“Yes, tell him to come back ... tell him that his position makes no difference to you ...”
She spoke with a certain embarrassment: and this made Gilberte feel awkward. However, she said:
“I can’t write. Guillaume alone can solve the question that lies between him and his conscience.”
Mme. de la Vaudraye gave an impatient gesture and cried:
“You can’t write! What a ridiculous scruple! Is it any worse to write to a young man than to go walking about the country with him, as I hear you did yesterday? What! My son fights a duel because of you, he leaves me because of you; and, when I, his mother, ask you ...! Well, what’s the matter? What are you looking at me like that for?”
A chair suddenly pushed aside, an overturned flower-vase bore evidence to Mme. de la Vaudraye’s burst of irritation. She flew out again:
“Oh, yes, it’s all very well, but one can’t stand that eternal gentleness of yours! Here am I, telling you how wrong you are, and you listen in such a queer way that I end by putting myself in the wrong. One always feels with you as though one were in front of an indulgent judge, who graciously forgives one’s faults. And yet it’s you who are at fault!”
“Why, of course!” said Gilberte, all confusion.
“Then why do I look like a prisoner being judged?”
“Oh, but you don’t!”
“Yes, I do. It’s all very well for you to bend your head and all very well for me to rave and yell: any one would think that I was to blame and that you were making allowances. You must admit, it is enough to make one lose all patience.”
Presumably, Mme. de la Vaudraye was afraid of growing still more impatient, for she went away without another word.
Gilberte called on her, next day, and kissed her affectionately. There was not a word said about their difference of the day before.
They saw each other every day. According to the weather, they walked in the town or walked about the neighbourhood, leaning on each other’s arm and heedless of any but themselves. But they invariably returned at the same hour.
“Ah, it’s five o’clock: here are the ladies coming back!” people said.
This regularity was due to Gilberte. As soon as she was free, she went to the ruined summer-house and sat there until dinner-time.
“But why this hurry?” asked Mme. de la Vaudraye. “You never give me a minute over.”
“And what about my daily appointment?” said Gilberte, laughing.
“Your appointment?”
“Why, yes, with your son: what would he think of me if I were not punctual?”
In the course of a longer excursion than usual, Mme. de la Vaudraye, who was fond of turning the conversation on her past greatness, pointed out the limits of the property once possessed by her ancestors. They extended along both banks of the Varenne, as far as the spot where it joined the Andainette.
“To say nothing of what we owned on the forest side: the Revolution robbed us of that. Why, on the death of my father, the whole of the valley still belonged to us! My marriage-portion included everything down to the Bas-Moulin. And you should have seen the Logis in those days! Such furniture! Such works of art!”
Gilberte, to humour her, asked:
“And how did you lose it?”
“Oh, it’s a long story, a heap of mysterious business-schemes in which my poor husband, a decent man, if ever there was one, allowed himself to be robbed by a company-promoter called Despriol. You remember that empty house, near Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau, which took your fancy yesterday, I don’t quite know why? Well, that’s where Despriol and his wife lived, up to fifteen years ago. Henriette Despriol was a charming woman; she and I were great friends; and she used to come to the Logis when she liked ... so did her husband, for M. de la Vaudraye was never happy out of his sight; and I did not dream of suspecting him, for he struck me as a good-natured, honest man and M. de la Vaudraye was careful to hide from me the dangerous speculations into which his evil genius was dragging him. Everything was discovered in an hour. Despriol took to flight, after losing, or rather stealing, all that remained to us. We were ruined.”
She paused and then continued:
“There’s worse than that. On the same evening, my dear friend Henriette came and flung herself on her knees before me and implored me to give her money to join her husband, who was in concealment in the neighbourhood, and to enable them to leave the country and retrieve their fortunes. It was a piece of brazen impudence; and I showed her the door. Unfortunately, I left her alone, for a moment, in my bedroom. An hour after, I saw that a box containing all my jewels had disappeared. We rushed to her house: she was gone.”
“Did you prosecute them?”
“We notified the police, but they were never found. Five years ago, I received a letter from Henriette in which she said, ‘The ten thousand francs which my husband sent you this morning represent the value of the jewels. It is the first money which we have been able to put by. I am longing for the day when we shall be in a position to settle with you altogether and when I shall have the right to beg your forgiveness for all the harm that we have done you. Until that day comes there will be no rest for your repentant friend.”
“And since then ...?”
“Since then, I have received another letter, a few months ago, in which she told me that her husband was dead and that she was on her way to me with all the money she owed me.”
“Well?”
“Nothing but lies! Nobody came. Do people like that come and pay back the money they have stolen! No, they were a couple of thieves. You ask anybody at Domfront about M. and Mme. Despriol: a nice reputation they left behind them! If either of them thought of coming back here, they’d be stoned in the streets! Henriette indeed! Why, I should spit in her face, that I would, the sneak, the hypocrite! ...”
She uttered those words with an accent of implacable hatred charged with all the rancour of those fifteen years of poverty and privation. Gilberte shuddered. The evil expression on that face filled her with a sort of repugnance. Nevertheless, she took Mme. de la Vaudraye’s hand and, raising it to her lips, murmured:
“You poor dear!”
And she did this not designedly, because it was Guillaume’s mother whom she was conciliating, but from an undefined and all-powerful instinct that compelled her to be kind to this humiliated and disappointed woman.
It was the same instinct which had guided her hitherto and which made her still more attentive and affectionate in the days that followed, notwithstanding a certain sense of constraint which she felt in Mme. de la Vaudraye’s presence. She knew no greater pleasure than to smooth the wrinkles from those sullen features at the moment when they were most firmly set; and to do this she employed all sorts of childish rogueries:
“Come, try hard and laugh. ... There, you have laughed!”
Mme. de la Vaudraye was touched by all this charm of manner. It made her neglect the artificial plan of conduct which she had arranged to captivate the girl: she forgot to conceal her faults, she even became natural and spontaneous.
One day, after something that Gilberte had said, with a sudden movement she drew the girl to her:
“Oh, my darling, what a treasure of a wife you would make!”
Gilberte smiled:
“Indeed! How do I know that you would have me for a daughter! ... However, we shall soon see ... perhaps to-morrow ...”
“To-morrow?”
“Why, of course! Isn’t this the day when Guillaume is coming to the trysting-place where I wait for him every day?”
“Guillaume? I had a letter from him this morning from Paris. Besides, I know him; when he has made up his mind ...”
Gilberte looked at her watch:
“Five o’clock. Suppose he were there now! ... Ah, I have a feeling that he is there to-day, that I shall see him! ... Good-bye till to-morrow.”
She hastened away swiftly, leaving her companion speechless. Hope filled her breast, a hope each time disappointed, but never
discouraged.
“Mme. Armand is coming back alone this afternoon,” said the people at Domfront. “What a hurry she’s in!”
She crossed the threshold of the Logis without stopping and went straight to the summer-house. Her eyes longed to pierce the screen of foliage that hid the hill from sight. She had not a doubt that he was there; and, at the same time, she felt the madness of her certainty.
She arrived. Her glance at once swept the rocks. He was there.
She was on the point of throwing him handfuls of kisses, or else of kneeling down and stretching out her arms to him across space, but she saw him running down the slope and she herself started running towards him, as fast as she could.
She arrived all out of breath at the bottom of the garden, broke down the little wooden gate, which was slow in opening, and sprang into the road at the moment when Guillaume crossed the bridge:
“Gilberte!”
“Guillaume!”
They assured themselves with a glance that nothing was changed in either of them and then silently followed the road that skirts the Varenne. They dared not speak, overcome with the importance of the words which they were about to pronounce. Besides, excitement gripped them by the throat.
Thus they arrived at Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau, the old Norman chapel which is so prettily situated on the river-bank.
Leaning on the balustrade above the water flowing through the arches of the bridge, they revelled in the delight of dreaming side by side. Then Guillaume said: “It was more than I could bear. I wanted to see you, if only for a few minutes ... and to gather fresh courage ...”
She asked, in a voice that did not sound like her own:
“Then ... you are going back? ...”
“I intended to ... but I can’t now ... I can’t now ...”
He continued, almost in a whisper:
“It’s not weakness. But I am seeing you; and to see you is to see things and ideas as they are. You flood them with the light which is in you and which springs from you. Yes, I tried to escape the temptation and I had a wild desire to work in solitude, so as to achieve the wealth and fame that would have permitted me to marry you. And now ... and now I see that it is all madness. Why suffer uselessly? Let us struggle together, Gilberte. I can do nothing without you ... I am too much in love with you.”
“And your scruples?” she asked, maliciously.
“What do wealth and poverty matter? They are words to which I was able to attach a certain value when away from you in writing to you. But, when I am near you, it seems to me that they mean nothing. A man has no right to order his life by such empty phrases. ... Oh, Gilberte, you put everything in its right proportion, you are truth itself, your love gives certainty and peace! Such as I am, I am worthy of you, because you love me ...”
She gave him her hand. He asked:
“You are not angry with me?”
“For going away, Guillaume? No, I was so sure that you would come back!”
IX. AFFIANCED
ON THE NEXT afternoon, Adèle burst into the room where Gilberte was sitting after lunch:
“M’am, there’s Mme. de la Vaudraye and her son turning into the square. Am I to let them in?”
“Yes, certainly, I am expecting them.”
“Then it’s true what Mme. Duval says, that you’re going to marry M. Guillaume, ma’am?”
“Well, suppose I am?”
“Oh, as far as M. Guillaume’s concerned, I’ve nothing to say! But Mme. de la Vaudraye as your mother-in-law! If you want to know, ma’am, I’d rather ...”
The front-bell rang; and she went to the door looking very cross.
Gilberte shot a glance at the glass over the mantel-piece, pushed a curl into place and nervously made a change in the flowers in the vases, bunches of roses which she had gathered herself. Adèle showed in the mother and son.
Mme. de la Vaudraye was radiant. A moment before, in the main street, the mere sight of her silk dress, her ceremonious walk and her triumphant expression must have told the inhabitants of Domfront the exact nature of her errand.
She entered with the ease of one who is quite at home. Her way of sitting down showed that she was definitely and blissfully taking possession. There was none of the stiffness, none of the preliminary commonplaces that usually mark this sort of interview. Mme. de la Vaudraye was much too eager to come to the point:
“My dear Gilberte, I wish to ask your hand for my son Guillaume.”
All their love, all the unspeakable happiness of their souls, all their gratitude, all their faith in the future was contained in the glance exchanged by Guillaume and Gilberte. Nothing remained of the irritation which his mother’s air of victory caused him, nothing remained of the anxiety which the other felt at this solemn hour.
Mme. de la Vaudraye did not even wait to hear the answer.
“First of all, my dear child, let me speak to you as a friend and as a woman of experience, who knows only too well, by what she herself has been through, that happiness in married life is based upon material prosperity. You know, don’t you, how Guillaume and I are placed as regards money? On the death of my poor husband ...”
Guillaume rose and walked to the open window, as though bored beforehand by what was coming. Gilberte felt very much inclined to join him and to leave Mme. de la Vaudraye to fight out with herself the question of the material prosperity on which married bliss is based. But the older woman’s imperious eye nailed her to her chair; and, nodding her head at intervals, by way of assent, she had to listen to a long speech in which strange phrases like separate and common property, joint estate and settlements kept on recurring.
“That will do nicely,” she said, with an air of deliberation, though she did not understand a single word of what was said.
“Are we agreed?”
“Quite, madame.”
“Well, children, kiss each other and bless you!”
Guillaume stepped forward and his outstretched arms closed round Gilberte. He kissed her forehead, kissed her eyes. She released herself, blushing, and said:
“It is my first kiss, Guillaume.”
He felt a momentary bitterness:
“Your first ... from me.”
She smiled:
“A girl must not receive a kiss from any but the man she is engaged to ... and are you not the first, the only one?”
“What do you mean, Gilberte?”
“I mean, Guillaume,” she said, in accents throbbing with her heart’s gladness, “I mean that I am not a widow, that I have never been married, that I called myself a married woman in the hope of escaping attention and that no such person as Mme. Armand exists.”
Guillaume was trembling with emotion. He understood, yet refused to admit the truth, so great would have been the anguish of a mistake:
“No, no, I dare not believe it ... you, a girl, unmarried!”
“What is there so extraordinary in that?”
“Oh, Gilberte!”
He had seized her hands and stood gazing at her in ecstasy.
She whispered:
“I was sure that you would be delighted.”
“It is something more than delight. You seem to me even more beautiful and even more innocent and sacred. I do not love you any better, but I love you differently.”
And he continued:
“Is it really possible? Is there no one in your past? Is there not even that shadow on my happiness?”
“My whole past is you, Guillaume.”
Mme. de la Vaudraye came up to them. They had forgotten all about her; and her appearance gave them an impression that was all the more painful inasmuch as the sudden gravity of her features was in direct contrast with their own rapture. She said to Gilberte:
“If Mme. Armand does not exist, then whom is my son marrying?”
“Well, Gilberte ...”
“Gilberte whom?”
“Gilberte Me,” replied the girl, trying to speak playfully, but half-uneasy at heart.
“
Come, child, that’s not enough. You must have a surname? ...”
“I suppose so ...”
“What was your father’s name? Your mother’s?”
“I don’t know.”
Mme. de la Vaudraye drew herself up to the full length of her angular figure. It was as though she were learning some terrible event, a catastrophe. Gilbert caught sight of Guillaume’s pallor and suddenly understood what she had never even half-realized, the danger of her irregular position where a woman like Mme. de la Vaudraye was concerned. She shook with terror.
Guillaume interposed gently:
“Don’t upset yourself, Gilberte. I need not say how little importance I attach to all this; but mother does not look at things from my point of view. Let us hear the facts.”
Gilberte, without entering into details, told of the death of her mother, the loss of the family-papers and the whole chapter of accidents which had prevented her from penetrating the mystery that surrounded her. As she went on, her voice lost its assurance. All this story, which, until then, she had simply regarded as a source of petty worries, now, under Mme. de la Vaudraye’s stern eye, appeared to her the abominable story of a worthless creature. To be without a name! She felt as much ashamed of herself as though they had made the unexpected discovery that she had an ear missing, or a piece of one cheek. And yet, in the silence that followed on her recital she sought in vain for the crime which she had committed, for the crime of which she was held guilty.
“Well, mother,” said Guillaume, “there’s nothing serious in that.”
“Nothing serious!” sneered Mme. de la Vaudraye.
All her little middle-class, provincial feelings were outraged by this unforeseen revelation. The pride of the La Vaudrayes cried aloud within her. What would people say at Domfront if a La Vaudraye married a girl without a name, a foundling, an adventuress, in fact! She pictured the tittletattle, the sidelong allusions, the condolences with which she would be overwhelmed.
“My poor friend, how very unpleasant for you! ... Of course, I knew there was something suspicious about her, for, after all ...”
And they would say, among themselves: “No name? Nonsense! When people haven’t a name, it’s because it’s to their interest not to have one, because they are hiding their real name.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 388