All Over
by Guy de Maupassant
Translators:
Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast
a parting glance at the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his
dressing-room and smiled.
He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite
gray. Tall, slight, elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of
doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility, a
"chic," in short, that indescribable something which establishes a
greater difference between two men than would millions of money. He murmured:
"Lormerin is still alive!"
And he went into the drawing-room where his
correspondence awaited him.
On his table, where everything had its place, the work
table of the gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside
three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch he spread out all
these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned the
handwriting, a thing he did each morning before opening the envelopes.
It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of
inquiry and vague anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious letters bring him?
What did they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them
with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing the writing, selecting them, making
two or three lots, according to what he expected from them. Here, friends;
there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind
always gave him a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had
traced those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?
This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It
was simple, nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he looked at
it uneasily, with a sort of chill at his heart. He thought: "From whom can
it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can't identify it."
He raised it to a level with his face, holding it
delicately between two fingers, striving to read through the envelope, without
making up his mind to open it.
Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a
little magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of
handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is
familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very
often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be
from? Pooh! it's only somebody asking for money."
And he tore open the letter. Then he read:
MY DEAR FRIEND: You have, without doubt, forgotten me,
for it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old.
When I bade you farewell, I left Paris in order to follow into the provinces my
husband, my old husband, whom you used to call "my hospital." Do you
remember him? He died five years ago, and now I am returning to Paris to get my
daughter married, for I have a daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you
have never seen. I informed you of her birth, but you certainly did not pay
much attention to so trifling an event.
You are still the handsome Lormerin; so I have been
told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison,
come and dine with her this evening, with the elderly Baronne de Vance your
ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, although happy, reaches out to
you a devoted hand, which you must c1asp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
LISE DE VANCE.
Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in
his armchair with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him,
overcome by a poignant emotion that made the tears mount up to his eyes!
If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this
one, little Lise, Lise de Vance, whom he called "Ashflower," on
account of the strange color of her hair and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh!
what a dainty, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail baronne, the wife
of that gouty, pimply baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces,
shut her up, kept her in seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the handsome
Lormerin.
Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too,
had been truly loved. She familiarly gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would
pronounce that word in a delicious fashion.
A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far,
off and sweet and melancholy now. One evening she had called on him on her way
home from a ball, and they went for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in
evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was
beautiful. The fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air-the odor of her
bodice, and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a divine night! When
they reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the branches into the
water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.
"I don't know. The moon and the water have
affected me. Every time I see poetic things I have a tightening at the heart,
and I have to cry."
He smiled, affected himself, considering her feminine
emotion charming-- the unaffected emotion of a poor little woman, whom every
sensation overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:
"My little Lise, you are exquisite."
What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty,
it had been and over all too quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by
this old brute of a baron, who had carried off his wife, and never let any one
see her afterward.
Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or
three months. One woman drives out another so quickly in Paris, when one is a
bachelor! No matter; he had kept a little altar for her in his heart, for he
had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.
He rose, and said aloud : "Certainly, I will go
and dine with her this evening!"
And instinctively he turned toward the mirror to
inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: "She must look very old,
older than I look." And he felt gratified at the thought of showing
himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of
filling her with emotion, and making her regret those bygone days so far, far
distant!
He turned his attention to the other letters. They
were of no importance.
The whole day he kept thinking of this ghost of other
days. What was she like now? How strange it was to meet in this way after
twenty-five years! But would he recognize her?
He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a
white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent
for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch With the curling iron, for he
had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness
to see her.
The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room
newly furnished was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the
days when he was a beau, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.
He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He
rose up abruptly, and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who
extended both hands toward him.
He seized them, kissed them one after the other
several times; then, lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.
Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not
recognize, and who, while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.
He could not abstain from murmuring:
"Is it you, Lise?"
She replied:
"Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not
have known me, would you? I have had so much sorrow--so much sorrow. Sorrow has
consumed my life. Look at me now--or, rather, don't look at me! But how
handsome you have kept--and young! If I had by chance met you in the street I
would have exclaimed: 'Jaquelet!'. Now, sit down and let us, first of all, have
a chat. And then I will call my daughter, my grown-up daughter. You'll see how
she resembles me--or, rather, how I resembled her--no, it is not quite that;
she is just like the 'me' of former days--you shall see! But I wanted to be
alone with you first. I feared that there would be some emotion on my side, at
the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my
friend."
He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did
not know what to say; he did not know this woman--it seemed to him that he had
never seen her before. Why had he come to this house? What could he talk about?
Of the long ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no
longer recall anything in presence of this grandmotherly face. He could no
longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter, that had come
to his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the
dainty Ashflower. What, then, had become of her, the former one, the one he had
loved? That woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray eyes, the young girl who
used to call him "Jaquelet" so prettily?
They remained side by side, motionless, both
constrained, troubled, profoundly ill at ease.
As they talked only commonplaces, awkwardly and
spasmodically and slowly, she rose and pressed the button of the bell.
"I am going to call Renee," she said.
There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a
dress; then a young voice exclaimed:
"Here I am, mamma!"
Lormerin remained bewildered as at the sight of an
apparition.
He stammered:
"Good-day, mademoiselle"
Then, turning toward the mother:
"Oh! it is you!
In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone
days, the Lise who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had
won twenty- five years before. This one was even younger, fresher, more
childlike.
He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her
to his heart again, murmuring in her ear:
"Good-morning, Lison!"
A man-servant announced:
"Dinner is ready, madame."
And they proceeded toward the dining-room.
What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him,
and what could he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those
strange dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed
idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:
"Which is the real one?"
The mother smiled again repeating over and over:
"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright
eyes of the young girl that he found again his memories of the past. Twenty
times he opened his mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?"
forgetting this white- haired lady who was looking at him tenderly.
And yet, there were moments when, he no longer felt
sure, when he lost his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not
exactly the woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice,
in her glances, in her entire being, something which he did not find again. And
he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize again what
had escaped from her, what this resuscitated one did not possess.
The
baronne said:
"You have lost your old vivacity, my poor
friend."
He murmured:
"There are many other things that I have
lost!"
But in his heart, touched with emotion, he felt his
old love springing to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite
him.
The young girl went on chattering, and every now and
then some familiar intonation, some expression of her mother's, a certain style
of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people
acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things
penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed anew.
He got away early, and took a turn along the
boulevard. But the image of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened
his heart, inflamed his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a
young one, the old one come back out of the past, and he loved her as he had
loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an interval
of twenty-five years.
He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible
thing, and to think what he should do.
But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand,
before the glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and
admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly,
gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden days, in
the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and handsome, as he had been
when he was loved! Then, drawing the light nearer, he looked at himself more
closely, as one inspects a strange thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the
wrinkles, discovering those frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till
now.
And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at
the sight of his lamentable image, murmuring:
"All over, Lormerin!"
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