The Choice of Life. Georgette Leblanc
IX
1
Beside the house, two old cypresses make great pools of shadow in the bright, green garden. Motionless, they keep a pious and jealous watch over the stone fountain whose basin seems to round itself into an obliging mirror for their benefit. Here, amid the cool stillness, the running water murmurs its unceasing orison.
I make Rose sit beside the fountain and slowly I begin unbinding her hair.
Oh, the beauty of the honey-coloured waves that roll down her shoulders and frame her face in their sweetness! Again and again I lifted and shook out those long-imprisoned tresses, giving them life and liberty at last. Rose, following the ancient fashion of our Norman peasant-women, does her hair into a mass of tight little plaits, twisted so cruelly as to forbid all freedom.
The better to efface the impress of their tyrannical past, I had to dip them into water. They opened out, like sea-weed.
I had brought rich materials, jewels and flowers for Rose's adornment. All her beauty, so long hidden, was at last to stand revealed. I knew its potency, I divined its splendour; but her hair was too barbarously done, her garments too coarse and rough for me to discover the character of her beauty or say what constituted its nobility.
Rose, still smiling, held her head back patiently and, with closed eyes, gave herself over to my tender mercies. Then another picture, a similar picture, but tragic and now fading into dimness, rose in my mind; and, almost in spite of myself, I said, softly:
"Your long hair must have floated like this, I expect, on the day when you wished to die. And it must have been its splendour that would not suffer such a catastrophe. I wonder, dear, that you should have wished that, you who are so faint-hearted in the presence of life!"
Her forehead, bronzed by the summer suns, turned a warmer colour, like a ripe apricot; the veins on her temples swelled a little; and she murmured:
"I don't know … I don't know...."
I made fruitless efforts to find out the cause of her embarrassment; her face clouded; and she said nothing more. Then, after doing up her hair, I began to drape a material around her. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Rose noticed it and asked me why I was smiling.
"Why?" I cried. "Why? Oh, of course, you are incapable at present of understanding the pleasure which I feel! And how many are there who could distinguish its true quality? People admire the new-blown flower, they are touched by a child's first smile, they travel day and night to stand on a mountain-top and see the dawn conquering the shadows of the earth; and it is considered natural that, at such moments, our feminine hearts, always ready to be poured out, should be filled with love and incense. But it is thought strange that one of us should recognise and greet the union of all the graces in the fairest of her sisters! And yet one must be a woman to feel what I feel to-day, in unveiling and adorning your beauty. For it charms me without intoxicating me, sheds its radiance on me without dazzling me and makes my heart throb without causing my hands to tremble.... When the lover for the first time beholds the object of his love, longing clouds his eyes. Certainly, his sentiment is no less noble or less great, but it is of a very different nature! Other joys are mine, a thousand, new and glorious emotions, emotions of the heart and of the mind, the childish and girlish joys of dressing up, decorating and adorning, of creating form and colour, in a word, beauty, the stuff of which happiness is made!"
Rose interrupted me:
"Happiness? Do you think so?"
"Yes, because beauty calls for love. Does not our happiness as women lie above everything in love?"
Making one of those horrible movements with her feet, hands and shoulders of which I had done my best to correct her, Rose expressed her disgust with such violence as to undo the brooch with which I had just fastened the folds of a long white drapery to her shoulders:
"Oh," she cried, "I hate love, I hate it!"
Then she covered her face with her open hands; slowly the material slipped down to her waist; and her bust stood out against the dark trees, white and pure as that of a marble statue.
The great calm that is born of beauty compelled me to silence. Rose remained without moving, untroubled by the nudity which, at any other time, she would have refused to unveil. Did her emotion make her unconscious, or was it, on the contrary, lifting her to a plane in which false modesty had no place? Did she, in that brief minute, realise how our actions change their values in proportion to the fineness of our perception?…
I threw my cloak round her and drew aside her hands: her face was wet with tears. I cross-examined her: could she have suffered through love?
"What is the matter, Roseline? Why are you so bitter against something you have never experienced?"
She tried to smile through her tears and said, innocently:
"It's nothing.... It was like a shower: it's over now, quite over.... You are right, I really don't know why love fills me with such horror!"
And she came quietly and sat down again beside the fountain.
2
For the third time, I began to coil and uncoil her hair:
"You see, I was wrong just now," I said, "when I uncovered your neck and crowned your forehead. This is what suits you: the severe Roman style! And, though that loathing which you expressed just now seems to me unnatural, I feel almost tempted to excuse it in you, because it is so much in keeping with your impassive loveliness."
Kneeling in front of her, I tried to make the folds of the material follow the natural curves of her body. Meanwhile, Rose seemed to be watching other reflections in the water than ours. Suddenly, she leant forward and put her beautiful bronzed arms round my neck; and I felt that she was willing me to look up. Then I raised my head and, when we were gazing into each other's eyes, she said, laying a sort of grave stress on every syllable:
"Do you forgive everything, absolutely everything?"
"To answer yes is not answering half enough," I said. And, kissing her, I added, "If you had to tell me of a serious fault, I should love to give proof of my indulgence; but are you not the best of girls?"
I had an impression, for a second, that she was hesitating and that I was about to receive the solemn confession of a childish fault. But she at once replied, in a decisive little way:
"I could not be as indulgent as you, really!"
"Because you are not so happy yet, my dearest.... Come, I have my own reasons for spoiling you and coaxing you and wanting you to be beautiful. I know what good fruits are born of those flowers of joy!… But I have finished my work. Get up, Rose, come with me! Come and see yourself a goddess!"
And I carried her off to the drawing-room.
Straight and slender in the long white folds falling to her feet, the girl stands before the mirror and stares with astonishment at her glorified image. Does she grasp the importance of this hour? Does she reflect that, at this minute, one of the great secrets of her destiny has been revealed to me by this woman's game which has given me a child's pleasure? Does she know that the moment is grave, unmatched and marvellous and that, by my friendly hands, chance is to-day showing her the power which she can wield and the realm over which she can rule?
Her everyday clothes are lying at her feet: the coarse chemise, the barbarous bodice, the hat trimmed with faded ribbons. Ah, Roseline, why cannot I as easily fling far from you all that imprisons your life and fetters your soul!
"You are beautiful!" I say to her. "You are beautiful! Do you know what that means? Beauty is the source of happiness; and it is also the source of goodness, forgiveness and indulgence! Your face, if you take pleasure in looking at it, will teach you much better than I can what you must be. It will make you kind and gentle and generous, if you have the wish to be in perfect harmony with it. Thanks to your beauty, my Rose, you will be able, if you have a true conception of its dignity, to achieve one perfect moment in your life!"
Alas, she does not share my enthusiasm! I take her hand, I lead her through the house, into all the rooms which she does not know. I keep on hoping that, in a new mirror,