by George Sand
He got up and plucked from a nearby grove a flowering orange branch and placed it on Indiana’s black hair. Then, kneeling down, he said:
‘Make me happy; tell me that your heart agrees to this marriage in the other life. Give me eternity; don’t force me to ask for annihilation.’
If the tale of Ralph’s inner life has had no effect on you, if you haven’t come to love that good man, it’s because I’ve been an incompetent narrator of his memories; it’s because I haven’t been able to exert over you the power contained in the voice of a man whose passion is deep and genuine. And then I’ve not the moon’s melancholy influence to help me; the song of the waxbills,* the scent of the gilly-flowers, and all the lulling, intoxicating seductions of a tropical night don’t invade your heart and head. Perhaps you don’t know, either, from experience what powerful new sensations are aroused in the heart when confronted with suicide and how the things of this life appear in their true light just when we are about to put an end to them. This sudden, inevitable light flooded into the innermost recesses of Indiana’s heart: the bandage which had been loosening for a long time, fell altogether from her eyes. Having realized the true nature of Ralph’s heart, she saw it as it really was; she also saw his features as she had never seen them before, for the power of his extreme exaltation had had the same effect on him as an electric battery has on numbed limbs. It had delivered him from the paralysis which had enchained his hands and voice. Embellished by his frankness and his virtue, he was much more handsome than Raymon, and Indiana felt he was the man she should have loved.
‘Be my husband in heaven and on earth,’ she said, ‘and let this kiss pledge me to you for all eternity.’
Their lips met. In a love which comes from the heart there is, no doubt, a more striking power than in the ardours of an ephemeral desire, for this kiss, on the threshold of another life, contained all their joys.
Then Ralph took his fiancée in his arms and carried her off to plunge with her into the torrent . . .
CONCLUSION
To J. Néraud*
ON a hot sunny day last January, I left Saint-Paul to daydream in the wild woods of Bourbon Island. I thought of you, my friend. These virgin forests had retained for me the memory of your expeditions and your studies. The ground had preserved your footprints. I found everywhere the marvellous things with which your magical tales had charmed my evenings in the past, and so as to admire them together I asked old Europe, where the modest benefits of obscurity surround you, to send you back to me. Happy man, whose intelligence and merit no treacherous friend has revealed to the world!
I had walked towards a deserted spot in the highest part of the island called the Brûlé de Saint-Paul.* The collapse of a large section of the main mountain in a volcanic disturbance has formed a long strip of sand studded with rocks arranged in the most magical disorder and in the most frightful confusion. In one place, a huge block of stone is balanced on some small fragments; in another, a wall of thin, light, porous rocks rises up, dentellated and ornamented with openwork like a Moorish building; in yet another a basalt obelisk, whose sides an artist seems to have carved and polished, rises up from a battlemented fortress; elsewhere a Gothic stronghold is crumbling away beside a formless, strange pagoda. There is the meeting place of all the draft outlines of artists, of all the rough sketches of architects. It seems as if the geniuses of all centuries and all nations have come to draw inspiration from this great work of chance destruction. There, no doubt, magical developments of ideas gave rise to the concepts of Moorish sculpture. In the heart of the forests, art has found one of its beautiful models in the palm tree. The vacoa* which is anchored to the ground and clings to it with a hundred arms coming from its stem, must have been the first inspiration for the plan of a cathedral supported by light flying-buttresses. In the Brûlé de Saint-Paul all shapes, all beauty, all humour, all bold conceptions, have been brought together, piled up, arranged, and constructed in one stormy night. The spirits of air and fire must have presided over this diabolical piece of work; they alone could give their first attempts the terrible, freakish, unfinished character which distinguishes their works from man’s; they alone would have piled up these terrifying boulders, moved these gigantic masses, made play with the mountains as with grains of sand, and scattered amongst creations which man has tried to copy, those great artistic ideas, those sublime, unrealizable contrasts which seem to defy the artist’s boldness, and say to him derisively: ‘Try to repeat that.’
I stopped at the foot of a pile of crystallized basalt about sixty feet high and cut in facets like a lapidary’s work. At the top of this strange structure it seemed as if an inscription had been traced in large letters by an immortal hand. Volcanic rocks of this kind often show the same phenomenon. In the past, when their substance, softened by the action of the flames, was still warm and malleable, it received the imprint of the shells and creepers that stuck to it. These chance contacts have resulted in some strange patterns, hieroglyphic marks, mysterious characters, which look as if they had been cast there like the seal of a supernatural being written in cabalistic letters.
I stayed a long time, under the sway of the childish pretension of finding a meaning in those mysterious marks. These useless investigations made me fall into a profound meditation during which I forgot that time was flying.
Thick mists were already piling up on the tops of the mountains, coming down their sides, and quickly obscuring their outlines. Before I had gone half-way across the plateau, they bore down upon the area I was crossing and enveloped it in an impenetrable curtain. A moment later, a fierce wind arose and swept the mists away in a split second. Then the wind dropped; then fog reformed, only to be driven away again by a terrible gust.
I looked for refuge against the storm in a grotto which provided shelter, but another scourge added to that of the wind. Torrents of rain filled up the beds of the rivers, which all start from the top of the mountain. In an hour, everything was flooded and the mountain sides, streaming with water from all directions, were turned into a huge waterfall which rushed furiously down to the plain.
After two hours of a very difficult, dangerous journey, guided no doubt by Providence, I found myself at the door of a dwelling in an extremely wild spot. The simple but attractive house had withstood the storm since it was protected by a rampart of cliffs leaning over it and serving as an umbrella. A little lower down, a waterfall plunged madly to the bottom of a ravine and there it formed an overflowing lake with clumps of fine trees still lifting their battered, weary heads above it.
I knocked eagerly, but the face which appeared at the doorway made me step back. Before I had opened my mouth to ask for shelter, the owner of the house had silently and solemnly made a welcoming gesture. So I went in and found myself face to face with him, with Sir Ralph Brown.
It had been almost a year since the ship, the Nahandove had brought M. Brown and his companion back to the colony, but Sir Ralph had not been seen in the town three times. And as for Madame Delmare, her seclusion had been so complete that many of its inhabitants still doubted her existence. It was at about the same time that I had first landed at Bourbon, and this interview with M. Brown was the second in my life.
The first had left an ineffaceable impression on me. It was at Saint-Paul on the sea-shore. His features and bearing had at first only struck me slightly, but when, out of idle curiosity, I questioned the colonists about him, their answers were so strange and so contradictory that I examined the hermit of Bernica with more attention.
‘He’s a boor, a man with no breeding,’ said one. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to him and he has only one good quality, that of keeping quiet.’
‘He’s a highly educated, thoughtful man,’ said another. ‘But he’s too conscious of his own superiority, contemptuous and self-important, so that he thinks words he might happen to say to ordinary people are wasted.’
‘He’s a man who cares only for himself,’ said a third, ‘undistinguished but not st
upid, and utterly selfish; he’s even said to be completely unsociable.’
‘But don’t you know?’ said a young man, brought up in the colony and completely imbued with provincial narrow-mindedness. ‘He’s a scoundrelly wretch who treacherously poisoned his friend so as to marry his wife.’
This reply bewildered me so much that I turned to another, older colonist, whom I knew had a certain amount of common sense.
As my look eagerly asked for the answer to these riddles, he replied:
‘Sir Ralph was formerly a worthy man who was disliked because he wasn’t communicative but whom everybody esteemed. That’s all I can say about him, for since his unfortunate experiences, I’ve had nothing to do with him.’
‘What experiences?’ I asked.
He told me about Colonel Delmare’s sudden death, his wife’s flight on the same night, and M. Brown’s departure and return. Judicial enquiries had not been able to throw light on the obscurities which surrounded all these events; nobody had been able to prove the fugitive’s crime. The public prosecutor had refused to prosecute, but the partiality of the magistrates for M. Brown was well known and they were severely blamed for not having at least enlightened public opinion about an affair which left two people’s reputations tarred with a vile suspicion.
The furtive return of the two accused and their mysterious establishment in the depths of the Bernica desert seemed to confirm the suspicions. It was said they had run away at first to hush up the affair, but public opinion had been so hostile to them in France that they had been forced to come back and take refuge in that lonely spot to satisfy their criminal attachment in peace.
But what made a nonsense of all these stories was a final assertion which seemed to me to originate with better informed people: Madame Delmare, they said, had always shown coolness and even aversion for her cousin M. Brown.
I had looked carefully then, I might say conscientiously, at the hero of so many strange tales. He was sitting on a bale of merchandise, waiting for the return of a sailor with whom he had been negotiating about some purchase or other. His eyes, blue as the sea, were gazing at the horizon with such a calm, candid, dreamy expression, all the lines of this face were in such complete harmony with each other, his nerves, his muscles, his blood, all seemed so tranquil, so well coordinated and regulated in this strong, healthy individual, that I could have sworn that he was the victim of a deadly insult, that he had not a crime in his memory, that he’d never had one in his thoughts, and that his heart and his hands were as pure as his brow.
But suddenly, the baronet’s idle glance had fallen on me as I was studying him with eager, indiscreet curiosity. Embarrassed like a thief caught in the act, I had lowered my eyes in confusion, for Sir Ralph’s contained a severe reproach. Since that moment, I had often thought of him involuntarily; he had appeared to me in my dreams. Whenever I thought of him, I experienced the vague anxiety, the indescribable emotion, which is like the magnetic fluid that surrounds an extraordinary destiny.
My desire to know Sir Ralph was then very real and very keen, but I should have liked to watch him from a distance and without his seeing me. It seemed to me that I had wronged him. His crystal-clear eyes froze me with fear. Such a man was bound to be so superior in virtue or in wickedness that I felt very insignificant and small in his presence.
His hospitality was neither ostentatious nor vulgar. He took me to his room, lent me clothes and clean linen, and then led me to his companion who was waiting for us to have supper.
On seeing her so young and beautiful (for she looked as if she were barely eighteen), and admiring her bloom, her grace, and her gentle voice, I experienced a painful emotion. I immediately thought that she was either very guilty or very unfortunate, guilty of a vile crime or injured by a vile accusation.
For eight days the overflowing river-beds, the flooded plains, the rain, and the wind kept me at Bernica. And then the sun came, but I no longer thought of leaving my hosts.
Neither of them was brilliant. I don’t think they had much wit, perhaps they had none at all, but they had the gift of making impressive or delightful remarks; they had the wit that comes from the heart. Indiana is ignorant, but not with the narrow, vulgar ignorance that stems from laziness, indifference, or empty-headedness. She is eager to know what the occupations of her life have prevented her from learning; and then perhaps there was a little coquetry on her part in questioning Sir Ralph so as to show off her friend’s immense knowledge before me.
I found her playful but not capricious. Her manners have retained something of the languid melancholy which is natural to Creoles but which, in her, seemed to contain a more fundamental charm. Above all, her eyes have an incomparable gentleness; they seem to speak of a life of suffering, and when her mouth smiles, there is still melancholy in her eyes but a melancholy which seems to express a reflection on happiness or an emotion of gratitude.
One morning, I told them that I was going to leave at last.
‘Already!’ they said.
The tone of this word was so sincere and touching that I felt encouraged. I had promised myself not to leave Sir Ralph without asking him for his story, but because of the terrible suspicion that had formerly been put into my mind, I felt an insurmountable timidity.
I tried to conquer it.
‘I must tell you,’ I said, ‘men are great scoundrels. They’ve spoken ill of you to me. I’m not surprised now that I know you. Your life must be very beautiful since it has been slandered so much . . .’
I stopped short on seeing an expression of innocent surprise appear on Madame Delmare’s face. I realized that she knew nothing of the atrocious nasty remarks spread abroad about her, and on Sir Ralph’s face I met an unequivocal look of haughty displeasure. Ashamed and sad, I got up then to leave them, overawed by M. Brown’s look, which reminded me of our first interview and the silent conversation of the same kind that we’d had together by the seashore.
In despair at having to leave for ever this excellent man in such a frame of mind, and sorry to have angered and hurt him in return for the happy days he had just given me, I felt my heart swell and I burst into tears.
‘Young man,’ he said, taking my hand, ‘stay a day longer with us. I haven’t the courage to let the only friend we have in the district leave us like this.’
Then, after Madame Delmare had left the room, he said:
‘I understand you,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you my story, but not in front of Indiana. There are wounds which must not be reopened.’
In the evening we went for a walk in the woods. The trees, so fresh and beautiful a fortnight before, had completely lost their leaves but they were already covered with plump, resinous buds. The birds and insects had regained possession of their empire. The faded flowers had already been replaced by new buds. The streams were steadily washing away the sand which had filled their beds. Everything was returning to life, happiness, and health.
‘Just look how amazingly quickly kind, fertile nature repairs its losses here!’ Ralph said to me. ‘Doesn’t it look as if it was ashamed of the time wasted, and wanted, with its strength and sap, to restore in a few days the work of a whole year?’
‘And it will succeed,’ continued Madame Delmare. ‘I remember last year’s storms; after a month there was no trace of them.’
‘It is the image of a heart broken by sorrows,’ I said. ‘When happiness comes back, it revives and regains its vitality very quickly.’
Indiana gave me her hand and looked at M. Brown with an indescribable expression of affection and joy.
When night fell, she retired to her room and Sir Ralph, making me sit beside him on a bench in the garden, told me his story up to the point where we left it in the previous chapter.
Then he paused for a long time and seemed to have forgotten my presence completely.
Impelled by my interest in his tale, I decided to interrupt his meditation with one final question.
He started like a man who is waking up. Then
smiling good-naturedly, he said:
‘My young friend, there are memories we take the shine off by recounting them. Let it suffice you to know that I had firmly decided to kill Indiana with myself. But, presumably, approval of our sacrifice had not yet been recorded in the archives of heaven. A doctor might tell you that very probably I was overcome by giddiness and mistook the direction of the path. As for me, who am not in the least a doctor in that sense, I prefer to think that the angel of Abraham and Tobias,* that beautiful, blue-eyed angel, in a white robe with a golden belt, whom you have often seen in your childhood dreams, came down on a moonbeam and, hovering in the trembling spray of the waterfall, spread his silvery wings over my sweet companion. All I can say with certainty is that the moon sank behind the great mountain peaks without any ominous sound disturbing the peaceful murmur of the waterfall, that the birds on the cliff didn’t take their flight till a white streak stretched across the horizon, that the first crimson ray which lighted on the clump of orange trees found me there on my knees blessing God.
‘But still I don’t think that I immediately accepted the unhoped-for happiness which had just restored my destiny. I was afraid to make any judgement about the radiant future that was opening up before me, and when Indiana opened her eyes and smiled at me, I pointed to the waterfall and spoke of dying.