THE SEPARATION.Laurent, as he cast his eyes for the last time upon that dismal cliff, saw, on the platform of the old ruined fort, a figure whose head and waving hair were still tinged with gold by the sun's declining rays; it was Thérèse's.
THE SEPARATION.
Laurent, as he cast his eyes for the last time upon that dismal cliff, saw, on the platform of the old ruined fort, a figure whose head and waving hair were still tinged with gold by the sun's declining rays; it was Thérèse's.
But, ten minutes later, as theFerruccio, after steaming out to sea with some effort, turned to round the promontory, Laurent, as he cast his eyes for the last time upon that dismal cliff, saw, on the platform of the old ruined fort, a figure whose head and waving hair were still tinged with gold by the sun's declining rays; it was Thérèse's fair hair and her adored form. She was alone. Laurent held out his arms with intense emotion; then he clasped his hands in token of repentance, and his lips murmured two words which the breeze bore away:
"Forgive! forgive!"
Monsieur de Vérac gazed at him in speechless amazement; and Laurent, the most sensitive man on earth in the matter of ridicule, did not heed the glance of his former companion in debauchery. Indeed, he took a sort of pride in braving it at that moment.
When the shore had disappeared in the evening haze, Laurent found himself seated on a bench by Vérac's side.
"Come," said the latter, "tell me about this extraordinary experience! You have said too much to leave me in ignorance of the rest; all your friends in Paris—I might say all Paris, since you are a famous man—will ask me concerning the progress of your liaison with Mademoiselle Jacques, who is also too much in the public eye not to arouse curiosity. What shall I reply?"
"That you found me very downcast and shamefaced. That what I told you can be summed up in three words. Must I say them again?"
"Then you really abandoned her first? I like that better for your sake!"
"Yes, I understand; it is ridiculous to be betrayed, it is glorious to have taken the first step. That is the way I used to reason with you, that was our code; but I have changed my ideas altogether concerning all such matters since I have been in love. I betrayed her, I have been deserted, I am in despair: therefore our former theories had no common-sense. Find in the theory of life which we used to put in practice together an argument which will relieve me of my regret and my suffering, and I will say that you are right."
"I shall seek no arguments, my dear fellow; suffering is not to be argued with. I pity you because you are unhappy; but I am wondering if there is a woman in existence who deserves to be mourned so deeply, and if Mademoiselle Jacques would not have done better to forgive an act of infidelity, than to dismiss you in your present desperate state. For a mother, she seems to me a trifle stern and vindictive!"
"That is because you don't know how guilty and absurd I have been. An act of infidelity! she would have forgiven that, I am sure; but insults, reproaches!—and worse than that, Vérac! I said something to her that no self-respecting woman can ever forget: 'You bore me!'"
"Yes, that is a rough thing to say, especially when it is true. But suppose it was not true? suppose you simply said it in a moment of anger?"
"No! it was mental weariness. I had ceased to love her. Stay, it was worse than that: I was never able to love her when she was mine. Just remember that, Vérac; laugh if you please, but remember that for your own guidance. It is very possible that you will wake up some fine morning, sated with sham pleasures and violently in love with a virtuous woman. That may happen to you as it has happened to me, for I do not think that you are any more dissipated than I used to be. Well, when you have overcome that woman's resistance, probably the same thing will happen to you as to me: having acquired the deplorable habit of making love to women you despise, you will be doomed to fall back into those cravings for a barbarous sort of liberty of which dignified love has a horror. Thereupon, you will feel like a wild animal tamed by a child, and always ready to devour him in order to break its chain. And some day, when you have killed the helpless little keeper, you will fly all alone, roaring with joy and shaking your mane; but then—then the wild beasts of the desert will frighten you, and, because you have once learned to know the cage, you will care no more for liberty. However slight the bond, and however unwillingly your heart may have accepted it, it will regret it as soon as it is broken, and it will have a horror of solitude, yet be powerless to choose between love and libertinism. That is a form of suffering which you do not yet know. God grant that you may never know it! And meanwhile laugh and jeer as I used to do! That will not prevent your day from coming if debauchery has not already made a corpse of you!"
Monsieur de Vérac, smiling, allowed this torrent of words to flow, listening to it as to a well-executed cavatina at the Théâtre-Italien. Laurent was unquestionably sincere; but perhaps his auditor was justified in not attaching too great weight to his despair.
When Thérèse finally lost sight of theFerruccio, it was quite dark. She had dismissed the boat which she had hired in the morning at Spezzia, and paid for in advance. When the boatman rowed her ashore from the steamer, she had noticed that he was drunk; she was afraid to return to Spezzia alone with him, and, expecting to find some other boat on the shore, she had dismissed him.
But when she thought seriously about returning, she remembered that she was absolutely destitute. Nothing could be simpler, of course, than to go back to theMaltese Crossat Spezzia, where she and Laurent had passed the preceding night, to have the boatman paid at the office, and to await Palmer's arrival there; but the idea of being entirely destitute, and of being obliged to owe her breakfast the next day to Palmer, caused a feeling of repugnance, puerile, perhaps, but insurmountable, considering the existing relations between them. Furthermore, she was more than a little disturbed as to the real explanation of his conduct toward her. She had noticed the heart-rending sadness of his glance when she left Florence. She could not refrain from thinking that an obstacle to their marriage had suddenly arisen, and she saw in the projected union so many real drawbacks for Palmer, that she considered it her duty not to contend against the obstacle in whatever quarter it might arise. Thérèse adopted an altogether instinctive solution of the problem, which was to remain for the present at Porto Venere. In the small bundle which she had brought with her to guard against emergencies, she had enough clothes to pass four or five days anywhere. In the way of jewels, she had a gold watch and chain; these she could leave in pawn until she had received the pay for her work, which should have reached Genoa in the form of a banker's draft. She had directed Vicentino to call for her letters at Genoa and forward them to Spezzia.
She must pass the night somewhere, and the appearance of Porto Venere was not inviting. The tall houses along the narrow passage out to sea, which reach to the water's edge, are so nearly on a level with the top of the cliff in the rear, that in many places one must stoop in order to pass under the overhanging roofs which reach nearly to the middle of the street. That steep, narrow street, paved with rough cobble-stones, was crowded with children, hens, and large copper vessels placed at the angles formed by the roofs to catch the rain-water during the night. These vessels are the barometer of the locality: fresh water is so scarce there, that as soon as a cloud appears in the direction from which the wind is blowing, the housewives hasten to place all practicable receptacles in front of their doors, in order not to lose a drop of the blessing sent by Heaven.
As she passed before those yawning doorways, Thérèse caught a glimpse of one interior which seemed cleaner than the others and which exhaled a somewhat less acrid odor of oil. In the doorway was a poor woman whose pleasant and honest face inspired confidence; and the woman anticipated her by speaking to her in Italian or something approaching it. Thus she and Thérèse were able to understand each other. The goodwoman asked her pleasantly if she were looking for any one. She went in, looked about, and asked if she could hire a room for the night.
"Yes, to be sure, a better room than this, and you will be much quieter than at the inn, where you would hear the sailors singing all night long! But I am not an innkeeper, and if you don't want me to have quarrels on my hands, you will say publicly in the street to-morrow that you knew me before you came here."
"Very well," said Thérèse, "show me the room."
She was led up several steps and found herself in an enormous, miserable room, which commanded a panorama of vast extent on the bay and on the open sea; she took a liking to the room at first sight, for no special reason, unless it was that it seemed to her a sort of refuge against new bonds which she did not wish to be forced to accept. In that room she wrote on the following day to her mother:
"MY DEAREST LOVE:"For twelve hours I have been at peace and in full possession of my free will for—I know not how many days or years. Everything is unsettled again in my mind, and you shall form your own opinion of the situation of affairs."That fatal love which alarmed you so is not renewed and never will be. You may set your mind at rest on that point. I came here with my patient, and put him aboard ship last night. If I have not saved his poor heart, and I hardly dare flatter myself that I have, I have made it better at all events, and through me it has enjoyed the sweet pleasure of friendship for a few moments. If I could have believed him, he was cured forever of his tempestuous outbreaks; but I could see plainly enough, from his contradictions and his relapses with respect to me, that the foundation of his nature is still unchanged, and the something still exists that I cannot define otherwise than as the love of that which is not."Alas! yes, that child would like to have for his mistress some one like the Venus de Milo, enlivened with the breath of my patron Sainte Thérèse, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the same woman should be Sappho to-day and Jeanne d'Arc to-morrow. It is most unfortunate for me that I ever believed that, after adorning me in his imagination with all the attributes of the Divinity, he would not open his eyes the next day! It must be that, without suspecting it, I am very vain, to have accepted the task of inspiring a cult! But, no, I was not, I give you my word! I did not think of myself; on the day when I allowed myself to be placed on that altar, I said to him: 'Since you absolutely insist upon adoring me instead of loving me, which I should much prefer, why, adore me, reserving the right to crush me to-morrow!'"And he has crushed me! But of what can I complain? I anticipated it, and resigned myself to it beforehand."But I was weak, undignified, and wretched when that horrible moment came. My courage returned, however, and God permitted me to recover more quickly than I hoped."Now, I must speak to you of Palmer. You wish me to marry him, he wishes it, and I, too, did wish it! Do I wish it still? What shall I say, my beloved? I still am tortured by scruples and fears. Perhaps it is his fault. He could not or would not pass with me the last moments that I passed with Laurent; he left me alone with him three days, three days which I knew would be, and which actually were, without danger for me; but did he, Palmer, know it, and could he be sure of it? or—which would be much worse—did he say to himself that he must find out how far he could depend on me? There was on his part either a display of romantic unselfishness or an exaggerated discretion, which, in such a man, can come only from some worthy sentiment, but which has given me food for reflection none the less."I have written you what took place between us; it seemed to me that he had taken it upon himself as a sacred duty to rehabilitate me by marriage, after the affronts to which I had been subjected. I felt the enthusiasm of gratitude and the emotion that follows profound admiration. I said yes, I promised to be his wife, and to-day I feel that I love him as much as it is in my power to love."And yet to-day I hesitate, because it seems to me that he repents. Am I dreaming? I have no idea; but why could he not come here with me? When I learned of my poor Laurent's terrible illness, he did not wait for me to say: 'I am going to Florence;' but he said to me: 'Let us go!'—The twenty nights that I passed at Laurent's bedside, he passed in the next room, and he never said to me: 'You are killing yourself!' but simply: 'Take a little rest, so that you can go on with it.'—I have never detected the shadow of jealousy in him. It seemed that in his eyes I could never do too much to save the ungrateful boy whom we had both of us adopted, as it were. He knew, noble heart, that his confidence and generosity increased my love for him, and I was infinitely grateful to him for understanding it. In that way he raised me in my own eyes, and made me proud to belong to him."Very well; then why this whim or this obstacle at the last moment? An unforeseen obstacle? With the strong will that I know him to possess, I hardly believe in obstacles; it seems more probable that he wished to test me. That humiliates me, I confess. Alas! I have become horribly sensitive since I fell! Is it not natural? why did not he, who understands everything, understand that?"Or, perhaps he has thought better of it, and has said to himself all that I said to him, from principle, in order to prevent his thinking of me; what would there be surprising in that? I had always known Palmer as a prudent and sensible man. When I discovered in him stores of enthusiasm and trust, I was greatly surprised. Might he not be one of those who take fire when they see others suffer, and who fall to loving the victims passionately? That is a natural instinct in those who are strong, it is the sublime pity of pure and happy hearts! There were moments when I said that to myself, in order to reconcile me with myself,—when I loved Laurent, for it was his suffering, before and above all else, that attached me to him!"All this that I am saying to you, my dearest love, I should not dare to say to Richard Palmer if he were here. I should be afraid that my doubts would cause him horrible pain, and I am sorely embarrassed, for I have these doubts in spite of myself, and I am afraid, for to-morrow at all events, if not for to-day. Will he not cover himself with ridicule by marrying a woman whom he has loved, he says, for ten years, to whom he has never lisped a word of anything of the sort, and whom he decides to attack on the day that he finds her crushed and bleeding under the feet of another man?"I am sojourning in a horrible yet magnificent little seaport, where I passively await the command of my destiny. Perhaps Palmer is at Spezzia, three leagues away. That was where we had arranged to meet. And I, like a sulking, or rather like a timid, child, cannot make up my mind to go to him and say: 'Here I am!'—No, no! if he suspects me, no further relations between us are possible! I forgave the other five or six insults a day. With this one I could not overlook the shadow of a suspicion. Is this unjust? No! henceforth I must have a sublime love or nothing! Did I seek his love? He forced it upon me, saying: 'It will be heaven!'—The other had told me that perhaps what he brought me would be hell. He did not deceive me. Nor must Palmer deceive me, while deceiving himself; for, after this new error, nothing would be left for me but to deny everything, to say to myself that, like Laurent, I have forfeited forever, by my own fault, the right to believe; and I do not know whether, with that certainty, I could endure life!"Forgive me, my beloved; my perplexities distress you, I am sure, although you would say that I must spare you none of them! At all events, have no anxiety concerning my health; I am exceedingly well, I have the loveliest bit of ocean before my eyes, and over my head the loveliest sky that can be imagined. I lack nothing, I am boarding with excellent people, and it is likely that I shall write you to-morrow that my uncertainties have disappeared. Do not forget to love your Thérèse, who adores you."
"MY DEAREST LOVE:
"For twelve hours I have been at peace and in full possession of my free will for—I know not how many days or years. Everything is unsettled again in my mind, and you shall form your own opinion of the situation of affairs.
"That fatal love which alarmed you so is not renewed and never will be. You may set your mind at rest on that point. I came here with my patient, and put him aboard ship last night. If I have not saved his poor heart, and I hardly dare flatter myself that I have, I have made it better at all events, and through me it has enjoyed the sweet pleasure of friendship for a few moments. If I could have believed him, he was cured forever of his tempestuous outbreaks; but I could see plainly enough, from his contradictions and his relapses with respect to me, that the foundation of his nature is still unchanged, and the something still exists that I cannot define otherwise than as the love of that which is not.
"Alas! yes, that child would like to have for his mistress some one like the Venus de Milo, enlivened with the breath of my patron Sainte Thérèse, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the same woman should be Sappho to-day and Jeanne d'Arc to-morrow. It is most unfortunate for me that I ever believed that, after adorning me in his imagination with all the attributes of the Divinity, he would not open his eyes the next day! It must be that, without suspecting it, I am very vain, to have accepted the task of inspiring a cult! But, no, I was not, I give you my word! I did not think of myself; on the day when I allowed myself to be placed on that altar, I said to him: 'Since you absolutely insist upon adoring me instead of loving me, which I should much prefer, why, adore me, reserving the right to crush me to-morrow!'
"And he has crushed me! But of what can I complain? I anticipated it, and resigned myself to it beforehand.
"But I was weak, undignified, and wretched when that horrible moment came. My courage returned, however, and God permitted me to recover more quickly than I hoped.
"Now, I must speak to you of Palmer. You wish me to marry him, he wishes it, and I, too, did wish it! Do I wish it still? What shall I say, my beloved? I still am tortured by scruples and fears. Perhaps it is his fault. He could not or would not pass with me the last moments that I passed with Laurent; he left me alone with him three days, three days which I knew would be, and which actually were, without danger for me; but did he, Palmer, know it, and could he be sure of it? or—which would be much worse—did he say to himself that he must find out how far he could depend on me? There was on his part either a display of romantic unselfishness or an exaggerated discretion, which, in such a man, can come only from some worthy sentiment, but which has given me food for reflection none the less.
"I have written you what took place between us; it seemed to me that he had taken it upon himself as a sacred duty to rehabilitate me by marriage, after the affronts to which I had been subjected. I felt the enthusiasm of gratitude and the emotion that follows profound admiration. I said yes, I promised to be his wife, and to-day I feel that I love him as much as it is in my power to love.
"And yet to-day I hesitate, because it seems to me that he repents. Am I dreaming? I have no idea; but why could he not come here with me? When I learned of my poor Laurent's terrible illness, he did not wait for me to say: 'I am going to Florence;' but he said to me: 'Let us go!'—The twenty nights that I passed at Laurent's bedside, he passed in the next room, and he never said to me: 'You are killing yourself!' but simply: 'Take a little rest, so that you can go on with it.'—I have never detected the shadow of jealousy in him. It seemed that in his eyes I could never do too much to save the ungrateful boy whom we had both of us adopted, as it were. He knew, noble heart, that his confidence and generosity increased my love for him, and I was infinitely grateful to him for understanding it. In that way he raised me in my own eyes, and made me proud to belong to him.
"Very well; then why this whim or this obstacle at the last moment? An unforeseen obstacle? With the strong will that I know him to possess, I hardly believe in obstacles; it seems more probable that he wished to test me. That humiliates me, I confess. Alas! I have become horribly sensitive since I fell! Is it not natural? why did not he, who understands everything, understand that?
"Or, perhaps he has thought better of it, and has said to himself all that I said to him, from principle, in order to prevent his thinking of me; what would there be surprising in that? I had always known Palmer as a prudent and sensible man. When I discovered in him stores of enthusiasm and trust, I was greatly surprised. Might he not be one of those who take fire when they see others suffer, and who fall to loving the victims passionately? That is a natural instinct in those who are strong, it is the sublime pity of pure and happy hearts! There were moments when I said that to myself, in order to reconcile me with myself,—when I loved Laurent, for it was his suffering, before and above all else, that attached me to him!
"All this that I am saying to you, my dearest love, I should not dare to say to Richard Palmer if he were here. I should be afraid that my doubts would cause him horrible pain, and I am sorely embarrassed, for I have these doubts in spite of myself, and I am afraid, for to-morrow at all events, if not for to-day. Will he not cover himself with ridicule by marrying a woman whom he has loved, he says, for ten years, to whom he has never lisped a word of anything of the sort, and whom he decides to attack on the day that he finds her crushed and bleeding under the feet of another man?
"I am sojourning in a horrible yet magnificent little seaport, where I passively await the command of my destiny. Perhaps Palmer is at Spezzia, three leagues away. That was where we had arranged to meet. And I, like a sulking, or rather like a timid, child, cannot make up my mind to go to him and say: 'Here I am!'—No, no! if he suspects me, no further relations between us are possible! I forgave the other five or six insults a day. With this one I could not overlook the shadow of a suspicion. Is this unjust? No! henceforth I must have a sublime love or nothing! Did I seek his love? He forced it upon me, saying: 'It will be heaven!'—The other had told me that perhaps what he brought me would be hell. He did not deceive me. Nor must Palmer deceive me, while deceiving himself; for, after this new error, nothing would be left for me but to deny everything, to say to myself that, like Laurent, I have forfeited forever, by my own fault, the right to believe; and I do not know whether, with that certainty, I could endure life!
"Forgive me, my beloved; my perplexities distress you, I am sure, although you would say that I must spare you none of them! At all events, have no anxiety concerning my health; I am exceedingly well, I have the loveliest bit of ocean before my eyes, and over my head the loveliest sky that can be imagined. I lack nothing, I am boarding with excellent people, and it is likely that I shall write you to-morrow that my uncertainties have disappeared. Do not forget to love your Thérèse, who adores you."
Palmer had actually been at Spezzia since the preceding night. He had purposely arrived just an hour after the sailing of theFerruccio. Not finding Thérèse at theMaltese Cross, and learning that she had planned to put Laurent on board at the mouth of the bay, he awaited her return. At nine o'clock, the boatman she had hired in the morning, who belonged to the hotel, returned alone. The worthy man was not accustomed to drink too much. He had beensurprisedby a bottle of Cyprus, which Laurent gave him after his lunch on the grass with Thérèse, and which he drank during their stay on the Isola Palmaria; so that he remembered well enough that he had put the signor and signora aboard theFerruccio, but had no remembrance of having afterward taken the signora to Porto Venere.
If Palmer had questioned him calmly, he would soon have discovered that the man's ideas were not very clear on the latter point; but the American, notwithstanding his serious and impassive manner, was very irritable and very passionate. He believed that Thérèse had gone with Laurent, gone shamefacedly, afraid or unwilling to confess the truth to him. He was thoroughly convinced, and returned to the hotel, where he passed a terrible night.
We have not undertaken to tell the story of Richard Palmer. We have entitled our taleShe and He, that is to say, Thérèse and Laurent. Of Palmer, therefore, we shall say no more than it is necessary to say to make it possible to understand the events in which he was involved, and we think that his character will be sufficiently explained by his conduct. Let us hasten to say simply this, that Richard was as ardent as he was romantic, that he had an abundance of pride, pride in the good and the beautiful, but that the strength of his character did not always come up to the idea he had formed of it, and that, while striving constantly to rise above human nature, he cherished a noble dream, but one probably impossible of realization in love.
He rose early, and walked by the shore of the bay, thinking seriously of suicide, from which he was turned aside, however, by a feeling of something like contempt for Thérèse; then the fatigue of a night of intense agitation asserted itself and gave him sensible advice. Thérèse was a woman, and he should not have subjected her to a hazardous trial. But since he had done so, since Thérèse, whom he had placed so high in his esteem, had been vanquished by a deplorable passion after her sacred promises, why, he must never believe in any woman, and no woman deserved the sacrifice of a good man's life. Palmer had progressed thus far when he saw a graceful black cutter drawing near the place where he stood, with a naval officer at the stern. The eight oarsmen who pulled the long and narrow craft swiftly through the smooth water tossed their white oars by way of salute, with military precision; the officer stepped ashore and walked toward Richard, whom he had recognized in the distance.
It was Captain Lawson, in command of the American frigateUnion, which had been stationed in the bay for a year. It is common knowledge that the different maritime powers are accustomed to station war vessels, for months or even for years, all over the globe to safeguard their commercial interests.
Lawson had been a friend of Palmer's from boyhood, and Thérèse was provided with a letter of introduction to him, in case she should care to visit the ship while rowing about the harbor.
Palmer thought that Lawson would mention her, but he did not. He had received no letter, had had no visit from any friend of Palmer's. He invited him to breakfast on board, and Richard made no objection. TheUnionwas to leave the station at the end of the spring. He conceived the idea of seizing the opportunity to return to America in her. Everything seemed to be at an end between Thérèse and him; however, he determined to remain at Spezzia, the sight of the sea having always had a strengthening influence upon him in the critical moments of his life.
He had been there three days, living on board the American vessel much more than at theMaltese Cross, making an effort to revive his interest in the study of navigation, which had occupied the greater part of his life, when a young ensign, at breakfast one morning, declared, half-laughing and half-sighing, that he had fallen in love the day before, and that the object of his passion was a problem concerning which he should be glad to have the opinion of a man of the world like Palmer.
She was a woman apparently twenty-five to thirty years old. He had simply seen her at a window at which she was seated making lace. Coarse cotton lace is made by women all along the Genoese coast. It was formerly a flourishing branch of commerce, which the looms have ruined, but which still affords occupation and a trifling profit to the women and girls of the coast. Therefore the young woman of whom the ensign was enamored belonged to the artisan class, not only because of the work she was doing, but because of the poverty of the house in which he had seen her. And yet the cut of her black dress and the distinction of her features caused some doubt in his mind. She had wavy hair, which was neither dark nor light; dreamy eyes, a pale complexion. She had seen that the young officer was gazing curiously at her from the inn, where he had sought refuge from the rain. She had not condescended to encourage him or to avoid his glances. She had presented a distressing image of indifference personified.
The young seaman also stated that he questioned the innkeeper's wife at Porto Venere. She had told him that the stranger had been there three days, living with an old woman who said that she was her niece and who probably lied, for she was an old schemer who let a miserable bedroom to the detriment of the genuine, licensed public-house, and who apparently presumed to invite and entertain guests, but who must feed them very badly, for she had nothing, and for that reason deserved the contempt of all well-to-do people and self-respecting travellers.
As a result of this harangue, the young ensign lost no time in going to the old woman and asking her for lodgings for a friend of his whom he was expecting, hoping, by means of this fable, to induce her to talk, and to learn something about the stranger; but the old woman was impenetrable, yes, and incorruptible.
The portrait that the officer drew of this young unknown aroused Palmer's attention. It might be Thérèse; but what was she doing at Porto Venere? why was she hiding there? Of course, she was not alone; Laurent must be hidden in some other corner. Palmer deliberated whether or not he should go to China in order not to witness his misfortune. However, he adopted the more sensible course, which was to find out the truth of the matter.
He crossed at once to Porto Venere, and had no difficulty in discovering Thérèse, lodged and occupied as he had been told. They had an earnest and frank explanation. They were both too sincere to sulk; so they both confessed that they had been angry, Palmer because Thérèse had not let him know where she had concealed herself, Thérèse because Palmer had not sooner sought and found her.
"My dear," said he, "you seem to reproach me most of all for having, as it were, exposed you to some danger. I did not believe that danger existed!"
"You were right, and I thank you. But in that case, why were you so depressed and despairing when I left you? and how does it happen that you did not discover where I was the very first day after you arrived here? Did you suppose that I had left, and that it was useless to search for me?"
"Listen to me," said Palmer, evading the question, "and you will see that I have had, during the last few days, much rough experience that may well have made me lose my head. You will also understand why, having first known you when you were very young and when it was possible for me to think of marrying you, I let slip a happiness which I have never ceased to dream of and to regret. I was at that time the lover of a woman who has deceived me in a thousand ways. For ten years I considered myself in duty bound to keep her on her feet and shelter her. At last, she put the finishing-touch to her ingratitude and treachery, and I was able to leave her, to forget her, and to dispose of myself as I chose. But I fell in with that woman, whom I supposed to be in England, in Florence, just as Laurent was about to leave. Abandoned by a new lover who had taken my place, she desired and expected to recapture me: so many times before had she found me generous or weak! She wrote me a threatening letter, and, feigning an utterly absurd jealousy, she declared that she would come to insult you in my presence. I knew that she was a woman who would recoil from no scandal, and I would not for anything in the world have had you see her in one of her fits of frenzy. I could not persuade her not to appear on the scene, except by promising to have an explanation with her the same day. She was living in the same hotel where we were living with our sick man, and when Laurent's carriage was at the door, she was on hand, determined to make a scene. Her detestable and ridiculous plan was to exclaim before all the hotel people and the whole street that I shared my new mistress with Laurent de Fauvel. That is why I sent you away with him, and why I remained behind, in order to have done with that mad woman without compromising you, and without exposing you to the necessity of seeing her or listening to her. Now, do not say again that my purpose was to subject you to a test by leaving you alone with Laurent. I suffered enough on that account, God knows! don't reproach me! And when I thought of your having gone with him, all the demons of hell attacked me."
"And that is what I reproach you for," said Thérèse.
"Ah! what can you expect!" cried Palmer; "I have been so miserably deceived in my life! That wretched woman stirred up a whole world of bitterness and contempt in me."
"And that contempt overflowed on me!"
"Oh! don't say so, Thérèse!"
"But I, too, have been deceived," she rejoined, "and I believe in you none the less."
"Let us say no more about it, my love; I regret that I have been driven to tell you the story of my past. You will believe that it may react on my future, and that, like Laurent, I shall make you pay for the treachery with which I have been sated. Come, come, my dear Thérèse, let us have done with these depressing thoughts. This place you are in is enough to give one the blues. The boat is waiting; come and take up your quarters at Spezzia."
"No," said Thérèse, "I shall stay here."
"What? what does this mean? hard feeling between us?"
"No, no, my dear Dick," she replied, offering him her hand; "I can never be angry with you. Oh! I implore you, let our affection be ideally sincere; for my part, I will do all that it is possible for a trustful heart to do to that end; but I did not know that you were jealous, whereas you were and you admit it. Be sure that it is not in my power to avoid suffering keenly from your jealousy. It is so entirely opposed to what you promised me, that I cannot help asking myself whither we are going now, and why it was necessary that, on making my escape from a hell, I should enter a purgatory, when I aspired to naught save repose and solitude.—Not for myself alone do I dread these new tortures which seem to be brewing for me; if it were possible that in love one of the two should be happy while the other suffers, the path of self-sacrifice would be all marked out and easy to follow; but, as you see, that is not the case: I cannot have a moment's pain that you do not feel. So here am I, who sought to render my life inoffensive, in a fair way to ruin your life, and I am beginning to make a man unhappy! No, Palmer, believe me, we thought that we knew each other, but we did not. What attracted me in you was a trait which you have already lost—confidence. Don't you understand that, debased as I was, I needed that, and nothing else, in order to love you? If I should now accept your affection with its blemishes and weaknesses, with its doubts and tempests, would you not be justified in saying to yourself that I was influenced by selfish motives in marrying you? Oh! do not say that idea will never occur to you; it will occur to you in spite of yourself. I know too well how a person goes from one suspicion to another, and what a steep incline hurries us from a first disenchantment to humiliating repulsion! Now I, for my part, have drunk enough of that gall! I want no more of it, and I do not assume too much in saying I am no longer capable of undergoing what I have undergone; I told you so the very first day, and, although you may have forgotten it, I remember it. Let us put aside this idea of marriage," she added, "and remain friends. I retract my promise provisionally, until I can rely upon your esteem, such esteem as I supposed that I possessed. If you are not willing to submit to a trial, let us part at once. As for myself, I swear that I do not propose to owe anything to you, not even the most trivial service, while I am in my present position. I must tell you what that position is, for you must fully understand my purpose. I have board and lodging here on the strength of my word, for I am absolutely penniless, I gave all I had to Vicentino to pay the expenses of Laurent's journey; but it happens that I can make lace quicker and better than the women hereabout, and, pending the arrival of my money from Genoa, I can earn enough from day to day to pay my excellent landlady for the very frugal board with which she supplies me, if not to reward her. I am neither distressed nor humiliated by this state of things, and it must continue until my money arrives. Then I will see what it is best to do. Until then, return to Spezzia, and come to see me when you choose; I will make lace as we chat."
Palmer had to submit, and he submitted with a good grace. He hoped to regain Thérèse's confidence, which he felt that he had shaken by his own fault.
A few days later, Thérèse received a letter from Geneva. Laurent accused himself, in writing, of all that he had previously accused himself of in speech, as if he had determined to perpetuate thus the testimony of his repentance.
"No," he wrote, "I was not capable of deserving you. I was unworthy of such a generous, pure, and unselfish affection. I tired out your patience, O my sister, my mother! Even the angels would have been tired of me! Ah! Thérèse, as I return to health and life, my memory becomes clearer, and I look into my past as into a mirror, which shows me the spectre of a man whom I once knew, but whom I no longer understand. Surely, that poor devil was mad; don't you think, Thérèse, that, as I drew nearer to that ghastly physical illness from which you saved me, I may have been, even three or four months beforehand, in the grasp of a moral illness which took from me all consciousness of my words and my acts? Ah! if that were so, should you not have forgiven me? But what I am saying lacks common-sense, alas! What is wrong-doing, if not a moral malady? Could not the man who kills his father allege the same excuse that I do? Good, evil—this is the first time that idea has ever bothered me. Before I knew you and made you suffer, my poor love, I had never thought of it. Evil was to my mind a monster of low estate, the apocalyptic beast that soils with his hideous caresses the offscourings of mankind in the unhealthy bogs of society; could evil come near me, the man of fashion, the Parisianbeau, the son of the Muses? Ah! fool that I was, I imagined, because my beard was perfumed and my hands neatly gloved, that my caresses would purify the great harlot of the nations, debauchery, my fiancée, who had bound me to her with chains as noble as those with which convicts are bound in the galleys! And I sacrificed you, my poor, sweet mistress, in my brutal egotism, and after that I held my head erect, saying: 'It was my right, she belonged to me; nothing that I have the right to do can be evil!'—Ah! miserable, miserable creature that I am! my behavior was criminal; and I never suspected it! Nothing would make me understand it but to lose you, you, my only treasure, the only mortal who had ever loved me and who was capable of loving the insane and ungrateful child that I was! Not until I saw my guardian angel veil her face and resume her flight heavenward did I realize that I was forever alone and abandoned on earth!"
A large part of this first letter was written in a lofty tone, the sincerity of which was confirmed by realistic touches and abrupt changes of manner, characteristic of Laurent.
"Would you believe that, on my arrival at Geneva, the first thing that I did, even before I thought of writing to you, was to go out and buy a waistcoat? Yes, a summer waistcoat, a very pretty one, on my word, and very well made, which I found at a French tailor's,—a most agreeable find for a traveller in great haste to leave this city of watchmakers and naturalists! Behold me, therefore, parading the streets of Geneva, delighted with my new waistcoat, and halting in front of a book-shop where an edition of Byron, bound in exquisite taste, offered an irresistible temptation to me. What am I to read while travelling? I cannot endure books of travel, unless they treat of countries which I shall never be able to visit. I prefer the poets, who take you into the world of their dreams, and I purchased this edition. And then I followed aimlessly a very pretty girl in a short dress who passed me, and whose ankle seemed to me a masterpiece of jointing. I followed her, thinking much more of my waistcoat than of her. Suddenly she turned to the right and I to the left without noticing it, and I found myself back at my hotel, where, as I went to put my new books in my trunk, I discovered the double violets that you strewed in my cabin on theFerrucciowhen we parted. I picked them up, one by one, with great care, and kept them as a relic; but they made me weep like a waterspout, and, glancing at my new waistcoat, which had been the principal event of my morning, I said to myself:
"'And yet this is the child that poor woman loved!'"
Elsewhere he said:
"You made me promise to take care of my health. 'As it was I who gave it back to you,' you said, 'it belongs to me in a measure, and I have the right to forbid you to throw it away.'—Alas! my Thérèse, what do you expect me to do with this infernal health, which begins to intoxicate me like new wine? The spring is at hand, it is the season for loving, I know; but is it in my power to love?Youwere unable to inspire true love in my heart, and do you suppose that I shall meet a woman capable of performing the miracle that you could not perform? Where am I to find this magician? In society? No, surely not: there are no women there but those who do not choose to risk or sacrifice anything. They are quite right, no doubt, and you could tell them, my poor dear, that those for whom a woman sacrifices herself seldom deserve it; but it is not my fault if I can no more readily make up my mind to share with a husband than with a lover. But should I love a maiden? and marry her? Oh! surely, Thérèse, you cannot think of that without laughing—or without trembling. Think of me, chained by the law, when even my own desires are powerless to chain me!"I once had a friend who loved a grisette and who believed that she was true to him. I paid court to that faithful light-o'-love, and she was mine for a green parrot which her lover would not give her. She said, artlessly: 'Dame! 'tis his own fault; why didn't he give me that parrot!' And from that day I have sworn never to love a kept woman, that is to say, a woman who longs for everything her lover does not give her."Thus, in the way of mistresses, there seems to be nothing left but an adventuress, such as we meet on the high-roads, who are all born princesses but have hadmisfortunes. Too many misfortunes, thank you! I am not rich enough to fill the gulf of those past lives.—A famous actress? That idea has often tempted me; but my mistress must renounce the public, and the public is a lover that I do not feel the strength to replace. No, no, Thérèse, I cannot love! I ask too much, and I ask what I cannot give back; so I shall have to return to my former life. I prefer that, because your image in my heart will never be contaminated by possible comparisons. Why should my life not be arranged thus: women for the passions, and a mistress for my heart? It is not in your power nor in mine, Thérèse, to effect that you should be that mistress, that ideal which I have dreamed of, lost, and wept for, and of which I dream now more longingly than ever. I will never suggest such a thing to you, for you may take offence. I will love you in my secret thoughts so that no one will know it and no other woman can ever say: 'I have replaced that Thérèse!'"My dear, you must grant me a favor which you denied me during those last dear, sweet days that we passed together; you must tell me something of Palmer. You have thought that would increase my pain. But you are mistaken. It would have killed me the first time that I questioned you about him angrily; I was still sick and a little mad; but, when my reason returned, when you let me guess thesecretthat you were not obliged to confide to me, I felt, in the midst of my grief, that by being reconciled to your happiness I should atone for all my wrong-doing. I watched closely your manner when you were together; I saw that he loved you passionately, and that he seemed, nevertheless, to have a fatherly affection for me. That was too much for me, Thérèse. I had no conception of such generosity, such grandeur in love. Lucky Palmer! how sure he is of you, how fully he understands you, and consequently deserves you! It reminded me of the time when I said to you: 'Love Palmer, you will do me a great favor!'—Ah! what a hateful sentiment I had in my heart at that time! I longed to be delivered from your love, which overwhelmed me with remorse, and yet, if you had answered me then: 'I do love him,' I would have killed you!"And he, that great, warm heart, already loved you, and was not afraid to devote his life to you, when perhaps you still loved me! Under such circumstances, I would never have dared to take the risk. I had too large a dose of that pride which we parade so haughtily, we men of the world, and which was invented by fools to prevent us from striving to win happiness at any risk to ourselves, or from even knowing enough to grasp it when it is slipping from us."Yes, I propose to confess to the end, my poor dear. When I said to you: 'Love Palmer,' I believed, at times, that you already loved him, and that is what finally drew me apart from you. In the last days, there were many hours when I was on the point of throwing myself at your feet; I was kept from it by this thought: 'It is too late, she loves another. It was my wish, but she should not have consented. Therefore she is unworthy of me!'"That is how I reasoned in my madness, and yet I am sure now that if I had come back to you in all sincerity, even though you had begun to love Dick, you would have sacrificed him to me. You would have entered anew upon that martyrdom which I forced on you. Tell me, did I not do well to run away? I felt that I did, when I left you. Yes, Thérèse, that was what gave me strength to run away to Florence without a word to you. I felt that I was killing you day by day, and that there was no other way to undo the wrong I had done you than to leave you with a man who really loved you."That was what sustained my courage at Spezzia, too, during that day when I might have made another attempt to obtain my pardon; but that detestable thought did not once occur to me, I give you my word, my friend. I don't know whether you had told that boatman not to lose sight of us; but it was quite unnecessary. I would have thrown myself into the sea rather than try to betray the confidence in me which Palmer displayed in leaving us together."Say to him, then, that I love him dearly, as much as I can love. Tell him that it is to him as much as to you that I am indebted for having condemned and executed myself as I have done. I suffered terribly, God knows, in committing that suicide of the old man! But I am proud of myself now. All my former friends would consider that I had been a fool or a coward not to try to kill my rival in a duel, and then to abandon the woman who had betrayed me, spitting in her face. Yes, Thérèse, that is the judgment which I myself should probably have pronounced upon another man for conducting himself as I have conducted myself toward you and Palmer with so much resolution and delight. I am not a brute, thank God! I am not good for much, but I understand how little I am good for, and I do myself justice."So write me about Palmer, and do not be afraid that it will hurt me; far from it; it will be my consolation in my hours of spleen. It will be my strength, too; for your poor child is still sadly weak, and, when he begins to think of what he might have been and what he actually is to you, his head becomes still more confused. But tell me that you are happy, and I will say, proudly: 'I might have disturbed, combated, and perhaps destroyed her happiness; I did not do it. So it is my work to some extent, and I am entitled now to Thérèse's friendship."
"You made me promise to take care of my health. 'As it was I who gave it back to you,' you said, 'it belongs to me in a measure, and I have the right to forbid you to throw it away.'—Alas! my Thérèse, what do you expect me to do with this infernal health, which begins to intoxicate me like new wine? The spring is at hand, it is the season for loving, I know; but is it in my power to love?Youwere unable to inspire true love in my heart, and do you suppose that I shall meet a woman capable of performing the miracle that you could not perform? Where am I to find this magician? In society? No, surely not: there are no women there but those who do not choose to risk or sacrifice anything. They are quite right, no doubt, and you could tell them, my poor dear, that those for whom a woman sacrifices herself seldom deserve it; but it is not my fault if I can no more readily make up my mind to share with a husband than with a lover. But should I love a maiden? and marry her? Oh! surely, Thérèse, you cannot think of that without laughing—or without trembling. Think of me, chained by the law, when even my own desires are powerless to chain me!
"I once had a friend who loved a grisette and who believed that she was true to him. I paid court to that faithful light-o'-love, and she was mine for a green parrot which her lover would not give her. She said, artlessly: 'Dame! 'tis his own fault; why didn't he give me that parrot!' And from that day I have sworn never to love a kept woman, that is to say, a woman who longs for everything her lover does not give her.
"Thus, in the way of mistresses, there seems to be nothing left but an adventuress, such as we meet on the high-roads, who are all born princesses but have hadmisfortunes. Too many misfortunes, thank you! I am not rich enough to fill the gulf of those past lives.—A famous actress? That idea has often tempted me; but my mistress must renounce the public, and the public is a lover that I do not feel the strength to replace. No, no, Thérèse, I cannot love! I ask too much, and I ask what I cannot give back; so I shall have to return to my former life. I prefer that, because your image in my heart will never be contaminated by possible comparisons. Why should my life not be arranged thus: women for the passions, and a mistress for my heart? It is not in your power nor in mine, Thérèse, to effect that you should be that mistress, that ideal which I have dreamed of, lost, and wept for, and of which I dream now more longingly than ever. I will never suggest such a thing to you, for you may take offence. I will love you in my secret thoughts so that no one will know it and no other woman can ever say: 'I have replaced that Thérèse!'
"My dear, you must grant me a favor which you denied me during those last dear, sweet days that we passed together; you must tell me something of Palmer. You have thought that would increase my pain. But you are mistaken. It would have killed me the first time that I questioned you about him angrily; I was still sick and a little mad; but, when my reason returned, when you let me guess thesecretthat you were not obliged to confide to me, I felt, in the midst of my grief, that by being reconciled to your happiness I should atone for all my wrong-doing. I watched closely your manner when you were together; I saw that he loved you passionately, and that he seemed, nevertheless, to have a fatherly affection for me. That was too much for me, Thérèse. I had no conception of such generosity, such grandeur in love. Lucky Palmer! how sure he is of you, how fully he understands you, and consequently deserves you! It reminded me of the time when I said to you: 'Love Palmer, you will do me a great favor!'—Ah! what a hateful sentiment I had in my heart at that time! I longed to be delivered from your love, which overwhelmed me with remorse, and yet, if you had answered me then: 'I do love him,' I would have killed you!
"And he, that great, warm heart, already loved you, and was not afraid to devote his life to you, when perhaps you still loved me! Under such circumstances, I would never have dared to take the risk. I had too large a dose of that pride which we parade so haughtily, we men of the world, and which was invented by fools to prevent us from striving to win happiness at any risk to ourselves, or from even knowing enough to grasp it when it is slipping from us.
"Yes, I propose to confess to the end, my poor dear. When I said to you: 'Love Palmer,' I believed, at times, that you already loved him, and that is what finally drew me apart from you. In the last days, there were many hours when I was on the point of throwing myself at your feet; I was kept from it by this thought: 'It is too late, she loves another. It was my wish, but she should not have consented. Therefore she is unworthy of me!'
"That is how I reasoned in my madness, and yet I am sure now that if I had come back to you in all sincerity, even though you had begun to love Dick, you would have sacrificed him to me. You would have entered anew upon that martyrdom which I forced on you. Tell me, did I not do well to run away? I felt that I did, when I left you. Yes, Thérèse, that was what gave me strength to run away to Florence without a word to you. I felt that I was killing you day by day, and that there was no other way to undo the wrong I had done you than to leave you with a man who really loved you.
"That was what sustained my courage at Spezzia, too, during that day when I might have made another attempt to obtain my pardon; but that detestable thought did not once occur to me, I give you my word, my friend. I don't know whether you had told that boatman not to lose sight of us; but it was quite unnecessary. I would have thrown myself into the sea rather than try to betray the confidence in me which Palmer displayed in leaving us together.
"Say to him, then, that I love him dearly, as much as I can love. Tell him that it is to him as much as to you that I am indebted for having condemned and executed myself as I have done. I suffered terribly, God knows, in committing that suicide of the old man! But I am proud of myself now. All my former friends would consider that I had been a fool or a coward not to try to kill my rival in a duel, and then to abandon the woman who had betrayed me, spitting in her face. Yes, Thérèse, that is the judgment which I myself should probably have pronounced upon another man for conducting himself as I have conducted myself toward you and Palmer with so much resolution and delight. I am not a brute, thank God! I am not good for much, but I understand how little I am good for, and I do myself justice.
"So write me about Palmer, and do not be afraid that it will hurt me; far from it; it will be my consolation in my hours of spleen. It will be my strength, too; for your poor child is still sadly weak, and, when he begins to think of what he might have been and what he actually is to you, his head becomes still more confused. But tell me that you are happy, and I will say, proudly: 'I might have disturbed, combated, and perhaps destroyed her happiness; I did not do it. So it is my work to some extent, and I am entitled now to Thérèse's friendship."
Thérèse replied affectionately to her poor child. That was the title under which he was thenceforth buried and, as it were, embalmed in the sanctuary of the past. Thérèse loved Palmer; at least, she wished to love him, and believed that she did. It did not seem to her that she could ever regret the time when, as she afterward said, she looked up every morning when she woke to see if the house were not falling about her ears.
And yet something was lacking, and an indefinable depression of spirits had taken possession of her since she had dwelt upon that livid-hued cliff of Porto Venere. It was as if she were held aloof from life, which, at times, was not without a charm for her; but there was a touch of gloom and dejection in her feelings, which was unnatural to her and which she could not explain to herself.
It was impossible for her to do what Laurent asked with regard to Palmer; she wrote of him briefly in the highest terms, and conveyed the most affectionate messages from him; but she could not make up her mind to make him a confidant of their relations. She felt disinclined to divulge her real situation, that is to say, to confide to him plans concerning which she had not absolutely made up her own mind. And even if she had decided, would it not have been too early to say to Laurent: "You are still suffering? so much the worse for you! I am to be married!"
The money that she expected did not arrive for a fortnight. She made lace during that fortnight with a perseverance that drove Palmer to despair. When, at last, she found herself in possession of a few bank-notes, she paid her kind landlady handsomely, and indulged in a sail around the bay with Palmer; but she desired to remain at Porto Venere a little longer, although she could not explain why she clung to that dismal and wretched hamlet.
There are phases of the mind which one feels much more distinctly than one can describe them. In her letters to her mother, Thérèse succeeded in pouring out her whole heart.
"I am still here," she wrote in July, "notwithstanding the intense heat. I have attached myself like a shell-fish to this rock where no tree has ever thought of growing, but where brisk and revivifying breezes blow. The climate is severe but healthy, and the constant view of the sea, which formerly I could not endure, has become, in a certain sense, necessary to me. The country which lies behind me, and which I can reach by boat in less than two hours, was fascinating in the spring. On walking inland from the head of the bay, two or three leagues from the shore, you come across some most peculiar spots. There is one place where the ground was all torn up by earthquakes Heaven knows how many years ago, where the surface presents most extraordinary irregularities. There is a series of hills of red sand, covered with pines and heather, rising one above another, with natural paths of considerable width on their summits, which paths end abruptly on the brink of sheer precipices and leave you sorely perplexed as to how you are to go on. If you retrace your steps and lose your way in the labyrinth of narrow paths trodden by the herds, you come to other precipices, and Palmer and I have passed whole hours on those wooded hill-tops, unable to find the path by which we had come. Beyond these hills is a vast expanse of tilled land, broken here and there, with something like regularity, by similar curious excrescences, and beyond that vast expanse stretches the blue immensity of the sea. The horizon seems boundless in that direction. Toward the north and east are the Maritime Alps, whose sharply outlined peaks were still covered with snow when I arrived here.
"But it is all over with the great fields of wild roses and the trees of white heather which gave forth so sweet and delicious a perfume in the early days of May. Then it was an earthly paradise: the woods were full of Alpine ebony-trees, of Judas-trees, of fragrant genesta, and laburnum gleaming like gold amid the black clumps of myrtle. Now everything is burned, the pines exhale an acrid odor, the fields of lupin, lately so fragrant and so bright with blossoms, display naught but shorn stalks, as black as if they had been overrun by fire; the crops are harvested, the ground smokes in the noonday sun, and one must rise early in order to walk without discomfort. So that, as it takes at least four hours, whether by boat or on foot, to reach the wooded part of the country, the return journey is far from pleasant, and all the heights on the immediate shores of the bay, magnificent as they are in shape and in the views they afford, are so bare, that it is cooler at Porto Venere and on Isola Palmaria.
"And then there is a scourge at Spezzia: I mean the mosquitoes, bred by the stagnant waters of a small pond near by and of the vast marshes, possession of which the hand of the husbandman disputes with the waters of the sea. Here there is no water on shore to annoy us; we have only the sea and the bare rock, consequently no insects, and not a blade of grass; but such golden and purple clouds, such sublime tempests, such solemn calms! The sea is a picture which changes in color and feeling at every moment of the day and night. There are chasms here filled with uproars of which you cannot conceive the terrifying variety; the sobbing of despair, the imprecations of hell, seem to have appointed a meeting there, and, from my little window, at night, I hear those voices of the abyss, sometimes roaring a nameless bacchanalian refrain, sometimes singing wild hymns, awe-inspiring even in their mildest form.
"And I love all this now, I who always cherished rustic tastes and a love for tranquil little green nooks. Is it because in that fatal love-affair I became accustomed to storms and to a craving for tumult? Perhaps so. We women are such strange creatures! I must confess to you, my own beloved, that many days passed before I could accustom myself to the absence of my daily torment. I did not know what to do with myself, having nobody to wait upon and nurse. Palmer would have done well to be a little overbearing; but observe my injustice: as soon as he showed signs of being so, I rebelled, and now that he has become as kind as an angel once more, I don't know how to deal with the horrible ennui that assails me now and again. Woe is me! that is the truth.—And must I tell you? No, it is better that I should not find out myself, or if I do, that I should not grieve you with my madness. I intended to write of nothing but the country, my walks, my occupations, and my dull chamber under the roof, or rather on the roof, where I take pleasure in being alone, unknown, forgotten by the world, with no duties, no customers, no business, no other work than that which it pleases me to do. I get little children to pose for me, and I amuse myself arranging them in groups; but all this will not satisfy you, and if I don't tell you where I stand with regard to my heart and my desires, you will be more anxious than ever. Very well; it is a fact that I have fully decided to marry Palmer, and that I love him; but I have not yet been able to make up my mind to appoint a time for the marriage; I fear for him and for myself the morrow of that indissoluble union. I have passed the age of illusions, and after such a life as mine one has had a hundred years of experience and consequently of terrors! I believed that I was absolutely severed from Laurent, and so, in fact, I was, at Genoa, on the day that he told me I was his scourge, the assassin of his genius and his glory. But now I no longer feel so entirely independent of him; since his sickness, his repentance, and the letters he has written me during these last two months, letters adorable in their gentleness and resignation, I feel that a solemn duty still binds me to that ill-fated child, and I am reluctant to wound him by a complete desertion. And yet that is just what is likely to happen on the day after my marriage. Palmer has had a moment's jealousy, and that jealousy may return on the day that he has the right to say to me:I wish it! I no longer love Laurent, my beloved, I swear it, I would rather die than love him; but on the day that Palmer seeks to break the friendship which has survived that unhappy passion in my heart, perhaps I shall cease to love Palmer.
"I have told him all this; he understands it, for he prides himself on being a great philosopher, and he persists in believing what seems fair and right to him to-day will never bear a different aspect in his eyes. I believe it also, and yet I ask him to allow the days to pass, without counting them, and without disturbing our present calm and pleasant situation. I have attacks of spleen, it is true; but Palmer is not naturally very keen-sighted, and I can conceal them from him. I can wear before him what Laurent used to call my sick bird's face, without frightening him. If my future suffering is limited to this, that I may have irritated nerves and gloomy thoughts without his noticing it or being affected by it, we can live together as happily as possible. If he should begin to scrutinize my absent-minded glances, to seek to pierce the veil of my reveries, to do, in short, ali the cruel, childish things with which Laurent used to overwhelm me in my hours of moral weakness, I feel that I have not the strength to struggle longer, and I should prefer that he would kill me at once; it would be done with the sooner."
About the same time, Thérèse received from Laurent so ardent a letter that she was alarmed by it. It was no longer the enthusiasm of friendship, but of love. The silence that Thérèse had maintained concerning her relations with Palmer had restored the artist's hope of renewing his intimacy with her. He could not live without her; he had made vain efforts to return to a life of pleasure. Disgust had seized him by the throat.
"Ah! Thérèse," he said, "I used to reproach you for loving too chastely and for being better adapted for the convent than for love. How could I have blasphemed thus? Since I have been trying to renew my acquaintance with vice, I feel myself that I am becoming as pure as in my childhood, and the women I see tell me that I would make a good monk. No, no, I shall never forget what there was between us above and beyond love, that motherly gentleness which watched over me for long hours with a placid, melting smile, those outpourings of the heart, those aspirations to a higher intelligence, that twofold poem of which we were the authors and the characters, without realizing it. Thérèse, if you do not belong to Palmer, you cannot belong to any one but me! with what other man can you find again those profound, ardent emotions? Were all our days unhappy? Were there not some delicious ones? Besides, is it happiness that you seek, you, the self-sacrificing woman? Can you do without suffering for some one, and did you not call me sometimes, when you pardoned my follies, your dear torment, your necessary torment? Remember, remember, Thérèse! You suffered, and you are alive. I made you suffer, and I am dying! Have I not atoned sufficiently? Three long months of death-agony for my heart!"
Then came reproaches. Thérèse had said too much or too little. Her expressions of friendship were too warm if it was only friendship, too cold and too reserved if it was love. She must have the courage either to give him new life or to kill him.
Thérèse decided to reply that she loved Palmer, and that she expected to love him forever, but did not speak of the projected marriage, which she could not make up her mind to consider as definitely decided upon. She softened as much as she could the blow that confession was certain to deal to Laurent's pride.
"Understand," she said, "that it is not, as you claimed, topunishyou, that I have given my heart and my life to another. No, you were fully forgiven on the day that I responded to Palmer's affection, and I proved it by hurrying to Florence with him. Do you think, my poor child, that, when I nursed you as I did during your illness, I was there simply as a Sister of Charity? No, no, it was not duty that tied me to your bedside, but a mother's affection. Does not a mother always forgive? Well, it will be always so with me, as you will see! Whenever, without failing in my duty to Palmer, I can serve you, nurse you, and comfort you, you will find me ready. It is because Palmer makes no objection to that, that I am able to love him and do love him. If it had been necessary for me to pass from your arms into those of your enemy, I should have had a horror of myself; but it was just the opposite. Our hands met as we swore to each other that we would watch over you, would never abandon you."
Thérèse showed this letter to Palmer, who was deeply moved by it, and insisted upon writing to Laurent himself, to make similar promises of constant solicitude and true affection.
Laurent made them wait for another letter from him. He had begun to dream a new dream, and saw it fly away beyond hope of recall. He was deeply affected at first; but he resolved to shake off the sorrow which he felt that he had not the strength to bear. There took place in him one of those sudden and complete revolutions which were sometimes the scourge, sometimes the salvation, of his life; and he wrote to Thérèse:
"Bless you, my adored sister; I am happy, I am proud of your faithful friendship, and Palmer's cordial words moved me to tears. Why did you not speak sooner, bad girl? I should not have suffered so keenly. What did I crave, in truth? To know that you were happy, nothing more. It was because I thought that you were alone and sad, that I came and knelt again at your feet, and said: 'Since you are suffering, let us suffer together. I long to share your sorrows, your vexations, and your solitude.'—Was not that my duty and my right?—But you are happy, Thérèse, therefore so am I. I bless you for telling me. At last, I am delivered from the remorse that was gnawing at my heart! I can walk with my head erect, breathe freely, and say to myself that I have not marred and ruined the life of the best of friends. Ah! I am full of pride to feel within me this generous joy, instead of the horrible jealousy that formerly tortured me!"Dear Thérèse, dear Palmer, you are my two guardian angels. You have brought me happiness. Thanks to you, I feel at last that I was born for something different from the life I have led. I am born again, I feel the air of heaven descend into my lungs, which thirst for a pure atmosphere. My being is transformed. I am going to love."Yes, I am going to love, I love already! I love a pure and lovely child who knows nothing of my love as yet, and in whose presence I take a mysterious pleasure in guarding the secret of my heart, and in appearing and acting as artless, as gay, as child-like as herself. Ah! how lovely they are, these first days of a newly-born emotion! Is there not something sublime and terrifying in this idea: 'I am going to betray myself, that is to say, I am going to give myself away! to-morrow, perhaps to-night, I shall cease to belong to myself'?"Rejoice, my Thérèse, in this conclusion of your poor child's sad and insane youth. Say to yourself that this rehabilitation of a creature who seemed lost, and who, instead of crawling about in the mire, now spreads his wings like a bird, is the work of your love, your gentleness, your patience, your anger, your sternness, your forgiveness, and your friendship! Yes, it required all the changing scenes of a private drama in which I was vanquished to force me to open my eyes. I am your handiwork, your son, your labor and your reward, your martyrdom and your crown. Bless me, both of you, my friends, and pray for me: I am going to love!"
"Bless you, my adored sister; I am happy, I am proud of your faithful friendship, and Palmer's cordial words moved me to tears. Why did you not speak sooner, bad girl? I should not have suffered so keenly. What did I crave, in truth? To know that you were happy, nothing more. It was because I thought that you were alone and sad, that I came and knelt again at your feet, and said: 'Since you are suffering, let us suffer together. I long to share your sorrows, your vexations, and your solitude.'—Was not that my duty and my right?—But you are happy, Thérèse, therefore so am I. I bless you for telling me. At last, I am delivered from the remorse that was gnawing at my heart! I can walk with my head erect, breathe freely, and say to myself that I have not marred and ruined the life of the best of friends. Ah! I am full of pride to feel within me this generous joy, instead of the horrible jealousy that formerly tortured me!
"Dear Thérèse, dear Palmer, you are my two guardian angels. You have brought me happiness. Thanks to you, I feel at last that I was born for something different from the life I have led. I am born again, I feel the air of heaven descend into my lungs, which thirst for a pure atmosphere. My being is transformed. I am going to love.
"Yes, I am going to love, I love already! I love a pure and lovely child who knows nothing of my love as yet, and in whose presence I take a mysterious pleasure in guarding the secret of my heart, and in appearing and acting as artless, as gay, as child-like as herself. Ah! how lovely they are, these first days of a newly-born emotion! Is there not something sublime and terrifying in this idea: 'I am going to betray myself, that is to say, I am going to give myself away! to-morrow, perhaps to-night, I shall cease to belong to myself'?
"Rejoice, my Thérèse, in this conclusion of your poor child's sad and insane youth. Say to yourself that this rehabilitation of a creature who seemed lost, and who, instead of crawling about in the mire, now spreads his wings like a bird, is the work of your love, your gentleness, your patience, your anger, your sternness, your forgiveness, and your friendship! Yes, it required all the changing scenes of a private drama in which I was vanquished to force me to open my eyes. I am your handiwork, your son, your labor and your reward, your martyrdom and your crown. Bless me, both of you, my friends, and pray for me: I am going to love!"
All the rest of the letter was in this strain. On receiving this hymn of joy and gratitude, Thérèse felt for the first time that her own happiness was complete and assured. She held out both hands to Palmer, and said:
"And now, when and where shall we be married?"
It was decided that the marriage should take place in America. Palmer looked forward with intense delight to presenting Thérèse to his mother, and receiving the nuptial benediction before her eyes. Thérèse's mother could not promise to be present, even if the ceremony should take place in France. She was compensated for the disappointment by the joy she felt in the knowledge that her daughter was pledged to a sensible and devoted man. She could not endure Laurent, and she was always in mortal terror that Thérèse would fall under his yoke again.
TheUnionwas making preparations for her voyage. Captain Lawson offered to take Palmer and his fiancée as passengers. Everybody on board was overjoyed at the prospect of crossing the ocean with that favorite couple. The young ensign atoned for his impertinence by maintaining a most respectful attitude toward Thérèse, and conceiving the most sincere esteem for her.
Thérèse, having made all her preparations to sail on August 18th, received a letter from her mother begging her to come first to Paris, if for no more than twenty-four hours. She had to go thither herself on some family matters. Who could say when Thérèse would return from America? The poor mother was not happy with her other children, who, guided by the example of a suspicious and irritable husband, were insubordinate and cold toward her. So she loved Thérèse all the more dearly, who alone had really been a loving daughter and devoted friend to her. She wished to give her her blessing and to embrace her, perhaps for the last time, for she felt prematurely aged, sick, and fatigued by a life of constant insecurity and without love.
Palmer was more disturbed by this letter than he cared to confess. Although he had always referred with apparent satisfaction to the certainty of a lasting friendship between Laurent and himself, he had not ceased to be anxious, in spite of himself, touching the sentiments which might spring to new life in Thérèse's heart when she should see him again. Not that he was conscious of this anxiety when he asserted the contrary; but he became conscious of it on the 18th of August, when the guns of the American man-of-war woke the echoes of the gulf of Spezzia with repeated farewell salutes, throughout the day.
Each report made him jump, and, at the last one, he wrung his hands until he nearly cracked the joints.
Thérèse was surprised. She had had no suspicion of Palmer's uneasiness since the explanation they had had together at the beginning of their residence in that neighborhood.
"Mon Dieu! what is the matter?" she cried, watching him closely. "What presentiment——"
"Yes! that is it," replied Palmer, hastily. "I have a presentiment—about Lawson, my friend from boyhood. I don't know why.—Yes, yes, it is a presentiment!"
"Do you think that something will happen to him at sea?"
"Perhaps. Who can tell? However, you will not be exposed to it, thank Heaven, as we are going to Paris."
"TheUnionis to touch at Brest, and remain there a fortnight. Are we not going to join her there?"
"Yes, yes, to be sure, unless some catastrophe happens between now and then."
Palmer continued downcast and depressed, nor could Thérèse imagine what was going on in his mind. How could she have imagined? Laurent was taking the waters at Baden; Palmer knew it perfectly well. Moreover, Laurent had his own marriage plans as he had written.
They set off by post the next day, and returned to France by Turin and Mont Cenis, stopping nowhere on the way.
The journey was extraordinarily dull. Palmer saw signs of disaster everywhere; he confessed to superstitions and mental foibles which were entirely foreign to his character. Ordinarily so placid and so mild a master, he indulged in savage fits of temper against the postilions, against the roads, against the customs officers, against the passers-by. Thérèse had never seen him in such a mood. She could not refrain from telling him so. He answered with meaningless words, but with so sombre an expression and so marked an accent of irritation, that she was afraid of him, and consequently of the future.
Some lives are pursued by an implacable destiny. While Thérèse and Palmer were returning to France by Mont Cenis, Laurent was returning thither by Geneva. He reached Paris some hours in advance of them, his mind engrossed by a painful anxiety. He had discovered at last that Thérèse, to make it possible for him to travel for a few months, had parted with every sou that she then possessed, and he had learned (for everything comes to light sooner or later) from a person who had visited Spezzia at that time, that Mademoiselle Jacques was living at Porto Venere in extraordinarily straitened circumstances, and was making lace to pay for her lodgings at the rate of six francs per month.
Humiliated and repentant, angry and hopeless, he determined to learn the exact truth with reference to Thérèse's present situation. He knew that she was too proud to consent to accept anything from Palmer, and he said to himself, reasonably enough, that if she had not been paid for the work she did at Genoa, she must have sold her furniture in Paris.
He hurried to the Champs-Elysées, trembling lest he should find strangers installed in that dear little house, which he could not approach without a violent beating of the heart. As there was no concierge, he had to ring at the garden-gate, and he wondered who would come in answer. He knew nothing of Thérèse's approaching marriage, he did not even know that she was free to marry. The last letter that she had written him touching on that subject had reached Baden the day after his departure.
He was delighted beyond measure when the gate was opened by old Catherine. He leaped on her neck; but his spirits instantly sank when he saw the consternation depicted on the goodwoman's face.
"What have you come here for?" she said, angrily. "Have you found out that mademoiselle is coming to-day? Can't you leave her in peace? Have you come to make her miserable again? They told me that you had separated, and I was glad of it; for, although I was fond of you at first, I had grown to detest you. I saw plainly enough that you were the cause of her troubles and her sorrows. Come, come, don't stay here waiting for her, unless you have made a vow to kill her!"
"You say that she is coming to-day!" Laurent exclaimed again and again.
That was all that he had heard of the old servant's lecture. He entered Thérèse's studio, the small lilac salon, and even the bedroom, raising the gray covers that Catherine had spread over all the furniture to preserve it. He gazed at all those rare and fascinating things one by one, artistic, dainty objects which Thérèse had bought with the fruits of her toil; not one was missing. There seemed to have been no change in Thérèse's Parisian environment, and Laurent repeated in a slightly bewildered tone, looking at Catherine, who was following him step by step, with an anxious air:
"She is coming to-day!"
When he said that he loved a lovely child with a love as pure and fair as she, Laurent had boasted unduly. He had believed that he was telling the truth when he wrote to Thérèse, with the passionate warmth to which he was wont to give way when speaking to her of himself, and which contrasted so strangely with the cold and mocking tone he felt called upon to adopt in society. The declaration he was supposed to have made to the young woman who had filled his dreams, he had not made. A bird or a cloud, passing through the sky at night, had sufficed to overthrow the fragile edifice of happiness and passionate declamation which had sprung up in the morning in that childish, poetic imagination. The fear of making himself ridiculous had taken possession of him, or else the fear of being cured of his invincible and fatal passion for Thérèse.
He remained there, making no reply to Catherine, who, being in haste to prepare everything for her dear mistress's arrival, decided to leave him alone. Laurent was agitated beyond expression. He asked himself why Thérèse was returning to Paris without telling him. Was she coming secretly with Palmer, or had she done as Laurent had done himself? Had she announced to him a happiness which had no existence, and the thought of which had already vanished? Did not this sudden and mysterious return conceal a rupture with Dick?
Laurent was at once overjoyed and terrified by the thought. A thousand contrary ideas and emotions wrangled in his brain and in his nerves. There was a moment when he himself insensibly forgot the reality, and persuaded himself that those linen-covered objects were tombs in a cemetery. He had always had a horror of death, and his mind dwelt constantly upon it, in spite of himself. He saw it about him in all its forms. He fancied that he was surrounded by shrouds, and sprang to his feet in terror, crying:
"Who is dead, then? Is it Thérèse? is it Palmer? I see, I feel that some one is dead in this neighborhood to which I have returned!—No, it is you," he replied, talking to himself, "it is you, who have lived in this house the only real days of your life, and who return hither lifeless, abandoned, forgotten, like a corpse!"
Catherine returned, unnoticed by him, removed the coverings, dusted the furniture, threw all the windows and blinds wide open, and placed flowers in the great china vases which stood on gilt consoles. Then she approached him, and said:
"Well, what are you doing here?"
Laurent came out of his dream, and, looking about him in a dazed sort of way, saw the flowers reflected in the mirrors, the Boule cabinets glistening in the sun, and the whole holiday aspect which had succeeded, as if by magic, the funereal atmosphere of absence, which does, in truth, so closely resemble death.
His hallucination took another course.
"What am I doing here?" he said, smiling darkly; "true, what am I doing here? To-day is a holiday in Thérèse's house, a day of joy and oblivion. Evidently the mistress of this house has appointed a rendezvous here to-day, and certainly it is not I whom she expects, I, a dead man! What business has a corpse in this nuptial chamber? And what will she say when she sees me here? She will say, as you do, poor old woman; she will say: 'Begone! your place is in a coffin!'"
Laurent talked as if he were in a fever. Catherine felt sorry for him.
"He is mad," she thought; "he always was."
And as she was thinking what she should say to send him away quietly, she heard a carriage stop in the street. In her joy at seeing Thérèse again, she forgot Laurent, and hastened to open the door.
Palmer was there with Thérèse; but, being in haste to rid himself of the dust of the journey, and not wishing to give Thérèse the trouble of having the post-chaise unloaded at her door, he stepped in again at once and ordered the postilions to drive him to Hôtel Meurice, saying to Thérèse that he would return in two hours to dine with her, and would bring her trunks.
Thérèse embraced her dear old Catherine, and, while she questioned her concerning her own health during their separation, entered the house with that impatient curiosity, sometimes joyous, sometimes anxious, which we instinctively feel on returning to a place where we have lived a long while; so that Catherine had no opportunity to tell her that Laurent was there, and she surprised him sitting on the sofa in the salon, pale, absorbed, and, as it were, petrified. He had not heard the carriage, nor the noise of doors hurriedly opened and closed. He was still buried in his dismal meditations when he saw her before him. He uttered a terrible cry, darted toward her to embrace her, and fell, gasping for breath, almost fainting, at her feet.
They had to remove his cravat, and give him ether to inhale. He was suffocating, and his heart beat so violently that his whole body was shaken as by a succession of electric shocks. Thérèse, dismayed to see him thus, thought that he had fallen sick again. However, his youthful vigor soon returned, and she noticed that he had grown stout. He swore a thousand times that he had never been in better health, and that he was overjoyed to find her improved and her eye as clear and bright as on the first day of their love. He knelt before her and kissed her feet to testify his respect and adoration. His outpourings of emotion were so ardent that Thérèse was disturbed, and thought it her duty to remind him at once of her impending departure and her approaching marriage to Palmer.
"What? what's that? what do you say?" cried Laurent, as pale as if the lightning had struck at his feet. "Departure! marriage!—How? why? am I still dreaming? did you say those words?"
"Yes," she replied, "I did say them. I had already written them to you; did you not receive my letter?"
"Departure! marriage!" repeated Laurent; "why, you used to say that it was impossible! Remember! there were days when I regretted that I could not impose silence on people who tore your reputation to pieces, by giving you my name and my whole life. And you always said: 'Never, never, so long as that man lives!'—Is he dead, pray? or do you love Palmer as you never loved me, since for him you brush aside scruples which I thought well founded, and defy a horrible scandal, which I consider inevitable?"
"The Comte de —— is dead, and I am free."
Laurent was so thunderstruck by this revelation, that he forgot all his schemes of disinterested, fraternal friendship. What Thérèse had foreseen at Genoa, happened under peculiarly distressing conditions. Laurent conceived a most exalted idea of the happiness he might have enjoyed as Thérèse's husband, and he shed torrents of tears; nor could words of reason or remonstrance produce any effect upon his perturbed and despairing heart. His grief was expressed so vehemently, and his tears were so genuine, that Thérèse could not escape the emotion naturally incident to a pathetic, heart-rending scene. She had never been able to see Laurent suffer without feeling all the compassion of maternal love, reproachful but vanquished. She tried in vain to restrain her own tears. They were not tears of regret, she was not deceived by this vertigo from which Laurent was suffering, and which was nothing more than vertigo; but it acted on her nerves, and the nerves of such a woman were the very fibres of her heart, torn by a pain which she could not understand.
She succeeded finally in calming him, and, by speaking to him gently and affectionately, in persuading him to look upon her marriage as the wisest and best solution for them both. Laurent agreed, with a sad smile.
"Yes," he said, "I should certainly have made a detestable husband, andhewill make you happy! Heaven owed you that compensation and that reward. You are quite right to thank Heaven for it and to consider that it preserves you from a wretched existence, and me from a remorse worse than the old one. It is because all that is so true, so wise, so logical, and so well arranged, that I am so unhappy!"
And he began to sob afresh.
Palmer entered the house unheard by either of them. He was, in truth, oppressed by a ghastly presentiment, and, albeit entirely without premeditation, he arrived like a jealous man whose suspicions have been aroused, ringing very softly, and walking so that his footsteps made no noise on the floor. He stopped at the door of the salon and recognized Laurent's voice.
"Ah! I was perfectly sure of it!" he said to himself, tearing the glove which he had held in his hand to be put on at the door, apparently to give himself time for reflection before entering. He thought it best to knock.
"Come in!" cried Thérèse hastily, astounded that any one should insult her by knocking at the door of her salon.
When she saw Palmer, she turned pale. What he had done was more eloquent than many words: he suspected her.
Palmer saw that pallor, and could not understand its real cause. He saw also that Thérèse had been weeping, and Laurent's discomposed countenance put the finishing-touch to his agitation. The first glance that the two men exchanged was a glance of hatred and defiance; then they walked toward each other, uncertain whether they should shake hands, or grasp each other by the throat.