The weight of the name

Chapter 2

After the first words of commonplace courtesy, amid which she found a way to slip in an allusion to an errand to be done before luncheon, there ensued one of those intervals of dumbness that occur between two persons at the moment of uttering words which cannot be retracted, and which they crave and fear in equal measure. The crackling of the fire on the hearth, and the ticking of the clock, suddenly made themselves heard in that silence, which the officer broke at last, in a tone in which his emotion betrayed itself.

"Doubtless you understood, madame," he began, "that it was a very serious matter which made me presume to ask you to receive me at this hour. I had no other at my disposal. I must start for Saint-Mihiel to-morrow evening. I was able to obtain only a very short leave of absence. My father awaits me at Grandchamp, where he is hunting to-day, and you know how much importance he attaches to his hunt. I must be there before the end, or run the risk of disappointing him. I succeeded in catching the train at Commercy last night. I was at the Gare de l'Est at nine o'clock. In an hour and a half by automobile I shall be at Grandchamp. I tell you all this because—"

"Because you do not think me your friend," she interrupted, shaking her head. "But I am, and most cordially. You have nothing to apologize for. You have accustomed me to a too loyal devotion, which I know to be too loyal," she repeated, "for me not to divine that a very important motive dictated your letter. Tell me what it is very simply, as a friend, I say again, a true friend, who will answer in the same way."

She had assumed, as she said these few words, a very gentle but very firm expression. Her voice had dwelt with especial force on the word "friend," which she repeated thrice. It was a reminder of a very hazardous and very fragile engagement. Thousands of such engagements have been entered into, since passionate men, like Landri, are able to respect those whom they love, and since women secretly enamored, like Valentine, dream of reconciling the emotions of a forbidden affection with the strict requirements of virtue. The rare thing is not that one suggests and the other accepts the romantic compact of friendship without other development, but that the compact is adhered to. Absolute, almost naïve sincerity on the part of both contracting parties is essential, a sincerity which excludes all trickery on his part, all coquetry on hers. There must also be a voluntary separation of their lives, which does not permit too frequent meetings. He who says sincerity does not always say truth. One may maintain sincerely a radically false situation, may obstinately abide by it through mute rebellions, through secret and long-protracted suffering, through hidden anguish, like that the memory of which quivered in the young man's reply:—

"A friend!" What bitterness those soft syllables assumed in passing through those suddenly contracted lips! "I knew that, at the outset of our conversation, you would shelter yourself behind my promise. I knew that you would anticipate the sentences that I wish to say to you, and that you would not allow me to say them. God is my witness, and you, too, madame, are my witness, that I have done everything to maintain the absolute reserve which you imposed as a condition upon the relations between us.—Let me speak, I deserve that you should let me speak!" he implored, at a gesture from Valentine, who had half risen. He put such mournful ardor into that entreaty, that she resumed her seat, without further attempt to arrest an avowal which her woman's tact had foreseen only too plainly during these last days. Accustomed as she was to control herself, her constantly increasing pallor, her more and more rapid breathing, disclosed the agitation aroused in her by the voice of him whom she had pretended to look upon only as a friend, and who continued: "Yes, I deserve it. I have been so honest, so loyal in my determination to obey you! Anything, even that silence, was less painful to me than to lose you altogether. And then, I had given you such good reason! I have reproached myself so bitterly for that madness of a few minutes, three years ago! That I had confessed to you what I ought always to have hidden from you, since you were not free, crushed me with such profound remorse! Every day at Saint-Mihiel I pass the wall of the garden where that scene took place. Never without seeing you again, in my thoughts, as I saw you after that mad declaration, abruptly leaving me and going back to the house, without looking back. And what weeks those were that followed, when we met almost every day, and I did not exist for your glance! 'She will never, never forgive me,' I said to myself, and the thought tore my heart. I was sincere when I determined to exchange into another regiment, to leave Saint-Mihiel; sincere when I tried, before my departure, which I believed to be final, to speak with you once more. I felt that I must explain my action to you, must make you understand that no degrading thought of seduction had entered my mind, that I must have been demented, that I had never for one second ceased to have such unbounded esteem and respect for you! Ah! I shall be very old, very cold-blooded, when I am able to recall without tears—see, they are coming to my eyes now!—your face on that day, your eyes, the tone in which you said to me: 'I have forgotten everything. Give me your word that that moment of aberration shall never return, and I will see you as before. I do not wish your life to be turned topsy-turvy because of me.'—While you were speaking, I was saying to myself—that hour is so vivid to me!—I was saying to myself: 'To breathe the air that she breathes, to see her go to and fro, to continue to hear her voice, there is no price I will not pay.' And you marked out the programme of our relations in the future. You said that the world did not place much credit in a disinterested friendship between a man and a woman, but that you did believe in such a thing provided that both were really loyal. I could repeat, syllable for syllable, every word that you said that afternoon. I listened while you said them, with an utterly indescribable sensation, of assuagement and exaltation as well, through my whole being. It was as if I had seen your very soul think and feel. Yes, I solemnly promised you then that, if you would admit me once more to your intimacy, I would be that friend that you gave me leave to be, and nothing more. That promise I have the right to say again that I have kept. I declare that I would continue to keep it if the circumstances had remained the same. But they have changed. Ah! madame, if one could read another's heart, I would beseech you to look into mine. You would see there that at the news of the misfortune which befell you, I had no selfish reflection concerning that change. I thought only of your grief, your solitude, your orphan child. So long as the catastrophe was recent, I was ashamed even to glimpse a new horizon before me—before us. But I cannot prevent life from being life. At twenty-seven a woman is entitled to reconstruct her life without offending in any wise the memory of him who is no more. On my part, I am not breaking my plighted word when I say: 'Madame, the worship, the adoration that I had for you three years ago, and that you justly forbade me to express to you then, I still entertain. My silence regarding my sentiments since that time is a guarantee of their depth. I break it to-day, when you can listen to me without having the protestation of the most fervent, the most respectful, the most submissive of passions cause you remorse. What I said to you in the garden I say again to-day, adding to it an entreaty which you will not deny. I love you. Let me devote to you what I have left of youth, my whole life. Allow me to be a support in your solitude, a consolation in your melancholy, a second father to your son. Be my wife and I will bless this long trial, which justifies me in repeating to you what I felt on the first day that I met you,—but how could you have failed to suspect it?—I love you, and I never have loved, I never shall love, anybody but you.'"

This impassioned harangue, so insistent and so direct, bore little resemblance to the one that Landri had prepared during the long waking hours of the night and in the cold light of dawn, while the express train of the Chemin de Fer de l'Est bore him away from the little garrison town where his destiny had caused him to meet Captain Olier and his charming wife. What diplomatic stages he had marked out for himself beforehand! And he had hurried through them all to go straight to that offer of marriage, put forth, abruptly, with the spontaneity that is more adroit than all the prudence in the world with a woman who loves,—and Valentine loved Landri. She loved him despite complexities upon which we must insist once again in order to avoid the illogical aspects of that woman's nature, loyal even in its subtleties, even to the slightest appearance of coquetry. She loved him, but in a strange ignorance of the elements of love, despite her marriage and maternity. Her union with a man older than herself, arranged by her family, had not caused her to know that total revolution of her existence, after which a woman is truly woman. With her, affection had never been anything more than imaginary. In the chaste and artless delights of this intimacy, without caresses or definite words, with a young man by whom nevertheless she knew that she was loved, and whom she loved, she had found the only pleasure which her sensibility, still altogether mental, could conceive. To tell the whole fact, she loved—and that friendship had sufficed for her! It was inevitable, therefore, that at the first attempt of her alleged "friend" to draw her into the ardent world of complete passion,—and this offer of marriage, under such conditions, was such an attempt,—she should throw herself almost violently back. She ought, however, to have foreseen it, that step which would put an end to the paradoxical and unreliable compromise of conscience devised by her between her conjugal duties and her secret love. Yes, she had foreseen it, and on the day after her husband's death. Her habit of reflection, intensified by the monotony of her semi-recluse existence, had led her to take an almost painful pleasure in a minute scrutiny of the reasons for and against a decision, and she had ended, in the false perspective of solitary meditation, by thinking solely in opposition to her heart. She had ceased to see anything but the force of the objections, the insurmountable difficulties, and she had taken her stand with the party most strongly opposed to her passionate desire. With that she had soothed herself with the chimerical hope of postponing from week to week the explanation which had suddenly forced itself upon her so imperatively. She came to it deeply moved and at the same time prepared, overwhelmed with surprise and, as it were, armored rather than armed with arguments long since thought out. She ran the risk thus of seeming very cold when she was deeply moved, very self-controlled and conventional, when she was all a-quiver. How near to weakness was her borrowed energy from the moment that she began her reply!