‘What do you know of that?’
‘There are many sorts of women…’
‘You insult me, madame…’
‘Don’t stand on your dignity, we shall never come to an understanding. Just hear me out. A week ago I had a mortal shock: my poor son began to spit blood. I know this disease, I witnessed its deadly progress. His father…’
Oh, my dear Jean, a dagger went through my heart! Something ripped inside me, I turned horribly pale; but I didn’t interrupt, I let her keep talking.
‘Absolutely terrified, I rushed to Paris, to talk to my brother, to see my doctor and arrange an immediate examination. In the evening we were all gathered as a family, everyone concerned by the deterioration in my son’s condition. I told the story of the bicycle accident, observing that his health had noticeably weakened after it, and I mentioned, meaning to speak of you in the warmest terms, your name.
‘“Mme de Valneige! Josiane de Valneige!” my nephew interrupted. He’s a fine-looking young man but a little too fond of the fashionable world. “That’s not possible, aunt. She’s one of the most lionised women of the day, everyone wants her. One of the richest women in all of Paris going off and burying herself in Brunoy? Who’s ever heard of Brunoy? It doesn’t exist! You must be making a mistake. In any case, I pity poor Paul, however flattered he may feel, if he’s fallen into her clutches. A woman like that will finish him off in no time!”’
Oh, my poor Jean, I can’t tell you how terrible it was! I crumpled, head in my hands, chest racked with great sobs that I couldn’t hold back any more. I hardly heard all those bitter words, I could only feel one thing: they were going to take him away from me, he was ill, I could lose him.
And hot tears such as I had never wept before fell between my fingers on to my crumpled dressing-gown.
Then she was the one who consoled me.
‘You truly love him then,’ she said, taking my hand. ‘Poor woman…! But what about me? Consider this: he is my one and only joy, my one hope. Think how alone I am in the world. It would kill me if he were to die!’
‘And do you think it wouldn’t kill me too?’
And with a groan that wrenched at my heart, she said again: ‘You really love him then, you really do love him…!’
For a long while we sat there, overwhelmed, not saying a word. A silence of the dead hung between us!
She was the first to break it, joining her hands in ardent entreaty.
‘Tell me you won’t try to steal my son from me,’ she said. ‘My Paul whom I adore…! It will be easy enough for a woman like you to forget him.’
Well, my friend, I stiffened like a tigress at the insult, anger flushing my cheeks.
‘Do you think women like me don’t have a heart like you, then? Do you think nothing in here is any good, the love we feel can’t be just as noble and pure?’
‘Then I beg you, prove it to me, and sacrifice yours to mine. God will count it in your favour.’
‘But he loves me too! He loves me! Don’t you realise?’
‘Yes, I know,’ Mme Duvert replied in a hushed voice and with some effort. ‘Poems addressed to you, a letter to you begun but not finished because of his illness. I confess, I couldn’t help glancing at it. But I didn’t yet know…’
‘So then!’ I cried, at the end of my tether, in the grip of appalling fear, ‘If he is to be saved, what must be done? What do you want me to do?’
‘Stop loving him… at least stop telling him so… don’t try to see him any more.’
‘That is impossible, madame, impossible! Do you think we can uproot love from our hearts like weeds in the fields? Do you think that when one has found a treasure it is a simple thing to hand it over…! What if I told you, as a woman who has been greatly loved in her life, that this is the first time I have ever loved anyone myself? That my life has been regenerated by this young and pure love, that I have been made a better person? Maybe then you would feel pity for me too at the prospect of losing him! I beg you in my turn: don’t take him away from me! Since it must be so, I will be his sister, his friend, I will watch over him, like you the best of mothers, and we will love him and cherish him together, the two of us. But if I do make this sacrifice, swear to me that if your anxieties were to increase… that if he grew worse, you would let me come to him.’
Mme Duvert remained thoughtful.
I looked at her. The tight features relaxed a little, a look of pity came into her eyes, and tears were not far behind.
‘If what you are promising is not beyond your strength to keep, if you will remember that my poor child is ill, that strong emotions could kill him, then,’ she said with resignation, ‘I place it in God’s hands. You will see him again. I put my faith in you, you will not break my trust.’
And as she was leaving, making her halting way towards the door, I said in a wave of deep feeling: ‘I promise… but he, at least, must never know.’
So all of this was another of destiny’s traps, then, and in its cruelty, what a refined one! To put happiness in my hands only to snatch it back, to let me touch the reality of my dream only to make me feel its loss more bitterly! I could have died from grief!
Then I began to disbelieve it all, I told myself that it was not possible, that in order to prise him away from me this mother – women of my sort are always fatal in the eyes of mothers – had no qualms about saying he was sicker than he was, and that I was thoroughly naïve!
But no, her despair was real: had I not seen her wet eyes and her twitching fingers when she told me: ‘My son has been spitting blood!’
And had the fortune-teller not seen in her cards darkness… darkness… darkness!
I could feel it, I was going to lose him, he was going to die!
XXIV
Jean Leblois to Josiane de Valneige
My poor Josiane! My poor friend, I can tell you are in great distress and this is only the beginning.
And it has come as a shock to me too, a blow to the heart.
The sadness of life, the sadness of what fate has in store, alas! How marvellous this love of yours was and what a joy it should have been to you!
Now, thinking of you, Josiane, I have before me the poignant image, roles reversed, of the Lady of the Camellias: and yet I think your heart was torn even more than hers! Those who are left behind, are they not the ones most to be pitied?
XXV
Josiane de Valneige to Jean Leblois
Alas, alas, it was truly terrible!
After a month of separation, the poor child came to see me again. I had given up expecting him.
What a change, my friend! What a sad contrast in the way this clear-browed twenty-year-old approached me, wearing a shawl round his shoulders, dragging himself towards me like an old man! His back had become bent, his chest hollow, and in his pinched features and pale cheeks only his eyes retained their living intensity, their warm flame of love!
‘Oh, my darling!’ he said, throwing himself into my arms. ‘It wasn’t being ill that made me think I might die, it was not seeing you. What long days of torture! The suffering, the fever, the sleepless nights, that was nothing, Josiane. But waiting for the woman you love, telling yourself you might close your eyes for ever without seeing her dear smile again, without giving her a last kiss, that, can you see, is to die a thousand deaths! There were several times when I was on the point of confessing everything to my mother – she is so good! – several times when I very nearly called out to her: “If you want me to get better, let the woman who is my whole life come to me!” And each time, some feeling of awkwardness I can’t describe made me hesitate, the words died on my lips. Today, you are mine, I am here, pressed against your heart, and nothing else, nothing…’
At that moment a fit of dry, hollow coughing shook his frame and a cold sweat appeared on his forehead.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, barely able to speak and falling back into an armchair. ‘I’m still a little weak.’
Poor friend, in his joy at seein
g me again he had not noticed the coldness of my demeanour, the kind of reserve I had imposed on myself as a consequence of my promise. But as he slowly recovered his breath: ‘Well, Josiane!’ he said sadly. ‘Are you not glad to see me then? Is that all it takes, a few days’ absence, being removed from your sight, and already I’m removed from your heart?’
Oh, how they wounded me, those bitter words! The reproach stirred a silent rebellion in my soul.
What? I would have given my life for him. Here I was, filled with a wild longing to throw my arms round him, to give myself to him entirely, and I was not allowed to tell him so. This time my role was to pretend indifference, when so many times in the past I had had to pretend the opposite!
But what had she thought she was asking of me, that mother of his? What sort of love did she mean? How can you play games like this when you are young, when you are in love with each other, when everything is so vivid inside you?
And already at the first test the promise which she had forced from me, the sacrifice I had offered in a moment of high emotion, was near to bending. Would I be capable of keeping it?
But he had remained very pale, in a state of inert misery that filled me with alarm.
I felt convinced that a tender word, an embrace, would warm and revive him and I was about to tell him, ‘But I love you, I adore you!’ – when I remembered: I had given my word!
So it was decreed that the words that burned inside me could never be said! Until now, I had held them back from a reluctance brought about by the very strength of my love; today, it is a dreadfully cruel oath that checked them on my lips.
Therefore I turned my lover’s love into a sister’s and mother’s love, and allowing my passion, my sensual longing to be overruled by a near-sublime sense of devotion, I gently crossed over to where he sat and placed a kiss on his forehead.
‘Are you not perhaps a little chilly near that window?’ I asked, rearranging on his shoulders the shawl his mother had no doubt placed there. ‘What I want to do is look after you, make you better.’
And, calling Gérard, I had her bring him a cup of warm milk, which, to please me, he was obliged to accept, whilst I took his long hand, now thinner than ever, between mine.
For a short time, at least, I was able in this way to allay his suspicions. But what a huge effort it took me to play my role with any conviction!
Can you imagine, my dear Jean, the dazzling Josiane reinvented as a Sister of Charity? And yet there was an unexpected sense of joy, a secret sort of pleasure in my own suffering. I experienced a novel sense of pride; I felt like a person I had never been.
He seemed a little happier, calmed and contented. Now he described how his illness had suddenly come on, his poor mother’s terror, the letter he had begun to write but been unable to finish, the long days of boredom and worry, the doctor’s visits, the battles he had fought to be allowed to leave the house and come to me, how he had guessed my anguish, the prolonged torture of a separation which redoubled his own suffering by adding mine.
And then he wanted to know how I too had endured the strain, if I had thought about him through the days, through the nights, in the mornings and in the evenings; if I loved him less, if I loved him more; if I had wept, suffered.
And so the hours fled by in these sweet exchanges.
The sun was already setting, and the freshness in the air felt all the cooler for the day’s strong warmth.
‘I’m going to send you home, my dearest friend,’ I said firmly. ‘We must be careful. This is your first time out. Hurry back now. We have happy times ahead of us.’ And I continued: ‘Why don’t we meet again tomorrow, in our forest, at our special place? The open air will do you good and it will be delightful.’
I could see my suggestion did not much appeal to him.
Coming to my house, where we could enjoy an easier intimacy, had always seemed to him preferable. It was a better way to be together, just the two of us, he said! Poor child, he couldn’t understand that it was precisely to be less together, the two of us, alas, that I had been resolute enough to suggest going to a place where anyone might pass and where an unexpected encounter, a surprise of some sort, necessarily put us on our guard.
Poor friend, how he would have pitied me if he had been aware of my sacrifice, instead of accusing me, no doubt, of loving him less than before, when in fact I loved him too much!
The next day, we were due to see each other at three o’clock, in the woods.
XXVI
To the Same
The night was dreadful, full of lowering dreams, of nightmares; and looming before me like the ghost of my happiness, the wasted face, the pale brow of that poor child. No, no, I couldn’t believe it, and, crushed beneath the rubble of my hopes, I was left without strength or courage.
And yet, there he was, expecting joy and smiles from me; there he was, opening his arms to me, wishing to share his life with me. How was I to appear happy before him when I had death in my soul? How, above all, was I to appear cool and detached when the fiery look in his eyes was itself enough to ignite ardours more powerful than I had ever known?
What a struggle, what a terrible struggle! What on earth had I been doing, promising a thing I could not do?
What must I do now, then, since this love was killing him!
And Mme Duvert’s words rang in my ears with their bitter irony: ‘Stop loving him!’
That was impossible, and if, through the very power of my love, I had finally been strong enough to hide it from him; if, to outward appearances, I had indeed made a sacrifice of it, then wouldn’t my cold attitude have itself been the surest spur to his own love, and the most dangerous?
Well… if, to cure him of it, it had been necessary to confess I was unworthy of him, that his heart had taken a wrong turning, that he had been in love with none other than the Valneige woman…! Well yes, if, to save his life, that sacrifice had been necessary, I would have made it; and gathering up like precious wreckage the remains of my shattered love, I would have let myself die of it, withering away, as he was dying, from the dreadful consumption that was eating away at him, hollowing him out.
The heart is strange. In my suffering, I experienced a fierce desire to return to the place where I had been happy: the mossy carpet by the oak tree where, in the warm stirrings of spring, he had first told me he loved me. Oh, how joyful it had all been then!
I was the first to arrive. Although it was a fine October day, there was already a certain melancholy in the air, and little autumnal gusts blew the yellow leaves about. The tree was half bare, and the moss, scorched by summer’s heat, was strewn with dead twigs.
And there, as I set myself to wait, the full measure of my grief broke over me, coursing through me, if I may speak of it this way, like a sensual wave.
Suddenly I caught a slow tramp of feet in the rustle of dead leaves covering the ground. I stood up, fixed a smile on my lips and walked towards where the footsteps were coming from. It was surely him.
Yes, it was my poor little Paul Duvert, trailing sadly along, his plaid shawl still wrapped round his shoulders. He looked like a convalescent, his face was pale and tired, but his eyes as full of brilliance as ever.
‘Ah, my beautiful beloved!’ he said, coming up to me. ‘There are so many things I have to tell you today, my head is buzzing with plans, I couldn’t wait to see you.’
When we had settled side by side he put his arm round me and held us tightly together.
I let him talk.
These first days of autumn had made him very sad to begin with. They seemed to threaten a separation, he had wondered if I might want to return to Paris. Then he had remembered that I had once talked with enthusiasm of the charms of a winter spent in Nice and he had put all this together and formed a plan.
Every cloud has a silver lining: he would arrange to be sent to Nice to complete his recovery! His mother, he knew, was ready to do anything. Then I would come and join him, and we would live the life of sweet selfishnes
s we had dreamed about so long, the two of us together. And his cherished project did not stop there – the projects sick people devise to delude themselves! In the spring, when he would be restored to health, we would walk down the aisle of Brunoy’s little church, under the warm caress of a new season, to have official blessing on a love that could only bring pleasure to his mother!
‘For you belong to me, Josiane. For you will be my wife.’
Ah, my dear friend, I was overcome. It was too much!
Poor woman, what was I to think? And him, poor child!
But what would you have had me do? Dash his hopes with a single word, when his hopes were perhaps the only things keeping him alive? Burst out suddenly with: ‘No, no, I am not worthy of you, love me no more, forget me’? – I didn’t have the courage.
And in the sombre glow of the setting sun, as I looked into his sickly and radiant face, I said to myself: Let it go; why would I rob him of his dearest and perhaps his last illusions?
At that moment a stronger gust of wind sent leaves spinning along the peaceful lanes.
‘Let’s go back quickly,’ I told him, ‘or you’ll be unwell again.’
‘Leave you, my darling Josiane! Not yet, not yet. Let me enjoy the exhilaration of being in your arms a few moments more. Let me, let me…’
He was becoming so pressing I could feel my resolve about to waver. It was so painful to be forever deflecting his bursts of passion, constantly putting a brake on his flights of eloquence! But, making a great effort, I stood up, took command of the situation and said, in a playful tone: ‘A lover goes where his loved one leads.’
‘To your house, then? Yours, my Josiane?’
‘Tomorrow, yes… yes, tomorrow.’
And reluctantly he took the path home.
XXVII
To the Same
I had had a kind of presentiment that he would not come. He looked so tired when we parted. Who could say if he hadn’t caught a chill, or if, when the evening wind got up, it hadn’t done him some irreparable harm?
Chasing the Dream Page 11