by George Sand
The only cheerful, affectionate face in the group was that of a handsome hunting dog, a large pointer, which had stretched its head out on the knees of the seated man. It had a remarkably long body, stout hairy legs, a pointed fox-like nose, and an intelligent face bristling with untidy hairs; behind them like two topazes gleamed two large, tawny eyes. Those hunting-dog’s eyes, so bloodthirsty and sinister in the ardour of the hunt, now expressed a feeling of indefinable melancholy and tenderness, and when the master, the object of all that instinctive love which is sometimes so superior to rational affections, stroked the silvery, silky coat of the handsome dog, the animal’s eyes gleamed with pleasure and its long tail swept the hearth rhythmically, scattering the ashes on the patterned floor.
This domestic scene, half lit by the flames of the fire, could have been the subject of a picture in the style of Rembrandt. From time to time the room and its inhabitants were bathed in fitful shafts of white light; then, shading into the red hue of the embers, the light gradually faded, the vast room becoming correspondingly dark. Each time M. Delmare turned in his walk as he passed in front of the fire, he appeared like a shadow and then was immediately lost in the mysterious depths of the room. Here and there a few strips of gilt stood out as lines of light on the oval picture frames, heavily ornamented with wreaths, medallions, and imitation ribbons made of wood, on the furniture decorated with ebony and brass, and even on the sharply outlined cornices of the woodwork. But when the gleam of a dying ember gave way to another blaze in the fireplace, the objects which had just been lit up returned to the blackness and other gleaming objects stood out sharply in the dark. In this way all the details of the scene could be grasped in turn; now it was the table supported by three large gilded tritons, now the ceiling painted to represent a sky strewn with clouds and stars, now the heavy, long-fringed, crimson silk hangings shot through with burnished glints their wide folds seeming to move as they reflected the changing light.
On seeing the two motionless figures sitting prominently in front of the fireplace, you would have thought that they were afraid to disturb the stillness of the scene. They seemed fixed and turned into stone like the heroes of a fairy-tale, and you would have thought that the least word, the slightest movement, was going to make the walls of an imaginary city collapse upon them, while the gloomy master of the house, whose regular step was the only break in the dark silence, was rather like a magician who had cast a spell over them.
At last the dog, receiving an affectionate look from its master, yielded to the magnetic power that the human eye wields over intelligent animals. It let out a timid, affectionate bark and thrust its two paws on to its beloved’s shoulders with a matchless supple grace.
‘Down, Ophelia! down!’
And the young man solemnly reprimanded the docile animal in English; repentant and ashamed it crawled towards Madame Delmare as if to ask for her protection. But Madame Delmare did not emerge from her reverie, and let Ophelia’s head rest on her two white hands which she kept crossed on her knees without giving the animal one caress.
‘Is this bitch then permanently installed in the drawing-room?’ said the Colonel, secretly pleased to find a reason for being in a bad mood as a distraction. ‘To the kennel, Ophelia! Out, you stupid beast!’
Had anyone then observed Madame Delmare closely, he might have guessed the painful secret of her whole life in this trivial, commonplace incident. A barely perceptible shudder went through her body, and her hands, which unthinkingly supported the favourite animal’s head, gripped its rough, hairy neck more firmly as if to hold and preserve it. M. Delmare, pulling his riding crop out of his jacket pocket, then advanced threateningly on poor Ophelia, who, closing her eyes and letting out yells of pain and fear in advance, lay down at his feet. Madame Delmare became even paler than usual; her breast heaved convulsively, and turning her big blue eyes towards her husband, she said, with an indefinable look of fear:
‘Have mercy, Monsieur, don’t kill her.’
These few words made the Colonel start. A feeling of sorrow gave way to his inclination to anger.
‘Madame, that’s a reproach that I understand very well and that you haven’t spared me since the day I killed your spaniel at the hunt in a moment of anger,’ he said. ‘Is that such a great loss? A dog that always rushed ahead and attacked the game! It would have worn out anyone’s patience. Besides, it’s only since his death that you’ve been so fond of him; before that you didn’t pay any attention to him, but now that it’s an opportunity for you to blame me . . .’
‘Have I ever once reproached you?’ asked Madame Delmare with the gentleness that out of generosity one uses towards the people one likes, and out of self-respect for those one dislikes.
‘I didn’t say you had,’ continued the Colonel in a tone that was partly a father’s and partly a husband’s. ‘But in some women’s tears there are more bitter reproaches than in all the curses of others. Dash it all, Madame! You know very well that I don’t like to see tears around me.’
‘I don’t think you ever see me in tears.’
‘But don’t I see you continually red-eyed? That’s even worse, God knows!’
During this conversation between husband and wife, the young man had got up and very calmly let Ophelia out. Then, after lighting a candle and putting it on the mantelpiece, he came back and sat down opposite Madame Delmare.
This purely chance action had a sudden influence on M. Delmare’s mood. As soon as the candle had cast a less flickering and more regular light on his wife than the firelight, he noticed the sickly, depressed appearance which, that evening, affected her whole person, her weary attitude, her long dark hair hanging down her emaciated cheeks, and dark rings under her dulled, inflamed eyes. He took a few turns round the room and then, coming back to his wife with quite a sudden change of tone:
‘How are you, today, Indiana?’ he asked, with the clumsiness of a man whose heart and temperament are rarely in agreement.
‘As usual, thank you,’ she replied, without showing any surprise or resentment.
‘As usual, that’s not an answer, or rather it’s a woman’s answer, a non-committal answer, which doesn’t mean yes or no, well or unwell.’
‘Alright, I’m neither well nor unwell.’
‘Well,’ he continued, with renewed harshness, ‘you’re lying. I know you’re not well. You told Sir Ralph here. Come now, have I lied? Speak up, Monsieur Ralph, did she tell you so?’
‘She did tell me,’ replied the phlegmatic man whom the Colonel had addressed, and he paid no attention to the reproachful look Indiana gave him.
Just then, a fourth person came in; he was the steward of the house, a former sergeant in M. Delmare’s regiment.
In a few words he explained to M. Delmare that he had reason to think that, at this time on previous nights, wood thieves had got into the grounds, and he had come to ask for a gun so as to make his round before closing the gates. M. Delmare, who saw a military side to this event, immediately took his hunting gun, gave another one to Lelièvre, and prepared to leave the room.
‘Oh, dear! Would you kill a poor peasant for a few sacks of wood?’ said Madame Delmare, frightened.
‘I’ll kill like a dog any man that I find prowling round my land at night,’ replied Delmare, irritated by this objection. ‘If you knew the law, Madame, you would know that it authorizes me to do so.’
‘It’s a terrible law,’ continued Indiana, passionately.
Then, immediately suppressing her emotion, she added in a quieter tone.
‘But what about your rheumatism? You forget that it’s raining and you’ll be in pain tomorrow if you go out this evening.’
‘You’re very much afraid of having to look after your old husband!’ replied Delmare, opening the door violently.
And he went out, muttering complaints about his age and his wife.
II
THE two people whom we have just called Indiana Delmare and Sir Ralph, or if you prefer, M. Rodolphe B
rown, remained facing each other, as calm and cold as if the husband had been between them. The Englishman did not think at all of justifying himself and Madame Delmare felt that she had nothing serious to reproach him with, for he had spoken only with good intentions. Finally, making an effort to break the silence, she scolded him gently.
‘It wasn’t right, my dear Ralph,’ she said. ‘I had forbidden you to repeat that remark which escaped me when I wasn’t feeling very well; M. Delmare is the last person I’d have wanted to tell about my illness.’
‘I don’t understand you, my dear,’ replied Sir Ralph. ‘You’re ill and you don’t want to look after yourself. So I had to choose between the risk of losing you and the necessity of informing your husband.’
‘Yes,’ said Madame Delmare, smiling sadly, ‘and you decided to inform the authorities!’
‘You’re wrong, on my word of honour, you’re wrong, to let yourself get so irritated with the Colonel in this way. He’s a man of honour, a worthy man.’
‘But who’s saying the opposite, Sir Ralph?’
‘Oh, you yourself, without meaning to. Your sadness, your poor health, and, as he himself noticed, your red eyes, tell the whole world, all the time, that you’re not happy . . .’
‘Say no more, Sir Ralph. You’re going too far. I’ve not allowed you to know so much.’
‘I’m making you angry, I see that. I can’t help it. I’m not clever. I don’t know the subtleties of your language, and then I’ve a lot in common with your husband. Like him, I’ve no idea of what to say to women to comfort them in either English or French. Another man, without saying a word, would have made you understand the idea I’ve just expressed so clumsily. He would have found the art of making great inroads into your confidence without making you aware of his progress, and he might have succeeded in giving a little relief to your heart, which is becoming hard and closed to me. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed how much more power words have than ideas, particularly in France.’
‘Oh, you have a profound contempt for women, my dear Ralph. I’m alone here against two; so I must resign myself to never being right.’
‘Prove us wrong, my dear cousin, by being well, by regaining your former bloom, cheerfulness, and vivacity. Remember Bourbon Island* and our delightful retreat at Bernica, and our happy childhood and our friendship, which is as old as you . . .’
‘I also remember my father . . .’ said Indiana, stressing this remark sadly and putting her hand in Sir Ralph’s.
They relapsed into a deep silence.
‘Indiana,’ said Ralph after a pause, ‘happiness is always within our grasp. Often one only needs to stretch out one’s hand to take hold of it. What do you lack? You are reasonably well-off, and that’s better than being very rich; you have an excellent husband who loves you with all his heart, and if I may say so, a sincere and devoted friend . . .’
Madame Delmare pressed Ralph’s hand gently, but her demeanour did not change. Her head remained sunk on her chest and her moist eyes fixed on the magical glow of the embers.
‘Your sadness, my dear friend, is merely a state of ill-health,’ continued Ralph. ‘Which of us can escape grief and depression? Look beneath you; you will see there people who rightly envy you. Man is so made; he always longs for what he hasn’t got . . .’
I spare you a host of other platitudes uttered by the good Sir Ralph in a monotonous voice as dull as his thoughts. It is not that Sir Ralph was a fool, but in this matter he was quite out of his depth. He lacked neither good sense nor knowledge, but to comfort a woman, as he himself admitted, was something beyond his competence. And he so little understood the sorrows of others that, with the best will in the world to alleviate them, he could only make them worse by alluding to them. He was so well aware of his clumsiness that he rarely risked paying attention to his friends’ woes, but this time he made enormous efforts to fulfil what he regarded as the most painful duty of friendship.
When he saw that Madame Delmare had to make an effort to listen to him, he said no more, and the only sounds were the thousand little voices that hum in the burning wood, the plaintive song of the log as it gets hot and swells up, the crackling of the bark as it wrinkles before it explodes, and the phosphorescent eruptions of the sap which give rise to a blue flame. From time to time, the howling of a dog mingled with the faint whistling of the north wind which slipped through the cracks in the door, and with the sound of the rain lashing against the windows. It was one of the saddest evenings that Madame Delmare had yet spent in her little country house in the Brie.
And then, some indefinable vague apprehension weighed on her impressionable heart and delicate nerves. Weak people live in perpetual fear and foreboding. Madame Delmare had all the superstitious feelings of a nervous Creole in poor health. Certain night sounds, certain tricks of moonlight, made her believe in certain events, and for this pensive, sad woman, night told tales of ghosts and mysteries that only she could understand and interpret according to her fears and sufferings.
‘You’ll say, too, that I’m crazy,’ she said, withdrawing her hand which Sir Ralph was still holding, ‘but some sort of disaster threatens us. A danger is hanging over someone . . . over me, no doubt . . . but . . . listen, Ralph, I feel moved as if on the eve of a great phase in my destiny . . . I’m afraid,’ she added, shivering, ‘I feel ill.’
Her lips turned as white as her cheeks. Sir Ralph, alarmed, not by Madame Delmare’s forebodings, which he regarded as symptoms of severe depression, but by her mortal pallor, rang the bell hurriedly to summon help. No one came, and as Indiana grew weaker and weaker, Ralph, frightened, lifted her away from the fireside, put her down on a settee, and ran hither and thither, calling the servants, looking for water and smelling salts, not finding anything, breaking all the bells, losing himself in the labyrinth of dark rooms, and wringing his hands in impatience and annoyance with himself.
At last the idea occurred to him of opening the glass door which gave on to the grounds, and of calling in turn Lelièvre and Noun, Madame Delmare’s Creole maid.
Some moments later, Noun ran in from one of the darkest paths in the grounds and asked anxiously if Madame Delmare was worse than usual.
‘She’s very ill,’ replied Sir Brown.
They both went back to the drawing-room and attended to Madame Delmare, who had fainted, Sir Ralph with useless, clumsy zeal, Noun with the skill and efficiency of a woman’s devotion.
Noun was Madame Delmare’s foster sister. The two young people, brought up together, were very fond of each other. Tall, well-built, sparkling with health, lively, brisk, and overflowing with the full-blooded ardour and passion of a Creole, Noun had a resplendent beauty which put Madame Delmare’s pale, delicate beauty into the shade, but their good hearts and the strength of their affection stifled any feeling of feminine rivalry between them.
When Madame Delmare recovered consciousness, the first thing she noticed was her maid’s distressed face, her wet disordered hair, and the agitation betrayed in all her movements.
‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ she said in a kindly tone; ‘you’re more upset by my poor health than I am myself. Come, Noun, you must look after yourself. You’re getting thin and you’re crying as if it weren’t up to you to live. My good Noun, the life ahead of you is so happy and beautiful!’
Noun pressed Madame Delmare’s hand to her lips effusively and said, almost beside herself as she cast frightened glances around her:
‘Oh, my God, Madame, do you know why M. Delmare is in the grounds?’
‘Why?’ repeated Indiana, immediately losing the faint pink colour that had returned to her cheeks. ‘But, wait a minute, I can’t think . . . You frighten me! What’s the matter, then?’
‘M. Delmare asserts there are thieves in the grounds,’ replied Noun. ‘He’s doing the rounds with Lelièvre and they’ve both got guns . . .’
‘Well?’ said Indiana who seemed to expect some terrible news.
‘Well, Madame,’ continued No
un, wringing her hands distraughtly, ‘isn’t it terrible to think they’re going to kill a man? . . .’
‘Kill!’ cried Madame Delmare, getting up with the terror of a credulous child scared by her nurse’s tales.
‘Oh yes, they’ll kill him,’ said Noun, stifling her sobs.
‘These two women are crazy,’ thought Sir Ralph, who was looking in amazement at the strange scene. ‘Still, all women are,’ he added to himself.
‘But, Noun, what’s that you’re saying?’ continued Madame Delmare. ‘Do you think there are thieves?’
‘Oh, if it were thieves! But it may be some poor peasant who’s come to take a handful of wood for his family.’
‘Yes, that would certainly be terrible . . . But it’s not likely. No one would put himself at risk in enclosed grounds on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest, where it’s so easy to take wood . . . Nonsense! M. Delmare won’t find anyone in the grounds; so don’t worry . . .’
But Noun was not listening. She was going from the window of the room to her mistress’s couch, she was trying to catch the slightest sound, she seemed torn between the desire to run after M. Delmare and that of staying with the sick woman.
Her anxiety seemed so strange and so uncalled for to M. Brown that he departed from his usual gentleness and, gripping her arm, said,
‘Are you quite out of your mind? Don’t you see that you’re frightening your mistress, and that your foolish fears are terribly bad for her?’