Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)

by George Sand

  Madame Delmare did not in the least suspect the effect she was having on Raymon. She had tied a scarf of Indian silk loosely round her head in the Creole manner. It was Noun’s usual head-covering. Raymon, overcome by fear, nearly fell backwards, thinking he saw the realization of his superstitious thoughts. But as he recognized the woman he had come to seduce, he forgot the one he had seduced, and approached Indiana. She looked grave and thoughtful; she gazed at him steadily, but with more close attention than affection, and did not make a single movement to bring him to her side more quickly.

  Raymon, surprised at this reception, attributed it to some chaste scruple, to a young woman’s sensitive reserve. He went down on his knees saying:

  ‘My beloved, are you afraid of me?’

  But then he noticed that Madame Delmare was holding something which she seemed to be showing him with a playful affectation of gravity. He bent over to look and saw a mass of black hair of irregular length, which looked as if it had been cut hurriedly and which Indiana was holding together and smoothing in her hands.

  ‘Do you recognize it?’ she asked, fixing on him her limpid eyes, from which flashed a strange, penetrating gleam.

  Raymon hesitated, looked again at the scarf round her head, and thought he understood.

  ‘Naughty girl!’ he said, taking the hair in his hand. ‘But why did you cut it off? It was so beautiful and I loved it so dearly.’

  ‘You were asking me yesterday,’ she said with a kind of smile, ‘if I would sacrifice it to you.’

  ‘Oh, Indiana,’ cried Raymon, ‘you know very well that henceforth you will be still more beautiful for me. Do give it me. I don’t want to be sorry that your head is without the hair I used to admire every day. Now I’ll be able to kiss it freely every day. Give it to me so that it will never leave me.’

  But as he took hold of it, as he gathered up in his hands the rich bundle of hair with some locks reaching right to the ground, Raymon thought he felt something dry and rough in it that his fingers had never felt in the tresses round Indiana’s brow. He experienced, too, an indefinable nervous shudder when he felt it was cold and heavy, as if it had already been cut a long time, and when he noticed that it had lost its fragrant moisture and vital warmth. And then he examined it closely and sought in vain for the blue sheen which made it look like a crow’s blue-tinged wing. This hair was completely black, like Indian hair, heavy and lifeless.

  Indiana’s bright, piercing eyes still followed Raymon’s. His turned involuntarily to a half-open ebony box, from which some locks of the same hair were still protruding.

  ‘It’s not yours!’ he said, removing the Indian kerchief, which was hiding Madame Delmare’s.

  Her hair was quite intact and fell abundantly around her shoulders. But she motioned him away and, still pointing to the cut hair said:

  ‘Don’t you recognize that hair, then? Have you never admired it, never caressed it? Has the damp night air made it lose all its fragrance? Haven’t you one thought, one tear, for the girl who used to wear this ring?’

  Raymon collapsed onto a chair. Noun’s hair fell from his trembling hands. So many painful emotions had exhausted him. He was a man of irascible temperament, with rapidly circulating blood and deeply irritable nerves. He shuddered from head to foot and fell to the floor in a faint.

  When he regained consciousness, Madame Delmare, kneeling beside him, was shedding tears over him and begging his pardon. But Raymon no longer loved her.

  ‘You have given me excruciating pain,’ he said, ‘a pain which it is not in your power to remedy. You will never give me back, I feel, the trust that I had in your heart. You have just shown me how much vengeance and cruelty it contains. Poor Noun! Poor unlucky girl! It was her I wronged, and not you. It was she who had the right to avenge herself, but she didn’t do so. She killed herself so as to leave the future to me. She sacrificed her life to avert trouble for me. You, Madame, would not have done so much! Give me that hair, it’s mine, it belongs to me. It’s all I have left of the only woman who truly loved me. Unhappy Noun! You deserved a better love! And it’s you, Madame, who reproach me with her death, you whom I loved so much that I forgot her, that I confronted the frightful tortures of remorse; you who, on the faith of a kiss, made me cross that river and go over the bridge, alone, with terror at my side, pursued by the infernal illusions of my crime! And when you discover with what intoxicating passion I love you, you dig your woman’s nails into my heart so as to find a last drop of blood which can still flow for you! Oh, when I spurned such a devoted love to pursue one that is so ferocious, I was as crazy as I was guilty.’

  Madame Delmare made no reply. Pale and motionless with dishevelled hair and staring eyes, she moved Raymon to pity. He took her hand.

  ‘And yet,’ he said, ‘the love I have for you is so blind that, in spite of myself, I feel I can still forget both the past and the present, the crime which has blighted my life and the one you have just committed. Love me still and I forgive you.’

  Madame Delmare’s despair rekindled desire as well as pride in her lover’s heart. On seeing her so afraid of losing his love, so humble before him, so resigned to accepting his edicts for the future as vindication of the past, he remembered what his intentions had been when he had eluded Ralph’s vigilance and he realized all the advantages of his position. For a few moments he pretended to be in a state of profound sadness, of gloomy meditation. He barely responded to Indiana’s tears and caresses. He waited till her broken heart had burst into sobs, till she had appreciated all the horror of being deserted, till she had worn out her strength in agonizing fears. And then, when he saw her at his knees, half-dead, exhausted, awaiting death at a word from him, he grasped her in his arms with passionate frenzy and drew her to his breast. She yielded like a weak child; she abandoned her lips to him without resistance. She was almost lifeless.

  But suddenly, as if waking from her dream, she snatched herself away from his burning caresses, fled to the end of the room, to the spot where Sir Ralph occupied the wall-panel, and as if she had put herself under the protection of that solemn personage with his pure brow and tranquil mouth, she pressed herself against the portrait, panting, distraught, and gripped by a strange fear. This made Raymon think that her emotions had been aroused in his arms, that she was afraid of herself, that she was his. He ran to her, pulled her forcibly from her retreat, and declared that he had come with the intention of keeping his promises but that her cruelty to him had freed him from his vows.

  ‘I am no longer now your slave or your ally,’ he said. ‘I am only the man who loves you to distraction and holds you in his arms, you unkind, capricious, cruel woman, but one who is beautiful, mad, and adored. With gentle, trusting words, you would have calmed my blood; had you been serene and generous like yesterday, you would have made me mild and submissive as usual. But you made me in turn unhappy, cowardly, ill, furious, desperate. Now you must make me happy or I feel I can no longer believe in you, that I can no longer love and bless you. Forgive me, Indiana, forgive me! If I frighten you, it’s your own fault. You have made me suffer so much that I have lost my reason.’

  Indiana trembled from head to foot. She was so ignorant of life that she thought resistance was impossible. She was ready to grant from fear what she wanted to refuse from love. But as she struggled weakly in Raymon’s arms, she said despairingly:

  ‘So you’d be capable of using force with me!’

  Raymon paused, struck by this moral resistance which outlasted her physical resistance. He quickly pushed her away.

  ‘Never!’ he cried. ‘I’d rather die than have you against your will.’

  He fell to his knees, and everything with which the mind can replace the heart, the poetry that the imagination can supply to the ardour of the blood, he put into a fervent and dangerous entreaty. But when he saw that she was not surrendering, he yielded to necessity and reproached her with not loving him, a despicable commonplace which made him laugh and feel almost ashamed of having
an affair with a woman who was so naive as not to laugh at it herself.

  This reproach went to Indiana’s heart more quickly than all the protestations with which Raymon had embellished his speeches.

  But suddenly she remembered.

  ‘Raymon,’ she said, ‘the girl you loved so dearly, the one we were talking about a few moments ago . . . Presumably she refused you nothing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Raymon, losing patience at this inopportune reminder. ‘You keep on reminding me of her; you should instead be making me forget how much she loved me!’

  ‘Tell me,’ continued Indiana, gravely and thoughtfully. ‘Be brave; I must say something more. Perhaps you were not as guilty towards me as I thought. It would be nice if I could pardon what I looked on as a mortal insult. . . Tell me then . . . when I surprised you there . . . whom did you come for? Her or me?’

  Raymon hesitated. Then, as he thought that Madame Delmare would soon know the truth, that perhaps she knew it already, he replied:

  ‘For her.’

  ‘Well, I prefer it that way,’ she said sadly. ‘I prefer an infidelity to an insult. Be honest right to the end, Raymon. How long had you been in my room when I came in? Remember that Ralph knows everything and that if I want to question him . . .’

  ‘There is no need of Sir Ralph as an informer, Madame. I had been here since the night before.’

  ‘And you spent the night in this room? . . . Your silence tells me all I need to know.’

  They both remained silent for a few moments. Indiana got up and was about to say something, when a sharp knock on her door froze the blood in her veins. She and Raymon stood quite still, not daring to breathe.

  A piece of paper was slipped under the door. It was a leaf from a notebook; on it were written in pencil, almost illegibly, the words:

  ‘Your husband is here.

  RALPH.’

  XVIII

  ‘IT’s a wretchedly fabricated lie,’ said Raymon, as soon as the faint sound of Sir Ralph’s steps had died away. ‘Sir Ralph needs a lesson and I’ll give him one such as . . .’

  ‘I forbid you,’ said Indiana coldly and decisively. ‘My husband is here. Ralph never lies. We are lost, you and I. There was a time when I would have frozen with terror at the thought. Today I don’t care!’

  ‘Well,’ said Raymon, enthusiastically grasping her in his arms, ‘since death is at hand, be mine! Forgive me everything, and in this supreme moment let your last word be one of love, my last breath one of happiness.’

  ‘This moment of terror and courage might have been the most wonderful of my life,’ she said, ‘but you have spoiled it for me.’

  The sound of wheels could be heard in the farmyard and the entrance bell was rung roughly and impatiently.

  ‘I know that ring,’ said Indiana tersely and coolly. ‘Ralph didn’t tell a lie, but you have time to escape. Run!’

  ‘No, I don’t want to,’ cried Raymon. ‘I suspect some foul betrayal, and you won’t be its only victim. I shall remain and my body will protect you.’

  ‘There is no betrayal . . . Don’t you see that the servants are aroused and the gate is about to be opened . . . Run, the trees in the garden will hide you, and then the moon isn’t up yet. Not another word. Go!’

  Raymon was forced to obey, but she went with him to the foot of the staircase and cast a searching look at the tree-clumps in the flower-garden. All was silent and calm. She stayed a long time on the last step, listening in terror to the sound of his steps on the gravel path and not thinking any more of her husband’s arrival. What did his suspicions and anger matter, provided that Raymon was out of danger!

  As for him, he crossed the river and grounds with a quick, light step. He reached the little gate but had some difficulty opening it. He had only just gone through it when Sir Ralph appeared before him and, as calmly as if he had gone up to him at a large party, said:

  ‘Do me the favour of handing me that key. If anyone looks for it, there won’t be any trouble if it’s found in my hands.’

  Raymon would have preferred the most mortal insult to this ironic generosity.

  ‘I wouldn’t be the man to forget a genuine service,’ he said, ‘but I would be the man to avenge an insult and punish a treachery.’

  Sir Ralph did not change the tone of his voice or the expression of his face.

  ‘I don’t want your gratitude,’ he replied, ‘and I await your vengeance unconcernedly. But now is not the moment to talk to each other. That’s your path; think of Madame Delmare’s honour.’

  And he disappeared.

  This night of violent emotions had had such a shattering effect on Raymon’s mind that, for the moment, he would have been prepared to believe in magic. He arrived at Cercy at daybreak and went to bed with a fever.

  As for Madame Delmare, she did the honours of the breakfast table for her husband and cousin with great calm and dignity. She had not yet reflected on her situation. She was completely dominated by instinct, which imposed calmness and presence of mind on her. The Colonel was gloomy and worried, but his business alone occupied his mind and there were no jealous suspicions in his thoughts.

  Towards evening, Raymon felt strong enough to turn his mind to his love-affair, but his love had greatly diminished. He liked obstacles, but he recoiled from troubles and he foresaw a great many now that Indiana had the right to reproach him. Finally, he remembered that his honour required him to ask for news of her, so he sent his servant to Lagny to find out what was happening there. The messenger brought back the following letter which Madame Delmare had handed to him:

  ‘Last night I hoped I would lose my reason or my life. To my misfortune, I have retained both, but I shall not complain; I have deserved the pain I am feeling. I wanted to live that passionate life; it would be cowardly to draw back today. I don’t know if you’re guilty and I don’t want to know. We’ll never return to that subject, will we? It hurts us both too much; so I’ll mention it now for the last time.

  ‘You made one remark to me which gave me a cruel pleasure. Poor Noun! From heaven above, forgive me. You suffer no longer, you love no longer, perhaps you pity me! . . . You told me, Raymon, that you sacrificed that unhappy girl to me, that you loved me more than her . . . Oh, don’t take back what you said, you said it. I need so much to believe it, that I do believe it. And yet your behaviour last night, your entreaties, your wild declarations, ought to have made me doubt it. I forgave you because of the agitated state you were in. Now you have been able to reflect, to return to your right mind. Tell me, are you willing to give up loving me in that way? I love you with the heart, and I have thought until now that I would be able to inspire in you a love as pure as my own. And then I hadn’t thought too much about the future. I hadn’t looked very far ahead and I wasn’t frightened by the idea that one day, conquered by your devotion, I would sacrifice my scruples and my reluctance to you. But today, that can no longer be the case. In such a future I can only see a frightening equality with Noun. Oh, to be loved no more than she was loved! If I believed that . . . And yet she was more beautiful than me, far more beautiful. Why did you prefer me? You must have loved me differently and better . . . That’s what I wanted to tell you. Will you give up being my lover in the way you were hers? In that case, I can still esteem you, believe in your remorse, in your sincerity, in your love; if not, think no more about me, you’ll never see me again. Perhaps I shall die as a result, but I prefer to die than to descend to being merely your mistress.’

  Raymon was in some embarrassment as to how to reply. Her pride offended him. Till then he had never believed that a woman who had thrown herself into his arms would have been able to resist him openly and give reasons for her resistance.

  ‘She doesn’t love me,’ he said to himself. ‘She is cold-hearted and arrogant.’

  From that moment, he no longer loved her. She had wounded his self-esteem; she had disappointed the hope of one of his conquests, ruined the expectation of one of his pleasures. As far as
he was concerned, she was no longer even what Noun had been. Poor Indiana! She who had wanted to be more! Her passionate love was misunderstood, her blind trust had been despised. Raymon had never understood her; how could he have loved her for long?

  Then, in his annoyance, he vowed he would triumph over her. He no longer vowed this out of pride, but in a spirit of vengeance. For him it was no longer a question of attaining happiness, but of punishing an insult, not of possessing a woman but of humiliating her. He vowed he would be her master and then he would abandon her so as to have the pleasure of seeing her at his feet.

  In his first reaction, he wrote the following letter:

  ‘You want me to promise you . . . You crazy girl, can you think of such a thing? I promise everything you want, because I can only obey you . . . But if I don’t keep my promises, I shan’t be guilty before God or you. If you loved me, Indiana, you wouldn’t inflict these cruel tortures on me, you wouldn’t expose me to being false to my word, you wouldn’t be ashamed to be my mistress . . . But you think you would demean yourself in my arms . . .’

  Raymon felt that his bitterness was becoming apparent in spite of himself. He tore up this beginning and, having given himself time for reflection, he began again:

  ‘You admit that you nearly went out of your mind last night. I went out of mine completely. I was guilty . . . but no, I was crazy. Forget those painful, intoxicating hours. I’m calm now; I’ve thought things over; I’m still worthy of you. Bless you, angel from heaven, for having saved me from myself, for having reminded me how I ought to love you. Command me, now, Indiana! I am your slave, you know that very well. I would give my life for one hour in your arms, but I am capable of suffering a whole lifetime to get one of your smiles. I shall be your friend, your brother, nothing more. If I suffer, you will be unaware of it. If, at your side, my blood is kindled, if my heart is inflamed, if a cloud passes over my eyes when I touch your hand, if a gentle kiss from your lips, a sisterly kiss, burns my brow, I shall command my blood to calm down, my head to become cool again, my mouth to respect you. I shall be gentle, I shall be submissive, I shall be unhappy and enjoy my tortures if you are to be happier that way, provided I still hear you say you love me. Oh, say that to me; give me back your trust and my happiness; tell me when we shall see each other again. I don’t know what the outcome of last night’s events may have been. How is it that you don’t tell me anything about it, that you have been leaving me in agony since this morning? Carle saw the three of you walking in the grounds. The Colonel looked ill and sad, but not angry. So that Ralph won’t have betrayed us! What a strange man! But what reliance can we place on his discretion, and how shall I dare show myself again at Lagny, now that our fate is in his hands? Yet I shall dare. Even if I have to stoop so low as to implore him, I shall humble my pride, I shall conquer my aversion, I shall do everything rather than lose you. One word from you and I shall burden my life with as much remorse as I can take. For you I would even desert my mother; for you I would commit any crime. Oh! if you realized the extent of my love, Indiana! . . .’