The Necessary Evil

by André Couvreur

  Everything was clear and precise in the atmosphere, as in her soul; there was an equal bliss on high, on earth and within her. She could not see her sun any longer, but it was present; she could feel its benevolent effluvia passing, and it bathed her in its calm warm light. Her sun was her love for Georges Ponviane—a love that had now received an official consecration, since the engagement of the two young people had been declared.

  Oh, the dear affection of the tall young man! How that sweet and powerful sentiment filled her with an intimate peace, an absolute quietude, and put an end to the surprises of the hereditary nervousness that had tormented her youth to such an extent! Now, Madeleine no longer felt the desire to laugh or cry at everything, as before. A great joy had put her nerves to sleep.

  Her last emotion—violent, of course—dated from the day when Georges Ponviane’s father had come to make Madame de Jancy party to his son’s proposal. The manufacturer had not had recourse to the preliminaries generally employed by prudent bourgeois who have the terrain explored by a third person. He had come directly to the point, as in business. He had hitched up his victoria and had presented himself at the Château des Bolois.

  Madame de Jancy and her daughter had been in the drawing room, the coolness of rainy weather not permitting them to take up their favorite location that day. They were alone, for Madame Bise, always in a fever of agitation, had gone to Paris in order to squander the energy of her southern temperament at the feminist conference. Madeleine and her mother, absorbed by reading, had raised their heads on hearing the sound of carriage wheels screeching on the gravel of the driveway. Who could it be? It was not a day for reception. The valet had come to say that it was a gentleman asking to see Madame de Jancy. At the same time he held out a card that Madeleine was unable to read, in spite of her keen curiosity.

  “I’ll go,” she had said to her mother, who had not tried to retain her. As she went out, however, she almost bumped into an elegant individual about sixty years old, very distinguished in appearance, the sight of whom had made her shiver.

  There was no doubt that the gentleman was Georges Ponviane’s father. There was, on a larger scale, the same silhouette, the same carriage of the head, the same slightly hooked nose and above all, she had recognized the same dimple in the cheeks when he smiled—for he had smiled, the elegant old gentleman, as he moved aside to let her pass, bowing graciously. My God, what had he come to do at the Château des Bolois?

  Having gone up to her bedroom she had fallen tremulously into a chair, torturing her brain with a thousand imaginations, each more baroque than the last. Might the gentleman have come to tell Madame de Jancy that he knew everything, and that he could not permit a young woman to court his son in that way? Had he brought back the bouquet of violets negligently abandoned by her on a seat in the church? Or—for the two families had acquaintances in common—had he come to ask for Madeleine’s hand in marriage for someone other than Georges?

  She did not suppose, although it was the only really plausible possibility, that the father had come to plead his own cause—and, mad with anxiety, compressing her breast, raised up by the beating of her heart, she had persuaded herself that the interview could not fail to end in disaster. However, the gentleman had not given the impression of being ill-intentioned; she had even thought that there had been something affable, good and protective in his greeting and his dimple.

  At the window, she had watched for the visitor. He had come out of the drawing-room, escorted back to his carriage by Madame de Jancy. They seemed to be on good terms with one another. Before climbing into his victoria, Georges’ father had lingered for a moment, chatting. His gestures indicated that the view they had before them was the subject of their conversation. Nothing terrible in that! Then, when Monsieur Ponviane had installed himself in his carriage to depart, a handshake had terminated the meeting.

  Right! Madeleine’s heart had settled down. Quickly, she had gone back down to the drawing room to resume her reading, quite astonished by the silence of her mother, who did not say a word to her about the visit. Strangely enough, though, all afternoon and all evening, Madame de Jancy’s gaze, which had weighed upon her, seemed to be charged with a tender fluid, and her goodnight kiss had been longer than usual,

  O charm of tender, simple hearts, how Madeleine had been cradled in the days that followed, how she had been enveloped by the instinctive atmosphere of love with which mothers surround their children in hours of separation or illness!

  Time had passed thus; Madame de Jancy still said nothing. One morning, on the table in the vestibule where the valet placed the post before distributing it to its addressees, Madeleine, having come down early, had perceived, among other letters, one sealed with red wax, bearing on the envelope the monogram of their notary in Paris. The sight of that letter, which would have left her indifferent at any other time, excited her.

  That’s the information arriving, she had thought.

  She picked up the letter in her delicate fingers, turned it over and over again, held it up to the light to search for the opacity of the writing through the translucency of the paper. She could not see anything; the envelope was too thick. Then she had slid the missive back among the others and, criticizing herself for a culpable curiosity, had fled into the grounds.

  That day, Madame de Jancy still remained mute. Madeleine kept anxious watch on her mother’s gaze. Was the news bad, then, to occasion such obstinate silence? At table she did not eat and submitted sadly to the disapproval of her entourage. Someone was hunting in the vicinity; gunshots made the valley rumble—perhaps it was Georges! She shivered at the sound of the rifles.

  The next day, Madame Bise being absent, she and her mother had been working by the waterside, as they were today. Madame de Jancy began: “My child, I have something to tell you...”

  What a furious emotion had sounded the charge for her heart! One might have heard it hammering against the walls of her thorax. But the anguish soon turned to delight. She scarcely heard the Madame de Jancy’s affectionately moderated words, as she eulogized Monsieur Ponviane and his son.

  “In any case,” her mother concluded, with a hint of malice, “you know Monsieur Georges better than I do, and you like him!”

  “I know him?” she said.

  She judged her conduct stupid and burst into sobs. Her mother wept too, and those combined tears calmed Madeleine’s nerves as a brief shower refreshes a tense stormy atmosphere.

  The most difficult one to convince was Madame Bise. She almost had an apoplectic fit that evening, when she returned from the feminist congress, her brain overheated by oratory conflict, and heard Madame de Jancy submit her intentions and those of her daughter. What! She had other plans, the dear aunt! They should have spoken to her sooner! Things were done differently in the Midi. One went about them with less Tartuffery. She did not mince her words, and the jet of her speech offended Madame de Jancy, who was ordinarily very reserved before the aunt with the inheritance.

  “Georges Ponviane! What is he? A manufacturer? That’s nice! Different, in the Midi! That’s not a marriage! Talk to me about Armand Caresco…that’s a marriage…but Ponviane! Ponviane!”

  Deep down she had allowed the idea to flourish of a union with the surgeon. It was really for that reason that she had invited the surgeon to come and to return to Les Bolois.

  As she was a good woman, however, whose resentments flew away as rapidly as her ideas, the next day, she invited the Ponvianes to dinner. That was the delightful and charming consecration in which, since then, Madeleine had allowed herself to bask, as she was this afternoon, while gazing at the calm, silvery lake, the golden leaves and the blue infinity of the firmament.

  “Bonjour,” said a deep and musical voice.

  Georges Ponviane appeared at the entrance to the summer-house. He was wearing an elegant hunting costume in pale gray velvet, slightly faded in the trousers. The absence of gaiters revealed the gracious line of a vigorous leg. For the moment, large straw
hat was hiding his dark eyes and shading his pink, lightly sun-tanned cheeks. He had a cavalier bearing and an altogether gentlemanly appearance. He was groomed without exaggeration, sufficiently masculine. His brown moustache was sufficiently turned up to allow healthy teeth to gleam. The ensemble spoke of strength, grace and simplicity. His astonishingly soft gaze immediately went to offer a caress of welcome to Madeleine, who blushed.

  Then, perfectly elegant, he lifted a game-bag off his shoulder, through the mesh of which feathers and fur projected, set it down with his rifle in a corner, took off his hat and came to kiss Madame de Jancy’s hand.

  Madame Bise, extracted from her doze, quite dazed and not wanting anyone to suppose for a moment that she could have been distracted from the powerful interest offered by the reading of her report, tumbled out of her hammock, contracting her features, masked with puffiness in order to make herself seem wide awake.

  “Pardon me, I was just reading something interesting,” she said to Georges, as he bowed to her.

  Georges took the report and read the title.

  “Oho! The feminist congress! A serious question, my dear Madame, well worthy of interesting a serious mind like yours.”

  Madame Bise became radiant. Georges thought that she was even more stupid than she seemed.

  “And you, Madeleine,” he added, turning to the young woman, “Are you a feminist?”

  She leaned toward him and replied in a whisper: “I’m content to be a wife…a wife for you.”

  Madame Bise did not hide a disapproving moue. The amorous abandonment of Georges and Madeleine irritated her, like a fine dish that others are eating and which one cannot touch oneself. Those mute or manifest caresses revealed the ashes of her sixth sense, reminding her of the valor of the late Bise, causing the down on her upper lip to quiver and the congested nostrils of her amorous nose to flutter.

  She suppressed the reawakening of an appetite, manifested an enthusiastic gaiety, and while Madame de Jancy was considering the young couple’s joy with a placid and benevolent smile, she said: “What! They’re whispering in one another’s ears now; they have confidences to make. Go for a walk in the park, you’ll be more tranquil there.” She winked at Georges, and added: “And above all, no hanky-panky, eh?”

  They went out. The wood offered itself to their footsteps; they went into it. The dying rays of sunlight were passing obliquely through the yellowed vault of the trees, already half-denuded. Their feet trod on a bed of golden leaves. Odors of cut hay brought from the fields by a fresh breeze intoxicated their young heads, but not as much as their love intoxicated them.

  There was the harmony of calm that emerges from the splendor of things. Immediately, Georges put his arm round Madeleine’s waist, and she let her adorable head sink on to his robust shoulder.

  They were supple, delighted, infinitely happy, allowing themselves to wander at random. They did not say anything at first. What had they to say, anyway? Nature spoke for them; they allowed themselves to be lulled by the song of her voice.

  The excursion extended, and they went with an equal intoxication. Rabbits and a hair fled at their approach. Madeleine turned the mischief of her luminous gaze to Georges. He shook his head, smiling. Neither the hare nor the rabbits tempted his destructive inclinations. Then she rested her head on his shoulder again, and he took her wrist with his free hand, raising it chastely to his lips.

  He had never kissed her in any other way, fearful of bruising her innocence—but that day, under the empire of the intoxicating evening, the odor of the cut hay and the inebriation caused by an already over-extended anticipation of the young body, ardently desired, the pure form that he felt, at that moment, so united with his own, so tenderly enlaced that in understanding its harmonious contours, a desire came to him to kiss those cherry-colored lips, a divine mirror of health and life, flowers blooming for the folly of kisses.

  He stopped—and she did not resist, vanquished long before, chastely surrendering her chastity. They responded to the appeal of their lips. Their mouths united; Madeleine swooned under the kiss.

  “Madeleine! Madeleine!”” he said, his voice so tenderly soft and deep that it seemed to be a music that made her quiver with pleasure.

  He gripped her hands again and contemplated her desperately. A tear ran down the young woman’s cheek; he breathed it in with his lips. He drank the joy and the love in it.

  “Madeleine,” he went on, “we’ve just exchanged a kiss that seals our love definitively. Tell me, oh, tell me that you love me!”

  “No, I don’t just love you; I love you utterly, I’m yours, utterly. I make that solemn oath, and I shall die on the day you disappear, Georges, dear Georges.”

  Yes, he sensed that she was truly his. Their hearts and their senses were vibrating in unison; they were at the apogee of passion. They were no longer seeing, they were no longer thinking. The splendor of the ambient nature, the great trees with golden leaves, the caressant evening air, the azure infinity, all the powerful seduction of that declining day, about to vanish into the torpor of dusk, no longer existed for them. They were isolated from the world, transported into a paradise of felicity.

  Again, he took long possession of her lips; again, Madeleine shivered with intoxication.

  But while he held her in that embrace, he saw her suddenly go pale, stiffening herself against an interior pang.

  “Madeleine, my beloved, what’s wrong?” he said, frightened. “You seem to be ill…”

  “I don’t know…a slight malaise; it’s nothing…nothing at all.”

  And immediately, doing his best to support her, he became alarmed. He thought he was dealing with one of those nervous crises about which he had been told, which he attributed to the emotion she had felt under his kisses.

  Gently, he led her to a bench on to which she almost collapsed, still very pale. And while he cradled her in his arms, striving, by pressing her against his male breast, to pass a little of the life that was beating in him into her, Madeleine apologized for that absurd malaise, which bore no resemblance to her crises of old. It was a very different sensation, never sensed before, comprised primarily of nausea and a strange respiratory hindrance. And scarcely recovered, confused and desolate, she asked Georges to forgive her for that untimely malaise, with words that explained and implored, her gaze charged with regret and love.

  “As you see,” she said, with a forced smile, “I’m weak by nature. You’ll find me difficult when I’m your wife...”

  “I’ll be so glad to prove my devotion...”

  “Georges, my Georges, what must you think of me? Leave me anyone for a moment, I beg you. In a few minutes, it will be completely dissipated. Go fetch me a little sugared water—and above all, don’t say anything to Maman.”

  The young man disappeared at a run, still anxious. When he came back a few minutes later carrying a glass into which he had poured a few drops of a vulnerary, Madeleine seemed less distressed; however, her forehead, bathed in cold sweat, testified to the heroic efforts she had been obliged to make to vanquish the crisis. Amorously, Georges wiped his fiancée’s temples with his handkerchief, smoothed her stray hairs, and presented her with the ardent beverage, which cheered her up.

  “Oh,” she said, getting to her feet, “what a poor little woman I am beneath my robust appearance, and how brave you are, Georges, to want me for a lifetime…it’s a long time, you know, a lifetime…have you thought of that?”

  They had resumed walking. Drawing Madeleine’s head toward him, he kissed the pale brown ornament of her hair. “Yes, my dear, dear angel, I’ve thought of that, and I must say that it hasn’t weighed in the balance for an instant. In any case, I can assure you now of the future state of our health; I have the approval of the Faculté, do you understand?”

  “Of the Faculté?”

  “Yes, Dr. Cartaux has assured me that marriage will dissipate these fits of malaise that you’ve experienced during your childhood...”

  “Dr. Cartaux?” she s
aid, surprised. “You know him, then?”

  “He’s my father’s doctor, and mine. He’s also our friend.”

  “And ours. How glad I am! He’s so devoted, so knowledgeable, so gentle; he’s a veritable saint. I love him.”

  “You’re going to make me hate him, then?”

  She put her hand over his mouth. “Not like you. You, that’s something else, something that I can’t describe, something that makes me weep and laugh at the same time, something soft, profound and powerful, as soft as the evening air, as powerful as the heavens and as profound as the sea…you…I can’t see anything beyond…after you, I die. No, I can’t tell you all that I experience, here.”

  She put her hand on her heart. He was listening, surprised and delighted by such a speech. She went on: “Him, I love with veneration, religiously. I’d have liked that man to be my father.”

  Her simple nature, devoid of preparations, devoid of conventions, revealed itself completely in that last statement. Others would have conserved in their words the conventional hypocrisy that attaches love even to unknown parents; she, whose father had died when she was still very young, and who had only ever heard him described in imprecise terms, hiding the disapproval of a riotous life, admitted naively that she would have liked to have been Dr. Cartaux’s daughter. And that chimera, in the intoxication of the moment, seemed entirely natural to Georges, who did not believe what she said.

  “Yes, I like him a great deal too,” he said. “He’s brought my poor Maman through several serious illnesses, and it was during one of her voyages that the poor woman died. Then again, I’ve heard so many good things about him from my close friend Dr. Jean Bordier, who was his pupil. You’ll meet him, Bordier, and you’ll see what a charming fellow he is…and what a saint, too! He’s presently the assistant of Dr. Caresco, the surgeon.”