Her name was Céline. She had beautiful hair, plaited and braided so as to set off her high, round forehead and her rather pointed ears, her thin cheeks, and her pretty chin: she was like a country girl, with fine intelligent dark eyes, very trustful, very soft, rather shortsighted: her nose was a little too large, and she had a tiny mole on her upper lip by the corner of her mouth, and she had a quiet smile which made her pout prettily and thrust out her lower lip, which was a little protruding. She was kind, active, clever, but she had no curiosity of mind. She read very little, and never any of the newest books, never went to the theater, never traveled—(for traveling bored her father, who had had too much of it in the old days)—never had anything to do with any polite charitable work—(her father used to condemn all such things)—made no attempt to study—(he used to make fun of blue stockings)—hardly ever left her little patch of garden enclosed by its four high walls, so that it was like being at the bottom of a deep well. And yet she was not really bored. She occupied her time as best she could, and was good-tempered and resigned. About her and about the setting which every woman unconsciously creates for herself wherever she may be, there was a Chardinesque atmosphere: the same soft silence, the same tranquil expression, the same attitude of absorption—(a little drowsy and languid)—in the common task: the poetry of the daily round, of the accustomed way of life, with its fixed thoughts and actions, falling into exactly the same place at exactly the same time—thoughts and actions which are cherished none the less with an all-pervading tranquil gentleness: the serene mediocrity of the fine-souled women of the middle-class: honest, conscientious, truthful, calm—calm in their pleasures, unruffled in their labors, and yet poetic in all their qualities. They are healthy and neat and tidy, clean in body and mind: all their lives are sweetened with the scent of good bread, and lavender, and integrity, and kindness. There is peace in all that they are and do, the peace of old houses and smiling souls. …
Christophe, whose affectionate trustfulness invited trust, had become very friendly with her: they used to talk quite frankly: and he even went so far as to ask her certain questions, which she was surprised to find herself answering: she would tell him things which she had not told anybody, even her most intimate friends.
“You see,” Christophe would say, “you’re not afraid of me. There’s no danger of our falling in love with each other: we’re too good friends for that.”
“You’re very polite!” she would answer with a laugh.
Her healthy nature recoiled as much as Christophe’s from philandering friendship, that form of sentimentality dear to equivocal men and women, who are always juggling with their emotions. They were just comrades one to another.
He asked her one day what she was doing in the afternoons, when he saw her sitting in the garden with her work on her knees, never touching it, and not stirring for hours together. She blushed, and protested that it was not a matter of hours, but only a matter of a few minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, during which she “went on with her story.”
“What story?”
“The story I am always telling myself.”
“You tell yourself stories? Oh, tell them to me!”
She told him that he was too curious. She would only go so far as to intimate that they were stories of which she was not the heroine.
He was surprised at that:
“If you are going to tell yourself stories, it seems to me that it would be more natural if you told your own story with embellishments, and lived in a happier dream-life.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “If I did that, I should become desperate.”
She blushed again at having revealed even so much of her inmost thoughts: and she went on:
“Besides, when I am in the garden and a gust of wind reaches me, I am happy. Then the garden becomes alive for me. And when the wind blusters and comes from a great distance, he tells me so many things!”
In spite of her reserve, Christophe could see the hidden depths of melancholy that lay behind her good-humor, and the restless activity which, as she knew perfectly well, led nowhere. Why did she not try to break away from her condition and emancipate herself? She would have been so well fitted for a useful and active life!—But she alleged her affection for her father, who would not hear of her leaving him. In vain did Christophe tell her that the old soldier was perfectly vigorous and energetic, and had no need of her, and that a man of his stamp could quite well be left alone, and had no right to make a sacrifice of her. She would begin to defend her father: by a pious fiction she would pretend that it was not her father who was forcing her to stay, but she herself who could not bear to leave him.—And, up to a point, what she said was true. It seemed to have been accepted from time immemorial by herself, and her father, and all their friends that their life had to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. She had a married brother, who thought it quite natural that she should devote her life to their father in his stead. He was entirely wrapped up in his children.
