CHAPTER XIX.
He felt an irresistible impulse to seek out the woman he loved, to unburden his heart to her of this new thought which seemed to him like a crime. He had left her in anger and mortification, but it was to her that he turned instinctively under the pain of a discovery which had filled him with a sense of intolerable remorse.
Alas! they were not alone; the great house was full of guests. With the slanting of the afternoon shadows across the hoary face of the old sun-dial, on which were the monogram of François de Valois and his sister, these indolent people had all left their chambers and were now scattered in quest of diversion all over the house, the gardens, or the woods, riding, driving, making music, or making love, carrying on their banter, their friendships, their rivalries, their intrigues. To see her as he wished, alone, was impossible for many hours. After sunset there was the long and ceremonious dinner; after dinner there was the usual evening pastime, some chamber music by great artists, some dancing for those who wished it, whist and baccarat in the card-room, flirtation in the drawing-rooms, constant demands, which he could not resist, made upon his own courtesy and social powers.
'What a stupid life!' he thought impatiently, being out of tune with its lightness and gaiety. 'What a stupid bondage! The vine-dressers sound asleep in their cave-cabins above the Loire water are a thousand times wiser than we are!'
He looked at his wife often. She had professed to think her world tiresome and its monotony of pleasure tedious; she had professed to find its conventional routine mere treadmill work which no one had the courage to refuse to pursue, but which every one of its toilers hated; and yet she never spent a day otherwise than in this conventional world!—she never ceased for an hour to surround herself with its artificialities and its pageantries. If she had really wished to escape from it how easy to have done so!—how easy to have chosen instead some solitary and tranquil spot with him and with her children!
But they were all as the very breath of her existence, this air of the great world, this perpetual movement and excitation, these elegant crowds, these honey-tongued courtiers, this Babel of news, and novelties, and fashion, and ennui, and endless effort to be amused! Were she alone with him at Amyôt, would she not yawn with ennui every hour of the twenty-four? She had said that she would.
He left the brilliant rooms as soon as his duties as a host permitted him to escape, and wandered through the dusky aisles and avenues of his gardens.
The night was still and sultry; the sounds of music and the reflection of the lights within came from the many open casements of the great castle on to the terraces and lawns beneath. There was no moon: the steep roof, the pointed towers, the frowning keep of Amyôt stood up black and massive against the starry sky. Restless, and tormented by his thoughts, its master paced the dark grass alleys of its gardens; all the simple verses of the little manuscript poems seemed whispered from their leaves and murmured by the fountains.
'She loved me!' he thought again and again. And to that warm and tender heart his own had been so cold!