Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle (63 page)

Nothing will make me happier than to arrive at the dance on my husband’s arm. He is so handsome in his uniform. And his manners are so good. He has such confidence in all he says! I am sure he will be given an officer ranking soon. It is not right that so fine a man be only an ensign. I know this was one of the reasons Papa was opposed to the match, but does Papa not remember the days when he was simply an unpublished poet? Why does Papa take no account of anyone’s ambition but his own?

You will be pleased to know that I have found a piano to practise on. I intend to keep up with my musical studies. There is a woman who lives nearby, a Mrs. Saunders, and she has a decent piano in her parlour that she allows me to use every afternoon, if I wish. I want to get back to my compositions. But one needs a quiet life in order to do any serious composing, and I fear that my life has been too busy as of late. I would also like to write a novel. Remember when Papa said he thought I was as strong a writer as he was? Do you think he really meant it?

Your Dédé

My darling Albert,

You did not see me last night, did you? That man who touched the brim of his hat to you as you were crossing the street, that was me.

I will be at all your dances, my beloved. And now that I am Antoine, I can also go to the taverns where you like to drink with your fellow soldiers when you are off duty. There is no finer calling card to the world’s pleasures than the dress of a man.

Your beloved Adèle

Dear François-Victor,

It is simply not true! I do not know what lies Mrs. Saunders is telling you, but you must not believe them. I am married to Albert. It is true that we are not living together at the moment, and that I am living in Mrs. Saunders’s boardinghouse, but I did not want Maman to worry about me. She would worry if she knew that I was in a boardinghouse and not living in a house of my own. So I suppose I did lie about that. But the other, greater lies—you must not believe those. I am Albert’s wife, and I do not go about at night dressed as a man. Why would I do that? Ask yourself, Brother, why I would do something like that when you have never known me to be other than I am.

Your loving sister, Adèle

My dear Papa,

I have not been lying to you. Why do you never believe me?

Adèle

Dear François-Victor,

I am sorry, but if you are not going to believe me, and if you are telling Papa and Maman that I am not being truthful about what my life is like here in Halifax, then I will have to stop writing to you. Consider this your last letter from me until all the fuss dies down. I do not want Maman to come out here in the spring and bring me home. I am a married woman. Maman and Papa no longer have any claim on my liberty.

Thank you for all you have done for me. It sorrows me to think you do not trust me to tell you the truth. But I have faced harder things than that, and I will close my heart to you for the time being, Brother, just so I can continue on without too much suffering. I know you will understand. We Hugos understand suffering, do we not!

I hope your translating work goes well. Do not let Papa tell you that you are too slow. I have always appreciated your measured pace, François-Victor. You have always been a safe haven for me.

Your loving sister, Adèle

My dear Maman,

This will be my last letter for a while, Maman. You know that I love you, but I fear that if you don’t trust me, and I cannot convince you to do so, then I have little to say to you for the time being.

I simply want to be with the man I love, and have there be no argument about this. I know you will understand, Maman. Once you think on it for a while, you will understand.

I hope Papa is still letting you off the island. It would be good for you to be in Paris, Maman. Your true life is there. Just as my true life is here.

I embrace you.

Your Dédé

Dear Mrs. Saunders,

Please excuse my damaged English. The rent, which I am not paying, will be paying soon.

Mademoiselle Lewly

My darling Albert,

I was too bold, wasn’t I? I walked right into that house after you, right into the middle of that dance. Perhaps I wanted to be caught. But I certainly did not want to be pulled from the dance floor. You almost tore my arm out of its socket, you handled me so roughly! I also did not need to be dragged from the house. I would have left of my own accord if you’d simply asked me to go. I did not need to be dragged into the Poor House cemetery and be berated by you. I was not Adèle but Antoine, and Antoine has done nothing to receive such venom from your lips.

It does no good to threaten me with the law. What would the police do? If I can be Antoine, I could be Pierre or Sébastien. There is no stopping me. I will make you understand that you must love me. I will not leave you alone. I cannot. You must see by now that I cannot. And there is no escape. I know where you are. If your posting is changed, I will hear of it and follow you.

My love will not be denied.

It is my destiny to be with you, as it is yours to be with me. You cannot flee your destiny. I will always be right behind you.

Your beloved Adèle

My darling Albert,

What good do you think it did to send the policeman? I did not listen to a word he said. I will not do as he requests. And now, I will simply leave Mrs. Saunders’s boardinghouse and find other lodgings. The police will not find me again.

Your beloved Adèle

Dear Mrs. Saunders,

I must go. Take the dresses. I leave the dresses for the money I should be paying you. They were once made fine by a perfect Paris dressmaker. Please be having them.

Mademoiselle Lewly

I
AM NOT EXPECTING
to ever see her again, but she comes one night after I have had my supper. The tray is still on my desk, and when Adèle, my cook, comes to the door of my bedroom, I think she has come simply to take the tray away.

“She’s here,” she says, hissing like a snake.

“George?”

“No.
Her
.” Adèle fixes me with her gaze, as though the intensity of her expression will somehow convey her meaning to me. I hear slow footsteps on the staircase outside the bedroom. Whoever is here has been let in the house already and is on her way up to see me.

“The Channel Islands,” says Adèle desperately, and just as I realize what she’s trying to tell me, Madame Hugo enters my room.

She has changed. She has grown stout. Her dark hair is a weave of grey. She wears a dull-coloured shawl against the chill of the evening air.

“Adèle.”

“Charles.”

The other Adèle is blocking Madame Hugo’s entrance into my chamber. “That will be all,” I say to her, and she backs reluctantly out of the room. I hear her footsteps hesitate on the staircase, and I walk over and deliberately shut the door behind Adèle.

I am not dressed for company, am wearing only trousers and a shirt. Not even a waistcoat, and my shirt not even tucked in.

“Adèle,” I say, just wanting to hear her name out loud again.

“Charles.” She extends her hand. I take it. Her skin is cool from the outdoors.

“Please, sit.” I wave my hand towards the chair by the fireplace, and she crosses the room and takes a seat. I perch on the edge of my desk chair. My heart is thudding so noisily in my chest that I think I may faint.

“I thought you were in exile,” I say.

“Victor is in exile. And it’s self-imposed. I have returned to Paris for the time being.”

“You’ve been in Paris awhile, then?”

“No, not very long.”

The lie makes us both uncomfortable, and just as if it were a bad smell in the room, we wait for it to pass.

I have no rights to Adèle anymore. I can’t act petulantly, burst out with an imagined affront, beg for her affections. I grip the arms of my chair to steady myself.

“It is as though we have died,” I say, unable to stop myself.

Adèle smiles at my vehemence. “We have, Charles,” she says. “Don’t you feel it? We have died and this is the afterlife.”

My cook brings us some wine without my asking her.

“To warm you up, madame,” she says to Adèle, and then she looks pointedly at me to make sure I haven’t missed the allusion.

Luckily, Adèle Hugo isn’t paying any attention to my cook, and I am able to banish her from my room once again.

I pour a glass of wine for Adèle and take it over to her.

“Thank you.” She sips at it and looks around my room, examining my desk, the window, the pictures on the wall. My room suddenly feels terribly inadequate.

“I inherited the house from my mother,” I say. “It is not something I chose for myself.”

“You are busy, Charles,” she says, nodding towards my desk. “You are a man of industry, not idleness. I am glad.”

It was all I could do after the affair ended. I let my work consume me, feed off my bones. I have nothing else. But writing feels entirely fraudulent in comparison to love. The moment one writes about something is the moment one ceases to understand it. To write is to control experience, and to control experience is to lose its meaning. I am not saved by my work. It is just hard proof that I have lost my way.

“There was a line I particularly liked in
Livre d’amour
.” She waits only a moment before summoning it. “Time, divine old man, fades all honours.”

“So you read the poems, then?”

Adèle smiles and does not answer, sips her wine.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“I have to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

Adèle takes another sip of her wine. I gulp half my glass and spill several drops on my trousers.

“But before I ask you something,” she says, “I have to tell you something.”

She tells me the story of little Adèle’s voyage to Canada.

“A month at sea, all alone! That is so courageous,” I say.

“Yes, it would have been courageous if Pinson had loved her,” says Adèle. “But he didn’t, and so it becomes an action more allied to madness than bravery.”

“How did you discover the lie?”

“Dédé’s landlady wrote to François-Victor because she was worried about my daughter’s sanity.” Adèle takes a sip of wine and smiles. “She called herself Mademoiselle Lewly in Halifax because she was afraid people would recognize her real surname.”

I cannot stop myself.

“You mean Victor is famous in Canada as well?” I grind my heels into the carpet with rage.

“Of course. But his fame has done nothing for his temper. Those years on Guernsey he was a tyrant. No wonder she wanted to escape.”

“And now she has.” I pour us some more wine.

“Yes. Walking about a city not her own, using a false name, and wearing male dress.” Adèle pauses for a moment. “She does this in imitation of George Sand. She greatly admires her writing. For you see, she wants to be a writer like her father. And you.” She takes another sip of wine, then turns her head to the window, where the wind knocks against the glass. It is autumn and the trees are flinging down their leaves, challenging winter to a duel. “She has always remembered you fondly.”

I had thought of little Adèle as my spiritual child. I regretted deeply that her father saw fit to keep me from her after I had confessed to him my affair with her mother. I missed my godchild. I missed the person she might have become had I still known her, the person I might have become had I been continually graced with her sweet presence.

“I wish she had been mine,” I say.

Adèle turns back towards me.

“Victor always thought she was yours,” she says. “That was part of the problem. He loved her less because of that. He paid her no attention. She suffered from the lack of a father’s affection. I hold him to blame for this whole escapade in Halifax.”

Once this might have caused me joy—to hear of Victor’s failings—but it has come at the cost of Adèle’s happiness, and so it brings little comfort to know of his neglect. Instead, I wish it had been different. If I had to lose Adèle and Dédé to Victor, then life with him should have made them both profoundly happy. That would have been the only compensation for my loss.

There is a knock at the bedroom door and Adèle the cook comes in to replace the wine with coffee. She is now on her best behaviour, nods deferentially to Adèle Hugo on her way out of the room. She also seems miraculously sober, probably because she doesn’t want to miss a word. I’m sure she is listening outside the door. For once I wish that she were drinking, that she would stumble downstairs and pass out at the kitchen table as usual.

“Victor is furious,” says Adèle. “He wants to have her committed to an insane asylum. He says that she has inherited the family trait of madness, that she is like his brother Eugène.”

“Well, it’s a good thing she doesn’t come home, then,” I say.

I had forgotten the story of the Hugos’ wedding, how Victor’s brother went insane, screaming out his love for Adèle as he was dragged from the church.

“Your marriage didn’t start well,” I say.

“Don’t,” says Adèle. “Please, Charles, leave the past where it is. I can’t stand to go back there. I have made mistakes. We both know what those were. It won’t change anything to bring them up now.”

I don’t know what mistakes Adèle has made. She’s never said. But it slowly dawns on me that she is referring to the fact that she ended the affair with me, that perhaps remaining with Victor was the mistake. But how was she to know he would go into exile? How was she to know the effect this would have on her youngest daughter?

With Victor there was always something. He was a volatile character, his ego charging relentlessly ahead, his friends and family trailing in its wake. Obsessively writing his books, always pumped up on his own virility.

“Do you think Adèle inherited our passion?” I ask.

“The strength of it?”

“The futility of it.”

Adèle lurches from her chair, her body older and slower but still driven by the force of her emotions. She kneels on the floor in front of my chair, rests her head on my lap.

“Charles,” she says, “our love was the greatest pleasure in my life.”

It makes me so sad to hear her utter those words, to know that her life after me has been so joyless. I stroke her hair with my hand. It is no longer silken to the touch, but coarse, like the mane of a horse.

“But if you added up the hours we were together,” I say, “it might not even equal a single week.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

And I suddenly see that she is right. It doesn’t matter. We loved each other. It is the simplest of truths, and it is not tied to a chronology. Time would not have increased what we felt.

I pat her shoulders awkwardly. Her bones are well padded with flesh. My hand is damp with perspiration and sticks to the fabric of her dress.

“You have always been with me,” I say. “I have never left you.”

I suddenly think of Charlotte, of the freedom I felt when I was being her, and of how she was created within my love affair with Adèle and now is shipwrecked there.

Adèle lifts her head from my lap, struggles to regain her composure. She pushes weakly off from me and drifts slowly back to her side of the room.

“Adèle?”

She secures the combs in her hair, smoothes the front of her dress with her hands.

“I came here to ask for your help, Charles,” she says. “I came here to ask you to lend me the money to travel to Halifax and bring my daughter home.”

“Of course. I will give you whatever you need. Whatever I have is yours.”

“But I wasn’t quick enough,” says Adèle. “It seems that Dédé has already left Canada. Her landlady wrote to say that she has sailed from Halifax.”

“And gone where?”

“I don’t know.” Adèle looks out the window again. “She is now well and truly lost to me. But you can still help me, Charles,” she says.

“How?”

“You can help me not to remember the past. The pain of what I have done is too great.”

We look at each other. She is still beautiful. She is still my Adèle. I can see it in her face. It flashes up, then disappears again.

I understand everything. She thought she was making the correct moral choice in staying with Victor. She thought she was protecting her children. But now she has one daughter who is dead and another, her favourite, who is possibly mad and lost on the other side of the ocean. Her sons are well, but their lives too have been made wretched by exile. They survive. They do not prosper.

Her husband is a fire who uses all those around him as fuel for his work.

There is no recovering from Victor.

“I entrust our love to you, Charles,” says Adèle. “I need some peace. I need to forget. But I would like you to remember. For both of us.”

When it is time for her to leave, I walk Adèle down the stairs to the front door. Then I walk her out onto the cobblestones. The night is cold, but she insists on going back to her hotel by foot, pushing me away when I try to accompany her.

“If my daughter can wander the rough-and-tumble streets of the New World,” she says, “then surely I can negotiate the familiar avenues of Paris.”

She holds out her hand. I take it one last time in my own and hold onto it for as long as I dare.

“Goodbye, Charles.”

“Goodbye, Adèle.”

When she turns and walks away, I want to run after her, throw myself in front of her, tell her that I love her, that it isn’t too late to leave Victor, that she could still come and live with me. We could still be happy.

But I let her go without protest. I turn and walk back into my house, close the door solidly behind me, plod slowly back upstairs to my bedroom.

The room still smells of her—perfumed soap and sweat and the mustiness of age. I sit down in the chair she was sitting in by the fireplace. The fabric is still warm from her body. I close my eyes and imagine it is her embrace.

When I open my eyes, I see, on my desk, the glass of cognac that Adèle the cook has poured for me in my absence, showing a sensitivity of which I had not believed her capable. I cross the room, pick up the glass, and return to the chair by the fireplace to sip the cognac.

Outside, the night continues, the city continues. Adèle is probably halfway back to the hotel by now. I didn’t have the nerve to ask her where she was staying. It is unlikely to be our old haunt, the Hôtel Saint-Paul—she would have more sense than that—but I like thinking of her there nonetheless. Perhaps she has a room high up, near the roof, with a lovely view out over the city. There would be the lights of Paris below her, and the starlight above.

I remember making love with Adèle in the room she shared with her daughter. I remember all the times we dragged Dédé with us through the orchard in the Jardin du Luxembourg, remember how she played in the dust at our feet while we whispered endearments and kissed each other. She would have heard everything, absorbed everything of who we were in those moments. How could she be anything other than our child—Adèle’s and mine? Her hunger for love was our hunger. We have fashioned this longing in her. We have created her despair. She is living out the torment of her mother’s love for me. There will be no happiness for her, and this is what is impossible for my Adèle to bear—that she sacrificed her own happiness for her children’s future, and instead, their future happiness has been compromised by her sacrifice.

I never see Adèle Hugo again. She dies of heart trouble in Brussels at the end of the summer, and she is buried in the cemetery in Villequier beside her eldest daughter, Léopoldine. Only her brother accompanies her body to the grave. Victor doesn’t attend his own wife’s funeral, preferring to remain in exile.

I hear this via Paris gossip, not through anyone I know.

After her death, I read again her letters to me. I walk to our old houses on Notre-Dame-des-Champs. I sit on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the heat of the day and weep into my hands. There is no consolation when the walls that hold up one’s world start to give way.