“It might perhaps be possible to get there by motor-boat?” suggested Geneviève.
Ignoring her proposal, Rita took her by the arm. “Come with me to the Post Office. In the meantime, Monsieur Christiani will be good enough to find rooms for us. There are two hotels next door to one another, Monsieur, at the corner of the main street and the parade-ground. Would you care to go there?”
He was able to understand that she wanted an opportunity to talk to her friend in private. She doubtless wanted to complete the task of wining her over, which could only be done while Charles was present by means of glances and notoriously insufficient sign language.
In fact, when they met up again he found Madame Le Tourneur much more cheerful and entirely ready, it seemed, to play the role of complaisant young duenna to the end. What followed demonstrated, moreover, that she could do so with abundant aptitude.
The Ile d’Aix’s two hoteliers were almost full. Of the few rooms they contained, only one was free; a supplementary camp-bed was introduced therein, enabling the young women to pass the night tolerably. As for Charles, he had to be content, in the other establishment, with a sofa, to which some bedclothes would be added. The holiday season had not finished, and the isle’s regulars were taking advantage of the restfulness that they found there until the end.
Madame Le Tourneur seemed to be satisfied by an arrangement that separated Rita’s and Charles’s sleeping arrangements under different roofs. Reassured on this point and perhaps confirming to instructions she had just received, she declared herself to be rather tired, inclined to go to bed until dinner…
Her companions in misfortune went out again, alone at last, and were not long delayed in discovering, not far from the village, a blanket of grass that seemed to be waiting for them, beneath lovely trees. From there, between the bushy terraces of an artillery-emplacement, they could see an expanse of sea in the shape of a trapezium. Dusk was beginning to fall. The Sun was setting in a reddening sky, increasingly fiery…
And as they chatted, Charles heart became increasingly heated. To an ever-greater extend he savored the delights of the marvelous adventure, seasoned by a mystery that Rita continued to maintain. Who was she? At the end of the day, that was not importance, since they pleased one another mutually, and she gave evidence of a faultless education and an elevated mind. So Charles meekly accepted the piquant game of secrecy and made no effort to violate his companion’s incognito.
The atmosphere emitted by such an accord exhaled a special, curious and amusing perfume: that of intrigues and fairy tales. Chasing away the word “romantic” again—which returned nevertheless with significant insistence—Charles thought that she wanted to test him, to assure herself of his conscience and his sentiments, to acquire the certainty that she was loved for herself, outside of any consideration foreign to the mind, the soul and the heart. Was she, for example, very poor? Everything belied that: her dress and the clothes that she wore; her charming and pure hands; the indefinable confidence imprinted in her features, whose serene lines had never been crumpled by any anguish. Was she very rich, then? Too rich? Did she fear that Charles, moved by omnipotent scruples, might recoil before millions? Did she want, first of all, to attach him by bonds so solid that nothing in the world could release them?
In all of that, Charles could only discern, wisely, one more reason to love her—since all of it, whatever its cause, proved that she loved him.
They were in love with one another! The evidence of it leapt to the eye while, as night fell, they went back to one of the hotels for dinner. They were in love with one another! That prodigious, unimaginable thing had occurred, as abrupt as an impact, as violent and stunning as a kind of divinely morbid stroke—a sort of voluptuous transport of the brain that had modified the regime of their blood in an exquisite manner.
Madame Le Tourneur, sitting by the door on the terrace of the hotel, watched them coming back. She could not help being alarmed by their approach—as if, in the shades of dusk, they were made of light. All through dinner, which manly consisted of fish and cockles, she had the same impression, and tried to hide the embarrassment of being a third party between two such palpitant and radiant victims of the god of Love. She was, however, unable to hide that embarrassment, or the anxiety that gradually overtook her as she was bathed in the quivering radiation of which they were, so to speak, the blissful emitters.
The worst thing about that was that the evening extended indefinitely. Rita was obstinately determined to prolong it well into the night. Charles, who would have followed her to the ends of space and time, surrendered to that nocturnal fantasy delightedly. Finally, though, they gave in to the imploring objurgations of Madame Le Tourneur, and the separation was accepted at about 2 a.m.
The daylight had not yet acquired its full force when Charles came out into the street. Silence weighed upon the dead village. Nevertheless, light footsteps resonated on wooden steps in the depths of the other hotel. It was Rita. She had sworn not to lose a minute of the hours that she had won.
At the sight of her, Charles felt a doubt—to which the solitude and the matinal lucidity had given birth in him—die away. What doubt? This one: that he had perhaps, been mistaken. Perhaps he had mistaken his desires for realities; perhaps Rita had not had any intention of missing that boat…
The young woman had only to appear within the frame of the doorway and everything became quite simple and favorable again. She was as fresh as if she had just emerged from a bathroom lacking none of the refinements of luxury. Her suntanned complexion, without make-up, warmed in the cheeks like a crimson reflection of the dawn. Her dark shiny hair had blue tints. The air around her was scented with the morning in the midst of the morning.
But shutters clattered on the second floor of the building. Disheveled, with her hair in her eyes, still heavy with sleep, and her bare arms raised, Geneviève cried out in anguish: “Rita!”
“What is it?” was the response, with a tranquil and cheerful irony.
“Oh, my God! There you are! I’ve just woken up. I didn’t see you. So…”
They began to laugh.
“Come on, hurry up and come down,” Rita advised. “I’ve got an idea. We’ll organize something. You’ll thank me for it!”
Lifting her blonde curls in one hand and veiling her bosom with the other, Geneviève beat a modest retreat, lamenting: “Yes, I’m coming. What thing? What is it now?”
As soon as she came down she received an explanation. It was a matter of going to eat lunch in the spot that Rita had mentioned the day before, on the edge of the woods facing north. The day promised to be particularly fine. The grocer’s shop and inn cuisine would furnish the elements of a perfectly suitable meal. Geneviève agreed, relieved. She had anticipated more fearful possibilities than a picnic.
The preparations for the little feast took all morning. They disrupted an idleness that it was still necessary to avoid. Slender as it was, that cooperation was nevertheless of value in establishing that Charles and Rita had similar tastes—or, at least, that they took pleasure in adopting one another’s views and predilections.
A donkey was found to transport the provisions baskets slung over its back. They walked behind it along the shore of the admirably convex bay. Then a shallow slope led up to the edge of a wood, through which they went.
Soon—for the island was small—they reached the goal of their expedition. In a corner of the wood, at the top of a rocky cliff, there was what might be called a kiosk of verdure. The soil was mossy and flexible. Hospitable shade filleted crystalline light. The shelter, though natural, offered a comfortable interior and a poetic character that was indefinable, reminiscent of the “boscages” of outdated romances.
At the foot of the cliff, however, the ocean was white with foam; an immense gulf, it climbed half way up the sky, limited by the thin blanched or foamy streaks, struck here and there by sunlight, that were the Ile de Ré and the coast of France. We assert that this is one of the most charming
viewpoints on the Atlantic coast. Rita, who remembered it very well, had the joy of knowing that Charles would remember it too.
The lunch left nothing to be desired, except that it seemed brief. The day was wearing on, and Rita suddenly became melancholy—which is to say that a moment came when she lost the strength to master her increasing sadness.
Charles drew nearer to her as she sat on a bed of moss, staring into infinity. Oh, what he would have given to restore her beautiful gaiety! But a deference, an imperious delicacy, prevented him from intervening in that melancholy, either with words or the gesture that his hand attempted to make, inviting him to extend it tenderly toward Rita’s. In addition, he too was anticipating, without pleasure, the end of this fantasy-filled prologue. Both of them were seriously in need of a distraction.
Madame Le Tourneur was picking heather some distance away. Charles and Rita, following the inclination of their thoughts, were chatting gravely—and still they were falling into agreement. Still, in everything, their opinions coincided. Instructed in the rigid principles of an uncompromising education, Charles set above everything else the religion of the family: irreducible fidelity to ancestral traditions, filial love and respect for the institutions, beliefs and domestic laws that are the sole foundation of durable hearths. Rita, far from being frightened by such a profession of faith, listened to it approvingly. And each of them was profoundly moved to discover in the other such a harmony of judgment, whether in respect of the smallest or the largest questions.
Thus the time ran by, enriched by their unity, impoverished by a reparation that Charles assumed would be temporary, but which was drawing nearer all the same—and which suddenly took on a material aspect, a visible and moving form: that of a plume of grey smoke above a black dot visible in the distance in the direction of La Rochelle, growing in size and seemingly descending toward them.
“There it is!” sighed the young woman.
“Bah!” he said, in an intentionally off-hand manner.
And they watched, without saying anything more and without moving, with a gleam in their eyes and an almost-painful smile on lips that had not even brushed one another.
“Let’s be off!” she said. “Geneviève! The Boyardville.”
Charles, thinking that he would be obliged, in three days, to leave her for a while, knew the misery of a child-like distress.
Two hours later, the Boyardville went through the entrance canal of Oléron’s harbor. Hearts racing, Charles and Rita watched the sands of the shore, its thickets of young pines, its houses and the quay file by.
Various carriages, rustic or sumptuous, were grouped there. On the bank of the canal, a middle-aged gentleman was waving his hat. Beside him, with his hands in the pocket of his broad culottes, a tall bare-headed young man raked the assembly of the arriving passengers with his eyes.
“Ah!” said Madame Le Tourneur, dolefully. “Look, Rita—my uncle has come to look for us with Monsieur de Certeuil.”
She waved her scarf. Charles’ handkerchief was deployed. Rita raised her left hand—but her right hand, hidden by the bulwark, grabbed her neighbor’s wrist, and they embraced in that manner, secretly and passionately.
II. A Cyclone in a Heart
A keen astonishment had been painted on Luc de Certeuil’s face when he suddenly perceived Charles Christiani on the deck of the Boyardville. Immediately thereafter, he had taken care to give his surprise an expression of superlative joy, which it had perhaps not offered initially. Charles saw that quite clearly, but it made him neither hot nor cold. He knew the man, knew his temperament, and accepted him for what he was. From his comrade’s attitude, he deduced that Rita, when she had telegraphed from the Ile d’Aix, had abstained from advertising the arrival of her unexpected companion—a perfectly natural abstention, since Charles had confided his desire not to put anyone out, and, in consequence, not to forewarn anyone.
The three travelers set foot, along with the others, on the soil of Oléron.
“Well!” cried Madame Le Tourneur’s uncle, laughing. “You’ve made a fine mess! What an escapade!”
Geneviève adopted her shrillest voice and her most insinuating intonations. “Uncle, may I introduce Monsieur Charles Christiani, the historian, who shared our suffering.”
Luc de Certeuil had not yet realized that Charles and the two women comprised a group within the crowd. “What!” he exclaimed, in amazement. “You know one another! Now there’s a thing!” And he displayed a prodigious amusement, while handshakes, bows and polite greetings were exchanged all round.
Rita, unexcited, smiled without merriment.
“Will all five of us fit into your car?” the uncle asked Luc de Certeuil. “I’d have brought mine if I’d known.”
“Don’t worry,” said the sportsman distractedly, not having recovered yet from his astonishment. “My old banger has taken more! It’ll be a bit cramped in the back, that’s all. You get in the front, Monsieur, next to me.” He had taken Charles’ arm in a familiar fashion, and while they all headed toward the carriages he said: “What a pleasant surprise, Christiani! What a nice idea! You couldn’t have given me more pleasure! So, if I understand correctly, you too missed the boat on the Ile d’Aix! That’s hilarious!”
Charles did not much like the joyful grimace that accompanied Luc’s appreciation. Rita was walking beside them; he tried to interrogate the young woman’s face, but only encountered an impenetrable scowling mask. In any case, Luc de Certeuil’s opinion of the matter was, deep down, a matter of total indifference to him.
“I hope you’ve brought your racket,” the latter went on. “Where’s your luggage?”
They had forgotten it. They sent for it. In the meantime Charles explained that he was only making a rapid stopover in Saint-Trojan—four or five days at the most.
“Bah! We’ll see about that!” affirmed Luc de Certeuil, who had recovered all his composure. “Never swear to anything!”
In fact, the traveler was thinking of prolonging his voyage. All things considered, he was free! Nothing was calling him back to Paris imperatively. There was only that business at the Château de Silaz, and the promise he had made his mother to go to Savoy within a week…
At the thought of his mother, a smile crossed his lips. When she found out why her son had not kept his word, Madame Christiani would be the happiest of mothers!
One question, however, was burning his lips. He would have liked to find himself alone for a moment with Luc in order to put it to him—but he understood that he would still have to have a little patience. They had reached the car, and Luc set out to make arrangements designed to permit the accommodation of five human beings and several bags and suitcases within that elegant vehicle.
“Very chic, your automobile,” said Charles.
“A hundred notes,” said the other, negligently.
Well, thought Charles, this aristocrat will never become a gentleman. On the other hand, I’d very much like to know where he found the “hundred notes” in question…
He made himself very slender, though, for Geneviève and Rita, drawing apart, had left a rather narrow but enviable space between them. Luc, behind the steering-wheel, turned round to assure himself, with a mocking expression, that they were ready. At the same time, the machine-gun sound of the liberated exhaust, so dear to sportsmen, began to explode. The car took off like a wild mustang trying to throw off the grip of a cowboy.
Two sharp turns at the entrance and exit of a bridge, and in a few seconds they were speeding alongside the canal at more than 100 kph. Soon, though, it was necessary to slow down, the uneven road describing numerous curves across a charmless plain divided up by watery ditches.
Everything always works out better than one fears, Charles said to himself. I assumed we’d be separated immediately, but…just the opposite.
He felt that infinitely precious form pressed against him now by the narrowness of the seat, as if all its “lines of force” were converging toward some inconceivable magne
t. His heart was racing at the contact of an individual who seemed to him to be chosen among all individuals, in the same way that there are things that are supremely rare, delicate, rich and pure; things made of gold, lace, and diamond. And, for the first time, Charles understood the meaning of the ancient words idol, goddess, and divinity; they lost every vestige of the ridiculous for him, and he was compelled to recognize that those ancient words described what they meant with an adorable exactitude. Could there ever be enough attentions, kindnesses, considerations for that young enchantress? What sanctified arms might carry her, in moments of fatigue, over the fords of life? In what pious caresses would his hands have to take wing, in order to touch her?
The automobile went through white villages with ancient pink roofs and brightly colored shutters. Luc announced, successively, “Les Allards” and “Dolus.” They cut across a straight road rimmed by a double line of trees. The causeway became more extensively ornamented. Cool woodlands deepened. They came out of them to run alongside others, through a succession of hamlets as neat as linen in a cupboard. After a quarter of an hour, the little red car straightened its roaring course, along the edge of a forest. Its speed surpassed 125 kph. They saw the sea again on the left, beyond a marsh.
Finally, Rita said: “Saint-Trojan.”
The hotel rose up in front of the beach. To reach it, they traversed the town from end to end and sped along a large avenue in the midst of pine-trees. Luc brought the car to a halt, level with a passage between two trimmed hedges. At the far end was a series of rose-gardens with tennis-players running hither and yon, leaping after invisible balls.
“Further on, because of the luggage!” implored Geneviève.
“Your wish is my command,” said Luc. And he went further on, to pull up facing a perron. The vestibule and the lounges were empty.
“Everyone’s outside,” said the uncle.
The Master of Light Page 3