When, a little before noon, Gustave was admitted by the servant into
Isaura's salon, its desolate condition, stripped of all its pretty
feminine elegancies, struck him with a sense of discomfort to himself
which superseded any more remorseful sentiment. The day was intensely
cold: the single log on the hearth did not burn; there were only two or
three chairs in the room; even the carpet, which had been of gaily
coloured Aubusson, was gone. His teeth chattered; and he only replied by
a dreary nod to the servant who informed him that Madame Venosta was gone
out, and Mademoiselle had not yet quitted her own room.
If there be a thing which a true Parisian of Rameau's stamp associates
with love of woman, it is a certain sort of elegant surroundings, a
pretty _boudoir_, a cheery hearth, an easy _fauteuil_. In the absence of
such attributes, "fuyit retro Venus." If the Englishman invented the
word comfort, it is the Parisian who most thoroughly comprehends the
thing. And he resents the loss of it in any house where he has been
accustomed to look for it, as a personal wrong to his feelings.
Left for some minutes alone, Gustave occupied himself with kindling the
log, and muttering, "_Par tous les diables, quel chien de rhume je vais
attraper_?" He turned as he heard the rustle of a robe and a light slow
step. Isaura stood before him. Her aspect startled him. He had come
prepared to expect grave displeasure and a frigid reception. But the
expression of Isaura's face was more kindly, more gentle, more tender,
than he had seen it since the day she had accepted his suit.
Knowing from his mother what his father had said to his prejudice, he
thought within himself, "After all, the poor girl loves me better than I
thought. She is sensible and enlightened; she cannot pretend to dictate
an opinion to a man like me."
He approached with a complacent self-assured mien, and took her hand,
which she yielded to him quietly, leading her to one of the few remaining
chairs, and seating himself beside her.
"Dear Isaura," he said, talking rapidly all the while he performed this
ceremony, "I need not assure you of my utter ignorance of the state to
which the imbecility of our Government, and the cowardice, or rather the
treachery, of our generals, has reduced you. I only heard of it late
last night from my mother. I hasten to claim my right to share with you
the humble resources which I have saved by the intellectual labours that
have absorbed all such moments as my military drudgeries left to the
talents which, even at such a moment, paralysing minds less energetic,
have sustained me:"--and therewith he poured several pieces of gold and
silver on the table beside her chair.
"Gustave," then said Isaura, "I am well pleased that you thus prove that
I was not mistaken when I thought and said that, despite all appearances,
all errors, your heart was good. Oh, do but follow its true impulses,
and--"
"Its impulses lead me ever to thy feet," interrupted Gustave, with a
fervour which sounded somewhat theatrical and hollow.
The girl smiled, not bitterly, not mockingly; but Gustave did not like
the smile.
"Poor Gustave," she said, with a melancholy pathos in her soft voice,
"do you not understand that the time has come when such commonplace
compliments ill suit our altered positions to each other? Nay, listen to
me patiently; and let not my words in this last interview pain you to
recall. If either of us be to blame in the engagement hastily
contracted, it is I. Gustave, when you, exaggerating in your imagination
the nature of your sentiments for me, said with such earnestness that on
my consent to our union depended your health, your life, your career;
that if I withheld that consent you were lost, and in despair would seek
distraction from thought in all from which your friends, your mother, the
duties imposed upon Genius for the good of Man to the ends of God, should
withhold and save you--when you said all this, and I believed it, I felt
as if Heaven commanded me not to desert the soul which appealed to me in
the crisis of its struggle and peril. Gustave, I repent; I was to
blame."
"How to blame?"
"I overrated my power over your heart: I overrated still more, perhaps,
my power over my own."
"Ah, your own! I understand now. You did not love me?"
"I never said that I loved you in the sense in which you use the word.
I told you that the love which you have described in your verse, and
which," she added, falteringly, with heightened colour and with hands
tightly clasped, "I have conceived possible in my dreams, it was not mine
to give. You declared you were satisfied with such affection as I could
bestow. Hush! let me go on. You said that affection would increase,
would become love, in proportion as I knew you more. It has not done so.
Nay, it passed away; even before this time of trial and of grief, I
became aware how different from the love you professed was the neglect
which needs no excuse, for it did not pain me."
"You are cruel indeed, Mademoiselle."
"No, indeed, I am kind. I wish you to feel no pang at our parting.
Truly I had resolved, when the siege terminated, and the time to speak
frankly of our engagement came, to tell you that I shrank from the
thought of a union between us; and that it was for the happiness of both
that our promises should be mutually cancelled. The moment has come
sooner than I thought. Even had I loved you, Gustave, as deeply as--as
well as the beings of Romance love, I would not dare to wed one who calls
upon mortals to deny God, demolish His altars, treat His worship as a
crime. No; I would sooner die of a broken heart, that I might the sooner
be one of those souls privileged to pray the Divine Intercessor for
merciful light on those beloved and left dark on earth."
"Isaura!" exclaimed Gustave, his mobile temperament impressed, not by the
words of Isaura, but by the passionate earnestness with which they were
uttered, and by the exquisite spiritual beauty which her face took from
the combined sweetness and fervour of its devout expression,--"Isaura, I
merit your censure, your sentence of condemnation; but do not ask me to
give back your plighted troth. I have not the strength to do so. More
than ever, more than when first pledged to me, I need the aid, the
companionship, of my guardian angel. You were that to me once; abandon
me not now. In these terrible times of revolution, excitable natures
catch madness from each other. A writer in the heat of his passion says
much that he does not mean to be literally taken, which in cooler moments
he repents and retracts. Consider, too, the pressure of want, of hunger.
It is the opinions that you so condemn which alone at this moment supply
bread to the writer. But say you will yet pardon me,--yet give me trial
if I offend no more--if I withdraw my aid to any attacks on your views,
your religion--if I say, 'Thy God shall be my God, and thy people shall
be my people.'"
"Alas!" said Isaura, softly, "ask thyself if those be words which I can
believe again. Hush!" she continued, checking his answer with a more
kindling countenance and more impassioned voice. "Are they, after all,
the words that man should address to woman? Is it on the strength of
Woman that Man should rely? Is it to her that he should say, 'Dictate my
opinions on all that belongs to the Mind of man; change the doctrines
that I have thoughtfully formed and honestly advocate; teach me how to
act on earth, clear all my doubts as to my hopes of heaven'? No, Gustave;
in this task man never should repose on woman. Thou are honest at this
moment, my poor friend; but could I believe thee to-day, thou wouldst
laugh tomorrow at what woman can be made to believe."
Stung to the quick by the truth of Isaura's accusation, Gustave exclaimed
with vehemence: "All that thou sayest is false, and thou knowest it. The
influence of woman on man for good or for evil defies reasoning. It does
mould his deeds on earth; it does either make or mar all that future
which lies between his life and his gravestone, and of whatsoever may lie
beyond the grave. Give me up now, and thou art responsible for me, for
all I do, it may be against all that thou deemest holy. Keep thy troth
yet awhile, and test me. If I come to thee showing how I could have
injured, and how for thy dear sake I have spared, nay, aided, all that
thou dost believe and reverence, then wilt thou dare to say, 'Go thy ways
alone--I forsake thee!'"
Isaura turned aside her face, but she held out her hand--it was as cold
as death. He knew that she had so far yielded, and his vanity exulted:
he smiled in secret triumph as he pressed his kiss on that icy hand and
was gone.
"This is duty--it must be duty," said Isaura to herself. "But where is
the buoyant delight that belongs to a duty achieved?--where? oh where?"
And then she stole with drooping head and heavy step into her own room,
fell on her knees, and prayed.