Kitabı oku: «The Choice of Life», sayfa 4

3

At last, I wiped away her tears and long and gently tried to rally her. But, suddenly drawing herself up, Rose cried:

"I don't understand you, I no longer understand you! What you are saying is just so much more silence and I wait for your judgment in vain! You have, you must have, an opinion on what I have done. The reason why I hesitated so long to confess my fault was because I knew instinctively that you would blame me; and now I feel you so far from me.... Please judge me, be angry with me: it will be easier for you to forgive me afterwards!…"

I do not know why this blind insistence offended me. Until then I had remained calm; but at her words there burst from the depths of my being the voice of instinct, that voice which I had tried to stifle, almost unconsciously, by force of habit and training.... Oh, that blatant, piercing voice! It seemed to me to rend the darkness, to scoff at my heart and my sweet reasonableness! It was as though I saw all my kindly dreams of tolerance and indulgence fly into a thousand splinters! Never had I so clearly realised their brittleness. My anger was all the greater because it was still trammelled by fragments of my reason.

I placed my hands on her shoulders and shouted close to her face, which my eyes could not distinguish:

"Why, why will you rouse my instinct, my nerves, all those things which should never interfere in our judgments and beyond which we should try to look if we would understand the actions of others? You give the name of silence to the words spoken by my reason and you wish to be judged by a blind and senseless power! But that idiot power mercilessly condemns all the faults committed in its name! That power, which is making me tremble now with excitement, will tell you that you could have done nothing worse! Do you understand? Nothing, nothing! And it will overwhelm you with reproaches. For it is not your action that revolts me; it is your apathy, your flabbiness, your cowardice!… You gave yourself without knowing why! You did not surrender for the sake of the joy that makes us fairer and better! You did not surrender because love had taken your heart by storm! You did not sacrifice yourself to an idea: had it been vile and base, I could still have accepted it! No, you gave yourself without knowing why! You obeyed the will of the first-comer, as the silliest and most docile of wives obeys the recognised canons and conventions … without knowing why!… Ah, Rose, Rose! I wanted to help you to become strong and free. What a character, what a disposition you bring me! And yet I did not ask so much! I wanted your nature to have strength and flexibility, so that my hands might have taken it and moulded it. I looked forward to shaping it and giving it nobility and refinement...."

Tears choked my words. At that moment, the disappointment appeared to me complete and irreparable. Still, so as not to sadden her unduly, I murmured:

"Do not misunderstand me, my poor Rose; I am not saying that you soiled yourself by yielding to that man. I should not care much if you had; for, if the fairest forms could take birth from the mud in the gutter, you would see me plunge my hands in it without reluctance. No, what distresses me is your weakness; and I have simply likened your nature to a substance without consistency and impossible to mould."

Rose moaned and sobbed:

"To please you, I will brave everything.... Don't forsake me!… Go on loving me!…"

I divined rather than saw the body lying prone, with her head on the ground; and the paler shadow of her hair reminded me of the dear beauty of her. I grew calmer. The comfort of having said all that I had to say relieved my heart and sent rippling through my veins, like a cool stream, a more natural indulgence than that which had animated me at first. Bending over Rose, I reflected that reason weighs heavily on a woman's breast and that it is well to thrust it aside occasionally. I tried to reassure her between my kisses:

"I am wrong to be so irritable and despondent; forgive me! I believe that your nature will never be vivid or strong; but your newly-developed conscience will save you from fresh weaknesses. Besides, in some direction we shall find what you are capable of. Destiny asks little of us when we have little to give it; and events pass us by of their own accord. Your life can be gentle and passive and still be useful and good. It is my own fault if I am disappointed: I am always more or less of a child; and I become passionately enthusiastic on the strength of a smile, or a pure outline, or a beautiful profile. I ought not to have looked in you for what existed only in my imagination...."

"Then you are no longer angry with me?"

"Why should I be?"

I kissed her tenderly. Poor child, so she had suffered through love! I pitied her; and yet the happiness of knowing her a little better swallowed up my pity. Things move quickly in those who, not believing in heaven, seek upon earth the beginning and the end of life and all that comes between. And they come to prefer to the highest joys those which foster a clearer vision and a truer comprehension.

And, trying to explain myself, I added:

"One would think that a time comes when we judge like a traveller looking out from the top of a tower. All the differences melt into unity before his eyes. He turns slowly and sees, on the one side, the forest; on the other, the sea; at his feet, the noisy town, the world; a little farther, the calm and peace of the fields; and, overhead, the infinite indifference of the skies. And, like him, we are engrossed in what we discover and we no longer see the tower by which we climbed nor feel that on which our feet stand; and we are nothing, nothing but a thinking light that settles upon some life."

4

We lay stretched in the clover that was still warm from the heat of the day; and our arms were locked and our hair intertwined. My cheek cooled hers, which her tears had set on fire; and the sombre peace of the sky sank into us. We were both filled with the peculiar happiness that comes after a painful confession, a happiness whose source is a sense of security, a joy that seems yearning to cover us with its wings for one halcyon hour.

"Rose, darling, never forget the feeling of relief which you have now. That sense of security is infinitely precious. Let its fragrance remain with you for ever. May it become impossible for you to do without it. Seek it, insist upon it silently, even from the strangers whom you may meet. Falsehood destroys the perfume and the bloom of women: it makes them colourless and uniformly commonplace. Always have the courage to be true. A sort of secret combat is waged between any two persons who meet for the first time. Remember that, as a woman, you have always the choice of weapons; and choose them frankly. In so doing, you will gain courage and assurance and the great strength that springs from harmony, from the perfect accord of our body, our mind and our speech. I do not say that you will necessarily conquer with that weapon, but I do say that, even if defeated, you will, contrary to the general rule, feel mightier and more exultant than before!"

A star appeared, a quiver ran through the trees near by and passed over all the earth. The night was rising.

I was at my ease beside my companion; our hearts were again at one. That love-incident, however lacking in love, had brought her nearer to me.

"I do not know which path you will choose, my Rose; but we all have two roads by which to reach the goal for which we are making: to be or to seem. The real lovers of life will always choose the first. They will arrive later; perhaps they will never arrive. But, after all, what does arriving mean?"

Rose at once retorted:

"Still, why have a goal, if not to reach it?"

The girl's practical logic amused me; and our laughter rang out in unison across the fields.

"Rose, morally speaking, the goal is really the means which we employ to attain it. It is a light which we voluntarily flash in front of our footsteps. We can neither miss it nor reach it, because it moves with us. It becomes greater or smaller or is renewed, according to the evolution of our strength and our life...."

We had risen from the ground and, as we talked, were slowly following the path that skirts the orchard. Rose asked:

"Cannot you more or less describe your goal, the one you are speaking about?"

I hesitated for a moment and, almost involuntarily, murmured:

"To know a little more … to see a little farther … to understand a little better...."

Rose repeated, slowly and earnestly:

"To know a little more … to see a little...."

But I laughingly stopped her, for the words sounded too serious in our young souls.

The orchard-gate closed between us. I was walking away, when Rose called to me:

"Come and kiss me again...."

I ran back to her. She leant over the hedge and I could only just distinguish her face. Then our lips met of themselves, like flowers that touch.

For a long time, in the still air, I heard her heavy footfall.

Chapter XI

1

Next day, Rose was with me early in the morning:

"I could not sleep," she said. "I wanted to speak to you without tears or blushes. If I have done wrong, I have atoned for it; and it is done with. All that remained of it was a sad memory; and, now that I have considered it with you, even that is gone."

I look at her. Her appearance pleases me. Her step is firm, her cheeks are pale, her eyes burning; she is living more ardently than usual. She continues, with animation:

"You said to me once that people who believe in another life seem to sweep their sins and their remorse up to the doors of eternity. For us, you said, who have not that illusion, everything is different: we do not put off paying the bill for our sins. We can recognise their consequences; and that is our expiation." And you added, proudly, "It is cowardly to look to another for it, even if that other were God!"

We are walking in the orchard. The long grass is bending under the weight of the dew, which has decked it with a thousand glittering jewels. As we pass by a tree laden with apples, Rose pulls a branch to her and, without plucking the fruit, bites into it. I watch the lips part and the white teeth meet and disappear in the juicy pulp. For a second, the soft red mouth rounds over the fruit, which seems to match its beauty and to be questioning Rose about her pitiful love-affairs.

"Then, Rose dear, you were not really happy for a moment with your lover?"

"No."

"But he was young, I suppose, and more or less good-looking?"

She thinks for a moment and then bends her head.

"You remember it, Rose?"

The girl appears astonished and answers, hesitatingly:

"It is five years ago, I don't remember now...."

I was surprised in my turn and looked at her. What! She didn't remember! She had forgotten that! Her lips had not retained the impress of the first kiss!

My eyes closed and from the background of my life a bygone moment rose, one of those memories that linger in the hearts of women with such fidelity and vividness that they lack not a scent, a sound, a line, a word, a look, a gesture!

I was twelve years old and he fifteen. It was at the seaside. Our parents were talking a few steps away, but night was falling and a fisherman's hut hid us from their eyes. He bent over to me and our lips met in a simple kiss, simple as a flower with petals still unopened, for we were both of us innocent....

I can still see the colour and the shape of the drifting clouds. I can smell the mingled breath of the sea and of his boyish mouth. I can remember how I felt as a frightened, trembling and enraptured little girl.... A sailor was singing some way off; and the gulls that circled between sea and sky seemed to be keeping the last rays of daylight upon their white wings.

Why, I know that boy's mouth by heart and shall always know it! We often kissed again, without even dreaming that, at this game as at all games, there might be room for progress!… And then … and then … that's all I remember of him.... The next is another memory, at another place and another age.... And then another again....

2

Would one not think that, in the more or less happy lives of us women, in our more or less easily traversed roads, the sensations of love are so many illuminated floral arches that mark the different stages of our accomplishment? We go up to them, we pass through them with hopes, smiles or sighs. But, whatever they may be, we come out of them fairer and better. What should we be without that, without love? The love which is rebuked, which we are supposed to hide and blush for! The love that entreats both our strength and our weakness, our patience and our fervour, our passion and our reason! The love that sets in motion our highest faculties and our lowest instincts, that makes each of us know her own power and her own poverty by the part which she allows it to play in her life!

In that moment, I saw and lived my joys in the kisses of childhood and girlhood. I travelled my road again; and the arches of light seemed higher to me and they followed hard on one another, becoming ever more radiant and decked with gayer flowers, until this very hour when the desired happiness has been found, established and kept fast....

3

My thoughts return to Rose, who has sat down under a tree; and I stretch myself beside her.

A herd of cows suddenly enters the orchard. White and brown, they plunge among the apple-trees; driven by a child, who is taking them down to the long grass, they amble heavily along in meek-eyed resignation. A smell of cow-shed at once reaches our nostrils; and, in the silence, we hear a noise of busy munching....

"Darling, you, who have always lived in the midst of nature, should have sounder and more accurate ideas on love than those of other women, while mine are a little warped by my over-cultivated nerves and feelings. If, for instance, you had said to me, yesterday, 'I gave myself because it was natural,' you would have dominated my poor reason from the pinnacle of an essential truth."

Without quite understanding what I say, Rose smiles in answer to my smile and we remain silent; our eyes gaze without seeing and our idle hands trail in the wet grass. We hear, without listening, the hoarse, fat, cooing-voluptuous voices of the doves: in the cool air of the morning, among the leaves, the flowers and the branches, it is an undercurrent of joy rising and falling, suspended for a moment and then beginning again, in unwearying repetition.

Rose murmurs:

"Why are you always saying that I cannot make progress without love? It makes me unhappy when you say that. I should have liked to have nothing in the world but your affection. You kissed me so tenderly last night, over the hedge."

"It is not the same thing, Rose darling. Certainly, there is nothing more harmonious and purer than the kiss that joins the lips of two friends like ourselves. But it is not the same thing as the kiss of love, for the value of that lies not only in what it is, but in what it promises; and it is a delight that sometimes echoes through our whole lives.... You will have to love before you understand."

The girl folded her arms around my waist as though to bind herself to me:

"But how would you have me love any one but yourself?" she asked. "Have you not given me happiness? When I am with you, I seem to be living in a fairy-tale."

Despite the pleasure which her words gave me, I made an effort to combat them.

The character of a woman who tries to be just is full of these little contradictions. In proportion as her heart is satisfied, she finds her intellect becoming clearer and stronger; and what calls for her judgment rarely leaves her heart unmoved. If Rose had not protested, I should still have spoken, from a sense of duty, but my words would have been without warmth or conviction. Now it seemed to me that her charming compliment gave added force to what I was about to utter in the interest of another's happiness.

She leant her face against my breast and my fingers played with her sunny hair, her unbound hair, which was now waving joyously, crowning her with a shimmer of amber and gold.

"No," I replied, "you must fall in love in order to develop and expand. Our women's lives are like summer days: wisdom tells us to follow their evolution. After the morning's waiting, we want the noon-day splendour and rapture. As you never had that rapture, you have not yet known love: and, at your age, is not that an absurd and miserable ignorance? Is it not right to wish for love and even to force its coming? Those who go on waiting for it in meek resignation appear to me so guilty!… Life has always seemed to me to be divided into two parts: the search for love; and love. As long as we are not in love, let us continue the search for it; let us seek stubbornly, madly, cruelly, if need be; let us be untiring and unrelenting. There are no obstacles for the woman with a resolute will. Let each of us follow that quest in her own manner, according to her strength, her means and her courage, through every danger and every pain. When we have at last found love, or rather our love, let us go towards it without fear, without false modesty; and, if we are loved, let us not wait to be entreated for what we can offer generously. Let us never be pilfered of that which it is our privilege to give!"

A tendril drops from the creeper above us and caresses our faces....

How delightful life is at this moment! The air is filled with rejoicing, with the murmur of an infinite happiness! A tremulous haze hovers over the fields, the insatiate doves reiterate their glad refrain. Around us, here and there, a slender blade of grass shakes beneath the light weight of a butterfly. But is not everything lovely in the eyes of a woman who is talking of love? It is as though happiness were the harbinger of her glance, flying ahead and settling upon things.

Rose, all attention and curiosity, now questioned me:

"But you, what did you do?"

"In my case," I said, "when I knew that he loved me too, I went to his country to find him. I can still see us walking in a meadow all bright with flowers. On the horizon, the blue sky met the sea; and, behind us, the red roofs, the church-steeples and the tiny white houses of a Dutch village slowly vanished from sight. He gave me his arm; and it was a joy to me to let him feel the gladness in my heart by the motion of my hip, on which he leant slightly. Then he said, 'You walk like a queen for whom her subjects wait.' And I knew from his words that he was still waiting for me, though I was by his side, and they suddenly told me what a blissful kingdom I had to offer him!"

"Did you seek long before that day came?"

"No, once I was free, I found happiness after a few months of trouble and difficulty; but you see, dear, I would have gone to the other end of the world to meet my love! I had no need to journey so far; and this makes me inclined to think that, in our search, we need to be attentive even more than active!"

Roseline murmured, pensively:

"The men say that a certain amount of preliminary experience in love is indispensable … to them."

My whole soul revolted. Releasing myself from the girl's embrace, I sprang to my feet and faced her:

"But, Rose, isn't it the same with us? And is it right to expect that a woman should rivet her whole existence to the first smile, to the first look, the first word that moves her? Sensible people tell us that marriage is a lottery! By what aberration of the intellect do they come to admit that a being's whole life should be voluntarily subjected to chance? Not one of us would consent to such a degradation, if women in general were not absolutely ignorant! And that is why many, too clear-sighted to submit to a ridiculous law and lacking the courage to infringe it, die without having known the flavour and the goodness of life. Oh, what injustice! Is youth not short enough as it is? Is the circle in which our poor intelligence moves not sufficiently limited? And is it necessary, in addition, to chain us to phantom principles, which falsify nature, disfigure goodness and vilify the miracle of the kiss and the innocence of the flesh?"

I was standing against a tree, a few steps away from Rose; and my hand plucked nervously at the leaves within my reach. The blue sky seemed hypocritical to my eyes, the beauty of the flowers crafty and mocking. I continued, in a tone of conviction:

"It is right that woman should make her own experiments, it is right that she should know men to judge which of them harmonises with her.... It is by constantly encountering alien souls that she will form an idea of what her twin soul should be. Yes, I know that a natural law rejects this morality; and that is why I do not think the woman should give herself until she is quite certain of her choice. It is true that her experiments will be incomplete; the senses will have played but a small part in them, or none at all; but must we not accommodate ourselves to the inevitable? In any case, that woman will indeed be enlightened who, regardless of public opinion, lives freely in the man's company, studying him, observing him and sometimes even loving him!"

Rose listened to me without a word or a movement; only, every now and then, her long, dark lashes, tipped with gold, would flicker for a moment and then droop discreetly on her cool, fresh cheeks. But the thought of her own frailty suggested an objection; and she asked:

"Don't you think that what you propose is difficult for the woman?"

"Oh, yes, difficult and, to many of us, impossible! Through a want of pride, through love or pity, they resign themselves to an act of which their reason does not approve and they wake up unhappy, sometimes for ever.... It is difficult, for the woman who resists appears to the man a sort of monster, abominable and detestable. Ah, there must be no desertion before possession! Because we have given him our lips, we must make him a present of our lives! Because we have consented to certain pleasures, we must, so that he may enjoy a greater, sacrifice our future to him!… In fact, he goes farther and says that woman, when she indulges in those experiments, is following the dictates of a loathsome and mean self-interest. Self-interest, when this conduct entails endless dangers and bitterness! Self-interest, when it demands of us, before all, an absolute contempt of a world to which nearly all are slaves, when it exposes us to insults and suffering and increases the number of our enemies and multiplies the obstacles in our path!… No, that woman is not selfish who, in all good faith, plunges boldly into the adventure at the risk of ruining herself, comes near to a man, thinking that she has found what she is seeking and hoping that love may result. She feels the promptings of her senses and does not resist her heart, but her reason is awake! She will not give herself unless everything that she learns confirms her expectations; she will give herself if she really believes that the happiness of both depends upon it; and the combat that is waged enables her to judge clearly of the quality of their love. She is judge and combatant in one. She lets herself be carried along so that she may have fuller knowledge; and it is not without pain, it is not without love that, at the eleventh hour, she will, if need be, refuse herself."

Rose here interrupted me:

"If she loves, if she suffers, why does she refuse herself?"

"There are a thousand degrees in love; and a woman of feeling always suffers when she inflicts suffering."

I examined my mind for a moment and, as though it were uttering its thoughts backwards, I continued, slowly:

"It is sometimes our duty to inflict suffering. The man's instinct is always more or less blinded by desire; he always, either craftily or brutally, proposes. It is for us to dispose. We are all-powerful. Peace or discord springs from our will. He is not as well fitted to choose as we are, because he has not the same reasons for wishing to see comradeship follow upon passion, to see rapture give way to security. If we are one day to be the mother of the child, are we not first of all the mother of love? Are we not at the same time the cradle and the tabernacle of that god? In any happy couple, is love not cast in the woman's image much more than in the man's? The man has a thousand things that attract and retain him elsewhere; his temperament is more prodigal and less considerate than ours. It is in the woman that love dwells; her sensitive nature leads her to a higher knowledge in the art of loving; and the infinite details of her tenderness can make her seem perfect in her lover's eyes when they do not render her exclusive...."

Struck by this last word, Rose exclaimed:

"What! According to you, love should not be exclusive!" And, lowering her voice, she asked, "Are you not faithful?"

"We do not even think of being faithful as long as we love. We should blush to offer love the cold homage of fidelity: it is a word devoid of meaning in the presence of a genuine love. In love fidelity is like a chain disappearing under the flowers. If it is one day seen, that means that the flowers are faded."

I kneel beside her and, taking her in my arms, kiss her fondly. Through the exquisite silence of the day, the church-bell rings out the Angelus in notes of gold. The garden is flooded with sunshine; and the marigolds, the phlox, the jasmines, the scabious and the mallows push their heads above their white railing. Each eager heart turns towards the light.

"You see, my Roseline: just as the great sun shines in his glory and governs the realm of flowers, so love must be king in the lives of us women! He reigns and is independent of any but himself. Only," I added, laughing, "though we accept him as king, we must not make a tyrant of him. Poor love! I wonder what wretched transformation he must have undergone through the ages for us to have managed to invest him with the most selfish of human sentiments, the sense of property! So far from that, we ought mutually to respect the life that goes with ours and never seek to restrain it."

There is a pause; and Rose, with her face pressed to my cheek, almost whispers:

"You are not jealous?"

I felt myself flushing and would have liked not to answer. But, alas, would she not by degrees have discovered all the pettiness that is ill-concealed under my thin veneer of self-control and determination? I tried to reveal it all in one sentence:

"Know this, Rose, that it is in myself and in myself alone that I study the women that I would not be!"