vi
it was at aunt plantier’s that our first meeting took place. i suddenly felt that my military service had
made me heavy and clumsy... later on i thought she must have found me altered. but why should
this first deceptive impression have had any importance for us two? as for me, i was so much afraid
of not recognizing the alissa i knew, that at first i hardly dared look at her. no! what was really
embarrassing was the absurd position of being engaged which they all forced upon us, and
everybody’s anxiety to leave us alone and hurry away when we were there!
‘oh, aunt! you are not the least in the way; we have nothing private to say to each other,’ cried
alissa at last, impatient at the tactless manner in which the excellent women tried to efface herself.
‘yes, yes! my dears. i quite understand. when young people haven’t seen each other for a long
time, they always have lots of little things to tell each other.’
‘please, aunt! you really will annoy us if you go away!’ and this was said in a tone which was
almost angry, and in which i hardly recognized alissa’s voice.
‘aunt! i assure you that if you go away, we shan’t utter a single other word!’ added i, laughing,
but myself filled with a certain apprehension at the idea of our being left alone. and then, with sham
cheerfulness, we all three set to work to make conversation, trying to hide our embarrassment
beneath the forced liveliness of our commonplace talk. we were to meet again the next day, as my
uncle had invited me to lunch, so that we parted that evening without regret, glad to put an end to this
absurd scene.
i arrived long before luncheon-time, but i found alissa talking to a girl-friend, whom she had not
the strength of mind to send away, and who was not discreet enough to go. when at last she left us, i
pretended to be surprised that alissa had not kept her to lunch. we were both of us in a state of
nervous tension and tired by a sleepless night. my uncle appeared. alissa felt that i thought him aged.
he had grown rather deaf, and heard my voice with difficulty; the necessity i was under of shouting
so as to make myself understood made my talk dull and stupid.
after lunch aunt plantier, as had been arranged, came to take us out in her carriage; she drove us
to orcher, with the idea of letting alissa and me do the pleasantest part of the journey on foot.
the weather was hot for the time of the year. the part of the hill up which we had to walk was
exposed to the sun and unattractive; the leafless trees gave us no shelter. in our anxiety to rejoin the
carriage in which our aunt was to wait for us, we hastened our pace uncomfortably. my head was
aching so badly that i could not extract a single idea from it; to keep myself in countenance, or
because i thought that the gesture might serve instead of words, i had taken alissa’s hand, which she
let me keep. our emotion, the rapidity of our walk, and the awkwardness of our silence, sent the
blood to our faces; i felt my temples throbbing; alissa’s colour was unpleasantly heightened; and
soon the discomfort of feeling the contact of our damp hands made us unclasp them and let them drop
sadly to our sides.
we had made too much haste, and arrived at the cross-roads long before the carriage, which had
taken another road and driven very slowly, because of my aunt’s desire to leave us plenty of time for
talking. we sat down on the bank at the side of the road; a cold wind, which suddenly got up, chilled
us to the bone, for we were bathed in perspiration; then we walked on to meet the carriage. but the
worst was again the pressing solicitude of our poor aunt, who was convinced that we had had a long
and satisfactory talk and was longing to question us about our engagement. alissa, unable to bear it,
and with her eyes full of tears, alleged a violent headache, and we drove home in silence.
the next day i woke up with aching limbs and a bad chill, so unwell that i put off going to the
bucolins’ till the afternoon. by ill luck, alissa was not alone. madeleine plantier, one of aunt
félicie’s granddaughters, was there. i knew alissa liked talking to her. she was staying with her
grandmother for a few days, and when i came in, she exclaimed:
‘if you are going back to the côte when you leave here, we might as well go together.’
i agreed mechanically; so that i was unable to see alissa alone. but the presence of this charming
girl was, no doubt, a help to us; i no longer felt the intolerable embarrassment of the day before; the
conversation between the three of us was soon going smoothly, and was less futile than i had at first
feared. alissa smiled strangely when i said good-bye to her; i had the impression that she had not
understood till that moment that i was going away the next morning. but the prospect of my speedy
return took away any touch of tragedy from my good-bye.
after dinner, however, prompted by a vague uneasiness, i went down to the town, where i
wandered about for nearly an hour before i made up my mind to ring at the bucolins’ door. it was my
uncle who received me. alissa, who was not feeling very well, had already gone to her room and, no
doubt, straight to bed. i talked to my uncle for a few moments, and then left.
it would be vain for me to blame the perverseness of these incidents, unfortunate though they
were. for even if everything had favoured us, we should still have invented our embarrassment
ourselves. but nothing could have made me more wretched than that alissa, too, should feel this.
this is the letter i received as soon as i got to paris:
‘my friend, what a melancholy meeting! you seemed to lay the blame on other people, but – without being able
to convince yourself. and now i think – i know – it will be so always. oh! i beg of you, don’t let us see each other
again!
‘why this awkwardness, this feeling of being in a false position, this paralysis, this dumbness, when we have
everything in the world to say to each other? the first day of your return this very silence made me happy, because i
believed it would vanish, and that you would tell me the most wonderful things; it was impossible that you should
leave me without.
‘but when our lugubrious expedition to orcher came to an end without a word, when, above all, our hands
unclasped and fell apart so hopelessly, i thought my heart would have fainted within me for grief and pain. and
what distressed me most was not so much that your hand let go mine, but my feeling that if yours had not, mine
would have done so, for my hand too no longer felt happy in yours.
‘the next day – yesterday – i expected you, madly, all the morning. i was too restless to stop indoors, and i left
a line for you to tell you where to find me on the jetty. i stayed a long time looking at the stormy sea, but i was too
miserable looking at it without you; i imagined suddenly that you were waiting for me in my room, and went in. i
knew i shouldn’t be free in the afternoon; madeleine had told me the day before that she meant to come, and as i
expected to see you in the morning i did not put her off. but, perhaps, it was to her presence we owed the only
pleasant moments of our meeting. for a few minutes i had the strange illusion that this comfortable conversation
was going to last a long, long time. and when you came up to the sofa where i was sitting beside her, and bent
down and said “good-bye”, i could not answer; it seemed as though it were the end of everything; it suddenly
dawned upon me that you were going.
‘you had no sooner left with madeleine, than it struck me as impossible, unbearable. will you believe it? i
went out! i wanted to speak to you again, to tell you all the things i had not told you; i was already hurrying to the
plantiers’... it was late; i didn’t have time, didn’t dare... i came in again, desperate, to write to you – that i didn’t
want to write to you any more – a good-bye letter because i felt too much that our correspondence was nothing but
a vast mirage, that we were each writing, alas! only to ourselves and that – jérôme! jérôme! ah! how far apart we
were all the time!
‘i tore that letter up, it is true; but now i am writing it over again, almost the same. oh! i do not love you less,
my dear! on the contrary, i never before felt so clearly, by my very disturbance, by my embarrassment as soon as
you came near me, how deeply i loved you; but hopelessly too, for i must perforce confess it to myself – when you
were away, i loved you more. i had already begun to suspect so, alas! this longed-for meeting has finally shown me
the truth, and you, too, my friend, must needs be convinced of it. good-bye, my much-loved brother; may god keep
and guide you! to him alone can we draw near with impunity.’
and as if this letter were not sufficiently painful, the next day she had added the following
postscript:
‘i do not wish to let this letter go without asking you to show a little more discretion in regard to what concerns
us both. many a time you have wounded me by talking to juliette or abel about things which should have remained
private between you and me, and this is, indeed, what made me think – long before you suspected it – that your love
was above all intellectual, the beautiful tenacity of a tender faithful mind.’
the fear lest i should show this letter to abel had doubtless inspired the last lines. what
suspicious instinct had put her on her guard? had she formerly detected in my words some reflection
of my friend’s advice?
in truth, i felt myself far enough away from him! the paths we followed were henceforth
divergent; and there was little need of these recommendations to teach me to bear the anxious burden
of my grief alone.
the next three days were wholly occupied by my pleading; i wished to reply to alissa; i was
afraid of incurably inflaming the wound by too deliberate a discussion, by too vehement
protestations, by the slightest clumsy word; twenty times over i began the letter in which my love
struggled for its life. i cannot to this day re-read, without weeping, the tear-stained paper, which is
the copy of the one i at last decided to send:
‘alissa! have pity on me, on us both!... your letter hurts me. how much i wish i could smile at your fears! yes,
i felt everything you write; but i was afraid to own it to myself. what frightful reality you give to what is merely
imaginary, and how you thicken it between us!
‘if you feel that you love me less... ah! let me dismiss this cruel supposition, which your whole letter
contradicts! but then, of what importance are your fleeting apprehensions? alissa! as soon as i begin to argue, my
words freeze; i can only hear the weeping of my heart. i love you too much to be skilful, and the more i love you
the less i know what to say to you. “intellectual love”... what am i to answer to that? when it is with my whole soul
that i love you, how can i distinguish between my intellect and my heart? but since our correspondence is the cause
of your unkind imputation, since we have been so grievously hurt by our fall into reality from the heights to which
that correspondence had raised us, since, if you were to write to me now you would think that you were writing only
to yourself since, too, i have not strength to bear another letter like your last – please, for a time, let us stop all
communication.’
in the rest of my letter i protested and appealed against her judgement, imploring her to grant us
the opportunity of another interview. the last had had everything against it; the scene, the
personages, the time of year – and even our correspondence, whose impassioned tone had prepared
us for it with so little prudence. this time it should be preceded only by silence. i wished it to take
place in the spring, at fongueusemare, where my uncle would let me stay during the easter holidays,
for as long or as short a time as she herself should think fit.
my determination was firmly taken, and as soon as my letter had gone i was able to bury myself
in my work.
★
i was to see alissa once more before the end of the year. miss ashburton, whose health had been
declining for some months past, died four days before christmas. on my return from my military
service i had gone back to stay with her. i left her very little and was present at her last moments. a
card from alissa showed me that our vow of silence lay nearer her heart than my bereavement; she
would come up, she said, for the day, just to go to the funeral, which my uncle would not be able to
attend.
she and i were almost the only mourners to be present at the burial service and afterwards to
follow the coffin. we walked side by side and exchanged barely a few sentences; but in church where
she took her seat beside me, i several times felt her eyes resting tenderly upon me.
‘it is agreed,’ said she, as she left me, ‘nothing before easter.’
‘no, but at easter...’
‘i will expect you.’
we were at the gate of the cemetery. i suggested taking her to the station; but she called a cab and
without a word of farewell, left me.
