This letter threw Roland into confusion. He had taken her at her word when she suggested an intimate friendship. He had taken her at her word when she told him her affection was becoming love. He had been, perhaps, too fervent, but how was one to regulate so delicate a situation? He wrote her a piteous and helpless sort of letter in which he declared he was unhappy. Manon replied in a way which did not help him particularly in his quandary:
“In the midst of the different objects which surround and oppress me, I see, I feel but you. I hear always, ‘I am unhappy.’ O God! how, why, since when, are you unhappy? Is it because I exist or because I love you? The destruction of the first of these causes is in my power and would cost me nothing. It would take away with it the other, over which I have no longer any control.”
Even after this Roland was so obtuse that he was uncertain of her feeling for him, but finally he asked her squarely if it could be that all this meant that she loved him. Very promptly she replied: “If I thought that question was unsettled for you to-day, I should fear it would always be.” Will she marry him then, oui ou non? He asked the question despairingly, in the tone of a man who expected a scene to follow, but could see nothing else for him to do honorably. In a letter of passionate abandon Manon promised to be his wife. Roland was the happiest of men.
“You are mine,” he wrote. “You have taken the oath. It is irrevocable. O my friend, my tender, faithful friend, I had need of that yes.”
Manon’s joy was unbounded and she told it in true eighteenth-century style. “I weep, I struggle to express myself, I stifle, I throw myself upon your bosom, there I remain, entirely thine.” Immediately they entered upon a correspondence, voluminous, extravagant, passionate. Manon explained to Roland the beginning and the development of her affection for him, and labored to harmonize two seemingly incongruous experiences,—her interest in Roland during the time he was in Italy and the marriage she had contemplated with M. de Sévelinges. The harmony seems incomplete to the modern reader, but probably Roland was not exacting since he was sure of his possession.
In every way she tried to please him, even keeping their betrothal a secret from Sophie—this at Roland’s request. They planned, confided, rejoiced, and made each other miserable in true lover-like style. For some time the worst of their misunderstandings were caused by delays in letters, but, unfortunately, there were to be annoyances, in the course of their love, more serious than those of the postman. There was M. Phlipon; there was Roland’s family; there were all the vexatious formalities which precede marriage in France. M. Phlipon was the most serious obstacle to their happiness. Since his wife’s death he had been constantly growing more dissipated and common. Roland regarded him with the cold and irritating disapproval of a man convinced of his own infallibility, and M. Phlipon, conscious of his own shortcomings, disliked Roland heartily. For some time Roland refused to ask M. Phlipon for his daughter, but he counselled her to insist upon having the remnant of her dowry turned over.
She began to talk to her father of this, and he, incensed at the suspicion this demand implied, became surly and defiant. He talked to the neighbors of his desire to live alone and accused Manon of ingratitude and coldness. She held to her rights, however, and succeeded finally in having her estate settled. She found at the end that she had an income of just five hundred and thirty francs a year.
The disagreement with her father made her unhappy. She wrote Roland letters full of complaints and sighs. She saw everything black. She declared that they were farther apart than ever, that her heart was breaking. After a few weeks of melancholy she came to an understanding with her father and wrote joyously again. This occurred several times until at last Roland grew seriously out of patience with her. He told her that it was her lack of firmness that was at the bottom of her father’s conduct; that she was “always irresolute, always uncertain, reasoned always by contraries.” His letters became brief, dry, impatient. Finally, however, he wrote M. Phlipon, asking for Manon.
The difficulty that Roland had foreseen with his prospective father-in-law was at once realized. The old gentleman, incensed that his daughter would not give him Roland’s letters to examine before he replied, answered in a way which came very near ending negotiations on the spot. Since his daughter had taken her property into her own hands and since she refused to let him see the correspondence which had passed between her and Roland, she could enjoy still further the privileges her majority gave her and marry without his consent.
Roland wrote to Manon, on receiving this curt response, that the soul of M. Phlipon horrified him; that he loved her as much as ever, but—“your father, my friend, your father,” and delicately hinted that it would be impossible for him to present such a man to his own family. This was in September. For two months they lived in a state of miserable uncertainty. Roland accused Manon of irresolution, of inconsistency, and inconsequence; she accused him of fearing the prejudices of society, of caring less for her than for his family’s good-will. With M. Phlipon Manon alternately quarrelled and made up. Wretched as the lovers were, their letters nearly always ended in protestations of affection and appeals for confidence.