CHAPTER II
It had already grown hot. They sat down in the shade, on a tree trunk. Large harmless ants crawled hither and thither on the bark, but M. Hervart seemed to have lost his interest in entomology. Idly, they looked at the busy little creatures, crossing and re-crossing one another's path.
"Do they know what they're doing? And do I know what I'm doing? Some sensation guides them. What about me? They run here and there, because they think they've seen or smelt some prey. And I? Oh, I should like to run away from my prey. I reason, I deliberate.... Yes, I deliberate, or at least I try."
He looked up at the girl.
Rose was engaged in pulling fox-glove buds off their stems and making them pop in the palm of her hand. Her face was serious. M. Hervart could look at her without distracting her from her dreams.
She made a pretty picture, as she sat there, gentle and, at the same time, wild. Her features, while they still preserved a trace of childishness, were growing marked and definite. She was a woman. How red her mouth was, how voluptuous! M. Hervart caught himself reflecting that that mouth would give most excellent kisses. What a fruit to bite, firm-fleshed and succulent! Rose heaved a sigh, and it was as though a wave had lifted her white dress; all her young bosom had seemed to expand. M. Hervart had a vision of roseate whiteness, soft and living; he desired it as a child desires the peach he sees on the wall hidden under its long leaves. He took the pleasure in this desire that he had sometimes taken in standing before Titian's Portrait of a Young Lady. The obstacle was as insurmountable: Rose, so far as he was concerned, was an illusion.
"But that makes no difference," he said to himself, "I have desired her, which isn't chaste of me. If I had been in love with her, I should not have had that kind of vision. Therefore I am not in love with her. Fortunately!"
Rose was thinking of nothing. She was just letting herself be looked at. Having been examined, she smiled gently, a smile that was faintly tinged with shyness. Flying suddenly to the opposite extreme, she burst out laughing and, holding on with both hands to the knotted trunk, leaned backwards. Her hat fell off, her hair came undone. She sat up again, looking wilder than ever. M. Hervart thought that she was going to run away, like Galatea; but there was no willow tree.
"I don't care," she said as M. Hervart handed her the hat; "my hair will have to stay down. It's all right like that. Pins don't hold on my head."
"Pins," said M. Hervart, "pins rarely do hold on women's heads."
She smiled without answering and certainly without understanding. She was smiling a great deal this morning, M. Hervart thought.
"But her smile is so sweet that I should never get tired of it. Come now, I'll tell her that...."
"I love your smile. It's so sweet that I should never get tired of it."
"As sweet as that? That's because it's so new. I don't smile much generally."
It was enough to move any man to the depths of his being, M. Hervart murmured spontaneously:
"I love you, Rose."
Frankly, and without showing any surprise, she answered:
"So do I, my dear."
At the same time she shook her skirt on which a number of ants were crawling.
"This sort doesn't bite," she said. They're nice...."
"Like you. (What a compliment! How insipid! What a fool I'm making of myself!)"
"There's one on your sleeve," said Rose. She brushed it off.
"Now say thank you," and she presented her cheek, on which M. Hervart printed the most fraternal of kisses.
"It's incomprehensible," he thought. "However, I don't think she's in love. If she were, she would run away. It is only after the decisive act that love becomes familiar...."
"If we want to go to Cherbourg," said Rose, "we must have lunch early."
They moved away; soon they were out of the wood and had entered the hardly less unkempt garden. It was sunny there, and they crossed it quickly. She walked ahead. M. Hervart picked a rose as he went along and presented it to her. Rose took it and picked another, which she gave to M. Hervart, saying:
"This one's me."
M. Hervart had to begin pondering again. He was feeling happy, but understood less and less.
"She behaves as though she were in love with me.... She also behaves as though she weren't. At one moment one would think that I was everything to her. A little later she treats me like a mere friend of the family.... And it's she who leads me on.... I have never seen that with flirts.... Where can she have learnt it? Women are like the noblemen in Moliere's time: they know everything without having been taught anything at all."
M. Hervart, weighed down in mind, but light of heart, went up to his room, so as to be able to meditate more at ease. First of all he smartened himself up with some care. He plucked from his beard a hair, which, if not quite silver, was certainly very pale gold. He scented his waistcoat and slipped on his finger an elaborately chased ring.
"It may come in useful when conversation begins to flag."
He was about to begin his meditations, when somebody knocked at the door. Luncheon was ready.
M. Des Boys, despite the disturbance of his plans, seemed pleased. A drive, he declared, would do him good. He needed an outing; besides he had a right to one.
"I have just finished the ninth panel of my life of Saint Clotilde. It is her entry into the monastery of Saint Martin at Tours."
M. Hervart manifested an interest in this composition, which he had admired the previous evening before it had been given the final touches. He hoped to see it soon in its proper frame, with the other panels in Robinvast church.
"There are going to be twelve in all," said M. Des Boys.
"People will come and see them as they do the Life of St. Bruno that used to be at the Chartreux and is now in the Louvre."
"So I hope."
"But they won't come quite so much."
"Yes, Robinvast is rather far. But then who goes to the Louvre? A few artists, a few aimless foreign sightseers. Nobody in France takes an interest in art."
"Nobody in the world does," said M. Hervart, "except those who live by it."
"What about those who die of it?" asked Rose.
Mme Des Boys looked at her daughter with some surprise:
"I have never heard that painting was a dangerous industry."
"When one believes in it, it is," said M. Hervart.
"What, not dangerous?" said M. Des Boys. "What about white lead?"
"One must believe," said Rose, looking at M. Hervart.
"This just shows," M. Des Boys went on, "what the public's point of view in this matter is. My wife's marvellously absurd remark exactly represents their feelings."
There followed a series of pointless anecdotes on Mme Des Boys' habitual absence of mind. M. Hervart very nearly forgot to laugh: he was thinking of what Rose had just said.
"Rose," said M. Des Boys, "ask Hervart if we weren't believers when we went around the Louvre. We were in a fever of enthusiasm. Hervart is my pupil; I formed his taste for beauty. Unluckily I left Paris and he has turned out badly. I remain faithful, in spite of everything."
"But," said M. Hervart, "faithfulness only begins at the moment of discovering one's real vocation."
Rose seemed to have given these words a meaning which M. Hervart had not consciously intended they should have. Two eyes, full of an infinite tenderness, rested on his like a caress.
"It's as though I had made a declaration," he thought. "I must be mad. But how can one avoid phrases which people go and take as premeditated allusions?"
However, he found the game amusing. It was possible in this way to speak in public and to give utterance to one's real feelings under cover of the commonplaces of conversation. Rose had given him the example; he had followed her without thinking, but this docility was a serious symptom.
"I am lost. Here I am in process of falling in love."
But like those drunkards who, feeling the moment of intoxication at hand, desire to control themselves, but must still obey their cravings because they have been so far weakened by the very sensation that now awakens them to a consciousness of their state, M. Hervart, while deciding that he ought to struggle, yielded.
He drank off a whole glass of wine and said:
"It is easy to make a mistake at one's first entry into life, and to go on making it long after. I am still very fond of art, but I was never meant to do more than pay her visits. We are friends, not a married couple. I have built my house on other foundations; it may be worth much or little, but I live in it faithfully. One can only stick to what one loves. To keep a treasure, you must have found it first."
He had spoken with passion.
"What eloquence!" said M. Des Boys.
All of a sudden, Rose began to laugh, a laugh so happy, so full of gratitude, that M. Hervart could make no mistake about its meaning.
"You're being laughed at, my poor friend," M. Des Boys went on.
At this mistake, Rose's laughter redoubled. It became gay, childish, uncontrollable.
"This is something," said Mme Des Boys, "which will console you, I hope. But what a little demon my daughter is!"
Out of pity for her mother, Rose made an effort to restrain herself. She succeeded after two or three renewed spasms and said, addressing herself to M. Hervart:
"What do you think of the little demon? Are you afraid?"
"More than you think."
"So am I; I'm afraid of myself."
"That's a sensible remark," said Mme Des Boys. "Come now, behave."
The home-made cake being approved of, she began giving the recipe. A meal rarely passed without Mme Des Boys' revealing some culinary mystery.
The carriage drove past the windows, and lunch ended almost without further conversation. Rose had become dreamy. M. Hervart's conclusion was:
"Our affair has made the most terrifying progress in these few seconds."