Woman Part 7

And when the golden May daylight rouses you from bed and sends you running to the window to feel its radiant stroke on your cheek and vague longings take possession of you, it will be the fastenings of this window which will turn to let in the breath of the dawn.

The little dining-room seems somewhat less desolate than the other wan rooms. The ceiling still bears the mark of the hanging-lamp as a sign of where the kindly light came from; a border of red arabesques runs round the top of the walls, and the fireplace of russet imitation marble with its pitted traces from invisible fingers of flame makes you feel as though the grate were still warm.

The kitchen is so tiny and so like a toy that there's not a thing in it, not even an old knife left behind through oversight. In spite of the floor with tiles missing like teeth from a mouth, the sink with dried-up pores, the stove downy with rust, it is the one room that doesn't seem to be crying for help. It needs only a glimmer in the stove and savory smells to give it life.

This is the moment to look life in the face--the real life, not the one people talk about. Until now our love has rested merely upon a foundation of clay. It has been facile, scarcely tangible. I perceive it is a love to be.

Now our love must be confronted with its kingdom, must have its boundaries and landmarks fixed, must be asked to s.h.i.+ne in truth and be forced to the test. Let our love speak and inspire us. Later, when we shall have furniture around us, like words already spoken, we shall be less at ease.

"If you like, this shall be your room. It suits you. The neutral paper makes it restful for thinking, and the recess is all ready for a couch.

Look, it's waiting for you. I will take the other room because of the clothes-closet, and I'll enjoy leaning out across the white window-sill for the fresh air.

"We shall visit each other. We shall be free and easy. You will come and go and receive your friends, do as you please, without ever having to account to me.

"But we are going to suffer, perhaps, in order to remain content and preserve the mult.i.tude of joys that one experiences when alone?

"This dividing wall is nothing more, after all, than a thin membrane through which the presence in the next room will ooze. When you are surrounded by your friends in the lively hum and buzz of comradely conversation, they will suddenly notice the shadow of an intruder moving as a woman moves. In the bottom of their hearts they will have us much married, you and me--the marriage of a friend is a little like a theft--and without your suspecting it, at that very moment, in the very midst of their talk, they will leave you.

"Do you really believe we shall be happy? I, for my part, would not like your friends to desert you. It seems unfair that you should be loved the less because of love. Are you quite sure that one has the right to impose one's unalloyed hope upon a person for a lifetime? Are you sure that in the name of love the person one has chosen can remain the best of all persons?... Tell me, are you sure you will not bear me a grudge?

"And can the most beautiful union _remain_ beautiful? For we are about to sign a pact. There's no denying it. What's to be done about this transport that we are, this constant expectation, this clinging intoxication?

"You know we shall have only each other intimately. Even inanimate things will exert a tendency to influence us. When the little lodging will take on our mould and there will be chairs to hold out our habits to us and a brown pulsating clock, creature of even utterance and over-sensitive soul, the fond familiar place will weigh and impose itself upon us.

"So the host of wishes, the magnificent secrets, the kernel of sadness, the nomadic hopes must all be made to enter by this door into our a.s.sociated days? Tell me, how is one to act? Must happiness, _true_ happiness without law or bridle, also be shut up here, here and nowhere else? And must happiness be the same for the two of us who are different?

"There's a children's fairy tale that once there was a princess whose heavily embroidered robe was by a magic command made to pa.s.s through a ring.

"Lovers betrothed think they understand love. But they have not lived together--and _every day_. They don't know what that means. Those who love as in books do not contemplate a long journey when they set out together, and if the short-lived blaze vanishes at the first turning in the road, it is not a great misfortune. Another spark will do for another kindling. And there are those who _renounce_, abdicate their own selves, bend the knee, and trust to love.... But how are those to act who are not cut in heroic marble, who do not want to lie or renounce, who don't pity the _other_ one, who are not afraid of themselves, who love as people love in actual life, who are like us? Perhaps you know better than I do. You are a man and older than I am, but I--I ask myself....

"I was ready, as women are, for great impossible things. I never thought about them very clearly, but I felt my emotions pierce me like dagger thrusts. They inspired me with an all-powerful spirit, and if I had had to batter down mountains, or dash through a river of fire, or die in your stead, I should have closed my eyes and done it at one go.

"And behold the test. The test is here. Why is it that the thing one awaits and expects never is the actual test? The actual test has only a sorry way about it, a commonplace aspect, a very reduced compa.s.s; it holds nothing but monotonous moments jogging along one after the other; it stops just at the foreshortened shadow at your feet, and my arms which I was about to open are, you see, arms of lead.

"Before I entered these rooms love looked like you and the future shone like a festival just beginning. What is left of all that? I no longer hear the chimes of golden promises ringing in my ears. I no longer feel the hosannas of my heart, and it's as though I scarcely saw you in the gloomy corner where you are standing."

I see the little dwelling where the hesitant evening has not yet taken its place. The silence is laid bare, life is showing us her skeleton; through the mottled panes one sees that the hour has red eyes and the walls confronting us in their inflexible truthfulness have become our four upright witnesses.

I feel like running away.

XI

When everybody was a.s.signed a seat in the carriages, whips cracked and the procession got under way.

The carriage at the head in a splash of suns.h.i.+ne drew the whole line after it, shattering the ma.s.sive silence of the street. The occupants were still settling themselves, the ladies with a great rustling of silk and a vast deal of twisting and turning before they got themselves comfortably installed, while the men were obliged to sit forward on the edge of the seats and be very careful of the disposition of their legs.

"Lovely weather," said one of the two ladies, "they're lucky." No one answered. They held themselves in abeyance for the usual conviviality to come later, and pa.s.sed the time looking through the lowered windows at the unknown quarter through which the procession was winding, where the houses sank upon each other and the people in workaday clothes stood still to stare with eyes of envy.

The second carriage had set off at a rapid pace; the coachman was holding in his frisky pair.

"Say what you like, she's a beautiful bride."

Like most very old ladies, this one suggested widowhood. Even in talking she exhaled the attenuated sadness that invests old people with a protective halo.

"Oh, she's just like the rest. What's in her favor is that she's fair. A brunette bride always makes you think of a fly in milk. At least, that's my opinion...."

That was a good start. One remark led to another; the conversation livened up. The ladies in their silk gowns felt conscious of sharing in pomp and an important ceremony.

"I was told she ran away from home last year, with...."

The carriage jolted and zigzagged, but the group sat undisturbed. Each felt drawn to the other three by a decidedly increasing sympathy.

What spirit haunted these carriages? All these people were held by an obsession. They had seen the bride in her starry whiteness and persistently retained an image with a halo round it. The bride was the sole topic.

"I don't approve of a double standard," said another lady. "They did a tremendous amount for her sister's wedding; you know they did, while they're not doing a thing for this poor child." A shrug of the shoulders. "I don't think it's fair."

Everything she said came out with a ripple in it from the unevenness of the paving. Her neighbor was plunged in dreams, unaware. A day triumphal arose out of the distant past when she too walked in white.

"Twenty-seven years like one month! How time does fly!"

They warmed up to their subject.

"She is making a very bad match: he hasn't a cent...."

"You forget she's well over twenty-two. A girl has got to take a husband when she finds one. Husbands don't grow in the front-yard."

The perspiration came out in beads on their fleshy foreheads. A stop.

What had happened? A block? An accident? Plumed hats were stuck out of carriage doors. "Get in again, madam, you can't see anything. You'll break your aigrette. If I tell you...."

The procession shortened like a snake drawing in its coils.

"Ha, ha! I know someone who will not find it dull to-night!"

Their laughter took on a sharper edge; smiles lurked in the corners of their mouths just deep enough to show that they understood, that they had their own recollections and at the same time were in well-bred company.... This lady with the air of knowing a thing or two....

What?... Without waiting to be importuned, she drew herself up heroically and whispered something over the frilled hat of the little girl beside her. They threw themselves back beaming, stuffed full.

"Impossible!"

Boots creaked, gowns rustled. The carriages began to clatter through the streets again.

The laughter of young people. Not very loud. Hiding something sweet and indefinably solemn. She was only fourteen. She had nothing but her thin little feelings, which, however, kept her straight and haughty as an Infanta. By leaning over slightly she succeeded in seeing the bride. The bride ... the white word flitted about her like a light ball.... But straightway she saw the bride her eyes fell. The same emotion had surprised her on Sunday at ma.s.s when she saw the host rise in a beam of light, and also when she listened to the hand-organ grind out arias.

Ecstasy leapt within her and hope sang: "Me too some day...."

The last carriage kept behind; a low coupe with drawn shades. A stiffly wired bouquet shed its fragrance within. As it sped rapidly by, heads turned around for a long look and for the sake of the virginal memory it left behind.