Elective Affinities (27 page)

He was launched on a resounding peroration when, holding the child out to the old man, he saw him apparently bend forward to receive him but then suddenly sink back. He was only just caught as he fell and taken to a stall, where, all that could be done for him notwithstanding, he had to be pronounced dead.

To see birth and death, coffin and cradle, juxtaposed so closely, and to see this terrible antithesis not in imagination but with their own eyes, was a hard lesson for those who were standing by, and it was the harder in that it was so sudden. Ottilie alone regarded the dead man, whose features still retained the amiable expression which characterized them, with a kind of envy. The life of her soul had been killed, why should her body remain alive?

If the disagreeable events of the day had led her often and often to meditate on transcience, on parting and loss, she was granted, as consolation, strange nocturnal visions which assured her of her beloved’s existence and cheered and fortitied
her own. When at evening she had lain down to rest, and was hovering still in that sweet sensation between sleep and wake, it seemed to her as if she were gazing into a bright yet softly illumined room. There she saw Eduard, quite clearly, dressed, not as she had seen him in life, but in the garb of a soldier, and each time his figure held a different posture, always a natural one, with nothing fanciful or grotesque in it: standing, walking, lying, riding. The figure, delineated to the smallest detail, moved before her of its own volition without her having to do anything, without her having to want it or to make an effort of imagination. Sometimes she saw him surrounded by shadowy forms, and especially by something that moved that was darker than the bright background, but she could hardly distinguish what they were, they might be people or horses or trees or mountains. Usually she fell asleep while watching these visions, and when she awoke on the morrow after a peaceful night she was refreshed and comforted: she felt convinced Eduard was still alive and that she was still his and he was still hers.

CHAPTER NINE

S
PRING
had come, later but also more suddenly and joyfully than usual. Ottilie now found in the garden the fruit of her foresight: all was budding and blossoming and putting out leaf in its proper season; much that lay ready under the glass of greenhouses now reached out towards the world of nature outside, which had at last grown active, and everything that had to be done was now no longer mere hopeful labour but a joy and a delight.

But she had to console the gardener for many a gap in the rows of potted plants and the spoiled symmetry of the treetops caused by Luciane’s ungoverned behaviour. She encouraged him by saying that all would soon be restored, but he had too deep a feeling for his craft and too pure an idea of it for these consolations to be of much effect. Just as the gardener must not let himself be distracted by other interests and inclinations, so the peaceful progress of the plant towards lasting or transient perfection must not be interrupted. Plants are like self-willed people with whom you can do anything provided you handle them properly. A tranquil eye, an unruffled consistency in doing, each season of the year, each hour of the day, precisely what needs to be done, are perhaps required of nobody more than they are of the gardener.

The good man possessed these qualities to a high degree, which was another reason Ottilie so enjoyed working with him; but for some time he had found it impossible to practise his real vocation with any sense of pleasure. For although he knew perfectly well how to undertake everything demanded by an orchard or a kitchen garden, and was equal to the older type of ornamental garden – as indeed a man will succeed better with this task or that – and although in the management
of an orangery, of flower-bulbs, of carnation and auricula plants, he could have challenged nature herself, yet the new ornamental trees and fashionable flowers were still to some extent strange to him, and of the endless field of botany that time was bringing to light and of the strange names buzzing about in it he had a kind of awe that put him out of humour. What the Lord and Lady had started to bring in the previous year he regarded all the more as useless expenditure and wasteful squandering in that he had to see many a costly plant thrown away and was on no good terms with the market-gardeners, who, as he thought, treated him with something less than perfect honesty.

After experimenting in various ways he had evolved for himself a sort of programme in respect of all this, a programme in which Ottilie encouraged him all the more in that it really depended on Eduard’s returning – in this matter, as in many others, his absence was felt more and more with every day that passed.

As the plants now put down ever more roots and put out ever more branches, Ottilie too felt more rooted to this ground. Just a year ago she had come there as a stranger, as a creature of no importance; how much had she not acquired since that time! But how much, alas, had she not since that time lost again! She had never been so rich and never been so poor. Her feelings of wealth and poverty alternated one with the other with every passing minute, they met and crossed one another in the depths of her soul, and she knew no way out but to attack whatever task lay immediately to hand with sympathetic, with passionate involvement.

That anything particularly dear to Eduard also exercised the strongest claim on her attention may well be imagined; indeed, why should she not hope that he himself, soon returned, would remark with gratitude the loving care she had devoted to him in his absence?

But she was also called upon to work on his behalf in quite
another direction. The principal task she had undertaken was to look after the child, whom she could care for the more completely in that it had been decided to bottle-feed him and not put him out to nurse. In that fair season he was to enjoy the open air, and so she liked best to take him out herself and to carry the sleeping child among the flowers and blossoms that were one day to smile upon his childhood, among the young shrubs and plants that seemed by their own infancy to be destined to grow up with him. When she looked about her she was conscious of how grand and rich a heritage the child was born to, for almost everything the eye could see was one day to belong to him. How desirable it was then that he should grow up before the eyes of his father and mother and be the confirmation of a union renewed and happy.

Ottilie felt all this so genuinely, she thought of it as actually coming to pass, and without considering her own situation in the slightest. Under that clear heaven, in that bright sunshine, it suddenly became clear to her that, in order to become perfect, her love would have to become utterly unselfish; indeed, there were moments when she believed she had already attained this height. She desired only Eduard’s welfare; she believed she was capable of renouncing him, even of never seeing him again, if only she knew he was happy. But for herself she was quite decided never to belong to another.

That autumn would be as glorious as spring was already assured. Every kind of so-called summer flower, all those which cannot cease blooming in autumn and go on bravely growing in face of the cold, asters especially, had been sown in the greatest abundance and, planted out everywhere, were to make a firmament of stars over the earth.

From Ottilie’s Journal

We are in the habit of copying into our journals good ideas we have read or striking remarks we have heard, but if we would also take the trouble to transfer there specific observations, original views, fleeting witty phrases from the letters we receive from our friends, we should acquire a very ample collection. We preserve letters, never to read them again; we finally destroy them one day for reasons of discretion, and so the fairest and most immediate breath of life vanishes for us and for others. I am going to resolve to make good this omission.

So once more the year’s tale is starting again from the beginning. Now we are once more, thanks be to God, at its prettiest chapter. Violets and lilies-of-the-valley are like the chapter headings or vignettes. It always gives us pleasure when we come upon them again in the book of life.

We reproach the poor, especially the youthful poor, if they stand about the streets begging. Do we not notice that they immediately become active as soon as there is something to do? Nature has hardly disclosed its treasures before the children have started making a business of them; there is no longer any begging, each of them offers you a bouquet; he has gathered it before you were awake, and he looks at you with as smiling a face as does the gift he offers. No one puts on the appeal of wretchedness when he feels he has some right to make a request.

Why is the year sometimes so long, sometimes so short, why does it seem so short and yet in retrospect so long? That is how the past year appeared to me, and nowhere more strikingly than in the garden: what is transient and what endures are involved one with another. And yet nothing is so fleeting but it leaves some trace of itself behind.

We can take pleasure even in winter. We feel we can stretch ourselves more freely when the trees stand before us so spectral and transparent. They are nothing, but they likewise conceal nothing. But when buds and blossom come we grow impatient for the full leaf, for the landscape to take on bodily form, and the tree to lean towards us like a living being.

Everything perfect of its kind must transcend its kind: it must become something other, something incomparable. In many of its notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its type and seems to want to show all the feathered tribe what singing really is.

A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is only a
comédie à tiroir
. You pull out one drawer and shut it again and hurry on to the next. Everything, even the good and significant, hangs together very poorly. You must everywhere be starting again from the beginning and would be glad to end anywhere.

CHAPTER TEN

C
HARLOTTE
, for her part, was feeling happy and fit. She found great joy in the hearty boy, whose form and features, which promised so much for the future, were the occupation of her eyes and heart every hour of the day. Through him she found a new and different contact with the world and with her home; her old energetic industry revived; wherever she looked she saw how much had been done over the past year and rejoiced over it. Inspired by a curious desire, she went up to the moss-hut with Ottilie and the child, and when she laid him on the little table as upon a domestic altar and regarded the two empty places, she thought of the times that had been and there arose in her new hope for herself and for Ottilie.

Young women perhaps look modestly around, quietly sizing up this young man or that to see whether they would like him for a husband; but whoever has to make provision for a daughter or a young female ward casts about in a wider sphere. And that was what Charlotte had in mind at that moment, for it seemed to her not impossible that Ottilie might marry the Captain, for had they not sat together side by side in this very hut? It was not unknown to her that that prospect of an advantageous marriage had failed to materialize.

Charlotte climbed further up and Ottilie carried the child. Charlotte was sunk deep in thought. Even on dry land it was possible to be shipwrecked; to recover from it as quickly as possible was a fine and praiseworthy thing. Life was, after all, only a matter of profit and loss. How many plans went awry! How often one was diverted from one’s chosen course! How often we were turned aside from a clearly envisaged goal so as to achieve a higher! The traveller on his way
breaks a wheel and is greatly annoyed by it, yet through this unpleasant accident he makes the most agreeable connections and acquaintances, which then go on to influence his entire life. Fate grants us our desires but it does so in its own fashion, so that it can give us something over and above what we desire.

It was with these and similar reflections that Charlotte was occupied as she climbed to the top of the hill, where their truth was fully confirmed. For the view of the surrounding country was far finer than could ever have been imagined. Every distracting petty feature had been removed, every good feature of the landscape produced by nature and the passing of time stepped unobstructedly forth, and already the young vegetation intended to fill out certain gaps and bind pleasingly together the separate parts of the terrain was putting on green.

The pavilion itself was practically habitable; the view, especially from the upper rooms, was as varied as could be desired. The longer you looked, the more beautiful things you discovered. What changing effects must the different times of the day, the sun and the moon, here produce! How delightful it would be to stay here, and how quickly the desire to construct and create reawoke in Charlotte now she found all the rough work completed! A joiner, an upholsterer, a painter who knew how to handle stencils and gilding: that was all that was needed, and soon the building was ready for use. Cellar and kitchen were quickly fitted out: for at this distance from the mansion you had to have everything you needed installed about you. And so from then on the women lived with the child up in the pavilion and, with this lodging as a new centre, unexpected paths and walks opened up for them in the country round about. The weather was beautiful and now they breathed the free fresh air of a higher region.

Ottilie’s favourite walk, sometimes alone, sometimes with the child, led down to the plane-trees by a comfortable foot-path
and then to the place where one of the boats used for crossing the lake was moored. She sometimes liked to take a trip on the water, only, because Charlotte evidenced some anxiety about taking the child, she always left him behind. But she did not fail to visit the gardener in the walled garden every day and take a friendly interest in the many young plants he was rearing, which had now all been brought out into the open air.

In this fair season, Charlotte found very opportune the visit of an Englishman who had come to know Eduard while on his travels, had met him several times, and was now curious to see the beautiful grounds of which he had heard so much. He brought with him a letter of recommendation from the Count and at the same time introduced a quiet but very pleasant man as his companion. As he now went around the domain, sometimes with Ottilie and Charlotte, sometimes with the gardeners and local huntsmen, sometimes with his companion and sometimes alone, the observations he made showed him to be an amateur and connoisseur of such landscape parks, of which he must himself have laid out many. Although advanced in years, he took a cheerful interest in anything that would enhance the charm of life or augment its significance.