Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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“What were you thinking of a moment ago? You seemed far away.”
“I was just feeling happy.”
“You must have had such a lot of happinesses since you began life, Xavier. You have given happiness, received it....”
“I have just lived,” said M. Hervart.
“Yes, and I’m only a girl of twenty.”
“Think of being twenty!”
“If you were twenty, I shouldn’t love you.”
M. Hervart answered only by a smile which he tried to make as young, as delicate as possible. He knew what he would have liked to say, but he felt that he could not say it. Besides, he wondered whether Rose and he were really speaking the same language.
“This conversation is really absurd. I tell her that I want her to surrender herself to me, and she answers — at least I suppose that’s what she means — that she has given me her heart. Obviously, she has no idea of what might happen between us.... What do these little caresses mean to her? They’re just marks of affection.... All the same there was surely desire in her movements, her kisses, her eyes. And her body trembled at the urgent touch of my lips. Yes, she knows what love is. How ridiculous! All the same, if we go to work cleverly....”
“You mustn’t believe, Rose,” he said out loud, “that I have ever yet had occasion to give my heart. That doesn’t always happen in the course of a life; and when it does happen, it happens only once.... A man has plenty of adventures in which his will is not concerned.... Man is an animal as well as a man....”
“And what about women?”
“The best people agree,” said M. Hervart, “that woman is an angel.”
Rose burst out laughing at this remark, apparently very innocently, and said:
“I can’t claim to be an angel. It wouldn’t amuse me to be one, either. Angels — why, father puts them in his pictures. No, I prefer being a woman. Would you love an angel?”
M. Hervart laughed too. He explained that young girls had a right to being called angels, because of their innocence....
“When one is in love, is one still innocent?”
“If one still is, one doesn’t remain so long.”
They could say no more. They had come back to the stream and there they caught sight of M. Des Boys showing his domains to two gentlemen, one of whom seemed to be of his own age, while the other looked about thirty.
CHAPTER VII
M. HERVART SOON recognised in one of the visitors a friend of old days, Lanfranc, the architect. The young man, as he found out, was Lanfranc’s nephew, pupil and probable successor. He was further informed that the two architects were installed in the old manor house of Barnavast, the restoration of which they had undertaken on behalf of Mme. Suif, widow of that famous Suif who gave such a fine impulse to the art of mortuary and religious sculpture. Lanfranc, who had patched and painted every church in Normandy, had for twenty years bought his materials at Suif’s and the widow had always appreciated him. Hence this job at Barnavast which would round off his fortune, make it possible for him to return to Paris and achieve a place in the Institute.
As soon as they had settled down in the shade of the chestnut trees on the rustic seat, Lanfranc began telling the story of Mme. Suif, a story that was well known to every one. Rose listened attentively. The moment Lanfranc could collect a friendly audience he always told the story of Mme. Suif. It was in some degree his own story too. Mme. Suif had been his mistress, then he had married, then he had resumed relations with her and had, with the cooling of their passion, remained her friend.
“Ah! If I hadn’t been so childish as to marry for love, I would marry Mme. Suif’s millions to-day, for Mme. Suif would be grateful to any man who would relieve her of her name. Being an architect of churches and ancient monuments, I could hardly get divorced, could I? But of course she may be willing to call herself Mme. Leonor Varin. For she looks at my nephew with no unfavourable eye!”
“Thanks, I don’t want her,” said Leonor, blushing.
Rose had looked at him and he had suddenly felt quite ashamed of his secret cupidity.
Leonor, who was nearly thirty, looked older from a distance and younger from close at hand. He was large, rather massive and slow in his movements. But when one came near him one was surprised at the sentimental expression of his eyes, surprised at the youthful appearance of a beard that still seemed to be newly sprouting, at the awkwardness of his gestures and, when he spoke, the abrupt shyness of his speech; for he could hardly open his mouth without blushing. It is true that the moment after he would frown and contract his whole face into an expression of harshness. But the eyes remained blue and gentle in this frowning mask. Leonor was a riddle for everybody, including himself. He liked pondering, and when he thought of love it was to come to the conclusion that his ideal hovered between the daydream and the debauch, between the happiness of kissing, on bended knees, a gloved hand and the pleasure of lying languidly in the midst of a troop of odalisques of easy virtue. He had no suspicion that he was like almost all other men. He was afraid of himself and contemptuous too, when he caught himself thinking too complacently of Mme. Suif’s millions, those millions that would give immediate satisfaction to his vices and, later on, to his sentimental aspirations.
He looked at Rose in his turn, but Rose did not drop her eyes. Meanwhile, M. Hervart was growing bored.
“Mme. Suif,” said Lanfranc, “is still quite well preserved. For instance....”
“Rose dear,” interrupted M. Des Boys, “doesn’t your mother want you?”
“Oh, no, I’m sure she doesn’t. Mother would only find me in the way.”
“Your father is right, Rose,” said M. Hervart glad to make trial of his authority.
She did not dare oppose her lover’s wish, but she felt angry as she rose to go.
“Acting like my master already!” she thought. “I should so like to listen to M. Lanfranc....”
She dared not add: “... and to look at this M. Leonor and be looked at by him and still more, to hear them talk of Mme. Suif. What was he going to say? Oh, I don’t want to know!”
She entered the house, came out again by another door and hid herself in a shrubbery from which she could hear their voices quite clearly.
“It’s not only her shoulders,” M. Lanfranc was saying, “they’re not the only things about her that tempt one. She’s forty-five, but her figure is still good and not too excessively run to flesh. As a whole she is certainly a bit ample, but at the Art School one could still make a very respectable Juno of her. I’ve seen worse on the model’s throne....”
“Time,” said M. Hervart, “often shows angelical clemency. He pardons women who have been good lovers.”
“And still are,” said Lanfranc.
“There’s no better recreation than love,” said Leonor. “No sport more suited to keep one fit and supple.”
M. Hervart looked in surprise at this dim young man who had so unexpectedly made a joke. Anxious to shine in his turn, he replied: “No one has ever dared to put that in a manual of hygiene. What a charming chapter one could make of it, in the style of the First Empire: ‘Love, the preserver of Beauty.’”
“A pretty subject too for the Prix de Rome,” said Lanfranc.
“Seriously,” broke in M. Des Boys, “I believe that the thing that so quickly shrivels up virtuous women in chastity.”
“Virtuous women!” said Lanfranc, “they’re mean to reproduce the species. When they have had their children, and that must take place between twenty and thirty, their rôle is finished.”
“The only thing left for them to do,” said M. Des Boys, “is to concoct philters to keep us young.”
The others looked at him interrogatively; he laughed.
“You will see, or rather you’ll taste, and you will understand. I wish you all as good a magician as Mme. Des Boys.”
“True,” said M. Hervart, understanding him at last, “she has a real genius for cookery. Dinners of her planning are regular love-potion
s.”
“You’ll realise that when you get back to Paris.”
“Yes, when I get back to Paris. I am taking a holiday here,” said M. Hervart, pleased at this mark of confidence. He even added, so as to guard against possible suspicions:
“A holiday from love is not without a certain melancholy.”
Rose had found it all very amusing, but when her father began speaking she stopped listening. Leonor, pleased at having made a witty remark, and afraid of not being able to think of another, had got up and was walking about the garden. Rose looked at him. The sight of this young animal interested her. And what curious words about love had issued from that mouth! So love was an exercise like tennis, or bicycling, or riding! What a revelation! And the most singular fancies took shape in her mind as she followed with her eyes the now distant figure of this ingenious and decisive young man.
“How do people play the game of love,” she wondered, “real love? Xavier teaches me nothing. He knows all about it though, more probably than this young Leonor, but he takes care not to tell me. He treats me like a little girl, while he makes fun of my innocence. Oh! it’s gentle fun, because he loves me; but all the same he rather abuses his superior position. A sport, a sport....”
Quitting the shrubbery, she went and sat down on an old stone bench in a lonely corner, from which she could keep a watch between the trees on all that was happening in the neighbourhood. She was fond of this nook and in it, before M. Hervart’s arrival, she had spent whole mornings dreaming alone. She laughed at the childishness of those dreams now.
“It always seemed to me,” she thought, “that the branches were just about to open, making way for some beautiful young cavalier.... Without saying a word, he would bring his horse to stop at my side, would lean down, pick me up, lay me across the saddle and off we would go. Then there was to be a mad, furious, endless gallop, and in the end I should go to sleep. And in reality I used to wake up as though from a sleep, even though I hadn’t dropped off. Nothing happened but this dumb ride in the blue air, and yet, when I came to myself, I felt tired.... How often I have dreamed this dream! How often have I seen the lilac plumes bending to make way for my lovely young knight and his black horse! The horse was always black. I remember very little of the face of the Perseus who delivered me, for a few hours at least, from the bondage of my boring existence.... A sport? That was indeed a sport! What did he do with his Andromeda, this Perseus of mine? I’ve never been able to find out. What do Perseuses do with their Andromedas?”
To this question Rose’s tireless imagination provided, for the hundredth time, a new series of answers. The imagination of a young girl who knows and yet is ignorant of what she desires has an Aretine-like fecundity.
Into all these imaginations of hers Rose now introduced the complicity of M. Hervart. Even at the moment when she was on the lookout for Leonor’s return, it was really of M. Hervart that she was thinking. Leonor was to be nothing more than a stimulant for her heart and her nerves, a musical accompaniment to something else. The stimulation which the young man’s arrival had brought to her went to the profit of M. Hervart.
“Xavier,” she murmured, “Xavier....”
Xavier, meanwhile, was congratulating himself that his paternal intervention had spared Rose’s ears the hearing of those over-frank remarks of M. Lanfranc. The architect would of course have toned down his language; but is it good that a young girl should learn the use that wives make of marriage? He said:
“M. Lanfranc, keep an eye on your language at table. Don’t forget that we have a young girl with us.”
“Yes,” said M. Des Boys “I sent her away from here, but that would hardly be possible during luncheon.”
“Girls,” said Lanfranc, “understand nothing.”
“They guess,” said M. Hervart.
M. Des Boys had no opinions on maiden perspicacity, but he desired to conform to custom and allow his daughter to listen only to the choicest conversation.
“Well, then,” said Lanfranc, “let us profitably employ these moments while we are alone.” His lively blue eyes lit up his tanned face.
The conversation had deviated once more in the direction of Mme. Des Boys’ administrative merits.
“One meets so many different kinds of women,” said M. Hervart. “The best of them is never equal to the dream one makes up about them.”
“Silly commonplace,” he thought. “What answer will he make to that?”
“I don’t dream,” said Lanfranc, “I search. But I scarcely ever find. Adventures have always disappointed me. That’s why Paris is the only place for love affairs. One can find plenty of pleasant romances there with only one chapter — the last.”
“Your opinion of women ceases to astonish me then!”
“His opinion is very reasonable,” said M. Des Boys. “You talk as though you were still twenty-five, Hervart.”
He reddened a little.
“Me! Oh no, thank God! I’m forty.”
And seeing the appropriateness of the occasion, he added:
“You’re jealous of my liberty, but I am becoming afraid that I may lose it.”
“Are you thinking of marriage?” asked Lanfranc.
“Perhaps.”
“Mme. Suif would suit you very well. Leonor is being coy about her....”
Irritated by so much vulgarity, M. Hervart got up and walked into the garden. Rose and Leonor were strolling there together.
CHAPTER VIII
ROSE HAD LAID her plans in such a fashion that the young man had found her in his path. Not to see her was too deliberately to avoid her. If he saw her, he had to take off his hat. And this was what had happened. Rose had answered his salutation by a word of welcome; conversation had then passed to the old house at Barnavast, finally to Mme. Suif. But Leonor was discreet and vague, so much so that at one of Rose’s questions the conversation had switched off on to sentimental commonplaces. But, for Rose, nothing in the world was commonplace yet.
“Isn’t she rather old to marry again?” she asked.
“Ah, but Mme. Suif is one of those whose hearts are always young.”
“Then there are some hearts that grow old more slowly than others?”
“Some never grow old at all, just as some have never been young.”
“All the same, I see a great difference, when I look around me, between the feelings of young and old people.”
“Do you know many people?”
“No, very few; but I have always seen a correspondence between people’s hearts and faces.”
“Certainly; but a general truth, although it may represent the average of particular truths, is hardly ever the same as a single particular case selected by chance....”
Rose looked at Leonor with a mixture of admiration and shame: she did not understand. Leonor perceived the fact and went on:
“I mean that there are, in all things, exceptions. I also mean that there are rules which admit of a great number of exceptions. It even happens in life, just as in grammar, that the exceptional are more numerous than the regular cases. Do you follow?”
“Oh, perfectly.”
“But that,” he concluded, emphasising his words, “does not prevent the rule’s being the rule, even though there were only two normal cases as against ten exceptions.”
Rose liked this magisterial tone. M. Hervart had, for some time, done nothing but agree with her opinions.
“But how does one recognise the rule?” she went on.
“Rules,” said Leonor, “always satisfy the reason.”
Rose looked at him in alarm; then, pretending she had understood, made a sign of affirmation.
“Women never understand that very well,” Leonor continued. “It doesn’t satisfy them. They yield only to their feelings. So do men, for that matter, but they don’t admit it. So that women accused of hypocrisy and vanity have less of these vices, it may be, than men.... At any rate the rule is the rule. The rule demands that Marguerite should give up....”
“Mme. Suif.”
“Do you know her well?”
Leonor smiled. “Am I not the nephew and lieutenant of her architect? The rule, then, would demand that Marguerite should give up love; and the rule further demands, Mademoiselle, that you should begin to think of it.”
“The rule is the rule,” said Rose sententiously, suppressing the shouts of laughter that exploded silently in her heart.
“The rule’s not so stupid after all,” she thought. “I don’t ask anything better than to obey it....”
At this moment M. Hervart came face to face with them at the turn of a path. Rose welcomed him with a happy smile, a smile of delicious frankness.
“Good,” thought M. Hervart, “he isn’t my rival yet. My rôle for the moment is to act the part of the man who is sure of himself, the man who possesses, dominates, the lord who is above all changes and chances....”
And he began to talk of his stay at Robinvast and of the pleasure he found in the midst of this rich disorderly scene of nature.
“But you,” he said, “have come to put it in order. You have come to whiten these walls, scrape off this moss and ivy, cut clearings through these dark masses, and you will make M. Des Boys a present of a brand-new castle with a charming and equally brand-new park.”
“Who’s going to touch my ivy?” exclaimed Rose, indignantly.
“Why should it be touched,” said Leonor. “Isn’t ivy the glory of the walls of Tourlaville? Ivy — why, it’s the only architectural beauty that can’t be bought. At Barnavast, which is in a state of ruin, we always respect it when the wall can be consolidated from inside. To my mind, restoration means giving back to a monument the appearance that the centuries would have given it if it had been well looked after. Restoration doesn’t mean making a thing look new; it doesn’t consist in giving an old man the hair, beard, complexion and teeth of a youth; it consists in bringing a dying man back to life and giving him the health and beauty of his age.”
“How glad I am to hear you talk like this,” said Rose. “I hope M. Lanfranc shares your ideas.”