The Choice of Life. Georgette Leblanc

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      The stillness is so intense in the grove where we are sitting side by side, I am so anxious for her to feel it, that I become impatient and irritable. When I am with her, I am in a perpetual ferment. Her beauty and her coarseness hurt me, like two ill-matched colours that attract and wound the eyes. I calm myself by scattering all my thoughts over her promiscuously; and, though most of them are carried away by the wind, I imagine that I am sprinkling them on her life to make it blossom anew.

      "I am nursing you in my arms to wake you, my Roseline, just as one nurses children to put them to sleep. See what poor creatures we are! As a rule, it is the conventions and constraint of our upbringing, with all its artificiality and falsehood, that divide us. To-day, it is the opposite that rises between you and me and spoils our happiness! I have often longed to meet a woman who was so simple as to be almost uncivilised; and, now that you are here, I dread your gestures and your voice, which grate upon me and annoy me!"

      "But am I not simple?" Rose asks, ingenuously.

      "People generally confuse simplicity with ignorance, too often also with silliness—which is not the case with you," I added, with a smile. "Real, that is to say, conscious simplicity is not even recognised; and, when it becomes active, it appears to vulgar minds a danger that must be averted. The better to attack it, they disfigure it. It is this proud and noble grace that I want you to acquire. Look, it may be compared with this diamond which I wear on my finger. The stone is absolutely simple; and yet through how many hands has it passed before becoming so! How many transformations has it undergone! How magnificent is its bare simplicity when set off by the plain gold ring! It is the same with us. For simplicity to be beautiful in us, we must have cut and polished our soul and person many times over. Above all, we must have learnt the harmony of things and become fixed in that knowledge, like the stone which you see held in these gold claws."

      She asked, with an effort to modulate her voice:

      "Oughtn't I to take you for my model?"

      "No, Rose! You frighten me when you say that! You must not think of it. Listen to me: if ever we are permitted to imitate any one, it is only in the pains which she herself takes to improve herself. As for me, I wanted to achieve simplicity and I looked for it as one looks for a spot that is difficult to reach and easy to miss. For a long time, I wandered beyond it. Rather than stoop to false customs, to lying conventions, I followed the strangest fancies.... Now it all makes me laugh."

      "Makes you laugh?"

      "Yes, past errors are dead branches that make our present life burn more brightly. But, when I see how I judge my former selves, I become suspicious as to what I may soon think of my actual self; and therefore I do not wish you to take me as an example."

      Rose was still lying in my arms; and her beautiful eyes were looking up at me. I raised her head in my hands and whispered, tenderly:

      "I feel that you understand me, that my words touch you, that you trust me and that you love me deep down in your heart; I feel that you also will soon be able to speak and unburden yourself freely, to be silent amid silence and peaceful amid the peace of things...."

      3

      The girl rose to her feet, with a glint of emotion animating her features; and, as though to escape my eyes, she took a few steps in the garden. While she was hidden by the bend of the narrow path fenced by the tall sunflowers, my heart was filled with misgiving: her step was so heavy, so clumsy! Would she ever be able to improve her walk? Judging by the ponderous rhythm of her hips, one would always think that she was carrying invisible burdens at the end of each of her drooping arms....

      But she soon returned; and her fair countenance was so adorable amid the golden glory of the great flowers that I could not suppress a cry of admiration. She came towards me smiling; and, to protect herself a little from the blinding sunlight, she was holding both hands over her head. Was it simply the curve of her raised arms that thus transfigured her whole bearing, that reduced the unwieldiness of her figure and made its lines freer? It was, no doubt; but it was also the soft breeze which now blew against her and accentuated the movement of her limbs by plastering her thin cotton skirt against them. And the heavy gait now seemed stately; and the excessive stride appeared virile and bold. I watched the humble worker in the fields, the poor farm-girl; and I thought of the proud Victory whom my mind pictured enfolding all the beauties of the Louvre in her mighty wings!

      Chapter VIII

      1

      We were lying in the long grass, looking up at the sky through the branches of the apple-trees and watching the clouds drift past.

      The light was fading slowly, the leaves became dim, the birds stopped singing.

      "Rose, I do nothing but think of you. Who are you? What will become of you? I should like to anticipate everything, so as to save you every pain. Had you been happy and well-cared-for, I would have wished you trouble and grief. But, strengthened as you now are by many trials, you will be able to find in sorrows avoided and only seen in the distance all the good which we usually draw from them by draining them to the dregs."

      "I am not afraid, I expect to be unhappy."

      "I hope that you will not be unhappy. The change will be quite simple if it is wisely brought about; you will drop out of your present life like a ripe fruit dropping from its stalk."

      "How shall I prepare myself?"

      "So far, your chief merit has been patience. But now rouse yourself, look around you, judge, find out your good and bad qualities."

      Rose interrupted me:

      "My good qualities! Have I any?"

      "Indeed you have: plenty of common sense, a great power of resistance, shrewdness. By means of these, you have been able to subdue the tyranny of others: can you not escape from that of your failings? Your life has adapted itself to an evil and stupid environment; it must now adapt itself to the environment of your own self."

      2

      From the neighbouring farms came the plaintive, monotonous cry calling the cattle home. The drowsy sky became one universal grey, while the night dews covered the earth with a faint haze.

      "I am surprised that, when you were so unhappy, solitude did not appear to you in the light of a beautiful dream."

      Rose's timid and astonished voice echoed my last words:

      "A beautiful dream! Then do you like solitude?"

      "Oh, Rose, I owe it the greatest, the only joys of my childhood! It was to gain solitude that, later, I set myself to win my independence, knowing that, if I did not meet with the love I wished, I should yet be happier alone than among others."

      "But, still, you do not live alone!"

      I remained silent for a moment, stirred by that question which filled my mind with the thought of my own happiness; and then I said in a whisper, as though speaking to myself:

      "Rose, my present life is the most exquisite form of independence and solitude."

      And I went on:

      "Ah, Rose, to know how to be alone! That is the finest conquest that a woman can make! You cannot imagine my rapture when I first found myself in a home of my own, surrounded by all the things purchased by my work. When I came in at the end of the day, my heart used to throb with gladness. No pleasure has ever seemed to equal that СКАЧАТЬ