CHAPTER XII
SATIATED, languid with that fatigue which is a blessing to the body and a joy for the lightened brain, Hortense was thinking. She was not sorry to be returning home. The journey—what better pretext could there be for the headaches which demand darkness and silence, or long morning hours in bed, for siestas?
"I must sleep off my love, as drunkards say that one must sleep off one's wine. But what a horrid comparison! I shall dream deliciously. My lover, I have only to shut my eyes to see you, happy in my happiness, and to feel your dear caresses. Tell me, are you pleased with me? What must I do to be still more your mistress? Yes, I ought not to have gone away; I ought to have stayed with you, at your orders, forgetting everything that is not you. You should have run and overtaken me, kept me, locked me up! But listen, I shall go and see you every week. Oh! how gladly I shall tell lies? How pleasant it will be for me to look M. de la Mesangerie in the face while he reads around my eyes only the innocent fatigue of a long journey!"
The delirium of the senses invaded all her life. She scarcely remembered the events that had preceded her trip to Compiègne. She spent more than an hour wondering if there were round about St. Lô, or in the forest of Cerisy, any of these oceans of bracken. She could not think of any; but she would look...
M. de la Mesangerie, who was waiting for her at the station, thought she looked tired. She was not tired; she was in a state of hallucination. However, she had enough presence of mind to reproach her husband for having deserted her. Thus, she haden't dare fix definitely on the furniture which they had almost chosen together; she had spent two days of indecision in the Louvre stores, tiring every one, including herself.
"You must go back there by yourself," she said, "it will be your punishment."
M. de la Mesangerie was flattered. But there was another misfortune: the toys for the children had been forgotten. Hortense felt rather ashamed when she confessed this; she also inwardly regretted such an oversight.
"I am a lover, but I am also a mother."
For the first time the possibility of a conflict between two tendencies of her heart occurred to her. A few minutes' shopping in the town repaired her omissions, and meanwhile opportunity to send a post-card to Barnavast. After that she abandoned herself, with a certain pleasure, to the re-discovery of familiar landscapes: they were not so different as she might have thought.
Leonor went back with no lyrical ideas in his head, but none the less very well satisfied.
"I have a mistress of the very kind I wanted. Libertinage and sentiment. The mixture has a very piquant savour. But I didn't believe her capable of so much boldness. She would never have dared in her own surroundings. People only become themselves out of their native surroundings: they either die or else they develop according to their own physiological logic. Breton girls, out of whom Paris sometimes makes such agreeable little drabs, are dreamy little prudes in the shade of their village belfry. Hortense is, as was said of Marion, "naturally lascivious;" she might have died without knowing the art of fruitfully employing this precious temperament. She seemed so awkward and shame-faced when she abandoned herself at those first meetings of ours. She loves me. But mayn't she perhaps love me too much? Leave her husband! No, she must remain my secret."
He was in a very good humor, and took an interest in the trees and rivers and houses that he passed. The monotony of the apple orchards and the fields of cows did not bore him in the least. Having nothing to desire, he was enjoying the mere process of living.
He stopped at Carentan to look for a house in which he could hide a bed, failed to find one but discovered a very decent furnished room. The skipper of an English coasting steamer occupied it sometimes, but the people would be happy to have a more sober tenant. Everything smelt strongly of whiskey. He made the bargain, had the room cleaned, paid well and made no concealment of his intentions. "Oh yes," they answered, "the other tenant used to bring them back with him too. It's all right provided there's no noise."
"Them, he thought; that's what she'll be for these people. Just one of them.
He left them and strolled along the shore to Grandcamp, thinking of nothing but the little sensations of the moment. He was not one of those who complain that the sea-side is fringed with houses, that there are shelters where one can take refuge from wind and rain, iced drinks to melt the salt out of one's throat, board and lodgings and the movement of a second-rate, but sometimes curious, humanity. These little boys destined to become gross males, little girls whom time will turn into pretentious young ladies and rich middle class brides—what pretty and delicate animals they are! Much more amusing than little dogs or kittens! He had often pondered on the mystery of intelligence among children. How is it that these subtle creatures are so quickly transformed into imbeciles? Why should the flower of these fine graceful plants be silliness?
"But isn't it the same with animals, and especially among the animals that approach our physiology most closely? The great apes, so intelligent in their youth, become idiotic and cruel as soon as they reach puberty. There is a cape there which they never double. A few men succeed; their intelligence escapes shipwreck, and they float free and smiling on the tranquillized sea. Sex is an absinthe whose strength only the strong can stand; it poisons the blood of the commonalty of men. Women succumb even more surely to this crisis. Those who have been intelligent in their critical age is past. In both sexes there are two successive crisis: the sexual crisis and the sensual crisis. The first comes at a fixed period for the individuals of the same race and the same environment. The second generally coincides with 'the completion of growth, with the state of physiological perfection. Sometimes, when decline is beginning, a third crisis occurs, which is like the first, inasmuch as it almost always brings with it a condition of sentimentality. Hervart, I feel almost sure, is going through this crisis now; Hortense and I are at the second; Rose is undergoing the first."
Leonor, like many of his contemporaries, despised his profession. He was an architect, but his desire was to write scientific works, showing that physiology is the base of all the so-called psychical phenomena. All the acts which men call virtuous or vicious were, he considered, made inevitable by the state of the organs and the disposition of the nervous system. Nothing made him want to laugh so much as the pretentions of cold-blooded women who make a merit of their chastity; and he was amazed, after so much scientific data, at the way in which men went on considering the explosions of the organism as voluntary or involuntary. The influence of conscience on human conduct seemed to him null. He had demonstrated this to one of his friends, a master in an ecclesiastical school, by means of a grandfather clock which stood in his study. "What you call conscience, "he said, "is the weight that works the striking apparatus. But I can take off that weight and the clock will go on making the hours without striking them. "This friend had confessed that his own very real chastity was entirely involuntary: women roused no desire in him. He had once made the experiment and had obtained, after the greatest difficulty, only a most disappointing result. "I believe," he added, "that most of my colleagues are like me. Some of them, more favoured by nature, employ their faculties in secret; another has a private vice; and I know one who is a danger for children. For the most part we are chaste by the will of nature herself. Debauchery would be a torture for me. I am only interested in mathematics."
Leonor, however, had no intention of succumbing to the embraces of the sensual crisis.
"Let me profit by this monetary disposition, but let me preserve at the same time a certain spirit. I musn't compromise either my physical, intellectual or social fortune. Within these limits I can give myself body and soul to this midsummer madness. Hortense is a a perfect violin; I will be her devoted bow. And between her hands, am not I also a good instrument? Oh! the fools who pass their life fighting against their passions! After that, what happens? When they see that the garden is almost flowerless, they come in melancholy fashion to smell the last rose: the wind passes and they find only a bush of leaves and thorns! But shouldn't I also ask: after that? May it not be that the only delicious thing in life is the constancy of an unconscious love? I know only too well that I love Hortense, and I know too well why I love her. It is certain that on the day when she appears to me less beautiful I shall leave her. Suppose I let it go at that? Suppose I looked for something else? Is variety as satisfactory as quality? Let's have a look on this beach.... I must make use of my state of mind, that is to say of the pleasing irritation of my nerves...."
Chance is scarcely ever anything more than our aptitude to take advantage of circumstances. On the beach Leonor met a young and pretty woman, a young woman of the sort that one sees so many of, the sort whose dress and figure tell one nothing decisive about a passing glance, have gone on contemplating the melancholy death of the wave at her feet; but he was walking for this very purpose—to meet a woman walking by herself: his desire created the chance. For a moment he was afraid that she was going to make advances, but she passed on. He followed. Skirting the water all the while, the young woman moved away from the frequented part of the sands. She tried to pick up a ribbon of weed but it escaped her. Leonor reached it. Out of the water, it was a long viscious whip-lash. She thanked him, embarrassed by the present.
"Throw it back, then. It's like most of our desires. As soon as one holds them fast, one would like to throw them back into the sea."
She gave a little laugh, a sad, almost a smothered, laugh.
"Oh! Not always," she said.
They turned back towards the dunes and, seated on the sand, began to talk as though they were old friends.
She looked at him insistently, though appearing to do so. Finally she said:
"You don't look like a nasty man."
"Is that a compliment?"
"In my mouth, yes."
Then, little by little warming up, she talked without stop. It was a flood of words, like the mounting tide, only more rapid. She told him the story of her life. Leonor liked this sort of thing from ladies of equivocal reputations, and he now displayed a keen interest, putting in little words that inspired confidence. This was what he succeeded in making out:
She lived in Paris and gave herself only to a small number of friends, always the same. The respectability of her life was, therefore, beyond suspicion. Her parents could not complain of having that sort of daughter. They lived in the north, near Boulogne; hence, in order not to meet them or the people from her part of the country, she confined her peregrinations to the seaside resorts of Normandy. Among her friends two were particularly dear. One was a young foreigner, who lived in Paris six months of the year; but he went on sending her money during the summer. The other, though he was older, gave less; she liked him better—being a Parisian, he was clever. He was a civil servant. She would not specify the office for which he worked, but it seemed to be the department of Fine Arts. The first of these friends imagined that she was at Grandcamp, where she had just arrived; for the civil servant she was at Honfleur. That complicated her correspondence a little, but it was better. Besides, she had had no opportunity of writing to the civil servant for a long time, for he gave signs of life only by an occasional post-card. That seemed to her suspicious and made her sad. When he had last written he was at Cherbourg, but he had given no address.
"He looks like a man who wants to get married. Married! he's not capable of satisfying a woman. All the same, I like him. And besides, I should miss him for other reasons."
This woman, with her commonplace life, her commonplace brain, had an agreeable voice, a delicate face, intelligence in her eyes and a sort of natural elegance. Leonor felt a violent desire for her.
"I am spending several days here," he said.
"So am I."
"Shouldn't we spend them together?"
She gave a pretty laugh, allowed herself to be entreated and accepted, after having once more examined Leonor with a sagacious eye. The proposition accepted, she offered him her lips, looked at the time on a minute watch and got up, saying:
"Let's go and have dinner. We must hurry to get a little table."
Her name was Gratienne. She was a little woman, with a mass of dark hair, and her profile was charming. Leonor was amused by the contrast between this little statuette and the opulent Leda type of Hortense. She had a supple body, fresh and delicately scented; and since she was a professional and ardently shared the pleasures she provoked, he passed several pleasant nights. The days were much less agreeable, for he had to submit to long prolix confidences. There were amusing touches in her stories, but from professional ethics she refrained from ever uttering a proper name, a fact which somewhat confused her anecdotes.
One evening, however, in a moment of distraction or of confidence, she allowed Leonor to turn over her little collection of post-cards.
"Besides," she added, "as you're not a Parisian, the names will tell you nothing."
Leonor looked at ships, mountains, casinos, girls bathing and many other interesting pictures. Some were signed Theobald and came from Austria, others, Paul, and came from the Pyrenees.
"Hullo, Tourlaville castle!"
Without appearing to do so, he examined the writing of the address with care. He did not know the hand. The card was signed H. He passed on. Another of the La Hague castles. This time the signature was Herv.
"Surely it's Hervart."
The name appeared in full at the bottom of Martinvast Castle, with a postscript of 'love and kisses.'
"That must be the civil servant in the Fine Arts Department. Obviously."
For a moment he felt annoyed at being the collaborator, even the casual collaborator, of M. Hervart. He would have preferred someone he did not know. Theobald pleased him better. But all at once he thought of Rose:
"It's curious," he said to himself, "that we should love the same women in all the different styles."
While Gratienne was looking out of the window, he slipped the card of Martinvast castle into his pocket.