by George Sand
‘Don’t ever talk to him about her. She was young, rich, and beautiful, but she had been in love with Edmond; she had been intended for him and when, in obedience to the interests and feelings of her family, she had to marry Ralph, she didn’t even try to hide her dislike from him. He had to go with her to England and when, after his wife’s death, he came back to Bourbon Island, I was married to M. Delmare and I was going to leave for Europe. Ralph tried to live alone but solitude made his troubles worse. Although he has never spoken to me about Madame Ralph Brown, I’ve every ground for thinking that he was even more unhappy in his married life than in his family, and that recent, painful memories added to his natural melancholy. He had another attack of spleen, and so he sold his coffee plantations and settled in France. The way he introduced himself to my husband is original and would have made me laugh if I had not been touched by my good Ralph’s attachment. “Monsieur,” he said to him, “I love your wife. It was I who brought her up. I look on her as my sister and even more as my daughter. She is my only surviving relative and the only affection I have. Allow me to settle near you and permit the three of us to spend our lives together. People say you’re a little jealous where your wife is concerned, but they say you’re honourable and upright. When I’ve given you my word that I was never in love with her and that I never will be, you’ll be able to look on me with as little anxiety as if I were really your brother-in-law. Isn’t that so Monsieur?” M. Delmare, who values highly his reputation for military loyalty, received this frank declaration with a kind of ostentatious trust. But several months of careful observation were necessary for this trust to be as real as he claimed it to be. Now it is unbreakable, like Ralph’s calm, faithful heart.’
‘Are you quite sure, Indiana, that Sir Ralph isn’t deceiving himself a little when he swears he was never in love with you?’ asked Raymon.
‘I was twelve years old when he left Bourbon Island to follow his wife to England; I was sixteen when he met me again married, and he seemed more pleased than sorry. Now, Ralph is quite old.’
‘At twenty-nine?’
‘Don’t laugh. Ralph’s face is young, but his heart is worn out with suffering and he doesn’t love anything any more so that he won’t suffer any more.’
‘Not even you?’
‘Not even me. His friendship is now only habit. In the past it was generous, when he undertook to protect and teach me in my childhood, and then I loved him as he loves me today, because I needed him. Today, with all my heart I pay the debt of the past, and I spend my life trying to make his life more pleasant and less burdensome. But when I was a child, I loved instinctively more than with my heart, while he, a grown man, loves me less with his heart than instinctively. He needs me because I am almost the only being who cares for him, and even today, when M. Delmare shows him friendship, Ralph loves my husband almost as much as he does me. The protection, formerly so brave against my father’s tyranny, has become lukewarm and prudent against my husband’s. He does not reproach himself with seeing me suffer, provided I am with him; he doesn’t ask himself if I’m unhappy, he’s content to see that I’m alive. He doesn’t want to stand up for me in a way that would ameliorate my lot but which, by making him quarrel with M. Delmare, would disturb the calm of his own. Because he was told repeatedly that he was cold-hearted, he has persuaded himself that he is, and his heart has become cold through the passivity in which he has left it dormant. He is a man whom the affection of others might have been able to develop; but it was denied him and he has become withered. Now, he places his happiness in a peaceful life and his pleasure in its comforts. He doesn’t enquire about worries that aren’t his. I must use the word, Ralph is selfish.’
‘Well, so much the better,’ said Raymon. ‘I’m no longer afraid of him. I’ll like him better if you want me to.’
‘Yes, like him, Raymon,’ she replied. ‘He’ll appreciate that. And, as for us, let’s never worry ourselves about saying precisely why we’re loved, but how we’re loved. Happy is the person who is loved, for whatever reason.’
‘What you’re saying is the moan of a sad, lonely heart,’ Raymon replied, putting his arm round her graceful, slender waist, ‘but for my part, I want you to know why and how, above all why.’
‘That’s to make me happy, isn’t it?’ she said, looking at him sadly and ardently.
‘It’s to give you my life,’ said Raymon, lightly touching Indiana’s flowing hair with his lips.
A near-by fanfare warned them to be prudent; it was Sir Ralph, who may or may not have seen them.
XIV
WHEN the hounds were let loose, Raymon was surprised at what seemed to take place in Indiana’s heart. Her eyes and cheeks sprang to life; her dilated nostrils seemed to reveal an indefinable feeling of terror or pleasure, and suddenly, leaving his side and eagerly pressing her horse’s flanks, she dashed forward after Ralph. Raymon did not know that hunting was the only passion that Ralph and Indiana had in common. He did not suspect, either, that this apparently frail, timid woman possessed a more than masculine courage, the kind of mad intrepidity that can sometimes be manifested as a nervous crisis in the weakest of creatures. Women rarely have the physical courage which lies in fighting passively against grief or danger, but they often have the moral courage which is heightened by peril or suffering. Indiana’s delicate nerves responded above all to the sounds, the swift movement, and the emotion of the hunt, which is like a war in miniature with its fatigues, its subterfuges, its calculations, its fights, and its luck. Her dreary life, filled with sorrows, needed this stimulus; she seemed then to be aroused from a lethargy and, in one day, expended all the unused energy that had been allowed to seethe in her blood for a year.
Raymon was frightened at seeing her gallop in this way, abandoning herself fearlessly to the fiery mettle of a horse she barely knew, urging it on boldly into the heart of the woods, avoiding with amazing skill the branches which, springing back sharply, struck her face, unhesitatingly crossing ditches, confidently taking risks on slippery clay soil, not worrying about breaking her slender limbs, but anxious to be the first to reach the steaming trail of the boar. He was frightened by such fierce determination and it almost turned him against Madame Delmare. Men, above all when they are in love, want, in their naive self-satisfaction, to protect women’s weakness rather than admire their courage. Shall I make an admission? Raymon felt terrified of the boldness and tenacity which such an intrepid spirit promised in love. Indiana’s heart was not like that of poor Noun, who preferred to drown herself rather than fight against her unhappiness.
‘If there is as much fire and enthusiasm in her affection as there is in her tastes, if her eager, panting will becomes attached to me as much as her whim does to the flanks of this boar, society will have no shackles for her, laws will have no force,’ he thought. ‘My destiny will have to give way to her and I shall have to sacrifice my future to her present.’
Shouts of fear and distress, among which could be heard Madame Delmare’s voice, roused Raymon from these reflections. He urged his horse on anxiously and was immediately joined by Ralph, who asked him if he had heard the shouts of alarm. The frightened whips soon reached them, shouting in confusion that the boar had stood at bay and knocked Madame Delmare off her horse. Other huntsmen, still more terrified, arrived, calling for Sir Ralph, whose assistance was required for the person hurt.
‘It’s no use,’ said one of the last to arrive. ‘There’s no hope; your attentions would be too late.’
At this terrible moment Raymon’s eyes met M. Brown’s pale, gloomy face. He was not screaming, he was not foaming at the mouth, he was not wringing his hands; he simply picked up his hunting-knife and with truly British phlegm, was about to cut his throat, when Raymon snatched his weapon from him and dragged him to the spot where the screams were coming from.
Ralph seemed to emerge from a dream when he saw Madame Delmare dash towards him and help him to rush to the assistance of the Colonel who, apparently lifeless
, lay stretched on the ground. He bled him without delay, for he had soon assured himself that M. Delmare was not dead, but he had broken his thigh and was carried to the house.
As for Madame Delmare, it was by mistake that, in the confusion of the moment, she had been named instead of her husband, or rather, Ralph and Raymon had thought they heard the name that most interested them.
Indiana had not had an accident at all, but her fright and dismay almost deprived her of the strength to walk. Raymon supported her in his arms, and became reconciled to her womanly heart when he saw her so deeply affected by her husband’s misfortune for she had much to forgive him before pitying him.
Sir Ralph had already recovered his usual calm, but an extraordinary pallor revealed the violent shock he had experienced; he had almost lost one of the only two people he loved.
In that moment of frenzied confusion, Raymon alone had retained enough sanity to understand what he saw; he had been able to judge the degree of Ralph’s affection for his cousin and how little it was balanced by his feeling for the Colonel. This observation, which definitely gave the lie to Indiana’s opinion, remained in Raymon’s memory, though not in the memories of the other witnesses of the scene.
Nevertheless, Raymon never spoke to Madame Delmare of the suicide attempt he had witnessed. There was something selfish and malevolent in this discretion, but perhaps you will forgive it in view of the lover’s jealousy which inspired it.
It was with great difficulty that, after six weeks, the Colonel was moved to Lagny, but six months more elapsed before he could walk; the break in the femur was barely mended when the injured limb was affected by acute rheumatism, which condemned M. Delmare to excruciating pain and complete immobility. His wife lavished on him the most tender care. She did not leave his bedside and, without complaint, put up with his bitter, peevish moods, his military rages, and his invalid’s injustice.
Despite the troubles of such a dreary life, she became radiant and sparkling with blooming health again, and happiness came to settle in her heart. Raymon loved her, he loved her truly. He came every day; no difficulty deterred him from seeing her; he put up with the husband’s infirmities, the cousin’s coldness, the constraints of their meetings. A look from him filled Indiana’s heart with joy for a whole day. She no longer thought of complaining of life. Her heart was full, her youth had occupation, her moral strength had nourishment.
Gradually, the Colonel came to have friendly feelings for Raymon. He was naïve enough to think that his neighbour’s assiduity was proof of the interest that Raymon took in his health. Sometimes Madame de Ramière came too, sanctioning the liaison by her presence, and Indiana became enthusiastically and passionately attached to Raymon’s mother. In the end the wife’s lover became the husband’s friend.
In this constant proximity, Raymon and Ralph were forced into a kind of intimacy. They called each other ‘my dear fellow’. They shook hands morning and evening. If they had to ask each other a slight favour, their usual formula was, ‘I count on your kind friendship, etc’
And when they referred to each other, they would say, ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
But although they were as frank as it is possible for men to be in society, they did not like each other at all. They had totally different opinions about everything, they had no tastes in common, and if they both loved Madame Delmare, it was in such different ways that the feeling divided them instead of bringing them together. They took an unusual pleasure in contradicting each other and in upsetting each other as much as possible by reproaches which, although they were tossed into the conversation as generalities, were no less sharp and bitter.
Their principal and most frequent arguments began about politics and ended about morals. It was in the evening, when they would gather around M. Delmare’s chair, that disagreement arose on the slightest pretext. They always maintained the surface courtesy that philosophy imposed on the one and social propriety on the other, but beneath the veil of innuendo they nevertheless said harsh things to each other which amused the Colonel, for he had a bellicose, quarrelsome temperament and, since there were no battles, he loved quarrels.
My own belief is that a man’s political opinions are the whole man. Tell me your heart and your head, and I shall tell you your political opinions. In whatever rank or party we happen to be born, sooner or later our character wins the day against the prejudices or beliefs of upbringing. Perhaps you will think I am dogmatic, but how can I bring myself to augur well of a man who espouses certain theories which generosity repels? Show me a man who maintains the utility of the death penalty and, however conscientious and enlightened he may be, I challenge you ever to establish any sympathy between him and me. If such a man wants to instruct me about truths that I do not know, he will not succeed, for it will not be in my power to have faith in him.
Ralph and Raymon differed on every point, and yet, before they knew each other, they did not have firmly held opinions. But from the moment they began to argue, when they each expressed an opinion opposite to the one advanced by the other, they each acquired a total, unshakeable conviction. On every occasion Raymon was the champion of the existing social order, Ralph attacked the system on every point.
That is easily explained: Raymon was happy and very well treated, Ralph had known only the ills and disappointments of life; the one found everything fine, the other was dissatisfied with everything. Men and affairs had treated Ralph badly but heaped favours on Raymon; and like two children, Ralph and Raymon referred everything to themselves, setting themselves up as judges in the last resort of the great problems of the social system, though neither of them was competent.
So Ralph continued to support his dream of a republic from which he wanted to banish all abuses, all prejudices, all injustices, a plan based in its entirety on the hope of a new race of men. Raymon supported his doctrine of hereditary monarchy, preferring, he said, to put up with abuses, prejudices, and injustices rather than to see scaffolds built again and innocent blood flow.
The Colonel was nearly always on Ralph’s side at the beginning of the discussion. He hated the Bourbons* and in his opinions he expressed all the animosity he felt. But Raymon soon brought him over skilfully to his side by proving that, as a principle, the monarchy was much closer to the Empire* than to the Republic.* Ralph had so little talent for persuasion, the poor baronet was so direct and awkward, his frankness was so clumsy, his logic so dreary, his principles so uncompromising! He spared no one, he toned down no truth.
‘What the deuce!’ he would say to the Colonel when the latter cursed England’s intervention.* ‘So what has a whole nation, which fought fairly against you, done to you, who are, I assume, a sensible, reasonable man?’
‘Fairly?’ Delmare would repeat, clenching his teeth and brandishing his crutch.
‘Let the powers settle diplomatic questions between them’, Sir Ralph would continue, ‘since we’ve adopted a form of government which forbids us to discuss our interests ourselves. If a nation is responsible for its legislature’s mistakes, which will you find more guilty than yours?’
‘So, Monsieur, shame on France, which deserted Napoleon and put up with a king proclaimed by foreign bayonets!’* the Colonel would cry.
‘I don’t say shame on France,’ Ralph would continue. ‘I say misfortune for France. I pity her for having been so weak and so sick on the day she was purged of her tyrant that she was forced to accept your rag of a Constitutional Charter,* a shred of liberty that you’re beginning to respect today, when you should be throwing it away and reconquering your liberty completely.’
Then Raymon would pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Sir Ralph. A knight of the Charter, he wanted to be the knight of liberty as well, and he proved skilfully to Ralph that the one was the expression of the other, that if he tore up the Charter he would be overturning his idol himself. In vain the baronet would flounder in the faulty arguments in which M. de Ramière ensnared him. Raymon proved admirably that a more broadly based
franchise would infallibly lead to the excesses of 1793,* and that the nation was not yet mature enough for liberty, which was not the same as license. When Sir Ralph claimed that it was absurd to want to imprison a constitution in a given number of articles, that what was initially adequate, later became inadequate, supported his argument with the example of the convalescent whose needs increase daily. Raymon would then reply, to all the commonplaces clumsily regurgitated by M. Brown, that the Charter was not an inflexible circle, that it would come to terms with France’s needs, and he gave it an elasticity which he said would make it adaptable later to national needs, but which in fact was only adapted to the crown’s.
As for Delmare, he had not taken one step forward since 1815.* He was a stick-in-the-mud, as prejudiced and obstinate as the Coblenz émigrés,* the perpetual victims of his hate-filled irony. He was like a grown-up child who had never understood anything about the great drama of Napoleon’s fall. He had seen only the fortune of war when it was the power of public opinion that had triumphed. He kept on talking of treason and the sale of the fatherland, as if a whole nation could betray one man, as if France would have let itself be sold by a few generals. He would accuse the Bourbons of tyranny and regret the great days of the Empire, when there was not enough labour to till the land and families lacked bread. He would rail against Franchet’s* police and extol Fouché’s.* He was still at the day after Waterloo.
It was a really strange experience to listen to the sentimental stupidities of Delmare and M. de Ramière, both of them philanthropic dreamers, the one under Napoleon’s sword, the other under St Louis’ sceptre,* M. Delmare standing firmly at the foot of the Pyramids,* Raymon seated in the regal shade of the oak of Vincennes.* Their Utopias, which conflicted at first, became compatible in the end. Raymon ensnared the Colonel with his chivalrous speeches; for one concession he demanded ten and imperceptibly he accustomed M. Delmare to seeing twenty-five years of victories spiral upwards under the folds of the white flag.* If Ralph had not continually interrupted Raymon’s flowery rhetoric with his abrupt, blunt remarks, he would have been bound to win Delmare over to the throne of 1815,* but Ralph hurt the Colonel’s self-esteem and the clumsy directness that he used to shake his opinion only served to anchor him more firmly to his imperial convictions. Then all M. de Ramière’s efforts were wasted. Ralph trampled heavily on the flowers of his eloquence and the Colonel returned determinedly to his tricolour.* He would swear to shake the dust off it one fine day, he would spit on the lilies, he would bring back the Due de Reichstadt* to the throne of his father; he would start again on the conquest of the world and would always conclude by complaining of the shame which burdened France, of the rheumatism that nailed him to his chair, and of the ingratitude of the Bourbons towards the old moustachioed soldiers who had been burned by the desert sun* and stuck in the ice floes of the Moskva.*