The Cross of Berny Part 23

For three days--three eternities--I have taxed my memory to an alarming extent. I have recalled everything that I have said for the last two weeks, word by word, syllable for syllable, endeavoring to give to each expression its intonation, its inflection, its sharps and flats. Every different signification that the music of the voice could give to a thought, I have a.n.a.lyzed, debated, commented upon twenty times a day.

Not a word, accent nor gesture has enlightened me. I defy the most embittered and envious spirit to find anything that could offend the most susceptible pride, the haughtiest majesty. Nothing has occurred in my familiar intercourse with you that would alarm a sensitive plant or a mimosa. Therefore, such cannot be the motive for your panic-stricken flight. I am young, ardent, impetuous; I attach no importance to certain social conventionalities, but I feel confident that I have never failed in a religious respect for the holiness of love and modesty. I love you--I could never, wilfully, have offended you. How could my eyes and lips have expressed what was neither in my head nor in my heart? If there is no fire without smoke, as a natural consequence there can be no smoke without fire!

It is not that--Is it caprice or coquetry? Your mind is too serious and your soul too honest for such an act; and besides, what would be your object? Such feline cruelties may suit blase women of the world who are roused by the sight of moral torture; who give, in the invisible sphere of the pa.s.sions, feasts of the Roman empresses, where beating hearts are torn by the claws of the wild beasts of the soul, unbridled desires, insatiate hate and maddened jealousy, all the hideous pack of bad pa.s.sions. Louise, you have not wished to play such a game with me. It would be unavailing and dangerous.

Although I have been brought up in what is called the world, I am still a savage at heart. I can talk as others do of politics, railroads, social economy, literature. I can imitate civilized gesture tolerably well; but under this white-glove polish I have preserved the vehemence and simplicity of barbarism. Unless you have some serious, paramount reason, not one of those trivial excuses with which ordinary women revenge themselves upon the lukewarmness of their lovers--do not prolong my punishment a day, an hour, a minute--speak not to me of reputation, virtue or duty. You have given me the right to love you--by the light of the stars, under the sweet-scented acacias, in the sunlight at the window of Richard's donjon which opens over an abyss. You have conferred upon me that august priesthood. Your hand has trembled in mine. A celestial light, kindled by my glance, has shone in your eyes. If only for a moment, your soul was mine--the electric spark united us.

It may be that this signifies nothing to you. I refuse to acknowledge any such subtle distinctions--that moment united us for ever. For one instant you wished to love me; I cannot divide my mind, soul and body into three distinct parts; all my being worships you and longs to obtain you. I cannot graduate my love according to its object. I do not know who you are. You might be a queen of earth or the queen of heaven; I could not love you otherwise.

Receive me. You need explain nothing if you do not wish; but receive me; I cannot live without you. What difference does it make to you if I see you?

Ah! how I suffered, even when you were at the chateau! What evil influence stood between us? I had a vague feeling that something important and fatal had happened. It was a sort of presentiment of the fulfilment of a destiny. Was your fate or mine decided in that hour, or both? What decisive sentence had the recording angel written upon the ineffaceable register of the future? Who was condemned and who absolved in that solemn hour?

And yet no appreciable event happened, nothing appeared changed in our life. Why this fearful uneasiness, this deep dejection, this presentiment of a great but unknown danger? I have had that same instinctive perception of evil, that magnetic terror which slumbering misers experience when a thief prowls around their hidden treasure; it seemed as if some one wished to rob me of my happiness.

We were embarra.s.sed in each other's presence; some one acted as a restraint upon us. Who was it? No one was there but Raymond, one of my best friends, who had arrived the evening before and was soon to depart in order to marry his cousin, young, pretty and rich! It is singular that he, so gentle, so confiding, so unreserved, so chivalrous, should have appeared to me sharp, taciturn, rough, almost dull,--and my feelings towards him were full of bitterness and spite. Can friendship be but lukewarm hate? I fear so, for I often felt a savage desire to quarrel with Raymond and seize him by the throat. He talked of a blade of gra.s.s, a fly, of the most indifferent object, and I felt wounded as if by a personality. Everything he did offended me; if he stood up I was indignant, if he sat down I became furious; every movement of his seemed a provocation; why did I not perceive this sooner? How does it happen that the man for whom I entertain such a strong natural aversion should have been my friend for ten years? How strange that I should not have been aware of this antipathy sooner!

And you, ordinarily so natural, so easy in your manners, became constrained; you scarcely answered me when he was present. The simplest expression agitated you; it seemed as if you had to give an account to some one of every word, and that you were afraid of a scolding, like a young girl who is brought by her mother into the drawing-room for the first time.

One evening, I was sitting by you on the sofa, reading to you that sublime elegy of the great poet, La Tristesse d'Olympio; Raymond entered. You rose abruptly, like a guilty child, a.s.sumed an humble and repentant att.i.tude, asking forgiveness with your eyes. In what secret compact, what hidden covenant, had you failed?

The look with which Raymond answered yours doubtless contained your pardon, for you resumed your seat, but moved away from me so as not to abuse the accorded grace; I continued to read, but you no longer listened--you were absorbed in a delicious revery through which floated vaguely the lines of the poet. I was at your feet, and never have I felt so far away from you. The s.p.a.ce between us, too narrow for another to occupy, was an abyss.

What invisible hand dashed me down from my heaven? Who drove me, in my unconsciousness, as far from you as the equator from the pole? Yesterday your eyes, bathed in light and life, turned softly towards me; your hand rested willingly in mine. You accepted my love, unavowed but understood; for I hate those declarations which remind one of a challenge. If one has need to say that he loves, he is not worth loving; speech is intended for indifferent beings; talking is a means of keeping silent; you must have seen, in my glance, by the trembling of my voice, in my sudden changes of color, by the impalpable caress of my manner, that I love you madly.

It was when Raymond looked at you that I began to appreciate the depth of my pa.s.sion. I felt as if some one had thrust a red-hot iron into my heart. Ah! what a wretched country France is! If I were in Turkey, I would bear you off on my Arab steed, shut you up in a harem, with walls bristling with cimetars, surrounded by a deep moat; black eunuchs should sleep before the threshold of your chamber, and at night, instead of dogs, lions should guard the precincts!

Do not laugh at my violence, it is sincere; no one will ever love you like me. Raymond cannot--a sentimental Don Quixote, in search of adventures and chivalrous deeds. In order to love a woman, he must have fished her out of the spray of Niagara; or dislocated his shoulder in stopping her carriage on the brink of a precipice; or s.n.a.t.c.hed her out of the hands of picturesque bandits, costumed like Fra Diavolo; he is only fit for the hero of a ten-volume English novel, with a long-tailed coat, tight gray pantaloons and top-boots. You are too sensible to admire the philanthropic freaks of this modern paladin, who would be ridiculous were he not brave, rich and handsome; this moral Don Juan, who seduces by his virtue, cannot suit you.

When shall I see you? Our moments of happiness in this life are so short; I have lost three days of Paradise by your persistence in concealing yourself. What G.o.d can ever restore them to me?

Louise, I have only loved, till now, marble shadows, phantoms of beauty; but what is this love of sculpture and painting compared with the pa.s.sion that consumes me? Ah! how bittersweet it is to be deprived at once of will, strength and reason, and trembling, kneeling, vanquished, to surrender the key of one's heart into the hands of the beautiful victor! Do not, like Elfrida, throw it into the torrent!

EDGAR DE MEILHAN.

XXV.

RAYMOND DE VILLIERS _to_ MME. LA VICOMTESSE BE BRAIMES, Hotel of the Prefecture, Gren.o.ble (Isere).

ROUEN, July 12th 18--

MADAME:--If you should find in these hastily written lines expressions of severity that might wound you in one of your tenderest affections, I beg you to ascribe them to the serious interest with which you have inspired me for a person whom I do do not know. Madame, the case is serious, and the comedy, performed for the gratification of childish vanity, might, if prolonged, end in a tragedy. Let Mademoiselle de Chateaudun know immediately that her peace of mind, her whole future is at stake. You have not a day, not an hour, not an instant to lose in exerting your influence. I answer for nothing; haste, O haste! Your position, your high intelligence, your good sense give you, necessarily, the authority of an elder sister or a mother over Mademoiselle de Chateaudun; exercise it if you would save that reckless girl. If she acts from caprice, nothing can justify it; if she is playing a game it is a cruel one, with ruin in the end; if she is subjecting M. de Monbert to a trial, it has lasted long enough.

I accompanied M. de Monbert to Rouen; I lived in daily, hourly intercourse with him, and had ample opportunities for studying his character; he is a wounded lion. Never having had the honor of meeting Mademoiselle de Chateaudun, I cannot tell whether the Prince is the man to suit her; Mademoiselle de Chateaudun alone can decide so delicate a question. But I do a.s.sert that M. de Monbert is not the man to be trifled with, and whatever decision Mademoiselle de Chateaudun may come to, it is her duty and due to her dignity to put an end to his suspense.

If she must strike, let her strike quickly, and not show herself more pitiless than the executioner, who, at least, puts a speedy end to his victim's misery. M. de Monbert, a gentleman in the highest acceptation of the word, would not be what he now is, if he had been treated with the consideration that his sincere distress so worthy of pity, his true love so worthy of respect, commanded. Let her not deceive herself; she has awakened, not one of those idle loves born in a Parisian atmosphere, which die as they have lived, without a struggle or a heart-break, but a strong and deep pa.s.sion that if trifled with may destroy her. I acknowledge that there is something absurd in a prince on the eve of marrying a young and beautiful heiress finding himself deserted by his fiancee with her millions; but when one has seen the comic hero of this little play, the scene changes. The smile fades from the lips; the jest is silent; terror follows in the footsteps of gayety, and the foolish freak of the lovely fugitive a.s.sumes the formidable proportions of a frightful drama. M. de Monbert is not what he is generally supposed to be, what I supposed him before seeing him after ten years' separation.

His blood has been inflamed by torrid suns; he has preserved, in a measure, the manners and fierce pa.s.sions of the distant peoples that he has visited; he hides it all under the polish of grace and elegance; affable and ready for anything, one would never suspect, to see him, the fierce and turbulent pa.s.sions warring in his breast; he is like those wells in India, which he told me of this morning; they are surrounded by flowers and luxuriant foliage; go down into one of them and you will quickly return pale and horror-stricken. Madame, I a.s.sure you that this man suffers everything that it is possible to suffer here below. I watch his despair; it terrifies me. Wounded love and pride do not alone prey upon him; he is aware that Mademoiselle de Chateaudun may believe him guilty of serious errors; he demands to be allowed to justify himself in her eyes; he is exasperated by the consciousness of his unrecognised innocence. Condemn him, if you will, but at least let him be heard in his own defence. I have seen him writhe in agony and give way to groans of rage and despair. When calm, he is more terrible to contemplate; his silence is the pause before a tempest. Yesterday, on returning, discouraged, after a whole day spent in fruitless search, he took my hand and raised it abruptly to his eyes. "Raymond," said he, "I have never wept," and my hand was wet. If you love Mademoiselle de Chateaudun, if her future happiness is dear to you, if her heart can only be touched through you, warn her, madame, warn her immediately; tell her plainly what she has to expect; time presses.

It is a question of nothing less than antic.i.p.ating an irreparable misfortune. There is but one step from love to hate; hate which takes revenge is still love. Tell this child that she is playing with thunder; tell her the thunder mutters, and will soon burst over her head. If Mademoiselle de Chateaudun should have a new love for her excuse, if she has broken her faith to give it to another, unhappy, thrice unhappy she!

M. de Monbert has a quick eye and a practised hand; mourning would follow swiftly in the wake of her rejoicing, and Mademoiselle de Chateaudun might order her widow's weeds and her bridal robes at the same time.

This, madame, is all that I have to say. The foolish rapture with which my last letter teemed is not worth speaking of. A broken hope, crushed, extinguished; a happiness vanished ere fully seen! During the four days that I was at Richeport, I began to remark the existence between M. de Meilhan and myself of a sullen, secret, unavowed but real irritation, when a letter from M. de Monbert solved the enigma by convincing me that I was in the way under that roof. Fool, why did I not see it myself and sooner? Blind that I was, not to perceive from the first that this young man loved that woman! Why did I not instantly divine that this young poet could not live unscathed near so much beauty, grace and sweetness?

Did I think, unhappy man that I am, that she was only fair to me; that I alone had eyes to admire her, a heart to worship and understand her?

Yes, I did think it; I believed blindly that she bloomed for me alone; that she had not existed before our meeting; that no look, save mine, had ever rested upon her; that she was, in fact, my creation; that I had formed her of my thoughts, and vivified her with the fire of my dreams. Even now, when we are parted for ever, I believe, that if G.o.d ever created two beings for each other, we are those two beings, and if every soul has a sister spirit, her soul is the sister spirit of mine.

M. de Meilhan loves her; who would not love her? But what he loves in her is visible beauty: the slope of her shoulders, the perfection of her contours. His love could not withstand a pencil-stroke which might destroy the harmony of the whole. Beautiful as she is, he would desert her for the first canvas or the first statue he might encounter. Her rivals already people the galleries of the Louvre; the museums of the world are filled with them. Edgar feels but one deep and true love; the love of Art, so deep that it excludes or absorbs all others in his heart. A fine prospect alone charms him, if it recalls a landscape of Ruysdael or of Paul Huet, and he prefers to the loveliest model, her portrait, provided it bears the signature of Ingres or Scheffer. He loves this woman as an artist; he has made her the delight of his eyes; she would have been the joy of my whole life. Besides, Edgar does not possess any of the social virtues. He is whimsical by nature, hostile to the proprieties, an enemy to every well-beaten track. His mind is always at war with his heart; his sincerest inspirations have the scoffing accompaniment of Don Juan's romance. No, he cannot make the happiness of this Louise so long sought for, so long hoped for, found, alas! to be irremediably lost. Louise deceives herself if she thinks otherwise. But she does not think so. What is so agonizing in the necessity that separates us, is the conviction that such a separation blasts two destinies, silently united. I do not repine at the loss of my own happiness alone, but above all, over that of this n.o.ble creature. I am convinced that when we met, we recognised each other; she mentally exclaimed, "It is he!" when I told myself, "It is she!" When I went to bid her farewell, a long, eternal farewell, I found her pale, sad; the tears rolled, unchecked, down her cheeks. She loves me, I know it; I feel it; and still I must depart! she wept and I was forced to be silent! One single word would have opened Paradise to us, and that word I could not utter! Farewell, sweet dream, vanished for ever! And thou, stern and stupid honor, I curse thee while I serve thee, and execrate while I sacrifice all to thee. Ah! do not think that I am resigned; do not believe that pride can ever fill up the abyss into which I have voluntarily cast myself; do not hope that some day I shall find self-satisfaction as a recompense for my abnegation. There are moments when I hate myself and rebel against my own imbecility. Why depart? What is Edgar to me? still less, what interest have I in his love episodes? I love; I feel myself loved in return; what have I to do with anything else?

Contempt for my cowardly virtue is the only price that I have received for my sacrifice, and I twit myself with this thought of Pascal: "Man is neither an angel nor a brute, and the misfortune is that when he wishes to make himself an angel, he becomes a brute!" Be silent, my heart! At least it shall never be said that the descendant of a race of cavaliers entered his friend's house to rob him of his happiness.

I am sad, madame. The bright ray seen for a moment, has but made the darkness into which I have fallen, more black and sombre; I am unutterably sad! What is to become of me? Where shall I drag out my weary days? I do not know. Everything wearies and bores me, or rather all things are indifferent to me. I think I will travel. Wherever I go, your image will accompany me, consoling me, if I can be consoled. At first I thought that I would carry you my heart to comfort; but my unhappiness is dear to me, and I do not wish to be cured of it.

I press M. de Braimes's hand, and clasp your charming children warmly to my heart.

RAYMOND DE VILLIERS.

XXVI.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN _to the_ PRINCE DE MONBERT, Poste Restante (Rouen).

Richeport, July 23d 18--.

I am mad with rage, wild with grief! That Louise! I do not know what keeps me from setting fire to the house that conceals her! I must go away; I shall commit some insane act, some crime, if I remain! I have written her letter after letter; I have tried in every way to see her; all my efforts unavailing! It is like beating your head against a wall!

Coquette and prude!--appalling combination, too common a monstrosity, alas!

She will not see me! all is over! nothing can overcome her stupid, obstinacy which she takes for virtue. If I could only have spoken to her once, I should have said--I don't know what, but I should have found words to make her return to me. But she entrenches herself behind her obstinacy; she knows that I would vanquish her; she has no good arguments with which to answer me; for I love her madly, desperately, frantically! Pa.s.sion is eloquent. She flies from me! O perfidy and cowardice! she dare not face the misery she has caused, and veils her eyes when she strikes!

I am going to America. I will dull my mental grief by physical exhaustion; I will subdue the soul through the body; I will ascend the giant rivers whose bosoms bloom with thousands of islands; penetrate into the virgin forests where no trapper has yet set his foot; I will hunt the buffalo with the savage, and swim upon that ocean of s.h.a.ggy heads and sharp horns; I will gallop at full speed over the prairie, pursued by the smoke of the burning gra.s.s. If the memory of Louise refuses to leave me, I will stop my horse and await the flames! I will carry my love so far away that it must perforce leave me.

I feel it, my life is wrecked for ever!--I cannot live in a world where Louise is not mine! Perhaps the young universe may contain a panacea for my anguish! Solitude shall pour its balm in my wound; once away from this civilization which stifles me, nature will cradle me in her motherly arms; the elements will resume their empire over me; ocean, sky, flowers, foliage will draw off the feverish electricity that excites my nerves; I will become absorbed in the grand whole, I will no longer live; I will vegetate and succeed in attaining the content of the plant that opens its leaves to the sun. I feel that I must stop my brain, suspend the beating of my heart, or I shall go raving mad.

I shall sail from Havre. A year from now write to me at the English fort in the Rocky Mountains, and I will join you in whatever corner of the globe you have gone to bury your despair over the loss of Irene de Chateaudun!

EDGAR DE MEILHAN

XXVII.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN _to_ MADAME GUERIN, Pont-de-l'Arche (Eure).