Are We Rivals? Are We Rivals?UNTIL this day Lucan had given but little thought to herself or to her own concerns. When she was a child her mother and her small brothers had taken all her time and her thoughts; later on they had been her father’s, and, for these last months, Zosine’s. Now all this was suddenly changed, and the new, strange state of things in itself alarmed and confused the girl.
It seemed to her that all the world had turned against her, and that no girl could ever have found herself in such a cruel situation as she. Noël’s words about the fighting bull that is attacked and stabbed from all sides came back to her. As a child she had heard her father talk with abhorrence of bull fights, and the ferocious picture had stuck in her mind. But was it not even more cruel when the stabs were aimed at a timid girl who had never harmed anybody? She would have fled, if it had been possible. But where would she fly this time? No flight could take her away from her misery.
Was it not, she asked herself with pale, quivering lips, hard enough that she should love a man who loved another woman, and that this woman should be her own best friend? Must she also be forced, by strange, unhappy circumstances, to listen to the burning declaration of his love, to the sweet words and vows, that were not meant for her? And must she know, in the midst of her own distress, that he too was unhappy and lonely, and that she could give him no help or comfort?
There was no one in the world to whom she could confide her misfortune. She must hide from Zosine what had passed between Noël and herself in the moonlit garden, for she felt as if she would die if she repeated it. No feeling of loyalty to her friend could compel her to do so either, for Noël was bound by his word and honor to a bride in England, and had gone back there to marry her.
And if it had not been so, she thought, could she have found any consolation, any faint reflection of content, in the sight of the happiness of her friend? For some time Zosine had spoken much of the handsome, fascinating stranger. It was probably Lucan’s own silence on the subject which had gradually stopped her gay, fanciful talk. Lucan loved Zosine as a sister. She had always admired her without envy or bitterness, and she saw that she and Noël were like each other, so beautiful to look at, so gay, gallant and generous. She had worried about the fate of her friend, and had felt her own responsibility toward her deeply. She would not grudge Zosine any luck or triumph in life. Still sometimes, at night, in her dreams, for a moment of infinite sweetness, it happened that the white shawl was hers, and that Noël’s words were indeed meant for her. Then she would wake up to find herself in a bleak and empty world. She would look at her sleeping friend, wring her hands and reflect that she had never known unhappiness till now.
All the same she felt that now she lived more fully than ever before. Each hour of the day had in it a significance which strained her whole nature to its utmost capacity, but which also gave weight and richness to her existence. She now remembered, with a strange thrill, how, as she was considering Mr. Armworthy’s offer to her, she asked herself, “What is it that I demand of life and have always longed and hoped for?” And how her own heart had answered her clearly and loudly, “It is love.”
It was true that she had then dreamed of a happy love, and that the idea of an unrequited passion would have horrified and distressed her. But her vague presentiment of that spring night had been confirmed to her. The beauty of nature, music, poetry and art are all inextricably bound up with the idea of love. The woman who has denied love, she had then dimly guessed, will no longer dare to learn a poem by heart, to listen to a song, to pick the wild flowers of the woods, or the roses of her garden. Now, in pain and ecstasy, she knew for certain that the magic kingdom of beauty, sweetness and poetry in this world is open to the lovers as to its lawful heirs.
Could it be, then, that it was in itself a happiness to love, even when one loved without hope? She wondered, doubted and despaired, and again felt a strength and a bliss she had never known before. Time after time she went through the hours she had passed in Noël’s company, and in her heart knew that she would not exchange her sadness for any secure and prosperous everyday existence, nor the picture of a young man, whom she had known for a day and a night, and would never meet again, for the whole world.
She so thoroughly lost herself in her own thoughts that she hardly saw what was going on round her. Some time ago she had wondered and worried at the idea of some sinister secret at Sainte-Barbe; now her anxiety vanished before her own secret. She sought refuge in her books because there she could get away from the world of reality, and in her daily life she was happiest in Clon’s company, because there she could be silent when she wanted it. Since the evening when she had freed the boy of his prison in the shed, he had for some time kept away from her, and had looked at her almost with fear, but lately he had come back to her, slowly and shyly, and was now following her about everywhere. His odd, wild manner no longer alarmed her. She sometimes tore herself away from her dreams to talk to him, and gently tried to enlighten and guide him. The thoughtful girl and the dull boy worked together in the garden, carried baskets and vegetables and fruit to the house, and fed Baptistine’s hens and pigeons.
Lucan did not know that under her great agitations of mind she grew lovelier day by day, nor that Mrs. Pennhallow’s round gray eyes were now resting on her face more constantly than before.
On one of the last fine days of September Lucan and Zosine walked in the woods, and sat down on a fallen tree at the edge of them to gaze over the fields toward the distant blue hills. Zosine was playing with a broken-off branch. “Lucan,” she suddenly and softly asked her friend, “do you believe that love can work miracles?” The question hit Lucan in the heart. She could not answer.
“You are so very pretty,” Zosine went on after a while. “Many men must have been in love with you. But have you ever, yourself, in your heart believed that they loved you?”
Lucan felt that she blushed, and the moment after grew pale. But she could not deny the power that ruled her whole life. “Yes, surely love can work miracles,” she said.
“I have had a lot of suitors,” said Zosine, “but I have never for a moment believed that any of them loved me. I used to laugh at them, and to make Papa laugh too. But here in France many things have become different. Is it, do you think, because France was my Mama’s country, that it is now so very dear to me? Sometimes I wonder whether I have not, a hundred years ago and in a former existence, lived in France. And here, too, I think I should believe him, if somebody told me that he loved me.”
“Whom are you thinking of?” Lucan asked.
“I am thinking of no one,” Zosine answered, tossing her head. “I am making a fairy tale to amuse myself, and I thought it might amuse you as well, for a moment.”
“And what happens in your fairy tale?” Lucan asked, and smiled at her.
Zosine was silent for a while, and laid down her branch. “Listen,” she said. “You will have read of that white doe which was really a maiden and which would get back her own form only if a young knight told her that he loved her? In my fairy tale the doe is a spoiled, frivolous and selfish little thing, which is used to getting everything she wants. As it happens, she meets a beautiful young knight in the wood, a knight like—like those of whom we have read. She thinks, ‘If now he would only tell me that he loved me, I should become a real human being.’ But at the same time she clearly sees that he can never love a little silly doe that only plays and prances in the wood.”
“But does the doe herself love the knight?” Lucan asked.
Zosine slowly shook her head. “Do you think,” she asked, “that a doe can really love anybody at all before she has become a human being? All the same,” she added, took up the branch, and fanned her face with it, “she can never forget him.”
“But a fairy tale,” Lucan said lowly, “ought to end up with a happy marriage.”
“Perhaps it ought to,” said Zosine, “but there are so many difficulties and obstacles between the two—as always in fairy tales—that I do not know what to think about it. And I have not quite finished my tale yet.”
“Alas,” thought Lucan, gazing into the green shade of the wood, “are we two rivals in a love that can never be fulfilled, in a dream? Are we standing hand in hand, gazing into a promised land, the threshold of which we shall never cross?” She had felt a kind of reluctance at the idea of anyone entering her own world of dreams; for a moment she had almost shrunk from her friend’s confidence.
“Nay,” she thought, as they walked home, “it could not be otherwise. Who could help loving him? Surely I must allow my sister to dream of him, as I do myself.”
After a while she took Zosine’s hand.