THE SECRET

‘I passed once more under her window. The panes are always dusty and whitened by the double curtain behind. Should Yvonne de Galais open it now, I have no longer anything to tell her, since she is married.... What’s to be done now? How live?...

* * * * *

‘_Saturday, February 13._ I met by the river that girl who gave me news in the month of June and who used, like me, to wait before the closed house.... I spoke to her. While she walked, I noticed, from the side, the slight blemishes in her face: a little line by the lips, a little hollowness in the cheeks, and powder a little thick on her nostrils. Turning suddenly, she looked me full in the face, perhaps because her full-face was prettier than her profile, and said abruptly: “You do amuse me. You remind me of a young man who made love to me once at Bourges. I was engaged to him....”

* * * * *

‘Moreover, at night, on the deserted wet pavement reflecting the light of a street lamp, she suddenly came close and asked me to take her with her sister to the theatre that evening. For the first time I observed that she was dressed in mourning, in a woman’s hat far too old for her young face, and that she carried a long thin umbrella like a cane. And as I was quite close to her my nails got caught in the front of her dress.... I do not jump at her suggestion. She is cross and immediately wants to go away. And now it is I who hold her back and beg her. Then a workman, passing in the dim light, says in a low voice, bantering: “Don’t you go, little girl. He’ll do you a mischief!”

‘And we stopped there, both of us, embarrassed.

* * * * *

‘_At the theatre._ The two girls--my friend, whose name is Valentine Blondeau, and her sister--have come in cheap scarves.

‘Valentine is in front of me. Every moment she turns round, restlessly as though inquiring what I want of her. I, near her--well, I feel almost happy; each time I reply with a smile.

‘All round us there were women wearing dresses that were too low. And we joked about them. She smiled at first, then said, “I must not laugh at them: my dress is too low, too.” And she wrapped her scarf round her. As a matter of fact, under the square of black lace, you could see that in her hurry to change her dress she had rolled back the top of her simple chemise that was working up.

* * * * *

‘There is something poverty-stricken and childish about her. She has a curious suffering and adventurous look which attracts me. Near her, the only person in the world who could give me news of the people of the manor, I never stop brooding on my strange past adventure.... I wanted to ask fresh questions about the little house in the boulevard. But she, in her turn, put such troublesome questions to me that I did not know how to reply. I feel that henceforth we shall, both of us, be dumb on that subject. And yet I know, too, that I shall see her again. What’s the good? Why?... Am I now doomed to dog the steps of every person who carries with him the faintest, most distant whiff of my foiled adventure?...

* * * * *

‘At midnight, alone in the deserted street, I ask myself what meaning this new strange story has for me. I walk by houses like cardboard boxes in a row, in which a whole people sleep. And all of a sudden I remember a decision I had taken a month or so ago: I had resolved to go there by night, about one in the morning to go right round the house, to open the garden-gate, to enter like a thief and to search for some indication which would help me to find the lost manor, to see her again, merely to see her again.... But I am tired, I am hungry. I, too, hurried to dress for the theatre and I have had no dinner.... However, I remain a long time seated, much disturbed in mind, on the edge of my bed before lying down, a prey to vague remorse. Why?

‘They did not want me either to see them home or to know where they lived. But I followed them long enough to know. I know they live in a little street which leads into the neighborhood of Notre-Dame. But at what number?... I guessed they were dressmakers or milliners.

‘Valentine, without telling her sister, made a plan to meet me on Thursday at four in front of the theatre we had been to.

‘“If I’m not there to-morrow,” she said, “come on Friday at the same time, and Saturday, and so on, every day.”

* * * * *

‘_Thursday, February 18._ I went to wait for her, in a high wind foretelling rain. You said to yourself all the time, “It’ll end by raining.” ...

‘I walk along in the twilight of the streets with a weight on my heart. A drop falls. I fear a downpour: a storm would keep her from coming. But the wind rises again and the rain still keeps off. Above in the grey afternoon sky--now grey and now ablaze with light--a great cloud must have yielded to the wind. And I am here on the earth, miserably waiting....

* * * * *

‘_In front of the theatre._ I am certain, after a quarter of an hour, that she won’t come. From where I stand on the embankment I keep watch on the stream of people passing over the bridge, the way she ought to be coming. I follow with my eyes all young women in mourning whom I see approach and almost feel a kind of gratitude for those who, when nearest to me, have resembled her the longest and made me hope....

* * * * *

‘_An hour’s wait._ I am tired. At nightfall a policeman takes a rough to the station near by and the rough hurls all the filthy insults he knows at him. The policeman is furious, pale, dumb.... In the passage he begins to strike, then he closes the door to beat the wretched man in peace.... This terrible thought comes to me: “I have renounced paradise and am now stamping my feet at the gates of hell.”

‘To ease my restless mind, I leave the place and make for the little narrow street, between the Seine and Notre-Dame, where I almost know where they live. I walk to and fro alone. Now and again a servant or housewife comes out in the fine rain to shop before night.... Nothing here for me and I go away.... I walk through the clear rain which keeps the night back, up to the square where we ought to meet. There are more people than before--a black crowd....

* * * * *

‘Suppositions--despair--fatigue--I cling to the thought of to-morrow. To-morrow at the same time I shall come back and wait for her. And I am in a great hurry for to-morrow to come. I look forward with weariness to the evening to-day and then to the next morning which I must go through somehow with nothing to do.... But surely this day anyhow is practically over?... By the fire, in my room, I hear them shout the evening papers. Without any doubt, from her house hidden somewhere in the town near Notre-Dame, she is hearing them cried, too.

‘She ... I mean: Valentine.

‘That evening, which I wanted to skip, weighs strangely upon me. While the hours advance, while the day is soon to end--and I should like it ended--there exist men who have trusted all their hope to it, all their love and their last strength. There are dying men, others threatened by ruin, who would all like to-morrow never to come. There are others for whom remorse will dawn with to-morrow. Others who are so tired that this night will never be long enough to give them the rest they need. And I, I who have wasted to-day, how dare I summon to-morrow?

* * * * *

‘_Friday evening._ I had thought to write, “I have not seen her again.” And everything would have been finished.

‘But when I reached the corner of the theatre at four o’clock--there she was! Slight and solemn, wearing black, but with powder on her face and a little collar which made her look like a naughty Pierrot. A look at once doleful and malicious.

‘She comes to tell me that she wants to leave me at once, that she will never come any more....

‘And yet at nightfall here we still are, the two of us, slowly walking, one close to the other, on the gravel path of the Tuileries. She tells me her story, but tells it in so involved a manner that I understand it badly. She says “my lover” in speaking of the man to whom she had been engaged, but whom she did not marry. She does so purposely, I think, to shock me and to keep me from attaching myself to her.

* * * * *

‘Here are some of her phrases which I write down against my will:

‘“Don’t you trust me an atom,” she says; “I always get into scrapes.”

‘“I’ve seen a good bit of life, quite on my own.”

‘“I upset the man I was engaged to. I left him because he admired me too much; he saw me only in imagination, never as I was. I’m full of faults. We should have been very unhappy.”

‘Every moment I catch her trying to make herself out worse than she is. I think that she wants to prove to herself that she was right in doing the stupid thing she speaks of, that she has nothing to regret and is not worthy of the happiness which was offered her.

‘Another time:

‘“What I like about you,” she said, giving me a long look--“what I like about you--and I can’t know why--are my memories....”

* * * * *

‘Another time:

‘“I still love him,” she said, “more than you think.”

‘And then suddenly, abruptly, sadly: “Well, what do _you_ want? Do _you_ love me? Are _you_ going to propose to me?”

‘I muttered something. I don’t know what I replied. As likely as not I said, “Yes.”’

* * * * *

Here this sort of journal stopped. There began rough drafts of letters, illegible, scribbled, scratched out. Precarious betrothal!... The girl, at Meaulnes’ request, had left her job. He had busied himself with preparations for the wedding. But for ever clutched at by the desire to continue the search, to set out again on the tracks of his lost love, he must doubtless have disappeared on several occasions; and in his letters, with tragic embarrassment, he tried to justify himself to Valentine.