hot, dark evening--impetuously embraced her knees, nearly fainting with
passion. And looking at his hair, at his thin white neck, she thought
with pain and ecstasy:
"Ah yes, yes, I might have had such a son, almost his age!"
However, from that time until he left for France he behaved reasonably.
This essentially was a bad sign, for it might mean that his passion had
become deeper. But outwardly everything had changed for the better--only
once did he break down. It was on a Sunday after dinner at which several
strangers were present, and he, careless of whether they noticed it,
said to her:
"I beg you to spare me a minute."
She got up and followed him into the empty, half-dark drawing-room. He
went to the window through which the evening light fell in broad shafts,
and, looking straight into her face, said:
"To-day is the day on which my father died. I love you!"
She turned and was about to leave him. Frightened, he hastily called
after her:
"Forgive me, it is for the first and last time!"
Indeed, she heard no further confessions from him. "I was fascinated by
her agitation," he noted that night in his diary in his elegant and
pompous style; "I swore never again to disturb her peace of mind: am I
not blessed enough without that?" He continued to come to town--he only
slept at the villa Hashim--and he behaved erratically, but always more
or less properly. At times he was, as before, unnaturally playful and
naïve, running about with the children in the garden; but more often he
sat with her and "sipped of her presence," read newspapers and novels to
her, and "was happy in her listening to him." "The children were not in
the way," he wrote of those days, "their voices, laughter, comings and
goings, their very beings acted like the subtlest conductors for our
feelings; thanks to them, the charm of those feelings was intensified;
we talked about the most everyday matters, but something else sounded
through what we said: our happiness; yes, yes, she, too, was happy--I
maintain that! She loved me to read poetry; in the evenings from the
balcony we looked down upon Constantine, lying at our feet in the bluish
moonlight...." At last, in August Madame Maraud insisted that he should
go away, return to his work; and during his journey he wrote: "I'm going
away! I am going away, poisoned by the bitter sweet of parting! She gave
me a remembrance, a velvet ribbon which she wore round her neck as a
young girl. At the last moment she blessed me, and I saw tears shine in
her eyes, when she said: 'Good-bye, my dear son.'"
Was he right in thinking that Madam Maraud was also happy in August? No
one knows. But that his leaving was painful to her--there is no doubt of
that. That word "son," which had often troubled her before, now had a
sound for her which she could not bear to hear. Formerly when friends
met her on the way to church, and said to her jokingly: "What have you
to pray for, Madame Maraud? You are already without sin and without
troubles!" she more than once answered with a sad smile: "I complain to
God that he has not given me a son." Now the thought of a son never left
her, the thought of the happiness that he would constantly give her by
his mere existence in the world. And once, soon after Emile's departure,
she said to her husband:
"Now I understand it all. I now believe firmly that every mother ought
to have a son, that every mother who has no son, if she look into her
own heart and examine her whole life, will realize that she is unhappy.
You are a man and cannot feel that, but it is so.... Oh how tenderly,
passionately a woman can love a son!"
She was very affectionate to her husband during that autumn. It would
happen sometimes that, sitting alone with him, she would suddenly say
bashfully:
"Listen, Hector.... I am ashamed to mention it again to you, but still
... do you ever think of March, '76? Ah, if we had had a son!"
"All this troubled me a good deal," M. Maraud said later, "and it
troubled me the more because she began to get thin and out of health.
She grew feeble, became more and more silent and gentle. She went out to
our friends more and more rarely, she avoided going to town unless
compelled.... I have no doubt that some terrible, incomprehensible
disease had been gradually getting hold of her, body and soul!" And the
governess added that that autumn, Madame Maraud, if she went out,
invariably put on a thick white veil, which she had never done before,
and that, on coming home, she would immediately take it off in front of
the glass and would carefully examine her tired face. It is unnecessary
to explain what had been going on in her soul during that period. But
did she desire to see Emile? Did he write to her and did she answer him?
He produced before the court two telegrams which he alleged she sent him
in reply to letters of his. One was dated November 10: "You are driving
me mad. Be calm. Send me a message immediately." The other of December
23: "No, no, don't come, I implore you. Think of me, love me as a
mother." But, of course, the truth that the telegrams had been sent by
her could not be proved. Only this is certain, that from September to
January the life which Madame Maraud lived was miserable, agitated,
morbid.
The late autumn of that year in Constantine was cold and rainy. Then, as
is always the case in Algeria, there suddenly came a delightful spring.
And a liveliness began again to return to Madame Maraud, that happy,
subtle intoxication which people who have already lived through their
youth feel at the blossoming of spring. She began to go out again; she
drove out a good deal with the children and used to take them to the
deserted garden of the villa Hashim; she intended to go to Algiers, and
to show the children Blida near which there is in the hills a wooded
gorge, the favourite haunt of monkeys. And so it went on until January
17 of the year 1893. On January 17 she woke up with a feeling of gentle
happiness which, it seemed, had agitated her the whole night. Her
husband was away on business, and in his absence she slept alone in the
large room; the blinds and curtains made it almost dark. Still from the
pale bluishness which filtered in one could see that it was very early.
And, indeed, the little watch on the night table showed that it was six
o'clock. She felt with delight the morning freshness coming from the
garden, and, wrapping the light blanket round her, turned to the
wall.... "Why am I so happy?" she thought as she fell asleep. And in
vague and beautiful visions she saw scenes in Italy and Sicily, scenes
of that far-off spring when she sailed in a cabin, with its windows
opening on to the deck and the cold silvery sea, with doorhangings which
time had worn and faded to a rusty silver colour, with its threshold of
brass shining from perpetual polishings.... Then she saw boundless bays,
lagoons, low shores, an Arab city all white with flat roofs and behind
it misty blue hills and mountains. It was Tunis, where she had only once
been, that spring when she was in Naples, Palermo.... But then, as
though the chill of a wave had passed over her, with a start, she opened
her eyes. It was past eight; she heard the voices of the children and
the governess. She got up, put on a wrap, and, going out on to the
balcony, went down to the garden and sat in the rocking-chair. It stood
on the sand by a round table under a blossoming mimosa tree which made a
golden arbour heavily scented in the sun. The maid brought her coffee.
She again began to think of Tunis, and she remembered the strange thing
which had happened to her there, the sweet terror and happy silence of
the moment before death which she had experienced in that pale-blue city
in a warm pink twilight, half lying in a rocking-chair on the hotel
roof, faintly seeing the dark face of the Arab hypnotizer and juggler,
who squatted in front of her and sent her to sleep by his hardly
audible, monotonous melodies and the slow movements of his thin hands.
And suddenly, as she was thinking and was looking mechanically with
wide-open eyes at the bright silver spark which shone in the sunlight
from the spoon in the glass of water, she lost consciousness.... When
with a start she opened her eyes again, Emile was standing over her.
All that followed after that unexpected meeting is known from the words
of Emile himself, from his story, from his answers in cross-examination.
"Yes, I came to Constantine out of the blue!" he said; "I came because I
felt that the Powers of Heaven themselves could not stop me. In the
morning of January 17 straight from the railway station, without any
warning, I arrived at M. Maraud's house and ran into the garden. I was
overwhelmed by what I saw, but no sooner had I taken a step forward than
she woke up. She seemed to be amazed both by the unexpectedness of my
appearance and by what had been happening to her, but she uttered no
cry. She looked at me like a person who has just woken up from a sound
sleep, and then she got up, arranging her hair.
"It is just what I anticipated," she said without expression; "you did
not obey me!"
And with a characteristic movement she folded the wrap round her bosom,
and taking my head in her two hands kissed me twice on the forehead.
I was bewildered with passionate ecstasy, but she quietly pushed me from
her and said:
"Come, I am not dressed; I'll be back presently; go to the children."
"But, for the love of God, what was the matter with you just now?" I
asked, following her on to the balcony.
"Oh, it was nothing, a slight faintness; I had been looking at the
shining spoon," she answered, regaining control of herself, and
beginning to speak with animation. "But what have you done, what have
you done!"
I could not find the children anywhere; it was empty and quiet in the
house. I sat in the dining-room, and heard her suddenly begin to sing in
a distant room in a strong, melodious voice, but I did not understand
then the full horror of that singing, because I was trembling with
nervousness. I had not slept at all all night; I had counted the minutes
while the train was hurrying me to Constantine; I jumped into the first
carriage I met, raced out of the station; I did not expect as I came to
the town.... I knew I, too, had a foreboding that my coming would be
fatal to us; but still what I saw in the garden, that mystical meeting,
and that sudden change in her attitude towards me, I could not expect
that! In ten minutes she came down with her hair dressed, in a light
grey dress with a shade of blue in it.
"Ah," she said, while I kissed her hand, "I forgot that to-day is
Sunday; the children are at church, and I overslept.... After church the
children will go to the pine-wood--have you ever been there?"
And, without waiting for my answer, she rang the bell, and told them to
bring me coffee. She began to look fixedly at me, and, without listening
to my replies, to ask me how I lived, and what I was doing; she began to
speak of herself, of how, after two or three very bad months during
which she had become "terribly old"--those words were uttered with an
imperceptible smile--she now felt so well, as young, as never before....
I answered, listened, but a great deal I did not understand. Both of us
said meaningless things; my hands grew cold at the thought of another
terrible and inevitable hour. I do not deny that I felt as though I were
struck by lightning when she said "I have grown old...." I suddenly
noticed that she was right; in the thinness of her hands, and faded,
though youthful, face, in the dryness of some of the outlines of her
figure, I noticed the first signs of that which, painfully and somehow
awkwardly--but still more painfully--makes one's heart contract at the
sight of an ageing woman. Oh yes, how quickly and sharply she had
changed, I thought. But still she was beautiful; I grew intoxicated
looking at her. I had been accustomed to dream of her endlessly; I had
never for an instant forgotten when, in the evening of July 11, I had
embraced her knees for the first time. Her hands, too, trembled
slightly, as she arranged her hair and spoke and smiled and looked at
me; and suddenly--you will understand the whole catastrophic power of
that woman--suddenly that smile somehow became distorted, and she said
with difficulty, but yet firmly:
"You must go home, you must rest after your journey--you are not looking
yourself; your eyes are so terribly suffering, your lips so burning that
I cannot bear it any longer.... Would you like me to come with you, to
accompany you?"
And, without waiting for my answer, she got up and went to put on her
hat and cloak....
We drove quickly to the villa Hashim. I stopped for a moment on the
terrace to pick some flowers. She did not wait for me, but opened the
door herself. I had no servants; there was only a watchman, but he did
not see us. When I came into the hall, hot and dark with its drawn
blinds, and gave her the flowers, she kissed them; then, putting one arm
round me, she kissed me. Her lips were dry from excitement, but her
voice was clear.
"But listen ... how shall we ... have you got anything?" she asked.
At first I did not understand her; I was so overwhelmed by the first
kiss, the first endearment, and I murmured:
"What do you mean?"
She shrank back.
"What!" she said, almost sternly. "Did you imagine that I... that we can
live after this? Have you anything to kill ourselves with?"
I understood, and quickly showed her my revolver, loaded with five
cartridges, which I always kept on me.
She walked away quickly ahead of me from one room to the other. I
followed her with that numbness of the senses with which a naked man on
a sultry day walks out into the sea; I heard the rustle of her skirts.
At last we were there; she threw off her cloak and began to untie the
strings of her hat. Her hands were still trembling and in the half-light
I again noticed something, pitiful and tired in her face....
But she died with firmness. At the last moment she was transformed; she
kissed me, and moving her head back so as to see my face, she whispered
to me such tender and moving words that I cannot repeat them.
I wanted to go out and pick some flowers to strew on the death-bed. She
would not let me; she was in a hurry and said:
"No, no, you must not ... there are flowers here ... here are your
flowers," and she kept on repeating: "And see, I beseech you by all that
is sacred to you, kill me!"
"Yes, and then I will kill myself," I said, without for a moment
doubting my resolution.
"Oh, I believe you, I believe you," she answered, already apparently
half-unconscious....
A moment before her death she said very quietly and simply:
"My God, this is unspeakable!"
And again:
"Where are the flowers you gave me? Kiss me--for the last time."
She herself put the revolver to her head. I wanted to do it, but she
stopped me:
"No, that is not right; let me do it. Like this, my child.... And
_afterwards_ make the sign of the cross over me and lay the flowers on
my heart...."
When I fired, she made a slight movement with her lips, and I fired
again....
She lay quiet; in her dead face there was a kind of bitter happiness.
Her hair was loose; the tortoise-shell comb lay on the floor. I
staggered to my feet in order to put an end to myself. But the room,
despite the blinds, was light; in the light and stillness which suddenly
surrounded me, I saw clearly her face already pale.... And suddenly
madness seized me; I rushed to the window, undid and threw open the
shutters, began shouting and firing into the air.... The rest you
know...."
* * * * *
[In the spring, five years ago, while wandering in Algeria, the writer
of these lines visited Constantine.... There often comes to him a memory
of the cold, rainy, and yet spring evenings which he spent by the fire
in the reading-room of a certain old and homely French hotel. In the
heavy, elaborate book-case were much-read illustrated papers, and in
them you could see the faded photographs of Madame Maraud. There were
photographs taken of her at different ages, and among them the Lausanne
portrait of her as a girl.... Her story is told here once more, from a
desire to tell it in one's own way.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HOGARTH PRESS
PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND, SURREY
_PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS_
CLIVE BELL
Poems. 2_s._ 6_d._ net.
T. S. ELIOT
Poems. _Out of print._
E. M. FORSTER
The Story of the Siren. 2_s._ 6_d._ net.
ROGER FRY
Twelve Original Woodcuts. Third impression. 5_s._ net.
MAXIM GORKY
Reminiscences of Tolstoi. Second edition. 5_s._ net.
KATHERINE MANSFIELD
Prelude. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.
HOPE MIRRLEES
Paris. A Poem. _Out of print._
J. MIDDLETON MURRY
The Critic in Judgment. 2_s._ 6_d._ net.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Stories from the Old Testament retold. 4_s._ 6_d._ net.
The Note-books of ANTON TCHEKHOV, together with
Reminiscences of TCHEKHOV by Maxim Gorky. 5_s._ net.
LEONARD WOOLF
Stories of the East. 3_s._ net.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Monday or Tuesday. 4_s._ 6_d._ net.
The Mark on the Wall. Second edition. 1_s._ 6_d._ net.
Kew Gardens. _Out of print._
LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF
Two Stories. _Out of print._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forthcoming Publications
KARN. A Poem. By Ruth Manning-Sanders.
3_s._ 6_d._ net.
DAYBREAK. A Book of Poems. By Fredegond
Shove. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
and other Stories. By I. A. Bunin. Translated
from the Russian by S. S. Koteliansky and
Leonard Woolf.