Almost the whole night passed in this way. I wandered on at random through fields, woods and hamlets where all was still. Now and again, in some distant dwelling, I saw a dim light piercing the darkness. ‘Yonder,’ I said to myself, ‘some poor wretch may be struggling on in grief, or wrestling with death, death the inexplicable mystery men still seem unable to accept despite daily experience, the certain end which brings neither consolation nor peace, the subject of habitual unconcern and momentary panic! And I too,’ I went on, ‘am indulging in this same senseless inconsistency! I am rebelling against life as though life were never-ending! I am spreading misery around me so as to win back a few years of wretchedness that time will soon snatch away! Ah, enough of these useless struggles! Let me stand unmoved, a detached onlooker at an already half-spent existence; anybody can take it and tear it to pieces – they won’t make it last any longer! Is it worth fighting over?’
The thought of death has always had great power over me. In my keenest afflictions it has always sufficed to calm me at once, and now it produced its usual effect upon my soul, and my feelings about Ellenore lost some of their bitterness. All my annoyance vanished, and all that remained of the impressions of this night of frenzy was a mild and almost tranquil emotion. Perhaps my physical weariness contributed to this tranquillity.
Dawn was at hand, and I could already make out objects in the landscape. I realized that I was a considerable distance from Ellenore’s home. I pictured her anxiety and I was hurrying back to her as fast as my exhaustion would allow when I met a man on horseback whom she had sent to look for me. He told me that she had been intensely worried for the past twelve hours, that having been into Warsaw and all over the surrounding district she had returned in a state of indescribable distress and that the villagers had scoured the countryside in every direction in search of me. At first this story filled me with quite painful resentment. It was irritating to see myself subjected by Ellenore to such officious surveillance. It was useless to tell myself that it was due to nothing but her love, for was not her love also the cause of all my troubles? But I managed to overcome this feeling, which I was ashamed of. I knew she was alarmed and ill. I leaped on horseback and quickly covered the distance between us. She welcomed me with transports of joy. I was touched by her emotion. Our conversation was brief because it soon occurred to her that I must be in need of rest, and I left her, for once at any rate, without having said anything to grieve her.
Chapter Eight
I ROSE next day haunted by the same thoughts which had disturbed me the day before. My uneasiness increased during the following days. Ellenore tried in vain to find out the cause, but I answered her pressing questions in awkward monosyllables, stiffening myself against her insistence, knowing full well that frankness from me would mean sorrow for her and that her sorrow would force me into fresh dissimulation.
In her worried and bewildered state she sought the help of one of her women friends to discover the secret she accused me of hiding from her; eager to deceive herself she was looking for a fact where there was only a feeling. This friend spoke to me about my strange state, the care I was taking to discourage any idea of a lasting union, and my inexplicable desire to make a break and find solitude. I listened for a long time without a word; until that moment I had told nobody that I no longer loved Ellenore, for I shrank from putting into words what seemed to me a betrayal. Yet I wanted to justify myself, and so I told my story with circumspection, praising Ellenore highly, admitting the illogicality of my own behaviour but blaming it on to the difficulties of our situation, and not allowing myself one word which would state clearly that the real trouble was absence of love. She was touched by my story, seeing generosity in what I called weakness, misfortune in what I called hardness of heart. The very explanations which infuriated the passionate Ellenore carried conviction in the mind of her impartial friend. How fair we all are when we are not involved ourselves! Whoever you may be, never discuss with another the interests of your own heart; the heart alone can plead its own cause and plumb the depths of its own wounds. Any intermediary becomes a judge who analyses, comes to a compromise, realizes that indifference can exist, indeed allows it to be possible, recognizes it as inevitable, and hence excuses it. In this way indifference is amazed to find itself legitimized in its own eyes. Ellenore’s reproaches had convinced me that I was guilty, but now I learned from the woman who thought she was defending her that I was merely unfortunate. I was led on to make a complete avowal of my feelings; I agreed that I felt devotion, sympathy, pity for Ellenore, but I added that love played no part in the duty I was imposing upon myself. This truth, until then kept locked in my heart, and only once or twice revealed to Ellenore under stress or in anger, assumed in my eyes more reality and strength from the mere fact of its having been confided to another. It is a major step, and an irreparable one, when we suddenly reveal to a third party the secret places of an intimate relationship; daylight, as it penetrates this sanctuary, shows up and completes the ravages that night had enveloped in its shadows. In the same way bodies buried in the tomb often preserve their pristine shape until the outer air strikes them and reduces them to dust.
Ellenore’s friend left me. I do not know what account she gave of our conversation, but on my way to the drawing-room I heard Ellenore talking in very animated tones, and when she saw me she stopped. Soon she began expressing in devious ways certain general observations which were really nothing less than personal attacks. ‘Nothing is more curious,’ she said, ‘than the zeal of certain sorts of friendship; there are people who officiously busy themselves with your interests the better to abandon your cause. They call it attachment: I would rather call it hatred.’ I quickly gathered that Ellenore’s friend had championed my cause against her and had annoyed her by not seeming to think me guilty enough. Thus I felt I was in league with another against Ellenore, and that was one more barrier between our hearts.
A few days later Ellenore went further, for she was incapable of any self-control, and as soon as she thought she had grounds for complaint she made straight for an explanation with no beating about the bush, preferring the risk of a total break to the constraint of dissimulation. The two friends quarrelled and parted for ever.
‘Why bring outsiders into our private discussions?’ I said. ‘Do we need a third party to help us come to an understanding? And if we lack that understanding what third party could remedy the situation?’ ‘You are right,’ she answered, ‘but it is all your fault; I used not to have to go to anybody else in order to reach your heart.’
Suddenly she announced that she proposed to change her way of life. I gathered from what she said that she ascribed my gnawing unhappiness to the isolation in which we were living. She was working through all the wrong explanations before resigning herself to the right one. We spent dull evenings alone together in silence or ill-humour, for the spring of our long conversations had dried up.
Ellenore therefore resolved to attract to her house members of aristocratic families living in or near Warsaw. It was easy to visualize the difficulties and dangers of these schemes of hers. The relatives who were challenging her right of inheritance had revealed the follies of her past and spread a thousand scandalous rumours. I trembled at the humiliations that she would have to face and tried to dissuade her from the idea. But my representations were unavailing, and I hurt her pride by my fears, although I only expressed them cautiously. She assumed that I was embarrassed by our relationship because her position was ambiguous, and that made her all the more eager to regain an honourable place in society. Her efforts were crowned with some success, for her fortune, her beauty, that time had so far only slightly dimmed, and even the stories of her adventures, in fact everything about her, aroused curiosity. She was soon surrounded by a large circle, but she was secretly a prey to embarrassment and anxiety. I was uncomfortable about my position and she imagined I was about hers, and so was trying to get out of it; but the strength of her desire left no room for tactful ma
noeuvre and the falseness of her position made her erratic in her behaviour and hasty in her moves. Her intelligence was acute but lacked breadth; moreover the acuteness of her mind was marred by the impulsiveness of her character whilst its lack of breadth prevented her from seeing the wisest course of action and grasping subtle distinctions. For the first time she had an aim in life, and by rushing at it she missed it. What sickening humiliations she had to swallow without revealing them to me! How many times I blushed for her without finding the strength to tell her! Such is the impression that reserve and moderation make upon people that I had seen her more respected by M. de P—’s friends when she was his mistress than she was by her neighbours as heiress to a great fortune and surrounded by vassals. Haughty and humble in turn, sometimes considerate but sometimes touchy, there was in her actions and words a kind of feverishness which is fatal to that prestige which only calm can give.
By picking out these faults of Ellenore I am accusing and condemning myself. A single word from me would have given her that calm. Why could I not say it?
And yet our life together was happier, for amusements gave us relief from our usual thoughts. We were alone only occasionally, and as we had unlimited confidence in each other, except in the matter of our intimate feelings, we substituted general remarks and statements of fact for such feelings, and our conversations recovered a certain charm. But soon this new way of life gave rise to a fresh perplexity for me. Lost in the crowd surrounding Ellenore, I noticed that I was looked upon as an object of astonishment and censure. The time was approaching for her case to be heard, and her opponents maintained that she had alienated her father’s love by her numberless follies. My presence lent colour to these assertions, and her friends blamed me for doing her a disservice. They excused her passion for me but accused me of lack of delicacy, of taking advantage, as they put it, of a feeling I ought to have discouraged. I was the only one to know that if I left her I should have her following on my heels, and that in order to do so she would neglect any interest in her own fortune and abandon all the dictates of prudence. I could not share this secret with the world at large, and so all I could appear to be in Ellenore’s home was a stranger inimical to the success of the very steps which were to decide her fate, and, by a strange reversal of the truth, while I was the victim of her unshakeable will she was being pitied as the victim of my hold over her.
A fresh circumstance now complicated this painful situation still further.
Ellenore’s actions and behaviour suddenly underwent a strange transformation. Until then she had never seemed interested in anybody but me; suddenly I saw her accepting and provoking the attentions of the men around her. This woman, so reserved, so cold and quick to take offence, suddenly seemed to change character. She encouraged the affection and even hopes of a crowd of young men, some of whom were captivated by her beauty, whilst others, in spite of the errors of her past, seriously aspired to her hand. She let them have long conversations alone with her and her manner with them was ambiguous but attractive, discouraging but only gently, so as to hold them by suggesting indecision rather than indifference, and deferment rather than refusal. I learned from her later, and the facts showed it to be the case, that she was acting in this way from an ill-advised and deplorable piece of calculation. She thought she could revive my love by arousing my jealousy, but it was merely raking over ashes that nothing could rekindle. Possibly also, without her realizing it herself, there was some feminine vanity in it; she was hurt by my coolness and anxious to prove to herself that she was still attractive. Or it may even have been that in the loneliness of heart in which I had left her, she drew a kind of consolation from hearing others repeating expressions of love which I had long since abandoned.
At all events, I did misinterpret her motives for a time. I thought I saw a glimpse of my future freedom, and congratulated myself. For fear that some thoughtless impulse of mine might upset the course of this great crisis on which I counted for my liberation, I became more gentle in manner and seemed happier. Ellenore took my gentleness for affection, my hopes of seeing her at last happy without me for the desire to make her happy myself, and she congratulated herself on her subtlety. Yet she was sometimes perturbed that I seemed so unconcerned, and blamed me for putting no obstacles in the way of affairs which apparently threatened to take her from me. I turned these accusations aside with jokes but did not always succeed in calming her fears – her character showed through the dissimulation she had forced herself to adopt. The old scenes began again on different grounds, but they were no less stormy. Ellenore saw her own faults in me, and let me suspect that a single word from me would make her wholly mine again; then, offended by my silence, she threw herself once more into flirtations with a kind of frenzy.
It is at this point, I feel sure, that I shall be accused of weakness. I wanted to be free and I could have been with everybody’s approval; perhaps, indeed, I should have been, for Ellenore’s behaviour authorized me and seemed to be forcing me to free myself. But did I not know that this behaviour of hers was of my own making? Did I not know that in her heart she had never ceased to love me? Could I punish her for indiscretions I was making her commit, and with cold hypocrisy seek in those indiscretions a pretext for pitilessly abandoning her?
I really am not trying to make excuses, and I blame myself more bitterly than another might do in my place, but I can at least solemnly claim that I have never acted out of calculation, but have always been guided by genuine and natural feelings. How comes it that with such feelings I have for so long brought about nothing but my own misfortune and that of others?
But as they watched me people were puzzled. My living with Ellenore could only be explained by a deep attachment to her, but my indifference towards the relationships she always seemed ready to embark upon appeared to give the lie to any such attachment. My inexplicable tolerance was put down to lack of any strong principles, to a carelessness about morals characteristic, it was said, of a profoundly selfish man corrupted by the world. These conjectures, all the more likely to impress for being in keeping with the minds who made them, were accepted and repeated. The gossip finally reached my ears. I was outraged by this unexpected discovery. The reward for all I had done was scorn and calumny. For the sake of a woman I had given up all interests and thrust aside all the pleasures of life, and now I was the one to be condemned.
I remonstrated strongly with Ellenore. A single word from me sufficed and all this mob of admirers she had gathered round in order to make me afraid of losing her was sent packing. She limited her circle to a few ladies and a handful of elderly men. Everything appeared to return to a normal routine, but that only made us more unhappy still, for Ellenore thought she had established new claims upon me and I felt burdened with new chains.
I cannot describe all the bitterness and scenes that resulted from this further complicated relationship. Our existence was one perpetual storm; intimacy lost all its charms and love all its sweetness, and even those short-lived renewals which seem to heal incurable wounds for a few fleeting instants occurred no more. The truth showed through at every turn, and in order to make my meaning clear I resorted to the harshest and most pitiless expressions, never stopping until Ellenore was in tears, but her very tears were like molten lava falling drop by drop on to my heart, making me scream with pain, but not retract. It was at these times that more than once she rose to her feet, pale and prophetic. ‘Adolphe,’ she said, ‘you don’t know the harm you are doing. You will realize it one day, you will learn it from me when you have driven me into the grave.’ Wretched creature that I am! When she spoke in this way why did I not hurl myself into the grave before her?
Chapter Nine
I HAD not been back to Baron T—’s house since my first visit. One morning I received this note from him:
The advice I gave you did not justify such a long absence. Whatever course you adopt over what is your own business, you are still the son of my best friend, and I shall not enjoy the pleasure
of your company any the less. Moreover it will give me much pleasure to introduce you into a circle to which I venture to promise you will be very glad to belong. May I add that the more unusual your way of life (and far be it from me to disapprove), the more desirable it is for you to dispel doubtless unfounded prejudices by letting yourself be seen in society.
I was grateful for this kindness shown me by an older man. I called upon him; the subject of Ellenore was not raised. He kept me to dinner, and that day there were only a few men there, and they were witty and very pleasant. At first I felt ill at ease, but I made an effort, recovered my spirits, began talking and displayed as much brilliance and knowledge as was in my power. I noticed I was successful in winning approval. This kind of success gave me once again a certain satisfaction based on vanity which I had long been deprived of, and this satisfaction made Baron T—’s society still more enjoyable.
My visits became more frequent. He entrusted me with one or two tasks connected with his political mission, which he felt he could safely leave in my hands. Ellenore was at first surprised at this change in my way of life, but I told her about the Baron’s friendship with my father, and how glad I was to be able to console the latter for my absence by appearing to be usefully occupied. Poor Ellenore, and I write this now with a feeling of remorse, poor Ellenore was happier because I seemed more settled, and she resigned herself without undue complaint to spending often a large part of the day apart from me. As for the Baron, once we had established a certain amount of confidence in each other he raised the subject of Ellenore again. My fixed intention was to speak well of her at all times, but without realizing it I was referring to her in freer and more detached terms, sometimes showing by my general remarks that I accepted the necessity of a separation, sometimes letting jokes come to my rescue and laughing about women and how hard it was to break with them. This kind of talk amused an elderly official whose passions were all spent, but who vaguely recollected that he too had been tormented by love-affairs when he was young. And so the very fact that I was hiding my feelings led to my more or less deceiving everybody. I was deceiving Ellenore because I knew that the Baron wanted to get me away and yet I kept it from her, and I was deceiving M. de T— because I let him hope that I was prepared to break my bonds. This duplicity was quite foreign to my normal character, but a man deteriorates as soon as he harbours a single thought that he is constantly obliged to conceal.
Adolphe Page 9