Raymonde

“ Raymonde hastened to tell him where we had been. Somewhat astonished to see us together, he gazed at us attentively. The least favourable sign of happiness on his daughter’s face reflected itself on his own. He understood her expression so thoroughly that he was not to be deceived by appearances.
From her open window Mme. Mairieux caught sight of us.
“Ah! there are the lovers,” she cried.
* * *
I suggested to Raymonde that we make a little journey. The closer intimacy of travel helps sometimes to heal the distress of hearts that have been worn by concealed and daily irritations. ”

“ And I sent the troop of children away, no longer able to endure their gaiety.
* * *
That same day she asked for Dilette, whom she no longer kept so much near her, not to affect or sadden her precocious sensibility unduly. The child was loth to leave her again: she looked at her insistently and too closely.
“Take her away,” Raymonde begged me.
I had almost to take the child away by force. When she had gone, Raymonde drew me down as if to whisper to me.
“Promise me,” she said, “that you will always love her, that you will never let any one take her place in your affections.” ”

“ All the tenderness and yearning of her womanhood were aroused; she could not keep back the tears.
Instead of silently entering into her feeling, without useless words, I said impatiently:
“What is the matter with you, Raymonde? Come, that is absurd.”
In reality I knew the deep causes of her emotion. With miraculous intuition, had she not foreseen this, when she told her father that although she loved me I was not the husband for her? Although she was very ingenuous and ignorant of the degree of my unworthiness, yet she presaged our incompatibility, if not my injustice. ”

“ Of what use were receptions, beautiful gowns, enticing conversation and the arts of coquetry, if not to call forth the very thing she had resented! Could she not have let Pierre Ducal know in a quiet, forceful manner that his advances annoyed her, without going to the extreme limit of causing a break in our friendship? Surely a woman’s greatest asset is the use of all her weapons of charm and fascination to the best possible advantage. What to Raymonde constituted an irreparable injury was to me only a source of great annoyance. ”

“ Oftentimes a hare crossed the avenue in front of us with little bounds.
Yes, these strolls would have been exquisite but for the skill I employed to spoil them! As I had tormented Raymonde about her parents, so now I tormented her about the hope that filled her with a joy that was all but sacred. She saw in it the continuation of our cherished love, the palpable thrill of our union, the living bond of our united bodies and souls. I saw only the inconvenience, and I showed my irritation and nervousness over it. ”

“ So the woman he desired lay at last against Fortuné de la Vireville's breast, and up from the sea of gorse in which they stood welled the warm honey-sweet scent that is like no other in the world to steal away the heart. The wind had dropped to a caress; it caught at Raymonde's gown no longer, and out over the illimitable wrinkled blue, from the height on which they stood, the poised gulls looked like slowly drifting flecks of snow. ”

“ Raymonde asked immediately.
I agreed without interest, from courtesy, instead of giving way to my emotions as I had been invited to do. For a second short space of time, I surprised her in the act of trembling. Still, I continued to believe in her apathy, her reputation for it was so well established. When one holds to the judgment of the world one can not appreciate his own fireside. ”

“ Ordinarily we employ the same phrases in common conversation that we use for the deepest emotions. Through reluctance, through delay, through the difficulty of giving them utterance, the desire to keep them in her heart, which cherished them in order the better to absorb their virtue, Raymonde restored to the divine words their true meaning, their power and their freshness. ”

“ During my previous visits in the Sleeping Woods, I had had scarcely a word to say to the farmers and workmen whom I met on my estate. They were my superintendent’s affair, not mine; such people were total strangers to me. During our engagement, I had been much surprised at the looks of understanding exchanged between them and Raymonde when I accompanied her. Later, love traced around us its circle of isolation and no one addressed us, but through its social aspect, marriage made us more accessible. ”

“ Raymonde shook her head, as if that were not all. One evening, aroused by the general acclamation, unable to resist that magnetic current which comes from an electrified crowd, I insisted on sustaining the popular theories regarding a play in which the heroine, a young girl, gave herself up in a burst of passion to her sister’s husband.
“Love, true love, disregards morals, tramples upon suffering, takes no account of anything outside of itself. ”

“ If she could have seen Raymonde’s expression, as that young lady turned her head for a moment towards Aveline, she would have been surprised. The serious apprehension had changed to dancing mischief. Even so well-seasoned a mistress as Miss Gibbs, however, cannot be aware of every sub-current in her Form. Human nature has its limits.
Raymonde left the class-room chuckling to herself, and at the earliest convenient moment summoned a committee of the Mystic Seven. ”

“ But these first smiles, whose charm I understand so well now, I questioned then, as I remember, in jealousy, not in admiration. So new were they to me that I did not know how to gather them. Thus we permit the simple emotions that are the ornament of life to escape from it because we seek our happiness in ourselves instead of finding it on the faces of others. While I made our love complicated by trying to confine it to my personal satisfactions, Raymonde gave to it quite naturally her primitive capacity for acceptation, her radiance, her creative splendour. ”

“ It was not only at Mme. de Saunois’ first reception that Raymonde failed of sufficiently enthusiastic formulæ for amateur singers and elocutionists. Even on occasions when she was genuinely stirred, the exaggerated congratulations of those about her arrested her enthusiasm. Her lips would half open to express a compliment, but if she deemed it insufficient she would blush and remain silent after all. I believe it was a physical impossibility for her to conceal her thoughts. People complained of her disdain, her coldness, but never of her candour. ”

“ The fact of my being seen publicly with a lady of her calibre in a frequented place need not of necessity have aroused suspicion. Was it that the mere presence of one perfectly right and loyal creature threw out falsehood and irregularity? We were often seen together—why should we now appear so at fault? Until now Raymonde had no inkling of anything between us Now the trembling of her lips a moment alarmed me. In the Sleeping Woods how could she have learned that one must control one’s self in public? ”

“ Raymonde would have liked to spare me these interminable and noisy visits, which my coldness could not shorten. She knew how impatient I was after them. I was growing tired of the Sleeping Woods; she knew it and mourned for it, and, thinking only of me, blamed herself for it.
* * *
Almost immediately after our return to the chateau Raymonde’s condition necessitated our giving up our horseback rides.
“Let us walk,” she said, “we can see better when we go slowly, and one hears the life in the trees better, too, and the stirring of the little blades of grass. Shan’t we?” ”

“ Isn’t that part of your estate?”
“Certainly, since her father is my superintendent.”
In order to be done with it as quickly as possible, I hurled the sentence at him in a single breath, as if it were the confession of a sin. I decidedly was not enjoying the serenity which should have come from the happiness and honour of marrying Raymonde. The presence of a single man was sufficient to cause me one of those little shudders of cowardice and baseness. Nothing suggested a greater menace to my own and Raymonde’s happiness than the troubled way in which I confessed this little fact to Ducal. ”

“ The girls found her conversation most entertaining as they walked along.
“She is absolutely refreshing!” giggled Raymonde. “The way she shakes out her skirts and manœuvres the sleeves of the big jacket is perfectly lovely. She ought to be a mannikin when she grows up, and try on coats and mantles in shops. ”

“ At the chateau we found a large fire burning in the little salon, which I had refurnished for her. She looked at the furniture, the pictures and the hangings, and then at me with a smile that was a little sad. Did she have a presentiment of the future? Now that I am able to interpret truly the past, I recall having seen, one morning when I was out shooting, a young hind stop at the entrance to a wood, where I was hiding. She inhaled the fresh breeze and then hesitated in fear. Finally she came on in my direction.
“You are in your own home, Raymonde,” I said. ”

“ She would have liked to cause some scandal, to force Raymonde to seek a separation. All such women as she extol free love, and with an eye to the practical side as well know how to secure social advantage from it all; though once they have it they exhibit marvellous executive ability in preventing their passion from running away with them.
Growing paler and paler, more and more silent, Raymonde still accompanied me everywhere. Her preoccupied air re-established between us those distances which indelicacy thought to have wiped out. I was being apprenticed in that cruelty which Mme. ”

“ Ah! those people whose daily acts are regulated by a definite code of morals, to whom faith and love are as necessary as food and respiration—they have a presentiment of death when once that faith is shaken; they have no powers of resistance when their ideals are finally shattered.
The first effect in Raymonde was a loss of cheerfulness. I did not notice it then, yet I recall it clearly now. There is in our past always something which we would forget, but which does not permit itself to be forgotten. ”

“ Before the day was over, eighteen girls had given in their names as volunteers, Raymonde, Morvyth, Katherine, and Aveline being among the number.
“I would like to have joined you, really!” protested Fauvette, “only I know I’ll be so dreadfully home-sick all the rest of the term if I don’t go home, and––”
“Don’t apologize, child!” interrupted Raymonde. “Nobody in their senses expects you to go. You’d be a huge embarrassment to the rest of us. Blue-eyed darlings, all baby-ribbon and fluffy hair, aren’t meant for hard work. ”

“ The girls put their united lung power into the loudest halloo of which they were capable, but it only scared a blackbird in the orchard, and provoked no human response. They sat down in a place where they could be best seen from the mainland, and waited. There were too many brambles for comfort, and the midges were biting badly. Raymonde began to wonder whether, after all, the island were as ideal a situation for a residence as she had supposed. ”

“ Tell every member of the Fifth to come at once to the practising-room, and bring her keys. You will go upstairs with me, Raymonde.”
Veronica’s message spread consternation through the Form. The girls trooped to the sanctum with scared faces. They found Miss Beasley there, looking very grave, and Raymonde, her eyes downcast and her mouth set in its most obstinate mould, standing by the bureau.
“I wish you each to unlock your drawer in my presence,” said the Principal. “The money collected at your concert is missing, and perhaps it may have been misplaced.” ”

“ Your work is your glory. I shall be afraid, but I shall pray. A woman can fear—”
However, I soon abandoned my studies because they seemed too problematical, and would not have been productive of immediate visible prestige. I was not to take them up again until much later.
* * *
One makes mistakes: I was mistaken in my belief of Raymonde’s lowly origin. I prided myself that I had raised her to my rank, by magnificent generosity, without seeking to divine how such tact and moral culture as hers had come about without the slow formation of time. ”

“ He would use to advantage the observations he had made during our close intimacy. I was incensed by the thought of Raymonde’s having so needlessly exposed us to this danger through laying too much stress on a trivial incident. Had she not learned in our society that all women allow men to be attentive to them? ”

“ Raymonde’s harum-scarum mind was for once really filled with a wish to help. She meant to do her full share of work. Also she was determined to enjoy herself. The prospect of camp-life was alluring. There was a gipsy smack about it that satisfied her unconventional instincts. It seemed almost next door to campaigning.
“If I’d only been a boy, I’d have run away to the front long ago!” she announced.
“Girls have their own chances in life as well as boys now,” said Hermie. “Wait till you’ve finished with school, then you must try to find your niche in the world. ”

“ And I saw on her courageous face that night, a as shows on high mountains after sunset, the divine rejection of Raymonde’s soul.
* * *
I have just paid another visit to the Sleeping Woods.
First I rang at the lodge, which was closed. As no one answered, I took the road toward the chateau, whose open windows I could see through the oaks. Mme. Mairieux received me with her customary affability.
“Yes” she explained, “we have at last come to live here. It is surely more suitable and consistent with our position. Besides, shouldn’t Dilette get used to her fortune?” ”