CHAPTER XV
ON reaching Barnavast, Leonor had found two letters; which of the two interested him the more he could not tell. One was from M. Des Boys, asking him to come and finish, before the winter, and immediately, if he could, the alterations at Robinvast. A room was ready for him. He had but to give them warning, and they would send for him. The second came from La Mesangerie. It was a diary.
"15th September. What are my children's kisses after the kisses of my lover? It is like the smell of the humble pink after the heady perfume of the rarest flowers......"
"What a fool the woman is," said Leonor inwardly. "Why does she write. She has intelligence, her conversation is agreeable, she has taste, and see what she writes! God, how melancholy!..."
"... But pinks have their charm, just as they have their own season, and I am happy to come back to them, since their season has returned."
"That," thought Leonor, "is better; it's almost good.... Is Hervart still at Robinvast? I hope not. His holiday wasn't indefinite, I should think. Suppose I wrote to Gratienne?"
".... You flowers that the touch of my Beloved made to blossom in my heart, you perfume my soul, you intoxicate my senses ...."
Intoxicate my senses... Is it necessary to remember myself to Gratienne? I would as soon get my information from another source."
".... intoxicate my senses. My body trembles at the thought of the night at Compiégne, every moment of which is a star that shines in my dreams. I did not know what love was...."
"Who does know what love is?... I don't feel bound to answer that to-day. Now I come to think of it I don't know where Gratienne is. She must have left almost at the same time as I did. Let's leave it at that ..."
"... what love was.... I have no desire to meet Hervart again at Robinvast. He bores me. Is she really going to marry this civil servant? If Rose knew. Yes, but if Rose knew everything, would she think much more of me than of M. Hervart. I am ten years younger than he, that's all; and my mistress is a much heavier millstone about my neck than his. It's easy to get rid of a Gratienne; with someone like Hortense, the process is much more difficult. She may make a scandal, she may kill herself, she may make her husband turn her out and then come and take refuge in my arms.... What then? Besides I love this beautiful woman quite a lot and it would distress me very much if I had to drive her to despair. And then Rose is wildly in love. Let me be reasonable. Where was I? Still at love."
"... what love was, before knowing you; did not know what pleasure was before our mad night...."
"That's very likely. But I am doubtful about love. Is it love, that frenzy of sensual curiosity that makes us desire to know, in every aspect and in all its mysteries, the longed-for body? Why not? It is indeed, probably, the best kind of love. Bite, eat, devour! How well they realize it—those who reduce the object of their love to a little bit of bread which they swallow. The Communion—what an act of love! It's marvellous. Bouret would think that foolish, perhaps; but Bouret, right as he is in being a materialist, is wrong in not understanding materialistic mysticism. Can anyone be at once more materialistic and more mystical than those Christians who believe in the Real Presence? Flesh and blood—that's what lovers want too, and they too have to content themselves with a mere symbol."
"... our mad night. It revealed a new world to me. I shall not die, like Joshua, without having seen the earthly paradise."
This phrase, despite its banality, pleased Leonor, who had begun to feel more indulgent towards his mistress.
"To write a long letter like this was a great effort for her, and as it was for me that she made the effort, I should be a cad to laugh at it. That is why it would be as well to read no more. I shall ask her to give me a rendezvous at Carentan. It will give her pleasure and me too. Afterwards I shall go to Robinvast. Everything fits in well."
The assignation at Carentan was difficult to arrange. Hortense, at first delighted and ready to start, seemed to hesitate. It was too near, the town was too small. But her desire was so strong! What should she do? She hoped to find some pretext for going to Paris alone.
The truth was that, re-established in her surroundings, Hortense did not feel sufficiently bold to flout the rules voluntarily. She was one of those women who are ready to do anything, provided that circumstances determine their will. She could yield on an impulse to an imperious lover, where or when did not matter, as soon as safety was assured; she would profit by a chance, but to create chance, to organize it—that was another matter. Her escapade at Compiègne appeared to her now as one of those strokes of fortune which life does not grant twice. She dreamed of a new chance meeting with Leonor; but a concerted assignation! At the very thought, she felt herself followed, shadowed; the idea made her quite ill. To be surprised by her absurd husband—how shameful that would be!
"If Leonor came here we could easily find some means. I could have a headache, one Sunday, stay in my room, be alone in the house; besides, there is luck."
She always entrusted herself to luck. She had never yielded to any of her lovers except on the spur of the moment.
"Might we not recapture," she went on, "something of the night at Compiègne, even in a rapid abandonment?"
Women are ruminants: they can live for months, for years it may be, on a voluptuous memory. That is what explains the apparent virtue of certain women; one lovely sin, like a beautiful flower with an immortal perfume, is enough to bless all the days of their life. Women still remember the first kiss when men have forgotten the last.
Hortense dreamed, Leonor desired. He thought only of yesterday's mistress, when he did think of her, in order to make her the mistress of to-morrow. His sentimentality was material. He crossed the stream from stone to stepping-stone, from reality to reality. In default of Hortense, he had taken Gratienne, not to satisfy his physical, but his cerebral needs. To live, he had to have the electuary of two or three sensations, always the same, but always fresh. Was he capable of a profound emotion, and would such a love have influenced his physiological habits? He did not know. Faithful to Bouret's theories, he did not think so.
He wrote to Hortense: "I want you to come." She was frightened but happy.
"How he loves me!"
The pleasure of obeying struggled in her with fear. Fear, at certain moments, gave way.
"Since he wants me to come, it is clear that he knows I can come, that there is no danger. And then, he will be there!"
She leaned on Leonor as on a second husband, stronger, more real, though distant. Distant? But wasn't he always present in her thoughts?
One morning her fear gave way altogether. She wrote, set out, arrived.
She was trembling, and she still trembled long after the bolts were shot.
This new festival of love was vain, on account of her sensibility. Leonor, astonished by a coldness which he imagined he had overcome for ever, attributed it to a failure of tenderness. He knew that women only palpitate with the men they adore, but he thought that they ought always to palpitate. He did not know how capricious these frail organisms are. He did not know that there are women who, their whole life long, pursue the delirious sensations which they are doomed never to find again. He imagined therefore, that he was no longer loved, and he was bitter, for men are readily bitter when their mistress's exaltation is too moderate.
Hortense wept. "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
Her tenderness had, however, in no way diminished. Leonor had to admit it as he received contritely Hortense's poignant kisses. He asked her pardon, humiliated himself, and for a moment she was happy in the caresses of her lover, but she was still whispering to herself, "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
After her departure, Leonor coldly informed his landlady that he did not mean to come back; then after a long tedious wait in an inn parlour, he returned to Barnavast. A letter awaited him, pressing him to come. M. Des Boys begged him, with a kind of anxiety, to fix the day on which they could come and fetch him.
Leonor would have liked, however, to devote some few days to meditation. He had a question to answer, "Does she love me?"
"We shall not meet again at Carentan, that is decided. Besides, it was absurd. What a place to make love in! Her failure was due to her repugnance for the surroundings. It was a sign of her refinement of feeling. And then women have no imagination. To me, everything is a palace; the woman I adore would light up a hovel.... Does she love me?"
But it was in vain that he repeated the question; he could find no answer.
"What a fool I am! I shall see well enough next time. I continue to love her. She is beautiful, she is obedient.... But is that the aim of my life? Suppose she were given me for my own?"
But to this question he could think of no answer either.
Hortense, at the same moment, in the old room she had had before she was married, was going to sleep, sighing, "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"