“No, I’m not understanding you too well. You’re making a scene of very unexpected reproaches.”
“Oh my God! If only I could make you understand how I love you. I seek and cannot find. When I think of you—and I’m always thinking of you—in the depths of my body and soul I feel an unspeakable longing to be yours and an irresistible need to give you more of myself. If only I could sacrifice myself in some absolute way: There’s nothing better when one loves than to give, to give always, to give everything—to give one’s life, one’s thoughts, one’s body, to give all one has and to feel that one’s giving absolutely, to be ready to risk everything, to give still more. I love having to suffer for you, which means loving my fears, my torments, my jealousies, the grief I feel when I realize you’re no longer tender toward me. . . . In you I love someone only I have discovered, not the you who’s admired and known by the world but a you who’s my own, who can’t change, who can’t grow old, who can’t outlive my love. . . . I look at you with eyes that see no one else. . . . But such things can’t be told, can they? There are no words to express them.”
He kept repeating softly, many times in succession, “Dear Any, dear dear Any.”
Julio came back then, bounding along without having found the quail that had kept silent at his approach, and Annette after him, out of breath with running.
“I’m tired to death,” she said, “so I’ll just cling to you, Sir Painter.”
She leaned on Olivier’s free arm, and the three of them returned walking thus, he between them, under the dark trees. There was no more speaking. They advanced, he possessed by the two of them, penetrated by a sort of feminine exhalation with which their contact filled him. They guided him, they led him, and he walked straight ahead, charmed with the one on the left as with the one on the right, which the mother or which the daughter. He even sought to mingle them in his heart, not to distinguish them in his mind, and when he had his eyes again, upon entering the castle, he felt that he had just experienced the strangest and most complete emotion a man can feel, an emotion that defies analysis—intoxicated with the same love, by the same charm emanating from two women.
“Ah! What a delightful evening!” he said, as soon as he found himself again between them by the light of the lamps.
Annette exclaimed, “I’m not at all sleepy. I could spend the whole night walking when the weather’s so fine.”
The countess looked at the clock. “Oh! It’s half past eleven. Time to retire, my child.”
They separated, proceeded toward their own apartments. The young girl, who did not like going to bed, was the only one who fell asleep immediately.
The next day, at the usual hour, after she had drawn the curtains and opened the binds, the maid brought the tea and looked at her mistress, still half asleep, and said to her, “Madame already looks better, today.”
“You think so?”
“Oh yes. Madame’s face is much more rested.”
The countess, though she had not yet looked at herself, knew very well that it was true. Her heart was light; she did not feel its throb; she felt herself living. The blood that coursed in her veins was no longer rushing as on the day before, warm and feverish, carrying through her whole being nervousness and disquiet, but distributing a soothing comfort and a happy confidence.
When the servant had gone she went to look at herself in the mirror. She was somewhat surprised, for she felt so well that she expected to find herself perceptibly younger overnight. Then she realized the childishness of such a hope, and after a second glance resigned herself to the discovery that her complexion was clearer, her eyes less fatigued, her lips more brilliant than on the day before. Her soul being content, she could not be sad, and she smiled, thinking, “Yes, in a few days I shall be quite well. My trial was too severe for me to recover so soon.”
But she remained a very long time seated before her toilette table, upon which were laid out on a muslin cover trimmed with lace, before a fine mirror of cut crystal, all her little ivory-handled implements of coquetry stamped with her coat of arms surmounted by a coronet. There they were, innumerable, pretty, and various, designed for delicate and clandestine duties, some of steel, thin and sharp, in odd shapes, like surgical instruments intended for petty operations, of feathers, of down, of skin of unknown animals, made to spread over tender flesh the caresses of fragrant powders or liquid perfumes.
She handled them a long while with her experienced fingers, carrying them from lips to temples with touches softer than kisses, correcting the imperfect tints, underlining the eyes, looking after the lashes. Finally, when she went downstairs, she was almost sure that the first glance that fell upon her would not be too unfavorable.
“Where is Monsieur Bertin?” she asked of the servant she met in the vestibule.
The maid answered, “Monsieur Bertin is in the orchard playing tennis with mademoiselle.”
She heard them in the distance now, counting points. One after the other, the painter’s deep voice and the girl’s thin tones called out: fifteen, thirty, forty, vantage, deuce, vantage, game.
The orchard, where a place had been leveled for a tennis court, was a large square grass plot planted with apple trees, bordered by the park, the vegetable garden, and the farms belonging to the castle. Along the slope that constituted its boundaries on three sides, like the fortifications of an entrenched camp, flowers were growing, long borders of flowers of all sorts, wild and rare, roses in quantity, pinks, heliotropes, fuchsias, mignonette, and many others which, as Bertin would say, gave the air a taste of honey. In addition, the bees whose straw-domed hives lined the fruit wall of the vegetable garden, covered that blooming field in their golden, humming flight.
In the very center of this orchard, a few apple trees had been cut down in order to obtain sufficient room for the court, divided by a net stretched across it.
Annette on one side, bareheaded, her black gown caught up, showing her limbs halfway to the knee when she rushed to volley a ball, ran hither and thither, with shining eyes and flushed cheeks, tired and breathless from her antagonist’s sure and unerring play.
He, in visored cap and snug white flannels revealing a somewhat too rounded figure, coolly awaited the ball, judged its fall with precision, received and returned it without haste, without running, with the easy elegance, the passionate attention, and the professional skill with which he indulged in all sports.
Annette was the first to discover her mother. She cried, “Good morning, Maman. Wait a minute till we have finished this.”
That second’s inattention lost her the game. The ball passed against her, rolling almost, touched the ground, and went out of the court.
Then Bertin shouted “Game,” and the young girl, surprised, accused him of taking advantage of her momentary diversion. Julio, trained to look for and find the lost balls that were scattered like partridges fallen in the underbrush, sprang after it, rolling before him in the grass, seized it daintily with his mouth, and brought it back, wagging his tail.
The painter was now greeting the countess, but urged to continue the game, animated by the struggle, pleased to find himself so nimble, he gave but a short and hasty glance at the face so carefully prepared for his sake, asking, “Will you permit, dear countess? I’m afraid of catching cold and getting neuralgia.”
“Oh yes,” she answered. She sat down upon a haystack, mowed that very morning to give the players a clear field, and with her heart suddenly a little sad, looked on.
Her daughter, exasperated by her continual failures, was getting animated, excited, dashing impetuously from one end of the court to the other with cries of vexation or triumph. Her violent motion would often loosen locks of hair that fell upon her shoulders; these she would seize impatiently, and with the racket held between her knees, fasten them up again, sticking hairpins here and there in the soft mass.
And Bertin, from afar, would shout to the countess, “Eh! Isn’t she pretty now, and as fresh as day?”
Yes
, she was young, she might run, get warm, red, loosen her hair, defy or dare everything, for everything made her only more beautiful.
Then when they resumed their vigorous play, the countess, more and more melancholy, felt that Olivier preferred that game of tennis, that childish excitement, that enjoyment of little kittens jumping after paper balls, to the sweetness of sitting by her side that warm morning and feeling her loving pressure against him.
When the bell, at a distance, sounded the first signal for breakfast, it seemed to her that she was set free, that a weight was taken from her heart. But as she returned, leaning on his arm, he said to her, “I’ve been amusing myself like a little boy. It’s a capital thing to be, or to feel, young. Yes indeed! There’s nothing like it. When we don’t care to run anymore, we’re done for.”
After breakfast, the countess, who for the first time on the day before had omitted her visit to the cemetery, proposed that they should go together, and they all three started for the village.
They had to cross a section of woods, traversed by a stream called La Rainette, doubtless because of the frogs that occupied it; then walk over a bit of plain before arriving at the church, surrounded by a group of houses that sheltered the grocer, the baker, the butcher, the wine merchant, and a few other modest dealers who furnished the peasants with their simple supplies.
That walk was silent and contemplative, the thought of the dead oppressing their souls. The two women knelt at the grave and prayed for a long time. The countess, bending low, was motionless, her handkerchief over her eyes, for she feared to weep lest the tears flow across her cheeks. Her prayer was not, as it had been hitherto, a sort of invocation of her mother, a desperate appeal to that object beneath the marble of the tomb until she seemed to feel by the weight of her distress that the dead was hearing her, listening to her, but in simple earnestness, stammering out the consecrated words of the Paternoster and the Ave Maria. She would not have had at this hour the strength and elasticity requisite for that cruel, responseless communion with what might remain of the being who had disappeared into the vault that concealed the remains of her body.
Her woman’s heart was besieged by other cares and fears that stirred her, wounded her, distracted her; and her fervent prayer ascended toward heaven, laden with vague supplications. She implored God, who has created all poor creatures upon the earth, to feel pity towards herself as well as to the one He had recalled to Himself.
She could not have told what she asked Him, so obscure and confused were her apprehensions still, but she felt she had need of divine help, superhuman support against impending dangers and inevitable grief.
Annette, with eyes closed, having stammered through the formulas, fell into a reverie, for she would not rise before her mother.
Olivier Bertin stood looking at them, realizing he had a ravishing picture before him and regretting he would not be permitted to make a sketch. On their return they began to speak of human life, softly stirring those bitter and poetic fancies of a tender and hopeless philosophy, a common subject of conversation between men and women whom life has wounded a little, and whose hearts mingle as they blend their sorrows.
Annette, who was not ripe for such reflections, kept wandering off to gather the flowers growing wild around them.
But Olivier, possessed by the desire to keep her close, was alarmed to see her continually darting away and never let his eyes leave her. Annoyed to find her more interested in the colors of plants than in his words, he felt a certain discomfort in seeing that he failed to fascinate her as he could her mother, and he longed to stretch out his hand to seize her, to hold her, to forbid her to go away. He felt she was too alert, too young, too indifferent, like a young dog which fails to return, to obey, which has independence in its veins, that reckless instinct of liberty as yet undisciplined by castigation or the whip.
In an effort to attract her, he spoke of gayer subjects and sometimes asked her peculiar questions, seeking to waken her woman’s curiosity and a desire to listen; yet one might have assumed that the capricious wind of the broad heavens was blowing in Annette’s head that day, carrying her attention away and dispersing it into space, for she scarcely returned even the mechanical answers perhaps expected of her before resuming, with an abstracted air, her imperiously commonplace though decorative flower studies. Finally, he was exasperated, bitten by puerile impatience, and as she came to beg her mother to carry her first bouquet, so that she might gather another, he caught her by the elbow and pressed her arm to keep her from running away again. She struggled, laughing, trying with all her might to free herself; then, dictated by his masculine instinct, he resorted to the wiles of weakness, and unable to gain her attention otherwise, sought to purchase it by tempting her vanity.
“Tell me,” he said, “what flower you prefer. I’ll have a brooch made of it for you.”
She hesitated, surprised. “A brooch—how?”
“In stones of the same color,” he explained. “Rubies if it’s a wild poppy, sapphires if it’s a cornflower, with maybe a little emerald leaf.”
Annette’s face lit up with that affectionate joy that makes a woman’s features radiant. “The cornflower,” she said. “It’s so pretty.”
“The cornflower it is. We’ll go and order it as soon as we’re back in Paris.”
She no longer wandered off, drawn to him by the thought of the jewel she was already endeavoring to see, to imagine. She asked, “Does it take very long to do a thing like that?”
He laughed, sensing she was caught. “I don’t know, it depends on the difficulties. We’ll put pressure on the jeweler.”
A distressing thought suddenly shot through her head. “But I couldn’t wear it, since I’m in mourning.”
He had put his arm under the young girl’s and pushed it against him. “Well, you’ll keep the brooch till you put off mourning—that won’t keep you from looking at it.”
As on the previous evening, he was between them, held captive between their shoulders, and in order to see their equally blue eyes looking up at him with their tiny black specks, he spoke to them in turn, turning his head toward one, then the other. In broad daylight he was not so likely to mistake the countess for Annette, but he increasingly confused the daughter with the reviving memory of what the mother had been. He longed to embrace both of them: the one to rediscover on her cheek and neck a trace of that fair pink freshness he had formerly tasted and saw today miraculously reproduced; the other because he still loved her and felt coming from her the potent appeal of habit. He even realized at this moment and understood that his affection and his desire for her, somewhat abated for a long time past, had been reanimated at the sight of her resuscitated youth.
Annette was off again in search of flowers. Olivier no longer kept her beside him, as if the contact of her arm and the satisfaction of the pleasure he had given her contented him, but he followed her every movement with the pleasure we take in the objects or persons that charm and intoxicate our vision. When she returned carrying a huge bouquet he breathed more deeply, unconsciously finding something of her, a little of her breath or her warmth in the air stirred by her running. He watched her with thrills of pleasure when she bent down and straightened up again, raising both arms at once to rearrange her hair. And then, more and more, moment by moment, she activated in him the memory of former days. She had certain giggles, certain movements that brought to his mouth the taste of former kisses given and returned; she made of the remote past, the precise sensation of which he had lost, something like a present dream; she mingled epochs, dates, the very ages of his heart, and kindling new emotions that had cooled, she mixed, without his realizing it, yesterday with tomorrow, recollection with hope.
He was asking himself as he searched his memory whether the countess in her fullest bloom had possessed that faun-like, supple charm, that bold, capricious, irresistible fascination like the grace of a bounding animal. No. She had had a fuller bloom and been less wild.
A city girl, t
hen a city woman, having never drunk the air of the fields and lived the grass, she had grown pretty in the shade of walls and not in the sunshine of heaven.
When they had returned to the castle the countess began to write letters at her little low table at the embrasure of the window, Annette went up to her room, and the painter went out again to walk slowly, a cigar in his mouth, his hands behind his back, through the winding paths of the park. But he did not go far enough to lose sight of the white façade or the sharp-pointed roof of the dwelling. As soon as it had disappeared behind the clumps of trees or clusters of shrubbery there came a shadow over his heart, as when a cloud hides the sun, and when it reappeared in the verdant openings he halted for a few seconds to gaze at the two rows of high windows. Then he resumed his walk.
He felt agitated but content. Content with what? Everything.
The air seemed pure to him, life good that day. His body again felt the vivacity of a little boy, a desire to run, to catch the yellow butterflies fluttering on the green turf, as if they had been suspended on the end of an elastic thread. He was humming airs from an opera. Several times in succession he repeated that famous strain from Gounod’s Faust—“Laisse-moi contempler ton visage”—discovering in it a profoundly tender expression that he had never felt so deeply.
Suddenly he asked himself how it was that he had so soon become different from himself. Yesterday, in Paris, dissatisfied with everything, disgusted, irritated; today calm, satisfied with everything.