The Confession of a Child of the Century Part 26

"Listen to me," she began with an effort. "I have suffered much, I call to heaven to bear me witness that I would give my life for you. So long as the faintest gleam of hope remains, I am ready to suffer anything; but, although I may rouse your anger in saying to you that I am a woman, I am, nevertheless, a woman, my friend. We can not go beyond the limits of human endurance. Beyond a certain point I will not answer for the consequences. All I can do at this moment is to get down on my knees before you and beseech you not to go away."

She knelt down as she spoke. I arose.

"Fool that I am!" I muttered bitterly, "fool to try to get the truth from a woman! He who undertakes such a task will earn naught but derision and will deserve it! Truth! Only he who sorts with chamber-maids knows it, only he who steals to their pillow and listens to the unconscious utterance of a dream, hears it. He alone knows it, who makes a woman of himself and initiates himself into the secrets of her cult of inconstancy! But the man who asks for it openly, he who opens a loyal hand to receive that frightful alms, he will never obtain it! They are on guard with him; for reply, he receives a shrug of the shoulders, and, if he rouses himself in his impatience, they rise in righteous indignation like an outraged vestal, while there falls from their lips the great feminine oracle that suspicion destroys love, and they refuse to pardon an accusation which they are unable to meet. Ah! just G.o.d! How weary I am! When will all this cease?"

"Whenever you please," said she coldly, "I am as tired of it as you."

"At this very moment; I leave you forever, and may time justify you!

Time! Time! O what a cold lover! remember this adieu. Time! and thy beauty, and thy love, and thy happiness, where will they be? Is it thus, without regret, you allow me to go? Ah! the day when the jealous lover will know that he has been unjust, the day when he shall see proofs, he will understand what a heart he has wounded, is it not so? He will bewail his shame, he will know neither joy nor sleep; he will live only in the memory of the time when he might have been happy. But, on that day, his proud mistress will turn pale as she sees herself avenged; she will say to herself: 'If I had only done it sooner!' And believe me, if she loves him, pride will not console her."

I tried to be calm but I was no longer master of myself, and I began to pace the floor as she had done. There are certain glances that resemble the clashing of drawn swords; such glances, Brigitte and I exchanged at that moment. I looked at her as the prisoner looks at the door of his dungeon. In order to break the seal on her lips and force her to speak, I would give my life and hers.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "What do you wish me to tell you?"

"What you have in your heart. Are you cruel enough to make me repeat it?"

"And you, you," she cried, "are you not a hundred times more cruel? Ah!

fool, as you say, who would know the truth! Fool that I would be if I expected you to believe it! You would know my secret, and my secret is that I love you. Fool that I am! you will seek another. That pallor of which you are the cause, you accuse it, you question it. Like a fool, I have tried to suffer in silence, to consecrate to you my resignation; I have tried to conceal my tears; you have played the spy, and you have counted them as witnesses against me. Fool that I am! I have thought of crossing seas, of exiling myself from France with you, of dying far from all who have loved me, leaning for sole support on a heart that doubts me. Fool that I am! I thought that truth had a glance, an accent, that could not be mistaken, that would be respected! Ah! when I think of it, tears choke me. Why, if it must ever be thus, induce me to take a step that will forever destroy my peace? My head is confused, I do not know where I am!"

She leaned on me weeping.

"Fool! Fool!" she repeated, in a heart-rending voice.

"And what is it you ask?" she continued. "What can I do to meet those suspicions that are ever born anew, that alter with your moods? I must justify myself, you say! For what? For loving, for dying, for despairing?

And if I a.s.sume a forced cheerfulness, even that cheerfulness offends you. I sacrifice everything to follow you and you have not gone a league before you look back. Always, everywhere, whatever I may do, insults and angers! Ah! dear child, if you knew what a mortal chill comes over me, what suffering I endure in seeing my simplest words thus taken up and hurled back at me with suspicion and sarcasm! By that course, you deprive yourself of the only happiness there is in the world--perfect love. You kill all delicate and lofty sentiment in the hearts of those who love you; soon you will believe in nothing except the material and the gross; of love, there will remain for you only that which is visible and can be touched with the finger. You are young, Octave, and you have still a long life before you; you will have other mistresses. Yes, as you say, pride is a little thing and it is not to it I look for consolation; but G.o.d wills that one of your tears shall one day pay me for those which I now shed for you!"

She arose.

"Must it be said? Must you know that for six months I have not sought repose without repeating to myself that it was all in vain, that you would never be cured; that I have never risen in the morning without saying that another effort must be made; that after every word you have spoken I have felt that I ought to leave you, and that you have not given me a caress that I would rather die than endure; that, day by day, minute by minute, hesitating between hope and fear, I have vainly tried to conquer either my love or my grief; that, when I opened my heart to you, you pierced it with a mocking glance, and that, when I closed it, it seemed to me I felt within it a treasure that none but you could dispense? Shall I speak of all the frailty and all the mysteries which seem puerile to those who do not respect them? Shall I tell you that when you left me in anger I shut myself up to read your first letters; that there is a favorite waltz that I never played in vain when I felt too keenly the suffering caused by your presence? Ah! wretch that I am! How dearly all these unnumbered tears, all these follies so sweet to the feeble, are purchased! Weep now; not even this punishment, this sorrow, will avail you."

I tried to interrupt her.

"Allow me to continue," she said, "the time has come when I must speak.

Let us see, why do you doubt me? For six months, in thought, in body, and in soul, I have belonged to no one but you. Of what do you dare suspect me? Do you wish to set out for Switzerland? I am ready, as you see. Do you think you have a rival? Send him a letter that I will sign and you will direct. What are we doing? Where are we going? Let us decide. Are we not always together? Very well, then why would you leave me? I can not be near you and separated from you at the same moment. It is necessary to have confidence in those we love. Love is either good or bad: if good, we must believe in it; if evil, we must cure ourselves of it. All this, you see, is a game we are playing; but our hearts and our lives are the stakes, and it is horrible! Do you wish to die? That would, perhaps, be better. Who am I that you should doubt me?"

She stopped before the gla.s.s.

"Who am I?" she repeated, "who am I? Think of it. Look at this face of mine."

"Doubt thee!" she cried, addressing her own image; "poor, pale face, thou art suspected! poor thin cheeks, poor tired eyes, thou and thy tears are in disgrace. Very well, put an end to thy suffering; let those kisses that have wasted thee, close thy lids! Descend into the cold earth, poor trembling body that can no longer support its own weight. When thou art there, perchance thou wilt be believed, if doubt believes in death. O sorrowful specter! On the banks of what stream wilt thou wander and groan? What fires devour thee? Thou dreamest of a long journey and thou hast one foot in the grave! Die! G.o.d is thy witness that thou hast tried to love. Ah! what wealth of love has been awakened in thy heart! Ah! what dreams thou hast had, what poisons thou hast drunk! What evil hast thou committed that there should be placed in thy breast a fever that consumes? What fury animates that blind creature who pushes thee into the grave with his foot, while his lips speak to thee of love? What will become of thee if thou livest! Is it not time? Is it not enough? What proof canst thou give that will satisfy when thou, poor living proof, art not believed? To what torture canst thou submit that thou hast not already endured? By what torments, what sacrifices, wilt thou appease insatiable love? Thou wilt be only an object of ridicule, a thing to excite laughter; thou wilt vainly seek a deserted street to avoid the finger of scorn. Thou wilt lose all shame and even that appearance of virtue which has been so dear to thee; and the man, for whom thou hast disgraced thyself, will be the first to punish thee. He will reproach thee for living for him alone, for braving the world for him, and while thy own friends are whispering about thee, he will listen to a.s.sure himself that no word of pity is spoken; he will accuse thee of deceiving him if another hand even then presses thine, and if, in the desert of thy life, thou findest some one who can spare thee a word of pity in pa.s.sing.

O G.o.d! dost thou remember a day when a wreath of roses was placed on my head? Was it this brow on which that crown rested? Ah! the hand that hung it on the wall of the oratory has now fallen, like it, to dust! O my valley! O my old aunt, who now sleeps in peace! O my lindens, my little white goat, my dear peasants who loved me so much! You remember when I was happy, proud, and respected? Who threw in my path that stranger who took me away from all this? Who gave him the right to enter my life? Ah!

wretch! why didst thou turn the first day he followed you? Why didst thou receive him as a brother? Why didst thou open thy door, and why didst thou hold out thy hand? Octave, Octave, why have you loved me if all is to end thus!"

She was about to faint as I led her to a chair where she sank down and her head fell on my shoulder. The terrible effort she had made in speaking to me so bitterly had broken her down. Instead of an outraged woman, I found now only a suffering child. Her eyes closed and she was motionless.

When she regained consciousness, she complained of extreme languor, and begged to be left alone that she might rest. She could hardly walk; I carried her gently to her room and placed her on the bed. There was no mark of suffering on her face: she was resting from her sorrow as from great fatigue and seemed not even to remember it. Her feeble and delicate body yielded without a struggle; the strain had been too great. She held my hand in hers; I kissed her; our lips met in loving union, and after the cruel scene through which she had pa.s.sed, she slept smiling on my heart as on the first day.

CHAPTER VI

BRIGITTE slept. Silent, motionless, I sat near her. As a farmer, when the storm has pa.s.sed, counts the sheaves that remain in his devastated field, thus I began to estimate the evil I had done.

The more I thought of it, the more irreparable I felt it to be. Certain sorrows, by their very excess, warn us of their limits, and the more shame and remorse I experienced, the more I felt that, after such a scene, nothing remained for us to do but to say adieu. Whatever courage Brigitte had shown, she had drunk to the dregs the bitter cup of her sad love: unless I wished to see her die, I must give her repose. She had often addressed cruel reproaches to me and had, perhaps, on certain other occasions shown more anger than in this scene; but what she had said this time was not dictated by offended pride; it was the truth, which, hidden closely in her heart, had broken it in escaping. Our present relations, and the fact that I had refused to go away with her, destroyed all hope; she desired to pardon me but she had not the power. This slumber even, this deathlike sleep of one who could suffer no more, was conclusive evidence; this sudden silence, the tenderness she had shown in the final moments, that pale face, and that kiss, confirmed me in the belief that all was over, and that I had broken, forever, whatever bond had united us. As surely as she slept now, as soon as I gave her cause for further suffering, she would sleep in eternal rest. The clock struck and I felt that the last hour had carried away my life with hers.

Unwilling to call any one, I lighted Brigitte's lamp; I watched its feeble flame and my thoughts seemed to flicker in the darkness like its uncertain rays.

Whatever I had said or done, the idea of losing Brigitte had never occurred to me up to this time. A hundred times I wished to leave her, but who has loved, and is ready to say just what is in his heart? That was in times of despair or of anger. So long as I knew that she loved me, I was sure of loving her; stern necessity had just arisen between us for the first time. I experienced a dull languor and could distinguish nothing clearly. What my mind understood, my soul recoiled from accepting. "Come," I said to myself, "I have desired it, and I have done it; there is not the slightest hope that we can live together; I am unwilling to kill this woman, so I have no alternative but to leave her.

It is all over; I shall go away to-morrow."

And all the while I was thinking neither of my responsibility, nor of the past, nor future; I thought neither of Smith nor his connection with the affair; I could not say who had led me there, or what I had done during the last hour. I looked at the walls of the room and thought that all I had to do was to wait until to-morrow and decide what carriage I would take.

I remained for a long time in this strange calm. Just as the man who receives a thrust from a poignard feels, at first only the cold steel; when he has gone some distance on his way he becomes weak, his eyes start from their sockets and he asks what has happened. But drop by drop the blood flows, the ground under his feet becomes red; death comes; the man, at his approach, shudders with horror and falls as though struck by a thunderbolt. Thus, apparently calm, I awaited the coming of misfortune; I repeated in a low voice what Brigitte had said, and I placed near her all that I supposed she would need for the night; I looked at her, and then went to the window and pressed my forehead against the pane, peering out at a somber and lowering sky; then I returned to the bedside. That I was going away to-morrow was the only thought in my mind and, little by little, the word "depart" became intelligible to me. "Ah! G.o.d!" I suddenly cried, "my poor mistress, I am going to lose you and I have not known how to love you!"

I trembled at these words as though it had been another who had p.r.o.nounced them; they resounded through all my being as resounds the string of the harp that has been plucked to the point of breaking. In an instant two years of suffering traversed my heart, and after them, as their consequence and as their last expression, the present seized me.

How shall I describe such woe? By a single word, perhaps, for those who have loved. I had taken Brigitte's hand, and, in a dream, doubtless, she had p.r.o.nounced my name.

I arose, and went to my room; a torrent of tears flowed from my eyes. I held out my arms as though to seize the past which was escaping me. "Is it possible," I repeated, "that I am going to lose you? I can love no one but you. What! you are going away? And forever? What! you, my life, my adored mistress, you flee from me; I shall never see you again? Never!

never!" I said aloud; and, addressing myself to the sleeping Brigitte as though she could hear me, I added: "Never, never; do not think of it; I will never consent to it. And why so much pride? Are there no means of atoning for the offense I have committed? I beg of you let us seek some expiation. Have you not pardoned me a thousand times? But you love me, you will not be able to go, for courage will fail you. What shall we do?"

A horrible madness seized me; I began to run here and there in search of some instrument of death. At last I fell on my knees and beat my head against the bed. Brigitte stirred and I remained quiet, fearing I would waken her.

"Let her sleep until to-morrow," I said to myself; "you have all night to watch her."

I resumed my place; I was so frightened at the idea of waking Brigitte, that I scarcely dared breathe. Gradually I became more calm and less bitter tears began to course gently down my cheeks. Tenderness succeeded fury. I leaned over Brigitte and looked at her as though, for the last time, my good angel was urging me to grave on my soul the lines of that dear face!

How pale she was! Her large eyes, surrounded by a bluish circle, were moist with tears; her form, once so lithe, was bent as though under a burden; her cheek, wasted and leaden, rested on a hand that was spare and feeble; her brow seemed to bear the marks of that crown of thorns which is the diadem of resignation. I thought of the cottage. How young she was six months ago! How cheerful, how free, how careless! What had I done with all that? It seemed to me that a strange voice repeated an old romance that I had long since forgotten:

Altra volta gieri biele, Blanch' e rossa com' un flore, Ma ora no. Non son piu biele Consumatis dal' amore.

My sorrow was too great; I sprang to my feet and once more began to walk the floor. "Yes," I continued, "look at her; think of those who are consumed by a grief that is not shared with another. The evils you endure, others have suffered, and nothing is singular or peculiar to you.

Think of those who have no mother, no relatives, no friends; of those who seek and do not find, of those who love in vain, of those who die and are forgotten. Before thee, there on that bed, lies a being that nature, perchance, formed for thee. From the highest circles of intelligence to the deepest and most impenetrable mysteries of matter and of form, that soul and that body are thy brothers; for six months thy mouth has not spoken, thy heart has not throbbed, without a responsive word and heart-beat from her; and that woman whom G.o.d has sent thee as He sends the rose to the field, is about to glide from thy heart. While rejoicing in each other's presence, and the angels of eternal love were singing before you, you were farther apart than two exiles at either end of the earth. Look at her, but be silent. Thou hast still one night to see her, if thy sobs do not awaken her."

Little by little, my thoughts mounted and became more somber until I recoiled in terror.

"To do evil! Such was the role imposed upon me by Providence! I, to do evil! I, to whom my conscience, even in the midst of my wildest follies, said that I was good! I, whom a pitiless destiny was dragging swiftly toward the abyss and whom a secret horror unceasingly warned of the awful fate to come! I, who, if I had shed blood with these hands, could yet repeat that my heart was not guilty; that I was deceived, that it was not I who did it, but my destiny, my evil genius, some unknown being who dwelt within me, but who was not born there! I, do evil! For six months I had been engaged in that task, not a day had pa.s.sed that I had not worked at that impious occupation, and I had at that moment the proof before my eyes. The man who had loved Brigitte, who had offended her, then insulted her, then abandoned her, only to take her back again, trembling with fear, beset with suspicion, finally thrown on that bed of sorrow, where she now lay extended, was I!"

I beat my breast, and, although looking at her, I could not believe it. I touched her as though to a.s.sure myself that it was not a dream. My face, as I saw it in the gla.s.s, regarded me with astonishment. Who was that creature who appeared before me bearing my features? Who was that pitiless man who blasphemed with my mouth and tortured with my hands? Was it he whom my mother called Octave? Was it he who, at fifteen, leaning over the crystal waters of a fountain, had a heart not less pure than they? I closed my eyes and thought of my childhood days. As a ray of light pierces a cloud, a gleam from the past pierced my heart.

"No," I mused, "I did not do that. These things are but an absurd dream."

I recalled the time when I was ignorant of life, when I was taking my first steps in experience. I remembered an old beggar who used to sit on a stone bench before the farm gate, to whom I was sometimes sent with the remains of our morning meal. Holding out his feeble, wrinkled hands he would bless me as he smiled upon me. I felt the morning wind blowing on my brow and a freshness as of the rose descending from heaven into my soul. Then I opened my eyes and, by the light of the lamp, saw the reality before me.

"And you do not believe yourself guilty?" I demanded with horror. "O novice of yesterday, how corrupt to-day! Because you weep, you fondly imagine yourself innocent? What you consider the evidence of your conscience is only remorse; and what murderer does not experience it? If your virtue cries out, is it not because it feels the approach of death?

O wretch! those far off voices that you hear groaning in your heart, do you think they are sobs? They are, perhaps, only the cry of the sea-mew, that funereal bird of the tempest, whose presence portends shipwreck. Who has ever told the story of the childhood of those who have died stained with human blood? They, also, have been good in their day; they sometimes bury their faces in their hands and think of those happy days. You do evil, and you repent? Nero did the same when he killed his mother. Who has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt?

"And even if it were true that a part of your soul is not devoted to evil forever, what will you do with the other part that is not yours? You will touch with your left hand the wounds that you inflict with your right; you will make a shroud of your virtue in which to bury your crimes; you will strike, and, like Brutus, you will engrave on your sword the prattle of Plato! Into the heart of the being who opens her arms to you, you will plunge that blood-stained but repentant arm; you will follow to the cemetery the victim of your pa.s.sion, and you will plant on her grave the sterile flower of your pity; you will say to those who see you: 'What would you expect? I have learned how to kill, and observe that I already weep; learn that G.o.d made me better than you see me.' You will speak of your youth and you will persuade yourself that Heaven ought to pardon you, that your misfortunes are involuntary and you will implore sleepless nights to grant you a little repose.