II Philippe Lagier’s Mysterious Journey
Two or three days after Palm Sunday, Philippe Lagier, during a visit to M. Molay-Norrois, learned that the doctor had prescribed absolute rest for Elizabeth, and considering her to be, if not in actual danger—at any rate, in a serious state of decline which he must check at all costs, had her under his close observation. He hesitated as to what he should do then decided to let Albert know. Instead of receiving the answer he expected, he saw his friend come to his house. That was an indication of very keen anxiety. He had not been wrong in keeping up the young wife’s hope: what unselfishness friendship demanded!
Albert, through his intermediary, begged, in the interests of his children, that she would grant him an interview, which she refused. Her illness, depressing her, made her less accessible to any attempt of reconciliation. “Is he free?” she had asked. And, as she could not be answered in the affirmative, of what benefit would be this meeting, which would only be painful, and could not, in any way, modify their respective positions? Did not their discretion consist in remaining apart? Thus set aside, he begged her to accept his help. A change of air would do her good, would be good for Marie Louise and her brother. When Philippe brought him another refusal, he flew into a passion, which terrified his friend, who tried in vain to keep him within bounds. Did he not speak of taking up the suit again, of claiming his paternal rights, of again suing for divorce?
On the following day, he acted on his own behalf. It was cruel and yet good for him. He went to the Saint-Roch cemetery where his parents, whom death had not separated, were lying side by side;—to the city park, where he wandered a long time watching the children at play, not knowing that his own were invited to Blanche Vernier’s house; and to the Rue Haxo to look at the closed windows. Rejected everywhere, out of favor with fate, he wandered about Grenoble like a stranger, who has seen all the sights and does not know what to do. Before leaving, he excused himself to Philippe.
“I was wrong yesterday, you must understand me—I am sowing only suffering and evil about me—And it is unavoidable: I can do nothing for it. It is better for me never to return. You will come to see me in Paris?”
“I shall,” said Philippe, “but what have you decided?”
“Nothing!”
“You will remain like this—without an official separation?”
“Yes. I promised my mother that I would never seek a divorce against Elizabeth’s wish, and Anne despises our laws.”
The last volume of the “History of the Peasant” had appeared the previous month, and drawing attention to the whole work, it was the subject of numerous reviews and even heated discussions in the press. In Parliament it had inspired the plan of a bill relating to unseizable family property. The death of an old statesman, forgotten because of his almost interminable old age, had caused a vacancy in the Academy. The newspapers, influenced by such brilliant success, had sympathetically mentioned the candidacy of Albert Derize, without consulting him. To Philippe’s questions, he had only replied:
“In my position, it is impossible. And what do honors matter to me?”
He left with his friend a copy of his book for Marie Louise, with an appropriate inscription. Through the child, he saw Elizabeth. The invalid plunged into the reading of it. She discovered therein a sharper and more bitter tone, an authority which asserted itself without discretion, almost with insolence. The conclusions concerning the importance of patrimony, the family, the freedom to make one’s will, the account of rural domain, and of tradition, all accorded with the strength of the first volumes, perhaps with less force of persuasion, but a more studied power, and in places, a mood of irritation which revealed an eloquence, both high-spirited and disillusioned.
Elizabeth’s health triumphed over that crisis which was the result of an excess of moral fatigue—but she remained subject to nervous trouble, anæmic and susceptible to all injurious influences. Her doctor, who knew her from childhood, analyzed her case as a psychologist, and was not satisfied with her condition.
“This state of uncertainty brings about an irregularity of all the vital functions. A decided position, final separation, divorce would be preferable. After the shock, she could again take up a normal life. She is so young.”
But she would hear nothing of this. She would wear herself out without improvement, as long as her strength lasted. Philippe, allowed to visit her, saw the “History of the Peasant” on a little table next to the sofa.
“You have read it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“It is very fine.”
She added, as if speaking of someone else:
“Men can change their feelings without changing their thoughts. Women, no!”
It was she, who was now generalizing. He appeared to be meditating, as if weighing a difficult case, and at the end of his reflections, remarked simply:
“I believe he still loves you.”
“Please—”
“I am sure of it. And I know how to give him back to you.”
Half reclining on the cushions, she sat up, her cheeks flaming, her eyes shining with fever.
“I beg of you to give up that idea. He has wrecked his home. It was his affair to rebuild it. And now—”
“Now.”
She allowed herself to fall back.
“It is too late,” she said.
Philippe, ever eager to serve her, was painfully affected by this evidence of her state of disenchantment, and changed the conversation, which was painful to her.
“What are your plans? Shall you go to Provence into the sunshine?”
“No, spring is there. As soon as the warm weather comes, we shall go to Saint Martin d’Uriage.”
“That is the mountains, and you may find it cold there again. You take very poor care of yourself.”
She tried to make a slight motion of indifference, but her arm was too weak. As if the future no longer interested her, she explained, with that smile of conscious invalids, which permits them to mitigate the strictness of their doctors’ orders:
“I shall soon be better, you will see. My health is good. In any case I have made my will.”
“It is absurd! Why these gloomy thoughts?”
“I confide my children to the care of my mother. You understand I do not wish that woman—You will help mamma to put all obstacles aside, will you not?”
“Oh, Madame—”
“Will you promise me? Albert is your friend. He will listen to you.”
Philippe rose, adding the melancholy of his hopeless love to his pity, and no longer able to master his emotion:
“No, no, Madame. That will not be.”
The next day, using the end of his legal Easter holiday, he took the train to Paris, without letting anyone know of his journey. This absence, which would scarcely be remarked, lasted for several days. At Grenoble nobody suspected it. The lawyer had never been very confidential, and his goings and comings helped to preserve the mystery. As soon as he came back he went to the Rue Haxo. Elizabeth, with languor and an unsteady step, was slowly taking up her routine again. At the end of his visit, which was very short, he put this question to her:
“If they separated, what would you do?”
She evaded giving an answer.
“I do not know,” she said.
“If he were free—if he came back to you.”
She fixed him with her eyes, enlarged by illness, and lit up with a somber flame:
“I no longer believe that possible.”
Scarcely had she said these words, than she felt as if she had refused an offer from Albert. In despair, she recalled the promise that she had sworn at Mme. Derize’s death bed. She had said she would forgive, forgive without restriction. And now that she was recovering she had said “Too late,” which is the excuse of the weak. When Philippe had gone, she reproached herself, but she was so weak. Had she not suffered too much, waited too long? Had she not been sufficiently humiliated by life? When a person had begun to enter on the path of abnegation and sacrifice, did he never stop, must he build an everlasting Calvary? To escape, to come back, to attempt to find personal happiness elsewhere, that she could not do; but, like an overladen beast, who resists an ascent, she felt neither the strength, nor the courage to go on. She did not know that one walks much longer when overtired, than before becoming fatigued. It is always at the end that an ascent demands the greatest effort.
After a brief glimpse of spring, the wind and rain had taken possession of Grenoble. One could hardly distinguish the neighboring mountains under the leaden sky. Thus the trip to Saint Martin was delayed, although Elizabeth was anxious to go away, and was eager for the open air. Encouraged by the change in the weather, she began her preparations on the 1st of May. A letter, which she received on the 8th, addressed to Mme. Albert Derize, née Molay-Norrois, Boulevard des Adieux, from whence it came back to her, altered her plans. It was a letter with the English postmark, with the address in a handwriting not entirely unknown to her, and which at once disquieted her. She held it in her hand defiantly before opening it, and did not decide to break the seal without a presentiment of evil. She was not mistaken: the foreign paper, those straight flowing letters, which she had seen before, had already broken up her life. She turned the pages which were numerous, and read the signature: “Anne de Sézery.” Then she let the letter drop. How could she have had the audacity to write to her? By what right did she inflict such an insult upon her? Crushed, she sat down, but involuntarily looked on the ground. At last she bent over and picked up the paper which lay there. A few months ago she would have decided not to read it. But she had nothing more to hope, nor to fear. In certain excesses of sorrow, we lose the narrow sense of our dignity which we reserve for our intimate life alone. She began reading this strange letter with suspicion and aversion, ready at the least stinging word to discontinue and not to finish it. She read to the end without stopping.
“LONDON, 6th May, 1907.
“Madame:
“When you receive this letter I shall have left for a far distant country, where no one can follow me and from which I shall never return. That is my excuse for addressing you, and it is—believe me—your obligation to read this letter in its entirety.
“As a result of living in England, I have acquired the habit of candor. I therefore did not want an intermediary between us, for fear of wounding you. The circumstances in which we find ourselves are beyond the pettiness of delicacy, and demand courage, above all things. I must have more than you. If I speak to you of certain things of the past, it is that they may be useful to you in the future. If you have to make a decision, you must be informed.
“I can do nothing more for his happiness, and you, you can do much. That is the whole truth, and the truth must inspire us. I loved him before you did, and more than any other woman has ever loved him. That is the pride I shall take with me to the end of the world. He was my sole thought. When I met him after ten years’ absence, I hoped at first to make a loyal friendship of this unusual love. But you did not welcome me kindly, and he himself did not help me. It is so difficult, especially in France, to fathom and to govern these affairs of the heart. After your departure from Paris, I awaited your return. You did not come back, and I believed you and he were finally separated. He was unhappy, and on my account. What could I do, since I loved him? In England we weigh our resolutions for a long time, and then our decision is final. With you, uncertainty may last for a lifetime.
“I was resigned to being socially ostracized. His social convictions, your children, my family traditions, the lack of a religious belief which I had lost, all united to keep us from a legal union. In my own conscience, I was his wife, the true companion of his heart and mind: little else mattered to me, but to live in harmony with him. Last autumn I knew that even his happiness was threatened. It was some days before his mother’s death: he had met his children on a path in the country of his own childhood. The children: I did not understand the power of that tie which cannot break. How could I realize it? I never knew my mother, and my father was not concerned about my affection.
“The death of Mme. Derize contributed still more to separate our thoughts. He bore his sorrow alone, and I could not speak to him of her without irritating him. It is very wretched for a woman to remain a stranger to a large part of the life of her.... I was going to say, her husband. He certainly endeavored to lessen the pain he was causing me. His sorrow was like a wall between us, and there must be no walls when two people love each other. Then I fell ill this winter. Deprivations, the struggles of my first years in London, had left no visible traces on me, only a little inward wear and tear and a weakened power of resistance. I believed that love would give me back my youth. In my first illness, in the first breach of our intimacy, I noticed signs of those hard years in my face. And, as if I longed madly to destroy myself, I showed them to him one by one. I am no longer a young woman like you, and the days count for me. You will understand from this confession whether I have promised myself to be sincere.
“Our life was apparently unchanged. During his silences I followed the trend of his thoughts. The dead and the living, the past and the future were calling him to Dauphiné. We were only in accord when we traveled. One should always travel when one lives outside of ordinary life, but one cannot always travel. From certain fragments of sentences, from his absentmindedness, from his last visit to Grenoble, I felt that he had found a new woman in you. By an unexpected reaction, it was you who now became my rival. I had not believed that you would be so faithful, brave, resolute in hope, and so capable of making the most of unhappiness. The physical memory I retained of you, had very often been sufficient to inspire me with fear. Since you compelled me to admire you from afar, I detested you until the day I felt—so unhappily—that you could still do what I could no longer do, and that I should have to tell you so.
“His last book opened my eyes. I sought its pages in vain for that delightful weakness of pity, that bending of the will which I had found in all the writers whom Fate or their own desires had led to unconventional living. It treated only of family, of the home, of hierarchy, of endurance, of tradition, and of the dead. He expresses his deepest thoughts in his books. He put ours only into a ‘Schumann,’ which is heartrending. Finally, the newspapers spoke of his candidacy for the Academy. I was afraid of hearing it confirmed, when one day two friends, whom he esteemed highly, paid him a visit. He said nothing to me about the interview, the purpose of which was all too clear. I asked him about it, and he put me aside at the first word. No doubt your separation, the contrast between his convictions and his books, rendered any step difficult. From his hostile air, I knew he was ambitious, but weary.
“So everything was in league against me. He believed he had duties, as if there were any in love. One day he suggested that we should die together, when the slightest happiness is sufficient to restrain us. From that time, I began to think of disappearing. What should I do, if I did not go? I owe my practical judgment to English life. As he cannot forget you, neither you nor his children, since my love is no longer sufficient for him, my departure will give him back to his natural destiny, and I have accustomed myself to go on journeys alone. At another time he would have noticed my preparations, which I delayed, always awaiting a more favorable opportunity. Yesterday—on a rainy morning—he was away for the entire day. I took the train from London, and this evening I embark at Liverpool. He will never know where I am going. I have taken every precaution that it should remain a mystery. “It seems to me that these explanations should fix our respective positions exactly, and that a warning should make it clearer for you what course to pursue. The harm I have done you, I did not wish to do, and you are repaying me without wishing it any more than I. Forget that. Forget me. One does not think of death when one holds life in armfuls, and when one hopes for love. May yours, Madame, inspire you, as mine has inspired me.
“ANNE DE SÉZERY.”
Despite her despair and her spirit of sacrifice, this letter still implied that apologetic judgment of which we can so seldom divest our actions, even our noblest and most unselfish actions. Anne had not reached that thought of flight of her own volition. The intervention of another had pointed out that sorrowful course to her. But what is a thought in comparison with its realization? She had also omitted to mention that the illness to which she alluded had brought with it a gloomy mood, very unfavorable to love, and that of Albert’s affection could have been touched by it, it would have required all the susceptibility of a passion lacking in trust to recognize it through unceasing devotion. No realization is more heart-rending than that of kindness, when we are expecting another sentiment.
Elizabeth had no doubts as to what she had just read. The sincerity of the accent, and that generosity went to her heart, even though the tone of protection wounded her. She was trembling from head to foot. Forgetting her abhorrence of all contact with the woman who had stolen her husband from her, she wished to reread Mlle. de Sézery’s letter. In place of her old rebellion, the second reading made her so jealous that her nerves were shaken—not because of that physical jealousy which is less tyrannical in a woman than in a man, and which, moreover, she had understood so late, but rather a kind of mystic envy, of holy anger against that rival who had claimed to surpass her in loving: a fever of sacrifice.
Anne’s disappearance was not the end. Free, Albert could, must rebuild his home and come back. She would consent to forgive him; yes, she would forgive him unreservedly. But what was this pardon in comparison with the other’s sacrifice? Mme. Derize had told her one day that she was going to look for her son. Well, she would not be behind her in generosity. She would not wait till Albert returned, she would not speak of forgiveness. She would go herself and take her place again. And what humiliation to go and ask for that place still warm with love for another woman! Could she really submit to it? One needs more courage for ordinary circumstances of life in common, than for great departures and heroic actions. Well, she would have that courage. No sacrifice would be comparable to hers.
A mistress can prove her love by turning willingly from a life which she is hindering, and whose happiness no longer depends upon her. She, the wife, must show hers by her firm adherence to an attachment which is indissoluble. So Elizabeth, wounded and exalted, roused herself to vitalize her inactivity.