X
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 Parisian beau, 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 the Ferruccio when 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? You were 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 had misfortunes. 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 the secret that 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, to punish you, 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!”
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?”