The weight of the name

Chapter 3

"You have made me very unhappy, my friend,—for I shall continue to give you in my heart that name which you no longer care for. I do not reproach you. It was I who deceived myself, in thinking that your feeling for me might change, that it had changed. Perhaps such a transformation is not possible. I too have acted in good faith in wishing for it, in longing for it, in hoping for it. You know it, do you not?—Now that dream is at an end." She repeated, as if speaking to herself: "At an end, at an end." And, turning toward Landri: "How do you expect me to permit you to come here now, to indulge myself in those long conversations and that correspondence which were so dear to me, after you have talked to me in this way? One does not try such an experiment twice. Three years ago I was able to believe in an unconscious outbreak of your youth, in an exaltation which would soon subside. To-day, I am no longer able to flatter myself with that illusion. But on one point you are right. The circumstances are no longer the same. If at that time it was my right and my duty to judge severely a declaration which I should have been as culpable to listen to as you were to make it, how can I blame you now for a step in which there is no other feeling for me than respect and esteem? I have not lived much in the world,—enough, however, to realize that the fidelity of a heart like yours, prolonged thus and under such conditions, is no ordinary thing. It touches me far more than I can tell you."—Despite herself, her voice trembled as she let fall those words which signified too clearly: "And I, too, love you."—"But," she continued, firmly, "this interview must be the last, since I cannot answer you with the words that you ask, since in that hand which you offer me I cannot place mine."

"Then," he faltered, "if I understand you, you refuse—"

"To be your wife. Yes," she said; and this time her blue eyes beneath their half-closed lids gazed steadfastly at Landri. Her delicate mouth closed in a fold of decision. Her whole fragile person was as if stiffened in a tension which proved to the lover the force of the emotion that she held in check. She repeated: "Yes, I refuse. I could find many pretexts to give you which, to others, would be good reasons, and which should be so to me. I have a child. I might say to you: 'I do not want him to have a stepfather.' That would not be true. You would be to him, I am sure, as you said, a second father. I might dwell upon my loss, which is so recent, in order to postpone my reply until later. Later, the reason which makes me decline the offer of your name would be the same, for it is just that name, it is what it represents, which forbids me to abandon myself to a liking of which you have had too many proofs. I shall soon be twenty-eight, my friend. I am no longer exactly a young woman. I have reflected much on marriage. I know that if people marry to love each other, they marry also to live and remain together, to have a home, to be a family. For that it is essential that there should not be, between the husband and wife, one of those unalterable differences of birth and environment, which make it impossible that her people should ever be really related to his.—Your name? It is not only very old, it is illustrious. It is blended with the whole history of France. There was a Maréchal de Claviers-Grandchamp who was a comrade of Bayard, a Cardinal de Claviers-Grandchamp who was a friend of Bossuet. Claviers-Grandchamps have been ambassadors, governors of provinces, commanders of the Saint-Esprit, peers of France. Your house has contracted alliances with ten other houses of the French or European aristocracy. You are cousins of English dukes, of German and Italian princes. You are a grand seigneur, and I a bourgeoise, a very petty bourgeoise.—Do not you interrupt me, either," she said, placing her slender hand on the young man's arm and arresting thus his protest; "it is better that I should say it all at once. In all this I am moved neither by humility nor by pride. I have never understood either of those sentiments, when there is question of facts so impossible to deny or to modify as our situation. I am a bourgeoise, I say again. That means that my people lived in straitened circumstances at first, then modestly. I consider myself rich with the thirty thousand francs a year that they saved for me, in how many years! It is a fortune in our world, in yours it would be ruin. When I walk in that quarter, before those ancient hôtels which are still to be found there, on the afternoon of a grand reception, I see their courtyards, the coupés and automobiles waiting, the footmen in livery, all that luxury of existence which you no longer notice, it is so natural to you,—and do you know what my feeling always is? That if it were necessary for me to live there, and in such fashion, I should be too much out of my element, too overpowered! These are trifles. I mention them to you because they represent a whole type of customs, an entire social code. Do not say that you will not impose those customs on your wife, that you will liberate her from that code. You could not do it. To-day, as a bachelor, and because you are an officer, you have been able to simplify your life a great deal. But your wife would not be merely the companion of Monsieur de Claviers-Grandchamp, a simple lieutenant of dragoons, stationed at Saint-Mihiel, she would be also the daughter-in-law of the Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp, who lives in a veritable palace in Paris, and who has a historic château in the Oise. He is a widower. He would require, and he would have a right to require, his daughter-in-law, with him and for him, to do the honors of those princely residences. And besides, he would begin by not accepting me. You have talked so much to me about him! I know him so well, without having seen him. Not for nothing do you call him the 'Émigré.' So many times you have exerted yourself to prove to me that he is not a man of our time; that he has the pride, the religious veneration of his race and of old France. And such a man would consent that his heir, the only survivor of his four sons, should take for his wife the widow of an officer who was the son of a physician, herself the daughter of a provincial notary, who, before she became Madame Olier, bore the name of Mademoiselle Barral? Never! To marry me, my friend, would be first of all to quarrel with your father, and, more or less, with all your relations and your whole social circle. What do you care? you will say. When two people love, they suffice for each other. That is true and it is not true. You would suffer death and torture that I should be humiliated, even in trifles, that I should not have the rank due to your wife, being your wife. I should suffer to see you suffer, and perhaps—I do not make myself out any better than I am—on my own account. People are so ingenious in all societies in wounding those whom they look upon as intruders. If we should have children, would they feel that they were really the brothers and sisters of my boy, of a poor little Olier, they who would be Claviers-Grandchamps? And if—But what's the use of enumerating the miseries comprised in that cruel, wise, profoundly significant word—mésalliance. No. I will not be your wife, my friend, and the day will come when you will thank me for having defended you against yourself, for having defended us—dare I say it?—But not effectively, for I could not prevent your saying words which are destined to break off forever, for a long time at all events, relations so pleasant as ours.—So pleasant!" she repeated. And then, with something very like a sob: "Oh! why, why did you speak so to me again?"

"Because I love you," he replied, almost fiercely. "And you! But if you loved me, you would bless them, these differences between our environments, instead of fearing them! You would see in the hostility of my circle—I admit that I had not thought of it!—a means of having me entirely to yourself. I should have heard you simply discuss the matter and hesitate. But the coldness of your reply, this keen analysis of our respective social positions, this balance-sheet of our families spread out before me, calmly, coldly, mathematically, when I had come here, mad with emotion, and thinking only of the life of the heart!—I am more deeply hurt by that than by your refusal. I might have discussed it and argued against your reasons. One does not discuss, one does not combat indifference. One submits to it, and it is horrible!"

"How unjust you are, Landri!" she exclaimed. It very rarely happened that she addressed him so, by his first name. That caress of language, the only kind that she had ever bestowed on him, and that so seldom, came to her lips in face of the young man's evident despair. A woman who loves can endure everything, conceal everything, except the compassion aroused by a sorrow which she has inflicted upon the man she loves; and, destroying, by that involuntary outburst of her passion, the whole effect of her previous refusal, she added: "I! indifferent to you! Why, of whom was I thinking when I spoke, if not of you, solely and only of you, of your future and your happiness?"

"How happy I should be," he interrupted, "if, on the other hand, you would think only of yourself, if you would have the selfishness of love, its exigences, its unreasonableness! And yet," he continued with the asperity of a passion which feels that it is reciprocated, despite all manner of resistance, and which is exasperated by that assurance, "it is true. You have some feeling for me in your heart. You are not a coquette. You would not make sport of a man who has shown you so plainly that he loves you, and how dearly! I said just now that you didn't love me. At certain times I believe it, and it tortures me. At other times I feel that you are so moved, so trembling—see, now!—Oh! by everything on earth that you hold sacred, Valentine,"—he had never before allowed himself that familiarity, which made her start like a kiss,—"if you really regard me with the feeling that I have for you, if my long fidelity has touched you, answer me. Is it true, really true, that between me and my happiness,—for you are my happiness, only you, I tell you,—between your heart and my heart there is nothing but that single, wretched obstacle, my name?"

"There is nothing else," she replied, "I swear."

"And you expect me to bow before that, to give you up because I am called Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp and you Madame Olier, and because my social circle will frown upon the marriage!"

"It is not I who expect it," she replied, "it is life!"