Dear wedded sweetheart,--Your letter has arrived at the very moment to
hearten me for a bold step which I have been meditating night and day.
I feel within me a strange craving for the unknown, or, if you will, the
forbidden, which makes me uneasy and reveals a conflict in progress in
my soul between the laws of society and of nature. I cannot tell whether
nature in me is the stronger of the two, but I surprise myself in the
act of meditating between the hostile powers.
In plain words, what I wanted was to speak with Felipe, alone, at night,
under the lime-trees at the bottom of our garden. There is no denying
that this desire beseems the girl who has earned the epithet of an
"up-to-date young lady," bestowed on me by the Duchess in jest, and
which my father has approved.
Yet to me there seems a method in this madness. I should recompense
Felipe for the long nights he has passed under my window, at the same
time that I should test him, by seeing what he thinks of my escapade and
how he comports himself at a critical moment. Let him cast a halo round
my folly--behold in him my husband; let him show one iota
less of the tremulous respect with which he bows to me in the
Champs-Elysees--farewell, Don Felipe.
As for society, I run less risk in meeting my lover thus than when I
smile to him in the drawing-rooms of Mme. de Maufrigneuse and the old
Marquise de Beauseant, where spies now surround us on every side; and
Heaven only knows how people stare at the girl, suspected of a weakness
for a grotesque, like Macumer.
I cannot tell you to what a state of agitation I am reduced by dreaming
of this idea, and the time I have given to planning its execution. I
wanted you badly. What happy hours we should have chattered away, lost
in the mazes of uncertainty, enjoying in anticipation all the delights
and horrors of a first meeting in the silence of night, under the noble
lime-trees of the Chaulieu mansion, with the moonlight dancing through
the leaves! As I sat alone, every nerve tingling, I cried, "Oh! Renee,
where are you?" Then your letter came, like a match to gunpowder, and my
last scruples went by the board.
Through the window I tossed to my bewildered adorer an exact tracing of
the key of the little gate at the end of the garden, together with this
note:
"Your madness must really be put a stop to. If you broke your
neck, you would ruin the reputation of the woman you profess to
love. Are you worthy of a new proof of regard, and do you deserve
that I should talk with you under the limes at the foot of the
garden at the hour when the moon throws them into shadow?"
Yesterday at one o'clock, when Griffith was going to bed, I said to her:
"Take your shawl, dear, and come out with me. I want to go to the bottom
of the garden without anyone knowing."
Without a word, she followed me. Oh! my Renee, what an awful moment
when, after a little pause full of delicious thrills of agony, I saw him
gliding along like a shadow. When he had reached the garden safely, I
said to Griffith:
"Don't be astonished, but the Baron de Macumer is here, and, indeed, it
is on that account I brought you with me."
No reply from Griffith.
"What would you have with me?" said Felipe, in a tone of such agitation
that it was easy to see he was driven beside himself by the noise,
slight as it was, of our dresses in the silence of the night and of our
steps upon the gravel.
"I want to say to you what I could not write," I replied.
Griffith withdrew a few steps. It was one of those mild nights, when
the air is heavy with the scent of flowers. My head swam with the
intoxicating delight of finding myself all but alone with him in the
friendly shade of the lime-trees, beyond which lay the garden, shining
all the more brightly because the white facade of the house reflected
the moonlight. The contrast seemed, as it were, an emblem of our
clandestine love leading up to the glaring publicity of a wedding.
Neither of us could do more at first than drink in silently the ecstasy
of a moment, as new and marvelous for him as for me. At last I found
tongue to say, pointing to the elm-tree:
"Although I am not afraid of scandal, you shall not climb that tree
again. We have long enough played schoolboy and schoolgirl, let us rise
now to the height of our destiny. Had that fall killed you, I should
have died disgraced..."