“Indeed!” Charles murmured. “Are they local? Do you know them?”
“I don’t have that honor, and I regret it! I’ve never seen them before.”
“She’s lovely, isn’t she?”
“Which one?” asked Monsieur Palanque, smiling.
“Oh, the brunette, of course!” said Charles, reproachfully.
A porter carrying their baggage was following the two female travelers. On their instructions, he deposited his burden not far from Charles Christiani’s suitcase.
The Boyardville’s siren whistled three times, amid a jet of white vapor. The vessel was about to cast off.
“I’ll leave you to it!” said Monsieur Palanque, hurriedly. “Have a pleasant stay in Oléron and a safe journey back to Paris!”
A few minutes later the Boyardville, exiting from La Rochelle harbor, left behind the celebrated scene of keeps and lanterns and set a course southwards.
The two women had installed themselves in their armchair on deck. In order to get closer to them, Charles had only to sit down in the one that he had reserved. The passengers were not very numerous. Sheltered in a sort of alcove, the three first-class passengers were relatively isolated.
Charles listened to his neighbors’ conversation. They were speaking quite freely, and there was no need for him to strain his ears to hear them. The blonde woman—who was a very pale blonde—was making almost all of the conversation by herself. Her quavering and languid voice was indefatigable. Charles found its soft inflexions irritating. As for the brunette, she limited herself to replying soberly, in order not to be impolite, whenever she was forced to do so by a “Don’t you think so?” or a “Wouldn’t you say, Rita?” She spoke calmly, in a low-pitched and musical voice.
So her name was Rita—and her friend was Geneviève. There was nothing to inform Charles of their surnames, but the manner in which they talked about La Rochelle made it easy for him to understand that they had just spent 48 hours visiting the town. Then certain phrases revealed to him that they were returning to Oléron, where they had already been staying for some time, following that instructive excursion. There was mention of tennis matches. The words “Saint-Trojan” recurred several times; that was where they were returning, and where they were staying. There was mention on the blonde side of “my uncle,” “my cousins” and “my brother,” and on the brunette side of “my mother” and “my parents.” Names were mentioned in familiar terms—including, among others, Luc de Certeuil.
Singularly satisfied, as a man always is when a man finds the connivance of chance in his favor, Charles Christiani considered introducing himself immediately. It seemed more appropriate, though, to be patient and to await some opportunity that would doubtless crop up to furnish him with an admissible pretext. He resolved that, if necessary, he would contrive that pretext.
Chance, however, continued to favor to him—so strangely that the young man began to it as the marvelous assurance of a providential hand steering events to the benefit of his desires and happiness.
The conversation of Madame Geneviève X and Mademoiselle Rita Z faded away. Its initial impetus exhausted, the chatter became sparse, all the more so because Rita never made any contribution to its alimentation. The large boat rocked gently at the whim of a tranquil sea. A pleasantly fresh breeze ran through the air. The girl picked up a bag, took a book out of it, and opened it, saying: “I have to finish this.”
Now that book was none other than Charles Christiani’s latest work: Les Quatre Sergents de La Rochelle—the short but substantial account he had written on the request of an editor, which evidently constituted a handy little book for the use of tourists.
He saw—with what delight!—the beautiful unknown absorb herself in reading his work, devouring the pages that remained to be read. It was a profound joy for him, of a rare quality. Rita, this mysterious Rita, did not know that he was there, close by, and she was providing him with the feast of an undeniably sincere admiration—a girl who had subjugated him at first glance, and whom he had suddenly placed in advance of all the women in the world.
Eventually, Rita closed the book and, placing it mechanically against her cheek, lost herself in thought.
“Finished?” asked Geneviève. “Still entranced?”
The low-pitched voice pronounced: “It’s really very, very good”—upon which Charles estimated that if he were going to intervene, the moment had come. The praise that Rita had already conferred rendered the situation a trifle embarrassing for him, for her and for Geneviève, who had revealed the “entrancement” of the reader. To let the young women proceed any further with the eulogy might stupidly compromise the continuation of the adventure. His delicacy, moreover, protested.
He got to his feet, took off his hat and said, with a politeness mingled with confusion: “Pardon me, Madame, and you too, Mademoiselle, but I have quite unwittingly discovered coincidences that enchant me: that you are bound, as I am, for Saint-Trojan; that we have a friend in common, Luc de Certeuil; and, to cap it all, Mademoiselle, the book that you have just finished reading is by an author to whom I am very attached. Permit me, therefore to introduce myself to you: Charles Christiani.”
As he had anticipated and feared, his intrusion caused a considerable disturbance. They had begun by staring at him in astonishment; then, as his explanation continued, their cheeks had colored brightly; and now he could see them in front of him, as red as two red roses, their young bosoms heaving.
“Monsieur,” said Rita, “I’m charmed…”
Charles immediately began speaking again. He feared the embarrassed silence that might otherwise have left both of them speechless. He had also had an idea—an idea that would surely acquaint him with the name of his adorable admirer. “It would be a genuine pleasure for me,” he said, taking out his pen, “to inscribe this little volume for you, since it has not displeased you. Will you give me your authorization?”
Rita, smiling, shook her head. “I would be flattered by that, Monsieur, but the book doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my friend here, Madame Le Tourneur, who will doubtless be very happy for you to inscribe it to her.”
The historian for the Quatre Sergents bowed, constraining his smile to remain on his lips, even though the smile was not disposed to do so. For Madame Le Tourneur, instead of protesting and immediately offering the volume to Rita, maintained an exasperating silence.
“I shall, therefore, be glad to send you a copy of your own,” he said, turning to the girl. He was on the point of asking her for her name and address, for this purpose, but he stopped himself; the bad taste of the device restrained him from employing it, in violation of the rules of etiquette that were still observed, thank God, in his family and his society.
He wrote a few lines of classic gallantry on the title page, beneath the name of Geneviève Le Tourneur—after which the latter, charmed, read the dedication, made Rita read it, and finally replaced it in the bag from which it had emerged, whose tan leather bore her initials: G. L. T. None of the other bags and cases was marked with any identification.
It’s truly inexcusable for me to show myself so rarely at salons, Charles thought. It’s quite idiotic. Otherwise, I’d have made her acquaintance a long time ago. No matter! She’s exquisite; she admires me a little; she is, indubitably, from an excellent family. The weather’s fine! God, how fine it is!
It was, as is evident, the “thunderbolt” in all its magnificence. This time, though, in complete contrast to the most common cases, everything seemed to prove that the thunderbolt had fallen in both directions at the same time. Two flashes of lightning, sprung from two inner beings, had intersected—so neatly that the exchange of sparks had struck both of them simultaneously with a powerful, unexpected and delightful commotion. That is very rare.
Poor Geneviève Le Tourneur, having assumed the responsibility of chaperoning Rita, quickly perceived the truth. She made that obvious by fidgeting, moving her fingers over the keyboard of an imaginary piano, and assumi
ng a fearful expression in her features. But Rita did not notice that at all, or did not care. It seemed that Geneviève no longer existed, so far as she was concerned, as she abandoned herself to the joys of a dialogue that was admirably banal, but in which she and Charles took great pleasure in listening to one another talk, by turns.
Charles could not doubt Rita’s sentiments. To tell the truth, given the condition of his heart, he would not have doubted them even if those sentiments had not been those he desired.
Geneviève, being a woman and a disinterested observer, was not deceived in that regard—so she made her anxiety and reprobation manifest, albeit in vain. Neglected, she ended up getting to her feet and, darting a glance full of warnings at Rita, drew away at a nonchalant pace—only to come back almost immediately to say: “We’re arriving at the Ile d’Aix.”
She seemed glad to break up the intimacy of that sweet conversation, to which the Greeks would have given the musical name oaristys.3
Charles and Rita seemed to wake up. “Already!” the exclaimed, in unison.
The boat changed direction. The Ile d’Aix appeared to them. A sailor circulated among the groups of passengers and told them that the stopover, unusually, would be half an hour rather than a few minutes, because an exceptionally important cargo had to be unloaded. Any tourists who wanted to disembark there were authorized to do so.
“I know the Ile d’Aix,” said Rita. “I visited it last year with my parents—but I’d gladly see it again.”
“I don’t know it myself,” said Geneviève, “but do you think that half an hour is time enough…”
“It’s very tiny. One can easily take account of its general aspect. Monsieur Christiani has never been there either. Would you like to go with us, Monsieur?”
“At your disposal!” the man in question accepted, joyfully. He admired Rita’s decisiveness, the contained ardor that emanated from her slender person, the dark fire in her eyes and—when he looked her full in the face—all the honesty, will-power and occasional enigmatic shadows of profound thought that those eyes revealed: a consciousness of actions, their importance and consequences. This young girl was “someone:” a force, an intelligence, an energy. A true woman, above all, to whom he felt himself drawn by a thousand influences: to her adventurous spirit; to the feminine mystery he divined within her. There was also something else acting to draw him magnetically toward so much grace and beauty: the muffled conviction—perhaps illusory—that they were both, in some unknown fashion, from the same sentimental country; that the same climate regulated their temperament; and that, speaking the same language, their hearts had a common fatherland in the Europe of love.
“Let’s go!” she said.
The Boyardville came about, its engines reversing, then going forwards, with bells ringing and the rudder-chain grinding. Mooring-ropes were thrown ashore. A crowd of passengers formed at the cutaway, ready to disembark.
They were able to study the walls of the fortifications and, higher up, in front of the distant semaphore-station, two harshly white twin towers, one surmounted by a lantern-light, the other by a screen of red glass.
The gangplank linked the steamship to the extremity of a pier.
“Come on, quickly!” said Rita. “We’ll go through the village and take a look at the fields…”
They accelerated their steps and rapidly drew ahead of the bulk of the tourists.
Deserted drawbridges. Unmanned sentry-posts. A verdant and shady parade-ground framed by geometrically-sloped embankments. Beyond that, a white and silent village, where they breathed an air that was no longer that of the present day.
Addressing herself to Charles, Geneviève said: “It was from here, wasn’t it, that Napoleon departed for Saint Helena?”
The young historian summarized that tragic chapter of the imperial epic in a few words. He did so briefly, careful not to make any ostentatious display of his knowledge. The subject was, however, of some personal interest—not because he had the slightest inclination to write about Napoléon I, but because the Emperor’s history was linked to that of his ancestor, the corsair captain César Christiani. Like Napoléon, César had been born at Ajaccio, and on the same day—with the result that “the other” had always protected him, in memory of what seemed to him to be a fateful conjunction.
There could be no question of visiting the Napoleonic museum installed in the building known as “the Emperor’s House;” there was not enough time. They contented themselves with walking less rapidly as they passed before its time-worn door, with its worn steps and its humble columns, by which one might say that the man of Waterloo had left France never to return—alive, at least.
More drawbridges, or rather bridges that had once been capable of being raised. Moats full of stagnant water. And, before the three visitors, bordered to the right by a graceful cove, in the background by fleecy woods and to the left by military earthworks covered in grass, a little sunlit plain.
The entire island, or very nearly, was there.
“There’s no point going any further,” Rita declared. “We don’t have time. It’s regrettable, because over there, on the far side of the woods, one has the most beautiful view over the straits of Antioch, the Ile de Ré, La Rochelle and so on. Let’s not think about it.”
“We have to go back to the harbor,” Geneviève decided. “We only have 13 minutes.”
“I know a short cut. Going that way, to our left, and along the shore, we’ll arrive very quickly—and on the way we’ll see the beach, which is pleasant. Last year, we stayed here for three days, my parents and I; I could have stayed for weeks! But Papa was bored…”
“And he wouldn’t hide it!” joked Madame Le Tourneur. “What a bear!”
Rita frowned almost imperceptibly, and her expression darkened again. She walked beside Charles, elbow to elbow, along the narrow and shady street. Few women walk along the by-ways of life with such a harmonious stride.
Charles, already sensitive to everything that the slender young girl felt, enveloped her with a gaze as loving as it was attentive, but without daring to question her on the subject of the father who was “a bear.”
She raised her head again and smiled gaily. “Look!” she said. “You see: the Ile d’Oléron!”
They had passed through an archway that pierced an embankment, and they found themselves confronted by the sea.
On the horizon, a solid line terminated by the vertical streak of a lighthouse, separated the vast luminous sky from the green extent of the waves.
“Are you sure this is a short cut?” asked Charles, consulting his watch.
“Let’s hurry!” said Madame Le Tourneur.
Rita had made no reply. To begin with, she followed a winding path which snaked between stone blocks not far from the shore, through a wilderness of grass that was growing tall and dry. It seemed to be zigzagging at will.
Suddenly, behind the mass of outcrops beyond which the summits of the semaphore and the twin lighthouses could be seen, the siren of the Boyardville was heard three times—the signal of an imminent departure.
“There it goes!” grumbled Geneviève. “I was certain of it. We’re in trouble now!”
Charles assumed that the boat would whistle again before putting to sea. Was that not the custom?
Rita continued on her way silently. Her companions, moving in Indian file, could not see her face.
As they arrived on the beach, where several bathers were frolicking, the bow of a great steamship was displayed, drawing away, seeming to emerge from a mass of trees and rocks that had hidden it until then.
“Oh well!” said Charles, placidly. “It’s the Boyardville.”
“Oh, Rita! Really!” groaned Madame Le Tourneur.
“I’m extremely sorry, my dear Geneviève.”
“Ah!” said the young woman, annoyed. “What are we going to do now? Yes, it’s funny—you can laugh!”
“But I’m not laughing, Geneviève. What can I do about it, though? We’ve misse
d the boat—it happens to everyone…”
“We’re expected at Saint-Trojan,” complained the young woman, reproachfully. “They’ll be waiting for us, for sure, in Boyardville…” She lowered her eyelids before Rita’s gaze; the latter was still smiling, but her eyes had taken on a certain fixity. Their softness, without any deception, revealed such profound and absolute calmness that she had become imperious.
“And there’s our luggage!” Geneviève recriminated, in a defeated tone.
Charles said nothing. An immense joy overwhelmed him. He was certain that Rita had just executed a preconceived plan. She was not the sort of person to make that kind of mistake, and she knew exactly what she wanted. What had she wanted? To spend 24 hours with him, in the retreat of this silent and restful isle. For all three of them knew full well that the Boyardville would not come back until the following afternoon, heading for Oléron. For what reason had she decided upon this somewhat romantic subterfuge?
Was she romantic? Charles hesitated to believe it. No, no, if she had done it, it was because she had understood that such a good opportunity might not reappear for a long time and that, once back in Saint-Trojan, she would not be in control of the situation to the extent she was today, reclaimed as she would be by the obligations of society—curious, malicious, gossipy society—under the authority of a father who was not indulgent. Did she want to study Charles at her leisure, better than she could in any other circumstances? Had she simply yielded to a desire to prolong a tender intimacy that Geneviève’s presence sanctioned without inconveniencing it unduly? What did it matter? There was so much independence in that undoubtedly-premeditated action, put so firmly at the service of such an inclination, that the dazzled Charles was bowled over by it. He waited for his throat to unclench so that he might speak. In any case, they had started walking again, and the village was suddenly very close, as they rounded a knoll.
“I’ll send telegrams to Boyardville and Saint-Trojan,” Rita said. “The hotelier in Boyardville will hold on to our luggage until tomorrow.”
The Master of Light Page 2
