Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)

by George Sand

  ‘I agree,’ replied Madame Delmare, putting her hand in Ralph’s to indicate a compact. ‘I’ve always been attracted to the water’s edge by an invincible feeling, by the memory of my poor Noun. To die as she did will be pleasing to me; it will be my atonement for her death, which I caused.’

  ‘And then,’ added Ralph, ‘a new voyage, undertaken this time with feelings other than those which have troubled us up to now, is the best imaginable preparation for reflecting and detaching ourselves from earthly affections, for raising our selves, pure and unsullied, to the feet of the Supreme Being. Isolated from the whole world, ready at any moment to leave life gladly, we shall delight in seeing the storm arouse the elements and reveal before us its magnificent spectacles. Come, Indiana, let us go, let us shake from our feet the dust of this heartless land. To die here, under Raymon’s eyes, would look as if it were a petty, cowardly revenge. Let us leave the task of punishing him to God; let us rather ask Him to open the treasures of His mercy to that barren, ungrateful heart.’

  They left France. The schooner Nahandove, swift and light as a bird, took them to their twice-deserted native land. Never was a passage so quick and pleasant. It was as if a favourable wind had been given the task of leading to port these two unfortunate beings who had been tossed about on the rocks of life. During those three months, Indiana reaped the reward of her docile obedience to Ralph’s advice. The bracing, penetrating, sea air restored her fragile health; calm returned to her weary heart. The certainty of soon seeing an end to her troubles produced on her the effect of a doctor’s promises on a credulous patient. Forgetting her past life, she opened her soul to the profound emotions of religious hope. All her thoughts became impregnated with a mysterious charm, with a heavenly perfume. Never had the sea and sky seemed to her so beautiful. It was as if she were seeing them for the first time, so many rich and splendid beauties did she discover in them. Her brow became serene again and it was as if a ray of the Divine had passed into her gentle, melancholy, blue eyes.

  A no less extraordinary change took place in Ralph’s soul and appearance; the same causes produced almost the same effects. His heart, long steeled to pain, softened in the reviving warmth of hope. Heaven also descended into that bitter, wounded heart. His words reflected his feelings and, for the first time, Indiana came to know his true character. The sacred, filial intimacy which brought them close to each other, cured the one of his painful shyness and the other of her unfair prejudices. Every day removed some of Ralph’s natural awkwardness and one of Indiana’s errors of judgement. At the same time, the poignant memory of Raymon became dulled, faded, and gradually fell away before Ralph’s unknown virtues and absolute sincerity. As Indiana saw the good qualities of the one grow and develop, the other fell in her esteem. Finally, by dint of comparing the two men, every spark of her blind, disastrous love was extinguished in her heart.

  XXX

  IT was last year, on an evening of the eternal summer which prevails in that part of the world, that, three days after landing, two passengers from the schooner Nahandove went deep into the mountains of Bourbon Island. These two people had given the intervening time to resting, a precaution apparently very alien to the purpose which brought them to the island. But presumably they did not think so; for after taking faham together on the verandah, they dressed with special care as if they had intended to spend the evening in town, and, taking the road to the mountains, after an hour’s walk they reached the Bernica ravine.

  By chance, it was one of the most beautiful of tropical, moonlit nights. That heavenly body, just emerged from the dark waves, was beginning to spread a long band of quicksilver over the sea, but its rays did not reach the gorge, and the borders of the lake mirrored only the trembling reflection of a few stars. Even the lemon trees on the higher slopes of the mountain were not covered with the pale diamonds that the moon scatters on their polished, brittle leaves. The ebony and taramind trees were murmuring in the darkness; only the clusters of leaves at the top of a few gigantic palm trees, whose slender trunks rose a hundred feet from the ground, were tinged with a greenish, silvery gleam.

  The seabirds in the crevices of the cliff were silent and only the sad, passionate voices of a few blue pigeons, hidden behind the mountain ledges, could be heard in the distance. Gorgeous beetles, like living jewels, hummed faintly in the coffee shrubs or, buzzing, skimmed over the surface of the lake, and the continuous sound of the waterfall seemed to exchange mysterious words with the echoes on its banks.

  By taking a long, steep, winding path the two lonely walkers reached the top of the gorge at the spot where the torrent gushes out in a thin white column of vapour and plunges to the bottom of the precipice. Then they stood on a little platform perfectly suited to the fulfilment of their plan. At this spot a few tropical creepers, hanging on stalks of raffia grass, formed a natural cradle half-suspended over the waterfall. With wonderful self-possession, Sir Ralph cut off a few branches which might have impeded their leap; then he took his cousin’s hand and sat her down on a moss-covered rock where, by day, the charming view of the place could be seen in all its wild, vigorous grandeur. But at that moment, the darkness of the night and the condensed vapour of the waterfall enveloped everything and made the deep abyss seem immeasurable and terrifying.

  ‘My dear Indiana,’ said Ralph, ‘I must tell you that we need the greatest self-possession for the success of our undertaking. If you jump hastily in the direction which, in the thick darkness, looks empty to you, you are bound to hurt yourself on the rocks and your death will be slow and painful, but if you take care to throw yourself on to the white line marked by the waterfall, you will go down into the lake with it and the waterfall itself will ensure that you reach the bottom. If, however, you are willing to wait an hour longer, the moon will be high enough in the sky to give us its light.’

  ‘I’m all the more willing to wait, as we ought to devote our last moments to religious thoughts,’ replied Indiana.

  ‘You’re right, my dear,’ continued Ralph. ‘I think our last hour is one of reflection and prayer. I don’t say we ought to make our peace with the Eternal; that would be to forget the distance which separates us from His sublime power. But I think we ought to make our peace with the men who have made us suffer, and entrust to the wind, that blows towards the north-east, words of pity for people from whom we are separated by three thousand miles.’

  Indiana accepted this suggestion without surprise or emotion. For several months her thoughts had became more exalted in proportion to the change that had taken place in Ralph. She no longer listened to him merely as a phlegmatic adviser; she followed him silently as a good spirit who had been given the task of taking her away from the earth and delivering her from her woes.

  ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘I am happy to feel that I can forgive without an effort, that I have no hatred, no regret, no love, no resentment in my heart. As my last hour approaches, I can barely remember the sorrows of my sad life and the ingratitude of the people who surrounded me. Almighty God! Thou seest into the depths of my heart; Thou knowest that it is pure and calm and that all my thoughts of love and hope are turned towards Thee.’

  Then Ralph sat down at Indiana’s feet and began to pray in a strong voice louder than the sound of the waterfall. It was perhaps the first time since he had been born that all his thoughts came to his lips. The hour of death had struck. His soul was no longer bound by fetters or shrouded in secrets; it belonged only to God; the chains of society no longer weighed upon it. His fervour was no longer a crime; he could freely make a leap towards heaven which was awaiting him. The veil that concealed so much virtue, nobility, and power fell away completely and his mind rose at its first bound to the level of his heart.

  As a burning flame shines among swirls of smoke and scatters them, the bright light of the sacred fire which lay dormant and unknown in the depths of his being shot up. The first time his strict conscience was freed from its fears and restrictions, words came spontaneously to the
help of his thoughts and, in his last hour, the ordinary man who, in all his life, had uttered only banalities became more eloquent and persuasive than Raymon had ever been. Don’t expect me to repeat to you the strange speech that he confided to the echoes of that solitary place. He himself couldn’t repeat it if he were here. There are moments of exaltation and ecstasy when our thoughts become, in a way, more pure, more subtle, more ethereal. These rare moments raise us up so high, carry us so far out of ourselves, that when we fall back to earth we lose the consciousness and the memory of that intellectual intoxication. Who can understand the anchorite’s mysterious visions? Who can relate the dreams of the poet before his emotion has cooled so that he can write them down for us? Who can tell us of the wonders that are revealed to the soul of the righteous man at the moment when heaven opens to receive him? Ralph, apparently a very ordinary man, yet an exceptional one, for he firmly believed in God and consulted daily the book of his conscience, at that moment Ralph was settling his account with eternity. It was the moment to be himself, to lay bare his whole moral being, to lay aside before his Judge, the disguise that men had imposed upon him. In casting aside the hair shirt that grief had attached to his bones, he rose up, sublime and radiant, as if he had already entered the dwelling of divine rewards.

  As she listened to him, it did not occur to Indiana to be surprised; she did not wonder if it was really Ralph who was talking like that. The Ralph she had known no longer existed, and the man she was listening to now seemed to her to be a friend, whom she had seen formerly in her dreams and who at last became a reality for her on the brink of the grave. She felt her own pure soul soar up in the same flight. A profound religious sympathy led her to experience the same emotions; tears of enthusiasm fell from her eyes upon Ralph’s hair. Then the moon rose above the top of the tall cabbage-palm, and its rays, shining through the gaps in the creeper, clothed Indiana in a pale, moist light which made her, in her white dress and with her long braided hair falling over her shoulders, look like the shade of some maiden lost in the desert.

  Sir Ralph knelt before her, saying:

  ‘Now, Indiana, you must forgive me all the harm I’ve done you so that I can forgive myself.’

  ‘Alas!’ she replied, ‘what have I to forgive you, my poor Ralph? On the contrary, ought I not to bless you on my last day, as you have forced me to do on all the unhappy days that have marked my life?’

  ‘I don’t know to what extent I was blameworthy,’ continued Ralph, ‘but it is impossible that, in such a long, terrible struggle with my destiny, I was not at fault many times without realizing it.’

  ‘What struggle are you talking of?’ asked Indiana.

  ‘That’s what I must reveal to you before dying; that’s my life’s secret. You asked me to tell you on the boat that brought us back here, and I promised to do so on the shore of Lake Bernica, the last time the moon would rise on us.’

  ‘The moment has come,’ she said. ‘I am listening.’

  ‘Be patient, then, for I have a long story to tell, Indiana, and that story is mine.’

  ‘I thought I knew it, for I’ve hardly ever been separated from you.’

  ‘You don’t know it; you know not a day, not an hour of it,’ said Ralph sadly. ‘For when could I have told it to you? Heaven willed that the only fitting moment for this confidence should be the last of your life and of mine. But it is as innocent and legitimate today as it would formerly have been crazy and criminal. It is a personal satisfaction that no one has the right to reproach me with at the present hour, and you will grant it me in order to complete the task of patience and gentleness that you have performed towards me. So bear to the end with the weight of my misfortunes, and if my words weary you, listen to the sound of the waterfall which sings the hymn of the dead over me.

  ‘I was born to love; none of you were willing to believe it and this mistake determined my character. It is true that in giving me a loving heart nature made a strange mistake. It had put a stony mask on my face and an immovable weight on my tongue; it denied me what it grants to the most uncivilized beings, the power to express my feelings in looks or words. That made me selfish. The moral being was judged by the outer shell and, like a sterile fruit, I had to harden myself beneath the rough husk that I couldn’t discard. I had barely been born when I was rejected by the heart I needed most. My mother sent me away from her breast with disgust because my infant face could not respond to her smile. At an age when one can hardly distinguish a thought from a need, I was already blighted by the odious name of egoist.

  ‘Then it was decided that no one would love me, because I couldn’t express my affection to anyone. They made me unhappy; they said I didn’t feel it; I was almost banished from my father’s house; they sent me to live on the cliffs like a poor bird from the shore. You know what my childhood was like, Indiana. I spent my long days in the wilds with no anxious mother coming to look for my footprints, with no friendly voice crying out in the silent ravines to tell me that night was calling me home. I grew up alone, I lived alone, but God has not permitted me to be unhappy to the end, for I shall not die alone.

  ‘But, even then, heaven sent me a present, a consolation, a hope. You came into my life as if you had been created for me. Poor child! Abandoned like me, cast like me into life without love and without protection, you seemed destined for me; at least I flattered myself with the thought. Was I presuming too much? For ten years you were mine, mine alone, without rivals, without worries. At that time I hadn’t yet understood what jealousy is.

  ‘That was the least unhappy period of my life, Indiana. I made you my sister, my daughter, my companion, my pupil, my social group. Your need of me made my life something more than that of a wild animal. For you I emerged from the depression into which the contempt of my family thrust me. I began to have a good opinion of myself by becoming useful to you. I must tell you everything, Indiana. After accepting for your sake the burden of life, my imagination placed in that the hope of a reward. I became accustomed (forgive the words I’m going to use; even today I can’t pronounce them without trembling), I became accustomed to thinking you would be my wife. Even though you were still a child, I looked on you as my fiancée. My imagination already embellished you with the charms of a young woman; I was impatient to see you grown up. My brother, who had usurped my share of family affection and who enjoyed domestic tasks, cultivated a garden on the hill which, in the daytime, can be seen from here and which new planters have turned into a rice-field. The care of his flowers occupied his happiest moments, and every morning he went to inspect their progress with an impatient eye and was surprised, child that he was, that they hadn’t been able to grow in one night according to his expectations. As for me, Indiana, you were my sole occupation, my sole joy, my sole wealth. You were the young plant that I was cultivating, the bud that I was impatient to see flower. In the morning, I, too, noted the effect of one more day’s sun passing over your head; for I was already a young man and you were still only a child. Already, passions whose name was unknown to you were stirring in my heart. My fifteen years were playing havoc with my imagination and you were surprised to see me often sad, taking part in your games without enjoying them. You didn’t understand that a fruit or a bird were no longer riches for me as they were for you, and already I seemed to you cold and strange. Yet you loved me as I was, for, in spite of my melancholy, there wasn’t a moment I didn’t devote to you. My sufferings made you dearer to my heart. I nurtured the crazy hope that one day it would fall to you to change them into joys.

  ‘Alas! Forgive me the sacriligious thought which kept me alive for ten years. If it was a crime for the ill-starred child to place his hopes in you, a beautiful, simple daughter of the mountains, God alone is guilty for giving him that bold thought as his only nourishment. On what could that wounded, misunderstood heart exist, a heart which found needs everywhere and refuge nowhere? From whom could he expect a look, a loving smile, if not from you, with whom he was in love almost as soon as
he was your father?

  ‘But don’t be alarmed that you grew up under the wing of a poor bird consumed by love. No impure adoration, no guilty thought ever endangered the virginity of your soul; never did my mouth pluck from your cheeks the bloom of innocence that covered them as fruit is covered in the morning by a moist vapour. My kisses were a father’s, and when your innocent, playful lips met mine they did not find the burning flame of a man’s desire. No, it wasn’t you, the little blue-eyed girl, I was in love with. As I held you in my arms with your candid smile and your sweet caresses, you were just my child, or at most, my little sister. But I was in love with your fifteen years, and when left alone with the passions of my own age, I would greedily anticipate the future.

  ‘When I read you the story of Paul and Virginie, you only half understood it. But you wept. You had seen only the story of a brother and sister, where I, perceiving the torments of two lovers, had quivered with sympathy. This book brought torture to me, whilst it brought joy to you. You enjoyed hearing me read of the attachment of the faithful dog,* of the beauty of the coconut palms, and of the songs of the negro Domingue.* But I, when I was alone, reread the conversations between Paul and his beloved, the impulsive suspicions of the one, the secret sufferings of the other. Oh, how well I understood those first anxieties of the adolescent who seeks in his own heart an explanation for the mysteries of life and grasps enthusiastically the first object of love that comes his way! But do me justice, Indiana; I didn’t commit the crime of hurrying on by a single day the peaceful course of your childhood. I didn’t let slip a word which might have told you that there were anxieties and tears in life. I left you, at the age of ten, in all the ignorance, in all the security that you had when your nurse put you in my arms one day when I had resolved to die.