Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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“Might we not recapture,” she went on, “something of the night at Compiègne, even in a rapid abandonment?”
Women are ruminants: they can live for months, for years it may be, on a voluptuous memory. That is what explains the apparent virtue of certain women; one lovely sin, like a beautiful flower with an immortal perfume, is enough to bless all the days of their life. Women still remember the first kiss when men have forgotten the last.
Hortense dreamed, Leonor desired. He thought only of yesterday’s mistress, when he did think of her, in order to make her the mistress of to-morrow. His sentimentality was material. He crossed the stream from stone to stepping-stone, from reality to reality. In default of Hortense, he had taken Gratienne, not to satisfy his physical, but his cerebral needs. To live, he had to have the electuary of two or three sensations, always the same, but always fresh. Was he capable of a profound emotion, and would such a love have influenced his physiological habits? He did not know. Faithful to Bouret’s theories, he did not think so.
He wrote to Hortense: “I want you to come.” She was frightened but happy.
“How he loves me!”
The pleasure of obeying struggled in her with fear. Fear, at certain moments, gave way.
“Since he wants me to come, it is clear that he knows I can come, that there is no danger. And then, he will be there!”
She leaned on Leonor as on a second husband, stronger, more real, though distant. Distant? But wasn’t he always present in her thoughts?
One morning her fear gave way altogether, she wrote, set out, arrived.
She was trembling, and she still trembled long after the bolts were shot.
This new festival of love was vain, on account of her sensibility. Leonor, astonished by a coldness which he imagined he had overcome for ever, attributed it to a failure of tenderness. He knew that women only palpitate with the men they adore, but he thought that they ought always to palpitate. He did He did not know that there are women who, their whole life long, pursue the delirious sensations which they are doomed never to find again. He imagined therefore, that he was no longer loved, and he was bitter, for men are readily bitter when their mistress’s exaltation is too moderate.
Hortense wept. “Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!”
Her tenderness had, however, in no way diminished. Leonor had to admit it as he received contritely Hortense’s poignant kisses. He asked her pardon, humiliated himself, and for a moment she was happy in the caresses of her lover, but she was still whispering to herself, “Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!”
After her departure, Leonor coldly informed his landlady that he did not mean to come back; then after a long tedious wait in an inn parlour, he returned to Barnavast. A letter awaited him, pressing him to come. M. Des Boys begged him, with a kind of anxiety, to fix the day on which they could come and fetch him.
Leonor would have liked, however, to devote some few days to meditation. He had a question to answer, “Does she love me?”
“We shall not meet again at Carentan, that is decided. Besides, it was absurd. What a place to make love in! Her failure was due to her repugnance for the surroundings. It was a sign of her refinement of feeling. And then women have no imagination. To me, everything is a palace; the woman I adore would light up a hovel.... Does she love me?”
But it was in vain that he repeated the question, he could find no answer.
“What a fool I am! I shall see well enough next time. I continue to love her. She is beautiful, she is obedient.... But is that the aim of my life? Suppose she were given me for my own?”
But to this question he could think of no answer either.
Hortense, at the same moment, in the old room she had had before she was married, was going to sleep, sighing, “Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!”
CHAPTER XVI
WHEN LEONOR ARRIVED at Robinvast, Rose and her father were sitting in the garden, each of them reading a letter.... From time to time, Rose would raise her eyes and look at the trees; M. Des Boys between two sentences of his letter would examine his daughter. During this last fortnight, she had been pale, sad, out of humour; and her father, absent-minded, but affectionate, had grown anxious. What was going on between the recently engaged couple? But M. Des Boys would never have dared to question his daughter. He was waiting for a confidence, knowing quite well that it would never come; and on her side, Rose was unhappy at having to keep locked up in her heart the troubles that were suffocating her. These two people, shy and secretive towards one another, might have remained like this for years without deciding to speak the words which would have consoled them.
M. Des Boys had accordingly urged Leonor to come and finish his work.
“It will be a distraction for her,” he had thought, “and then, at bottom and in spite of my pledged word, I agree with my wife: Leonor would be a much more suitable husband. What! Can Hervart be making her unhappy already.”
The letter he was reading at this moment put the final touch to his anxiety. It was from Bouret and Leonor was much praised in it. Bouret went on:
“I have seen Hervart and have equally advised him to get married, but for different reasons. Though he is little younger than we are, he is probably nearer the end. We shall all, alas, see this end confronting us, if we live another fifteen years. Do you understand me? With prudence and diplomacy, Hervart can still drag on a long time, can even recapture brilliant moments; but he has played too much on the fine violin given him by nature. The strings will snap one after the other. As long as one remains a virtuoso, one can still astonish ears habituated to vulgar exercises; but all the same, a single string is very risky! I have therefore ordered him to marry and, above all, to be faithful to his wife. Fidelity will bring satiety, satiety will bring continence, and continence will perhaps be the true philter. A young wife is not so dangerous as one thinks for a man on the down grade. She is a favourable stimulant and, at the same time, a moderating element. In fine, Hervart may make a very good husband. In any case it’s an experiment that interests me. I should be quite capable — if it gives good results, that is, at least a fine child — of yielding myself to an old temptation. I would give up my practice and go and cultivate roses and camellias in some corner of your earthly Paradise, in the Saire Valley, where one sees palms among the willow-trees!”
“I had almost forgotten one important point in our hypothesis. The young wife must have a virtuous temperament, without coldness, but also without sensual curiosity; a good reproducing animal, apt in the pleasure of conceiving rather than in the pleasure of love-making; one of those who, after having been blushing brides, become loving mothers. If he falls on some rebellious woman he is lost. If the instrument which he has to tune and render sensitive gives out no sound or false notes he will lose courage and return to his old concerts. But if, by chance, his wife should reveal herself as a creature of voluptuousness, his perdition would be still more certain: Hervart would flare up like a faggot and nothing but a handful of ashes would be left. I am not speaking of the adultery which would, in these last two cases be inevitable. Sometimes it has the effect of re-establishing the balance in a dislocated household; there are excellent conjugal associations in which each party has his or her ideal down town, in a different quarter of the city. But this is a matter of sociology and doesn’t interest me. I remain in my domain, which is the human body, its functions, its anomalies. I may add that it is by their ignorance of it that the sociologists think of such nonsense as they do. They are still hard at work — the idiots! — reasoning about averages, they never come down to reality, to the individual. How it is despised, this human body of ours! And yet it is the only truth, the only beauty, just as it is the only ideal and the only poetry....”
Bouret was inclined to philosophise. His letters almost always passed the range of his correspondents’ comprehension. He saw that himself, when he re-read them, and smiled. All that M. Des Boys understood in his friend’s dissertation was the passage which conc
erned Hervart; but that he understood very well. Bouret’s reticences produced their ordinary effect: Hervart was considered as a man incapable, condemned without reprieve.
“He’s a madman. What does he mean by going and captivating a young girl’s heart when he isn’t sure of being able to make a wife of her! The Lord knows, women aren’t angels; they have corpora! sensations; and then maternity, maternity....”
M. Des Boys confided to himself all the scabrous or moral banalities that such a subject could make him think of. Meanwhile, he examined his daughter.
“How shall I explain this to her? I shall make her mother do it.”
He continued his meditations; and sometimes he would smile at the evocation of foolish fancies, sometimes his brows contracted and he would feel a mixture of anxiety and anger.
Rose was also reading:
“... but I have been very ill since my arrival here. Some fever, due, it may be to the delicious excitement of my heart. A great depression has been the result and I now feel a most disquieting lassitude. Alas! the conclusion is sad: we must put off our marriage. It’s a infinite pain to me to write this; but I ask myself when it will be possible? Will it ever be possible? No, I won’t ask that. It would be terrible. I love you so much! What a happiness it is to walk again with you, in fancy, through the wood at Robinvast! If I was too audacious, you will pardon me won’t you, because of the violence of my love....”
There was a lot more in this style, and a less inexperienced woman than Rose would have felt the artificiality of this amorous eloquence Not a word of it, certainly, came from the heart. M. Hervart, who was not cruel, had first laid down the principle of his illness and his intention was to draw from it, graduating deceptions, all its logical conclusions. If necessary, he had said to himself, Bouret will help me. M. Hervart, who was by nature a man of the last moment and the present sensation, thought of Rose only as one thinks of a sick friend, for whose recovery one certainly hopes, but without anguish of mind. However the fatuity inevitable in the male sex assured him that he was not forgotten: he flattered himself on having left a wound in the young girl’s heart which would never altogether close, and he felt what was almost remorse. To enjoy the egoist’s complete peace, he would have consented to a sacrifice; he would have allowed Rose, not forgetfulness, but melancholy resignation.
“Poor child!... But it had to happen. I hope she won’t be too unhappy.”
The perusal of M. Hervart’s letter left Rose sad and charmed:
“Oh, how he loves me! Oh, my darling Xavier, you are ill then?”
And she thought of the fiancée’s cruel fate:
“He is ill, and mayn’t go and console him.”
She was turning towards her father when he rose to meet Leonor. It was in the presence of the young man and without paying heed to him that she imparted M. Hervart’s news.
“He is ill, he has had a touch of fever....”
“Fever?” exclaimed M. Des Boys.
“Yes, and afterwards he’s been feeling very weak after it.”
“Very weak, yes. What then?”
“What then, why, our marriage has to be postponed....”
“Of course.”
“I’m very anxious.”
“So I should imagine.”
“Why shouldn’t we go and see him?”
“Do you think it would be any use?”
“It would give him such pleasure.”
“Does he ask you to do it?”
“No....”
“Well, then.”
“He doesn’t dare ask.”
“Is he as shy as all that?”
This innocent question made her blush.
“I’ll speak of it with your mother,” M. Des Boys continued. “Meanwhile, let’s get on a little with our architecture.”
Rose had been so bored since Xavier’s departure, she had been so miserable at his long silence, and now she was feeling so anxious that she accepted her father’s proposal without repugnance.
This time they were dealing with the house, there were urgent repairs to be made and useful ameliorations. As they went round, the architect pointed out the weak spots. A whole plan of restoration formed itself in his head.
The days passed. The masons were soon at work. Rose hardly left Leonor’s side.
They had news of M. Hervart more than once through the newspapers, for his rearrangements at the Louvre had drawn upon him the epigrams of the press; but he himself remained silent.
In the circumstances M. Des Boys had resolved to say nothing, to leave time to do its work. Later on, when no dangerous memories of her past love remained in Rose’s heart, when she should be married, he would confide her the truth, with a smile.
One day Leonor let fall, from the top of a ladder, a pocket-book from which a flood of papers — sketches, bills, letters, picture post-cards — escaped. Rose picked them up, without giving them more than the discreetest glance when Martinvast castle caught her eye. At the loot of the keep she found M. Hervart’s “love and kisses.” The blood came suddenly to her eyes; she turned the card over and read: “Mademoiselle Gratienne Leboeuf, Rue du Havre, Honfleur.” She looked up; Leonor did not seem to have noticed the incident, and with a rapid gesture she folded up the card and slipped it into her bosom.
“Monsieur Leonor, you’ve dropped your pocket-book.”
Leonor descended his ladder and thanked her, while Rose walked away. When she had disappeared he noticed with delight that she had stolen Martinvast Castle; then, whistling, he climbed up once more to see his workmen.
Arrived in her room, Rose sat down, trembling.
“I have made a mistake,” she said to herself. “It isn’t possible. And how could it have come into Leonor’s hands?”
She extracted the card from its hiding-place, unfolded it and looked at it, trembling.
“It’s his writing all right.”
She still felt doubtful.
“What’s the date?”
She deciphered it without difficulty. “Cherbourg, 31 July, 1903.”
“The very day we went to the Liais Garden, the day we went up that tower where I almost fainted with love.... I was so happy!”
She began crying. Through her tears she looked at her hands, turning them, looking at all the fingers one after another. She looked as though she were rediscovering them, taking possession of them once more.
Finally she got up and stamped her foot.
“Very well then, I don’t love him any more. There! Good-bye, Monsieur Hervart. You deceived me, I shall never forgive you. And I had such confidence in him; I let myself rest so softly on his heart.”
She was still crying.
“Now, I am ashamed....”
And she felt her body, from head to feet, as though to take possession of it also. She would have liked to press it, to wring it so that all the caresses, all the kisses which had sunk into her skin, penetrated her veins, thrilled her nerves, might be drained out of it.
In her already perverted innocence she pictured to herself the mutual caresses of Xavier and this Gratienne woman. She pictured to herself this woman’s body and compared it with her own. Was she more beautiful? In what is one woman’s body more beautiful than another’s? Xavier had loved to caress her, to crush her in his arms. And used he not to say: “How beautiful you are!” A vision, against which she struggled in vain, showed her Xavier kneeling beside Gratienne and covering her with kisses.
A heat mounted in her breast, her heart contracted; she tried to cry out, half got up, clutched at the air with her hands and fell in a faint.
When she came to herself, she felt very tired and very frightened as well. She looked about her, afraid to discover the reality of the painful vision which had overwhelmed her. Reassured, she breathed again.
“It was a dream, only a dream.”
But it seemed as though a spring had suddenly been released in her heart. Throughout her whole being there was a sudden change. Under her maiden breast, grief had
taken up its home. She felt it as one feels a piece of gravel in one’s shoe. It was something material which had insinuated itself into the intimacy of her flesh, causing her, not pain, but a sense of discomfort.
At the same time, all that she habitually loved seemed to her without the faintest interest. She looked with an indifferent eye at this room in which she had dreamt so many dreams, this room that she had arranged, decorated with so much pleasure, so much minute care, this cell she had spun and woven herself to sleep in, like a chrysalis, till the awakening of love should come. The great trees of the wood which she could see from her window, and could never see without emotion, appeared to her patches of insignificant greenery: she noticed, for the first time, that their tops were of uneven height and she was irritated by it. There was a sound of hammering; she leaned out of the window and saw two men splitting a block of granite, and for a moment she wondered what for.
“Oh, yes, of course, the repairs.... What does it all matter to me? Ah! where are my dear solitary hours in the old house, imprisoned by its ivy and climbing roses! And now Leonor! I wish he’d go away. He’s the cause of it all. If it hadn’t been for his clumsiness, I should never have known of the existence of this woman.... But how did he come to have that card in his pocket?”
The idea of a voluntary indiscretion did not occur to her. She had never dreamt that Leonor could feel for her any emotion of tenderness. Besides, no man except Xavier had yet existed in her imagination. There was Xavier on the one hand; and on the other there were the others.
Meanwhile she went on reflecting. Love, jealousy, grief, quickened her natural intelligence.
“There were several letters in the pocket-book addressed to M. Varin. That’s natural. But why this card addressed to that woman? He must know her too. She must have given it to him because of the view of Martinvast Castle, I suppose....”
She could not succeed in reconstructing the adventure of this post-card. There was some mystery about it, which she soon gave up the hope of solving.