She was religious in the manner of many Parisian women. She believed in God without a doubt, unable to admit the existence of the universe without the existence of a creator. But associating, as everyone does, the attributes of Divinity with the nature of created matter within her vision, she more or less personified her Eternal Being according to what she knew of His works, without for all that having very distinct notions as to what that mysterious Maker might in reality be.
She believed in Him firmly, worshipped Him theoretically, and feared Him very vaguely, for she was in all consciousness ignorant of His intentions and His will, having only an extremely limited confidence in priests, all of whom she regarded as peasants’ sons seeking refuge from military exactions. Her own father, a Parisian bourgeois, having inculcated no principle of devotion, she had practiced quite nonchalantly until her marriage. Then, her new situation having marked more strictly her apparent obligations toward the Church, she had conformed punctiliously to this light servitude.
She was lady patroness to numerous very well-known infant homes, never failed to attend one o’clock mass on Sundays, gave alms personally, and also through the medium of an abbé, the vicar of her parish.
She had often prayed from a sense of duty, as a soldier stands guard at his general’s door. Sometimes she had prayed when her heart was sad, especially when she feared Olivier’s desertion. Then, without confiding to heaven the origin of her supplication, treating God with the same naive hypocrisy that one does a husband, she asked Him to succor her. Formerly at her father’s death and again, quite recently, at her mother’s, she had had violent paroxysms of fervor, had implored with sudden passionate outbursts Him who watches over and consoles us.
And lo! Today, in the church she had just entered by chance, she felt a profound need to pray, not for somebody or something but for herself, herself alone, as the other day already she had prayed on her mother’s grave. She must have help from some source, and she called upon God now as she had that very morning called a physician.
She remained long, kneeling in the silence of the church, broken now and then by a noise of footsteps. Then, at once, as if a clock had struck in her heart, she collected herself, drew out her watch, was startled when she saw that it was nearly four o’clock, and ran away to get her daughter, whom Olivier must already be expecting.
They found the artist in his studio, studying upon his canvas the pose of his Reverie. He wished to reproduce exactly what he had seen in the Parc Monceau while out walking with Annette—a poor girl, dreaming, with a book upon her lap. He had long hesitated as to whether he should make her ugly or pretty. Homely she would have more character, would awaken more thought, more emotion, would contain more philosophy. Pretty, she would be more winning, would diffuse greater charm, would please better.
The desire to make a study after his young friend decided him.
The dreamer should be pretty and might consequently realize her poetic vision some day or other, while if homely she would remain condemned to an endless and hopeless dream.
As soon as the two women had entered, Olivier said, rubbing his hands, “Well, Nanette, we’re going to work together?”
The countess seemed anxious. She sat in an easy chair and watched Olivier as he placed a garden chair of twisted iron in the required light. He then opened his bookcase to get a book and hesitating asked, “What does your daughter read?”
“Mon Dieu! Anything you like. Give her a volume of Victor Hugo.”
“La Légende des siècles?”
“Yes, fine!”
He continued, “Little one, sit down here and take this volume of poetry. Find page . . . page 336, where you’ll see a poem entitled ‘Les Pauvres gens.’ Absorb it as one would drink the best of wines, very slowly, word by word, and let it intoxicate you, let it move you. Listen to what your heart will say to you. Then close the book, raise your eyes, think, and dream. And I’ll go and prepare my implements.”
He went into a corner to ready his palette, but even as he emptied the slender twisted snakes of color onto the thin board, he turned around from time to time to look at the young girl absorbed in her reading.
His heart was oppressed, his fingers trembled, he no longer knew what he was doing and jumbled the colors as he mixed the tiny piles of paste, so suddenly did he suffer at seeing that apparition, that resurrection in the same place, after twelve years—an irresistible wave of feeling.
Now she had finished reading and was looking straight ahead.
Coming closer, he saw two bright drops in her eyes, which, released, flowed down her cheeks. Then he suffered one of those shocks that set a man beside himself, and he murmured, turning toward the countess, “God, she’s beautiful!”
But he remained stupefied before the livid and convulsed face of Madame de Guilleroy. With those great eyes of hers, full now of a sort of terror, she contemplated them, him and her daughter.
He approached, asking in great concern, “What’s the matter?”
“I wish to speak to you.” Standing now, she said, speaking very rapidly to Annette, “Wait here a minute, my child, I have something to say to Monsieur Bertin.” Then she walked quickly into the adjoining little reception room where he often kept his visitors waiting.
He followed her, his head in a whirl, not understanding. As soon as they were alone, she seized his hands and stammered, “Olivier, Olivier, I beg of you, don’t make her pose anymore.”
He murmured, troubled, “But why?”
She answered in a rush, “Why? Why? He asks why! Don’t you feel it, you, Olivier—why? Oh! I should have guessed it sooner myself, but I only realized it a moment ago—I can say nothing to you now—nothing! Go and get my daughter. Tell her I feel ill. Call a cab, and then come and hear what I have to say in an hour. I’ll receive you alone!”
“But, after all, what’s the matter?”
She seemed to be approaching a hysterical condition. “Leave me. I cannot speak here. Go and get my daughter, and call a cab.”
He was obliged to obey and return to the studio. Annette, suspecting nothing, had gone on reading, her heart filled with sadness by the poetic and lamentable story. Olivier said to her, “Your mother is indisposed. She almost fainted when she got to the reception room. Go to her now. I’ll bring some ether.”
He left, ran to his room to get a bottle of something he had noticed there, and then returned.
He found them weeping in each other’s arms. Annette, her feelings raised by “Les Pauvres gens,” gave vent to her emotion, and the countess was somewhat relieved by confounding her grief with that sweet sorrow, mingling her tears with her daughter’s.
He waited for some time, not daring to speak, and looking at them both, oppressed himself by an incomprehensible melancholy. Finally he said, “Well, are you better?”
The countess replied, “Yes, somewhat. I’ll be all right. Did you call for a cab?”
“Yes, you’ll have one in a few minutes.”
“Thanks, my friend. It’s all over now. I’ve had too much sorrow for some time past.”
“The cab is waiting,” a servant announced a minute later.
And Bertin, full of secret anguish, escorted to the door his pale and still-faltering friend, whose heartbeat he could feel beneath her dress.
When he was alone he asked himself, “But what’s the matter with her? Why this scene?” And he began to seek the truth without managing to discover it. Finally he came near it. “Come,” he said to himself, “does she believe I’m paying court to her daughter? That would be too absurd.” And combating with ingenious and loyal arguments that possible conviction, he was indignant that she should have lent for a moment any appearance of gallantry whatever to this healthy, almost parental affection. He became more and more irritated with the countess, unwilling to concede that she should dare to suspect him of such dishonor, of such an unnamable infamy, and resolved not to spare her the expression of his resentment when he should answer her shortly.
After a little while he went to her house for the purpose of seeing her, impatient to have an explanation. All along the way he rehearsed with increasing vexation the arguments and the phrases that would justify him and absolve him of such suspicion.
He found her upon her chaise longue, her face changed by suffering.
“Well,” said he, in a dry tone, “my dear friend, please explain to me the strange scene of a little while ago.”
She answered in a crushed voice, “What! You have not yet understood?”
“No, I confess I have not.”
“Come, Olivier, look well into your heart.”
“In my heart?”
“Yes, in the depths of your heart.”
“I do not understand. Explain yourself better.”
“Look well into the depths of your heart and see if you find nothing there that is dangerous for you and for me.”
“I repeat that I do not understand you. I guess that there is something in your imagination, but in my conscience I see nothing.”
“I am not speaking of your conscience, I am speaking of your heart.”
“I am not good at conundrums, I beg you to be clearer.”
Slowly raising both hands, she took those of the painter and kept them; then, as if each word were rending her heart, she said, “Beware, my friend, or you will fall in love with my daughter.”
He abruptly withdrew his hands, and with the energy of innocence under a shameful accusation, with kindling animation and passionate gestures, he defended himself, accusing her in his turn of having thus suspected him.
She let him speak at length, obstinately incredulous, sure of her position; then she resumed: “But I am not suspicious of you, my friend. You are unconscious of what is taking place within you, as I was ignorant of it myself until this afternoon. You treat me as if I accused you of wanting to seduce Annette. Oh, no! Oh, no! I know how loyal you are, and how worthy of the highest trust and complete confidence. I only pray you, I beseech you, to look into the bottom of your heart and see whether the affection that, in spite of yourself, you are beginning to entertain for my daughter is not characterized by something a little deeper than simple friendship.”
He was offended, and growing more and more excited, again began to plead his loyalty, as he had argued to himself through the streets.
She waited for him to finish his protestations; then, without anger, without being shaken in her conviction, but frightfully pale, she said, “Olivier, I know very well all that you are saying to me, and I think as you do, but I am sure I am not mistaken. Listen, reflect, understand. My daughter resembles me too much; she is too much what I formerly was when you began to love me, that you should not begin to love her also.”
“Then,” he exclaimed, “you dare to throw such a thing in my face, upon this simple supposition and ridiculous reasoning: ‘He loves me, my daughter resembles me—therefore, he will love her.’ ”
But seeing the growing change in the countess’s face, he continued, in a softer tone, “Come, my dear Any, why, it is just because I find you once more in her that I so much like that young girl. It is yourself, yourself alone, I love as I look at her.”
“Yes, it is precisely that which is beginning to make me suffer, and of which I am so apprehensive. You do not yet distinguish what you feel. You will have no doubt concerning it in a little while.”
“Any, I assure you, you are mad.”
“Do you want proofs?”
“Yes.”
“You had not come to Roncières for the last three years, notwithstanding my entreaties. But this last time you simply rushed when it was proposed to you to come after us.”
“Ah, indeed! You reproach me for not leaving you alone yonder, knowing you to be ill, after your mother’s death.”
“Be it so. I shall not insist. But this: the need of seeing Annette again is so imperative with you that you could not pass this day without asking me to take her to your house, under pretext of posing.”
“And you do not suppose it was you I sought to see?”
“Now you’re arguing against yourself; you’re endeavoring to convince yourself; you don’t deceive me. Why did you leave abruptly, when the Marquis de Farandal entered? Do you know?”
He hesitated, very much surprised, very anxious, disarmed by this question. Then, slowly: “Why . . . I hardly know . . . I was tired . . . and, to be frank with you, that blockhead makes me nervous.”
“How long since?”
“He always did.”
“I beg your pardon. I’ve heard you praise him. You liked him once. Be quite sincere, Olivier.”
He reflected a few moments, and then, choosing his words: “Yes, it’s possible that the great love I bear you makes me so love all yours as to influence my opinion of that simpleton, whom I might meet now and then with indifference, but whom I should be sorry to see in your house almost daily.”
“My daughter’s house will not be mine. But enough. I know the uprightness of your heart. I know that you’ll reflect much upon what I’ve just said to you. When you’ve reflected you’ll understand that I pointed out a great danger to you when there was still time to escape from it. And you’ll beware. Let’s talk of something else, will you?”
He did not insist, ill at ease now, no longer knowing what to think, having indeed need for reflection. And he went away after a quarter of an hour’s conversation on indifferent subjects.
4
WITH CAUTIOUS steps, Olivier returned home, troubled as if he had just learned a shameful family secret. His effort now was to sound his heart, to see clearly within himself, to read those intimate pages of the private book which seem glued together and which only someone else’s fingers can ever manage to separate. He certainly didn’t believe himself in love with Annette! The countess, whose suspicious jealousy was ever on the alert, had scented the danger from afar and had signaled it even before it existed. But might that danger exist tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or a month from now? It was that sincere question he was trying to answer sincerely. Of course the young girl stirred up his instincts of tenderness, but such instincts are so numerous in men that the dangerous ones should not be confounded with those which are harmless. For instance, he adored animals, cats especially, and could not see their silky fur without experiencing an irresistible sensuous desire to stroke their soft undulating backs and kiss their electric hair. The attraction the young girl had for him somewhat resembled those obscure and innocent desires that constitute a part of all the unceasing and immitigable vibrations of human nerves. The eye of the artist and the man’s eye were charmed by her freshness, by that growth of beautiful clear life, by that essence of youth so resplendent in her, and his heart, full of the recollections of his long intimacy with the countess, finding in the extraordinary resemblance of Annette to her mother a resurrection of former emotions, the sleeping emotions of the beginning of his love, had been a little startled, perhaps, by the sensation of an awakening.
An awakening? Yes. Was that it? The countess was right. That idea enlightened him. He felt that he was awakening after years of sleep. Had he unconsciously loved the little one he would have experienced near her that feeling of rejuvenation of the entire being, which creates a different man as soon as the flame of a new desire is kindled within him. No, that child had only fanned the old fire. It was the mother indeed he continued to love, but a little more than before, unquestionably, because of her daughter, that new edition of herself. And he formulated the ascertainment of this with the tranquilizing sophism: We love but once. The heart may often be stirred at the meeting with another being, for everyone exercises upon others attractions or repulsions. All these influences create friendship, caprice, desire for possession, intense and fleeting passion, but not true love. That this love may exist, it is necessary that two beings should be so truly born for each other, should be bound to each other in so many ways, by such similarity of tastes, such affinities of body, mind, character—so many ties of all sorts,
as to form a network of bonds. What we love, after all, is not so much Madame X or Monsieur Z; it is a woman or a man, a nameless creature born of Nature, that great mother, with organs, a form, a heart, a mind, an aggregation of qualities which, like a lodestone, attract our organs, eyes, lips, our hearts, our minds, all our senses and appetites. We love a type, that is to say, the union in one signal person of all human qualities which separately may charm us in others.
The Countess de Guilleroy had been this type for him, and the continuance of their intimacy, of which he had not wearied, proved it to him undeniably. Now, physically, Annette so resembled what her mother had been as to deceive the eye. There was therefore nothing astonishing if the heart of the man had been taken by surprise without being led away. He had adored a woman. Another woman was born of her, almost like her. He really could not help bestowing upon the latter a moderate affectionate remnant of the passionate attachment he had felt for the former. There was no harm, there was no danger in that. His vision and his memory only were deluded by this semblance of resurrection, but his instinct was not led away, for he had never felt the slightest disturbance of a desire for the young girl.
Yet the countess reproached him with being jealous of the marquis. Was it true? He again examined his conscience severely, and ascertained that in truth he was a little jealous. What was astonishing about that, after all? Are we not at every instant jealous of men who pay their court to no matter what woman? Do we not in the street, the restaurant, the theater, feel a sort of enmity against the gentleman who is passing or who enters with a beautiful woman on his arm? Every possessor of a woman is a rival. It is a man who has won, a conqueror, who is envied by the other men. And then, without entering into these physiological considerations, if it was natural that he should have for Annette a sympathy rendered somewhat too active by his love for her mother, was it not therefore natural that he should feel rising within him a little animal hatred of the future husband? He would have no difficulty in overcoming this ignoble person.