At the moment when Theresa de Sauve received Hubert's despatch she was
preparing to dress for dining out. She immediately countermanded her
carriage, and wrote a hasty line, pleading headache as an excuse for
absence. She had been seized with trembling and an icy sweat on reading
the simple phrases of the blue note. She gave orders that she was not at
home, and cowered down in a low chair before her bedroom fire, with her
head in her hands.
Since her return from Trouville she had been living in continued agony,
and what she had been dreading like death was come. Her darling, whom
she had left so perfectly tranquil and cheerful at two o'clock, could
not have fallen into the state of mind which she could feel through the
graceful childishness of his note, if some catastrophe had not happened.
What catastrophe? Theresa guessed it too well.
George Liauran had been told the truth. During the unhappy woman's stay
at the seaside there had been enacted in her life one of those secret
dreams of infidelity which frequently occur in the lives of women who
have once deviated from the straight path. But our actions, however
guilty they may be, do not always give the measure of our souls. Madame
de Sauve's nature comprised very lofty portions by the side of very low
ones, and was a singular mixture of corruption and nobility. She might,
indeed, commit abominable faults, but to forgive them in herself, after
the happy custom of most women of the same description, that she could
not do, and now less than ever after what her passion for Hubert had
been to her life for several months.
Ah! her life! her life! It was this that Theresa de Sauve saw in the
flickering flames in the fireplace that autumn evening, with her heart
racked with apprehension. The whole weight of her former errors, her
criminal errors, was now falling upon her heart, and she remembered her
state of dull agony when she had met Hubert. Theresa de Sauve had been
endowed by nature with those dispositions which are most fatal to a
woman in modern society, unless she marries under rare conditions, or
unless maternity saves her from herself by breaking the energies of her
physical, and engrossing the fervour of her moral, vitality. She had a
romantic heart, while her temperament made her a creature of passion,
that is to say, she fostered both dreams of feeling and unconquerable
appetites for sensation.
When persons of this kind meet on the threshold of their lives, with a
man who satisfies the twofold needs of their nature, there are between
them and this man such mysterious festivities of love as poets conceive
but never embrace. Where their destiny wills that they shall be
delivered, as Theresa had been to her husband, to a man who treats them
from the very first like courtesans, who initiates them in deed and
thought into the whole science of pleasure, but who has not sufficient
poetry to satisfy the other half of their souls, such women necessarily
become curiosos, capable of falling into the worst experiences, and then
their sterility even becomes a happiness, for they at least do not
transmit that flame of sentimental and sensual life which they have
commonly inherited from a mother's error.
It was, in fact, from her mother, who, cold though she was, had been led
by weariness and abandonment into guilty misconduct, that Theresa
derived her dreamy imagination, while there flowed in her veins the
burning blood of her true father, the handsome Count Branciforte.
Further, this child of license and infatuation had been brought up
without religious principles or bridle of any kind, by Adolphe Lussac, a
most immoral man, who was amused by the little girl's vivacity, and had
early made her a guest at many dinners, where she heard all that she
ought not to have heard, and guessed all that she ought not to have
known. Who can calculate the amount of influence over the falls of a
woman of twenty-five that is attributable to the conversations listened
to or overheard by the young girl in short frocks?
Nevertheless, Theresa, who had married when very young, had had only two
intrigues up to the time of her chance meeting with Hubert, and these
two amours had caused her such disgust that she had sworn that she would
never again fall into the folly of taking a lover. The good resolutions
of a woman who has fallen, and who has suffered for her fault, are like
the firm intentions of a gambler who has lost two thousand pounds, or a
drunkard who has told his secrets during his intoxication. The
deep-lying causes which have produced the first adultery continue to
subsist after the fault has given the guilty one cruelly to taste of
every bitterness.
The woman who takes a lover is not so much attached to this lover as she
is to love, and she continues to be still attached to love when the
chosen lover has deceived her, until disillusion after disillusion
brings her to love pleasure without love, and sometimes pleasure of the
most degrading nature. Theresa de Sauve could never descend so far as
this, because a sentiment of the ideal persisted within her, too feeble
to counterbalance the fever of the senses, but strong enough to illumine
in her own eyes the abyss of her weaknesses. This taciturn woman,
through whom there passed at times the tremors of almost brutal desire,
was no epicurean, no light and cheerful courtesan of the world.
Conceived amid her mother's remorse, Theresa had a tragic soul. She was
capable of depravity, but incapable of that amused forgetfulness which
plucks the fleeting hour, and cannot, without effort, recall the first
lover's name among all the rest. No; this first lover, this Frederick
Suzel, whom George Liauran had justly suspected, could never be thought
of by her without causing her thorough nausea by the recollection of the
sad motives of her surrender to him. He was a man gay even to
buffoonery, and witty even to cynicism, with that sort of wit which is
current between the Opera House, Tortoni, and the Café Anglais.
When paying his addresses to Theresa, he had the good sense not to lose
himself in the tricks of fashionable flirtations as did his numerous
rivals--a troop of beasts of prey on the scent of a victim. With great
skilfulness of language and a certain penetration of vice, he had
frankly offered to arrange with her a kind of partnership for pleasure
which should be secret, sure, and with no future, and the unfortunate
woman had accepted his proposal. Why? Because she was dreadfully dull;
because she was carrying off Suzel from one of her friends; because she
was greedy for new sensations, and this person, with his dishonouring
talk, had about him a sort of strange prestige of libertinism. Of this
connection, in which Frederick had at least been faithful to his promise
in not seeking to prolong it, Theresa had soon been deeply ashamed, and
she had escaped from it as from the galleys.
After a year spent in enduring her remorse, and in feeling herself
sullied by all the knowledge of evil that her intimacy with this man had
revealed to her, she had thought to find satisfaction for the needs of
her heart in the person of Alfred Fanières, one of the most subtle
novelists of the day. Did not all the books of this charming narrator,
from his first and only volume of poetry to his last collection of
tales, reveal the most minute and tender understanding of the gentle
feminine mind? In this second connection, begun with the most
intoxicating hope--that, namely, of consoling all the deceptions of an
admired artist--Theresa had soon struck upon the implacable barrenness
of the inmost nature of the worn-out literary man, in whom there is an
absolute divorce between feeling and written expression.
Though undeceived, she nevertheless persisted in remaining this man's
mistress, from that reason which causes a woman's second love affair to
be the longest of all in coming to a conclusion. She will admit that the
first has been a mistake; but the mistake of her marriage and the
mistake of her first amour make two; at the third error she acknowledges
that the fault in her conduct is due to herself, and not to the
circumstances of her life, and this is a cruel confession for secret
pride. Then the writer's egotism had manifested itself so harshly, when
he had believed himself sure of her, that the revolt had been too
strong, and Theresa had broken with him.
It was during the period of hard distress subsequent to this rupture
that she had met Hubert Liauran. From the corner of her solitary hearth,
beside which she watched persistently, she could see so very clearly
what the discovery of this tender child's heart had been to her. In an
existence which had comprised nothing but wounding or disgrace--had not
her keenest sorrows been dishonoured beforehand by their cause?--with
what delighted emotion had she measured the purity of this young man's
heart? What anxiety had she felt, and what a dread of not pleasing him!
What a dread, too, knowing that she had pleased him, of being ruined in
his thoughts!
How she had trembled lest one of the cruel talkers of society should
reveal her past to Hubert! How had she employed all her woman's art to
make this love an adorable poem, wherein should be lacking nothing that
might enchant a soul innocent and new to life! How had she enjoyed his
reverence, and how had she allowed it to be prolonged! Ah! when she
thought now of those two days at Folkestone she could scarcely believe
that they had been real, and that she had had the courage to survive
them. She remembered that she had gone with Hubert to the terminus in
spite of every consideration of prudence; she had seen him disappear in
the direction of London, leaning out of the carriage window to watch her
the longer; she had re-entered the rooms which they had both occupied,
before herself taking train for Dover, and there she had spent two hours
in the grievous loneliness of a soul overwhelmed with simultaneous
despair and felicity.
Her soul bent beneath its weight of recollections like a flower
overladen with dew. She had there known a complete union between her two
natures--an almost passionate vibration of her entire being. She had
half forgiven herself the past, excusing herself by saying mentally to
Hubert the words which so many women have said aloud to men jealous of
those bygone days which belonged to others: "I did not know you!"
On their subsequent return to Paris, how carefully and piously had she
set herself, during the spring and summer, to live in such a way as not
to lose his affection for a single minute! She had resumed all the
modesty admitted by love that is complete, but is ennobled by the soul.
She trembled constantly lest her caresses should be a cause of
corruption to this being, so young both in heart and in body, whom she
wished to intoxicate without defiling.
Although she was enamoured to distraction, she had desired the meetings
in the little abode in the Avenue Friedland to be far between, lest she
should not long enough preserve in his eyes her charm of divine novelty.
They had not been very numerous--she might have counted them, tasting in
thought the distinct sweetness of each--those afternoons when, with all
the shutters closed, and with no light, she had again found the delights
of the Folkestone time, sunk in her lover's arms, and dead to everything
but the present moment and its intoxication.
She had gone so far in her idolatry of Hubert as to worship Madame
Liauran, although she well knew that she was hated by her. She
worshipped her for having brought up this son in such an atmosphere of
pure and shrinking sensibility. She worshipped her for having kept him
for her during the years of adolescence and youth, so delicate, so
graceful, so tender, so much her own, so absolutely her own in the past,
the present, and the future. For there was loftiness, almost folly, in
her pride. She would say to him:
"Yours is beginning and mine is ending. Yes, child, at twenty-six a
woman is almost at the end of her youth, and you have so many years
before you! But never, never will you be loved as I love you, and never
will you forget me, never, never." And at other times: "You will marry,"
she would say; "she lives, she breathes, and yet she is not known to me,
she who is to take you from me, and who will sleep every night upon your
heart as I did at Folkestone. Ah! must it indeed be that I have met you
so late, and that I cannot bind you to my kisses."
And she would encircle his neck with the loosened tresses of her long,
black hair. Since she had belonged to him she had again acquired the
habit which she had had as a young girl, of dressing her own hair, so
that he might handle her beautiful locks. Then when she had dressed them
again quite alone, and was attired and veiled, she would come back to
him, not wishing to bid him good-bye anywhere but in the room where they
had loved each other, and she would understand from the throbbings of
Hubert's heart that no sensation told so much upon him as this good-bye
kiss which she gave him with nearly cold lips. She would depart a prey
to a nameless sadness, but one at least of which she told her lover. For
she did not tell him of every sadness.
She was married, and although she had at all times had a room of her
own, she was sometimes obliged to receive her husband in it. Alas! it
was all the more necessary because she had a lover. It was a sinister
expiation of her passion, and one which she justified on her part by
telling herself that she owed as much to Hubert. If she ever became a
mother could she fly with him and take from him his whole life? and the
pitiless necessity of baleful lies and degrading partitions would thus
come to torture her at the height of her happiness. She acquitted
herself, nevertheless, since it was for him, her darling, that she lied.
Yes, but what monstrous enigma suddenly reared itself before her? Oh,
the cruel, cruel enigma! With this divine love in her heart, how had she
been able to do what she had done? For it had been, indeed, herself, and
none other--she, with those feet of hers which now were feeling icy
cold, with those hands which now were pressing her feverishly-throbbing
brow--she, in short, with her whole physical being, who had left for
Trouville at the end of the month of July--she, Theresa de Sauve, who
had installed herself for the season in a villa on the hill. Yes, it had
been herself. And yet no! It was not possible that Hubert's mistress had
done this. What--this? Oh, cruel, cruel enigma!
From what depths of the memory of her senses had there issued those
strange impulses, those secret, lustful temptations which had commenced
to assail her? But have the senses really a memory? Can it be that the
guilty fevers will not depart for ever from the blood which they have
fired in evil hours?
Once settled in her villa, she had met again with old friends who had
been greatly neglected since the beginning of her connection with
Hubert. With these women and their admirers--their "fancy men," as a
lady said who mixed in their "set"--she had formed several very cheerful
and innocent country parties, and here she was, day by day, beginning,
not to love Hubert less, but to live somewhat apart from her love, and
to take pleasure anew in habits of masculine familiarities which she had
forbidden to herself for a year past. She was so idle in her villa with
no indoor occupation--not even reading. For she had never liked books
much, and her connection with Alfred Fanières had disgusted her for
ever with the falsity of fine phrases. When she had written lengthily to
Hubert, and then briefly to her husband--who, moreover, came to see her
every week--it was necessary to beguile the tedious hours; and at times
fitful thoughts came to her which she dared not acknowledge to herself.
Hankerings after sensations arose within her, and astonished her.
She knew by hearsay that almost all men, however tender they may be, and
however dearly loved their mistresses, cannot remain long away from the
latter without experiencing irresistible temptations to deceive her with
the first girl that they meet. But this was true of men, and not of
women. Why, then, did she find herself a prey to this inexplicable
agitation, to this thirst for sensual intoxications, of which she had
believed herself for ever cured by the influence of her ennobling, her
ideal love? The depraved creature that she had formerly been awoke by
degrees. At night, in her sleep, she was haunted by visions of her past.
In vain, had she striven, and in vain had she cursed her secret
perversion.
Then she had allowed herself to listen to the addresses of the young
Count de la Croix-Firmim. She remembered with horror the kind of nervous
fascination which this man's presence, his smile, and his eyes had
exerted upon her. Then--she would fain have died at the recollection of
this--one afternoon, when he had come up to see her, and there was a
torrid heat, such as makes the will feel itself drooping, he had been
venturesome, and she had given herself to him, faintly at first, and
then impetuously and madly. For three days she had been his mistress--a
prey to the wildness of physical passion--banishing, ever banishing, the
recollection of Hubert, feeling herself rolling into a gulf of infamy,
and flinging herself still further into it, until the day when she had
awakened from this sensual frenzy as from a dream. She had opened her
eyes, measured her shame, and, like a wounded and dying creature, had
fled from the accursed spot and from her detested accomplice to
return--to what?--and to whom?
A melancholy and heart-breaking return to what had been the restoration
of her entire life, to what she had blasted for ever! She had returned
to the room of those sweet hours, and she had found Hubert, her
Hubert--but could she still call him so?--more tender, more loving, and
more loved than before. Alas! alas! had her inexpiable deceit rendered
her for ever powerless to taste that of which she was no longer worthy?
In the young man's arms, and on his heart, she had remembered the other,
and the ecstacy of former times, the delicious and unspeakable swooning
in the excess of feeling, had fled from her.
It was then that Hubert had seen her sobbing despairingly, and an
immense sadness had come upon her, a death-like torpor, crossed by a
cruel anxiety lest some indiscreet speech should reach her lover and
awake his suspicions. Her own reputation she heeded but little; she was
well aware that after acting as she did with La Croix-Firmin, she could
count on little but contempt and hatred from him. She also knew what the
honour of those men who make it their profession to have women is worth.
What tortured her, however, was not a fear lest he might compromise her
personal security by speaking. After all, what had she, childless, and
rich with an independent fortune, to dread from her husband?
But a look of distrust in Hubert's eyes was what she felt to be beyond
her powers of endurance. Perhaps, nevertheless, it might be better that
he should know the frightful truth? He would drive her from him like an
unfortunate; but at times anything seemed preferable to the torment of
having such remorse at her heart, and of lying ceaselessly to so noble a
fellow. She had again set herself to love him with desperate frenzy,
and, as her revolt against the baser part of her nature hurried her to
an extreme in the other or romantic direction, a mad desire came upon
her to tell him everything, that at least the voluntary humiliation of
her confession might be, as it were, a ransom for her infamy. And yet,
although silence was a very lie, this lie she had still the strength to
sustain; but, as for an actual lie, she suffered too much to have the
shameful energy for it, if ever he questioned her.
And this questioning she was now about to face; she could read it
between the lines of the despatch. Ah! what was she now to do, if she
had guessed aright? She had drunk as much of the gall of shame as she
could bear. Would she have heart enough still to drink this, the
bitterest drop, and once more betray her only love by a fresh deception?
If she were frank Hubert must at least esteem her for her frankness, and
if she were not how could she endure herself? Yes, but to speak was the
death of her happiness.
Alas! had not this been dead ever since her return? Would she ever
recover what she had once felt? What was the use of disputing with fate
for this mutilated, sullied remnant of a divine dream? And all that
night she was bowed beneath the agony of these thoughts, a poor creature
born for all the nobility of a single and faithful love, who had caught
a glimpse of her dream and had possessed it, to be then dispossessed of
it by the fault of a nature hidden within her, but which, nevertheless,
was not her entire self.