“As if I should!” the little man retorted energetically. “Even if my loveliest flowers should fade in my absence I will satisfy you.”
M. Loigny was going to Le Maupas to ask Madame Guibert for her daughter’s hand on behalf of his nephew. When the carriage had disappeared round the road, Jean, impatient and agitated, instead of going back to Rose Villa, had slowly followed the same road. Thus he would perhaps meet his ambassador returning and perhaps would have time in the evening to go up himself to the house and speak alone to her who was to be his bride. He gazed questioningly at the sun, which was slowly sinking towards Mount Lépine.
“These July days are the longest of all,” he said to himself, looking for encouragement in his project.
After the evening at Aix the young man had searched his heart. He loved Paule for her courage and pride; and also for that mysterious attraction exercised on us by the features of the face, the color of the eyes, the mass of the hair, the carriage of the body, the matchless grace of a woman in whom we foresee the promise of a secure and happy future for ourselves—or at least a delicious torment of our soul. He could feel within him the approval of all his ancestry in the past, whose noble traditions he meant to carry on successfully. This sensible young girl with the eyes of flame inspired a tender love in his heart; above all she incited him to seek the true end of human existence, which is not to set up one’s own welfare as one’s object, but, striving valiantly and unselfishly, to make oneself the link between the generations past and those to come. Where could he find a worthier companion, a stronger and a surer one who could give better counsel? Paule had grown like a plant whose roots drew their nourishment from fertile soil. Her family was the guarantee of her virtue. It had only needed a little sunshine for her to attain her full development. Would not love bring her warmth and light? And what joy to see her grow and blossom and to feel oneself a little the cause of it, to give back to her the lost days of a cruelly harassed youth, fled almost before she had time to note their flight.
Paule would love him, she loved him already perhaps. Had he not noticed more than one slight indication of her secret feelings, in spite of her reserve and dignity—a blush on her cheek, a hurried fluttering of her eyelids, and above all the unconscious softness of that pure, loyal, sincere glance as it rested on him. Then, as he dipped back into his memories, he seemed to recall a coolness which she had long ago shown toward Isabelle Orlandi. Isabelle Orlandi! He had not seen her again, he would never see her any more. He was still full of a superstitious dread of her, and he put away from him the too beautiful vision which humiliated him cruelly as it reminded him of his own weakness. Loved by Paule Guibert, on the contrary, he felt himself strong enough to conquer all obstacles. For this is the true test of real love, that it exalts all our faculties, and gives us confidence in ourselves.
The decision which his heart reached was sustained by other considerations. Married love does not cut the lover off from the outer social world, but, through the very difficulties which it encounters, brings with it an understanding of life in general. It is the safeguard of this life, in contradistinction to the love of mere passion, which threatens it with oblivion, and ruin. The Guiberts were not well off, and his own fortune was reduced to very little. No doubt it would be not without regret that he would leave the service. He loved this self-sacrificing and honorable profession, and the stern discipline which imposes itself on the will. The brilliant career he had carved out for himself so early gave him the right to count on the future. He did not, however, feel that irresistible vocation which forces young men to travel along one road, all others for them leading but to distaste and dissatisfaction. That had been the case with Marcel, for instance. But Jean was not tempted to reject the suggestion which the necessities of his existence, as it must be in the future, made to him. He was able to plan out his life without trouble. In the course of his visits to Le Maupas, the affairs of Étienne and François Guibert in Tonkin were often discussed. In all their letters the two young men told of the prosperity of their undertakings and complained of not being able to extend them for want of the necessary help. In vain, they said, they had appealed to old school friends. They all preferred routine work to independence, mediocrity to risk. But Jean, as he grew to know his heart more surely, thought the more deliberately: “If I hand in my resignation, I—we—shall go out to join them.” The call of the colonies attracted him by the very energy and activity which it necessitates. He had always had a love of mother earth. Distant peasant ancestors drew him to the soil. If, out there, he should feel homesick for France and the Army, could he not gain strength in the love of that new France, which he would be helping to build, in the manly joy that there is in the patient conquest, day by day, of a soil to which water and fertility must be slowly brought? Would he not gain it, above all, from the love of his wife? She, he was certain, would not fear to leave the country with him and to share his life of struggle and adventure. The blood of Dr. Guibert, so indifferent to danger, the blood of that mother who was sustained in trials by an unconquerable faith, ran in the veins of this girl whom he loved.
With the selfishness of lovers, Jean forgot one person in the calculation of his future, or rather he was thoughtlessly planning to deprive this person of her sole support, of the sole sweetness of her joyless days.
In Madame Guibert’s heroism he discovered new reasons for confidence in Paule, worthy of such a mother; and he did not see that he was going to ask the greatest sacrifice of all from this poor woman, to take from Niobe her last child, the only one left her by the gods, the one she might still clasp distractedly to her bosom.
Along the road to Le Maupas Jean walked towards his happiness, while the lovely summer evening was shedding its light over the glad world.
Old Marie ushered M. Loigny into the drawing-room and went to look for her mistress, muttering on her way,