A Virgin Heart (de Gourmont, 1921)/3
CHAPTER III
HE went on with his meditations in the little wagonette which carried them to Couville station. Rose was sitting opposite; their feet, naturally, came into contact.
M. Des Boys, who owned several farms, stopped to examine the state of the crops. In some of the fields the corn had been beaten down. He got up on the box beside the driver to ask him whether it was the same throughout the whole district. He was very disquieted.
M. Hervart stretched out his legs, so that he held the girl's knees between his own. She smiled. M. Hervart, a little oppressed by his emotions, dared not speak. He took her hand and kissed it.
All of a sudden, Rose exclaimed: "We have forgotten the microscope!"
"So we have! our pretext. What will become of us?"
"But do we need a pretext, now?"
M. Hervart renewed the pressure of his prisoning knees. That was his first answer.
"We're conspirators, Rose," he then said. "It's serious."
"I hope so."
"We have been conspirators for a long time."
"Since this morning, yes."
She blushed a little.
"From that moment," M. Hervart went on, "when you said, 'One must believe'."
"I said what I thought."
"It's what I think too."
"In this way," he said to himself, "I say what I ought to say without going too far. Oh, if only I dared!"
Meanwhile, he was disturbed by the thought of the microscope.
"I shall buy one," he said, "and leave it with you. It will be of use to me when I come again."
"Stop," said Rose; her voice was low, but its tone was violent. "When you talk of coming again, you're talking of going away."
M. Hervart had nothing to answer. He got out of the difficulty by renewing the pressure of his legs.
They reached the little lonely station. The train came in, and a quarter of an hour later they were in Cherbourg.
M. Des Boys at once announced his intention of going to see the museum. He wanted to look at a few masterpieces, he said, so that he might once more compare his own art with that of the great men. M. Hervart protested. For him, a holiday consisted in getting away from museums. Furthermore, he regarded this particular collection, with its list of great names, as being in large part apocryphal.
"If the catalogue of the Louvre is false, as it is, what must the catalogue of the Cherbourg museum be like?" he asked.
M. Des Boys shrugged his shoulders:
"You have lost my esteem."
And he affirmed the perfect authenticity of the Van Dycks, Van Eycks, Chardins, Poussins, Murillos, Jordaenses, Ribeiras, Fra Angelicos, Cranachs, Pourbuses and Leonardos which adorned the town hall.
"There's no Raphael," said M. Hervart, "and there ought to be a Velasquez and a Titian and a Correggio."
M. Des Boys replied sarcastically:
"There's a Natural History museum."
And with a wave of the hand, he disappeared round the corner of a street.
One would thing everything in this dreary maritime city had been arranged to disguise the fact that the sea is there. The houses turn their backs on it, and a desert of stones and dust and wind lies between the shores and the town. To discover that Cherbourg is really a sea port, one must climb to the top of the Roule rock. M. Hervart had desire to scale this pinnacle.
"It's a waste of time," said Rose, "let's go up the tower in the Liais gardens."
Side by side, they walked through the dismal streets. Rose kept on looking at M. Hervart; she was disquieted by his silence. She took his arm.
"I didn't dare offer to you," he said.
"That's why I took it myself."
"I do enjoy walking with you like this, Rose."
But as a matter of fact he was most embarrassed. This privilege was at once too innocent and too free. He wondered what he should do to keep it within its present bounds.
"If this is going on... And to think it only started this morning...."
He reassured himself by this most logical piece of reasoning:
"Either I do or I don't want to marry her; in either case I shall have to respect her.... That's evident. Being neither a fool nor a blackguard, I have nothing to fear from myself. The civilized instinct will certainly be stronger than the natural instinct; I'm very civilized...."
They were lightly clad. As he held her arm, he could feel its warmth burning into his flesh.
"Distressing fact! in love you can never be sure of anything or anybody, least of all of yourself. I'm helpless in the hands of desire. And then, at the same time as my own, I must calm down this child's overexcited nerves. Nerves? No, feelings. Feelings lead anywhere.... What a fool I am, making mental sermons like this! I am spoiling delicious moments."
A house like all the others, a carriage door, a vaulted passage—and behold, you were in a great garden, where the brilliance and scent of exotic flowers burst from among the palm-trees, more intoxicating to their senses than the familiar scents and colours of the copse at Robinvast. Within the high walls of this strange oasis, the air hung motionless, heavy and feverish. The flowers breathed forth an almost carnal odour.
"What a place to make love in," thought M. Hervart.
He forgot all about Rose; his imagination called up the thought of Gratienne and her voluptuousness. He shut out the sun, lit up the place with dim far away lamps, spread scarlet cushions on the grass where a magnolia had let fall one of its fabulous flowers, and on them fancied his mistress.... He knelt beside her, bent over her beauty, covering it with kisses and adoration.
"This garden's making me mad," said M. Hervart aloud. The dream was scattered.
"Here's the tower," said Rose. "Let's go up. It will be cool on top."
She too was breathing heavily, but from uneasiness, not from passion. It was cool within the tower. In a few moments Rose, now freed from her sense of oppression, was at the top. She had quite well realized that M. Hervart, absorbed in some dream of his own, had been far away from her all the last part of their walk. Rose was annoyed, and the appearance of M. Hervart, rather red in the face and with eyes that were still wild, was not calculated to calm her. She felt jealous and would have liked to destroy the object of his thought.
M. Hervart noticed the little movement of irritation, which Rose had been unable to repress, and he was pleased. He would have liked to be alone.
He went and leaned on the balustrade and, without speaking, looked far out over the blue sea. Seeing him once more absorbed by something which was not herself, Rose was torn by another pang of jealousy; but this time she knew her rival. Women have no doubts about one another, which is what always ensures them the victory, but Rose now pitted herself against the charm of the infinite sea. She took up her position very close to M. Hervart, shoulder to shoulder with him.
M. Hervart looked at Rose and stopped looking at the sea.
His eyes were melancholy at having seen the ironic flight of desire. Rose's were full of smiles.
"They are the colour of the infinite sea, Rose."
"It's quite pleasant," thought M. Hervart, "to be the first man to say that to a young girl.... In the ordinary way, women with blue eyes hear that compliment for the hundredth time, and it makes them think that all men are alike and all stupid.... It's men who have made love so insipid.... Rose's eyes are pretty, but I ought not to have said so.... Am I the first?..."
M. Hervart felt the prick, ill defined as yet, of jealousy.
"Who can have taught her these little physical complaisances? She has no girl friends; it must have been some enterprising young cousin.... What a fool I am, torturing myself! Rose has had girl friends, at Valognes at the convent. She has them still, she writes to them.... And besides, what do I care? I'm not in love; it's all nothing more than a series of light sensations, a pretext for amusing observations...."
The afternoon was drawing on. They had to think of the commissions which Mme Des Boys had given them.... It was time to go down.
"How dark the staircase is," said Rose. "Give me your hand."
At the bottom, as though to thank him for his help, she offered her cheek. His kiss settled on the corner of her mouth. Rose recoiled, warned of danger by this new sensation that was too intimate, too intense. But in the process of moving away, she came near to falling. Her hands clutched at his, and she found herself once more leaning towards M. Hervart. They looked at one another for a moment. Rose shut her eyes and waited for a renewal of the burning touch.
"I hope you haven't hurt yourself."
She burst out laughing.
"That," said M. Hervart to himself, "is what is called being self controlled. And then she laughs at me for it. Such are the fruits of virtue."
They went into almost all the shops in the Rue Fontaine, which is the centre of this big outlandish village. M. Hervart bought some picture postcards. The castles in the Hague district are almost as fine and as picturesque as those on the banks of the Loire. He would have liked to send the picture of them to Gratienne, but he felt himself to be Rose's prisoner. For a moment, that put him in a bad temper. Then, as Rose was entering a draper's shop, he made up his mind; the post office was next door.
"I should like your advice," said Rose. "I have got to match some wools."
But he had gone. She waited patiently.
The castles were at last dropped into the box and they continued their course. The walk finished up at the confectioner's.
One of M. Hervart's pleasures was eating cakes at a pastry cook's, and the pleasure was complete when a woman was with him. He was a regular customer at the shop in the Rue du Louvre, at the corner of the square; he went there every day and not always alone.
Entering the shop with Rose, he imagined himself in Paris, enjoying a little flirtation, and the thought amused him. Rose was as happy as he. Smiling and serious, she looked as though she were accomplishing some familiar rite.
"She would soon make a Parisian," M. Hervart thought, as he looked at her.
And in an instant of time, he saw a whole future unfolding before him. They would live in the Quai Voltaire; she would often start out with him in the mornings on her way to the Louvre stores. He would take her as far as the arcades. She would come and pick him up for luncheon. On other days, she would come into his office at four o'clock and they would go and eat cakes and drink a glass of iced water; and then they would walk slowly back by the Pont Neuf and the Quays; on the way they would buy some queer old book and look at the play of the sunlight on the water and in the trees. Sometimes they would take the steamer or the train and go to some wood, not so wild as the Robinvast wood, but pleasant enough, where Rose could breathe an air almost as pure as the air of her native place....
There was not much imagination in this dream of M. Hervart's, for he had often realized it in the past. But the introduction of Rose made of it something quite new, a pleasure hitherto unfelt.
"By the end of my stay I shall be madly in love with her and very unhappy," he said to himself at last.
A little while later they met M. Des Boys, who was looking for them. While they were waiting at the station for the train, M. Hervart examined his duplicate postcards of the castles.
"Why shouldn't we go and look at them?" said Rose, glancing at her father.
He acquiesced:
"It will give me some ideas for the restoration of Robinvast, which I think of carrying out."
All that he meant to do was simply to set the place in order. He would have the mortar re-pointed without touching the ivy, and while preserving the wildness of the park and wood, he would have paths and alleys made.
"Art," he said sententiously, "admits only of a certain kind of disorder. Besides, I have to think of public opinion; the disorder of my garden will make people think what I am letting my daughter grow up in the same way...."
There was, in these words, a hint of marriage plans. Rose perceived it at once.
"I'm quite all right as I am," she said, "and so is Robinvast."
"Vain little creature!"
"Don't you agree with me?" said Rose, turning to M. Hervart with a laugh that palliated the boldness of her question.
"About yourself, most certainly."
"Oh, there's nothing more to be done with me. The harm's done already; I'm a savage. I'm thinking of the wildness of Robinvast; I like it and it suits my wildness."
"All the same," said M. Hervart, whose hands were covered with scratches, "there are a lot of brambles in the wood. I've never seen such fine ones, shoots like tropical creepers, like huge snakes...."
"I never scratch myself," said Rose.
But it was not without a feeling of satisfaction that she looked at M. Hervart's hands, which were scarred with picking blackberries for her. She whispered to him:
"I'm as cruel as the brambles."
"Defend yourself as well as they do," M. Hervart replied.
It had been only a chance word. No doubt, M. Des Boys thought of marrying his daughter, but the project was still distant. No suitor threatened. M. Hervart was pleased with this state of affairs; for, having fallen in love at ten in the morning, he was thinking now, at seven, of marrying this nervous and sentimental child who had offered the corner of her mouth to his clumsy kiss.
The evenings at Robinvast were regularly spent in playing cards. Trained from her earliest youth to participate in this occupation, Rose played whist with conviction. She managed the whole game, scolded her mother, argued about points with her father and kept M. Hervart fascinated under the gaze of her gentle eyes.
As soon as he sat down at the card table, he was conscious of this fascination, which, up till then, had worked on him without his knowledge. He remembered now that each time a chance had brought him face to face with Rose, he had felt himself intoxicated by a great pleasure. It was a kind of possession; spectators feel the same at the theatre, when they see the actress of their dreams. He reflected too that his own pleasure, almost unconscious though it had been, must have expressed itself by fervent looks....
"Her heart responded little by little to the mysterious passion of my eyes.... I have nice eyes too, I know; they are my best feature.... My pleasure is easily explained; full face, Rose is quite divine, though her profile is rather hard. Her nose, which is a little long, looks all right from the front; her face is a perfect oval; her smile seems to be the natural movement of her rather wide mouth, and her eyes come out in the lamp light from their deep setting, like flowers.... I have often stood in the same ecstasy before my lovely Titian Venus; it's true that she displays other beauties as well, but her face and her eyes are above all exquisite...."
"Don't make signs at one another!"
This observation, which had followed a too obvious exchange of smiles, amused Rose enormously; for she had been thinking very little of the game at the moment. She bowed her head innocently under the paternal rebuke.
They played extremely badly and lost a great number of points.
At the change of partners they were separated; but separation united them the better, for their knees soon came together under the table. The game, under these conditions, became delicious. Rose did her best to beat her lover and at the same time, delighting in the sense of contrast, caressed him under the table. Life seemed to her very delightful.
She was a little feverish and it was late before she went to sleep, to dream of this wonderful day when she had so joyously reached the summit of her desires. She was loved; that was happiness. She did not for a moment think of wondering whether she were herself in love. She had no doubts on the state of her heart.
M. Hervart's reflections were somewhat different. They also were extremely confused. Women live entirely in the present; men much more in the future—a sign, it may be, that their nature is not so well or organized. M. Hervart was making plans. He went to sleep. in the midst of his scheming, exhausted by his inability to make so much as one plan that should be tenable.