Part 13 (1/2)
I listened to this dreadful cry in silence, holding her moist hand in mine that was still more moist. I pressed it with a force to which Henriette replied with an equal pressure.
”Where are you?” cried the count, who came towards us, bareheaded.
Ever since my return he had insisted on sharing our interviews,--either because he wanted amus.e.m.e.nt, or feared the countess would tell me her sorrows and complain to me, or because he was jealous of a pleasure he did not share.
”How he follows me!” she cried, in a tone of despair. ”Let us go into the orchard, we shall escape him. We can stoop as we run by the hedge, and he will not see us.”
We made the hedge a rampart and reached the enclosure, where we were soon at a good distance from the count in an alley of almond-trees.
”Dear Henriette,” I then said to her, pressing her arm against my heart and stopping to contemplate her in her sorrow, ”you have guided me with true knowledge along the perilous ways of the great world; let me in return give you some advice which may help you to end this duel without witnesses, in which you must inevitably be worsted, for you are fighting with unequal weapons. You must not struggle any longer with a madman--”
”Hus.h.!.+” she said, das.h.i.+ng aside the tears that rolled from her eyes.
”Listen to me, dear,” I continued. ”After a single hour's talk with the count, which I force myself to endure for love of you, my thoughts are bewildered, my head heavy; he makes me doubtful of my own intellect; the same ideas repeated over and over again seem to burn themselves on my brain. Well-defined monomanias are not communicated; but when the madness consists in a distorted way of looking at everything, and when it lurks under all discussions, then it can and does injure the minds of those who live with it. Your patience is sublime, but will it not end in disordering you? For your sake, for that of your children, change your system with the count. Your adorable kindness has made him selfish; you have treated him as a mother treats the child she spoils; but now, if you want to live--and you do want it,” I said, looking at her, ”use the control you have over him. You know what it is; he loves you and he fears you; make him fear you more; oppose his erratic will with your firm will. Extend your power over him, confine his madness to a moral sphere just as we lock maniacs in a cell.”
”Dear child,” she said, smiling bitterly, ”a woman without a heart might do it. But I am a mother; I should make a poor jailer. Yes, I can suffer, but I cannot make others suffer. Never!” she said, ”never! not even to obtain some great and honorable result. Besides, I should have to lie in my heart, disguise my voice, lower my head, degrade my gesture--do not ask of me such falsehoods. I can stand between Monsieur de Mortsauf and his children, I willingly receive his blows that they may not fall on others; I can do all that, and will do it to conciliate conflicting interests, but I can do no more.”
”Let me wors.h.i.+p thee, O saint, thrice holy!” I exclaimed, kneeling at her feet and kissing her robe, with which I wiped my tears. ”But if he kills you?” I cried.
She turned pale and said, lifting her eyes to heaven:
”G.o.d's will be done!”
”Do you know that the king said to your father, 'So that devil of a Mortsauf is still living'?”
”A jest on the lips of the king,” she said, ”is a crime when repeated here.”
In spite of our precautions the count had tracked us; he now arrived, bathed in perspiration, and sat down under a walnut-tree where the countess had stopped to give me that rebuke. I began to talk about the vintage; the count was silent, taking no notice of the dampness under the tree. After a few insignificant remarks, interspersed with pauses that were very significant, he complained of nausea and headache; but he spoke gently, and did not appeal to our pity, or describe his sufferings in his usual exaggerated way. We paid no attention to him. When we reached the house, he said he felt worse and should go to bed; which he did, quite naturally and with much less complaint than usual. We took advantage of the respite and went down to our dear terrace accompanied by Madeleine.
”Let us get that boat and go upon the river,” said the countess after we had made a few turns. ”We might go and look at the fis.h.i.+ng which is going on to-day.”
We went out by the little gate, found the punt, jumped into it and were presently paddling up the Loire. Like three children amused with trifles, we looked at the sedges along the banks and the blue and green dragon-flies; the countess wondered perhaps that she was able to enjoy such peaceful pleasures in the midst of her poignant griefs; but Nature's calm, indifferent to our struggles, has a magic gift of consolation. The tumults of a love full of restrained desires harmonize with the wash of the water; the flowers that the hand of man has never wilted are the voice of his secret dreams; the voluptuous swaying of the boat vaguely responds to the thoughts that are floating in his soul.
We felt the languid influence of this double poesy. Words, tuned to the diapason of nature, disclosed mysterious graces; looks were impa.s.sioned rays sharing the light shed broadcast by the sun on the glowing meadows.
The river was a path along which we flew. Our spirit, no longer kept down by the measured tread of our footsteps, took possession of the universe. The abounding joy of a child at liberty, graceful in its motions, enticing in its play, is the living expression of two freed souls, delighting themselves by becoming ideally the wondrous being dreamed of by Plato and known to all whose youth has been filled with a blessed love. To describe to you that hour, not in its indescribable details but in its essence, I must say to you that we loved each other in all the creations animate and inanimate which surrounded us; we felt without us the happiness our own hearts craved; it so penetrated our being that the countess took off her gloves and let her hands float in the water as if to cool an inward ardor. Her eyes spoke; but her mouth, opening like a rose to the breeze, gave voice to no desire. You know the harmony of deep tones mingling perfectly with high ones? Ever, when I hear it now, it recalls to me the harmony of our two souls in this one hour, which never came again.
”Where do you fish?” I asked, ”if you can only do so from the banks you own?”
”Near Pont-de-Ruan,” she replied. ”Ah! we now own the river from Pont-de-Ruan to Clochegourde; Monsieur de Mortsauf has lately bought forty acres of the meadow lands with the savings of two years and the arrearage of his pension. Does that surprise you?”
”Surprise me?” I cried; ”I would that all the valley were yours.” She answered me with a smile. Presently we came below the bridge to a place where the Indre widens and where the fis.h.i.+ng was going on.
”Well, Martineau?” she said.
”Ah, Madame la comtesse, such bad luck! We have fished up from the mill the last three hours, and have taken nothing.”
We landed near them to watch the drawing in of the last net, and all three of us sat down in the shade of a ”bouillard,” a sort of poplar with a white bark, which grows on the banks of the Danube and the Loire (probably on those of other large rivers), and sheds, in the spring of the year, a white and silky fluff, the covering of its flower. The countess had recovered her august serenity; she half regretted the unveiling of her griefs, and mourned that she had cried aloud like Job, instead of weeping like the Magdalen,--a Magdalen without loves, or galas, or prodigalities, but not without beauty and fragrance. The net came in at her feet full of fish; tench, barbels, pike, perch, and an enormous carp, which floundered about on the gra.s.s.
”Madame brings luck!” exclaimed the keeper.
All the laborers opened their eyes as they looked with admiration at the woman whose fairy wand seemed to have touched the nets. Just then the huntsman was seen urging his horse over the meadows at a full gallop.