Longmore turned away with the feeling that women were indeed a measureless mystery, and that it was hard to say whether there was greater beauty in their strength or in their weakness. He walked back to Saint-Germain, more slowly than he had come, with less philosophic resignation to any event, and more of the urgent egotism of the passion which philosophers call the supremely selfish one. Every now and then the episode of the happy young painter and the charming woman who had given up a great many things for him rose vividly in his mind, and seemed to mock his moral unrest like some obtrusive vision of unattainable bliss.
The landlady’s gossip cast no shadow on its brightness; her voice seemed that of the vulgar chorus of the uninitiated, which stands always ready with its gross prose rendering of the inspired passages in human action. Was it possible a man could take that from a woman, – take all that lent lightness to that other woman’s footstep and intensity to her glance, – and not give her the absolute certainty of a devotion as unalterable as the process of the sun? Was it possible that such a rapturous union had the seeds of trouble, – that the charm of such a perfect accord could be broken by anything but death? Longmore felt an immense desire to cry out a thousand times ‘No!’ for it seemed to him at last that he was somehow spiritually the same as the young painter, and that the latter’s companion had the soul of Euphemia de Mauves.
The heat of the sun, as he walked along, became oppressive and when he re-entered the forest he turned aside into the deepest shade he could find, and stretched himself on the mossy ground at the foot of a great beech. He lay for a while staring up into the verdurous dusk overhead, and trying to conceive Madame de Mauves hastening toward some quiet stream-side where he waited, as he had seen that trusting creature do an hour before. It would be hard to say how well he succeeded; but the effort soothed him rather than excited him, and as he had had a good deal both of moral and physical fatigue, he sank at last into a quiet sleep.
While he slept he had a strange, vivid dream. He seemed to be in a wood, very much like the one on which his eyes had lately closed; but the wood was divided by the murmuring stream he had left an hour before. He was walking up and down, he thought, restlessly and in intense expectation of some momentous event. Suddenly, at a distance, through the trees, he saw the gleam of a woman’s dress, and hurried forward to meet her. As he advanced he recognised her, but he saw at the same time that she was on the opposite bank of the river. She seemed at first not to notice him, but when they were opposite each other she stopped and looked at him very gravely and pityingly. She made him no motion that he should cross the stream, but he wished greatly to stand by her side. He knew the water was deep, and it seemed to him that he knew that he should have to plunge, and that he feared that when he rose to the surface she would have disappeared. Nevertheless, he was going to plunge, when a boat turned into the current from above and came swiftly toward them, guided by an oarsman, who was sitting so that they could not see his face. He brought the boat to the bank where Longmore stood; the latter stepped in, and with a few strokes they touched the opposite shore. Longmore got out, and, though he was sure he had crossed the stream, Madame de Mauves was not there. He turned with a kind of agony and saw that now she was on the other bank, – the one he had left. She gave him a grave, silent glance, and walked away up the stream. The boat and the boatman resumed their course, but after going a short distance they stopped, and the boatman turned back and looked at the still divided couple. Then Longmore recognised him, – just as he had recognised him a few days before at the café in the Bois de Boulogne.
VIII
HE must have slept some time after he ceased dreaming, for he had no immediate memory of his dream. It came back to him later, after he had roused himself and had walked nearly home. No great ingenuity was needed to make it seem a rather striking allegory, and it haunted and oppressed him for the rest of the day. He took refuge, however, in his quickened conviction that the only sound policy in life is to grasp unsparingly at happiness; and it seemed no more than one of the vigorous measures dictated by such a policy, to return that evening to Madame de Mauves. And yet when he had decided to do so, and had carefully dressed himself, he felt an irresistible nervous tremor which made it easier to linger at his open window, wondering, with a strange mixture of dread and desire, whether Madame Clairin had told her sister-in-law that she had told him … His presence now might be simply a gratuitous cause of suffering; and yet his absence might seem to imply that it was in the power of circumstances to make them ashamed to meet each other’s eyes. He sat a long time with his head in his hands, lost in a painful confusion of hopes and questionings. He felt at moments as if he could throttle Madame Clairin, and yet he could not help asking himself whether it was not possible that she might have done him a service. It was late when he left the hotel, and as he entered the gate of the other house his heart was beating so that he was sure his voice would show it.
The servant ushered him into the drawing-room, which was empty, with the lamp burning low. But the long windows were open, and their light curtains swaying in a soft, warm wind, and Longmore stepped out upon the terrace. There he found Madame de Mauves alone, slowly pacing up and down. She was dressed in white, very simply, and her hair was arranged, not as she usually wore it, but in a single loose coil, like that of a person unprepared for company.
She stopped when she saw Longmore, seemed slightly startled, uttered an exclamation, and stood waiting for him to speak. He looked at her, tried to say something, but found no words. He knew it was awkward, it was offensive, to stand silent, gazing; but he could not say what was suitable, and he dared not say what he wished.
Her face was indistinct in the dim light, but he could see that her eyes were fixed on him, and he wondered what they expressed. Did they warn him, did they plead or did they confess to a sense of provocation? For an instant his head swam; he felt as if it would make all things clear to stride forward and fold her in his arms. But a moment later he was still standing looking at her; he had not moved; he knew that she had spoken, but he had not understood her.
‘You were here this morning,’ she continued, and now, slowly, the meaning of her words came to him. ‘I had a bad headache and had to shut myself up.’ She spoke in her usual voice.
Longmore mastered his agitation and answered her without betraying himself: ‘I hope you are better now.’
‘Yes, thank you, I’m better – much better.’
He was silent a moment, and she moved away to a chair and seated herself. After a pause he followed her and stood before her, leaning against the balustrade of the terrace. ‘I hoped you might have been able to come out for the morning into the forest. I went alone; it was a lovely day, and I took a long walk.’
‘It was a lovely day,’ she said absently, and sat with her eyes lowered, slowly opening and closing her fan. Longmore, as he watched her, felt more and more sure that her sister-in-law had seen her since her interview with him; that her attitude toward him was changed. It was this same something that chilled the ardour with which he had come, or at least converted the dozen passionate speeches which kept rising to his lips into a kind of reverential silence. No, certainly, he could not clasp her to his arms now, any more than some early worshipper could have clasped the marble statue in his temple. But Longmore’s statue spoke at last, with a full human voice, and even with a shade of human hesitation. She looked up, and it seemed to him that her eyes shone through the dusk.
‘I’m very glad you came this evening,’ she said. ‘I have a particular reason for being glad. I half expected you, and yet I thought it possible you might not come.’
‘As I have been feeling all day,’ Longmore answered, ‘it was impossible I should not come. I have spent the day in thinking of you.’
She made no immediate reply, but continued to open and close her fan thoughtfully. At last, – ‘I have something to say to you,’ she said abruptly. ‘I want you to know to a certainty that I have a very high opinion of you.??
? Longmore started and shifted his position. To what was she coming? But he said nothing, and she went on.
‘I take a great interest in you; there’s no reason why I should not say it, – I have a great friendship for you.’
He began to laugh; he hardly knew why, unless that this seemed the very mockery of coldness. But she continued without heeding him.
‘You know, I suppose, that a great disappointment always implies a great confidence – a great hope?’
‘I have hoped,’ he said, ‘hoped strongly; but doubtless never rationally enough to have a right to bemoan my disappointment.’
‘You do yourself injustice. I have such confidence in your reason, that I should be greatly disappointed if I were to find it wanting.’
‘I really almost believe that you are amusing yourself at my expense,’ cried Longmore. ‘My reason? Reason is a mere word! The only reality in the world is feeling!’
She rose to her feet and looked at him gravely. His eyes by this time were accustomed to the imperfect light, and he could see that her look was reproachful, and yet that it was beseechingly kind. She shook her head impatiently, and laid her fan upon his arm with a strong pressure.
‘If that were so, it would be a weary world. I know your feeling, however, nearly enough. You needn’t try to express it. It’s enough that it gives me the right to ask a favour of you, – to make an urgent, a solemn request.’
‘Make it; I listen.’
‘Don’t disappoint me. If you don’t understand me now, you will to-morrow, or very soon. When I said just now that I had a very high opinion of you, I meant it very seriously. It was not a vain compliment. I believe that there is no appeal one may make to your generosity which can remain long unanswered. If this were to happen, – if I were to find you selfish where I thought you generous, narrow where I thought you large,’ – and she spoke slowly, with her voice lingering with emphasis on each of these words, – ‘vulgar where I thought you rare, – I should think worse of human nature. I should suffer, – I should suffer keenly. I should say to myself in the dull days of the future, “There was one man who might have done so and so; and he, too, failed.” But this shall not be. You have made too good an impression on me not to make the very best. If you wish to please me for ever, there’s a way.’
She was standing close to him, with her dress touching him, her eyes fixed on his. As she went on her manner grew strangely intense, and she had the singular appearance of a woman preaching reason with a kind of passion. Longmore was confused, dazzled, almost bewildered. The intention of her words was all remonstrance, refusal, dismissal; but her presence there, so close, so urgent, so personal, seemed a distracting contradiction of it. She had never been so lovely. In her white dress, with her pale face and deeply lighted eyes, she seemed the very spirit of the summer night. When she had ceased speaking, she drew a long breath; Longmore felt it on his cheek, and it stirred in his whole being a sudden, rapturous conjecture. Were her words in their soft severity a mere delusive spell, meant to throw into relief her almost ghostly beauty, and was this the only truth, the only reality, the only law?
He closed his eyes and felt that she was watching him, not without pain and perplexity herself. He looked at her again, met her own eyes, and saw a tear in each of them. Then this last suggestion of his desire seemed to die away with a stifled murmur, and her beauty, more and more radiant in the darkness, rose before him as a symbol of something vague which was yet more beautiful than itself.
‘I may understand you to-morrow,’ he said, ‘but I don’t understand you now.’
‘And yet I took counsel with myself to-day and asked myself how I had best speak to you. On one side, I might have refused to see you at all.’ Longmore made a violent movement, and she added: ‘In that case I should have written to you. I might see you, I thought, and simply say to you that there were excellent reasons why we should part, and that I begged this visit should be your last. This I inclined to do; what made me decide otherwise was – simply friendship! I said to myself that I should be glad to remember in future days, not that I had dismissed you, but that you had gone away out of the fullness of your own wisdom.’
‘The fullness – the fullness!’ cried Longmore.
‘I’m prepared, if necessary,’ Madame de Mauves continued after a pause, ‘to fall back upon my strict right. But, as I said before, I shall be greatly disappointed, if I am obliged to.’
‘When I hear you say that,’ Longmore answered, ‘I feel so angry, so horribly irritated, that I wonder it is not easy to leave you without more words.’
‘If you should go away in anger, this idea of mine about our parting would be but half realised. No, I don’t want to think of you as angry; I don’t want even to think of you as making a serious sacrifice. I want to think of you as –’
‘As a creature who never has existed, – who never can exist! A creature who knew you without loving you, – who left you without regretting you!’
She turned impatiently away and walked to the other end of the terrace. When she came back, he saw that her impatience had become a cold sternness. She stood before him again, looking at him from head to foot, in deep reproachfulness, almost in scorn. Beneath her glance he felt a kind of shame. He coloured; she observed it and withheld something she was about to say. She turned away again, walked to the other end of the terrace, and stood there looking away into the garden. It seemed to him that she had guessed he understood her, and slowly – slowly – half as the fruit of his vague self-reproach, – he did understand her. She was giving him a chance to do gallantly what it seemed unworthy of both of them he should do meanly.
She liked him, she must have liked him greatly, to wish so to spare him, to go to the trouble of conceiving an ideal of conduct for him. With this sense of her friendship, – her strong friendship she had just called it, – Longmore’s soul rose with a new flight, and suddenly felt itself breathing a clearer air. The words ceased to seem a mere bribe to his ardour; they were charged with ardour themselves; they were a present happiness. He moved rapidly toward her with a feeling that this was something he might immediately enjoy.
They were separated by two-thirds of the length of the terrace, and he had to pass the drawing-room window. As he did so he started with an exclamation. Madame Clairin stood posted there, watching him. Conscious, apparently, that she might be suspected of eavesdropping, she stepped forward with a smile and looked from Longmore to his hostess.
‘Such a tête-à-tête as that,’ she said, ‘one owes no apology for interrupting. One ought to come in for good manners.’
Madame de Mauves turned round, but she answered nothing. She looked straight at Longmore, and her eyes had extraordinary eloquence. He was not exactly sure, indeed, what she meant them to say; but they seemed to say plainly something of this kind; ‘Call it what you will, what you have to urge upon me is the thing which this woman can best conceive. What I ask of you is something she can’t!’ They seemed, somehow, to beg him to suffer her to be herself, and to intimate that that self was as little as possible like Madame Clairin. He felt an immense answering desire not to do anything which would seem natural to this lady. He had laid his hat and cane on the parapet of the terrace. He took them up, offered his hand to Madame de Mauves with a simple good night, bowed silently to Madame Clairin, and departed.
IX
HE went home and without lighting his candle flung himself on his bed. But he got no sleep till morning; he lay hour after hour tossing, thinking, wondering; his mind had never been so active. It seemed to him that Euphemia had laid on him in those last moments an inspiring commission, and that she had expressed herself almost as largely as if she had listened assentingly to an assurance of his love. It was neither easy nor delightful thoroughly to understand her; but little by little her perfect meaning sank into his mind and soothed it with a sense of opportunity, which somehow stifled his sense of loss. For, to begin with, she meant that she could love him in no degree nor contingency, i
n no imaginable future. This was absolute; he felt that he could alter it no more than he could transpose the constellations he lay gazing at through his open window. He wondered what it was, in the background of her life, that she grasped so closely: a sense of duty, unquenchable to the end? a love that no offence could trample out? ‘Good Heavens!’ he thought, ‘is the world so rich in the purest pearls of passion, that such tenderness as that can be wasted for ever, – poured away without a sigh into bottomless darkness?’ Had she, in spite of the detestable present, some precious memory which contained the germ of a shrinking hope? Was she prepared to submit to everything and yet to believe? Was it strength, was it weakness, was it a vulgar fear, was it conviction, conscience, constancy?
Longmore sank back with a sigh and an oppressive feeling that it was vain to guess at such a woman’s motives. He only felt that those of Madame de Mauves were buried deep in her soul, and that they must be of some fine temper, not of a base one. He had a dim, overwhelming sense of a sort of invulnerable constancy being the supreme law of her character, – a constancy which still found a foothold among crumbling ruins. ‘She has loved once,’ he said to himself as he rose and wandered to his window; ‘that’s for ever. Yes, yes, – if she loved again she would be common.’ He stood for a long time looking out into the starlit silence of the town and the forest, and thinking of what life would have been if his constancy had met hers unpledged. But life was this, now, and he must live. It was living keenly to stand there with a petition from such a woman to revolve. He was not to disappoint her, he was to justify a conception which it had beguiled her weariness to shape. Longmore’s imagination swelled; he threw back his head and seemed to be looking for Madame de Mauves’s conception among the blinking, mocking stars. But it came to him rather on the mild night-wind, as it wandered in over the house-tops which covered the rest of so many heavy human hearts. What she asked he felt that she was asking, not for her own sake (she feared nothing, she needed nothing), but for that of his own happiness and his own character. He must assent to destiny. Why else was he young and strong, intelligent and resolute? He must not give it to her to reproach him with thinking that she had a moment’s attention for his love, – to plead, to argue, to break off in bitterness; he must see everything from above, her indifference and his own ardour; he must prove his strength, he must do the handsome thing; he must decide that the handsome thing was to submit to the inevitable, to be supremely delicate, to spare her all pain, to stifle his passion, to ask no compensation, to depart without delay and try to believe that wisdom is its own reward. All this, neither more nor less, it was a matter of friendship with Madame de Mauves to expect of him. And what should he gain by it? He should have pleased her! … He flung himself on his bed again, fell asleep at last, and slept till morning.