Pierre and Jean

“No – I know. But I was thinking of so many things.”

And she thought for a long time, her head bent, accommodating her step to her son’s; then, in the peculiar voice in which we sometimes give utterance to the conclusion of long and secret meditations, she exclaimed:

“How horrible life is! If by any chance we come across any sweetness in it, we sin in letting ourselves be happy, and pay dearly for it afterward.”

He said in a whisper:

“Do not speak of that any more, mother.”

“Is that possible? I think of nothing else.”

“You will forget it.”

Again she was silent; then with deep regret she said:

“How happy I might have been, married to another man!”

She was visiting it on Roland now, throwing all the responsibility of her sin on his ugliness, his stupidity, his clumsiness, the heaviness of his intellect, and the vulgarity of his person. It was to this that it was owing that she had betrayed him, had driven one son to desperation, and had been forced to utter to the other the most agonizing confession that can make a mother’s heart bleed. She muttered: “It is so frightful for a young girl to have to marry such a husband as mine.”

Jean made no reply. He was thinking of the man he had hitherto believed to be his father; and possibly the vague notion he had long since conceived, of that father’s inferiority, with his brother’s constant irony, the scornful indifference of others, and the very maid-servant’s contempt for Roland, had somewhat prepared his mind for his mother’s terrible avowal. It had all made it less dreadful to him to find that he was another man’s son; and if, after the great shock and agitation of the previous evening, he had not suffered the reaction of rage, indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had feared, it was because he had long been unconsciously chafing under the sense of being the child of this well-meaning lout.

They had now reached the dwelling of Mme. Rosemilly.

She lived on the road to Sainte-Adresse, on the second floor of a large tenement which she owned. The windows commanded a view of the whole roadstead.

On seeing Mme. Roland, who entered first, instead of merely holding out her hands as usual, she put her arms round her and kissed her, for she divined the purpose of her visit.

The furniture of this drawing-room, all in stamped velvet, was always shrouded in chair-covers. The walls, hung with flowered paper, were graced by four engravings, the purchase of her late husband, the captain. They represented sentimental scenes of seafaring life. In the first a fisherman’s wife was seen, waving a handkerchief on shore, while the vessel which bore away her husband vanished on the horizon. In the second the same woman, on her knees on the same shore, under a sky shot with lightning, wrung her arms as she gazed into the distance at her husband’s boat which was going to the bottom amid impossible waves.

The others represented similar scenes in a higher rank of society. A young lady with fair hair, resting her elbows on the ledge of a large steamship quitting the shore, gazed at the already distant coast with eyes full of tears and regret. Whom is she leaving behind?

Then the same young lady sitting by an open widow with a view of the sea, had fainted in an arm-chair; a letter she had dropped lay at her feet. So he is dead! What despair!

Visitors were generally much moved and charmed by the commonplace pathos of these obvious and sentimental works. They were at once intelligible without question or explanation, and the poor women were to be pitied, though the nature of the grief of the more elegant of the two was not precisely known. But this very doubt contributed to the sentiment. She had, no doubt, lost her lover. On entering the room the eye was immediately attracted to these four pictures, and riveted as if fascinated. If it wandered it was only to return and contemplate the four expressions on the faces of the two women, who were as like each other as two sisters. And the very style of these works, in their shining frames, crisp, sharp, and highly finished, with the elegance of a fashion plate, suggested a sense of cleanliness and propriety which was confirmed by the rest of the fittings. The seats were always in precisely the same order, some against the wall and some round the circular centre-table. The immaculately white curtains hung in such straight and regular pleats that one longed to crumple them a little; and never did a grain of dust rest on the shade under which the gilt clock, in the taste of the first empire – a terrestrial globe supported by Atlas on his knees – looked like a melon left there to ripen.

The two women as they sat down somewhat altered the normal position of their chairs.

“You have not been out this morning?” asked Mme. Roland.

“No. I must own to being rather tired.”

And she spoke as if in gratitude to Jean and his mother, of all the pleasure she had derived from the expedition and the prawn-fishing.

“I ate my prawns this morning,” she added, “and they were excellent. If you felt inclined we might go again one of these days.”

The young man interrupted her:

“Before we start on a second fishing excursion, suppose we complete the first?”

“Complete it? It seems to me quite finished.”

“Nay, madame, I, for my part, caught something on the rocks of Saint Jouain which I am anxious to carry home with me.”

She put on an innocent and knowing look.

“You? What can it be? What can you have found?”

“A wife. And my mother and I have come to ask you whether she had changed her mind this morning.”

She smiled: “No, monsieur. I never change my mind.”

And then he held out his hand, wide open, and she put hers into it with a quick, determined movement. Then he said: “As soon as possible, I hope.”

“As soon as you like.”

“In six weeks?”

“I have no opinion. What does my future mother-in-law say?”

Mme. Roland replied with a rather melancholy smile:

“I? Oh, I can say nothing. I can only thank you for having accepted Jean, for you will make him very happy.”

“We will do our best, mamma.”

Somewhat overcome, for the first time, Mme. Rosemilly rose, and throwing her arms round Mme. Roland, kissed her a long time as a child of her own might have done; and under this new embrace the poor woman’s sick heart swelled with deep emotion. She could not have expressed the feeling; it was at once sad and sweet. She had lost her son, her big boy, but in return she had found a daughter, a grown-up daughter.

When they faced each other again, and were seated, they took hands and remained so, looking at each and smiling, while they seemed to have forgotten Jean.

Then they discussed a number of things which had to be thought of in view of an early marriage, and when everything was settled and decided Mme. Rosemilly seemed suddenly to remember a further detail and asked: “You have consulted M. Roland, I suppose?”

A flush of colour mounted at the same instant on the face of both mother and son. It was the mother who replied:

“Oh, no, it is quite unnecessary!” Then she hesitated, feeling that some explanation was needed, and added: “We do everything without saying anything to him. It is enough to tell him what we have decided on.”

Mme. Rosemilly, not in the least surprised, only smiled, taking it as a matter of course, for the good man counted for so little.

When Mme. Roland was in the street again with her son she said:

“Suppose we go to your rooms for a little while. I should be glad to rest.”

She felt herself homeless, shelterless, her own house being a terror to her.

They went into Jean’s apartments.

As soon as the door was closed upon her she heaved a deep sigh, as if that bolt had placed her in safety, but then, instead of resting as she had said, she began to open the cupboards, to count the piles of linen, the pocket-handkerchiefs, and socks. She changed the arrangement to place them in more harmonious order, more pleasing to her housekeeper’s eye; and when she had put everything to her mind, laying out the towels, the shirts, and the drawers on their several shelves and dividing all the linen into three principal classes, body-linen, household-linen, and table-linen, she drew back and contemplated the results, and called out:

“Come here, Jean, and see how nice it looks.”