Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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M. Hervart brought his meditations to no conclusions, and so the morning passed — Rose choosing imaginary wallpapers and Xavier philosophising in secret on the unpleasantnesses of marriage.
After luncheon, a diabolic idea occurred to him: Why shouldn’t he take a definite advance on his conjugal rights? The blood went to his head. He began to breathe a little heavily as he pressed Rose against him. When they were seated, the usual ceremony took place after the usual rebuffs. She allowed her lover’s hand to wander. Their mouths, meanwhile, were kissing, drinking one another. After a moment of calm, M. Hervart, on his knees now, took one of Rose’s feet in his hand. He caressed the ankle and she made no resistance, when he became more daring, though much moved, still she did not protest, and did no more than whisper, “Xavier! No! No!” Nothing more happened. M. Hervart did not dare. While, feeling very uncomfortable, he was deploring his virtue, Rose fondled him and called him naughty.
“It’s curious,” he thought, “that they all have the same vocabulary by nature.”
He was ashamed. Nothing makes a man ashamed so much as having failed in his purpose, what ever may have been the cause of his failure. He said, a little nervously:
“Let’s walk a little. Let’s do something.”
“What an idiot I am,” he thought, as they walked along the Couville road, where there are rocks and a little heather and foxgloves among the birch-trees; “after all, she’s my wife.”
On the following days the same manoeuvre was repeated several times, and M. Hervart always hesitated at the decisive moment.
“Besides,” he wondered, “would she let me? I can hardly violate my fiancée, can I? I have taught her nothing she doesn’t know. If we came on to untried lessons, how would she take it?...”
He continued: “Dismal pleasures for me. I’ve had enough of them. It was amusing only the first time.”
Finally, one evening when they had gone out alone, a thing which never had happened before, he was a little more daring....
The darkness made Rose receive her lover’s caresses more willingly than usual. She was expecting them. The thing which had appeared so bold to M. Hervart obviously seemed already quite natural to her....
“Much more natural, perhaps, than allowing me to touch her breast or the under side of her arm....”
M. Hervart made bold to ask for more.... “Rose! Rose!”
But the girl recoiled. Suppressing a cry, Rose got up and said: “Let’s go indoors.”
She added, a moment later, “It’s wrong Xavier, it’s wrong. Respect me.”
“What logic,” said M. Hervart to himself. “Respect me! But it’s true, I made a mistake. With young girls especially one must begin at the end.”
The next day they met very early and Rose, refusing to listen to anything he had to say, refusing even to give him a friendly kiss, pronounced the sentence on which she had been meditating:
“I am angry. If you want me to pardon you, go away at once and write to me a week hence that everything’s arranged for our marriage. I love you. You will realise that when I am your wife, but not before. I have been willing to play with you and you have tried to abuse the privilege. It’s wrong. Go!”
He had to go, she was inflexible.
When M. Hervart got into the express at Sottevast, Rose cried. She had forgiven him because she loved him. She had forgiven him because he had obeyed.
CHAPTER XIV
FROM 8.57 A.M. till the hour of 6 p.m., when she rang at his door, M. Hervart had precisely one idea, a single one: he must meet Gratienne.
She had been in Paris since the day before, and she had just written to him when she got his telegram from Caen. Her delight was very great. She fulfilled her lover’s desire with joy.
“I love you, my old darling!”
M. Hervart spent two days without thinking of Rose except as something very remote. He was thrilled to re-discover the Louvre: he looked at the colonnade before he went in; even the “fighting Hero” seemed a novelty to him: he went and meditated in front of the crouching Venus, of which he was especially fond. It was there that he had often met Gratienne. How he loved her! What a pleasure it had been to come back to his “ephebe.”
On the third day after his arrival he received Gratienne’s letter forwarded from Robinvast. That disturbed him a little — Rose’s writing superimposed on Gratienne’s.
“But aren’t they superimposed in life? No, I mean, mingled together. Rose is much too ignorant of the way things go to have any suspicion. And besides, I must have got at least ten letters in women’s handwriting while I was at Robinvast and I never made any attempt at concealment.... Rose — it’s true I went rather far with her. But whose fault was that? If she had resisted my first attacks, I shouldn’t have insisted. What an egoist she is!... However, I ought to write to her. No, not to-day. It’s my turn to be cross.”
During the day he thought several more times of Rose. The scenes in the garden and the wood came back into his mind and unnerved him. Then a question posed itself in his mind: Do I love her? But he would not answer. Others presented themselves yet insistently: How shall I draw back. He did not understand. He had no intention of drawing back. Well, then, should the marriage take place? He really didn’t know.
“I must have a breathing space. I come back, I have arrears of work and friends to sec. Everything must be done properly. For the little dryad of the Robinvast wood, there is only one thing in the world and that is I. For me there are a dozen things, a thousand....”
He rang the bell, gave unnecessary orders, asked futile questions. It was only at about three o’clock that he opened the door to an image which had been prowling round his head since the morning: Gratienne was coming to pick him up at four and they were to go to St. Cloud. That was one of his great pleasures.
“Will Rose be able to understand these profoundly civilised landscapes, this well-tamed nature, these hills with their harmonious lines like the body of a lovely sleeping woman?”
M. Hervart felt in very good form. The uncomfortable symptoms which had disquieted him in the country had disappeared since his return.... He found in Gratienne a favourable reception and to the realisation of his desires. She knew his tastes and she shared them. In short, he promised himself several delightful hours after this familiar outing. However a very disagreeable surprise was in store for him. After the preludes of passion, when his whole being was bent on realisation, M. Hervart had a moment of weakness. Gratienne’s skilful tenderness had certainly overcome it, the self-esteem of both parties had been preserved.
In the morning, he thought of Stendhal, carried the volume to his office and read chapter LX of L’Amour with the greatest attention. He found nothing there to enlighten him. Gratienne, certainly, did not inspire, and indeed no woman had ever inspired, in him that kind of ill-balanced passion in which the body recoils, alarmed at its own boldness.
“Stendhal no doubt had discovered one of the reasons for an absence of apropos, but he had found only one. And besides, all this doesn’t belong to psychology; it is physiology. There’s nothing but physiology. Bouret will tell me about it.”
Bouret, who knew M. Hervart’s life, made him relate, point by point, the whole history of his last year. Finally he said: “Well it’s very simple.”
Bouret employed no circumlocutions. He was clear and brutal. After a moment’s reflection he continued!
“The inevitable accompaniment of Platonic love is secret vice. Simple flirtation leads to the same consequences. Double flirtation is secret vice à deux, discreet and hypocritical. Triple flirtation, if it exists, would still be secret vice à deux, but avowed, frank. It would perhaps be less dangerous than double flirtation, which is simply realisation artificially provoked. No virility can stand that. Women, for another reason less easy to explain, are destroyed by it just like men. Men are fools. If you want a woman, take a woman and behave like a fine animal fulfilling its functions! And above all beware of young girls. Young girls have destroye
d the virility of more men than all the Messalinas in the world. Sentimental conversations, furtive kisses and hand-squeezings are almost always accompanied in an impressionable man, especially if he has several months or even a few weeks of chastity behind him, by loss of vigor. Then do you know what happens? One gets used to it. I believe that our organs, despite their close interdependence, have a certain autonomy. The first thing you must do is to preserve perfect chastity for an indefinite period. Active occupations, fatigue; you must procure sheer brute sleep. Then, in two or three months make a few direct attempts, absolutely direct. If that’s all right, you must marry and set your mind to producing children. There.”
“Then you condemn me to conjugal duty.”
“That’s it precisely.”
“One should marry a woman one doesn’t love?
“That would be true wisdom.”
“And be faithful to her?”
“Obviously.”
“Or else renounce everything?”
“I won’t go as far as that. Your case isn’t desperate. You have fled in time.”
“I didn’t fly. I was driven away.”
“Bless her cruel heart. Tell me, did she permit indiscretions?”
“Yes, I should almost have said willingly.”
“She will be a dangerous wife.”
“She is so innocent!”
“There are no innocent women. They know by instinct all that we claim to teach them.”
“That’s just what innocence is.”
“Perhaps. But a delicate voluptuary with an innocent and amorous girl is a lost man.”
“I begin to realise the fact.”
“There are not,” Bouret went on, “several kinds of love. There is only one kind. Love is physical. The most ethereal reverberates through the organism with as much certainty as the most brutal. Nature knows only one end, procreation, and if the road you take does not lead there, she stops you and condemns you at least to some simulacrum; that is her vengeance. Every intersexual sentiment tends towards love, unless its initial character be well defined or unless the partners are in a phase of life in which love is impossible.... But I am treating you too much as a friend and too little as a patient. You seem to be pensive. You’re not as much interested in questions as Leonor Varin. He is my pupil in the physiology of morals. How is Lanfranc? He doesn’t Platonise, doesn’t flirt....”
“Oh! no.”
“Varin interests me. Do you know him?”
“Very little.”
“The loss is yours. One of his days he will become a fine mind, if he gets over the sensual crisis. I’d like to marry him to some one.”
“That’s your panacea.”
“Perhaps it is one, my friend, on condition that marriage is taken seriously. It’s only in marriage that one can find stability. By the way, have you seen Des Boys’ daughter? He writes to me from time to time. We have remained friends because, though he’s a fool, he’s a laconic fool. And then he’s a very decent sort of fellow and a man to whom I owe my position. He seems to be almost embarrassed with his daughter. He has no connections in the world. What’s she like? Pretty?
“Yes.”
“Intelligent? I mean, of course, as far as a woman can be intelligent.”
“Yes.”
“And now the principal thing — her health?”
“Good as far as one can see.”
“Ho, ho! I shall unloose Varin in pursuit of this nymph.”
“Unnecessary; he knows her.”
“Ah, he knows her?”
M. Hervart got up. He was afraid that some unforeseen question might make him say something silly. Suppose Bouret, who was a friend of Des Boys, guessed something? He tried to think of an ambiguous phrase and found one:
“I spent a day at the Des Boys’ with Varin. I don’t know if he’s a familiar of the house.”
And with that he went away.
“What a bad business!” he said to himself, as he thought of his health, for the rest was of secondary importance to him now. “No more women! No more Gratienne! No libidinous thoughts! Am I master of my thoughts? Why not a course of pious reading?”
He spent several black days, then gave orders, in one of the galleries of his museum, for one of those untimely upheavals which drive the amateur wild. M. Hervart needed to distract himself. After a week, Gratienne grown anxious, sent him an express letter. He yielded to the suggestion and that evening made an attempt which Bouret would have considered premature. However, it succeeded marvellously well and M. Hervart felt new life spring within him.
The next day, as he was in excellent spirits, he wrote to Rose, whose prolonged silence had ended by pricking his self-satisfaction.
CHAPTER XV
ON REACHING BARNAVAST, Leonor had found two letters; which of the two interested him the more he could not tell. One was from M. Des Boys, asking him to come and finish, before the winter, and immediately, if he could, the alterations at Robinvast. A room was ready for him. He had but to give them warning, and they would send for him. The second came from La Mesangerie. It was a diary.
“15th September. What are my children’s kisses after the kisses of my lover? It is like the smell of the humble pink after the heady perfume of the rarest flowers....”
“What a fool the woman is,” said Leonor inwardly. “Why does she write. She has intelligence, her conversation is agreeable, she has taste, and see what she writes! God, how melancholy!...”
“... But pinks have their charm, just as they have their own season, and I am happy to come back to them, since their season has returned.”
“That,” thought Leonor, “is better; it’s almost good.... Is Hervart still at Robinvast? I hope not. His holiday wasn’t indefinite, I should think. Suppose I wrote to Gratienne?”
“... You flowers that the touch of my Beloved made to blossom in my heart, you perfume my soul, you intoxicate my senses....”
“Intoxicate my senses.... Is it necessary to remember myself to Gratienne? I would as soon get my information from another source.”
“... intoxicate my senses. My body trembles at the thought of the night at Compiègne, every moment of which is a star that shines in my dreams. I did not know what love was....”
“Who does know what love is?... I don’t feel bound to answer that to-day. Now I come to think of it, I don’t know where Gratienne is. She must have left almost at the same time as I did. Let’s leave it at that....”
“... what love was.... I have no desire to meet Hervart again at Robinvast. He bores me. Is she really going to marry this civil servant? If Rose knew. Yes, but if Rose knew everything, would she think much more of me than of M. Hervart? I am ten years younger than he, that’s all; and my mistress is a much heavier millstone about my neck than his. It’s easy to get rid of a Gratienne; with some one like Hortense, the process is much more difficult. She may make a scandal, she may kill herself, she may make her husband turn her out and then come and take refuge in my arms.... What then? Besides I love this beautiful woman quite a lot and it would distress me very much if I had to drive her to despair. And then Rose is wildly in love. Let me be reasonable. Where was I? Still at love.”
“... what love was, before knowing you; I did not know what pleasure was before our mad night....”
“That’s very likely. But I am doubtful about love. Is it love, that frenzy of sensual curiosity that makes us desire to know, in every aspect and in all its mysteries, the longed-for body? Why not? It is indeed, probably, the best kind of love. Bite, eat, devour! How well they realise it — those who reduce the object of their love to a little bit of bread which they swallow. The Communion — what an act of love! It’s marvellous. Bouret would think that foolish, perhaps; but Bouret, right as he is in being a materialist, is wrong in not understanding materialistic mysticism. Can any one be at once more materialistic and more mystical than those Christians who believe in the Real Presence? Flesh and blood — that’s what lovers want too, and they too have
to content themselves with a mere symbol.”
“... our mad night. It revealed a new world to me. I shall not die, like Joshua, without having seen the earthly paradise.”
This phrase, despite its banality, pleased Leonor, who had begun to feel more indulgent towards his mistress.
“To write along letter like this was a great effort for her, and as it was for me that she made the effort, I should be a cad to laugh at it. That is why it would be as well to read no more. I shall ask her to give me a rendezvous too. Afterwards I shall go to Robinvast. Everything fits in well.”
The assignation at Carentan was difficult to arrange. Hortense, at first delighted and ready to start, seemed to hesitate. It was too near, the town was too small. But her desire was so strong! What should she do? She hoped to find some pretext for going to Paris alone.
The truth was that, re-established in her surroundings, Hortense did not feel sufficiently bold to flout the rules voluntarily. She was one of those women who are ready to do anything, provided that circumstances determine their will. She could yield on an impulse to an imperious lover, where or when did not matter, as soon as safety was assured; she would profit by a chance, but to create chance, to organise it — that was another matter. Her escapade at Compiègne appeared to her now as one of those strokes of fortune which life does not grant twice. She dreamed of a new chance meeting with Leonor; but a concerted assignation! At the very thought, she felt herself followed, shadowed; the idea made her quite ill. To be surprised by her absurd husband — how shameful that would be!
“If Leonor came here we could easily find some means. I could have a headache, one Sunday, stay in my room, be alone in the house; besides, there is luck.”
She always entrusted herself to luck. She had never yielded to any of her lovers except on the spur of the moment.