 | VIII. A passionate pilgrim |  |
8. 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
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,
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
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
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
need n't try to express it. It 's enough that it gives
me the right to ask a favor of you, — to make an
urgent, a solemn request.”
“Make it; I listen.”
“Don't disappoint me. If you don't understand me
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 forever, 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
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
remember in future days, not that I had dismissed
you, but that you had gone away out of the fulness
of your own wisdom.”
“The fulness — the fulness!” 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 realized. 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 colored;
she observed it and withheld something she was about
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 ardor; they were
charged with ardor 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
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.
| VIII. A passionate pilgrim | |