The Eyes of Innocence/VI
VI
A NEW FRIEND
Two days later Domfront could not believe its ears when it heard that all relations had been broken off between the La Vaudrayes on the one hand and Beaufrelant and Le Hourteulx on the other. The two no longer formed part of the salon.
"Oh, nonsense! Beaufrelant and Le Hourteulx, who have been there longer than anybody, who date back to the days when the La Vaudrayes saw their friends at the Logis: it's impossible!"
"It's quite true, for all that. I heard it from Mme. Duval, who is constantly at all three houses; and she saw the letters which Mme. de la Vaudraye wrote."
"Well, you can say what you please, but it's a great pity. M. le Hourteulx: such a fine voice! And M. Beaufrelant: such a brillant talker! And have you heard the reason?"
"No, I can't imagine. ... If I hear the least thing, I'll let you know."
Gilberte was very much vexed when Adèle told her what had happened. She had no doubt that Guillaume de la Vaudraye had told his mother what he knew of the incident and she was distressed at being the cause of disagreement, complication and gossip.
"Perhaps," she thought, "all this would not have come about if I had not been looked upon as married."
And, as a matter of fact, she seemed, as a married woman, to be exposed to unpleasantness which she would have escaped in the position of a girl. Instead of the quiet which she had sought, she found, in the men's behaviour, in their conversation, in their way of looking at her, in the persistency of their pursuit, a host of disturbing little annoyances which might well have troubled a mind less innocent than hers.
She went to Mme. de la Vaudraye, in the afternoon, and begged her to reconsider her decision.
"It is no use asking me," cried Mme. de la Vaudraye. "I admit that, in writing to those two gentlemen, I did no more than my duty; but it was my son who pointed out to me how imperative that duty was."
She was in a bad temper and, when all is said, with reason. No mistress of a house lightly gives up two individuals of the undoubted merit of M. Beaufrelant and M. le Hourteulx. She called out:
"Guillaume, Mme. Armand wants to talk to you!"
And, when her son entered the room, she went out.
Gilberte, who was always frightened by Guillaume's obvious coldness and his excessive reserve, blushed as she made her request. Ought so much importance to be attached to an incident which the two gentlemen surely regretted and at which she could only laugh?
"My mother and I have no right to laugh at it," he said. "We are responsible for all the people whom we introduce to you. If one of them treats you with disrespect, we must not expose you to meeting him here."
"But how have they treated me with disrespect? ... I assure you, I don't see it. ..."
He looked at her, turned away his head and said, in a voice so abrupt that she could not make out whether his answer was full of contemptuous pity or affectionate admiration:
"It is the others, it is all of us who must see for you. ... How can you be expected to see those things?"
He paused and continued:
"Are you very anxious to have those two boors back here?"
"For your mother's sake, yes. I feel that the situation grieves her."
"Why, of course," he exclaimed, with cutting irony, "they are the two finest ornaments of her salon! How will the others do without them? How will they manage to rattle out the regulation tomfoolery? Will they ever be able to reach the required level of absurdity, affectation, stupidity and narrowness? Heavens, if we were a shade less dull and less inane, what a catastrophe!"
"It's not right of you to talk like that, monsieur," said Gilberte.
"What!" he said, taken aback.
"No, you ought not to laugh at what is a great pleasure to your mother. If some of her friends are a little eccentric, it is not for you to remark upon it."
He rose, began to walk excitedly up and down the room and then, gradually mastering himself, came and sat opposite Gilberte again and said:
"You are right, madame. Besides, among all those people whom I cannot help criticizing, I have never heard you speak any but sensible, judicious, intelligent words, admirable for their kindness and wisdom. You always answer their most ridiculous questions as though they had asked you about the most interesting things in life. One word from you brings order and lucidity into the most absurd conversations."
It was no longer the same voice. Usually so hard and dictatorial, it had become humble and grave. And his face, which was generally severe, bore an expression of infinite gentleness. One was no longer conscious of acrimony, constraint or distrust, but of the frank unreserve of a pent-up nature and of subdued melancholy.
Which of the two was the real Guillaume? Gilberte did not even ask herself the question, was only too happy to believe at once in the more attractive of the two images presented to her. And so she smiled upon this second Guillaume and said:
"Then ... those gentlemen ... ?"
"Your two protégés shall resume the places which they fill so well. I insist, however, on a temporary exclusion as a punishment; for it is a punishment to Le Hourteulx and Beaufrelant. After that, if they are very good ..."
"And you will be pleasant to them?"
"To them and to the others, at least as pleasant as I can."
"Is it so very difficult?"
"Extremely! I can't help it: I do not suffer fools gladly; they make me irritable and unjust. I have not your charity."
"It only needs a little indulgence; think of your mother."
"Oh, my mother, my mother!"
There was something sorrowful and harsh about this exclamation that struck Gilberte. She kept silence from a sense of delicacy. But Guillaume was passing through one of those periods when it is a relief to the overburdened soul to confess its troubles:
"Have my mother and I ever understood each other? We have not an idea in common. Her wants are not mine, nor are mine hers. She offends all my tastes as I offend all hers. If I display so much bitterness against the merry-andrews who perform in her salon, it is because of her. I hate to see her countenancing their grimaces and posturings."
She said nothing. He asked:
"You blame me for it, don't you? Yes, yes, I feel it. ... And how strange: in your presence, I too think that I am wrong and, while I was saying those things, I blushed as if I had uttered ugly thoughts!"
She laughed:
"They were not very pretty ones."
"Never mind, I prefer you to know them. I do not wish to trick you into liking me. If I ever win your esteem, I want to do so without hypocrisy, without trying to hide my faults from you."
No one had ever spoken to Gilberte with such seriousness and deference. She felt quite touched and, with a spontaneous movement, held out her hand to Guillaume: "We shall be friends," she said. "I am sure that we shall be friends."
He was on the point of raising her small, gloved hand to his lips, but he restrained himself. And she went on:
"So this is the unsociable Guillaume de la Vaudraye! Will you believe that you quite frightened me with your surly ways? You did indeed!"
After this interview, Gilberte did two or three errands and returned to the Logis. It was drawing towards evening. She made for the summer-house and saw her dream-companion in the distance. She said to him, as though he could hear her and as though she felt bound to tell him the good news without delay:
"You know, I have a new friend!"
And Gilberte saw nothing extraordinary in this sudden friendship, based upon the exchange of a few sentences. Was she not one of those unsophisticated beings who always obey the unreflecting impulse of their hearts, who look you straight in the eyes and who do not think it out of place to tell people how they feel towards them?
And so, the next evening, she went to Mme. de la Vaudraye's, quite happy at the thought of seeing her new friend again. A disappointment awaited her: Guillaume did not appear.
She went back next day. Guillaume came down to the drawing-room, bowed to her and seemed to take no further notice of her presence.
Thereupon, on the third day, while the others were listening to Mlle. du Bocage and M. Lartiste the elder in the duet from Mireille, Gilberte, finding that Guillaume was alone in the next room, went out to him. She at once saw that he tried to avoid her. Realizing this to be impossible, he gave a gesture of vexation and crossed his arms in an indifferent attitude.
"What about your promise?" she asked, playfully, but a little sadly. "You promised to make yourself pleasant to your enemies in the salon; and this is the best you can do! Am I not entitled to complain? Did we not shake hands as friends?"
He uncrossed his arms and his expression changed. Once again she felt the relaxation of a tense will, the immediate suppression of all resistance in this silent man whose square chin and inflexible eyes bore witness to his obstinacy.
"Good!" she said. "Capital! But you still look a little fierce. ... That's better! ... And now, come along."
He stopped her:
"Do not ask too much of me. You are so far above ordinary life, so inaccessible, that you can mix with those people and remain serene and untouched. I could only do so at the risk of deteriorating. One must make allowance for different temperaments. I shall be polite, that's all."
Then she stayed and they talked.
Often, after that, Gilberte had to go to him and open, as she said, the door of his prison-house, unbind his hands and deliver his captive soul. But she did it so easily that it amused them both.
"You have but to lift your little finger," Guillaume would say, "to bring down the prison-walls."
Under this uneven and rugged husk, Gilberte discovered the most exquisite and delicate of natures, a poet's nature that was galled by all its surroundings, a child's nature that his mother had kept in to the verge of pain. And it was often from the point of view of a child that Gilberte was glad to be with him. They would laugh at the least thing, with that childish laughter, which is so good just because it has no excuse except our need of laughter. They longed to run and skip and play.
"Oh dear, how young I am!" Guillaume would exclaim.
"I shall be two next year," Gilberte declared.
They could be serious also. She asked him about his writing, wanted to read what he had printed. He refused, on the pretext that he was not satisfied. Nevertheless, he showed her a letter from the editor of an important review, a letter teeming with compliments.
He lent her his favorite books and she devoured them.
Mme. de la Vaudraye was in ecstasies. She was now certain that her dream would be realized. She was too clever to betray her delight and hid it under demonstrations of gratitude:
"How sweet of you, my dear Gilberte, to tame that wild savage! You will make quite a courtier of him."
And she added, with a sigh:
"Oh, if you could only turn him into a more attentive son and make him more grateful to his mother for all the sacrifices she has made for him!"
The discord between Mme. de la Vaudraye and Guillaume was Gilberte's greatest grief. Her love of harmony prompted her to make continual endeavours at reconciliation which were bound to fail as much because of the mother's arid artificiality as of the son's stubbornness and reserve.
She had to give up the attempt.
But she suffered another pain, arising from her extreme sensitiveness: at the close of day, she could no longer go to the ruined summer-house without a certain sense of discomfort. Her unknown friend was faithful to the daily tryst which they had made with their dreams; and, though Gilberte herself never failed to keep it, she felt as though she had done him some wrong. With her eyes fixed on the distant mountains melting into the deep blue of the heavens, she let herself drift into vague reveries, far, very far away from the homely valley where her first friend patiently waited for her thoughts to return to him. It was at such times, when the darkness overtook her amidst this delightful torpor, that she seemed to be coming back from a long journey. She was almost angry with herself. But why? She could not have said.
One day, at five o'clock, as she was going down to her garden, she received a note from Mme. de la Vaudraye.
"My Dear Gilberte,
"Guillaume and I are going for a stroll in the Forest of Andaine. It is such a fine evening: do come with us."
Should she go? To do so meant a break in sweet custom that had lent such charm to the most oppressive hours of her life, meant throwing over the constant friendship of the bad days.
She wavered and, wavering, went up to her room, put on her things, went out and knocked at the La Vaudrayes' door.
Whatever regrets may have lingered in her conscientious mind were very soon dispelled by the pleasure which the walk gave her from the start. Spring was trying her hand, at the tips of the branches, with tiny pale-green leaves and, along the roadsides and ditches, with those charming early flowers which are so dear to us: anemones, periwinkles, primroses, wild hyacinths, lilies of the valley. . . . Arched lanes sped into the depths of the woods. Sweet scents, songs and colours played and mingled in all the gladness of new-born nature.
They walked without speaking. Sometimes, Guillaume and Gilberte would point out to each other, with a glance, a corner of the landscape, or the outline of a tree, or the glint of a ray of sunshine, both wishing the other to share their delight and admiration.
They sat down on the edge of a pool whose waters slumbered amidst a circle of old pines that joined their arms around them as though to dance a moveless measure. It was one of those abodes of silence that open only in the hearts of old forests. Those who are brought there by chance and who grasp the fitness of things are themselves silent.
Mme. de la Vaudraye exclaimed:
"On the first fine Sunday, we must make up a party and come here. It is a lovely spot for a picnic. What do you say?"
They did not reply. She continued:
"Every one will bring his own provisions. Of course, Mme. Charmeron will make her famous spiced beef and Mlle. du Bocage her prune-tart. And, at dessert, everybody must come out with a set of verses!"
Guillaume hurled a pebble violently into the mirror of the water.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Mme. de la Vaudraye.
He sprang up and confronted her, angrily, impatiently, with tense wrists. But, as he was about to speak, he met Gilberte's eyes, sad and full of entreaty. He seemed quite dazed, his lips trembled and suddenly he took Mme. de la Vaudraye in his arms and began to kiss her with all his might, with all his fervent soul. And he blurted out:
"It's quite right ... you're my mother ... you're my mother ... you're entitled to say what you please. ... What you say is right. ... It's my business to understand. ... Oh, mother, if you only knew ... !"