The Choice of Life Part 12

She is to me the incarnation of one of my most cherished ideas. Until I know all, I shall suspend my judgment and my intentions will not change.

I believe that every seed in the rich soil of a n.o.ble heart has to fulfil its tender, gracious work of love and kindness.

I cannot, therefore, lay upon Rose the burden of my disappointment last night; and my affection suggests a thousand good reasons for absolving her. Is this wrong? And are we to consider, with the sapient ones of the earth, that our vision is never clear until the day when we no longer have the strength to love, believe and admire? I do not think so.

Setting aside the careful judgment which we exercise in the case of our companion for life, it is certain that our opinions on the others, on our chance acquaintances, are but an illusion and owe far more to our souls than to theirs. In our brief and crowded lives, we have barely time to catch a note of beauty here, to perceive a sign of truth there.

If, therefore, we have to pa.s.s days and years without understanding everything and loving everything, if we have to remain under a misapprehension, why not choose that which is on the side of love and gladdens our hearts?

We should take care of the images that adorn our soul. Our women's minds would possess more graciousness if we bestowed upon them a little of the attention which we lavish on our bodies.

My beautiful Rose is kind and loving; I will deck her with my hopes as long as I can. When enthusiasm is shared, it is easy to keep it up. It weighs lightly in spite of its infinite preciousness. If I ever find it a strain, the reason will be that Rose did not really bear her share of it. It will become a burden and I shall relinquish it. All that she will have of me will be the careless charity bestowed upon the poor.

2

"Paris, ... 19--

"If you knew, Rose, how I miss the lovely autumn landscapes! The weather was so bright on the day of my departure that, to enjoy it to the full, I bicycled to the railway-town. After leaving the village, I took the road through the wood and it was delightful to skim along through the dead leaves, the softly-streaming tears of autumn. Sometimes, when a gust of wind blew, I went faster; and little yellow waves seemed to rise and fall and chase one another all around me. Some of the trees, not yet bare, but only thinned, traced an exquisite russet lacework against the blue sky; and the birds warbled, cooed and whistled as in spring. I saw the noisy, crowded streets of Paris waiting for me at the end of my day; and this gave a flavour of sadness to the calm of the high roads, the pureness of the air, the dear beauty of the lanes....

"It was quite early in the morning and the fields were still bathed in a dewy radiance. I sat down for a little while on a roadside bank; an immense plain began at the level of my face and ended by rising slowly towards the sky. It was a very young field of corn, which the splendour of the day turned into pearly down. I could have looked at it for ever, at one moment letting the full glory of it burst on my dazzled eyes and then gradually lowering my lids down to the tiny threads that trembled and glittered in my breath. Then my mouth formed itself into a kiss; and I amused myself by slowly and lovingly making the cool pearls of the morning die on my warm lips...."

3

"Paris, ... 19--

"I see you, my Rose, laying supper in the wretched kitchen, while the farm-hands gather round the hearth. I like to picture you going cautiously through the old woman's room at night, so as to write to me by the rays of the moon, without disturbing the household with an unwonted light. You come and sit on the ledge of the open window, to receive the full benefit of the moonbeams, and then you write on your knee those trembling lines which convey your emotion to me.

"I see you in the wonderful setting of the silver-flooded orchard. The golden silk of your long tresses embroiders your white night-dress. Your eyes are filled with peace; you are beautiful like that; and there is nothing so sweet as an orchard in the moonlight. The apple-trees seem to lay their even shadows softly upon the pallor of the gra.s.s; and their ordered quiet spreads a serene and simple joy over nature's sleep....

"Rose, at the moving period that brought us together, how I would that your sweet composure had been sometimes a little ruffled! It would have appeared to me of a finer quality had I found it more variable. A woman's reason should be less rigid; and I should loathe mine if it were not a leaven of indulgence and forgiveness in my life....

"Oh, Rose, Rose, tell me that the coldness of your soul springs from its wonderful purity! Tell me that your heart is so deep that the sound of the joys which fall into it cannot be heard outside! Tell me that it is the storm of your life that has crushed the flowers of your sensibility for the time....

"I well know that our interest cannot always be active, that it must be suppressed; I know that indifference is essential to the happy equilibrium of our faculties and that, beside the exaltation of our soul, it is the untroubled lake fertilising and refres.h.i.+ng the earth.

And you will find, Rose, how necessary it is to be on our guard against it in our judgments and how it can take possession of some natures and slowly destroy them under a hateful appearance of wisdom! I would rather discover ugly and active defects in you than that beautiful impa.s.siveness. Besides, as I have told you many a time, the excellence that seems to me ideal has its weaknesses. It is rather a way of perfection for our poor humanity, a way that is all the better because it is adapted for our feeble and wavering steps!...

"Once, at harvest-time, I met you in the little road near the church. It was the end of the day; and you were coming back from the fields. You were standing high on a swaying mountain of hay, you were driving a great farm-horse, which disappeared under its load. Your tall figure stood out against the sky ablaze with the last rays of the sun; and I still see your look of absolute unconcern. You wore a long blue ap.r.o.n that came all round you and a bodice of the same colour. In that blue faded by the sun, with your hair a pale cloud in the gold of the sunset, you looked like an archangel taken from some Italian fresco.

"As you pa.s.sed me, you timidly returned my smile; and I followed you for a long time with my eyes. Do you still remember the trouble you had in pa.s.sing under the dark vault of the old oaks? Every now and again, a branch, longer and lower than the others, threatened your face: you caught it with a quick movement and lifted it over your head. At one time, there were so many of those branches and they were so heavy that you were obliged to lie back on the hay, holding both arms over your face to save it from being struck. Then, when the lumbering wagon stopped in front of the farm, my archangel stepped down humbly into the mud, took the horse by the bridle and disappeared from sight....

"The reason why this memory now comes back to me is that I find in it some affinity with what I would ask of your reason: those simple movements by which you will be able to thrust aside the bad habits that disfigure you! May your reason be the beautiful archangel to guide and sway your humble life, but may it sometimes know how to descend and stoop in obedience to the necessities of chance. Even as, on the day when I saw you, you could not alter the road which you had to follow, so you cannot alter your real nature; but you must 'know the way,' you must guide and control."

4

"Paris,... 19--

"I am longing to have you here so that I may watch carefully over the slightest details of your life and put your temperament incessantly to the test. They say that enthusiasm cannot be acquired. But how can they tell that it is not merely sleeping, unless they try to awaken it? Those around us have sometimes, quite unconsciously, an unhappy way of subduing and oppressing us.

"Even the most emotional have often to struggle lest their souls should shrink in the presence of certain people, like the flowers whose petals exposed to the light timidly hide their hearts as soon as day declines.

You, whom a placid humour reserves for gentle emotions, must try not to let that very beautiful nature exceed its rights, or cast an unnecessary shadow over your feelings, or ever check your finest bursts of admiration with doubt and misgiving. Circ.u.mstances have failed to form your taste; and at first you will pa.s.s marvels by and prefer to marvel at some hideous thing. Never mind! I like to think that, after all, the best part of a n.o.ble work is the enthusiasm which it arouses and that the greatest dignity of art lies in the flame which it kindles.

"Time was when I wept in front of things that now leave me unmoved; but, in captivating my childish heart, did they not accomplish their task even as those do now which quicken the beating of my woman's heart?...

"Learn to appreciate life and to look upon all that does not enhance it as vain and wearisome. As there is nothing in this world which has not its relation to life, in loving it, my Roseline, you will understand everything and accept everything.

"I want your eyes, when presenting to your mind whatever is best in a great work, to learn the luxury of lingering on it; I want your ears to perceive the wonderful, voluptuous charm of sounds, your hands to rejoice in things soft to the touch; I want you to learn how to breathe with delight and how to eat with pleasure. Don't smile. None of all this is childish; it is made up of tiny joyous movements which the simplest existence can command when it knows how to recognise them. And yet ...

and yet I feel a selfish wish to leave you still in your prison, so that your desire to escape from it may keep on growing! I love that desire, I love your actual distress, I love the wretchedness of your past, the wretchedness of your present, I love you to see difficulties in the way of your deliverance....

"Oh, if those obstacles could give you, as they do me, that sort of intoxication for which I cherish them! When at last I see the goal beyond them, my heart leaps for joy. But hardly is the goal attained when I rejoice in it only because it brings me to another, higher and more distant; and my imagination resumes its course, never looking back except to measure the road already traversed.... In this way, never satisfied and yet happy in the mere fact that I am advancing and in the knowledge that no more can be asked of a poor human will, I have the feeling that my life never stops."

5

"Paris,... 19--

"Dearest, it is evening; it is cold and wet out of doors; but peace and gaiety shed their radiance in the great drawing-room which you will soon know, white and bare as a convent-parlour, living and bright as joy itself. Chance gave me to-day a long day of solitude, like those at Sainte-Colombe. And yet the hours pa.s.sed before me and I could not make them fruitful. When such favours come to me in the midst of excitement, I am too glad of them to be able to profit by them; I can but feel them; and they control me without leaving me time to control them in my turn.

I listen to my life, I contemplate it. It has too many opposing voices, too many absolutely different shapes; my consciousness is lost in it as a precious stone is swallowed up by the sea. I blush at such chaos. My soul appears to me only fit to compare with one of those wretched table-cloths which country dressmakers patch together, at the end of the year, out of the thousand sc.r.a.ps of the thousand different materials which they have cut during the season. But is not this the natural result of the diversity of our feminine souls?

"Antagonistic elements have long been at war in me; and the violence of their blows has sometimes torn my life asunder. I no longer have cause to complain of it now, because time and love have helped me to reconcile them. Our powers are injurious to us so long as we do not know how to use them. I have suffered, I still suffer from my creeping knowledge. I would like to increase the pace of yours. Is it impossible?

"And so I dreamed all day and, of course, I dreamed of you, the Rose whom I am always picturing. I imagined that we had arranged to see each other this evening. You walked into the drawing-room, drenched with the rain, pink-cheeked with the cold. You looked very pretty, in a frock that suited your face and your figure. You knew how to hold yourself!

You knew how to walk! Your movements were graceful! After talking for a little while by the fire, we both sat down at the table, under the lamp-light, and there began our usual work. What work it was I cannot tell; but it will be easy for us to choose: we have everything to learn; and I feel that both our minds must follow the same path for some time to come. By placing the same objects before them, we shall succeed in discovering what you really feel and what you really wish. That is the only way of delivering your mind from my involuntary dominion and of distinguis.h.i.+ng your image from mine. I have no other ideal than to feel myself actually moving, even though the movement be an inconsistent one. How could I invite you to a similarity which is nothing but a perpetual dissimilarity?

"You must cease to be an echo. I shall map out no course for you; and we do not know what will become of you. Let us first walk at random. The goal is not always visible; but very often the road travelled tells us which road to take next. It matters little what work we do, provided that it gives a sort of tone to our meetings and that it regulates our hours. The freaks of chance and the youthfulness of our minds will always furnish colour and fancy in plenty....

"Understand me, Roseline: it is not a friend that I am seeking, not one of those uncertain, light-hearted, capricious relations which enc.u.mber life without adding to it. I am dreaming like a child, of a woman who should realise the greatest possible amount of beauty in her mind and person and who should add her strength to mine in the service of the same ideals. Rose, are you that woman? Will you help me to deliver other women still who are oppressed by circ.u.mstances or people, to deliver those who are shackled by prejudice or fear, to deliver the beauty that is unable to show itself and the will that dares not act? To deliver!

What a magic word! Rose, does it ring in your heart as it rings in mine?...

"But, as you see, my dreams are carrying me too far; and I blush at my audacity. When I look at you and judge myself, it often seems to me that what I have done for you is only a form of vanity, that all my generous aspirations are but vanity!... Is it true?

"And, if it were! Is it not still greater and more foolish vanity to require that all our actions should spring from pure and sublime motives? If, in contributing to your development, I am conscious that I am a.s.sisting my own, will yours be any the less complete for that? If I no longer know which is dearer, you, who represent my dreams, or my dreams, which have become embodied in yourself, will you on that account be less fondly and less n.o.bly loved?

"And, if it be true that vanity there is, is the vanity vain that sheds happiness and joy?"

CHAPTER II

1

A long month has pa.s.sed since my return to Paris. Twice Rose has written to announce her arrival: I waited for her at the station and she did not come. Poor child! We all know how difficult it is to break one's bonds, even the most detested. A thousand invisible ties keep us in the place where chance has set us; and, when we are about to rend them, they become so many unsuspected pangs. Instinct blindly resists all change, as though it were unable to distinguish what reason dimly descries beyond the trials and dangers of the moment. Rose is leaving nothing but wretchedness; in front of her is a fair and pleasant prospect.

Nevertheless, she hesitates and she is unhappy.

In my present restless state, I no longer know what I wish. If she came to-morrow, should I be glad or not? I cannot tell. I can no longer tell.

Those who do not suffer from this absurd mania for action escape those painful moments when we are at the mercy of a distracted will that no longer knows exactly what it ought to want. In absence, our feelings pa.s.s through so many contradictory phases! When the hour of return comes, finding it impossible to collect so many conflicting sentiments or to bring back to one point so many different desires, we surrender ourselves to the impression of the moment; and this impression often has nothing in common with what we had previously felt and hoped.