Chapter 11

'She answered quite simply, "Et moi, je t'aime tant, aussi." And then she began to cry. And when I asked her what she was crying for, she explained that I oughtn't to have left her in doubt for so long; she had been so unhappy from fear that I didn't "love her so." She was quite unfemininely frank, you see. Oh, the ecstacy of that hour! The ecstacy of our first kiss! From that time on it was "mon petit mari" and "ma petite femme." The greatest joy in life for me, for us, was to sit together, holding each other's hands, and repeating from time to time, "J' t'aime tant, j' t'aime tant." Now and then we would vary it with a fugue upon our names--"Hélène!"--"Paul!"' He laughed. 'Children, with their total lack of humour, are the drollest of created beings, aren't they?'

'Oh, I don't think it's droll. I know, all children have those desperate love affairs. But they seem to me pathetic. How did it go on?'

'Oh, for two or three years we lived in Paradise. There were no other boys in the neighbourhood, so she was constant.'

'For three years? And then?'

'Then my grandmother died, and I was carried off to Paris. She remained here. And so it ended.'

'And when did you meet her next? After you were grown up?'

'I have never met her since.'

'You must have followed her career with a special interest, though?'

'_Ah, quant à ça_!'

'Her marriage, her coronation, her divorce. Poor Woman! What she must have suffered. Have you made any attempt to see her since you came back to Saint-Graal?'

'_Ah, merci, non_! If she wanted to see me, she'd send for me.'

'She sees no one, everybody says. But I should think she'd like to see you--her old playmate. If she _should_ send for you--But I suppose I musn't ask you to tell me about it afterwards? Of course, like everybody else in her neighbourhood, I'm awfully interested in her.'

There was a moment's silence. She looked at the moss beneath her, and stroked it lightly with a finger-tip. Paul looked at her.

'You're horribly unkind,' he said at last.

'Unkind?' She raised wide eyes of innocent surprise.

'You know I'm in an agony of curiosity.'

'About what?'

'About you.'

'Me?'

'Yourself.'

She lifted the cluster of charms at the end of her watch-chain. One of them was a tiny golden whistle. On this she blew, and Bézigue came trotting up. She mounted him to-day without Paul's assistance. Smiling down on the young man, she said, 'Oh, after the reckless way in which I've cast the conventions to the winds, you really can't expect me to give you my name and address.' And before he could answer, she was gone.

He walked about for the rest of the day in a great state of excitement. 'My dear,' he told himself, 'if you're not careful, something serious will happen to you.'

IX.

When he woke up he saw that it was raining; and in that part of the world it really never does rain but it pours. Needless to touch upon the impatient ennui with which he roamed the house. He sent for André to lunch with him.

'André, can't you do something to stop this rain?' he asked; but André stared. 'Oh, I was thinking of the priests of Baal,' Paul explained. 'I beg your pardon.' And after the coffee, 'Let's go up and play in the garret,' he proposed: at which André stared harder still. 'We always used to play in the garret on rainy days,' Paul reminded him. 'Mais, ma foi, monsieur, nous ne sommes plus des gosses,' André answered.

'Is there any news about the Queen?' Paul asked.

'There's never any news from Granjolaye,' said André.

'And the lady I met in the forest? Have you any new theory who she is?'

'An officer's wife from Ba----'

'André!' cried Paul. 'If you say that again, I shall write to the Pope and ask him to disfrock you.'

The next day was fine; but, though he spent the entire morning in the Smuggler's Pathway, he did not meet her. 'It's because the ground's still wet,' he reasoned. 'Oh, why don't things dry quicker?'

The next day he did meet her--and she passed him with a bow. He shook his fist at her unsuspecting back.

The next day he perceived Bézigue riderless near the opening among the trees. The horse neighed, as he drew near. She was seated on the moss. He stood still, and bowed tentatively from the path. 'Are you disengaged? May I come in?' he asked.

'Oh, do,' she answered. 'And--won't you take a seat?'

'Thank you,' and he placed himself beside her.

'Tell me about your life afterwards,' she said.

'My life afterwards? After what?'

'After you were carried off to Paris.'

'What earthly interest can _that_ have?'

'I want to know.'

'It was the average life of the average youth whose family is in average circumstances.'

'You went to school?'

'What makes you doubt it? Do I seem so illiterate?'

'Where? In England? Eton? Harrow?'

'No, in Paris. The Lycée Louis le Grand. Oh, I have received an education--no expense was spared. I forget how many years I passed _à faire mon droit_ in the Latin Quarter. You'd be surprised if you were to discover what a lot I know. Shall I prove to you that the sum of the angles of a right-angled triangle is equal to two right angles? Or conjugate the verb _amo_? Or give you a brief summary of the doctrines of Aristotle? Or an account of the life and works of Gustavus Alolphus?'

'When did you go to England?'

'Not till Necessity drove me there. I had to eke out a meagre patrimony. I went to England to seek my fortune.'

'Did you find it?'

'I never had the knack of finding things. When my father used to send me into the library to fetch a book, or my mother into her dressing-room to fetch her scissors, I could never find them. I looked for it everywhere, but I couldn't find it.'

'What did you do?'

'I lived by my wits. _Chevalier d'industrie_.'

'_Ah, non. Je ne crois pas_.'

'You don't believe my wits were sufficient to the task? I was like the London hospitals--practically unendowed; only they wouldn't support me by voluntary contributions. So--I wrote for the newspapers, I'm afraid.'

'For the newspapers?'

'Oh, I admit, it's scandalous. But you may as well know the worst. A penny-a-liner! But I shan't do so any more, now that I have stepped into the shoes of my uncle. You'll never catch me fatiguing myself with work, now that I've got enough to live on!'

'Lazy!'

'Oh, I'm everything that's reprehensible.'

'And you never married?'

'I don't think so.'

'Aren't you sure?'

'As sure as one can be of anything in this doubtful world.'

'But why didn't you?'

'_Pas si bête_. Marriage is such a bore. I never met a woman I could bear the thought of passing all my life with.'

'Conceited!'

'I daresay. If you like false modesty better, I'll try to meet your wishes. What woman would have had a poor devil like me?'

'Still, marriage is, after all, very much in vogue.'

'Yes, but it's mad. Either you must love the woman you marry, or you mustn't love her. But if you marry a woman without loving her, I hope you'll not deny you're doing a very shocking thing. If, on the contrary, you do love her, _raison de plus_ for not marrying her Fancy marrying a woman you love; and then, day by day, watching the beautiful wild flower of love fatten into a domestic cabbage! Isn't that a syllogism?'

'You have been in love then?'

'Never.'

'Never?'

'Oh, I've made a fool of myself occasionally, of course. But I've never been in love.'

'Except with Hélène de la Granjolaye?'

'Oh, yes, I was in love with her--when I was ten.'

'Till you were...?'

'Till I was...?'

'How long did it take you to get over it, I mean?'

'I don't know. It wore away gradually. The tooth of time.'

'You're not at all in love with her any more?'

'After twenty years? And she a Queen? I hope I know my place.'

'But if you were to meet her again?'

'I should probably suffer a horrible disillusion.'

'But you have found, at any rate, that "first love is best"?'

'First and last. The last shall be first,' he said oracularly.

'Don't you smoke?' she asked.

'Oh, one by one you drag my vices from me. Let me own, _en bloc_, that I have them all.'

'Then you may light a cigarette and give me one.'

He gave her a cigarette, and held a match while she lit it. Then he lit one for himself. Her manner of smoking was leisurely, luxurious. She inhaled the smoke, and let it escape slowly in a slender spiral. He looked at her through the thin cloud, and his heart closed in a convulsion. 'How big and soft and rich--how magnificent she is--like some great splendid flower, heavy with sweetness!' he thought. He had to breathe deep to overcome a feeling of suffocation; he was trembling in every nerve, and he wondered if she perceived it. He divined the smooth perfection of her body, through the supple cloth that moulded it; he noticed vaguely that the dress she wore to-day was blue, not black. He divined the warmth of her round white throat, the perfume of her skin. 'And how those lips could kiss!' his imagination shouted wildly. Again, the silence, the solitude and dimness of the forest, their intimate seclusion there, the great trees, the sky, the bright green cushion of moss, the few detached sounds,--bird-notes, rustling leaves, snapping twigs,--by which the silence was intensified; again all these lent an acuteness to his sensations. Her dark eyes were smiling lustrously, languidly, at the smoke curling in the air before her, as if they saw a vision in it.

'You're adorable at moments,' he said at last.

'At moments! Thank you.' She laughed.

'Oh, you can't expect me to pretend that I find you adorable always. There are times when I could fall upon you and exterminate you.'

'Why?'

'When you passed me yesterday with a nod.'

'Twas your own fault. You didn't look amusing yesterday.'

'When you baffle my perfectly innocent desire to know whom I have the honour of addressing.'

'Shall I summon Bézigue?' she asked, touching her bunch of charms.

He acted his despair.

'Besides, what does it matter? I know who _you_ are,' she went on. 'Let that console you.'

'Did I say you were adorable? You're hateful.'

'What's in a name? Nothing but the power to compromise. Would you have me compromise myself more than I've done already? A woman who makes a man's acquaintance without an introduction, and talks about love, and smokes cigarettes, with him!' She gave a little shudder. 'How horrible it sounds when you state it baldly.'

'One must never state things baldly. One must qualify. It's the difference between Truth and mere Fact. Truth is Fact qualified. You must add that the woman knew the man by common report to be of the highest possible respectability, and that she saw for herself he was (alas!) altogether harmless. And then you must explain that the affair took place in the country, in the spring; and that the cigarettes were the properest conceivable sort of cigarettes, having been rolled by hand in England.'

'You wouldn't believe me if I said I had never done such a thing before? They all say that, don't they?'

'Yes, they all say that. But, oddly enough, I do believe you.'

'Then you're not entirely lost to grace, not thoroughly a cynic.'

'Oh, there are _some_ good women.'

'And some good men?'

'Possibly. I've never happened to meet one.'

'The eye of the beholder!'

'If you like. But I don't know. There are such things, no doubt, as cynics by temperament; congenital cynics. Then, indeed, you may cry: The eye of the beholder. But others become cynics, are driven into cynicism, by sad experience. I started in life with the rosiest faith in my fellow-man. If I've lost it, it's because he's always behaved shabbily to me, soon or late; always taking some advantage. The struggle for existence! We're all beasts, who take part in it; we must be, or we're devoured. Women for the most part are out of it. Anyhow, _plus je vois les hommes, plus j'aime les femmes_.'

'Are you a beast too?'

'Oh, yes. But I don't bite. I'm the kind of beast that runs away. I lie by the fire and purr, but at the first sign of trouble I jump for the open door. That's why the other fellows always got the better of me. They knew I was a coward, and profited by the knowledge. If my dear good uncle hadn't died, I don't know how I should have lived.'

'I'm afraid you have "lived" too much.'

'That was uncalled for.'

'Or else your looks belie you.'

'My looks?'

'You're so dissipated-looking.'

'Dissipated-looking? I? Horror!'

'You've got such a sophisticated eye, if that suits you better. You look _blasé_.'

'You're a horrid, rude, uncomplimentary thing.'

'Oh, if you're going to call names, I must summon my natural protector.' She blew on her golden whistle, and up trotted the obedient Bézigue.

That evening Paul said to himself, 'I vastly fear that something serious _has_ happened to you. No, she's everything you like, but she _isn't_ that sort.'

He was depressed, dejected; the reaction, no doubt, from the excitement of her presence. 'She's married, of course; and of course she's got a lover. And of course she'll never care a pin for the likes of me. And of course she sees what's the matter with me, and is laughing in her sleeve. And I had thought myself impervious. Oh, damn all women.'

X.

'Don't stop; ride on,' he called out to her, next morning, 'I shan't be amusing to-day. I'm frightfully low in my mind.'

'Perhaps it will amuse me to study you in a new aspect,' she said. 'You can entertain me with the story of your griefs.'

'Bare my wounds to make a lady smile. Oh, anything to oblige you.'

She leapt lightly from Bézigue, and sank upon the moss.

'What is it all about?'

'Oh, not what you imagine,' said he. 'It's about my debts.'

'I had hoped it was about your sins.'

'_My_ sins! I'm kept awake at night by the thought of _yours_.'

'Your conscience is too sensitive. Mine are but peccadillos.'

'You say that because you've no sense of moral proportion. Are cruelty and dissimulation pecadillos?'

'They may be even virtues. It all depends. Discipline and reserve!'

'I'll forgive you everything if you'll tell me your name.'

'Oh, I have debts, as well as you.'

'What have debts to do with the question?'

'I owe something to my reputation.'

'If we're going to consider our reputations, what of mine?'

'Yours has preceded you into the country,' she said, and drew from her pocket a small, thin volume, bound in grey cloth, with a gilt design.

'Oh, heavens!' cried Paul. 'This is how one's past finds one out.'

'Oh, some of them aren't bad,' she said. 'Wait, I'll read you one.'

'Then you know English?'

'A leetle. Bot the one I shall read is in Franch.'

And then she read out, in an enchanting voice, one of his own French sonnets. 'That isn't bad,' she added. 'Do you think it hopelessly bad?'

'It shows promise, perhaps--when _you_ read it.'

'It is strange, though, that it should have been written by a man who had never been in love.'

'Imagination! Upon my word, I never had been. Besides, the idea is stolen. It's almost a literal translation from Rossetti. What with a little imagination and a little ingenuity, one can do wonderfully well on other people's experience.'

'I don't believe you. You have been in love a hundred times.'

'Never.'

'Never? Not even with Hélène de la Granjolaye de Ravanches?'

'Oh, I don't count my infancy. Never with anybody else.'

'It's very strange,' she said. 'Tell me some more about her.'

'Oh, bother her.'

'I suppose when they carried you off to Paris you had a tearful parting? Did you kick and scream and say you wouldn't go?'

'Why do you always make me talk about the Queen?'

'She interests me. And when you talk about the Queen, I rather like you. It is nice to see that there _was_ a time when you were capable of an emotion.'

'You fancy I'm incapable now?'

'Tell me about your leave-taking, your farewells.'

'Bother our farewells.'

'They must have been heart-rending?'

'Probably.'

'Don't you remember?'

'Oh, yes, I remember.'

'Go on. Don't make me drag it from you by inches. Tell it to me in a pretty melodious narrative. Either that, or--' she touched her whistle.

'That's barefaced intimidation.'

She raised the whistle to her lips.

'Stay, stay!' he cried, 'I yield.'

'I wait,' she answered.

He bent his brows for an instant, then looked up smiling. 'If it puts you to sleep, you'll know whom to blame.'

'Yes, yes, go on,' she said impatiently.

'Dear me, there's nothing worth telling. It was a few weeks after my grandmother's death. We were going to Paris the next day. Her father drove over, with her, to say good-bye. Whilst he was with my people in the drawing-room, she and I walked in the garden.--I say, this is going to become frightfully sentimental, you know. Sure you want it?'

'Go on. Go on.'

'Well, we walked in the garden; and she was crying, and I was beseeching her not to cry. She wore one of her white frocks, with a red sash, and her hair fell down her back below her waist. I was holding her hand. "Don't cry, don't cry. I'll come back as soon as I'm a man, and marry you in real earnest!" I promised her.' He paused and laughed.

'Go on. And she?'

'"Oh, aren't we married in real earnest now?" she asked. I explained that we weren't. "You have to have the Notary over from Bayonne, and go to Church. I know, because that's how it was when my cousin Elodie was married. We're only married in play?" Then she asked if that wasn't just as good. "Things one does in play are always so much nicer than real things," she said.'

'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! She had a prophetic soul.'

'Hadn't she? I admitted that that was true. But I added that perhaps when people were grown up and could do exactly as they pleased, it was different,--perhaps real things would come to be pleasant too.'

'Have you found them so?'

'I suppose I can't be quite grown-up, for I've never yet had a chance to do exactly as I pleased.'

'Poor young man. Go on.'

'And, besides, I reminded her, all the married people we knew were really married, my father and mother, André's father and mother, my cousin Elodie. Hélène's mother was dead, so her parents didn't count. And I argued that we might be sure they found it fun to be really married, or else they wouldn't keep it up. "Oh, well, then, I suppose we'll have to be really married too," she consented. "But it seems as though it never could be as nice as this. If only you weren't going away!" Whereupon I promised again to come back, if she'd promise to wait for me, and never love anybody else, and never, never, never allow another boy to kiss her. "Oh, never, never, never," she assured me. Then her father called her, and they drove away.'

'And you went to Paris and forgot her. Why were you false to your engagement?'

'Oh, she had allowed another boy to kiss her. She had married a German prince. Besides, I received a good deal of discouragement from my family. The next day, in the train, I confided our understanding to my mother. My mother seemed to doubt whether her father would like me as a son-in-law. I was certain he would; he was awfully good-natured; he had given me two louis as a parting tip. "But do you think he'll care to let his daughter marry a bourgeois?" my mother asked. "A what?" cried I. "A bourgeois," said my mother. "I ain't a bourgeois," I retorted indignantly. "What are you then?" pursued my mother. I explained that my grandmother had been a countess, and my uncle was a count; so how could I be a bourgeois? "But what is your father?" my mother asked. Oh, my father was "only an Englishman." But that didn't make me a bourgeois? "Yes, it does," my mother said. "Just because my father's English?" "Because he's a commoner, because he isn't noble." "But then--then what did you go and marry him for?" I stammered. "Where would you have been if I hadn't?" my mother enquired. That puzzled me for a moment, but then I answered, "Well, if you'd married a Frenchman, a Count or a Duke or something, I shouldn't have been a bourgeois;" and my mother confessed that that was true enough. "I don't care if I _am_ a bourgeois," I said at last. "When I'm big I'm going back to Saint-Graal; and if her father won't let me really marry her, because I'm a bourgeois, then we'll just go on making believe we're married."'

She laughed. 'And now you are big, and you've come back to Saint-Graal, and your lady-love is at Granjolaye. Why don't you call on her and offer to redeem your promise?'

'Why doesn't she send for me--bid me to an audience?'

'Perhaps her prophetic soul warns her how you'd disappoint her.'

'Do you think she'd be disappointed in me?'

'Aren't you disappointed in yourself?'

'Oh, dear, no; I think I'm very nice.'

'_I_ should be disappointed in myself, if I were a man who had been capable of such an innocent, sweet affection as yours for Hélène de la Granjolaye, and had then gone and soiled myself with the mud of what they call life.' She spoke earnestly; her face was grave and sad.

He was surprised, and a little alarmed. 'Do you mean by that that you think I'm a bad lot?' he asked.

'You said the other day--yesterday was it?--that you had made a fool of yourself on various occasions.'

'Well?'

'Did the process not generally involve making a fool of a woman too?'

'Reciprocity? Perhaps.'

'And what was it you always said to them?'

'Oh, I suppose I did.'

'You told them you loved them?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'And was it true?'

'No.'

'Well, then!'

'Ah, but they weren't deceived; they never believed it. That's only a convention of the game, a necessary formula, like the "Dear" at the beginning of a letter.'

'You have "lived"; you have "lived." You'd have been so unique, so rare, so much more interesting, if instead of going and "living" like other men, you had remained true to the ideal passion of your childhood.'

'I had the misfortune to be born into the world, and not into a fairy tale, you see. But it's a perfectly gratuitous assumption, that I have "lived."'

'Can you honestly tell me you haven't?' she asked, very soberly, with something like eagerness; her pale face intent.

'As a matter of fact ... Oh, the worst of it is ... I can't honestly say that I've never ... But then, what do you want to rake up such matters for? It's not my fault if I've accepted the traditions of my century. Well, anyhow, you see I can't lie to you.'

'You appear to find it difficult,' she assented, rising.

'Well, what do you infer from that?'

She blew her whistle. 'That--that you're out of training,' she said lightly, as she mounted her horse.

'Oh,' he groaned, 'you're--'

'What?'

'You beggar language.'

She laughed and rode away.

'There, I've spoiled everything,' Paul said, and went home, and passed a sleepless night.

XI.

'I'll bet you sixpence she won't turn up to-day,' he said to his friend in the glass, next morning; nevertheless he went into the forest, and there she was. But she did not offer to dismount.

'Isn't there another inference to be drawn from my inability to lie to you?' he asked.

She smiled on him from her saddle. 'Oh, perhaps there are a hundred.'

'Don't you think a reasonable inference is that--I love you?'

She laughed.

'You know I love you,' he persisted.

'Oh, the conventions of the game! the necesary formula, like "Dear" at the beginning of a letter!' she cried.

'You don't believe me?'

'_Qui m'aime me suive_,' she said, spurring Bézigue into a rapid trot.

XII.

But the next day he found her already installed in their nook among the trees.

'I hate people who doubt my word,' he said.

'Oh, now you hate me?'

'I love you. I love you.'

She drew away a little.

'Oh, you needn't be afraid. I shan't touch you. Why won't you believe me?'

'Do men always glare savagely like that at women they love?'

'Why won't you believe me?'

'How long have you known me?'

'All my life. A fortnight--three weeks. But that's a lifetime.'

'And what do you know about me?'

'Everything. I know that you're adorable. And I adore you.'

'Adorable--at moments. Do you know whether I am--married, for example?'