 | VII. A passionate pilgrim |  |
7. VII.
HE felt, when he found himself unobserved, in
the open air, that he must plunge into violent
action, walk fast and far, and defer the opportunity
for thought. He strode away into the forest, swinging
his cane, throwing back his head, gazing away into
the verdurous vistas, and following the road without
a purpose. He felt immensely excited, but he could
hardly have said whether his emotion was a pain or a
joy. It was joyous as all increase of freedom is joyous;
something seemed to have been knocked down
across his path; his destiny appeared to have rounded
a cape and brought him into sight of an open sea. But
his freedom resolved itself somehow into the need
of despising all mankind, with a single exception; and
the fact of Madame de Mauves inhabiting a planet
contaminated by the presence of this baser multitude
kept his elation from seeming a pledge of ideal bliss.
But she was there, and circumstance now forced
them to be intimate. She had ceased to have what
men call a secret for him, and this fact itself brought
with it a sort of rapture. He had no prevision that
position into which they had been thrown; it
might be but a cruel trick of destiny to make hope a
harsher mockery and renunciation a keener suffering.
But above all this rose the conviction that she could do
nothing that would not deepen his admiration.
It was this feeling that circumstance — unlovely as
it was in itself — was to force the beauty of her character
into more perfect relief, that made him stride
along as if he were celebrating a kind of spiritual festival.
He rambled at random for a couple of hours,
and found at last that he had left the forest behind
him and had wandered into an unfamiliar region. It
was a perfectly rural scene, and the still summer day
gave it a charm for which its meagre elements but half
accounted.
Longmore thought he had never seen anything so
characteristically French; all the French novels
seemed to have described it, all the French landscapists
to have painted it. The fields and trees
were of a cool metallic green; the grass looked as if
it might stain your trousers, and the foliage your
hands. The clear light had a sort of mild grayness;
the sunbeams were of silver rather than gold. A great
red-roofed, high-stacked farm-house, with whitewashed
walls and a straggling yard, surveyed the high road,
on one side, from behind a transparent curtain of
rushes and edged with gray aspens, occupied the opposite
quarter. The meadows rolled and sloped away
gently to the low horizon, which was barely concealed
by the continuous line of clipped and marshalled
trees. The prospect was not rich, but it had a frank
homeliness which touched the young man's fancy.
It was full of light atmosphere and diffused sunshine,
and if it was prosaic, it was soothing.
Longmore was disposed to walk further, and he
advanced along the road beneath the poplars. In
twenty minutes he came to a village which straggled
away to the right, among orchards and potagers. On
the left, at a stone's throw from the road, stood a
little pink-faced inn, which reminded him that he
had not breakfasted, having left home with a prevision
of hospitality from Madame de Mauves. In the
inn he found a brick-tiled parlor and a hostess in
sabots and a white cap, whom, over the omelette she
speedily served him, — borrowing license from the
bottle of sound red wine which accompanied it, —
he assured that she was a true artist. To reward his
compliment, she invited him to smoke his cigar in
her little garden behind the house.
Here he found a tonnelle and a view of ripening
crops, stretching down to the stream. The tonnelle
was rather close, and he preferred to lounge on a
not too hot. Here, as he rested and gazed and
mused, he fell into a train of thought which, in an
indefinable fashion, was a soft influence from the
scene about him. His heart, which had been beating
fast for the past three hours, gradually checked
its pulses and left him looking at life with a rather
more level gaze. The homely tavern sounds coming
out through the open windows, the sunny stillness
of the fields and crops, which covered so much vigorous
natural life, suggested very little that was
transcendental, had very little to say about renunciation,
— nothing at all about spiritual zeal. They
seemed to utter a message from plain ripe nature, to
express the unperverted reality of things, to say that
the common lot is not brilliantly amusing, and that
the part of wisdom is to grasp frankly at experience,
lest you miss it altogether. What reason there was
for his falling a-wondering after this whether a deeply
wounded heart might be soothed and healed by such
a scene, it would be difficult to explain; certain it
is that, as he sat there, he had a waking dream of
an unhappy woman strolling by the slow-flowing
stream before him, and pulling down the blossoming
boughs in the orchards. He mused and mused, and
at last found himself feeling angry that he could not
somehow think worse of Madame de Mauves, — or at
in a sentimental way he asked very little of life, —
he made modest demands on passion; why then
should his only passion be born to ill-fortune? why
should his first — his last — glimpse of positive happiness
be so indissolubly linked with renunciation?
It is perhaps because, like many spirits of the
same stock, he had in his composition a lurking
principle of asceticism to whose authority he had
ever paid an unquestioning respect, that he now felt
all the vehemence of rebellion. To renounce — to
renounce again — to renounce forever — was this all
that youth and longing and resolve were meant for?
Was experience to be muffled and mutilated, like an
indecent picture? Was a man to sti and deliberately
condemn his future to be the blank memory of
a regret, rather than the long reverberation of a joy?
Sacrifice? The word was a trap for minds muddled
by fear, an ignoble refuge of weakness. To insist
now seemed not to dare, but simply to be, to live
on possible terms.
His hostess came out to hang a cloth to dry on the
hedge, and, though her guest was sitting quietly
enough, she seemed to see in his kindled eyes a flattering
testimony to the quality of her wine.
As she turned back into the house, she was met by
a young man whom Longmore observed in spite of his
jovial fraternity of artists whose very shabbiness has
an affinity with the element of picturesqueness and
unexpectedness in life which provokes a great deal of
unformulated envy among people foredoomed to be
respectable.
Longmore was struck first with his looking like a
very clever man, and then with his looking like a very
happy one. The combination, as it was expressed in
his face, might have arrested the attention of even a
less cynical philosopher. He had a slouched hat and
a blond beard, a light easel under one arm, and an unfinished
sketch in oils under the other.
He stopped and stood talking for some moments to
the landlady with a peculiarly good-humored smile.
They were discussing the possibilities of dinner; the
hostess enumerated some very savory ones, and he
nodded briskly, assenting to everything. It could n't
be, Longmore thought, that he found such soft contentment
in the prospect of lamb chops and spinach and a
tarte à la crême. When the dinner had been ordered,
he turned up his sketch, and the good woman fell
a-wondering and looking off at the spot by the stream-side
where he had made it.
Was it his work, Longmore wondered, that made
him so happy? Was a strong talent the best thing in
the world? The landlady went back to her kitchen,
something, beside the gate which opened upon the path
across the fields. Longmore sat brooding and asking
himself whether it was better to cultivate an art than
to cultivate a passion. Before he had answered the
question the painter had grown tired of waiting. He
picked up a pebble, tossed it lightly into an upper
window, and called, “Claudine!”
Claudine appeared; Longmore heard her at the window,
bidding the young man to have patience. “But
I 'm losing my light,” he said; “I must have my
shadows in the same place as yesterday.”
“Go without me, then,” Claudine answered; “I will
join you in ten minutes.” Her voice was fresh and
young; it seemed to say to Longmore that she was as
happy as her companion.
“Don't forget the Chénier,” cried the young man;
and turning away, he passed out of the gate and followed
the path across the fields until he disappeared
among the trees by the side of the stream. Who was
Claudine? Longmore vaguely wondered; and was she
as pretty as her voice? Before long he had a chance
to satisfy himself; she came out of the house with her
hat and parasol, prepared to follow her companion.
She had on a pink muslin dress and a little white hat,
and she was as pretty as a Frenchwoman needs to be
to be pleasing. She had a clear brown skin and a
to some slow music, heard only by herself. Her hands
were encumbered with various articles which she
seemed to intend to carry with her. In one arm she
held her parasol and a large roll of needlework, and in
the other a shawl and a heavy white umbrella, such as
painters use for sketching. Meanwhile she was trying
to thrust into her pocket a paper-covered volume which
Longmore saw to be the Poems of André Chénier; but
in the effort she dropped the large umbrella, and uttered
a half-smiling exclamation of disgust. Longmore
stepped forward with a bow and picked up the
umbrella, and as she, protesting her gratitude, put out
her hand to take it, it seemed to him that she was unbecomingly
overburdened.
“You have too much to carry,” he said; “you must
let me help you.”
“You 're very good, monsieur,” she answered. “My
husband always forgets something. He can do nothing
without his umbrella. He is d'une étourderie —”
“You must allow me to carry the umbrella,” Longmore
said. “It 's too heavy for a lady.”
She assented, after many compliments to his politeness;
and he walked by her side into the meadow.
She went lightly and rapidly, picking her steps and
glancing forward to catch a glimpse of her husband.
She was graceful, she was charming, she had an air of
that a young artist would work none the worse
for having her seated at his side, reading Chénier's
iambics. They were newly married, he supposed, and
evidently their path of life had none of the mocking
crookedness of some others. They asked little; but
what need one ask more than such quiet summer days,
with the creature one loves, by a shady stream, with
art and books and a wide, unshadowed horizon? To
spend such a morning, to stroll back to dinner in the
red-tiled parlor of the inn, to ramble away again as the
sun got low, — all this was a vision of bliss which
floated before him, only to torture him with a sense of
the impossible. All Frenchwomen are not coquettes,
he remarked, as he kept pace with his companion.
She uttered a word now and then, for politeness' sake,
but she never looked at him, and seemed not in the
least to care that he was a well-favored young man.
She cared for nothing but the young artist in the
shabby coat and the slouched hat, and for discovering
where he had set up his easel.
This was soon done. He was encamped under the
trees, close to the stream, and, in the diffused green
shade of the little wood, seemed to be in no immediate
need of his umbrella. He received a vivacious rebuke,
however, for forgetting it, and was informed of what
he owed to Longmore's complaisance. He was duly
a seat on the grass. But Longmore felt like a marplot,
and lingered only long enough to glance at the young
man's sketch, and to see it was a very clever rendering
of the silvery stream and the vivid green rushes. The
young wife had spread her shawl on the grass at the
base of a tree, and meant to seat herself when Longmore
had gone, and murmur Chénier's verses to the
music of the gurgling river. Longmore looked awhile
from one to the other, barely stifled a sigh, bade them
good morning, and took his departure.
He knew neither where to go nor what to do; he
seemed afloat on the sea of ineffectual longing. He
strolled slowly back to the inn, and in the doorway
met the landlady coming back from the butcher's with
the lamb chops for the dinner of her lodgers.
“Monsieur has made the acquaintance of the dame
of our young painter,” she said with a broad smile, —
a smile too broad for malicious meanings. “Monsieur
has perhaps seen the young man's picture. It appears
that he has a great deal of talent.”
“His picture was very pretty,” said Longmore, “but
his dame was prettier still.”
“She 's a very nice little woman; but I pity her all
the more.”
“I don't see why she 's to be pitied,” said Longmore;
“they seem a very happy couple.”
The landlady gave a knowing nod.
“Don't trust to it, monsieur! Those artists, — ça
n'a pas de principes! From one day to another he
can plant her there! I know them, allez. I 've had
them here very often; one year with one, another year
with another.”
Longmore was puzzled for a moment. Then, “You
mean she 's not his wife?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “What shall I tell
you? They are not des hommes sérieux, those gentlemen!
They don't engage themselves for an eternity.
It 's none of my business, and I 've no wish to speak
ill of madame. She 's a very nice little woman, and
she loves her jeune homme to distraction.”
“Who is she?” asked Longmore. “What do you
know about her?”
“Nothing for certain; but it 's my belief that she 's
better than he. I 've even gone so far as to believe
that she 's a lady, — a true lady, — and that she has
given up a great many things for him. I do the best
I can for them, but I don't believe she 's been obliged
all her life to content herself with a dinner of two
courses.” And she turned over her lamb chops tenderly,
as if to say that though a good cook could
imagine better things, yet if you could have but one
course, lamb chops had much in their favor. “I shall
cook them with bread crumbs. Voilà les femmes,
monsieur!”
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
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 recognized
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
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 recognized
him, — just as he had recognized him a few days before
at the café in the Bois de Boulogne.
| VII. A passionate pilgrim | |