A Virgin Heart (de Gourmont, 1921)/17
CHAPTER XVII
LEONOR was on the watch for the effect of his cure. He saw that evening that it had succeeded. Rose looked like a shadow, a dolorous shadow. She forgot to eat, and would sit, looking into the void, her hand on her glass; she did not reply to questions unless they were repeated. Finally, it was obvious that she had been crying.
"The remedy has been a painful one," said Leonor to himself. "Will she bear a grudge against the doctor? Perhaps, but the important thing was to scratch out the unblemished image stamped on her heart. That has been done. Across M. Hervart's portrait, in all directions, from top to bottom, from side to side, there is written now: Gratienne, Gratienne, Gratienne.
"Ah, little swallow of the beach, how precious you have been for me! I will give you a golden necklet to thank, in your person, the supreme goddess of hearts. Hervart, I envied you once; now I am sorry for you. I despise you too. You had found love, ingenuous and absolute, you had found in a single being, the child, the mistress and the wife, you possessed the smile of innocence and the woman's desire—and you have left it all for Gratienne and her caresses! But no, no invectives; worthy civil servant, I thank you. Yes, but am I much better? My Gratienne is a marquise, to be sure, but I have one just the same. No, I have ceased to have a Gratienne. I shall be loyal. I will fling my old burden into the sea, and at your feet, sad maiden, I shall kneel, heart free."
Nothing happened that evening. Rose preserved her silence, and her attitude towards Leonor was the same as at other times. But she had to make a painful effort to preserve her customary amiability. Leonor wondered, deliberated within himself whether he should speak. Might he not question her, with a distracted air, about the post-card of Martinvast? "He had thought it was with the other papers, but he couldn't find it. Perhaps the wind carried it away."
"No, that would be too direct. She may have suspicions; I shall try to destroy them. I should be lost if she had certainties. But I have no doubts. She will come of her own accord, she will speak first. And I shall look as though I didn't understand; she will have to drag out of me one by one a few ambiguous words."
The days passed. Rose remained in the same melancholy state, ruminating her grief. Still she did not speak, and Leonor foresaw the moment, when, his presence being no longer necessary, he would have to take his leave. The operations on the outside of the house were coming to an end, the weather had made digging impossible and Rose had decided that the interior repairs should be put off till the spring.
Meanwhile Leonor began to suffer in his turn. By living in the same house as Rose he had felt the love, that had to begin with been somewhat chimerical, grow and take root within him. From the moment of their first meeting Rose had aroused in him something like a love of love. He had first been moved by the generosity of an innocent heart giving itself with so noble a violence. Next, he had felt that vague jealousy which all men feel for one another. He had detested M. Hervart, without being able to keep himself from admiring the spectacle of his happiness. The desire to supplant him had naturally tormented Leonor; but it was one of those desires which one feels sure can never be realized and at which, in lucid moments, one shrugs one's shoulders. Since chance and his own good management had so much modified the logical sequence of things to his own profit, Leonor had begun to tell himself that one should never doubt of anything, that anything may happen and that the impossible is probably the most reasonable thing in the world.
In these few weeks he had become more serious than ever, and above all more calm. His egotism began to be capable of long deviations from its straight course. He knew very well that Rose, if he hazarded a confession, would reply with indifference, perhaps with anger. His plan was to risk a few discreet insinuations on some suitable opportunity.
"I might," he reflected, "put on the melancholy, disenchanted look myself. She is ill, and it would be a case of one sick person seeking some comfort in the eyes of a companion in misfortune.... Comedy! But would it be so much of a comedy? Have I found in life all that I looked for? If I had found it, should I be here dreaming of the capture of a young girl? It's my right, to do that, since I love; all means will be fair which put the resources of my imagination at the service of my heart."
But the opportunity of striking a melancholy, disenchanted attitude never presented itself. Rose considered him more and more as an architect, praised his skill in managing the workmen, and paid no attention to his youth, his cleverness or even to the way he looked at her—and his glances were often penetrating. There were moments when he became discouraged. The memory of Hortense came back to him. They had exchanged a few anodyne letters. She called him to her, but in a weak voice, and it was in uncertain terms that he announced his next visit.
"Dying love is always melancholy," he thought. "The poem would have been beautiful if we had said good-bye after Compiègne. We tried to add a verse, and it has been a failure. It's a pity. But what will become of her? I still feel some curiosity about her."
At other moments he pictured to himself Gratienne and the elegant manner of her posturing; that roused him for a time. But the image of M. Hervart would seem to come and mingle with that of this agreeable young woman, and the charm would be broken.
Rose's arrival would dispel all these visions. He took a great delight in seeing her walk, enjoying, though with no idea of libertinage, the grace of her movements.
Leonor's departure had already been spoken of. One rainy afternoon, Rose decided to speak. She did it very seriously, without attempting to dissimulate her unhappiness. Between the two there followed a conversation which took the tone of friendly confidences.
After long hesitation she put the question for which Leonor had been waiting with so much anxiety. He had forged several anecdotes with which Rose would doubtless have been satisfied; but when the moment came, rather than hesitate and risk inevitable contradictions, he suddenly decided on a certain degree of frankness.
He said: "The card fell into my hands because I myself have also been entertained by this person. M. Hervart, I must tell you, was not there; he did not know and she shall certainly never know. I had no idea myself that he was the intimate friend of the house. That was why his name struck me, appended as it was to 'best love.'"
"It was 'love and kisses.'"
"Of course, I remember now." And he repeated, with an intonation that aggravated the words, and stamped them on the young girl's bruised heart: "Yes, 'love and kisses'. There were a number of picture post-cards addressed to the same person; there were many signed with the same name or an abbreviation: H., Her., Herv. I was bold enough to take one as a souvenir of my visit. And then... and then... May I say it, Mademoiselle?"
"Say what you like. Nothing can hurt me any more now."
"Very well; I got hold of this card dishonestly, perhaps, but it was because I was thinking of you.... I was thinking that the man to whom you had just given your hand loved another woman and publicly admitted his love for her. That seemed to me bad; I suffered for you—you whose delicate and generous feelings I had guessed.... Yes, that distressed me and my idea was, by stealing this proof of a wrong action, to let you know of it, if circumstances allowed me."
"Then you dropped your pocket-book on purpose?"
"I confess. I did. And if that method had failed, I should have tried to find another."
"You hurt me great deal. All the same, I am grateful to you."
She held out her hand; Leonor pressed it respectfully.
"I have given you less pain now than you would have felt later on. It would have been irremediable then."
"Who knows? I might perhaps have forgiven him afterwards. I shall not forgive before."
"I know M. Hervart fairly well," said Leonor, in a slightly hypocritical voice, "but I know that, despite his age, he is capricious. M. Lanfranc is a spiteful gossip and I won't repeat all he told me. I know enough, and from certain sources, to make me congratulate myself on what is perhaps an audacious intervention."
"And what about my father? He has agreed to our marriage."
"Your father lives a long way from Paris. He is kind and trustful. No doubt his friend promised him to make you happy, and he believed him."
"I believed him too. Alas! he had begun to make me happy already."
"Oh! his intentions weren't bad. M. Hervart is not a bad man. He is fickle, inconstant, irresolute."
"I see that only too clearly."
"He's an egoist. All men are egoists, for that matter, but there are degrees. Is he capable of loving a woman whole-heartedly, capable of consecrating his life to weaving daily joys for her? And yet what could be a more perfect dream, when one meets in his path a creature who is worthy of it, one who draws to herself not only love but adoration!"
"I suppose that women like that are rare."
"Those who have known one and desert her are very guilty."
"Say rather that they are very much to be pitied. But not being one of these women, I didn't ask so much."
."You don't know yourself, Mademoiselle. Oh! if only I had been in M. Hervart's place."
"What would have happened?" asked Rose, without the least emotion, without even the least curiosity.
"How I should have loved you!"
"But he loved me a great deal."
"He didn't love you as you should be loved."
"I don't know. How should I know these things. I believed, that was all. I believed in him."
"He was not worthy of you."
"Perhaps it was I who was unworthy of him, since he loves me no more."
"Unworthy of him, you? Don't you know, then, what this woman is?"
"No, and I don't want to know. Oh! I'm not jealous. I'm humiliated. I feel as though I had been beaten. Jealous? No. I have stopped loving and I shall never love again."
"Don't say that."
"Love doesn't come twice."
"But if one is unhappy the first time?"
"One remains unhappy."
"Happiness always has to be looked for. When one looks for it one finds it."
"Happiness falls from heaven one day; then it goes up again and never descends any more."
"Don't say that. You will be happy."
"It's finished."
"You will be happy as soon as you meet someone you really love with all the force of an ardent and devoted heart."
"Don't let's speak of these things. It hurts me."
"I obey you. I will be silent, but not before telling you that that heart is mine."
Rose looked at him with astonished eyes. She seemed not to understand. Leonor, very much moved, got up, walked towards her and said, in a whisper:
"Rose, I love you."
At these words, Rose started, and when Leonor tried to take her hand, she got up and ran away, crying:
"No, no, no, no."
"How stupid I've, been," Leonor said to himself, when he was alone. "Does one declare one's love like this? Here am I on a level with the lowest heroes of novels. Think of declaring one's love, saying, 'I am hot,' to a woman who is cold. What does it mean to her? Words possess eloquence when the ears expect them. If not, they ring false. They only incline hearts which have already abdicated their will."
Leonor was very sincerely in love with Rose; hence he was very unhappy. He imagined, moreover, that M. Hervart was already completely pardoned. Rose was only awaiting some act of humility to give herself to him again.
"She is hurt in her pride. Her heart is happy, if happiness consisting in loving much more than in being loved. It is a painful pleasure, but none the less a pleasure for her to talk of M. Hervart..."
That evening Léonor had no difficulty in putting on a melancholy and disenchanted look. He felt these two emotions to perfection, and Rose, who could not help looking at him, noticed it.
"Can he really be in love with me," she wondered, "he?"
The next morning, when she woke up, she asked herself the same dangerous question. Then suddenly, a wave of red mounted to her head. She had just remembered all the amusements into which her own innocence and M. Hervart's perverse good-nature had led her.
"I am dishonoured," she said to herself. "Am I a maiden?"
This was the first time that she had felt any shame in calling to mind the kisses and caresses in which her heart, rather than her body, had felt pleasure. Though she was unconscious of the transference, the pain which she still felt had, without changing its nature, changed its cause.
When Leonor said good-morning she felt herself blushing and immediately turned her head, to discover an imaginary piece of thread on her skirt.
"So it's to-morrow that we shall have to drive you back," said M. Des Boys.
"If the garden isn't arranged before the winter," said Rose, "we shall have to wait till next autumn."
"Obviously," said Leonor; "one can't transplant in the spring. At least, it's a most delicate operation."
"Well then, stay and let's finish it off," said M. Des Boys.
Leonor stayed.
"Since I have made a declaration and it has been successful, I shall now pay my addresses. Can it be that the old methods are the best?"