Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Through calico curtains, carefully drawn across the two large windows, a
pale white light like that of breaking day filtered into the room. It
was a lofty and spacious room, fitted up with old Louis XV. furniture,
the woodwork painted white, the upholstery showing a pattern of red
flowers on a leafy ground. On the piers above the doors on either side
of the alcove were faded paintings still displaying the rosy flesh of
flying Cupids, whose games it was now impossible to follow. The
wainscoting with oval panels, the folding doors, the rounded ceiling
(once sky-blue and framed with scrolls, medallions, and bows of
flesh-coloured ribbons), had all faded to the softest grey. Opposite the
windows the large alcove opened beneath banks of clouds which plaster
Cupids drew aside, leaning over, and peeping saucily towards the bed.
And like the windows, the alcove was curtained with coarsely hemmed
calico, whose simplicity seemed strange in this room where lingered a
perfume of whilom luxury and voluptuousness.

Seated near a pier table, on which a little kettle bubbled over a
spirit-lamp, Albine intently watched the alcove curtains. She was gowned
in white, her hair gathered up in an old lace kerchief, her hands
drooping wearily, as she kept watch with the serious mien of youthful
womanhood. A faint breathing, like that of a slumbering child, could be
heard in the deep silence. But she grew restless after a few minutes,
and could not restrain herself from stepping lightly towards the alcove
and raising one of the curtains. On the edge of the big bed lay Serge,
apparently asleep, with his head resting on his bent arm. During his
illness his hair had lengthened, and his beard had grown. He looked very
white, with sunken eyes and pallid lips.

Moved by the sight Albine was about to let the curtain fall again. But
Serge faintly murmured, 'I am not asleep.'

He lay perfectly still with his head on his arm, without stirring even a
finger, as if overwhelmed by delightful weariness. His eyes had slowly
opened, and his breath blew lightly on one of his hands, raising the
golden down on his fair skin.

'I heard you,' he murmured again. 'You were walking very gently.'*

* From this point in the original Serge and Albine thee and thou
one another; but although this _tutoiement_ has some bearing on
the development of the story, it was impossible to preserve it
in an English translation.--ED.

His voice enchanted her. She went up to his bed and crouched beside it
to bring her face on a level with his own. 'How are you?' she asked, and
then continued: 'Oh! you are well now. Do you know, I used to cry the
whole way home when I came back from over yonder with bad news of you.
They told me you were delirious, and that if your dreadful fever did
spare your life, it would destroy your reason. Oh, didn't I kiss your
uncle Pascal when he brought you here to recruit your health!'

Then she tucked in his bed-clothes like a young mother.

'Those burnt-up rocks over yonder, you see, were no good to you. You
need trees, and coolness, and quiet. The doctor hasn't even told a soul
that he was hiding you away here. That's a secret between himself and
those who love you. He thought you were lost. Nobody will ever disturb
you, you may be sure of that! Uncle Jeanbernat is smoking his pipe by
his lettuce bed. The others will get news of you on the sly. Even the
doctor isn't coming back any more. I am to be your doctor now. You don't
want any more physic, it seems. What you now want is to be loved; do you
see?'

He did not seem to hear her, his brain as yet was void. His eyes,
although his head remained motionless, wandered inquiringly round the
room, and it struck her that he was wondering where he might be.

'This is my room,' she said. 'I have given it to you. Isn't it a pretty
one? I took the finest pieces of furniture out of the lumber attic, and
then I made those calico curtains to prevent the daylight from dazzling
me. And you're not putting me out a bit. I shall sleep on the second
floor. There are three or four empty rooms there.'

Still he looked anxious.

'You're alone?' he asked.

'Yes; why do you ask that?'

He made no answer, but muttered wearily: 'I have been dreaming, I am
always dreaming. I hear bells ringing, and they tire me.'

And after a pause he went on: 'Go and shut the door, bolt it; I want you
to be alone, quite alone.'

When she came back, bringing a chair with her, and sat down by his
pillow, he looked as gleeful as a child, and kept on saying: 'Nobody can
come in now. I shall not hear those bells any more. When you are talking
to me, it rests me.'

'Would you like something to drink?' she asked.

He made a sign that he was not thirsty. He looked at Albine's hands as
if so astonished, so delighted to see them, that with a smile she laid
one on the edge of his pillow. Then he let his head glide down, and
rested his cheek against that small, cool hand, saying, with a light
laugh: 'Ah! it's as soft as silk. It is just as if it were sending a
cool breeze through my hair. Don't take it away, please.'

Then came another long spell of silence. They gazed on one another with
loving kindliness--Albine calmly scanning herself in the convalescent's
eyes, Serge apparently listening to some faint whisper from the small,
cool hand.

'Your hand is so nice,' he said once more. 'You can't fancy what good it
does me. It seems to steal inside me, and take away all the pain in my
limbs. It's as if I were being soothed all over, relieved, cured.'

He gently rubbed his cheek against it, with growing animation, as if he
were at last coming back to life.

'You won't give me anything nasty to drink, will you? You won't worry me
with all sorts of physic? Your hand is quite enough for me. I have come
here for you to put it there under my head.'

'Dear Serge,' said Albine softly, 'how you must have suffered.'

'Suffered! yes, yes; but it's a long time ago. I slept badly, I had such
frightful dreams. If I could, I would tell you all about it.'

He closed his eyes for a moment and strove hard to remember.

'I can see nothing but darkness,' he stammered. 'It is very odd, I have
just come back from a long journey. I don't even know now where I
started from. I had fever, I know, a fever that raced through my veins
like a wild beast. That was it--now I remember. The whole time I had a
nightmare, in which I seemed to be crawling along an endless underground
passage; and every now and then I had an attack of intolerable pain, and
then the passage would be suddenly walled up. A shower of stones fell
from overhead, the side walls closed in, and there I stuck, panting, mad
to get on; and then I bored into the obstacle and battered away with
feet and fists, and skull, despairing of ever being able to get through
the ever increasing mound of rubbish. At other times, I only had to
touch it with my finger and it vanished: I could then walk freely along
the widened gallery, weary only from the pangs of my attack.'

Albine tried to lay a hand upon his lips.

'No,' said he, 'it doesn't tire me to talk. I can whisper to you here,
you see. I feel as if I were thinking and you could hear me. The
queerest point about that underground journey of mine was that I hadn't
the faintest idea of turning back again; I got obstinate, although I had
the thought before me that it would take me thousands of years to clear
away a single heap of wreckage. It seemed a fated task, which I had to
fulfil under pain of the greatest misfortunes. So, with my knees all
bruised, and my forehead bumping against the hard rock, I set myself to
work with all my might, so that I might get to the end as quickly as
possible. The end? What was it? . . . Ah! I do not know, I do not know.'

He closed his eyes and pondered dreamily. Then, with a careless pout, he
again sank upon Albine's hand and said laughing: 'How silly of me! I am
a child.'

But the girl, to ascertain if he were wholly hers, questioned him and
led him back to the confused recollections he had tried to summon up. He
could remember nothing, however; he was truly in a happy state of
childhood. He fancied that he had been born the day before.

'Oh! I am not strong enough yet,' he said. 'My furthest recollection is
of a bed which burned me all over, my head rolled about on a pillow like
a pan of live coals, and my feet wore away with perpetual rubbing
against each other. I was very bad, I know. It seemed as if I were
having my body changed, as if I were being taken all to pieces, and put
together again like some broken machine.'

He laughed at this simile, and continued: 'I shall be all new again.
My illness has given me a fine cleaning. But what was it you were
asking me? No, nobody was there. I was suffering all by myself at
the bottom of a black hole. Nobody, nobody. And beyond that, nothing
--I can see nothing. . . . Let me be your child, will you? You shall
teach me to walk. I can see nothing else but you now. I care for nothing
but you. . . . I can't remember, I tell you. I came, you took me, and
that is all.'

And restfully, pettingly, he said once more: 'How warm your hand is now!
it is as nice as the sun. Don't let us talk any more. It makes me hot.'

A quivering silence fell from the blue ceiling of the large room. The
spirit lamp had just gone out, and from the kettle came a finer and
finer thread of steam. Albine and Serge, their heads side by side upon
the pillow, gazed at the large calico curtains drawn across the windows.
Serge's eyes, especially, were attracted to them as to the very source
of light, in which he sought to steep himself, as in diluted sunshine
fitted to his weakness. He could tell that the sun lay behind that
yellower gleam upon one corner of the curtain, and that sufficed to make
him feel himself again. Meanwhile a far-off rustle of leaves came upon
his listening ear, and against the right-hand window the clean-cut
greenish shadow of a lofty bough brought him disturbing thoughts of the
forest which he could feel to be near him.

'Would you like me to open the curtains?' asked Albine, misunderstanding
his steady gaze.

'No, no,' he hastily replied.

'It's a fine day; you would see the sunlight and the trees.'

'No, please don't. . . . I don't want to see anything outside. That
bough there tires me with its waving and its rising, as if it was alive.
Leave your hand here, I will go to sleep. All is white now. It's so
nice.'

And then he calmly fell asleep, while Albine watched beside him and
breathed upon his face to make his slumber cool.

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