A Virgin Heart (de Gourmont, 1921)/8
CHAPTER VIII
ROSE had laid her plans in such a fashion that the young man had found her in his path. Not to see her was too deliberately to avoid her. If he saw her, he had to take off his hat. And this was what had happened. Rose had answered his salutation by a word of welcome; conversation had then passed to the old house at Barnavast, finally to Mme Suif. But Leonor was discreet and vague, so much so that at one of Rose's questions the conversation had switched off on to sentimental commonplaces. But, for Rose, nothing in the world was commonplace yet.
"Isn't she rather old to marry again?" she asked.
"Ah, but Mme Suif is one of those whose hearts are always young."
"Then there are some hearts that grow old more slowly than others?"
"Some never grow old at all, just as some have never been young."
"All the same, I see a great difference, when I look around me, between the feelings of young and old people."
"Do you know many people?"
"No, very few; but I have always seen a certain correspondence between people's hearts and faces."
"Certainly; but a general truth, although it may represent the average of particular truths, is hardly ever the same as a single particular case selected by chance...."
Rose looked at Leonor with a mixture of admiration and shame: she did not understand. Leonor perceived the fact and went on:
"I mean that there are, in all things, exceptions. I also mean that there are rules which admit of a great number of exceptions. It even happens in life, just as in grammar, that the exceptional are more numerous than the regular cases. Do you follow?"
"Oh, perfectly."
"But that," he concluded, emphasizing his words, "does not prevent the rule's being the rule, even though there were only two normal cases as against ten exceptions."
Rose liked this magisterial tone. M. Hervart had, for some time, done nothing but agree with her opinions.
"But how does one recognize the rule?" she went on.
"Rules," said Leonor, "always satisfy the reason."
Rose looked at him in alarm; then, pretending she had understood made a sign of affirmation.
"Women never understand that very well," Leonor continued. "It doesn't satisfy them. They yield only to their feelings. So do men, for that matter, but they don't admit it. So that women accused of hypocrisy and vanity have less of these vices, it may be, than men.... At any rate the rule is the rule. The rule demands that Marguerite should give up..."
"Who's Marguerite?"
"Mme Suif."
"Do you know her well?"
Leonor smiled. "Am I not the nephew and lieutenant of her architect? The rule, then, would demand that Marguerite should give up love; and the rule further demands, Mademoiselle, that you should begin to think of it."
"The rule is the rule," said Rose sententiously, suppressing the shouts of laughter that exploded silently in her heart.
"The rule's not so stupid after all," she thought. "I don't ask anything better than to obey it...."
At this moment M. Hervart came face to face with them at the turn of a path. Rose welcomed him with a happy smile, a smile of delicious frankness.
"Good," thought M. Hervart, "he isn't my rival yet. My rôle for the moment is to act the part of the man who is sure of himself, the man who possesses, dominates, the lord who is above all changes and chances...."
And he began to talk of his stay at Robinvast and of the pleasure he found in the midst of this rich disorderly scene of nature.
"But you," he said, "have come to put it in order. You have come to whiten these walls, scrape off this moss and ivy, cut clearings through these dark masses, and you will make M. Des Boys a present of a brand-new castle with a charming and equally brand-new park."
"Who's going to touch my ivy?" exclaimed Rose, indignantly.
"Why should it be touched," said Leonor. "Isn't ivy the glory of the walls of Tourlaville? Ivy—why, it's the only architectural beauty that can't be bought. At Barnavast, which is in a state of ruin, we always respect it when the wall can be consolidated from inside. To my mind, restoration means giving back to a monument the appearance that the centuries would have given it if it had been well looked after. Restoration doesn't mean making a thing look new; it doesn't consist in giving an old man the hair, beard, complexion and teeth of a youth; it consists in bringing a dying man back to life and giving him the health and beauty of his age."
"How glad I am to hear you talk like this," said Rose. "I hope M. Lanfranc shares your ideas."
"M. Lanfranc is completely converted to my ideas."
"My father will do nothing without consulting me, but I shall feel more certain of getting my way if you are my ally."
"I will be your ally then."
"Yours is a sensible method," said M. Hervart. "You may know that I am the keeper of the Greek sculpture at the Louvre. I entered that necropolis at a time when the old system of restoration had begun to be abandoned. They were oscillating between two methods—re-making or doing nothing. The second has prevailed. You will have noticed that our marbles can be divided into two groups: those which have no antiquity but in the name, and those which have no antiquity except in the material. In old days, when they had found a bust, they manufactured a new head for it, new arms and new legs; then they wrote underneath: 'Artemis (restored), Minerva (restored), Nymph with a bow (restored)', according to the fancy of the cast-maker or as they were guided by a somnolent archaeology. I think that they certainly filled some gaps in this way. If the system had gone on being followed, we should doubtless be in possession at the present time of a complete Olympus; while as it is there are plenty of empty places left in the assembly of our gods. Since we decided to do nothing, our galleries have grown rich in curious anatomical odds and ends—legs and hands that look like those exvoto offerings that used, as a matter of fact, to hang in Greek sanctuaries; heads that look as though they had, like Orpheus's head, been rolled by storms among the pebbles of the sea; busts so full of holes that they seem to have served as targets for drunken soldiers. In short nothing comes to us now but fragments—fragments of great archaeological interest, but whose value as works of art is almost nothing. Wouldn't some intermediate method be preferable? By intermediate I mean intelligent. Intelligence is the art of reconciling ideas and producing a harmony. A head of Aphrodite with a broken nose ceases to be a head of Aphrodite. I ask for beauty and they give me a museum specimen. If they want me to admire it, they must make a new nose; if they don't want to make a new nose, then they must divide up the Louvre into two museums, the æsthetic museum and the archaeological museum."
Having finished speaking he looked first of all at Rose, thus showing that he had need, before everything else, of her approbation. Rose's face lit up with happiness. Her eyes answered, "My dear, I admire you. You're a god."
These movements were understood by Leonor, who had been trying for some few moments to guess what were the relations between Rose and Hervart.
"They are in love," he said to himself. "Hervart has a genius for making love. I am twenty-eight, which is my only point of superiority over him. And even that is very illusory, for it is only women who know something about life, whether through experience or through the confidences of someone else, who pay any attention to a man's age. A woman is as old as her face: a man is as old as his eyes. Hervart has a pair of fine blue eyes, gentle and lively, ardent. But what do I care? I don't desire the good graces of this innocent."
While reflecting thus, he had answered M. Hervart, "I quite agree with you. People tend too much to-day to confound the curious, rare or antique with the beautiful. The æsthetic sense has been replaced by a feeling of respect."
"The process was perhaps inevitable," said M. Hervart. "In any case it suits a democracy. People have no time to learn to admire, but one can very quickly learn to respect. The intelligence is docile, but taste is recalcitrant."
"But aren't there such things," Rose asked, "as spontaneous admirations?"
"Yes," said Leonor, "there's love."
"Then is admiration the same as love?"
"If they don't yet love, people come very near loving when they admire."
"And is love admiration?"
"Not always."
"Love," said M. Hervart, "is compatible with almost all other feelings, even with hatred."
"Yes," replied Leonor, "that has the appearance of being true, for there are many kinds of love. The love that struggles with hatred can only be a love inspired by interest or sensuality."
"One never knows. I hold that love, just as it is capable of taking any shape or form, can devour all other feelings and install itself in their place. It comes and it goes, without one's ever being able to understand the mechanism of its movements. It lasts two hours or a whole life. . . ."
"You are mixing up the different species," said Leonor. "You must, if we are to understand one another, allow words to keep their traditional sense with all its shades of meaning. Love is at the base of all emotions either as a negative or positive principle; one can say that, and when one has said it one is no forwarder. Do you think there's no point in the way verbal usage employs the words 'passion, caprice, inclination, taste, curiosity' and other words of the kind? It would surely be better to create new shades, rather than set one's wits to work to dissolve all the colours and shades of sensation and emotion into a single hue."
Like a village musician plunged into the midst of a discussion on counterpoint and orchestration, Rose listened, a little disquieted, a little irritated, but at the same time fascinated. They were speaking of something that filled her heart and set her nerves tingling; she did not understand, she felt. She would have liked to understand.
"Xavier will explain it all to me. How silly I look in the middle of the conversations where I can't put in a word."
She pretended to desire a rose out of reach of her hand. M. Hervart darted forward, reached the flower and set to work to strip the branch of its thorns and its superfluous wood and leaves.
"That was not the one I wanted," said Rose.
M. Hervart began again and the girl looked on, happy at having been able to interrupt a serious conversation by a mere whim.
Leonor examined them with a certain irony. Rose noticed his look, felt herself blushing and slipped away.
M. Hervart and Leonor continued their stroll and their chat; but they talked no more about love.