by George Sand
‘Enough, enough!’ said Indiana, quite beside herself and her heart beating violently. ‘You’re hurting me.’
And yet, if one could die of happiness, Indiana would have been dead at that moment.
‘Don’t speak to me like that, not to me,’ she said. ‘7 am not fated to be happy. Don’t show me heaven on earth, not me; I am marked out to die.’
‘To die!’ exclaimed Raymon violently, as he grasped her in his arms; ‘You, die! Indiana! To die, before you have lived, before you have loved! No, you will not die; I shall not let you die, for my life is now tied to yours. You are the woman I’d dreamed of, the purity I adored; the vision that had always eluded me, the brilliant star which shone before me to tell me, “Keep on going in this life of sorrow, and heaven will send you one of its angels to go with you.” From the beginning of time you were destined for me, Indiana, your soul was betrothed to mine! Men and their iron laws have disposed of you. They have snatched from me the companion that God would have chosen for me, if God did not sometimes forget his promises. But what do men and laws matter to us, if I still love you in the arms of another, if you can still love me, accursed and unhappy as I am to have lost you! You see, Indiana, you belong to me, you are the half of my soul which has been seeking for a long time to rejoin the other half. When, in Bourbon Island, you were dreaming of a friend, it was I you were dreaming of. When, at the word “husband”, a sweet feeling of fear and hope entered your soul, it was I who was to be your husband. Don’t you recognize me! Doesn’t it seem to you that we haven’t seen each other for twenty years? Didn’t I recognize you, my angel, when you staunched my blood with your veil, when you placed your hand on my lifeless heart to restore to it warmth and life? Oh, I remember that well. When I opened my eyes, I said to myself, “There she is! That’s how she was in all my dreams, pale, melancholy, and beneficent. She belongs to me; she is going to nourish me with unknown felicities.” And already the physical life which had just been restored to me was your work. For, you see, it wasn’t ordinary circumstances that brought us together; it wasn’t chance or a whim, it was fate, it was death, which opened the gates of this new life for me. It was your husband, your master, in obedience to his destiny, who brought me, bleeding, with his own hands, and cast me at your feet, saying “This is for you!” And now, nothing can tear us apart . . .’
‘He, he can tear us apart!’ Madame Delmare interrupted vehemently; succumbing to her lover’s effusions she was listening to him, transported with delight. ‘Alas! Alas! You don’t know him. He’s a man who knows no mercy, a man one can’t deceive. Raymon, he will kill you!. . .’
Weeping, she hid her face on his breast. Raymon embraced her passionately.
‘Let him come,’ he cried. ‘Let him come and snatch this moment of happiness from me! I defy him! Stay there, Indiana, stay against my heart; there lies your refuge and shelter. Love me and I’ll be invulnerable. You know very well he hasn’t the power to kill me. I’ve already been exposed to his blows without any defence. But you, my good angel, you were hovering over me and your wings protected me. Come now, don’t be afraid of anything. We’ll certainly be able to turn away his anger, and now I’m not even afraid for you, for I’ll be there. And when your master wants to oppress you, I’ll also protect you against him. If necessary, I’ll snatch you away from his cruel law. Do you want me to kill him? Tell me you love me and I’ll be his murderer, if you condemn him to die . . .’
‘You make me shudder. Say no more! If you want to kill anyone, kill me; for I’ve lived one whole day and I want nothing more . . .’
‘Die then, but die of happiness,’ cried Raymon, pressing his lips on Indiana’s.
But it was too violent a storm for so tender a plant. She turned pale, and putting her hand to her heart, she fainted.
At first, Raymon thought his caresses would bring the blood back to her frozen veins, but in vain he covered her hand with kisses, in vain he called her by the most loving names. It was not an intentional faint, of the kind we see so often. Madame Delmare, who had been seriously ill for a long time, was subject to nervous attacks which lasted for hours. Raymon, in despair, was reduced to calling for help. He rang the bell; a maid appeared, but the bottle she was carrying dropped from her hands and she let out a cry when she recognized Raymon. He, recovering his presence of mind immediately, whispered to her:
‘Be quiet, Noun! I knew you were here; I came here for you. I didn’t expect to find your mistress, who I thought was at the ball. By making my way in here, I frightened her and she fainted. Be prudent. I’ll go.’
Raymon fled, leaving each of these two women with a secret that was to bring despair to the heart of the other.
VII
THE next day, when he woke up Raymon received a second letter from Noun. He did not despise that one and throw it away. On the contrary, he opened it eagerly; it might tell him something about Madame Delmare. It did indeed, but what difficulties this complication of intrigues caused Raymon! It was becoming impossible to hide the girl’s secret. Suffering and fear had already made her face thin. Madame Delmare noticed that Noun did not look well, without discovering why. Noun was afraid of the Colonel’s harshness, but even more of her mistress’s gentleness. She knew quite well that Madame Delmare would forgive her, but she was dying of shame and grief at being forced to confess. What would become of her if Raymon did not shield her from the humiliation which was bound to be heaped upon her? In short, he must look after her or she would throw herself at Madame Delmare’s feet and tell her everything.
This fear had a powerful effect on M. de Ramière. His first care was to take Noun away from her mistress.
‘Take care not to say anything without my agreement,’ he said. ‘Try to be at Lagny this evening. I’ll be there.’
On the way, he considered how he should behave. Noun had enough good sense not to count on an impossible redress. She had not dared pronounce the word marriage and because she was discreet and generous, Raymon thought himself less guilty. He told himself that he had not deceived her and that Noun must have foreseen her fate more than once. What troubled Raymon was not the thought of offering the poor girl half his fortune; he was prepared to make her rich, to give her all the care and consideration he could think of. What made his situation so painful was being forced to tell her that he no longer loved her, because he was no good at lying. If, at that moment, his behaviour seemed two-faced and treacherous, his heart was sincere, as it had always been. He had loved Noun with his senses, he loved Madame Delmare with all his heart. Till then he had lied neither to the one nor the other. It was a question of not starting to lie, and Raymon felt equally incapable of deceiving poor Noun and of driving her to despair. He had to choose between treachery and cruelty. Raymon was thoroughly unhappy. He reached the gate of the Lagny grounds without having made up his mind.
For her part, Noun, who perhaps did not expect such a prompt rely, had regained a little hope.
‘He still loves me,’ she said to herself. ‘He doesn’t want to desert me. He’d forgotten me a little; it’s quite natural. In Paris, with lots of parties, the darling of all the women, as he’s bound to be, he’s allowed himself to be distracted for a short while away from the poor girl from the Indies. Alas! Who am I, that, for me, he should give up so many great ladies, lovelier and richer than me? Who knows?’ she said to herself naively, ‘Perhaps the Queen of France is in love with him.’
Through thinking of the seductive charms with which luxury was bound to influence her lover, Noun thought of a way of making herself more attractive to him. She decked herself out in her mistress’s finery, lit a big fire in Madame Delmare’s room at Lagny, decorated the mantelpiece with the most beautiful flowers she could find in the hothouse and prepared a snack of fruit and fine wines; in short she arranged all the elegant refinements of the boudoir that she had never thought of before. And when she looked at herself in a large glass panel, she did herself justice in thinking herself prettier than the flowers with
which she had tried to enhance her beauty.
‘He often told me I didn’t need jewellery to be beautiful,’ she said to herself, ‘and that no lady at court, with all her sparkling diamonds, was worth one of my smiles. Yet those women he used to despise fill his mind now. Now, I must be cheerful, I must look lively and happy. Perhaps tonight I’ll regain all the love I used to arouse in him.’
Having left his horse at a little charcoal burner’s hut in the forest, Raymon let himself into the grounds to which he had a key. This time, he no longer ran the risk of being taken for a thief. Nearly all the servants had followed their masters; he had taken the gardener into his confidence and he knew all the paths to Lagny as well as those to his own house.
It was a cold night. A thick fog enveloped the trees in the estate and Raymon could scarcely make out their black branches in the white mist which clothed them in diaphanous robes.
He wandered for a while in the winding paths before he could find the door of the summer-house where Noun was waiting for him. She came to him wrapped in a fur-lined cloak with the hood up over her head.
‘We can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘It’s too cold. Follow me and don’t say anything.’
Raymon felt an extreme repugnance to enter Madame Delmare’s house as her maid’s lover. But he had to agree. Noun walked with a light step ahead of him and this interview would be decisive.
She led him across the courtyard, pacified the dogs, opened the doors without a sound, and, taking his hand, guided him silently through the dark corridors. Finally she took him into a simple, elegant, circular room, where flowering orange-trees were emitting their sweet fragrance and translucent candles were burning in the candelabra.
Noun had scattered Bengal rose petals on the floor; the couch was strewn with violets, a gentle warmth penetrated one’s whole body, and the crystal glasses glittered on the table amongst the pieces of fruit which coquettishly showed off their rosy cheeks against the green moss of the baskets.
Dazzled by the sudden transition from darkness to a bright light, Raymon was momentarily blinded, but it did not take him long to realize where he was. All the furnishings were in exquisite taste and of a chaste simplicity; love stories and travel books were scattered on the mahogany bookshelves; on the loom was a pretty tapestry, newly worked in melancholy patience; the harp strings seemed to be still vibrating with songs of sad longing; the engravings depicted the pastoral love of Paul and Virginie, the peaks of Bourbon Island, and the blue coastline of Saint-Paul; the little bed was half-hidden by muslin curtains, the modest little white virginal bed with a palm branch like a sacred emblem at its head, taken perhaps on the day she left from some tree in her native land. It all spoke of Madame Delmare and Raymon was gripped by a strange shudder at the thought that the cloaked woman who had led him there was perhaps Indiana herself. This absurd idea seemed to be confirmed when he saw a white, bejewelled figure appear in the mirror in front of him, the ghost of a woman who, on entering a ballroom, casts aside her cloak to reveal herself, radiant and half-naked in the brilliant lights. But it was only a momentary error. Indiana would have uncovered herself less . . . Her modest bosom would have been glimpsed only under a bodice of three layers of gauze. She might have decorated her hair with natural camellias, but they would not have been arranged on her head in such provocative disorder. She might have encased her feet in satin slippers, but her chaste dress would not have revealed like this the secrets of her pretty legs.
Taller and of bigger build than her mistress, Noun was dressed up rather than dressed in her fine attire. She was graceful, but graceful without distinction; she had a woman’s beauty but not a fairy’s; she suggested pleasure but gave no promise of ecstasy.
After studying Noun in the mirror without turning his head, Raymon cast his eyes again on everything which could give a purer reflection of Indiana, on the musical instruments, the paintings, and the narrow virginal bed. He became intoxicated by the gentle fragrance left by her presence in this sanctuary; he trembled with desire as he thought of the day when Indiana herself would reveal its delights to him. And Noun, with folded arms, looked at him ecstatically, imagining that he was lost in happiness at the sight of all the care she had taken to please him.
But at last he broke the silence, saying:
‘Thank you for all the preparations you’ve made for me. Thank you above all for bringing me here, but I’ve enjoyed this charming surprise enough now. Let’s leave this room; we’re out of place, and I ought to respect Madame Delmare, even in her absence.’
‘That’s very cruel,’ said Noun, who had not understood him but saw his cold, displeased look. ‘It’s cruelly disappointing to have hoped I would please you and to see that you reject me.’
‘No, my dear Noun, I’ll never reject you. I came here to talk to you seriously and to show you the affection I owe you. I appreciate your wish to please me, but I loved you more, adorned with your youth and natural charm, than with these borrowed ornaments.’
Noun half-understood and wept.
‘I am a wretched girl,’ she said. ‘I hate myself because you don’t love me any more . . . I ought to have foreseen that you wouldn’t love me for long, a poor girl like me with no education. I don’t blame you for anything. I knew perfectly well that you wouldn’t marry me, but if you’d continued to love me, I’d have sacrificed everything with no regrets and no complaints. Alas! I’m ruined, I’m dishonoured! Perhaps I’ll be dismissed. I’m going to give life to a being who will be even more unfortunate than me and no one will pity me . . . Everyone will feel entitled to trample on me . . . Well, I’d put up happily with all that, if you still loved me.’
Noun spoke a long time in this vein. Perhaps she did not use the same words, but she said the same things, a hundred times better than I could repeat them to you. Where can one find the secret of the eloquence which a totally ignorant mind suddenly has at its command in the crisis of a true passion and a deep grief? Words then take on a different value from what they have in all other situations in life; trivial words then become sublime because of the feeling which dictates them and the tone in which they are uttered. In giving way uninhibitedly to the full extent of her emotions, a woman of the lowest class then becomes more pathetic and more persuasive than one whose upbringing has taught her moderation and reserve.
Raymon felt flattered at having aroused so warm an attachment, and gratitude, compassion, perhaps a little vanity, momentarily revived his love.
Noun was choked with tears. She had ripped the flowers from her hair, her long tresses fell in strands onto her dazzling, broad shoulders. If, as an aid to her beauty, Madame Delmare had not had her lack of freedom and her suffering, Noun would at that moment have far surpassed her mistress in beauty. She was resplendent with grief and love. Raymon, overcome, took her in his arms, sat her down beside him on the sofa, and pulled up the table laden with decanters to pour a few drops of orange-flower water into a silver cup. Comforted by this sign of concern more than by the soothing drink, Noun dried her tears, threw herself at Raymon’s feet, and, passionately clasping his knees, said:
‘Love me still; tell me again that you still love me and I’ll recover, I’ll be saved. Kiss me as you used to and I won’t regret ruining myself to give you a few days’ pleasure.’
She put her young, brown arms around him, she covered him with her long hair, her large black eyes looked at him with the burning languor, the ardent temperament, and the oriental sensuality which can overcome all efforts of the will, all thoughts of propriety. Raymon forgot everything, his resolutions, his new love, and where he was. He returned Noun’s delirious caresses. He dipped his lips in the same cup and the heady wines which were at hand completed the loss of their reason.
Gradually the vague, floating memory of Indiana began to intrude into Raymon’s intoxicated mind. The two mirrored panels reflected Noun’s image endlessly from one to the other and seemed peopled by a thousand phantoms. In the depths of this double reflection he espied a
more slender form, and in the last dim, blurred shadow, which was Noun’s reflection in it, he thought he could see the slender, willowy form of Madame Delmare.
Noun, herself dazed by the unfamiliar intoxicating drinks, no longer understood her lover’s strange language. If she had not been as drunk as he, she would have realized that at the height of his ecstasy Raymon was thinking of another. She would have seen him kiss the scarf and ribbons that Indiana had worn, breathe in the perfumes that reminded him of her, and crush in his eager hands the material that had covered her breast; but Noun took all these transports for herself, when all that Raymon saw of her was Indiana’s dress. When he kissed her black hair, he believed he was kissing Indiana’s black hair. It was Indiana he saw in the vapours of the punch that Noun had just set alight. It was she who was summoning him and smiling at him behind the white muslin curtains, and it was again Indiana that he dreamed of on that modest, immaculate bed when, succumbing to love and wine, he led his dishevelled Creole there.