Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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His whole manner suddenly changed. He hoisted himself on to the terrace and, sitting on the edge in the dry grass, lit a cigarette and looked at the world without thinking of anything at all.
CHAPTER V
THEIR RAPID INTIMACY did not leave off growing during the following days. M. Des Boys never left the workmen who were making the new paths and from moment to moment he would call his daughter or M. Hervart, soliciting their approval.
In the afternoons they would go and look at one of the castles in the neighbourhood.
They saw Martinvast, towers, chapel, Gothic arches, ingeniously adapted so as to cover, without spoiling their lines, the flimsy luxury of modern times. Tourlaville, though less old, looked more decayed under its cloak of ivy. M. Hervart admired the great octagonal tower, the bold lines of the inward-curving roofs. They saw Pepinbast, a thing of lace-work and turrets, florid with trefoils and pinnacles. They saw Chiflevast, a Janus, Gothic on one side and Louis XIV on the other.
Nacqueville is old in parts; the main block seems to be contemporary with Richelieu; as a whole, it is imposing, a building to which each generation has added its own life without hiding the distant origins.
Vast, which looks quite modern, occupies a pleasing site by the falls of the Saire. It seemed more human than the others, whose hugeness and splendour they had admired without a wish to possess. Here one could give play to one’s desire.
“All the same,” said M. Hervart, “it looks too much like a big cottage.”
M. Des Boys resolved to have a cascade at Robinvast. It was a pity that he had nothing better than a stream at his disposal.
They returned by La Pernelle, from which one can see all the eastern part of the Hague, from Gatteville to St. Marcouf, a great sheet of emerald green, bordered, far away by a ribbon of blue sea.
They made a halt. Rose picked some heather, with which she filled M. Hervart’s arms. The eagerness of the air lit up her eyes, fired her cheeks.
“Isn’t it lovely, my country?”
A cloud hid the sun. Colour paled away from the scene; a shadow walked across the sea, quenching its brilliance; but southward, towards the isles of St. Marcouf, it was still bright.
“A sad thought crossing the brow of the sea,” said M. Hervart. “But look....”
Everything had suddenly lit up once again.
Rose blew kisses into space.
They had to go back towards St. Vast, where they had hired the carriage. Thence, traveling by the little railway which follows the sea for a space before it turns inland under the apple trees, they arrived at Valognes.
They dined at the St. Michel hotel. M. Des Boys was bored; he had begun to find the excursion rather too long. But there were still a lot of fine buildings to be looked at, Fontenay, Flamanville.... However, those didn’t mean such long journeys.
“We have still got to go,” said he, “to Barnavast, Richemont, the Hermitage and Pannelier. That can be done in one afternoon.”
They did not get back to Robinvast till very late. The darkness in the carriage gave M. Hervart his opportunity; his leg came into contact with Rose’s; under pretext of steadying the bundle of heather which Rose was balancing on her knee, their hands met for an instant.
Mme. Des Boys was waiting for them, rather anxiously. She kissed her daughter almost frenziedly. Enervated, Rose burst out laughing, said she wanted something to drink and, having drunk expressed a wish for food.
“That’s it,” said M. Hervart. “Let’s have supper.”
He checked himself:
“I was only joking; I’m not in the least hungry.”
But Rose found the idea amusing; she went in search of food, bringing into the drawing-room every kind of object, down to a bottle of sparkling cider she had discovered in a cupboard.
“Hervart’s a boy of twenty-five,” said M. Des Boys as he watched his friend helping Rose in her preparations. “I shall go to bed.”
“At twenty-five,” said Hervart, “one doesn’t know what to do with one’s life. One has all the trumps in one’s hand, but one plays one’s cards haphazard, and one loses.”
“Does he talk of playing now?” said M. Des Boys, who was half asleep. Rose burst out laughing.
“Are you really going to bed?” asked Mme. Des Boys; she looked tired. “I suppose I must stay here.”
But she was soon bored. It was half past twelve. She tried to get her daughter to come.
“Ten minutes more, mother.”
“All right, I’ll leave you. I shall expect you in ten minutes.”
M. Hervart got up.
“I give you ten minutes. Be indulgent with the child. All this fresh air has gone to her head.”
M. Hervart felt embarrassed. A week ago such a tête-a-tête would have seemed the most innocent and perhaps, too, the most tedious of things.
“I really don’t know what may happen. I must be serious, cold; I must try and look tired and antique....”
As soon as she heard her mother’s footsteps in the room above the drawing-room, Rose came and sat down close to M. Hervart, put her hands on the arm of his chair. He looked at her, and there was something of madness in his eyes. He turned completely and laid his hands upon the girl’s hands. They moved, took his and pressed them, gently. Then, without having had the time to think of what they were doing, they woke up a second later mouth against mouth. This kiss exhausted their emotion. With the same instinctive movement both drew back, but they went on looking at one another.
Decidedly, she was very pretty. She, for part, found him admirable, thinking:
“I belong to him. I have given him my lips. I am his. What will he do? What shall I do?...”
That was just what M. Hervart was wondering — what ought he to do?
“What caresses are possible, what won’t she object to? I should like to kiss her lips again.... Her eyes? Her neck? Which of the Italian poets was it who said: ‘Kiss the arms, the neck, the breasts of your beloved, they will not give you back your kisses. The lips alone,’ But I shall have to say something. Of course, I ought to say: ‘Je vous aime.’ But I don’t love her. If I did, I should have said: ‘Je t’aime!’ and I should have said it without thinking, without knowing.
“Rose, I love you.”
She shut her eyes, laid her head on the arm of the chair; for she was sitting on a low stool.
It was the ear that presented itself. M. Hervart kissed her ear slowly, savouring it, kiss by kiss, like an epicure over some choice shell-fish.
“She lets me do what I like. It’s amusing....”
He kissed his way round her ear and halted next to the eye, which was shut.
“How soft her eyelid is!”
His lips travelled down her nose and settled at the corner of her mouth. Tickled by their touch, she smiled.
When he had thoroughly kissed the right side, she offered him the left; then, giving her lips to him frankly, she received his kiss, returned it with all her heart, and got up.
She smiled without any embarrassment. She was happy and very little disturbed.
“There,” she said to herself. “Now I’m married.”
CHAPTER VI
THE PATHS WERE now visible. One of them, in front of the house, made an oval round a lawn, which looked, at the moment, like a patch of weeds, with all sorts of flowers in the uneven grass — buttercups, moon-daisies, cranes-bill and centaury; there were rushes, too, and nettles, hemlock and plants of lingwort that looked like long thin girls in white hats.
Encoignard, the gardener from Valognes, was contemplating this wildness with a melancholy eye:
“It will have to be ploughed, M. Des Boys, or at least well hoed. Then we’ll sift the earth we’ve broken up, level it down and sow ray-grass. In two years it will be like a carpet of green velvet.”
Eyeing the landscape, he went on:
“Lime trees! You ought to have a segoya here and over there an araucaria. And what’s that? An apple-tree. That’s quite wrong. We’ll have that up and put a magnol
ia grandiflora there. You want an English garden, don’t you? An English garden oughtn’t to contain anything but exotic plants. Lilacs and roses.... Why not snow-ball trees? Ah, there’s a nice spotted holly. We might use that perhaps.”
“I don’t want anyone to touch my trees,” said Rose, who had drawn near.
“She’s right,” said M. Des Boys.
“Think of pulling up lilacs,” Rose went on, “pulling up rose-trees.”
“But I mean to put prettier flowers in their place, Mademoiselle.”
“The prettiest flowers are the ones I like best.”
She picked a red rose and put it to her lips, kissing it as though it were something sacred and adored.
M. Des Boys looked at his daughter with astonishment.
“Well, M. Encoignard, we must do what she wants. Hervart, what do you think about it?”
“I think that one ought to leave nature as unkempt as possible. I also think that one ought to love the plants of the country where one lives. They are the only ones that harmonise with the sky and the crops, with the colour of the rivers and roads and roofs.”
“Quite right,” said M. Des Boys.
“Xavier, I love you,” Rose whispered, taking M. Hervart’s arm.
The inspection of the garden was continued, and it was decided that M. Encoignard’s collaboration should be reduced to the ordinary functions of a plain docile gardener. One or two new plants were admitted on condition that the old should be respected.
M. Hervart had got up early and had been strolling about the garden for some time past. He had spent half the night in thought. All the women he had loved or known had visited his memory with their customary gestures and the attitudes they affected. There was that other one who seemed always to have come merely to pay a friendly call; it needed real diplomacy to obtain from her what, at the bottom of her heart, she really desired. Between these two extremes there were many gradations. Most of them liked to give themselves little by little, playing their desire against their sense of shame M. Hervart flattered himself that he knew all about women; he knew that who let herself be touched will let herself be wholly possessed.
“A woman,” he said to himself, “who has been as familiar as Rose has been, or even much less familiar, ought to be one who has surrendered herself. Perhaps she might make me wait a few days more, but she would belong to me, she would let her eyes confess it and her lips would speak it out. Such a woman would even be disposed to hasten the coming of the delightful moment, if I had not the wit to prepare it myself. Rose, being a young girl and having only the dimmest presentiments of the truth, does not know how to hasten our happiness; otherwise she most certainly would hasten it. She belongs, then, to me. The question to be answered is this: shall I go on smelling the rose on the tree, or shall I pluck it?”
The poetical quality of this metaphor seemed to him perhaps a little flabby. He began to speak to himself, without actually articulating the words, even in a whisper, in more precise terms.
“Well, then, if I take her, I shall keep her. I have never thought of marrying, but it’s no good going against the current of one’s life. It may be happiness. Shall I lay up this regret for my old age: happiness passed dose to me, smiling to my desire, and my eyes remained dull and my mouth dumb? Happiness? Is it certain? Happiness is always uncertain. Unhappiness too. And the fusing of these two elements makes a dull insipid mixture.”
This commonplace idea occupied him for a while. Every joy is transient, and when it has passed one finds oneself numb and neutral once again.
“Neutral, or below neutral? A woman of this temperament? I can still tame her? Yes, but what will happen ten years hence, when she is thirty? Ah, well, till then...!”
M. Des Boys carried off Encoignard into his study. Left alone, Rose and M. Hervart had soon vanished behind the trees and shrubberies, had soon crossed the stream. They almost ran.
“Here we are at home,” said Rose and, very calmly, she offered her lips to M. Hervart.
“She’s positively conjugal already,” thought M. Hervart.
Nevertheless, this kiss disturbed his equanimity — the more so since Rose, in gratitude no doubt to M. Hervart for his defence of her old garden, kept her mouth a long time pressed to his. She was growing breathless and her breasts rose under her thin white blouse. M. Hervart was tempted to touch them. He made bold, and his gesture was received without indignation. They looked at one another anxious to speak but finding no words. Their mouths came together once more. M. Hervart pressed Rose’s breast, and a small hand squeezed his other hand. It was a perilous moment. Realising this, M. Hervart tried to put an end to the contact. But the little hand squeezed his own more tightly and in a convulsive movement her knee came into contact with his leg. The tension was broken. Their hands were loosened, they drew away from one another, and for the first time after a kiss, Rose shut her eyes.
M. Hervart felt a pain in the back of his neck.
He began thinking of that season of Platonic love he had once passed at Versailles with a virtuous woman, and he was frightened; for that passion of light kisses and hand-pressures had undermined him as more violent excesses had never done.
“What will become of me?” he thought. “This is a case of acute Platonism, marked by the most decisive symptoms. All or nothing! Otherwise I am a dead man.”
He looked at Rose, meaning to put on a chilly expression; but those eyes of her looked back at him so sweetly!
His thoughts became confused. He felt a desire to lie down in the grass and sleep, and he said so.
“All right, lie down and sleep. I’ll watch over you and keep the flies away from your eyes and mouth. I’ll fan you with this fern.”
She spoke in a voice that was caressingly passionate. It was like music. M. Hervart woke up and uttered words of love.
“I love you, Rose. The touch of your lips has refreshed my blood and brought joy to my heart. When I first touched you, it was as though I were clasping a treasure without price. But tell me, my darling, you won’t take back this treasure now you have given it?”
M. Hervart was breathing heavily. Rose shook her head and said, “No, I won’t take it back;” and to prove that she meant it she leaned towards him, as though offering her bosom; M. Hervart lightly touched the stuff of her blouse with his lips.
Seeing her lover’s lack of alacrity, Rose, without suspecting the mystery, at least guessed that there was a mystery.
“No doubt,” she thought, “love needs a rest every now and then. We will go for a little walk and I’ll talk to him of flowers and insects. We should do well, perhaps, to go back to the garden, for it would be very annoying if they took it into their heads to come and look for us.” They got up and walked round the wood meaning to go straight back to the house.
M. Hervart seemed to be in an absent-minded mood. He was holding Rose’s hand in his, but he forgot to squeeze it. His thoughts were, none the less, thoughts of love. He looked about him as though he were searching for something.
“What are you looking for? Tell me; I’ll look too.”
M. Hervart was looking for a nook. He inspected the dry leaves, peeped into every nook and bower of the wood. But he felt ashamed of his quest.
“Yet,” he thought, “I must. I love her and these innocent amusements are really too pernicious. Shall I go away? That would be to condemn myself to a melancholy solitude, with, perhaps, bitter consolations. Marry her, then? Certainly, but it can’t come off to-morrow, and we are too much aquiver with desire to wait patiently. And suppose, when we are engaged, we have to submit ourselves to the law of the traditional sentimentality.... No, let us be peasants, children of this kindly earth. Let us, like them, make love first, at haphazard, where the paths of the wood lead us; then, when we are certain of the consent of our flesh, we will call our fellow men to witness.”
He went on looking and found what he wanted, but when he had found, he started searching again, for he was ashamed of himself.
“Perhaps,” he thought, answering his own objections, “one may have to behave like a cad in order to be happy. What, shall I submit myself to the prejudices of the world at the moment when life offers to my kisses a virgin who is unaware of them? I will have the courage of my caddishness.”
Time passed and his eyes examined the heaps of leaves with decreasing interest. His imagination returned pleasantly to the joys of a little before, and he longed to be able to lay his trembling hand once more on Rose’s breast and to drink her breath in a kiss.
M. Hervart was recovering all his self-possession. He concluded:
“Well, it’s very curious adventure and one that will increase the sum of my knowledge and of my pleasures.”
Rose, feeling the pressure of his fingers, had the courage, at last, to look at him. He smiled and she was reassured.
“You won’t leave me, will you?” she said. “Promise. When we are married well live wherever you like, but till then, I want you near me, in my house, in my garden, my woods, my fields. Do you understand?”
“Child, I love you and I understand that you love me too.”
“Why ‘too’? I loved you first; I don’t like that word; it expresses a kind of imitation.”
“It’s true,” said M. Hervart. “We fell in love simultaneously. But the convention is that the man falls in love first and the woman does no more than consent to his desires.”
“What can you want that I don’t want myself?”
“Delicious innocence!” thought M. Hervart.
He went on:
“But perhaps I want still more intimacy, complete surrender, Rose.”
“But am I not entirely yours? I want you in exchange, though, Xavier, I want you, all of you.”
M. Hervart did not know what to say. He became quite shy. This charming ingenuousness troubled his imagination more than the images of pleasure itself.
“She doesn’t know,” he thought. “She hasn’t even dreamed of it. What chastity and grace!”
He answered:
“I belong to you, Rose, with all my heart....”