1
We were lying in the long grass, looking up at the sky through the
branches of the apple-trees and watching the clouds drift past.
The light was fading slowly, the leaves became dim, the birds stopped
singing.
"Rose, I do nothing but think of you. Who are you? What will become of
you? I should like to anticipate everything, so as to save you every
pain. Had you been happy and well-cared-for, I would have wished you
trouble and grief. But, strengthened as you now are by many trials, you
will be able to find in sorrows avoided and only seen in the distance
all the good which we usually draw from them by draining them to the
dregs."
"I am not afraid, I expect to be unhappy."
"I hope that you will not be unhappy. The change will be quite simple if
it is wisely brought about; you will drop out of your present life like
a ripe fruit dropping from its stalk."
"How shall I prepare myself?"
"So far, your chief merit has been patience. But now rouse yourself,
look around you, judge, find out your good and bad qualities."
Rose interrupted me:
"My good qualities! Have I any?"
"Indeed you have: plenty of common sense, a great power of resistance,
shrewdness. By means of these, you have been able to subdue the tyranny
of others: can you not escape from that of your failings? Your life has
adapted itself to an evil and stupid environment; it must now adapt
itself to the environment of your own self."
2
From the neighbouring farms came the plaintive, monotonous cry calling
the cattle home. The drowsy sky became one universal grey, while the
night dews covered the earth with a faint haze.
"I am surprised that, when you were so unhappy, solitude did not appear
to you in the light of a beautiful dream."
Rose's timid and astonished voice echoed my last words:
"A beautiful dream! Then do you like solitude?"
"Oh, Rose, I owe it the greatest, the only joys of my childhood! It was
to gain solitude that, later, I set myself to win my independence,
knowing that, if I did not meet with the love I wished, I should yet be
happier alone than among others."
"But, still, you do not live alone!"
I remained silent for a moment, stirred by that question which filled my
mind with the thought of my own happiness; and then I said in a whisper,
as though speaking to myself:
"Rose, my present life is the most exquisite form of independence and
solitude."
And I went on:
"Ah, Rose, to know how to be alone! That is the finest conquest that a
woman can make! You cannot imagine my rapture when I first found myself
in a home of my own, surrounded by all the things purchased by my work.
When I came in at the end of the day, my heart used to throb with
gladness. No pleasure has ever seemed to equal that blessed harmony
which reigned and reigns in my soul or that assured peace which no one
can take from me, because it depends only on my mood."
"Teach me that joy."
"It is only a brighter light of our own consciousness, a more detached
and loftier contemplation of what affects us, a truer way of seeing and
understanding...."
The girl murmured:
"Shall I ever have it?"
"Later, when you have gone away."
And, in response to her anxious sigh, I went on, confidently:
"And you will go away when you want to go as badly as I did, when your
object is not so much to escape unhappiness as to secure happiness; for,
when you become what I hope to see you, you will look at things so
differently! You will pity those about you, you will not judge them. The
irksome duties laid upon you will not be a burden to you. You will
understand the beauty of the country for the first time; and the thought
of leaving it will reveal its sweetness to you. But, on the other hand,
fortunately, new reasons for going will appeal to your conscience:
first, your just pride in what you are and what you may become; the
sense of your independence; and the vision of a wider and nobler
existence. And, in this way, you will go not to escape annoyance or to
please me, but as a duty towards yourself."
3
It was the silent hour when nature seems to be awaiting the darkness.
Not a breath, not a sound, while the colours of the day vanish one by
one before the life of the evening has yet begun to throb.
I turned to my companion. With a great labourer's knife in her hand, she
was solemnly whittling a piece of wood. She answered my enquiring
glance:
"It is to fasten to Blossom's horns; she's getting into bad ways...."
And, quickly, fearing lest she had hurt me, she added:
"I was listening, you know!"
4
Standing in the porch, we breathe the scent of the rose-trees laden with
roses. It has been raining heavily. Tiny drops drip from leaf to leaf;
the flowers, for a moment bowed down, raise their heads; the birds
resume their singing; and, in the sunbeams that now appear, slanting and
a little treacherous, the pebbles on the path glitter like precious
stones.
We had taken shelter, during the storm, inside the house, where we sat
eating sweets, laughing and talking without restraint. But now Rose is
uneasy; she looks at me and says, abruptly:
"Do you love me?"
"I cannot tell you yet."
She insists, coaxingly:
"Do tell me!"
"Darling, I have become very chary of words like that, for I know what
pain we can give if, after our lips have uttered them, they are not
borne out by all our later acts. As we grow in understanding, I believe
that it becomes more difficult for us to distinguish the exact value of
the friendship which we bestow."
"Why?"
"For the very reason that we grow at the same time less capable of
hatred, contempt and indifference. If a fellow-creature is natural, he
interests us by the sole fact of the life which he represents; and, if
circumstances make us meet him often, it will be hard for us to be
certain whether what we are actually lavishing upon him is friendship
or only interest."
She seemed to like listening to me; and I continued in the same strain:
"A moment, therefore, comes when our understanding is like a second
heart, a heart that seems to anticipate and complete the other, by
giving perfect security to its movements...."
A breath of wind passed and stripped the petals from a rose that hung in
the doorway. And our shoulders were covered with little scented wings.