Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)

by George Sand

  ‘Why hide me here?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you the master who can welcome and protect me; for I have no longer anyone but you in the world and without you, would be reduced to begging on the public highway? Why, even society can no longer make it a crime for you to love me . . . It is I who have taken everything on my own shoulders . . . I alone! . . . But where are you going?’ she cried as she saw him walk towards the door.

  She clung to him with the terror of a child who doesn’t want to be left alone for a moment, and dragged herself along on her knees to follow him.

  He wanted to lock the door, but it was too late. It opened before he could touch it, and Laure de Nangy came in. She seemed less surprised than shocked, didn’t utter a sound and bent down a little, blinking, to look at the half-fainting woman on the floor. Then, with a bitter, cold, contemptuous smile, she said:

  ‘Madame Delmare, it seems to me you enjoy putting three people in a strange situation. But I thank you for giving me the least ridiculous role, and this is how I fulfil it. Would you please go.’

  Indignation restored Indiana’s strength. She rose and, in a high and mighty tone, said to Raymon:

  ‘Who is this woman? And what right has she to give me orders in your house?’

  ‘You are in my house,’ replied Laure.

  ‘But say something, Monsieur!’ cried Indiana, shaking the unhappy man’s arm furiously. ‘Tell me if she’s your mistress or your wife!’

  ‘She’s my wife,’ replied Raymon with a dazed look.

  ‘I forgive your uncertainty,’ said Madame de Ramière with a cruel smile. ‘If you had stayed where your duty lay, you would have received a card announcing Monsieur’s marriage. Come, Raymon,’ she said with ironic amiability, ‘I pity your embarrassment; you’re rather young; I hope you will realize that more prudence is required in life. I leave to you the task of putting an end to this absurd scene. I would laugh at it if you didn’t look so unhappy.’

  With that speech, she withdrew, fairly satisfied with the dignity she had just displayed and secretly triumphant at the inferior, dependant position in which this incident had put her husband with regard to her.

  When Indiana recovered the use of her senses, she was alone in a closed carriage and being driven rapidly towards Paris.

  XXIX

  AT the city boundary, the carriage stopped. A servant, whom Madame Delmare recognized as having seen in the past in Raymon’s service, came to the carriage door to ask where he should take Madame. Without thinking, Indiana gave the street and the name of the hotel where she had spent the previous night. When she arrived, she collapsed on to a chair and stayed there till the next morning without thinking of going to bed, longing for death, but too broken, too exhausted, to have the strength to kill herself. She thought it was impossible to live after such terrible sorrows and that death would surely come of itself to seek her out. So she stayed in this state the whole of the following day, without having anything to eat and without replying to the few offers of service that were made to her.

  I’m not sure that there’s anything more horrible than staying in a furnished room in Paris, especially when, like this one, it is in a narrow, dark street and only a damp, murky daylight creeps reluctantly about the smoky ceiling and dirty windows. And then there’s something in the appearance of the unaccustomed furniture, to which your idle glance turns in vain in search of a memory and a fellow-feeling, something freezing and repellent. All these objects belong, as it were, to nobody, by dint of belonging to all comers; no one has left any trace of being there, except for an unknown name sometimes left on a card in the frame of the mirror; this bought refuge has sheltered so many poor travellers, so many lonely strangers, but was hospitable to none of them; it has seen the passage of so many agitated human beings but cannot say anything about them; the discordant, continuous noise from the street doesn’t even let you sleep to escape from grief or boredom; these are all grounds for disgust and depression, even for someone who doesn’t come here in Madame Delmare’s horrible state of mind. Poor provincial, who have left your fields, your expanse of sky, your green places, your home, and your family, to come and shut yourself up in this prison cell of the mind and the heart; look at Paris, the beautiful Paris that you had dreamed of as being so marvellous! Look at it stretched out there, black with mud and rain, noisy, foul, and swift as a torrent of mud! There is the perpetual revelling, always brilliant and perfumed, that you had been promised; there are the intoxicating pleasures, the gripping surprises, the treasures of sight, hearing, and taste, which were to vie for your limited senses and faculties unable to appreciate them all at once. Look over there at the Parisian who had been described to you as friendly, courteous, and hospitable, rushing along, always in a hurry, always careworn. Tired out before you have mingled with this ever-moving population or entered this inextricable maze, overcome with fear, you fall back into the cheerful precincts of a furnished hotel room, where, after you have hastily taken up residence, the only servant in a house that is often huge, leaves you to die alone in peace, if fatigue or sorrow deprives you of the strength to attend to the thousand needs of life.

  But to be a woman and to find oneself in such a place, a thousand miles from every human affection, to be there with no money, which is much worse than being abandoned in a vast desert without water, not to have in the whole course of one’s life one happy memory that is not poisoned or faded, in all one’s future not one hope of a possible existence to distract one’s mind from the emptiness of the present situation, that is the last degree of misery and hopelessness. So Madame Delmare did not try to struggle against a fulfilled destiny, against a broken, ruined life; she let hunger, fever, and grief gnaw at her without uttering one complaint, without shedding one tear, without making one effort to die one hour sooner, to suffer one hour less.

  They found her on the ground, the morning after the second day, stiff with cold, with blue lips and lifeless eyes, but she was not dead. The landlady looked carefully in the drawer of the writing desk and, seeing so little in it, considered whether she should send the stranger to hospital, since she certainly had not the means to pay the cost of a long, expensive illness. However, as she was a woman full of human kindness, she had Indiana put to bed and sent for a doctor so as to find out from him if the illness would last more than two days. One appeared who had not been sent for.

  When Indiana opened her eyes, she found him at her bedside. I don’t need to tell you his name.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, it’s you!’ she cried, throwing herself half-fainting on his breast. ‘It’s you who are my good angel! But you come too late; I can’t do anything more for you than to die blessing you!’

  ‘You won’t die, my dear,’ Ralph replied with emotion. ‘Life can still smile at you. The laws which opposed your happiness will no longer shackle your affection. I’d have liked to destroy the invincible charm cast over you by a man I neither like nor esteem. But that is not in my power and I am weary of seeing you suffer. Your life has been appalling up to now; it can’t become more so. In any case, if my sad expectations are realized, if the happiness you’ve dreamed of is not to last long, at least you’ll have experienced it for a while; at least you won’t die without having a taste of it. So I sacrifice all my dislike. The destiny which thrusts you, all alone, into my arms imposes on me the duties of a guardian and father. I come to tell you that you are free and that you can unite your lot with M. de Ramière’s. Delmare is no more.’

  Tears flowed slowly down Ralph’s cheeks as he was speaking. Indiana suddenly sat up in bed and cried, wringing her hands in despair:

  ‘My husband is dead! It’s I who killed him! And you speak to me of the future and happiness as if any remained for a heart which detests and despises itself! But know that God is just and that I am cursed. M. de Ramière is married.’

  She fell back exhausted into her cousin’s arms. They could not resume their conversation till several hours later.

  ‘Your conscience is rightly disturb
ed, but set it at rest,’ said Ralph solemnly, but gently and sadly. ‘Delmare was dying when you left him. He never knew of your flight and he died without cursing you or mourning for you. Towards morning, as I emerged from the doze into which I had fallen at his bedside, I found that his face was purple and his sleep heavy and feverish. He had already had an apoplectic fit. I ran to your room; I was surprised not to find you there. But I hadn’t time to enquire into the reasons for your absence. I only became seriously alarmed after Delmare’s death. All that medical skills could do was of no avail; the disease progressed with frightening speed. An hour later he died in my arms without regaining the use of his senses. Yet, at the last moment his dulled, inert mind seemed to make an effort to revive. He looked for my hand, which he took for yours, for his own were already stiff and numb. He tried to press it and died stammering your name.’

  ‘I heard his last words,’ said Indiana mournfully. ‘Just as I was leaving him for ever, he spoke to me in his sleep: “That man will destroy you,” he said. Those words are there,’ she added, putting one hand on her heart and the other to her head.

  ‘When I had the strength to lift my eyes and thoughts from the dead man,’ continued Ralph, ‘I thought of you, of you, Indiana, who were free from now on and could mourn your master only out of kindness and religious feeling. I was the only one who was deprived of something by his death, for I was his friend, and even if he wasn’t always sociable, at least I had no rival in his heart. I feared the effect on you of breaking the news too suddenly, and I went to wait for you at the front door, thinking you wouldn’t be long in coming back from your morning walk. I waited for a long time. I won’t tell you of my anxiety, my searches, my fear when I found Ophelia’s blood-stained dead body, which had been broken on the rocks. The waves had thrown it on to the shore. Alas! I looked for a long time, thinking I’d soon discover yours; for I thought there’d be nothing left on earth for me to love. There’s no point in telling you of my grief; you must have foreseen it when you deserted me.

  ‘However, the rumour soon spread in the colony that you had fled. A ship which was coming into the roadstead had crossed the Eugène in the Mozambique channel; the crew had come alongside your vessel. A passenger had recognized you and in less than three days the whole island knew about your departure.

  ‘I’ll spare you the absurd and insulting rumours which resulted from the coincidence of these two events on the same night, your flight and your husband’s death. I wasn’t spared in the charitable conclusions that people were happy to draw from it, but I didn’t bother about them. I had still one duty to fulfil on earth, that of making sure you were still alive and of helping you if it were necessary. I left soon after you, but the voyage was awful and I’ve only been in France for a week. My first thought was to hurry to M. de Ramière’s house to get news of you. But, by chance, I met his servant Carle, who had just driven you here. I only asked him your address and came with the conviction that I wouldn’t find you alone.’

  ‘Alone, alone! Shamefully deserted!’ cried Madame Delmare. ‘But let’s not talk about that man; let’s never talk about him. I don’t want to love him any more, for I despise him. But you mustn’t tell me that I have loved him; that would remind me of my shame and my crime. It would cast a terrible reproach on my last moments. Oh, be my consoling angel, you who come at every crisis in my lamentable existence to hold out a friendly hand to me. Fulfil your last mission to me with compassion. Speak to me words of affection and forgiveness, so that I may die in peace and hope for the pardon of the judge who awaits me above!’

  She hoped she would die, but sorrow rivets the chains of our lives instead of breaking them. She was not even seriously ill; she was not strong enough for that. But she lapsed into a state of languor and apathy which resembled imbecility.

  Ralph tried to distract her. He took her away from everything which might remind her of Raymon. He took her to Touraine. He surrounded her with all the comforts of life; he devoted every moment of his own life to making some moments of hers bearable; and, when he had no success, when he had exhausted all the resources of his skill and affection without being able to bring a single ray of pleasure to that sad, worn face, he deplored the impotence of his language and reproached himself bitterly for the clumsiness of his affection.

  One day he found her more crushed and despairing than ever. He did not dare speak to her and sat down sadly beside her. Indiana then turned towards him and said, pressing his hand affectionately: ‘I give you a lot of pain, my poor Ralph, and you must have a great deal of patience to put up with the sight of an unhappy, selfish creature like me. Your painful task has long since been fulfilled. The most unreasonable, demanding person could not ask more from friendship than you have given me. Now leave me to the pain which consumes me. Don’t spoil a pure, saintly life by contact with an accursed one. Try to find elsewhere the happiness which cannot develop near me.’

  ‘Indeed, I give up trying to cure you, Indiana,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll never desert you, even if you tell me I’m a nuisance to you, for you still need care in material matters, and if you don’t want me to be your friend, I’ll at least be your servant. Yet, listen to me: I’ve an expedient to propose that I’ve reserved for the final period of your pain but which is certainly infallible.’

  ‘I know only one remedy for grief,’ she replied, ‘and that is forgetfulness; for I’ve had the time to convince myself that reason is of no use. So let’s pin our hope on time. If my will could obey the gratitude you arouse in me, I would be as calm and cheerful from now on as in our childhood days. Believe me, my dear, I take no pleasure in making the most of my pain and rubbing salt into my wound. Don’t I know that all my suffering rebounds on to your heart? Alas, I’d like to forget, to be cured. But I’m only a weak woman, Ralph. Be patient and don’t think me ungrateful.’

  She burst into tears. Sir Ralph took her hand.

  ‘Listen, dear Indiana,’ he said. ‘It’s not in our power to forget. I don’t blame you. I can suffer patiently, but to see you suffer is more than I can bear. Besides, why should we, feeble creatures that we are, struggle like this against an iron destiny? We’ve carried this millstone round our necks for long enough. The God whom you and I worship has not destined man to suffer so much misery without giving him the instinct to deliver himself from it, and what, in my opinion, constitutes the main superiority of men over animals is that they understand where the remedy lies for all their ills. The remedy is suicide; that’s the one I propose, that I advise.’

  ‘I’ve often thought of it,’ replied Indiana after a short silence. ‘In the past, I was strongly tempted by it, but a religious scruple held me back. Since then, my ideas developed in my solitude. By clinging to me, misfortune gradually taught me a different religion from the one taught by men. When you came to my assistance, I was determined to let myself die of hunger, but you begged me to live and I hadn’t the right to refuse you that sacrifice. Now it’s your life, your future, that holds me back. What will you do alone in the world, my poor Ralph, without family, without passions, without affections? Since these terrible blows, which have cut me to the heart, I’m no longer any use to you, but perhaps I’ll recover. Yes, Ralph, I’ll try as hard as I can, I swear to you. Be patient a little longer; soon I’ll be able to smile . . . I want to become calm and cheerful again, so as to devote to you the life that you’ve worked so hard to rescue from misfortune.’

  ‘No, my dear, no,’ replied Ralph. ‘I don’t wish for such a sacrifice; I’ll never accept it. In what respect is my life more precious than yours? Why must you impose a hateful future on yourself to give me a pleasant one? Do you think I could possibly enjoy it while feeling that your heart did not enjoy it too? No, I’m not as selfish as all that. Believe me, let’s not try to be impossibly heroic. It’s presumptuously arrogant to hope to renounce all self-love in this way. Anyway, let’s look at our situation calmly, and let’s treat our remaining days as common property which neither of us has the right
to monopolize at the expense of the other. For a long time, from the day I was born I might say, life has wearied and been a burden to me. Now I feel I have no longer the strength to endure it without bitterness and impiety. Let us go together, Indiana; let us return to God, who banished us to this world of trials, to this vale of tears, but will surely not refuse to open His arms to us when, weary and bruised, we go to ask for His mercy and pity. I believe in God, Indiana, and it was I who first taught you to believe in Him. So have confidence in me. An upright heart cannot deceive a man who questions it with sincerity. I feel we have both suffered enough on this earth to be absolved from our sins. The baptism of misfortune has purified our souls quite enough; let us return them to Him who gave them to us.’

  This idea occupied the minds of Ralph and Indiana for several days, at the end of which they decided to commit suicide together.

  ‘It’s a matter of some importance,’ said Ralph, ‘but I had already given it some thought and this is what I have to suggest to you. Since the deed we are about to commit isn’t the result of a momentary aberration, but the reasoned objective of a decision taken in a feeling of calm, thoughtful piety, it is important that we should bring to it the meditative attitude of a Catholic towards the sacraments of his church. For us, the universe is the temple where we worship God. It is in the heart of beautiful, unspoilt nature that we rediscover an awareness of His power, pure of all human profanation. So let us go back to the desert in order to be able to pray. Here, in this country teeming with men and vice, in the heart of this civilization which rejects or deforms God, I feel I’d be ill at ease, distraught, saddened. I’d like to die joyfully, my brow serene, my eyes raised to heaven. But where can I find such a place here? So I’m going to tell you the place where suicide appeared to me at its most noble and solemn. It was at the edge of a precipice on Bourbon Island; it was at the top of the waterfall which, transparent and topped by a brilliant rainbow, rushes forth into the lonely ravine of Bernica. It was there that we spent the happiest hours of our childhood; it was there that, later, I wept at the bitterest sorrows of my life; it was there that I learned to pray and to hope; it’s there that, on a beautiful, tropical night, I should like to submerge myself in those pure waters and go down into the cool, flower-decked grave that lies in the depths of the verdant abyss. If you have no preference for any other place in the world, grant me the satisfaction of carrying out our double sacrifice at the spot which witnessed the games of our childhood and the sorrows of your youth.’