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Guy de Maupassant - The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8)

G >> Guy de Maupassant >> The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8)



THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT

VOLUME IV

The Old Maid and Other Stories







National Library Company
New York
Copyright, 1909, by
Bigelow, Smith & Co.





CONTENTS

THE OLD MAID

THE AWAKENING

IN THE SPRING

THE JENNET

RUST

THE SUBSTITUTE

THE RELIC

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES

ALLOUMA

A FAMILY AFFAIR

THE ODALISQUE OF SENICHOU

A GOOD MATCH

A FASHIONABLE WOMAN

THE CARNIVAL OF LOVE

A DEER PARK IN THE PROVINCES

THE WHITE LADY

CAUGHT

CHRISTMAS EVE

WORDS OF LOVE

A DIVORCE CASE

WHO KNOWS?

SIMON'S PAPA

PAUL'S MISTRESS

THE RABBIT

THE TWENTY-FIVE FRANCS OF THE MOTHER SUPERIOR

THE VENUS OF BRANIZA

LA MORILLONNE

WAITER, A "BOCK"

REGRET

THE PORT

THE HERMIT

THE ORDERLY

DUCHOUX

OLD AMABLE

MAGNETISM




THE OLD MAID


Count Eustache d'Etchegorry's solitary country house had the appearance
of a poor man's home, where people do not have enough to eat every day in
the week, where the bottles are more frequently filled at the pump than
in the cellar, and where they wait until it is dark before lighting the
candles.

It was an old and sordid building; the walls were crumbling to pieces,
the grated, iron gates were eaten away by rust, the holes in the broken
windows had been mended with old newspapers, and the ancestral portraits
which hung against the walls, showed that it was no tiller of the soil,
nor miserable laborer whose strength had gradually worn out and bent his
back, who lived there. Great, knotty elm trees sheltered it, as if they
had been a tall, green screen, and a large garden, full of wild
rose-trees and of straggling plants, as well as of sickly-looking
vegetables, which sprang up half-withered from the sandy soil, went
down as far as the bank of the river.

From the house, one could hear the monotonous sound of the water, which
at one time rushed yellow and impetuous towards the sea, and then again
flowed back, as if driven by some invisible force towards the town which
could be seen in the distance, with its pointed spires, its ramparts, and
its ships at anchor by the side of the quay, and its citadel built on the
top of a hill.

A strong smell of the sea came from the offing, mingled with the resinous
smell of pine logs, and of the large nets with great pieces of sea-weed
clinging to them, which were drying in the sun.

Why had Monsieur d'Etchegorry, who did not like the country, who was of a
sociable rather than of a solitary nature, for he never walked alone, but
kept step with the retired officers who lived there, and frequently
played game after game at _piquet_ at the _cafe_, when he was in town,
buried himself in such a solitary place, by the side of a dusty road at
Boucau, a village close to the town, where on Sundays the soldiers took
off their tunics, and sat in their shirt sleeves in the public-houses,
drank the thin wine of the country, and teased the girls.

What secret reasons had he for selling the mansion which he had possessed
at Bayonne, close to the bishop's palace, and condemning his daughter, a
girl of nineteen, to such a dull, listless, solitary life; counting the
minutes far from everybody, as if she had been a nun, no one knew, but
most people said that he had lost immense sums in gambling, and had
wasted his fortune and ruined his credit in doubtful speculations. They
wondered whether he still regretted the tender, sweet woman whom he had
lost, who died one evening, after years of suffering, like a church lamp
whose oil has been consumed to the last drop. Was he seeking for perfect
oblivion, for that soothing repose in nature, in which a man becomes
enervated, and which envelopes him like a moist, warm cloth? How could he
be satisfied with such an existence? With the bad cooking, and the
careless, untidy ways of a char-woman, and with the shabby clothes, that
were discolored by use!

His numerous relations had been anxious about it at first, and had tried
to cure him of his apparent hypochondria, and to persuade him to employ
himself with something, but as he was obstinate, avoided them, rejected
their friendly offers with arrogance and self-sufficiency, even his
brothers had abandoned him, and almost renounced him. All their affection
had been transferred to the poor child who shared his solitude, and who
endured all that wretchedness with the resignation of a saint. Thanks to
them, she had a few gleams of pleasure in their exile, and was not
dressed like a beggar girl, but received invitations, and appeared here
and there at some ball, concert or tennis party, and the girl was
extremely grateful to them for it all, although she would much have
preferred that nobody should have held out a helping hand to her, but
have left her to her dull life, without any day dreams or homesickness,
so that she might grow used to her lot, and day by day lose all that
remained to her of her pride of race and of her youth.

With her sensitive and proud mind, she felt that she was treated exactly
like others were in society, that people showed her either too much pity
or too much indifference, that they knew all about her side life of
undeserved poverty, and that in the folds of her muslin dress they could
smell the mustiness of her home. If she was animated, or buoyed up with
secret hopes in her heart, if there was a smile on her lips, and her eyes
were bright when she went out at the gate, and the horses carried her off
to town at a rapid trot, she was all the more low-spirited and tearful
when she returned home, and she used to shut herself up in her room and
find fault with her destiny, declared to herself that she would imitate
her father, show relations and friends politely out, with a passive and
resigned gesture, and make herself so unpleasant and embarrassing that
they would grow tired of it in the end, leave long intervals between
their visits, and finally would not come to see her at all, but would
turn away from her, as if from a hospital where incurable patients were
dying.

Nevertheless, the older the count grew, the more the supplies in the
small country house diminished, and the more painful and harder existence
became. If a morsel of bread was left uneaten on the table, if an
unexpected dish was served up at table, if she put a piece of ribbon into
her hair, he used to heap violent, spiteful reproaches on her, torrents
of rage which defile the mouth, and violent threats like those of a
madman, who is tormented by some fixed idea. Monsieur d'Etchegorry had
dismissed the servant and engaged a char-woman, whom he intended to pay,
merely by small sums on account, and he used to go to market with a
basket on his arm.

He locked up every morsel of food, used to count the lumps of sugar and
charcoal, and bolted himself in all day long in a room that was larger
than the rest, and which for a long time had served as a drawing-room.
At times he would be rather more gentle, as if he were troubled by vague
thoughts, and used to say to his daughter, in an agonized voice, and
trembling all over: "You will never ask me for any accounts, I
say?... You will never demand your mother's fortune?"

She always gave him the required promise, did not worry him with any
questions, nor give vent to any complaints, and thinking of her cousins,
who would have good dowries, who were growing up happily and peacefully,
amidst careful and affectionate surroundings and beautiful old furniture,
who were certain to be loved, and to get married some day, and she asked
herself why fate was so cruel to some, and so kind to others, and what
she had done to deserve such disfavor.

Marie-des-Anges d'Etchegorry, without being absolutely pretty, possessed
all the charm of her age, and everybody liked her. She was as tall and
slim as a lily, with beautiful, fine, soft fair hair, eyes of a dark,
undecided color, which reminded one of those springs in the depths of the
forests, in which a ray of the sun is but rarely reflected--mirrors which
changed now to violet, then to the color of leaves, but most frequently
of a velvety blackness--and her whole being exhaled a freshness of
childhood, and something that could not be described, but which was
pleasant, wholesome and frank.

She lived on through a long course of years, growing old, faithful to
the man who might have given her his name, honorable, having resisted
temptations and snares, worthy of the motto which used to be engraved
on the tombs of Roman matrons before the Caesars: "_She spun wool, and
kept at home_."

When she was just twenty-one, Marie-des-Anges fell in love, and her
beautiful, dark, restless eyes for the first time became illuminated with
a look of dreamy happiness. For someone seemed to have noticed her; he
waltzed with her more frequently than he did with the other girls, spoke
to her in a low voice, dangled at her petticoats, and discomposed her so
much, that she flushed deeply as soon as she heard the sound of his
voice.

His name was Andre de Gedre; he had just returned from Senegal, where
after several months of daily fighting in the desert, he had won his
sub-lieutenant's epaulets.

With his thin, surnburnt, yellow face, looking awkward in his tight coat,
in which his broad shoulders could not distend themselves comfortably,
and in which his arms, which had formerly been used to cut right and
left, were cramped in their tight sleeves, he looked like one of those
pirates of old, who used to scour the seas, pillaging, killing, hanging
their prisoners to the yard-arms, who were ready to engage a whole fleet,
and who returned to the port laden with booty, and occasionally with
waifs and strays picked up at sea.

He belonged to a race of buccaneers or of heroes, according to the breeze
which swelled his sails and carried him North or South. Over head and
ears in debt, reduced to discounting doubtful legacies, to gambling at
Casinos, and to mortgaging the few acres of land that he had remaining at
much below their value, he nevertheless managed to make a pretty good
figure in his hand to mouth existence; he never gave in, never showed the
blows that he had received, and waited for the last struggle in a state
of blissful inactivity, while he sought for renewed strength and
philosophy from the caressing lips of women.

Marie-des-Anges seemed to him to be a toy which he could do with as
he liked. She had the flavor of unripe fruit; left to herself, and
sentimental as she was, she would only offer a very brief resistance to
his attacks, and would soon yield to his will, and when he was tired of
her and threw her off, she would bow to the inevitable, and would not
worry him with violent scenes, nor stand in his way, with threats on her
lips. And so he was kind, and used to wheedle her, and by degrees
enveloped her in the meshes of a net, which continually hemmed her in
closer and closer. He gained entire possession of her heart and
confidence, and without expressing any wish or making any promises,
managed so to establish his influence over her, that she did nothing
but what he wished.

Long before Monsieur de Gedre had addressed any passionate words to her,
or any avowal which immediately introduces warmth and danger into a
flirtation, Marie-des-Anges had betrayed herself with the candor of a
little girl, who does not think she is doing any wrong, and cannot hide
what she thinks, what she is dreaming about, and the tenderness which
lies hidden at the bottom of her heart, and she no longer felt that
horror of life which had formerly tortured her. She no longer felt
herself alone, as she had done formerly--so alone, so lost, even among
her own people, that everything had become indifferent to her.

It was very pleasant and soothing to love and to think that she was
loved, to have a furtive and secret understanding with another heart,
to imagine that he was thinking of her at the same time that she was
thinking of him, to shelter herself timidly under his protection, to
feel more unhappy each time she left him, and to experience greater
happiness every time they met.

She wrote him long letters, which she did not venture to send him when
they were written, for she was timid and feared that he would make fun of
them, and she sang the whole day through, like a lark that is intoxicated
with the sun, so that Monsieur d'Etchegorry scarcely recognized her any
longer.

Soon they made appointments together in some secluded spot, meeting for a
few minutes in the aisles of the cathedral and behind the ramparts, or on
the promenade of the _Allees-Marines_, which was always dark, on account
of the dense foliage.

And at last, one evening in June, when the sky was so studded with stars
that it might have been taken for a triumphal route of some sovereign,
strewn with precious stones and rare flowers, Monsieur de Gedre went into
the large, neglected garden.

Marie-des-Anges was waiting for him in a somber walk with witch elms on
either side and listening for the least noise, looking at the closed
windows of the house, and nearly fainting, as much from fear as from
happiness. They spoke in a low voice. She was close to him and he must
have heard the beating of her heart, into which he had cast the first
seeds of love, and he put his arms around her and clasped her gently, as
if she had been some little bird that he was afraid of hurting, but which
he did not wish to allow to escape.

She no longer knew what she was doing, but was in a state of entire
intense, supreme happiness. She shivered, and yet something burning
seemed to permeate her whole being under her skin, from the nape of her
neck to her feet, like a stream of burning spirit, and she would not have
had the strength to disengage herself or to take a step forward, so she
leant her head instinctively and very tenderly against Andre's shoulder.
He kissed her hair, touched her forehead with his lips, and at last put
them against hers. The girl felt as if she were going to die, and
remained inert and motionless, with her eyes full of tears.

He came nearly every evening for two months. She had not the courage to
repel him and to speak to him seriously of the future, and could not
understand why he had not yet asked her father for her hand and had not
fulfilled his former promises, until, one Sunday, as she was coming from
High Mass, walking on before her cousins, Marie-des-Anges heard the
following words, from a group in which Andre was standing, and he was
the speaker: "Oh! no," he said, "you are altogether mistaken; I should
never do anything so foolish.... One does not marry a girl without a
halfpenny; one takes her for one's mistress."

The unhappy girl mastered her feelings, went down the steps of the porch
quite steadily, but feeling utterly crushed, as if by the news of some
terrible disaster, and joined the servant, who was waiting for her, to
accompany her back to Boucau. The effects of what she had heard were to
give her a serious illness and for some time she hovered between life
and death, consumed and wasted by a violent fever; and when after a
fortnight's suffering, she grew convalescent, and looked at herself
in the glass, she recoiled, as if she had been face to face with an
apparition, for there was nothing left of her former self.

Her eyes were dull, her cheeks pale and hollow, and there were white
streaks in her silky, light hair. Why had she not succumbed to her
illness? Why had destiny reserved her for such a trial, and increased her
unhappy lot, that of disappointed hopes, thus? But when that rebellious
feeling was over, she accepted her cross, fell into a state of ardent
devotion and became crystallized in the torpor of an old woman, tried
with all her might to rid her memory of any recollections that had become
incrusted in it, and to put a thick black veil between herself and the
past.

She never walked in the garden now, and never went to Bayonne, and she
would have liked to have choked herself, and to have beaten herself,
when, in spite of her efforts and of her will, she remembered her lost
happiness, and when some sensual feeling and a longing for past pleasures
agitated her body afresh.

That lasted for four years, which finished her and altogether destroyed
her good looks and she had the figure and the appearance of an old maid,
when her father suddenly died, just as he was going to sit down to
dinner; and when the lawyer, who was summoned immediately, had ransacked
the cupboards and drawers, discovered a mass of securities, of
bank-notes, and of gold, which Count d'Etchegorry, who was eaten up
with avarice, had amassed eagerly, and hidden away, it was found that
Mademoiselle Marie-des-Anges, who was his sole heiress, possessed an
income of fifty thousand francs.

She received the news without any emotion, for of what use was such a
fortune to her now, and what should she do with it? Her eyes, alas! had
been too much opened by all the tears that had fallen from them for her
to delude herself with visionary hopes, and her heart had been too
cruelly wounded to warm itself by lying illusions, and she was seized by
melancholy when she thought that in future she would be coveted, she who
had been kept at arm's length, as if she had been a leper; that men would
come after her money with odious impatience, that now that she was worn
out and ugly, tired of everything and everybody, she would most certainly
have plenty of suitors to refuse, and that perhaps he would come back to
her, attracted by that amount of money, like a hawk hovering over its
prey, that he would try to re-kindle the dead cinders, to revive some
spark in them and to obtain pardon for his cowardice.

Oh! With what bitter pleasure she could have thrown those millions into
the road to the ragged beggars, or scattered them about like manna to all
who were suffering and dying of hunger, and who had neither roof nor
hearth! She naturally soon became the target at which everyone aimed, the
goal for which all those who had formerly disdained her most, now eagerly
tried.

Monsieur de Gedre was not long before he was in the ranks of her suitors,
as she had foreseen, and caused her that last heart-burning of seeing him
humble, kneeling at her feet, acting a comedy, trying every means of
overcoming her resistance, and to regain possession of that heart, which
was closed against him, after having been entirely his, in all its
adorable virginity.

And Marie-des-Anges had loved him so deeply that his letters in which he
recalled the past, and stirred up all the recollections of their love,
their kisses, and their dreams, softened her in spite of herself, and
came across her profound, incurable sadness, like a factitious light, the
reflection of a bonfire, which, from a distance, illuminates a prison
cell for a moment.

He was poor himself and had not wished, so he said, to drag her into his
life of privation and shifts, and she thought to herself that perhaps he
had been right; and thus sensibly, like a mother or an elder sister, who
has become indulgent and wishes to close her eyes and her ears against
everything, to forgive again, to forgive always, she excused him, and
tried to remember nothing but those months of tenderness and of ecstacy,
those months of happiness, and that he had been the first, the only man
who, in the course of her unhappy, wasted life, had given her a moment's
peace, had caused her to dream, and had made her happy, and youthful and
loving.

He had been charitable towards her and she would be so a hundred fold
towards him; and so she grew happy again, when she said to herself that
she would be his benefactress, that even with his hard heart, he could
not accept the sacrifice from a woman, who, like so many others, might
have returned him evil for evil, but who preferred to be kind and
maternal, after having been in love with him, without some feelings
of gratitude and emotion.

And that resolution transfigured her, restored to her temporarily,
something of her youth, which had so soon fled away, and a poor, heroic
saint amongst all the saints, she took refuge in a Carmelite convent, so
as to escape from this returning temptation, and to bequeath everything
of which she could lawfully dispose, to Monsieur de Gedre.




THE AWAKENING


During the three years that she had been married, she had not left the
_Val de Cire_, where her husband possessed two cotton-mills. She led a
quiet life, and although she had no children, she was quite happy in her
house among the trees, which the work-people called the _chateau_.

Although Monsieur Vasseur was considerably older than she was, he was
very kind. She loved him, and no guilty thought had ever entered her
mind.

Her mother came and spent every summer at Cire, and then returned to
Paris for the winter, as soon as the leaves began to fall.

Jeanne coughed a little every autumn, for the narrow valley through which
the river wound, grew foggy for five months. First of all, slight mists
hung over the meadows, making all the low-lying ground look like a large
pond, out of which the roof of the houses rose.

Then that white vapor, which rose like a tide, enveloped everything, and
turned the valley into a land of phantoms, through which men moved about
like ghosts, without recognizing each other ten yards off, and the trees,
wreathed in mist, and dripping with moisture, rose up through it.

But the people who went along the neighboring hills, and who looked down
upon the deep, white depression of the valley, saw the two huge chimneys
of Monsieur Vasseur's factories, rising above the mist below. Day and
night they vomited forth two long trails of black smoke, and that alone
indicated that people were living in that hollow, which looked as if it
were filled with a cloud of cotton.

That year, when October came, the medical men advised the young woman
to go and spend the winter in Paris with her mother, as the air of the
valley was dangerous for her weak chest, and she went. For a month or so,
she thought continually of the house which she had left, to which she
seemed rooted, and whose well-known furniture and quiet ways she loved
so much, but by degrees she grew accustomed to her new life, and got to
liking entertainments, dinners and evening parties, and balls.

Till then, she had retained her girlish manners, she had been undecided
and rather sluggish; she walked languidly, and had a tired smile, but now
she became animated and merry, and was always ready for pleasure. Men
paid her marked attentions, and she was amused at their talk, and made
fun of their gallantries, as she felt sure that she could resist them,
for she was rather disgusted with love, from what she had learned of it
in marriage.

The idea of giving up her body to the coarse caresses of such bearded
creatures, made her laugh with pity, and shudder a little with ignorance.

She asked herself how women could consent to those degrading contacts
with strangers, as they were already obliged to endure them with their
legitimate husbands. She would have loved her husband much more if they
had lived together like two friends, and had restricted themselves to
chaste kisses, which are the caresses of the soul.

But she was much amused by their compliments, by the desire which showed
itself in their eyes, and which she did not share, by their declarations
of love, which they whispered into her ear as they were returning to the
drawing-room after some grand dinner, by their words, which were murmured
so low that she almost had to guess them, and which left her blood quite
cool, and her heart untouched, while they gratified her unconscious
coquetry, while they kindled a flame of pleasure within her, and while
they made her lips open, her eyes glow bright, and her woman's heart,
to which homage was due, quiver with delight.

She was fond of those _tete-a-tetes_ when it was getting dusk, when a man
grows pressing, stammers, trembles and falls on his knees. It was a
delicious and new pleasure to her to know that they felt that passion
which left her quite unmoved, to say _no_, by a shake of the head, and
with her lips, to withdraw her hands, to get up and calmly ring for
lights, and to see the man who had been trembling at her feet, get up,
confused and furious when he heard the footman coming.

She often had a hard laugh, which froze the most burning words, and said
harsh things, which fell like a jet of icy water on the most ardent
protestations, while the intonations of her voice were enough to make any
man who really loved her, kill himself, and there were two especially who
made obstinate love to her, although they did not at all resemble one
another.

One of them, Paul Peronel, was a tall man of the world, gallant and
enterprising, a man who was accustomed to successful love affairs, and
who knew how to wait, and when to seize his opportunity.

The other, Monsieur d'Avancelle, quivered when he came near her, scarcely
ventured to express his love, but followed her like a shadow, and gave
utterance to his hopeless desire by distracted looks, and the assiduity
of his attentions to her, and she made him a kind of slave who followed
her steps, and whom she treated as if he had been her servant.

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