A Virgin Heart (de Gourmont, 1921)/13
CHAPTER XIII
SINCE his marriage had been decided on, M. Hervart seemed very happy. Rose's confidence in him had grown still greater and with it their intimacy. He hesitated now about only one thing: what date should he fix? Rose, without admitting the fact, wanted to be married as soon as possible, so that she might know the end of the story. Women, however, are broken in to prolonged patience. She would wait, if Xavier decided that they ought to wait. To obey Xavier was to her a great pleasure.
M. Hervart's latest hesitations were not very comprehensible. His situation, after the winter, would be in no way altered. What was the present obstacle? Gratienne? Of course, he thought himself passionately adored by her, but would she love him less, would she be less hurt a year hence? His ideas about Gratienne, were, moreover, variable. At one moment he attributed to her the virture of an unhappily married woman who has given herself for love to her heart's choice; at the next going to the opposite extreme, he saw her prostituted to every chance comer. The humble truth escaped him. Expert in these matters though he was, he had never been able to see that Gratienne was a girl who could skilfully reconcile her interests, her pleasures and her sentimental needs, and who completely dissociated these three things. What she loved in M. Hervart was the sensual lover, but she none the less appreciated the rich and serious civil servant in him. For free love is like legal love in this also, that money reinforces sentiment. Thus M. Hervart esteemed Gratienne sometimes more and sometimes less, but he always loved her the same, having, moreover, no visible breach of contract to reproach her with. The thought of deserting Gratienne filled him with distress, not because of the pain he himself would feel, but because of the pain that she most certainly would suffer. Besides, even when he was in a mood to despise Gratienne, he set store by her esteem. However, all of that would come right, he thought, for the situation was a common one and one of those that have to be solved every day.
"As soon as I have possessed Rose, I shall think no more of Gratienne, that's obvious. And then, why should I break with the charming girl brutally? I don't intend to upset her."
At bottom, it was the thought of marriage itself that was still alarming M. Hervart. He felt the tyrant that they all turn into already rising up beneath the surface of the sweet young girl.
"She loves me, therefore she will be jealous. So shall I perhaps. Or perhaps in a few days I shall dislike her. Shall I please her for long? She loves me because she knows no one else but me."
M. Hervart's health sometimes alarmed him. He would wake up feeling more tired than when he went to bed. The least cold caught him in the throat or in the joints. And when meals were late, his breathing became difficult and he was seized with giddiness.
I'm a fool. Here am I, getting married at an age when wise men begin unmarrying. Bah! In spite of everything, I'm still tough and can still tame a woman."
He recalled, with pride, his last rendezvous with Gratienne; he had conquered her, annihilated her, reduced her to a pulp, and himself, strutting like a cock, had crowed over his happy victim.
"Besides, with Rose, I shall be master. I shall be for her the Man and men in general.... By the way, why hasn't Gratienne written to me since I've been here? Of course, I never gave her my address."
That had been the right thing, he first thought; then he reproached himself for it, felt almost remorseful. He hastily concocted a quite affectionate letter, asking for news. There was a letter-box not far away, on the St. Martin road; he went quickly down stairs and ran there with his missive.
On his return he found Rose in the garden. Since their engagement she had been living in a perpetual smile. She entered naively into her destiny, suspecting no further possible obstacle to her happiness. At the same time, by what must have been instinctive coquetry, she had become, not more reserved, but less prompt at their habitual sports. She spoke a great deal of her future house, picturing to herself their drawing-room furniture, which she pictured from the illustrated catalogues, and the colour of their carpets and curtains. The idea of this furniture horrified M. Hervart, who had a taste for antiques and happy discoveries, which he mixed, without shame, with practical constructions made under his own directions. To-day he found it more difficult than usual to tolerate this housewifely chatter. He was bored.
"Can it be," he wondered, "that I feel nothing but a wholly carnal love for her? What's the use of marrying, if I can't see in her the wife, the mother, the lady of the house as well as the mistress? In that case Gratienne is quite enough for me. Marriage is delightful when one is fresh from school. One finds the happiest establishments among students. They live on one another, in one another. Promiscuity seems an enchantment. One makes one's first acquaintance with the opposite sex; one completes oneself. Later on, all this intimacy is no longer possible; and later still, one is very well content with mere amorous visitations while one awaits the moment when solitude brings the only instants of appreciable happiness."
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 fox-gloves among the birch-trees; "after all, she's my wife."
On the following days the same manoevre 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 realize 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.