The parting of the ways

Book First The Choice

Page

I Untrammeled Youth 5

II The Summons 23

III The Two Paths 48

IV The Onward March 67

V The Victory 83

VI A Young Girl’s Heart 97

VII The Retreat 112

VIII The Chains 129

BOOK SECOND I The Return to the Latin Quarter . . 145

II The Visit 165

III The Wrestlers 181

IV The Prisoners 196

V The Past 212

VI Claire 226

VII The Parting in Public 240

VIII The Crossroads 255

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

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V

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Book First The Choice

Reasons come afterward^ hut at first a thing pleases or shocks me without my knowing the reason. — Roannez.

I

A NEWSPAPER or two, — just enough to wrap an occasional parcel and show what new pleasures Paris has to offer, — odd numbers, lavender, red or scarlet, of the ‘‘ Mercure de France,” the “ Hermitage,” and “ Political and Literary Chit Chat,” an “ Akedyseril ” or an Eve future ” by Villiers de PIsle Adam, verses by Moreas or Verlaine, perhaps the ‘‘ Dying Society and Anarchy ” of Jean Grave, assuredly “ A Free Man ” by Maurice Barres, whom the Latin Quarter was the first to appreciate, photographs of Primitifs, of English Pre-Raphaelites, of “ Rose Croix ” exhibits scattered hap-hazard among reproductions of Charles CattePs marines or Lucien Simon’s “ Fisher-Folk,” a ticket of the Thetoe de PCEuvre for a representation of “ The Weavers ” or of “ An Enemy of the People,” finally, a young person with banded hair, — these are what one was pretty sure to find in the rooms of a conscientious and up-to-date student of the year 1894.

Nothing of all this miscellany was lacking in the rooms of Pascal Rouvray (22 Avenue de PObservatoire, fifth floor) except the young person with banded hair. But she was doubtless expected, if one might judge by a huge bunch of crimson roses recently brought by a florist, which the servant, an old housekeeper, who looked a cross between a pew-opener and a theater-attendant, had carelessly thrown upon a table without removing the wrapping or refreshing the stems with water. To offset these tokens of frivolity were a number of scientific and medical works scattered about on shelves, and a revolving bookcase with the works of Claude Bernard, Annals of the Pasteur Institute, writings of Charcot, Vulpran, Duchenne de Boulogne, — all pretty well worn, — most convenient to the hand. The large, well-lighted and almost elegant apartment, — study with great bay window, dining-room with balcony, and bedroom, — together with the serious aspect of the books, chosen for a longer future than that of examinations, all spoke of an occupant who had passed the hazardous student years, and reached that well-defined, perplexing and solemn moment when one must put the acquirements of youth to use. Pascal Rouvray, one of the most brilliant students of his generation, had just been appointed, at an exceptionally early age, superintendent of a clinic for diseases of the nervous system.

Number 22 Avenue de PObservatoire is at the corner of the Boulevard de Montparnasse. The windows look down in spring upon a river of verdure which flows lazily into the Luxembourg Gardens as into a lake, except where at one point a sun-bathed channel breaks away to form the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Above the open place before the Bal Bullier, near by, towers the dome of the Pantheon, and on fine days the Church of the Sacred Heart on far-away Montmartre soars above the mists of distance, beyond the sea of roofs, its white walls suggesting some Saracen city. One holds all Paris in a single glance as a child, playing on the shore, thinks to hold the sea in the hollow of his hand ; and the many-tinted city, beginning thus in a garden and ending in a mirage, might well captivate and inflame a young man’s brain, even if it had not already caught the fever from Balzac.

A key turned in the lock and Pascal hurried into the room.

“Where are my flowers, Melanie.'* What! You have let them die of thirst! Quick, water in the vases ! ”

He hastily arranged the vases, crowding in the flowers — one does not improvise himself florist — placing them on the chimney and on a chest of drawers before a large photograph of a girl in evening dress.

“ Where are the cakes ”

“ Here.”

He arranged them on a dish under the very nose of the useless Melanie, and turned to inspect the furniture, while she looked on in petrifled amazement.

“ Now,” he concluded, “ you may go back to the kitchen and make the tea.”

“ I have n’t finished in here,” protested the housekeeper, recovering the use of her tongue. “ And besides, there is a letter for Monsieur.”

“ Very well, lay it on the table.” There were more important things on his mind than his mail.

“ See here,” he added, “ if the bell rings I shall open the door myself — you understand.^ ”

“ Yes, sir. Monsieur expects a lady.”

“ I perceive that you do understand. Melanie, you are perspicacious.”

“We have waited for her long enough.”

“ What ’s that you say ^ ”

“ It ’s a long time since Monsieur has received visitors of this sort.”

“ Melanie, you have ceased to understand.”

He waved her away, not without an amused smile at the doting old servant who would gladly have shared his secrets, and who with thoroughly Parisian indulgence seemed to regret his many lost opportunities, and hastened to post himself upon the balcony. The trees of the avenue, the great piles of buildings, the towers on Montmartre, were bathed in a sea of golden dust, shot through with the rays of the sun, sloping toward its setting. It was one of those fairy-like days of June which are the flower of all the year, but he saw neither its glory nor any of its details, so intently was he gazing upon the boulevard far below, where omnibuses, carriages, footpassengers, jostled one another with the pigmy bustle of an ant-hill. Long he watched, until at last a victoria with two ladies drew up at the curb.

“Will they both come up.?” he anxiously asked himself. “ No, Madame Aveniere is so delicate — ”

His hope was granted. Only one of the ladies quitted the carriage and vanished under the archway. He left the window, darted to the antechamber, then suddenly checked himself; he would wait for her here.

One of the most precious of all emotions is that of listening with the heart for the footsteps of the beloved one. She who at this moment was mounting the stairs to his fifth floor (she must have reached the first by this time), Laurence Aveniere, his betrothed, embodied, with all the love of his life, its fixed order, its natural harmony. In her he had reached the apex of his youth, whence he could survey the world that lay at his feet and take its measure. (The bench on the second landing invites to rest, but she will not sit down — )

He had had the unique good fortune of meeting her at the very moment when a man awakes to the consciousness of his powers, while as yet nothing has occurred to impair them. (The easy-chair on the third landing is moth-eaten; it rather repels than attracts — )

Their engagement was only two or three days old, — it had not yet been announced. But his parents would surely not delay the important journey required for the formal request of her hand. That letter upon the table was, indeed, in his father’s handwriting. (At the fourth landing one’s breath begins to give out, but one goes on. If only she has n’t tired herself, coming up too fast! — )

He had taken lunch with her that morning, in her house in the Rue Desbordes-Valmore, at Passy, and she had said to him, “ I shall be passing through the Avenue de I’Observatoire in a carriage with Mamma about five o’clock ; perhaps I ’ll make you a little visit — Mamma will permit. Just in and out again. I should like to see where you live.” (But she ought to be here. The bell has n’t rung yet. How high this apartment is, and how hard to reach!)

The longed-for tinkle startled him as if he had not expected it. He rushed ahead of Melanie, whom curiosity had impelled to disregard orders, and opened the door.

“ Here I am,” she said.

“ You ! It is you ! Come in, quick ! ”

‘‘ I must n’t stop. It is something to have come at all. Only in and out again, you know. Mamma is below in the carriage.”

He drew her into the study. She was not in the least out of breath. Climbing stairs suited her, or perhaps she had come up without hurrying, with reasonable deliberation. She appeared not at all embarrassed.

“ Don’t speak,” he said, more moved than she. “ Let me look at you in my home. For the moment I want nothing but just to look at you. To hear your voice would be too much.”

She laughed at the extravagant adoration, which, however, she was ready enough to receive, — laughed as little girls do, whose joy is quite untroubled.

Who does not feel a sort of disinterested pleasure on meeting in the street or in some public place one of those rare, perfectly assorted young couples whose height, age, appearance, manners, are in fine accord.? Who is not moved almost to thank them for the joy they exhale, and for the witness they bear to elective affinities, to pre-established harmonies.? Thus were Laurence and Pascal suited to one another. Not one of their acquaintances would be surprised to hear of their engagement.

Yet the impression made by each separately differed widely from that made by the two together. The girl, tall and slender, long-limbed, with that purity of proportion which is the joint gift of nature and outdoor sports, would have commanded attention by her light grace alone, and if her face at once attracted the eye, it was not so much for the profile, clear cut as a medal, the golden blond hair curling around her brow, and the dark eyes whose somewhat hard expression was softened by the color of her hair, as for the singularity of her coloring, unlike that of any one else. There is a luminous kind of fairness, such, for example, as the pigment with which Fra Angelico painted the Coronation of the Virgin on the wall of the Convent of San Marco; Laurence’s skin was like that — translucent. On her mother’s side she belonged to those northern races whose blood flows quietly, or seems to hide its flow, like a stream under ice. Her almost infantine smile gave ambiguity to her too classic and serious features, — a curious charm of uncertainty which serenely and as if by nature attracted, disconcerted, moved to rapture.

‘‘ I am never sure of your eyes,” Pascal had said to her in one of those welcome moods of melancholy which sweep over the young lover, trying to understand the baffling impression which she made upon him.

“ Because they saw too many things before they saw me.”

‘‘ Perhaps they would never have found you if they had sought for you less.”

The reply would have seemed flippant but for the grave tone which added a touch of tenderness to the words. Her flexible voice vibrated through the silence like the deep notes of the violoncello.

Quite contrariwise, the young man’s presence diffused a sense of security, confidence, life, all that guarantees success to him who has chosen for his profession to make war with death. His tall figure, clear-cut features, hair en brosse, the buoyancy of his twenty-seven years, commanded that confidence which goes out only to well-balanced powers, to the union of physical health with intellectual and moral vigor, a masculinity from which ultra- refinement shrinks as from something coarse, only to turn to it for refuge at the first menace of danger.

The girl had taken possession of the room with the open bay window. She wore a costume of flaxblue plaited voile with puffed sleeves and deep cuffs of black velvet to match the bodice, and a broad collar of old guipure. The little straw hat, of the same delicate shade as the gown, was bordered with black velvet and trimmed with great poppies of black silk. How many times in the long future would her image rise before him precisely thus !

“ May I speak now ? ” she ventured prettily, as he remained silent.

“Yes, indeed!”

“ Red roses I Let me take one — may I ? ”

“ All of them.”

“ All — I ’d like to. Ah, here am 1 1 Do you look at me often.? And is this where you work.? ”

“ Where I try to work. I forbid myself to think of you for a whole hour.”

“ That is soon over.”

“ And the quarter is not past when I take up your photograph again, or your letters.”

“ Then give them back to me,” she smiled, “ I will not have them impairing your value.” Then, more seriously, “ I want them to be a help to you.”

“ Don’t you know, Laurence, that it is to you I owe my best work, my sense of holding life in my hands, and all my happiness .? ”

She smiled her pleasure, and passing through the open bay leaned against the balcony railing.

“ From here you see all Paris. What a great noise it makes! Come and listen with me.”

While he was coming, she spoke to the city as to a living creature.

“ One day, perhaps, she will recognize you.” “Who.?”

“ Why, Paris. She must recognize you as a benefactor. Do you forget your ambitions.? ”

“ I am not precisely thinking of them at this moment.”

“ I think of them all the time, ever since that evening when you told me your hopes for the future. It was that evening — ”

“ That evening.? ”

“ That I understood — ”

“ I had understood long before — ”

She smiled; then recalling the conversation to an ordinary tone —

“ You must be sure to discover some unknown microbe, just to please me. With the means of destroying it, of course.”

“ Ah, you want your husband to be celebrated.”

“ Certainly. I know what you are worth. Now I must run. Mamma is making signals from the street.”

“Already ! ”

“ But you will come to Passy to-morrow.”

“ Don’t go yet ! I have hardly seen you. And you have not told me — ”

“ What?”

“ Whether you love me to-day.”

“ Nor have you, either.”

“How do we love, Laurence? Freely and for always, do we not? ”

She repeated, “ Yes, freely and for always. In the face of this Paris which is looking at us.”

He dared not kiss her, because she had trusted herself to him in his own rooms. He heaped her arms with roses, and unhampered by her burden she went lightly down the stairs. As she went down, he became for the first time conscious of the supple movements of her body. It is only for a brief moment that intense love annihilates desire, and regret that he had not clasped her to his breast gave a dash of bitterness to the happy memory of her visit.

He went back to the balcony and saw her enter her carriage, lay the roses across her knees, then lift them with a gesture of farewell. Her mother waved a greeting, the horse started, and they were gone. It was soon impossible for him to discern them. Why had not Laurence looked back at least once or twice? But she had come, was not that enough?

He lingered on the balcony, on the very spot which she had occupied, in that mood which abolishes time and space, and in which the absence of external sensations intensifies the inward emotion which deliciously carries one out of oneself. The fresh breeze of evening breathed softly, an impalpable violet haze floated over the far horizon, but he was unaware of the encompassing sweetness, for within himself was a sweetness which made a part of his very breath. He was loving as others live, so intensely as hardly to be conscious of it.

“ Monsieur did not ring for the tea.? ” Melanie was bringing in the tray. Her entrance recalled him from afar.

“ It is not needed.”

‘‘ What ! she is gone ! And Monsieur let her go ? ”

“ Take it away, Melanie, take it away. And those cakes, too.”

“ Monsieur will dine here this evening.? ”

‘‘ No, I have invited some friends to the restaurant.”

With the cakes and tea he had prepared all sorts of appropriate phrases which also had not been needed. That is pretty much the fate of thoughts of love — the best of them remain with us on account.

To him Laurence represented what marriage too seldom represents to the young people of France — all the anticipations of a youth which has never been really touched by low and ephemeral alliances. He belonged to a generation athirst for independence, intoxicated with a confused buzzing of ideas, resolved to live their own life. Of his generation he had even taken the lead in his own specialty. His father had been the first to foresee this, when he sent his sixteen-year-old boy to Paris armed with his double baccalaureate from the schools of Lyons. There is only one city in our too centralized France for students of more than average ability, and even in that city one is as likely to meet failure as success. Ten years of medical study, interrupted only by the year of voluntary army service, had brought him, step by step, from the school where he had gained the gold medal to a doctorate, the thesis for which, “ A Contribution to the Experimental Study of Infectious Myelitis,” bore witness to a rare scientific mind, and finally to an exceptionally early appointment to the charge of a clinic. The appointment dated from only a few days before, and seemed to prophesy that if he continued to follow the career of competitive examinations, and refrained from plunging too deeply into private practice, he would soon reach the position of hospital physician and a professorship in the Faculty of Medicine. The order of his progress would be as rapid and methodical as a well-regulated shooting-match.

Ambition and a sense of remoteness had safeguarded him from the low attachments which too often fetter the freedom of youth. It was his good fortune to have gone straight forward, untrammeled by ties of any sort, toward a goal which he had set very far beyond him.

It was at this juncture that one of his instructors, Marriel, who was attending Mme. Aveniere through an enteritis, and who had several times called upon him for assistance in the sick-room, smilingly suggested to him that the young lady seemed to take an uncommon interest in his future.

“ She has an antipathy to society young men,” said the old practitioner, “ and I quite understand it. They have been close around her from her childhood. What she wants in a husband is a young man capable of being one day a great man, or at least a well-known man — the same thing to a woman. Only a learned man or an artist would suit her. Singular taste! A good man is worth much more.

Women are queer, nowadays. At any rate, you are evidently the man.”

Such a hint, when it corresponds with a secret inclination, is often sufficient to determine a man’s future. It was impossible that Mile. Aveniere should meet an interesting face without seeking to know all about its owner. The decorated artists, the ripe and elegant metaphysicians of the Sorbonne, who frequented her mother’s drawing-room, were always ready to explain to her the color of the world or the rojjaance of the infinite, but while listening to them she never lost sight of their baldness or other signs of old age. Young men so often keep their intelligence in the ^background, at least for the time being, that she had begun to despair of finding youth and intellect united in the same person. Finding both in Pascal, she gave herself up to the new friendship, and he went on improving himself to give her pleasure. To his surprise he found that her ambition for him was even greater than his own. The girls he had till then known had thought of nothing farther than to win his love. This girl allured him on in the very course he had marked out for himself, running before him like a Diana in a forest path, calling him to hasten. Was she already aware that a woman’s social influence depends first of all upon her husband’s importance.? But the more she inspired him to a fever of effort, the more she cultivated calmness, like an accomplishment, for herself.

Thus he found in love a stimulus of all his faculties, the very motive power of his highest development.

Practically, this marriage would help him. The Avenieres were widely connected. Their style of living showed them to be people of fortune. V'The young doctor would find himself spared all those false starts, those weary struggles, which too often hamper the early stages of a career. He would go to meet his future by a royal road. It might well be that he found himself somewhat confused among all these considerations, practical and sentimental, but he had at least come to know the happiest of human experiences — the union, in early youth, of these two opposites, passion and a plan of life.

When she stood there, leaning against the balustrade above that luminous Paris, he had experienced a sense of completeness which no satisfaction of pride or of love could surpass. All the significance of his past had come home to him. He had tacitly dedicated it to her, like those roses which she had so delightedly inhaled and carried away. The day was to come when in bitterness of heart he would review his life in the memory of that scene, which by its results became one of those important moments upon which his whole future was suspended.

Recalled from his state of torpor by Melanie’s attentions, he went to the table for his neglected letter, in the address of which he had recognized the handwriting of his father, a physician of Lyons. For a moment he gazed at it without opening it. No doubt it was the reply to the announcement of his engagement, which he had sent off two days before ; possibly his parents had expressed some dissatisfaction on learning that he had by himself concluded an event which is usually arranged by one’s family.^ But was not this what general agreement called a fine marriage Besides, they knew him to be impatient under any yoke, disinclined to counsel, quite resolved to organize his own career and mode of life. His father not only knew but respected his independence. At times, it is true, during his vacations when he had resolutely stated his opinions on the subject of freedom he had felt the paternal gaze fixed upon him with something of questioning, something of disquiet. But this inquisition had never lasted long, — his father’s expression had soon become confident. And his mother always thought with his father.

He read the letter — a long one — standing just where Laurence had stood on the balcony. Its opening words appeared disturbing, and more than once as he read, he muttered protests below his breath.

“ My dear Pascal, — I have asked your mother, who is your usual correspondent, to permit me to express our surprise. We have not been consulted concerning the gravest act of your life — the choice of your companion, the founding of your home. You are our eldest son, our pride. We have never, so far as I know, been unreasonably hard upon you. I know all the importance of individuality, and that it is not by unceasing insistence that a family transmits its spirit and character to succeeding generations. I know, too, that younger generations, and especially the one to which you belong, go on their way without concerning themselves too much with what they leave behind them; and I have watched over too many lives, and also over too many deaths, to complain of facts or rebel against them. But at least we deserved your confidence.

“ This confidence, which I have many times restored to your mother when she was anxious about you — more often than you will ever know — it is now your turn to restore to us both. I do not consent to lose it. I cannot believe that in making your choice you have not been in some sort constrained by those voices of the past which in spite of ourselves insist upon being heard when our most sacred interests are at stake. We had hoped that our daughter-in-law would have been a young girl of Dauphiny, the cradle of our race, whose impress we all bear. She of whom we had thought would have brought you as her dowry not only a fortune honestly come by, but courage and confidence — virtues indispensable to one who intends to make something of his life. One who would undertake anything worth while must be sure of peace and security at home. A man of action needs to be free from all family disquietudes. Try to understand — will you not ? — the anxiety of parents who are looking forward to the future of their son. Love alone does not suffice for marriage. Marriage implies a family. We should simply have given you counsel. You have done without it. I hope that at least you have been influenced by our spirit.

“ Your mother has always been a little afraid of Paris. I did not hesitate to send you there for study, notwithstanding the fastidious notions of the people of Lyons, because of the enlarged intellectual capacity which a right-minded man may gain there. But one may also gain there a large stock of false ideas. Paris is, above all, a city which takes small account of the antecedents of people, is recruited from all sources, and consents to a society of casual individuals and short-lived marriages. People do not settle there permanently. Bethink yourself that to marry is to consent to permanence. This is the whole matter. When one builds for a long future, one takes thought for solidity of construction. We are living in a troubled time, when everything is questioned by every one. Beware of these quicksands with your betrothed. Once agreed upon the essential belief, the indissolubility of marriage, you will make your arrangements accordingly, out of respect for the ancient name of Rouvray. Forgive me for insisting upon this point. I should have preferred to talk with you of these things more quietly during the vacation in our summer home at Colletiere. Evenings in the country are just the time for such simple yet important discussions. You have allowed no time for them ; I must speak without delay.

“ I was already somewhat disappointed in your doctor’s thesis. Your method seems to me incomplete, however directly it may go to its aim, with no consideration of the old notions which it rejects. You draw too sharp a line between the disease and the invalid to satisfy me. One would say that the former alone interests you. You take too little account of the infinite complexity of human nature, and you are too much inclined to bring the whole divine art of medicine back to formulae, as if it were only a question of chemistry and physics. Nor can I admit the truth of the epigraph which you borrowed from Charcot: ‘ There are no hybrids in nervous pathology.’ I have practiced long, observed much, and I am growing old. The notes which I have collected, and which I may perhaps publish some day, forbid me to accept your conclusions as to the origin of maladies of the nerves. You lose some of their elements when you definitely separate them from any moral cause. A doctor is not merely a biologist. The theories of Pasteur have greatly served the science of medicine, but they can not confine it to the laboratory. The great Pasteur himself never gave them this meaning. We will speak of this again, and, moreover, experience will bring you to the right views. I am sure of your ability.

“Now that I have finished scolding you, — how many times have I done it in the last ten years since you left us to try to excel us ? — do not in the least doubt our love for you. We shall welcome Mile. Aveniere as our daughter. Her social position as you describe it cannot but be gratifying to us, since it will facilitate your entrance upon your career, and will serve your legitimate ambitions. We shall look to your betrothed herself for the explanation of your choice. I hope she may be worthy of your mother, to whom I owe my serenity of mind and peace of heart.

“ I shall shortly set out for Paris, to present to Mile. Aveniere’s parents — though somewhat late — the formal request for their daughter’s hand. Your mother would gladly accompany me, but I dread the journey for her in the increasing heat. I was thinking of taking the rapide to-morrow, but I feel somewhat fatigued this morning — a little trouble with the circulation, somewhat overworked no doubt. I almost always feel the need of rest at this time of the year. You will excuse my delay, which will not be for long.