Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)

by George Sand

  ‘You were a very close friend of our predecessors in this house,’ said the girl, ‘and it’s certainly generous on your part to come and see new faces. They say Madame Delmare was a remarkable woman,’ she added with a penetrating look at him. ‘She must have left memories for you here which are not to our advantage.’

  ‘She was an excellent woman,’ Raymon replied unconcernedly, ‘and her husband was a good fellow.’

  ‘But it seems to me that she was something more than an excellent woman,’ continued the heedless girl. ‘If I remember rightly, there was a charm about her which deserves a more lively, poetic description. I saw her two years ago at a ball at the Spanish embassy. She was lovely, that evening. Do you remember?’

  Raymon started at the memory of that evening when he had spoken to Indiana for the first time. At the same time he recalled that at this ball he had noticed the interesting face and intelligent eyes of the young woman to whom he was speaking at that moment. But he had not then asked who she was.

  It was only on leaving and when he was congratulating M. Hubert on his daughter’s charms, that he learned her name.

  ‘I haven’t the good fortune to be her father,’ replied the industrialist, ‘but I have made up for that by adopting her. Don’t you know my story then?’

  ‘I’ve been ill for several months,’ replied Raymon. ‘All I know of you is the good you’ve already done in the district.’

  ‘There are people who give me great credit for adopting Mademoiselle Nangy,’ replied M. Hubert, smiling. ‘But you, Monsieur, who have a noble heart, you will see whether I did anything more than decency required. A childless widower, I found myself the owner of a considerable capital, the result of my work, which I was seeking to invest. In Burgundy I found for sale the estate and château of Nangy, which were national property* and suited me very well. I had been the owner for some time, when I learned that the former owner of this estate was living in seclusion in a cottage with his seven-year-old granddaughter in conditions of extreme poverty. The old man had duly received his indemnity* but he had devoted it to paying off scrupulously debts incurred during the emigration. I wanted to ameliorate his lot and offered him a home in my house. But in his misfortunes he had retained all the pride of his rank. He refused to return to his ancestral home, as if on charity, and died shortly after my arrival without being willing to accept any help from me. Then, I took in his child. The little patrician was proud already and accepted my care against her will. But at that age prejudices are not deep-seated and resolutions don’t last long. She soon became used to looking on me as her father and I brought her up as my own daughter. She has rewarded me well by the happiness she brings to my old age. So, to make sure of my happiness, I adopted Mademoiselle de Nangy and my only ambition now is to find her a husband worthy of her and capable of skilful management of the property I’ll leave her.’

  Little by little, the excellent man, encouraged by Raymon’s interest in his confidences, let him unpretentiously into the secret of all his affairs. His attentive listener realized that M. Hubert had a fine, large fortune administered with the most minute care; to be displayed in all its splendour, it was only awaiting a younger and more fashionable user than its worthy proprietor. Raymon felt that he might be the man called to that agreeable task and he thanked his ingenious destiny which reconciled all his interests by offering him, with the help of romantic incidents, a wife of his own rank in possession of a fine, plebeian fortune. It was a stroke of fate not to let slip, and he exercised all his skill to take advantage of it. In addition, the heiress was charming. Raymon became a little more reconciled to his providence. As for Madame Delmare, he did not want to think about her. He banished the fears aroused in him from time to time by his letter. He tried to persuade himself that poor Indiana would not grasp its meaning or would not have the courage to respond to it. Finally, he managed to deceive himself and not to think he was at fault, for Raymon would have been horrified to think he was selfish. He was not one of those frank scoundrels who come on to the stage to make a naive confession of their vices to their own hearts. Vice does not see itself in its own ugliness, for it would frighten itself, and Shakespeare’s Iago,* a character so true to life in his deeds, is false in his words, forced as he is by our dramatic conventions to reveal, himself, the deep secret recesses of his tortuous heart. Man rarely tramples his conscience underfoot in cold blood. He turns it over, squeezes it, pulls it this way and that, distorts it, and when he has perverted it, enfeebled it, and worn it out, he carries it about with him as an indulgent and easy-going guardian, who gives in to his passions and his interest, but whom he always pretends to consult and to fear.

  So M. de Ramière often returned to Lagny, and M. Hubert welcomed his visits; for, as you know, Raymon had the art of making himself liked, and soon the rich plebeian’s only wish was to call him his son-in-law. But he wanted his adopted daughter to choose Raymon herself and he allowed the young people complete freedom to get to know, and to form an opinion about, each other.

  Laure de Nangy was in no hurry to reach a decision about Raymon’s happiness. She kept him perfectly balanced between fear and hope. Less generous than Madame Delmare but more skilful, detached but flattering, proud but attentive, she was the woman to get the better of Raymon, for her skill outdid Raymon’s as much as his outdid Indiana’s. She soon realized that her admirer was in pursuit of her fortune as much as of herself. Her rational imagination had hoped for nothing better from suitors. She had too much good sense, too much knowledge of the real world, to have dreamed of love side by side with two million. Calmly and philosophically, she had accepted the situation and did not blame Raymon. She did not dislike him for being calculating and materialistic like the age he lived in, only she knew him too well to love him. She prided herself on not being below the cold rational standard of the age. Her amour propre would have suffered had she retained the naive illusions of an ignorant girl at boarding school. She would have blushed at a disappointment as if it were a blunder. In a word, she made her heroism consist in avoiding love as Madame Delmare placed hers in yielding to it.

  Mademoiselle de Nangy had therefore quite made up her mind to submit to marriage as a social necessity, but she took a malicious pleasure in making use of the liberty she still had and in imposing her authority for a while on the man who aspired to deprive her of it. No youth, no sweet dreams, no brilliant, deceptive future, for this girl who was condemned to undergo all the miseries of wealth. For her, life was a stoical calculation and happiness a childish illusion, against which she must defend herself as against a weakness and an absurdity.

  While Raymon was working at building up his fortune, Indiana was approaching the shores of France. But how surprised and alarmed she was when on disembarking, she saw the tricolour flag flying on the walls of Bordeaux! A violent disturbance was disrupting the town; the prefect had been almost murdered the night before; on all sides the populace was rising; the garrison seemed to be preparing for a bloody struggle and the outcome of the revolution in Paris* was still unknown.

  ‘I’ve come too late!’ was the thought that struck Madame Delmare like a lightning blow.

  In her fear, she left the little money and few clothes she possessed on the boat, and began to walk about the town in a kind of daze. She looked for a coach going to Paris, but the public conveyances were laden with fugitives or with profiteers from the spoils of the conquered. It was not till the evening that she found a place. Just as she was getting into the coach, a patrol of the improvised national guard opposed the travellers’ departure and asked to see their papers. Indiana had none. While she was struggling against the fairly absurd suspicions of the triumphant victors, she heard it firmly stated around her that the monarchy had fallen, the King had fled, and the ministers with all their supporters had been murdered. This news, proclaimed with laughter, stamping feet, and shouts of joy dealt Madame Delmare a mortal blow. In all this revolution, only one item was of personal interest to her; in all
France she knew only one man. She fell in a faint on the pavement and only recovered consciousness in a hospital . . . several days later.

  Without money, clothes, or possessions she left hospital two months later, weak, tottering, and exhausted by an inflammatory brain fever which had nearly cost her life several times. When she found herself in the street, alone, barely able to stand, with no support, resources, or strength, and when, making an effort to recollect her situation, she realized she was lost and friendless in the great city, she had an indescribable feeling of terror and despair; for she thought that Raymon’s fate had probably been decided long since and there was not a single person around her who could put an end to her frightful uncertainty. The horror of being deserted weighed down upon her broken spirit with all its might, and the apathetic despair aroused by utter misery gradually deadened all her faculties. In the moral numbness that she felt was coming over her, she dragged herself to the harbour and, shivering with fever, sat down on a bollard to warm herself in the sun, gazing idly at the water flowing at her feet. She stayed there for several hours, without energy, hope, or will-power. Then at last she remembered her clothes and money that she had left on the Eugene and that she might be able to retrieve. But night had fallen and she dared not venture amongst the sailors, who were leaving their work with boisterous cheerfulness, to ask them for information about the ship. On the contrary, she wanted to avoid the attention she was beginning to attract, and so she left the harbour and hid in the ruins of a demolished house behind the huge esplanade of Les Quinconces. * Huddled in a corner, she spent the night there, a cold October night filled with terrors and bitter thoughts. At last day dawned; hunger, biting and implacable, made itself felt. She decided to beg. Although in a fairly bad condition, her clothes still indicated more comfortable circumstances than is normal for a beggar. People looked at her with curiosity, suspicion, or mockery, but gave her nothing. She dragged herself back to the harbour and, asking for news of the Eugene, learned from the first boatman she met that it was still in the Bordeaux roadstead. She had herself rowed out to the ship and found Random having breakfast.

  ‘Well, my lovely passenger,’ he cried. ‘So you’re back from Paris already? You’ve come just in time, for I’m sailing back tomorrow. Do you want to be taken back to Bourbon?’

  He informed Madame Delmare that he had had a search made for her everywhere so that he could return her belongings. But when Indiana was taken to hospital, she had no document on her which could indicate her name. She had been entered as unknown on the admissions register and on the police records; the Captain had therefore been unable to obtain any information.

  The next day, in spite of her weakness and fatigue, Indiana left for Paris. Her anxiety should have been lessened when she saw the turn political events had taken.* But anxiety does not reason and love is fertile in childish fears.

  The very evening of her arrival in Paris, she hurried to Raymon’s house. She questioned the porter anxiously.

  ‘Monsieur is well,’ he replied. ‘He’s at Lagny.’

  ‘At Lagny! Do you mean Cercy?’

  ‘No, Madame, at Lagny. He’s the proprietor there now.’

  ‘How kind Raymon is!’ thought Indiana. ‘He has bought the estate to provide a refuge for me, where malicious gossip cannot touch me. He was quite sure I would come.’

  Beside herself with happiness, light-hearted and filled with new life, she took a room in a hotel without delay and spent the night and a part of the next day resting. It was such a long time since the unfortunate young woman had had a peaceful sleep! Her dreams were delightful, yet deceptive, but when she awoke she did not regret their illusions, for she found hope at her bedside. She dressed with care; she knew that Raymon cared about all the details of dress, and the evening before she had ordered a pretty, new dress that was brought to her when she got up. But when she wanted to do her hair she looked in vain for her long, magnificent tresses: during her illness they had fallen under the nurses’ scissors. She noticed this for the first time, for her preoccupations had been so great that they had distracted her from trivialities.

  Nevertheless, when she had arranged her short black hair in curls on her melancholy, white brow and put on her pretty head a little hat in the English style (called then a three per cent* by allusion to the recent slump in dividends), when she had fixed in her belt a bunch of the flowers whose scent Raymon liked, she hoped he would still find her attractive; for she had become pale and delicate-looking again, as on the days when he had first known her, and the effects of illness had removed the traces of the tropical sun.

  In the afternoon she hired a carriage, and about nine o’clock in the evening she reached a village on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. There she ordered the driver to unharness the horse and to wait for her till the next day; then she set off alone on foot along a path in the wood which led her in less than a quarter of an hour to the grounds at Lagny. She tried to push the little gate open but it was locked on the inside. Indiana wanted to go in secretly, to evade the servants’ eyes and to surprise Raymon. She skirted the wall of the grounds. It was old; she remembered it had many broken sections, and fortunately she found one which she climbed over without too much difficulty.

  As she set foot on land which belonged to Raymon and which from now on was to be her refuge, her sanctuary, her fortress, and her home, she felt her heart leap for joy. Light-footed and triumphant, she sped along the winding paths she knew so well. She reached the English garden, so dark and isolated on that side. The clumps of trees had not changed but the bridge, whose painful sight she was dreading, had disappeared; even the river had altered it course. Only the places which would have recalled Noun’s death had become different.

  ‘He wanted to remove that cruel memory from me,’ thought Indiana. ‘He was wrong; I could have borne it. Wasn’t it for my sake that he brought this remorse into his life? From now on we are quits, for I too have committed a crime. I have perhaps caused my husband’s death. Raymon can open his arms to me. We will take the place of innocence and virtue for each other.’

  She crossed the river on planks which were lying there till a planned bridge was built, and walked through the flower garden. She was forced to stop, for her heart was beating as if it would burst. She looked up at the window of her old room. Oh joy! Light was shining through the blue curtains; Raymon was there. Could he occupy another room? The door of the secret staircase was open.

  ‘He’s expecting me at any time,’ she thought. ‘He’ll be happy but not surprised.’

  At the top of the staircase she stopped again to draw breath. She felt less strong to cope with joy than with sorrow. She bent down and looked through the keyhole. Raymon was alone; he was reading. It was really him; it was Raymon full of strength and vitality. Sorrows had not aged him; political upheavals had not removed a hair from his head. He was there, calm and handsome, his forehead resting on his white hand, which was buried in his black hair.

  Indiana eagerly pushed the door, which opened without difficulty.

  ‘You were expecting me,’ she cried, falling on her knees and leaning her head, almost fainting, on Raymon’s breast. ‘You had counted the months and the days! You knew the time had passed but you also knew I couldn’t fail to answer your call . . . It was you who asked me to come. Here I am, here I am, I feel faint!’

  Her thoughts became confused in her mind. She remained silent for some time, breathless, unable to speak or think.

  Then she opened her eyes, recognized Raymon as if she were emerging from a dream, uttered a cry of frantic joy, and pressed her lips to his, passionately, wildly happy. He was pale, silent, motionless, as if thunderstruck.

  ‘Recognize me, then,’ she cried. ‘It’s me; it’s your Indiana; it’s your slave, whom you recalled from exile and who has come a thousand miles to love and serve you. It’s your chosen companion, who has left everything, risked everything, braved everything, to bring you this moment of joy. Tell me, are you happy, are
you pleased with her? I’m waiting for my reward; one word, one kiss, will repay me a hundredfold.’

  But Raymon made no reply; his remarkable presence of mind had deserted him. He was overwhelmed with surprise, remorse, and terror at seeing this woman at his feet. He hid his head in his hands and longed for death.

  ‘My God! My God! You don’t speak to me, you don’t kiss me, you don’t say a word to me!’ cried Madame Delmare, pressing Raymon’s knees against her breast. ‘Aren’t you able to speak then? Happiness is painful; it kills people; I’m well aware of that! Oh, you feel ill; you’re suffocating; I surprised you too suddenly. But try to look at me. See how pale I am, how I have aged, how I have suffered. But it was for you, and you’ll only love me the better for it. Say one word to me, Raymon, just one.’

  ‘I’d like to weep,’ said Raymon in a choking voice.

  ‘And so would I,’ she said, covering his hands with kisses. ‘Oh, yes, that would do you good. Weep, weep then, on my heart. I’ll wipe your tears away with my kisses. I’ve come to bring you happiness, to be whatever you want, your companion, your servant, or your mistress. I was very cruel before, very unreasonable, very selfish. I made you suffer a lot and I didn’t want to understand that I was demanding more than your strength could bear. But since then, I’ve thought about it, and as you’re not afraid to brave public opinion with me, I’ve no longer the right to refuse to make any sacrifice for you. Do what you like with me, with my blood, with my life. I am yours, body and soul. I’ve travelled three thousand miles to belong to you, to tell you that. Take me, I am your property, you are my master.’

  I don’t know what infernal idea suddenly crossed Raymon’s mind. He lifted his head from his clenched hands and looked at Indiana with diabolical calm; then a terrible smile hovered on his lips and made his eyes gleam for Indiana was still beautiful.

  ‘First of all, we must hide you,’ he said, getting up.