CHAPTER IV
WHEN he came down fairly early next morning, he found M. Des Boys, who was usually invisible till lunch time, walking in the garden with his daughter. He was gesticulating, largely. M. Hervart was alarmed.
But they were not talking of him. M. Des Boys was planning a long winding alley and was showing Rose how it would run. After consulting M. Hervart, who was all eagerness in agreeing, he decided that they should start their tour of the castles that very day.
At the same time he sent for workmen to come the next day and wrote to Lanfranc, the architect of Martinvast, a friend of whom he had lost sight for a good many years. Lanfranc lived at St. Lo, where he acted as clerk of the works to the local authorities. M. Hervart was also acquainted with him.
Meanwhile, M. Des Boys forgot his painting and stayed in the garden nearly the whole morning. Rose was annoyed. She had counted on repeating their yesterday's walk among the hollies and brambles, among the fox-gloves and through the bracken. She dreamed of how she would take this walk every day of her life, believing that she would find it eternally the same, as moving and as novel.
M. Hervart, though he was grateful for this diversion, could not help feeling certain regrets. He missed Rose's hand within his own.
For a moment, as they were walking along the terrace, they found themselves alone, at the very spot where the crisis had begun.
Quickly, they took one another's hands and Rose offered her cheek. M. Hervart made no attempt, on this occasion, to obtain a better kiss. It was not the occasion. Perhaps he did not even think of it. Rose was disappointed. M. Hervart noticed it and lifted the girl's hands to his lips. He loved this caress, having a special cult for hands. He gave utterance to his secret thought, saying:
"How is it that I have never yet kissed your hands?"
Pleased, without being moved, Rose confined herself to smiling. Then, suddenly, as an idea flashed through her mind, the smile broke into a laugh, which, for all its violence, seemed somehow tinged with shyness. Grown calmer, she asked.
"I'd like to know... to know... I'd like to know your name."
M. Hervart was nonplussed.
"My name? But... Ah, I see... the other one."
He hesitated. This name, the sound of which he had hardly heard since his mother's death, was so unfamiliar to him that he felt a certain embarrassment at uttering it. He signed himself simply "Hervart." All his friends called him by this name, for none had known him in the intimacy of the family; even his mistresses had never murmured any other. Besides, women prefer to make use of appellations suitable to everyone in general, such as "wolf," or "pussy-cat," or "white rabbit."—M. Hervart, who was thin, had been generally called "wolf."
"Xavier," he said at last. Rose seemed satisfied.
She began eating blackberries as she had done the day before. And M. Hervart, just as he had done yesterday, opened his magnifying glass; he counted the black spots on the back of a lady-bird, coccinella septempunctata; there were only six.
In the palm of her little hand, well smeared already with purple, Rose placed a fine blackberry and held it out to M. Hervart. As he did not lift his head, but still sat there, one eye shut, the other absorbed in what he was looking at, she said gently, in a voice without affection, a voice that was deliciously natural:
"Xavier!"
M. Hervart felt an intense emotion. He looked at Rose with surprised and troubled eyes. She was still holding out her hand. He ate the blackberry in a kiss and then repeated several times in succession,
"Rose, Rose..."
"How pale you are!" she said, equally moved.
She stepped back, leant against the wall. M. Hervart took a step forward. They were standing now, looking into one another's eyes. Very serious, Rose waited. M. Hervart said:
"Rose, I love you."
She hid her face in her hands. M. Hervart dared not speak or move. He looked at the hands that hid Rose's face.
When she uncovered her face, it was grave and her eyes were wet. She said nothing, but went off and picked a blackberry as though nothing had happened. But instead of eating it, she threw it aside and, instead of coming back to M. Hervart, she walked away.
M. Hervart felt chilled. He stood looking at her sadly, as she smoothed the folds of her dress and set her hat straight.
When she reached the corner by the lilac bushes, Rose stopped, turned round and blew a kiss then, then, taking flight, she disappeared in the direction of the house.
The scene had lasted two or three minutes; but in that little space, M. Hervart had lived a great deal. It had been the most moving instant of his life; at least he could not remember having known one like it. At the sound of that name, Xavier, almost blotted from his memory, a host of charming moments from the past had entered his heart; he thought of his mother's love, of his first declaration, his first caresses. He found himself once more at the outset of life and as incapable of mournful thoughts as at twenty.
His whole manner suddenly changed. He hoisted himself on to the terrace and, sitting on the edge in the dry grass, lit a cigarette and looked at the world without thinking of anything at all.