What was Theresa doing while he was suffering thus, and why did she
afford him no sign of her existence? Although the young man had
forbidden himself to think about her, he thought of her nevertheless,
and this question came to add anxiety to his other anguish.
Contradictory hypotheses passed in turns through his mind. Had Theresa
died of remorse? Had she ceased to love him? Had she kept La
Croix-Firmin for her lover? Was she pursuing a fresh intrigue.
Everything seemed possible to Hubert, the worst as well as the best, on
the part of this woman whom he had learned to be so strangely compounded
of refinement and libertinism, of treachery and nobility. He then
ascertained by the heart-burning caused him by some of his hypotheses,
by what living fibres he still clung to this being from whom he wished
himself released.
He was on the point of taking some steps in order at least to learn what
the inclinations of her own soul were at that moment; then he despised
himself for the weakness, and, to strengthen himself, he repeated some
verses which were in correspondence with his condition of mind. He found
them, by a strange irony of destiny which he did not suspect, in the
single collection of poetry by Alfred Fanières. This volume, which had
been reprinted after the poet's novels had made him celebrated, bore a
title which was in itself a revelation of youthfulness: "Early Pride."
Hubert had dined, in company with the writer, at Madame de Sauve's house
without suspecting what the poor woman felt at being obliged by her
husband to receive at her table the lover whom she idolised and the man
with whom she had broken. Fanières had talked cleverly that evening,
and it was after that dinner that the young man, with very natural
curiosity, had obtained the book of verse at a bookseller's. The poem
which pleased him just now was a sonnet, somewhat pretentiously called
"Tender Cruelty":--
"Be still, my heart, but speak thou forth fierce pride,
And tell me that my sway no share must know,
Nor can I pardon her the grievous blow
Who knew another's couch although my bride.
At least, I've seen her as she vainly tried,
Her soul in tears dissolved, and crouching low,
To find the look my eyes could yet forego;
And, kingly silent, I have turned aside.
She knew not that, when grief distraught, were heard
Her plaintive tones entreat a single word,
I suffered even as she, and loved her still.
In silence only, outraged man is strong;
For vengeance tells a tale of secret ill,
And I would be believed above all wrong."
"Yes," said Hubert to himself, "he is right: silence--"
The verses moved him childishly, as happens with ordinary readers of
poetry, who require a literary work merely to excite or to soothe the
inward wound.
"Silence . . ." he resumed. "Do we speak to one that is dead? Well,
Theresa is dead to me."
Thus expressing himself in the solitude of his study, where he now spent
nearly all his days, Hubert had no ill-will remaining against his
mistress. As no new fact came to rouse fresh feelings within him, the
old ones, which had existed before the betrayal, reappeared. The images
of his remembrances abounded within him, nor did he drive them away, and
under their influence his anger little by little became something
abstract, rational, and, so to speak, expedient in his eyes; but in
reality he had never loved this woman so much as he did now when he
believed himself sure of never seeing her again.
He loved her, in fact, as though she were dead; but who does not know
that is the most indestructible and frantic tenderness? When irrevocable
separation has not primarily resulted in the killing of love, it exalts
it on the contrary in a strange fashion. Impossible to embrace, so
present and so far away, the dim shape of the wished-for phantom hovers
before our gaze with the beauty that life will never wither more, and
our whole soul goes out sadly and passionately to meet it. The duration
of days is annihilated. The sweetness of the past flows back in its
fulness within us, and then begins a singular and retrospective kind of
enchantment which is like hallucination in the heart.
Theresa de Sauve might have been a woman buried, sewn up in a shroud,
laid in the coldness of the funeral vault for ever, and Hubert would not
have abandoned himself more to the gnawings of his memory, to the mad
ardour of love which lacks both hope and desire, and is wholly made up
of ecstacy of what once has been,--and can never be again. By means of
her notes, which he had kept, and which he re-read until he knew every
word by heart, he reconstructed, hour by hour, the delicious months of
his past intoxication. Theresa was in the habit of never dating her
letters, but of simply writing the name of the day at the head of them,
"Thursday," "Wednesday," "Saturday." Hubert found the day of the month
from the post-mark, thanks to the pious care with which he had preserved
all the envelopes, for the childish reason that he could not have
destroyed a line of that handwriting without pain.
Even after so many weeks, he had failed to become insensible to the
emotion caused him by the sight of the letters of his name traced by
Theresa's hand. Yes; hour by hour he revived the life already lived. The
charm of the bygone moments reappeared so complete, so rapturous, so
heart-breaking! It had passed away as everything does, and the young man
had come to rebel no longer against the enigma of which he was the
victim. The Christian notion of responsibility was succeeded within him
by an obscure fatalism. The termination of his happiness was now
explained in his eyes by the inevitable misery of mankind. He almost
acquitted his phantom of a fault which seemed to him to be bound up with
natural fatalities; and then he began to think that this phantom was not
that of a dead woman with closed eyes, motionless bosom, and shut lips,
but of a living creature with beating eyelids, throbbing heart, and
parted lips that were fresh and warm; and, tormented in spite of himself
by some vague, dim desire, he again began to murmur:
"What is she doing?"
What then was Theresa doing, and how was it that she had essayed no
effort to see again the man she loved? What thoughts and what feelings
had she experienced since the terrible scene which had separated her
from Hubert? With her, too, days had succeeded to days, but while the
young man, a prey to a metamorphosis of soul provoked by the most
unlooked-for and tragic of deceptions, suffered these rapid burning days
to slip away as he passed from one extremity of the universe of feeling
to the other, she, the guilty one, the vanquished one, was absorbed in a
single thought. Herein like all women who love, she would have given her
blood-drops, one after another, to cure the sorrow that she had caused
to her lover. It was not that the visible details of her life were
modified. Except for the first week, during which she had been
overthrown, so to speak, by a continuous and shooting headache, she had,
as the result of a reaction from the experience of so many emotions,
resumed her vocation as a woman of fashion, her accustomed course of
drives and visits, great dinners and receptions, theatre-goings or
evening parties.
But this completely external movement has never been able to hinder
dreams any more than the employment of the needle does in fancy work.
Though a strange fact at first sight, the explanation in the Avenue
Friedland had been followed by a half-soothed relaxation in her soul,
simply because voluntary confession had lessened remorse, as it always
does. It is, too, on this unexplained law of our consciousness that the
subtle psychology of the Catholic Church has based the principle of
confession. If Theresa did not altogether forgive herself for her fault,
she was, at least, no longer compelled by her thoughts of it to endure
the contemplation of absolute baseness. The notion of a certain moral
loftiness was now associated with it, ennobling it in her own eyes. This
sleep of remorse left her free to absorb herself in the remembrance of
Hubert.
She now lived in a condition of deadly anxiety concerning him, and was
dominated by a steady longing to see him again, not that she hoped to
obtain her forgiveness from him, but she knew that he was unhappy, and
she felt within her such a love for the youth whom she had wounded, that
she would willingly have found means to dress and close the sore. How?
She could not have told that; but it was not possible that such great,
deeply-repentant tenderness could be inefficacious. In any case she
must, at least, show Hubert the scope of the passion which she felt for
him. Could this fail to touch him, to move him, to rescue him from
despair? Now that she was no longer beneath the immediate burden of her
infidelity, she did not judge of it from the essentially masculine
standpoint, that is, as being something absolute and irreparable.
In woman, who is a creature much more instinctive than we men, and much
closer to nature, the energies of renewing spring-time are much more
unimpaired. A woman who is deceived forgives, provided that she knows
herself to be loved, and a woman who has deceived can scarcely
understand non-forgiveness provided that she loves. The fault committed
is an idea, a shadow, a chimera. The love felt is a fact, a reality.
Thus Theresa had entirely emerged from the period of moral depression,
the extreme limit of which had been marked by her confession. Certainly,
she did not regret the latter, as so many other women would have done in
like circumstances; but it was her longing, her hope, her wish that it
should not have marked the end of her happiness, for, after all, she
loved and was loved.
Nevertheless, her longing did not blind her to such a degree as to make
her forget what she knew of her lover's character. Proud and pure as she
knew him to be, how difficult it was to effect a reconciliation with
him! And, moreover, what means could she employ to be alone with him
even for an hour? Write? She did so, not once, but ten times. Having
sealed the letter she threw it into a drawer, and did not send it at
all. At first no expression seemed to her sufficiently coaxing and
humble, endearing and tender. Then she was terrified with the
apprehension lest Hubert should not even open the envelope, and should
return it to her without a reply. Meet him again in society? She had a
frightful dread of such an accident. With what courage could she endure
his glance, which would be a cruel one, and one which she could not even
attempt to disarm? Go to the Rue Vaneau and obtain an interview from
him? She knew only too well that this was not possible. Send him a
message? By whom? The only person to whom she had confided her love was
her country friend whom she had employed to post her letters to her
husband, while she herself was at Folkestone. Among all the men whom she
met in society, that one who was sufficiently intimate with Hubert to
act as a messenger in such an embassy was also he in whom her woman's
instinct showed her the probable author of the indiscreet remarks which
had ruined her--George Liauran. She was bound by the thousand tiny
threads which society fastens to the limbs of its slaves.
At last, without any calculation, and by obeying the impulses of her own
heart, she succeeded in finding a means which appeared almost infallible
to her for coming to an explanation. She experienced an irresistible
longing to visit the little abode in the Avenue Friedland, and she told
herself that Hubert would, sooner or later, feel this longing like
herself. Of inevitable necessity she must meet him face to face on one
of these visits. Under the influence of this idea she began to pay long
solitary visits to those ground floor rooms, whose every nook spoke to
her of her lost happiness. The first time that she came there in this
way, the hour which she spent among the furniture, was the occasion of
such intolerable emotion that she was nearly relapsing into the
extravagance of her first despair. She returned, nevertheless, and by
degrees it became strangely sweet to her to accomplish this pilgrimage
of love nearly every day. The doorkeeper lit the fire; she allowed the
flame to illuminate the little drawing-room with a flickering light
which struggled against the invasion of the twilight; she lay down upon
the divan, to experience a sensation at once torturing and delicious, a
blending of expectation, melancholy, and remembrance. Each time she was
careful to first ask:
"Has the gentleman been here?" and the negative reply would give her the
hope that chance might cause the young man's visit to coincide with her
own.
She noticed, with beating heart, the slightest noise. All the objects
around her which were not coloured by the blaze from the fireplace, were
drowned in the shadow. The apartment was scented with the exhalations
from the flowers, the cups and vases of which she used herself to trim,
and she alternately dreaded and desired the entry of Hubert. Would he
forgive her? Would he repel her? And finally she had to leave this
refuge of her last hope, and she departed, her veil drawn down, her soul
flooded by the same sadness that she used formerly to feel when Hubert's
kisses were still fresh on her lips, at once comforted and terrified by
this thought:
"When shall I see him again? Will it be to-morrow?"
One afternoon when stretched thus upon the divan and absorbed in her
dreams, she seemed to hear the turning of a key in the lock of the outer
door. She sat up suddenly with a wild throbbing of heart. Yes, the door
was opening and closing. A step sounded in the ante-room. A hand was
opening the second door. She fell back again upon the cushions of the
divan, unable to endure the approach of what she had so greatly hoped
for, and thus finding, through her very sincerity, the vanquished
attitude which the most refined coquetry would have chosen and which was
calculated to work most powerfully upon her lover,--if it were he. But
what other could come, and did she not immediately recognise his step?
Yes, it was indeed Hubert who was just coming in.
Since their rupture, he, too, had often wished to come back to the
little ground floor rooms, where the clock had struck for him so many
sweet hours,--the clock over which Theresa used gracefully to throw the
black lace of her second veil "in order to veil the time better," she
said. Then he had not ventured. Fond memories made him timid. People are
afraid, in renewing such, both of feeling too much and of feeling too
little. This afternoon, however, was it the influence of the gloomy
winter sky and his own bewitching melancholy? Was it the reading
yesterday of one of Theresa's most charming notes, dated a year back on
the very same day?
Without thinking about it, Hubert had found himself on the way to the
Avenue Friedland. To reach the latter he had mechanically pursued a
network of winding streets, as he used of old in order to avoid spies.
What need was there of such stratagems to-day? And the contrast had made
his heart heavy. On his way he had to pass a telegraph office which
formerly he used to enter after their meetings to prolong the
voluptuousness of them by writing Theresa a note to surprise her just
after she had reached home--a stifled echo, distant and so tender of the
intoxicated sighs of that day! He saw the door of the office, its dark
colour, its inscription, the opening of the box reserved for telegraph
cards, and he nearly fainted.
But he was already pursuing the pathway of the fatal Avenue, and he
could see the house, the closed venetian blinds of the front rooms on
the ground floor, and the entrance commanded by the gateway. How did he
feel when the doorkeeper, after asking whether "the gentleman had had a
good journey," added, in his hatefully obsequious tones: "The lady is
there----?"
He had not yet taken the key from his pocket when this news, less
unexpected, perhaps, than he would acknowledge to himself, struck him
like a full blow upon the breast. What was to be done? Dignity commanded
him to depart immediately. But the lurking, deep desire which he had to
see Theresa again suggested to him one of those sophisms, thanks to
which we always find means to prefer with our reason what we most desire
with our instinct.
"If I do not go in," he said to himself, looking towards the lodge,
"this odious individual will understand that we have quarrelled. He is
capable of carrying his effrontery so far as to speak to Theresa of my
interrupted visit. I owe it to her to spare her this humiliation, and
besides, the matter of the rooms must be settled once for all. Shall I
never be a man?"
It was at this moment, after the lightning flash of this sudden
reasoning, that he opened the door, being aware the while that there was
one in the adjoining room who was being thrown into agitation from feet
to hair by this simple noise. He had often warmed those slender feet
with many kisses, and so often handled that long black hair!
"If she has come, it is because she loves me still."
This thought moved him in spite of himself, and he was trembling as he
passed into the drawing-room, where the dying of the twilight was
striving with the flames on the hearth. He was surprised by the
caressing aroma of the flowers standing in the vases on the
mantel-shelf, with which was blended the odour of a perfume that he knew
too well. On the divan at the back of the room he saw the prostrate form
of a body, then the movement of a bust, the paleness of a face, and he
found himself face to face with Theresa, now sitting up and looking at
him.
The silence of both was such that he could hear the sharp beats of his
own heart and the breathing of the woman, who was evidently wild with
emotion. The presence of his mistress had suddenly restored to him all
his nervous anger. What he felt at this moment was that frightful
longing to brutally ill-treat the woman, the being of stratagem and
falsehood, which takes hold of the man, the being of strength and
fierceness, whenever physical jealousy awakes the primitive male within
him, placed opposite the female in the truth of nature. At a certain
depth, all the differences of education and character are annihilated
before the inevitable necessities of the laws of sex.
It was Theresa who first broke the silence. She understood too well the
gravity of the explanation which was about to ensue not to bring all her
powers of feminine artifice into play. She loved Hubert at this moment
as passionately as on the day when she confessed her inexplicable fault
to him; but she was mistress of herself now, and could measure the scope
of her words. Moreover, she had no play to act. It was enough for her to
show herself just as she was, in the infinite humility of the most
repentant tenderness, and it was in a nearly hoarse voice that she began
to speak from the corner of the shadow in which she remained seated.
"I ask your forgiveness for being here," she said; "I am just going.
When I allowed myself to come into this room sometimes, quite alone, I
did not think that I was doing anything to displease you. It was the
pilgrimage to that which has been the only happiness in my life; but I
promise you that I will never do so again."
"It is for me to withdraw, madame," replied Hubert, who, at the sound of
her voice, found himself disquieted by an emotion impossible of
definition. "She has come several times," he thought, and the notion
irritated him, as happens when one is unwilling to give way to a tender
feeling. "I acknowledge," he continued, in quite a loud voice, "that I
did not expect to see you here again after what has taken place. It
seemed to me that you would fly from certain memories rather than seek
for them again."
"Do not speak harshly to me," she replied, still more softly. "But why
should you speak to me otherwise?" she added, in a melancholy tone; "I
cannot justify myself in your eyes. Yet reflect that had I not clung, as
I did, to the beauty of the feeling which united us, I should not have
been sincere with you as I was. Alas! it was because I loved you as I
love you still, as I shall always love you."
"Do not employ the word 'love,'" returned Hubert; "you have no longer
the right to do so."
"Ah!" she replied, with growing excitement; "you cannot prevent me from
feeling. Yes, Hubert, I love you; and if I can no longer hope that my
love is shared, it is none the less living here;" and she struck her
bosom. "And you must know it," she continued. "My only comfort in the
most utter unhappiness will be the thought that I have been able to tell
you one last time what I have so often told you in happy days: I love
you. Do not see in this a dream of forgiveness; I shall not seek to move
you, and you will never condemn me as much as I condemn myself. But it
is none the less true that I love you more than ever."
"Well!" replied Hubert, "this love will be the only vengeance that I
wish to exact from you. Know then that you have caused this man whom you
love to endure a martyrdom such as may scarcely be survived; you have
rent his heart, you have been his tormentor, the tormentor of every hour
and every minute. There is nothing more within me but a wound, and it is
you, you who have opened it. I have ceased to believe anything, hope for
anything, love anything, and _you_ are the cause. And this will last for
a long time, a long time, and every morning and every evening you will
have to say to yourself: 'He whom I love is in his throes, and I am
killing him.'"
And so he went on relieving his soul of the sorrow of so many days with
all the cruel words with which his anger supplied him for the woman who
was listening to him with downcast eyelids, disconcerted face, and
frightful paleness, in the shadow wherein resounded the voice that was
terrible in her ears. Was he not, merely by obeying his passion,
inflicting upon her the most torturing of punishments, that of bleeding
in her presence from a wound which she had dealt him and which she was
unable to cure.
"Strike me," she replied simply, "I have deserved all."
"These are useless words," said Hubert, after a fresh silence, during
which time he had been walking from one end of the room to the other to
exhaust his passion, "Let us come to deeds. This interview must at least
have a practical conclusion. We shall see each other again in society
and at your house. Need I tell you that I shall act as an honourable
man, and that no one shall suspect anything of what has passed between
us? There remains the matter of these rooms. I shall write to Emmanuel
Deroy to let him know that I shall come here no more. It is useless for
us to meet here again, is it not? We have nothing more to say to each
other."
"You are right," said Theresa, in a crushed voice; then, as though
forming a supreme resolution, she rose.
She passed both her hands across her eyes, and loosing from her wrist
the bracelet to which the little key was suspended, she offered the
trinket to Hubert without uttering a word. He took the gold chainlet,
and his fingers met those of the young woman. They looked at each other,
and for the first time since his entry into the room he saw her fully
face to face. Her beauty at that moment was sublime. Her mouth was half
open, as though respiration had failed her, her eyes were laden with
languor, her fingers pressed those of the young man with a lingering
caress, and a quick flame swept suddenly through him.
As though seized with intoxication he went up to her, took her in his
arms, and gave her a kiss. She gave way, and both fell upon the shadowed
divan together, clasping each other in one of those wild and silent
embraces wherein dissolves all animosity, just or unjust, but all
dignity as well. These are moments when neither man nor woman utters the
words, "I love you," as though feeling that such frenzies have, in fact,
nothing in common with love.
When they recovered their senses, she looked at him. She trembled lest
she should see him yield to the horrible impulse which is familiar to
men after similar lapses, and which prompts them to punish their
accomplice for their own weakness by loading her with contempt. If
Hubert was seized with a shudder of revolt, he, at least, had the
generosity to spare Theresa the sight of it, and then, in a voice
rendered so captivating by fear:
"Oh, Hubert!" she said, "I have you again for my own. Could you but know
it, I should not have survived our separation. I should have died of it,
for I love you too much. I will be so kind, so kind to you, I will make
you so happy. But do not leave me. If you love me no longer, let me love
you. Take me, or send me away as your fancy wills. I am your slave, your
thing, your property. Ah, if I could die now!"
And she covered her lover's wasted face with passionate tears. He
nevertheless remained motionless, with lips and eyes closed, and thought
of his downfall. Now that the intoxication was dispelled, he could
compare what he had felt just then with what he had felt formerly. The
symbol of the change that had been wrought was in the contrast between
the brutality of the pleasure taken thus upon this divan, and the divine
modesty of other days. He had not forgiven Theresa, and he had not been
able to resist her, but for this very reason he had for ever lost the
right of reproaching her with her betrayal.
And then, though he had had this right anew, how could he have used it?
There was too strong a witchery in this woman's caresses. He foresaw
that he would be subject to it from that day forth, and that his dream
was over. He had loved this woman with the sublimest love, and she now
held him by what was darkest and least noble within him. Something was
dead in his moral life which he would never find again. It was one of
those wrecks of soul which are felt by those suffering them to be
irremediable. He had ceased to value himself after ceasing to value his
mistress. The eternal Delilah had once more accomplished her work, and,
as the lips of the woman were quivering and caressing, he paid her back
her kisses.