George Sand - George Sand - The Collected Works (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 11)

Monsieur Delmare had all the good qualities and all the failings of these men. He was innocent to childishness concerning certain refinements of the point of honor, yet he was very well able to conduct his affairs to the best possible end without disturbing himself as to the good or evil which might result therefrom to others. His whole conscience was the law; his whole moral code was his rights under the law. His was one of those rigid, unbending probities which never borrow for fear of not returning, and never lend for fear of not recovering. He was the honest man who neither takes nor gives aught; who would rather die than steal a bundle of sticks in the king's forest, but would kill you without ceremony for picking up a twig in his. He was useful to himself alone, harmful to nobody. He took part in nothing that was going on about him, lest he might be compelled to do somebody a favor. But, when he deemed himself in honor bound to do it, no one could go about it with more energy and zeal and a more chivalrous spirit. At once trustful as a child and suspicious as a despot, he would believe a false oath and distrust a sincere promise. As in the military profession, form was everything with him. Public opinion governed him so exclusively that common sense and argument counted for nothing in his decisions, and when he said: "Such things are done," he thought that he had stated an irrefutable argument.

Thus it will be seen that his nature was most antipathetic to his wife's, his heart entirely unfitted to understand her, his mind entirely incapable of appreciating her. And yet it is certain that slavery had engendered in her woman's heart a sort of virtuous and unspoken aversion which was not always just. Madame Delmare doubted her husband's heart overmuch; he was only harsh and she deemed him cruel. There was more roughness than anger in his outbreaks, more vulgarity than impertinence in his manners. Nature had not made him evil-minded: he had moments of compassion which led him to repentance, and in his repentance he was almost sensitive. It was camp life that had raised brutality to a principle in him. With a less refined, less gentle wife he would have been as gentle as a tame wolf; but this woman was disheartened with her fate; she did not take the trouble to try to make it happier.

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As he alighted from his tilbury in the courtyard at Lagny, Raymon's heart failed him. So he was once more to enter that house which recalled such awful memories! His arguments, being in accord with his passions, might enable him to overcome the impulses of his heart, but not to stifle them, and at that moment the sensation of remorse was as keen as that of desire.

The first person who came forward to meet him was Sir Ralph Brown, and when he spied him in his everlasting hunting costume, flanked by his hounds and sober as a Scotch laird, he fancied that the portrait he had seen in Madame Delmare's chamber was walking before his eyes. A few moments later the colonel appeared, and the breakfast was served without Indiana. As he passed through the vestibule, by the door of the billiard room, and recognized the places he had previously seen under such different circumstances, Raymon was so distressed that he could hardly remember why he had come there now.

"Is Madame Delmare really not coming down?" the colonel asked his factotum Lelièvre, with some asperity.

"Madame slept badly," replied Lelièvre, "and Mademoiselle Noun—that devil of a name keeps coming to my tongue!—Mademoiselle Fanny, I mean, just told me that madame is lying down now."

"How does it happen then that I just saw her at her window? Fanny is mistaken. Go and tell madame that breakfast is served; or stay—Sir Ralph, my dear kinsman, be pleased to go up and see for yourself if your cousin is really ill."

While the unfortunate name that the servant had mentioned from habit caused Raymon's nerves a painful thrill, the colonel's expedient caused him a strange sensation of jealous anger.

"In her bedroom!" he thought. "He doesn't confine himself to hanging the man's portrait there, but sends him there in person. This Englishman has privileges here which the husband himself seems to be afraid to claim."

"Don't let that surprise you," said Monsieur Delmare, as if he had divined Raymon's reflections; "Monsieur Brown is the family physician; and then he's our cousin too, a fine fellow whom we love with all our hearts."

Ralph remained absent ten minutes. Raymon was distraught, ill at ease. He did not eat and kept looking at the door. At last the Englishman reappeared.

"Indiana is really ill," he said; "I told her to go back to bed."

He took his seat tranquilly and ate with a robust appetite. The colonel did likewise.

"This is evidently a pretext to avoid seeing me," thought Raymon. "These two men don't suspect it, and the husband is more displeased than worried about his wife's condition. Good! my affairs are progressing more favorably than I hoped."

This resistance rearoused his determination and Noun's image vanished from the dismal hangings, which, at the beginning, had congealed his blood with terror. Soon he saw nothing but Madame Delmare's slender form. In the salon he sat at her embroidery frame, examined the flowers she was making—talking all the while and feigning deep interest—handled all the silks, inhaled the perfume her tiny fingers had left upon them. He had seen the same piece of work before, in Indiana's bedroom; then it was hardly begun, now it was covered with flowers that had bloomed beneath the breath of fever, watered by her daily tears. Raymon felt the tears coming to his own eyes, and, by virtue of some unexplained sympathy, sadly raising his eyes to the horizon, at which Indiana was in the habit of gazing in melancholy mood, he saw in the distance the white walls of Cercy standing out against a background of dark hills.

The colonel's voice roused him with a start.

"Well, my excellent neighbor," he said, "it is time for me to pay my debt to you and keep my promises. The factory is in full swing and the hands are all at work. Here are paper and pencils, so that you can take notes."

Raymon followed the colonel, inspected the factory with an eager, interested air, made comments which proved that chemistry and mechanics were equally familiar to him, listened with incredible patience to Monsieur Delmare's endless dissertations, coincided with some of his ideas, combated some others, and in every respect so conducted himself as to persuade his guide that he took an absorbing interest in these things, whereas he was hardly thinking of them and all his thoughts were directed toward Madame Delmare.

It was a fact that he was familiar with every branch of knowledge, that no invention was without interest for him; moreover he was forwarding the interests of his brother, who had really embarked his whole fortune in a similar enterprise, although of much greater extent. Monsieur Delmare's technical knowledge, his only claim to superiority, pointed out to him at that moment the best method of taking advantage of this interview.

Sir Ralph, who was a poor business man but a very shrewd politician, suggested during the inspection of the factory some economical considerations of considerable importance. The workmen, being anxious to display their skill to an expert, surpassed themselves in deftness and activity. Raymon looked at everything, heard everything, answered everything, and thought of nothing but the love affair that brought him to that place.

When they had exhausted the subject of machinery the discussion fell upon the volume and force of the stream. They went out and climbed upon the dam, bidding the overseer raise the gates and mark the different depths.

"Monsieur," said the man, addressing Monsieur Delmare, who fixed the maximum at fifteen feet, "I beg pardon, but we had it seventeen once this year."