# A Virgin Heart (de Gourmont, 1921)/16

CHAPTER XVI
WHEN Leonor arrived at Robinvast, Rose and her father were sitting in the garden, each of them reading a letter.... From time to time, Rose would raise her eyes and look at the trees; M. Des Boys between two sentences of his letter would examine his daughter. During this last fortnight, she had been pale, sad, out of humour; and her father, absent-minded, but affectionate, had grown anxious. What was going on between the recently engaged couple? But M. Des Boys would never have dared to question his daughter. He was waiting for a conﬁdence, knowing quite well that it would never come; and on her side, Rose was unhappy at having to keep locked up in her heart the troubles that were suffocating her. These two people, shy and secretive towards one another, might have remained like this for years without deciding ​to speak the words which would have consoled them.
M. Des Boys had accordingly urged Leonor to come and ﬁnish his work.
"It will be a distraction for her," he had thought, "And then, at bottom and in spite of my pledged word, I agree with my wife: Leonor would be a much more suitable husband. What! Can Hervart be making her unhappy already?"
The letter he was reading at this moment put the ﬁnal touch to his anxiety. It was from Bouret and Leonor was much praised in it. Bouret went on:
"I have seen Hervart and have equally advised him to get married, but for different reasons. Though he is a little younger than we are, he is probably nearer the end. We shall all, alas, see this end confronting us, if we live another ﬁfteen years. Do you understand me? With prudence and diplomacy, Hervart can still drag on a long time, can even recapture brilliant moments; but he has played too much on the ﬁne violin given him by nature. The strings will snap one after the other. As long as one remains a virtuoso, one ​can still astonish ears habituated to vulgar exercises; but all the same, a single string is very risky! I have therefore ordered him to marry and, above all, to be faithful to his wife. Fidelity will bring satiety, satiety will bring continence, and continence will perhaps be the true philter. A young wife is not so dangerous as one thinks for a man on the down grade. She is a favourable stimulant and, at the same time, a moderating element. In fine, Hervart may make a very good husband. In any case it's an experiment that interests me. I should be quite capable—if it gives good results, that is, at least a fine child—of yielding myself to an old temptation. I would give up my practice and go and cultivate roses and camelias in some corner of your earthly Paradise, in the Saire valley, where one sees palms among the willow-trees!"
"I had almost forgotten one important point in our hypotheses. The young wife must have a virtuous temperament, without coldness, but also without sensual curiosity; a good reproducing animal, apt in the pleasure of conceiving rather than in the pleasure of love-making; one of those who, after having been blushing ​brides, become loving mothers. If he falls on some rebellious woman he is lost. If the instrument which he has to tune and render sensitive gives out no sound or false notes, he will lose courage and return to his old concerts. But if, by chance, his wife should reveal herself as a creature of voluptuousness, his perdition would be still more certain: Hervart would ﬂare up like a faggot and nothing but a handful of ashes would be left. I am not speaking of the adultery which would, in these last two cases, be inevitable. Sometimes it has the effect of re-establishing the balance in a dislocated household; there are excellent conjugal associations in which each party has his or her ideal down town, in a different quarter of the city. But this is a matter of sociology and doesn't interest me. I remain in my domain, which is the human body, its functions, its anomalies. I may add that it is by their ignorance of it that the sociologists think of such nonsense as they do. They are still hard at work—the idiots!—reasoning about averages. They never come down to reality, to the individual. How it is despised, this human body of ours! And yet it is the only truth, the ​only beauty, just as it is the only ideal and the only poetry...."
Bouret was inclined to philosophize. His letters almost always passed the range of his correspondents' comprehension. He saw that himself, when he re-read them, and smiled. All that M. Des Boys understood in his friend's dissertation was the passage which concerned Hervart; but that he understood very well. Bouret's reticences produced their ordinary effect: Hervart was considered as a man incapable, condemned without reprieve.
"He's a madman, What does he mean by going and captivating a young girl's heart when he isn't sure of being able to make a wife of her! The Lord knows, women aren't angels; they have corporal sensations; and then maternity, maternity...."
M. Des Boys conﬁded to himself all the scabrous or moral banalities that such a subject could make him think of. Meanwhile, he examined his daughter.
"How shall I explain this to her? I shall make her mother do it."
He continued his meditations; and sometimes he would smile at the evocation of fool​ish fancies, sometimes his brows contracted and he would feel a mixture of anxiety and anger.
Rose was also reading:
"... but I have been very ill since my arrival here. Some fever, due, it may be, to the delicious excitement of my heart. A great depression has been the result and I now feel a most disquieting lassitude. Alas! the conclusion is sad: we must put off our marriage. It is an infinite pain to me to write this; but I ask myself when it will be possible? Will it ever be possible? No, I won't ask that. It would be terrible. I love you so much! What a happiness it is to walk again with you, in fancy, through the wood at Robinvast! If I was too audacious, you will pardon me, won't you, because of the violence of my love...."
There was a lot more in this style, and a less inexperienced woman than Rose would have felt the artificiality of this amorous eloquence. Not a word of it, certainly, came from the heart. M. Hervart, who was not cruel, had ﬁrst laid down the principle of his illness and his intention was to draw from it, graduating the deceptions, all its logical conclusions. If ​necessary, he had said to himself, Bouret will help me. M. Hervart, who was by nature a man of the last moment and the present sensation, thought of Rose only as one thinks of a sick friend, for whose recovery one certainly hopes, but without anguish of mind. However, the fatuity inevitable in the male sex assured him that he was not forgotten; he ﬂattered himself on having left a wound in the young girl's heart which would never altogether close, and he felt what was almost remorse. To enjoy the egoist's complete peace, he would have consented to a sacrifice; he would have allowed Rose, not forgetfulness, but melancholy resignation.
"Poor child!... But it had to happen. I hope she won't be too unhappy."
The perusal of M. Hervart's letter left Rose sad and charmed:
"Oh, how he loves me! Oh my darling Xavier, you are ill then?"
And she thought of the ﬁancee's cruel fate:
"He is ill, and I mayn't go and console him."
She was turning towards her father, when he rose to meet Leonor. It was in the presence of the young man and without paying heed to ​him that she imparted M. Hervart's news.
"He is ill, he has had a touch of fever ...."
"Fever?" exclaimed M. Des Boys.
"Yes, and afterwards he's been feeling very weak after it."
"Very weak, yes. What then?"
"What then, why our marriage has to be postponed..."
"Of course."
"I'm very anxious."
"So I should imagine."
"Why shouldn't we go and see him?"
"Do you think it would be any use?"
"It would give him such pleasure."
"Does he ask you to do it?"
"No..."
"Well, then."
"He doesn't dare ask."
"Is he as shy as all that?"
This innocent question made her blush.
"I'll speak of it with your mother," M. Des Boys continued. "Meanwhile, let's get on a little with our architecture."
Rose had been so bored since Xavier's departure, she had been so miserable at his long ​silence and now she was feeling so anxious, that she accepted her father's proposal without repugnance.
This time they were dealing with the house. There were urgent repairs to be made and useful ameliorations. As they went round, the architect pointed out the weak spots. A whole plan of restoration formed itself in his head.
The days passed. The masons were soon at work. Rose hardly left Leonor's side.
They had news of M. Hervart more than once through the newspapers, for his rearrangements at the Louvre had drawn upon him the epigrams of the press; but he himself remained silent.
In the circumstances M. Des Boys had resolved to say nothing, to leave time to do its work. Later on, when no dangerous memories of her past love remained in Rose's heart, when she should be married, he would conﬁde her the truth, with a smile.
One day Leonor let fall, from the top of a ladder, a pocketbook from which a flood of papers—sketches, bills, letters, picture postcards—escaped. Rose picked them up, without giving them more than the discreetest ​glance, when Martinvast castle caught her eye. At the foot of the keep she found M. Hervart's 'love and kisses'. The blood came suddenly to her eyes; she turned the card over and read: "Mademoiselle Gratienne Leboeuf, Rue du Havre, Honﬂeur." She looked up; Leonor did not seem to have noticed the incident, and with a rapid gesture she folded up the card and slipped it into her bosom.
"Monsieur Leonor you've dropped your pocket-book."
Leonor descended his ladder and thanked her, while Rose walked away. When she had disappeared he noticed with delight that she had stolen Martinvast Castle; then, whistling, he climbed up once more to see his workmen.
Arrived in her room, Rose sat down, trembling.
"I have made a mistake," she said to herself. "It isn't possible. And how could it have come into Leonor's hands?"
She extracted the card from its hiding-place, unfolded it and looked at it, trembling.
"It's his writing all right."
She still felt doubtful.
"What's the date?"
​She deciphered it without difficulty... "Cherbourg, 31 July, 1903."
"The very day we went to the Liais Garden, the day we went up that tower where I almost fainted with love.... I was so happy!"
She began crying. Through her tears she looked at her hands, turning them, looking at all the ﬁngers one after another. She looked as though she were rediscovering them, taking possession of them once more.
Finally she got up and stamped her foot.
"Very well then, I don't love him any more. There! Good-bye, Monsieur Hervart. You deceived me, I shall never forgive you. And I had such conﬁdence in him; I let myself rest so softly on his heart."
She was still crying.
"Now, I am ashamed...."
And she felt her body, from head to feet, as though to take possession of it also. She would have liked to press it, to wring it so that all the caresses, all the kisses which had sunk into her skin, penetrated her veins, thrilled her nerves, might be drained out of it.
In her already perverted innocence she pictured to herself the mutual caresses of Xavier ​and this Gratienne woman. She pictured to herself this woman's body and compared it with her own. Was she more beautiful? In what is one woman's body more beautiful than another's? Xavier had loved to caress her, to crush her in his arms. And used he not to say: "How beautiful you are!" A vision, against which she struggled in vain, showed her Xavier kneeling beside Gratienne and covering her with kisses.
A heat mounted in her breast, her heart contracted; she tried to cry out, half got up, clutched at the air with her hands and fell in a faint.
When she came to herself, she felt very tired and very frightened as well. She looked about her, afraid to discover the reality of the painful vision which had overwhelmed her. Reassured, she breathed again.
"It was a dream, only a dream."
But it seemed as though a spring had suddenly been released in her heart. Throughout her whole being there was a sudden change. Under her maiden breast, grief had taken up its home. She felt it as one feels a piece of gravel in one's shoe. It was something ma​terial which had insinuated itself into the intimacy of her ﬂesh, causing her, not pain, but a sense of discomfort.
At the same time, all that she habitually loved seemed to her without the faintest interest. She looked with an indifferent eye at this room in which she had dreamt so many dreams, this room that she had arranged, decorated with so much pleasure, so much minute care, this cell she had spun and woven herself to sleep in, like a chrysalis, till the awakening of love should come. The great trees of the wood which she could see from her window, and could never see without emotion, appeared to her patches of insigniﬁcant greenery: she noticed, for the ﬁrst time, that their tops were of uneven height and she was irritated by it. There was a sound of hammering; she leaned out of the window and saw two men splitting a block of granite, and for a moment she wondered what for.
"Oh yes, of course, the repairs.... What does it all matter to me? Ah! where are my dear solitary hours in the old house, imprisoned by its ivy and climbing roses! And now Leonor! I wish he'd go away. He's the cause ​of it all. If it hadn't been for his clumsiness, I should never have known the existence of this woman.... But how did he come to have that card in his pocket?"
The idea of a voluntary indiscretion did not occur to her. She had never dreamt that Leonor could feel for her any emotion of tenderness. Besides, no man except Xavier had yet existed in her imagination. There was Xavier on the one hand; and on the other there were the others.
Meanwhile she went on reﬂecting. Love, jealousy, grief quickened her natural intelligence.
"There were several letters in the pocketbook addressed to M. Varin. That's natural. But why this card addressed to that woman? He must know her too. She must have given it to him because of the view of Martinvast Castle, I suppose...."
She could not succeed in reconstructing the adventure of this post-card. There was some mystery about it, which she soon gave up the hope of solving.
"But all I have to do is to ask M. Leonor. How simple! But then I shall have to tell him ​that I stole his postal-card, for I have stolen it! It's not very serious, perhaps, but how shall I dare talk to him about it, how shall I, ﬁrst of all, confess that I had the bad manners to look at his correspondence? Oh! but a postcard, a picture! And then I shall tell him the truth—it fell under my eyes by chance, and if the card had been turned with the address side upwards, I should certainly not have turned it over...."
What was most repugnant to her was the necessity of speaking of Gratienne, for Leonor was not ignorant of her projected marriage with M. Hervart. She remained undecided, and at once she began to suffer once more; for her grief had spared her a little while she was engaged in her deliberations.
She was so wretched and so tired that when the dinner-bell rang she went down without thinking of her dress, without refreshing her eyes, still red and inﬂamed with crying.