V The Phantom
Exceptional weather had prolonged the season at Uriage a little later than usual. It was the last day of September, and it might have been said that the mountains were taking pains to look their best in the autumn light. How could one decide to leave so peaceful and beautiful a horizon?
M. Molay-Norrois, enlivened by the heat, but subdued in his manner by family life, resolved to consummate a master stroke before the coming departure of the bathers. He made use of his former influence over Mme. Passerat to urge her to ask Albert and Elizabeth to come to the last formal luncheon party, that she was planning to give before her return to Grenoble. It would be the public and official recognition of the reconciliation, and by this diplomacy he would have earned his own.
Albert Derize and his wife, astonished at this joint invitation, agreed to go despite their dislike of being the cynosure of all eyes. It was proper, it was advantageous for their children that they should be seen together, and that their separation be set aside in the eyes of the world. So they were welcomed as if they had never been the object of general curiosity. Another occurrence had replaced theirs as a subject of conversation. It was told—under the seal of secrecy—that the utilitarian Mme. de Vimelle, seeing no advantage in the new liaison of her husband, had resolved to put an obstacle in his way by threatening to start a scandal by means of Mme. Bonnard-Basson’s letters, which she had intercepted.
“As you please,” M. de Vimelle is said to have replied cynically. “That lady no longer interests me.”
Mme. Passerat, too clever to fear the slightest personal danger, and moreover, sure of the support of her body guard, Messrs. Molay-Norrois, and Prémereux, reënforced by her own husband, believed she was well able to prevent this menagerie assembled around her table from devouring one another. And indeed nothing happened, and the Derize reconciliation was sanctioned. Elizabeth’s mother, who attached great importance to social opinions, was not annoyed by the result, which helped her to bear other sorrows, which were the outcome of her husband’s attractive personality. Albert made every effort to please his wife, who, in her simple dress and with her air of grace and dignity, so resembled those English portraits whose harmony he enjoyed. All the guests profited by his conversation, in the art of which he excelled when he cared to take the trouble.
Philippe Lagier, who had been living at Uriage for a short while, exchanged clever repartee with his friend, to the great joy of Mlle. Rivière, seated beside him; she was listening to him, often looking uneasily at Albert’s wife. After luncheon, while coffee was being served in the garden, the girl came up to Mme. Derize.
“Madame,” she said to her, as if admiration compelled her to make this confidence, “you have never been more beautiful.”
Elizabeth blushed at this sincere compliment, which, from anyone else would have been offensive to her. It was true that her face was radiant, with the clear complexion, softened by her hair which was caressed by the light, its beauty intensified by the contrast of her black dress. And her dark eyes seemed to have grown so big, especially because the cheeks were thinner. They changed the expression of her features, revealed that she was living a nobler, more active life.
“You are a child,” she murmured with a smile.
“Not any more,” sighed the girl, whose eyes were clouded.
She too had changed, and it was not difficult to notice it. Her coquettishness of former years had led her to understand a deeper emotion. She had angled for Philippe Lagier as a poor girl determined to shape her own destiny by an advantageous marriage angles for a good match. In a word, he was no longer in his first youth, and she was offering him hers. Little by little she began to understand that he was exceptional, that his skepticism concealed a contempt for the commonplace, that he had a superior intellect. Thus she had done something entirely unexpected, and had fallen hopelessly in love.
Her mother, of old family, but known to be of small means, witnessed with disappointment the failure of a plan, which would have assured her about the future of her daughter. Elizabeth asked herself, not without scruples, if her intervention might possibly be efficacious.
“Come and see me,” she said to Mlle. Rivière. And the latter thanked her, as she sought her assistance with a loyal and confident look.
Just to prove the value of her friendship, Philippe Lagier came over to Mme. Derize after the girl had left her:
“Will you give me some advice, Madame?”
“At once?”
“No, not here. I shall come to your house.”
“To Saint Martin?”
“Yes, after to-morrow, perhaps.”
All the way up the hill she was thinking: “what advice? I shall talk to him about Berthe Rivière.” Philippe always made her a little uneasy because of the complicated, involved manner in which he expressed his ideas. She wanted to tell her husband of this overture as he was going back with her; but she dared not, either from delicacy concerning another’s secret, or because she could not yet confide everything to Albert.
The next day Philippe came to St. Martin d’Uriage. She was in the orchard, in a straw chair, with some tapestry work, while her children were playing in the grass a few feet away. She was taking advantage of the last fine days and the mildness of the air to remain outdoors a good part of the afternoon. The regular sound of the fountain which was near by, kept her company without stopping the course of her thoughts. The apples and pears were ripening in the sunshine. The leaves were already changing color and the only flowers left were the colchicums in the meadows.
Marie Louise announced his presence. For how long had he been watching the young woman, whose face was framed by a large hood? She was a little offended by this indiscretion, the more so because she was hoping to see Albert, who had seemed nervous on the previous evening. So she hastened his explanation of the object of his visit:
“It is you who are to be consulted, not I.”
He imagined a vague hostility, but was not offended by it. What he had to say he would express, at all costs, for he had resolved upon this course after much hesitation:
“Well, Madame, I have to make a very serious decision now. I am touched, very deeply touched by a sentiment which has been inspired by circumstances, much more than by my personality, and the continuance of which, after having astonished me, is no longer a matter of indifference to me. At my age, it is a rare favor.”
“At your age?”
“I am forty. Mlle. Rivière is twenty-two or twenty-three. It is certainly a rare favor, and one which I shall perhaps not experience again if I put it aside.”
“But why put it aside?” asked Elizabeth.
And, as he did not reply, and looked at her with a curious smile, she resumed:
“But why put it aside? Berthe Rivière deserves to be loved, I can assure you. The emotion of which you speak, whose power she did not at first suspect, has slowly changed her. She has seen clearly into her own consciousness. She has grown very different in two years. She is now reserved and as trustworthy as she is pretty. I should like to see her your wife.”
She had become animated in her enthusiasm. He looked at her as if he were weighing his words, and turned around suddenly.
“Yes, but my heart is not free.”
She blushed while he continued, his eyes on the grass:
“Only die passion that filled it and which was hopeless is purified and has become a cult, a religion.”
She made a motion to stop him.
“Let me finish, Madame. I will never speak of these things again. And it does not only apply to me. I have often asked myself if a more human feeling could not exist side by side with that one, and satisfy the promise of happiness and fidelity with which I would reciprocate. Your religion does not keep you from loving. But would that be very loyal?”
Seeing her in this peaceful frame of mind, he had, in spite of himself, changed the meaning of his explanation. Elizabeth wished to get up and send him away, that he might understand that she considered as disloyalty that indirect confession which she had been obliged to hear. She remembered that he had been the first to alter her understanding of life, and remaining seated, she forgave him for the second time. But in her reply she expressed an authority which kept him at a distance, at the same time showing him the way:
“You must know yourself. This... friendship must no longer occupy your attention. You will forget it by never again seeing her who inspired it.”
“By never seeing her?”
“No. She will go away. Marry this young girl, who, as you just said, is not indifferent to you, whom you will love, whom you perhaps already love. But marry her without mental reservation.”
“I cannot.”
“Without a hidden thought. She is so young. Look at her and not at the past. Live near her and patiently form her mind. Let your life be altogether upright, without any side issues. That is the secret of happiness.”
He bowed and wished to kiss her hand. She gently drew it away. She would not even allow him this humble caress. In the long silence which followed, enwrapping them as the evening mist the sloping meadows, each was indulging in personal reflections. The air was calm; Nature was motionless. Some fruit, falling from the branches, and its hard impact against the ground, made them shudder as a call of time.
She was counting all the lost years of her own happiness, the result of her former daily routine, and was seeking by what enchantment, what witchcraft, to blot them out, to restore to her clear days, no longer troubled and cloudy. He repeated the words she had spoken:
“She will go away.”
She was going to Paris with Albert. The reconciliation, which, after a long time, he no longer doubted since the previous day, was then final. In order that he might carry away a more vivid and tender impression of her, he gazed for a long time at the young woman, seated in front of her country home, surrounded by the trees in the orchard, and caressed by the peace of the country. On this autumn evening (despite a little pallor and slimness, which would soon vanish), with her big hood, her charm of youth and the bunch of grasses which Marie Louise had laid on her knees, she symbolized that picture of hope of the blossoming earth in springtime. He contrasted her with another woman whom he had seen in spring, filled with all the melancholy of autumn. It was Anne de Sézery, on the terrace of the Luxembourg Garden, at the end of April. He had accompanied her from the Avenue de l’Observatoire to Cluny in Albert’s absence, and how strangely he had taken advantage of that tête-à-tête which he had sought with so much patience and cleverness. From tree to tree along the avenue he put off her confidence. In the garden, as they followed the stone balustrade from which one can overlook the central basin and the palace, he stopped suddenly:
“I must speak to you, Mademoiselle.”
She intuitively imagined something serious, something, even more serious than he could say, as her question indicated:
“Has our friend asked you to do so?”
“No, no!”
She was somewhat comforted.
“Well, I am listening to you.”
He began with a question:
“You are not happy. Albert is not happy.”
She tried to smile.
“Is that evident?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we prefer our unhappiness to other people’s happiness.”
“Are you sure?”
Then, with audacity, which he understood better at a distance, and which only his almost mystical passion for Elizabeth could explain, he had told her of his last conversation with Albert’s mother, and of the artless plan which she had conceived of coming to claim her son from her, who must have been convinced by time of the inefficacy of her love. He could see her face fall, her golden eyes lose their fire as he spoke. But she had not protested.
“Yes, it is just that,” she had said simply. “I have thought so. Albert must never know anything about it. Good-by, Monsieur. You have pained me. I shall finish my walk alone.”
He had been obliged to leave her thus, despite his urgent request to go back with her, in order to palliate the suffering he had made her endure. Several times he turned around to see her again, leaning on the stone balustrade between two vases, appearing smaller and smaller, until at last what a little lost creature she seemed! Ashamed of the part he had played, he had not had the strength to meet Anne and Albert together, and, as a pretext, he said he was obliged to leave. But his talk with her had its effect. It had only hastened an event which would have occurred sooner or later, and perhaps too late. Elizabeth owed to him her husband’s liberty, and the resurrection of her happiness. Yes, he had served her well. Even that generosity which she would never know, linked them together, in spite of herself. He would never forget. She would be his sorrowful secret, his Madonna, and nobody would ever know it. But would Albert entirely forget Anne de Sézery? Do not most men live with a hidden wound which reopens on bad days?
This silence could not continue. Philippe broke it with these obscure words:
“I have had news of her.”
She was then thinking of Mlle. de Sézery, for she questioned him, not without visible uneasiness:
“Where is she?”
“In India, at Poona. It is a kind of lay hospital, the Epiphany School, where they take care of invalids and bring up deserted children. She was not destined for an ordinary fate.”
Why had she written to him? Elizabeth guessed that he was not unconnected with Anne’s flight, and without ascertaining the truth of her supposition, already overcome by fear only in hearing her spoken of, she asked:
“Can you tell me what that letter contains?” He took it out of a pocketbook and gave it to her.
“Read it and destroy it. I answered it yesterday. She will never write again.”
“Have I the right?”
“Yes.”
She had just taken the envelope when Albert, having gone through the house, came out into the orchard.
“I was looking for you,” he said to his wife. Seeing Philippe, his face darkened. The day before at Mme. de Passerat’s luncheon party, it had been unbearable to him that Elizabeth’s charm should be felt by anyone but himself, and after trying impatiently to remain away until the following day, he could not finish his work without going to Saint Martin to see her again. He found her somewhat troubled, with the letter in her hand. Philippe, after a few words, rose and took leave of Elizabeth.
“I shall follow your advice, Madame.”
He shook hands with his friend, whom he would not allow to accompany him. As soon as he had gone, Albert came over to his wife, and harshly inquired:
“What advice did he want? Am I indiscreet?”
“He was telling me about his marriage.”
“With Mlle. Rivière?”
“Yes.”
“Poor girl!”
“Why?”
“Because he loves you.”
He did not notice how deeply this remark touched her. She stopped him reproachfully:
“Albert!”
“He confessed to me that he was devoted to you. Yes, he was the first to understand you. He realized that inner force which I had never been able to awaken. I am jealous of him, horribly jealous, not because I suspect you of ever having given him a word of encouragement—no suspicion could touch you when you were alone and abandoned—but because I do not acknowledge that another can know you and love you more than I do now.”
“Albert,” she murmured distractedly.
“I ought to fall on my knees before you, and at other times I long to clasp you to my heart and blot out those years which have blighted our love.” Trembling, swayed by her exaltation, she repeated:
“Albert!”
Misunderstanding her manner, he raised his arms in despair:
“Ah! I make you afraid—I see it in your eyes. But I do not dare to touch even the tips of your fingers. Since I have returned here, even when we are side by side, there is an abyss between us which we do not know how to cross. Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I am so unhappy.”
Overwhelmed, she wanted to come to him, and the letter which she had forgotten, fell to the ground. He stooped mechanically to pick it up and give it to her. Confused, she took it from his hand. He had not even seen the writing, but Elizabeth’s emotion was diverted.
“Farewell!” said he brusquely, and realizing she was repressed, he hurriedly left the orchard and rushed to the road.
“Albert!” she cried, as she followed him. Nightfall, which was coming on, hid him. A name, which they had never dared to utter, was sufficient to separate them. Neither distance nor space could do away with the past. Anne de Sézery was always there, between them.