Books: The Red Lily, v1
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Anatole France >> The Red Lily, v1
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He said to her:
"You are not cross now, my dear?"
And, as he insisted upon having an answer, she said:
"What do you wish me to say, my friend? I can only repeat what I said at
first. I think it strange that I have to learn of your projects from
General Lariviere."
He knew very well that she had not forgiven him; that she had remained
cold and reserved toward him. But he affected to think that she only
pouted.
"My dear, I have explained it to you. I have told you that when I met
Lariviere I had just received a letter from Caumont, recalling my promise
to hunt the fox in his woods, and I replied by return post. I meant to
tell you about it to-day. I am sorry that General Lariviere told you
first, but there was no significance in that."
Her arms were lifted like the handles of a vase. She turned toward him a
glance from her tranquil eyes, which he did not understand.
"Then you are going?"
"Next week, Tuesday or Wednesday. I shall be away only ten days at
most."
She put on her sealskin toque, ornamented with a branch of holly.
"Is it something that you can not postpone?"
"Oh, yes. Fox-skins would not be worth anything in a month. Moreover,
Caumont has invited good friends of mine, who would regret my absence."
Fixing her toque on her head with a long pin, she frowned.
"Is fox-hunting interesting?"
"Oh, yes, very. The fox has stratagems that one must fathom. The
intelligence of that animal is really marvellous. I have observed at
night a fox hunting a rabbit. He had organized a real hunt. I assure
you it is not easy to dislodge a fox. Caumont has an excellent cellar.
I do not care for it, but it is generally appreciated. I will bring you
half a dozen skins."
"What do you wish me to do with them?"
"Oh, you can make rugs of them."
"And you will be hunting eight days?"
"Not all the time. I shall visit my aunt, who expects me. Last year at
this time there was a delightful reunion at her house. She had with her
her two daughters and her three nieces with their husbands. All five
women are pretty, gay, charming, and irreproachable. I shall probably
find them at the beginning of next month, assembled for my aunt's
birthday, and I shall remain there two days."
"My friend, stay as long as it may please you. I should be inconsolable
if you shortened on my account a sojourn which is so agreeable."
"But you, Therese?"
"I, my friend? I can take care of myself."
The fire was languishing. The shadows were deepening between them. She
said, in a dreamy tone:
"It is true, however, that it is never prudent to leave a woman alone."
He went near her, trying to see her eyes in the darkness. He took her
hand.
"You love me?" he said.
"Oh, I assure you that I do not love another but--"
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. I am thinking--I am thinking that we are separated all through
the summer; that in winter you live with your parents and your friends
half the time; and that, if we are to see so little of each other, it is
better not to see each other at all."
He lighted the candelabra. His frank, hard face was illuminated. He
looked at her with a confidence that came less from the conceit common to
all lovers than from his natural lack of dignity. He believed in her
through force of education and simplicity of intelligence.
"Therese, I love you, and you love me, I know. Why do you torment me?
Sometimes you are painfully harsh."
She shook her little head brusquely.
"What will you have? I am harsh and obstinate. It is in the blood. I
take it from my father. You know Joinville; you have seen the castle,
the ceilings, the tapestries, the gardens, the park, the hunting-grounds,
you have said that none better were in France; but you have not seen my
father's workshop--a white wooden table and a mahogany bureau.
Everything about me has its origin there. On that table my father made
figures for forty years; at first in a little room, then in the apartment
where I was born. We were not very wealthy then. I am a parvenu's
daughter, or a conqueror's daughter, it's all the same. We are people of
material interests. My father wanted to earn money, to possess what he
could buy--that is, everything. I wish to earn and keep--what? I do not
know--the happiness that I have--or that I have not. I have my own way
of being exacting. I long for dreams and illusions. Oh, I know very
well that all this is not worth the trouble that a woman takes in giving
herself to a man; but it is a trouble that is worth something, because my
trouble is myself, my life. I like to enjoy what I like, or think what I
like. I do not wish to lose. I am like papa: I demand what is due to
me. And then--"
She lowered her voice:
"And then, I have--impulses! Now, my dear, I bore you. What will you
have? You shouldn't have loved me."
This language, to which she had accustomed him, often spoiled his
pleasure. But it did not alarm him. He was sensitive to all that she
did, but not at all to what she said; and he attached no importance to a
woman's words. Talking little himself, he could not imagine that often
words are the same as actions.
Although he loved her, or, rather, because he loved her with strength and
confidence, he thought it his duty to resist her whims, which he judged
absurd. Whenever he played the master, he succeeded with her; and,
naively, he always ended by playing it.
"You know very well, Therese, that I wish to do nothing except to be
agreeable to you. Don't be capricious with me."
"And why should I not be capricious? If I gave myself to you, it was not
because I was logical, nor because I thought I must. It was because I
was capricious."
He looked at her, astonished and saddened.
"The word is not pleasant to you, my friend? Well let us say that it was
love. Truly it was, with all my heart, and because I felt that you loved
me. But love must be a pleasure, and if I do not find in it the
satisfaction of what you call my capriciousness, but which is really my
desire, my life, my love, I do not want it; I prefer to live alone. You
are astonishing! My caprices! Is there anything else in life? Your
foxhunt, isn't that capricious?"
He replied, very sincerely:
"If I had not promised, I swear to you, Therese, that I would sacrifice
that small pleasure with great joy."
She felt that he spoke the truth. She knew how exact he was in filling
the most trifling engagements, yet realized that if she insisted he would
not go. But it was too late: she did not wish to win. She would seek
hereafter only the violent pleasure of losing. She pretended to take his
reason seriously, and said:
"Ah, you have promised!"
And she affected to yield.
Surprised at first, he congratulated himself at last on having made her
listen to reason. He was grateful to her for not having been stubborn.
He put his arm around her waist and kissed her on the neck and eyelids as
a reward. He said:
"We may meet three or four times before I go, and more, if you wish.
I will wait for you as often as you wish to come. Will you meet me here
to-morrow?"
She gave herself the satisfaction of saying that she could not come the
next day nor any other day.
Softly she mentioned the things that prevented her.
The obstacles seemed light; calls, a gown to be tried on, a charity fair,
exhibitions. As she dilated upon the difficulties they seemed to
increase. The calls could not be postponed; there were three fairs; the
exhibitions would soon close. In fine, it was impossible for her to see
him again before his departure.
As he was well accustomed to making excuses of that sort, he failed to
observe that it was not natural for Therese to offer them. Embarrassed
by this tissue of social obligations, he did not persist, but remained
silent and unhappy.
With her left arm she raised the portiere, placed her right hand on the
key of the door; and, standing against the rich background of the
sapphire and ruby-colored folds of the Oriental draperies, she turned her
head toward the friend she was leaving, and said, a little mockingly, yet
with a touch of tragic emotion:
"Good-by, Robert. Enjoy yourself. My calls, my errands, your little
visits are nothing. Life is made up of just such trifles. Good-by!"
She went out. He would have liked to accompany her, but he made it a
point not to show himself with her in the street, unless she absolutely
forced him to do so.
In the street, Therese felt suddenly that she was alone in the world,
without joy and without pain. She returned to her house on foot, as was
her habit. It was night; the air was frozen, clear, and tranquil. But
the avenues through which she walked, in shadows studded with lights,
enveloped her with that mild atmosphere of the queen of cities, so
agreeable to its inhabitants, which makes itself felt even in the cold of
winter. She walked between the lines of huts and old houses, remains of
the field-days of Auteuil, which tall houses interrupted here and there.
These small shops, these monotonous windows, were nothing to her. Yet
she felt that she was under the mysterious spell of the friendship of
inanimate things; and it seemed to her that the stones, the doors of
houses, the lights behind the windowpanes, looked kindly upon her. She
was alone, and she wished to be alone. The steps she was taking between
the two houses wherein her habits were almost equal, the steps she had
taken so often, to-day seemed to her irrevocable. Why? What had that
day brought? Not exactly a quarrel. And yet the words spoken that day
had left a subtle, strange, persistent sting, which would never leave
her. What had happened? Nothing. And that nothing had effaced
everything. She had a sort of obscure certainty that she would never
return to that room which had so recently enclosed the most secret and
dearest phases of her life. She had loved Robert with the seriousness of
a necessary joy. Made to be loved, and very reasonable, she had not lost
in the abandonment of herself that instinct of reflection, that necessity
for security, which was so strong in her. She had not chosen: one seldom
chooses. She had not allowed herself to be taken at random and by
surprise. She had done what she had wished to do, as much as one ever
does what one wishes to do in such cases. She had nothing to regret.
He had been to her what it was his duty to be. She felt, in spite of
everything, that all was at an end. She thought, with dry sadness,
that three years of her life had been given to an honest man who had
loved her and whom she had loved. "For I loved him. I must have loved
him in order to give myself to him." But she could not feel again the
sentiments of early days, the movements of her mind when she had yielded.
She recalled small and insignificant circumstances: the flowers on the
wall-paper and the pictures in the room. She recalled the words,
a little ridiculous and almost touching, that he had said to her.
But it seemed to her that the adventure had occurred to another woman,
to a stranger whom she did not like and whom she hardly understood.
And what had happened only a moment ago seemed far distant now.
The room, the lilacs in the crystal vase, the little cup of Bohemian
glass where she found her pins--she saw all these things as if through a
window that one passes in the street. She was without bitterness,
and even without sadness. She had nothing to forgive, alas!
This absence for a week was not a betrayal, it was not a fault against
her; it was nothing, yet it was everything. It was the end. She knew
it. She wished to cease. It was the consent of all the forces of her
being. She said to herself: "I have no reason to love him less. Do I
love him no more? Did I ever love him?" She did not know and she did
not care to know. Three years, during which there had been months when
they had seen each other every day--was all this nothing? Life is not a
great thing. And what one puts in it, how little that is!
In fine, she had nothing of which to complain. But it was better to end
it all. All these reflections brought her back to that point. It was
not a resolution; resolutions may be changed. It was graver: it was a
state of the body and of the mind.
When she arrived at the square, in the centre of which is a fountain, and
on one side of which stands a church of rustic style, showing its bell in
an open belfry, she recalled the little bouquet of violets that he had
given to her one night on the bridge near Notre Dame. They had loved
each other that day--perhaps more than usual. Her heart softened at that
reminiscence. But the little bouquet remained alone, a poor little
flower skeleton, in her memory.
While she was thinking, passers-by, deceived by the simplicity of her
dress, followed her. One of them made propositions to her: a dinner and
the theatre. It amused her. She was not at all disturbed; this was not
a crisis. She thought: "How do other women manage such things? And I,
who promised myself not to spoil my life. What is life worth?"
Opposite the Greek lantern of the Musee des Religions she found the soil
disturbed by workmen. There were paving-stones crossed by a bridge made
of a narrow flexible plank. She had stepped on it, when she saw at the
other end, in front of her, a man who was waiting for her. He recognized
her and bowed. It was Dechartre. She saw that he was happy to meet her;
she thanked him with a smile. He asked her permission to walk a few
steps with her, and they entered into the large and airy space. In this
place the tall houses, set somewhat back, efface themselves, and reveal a
glimpse of the sky.
He told her that he had recognized her from a distance by the rhythm of
her figure and her movements, which were hers exclusively.
"Graceful movements," he added, "are like music for the eyes."
She replied that she liked to walk; it was her pleasure, and the cause of
her good health.
He, too, liked to walk in populous towns and beautiful fields. The
mystery of highways tempted him. He liked to travel. Although voyages
had become common and easy, they retained for him their powerful charm.
He had seen golden days and crystalline nights, Greece, Egypt, and the
Bosporus; but it was to Italy that he returned always, as to the mother
country of his mind.
"I shall go there next week," he said. "I long to see again Ravenna
asleep among the black pines of its sterile shore. Have you seen
Ravenna, Madame? It is an enchanted tomb where sparkling phantoms appear.
The magic of death lies there. The mosaic works of Saint Vitale, with
their barbarous angels and their aureolated empresses, make one feel the
monstrous delights of the Orient. Despoiled to-day of its silver lamels,
the grave of Galla Placidia is frightful under its crypt, luminous yet
gloomy. When one looks through an opening in the sarcophagus, it seems
as if one saw the daughter of Theodosius, seated on her golden chair,
erect in her gown studded with stones and embroidered with scenes from
the Old Testament; her beautiful, cruel face preserved hard and black
with aromatic plants, and her ebony hands immovable on her knees. For
thirteen centuries she retained this funereal majesty, until one day a
child passed a candle through the opening of the grave and burned the
body."
Madame Martin-Belleme asked what that dead woman, so obstinate in her
conceit, had done during her life.
"Twice a slave," said Dechartre, "she became twice an empress."
"She must have been beautiful," said Madame Martin. "You have made me
see her too vividly in her tomb. She frightens me. Shall you go to
Venice, Monsieur Dechartre? Or are you tired of gondolas, of canals
bordered by palaces, and of the pigeons of Saint Mark? I confess that
I still like Venice, after being there three times."
He said she was right. He, too, liked Venice.
Whenever he went there, from a sculptor he became a painter, and made
studies. He would like to paint its atmosphere.
"Elsewhere," he said, "even in Florence, the sky is too high. At Venice
it is everywhere; it caresses the earth and the water. It envelops
lovingly the leaden domes and the marble facades, and throws into the
iridescent atmosphere its pearls and its crystals. The beauty of Venice
is in its sky and its women. What pretty creatures the Venetian women
are! Their forms are so slender and supple under their black shawls.
If nothing remained of these women except a bone, one would find in that
bone the charm of their exquisite structure. Sundays, at church, they
form laughing groups, agitated, with hips a little pointed, elegant
necks, flowery smiles, and inflaming glances. And all bend, with the
suppleness of young animals, at the passage of a priest whose head
resembles that of Vitellius, and who carries the chalice, preceded by two
choir-boys."
He walked with unequal step, following the rhythm of his ideas, sometimes
quick, sometimes slow. She walked more regularly, and almost outstripped
him. He looked at her sidewise, and liked her firm and supple carriage.
He observed the little shake which at moments her obstinate head gave to
the holly on her toque.
Without expecting it, he felt a charm in that meeting, almost intimate,
with a young woman almost unknown.
They had reached the place where the large avenue unfolds its four rows
of trees. They were following the stone parapet surmounted by a hedge of
boxwood, which entirely hides the ugliness of the buildings on the quay.
One felt the presence of the river by the milky atmosphere which in misty
days seems to rest on the water. The sky was clear. The lights of the
city were mingled with the stars. At the south shone the three golden
nails of the Orion belt. Dechartre continued:
"Last year, at Venice, every morning as I went out of my house, I saw at
her door, raised by three steps above the canal, a charming girl, with
small head, neck round and strong, and graceful hips. She was there, in
the sun and surrounded by vermin, as pure as an amphora, fragrant as a
flower. She smiled. What a mouth! The richest jewel in the most
beautiful light. I realized in time that this smile was addressed to a
butcher standing behind me with his basket on his head."
At the corner of the short street which goes to the quay, between two
lines of small gardens, Madame Martin walked more slowly.
"It is true that at Venice," she said, "all women are pretty."
"They are almost all pretty, Madame. I speak of the common girls--the
cigar-girls, the girls among the glass-workers. The others are
commonplace enough."
"By others you mean society women; and you don't like these?"
"Society women? Oh, some of them are charming. As for loving them,
that's a different affair."
"Do you think so?"
She extended her hand to him, and suddenly turned the corner.
CHAPTER V
A DINNER 'EN FAMILLE'
She dined that night alone with her husband. The narrow table had not
the basket with golden eagles and winged Victorys. The candelabra did
not light Oudry's paintings. While he talked of the events of the day,
she fell into a sad reverie. It seemed to her that she floated in a
mist. It was a peaceful and almost sweet suffering. She saw vaguely
through the clouds the little room of the Rue Spontini transported by
angels to one of the summits of the Himalaya Mountains, and Robert Le
Menil--in the quaking of a sort of world's end--had disappeared while
putting on his gloves. She felt her pulse to see whether she were
feverish. A rattle of silverware on the table awoke her. She heard her
husband saying:
"My dear friend Gavaut delivered to-day, in the Chamber, an excellent
speech on the question of the reserve funds. It's extraordinary how his
ideas have become healthy and just. Oh, he has improved a great deal."
She could not refrain from smiling.
"But Gavaut, my friend, is a poor devil who never thought of anything
except escaping from the crowd of those who are dying of hunger. Gavaut
never had any ideas except at his elbows. Does anybody take him
seriously in the political world? You may be sure that he never gave an
illusion to any woman, not even his wife. And yet to produce that sort
of illusion a man does not need much." She added, brusquely:
"You know Miss Bell has invited me to spend a month with her at Fiesole.
I have accepted; I am going."
Less astonished than discontented, he asked her with whom she was going.
At once she answered:
"With Madame Marmet."
There was no objection to make. Madame Marmet was a proper companion,
and it was appropriate for her to visit Italy, where her husband had made
some excavations. He asked only:
"Have you invited her? When are you going?"
"Next week."
He had the wisdom not to make any objection, judging that opposition
would only make her capriciousness firmer, and fearing to give impetus to
that foolish idea. He said:
"Surely, to travel is an agreeable pastime. I thought that we might in
the spring visit the Caucasus and Turkestan. There is an interesting
country. General Annenkoff will place at our disposal carriages, trains,
and everything else on his railway. He is a friend of mine; he is quite
charmed with you. He will provide us with an escort of Cossacks."
He persisted in trying to flatter her vanity, unable to realize that her
mind was not worldly. She replied, negligently, that it might be a
pleasant trip. Then he praised the mountains, the ancient cities, the
bazaars, the costumes, the armor.
He added:
"We shall take some friends with us--Princess Seniavine, General
Lariviere, perhaps Vence or Le Menil."
She replied, with a little dry laugh, that they had time to select their
guests.
He became attentive to her wants.
"You are not eating. You will injure your health."
Without yet believing in this prompt departure, he felt some anxiety
about it. Each had regained freedom, but he did not like to be alone.
He felt that he was himself only when his wife was there. And then, he
had decided to give two or three political dinners during the session.
He saw his party growing. This was the moment to assert himself, to make
a dazzling show. He said, mysteriously:
"Something might happen requiring the aid of all our friends. You have
not followed the march of events, Therese?"
"No, my dear."
"I am sorry. You have judgment, liberality of mind. If you had followed
the march of events you would have been struck by the current that is
leading the country back to moderate opinions. The country is tired of
exaggerations. It rejects the men compromised by radical politics and
religious persecution. Some day or other it will be necessary to make
over a Casimir-Perier ministry with other men, and that day--"
He stopped: really she listened too inattentively.
She was thinking, sad and disenchanted. It seemed to her that the pretty
woman, who, among the warm shadows of a closed room, placed her bare feet
in the fur of the brown bear rug, and to whom her lover gave kisses while
she twisted her hair in front of a glass, was not herself, was not even a
woman that she knew well, or that she desired to know, but a person whose
affairs were of no interest to her. A pin badly set in her hair, one of
the pins from the Bohemian glass cup, fell on her neck. She shivered.
"Yet we really must give three or four dinners to our good political
friends," said M. Martin-Belleme. "We shall invite some of the ancient
radicals to meet the people of our circle. It will be well to find some
pretty women. We might invite Madame Berard de la Malle; there has been
no gossip about her for two years. What do you think of it?"
"But, my dear, since I am to go next week--"
This filled him with consternation.
They went, both silent and moody, into the drawing-room, where Paul Vence
was waiting. He often came in the evening.
She extended her hand to him.
"I am very glad to see you. I am going out of town. Paris is cold and
bleak. This weather tires and saddens me. I am going to Florence, for
six weeks, to visit Miss Bell."
M. Martin-Belleme then lifted his eyes to heaven.
Vence asked whether she had been in Italy often.
"Three times; but I saw nothing. This time I wish to see, to throw
myself into things. From Florence I shall take walks into Tuscany, into
Umbria. And, finally, I shall go to Venice."
"You will do well. Venice suggests the peace of the Sabbath-day in the
grand week of creative and divine Italy."
"Your friend Dechartre talked very prettily to me of Venice, of the
atmosphere of Venice, which sows pearls."
"Yes, at Venice the sky is a colorist. Florence inspires the mind.
An old author has said: 'The sky of Florence is light and subtle, and
feeds the beautiful ideas of men.' I have lived delicious days in
Tuscany. I wish I could live them again."
"Come and see me there."
He sighed.
The newspaper, books, and his daily work prevented him.
M. Martin-Belleme said everyone should bow before such reasons, and that
one was too happy to read the articles and the fine books written by M.
Paul Vence to have any wish to take him from his work.
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