XI
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.
The Union was 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.”
“The Union is 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, and he will 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.
At that moment, Laurent was the better and more sincere of the two, for he had spontaneous impulses which redeemed all his faults. He opened his arms, and embraced Palmer effusively, making no effort to conceal his tears, which were beginning to suffocate him.
“What is all this?” said Palmer, glancing at Thérèse.
“I do not know,” she replied, firmly; “I have just told him that we are going to America to be married. It causes him some grief. He apparently thinks that we are going to forget him. Tell him, Palmer, we shall always love him, at a distance as well as near at hand.”
“He is a spoiled child!” rejoined Palmer. “He must know that I have but one word, and that I desire your happiness before everything. Must we take him to America, to make him cease grieving and causing you to weep, Thérèse?”
These words were uttered in a tone impossible to describe. It was a tone of paternal affection, blended with an indefinable flavor of profound and unconquerable bitterness.
Thérèse understood. She asked for her hat and shawl, saying to Palmer:
“We will go to dine at a restaurant. Catherine expected nobody but me, and there is not enough dinner in the house for us both.”
“You mean for us three,” rejoined Palmer, still half-bitter and half-loving.
“But I cannot dine with you,” said Laurent, understanding at last what was going on in Palmer’s mind. “I must leave you; I will come again to say adieu. What day do you start?”
“In four days,” said Thérèse.
“At least!” added Palmer, looking at her with a strange expression; “but that is no reason why we three should not dine together to-day. Do me this favor, Laurent. We will go to the Frères Provençaux, and after that we will take a drive in the Bois de Boulogne. That will remind us of Florence and the Cascines. Come, I beg you.”
“I am engaged,” said Laurent.
“Oh! well, break your engagement,” said Palmer. “Here are paper and pens! Write, write, I beg you!”
Palmer spoke in such a decided tone that there was no denying him. Laurent remembered vaguely that it was his old-time peremptory tone. Thérèse wanted him to refuse, and she could have made him understand it with a glance; but Palmer did not take his eyes from her face, and he seemed in a mood to interpret everything in an unfavorable light.
Laurent was very sincere. When he lied, he was the first person deceived. He deemed himself strong enough to face that delicate situation, and it was his straightforward, generous purpose to restore Palmer’s former confidence. Unluckily, when the human mind, borne onward by vigorous aspirations, has climbed certain lofty summits, if it is attacked with vertigo, it does not descend gradually, but plunges recklessly down. That is what happened to Palmer. Although the most noble-hearted and loyal of men, he had aspired to control the emotions aroused by a too delicate situation. His strength had betrayed him; who could blame him for it? And he plunged into the abyss, dragging Thérèse and Laurent himself with him. Who would not pity them—all three? All three had dreamed of scaling heaven and of reaching those serene regions where passions have naught of earthliness; but it is not given to man to reach that height; it is much for him to deem himself for an instant capable of loving without doubt or distrust.
The dinner was mortally dismal; although Palmer, who had assumed the rôle of host, made it a point to set before his guests the daintiest dishes and choicest wines, everything had a bitter taste to them, and Laurent, after vain efforts to recover the frame of mind which he had found so delightful during his relations with those two at Florence immediately after his illness, refused to accompany them to the Bois de Boulogne. Palmer, who had drunk a trifle more than usual in order to forget himself, insisted in a way that annoyed Thérèse.
“Come, come,” she said, “don’t be so persistent. Laurent is right to refuse; in the Bois de Boulogne, in your open carriage, we shall be very conspicuous, and we may meet people whom we know. We can’t expect them to know what an exceptional position we three occupy with respect to each other; and they may well draw some very unpleasant conclusions regarding all of us.”
“Very well, then let us return to your house,” said Palmer; “then I will go and take a walk alone; I need a bit of fresh air.”
Laurent made his escape when he saw that Palmer had determined to leave him alone with Thérèse, apparently for the purpose of watching them or surprising them. He returned to his own quarters very much depressed, saying to himself that perhaps Thérèse was not happy, and involuntarily deriving some satisfaction from the thought that Palmer was not superior to the weakness of human nature, as he had imagined, and as Thérèse had represented him in her letters.
We will pass rapidly over the ensuing week, a week during which the heroic romance of which the three ill-fated friends had dreamed more or less vividly, faded from hour to hour. Thérèse clung to her illusions more persistently than the others, because, after such far-seeing apprehensions and precautions, she had determined that she would risk her whole life, and that however unjust Palmer might be, she ought to, and would, keep her word to him.
Palmer released her from it at one stroke, after a succession of suspicions more aggravating, because they were unexpressed in words, than all Laurent’s insults had been.
One morning, after passing the night concealed in Thérèse’s garden, Palmer was about to retire when she appeared near the gate and detained him.
“Well,” she said, “you have been watching here six hours; I saw you from my room. Are you convinced that no one came to see me last night?”
Thérèse was angry, and yet, by forcing the explanation Palmer wished to avoid, she hoped to lead him back to confidence in her; but he thought otherwise.
“I see, Thérèse,” he said, “that you are tired of me, since you demand a confession after which I should be contemptible in your eyes. And yet it would not have cost you much to close them to a weakness with which I have not annoyed you overmuch. Why do you not let me suffer in silence? Have I insulted you and pursued you with bitter sarcasms? Have I written you volumes of insults, only to come the next day and weep at your feet and make frantic protestations of repentance, reserving the right to begin anew to torture you the next day? Did I ever so much as ask you an indiscreet question? Why could you not sleep quietly last night while I sat on yonder bench, not disturbing your repose by shrieks and tears? Can you not forgive a suffering for which I blush, perhaps, and which, at all events, I have the pride to wish to conceal and know how to? You have forgiven much more in the case of one who had not so much courage.”
“I have forgiven him nothing, Palmer, for I have parted from him irrevocably. As for this suffering which you avow, and which you think that you conceal so perfectly, let me tell you that it is as clear as daylight to my eyes, and that I suffer more from it than you do yourself. Understand that it humiliates me profoundly, and that, coming from a strong and thoughtful man like you, it wounds me a hundred times more deeply than the insults of an excited child.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” rejoined Palmer. “So you are wounded by my fault, and angry with me forever! Well, Thérèse, everything is at an end between us. Do for me what you have done for Laurent: continue to be my friend.”
“So you mean to leave me?”
“Yes, Thérèse; but I do not forget that, when you deigned to give me your word, I placed my name, my fortune, and my worldly station at your feet. I have but one word, and I will keep my promise to you; let us be married here, quietly and joylessly, accept my name and half of my income, and then——”
“And then?” echoed Thérèse.
“Then I will go home, I will go to embrace my mother, and you will be free!”
“Is this a threat of suicide?”
“No, on my honor! Suicide is rank cowardice, especially when one has a mother like mine. I will travel, I will start around the world again, and you will hear no more of me!”
Thérèse was shocked by such a proposition.
“This would seem to me a wretched joke, Palmer,” she said, “if I did not know you to be a serious man. I prefer to believe that you do not deem me capable of accepting this name and this money which you offer me as the solution of a case of conscience. Never recur to such a suggestion; I should feel insulted.”
“Thérèse! Thérèse!” cried Palmer, violently, squeezing her arm until he bruised the skin, “swear to me, by the memory of the child you lost, that you no longer love Laurent; I will kneel at your feet and implore you to forgive my injustice.”
Thérèse withdrew her wounded arm, and gazed at him in silence. She was outraged to the very bottom of her soul that he should exact such an oath from her, and his words seemed to her even more cruel and brutal than the physical pain she had undergone.
“My child,” she cried, stifling her sobs, “I swear to you, to you who are in heaven, that no man shall ever debase your poor mother again!”
She rose, went to her room, and locked herself in. She felt so entirely innocent with respect to Palmer, that she could not endure the idea of descending to self-justification like a guilty woman. Moreover, she anticipated a horrible future with a man who could brood so long over a deep-rooted jealousy, and who, after he had twice provoked what he thought to be a serious danger for her, attributed his own imprudence to her as a crime. She thought of her mother’s ghastly life with a husband who was jealous of the past, and she said to herself, justly enough, that, after she had had the misfortune to be subjected to a passion like Laurent’s, she had been insane to believe in the possibility of happiness with another man.
Palmer had a reserve store of good sense and pride which did not allow him to hope to make Thérèse happy after such a scene as had just occurred. He felt that his jealousy would never be cured, and he persisted in believing that it was well-founded. He wrote to Thérèse:
“Forgive me, my friend, if I have pained you; but it is impossible for me not to realize that I was about to drag you down into an abyss of despair. You love Laurent, you have always loved him in spite of yourself, and in all probability you will always love him. It is your destiny. I tried to relieve you from it; you tried with me. I also realize that in accepting my love you were sincere, and that you did your utmost to respond to it. I indulged in many illusions, but I have felt them slipping from me every day since we left Florence. If he had persisted in being ungrateful, I should have been saved; but his repentance and gratitude touched your heart. I myself was touched by them, and yet I strove to believe that I was perfectly calm. It was of no avail. Thenceforth there were between you, because of me, sorrows of which you never told me, but which I divined. He recurred to his former love for you, and you, although you fought against the feeling, regretted that you belonged to me. Alas! Thérèse, that was the time when you should have retracted your promise. I was ready to give it back to you. I left you at liberty to go with him from Spezzia: why did you not do it?
“Forgive me; I rebuke you for having suffered terribly to make me happy and to become attached to me. I have fought hard, too, I promise you! And now, if you care to accept my devotion, I am ready to struggle and suffer anew. Tell me if you are yourself willing to suffer, and if, by going with me to America, you hope to be cured of this wretched passion which threatens you with a pitiable future. I am ready to take you with me; but let us say no more of Laurent, I implore you, and do not look upon it as a crime on my part to have guessed the truth. Let us remain friends, come and live with my mother, and if, a few years hence, you find me not unworthy of you, accept my name and a permanent home in America, with no thought of ever returning to France.
“I will wait in Paris a week for your reply.
“RICHARD.”
Thérèse rejected an offer which wounded her pride. She still loved Palmer, and yet she felt so insulted by the offer to take her as a favor when she had no reason to reproach herself, that she concealed the pain that tore her heart. She felt, too, that she could not resume any sort of connection with him without prolonging a torture which he no longer had the strength to dissemble, and that their life thenceforth would be a constant struggle or constant misery. She left Paris with Catherine, telling no one where she was going, and hid herself in a small country-house in the provinces, which she hired for three months.