The Castaway
“Really, dear, I think you must be mad to go for a walk in the country in this weather. For the last two months you’ve had the oddest ideas. You drag me willy-nilly to the seaside, though you never thought of such a thing before in all the forty-five years of our married life. You make a point of choosing Fécamp, a melancholy hole, and now you’ve got such a passion for rushing about, you who could never be induced to stir out, that you want to walk about the fields on the hottest day in the year. Tell d’Apreval to go with you, since he falls in with all your whims. As for me, I’m going in to have a rest.”
Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend:
“Are you coming with me, d’Apreval?”
He bowed and smiled with old-world gallantry.
“Where you go, I go,” he said.
“Very well, go and get sunstroke,” said Monsieur de Cadour, and re-entered the Hôtel des Bains to lie down on his bed for an hour or two.
As soon as they were alone, the old woman and her aged companion started off. She clasped his hand and said very softly:
“At last! At last!”
“You are mad,” he murmured. “I assure you you’re mad. Think of the risk. If that man …”
She started violently.
“Oh, Henry, don’t call him that man.”
“Well,” he continued in a brusque voice, “if our son has any uneasy thoughts, if he suspects us, we’re caught, both of us. You’ve done without seeing him for forty years. What’s the matter with you now, then?”
They had followed the long road which leads from the sea to the town. They turned to the right to climb the hill of Étretat. The white road unwound itself before them under the blazing rain of sunlight. They walked slowly in the burning heat, taking short steps. She had taken her friend’s arm and was walking straight ahead with a fixed, haunted stare.
“So you’ve never seen him again either?” she said.
“No, never.”
“Is it possible?”
“My dear friend, don’t let us begin this eternal discussion all over again. I have a wife and children, just as you have a husband; so that each of us has everything to fear from public opinion.”
She did not answer. She was thinking of her lost youth, of old, unhappy, far-off things.
She had been married by her family, just as a young girl is married. She hardly knew her betrothed, a diplomat, and later she lived with him the life of any woman of fashion.
Then, however, a young man, Monsieur d’Apreval, married like herself, fell passionately in love with her; and during a long absence of Monsieur de Cadour on a political mission in India, she gave way to his desire.
Could she have resisted? Could she have denied herself? Would she have had the courage, the strength, not to yield?—for she loved him too. No, certainly no! It would have been too hard! She would have suffered too deeply! Life is very crafty and cruel! Can we avoid these temptations, or fly from the fate that marches upon us? How can a woman, alone, deserted, without love, without children, continue to run away from a passion surging in her? It is as though she fled from the light of the sun, to live to the end of her life in darkness.
And how plainly she remembered now the little things, his kisses, his smile, the way he stopped at the door to look at her, whenever he came to her house. What happy days, her only happy days, so soon over!
Then she discovered that she was with child; what agony!
Oh! the long terrible journey to the south, her misery, her incessant fear, her life hidden in the lonely little cottage on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the depths of the garden she dared not go beyond.
How well she remembered the long days she spent lying under an orange-tree, her eyes lifted to the round flaming fruit in the green foliage! How she longed to go out, to go down to the sea, whose sweet scent came to her over the wall, whose little waves she heard upon the beach; and dreamed perpetually of its wide blue surface glittering in the sun, flecked with white sails, and rimmed by a mountain. But she dared not go through the gate. Supposing she were recognised, in this state, her altered figure crying her shame!
And the days of waiting, the last few tormenting days! The fears! The threatening pians! Then the awful night! What misery she had endured!
What a night it had been! How she had moaned and screamed! She could see even now the pale face of her lover, kissing her hand every minute, the doctor’s smooth countenance, the nurse’s white cap.
And what a convulsion she had felt in her heart at the child’s shrill feeble cry, the first effort of a man’s voice!
And the day after! The day after! The only day of her life on which she had seen and kissed her son, for never afterwards had she as much as set eyes on him!
Then, after that time, the long empty life, the thought of this child floating always in the void of
