Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the
steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing a
way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few
yards. Then they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very
wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as
big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young
oaks. Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection of
plants. But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment,
everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of
roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled,
so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the
same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while
climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in
spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall at
the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood--narrow
footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled
in the shade and scent. These led to glades and clearings, under bowers
of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones. Some
sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright
patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an
aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a
woman's bosom. The rose bushes had whispering voices too. And the rose
bushes were full of songbirds' nests.

'We must take care not to lose ourselves,' said Albine, as she entered
the wood. 'I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was able
to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at
every step.'

They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out
with fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground,
and fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on
the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the
wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue
gap at its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the
clearing into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes
rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle
of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and
hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny
apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace,
the light filtered like impalpable sunny dust. And from the vaulted roof
hung stray branches, chandeliers, as it were, thick clusters suspended
from green thread-like stems, armfuls of flowers that reached to the
ground, athwart some rent in the leafy ceiling, which trailed around
like a tattered curtain.

Albine meanwhile was gazing at Serge asleep. She had never seen him so
utterly prostrated in body as now, his hands lying open on the turf, his
face deathly. So dead indeed he was to her that she thought she could
kiss his face without his even feeling it. And sadly, absently, she
busied her hands with shredding all the roses within her reach. Above
her head drooped an enormous cluster which brushed against her hair, set
roses on her twisted locks, her ears, her neck, and even threw a mantle
of the fragrant flowers across her shoulders. Higher up, under her
fingers, other roses rained down with large and tender petals
exquisitely formed, which in hue suggested the faintly flushing purity
of a maiden's bosom. Like a living snowfall these roses already hid her
feet in the grass. And they climbed her knees, covered her skirt, and
smothered her to her waist; while three stray petals, which had
fluttered on to her bodice, just above her bosom, there looked like
three glimpses of her bewitching skin.

'Oh! the lazy fellow!' she murmured, feeling bored and picking up two
handfuls of roses, which she flung in Serge's face to wake him.

He did not stir, however, but still lay there with the roses on his eyes
and mouth. This made Albine laugh. She stooped down, and with her whole
heart kissed both his eyes and his mouth, blowing as she kissed to drive
the rose petals away; but they remained upon his lips, and she broke
into still louder laughter, intensely amused at this flowery caressing.

Serge slowly raised himself. He gazed at her with amazement, as if
startled at finding her there.

'Who are you? where do you come from? what are you doing here beside
me?' he asked her. And still she smiled, transported with delight at
marking this awakening of his senses. Then he seemed to remember
something, and continued with a gesture of happy confidence:

'I know, you are my love, flesh of my flesh, you are waiting for me that
we may be one for ever. I was dreaming of you. You were in my breast,
and I gave you my blood, my muscles, my bones. I felt no pain. You took
half my heart so tenderly that I experienced keen inward delight at thus
dividing myself. I sought all that was best and most beautiful within me
to give it to you. You might have carried off everything, and still I
should have thanked you. And I woke when you went out of me. You left
through my eyes and mouth; ay, I felt it. You were all warm, all
fragrant, so sweet that it was the thrill from you that has made me
awake.'

Albine listened to his words with ecstasy. At last he saw her; at last
his birth was accomplished, his cure begun. With outstretched hands she
begged him to go on.

'How have I managed to live without you?' he murmured. 'No, I did not
live, I was like a slumbering animal. And now you are mine! and you are
no one but myself! Listen, you must never leave me; for you are my very
breath, and in leaving me you would rob me of my life. We will remain
within ourselves. You will be mine even as I shall be yours. Should I
ever forsake you, may I be accursed, may my body wither like a useless
and noxious weed!'

He caught hold of her hands, and exclaimed in a voice quivering with
admiration: 'How beautiful you are!'

In the falling dust of sunshine Albine's skin looked milky white, scarce
gilded here and there by the sunny sheen. The shower of roses around and
on her steeped her in pinkness.

Her fair hair, loosely held together by her comb, decked her head as
with a setting planet whose last bright sparks shone upon the nape of
her neck. She wore a white gown; her arms, her throat, her stainless
skin bloomed unabashed as a flower, musky with a goodly fragrance. Her
figure was slender, not too tall, but supple as a snake's, with softly
rounded, voluptuously expanding outlines, in which the freshness of
childhood mingled with womanhood's nascent charms. Her oval face, with
its narrow brow and rather full mouth, beamed with the tender living
light of her blue eyes. And yet she was grave, too, her cheeks
unruffled, her chin plump--as naturally lovely as are the trees.

'And how I love you!' said Serge, drawing her to himself.

They were wholly one another's now, clasped in each other's arms! They
did not kiss, but held each other round the waist, cheek to cheek,
united, dumb, delighted with their oneness. Around them bloomed the
roses with a mad, amorous blossoming, full of crimson and rosy and white
laughter. The living, opening flowers seemed to bare their very bosoms.
Yellow roses were there showing the golden skin of barbarian maidens:
straw-coloured roses, lemon-coloured roses, sun-coloured roses--every
shade of the necks which are ambered by glowing skies. Then there was
skin of softer hue: among the tea roses, bewitchingly moist and cool,
one caught glimpses of modest, bashful charms, with skin as fine as silk
tinged faintly with a blue network of veins. Farther on all the smiling
life of the rose expanded: there was the blush white rose, barely tinged
with a dash of carmine, snowy as the foot of a maid dabbling in a
spring; there was the silvery pink, more subdued than even the glow with
which a youthful arm irradiates a wide sleeve; there was the clear,
fresh rose, in which blood seemed to gleam under satin as in the bare
shoulders of a woman bathed in light; and there was the bright pink rose
with its buds like the nipples of virgin bosoms, and its opening flowers
that suggested parted lips, exhaling warm and perfumed breath. And the
climbing roses, the tall cluster roses with their showers of white
flowers, clothed all these others with the lacework of their bunches,
the innocence of their flimsy muslin; while, here and there, roses dark
as the lees of wine, sanguineous, almost black, showed amidst the bridal
purity like passion's wounds. Verily, it was like a bridal--the bridal
of the fragrant wood, the virginity of May led to the fertility of July
and August; the first unknowing kiss culled like a nosegay on the
wedding morn. Even in the grass, moss roses, clad in close-fitting
garments of green wool, seemed to be awaiting the advent of love.
Flowers rambled all along the sun-streaked path, faces peeped out
everywhere to court the passing breezes. Bright were the smiles under
the spreading tent of the glade. Not a flower that bloomed the same: the
roses differed in the fashion of their wooing. Some, shy and blushing,
would show but a glimpse of bud, while others, panting and wide open,
seemed consumed with infatuation for their persons. There were pert, gay
little things that filed off, cockade in cap; there were huge ones,
bursting with sensuous charms, like portly, fattened-up sultanas; there
were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish disarray, on whose petals the
white traces of the powder-puff could be espied; there were virtuous
maids who had donned low-necked garb like demure _bourgeoises_; and
aristocratic ladies, graceful and original, who contrived attractive
deshabilles. And the cup-like roses offered their perfume as in precious
crystal; the drooping, urn-shaped roses let it drip drop by drop; the
round, cabbage-like roses exhaled it with the even breath of slumbering
flowers; while the budding roses tightly locked their petals and only
sent forth as yet the faint sigh of maidenhood.

'I love you, I love you,' softly repeated Serge.

Albine, too, was a large rose, a pallid rose that had opened since the
morning. Her feet were white, her arms were rosy pink, her neck was fair
of skin, her throat bewitchingly veined, pale and exquisite. She was
fragrant, she proffered lips which offered as in a coral cup a perfume
that was yet faint and cool. Serge inhaled that perfume, and pressed her
to his breast. Albine laughed.

The ring of that laugh, which sounded like a bird's rhythmic notes,
enraptured Serge.

'What, that lovely song is yours?' he said. 'It is the sweetest I ever
heard. You are indeed my joy.'

Then she laughed yet more sonorously, pouring forth rippling scales of
high-pitched, flute-like notes that melted into deeper ones. It was an
endless laugh, a long-drawn cooing, then a burst of triumphant music
celebrating the delight of awakening love. And everything--the roses,
the fragrant wood, the whole of the Paradou--laughed in that laugh of
woman just born to beauty and to love. Till now the vast garden had
lacked one charm--a winning voice which should prove the living mirth of
the trees, the streams, and the sunlight. Now the vast garden was
endowed with that charm of laughter.

'How old are you?' asked Albine, when her song had ended in a faint
expiring note.

'Nearly twenty-six,' Serge answered.

She was amazed. What! he was twenty-six! He, too, was astonished at
having made that answer so glibly, for it seemed to him that he had not
yet lived a day--an hour.

'And how old are you?' he asked in his turn.

'Oh, I am sixteen.'

Then she broke into laughter again, quivering from head to foot,
repeating and singing her age. She laughed at her sixteen years with a
fine-drawn laugh that flowed on with rhythmic trilling like a streamlet.
Serge scanned her closely, amazed at the laughing life that transfigured
her face. He scarcely knew her now with those dimples in her cheeks,
those bow-shaped lips between which peeped the rosy moistness of her
mouth, and those eyes blue like bits of sky kindling with the rising of
the sun. As she threw back her head, she sent a glow of warmth through
him.

He put out his hand, and fumbled mechanically behind her neck.

'What do you want?' she asked. And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:
'My comb! my comb! that's it.'

She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses. A cloth of gold
suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips. Some locks which flowed
down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her regal
raiment. At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an
exclamation; he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that
sunset-like refulgence.

But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and
questioned unceasingly.

'Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and
day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my
wits like a good-for-nothing. . . . And yet the first few days I had
done you good. You saw me and spoke to me. . . . Do you remember when
you were lying down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that
I did you good?'

'No!' said Serge, 'no, I don't remember it. I had never seen you before.
I have only just seen you for the first time--lovely, radiant, never to
be forgotten.'

She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming: 'And my comb? You must
remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were
a little child? Why, you were looking for it just now.'

'No, I don't remember. Your hair is like fine silk. I have never kissed
your hair before.'

At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of
his convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling. But he only
laughed at her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with
anxious weariness: 'No, be quiet, I don't know; I don't want to know any
more. . . . I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with
roses. That is enough.'

And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming
aloud, and murmuring: 'Perhaps I have lived before. It must have been a
long, long time ago. . . . I loved you in a painful dream. You had the
same blue eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien. But
your hair was carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to
remove that cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and would
have made me die. But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of
yourself. It preserves your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my
face in it like this, I drink in your very life.'

He kept on passing the long curls through his hands, and pressing them
to his lips, as if to squeeze from them all Albine's blood. And after an
interval of silence, he continued: 'It's strange, before one's birth,
one dreams of being born. . . . I was buried somewhere. I was very cold.
I could hear all the life of the world outside buzzing above me. But I
shut my ears despairingly, for I was used to my gloomy den, and enjoyed
some fearful delights in it, so that I never sought to free myself from
all the earth weighing upon my chest. Where could I have been then? Who
was it gave me light?'

He struggled to remember, while Albine now waited in fear and trembling
lest he should really do so. Smiling, she took a handful of her hair and
wound it round the young man's neck, thus fastening him to herself. This
playful act roused him from his musings.

'You're right,' he said, 'I am yours, what does the rest matter? It was
you, was it not, who drew me out of the earth? I must have been under
this garden. What I heard were your steps rattling the little pebbles in
the path. You were looking for me, you brought down upon my head the
songs of the birds, the scent of the pinks, the warmth of the sun. I
fancied that you would find me at last. I waited a long time for you.
But I never expected that you would give yourself to me without your
veil, with your hair undone--the terrible hair which has become so
soft.'

He sat her on his lap, placing his face beside hers.

'Do not let us talk any more. We are alone for ever. We love each
other.'

And thus in all innocence they lingered in each other's arms; for a
long, long time did they remain there forgetfully. The sun rose higher;
and the dust of light fell hotter from the lofty boughs. The yellow and
white and crimson roses were now only a ray of their delight, a sign of
their smiles to one another. They had certainly caused buds to open
around them. The roses crowned their heads and threw garlands about
their waists. And the scent of the roses became so penetrating, so
strong with amorous emotion, that it seemed to be the scent of their own
breath.

At last Serge put up Albine's hair. He raised it in handfuls with
delightful awkwardness, and stuck her comb askew in the enormous knot
that he had heaped upon her head. And as it happened she looked
bewitching thus. Then, rising from the ground, he held out his hands to
her, and supported her waist as she got up. They still smiled without
speaking a word, and slowly they went down the path.

Back to chapter list of: Abbe Mouret's Transgression