ORANGE

When the captain entered the little room where she worked with her mother, Berthe was dumbfounded. She could arise only by restraining her heart. Falling at once back in to her chair, she lowered her head. She seemed to be folding her work, but she was trembling with happiness.

The mother expanded in graciousness and in useless, common words:

“You weren’t expected so soon. We should have desired to dress and receive you in the parlor. We should have placed, since it’s the style in Paris, some flowers in the vases upon the mantelpiece. And above all we should have asked M. Bernard to be here, for nothing so intimidates poor women as a brilliant officer.”

She was very much afraid. The orderly, who had come that afternoon as courier to visit the room, and unpack a military valise, had not given the old domestic a very clear notion of what the captain was like.

“He’s a rough chap, I tell you,” he had said. “Twice my size and with an appetite like the devil.”

“Lord Jesus, can it be possible! We’ll cook him a fine dinner and make a fine bed for this excellent gentleman.”

“He’s not a fine gentleman. He’s a tough bird. He’ll be here at six o’clock. Well, greetings to the company. So long.”

“You’re surely going to have something to drink just the same, mister Soldier.”

“Just the same.”

And as he drank, the soldier had outlined his notion of the captain: a handsome brute.

As these details were repeated the whole house had trembled, but not Berthe. M. Bernard had gone to invite to dinner the tax-collector, a knowing fellow, so that he might not be alone, face to face with such a redoubtable personage.

“We’ll get him drunk,” he had decided. “That will be the best way to get out of it.”

Mme. Bernard, on her side, said to herself:

“I’ll stuff him with sweets. Dainties—that’s all it takes to win over a man.”

Berthe, too, had thought on the matter. She had mused:

“At last, a man! I shall behold, finally, a man. Ah! How long ago!... Perhaps he’ll harm me? Perhaps! Perhaps!”

And she had tried to devote herself entirely to her embroidery, as on every other day, so as not to appear excited:

“Are we going to look like folks who never receive a visitor?”

And as she drew the needle she repeated to herself:

“Can my hour have come, at last,—the definitive hour?”

There was talk of great maneuvers, of the country, of its coolness, of the grass, of the trees. The officer sketched his rustic landscapes, lauded the charm of the tiny stream beneath the willows, and deplored the fact that he had been compelled to trample upon a corner of green meadow all aglow with buttercups.

Berthe, astonished, gazed at him, surprised at such tenderness, when he accentuated his admiration by slapping his knee and bursting into:

“Upon my word! A pretty little patch of earth! There was a big girl who kept pounding her clothes and from time to time would get up to lay out a piece upon a willow pollard. By Jove! If I had been alone!”

Berthe, once more happy, thought to herself:

“If he had been alone with her, something terrible would have happened, that’s evident. Oh! If I could only be alone with him?”

As the officer praised the garden, which he had glimpsed as he came in, Berthe addressed him for the first time:

“It’s very simple, but would you like to see it?”

“A good idea,” said the mother, “and you’ll cut some flowers. I’ll join you in a moment.”

“I’ll cut the ones you tell me to. I don’t want you to hurt your fingers in my presence.”

“No, no. Do you think me so clumsy?”

She pretended to struggle with him, letting him capture the instrument. He opened her fingers gently.

“A good sign,” he said. “To have touched so pretty a hand makes one feel like touching the heart.”

She made no reply, thinking:

“It’ll all come to nothing but empty compliments!”

Then she became aggressive. As the captain held out a rose with a hand streaked by scratches:

“Blood? Don’t let any get on to my flowers, at least.”

“But blood’s a beautiful thing.”

“No, it’s dirty.”

“I never believed that anybody could talk like that to an officer who had had his head half split by the blow of a sword.”

She looked at him.

“He really looks terribly angry. If he dared, he would strike me. What shall I say to him to excite him more?”

She could find nothing, and there was a long silence.

“Another one,” she said to herself, “who is master of his emotions. I was deceived. He won’t attack me. Ah! How weary I am!”

“In short,” said the captain to himself, “she has insulted me. She’s only a woman. Very well. But she insulted me just the same. I must get reparation.”

The captain looked around him. They were in an out-of-the-way nook, enclosed by clumps of bushes.

“The basket’s full, I believe,” he said. “Here’s the pruning-shears.”

And, as she held out her fingers, somewhat uneasy, despite her resolution, at the change of attitude in the man whom she was observing, she felt two hands seize upon her shoulders and, at the same time, a mouth crush against her own.

His gesture of vengeance completed—an ironical vengeance—the captain released her shoulders and was drawing back when he felt that his rude kiss was being returned with passion. From her shoulder one of his hands descended upon the heaving breast; the other hand supported her yielding waist. An eminently classical pose, the sequel of which, not far from a bed of verdure, is the difficulty of lifting up a skirt caught under the recumbent body. It is often necessary for the tender victim, who has not lost her sense of folds, to come delicately to the aid of the brute.

“Yes, yes....” murmured Berthe.

But, from the direction of the house a voice was calling:

“Berthe, Berthe.”

As she arose, she said:

“We have the night. I will come. Meanwhile, silence, coldness, or conventional gallantry.”

The officer, to the great astonishment of his hosts, ate and drank very moderately. He smoked only two cigarettes, but accepted a great deal of coffee. His attention, that entire evening, was concentrated upon trying to hit upon the topics of conversation that could release the eloquence of his partners. He was lucky enough to discover them. While they spoke, he reflected:

“Virgin? A lover? Lovers? Innocence? Perversity? Curiosity? Stupidity? In any event, it’s serious. In the first place, my conscience? Then, marriage? I’d better bolt the door.”

The next instant the male began to dream of the beautiful girl who was offering herself:

“Why have any scruples? What? Not pluck the flower along the road?”

Finally:

“If I don’t take it, I’ll feel remorseful for the next two years, perhaps for the rest of my life.”

He looked at her without affectation, while she poured him out a glass of tea, and he dared to say:

“Oh! Not so much, it’s very strong. You’re going to keep me from sleeping.”

As her only reply she raised her head, looked at him and lowered her lashes.

He felt his head whirl around. Of a surety this was not his first affair, but he had never before enjoyed one of such quality. This youthful country bourgeoise certainly excited him to the highest pitch. What was this sphinx with the red hair? He scented the odor of her nudity in advance, and trembled. He saw her all white, like those marble statues which formerly he had desired rather than admired.

“You’ll sleep in the orange room,” said Mme. Bernard, who was beginning to grow sleepy. “One of my daughter’s whims. She wanted it all in that color. But you’ve seen it already. I hope that you’ll sleep in it well.”

This last word pierced the officer atrociously. This maternal intervention cast him back into his indecision.

Berthe perhaps divined this evil impression, for she added:

“Orange is my color. It seems to me that I’m less ugly amidst this flame, into which I am melted. Nobody ever sleeps in that room, but I often retire to it. It’s my domain.”

“And what does she do there, I ask you?” resumed Mme. Bernard. “She reads, she dreams, for we’re a bit dreamy. What would you have? Young girls! I was just the same at her age. But my favorite color was blue.”

“Orange is a pretty color, too.”

“Say that it’s the prettiest of all,” said Berthe.

“It’s the prettiest of all,” said the officer.

Now he awaited her. After having undressed, he half-dressed, and smoked a cigarette, sketching arabesques upon the margins of a newspaper. He no longer thought of anything. Only, at every sound, even that of a wakened fly, his heart would stop beating.

Every six seconds he would look at the door. He arose and went over to it, to put his ear at the chink.

At this moment a panel of drapery, near the hearth, seemed to detach itself.

“Am I seeing things?”

He approached the mystery and reached there just in time to receive Berthe in his arms.

“My room is there,” she explained, after having received and returned the kiss of greeting. “Simply a double cupboard whose inside partition I’ve managed to make moveable. How many times, for three years, have I come to see if you were there! Nobody, always nobody! But at last here you are. Will you love me, at least?”

Seeing that these words astonished her lover, she resumed:

“He who comes is he whom one has been awaiting. You have come and I belong to you.”

Walking ever so softly, speaking ever so softly, they reached the edge of the bed and sat down. As he pressed her to him, the captain felt, under the flimsy robe, the young girl’s bodily beauty. He was deeply moved, but he had the courage to say:

“No, you are a silly child and I will not abuse you. If you wish to love me, we have the rest of our lives. You said, imprudently and innocently, ‘We have the night.’ And I tell you: ‘We have life’.”

She dropped her head upon the officer’s chest, pressing very tightly the arm that she had slipped around his neck. Then she arose, her head red, her golden eyes gleaming ardently, wildly, found his lips, which she bit, and threw herself upon her back, drawing him upon her.

“Should we,” she said later, cuddling into her lover’s lap, “should we ever have found again a chance like this?”

Two months later the orange room became the wedding chamber.

They were very happy and spoke very often of their adventure, but Berthe, I believe, never confessed to her husband that he was the third captain for whom she had pierced the walls.