desired to speak with her, and at once, Valentine was at table, had just
finished taking luncheon with her little boy. During the twenty-four
hours since the young man had left her upon her promise of a final
answer to his offer of marriage, she had been constantly in the throes
of the last convulsions of the struggle that had been waged for three
years between her love and her duty first, her good sense next. That
exclamation with which their interview had ended, that "now I am all
his," had been followed by a supreme effort to resist. The serious
objections that she had urged had presented themselves anew with a force
which Landri's disclosures concerning the secret difficulties of his
relations with his father had not lessened--quite the contrary. One
thing had grown less: her authority over her friend. By consenting to
reconsider her first refusal, she had proved too plainly her weakness
before the young man's passion. She realized that, and she was alarmed
to observe how sweet the sensation of yielding to that force was to her.
Irresistible inward intoxication of the woman who begins to give
herself! To give herself! A phrase so simple, yet of such deep meaning,
which sums up in itself the whole miracle of love, because it is love!
To cease to be one's self, to transform one's self into the ideas, the
wishes of another, to become whatsoever he wills, contrary to
self-interest, to prudence, sometimes to honor--so that he may be happy!
And the man whom Valentine loved wanted nothing from her which she had
not the right to give him without remorse.
"What answer shall I give him?" she had asked herself a score of times,
without ever arriving at a decision of which she was really, radically
sure in her own mind. "How can I persuade him to wait longer? Wait, and
for what? Assuming that I impose this further postponement upon him, and
he agrees to it, what will our relations be then? If I don't say yes,
and instantly, I shall be obliged, after the explanation we had
yesterday, to close my door to him. To receive him under such conditions
would be mere coquetry, in the worst of all forms. A woman who has let a
man tell her that he loves her should never see him again, or should
belong to him. Not see him again? Not know what he thinks, what he
feels? I should suffer too much. To say yes to him, if ill luck wills
that he shall be mixed up in one of these horrible church-burglaries, is
to dig still deeper the gulf between him and his father. If I could only
make my consent depend on the condition that he should resign rather
than obey an order of that sort! No; that would be wrong. He has a
conscience of his own which I have no right to exert pressure upon in
the name of his love! Ah! how I wish I could be sure that I am deciding
only for his real good, and not because I love him and for my own
happiness!"
A little incident had added to her uncertainty: a long letter from
Saint-Mihiel, written by one of the friends she had retained there, the
wife of one of the late Captain Olier's fellow officers. It was all
about the uneasiness that prevailed among all the officers on account of
the imminence of the two inventories--at Hugueville and Montmartin. The
young widow's correspondent related at great length a conversation she
had had with her husband, and how she had insisted that he should resign
rather than comply with certain orders.
"She is his wife," Valentine had said to herself. "A wife has the right
to take part in the most important resolutions of her husband's life.
Would she have the right to leave him if he should decide against her
advice? That is the sort of pressure I should try to exert if I should
demand a promise from Landri as the price of my hand. I will not do it!"
Such were the thoughts that she was turning over in her mind when the
bell rang. "Monsieur le Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp?" she could not
help asking the servant who transmitted the young man's request; and she
made her repeat the name, her surprise was so great. What was the
meaning of this call at half after twelve instead of two? Evidently,
that Landri had spoken to his father. To make him anticipate their
appointment thus, he must have good news to tell her! Would M. de
Claviers consent to their marriage? It was mad to hope for such a thing,
and yet Valentine's heart was beating fast with that hope when she went
into the small salon where the young man was awaiting her.
He had not uttered a word, and already she knew that she was mistaken.
And the door had hardly opened, and already he realized that he had come
to ask that woman a question which it was impossible for him even to
frame in his mind. Just as, a little while before, the trivial,
altogether material, necessity of writing a telegram, had roused him
from his stupor, so now the necessity of stating in explicit words the
ghastly thought roused him from his fit of frenzy. He saw it as clearly
as he saw Valentine coming toward him, that to seek to learn the extent
of the dishonor, as he had said, was to make himself an accomplice in
it, to aggravate it. Whatever Madame Olier might have learned, she had
learned it by hearsay only, and with doubts as to its truth. To speak to
her would change those doubts into certainty.
Landri suddenly recovered all the energy he had had before the
revelation. The mere presence of some one to talk to had caused the
tortured youth to realize with crushing force the sacredness of the
obligation to hold his peace, to conceal his martyrdom. Such a mighty
struggle with himself, and so instantaneous in its conclusion, did not
take place without a contraction of the whole being, betrayed by the
tension of the motionless features, by the wavering of the glance, by
the "white voice"--an admirably expressive popular phrase! What a
contrast to the exalted glance, the impassioned lips of yesterday--those
glowing eyes, that ardent voice! What had happened? Still engrossed by
the anxiety revived by her friend's letter, Valentine thought at once of
the ominous tale of inventories to be made.
"You have come at noon instead of two o'clock, Landri," she said,
speaking her thought aloud. "I understand. You have to return to
Saint-Mihiel by the next train. Have you had a telegram from the
colonel?"
"No," he answered in amazement. He was so far away from these
professional anxieties that he did not even understand the allusion.
"Then, if it isn't the inventories--" She did not finish the sentence.
The question that she had on the end of her lips did not pass them. The
perspicacity of a woman who loves made her divine that she must not even
ask it. To give herself countenance and to avoid the appearance of
interrupting herself, she continued: "The fact is that I have been
worried again this morning on your account. I have had a letter on the
subject from Julie Despois, the major's wife. In fact, I put it aside to
show it to you. Here it is."
She had espied the letter on her writing-table,--it was placed there, in
fact, with that purpose. She handed it to Landri, who began to read it,
or to pretend to do so. Valentine saw that his eyes followed the lines
but that their sense did not reach him. He did not really see the words.
When he had finished the fourth page, he refolded the letter and handed
it to Madame Olier, who refused it.
"Keep it. I want you to keep it. Read it again when you're back at
Saint-Mihiel. She says so well what I said to you so badly."
The meaning of these words did not reach the young man, either. He
obeyed, however, and with a mechanical movement slipped the envelope
into his coat pocket. They sat for several seconds without speaking.
This sort of absence in presence terrified Valentine now. Something had
happened, something tragical it must have been to affect him so
profoundly. With that occurrence she had nothing to do,--she felt it,
she saw it. It was not a question of their marriage, nor of the answer
that M. de Claviers might have made. He looked at her no more than he
had looked at the letter just now. Something had happened! And had
happened since the day before. Since the moment that Landri left that
little salon.--Where did he go? To Grandchamp. But he had taken Rue de
Solferino on his way. Madame Olier shuddered at the remembrance of the
dread that had suddenly seized her when Landri had told her of his
purpose. Suppose that, despite the promise she had exacted from him, he
had been compelled to go upstairs? Suppose--And overwhelmed by the
possibilities of which she caught a glimpse, she asked:--
"Did you get to Grandchamp in good season yesterday?"
"Why, very good," he replied; "in less than two hours."
"And your father wasn't angry? That little détour that you had to take
didn't make you too late?"
"No," he said, "I was there at the finish."
As he pronounced the word "no" his voice hardened a little. His eyelids
drooped over his eyes, in which she read distress. He waited, stiffening
himself, in order not to shriek, for an allusion which she did not make.
A great surgeon probing a wound displays no more skill in holding back
the steel instrument at the moment when it would make the patient cry
out, than a loving woman has in suspending a painful interrogatory
before she has touched the sore spot. But was there need for Valentine
to question him now in order to assure herself that the wound was there?
Madame Privat was right. Jaubourg had loved Madame de Claviers. And so
what she, Valentine, dreaded had really happened. Words had escaped the
dying man which had aroused in the son's mind doubts concerning his
mother's honor! And she waited, suffocated with emotion, for Landri to
go on.
He tried to speak, he did not wish to remain silent, to go away until he
had explained his unexpected call. But he could not. He could find only
phrases whose very insignificance emphasized their falsity.
"They gave me a great many commissions at the château," he said, "and
they'll take the whole afternoon. They disposed of my time without
consulting me, and as I wanted to see you again, I came a little
earlier."
"If you hadn't come," she replied, "and had sent me no word, I should
have been quite sure that it was not your fault. You well know that I
have entire faith in your affection, and that I shall never, never, take
offence at anything." Then, impelled by immeasurable pity for that too
cruelly stricken heart, if in truth a friend of his father, in the
delirium of the death-agony, had dishonored his mother's image forever,
she added: "I blame myself, Landri, for not having told you plainly
enough yesterday how dear you are to me. I didn't show it enough. For
you are dear to me, very dear," she repeated. It was as if she were
trying to tame with words that pain which she divined to be so savage,
so concentrated in itself, to caress it and soothe it. "Say that to
yourself sometimes, when I am not present, whatever may happen." And as
she saw that face, but now so gloomy, relax, and those veiled eyes look
at her once more and see her, the overflow of her affection extorted
from her the confession that she had always refused to make: "For you
see, Landri, I, too--I love you."
"You love me!" ejaculated the young man. Obeying the instinct of true
love, whose double vision borders on the marvellous, she had pronounced
the only words capable of pouring balm upon his wound, but causing him
to realize its full extent. That confession that he had so ardently
craved and begged for, he was suffering too intensely to enjoy. That
love which she at last manifested openly, and which, two hours earlier,
would have intoxicated him with a very ecstasy of joy, he could no
longer rush upon, absorb himself in, engulf himself in--himself and the
horrible thing! That thing was there, in his thought, torturing him even
at that moment, not to be forgotten even in the radiance of that noble
heart, which was his at last! A wave of emotion swept over him, so
despairing and so passionate at once, that he was alarmed by it. He
trembled lest the hideous disclosure should burst from his too deeply
moved heart. But did he need to make it now? Had she not divined
everything? And that also touched him, as a more convincing proof of
love than the most impassioned words, and overwhelmed him utterly.
"Thanks," he stammered. "But at this moment--surprise--emotion--Leave
me."
And motioning to her that his voice failed him, he hid his face in his
hands. He passed ten minutes thus, not sobbing, not weeping, not
sighing, nor did Valentine attempt to question him or to comfort him.
The only assuagement that his sick heart could receive without bleeding
from it was the feeling that she existed, that she was by his side, all
his. She gazed at him, even holding her breath, to spare him any
sensation. There was, in the silent convulsive immobility of that man
who was undergoing the most violent inward tempest and who gave no sign
of it except that gesture of mute agony, a wild upspringing of energy
for which she esteemed and admired him. Never during those three years
had they been so near each other in heart as in that silence, which he
broke at last. He raised his head. He was deathly pale; but the paroxysm
was conquered. He rose, took Madame Olier's hand, and said to her, in a
deep voice:--
"Yes. You love me. You have just proved it more clearly than you will
ever do again. I believe it. I feel it, and I feel also that I love you,
ah! much more dearly than I knew. I am going to leave you. I must. But
not until I have asked you again what I asked you yesterday. Valentine,
will you be my wife?"
"Yes," she replied, in the same tone.
An inexpressible emotion flashed in Landri's eyes as he drew her to him.
Chaste and ardent kiss of betrothal, in which his lips were wet with the
tears that she was shedding, now, for his misery, who did not weep! And
as those tears disturbed him anew to his inmost depths, he tore himself
from her embrace, saying:--
"Don't take away my courage. I need it sorely."
With these words they parted. She did not make a movement, she did not
say a word to detain him. She felt that he was hers, as she was his,
wholeheartedly, absolutely, and that she could do nothing else for him
than let him go, until he should have worn out, alone, that grief for
which she pitied him so profoundly. How much greater would her pity have
been if she had known the whole truth! She believed that at Jaubourg's
death-bed the young man had surprised some denunciatory words, had
perhaps found letters which had made him suspect his mother. The proofs
that he would soon have to face were far more cruel, and amid them all
he must needs find out the path of honor.
V
IN UNIFORM
"I still have her," said Landri to himself, as he left Rue Monsieur. As
before, he walked straight ahead, with the automatic, hurried step which
indicates, in certain diseases, the beginning of a disturbance of the
nerve-centres. But does not a moral shock, of such violence as the one
that he had just received, act upon the organism after the fashion of a
genuine stroke? Do not people often die of such shocks? Do they not come
out from them paralyzed and mentally unhinged? The young man's reason
had been very near giving way during the terrible, nervous paroxysm with
which he had been attacked in Valentine's presence, and which resulted
in the renewed entreaty that she would bind herself to him forever.
"I still have her," he repeated, "and only her!"
That was the ghastly sensation that he had struggled against during
those ten minutes of dumb agony--the sudden, the indescribable crash of
everything about him.--His mother? The pious memory of her that he had
always retained, tarnished forever!--His father? He had no father from
the moment that he could no longer give that name to the only man whom
he loved with filial affection, to the noble-hearted, the magnanimous
Marquis de Claviers. For the other he had had, from childhood, only
antipathetic sentiments which his sinister disclosure had suddenly
transformed into abhorrence, mingled with remorse and pity.--His name?
He no longer had a name. The name that he bore was not his. It was a
living lie.--His home? He no longer had a home. In the mansion on Rue du
Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, as at Grandchamp, he was an intruder, a usurper.
He had no right to be there. A few words uttered by a dying man had
sufficed to make his previous existence nothing save a heap of ruins. Of
the truth of those words he had no doubt. They had come to him with the
tragic sanction of death, against which nothing can prevail. But suppose
that it was only the sudden outburst of a madness caused by the fever of
the disease? No. Was Jaubourg mad when he sent that message to him at
Grandchamp the day before, so that he might embrace him before he died?
Was he mad when he followed Landri as a child, and afterward as a young
man, with such passionately vigilant watchfulness, carefully concealing
his interest? No. Nor was he mad when he pressed him to his heart in
that embrace all a-quiver with the grief-stricken fervor of his paternal
love. He was not mad in those visions of the past, in that "spoken
dream," as the doctor had said, which fitted into their whole life with
terrifying exactitude.
All these ideas had rushed at once into the young man's over-excited
mind during those very brief moments, as clear and distinct as memories
of the past in the mind of a drowning man. He had lost everything,
everything, except the sweet, pure woman yonder, who loved him,
understood him, pitied him, and did not tell him so--in order to spare
him! The unreasoned impulse, by virtue of which, in the throes of that
rayless distress, he had asked his only friend to unite their destinies,
was also, to follow out a too exact comparison, like the instinctive
movement with which the drowning man, whirled away by the current,
seizes in a desperate clutch the helping hand extended over the gunwale.
How happy Landri would have been to pass that long afternoon with her,
at her feet, his head on her knees; to feel descend upon him the only
charity that despairing souls welcome--sympathy without words! He had
been mortally afraid that he should himself speak if he stayed; and so
he had gone away to wrestle anew with the painful going and coming of
his thoughts, which tossed him to and fro once more in their resistless
surge. One by one the dying man's words repeated themselves in his mind,
from the sadly affectionate "You have come" of his first greeting, to
the outcries at the end, the imperative "You say that he's my son!"--a
supreme confession of the death-agony, followed by a supreme protest
which corroborated its truth. It proved the intense determination with
which the man had guarded his secret so long as his strength permitted
him to do so.
"Jaubourg's son!" Landri exclaimed. "I am Jaubourg's son!" The pitiless
revelation regarding his birth was beginning to appear to him in its
concrete reality. The social atmosphere in which he had lived nearly
thirty years gave to that vision a unique character. He had heard the
people of his circle, from the best--a Marquis de Claviers--to the
mediocre and the worst,--a Charlus, a Bressieux,--talk so much of
"race"; and it was in his race that he found himself suddenly stricken.
The blood that flowed in his veins--and he looked tremulously at his
hands--was the blood of Jaubourg. The vital force that enabled him to
move, to breathe, as he was doing at that moment, came to him from
Jaubourg. His very flesh came from that man. In imagination he saw him
once more, no longer a pitiable, wasted creature, as he lay stricken
with pneumonia on his bed, but young and handsome, as his childish
recollections recalled him,--on horseback, following the hunt; in
morning costume, walking in the avenues of their park at Grandchamp; in
evening dress, seated at their table. These images brought the man
before him, physically. The relationship of their faces became, so to
speak, visible, palpable, to him, and it gave him a sensation of
disgust, of revolt at himself--a detestation of his own body, as it
were.
The secret and hidden resemblances which he suddenly discovered between
himself and his mother's lover--he was dismayed to find that he dared
utter the words--confounded him. How had he failed to detect them? How
happened it that all those about him, and the marquis first of all, had
not remarked that similarity of temperament and the striking contrast
between the offspring of the Parisian bourgeois, distinguished it is
true, but in a mediocre way, and the feudal line of the Claviers? Landri
was slender, like Jaubourg, refined like him, but with a superficial,
almost stunted refinement, compared with the magnificence of those
splendidly robust noblemen. They all had light blue eyes. He had
Jaubourg's eyes, brown and dark. After so many years he could hear his
mother say: "Landri has my eyes." Why? So that no one might recognize
the eyes of the other. But he had those eyes, just as he had the
chestnut hair, and the lighter, almost tawny, mustache.
From his mother he inherited other features: the straight nose, the
haughty mouth, the dimpled chin. These points of resemblance had
justified Madame de Claviers in asserting that he was her living
portrait--to those who were not aware! Landri was aware now, and he
shuddered at the thought that the intimate guests at Grandchamp had
certainly detected in him the unmistakable tokens of his descent. He was
humiliated in the most secret depths of his being. He had prided
himself, throughout his young manhood, upon not being the prisoner of
his caste. He had treated as delusions at least, if not as prejudices,
the uncompromising convictions of the head of the house of Grandchamp
concerning the nobility; and he had a strange sensation of degradation
in facing the alloyage of his origin, the blending of other inherited
characteristics with the purely aristocratic maternal inheritance. This
feeling was most illogical. Had he not proposed, did he not propose, to
marry a woman even less aristocratic than a Charles Jaubourg? But does
logic ever govern the spontaneous reactions of our pride?
This indescribable impression of essential degradation was intensified
by another, more profound and more generous: the affection and
admiration that he had always entertained for M. de Claviers made it
almost unendurable to think that the sacred bond of parentage between
him and that loving, loyal, superior man was broken. Even while
struggling against his father's despotism, he had always been so proud
that he was his father! And he was not his father! What a heart-breaking
thing! It was as if, the very root of his being having suddenly been
laid bare, he were bleeding in every fibre that attaches the soul to the
body.
And he walked on and on, aimlessly, forgetting the time, regardless of
his surroundings, until, at the end of the afternoon, he found himself a
long way from his starting-point, at the far end of the Ménilmontant
quarter, beyond the cemetery of Père La Chaise. The approaching
twilight warned him at last that the day was passing. He looked at a
street sign and saw that he was at the corner of Boulevard Mortier and
Rue Saint-Fargeau. He consulted his watch. It was almost five o'clock.
The train he was to take started at a quarter past five. His servant was
waiting for him at the Gare de l'Est. He had just enough time to make
it, in a cab.
What mysterious and discomposing impulse of his perturbed heart did he
obey in leaving the station at his right and directing his steps towards
the Seine, and, from the river, to Rue de Solferino again? The
explanation is that, amid the tumult of his chaotic emotions, one image
had incessantly besieged his mind--that of the dying man, whose hands,
wet with sweat, he seemed still to feel wandering over his face, whose
short breath, tearing cough and spasmodic voice he could hear through
space. That man had done him a great wrong, but how large a place he
filled all of a sudden among his obsessions! That sinful paternity, so
brutally disclosed, agitated him without touching him. And yet it was
paternity none the less. His flesh quivered at the memory of those
farewell caresses. He felt a pang of remorse to think of leaving the
city where the unhappy man was breathing his last, without having
inquired for him, without having tried to see him once more.