He felt, when he found himself unobserved and outside, that he must
plunge into violent action, walk fast and far and defer the opportunity
for thought. He strode away into the forest, swinging his cane, throwing
back his head, casting his eyes into verdurous vistas and following the
road without a purpose. He felt immensely excited, but could have given
no straight name to his agitation. It was a joy as all increase of
freedom is joyous; something seemed to have been cleared out of his path
and his destiny to have rounded a cape and brought him into sight of an
open sea. But it was a pain in the degree in which his freedom somehow
resolved itself into the need of despising all mankind with a single
exception; and the fact that Madame de Mauves inhabited a planet
contaminated by the presence of the baser multitude kept elation from
seeming a pledge of ideal bliss.
There she was, at any rate, and circumstances now forced them to be
intimate. She had ceased to have what men call a secret for him, and
this fact itself brought with it a sort of rapture. He had no prevision
that he should “profit,” in the vulgar sense, by the extraordinary
position into which they had been thrown; it might be but a cruel trick
of destiny to make hope a harsher mockery and renunciation a keener
suffering. But above all this rose the conviction that she could do
nothing that wouldn’t quicken his attachment. It was this conviction
that gross accident--all odious in itself--would force the beauty of her
character into more perfect relief for him that made him stride along
as if he were celebrating a spiritual feast. He rambled at hazard for a
couple of hours, finding at last that he had left the forest behind him
and had wandered into an unfamiliar region. It was a perfectly rural
scene, and the still summer day gave it a charm for which its meagre
elements but half accounted.
He thought he had never seen anything so characteristically French;
all the French novels seemed to have described it, all the French
landscapists to have painted it. The fields and trees were of a cool
metallic green; the grass looked as if it might stain his trousers and
the foliage his hands. The clear light had a mild greyness, the sheen
of silver, not of gold, was in the work-a-day sun. A great red-roofed
high-stacked farmhouse, with whitewashed walls and a straggling yard,
surveyed the highroad, on one side, from behind a transparent curtain of
poplars. A narrow stream half-choked with emerald rushes and edged with
grey aspens occupied the opposite quarter. The meadows rolled and
sloped away gently to the low horizon, which was barely concealed by the
continuous line of clipped and marshalled trees. The prospect was not
rich, but had a frank homeliness that touched the young man’s fancy.
It was full of light atmosphere and diffused clearness, and if it was
prosaic it was somehow sociable.
Longmore was disposed to walk further, and he advanced along the road
beneath the poplars. In twenty minutes he came to a village which
straggled away to the right, among orchards and potagers. On the left,
at a stone’s throw from the road, stood a little pink-faced inn which
reminded him that he had not breakfasted, having left home with a
prevision of hospitality from Madame de Mauves. In the inn he found a
brick-tiled parlour and a hostess in sabots and a white cap, whom, over
the omelette she speedily served him--borrowing licence from the bottle
of sound red wine that accompanied it--he assured she was a true artist.
To reward his compliment she invited him to smoke his cigar in her
little garden behind the house.
Here he found a tonnelle and a view of tinted crops stretching down to
the stream. The tonnelle was rather close, and he preferred to lounge on
a bench against the pink wall, in the sun, which was not too hot. Here,
as he rested and gazed and mused, he fell into a train of thought which,
in an indefinable fashion, was a soft influence from the scene about
him. His heart, which had been beating fast for the past three hours,
gradually checked its pulses and left him looking at life with rather a
more level gaze. The friendly tavern sounds coming out through the open
windows, the sunny stillness of the yellowing grain which covered
so much vigorous natural life, conveyed no strained nor high-pitched
message, had little to say about renunciation--nothing at all about
spiritual zeal. They communicated the sense of plain ripe nature,
expressed the unperverted reality of things, declared that the common
lot isn’t brilliantly amusing and that the part of wisdom is to grasp
frankly at experience lest you miss it altogether. What reason there was
for his beginning to wonder after this whether a deeply-wounded heart
might be soothed and healed by such a scene, it would be difficult to
explain; certain it was that as he sat there he dreamt, awake, of an
unhappy woman who strolled by the slow-flowing stream before him and who
pulled down the fruit-laden boughs in the orchards. He mused and mused,
and at last found himself quite angry that he couldn’t somehow think
worse of Madame de Mauves--or at any rate think otherwise. He could
fairly claim that in the romantic way he asked very little of life--made
modest demands on passion: why then should his only passion be born
to ill fortune? Why should his first--his last--glimpse of positive
happiness be so indissolubly linked with renunciation?
It is perhaps because, like many spirits of the same stock, he had
in his composition a lurking principle of sacrifice, sacrifice for
sacrifice’s sake, to the authority of which he had ever paid due
deference, that he now felt all the vehemence of rebellion. To renounce,
to renounce again, to renounce for ever, was this all that youth and
longing and ardour were meant for? Was experience to be muffled and
mutilated like an indecent picture? Was a man to sit and deliberately
condemn his future to be the blank memory of a regret rather than the
long possession of a treasure? Sacrifice? The word was a trap for minds
muddled by fear, an ignoble refuge of weakness. To insist now seemed not
to dare, but simply to BE, to live on possible terms.
His hostess came out to hang a moist cloth on the hedge, and, though her
guest was sitting quietly enough, she might have imagined in his kindled
eyes a flattering testimony to the quality of her wine. As she turned
back into the house she was met by a young man of whom Longmore took
note in spite of his high distraction. He was evidently a member of that
jovial fraternity of artists whose very shabbiness has an affinity with
the unestablished and unexpected in life--the element often gazed at
with a certain wistfulness out of the curtained windows even of the
highest respectability. Longmore was struck first with his looking like
a very clever man and then with his looking like a contented one. The
combination, as it was expressed in his face, might have arrested the
attention of a less exasperated reasoner. He had a slouched hat and a
yellow beard, a light easel under one arm, and an unfinished sketch in
oils under the other. He stopped and stood talking for some moments to
the landlady, while something pleasant played in his face. They were
discussing the possibilities of dinner; the hostess enumerated some
very savoury ones, and he nodded briskly, assenting to everything. It
couldn’t be, Longmore thought, that he found such ideal ease in the
prospect of lamb-chops and spinach and a croute aux fruits. When the
dinner had been ordered he turned up his sketch, and the good woman fell
to admiring and comparing, to picking up, off by the stream-side, the
objects represented.
Was it his work, Longmore wondered, that made him so happy? Was a
strong talent the best thing in the world? The landlady went back to
her kitchen, and the young painter stood, as if he were waiting for
something, beside the gate which opened upon the path across the fields.
Longmore sat brooding and asking himself if it weren’t probably better
to cultivate the arts than to cultivate the passions. Before he had
answered the question the painter had grown tired of waiting. He had
picked up a pebble, tossed it lightly into an upper window and called
familiarly “Claudine!” Claudine appeared; Longmore heard her at the
window, bidding the young man cultivate patience. “But I’m losing
my light,” he said; “I must have my shadows in the same place as
yesterday.”
“Go without me then,” Claudine answered; “I’ll join you in ten minutes.”
Her voice was fresh and young; it represented almost aggressively to
Longmore that she was as pleased as her companion.
“Don’t forget the Chenier,” cried the young man, who, turning away,
passed out of the gate and followed the path across the fields until
he disappeared among the trees by the side of the stream. Who might
Claudine be? Longmore vaguely wondered; and was she as pretty as her
voice? Before long he had a chance to satisfy himself; she came out of
the house with her hat and parasol, prepared to follow her companion.
She had on a pink muslin dress and a little white hat, and she was as
pretty as suffices almost any Frenchwoman to be pleasing. She had a
clear brown skin and a bright dark eye and a step that made walking as
light a matter as being blown--and this even though she happened to be
at the moment not a little over-weighted. Her hands were encumbered with
various articles involved in her pursuit of her friend. In one arm she
held her parasol and a large roll of needlework, and in the other a
shawl and a heavy white umbrella, such as painters use for sketching.
Meanwhile she was trying to thrust into her pocket a paper-covered
volume which Longmore saw to be the poems of Andre Chenier, and in the
effort dropping the large umbrella and marking this with a half-smiled
exclamation of disgust. Longmore stepped forward and picked up the
umbrella, and as she, protesting her gratitude, put out her hand to take
it, he recognised her as too obliging to the young man who had preceded
her.
“You’ve too much to carry,” he said; “you must let me help you.”
“You’re very good, monsieur,” she answered. “My husband always
forgets something. He can do nothing without his umbrella. He is d’une
etourderie--”
“You must allow me to carry the umbrella,” Longmore risked; “there’s too
much of it for a lady.”
She assented, after many compliments to his politeness; and he walked
by her side into the meadow. She went lightly and rapidly, picking her
steps and glancing forward to catch a glimpse of her husband. She
was graceful, she was charming, she had an air of decision and yet of
accommodation, and it seemed to our friend that a young artist would
work none the worse for having her seated at his side reading Chenier’s
iambics. They were newly married, he supposed, and evidently their path
of life had none of the mocking crookedness of some others. They asked
little; but what need to ask more than such quiet summer days by a shady
stream, with a comrade all amiability, to say nothing of art and books
and a wide unmenaced horizon? To spend such a morning, to stroll back to
dinner in the red-tiled parlour of the inn, to ramble away again as the
sun got low--all this was a vision of delight which floated before him
only to torture him with a sense of the impossible. All Frenchwomen were
not coquettes, he noted as he kept pace with his companion. She uttered
a word now and then for politeness’ sake, but she never looked at him
and seemed not in the least to care that he was a well-favoured and
well-dressed young man. She cared for nothing but the young artist in
the shabby coat and the slouched hat, and for discovering where he had
set up his easel.
This was soon done. He was encamped under the trees, close to the
stream, and, in the diffused green shade of the little wood, couldn’t
have felt immediate need of his umbrella. He received a free rebuke,
however, for forgetting it, and was informed of what he owed to
Longmore’s complaisance. He was duly grateful; he thanked our hero
warmly and offered him a seat on the grass. But Longmore felt himself
a marplot and lingered only long enough to glance at the young man’s
sketch and to see in it an easy rendering of the silvery stream and the
vivid green rushes. The young wife had spread her shawl on the grass
at the base of a tree and meant to seat herself when he had left them,
meant to murmur Chenier’s verses to the music of the gurgling river.
Longmore looked a while from one of these lucky persons to the other,
barely stifled a sigh, bade them good-morning and took his departure. He
knew neither where to go nor what to do; he seemed afloat on the sea of
ineffectual longing. He strolled slowly back to the inn, where, in
the doorway, he met the landlady returning from the butcher’s with the
lambchops for the dinner of her lodgers.
“Monsieur has made the acquaintance of the dame of our young painter,”
she said with a free smile--a smile too free for malicious meanings.
“Monsieur has perhaps seen the young man’s picture. It appears that he’s
d’une jolie force.”
“His picture’s very charming,” said Longmore, “but his dame is more
charming still.”
“She’s a very nice little woman; but I pity her all the more.”
“I don’t see why she’s to be pitied,” Longmore pleaded. “They seem a
very happy couple.”
The landlady gave a knowing nod. “Don’t trust to it, monsieur! Those
artists--ca na pas de principes! From one day to another he can plant
her there! I know them, allez. I’ve had them here very often; one year
with one, another year with another.”
Longmore was at first puzzled. Then, “You mean she’s not his wife?” he
asked.
She took it responsibly. “What shall I tell you? They’re not des hommes
serieux, those gentlemen! They don’t engage for eternity. It’s none
of my business, and I’ve no wish to speak ill of madame. She’s
gentille--but gentille, and she loves her jeune homme to distraction.”
“Who then is so distinguished a young woman?” asked Longmore. “What do
you know about her?”
“Nothing for certain; but it’s my belief that she’s better than he. I’ve
even gone so far as to believe that she’s a lady--a vraie dame--and that
she has given up a great many things for him. I do the best I can for
them, but I don’t believe she has had all her life to put up with a
dinner of two courses.” And she turned over her lamb-chops tenderly, as
to say that though a good cook could imagine better things, yet if you
could have but one course lamb-chops had much in their favour. “I shall
do them with breadcrumbs. Voila les femmes, monsieur!”
Longmore turned away with the feeling that women were indeed a
measureless mystery, and that it was hard to say in which of their forms
of perversity there was most merit. He walked back to Saint-Germain more
slowly than he had come, with less philosophic resignation to any event
and more of the urgent egotism of the passion pronounced by philosophers
the supremely selfish one. Now and then the episode of the happy young
painter and the charming woman who had given up a great many things for
him rose vividly in his mind and seemed to mock his moral unrest like
some obtrusive vision of unattainable bliss.
The landlady’s gossip had cast no shadow on its brightness; her voice
seemed that of the vulgar chorus of the uninitiated, which stands always
ready with its gross prose rendering of the inspired passages of human
action. Was it possible a man could take THAT from a woman--take all
that lent lightness to that other woman’s footstep and grace to her
surrender and not give her the absolute certainty of a devotion as
unalterable as the process of the sun? Was it possible that so clear
a harmony had the seeds of trouble, that the charm of so perfect union
could be broken by anything but death? Longmore felt an immense desire
to cry out a thousand times “No!” for it seemed to him at last that
he was somehow only a graver equivalent of the young lover and that
rustling Claudine was a lighter sketch of Madame de Mauves. The heat of
the sun, as he walked along, became oppressive, and when he re-entered
the forest he turned aside into the deepest shade he could find and
stretched himself on the mossy ground at the foot of a great beech. He
lay for a while staring up into the verdurous dusk overhead and trying
mentally to see his friend at Saint-Germain hurry toward some quiet
stream-side where HE waited, as he had seen that trusting creature hurry
an hour before. It would be hard to say how well he succeeded; but the
effort soothed rather than excited him, and as he had had a good deal
both of moral and physical fatigue he sank at last into a quiet sleep.
While he slept moreover he had a strange and vivid dream. He seemed
to be in a wood, very much like the one on which his eyes had lately
closed; but the wood was divided by the murmuring stream he had left an
hour before. He was walking up and down, he thought, restlessly and in
intense expectation of some momentous event. Suddenly, at a distance,
through the trees, he saw a gleam of a woman’s dress, on which he
hastened to meet her. As he advanced he recognised her, but he saw at
the same time that she was on the other bank of the river. She seemed at
first not to notice him, but when they had come to opposite places she
stopped and looked at him very gravely and pityingly. She made him no
sign that he must cross the stream, but he wished unutterably to stand
by her side. He knew the water was deep, and it seemed to him he knew
how he should have to breast it and how he feared that when he rose to
the surface she would have disappeared. Nevertheless he was going to
plunge when a boat turned into the current from above and came swiftly
toward them, guided by an oarsman who was sitting so that they couldn’t
see his face. He brought the boat to the bank where Longmore stood;
the latter stepped in, and with a few strokes they touched the opposite
shore. Longmore got out and, though he was sure he had crossed the
stream, Madame de Mauves was not there. He turned with a kind of agony
and saw that now she was on the other bank--the one he had left. She
gave him a grave silent glance and walked away up the stream. The boat
and the boatman resumed their course, but after going a short distance
they stopped and the boatman turned back and looked at the still divided
couple. Then Longmore recognised him--just as he had recognised him a
few days before at the restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne.