The Choice of Life

I kiss her at the door of the boarding-house and walk back thoughtfully through the streets, reflecting on the surprises which that uncivilised character holds in store for me.

2

Rose had perhaps insulted a man who was simply taking pleasure in admiring her, I thought to myself. What did she know of his intentions? In any case, is not a silent look enough to keep importunity at a distance?

Generally speaking, those who go after us in this way because of the swing of our hips, or the mass of hair gleaming on our neck, or a shapely shoe under a lifted skirt, are uninteresting; and among all the coarse, silly or timid admirers whom a woman can encounter in the street there are perhaps one or two at most who will leave an ineffaceable mark on her memory. But why not always admit the most charitable construction?

3

I had been wandering a long time at random. Feeling a little tired, I turned into the Parc Monceau, at the time when it was too late for the mothers and babies and too early for the lovers' invasion. I sat down by the transparent lake which so prettily reflects its diadem of arbours. A young willow drooped in gentle sadness over the face of the water; and white ducks glided past me in the evening mist. The waning blue light mingled with the pale vapour that rises over Paris at nightfall; and all this made a mauve sky behind the dark trees. It was soft and melancholy, but not grave; and I lingered on, amid the beauty of the scene, rapt in some woman's reverie. Then a lamp was lighted behind the bench on which I sat; and on the ground before me I saw a shadow beside my own. I understood and did not turn my head.

A man had followed me. I felt his eyes resting heavily on my profile, on my cheek and on my ungloved hands. He was evidently going to speak. Annoyed at this, I took a little volume from my pocket and, to protect my solitude, began to read.

But soon I guessed that he was reading with me; and my mind thus mingling with a stranger's passed over the words without quite following them. His persistency angered me; and I closed the book.

Then he said to me:

"Yes, you are very beautiful."

The words fell into my soul with a disquieting resonance. I rose with a flushed face and then hesitated. It was certainly one of those gross and lying pieces of flattery which we all of us hear at times. Nevertheless, I resisted the instinctive impulse that would have made me move away. Is not modesty in such a case merely another stratagem of our coquetry? We flee, the man pursues and the wrong impression is confirmed.

Standing in front of him, I frankly turned my eyes on his. Then he softly repeated the same words.

Was it the exquisite modulation of his voice? Or again were the gentle, friendly words the sudden revelation of a troubled life, a sensitive soul ready to pour itself out in a single phrase and longing to crystallise itself in one unparalleled second? They surprised me, those words of his, they seemed to me new words, grave words, because I had not believed that it was possible to speak them in that way to a stranger, to speak them in a voice that asked for nothing.

My whole attitude must have betrayed my twofold astonishment. My eyes questioned his. Their expression underwent no change. He was really asking for nothing. Then I smiled and answered, simply:

"I thank you. A woman is always glad to be told that."

Taking off his hat, he rose and bowed. I moved away with a slight feeling of discomfort: would he commit the stupidity of following me? Had I made a mistake? No, he resumed his seat. He had not blundered either.

4

When two people do not know each other and will not meet again, the words exchanged between them, if they are not mere commonplaces, become fraught with a strange significance and leave behind them a trail of melancholy like a mourning-veil; it is the surprise of those voices which speak to each other and will never be heard again, the fleeting encounter between glance and glance, the smile which knows not where to rest and yet would fain enrich the remembrance with a ray of kindness.

The essential image of a human life is contained in a moment like that. It awakens, hesitates, seeks, thinks that it has found, speaks a word and relapses into nothingness.

Chapter VII

1

Rose's profile stands out in relief against the dark velvet of the box. Her soft, fair hair parts into two waves that are like two streams of honey following the curve of her cheek. Her long neck is very white in the black gown that frames it; and her gloved hands rest near the fan that lies opened on her knees like a swan's wing. She is sitting straight up, with her eyes fixed in front of her. Her attitude is as dignified and cold as a circlet of brilliants on a beautiful forehead.

I am alone, at the back of the box. I prefer to listen like that, in the shadow, unseen. Is not the attention of a woman who is anything of a coquette, that slight, fitful attention, always affected a little by the thought, however unconscious, of the effect which she is producing?

2

I am struck by the general attitude of reverence. In the great silence through which the music swells, the lives of all those present seem penetrated with harmony.

I look at them as at so many open temples, which their thoughts have deserted in order to join one another in an invisible communion. There is a kind of homage in the bent heads and lowered eyes of the men. The women are silent. The fans cease fluttering. The souls of the audience are uplifted like the silent instruments of a human symphony that mysteriously rises and rises till it mingles with the other and is absorbed in it. If some part of us exists beyond words and forms, if our thought sometimes floats in regions of pure mentality, is it not this principle deprived of consciousness which bathes in the tremulous waves of sound?

3

And Rose is also listening. But Rose listens without hearing. She, whom the most beautiful things leave unmoved, here preserves an appearance of absolute attention better than any one else in the audience. She listens in that passive manner which is characteristic of her nature. She lives a waking sleep. There is no consciousness, no effort, but neither any desire.

When the orchestra fills the house with a song of gladness, I forget my anxiety and let my imagination soar into its heights and weave romances around that strange, cold beauty; but, if the music stops, if Rose moves or speaks, then it comes to earth again with some simple little plan, quite practical and quite ordinary.

4

She leant forward and I saw glittering under the electric lamp the little silver chain which she wore round her neck on the day when I saw her first, in the Normandy cornfields, standing amid the tall golden sheaves; and, as I recalled that first impression, the difference between then and now came like a blinding flash. In the cool morning breeze, the sickles advance with the sound and the surge of waves; and the golden expanse bows before the oncoming death. The sky is blue, the village steeple shimmers in the sunlight, a great calm reigns … and a woman stands there, bending over the ground. What have I done? What have I done? Was not everything better so?

Chapter VIII

1

"It looks like snowing," says Rose.

The words falling upon an absolute silence distract me from my work.

It is a dull, drab winter's day. There is no colour, no light in the sky that shows through the muslin blinds. On the branches of the bare trees, a few dead leaves, which the wind has left behind, shiver miserably at some passing gust. There is just enough noise for us to enjoy the peace that enfolds the house. From time to time, carriage-wheels roll by and the crack of a whip cuts into our silence; then the dog wakes, sits up, looks questioningly at me and quietly puts his nose back between his paws and begins to snore again. Rose is sitting opposite him, on the other side of the fire-place. She is holding a book in her hands without reading it. Her beautiful eyes are staring dreamily at the fitful flames.

I rose and went upstairs to fetch a volume which I wanted. Both of them, the dog and she, accompanied me, yawning and stretching themselves as they went. They stood beside the book-case, like two witnesses, equally useless and equally indispensable, and watched me searching. I shivered in the cold room. Rose gave a little cough; and the dog tried to curl himself up in the folds of my skirt.

Then we all three went down again; and, when I had gone back to my place, they docilely resumed theirs on either side of the chimney.

The dog, before settling down, turned several times on his cushion, arching his back, with his tail between his legs and his critical nose quivering with satisfaction. Rose also has seen that her armchair is as comfortable as it can be made. Now, lying back luxuriously, with her elbows on the rests and her head on a soft cushion, she is evidently not much troubled at the thought of a long day indoors.

2

In the two months since Rose left Sainte-Colombe, I have drilled her into an intermittent attempt at style which is the utmost that she will ever achieve, I fear; for her will, unhappily, is incapable of sustained effort. When she has to hold herself upright for several hours at a time, I see her gradually stooping as though invisible forces were dragging her down.

Certainly, it is no longer the Rose of Sainte-Colombe who is here beside me. How much of her remains? Her general appearance is transformed by her clothes and the way in which she wears her hair; her voice and gestures are softer; but all this minute and complex change is but the subtle effect of events, the disconcerting effect of an influence that has laid itself upon her nature without altering it in any way. And this is what really causes my uneasiness. She is changed, but she has not changed.

I take her with me wherever I have to go. She accompanies me on my walks and drives, in my shopping, to the play. Men consider her beautiful, but her indifference keeps love at a distance: love, the passion in which I placed, in which I still place the hopes that remain to me.

3

As for Rose herself, she is always pleased, without being enthusiastic, and never expresses a wish or a desire.

I sometimes laugh and say:

"You have a weatherproof soul; and your common sense is as starched as your Sunday cap used to be!"

But at heart she saddens me. To keep my interest in her alive, I find myself wishing that she had some glaring fault. And at the same time I am angry with myself for not appreciating the exclusiveness of her affection better. I am actually beginning to think that this extravagant sentiment is fatal to her. I look upon it in her heart as I look upon the great tree in my garden, which interferes with the growth of everything around it: fond as I am of that tree, I consider it something of an enemy.

Chapter IX

1

This afternoon, the whole atmosphere of the house is changed. There is no silence, no work. The maid fusses about, spreading out my dresses before Rose and me. We cannot settle upon anything.

"We shall have to try them on you," I say.

But at the very first our choice is made.

A cry of admiration escapes me at the sight of Rose sheathed from head to foot in a long green-velvet tunic that falls heavily around her, without ornament or jewellery. From the high velvet collar, her head rises like a flower from its calyx; and I have never beheld a richer harmony than that of her golden hair streaming over the emerald green.

While I finish dressing her, we talk:

"You are having all your friends," she says.

"Some of them, those who live in Paris at this season. I have done for you to-day what I seldom care to do: I have asked them all together. But I have made a point of insisting that the strictest isolation shall be maintained."

Rose laughed as she asked me what I meant.

"It's quite simple," I answered. "We shall throw open all the doors; and there will be no crowding permitted! No general conversation, no loud talking …"

"In short," she exclaimed, "the exact opposite to the convent, where we were forbidden to talk in twos."

"That is to say, where you were forbidden to talk at all; for there is no real conversation with more than one. As long as you have not spoken to a person alone, can you say that you have ever seen her?"

She did not appear convinced; and I continued:

"But just think! Conversation in pairs, when two people are in sympathy—and they are nearly always in sympathy when they are face to face—can be as sincere as lonely meditations."

I felt that she shared my sentiment; but her reasonable nature makes her always steer a middle course, never leaning to either side.

2

The pale winter sun is beginning to wane, but there is still plenty of daylight in the white drawing-room. And I look at my friends, who have formed little groups in harmony with my wishes and their own. When an increased intimacy brings us all closer together, the party will gain by that earlier informality. Each life will have been given its normal pitch and will try at least to keep it. For our souls are such sensitive instruments that they can rarely strike as much as a true third.

Blanche, with the agate eyes and the cloud of chestnut hair, is a picture of autumn in the brown and red of her frock, with its bands of sable. She is listening attentively to Marcienne. The fair Marcienne herself, whom I love for her passionate pride, is sitting near the fire-place; and her wonderful profile stands out against the flames. Her mouth is a fierce red; but the figure which shows through the pale-coloured tailor-made dress is full of tender childish curves. The swansdown toque makes her black hair seem blacker still. She is talking seriously and holding out to the flames her fingers covered with rings.

The wide-open door reveals the darker bedroom, in which the lights are already turned on. A young married woman is sitting with her elbows on the table. She is reading a poem in a low voice; and from time to time a few words, spoken more loudly, mingle with the semi-silence of the other rooms. Bending under the lamp-shade, her brown hair is bathed in the light, while her profile is veiled by her hand and the lines of her body are lost in the dark dress which melts into the shadow. Near her, leaning against the white wall, two white figures listen and dream.

I see Rose. She is standing, all emerald and gold, in the middle of the next room. Behind her, a mirror reflects the copper candelabra whose lighted branches surround her with stars. A placidly-smiling Madonna, chaste and cold, dazzling and glorious, she talks to the inseparables, Aurélie and Renée.

Renée, clad in deep mourning, is a delicious little princess of jet, with lint-white hair and flax-blue irises. Her companion, crowned with glowing tresses, knows the splendour of her green eyes and, with a cunning fan-like play of her long eyelids, amuses herself by making them appear and disappear.

My attention is recalled to the visitor by my side, a young Dutchwoman not yet quite at home in France. She is shy in speaking and she does not know my friends. I look at her. Her fair round face is quaintly framed in the smooth coils of her golden hair. Her eyes are a cloudless blue. Her nose, which is a little heavy and serious, belies the smiling mouth, with its corners that turn up so readily. The very long and very lovely neck makes one follow in thought the hollow of the nape and the slope of the shoulders vanishing in a snowy cloud of Mechlin lace. On the deliberately antiquated black-silk dress, a gold chain and a miniature set in brilliants give the finishing touch to a style classic in its chastity. Seated in a grandfather's chair in the embrasure of the window, she reminds one of Mme. de Mortsauf in Balzac's Lys dans la vallée.

But she is also the very embodiment of Zealand. You can picture her head covered with a lace cap and her temples adorned with gold corkscrews. Behind her you conjure up flat horizons, slow-turning wind-mills, little red-and-green houses in which the inmates seem to play at living. How charming she looks in the last rays of light, at once childish and dignified, passive and romantic … and so different from the rest!

But has not each her particular interest, her special grace? When my eyes go from one to another, they tell a rosary of precious beads, each with its own peculiar beauty, neither greater nor less than its fellows! What a glad and wondrous thing it is to be women, to be delicate, pretty things, infinitely sensitive and infinitely varied, living works of art, matter for kisses, the realised stuff of dreams! When you look at them like that, solely in the decorative sense, you are ready to condemn those who work, who think and who concentrate upon an aim of some sort, for these superfine creatures carry the reason for their existence within themselves, so great is the perfection which they achieve with a gesture, an attitude, a glance. And then you reflect upon what they too often are in the privacy of their lives: narrow and domineering, attached to petty, useless duties, their minds lacking dignity, their souls lacking horizon; and you are sorry that they have not grown, through the sheer consciousness of their beauty, into ways that are kindly and generous.

I let my hand rest lightly on Cecilia's hands; and in the sweetness of the gathering dusk we both dream. Like the scent of flowers, the different natures seem to find a more precise expression as their shapes fade. I explain them to Cecilia, who does not know them.

Aurélie and Renée draw my eyes with their laughter; and I begin with them. They are the careless lovers, idle for the exquisite pleasure of idleness. They live a dream-life, the life of a child that sleeps, dresses itself, goes for a walk, eats sweets and plays with its dolls. They are good-natured as well as frivolous, lissom of mind as well as of body, indulgent to others and charming in themselves. Love, resting on their young and tender lives, makes them more tender yet, like the light that lingers long and fondly upon a soft-tinted pastel.

Next comes the turn of Marcienne, who, greatly daring, has broken with her family and given up worldly luxury, to work and live freely with the man of her choice.

Beside her is Blanche, still restless and undecided, attracted by love and irritated by her sister Hermione, who pursues a vision of charity and redemption.

Here my friend's fine profile turns to the other groups; and I continue:

"The one whom we call Sister Hermione you can see in the dark bedroom, reading under the light of the lamp, with her face hidden in her hands."

"Is she good-looking?"

"Very, but tries not to seem so. That is why she is always so simply dressed."

Cecilia interrupts me:

"But her dress isn't simple!"

"You are quite right. It is made complex by a thousand superfluous fripperies. Hermione has not been slow to understand that, to counteract perfect beauty, you must read simplicity to mean commonplace triviality."

A flutter of silk, a gleam of a silver-white skirt in the waning light, a whiff of orris-root; and Marcienne glides down to our feet with a lithe, cat-like movement. In a curt, passionate tone, she says:

"You are speaking of Hermione. Oh, do try and persuade her sister not to go the same way: is not one enough? Must more loveliness be wasted?"

Sitting on a cushion on the floor, she raises her glowing face, her eyes dark as night, her scarlet mouth, her dazzling pallor.

"I shall do nothing of the sort," I answer with a laugh, "for I rather like Hermione's folly; besides, her reason will soon conquer it! The dangers we run depend on chance; the first roads we take depend on influences. The way in which we bear those dangers and return from those roads: that is where the interest begins!"

"But, tell me," murmurs Cecilia, "what does your Hermione want?"

"Here is her story, in a couple of words," says Marcienne. "She is rich, beautiful and talented; and she belongs to an aristocratic English family. At twenty, she yielded to an impulse and went on the stage; in a few months, she was a really successful actress; then she made the acquaintance of a Hindu high-priest. He came and went; and she followed him. During the last two years, she has been his faithful disciple."

"But what does she preach?"

Marcienne made a vague gesture:

"Buddhist doctrines! She believes that she possesses the true faith and tries to hand it on to others. In the few days which she has spent in Paris, she has already made two converts, those two innocents who are hanging on her words. It would all be charming, you know, if her creed did not enjoin chastity and if, by holding those views, she did not risk the awful fate of never knowing love!"

Marcienne continued, still addressing herself to my new friend:

"Do you see those pretty creatures in white, standing close to Hermione? They are two orphans, two girls who fell in love with the same man. I don't know the details of the romance, nor can I say whether it was fancy or passion that guided the man's choice. All I know is that he loved one of them and had a child by her. A little while after, he deserted her. Thereupon their unhappy love reunited those two hearts which happy love, as always, had divided. The same devotion and kindness made them both bend over the one cradle. Oh, the adorable pity that prompted Anne's heart on the day when, hearing her baby call her mamma for the first time, she sent for her sister Marie and, holding towards her those little outstretched arms, those eyes in which consciousness was dawning, that little fluttering life seeking a resting-place, she offered the maid, in the exquisite mystery of that first smile, the first name of love! From that time onward, the baby grew up between its two mammas as one treads a sunny path between two flowering banks."

Marcienne had a gift for pretty phrases of this kind, which she would let fall not without a certain affectation. She liked talking and I liked listening to her. I asked her what she thought of Rose. She praised her beauty highly and even said the occasional awkwardness of her movements made it more uncommon:

"For that matter," she added, "if it were not so, I should try to be blind to it. A woman must understand that she lowers herself by belittling her sisters. How immensely we increase man's ascendancy by never praising one another!"

I began to laugh:

"Alas, I would not dare to say that the wisest among us, in extolling our own sex, are not once more seeking the admiration of some man!"

And Marcienne, who has been to such pains to release herself from the worldly surroundings amid which she suffered, goes on speaking long and passionately. There is a note of pain in her voice as she says:

"Everything separates us and removes us one from the other, education even more than instinct. If woman only knew how she lessens her power by blindly respecting the petty social laws of which she is nevertheless the sole judge and dictator! Whereas she hands them down meekly, from mother to daughter, with all their wearisome restrictions, and grows indignant if some one bolder ventures to transgress them. And yet it is in this domain, which is hers, that she might extend her power by gradually overthrowing the old idols."

And she also says:

"Almost always, in defending a woman, we have occasion to strike a mortal blow at some ancient prejudice. For my part, I must confess that I take a mischievous delight in bestowing special indulgence on things which often are too severe a test for that indulgence in others; for, rather than be suspected of impugning ever so lightly some worn-out principle, they will wound and wound again the most innocent of their sisters."

3

It is almost dark. I leave my companions in order to call for the lamps and I stop near Rose as I pass through the next room. Here, all the girls are clustered round Hermione, who is telling them a story of her travels.

Anne and Marie are listening respectfully, while the two inseparables, only half-attentive, are sharing a box of sweets.