Valentine (14 page)

She had found a way, the day before, to warn Louise of her visit; so that the whole farm-house was in order and waiting joyfully to receive her. Athénaïs had put fresh flowers in the blue glass vases. Bénédict had trimmed the trees in the garden, raked the paths and repaired the benches. Madame Lhéry had made with her own hands the finest cake that had been seen since housekeeping was invented. Monsieur Lhéry had shaved, and drawn some of his best wine. There were exclamations of joy and surprise when Valentine entered the living-room quietly and alone. She embraced Mère Lhéry like a madcap, and the old woman bowed to the ground. She shook hands warmly with Bénédict; she frolicked like a child with Athénaïs ; she hung about her sister's neck. Valentine had never felt so happy. Out of reach of her mother's eyes and of the frigid constraint which impeded her every step, it seemed to her that she breathed a clearer air, and, for the first time since she was born, lived her whole life. Valentine was naturally amiable and sweet. Heaven had gone astray in sending that simple, unambitious soul to dwell in palaces and breathe the atmosphere of courts. No one could be less adapted for a life of show, for the triumphs of vanity. On the contrary, her pleasures were all modest, all domestic ; and the more she was blamed for indulging in them, the more eagerly she aspired to that simple life which in her eyes was the promised land. If she wished to marry, it was that she might have a home and
children, and live a retired life. Her heart craved close affections,, few in number and without variety. To lead a virtuous life seemed likely to be as easy a matter to her as to any woman on earth.

But the luxury with which she was encompassed, which anticipated her slightest wants, which divined even her caprices, forbade her to perform the most trivial household duties. With twenty servants at her call, it would have seemed absurd, almost parsimonious, for her to take an active part in the management of the household. She was hardly allowed to take care of her aviary, and one could easily divine Valentine's character by the love with which she devoted herself to the welfare of its tiny occupants, even to the smallest details.

When she found herself at the farm, surrounded by hens, hunting-dogs and kids ; when she saw Louise spinning, Madame Lhéry cooking, and Bénédict mending his nets, it seemed to her that that was the sphere for which she was made. She insisted on having some employment herself, and, to Athénaïs's great surprise, instead of opening the piano or asking for a piece of her embroidery, she began to knit on a gray stocking which she found on the chair. Athénaïs was amazed at her dexterity, and asked her if she knew for whom she was working so zealously.

“For whom ?” said Valentine. “I haven't an idea ; it's for some one of you, at all events ; for yourself, perhaps.”

“Those gray stockings for me!” said Athénaïs, disdainfully.

“Are they for you, my dear sister ? “ Valentine asked Louise.

“I work on them sometimes,” said Louise, “but Mamma Lhéry began them. For whom ? I know no better than you.”

“Suppose they were for Bénédict ?” queried Athénaïs, looking at Valentine with a mischievous expression.

Bénédict stopped working, raised his head, and watched the two young women without speaking.

Valentine blushed slightly, but instantly recovered herself.

“Why, if they're for Bénédict,” she replied, “it's all right; I will gladly work on them.”

She looked up with a smile at her old playmate. Athénaïs was purple with anger. An indefinable feeling of irony and distrust had found its way into her heart.

“Oho !” said honest Valentine, with heedless candor, “that doesn't seem to please you overmuch. In truth, I am doing wrong, Athénaïs; I am poaching on your preserves, usurping privileges which belong to you. Come, come, take the work now, and forgive me for putting my hand to the wedding outfit.”

“Mademoiselle Valentine,” interposed Bénédict, impelled by a pitiless feeling toward his cousin, “ if you do not regret working for the humblest of your vassals, continue, I beg you. My cousin's pretty fingers have never touched such coarse yarn and such heavy needles.”

A tear glistened on Athénaïs's black lashes. Louise glanced reprovingly at Bénédict. Valentine looked in amazement from one to another, trying to fathom the mystery.

The thing that hurt the young woman most in her cousin's words was not so much the reproach of frivolity—she was used to that—as the submissive and, at the same time, familiar tone in which he addressed Valentine. She knew in a general way the story of their acquaintance, and hitherto she had not thought of taking
alarm at it. But she had no idea of the rapid progress of an intimacy which would never have come about under ordinary circumstances. She was amazed and pained to hear Bénédict, naturally so rebellious and so hostile to the pretensions of the nobility, style himself Mademoiselle de Raimbault's humble vassal. What sort of a revolution had taken place in his ideas ? How had Valentine already acquired such influence over him ?

Louise, observing an expression of gloom on every face, proposed a fishing party in the Indre before dinner. Valentine, who had an instinctive feeling that she had been unfair to Athénaïs, affectionately passed her arm through hers, and started to run with her across the field. Warm-hearted and sincere creature that she was, she succeeded in scattering the clouds that had gathered in the girl's heart. Bénédict, dressed in his blouse and carrying his net, followed them with Louise, and the four soon reached the banks of the river, lined with lotus and soapwort.

Bénédict threw the net. He was strong and dexterous. In bodily exercises he displayed the power, the courage and the rustic grace of the peasant. They were qualities which Athénaïs did not appreciate at their true value, being shared by all the men about her ; but Valentine marvelled at them as at supernatural things, and readily accorded to Bénédict superiority in one respect to all the men whom she knew. She was frightened to see him venture on a rotten willow which overhung the water and crumbled under his feet ; and when she saw him escape, by a vigorous leap, what seemed a certain fall, and coolly and adroitly land on small level spots which it seemed the rushes and grass must hide from him, she felt her heart beat with an indefinable emotion, as
always happens when we see a perilous or difficult undertaking bravely performed.

After catching a few trout, Louise and Valentine pouncing with childish glee on the dripping net and seizing the booty with shouts of joy, while Athénaïs, fearing to soil her fingers, or harboring a grudge against her cousin, sulkily concealed herself in the shadow of the alders, Bénédict, exhausted with the heat, sat on a roughly-hewn ash-tree which was thrown from bank to bank by way of bridge. Scattered over the bright green grass by the river, the three women employed themselves in different ways. Athénaïs gathered flowers, Louise tossed leaves into the stream with a melancholy air, and Valentine, being less accustomed to the fresh air and sunshine and walking, dozed gently, concealed as she supposed by the tall river-grass. Her eyes, after wandering for a long while over the rippling surface of the water and a sunbeam that stole through the branches, fell by chance upon Bénédict, whom she discovered about ten yards in front of her, seated on the springy bridge with his legs hanging down.

Bénédict was not absolutely without beauty. His complexion was of a bilious pallor, his long eyes were of no color, but his forehead was very high and extremely smooth. By virtue of a power inherent in men endowed with some mental force, the eye became gradually accustomed to the shortcomings of his face and saw only its beauties. This is true of some ugly faces, and was noticeably true of Bénédict's. His smooth, sallow skin gave an impression of tranquillity which inspired a sort of instinctive respect for that mind whose impulses were betrayed by no outward alteration of his features. His eyes, in which the colorless pupils swam in a sea of white vitreous humor, had a vague and mysterious
expression which could not fail to arouse the curiosity of every observer. But they would have driven Lavater to despair with all his learning ; they seemed to read the eyes of others to their lowest depths, and their immobility was positively metallic when they had occasion to be suspicious of an impertinent examination. A woman, when she was beautiful, could not endure their gleam ; an enemy could not detect any sign of weakness in them. He was a man whom one could look at at any time and never find him below his own level; it was a face which could allow the thoughts to wander without being made ugly thereby, as so many faces are. No woman could view him with indifference, and, if the lips sometimes decried him, the imagination did not readily lose the impression he made upon it; no one could meet him for the first time without following him with the eye as long as possible ; no artist could look at him without admiration for his singular countenance, and without longing to reproduce it.

When Valentine looked at him, he was absorbed in one of those profound reveries which seemed of frequent occurrence with him. The shadow of the foliage above him gave a greenish tinge to his broad forehead, his eyes were fixed intently on the water and seemed to see nothing. The fact is that they did see to perfection Valentine's face reflected in the motionless stream. He took keen pleasure in that contemplation, the object of which vanished whenever a faint breeze ruffled the surface of the mirror; then the charming image gradually took shape again, uncertain and vague at first, and in due time became placid and lovely against the crystalline background. Bénédict was not thinking ; he was gazing, he was happy, and it was at such moments that he was handsome.

Valentine had always heard it said that Bénédict was ugly. According to provincial ideas—in the provinces, as Monsieur Stendhal has wittily said, a
handsome man
is always stout and redfaced—Bénédict was the most ill-favored of youths. Valentine had never looked closely at him. She had retained in her mind the impression she had received at their first meeting; that impression was unfavorable. Not until the last few moments had she begun to find that there was something inexpressibly charming about him. Absorbed herself in a reverie which had no definite subject, she yielded to that hazardous curiosity which analyzes and compares. She discovered that there was a vast difference between Bénédict and Monsieur de Lansac. She did not ask herself in whose favor that difference was; she simply recognized its existence. As Monsieur de Lansac was handsome, and as she was engaged to him, she was not disturbed as to the result of that imprudent contemplation. It did not occur to her that her fiancé might come out of it vanquished.

And yet that is what happened. Bénédict, pale, fatigued, pensive, with dishevelled hair; Bénédict, dressed in coarse clothes and smeared with mud, with his bare, sunburned neck ; Bénédict, seated in an unstudied attitude amid that lovely verdure, over that lovely stream ; Bénédict, who was gazing at Valentine without Valentine's knowledge, and smiling with admiration ; Bénédict at that moment was a man ; a man of the fields and of nature, a man whose manly breast could throb with an intense passion, a man forgetful of himself in the contemplation of the fairest of God's creatures. I know not what magnetic emanations played in the scorching air about him ; I know not what mysterious, vague, involuntary emotions suddenly made the young countess's pure and ignorant heart beat fast.

Monsieur de Lansac was a dandy endowed with beauty of the conventional type, exceedingly clever, an unexcelled talker, who always laughed at the right moment, and never did anything out of season. There was never a wrinkle on his face any more than in his cravat; one could see that his costume, even to the smallest details, was to him as important and sacred a matter as the most momentous diplomatic discussion. He had never wondered at anything; at all events, he had ceased to wonder, for he had seen the greatest potentates of Europe. He had gazed unmoved at the most exalted leaders of society; he had soared aloft in the highest social spheres ; he had discussed the very existence of nations between dessert and coffee. Valentine had always seen him in society, in full dress, on his guard, exhaling perfumes and making the most of every fraction of an inch of his stature. She had never had a glimpse of the man in him ; at morning and at night Monsieur de Lansac was always the same. He rose a secretary of embassy; he never mused; he never forgot himself so far before any person as to commit the impropriety of reflecting ; he was as impenetrable as Bénédict, but with this difference, that he had nothing to conceal, that he had no will of his own, and that his brain contained nothing except the solemn nonsense of diplomacy. In short, Monsieur de Lansac, a man devoid of generous passion, of mental vigor, already worn out and withered by years of fashionable society, incapable of appreciating Valentine, whom he praised incessantly and never admired, had not, at any time, aroused in her one of those swift, irresistible impulses which transform and enlighten, and lead one impetuously on to a new life.

Imprudent Valentine! She had so little idea what love is, that she believed that she loved her fiancé;
not passionately, it is true, but with all her power of loving.

Because that man inspired no passion in her, she fancied that her heart was incapable of passion ; she felt the first thrill of love in the shadow of those trees. In that hot, stinging air her blood began to stir; several times, as she looked at Bénédict, she felt a strange flush rise from her heart to her forehead, and the innocent girl did not know what excited her so. She was not alarmed: she was engaged to Monsieur de Lansac, Bénédict was engaged to his cousin. Those were excellent reasons ; but Valentine, being accustomed to look upon her duties as easy to perform, did not dream that a sentiment fatal to those duties might be born in her.

At first, Bénédict gazed at Valentine's image calmly enough; gradually, a painful sensation, more prompt in its action and more keen than that which she experienced, forced him to change his position and to try to turn his mind to something else. He took up his net and made another cast, but he could not catch anything; he was distraught. He could not take his eyes from Valentine's; whether he leaned over the bank or ventured on the loose stones or on the smooth and slippery pebbles in the river-bed, he inevitably met Valentine's glance, watching him, brooding over him, so to speak, with tender solicitude. Valentine did not know how to dissemble ; she did not consider that on that occasion there
was the slightest occasion for her to do so. Bénédict's heart beat fast beneath that artless and affectionate glance. For the first time he was proud of his strength and his courage. He crossed a dam over which the river was rushing furiously; in three leaps he was on the other bank. He returned ; Valentine's face was white ; Bénédict's bosom swelled with pride.