Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)

by George Sand

  ‘I don’t advise you to try. It would disturb your peace and would do nothing for your dignity.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ he said, bruising her hand as he pressed it between his first finger and thumb.

  ‘I think so,’ she said with no change of expression.

  Ralph stepped forward, gripped the Colonel’s arm in his iron hand, and bent it like a reed, saying in a pacifying tone:

  ‘I request you not to touch a hair of that woman’s head.’

  Delmare wanted to go at him, but he felt he was in the wrong and he feared nothing in the world so much as being ashamed of himself. He merely pushed Ralph away, saying:

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  Then, turning back to his wife and keeping his arms close to his chest so as to resist the temptation to hit her, he said:

  ‘So, Madame, you’re starting open revolt against me. You refuse to follow me to Bourbon Island. You want a separation. Well, by God, so do I!’

  ‘I don’t want it any more,’ she replied. ‘Yesterday I wanted it. That was what I wanted. This morning it’s not so any more. You used violence in locking me in my room. I left by the window to prove to you that if you don’t control a woman’s will, your power over her is a mockery. I spent several hours beyond your power. I went to breathe the air of liberty, to show you that morally you’re not my master and that I depend only on myself on the earth. As I walked along, I reflected that I owed it to my duty and my conscience to return and place myself under your protection; I did it of my own free will. My cousin accompanied me here, and did not bring me back. If I hadn’t been willing to follow him, he wouldn’t have been able to force me, as you can imagine. So, Monsieur, don’t waste your time arguing against my conviction. You will never have any influence on it; you lost the right from the moment you claimed to do so by force. I am prepared to help you and follow you, not because that is what you want but because that is what I intend. You can condemn me but I shall never obey anyone but myself.’

  ‘I’m sorry for you; you’re out of your mind,’ said the Colonel shrugging his shoulders.

  And he retreated to his own room to put his papers in order, very pleased in his innermost heart with Madame Delmare’s decision and fearing no more obstacles. For he respected his wife’s word as much as he despised her ideas.

  XXII

  GIVING in to fatigue, Raymon had fallen into a deep sleep after a curt reception of Sir Ralph, who had to come to his house to make enquiries. When he woke up, a feeling of relief pervaded his heart; he believed that the most serious crisis of this affair was at last over. For a long time he had foreseen that a time would come when he would be in conflict with this feminine love, when he would have to defend his liberty against the demands of a romantic passion, and he had prepared himself in advance to fight against its demands. So he had at last taken that difficult step: he had said no, he would not need to take it again, for everything had happened for the best. Indiana had not wept too much, she had not been too insistent. She had proved to be reasonable. She had understood at the first word and had made up her mind quickly and proudly.

  Raymon was very pleased with his providence, for he had one of his own in which he believed like a good son and on which he relied to arrange everything to the detriment of others rather than to his own. He had been so well treated up till then that he did not want to have doubts. To see the consequences of his errors and be worried about them would have been, in his eyes, to commit the crime of ingratitude against the good God who watched over him.

  Raymon got up, still very weary from the efforts of imagination which the circumstances of that painful scene had forced upon him. His mother came home; she had just been to ask Madame de Carvajal about Madame Delmare’s health and frame of mind. The Marchioness had not been worried about Indiana; she was nevertheless in great distress when Madame de Ramière questioned her closely, but the only thing that touched her about Madame Delmare’s disappearance was the scandal that would result. She complained bitterly about her niece, whom, the day before, she was praising to the skies, and Madame de Ramière realized that by taking this step the unhappy Indiana had alienated her aunt for ever and lost her sole remaining support.

  For anyone who knew the Marchioness’s innermost feelings, it would not have been a great loss. But Madame de Carvajal passed for being irreproachably virtuous, even in Madame de Ramière’s eyes. Her youth had been wrapped in the mysteries of prudence or lost in the whirlwind of revolutions. Raymon’s mother wept over Indiana’s lot and tried to find excuses for her. Madame de Carvajal told her sharply that she was perhaps not disinterested enough in this matter to judge.

  ‘But what will become of that unhappy young woman?’ said Madame de Ramière. ‘If her husband ill-treats her, who will protect her?’

  ‘She’ll become what God wills,’ replied the Marchioness. ‘For my part, I’ll have nothing more to do with her and I never want to see her again.’

  Madame de Ramière, anxious and kind-hearted, was determined to have news of Madame Delmare at any price. She had herself driven to the end of the street where Indiana lived, and sent a servant to question the porter, telling him to try to see Sir Ralph if he were in the house. She awaited the result of this enquiry in her carriage and presently Ralph himself came out to her.

  Perhaps the only person who made a correct judgement about Ralph was Madame de Ramière. A few words between them were enough to make them realize the sincere disinterestedness of both in the matter.

  Ralph related what had happened in the course of the morning, and as he only had suspicions about the night’s events he did not try to confirm them. But Madame de Ramière thought she ought to tell him what she knew, making him a party to her desire to end this disastrous and impossible liaison. Ralph, who felt more at his ease with her than with anyone else, let his face betray deep emotion when he received this confidence.

  ‘You say, Madame, that she spent the night in your house,’ he murmured, repressing a sort of nervous shudder which ran through his veins.

  ‘A solitary, unhappy night, no doubt. Raymon, who was certainly not guilty of complicity, didn’t come home till six o’clock and at seven he came to my room to beg me to calm the unhappy girl’s mind.’

  ‘She wanted to leave her husband! She wanted to be dishonoured!’ replied Ralph, with an intense look and his heart strangely perturbed. ‘So she is deeply in love with this man who is unworthy of her! . . .’

  Ralph forgot he was talking to Raymon’s mother.

  ‘I’ve suspected so for a long time,’ he continued. ‘Why did I not foresee the day when she would complete her ruin? I would have killed her first.’

  This language in Ralph’s mouth came as a strange surprise to Madame de Ramière. She thought she was speaking to a calm, indulgent man and she regretted having believed in appearances.

  ‘Good God!’ she said, frightened. ‘Then do you, too, judge her without pity? Will you desert her like her aunt? Then are you all pitiless and merciless? Won’t she have one friend left after an error from which she has already suffered so much?’

  ‘Don’t be afraid of anything of that kind as far as I’m concerned, Madame,’ replied Ralph. ‘I’ve known all about it for six months and I’ve said nothing. I surprised their first kiss and I didn’t throw M. de Ramière off his horse. I’ve often come across their love messages in the woods and I didn’t tear them up with my whip. I’ve met M. de Ramière on the bridge he used to cross to go and meet her. It was at night; we were alone, and I’m four times as strong as he is, yet I didn’t throw him into the river. And when, having let him go, I discovered that he had eluded my vigilance and got into her house, instead of breaking down the doors and throwing him out of the window I quietly warned them of her husband’s approach and saved his life in order to save her honour. So you see, Madame, that I have pity and am merciful. This morning I had him in my power. I knew very well that he was the cause of all our woes and if I had no right to accuse him with
out proofs, I was at least entitled to pick a quarrel with him for his arrogant, mocking attitude. Well, I put up with his insulting contempt because I knew that his death would kill Indiana. I let him turn over and fall asleep again while Indiana, half-dead and out of her mind, was on the bank of the Seine, about to rejoin his other victim . . . You see, Madame, that I am patient with people I hate and indulgent to those I love.’

  Madame de Ramière, sitting in her carriage facing Ralph, gazed at him with a mixture of surprise and fear. He was so different from how she had always seen him that she almost thought it possible that he had suddenly gone out of his mind. The allusion he had just made to Noun’s death confirmed her in this idea, for she knew absolutely nothing about that story and took the words Ralph let slip in his indignation for a stray thought unrelated to his subject. He was, in fact, in one of those violent moods which occur at least once in the lives of the most reasonable men and are so close to madness that one degree more would put them in a towering rage. His anger was pale and intense, however, as it is with cool-tempered people, but it was deep as it is with noble hearts. This unusual frame of mind, quite extraordinary in his case, made him terrible to look upon.

  Madame de Ramière took his hand and said gently:

  ‘You are suffering greatly, my dear Monsieur Ralph, for you hurt me without pity. You forget that the man you are speaking of is my son and that his wrongdoing, if there is any, must rend my heart even more than yours.’

  Ralph immediately regained his self-control and, kissing Madame de Ramière’s hand in a demonstration of friendship almost as unusual as his outburst of anger, said:

  ‘Forgive me, Madame. You’re right. I suffer greatly and forget what I ought to respect. Forget yourself the bitterness I’ve allowed to surface. I’ll be able to lock it up again in my heart.’

  Although reassured by this reply, Madame de Ramière retained a hidden anxiety when she saw the deep hatred Ralph harboured for her son. She tried to make excuses for Raymon in his enemy’s eyes. Ralph stopped her.

  ‘I can guess your thoughts, Madame,’ he said, ‘but rest assured. M. de Ramière and I are not going to see each other again in the near future. As for my cousin, don’t regret having enlightened me. If everyone deserts her, I swear that she will have at least one friend left.’

  When, towards evening, Madame de Ramière came home, she found Raymon in front of the fire, luxuriously warming his cashmere slippered feet and drinking tea to banish the last traces of the morning’s upset to his nerves. He was still depressed by his bogus emotions, but sweet thoughts of the future were reviving his spirits. He felt he had become free again, and he gave himself up entirely to complacent meditations on that priceless state which he usually looked after so badly.

  ‘Why am I destined to tire so quickly of that ineffable mental freedom which I always have to pay such a high price to recover?’ he asked himself. ‘When I’m caught in a woman’s toils, I can’t wait to break them in order to recover my tranquillity and peace of mind. May I be cursed if I sacrifice them so soon again! The troubles those two Creoles have caused me will serve as a warning, and in future I’m only going to have affairs with frivolous, light-hearted Parisians . . . with real society women. Perhaps it would be a good idea for me to get married and put an end to it all, as they say . . .’

  He was deep in these comfortable, conventional thoughts, when his mother came in, tired and distressed.

  ‘She’s better,’ she said. ‘Everything went well. I hope she’ll calm down . . .’

  ‘Who?’ asked Raymon, suddenly aroused out of his castle in the air.

  But the next day, he thought he had still one task to fulfil. That was to regain Indiana’s esteem, if not her love. He did not want her to be able to boast that she had left him. He wanted her to persuade herself that she had yielded to the influence of his good sense and generosity. He still wanted to dominate her after rejecting her. So he wrote her the following letter:

  ‘I’m not writing to ask your forgiveness, my dear, for some cruel or disrespectful words I let fall in my passionate delirium. It’s not in the disarray of fever that one can form a coherent idea and express it appropriately. It’s not my fault if I’m not a god, if in your presence I can’t control the seething ardour of my blood, if I lose my head, if I go crazy. Perhaps I’d have the right to complain of the steely composure with which you condemned me to frightful tortures without taking any pity on me. But it’s not your fault either. You were too perfect to play the same part as we commonplace creatures subject to human passions, slaves of our unrefined constitutions. I’ve often told you, Indiana, you’re not a woman, and when I think about it, reflecting calmly, you’re an angel. I worship you in my heart like a divinity. But alas! When I’m with you the old Adam has often resumed his rights. Often, as I felt the sweet breath that comes from your lips, my own were consumed by a burning fire. Often, when my hair brushed against yours as I leaned towards you, a tremor of indescribable delight ran through all my veins, and then I would forget that you were an emanation from heaven, a dream of eternal bliss, an angel come from God’s bosom to guide my steps in this life and to tell me of the joys of another existence. Why, O pure spirit, did you assume the tempting shape of a woman? Why, O angel of light, were you clothed in the seductions of hell? I often thought I was holding happiness in my arms, and you were only virtue.

  ‘Forgive these culpable regrets, my dear. I wasn’t worthy of you and perhaps, if you had agreed to descend to my level, we should both have been happier. But my inferiority brought you constant suffering and you have turned your virtues into my crimes.

  ‘Now that you pardon me—as I’m sure you do, for perfection implies mercy—let me raise my voice again to thank and bless you . . . Oh no, my life, that’s not the word, for my heart is more rent than yours by the courage that snatches you from my arms. But I admire you, and even as I weep I congratulate you. Yes, my Indiana, this heroic sacrifice, you have found the strength to carry it out. It snatches away my heart and my life; it makes my future desolate; it ruins my existence. But I still love you enough to endure it without complaint, for my honour is of no consequence, it is yours which is all-important. As for my honour, I would sacrifice it a thousand times for you, but yours is more precious to me than all the happiness you would have given me. Oh no, I would not have enjoyed such a sacrifice. I would have tried in vain to be distracted by ecstatic raptures, in vain you would have tried to intoxicate me with celestial delights, remorse would have come to seek me out; it would have poisoned all my days and I would have been more humiliated than you by men’s scorn. Oh God! To see you degraded and destroyed by me! To see you fallen from the state of veneration which surrounds you! To see you insulted in my arms and not to be able to wipe out the offence! For even if I had spilt all my blood for you, it would have been of no use. I might have avenged you, but I could never have justified you. My zeal in defending you would have been a further accusation against you; my death an irrefutable proof of your crime. Poor Indiana, I would have ruined you. Oh, how unhappy I would be!

  Go, then, my beloved. Go and gather under another sky the fruits of virtue and religion. God will reward us for such an effort, for God is good. He will reunite us in a happier life and perhaps even . . . but this thought is still a crime. Yet I cannot forbid myself the hope. Farewell, Indiana, farewell. You see clearly that our love is sinful. Alas! My heart is broken. Where would I find strength to bid you farewell?’

  Raymon himself took this letter to Madame Delmare’s house, but she shut herself up in her room and refused to see him. So he left the house after slipping the letter into the hand of the servant and cordially embracing the husband. As he left the last step of the staircase behind him, he felt more light-hearted than usual. The weather was milder, the women were more beautiful, the shops more sparkling. It was a happy day in Raymon’s life.

  Madame Delmare put the letter away with its seal unbroken in a box which she would not open till she was in Bourbo
n Island. She wanted to say good-bye to her aunt; Sir Ralph, very determinedly opposed her doing so. He had seen Madame de Carvajal. He knew she intended to overwhelm Indiana with scornful reproaches. He was furious at this hypocritical severity and could not bear the idea of Madame Delmare’s exposing herself to it.

  The following day, just as Delmare and his wife were about to go into the coach, Sir Ralph said to them in his usual casual way:

  ‘I’ve often indicated, my friends, that I wished to accompany you, but you refused to understand me or to give me an answer. Will you allow me to go with you?’

  ‘To Bordeaux?’ asked M. Delmare.

  ‘To Bourbon,’ answered M. Ralph.

  ‘You mustn’t think of it,’ replied M. Delmare. ‘You can’t move your household like this to suit a couple in a precarious situation and with an uncertain future. It would be taking an unworthy advantage of your friendship to accept the sacrifice of your whole life and the abnegation of your social position. You are rich, young, and free. You ought to marry again, found a family.’

  ‘That’s not the question,’ Sir Ralph replied coldly. ‘Since I don’t know how to wrap up my ideas in words which change their meaning, I’ll tell you frankly what I think. It seemed to me that over the last six months the friendship of both of you has cooled towards me. Perhaps I’ve done something wrong that my lack of discernment has prevented me from noticing. If I’m mistaken, one word from you will be enough to reassure me. Allow me to go with you. If I’ve lost your esteem, now is the time to tell me. In leaving me behind, you ought not to leave me with the remorse of not having made amends for my mistakes.’

  The Colonel was so moved by this frank and generous approach that he forgot all the wounds to his amour propre which had alienated him from his friend. He held out his hand to him, swore to him that his friendship was more sincere than ever and that he had refused his offers only out of tact.