The Choice of Life Part 3

I put my arm round her neck:

"It's too late," I whispered, kissing her. "To discuss the idea of rebellion means to give way to it. Resist no longer, Roseline; let yourself go."

Her incredulous eyes remained fixed on mine; and she said, slowly:

"There is one thing that puzzles me. How am I to express it? I should like to know why you take so much interest in me: I am neither a friend nor a relation." And she added, with a knowing air, "You see, what you are doing doesn't seem quite natural!"

My heart shrank. So this peasant, this rough, simple girl knew the laws of the world! She knew that, even in the manner of doing good, there are customs to be followed, "conventions to be observed!" Ah, poor Rose, though your instinctive reason is like a broad white fabric which circ.u.mstances have not yet soiled, your character already has ugly streaks in it; the voice of the mult.i.tude spoke through your lovely mouth and, for a brief second, it became disfigured in my eyes! Alas, if I wore a queer head-dress and a veil down my back and a chaplet hanging by my side and said to you, "My child, I wish to save your soul," would you not think my insistence quite simple and natural?

Taking her poor, deformed hands in mine, I knelt down beside her:

"Rose, the happiness which I find in helping you is a sufficient motive for me; and I will offer you no others.... I give you my confidence blindly, for one can do nothing without faith. I give you my confidence and I ask for yours. Will you vouchsafe it me?"

The sun is streaming upon us; our faces are close together; my smile calls for hers; my eyes gaze into hers; and I repeat my prayer.

Then she whispers, s.h.i.+ly:

"You see ... I have been deceived once; perhaps you don't know...."

I interrupted her:

"I know that we must have been deceived twenty times before we learn to give our confidence blindly, like a little child!... I know that we must have been perpetually deceived before we understand that nothing proves anything; that everything is unforeseen, inconsistent, and unexpected; and that we must just simply 'believe,' because it is good to believe and because it is sweet to offer to others what we ourselves are unhappy enough to lack."

She went on:

"But what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to go away from here."

"Why?"

"Because you are wretched here."

"Has any one said so?"

"What does it matter what any one has said? I have only to look at you to see that you are not happy. Oh, please don't regard this as an act of charity, I would not even dare to talk about kindness! The interest that impels me is one which you do not yet know; it looks to none for recompense; it is its own reward. It is the mere joy, the mere delight of knowledge.... Do you understand?"

She shook her head; and I began to laugh:

"I suppose I really am a little obscure!... But why do you force me to explain myself now? You learn to understand me by degrees.... I am leading you towards a goal of which I am almost as ignorant as you are; I am only the guide waving a hand towards the roads which he himself has taken and never knowing what the traveller will see or feel in the depths of his being."

She was going to speak, but I placed my hand on her lips:

"Hus.h.!.+ I ask nothing more of you. I shall know how to win your confidence."

I feel that she is silenced but not convinced. Hers is not a character to be thus persuaded: she will wait for deeds before judging the sincerity of words. I feel clearly that she is searching and judging me, while I myself am engaged in discovering her; and I shall have some curiosity in bending over the untroubled waters of that soul in order to see my image there, as soon as there is sufficient light to reflect my image.

CHAPTER VII

1

Rose is already almost happy. Hope is penetrating her life; and the moments of rest filter into her days of wearisome toil like the cool water trickling through the rocks.

As soon as she can get away on any excuse, she runs across to me.

Flushed and laughing, she hurls herself into my arms with all the violence of a catastrophe; she crushes my cheek with a vehement kiss which waits for no response; and my hair catches in the rough hands squeezing my head. Smiling, I cannot help warding off the attack, while she pours out a torrent of incoherent words at the top of her voice....

During our early talks, I tried speaking very quietly, as a hint that she should do the same. She would shake the house with the thunder of her most intimate confidences, bellowed after the fas.h.i.+on of the peasants, who are accustomed to keep up a conversation from one end of a field to the other. As I obtained no result, I had to speak to her about it; and, because I did so as delicately as possible, in order not to wound her feelings, she burst into a roar of laughter which showed me that her rustic life had robbed her of all sensitiveness.

Being now authorised to admonish her at all times with regard to her gestures, her voice and her accent, I often make her repeat the same sentence; and, when I at last hear her natural voice, her original sweet and attractive voice, to which the music is beginning to return, s.h.i.+ly and timidly, my heart overflows with joy. But, two minutes after, she is again bawling out her most trivial remarks, with a cheerful unconcern that disarms my wrath. Then I plead for silence as I would for mercy, draw her down upon my lap, take her head in my arms and nurse her as I would a child.

2

The stillness is so intense in the grove where we are sitting side by side, I am so anxious for her to feel it, that I become impatient and irritable. When I am with her, I am in a perpetual ferment. Her beauty and her coa.r.s.eness hurt me, like two ill-matched colours that attract and wound the eyes. I calm myself by scattering all my thoughts over her promiscuously; and, though most of them are carried away by the wind, I imagine that I am sprinkling them on her life to make it blossom anew.

"I am nursing you in my arms to wake you, my Roseline, just as one nurses children to put them to sleep. See what poor creatures we are! As a rule, it is the conventions and constraint of our upbringing, with all its artificiality and falsehood, that divide us. To-day, it is the opposite that rises between you and me and spoils our happiness! I have often longed to meet a woman who was so simple as to be almost uncivilised; and, now that you are here, I dread your gestures and your voice, which grate upon me and annoy me!"

"But am I not simple?" Rose asks, ingenuously.

"People generally confuse simplicity with ignorance, too often also with silliness--which is not the case with you," I added, with a smile.

"Real, that is to say, conscious simplicity is not even recognised; and, when it becomes active, it appears to vulgar minds a danger that must be averted. The better to attack it, they disfigure it. It is this proud and n.o.ble grace that I want you to acquire. Look, it may be compared with this diamond which I wear on my finger. The stone is absolutely simple; and yet through how many hands has it pa.s.sed before becoming so!

How many transformations has it undergone! How magnificent is its bare simplicity when set off by the plain gold ring! It is the same with us.

For simplicity to be beautiful in us, we must have cut and polished our soul and person many times over. Above all, we must have learnt the harmony of things and become fixed in that knowledge, like the stone which you see held in these gold claws."

She asked, with an effort to modulate her voice:

"Oughtn't I to take you for my model?"

"No, Rose! You frighten me when you say that! You must not think of it.

Listen to me: if ever we are permitted to imitate any one, it is only in the pains which she herself takes to improve herself. As for me, I wanted to achieve simplicity and I looked for it as one looks for a spot that is difficult to reach and easy to miss. For a long time, I wandered beyond it. Rather than stoop to false customs, to lying conventions, I followed the strangest fancies.... Now it all makes me laugh."

"Makes you laugh?"

"Yes, past errors are dead branches that make our present life burn more brightly. But, when I see how I judge my former selves, I become suspicious as to what I may soon think of my actual self; and therefore I do not wish you to take me as an example."

Rose was still lying in my arms; and her beautiful eyes were looking up at me. I raised her head in my hands and whispered, tenderly:

"I feel that you understand me, that my words touch you, that you trust me and that you love me deep down in your heart; I feel that you also will soon be able to speak and unburden yourself freely, to be silent amid silence and peaceful amid the peace of things...."

3

The girl rose to her feet, with a glint of emotion animating her features; and, as though to escape my eyes, she took a few steps in the garden. While she was hidden by the bend of the narrow path fenced by the tall sunflowers, my heart was filled with misgiving: her step was so heavy, so clumsy! Would she ever be able to improve her walk? Judging by the ponderous rhythm of her hips, one would always think that she was carrying invisible burdens at the end of each of her drooping arms....

But she soon returned; and her fair countenance was so adorable amid the golden glory of the great flowers that I could not suppress a cry of admiration. She came towards me smiling; and, to protect herself a little from the blinding sunlight, she was holding both hands over her head. Was it simply the curve of her raised arms that thus transfigured her whole bearing, that reduced the unwieldiness of her figure and made its lines freer? It was, no doubt; but it was also the soft breeze which now blew against her and accentuated the movement of her limbs by plastering her thin cotton skirt against them. And the heavy gait now seemed stately; and the excessive stride appeared virile and bold. I watched the humble worker in the fields, the poor farm-girl; and I thought of the proud _Victory_ whom my mind pictured enfolding all the beauties of the Louvre in her mighty wings!