Delphi collected works o.., p.234
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli, page 234
part #22 of Delphi Series Series
She stopped abruptly, for I suddenly flung myself down on the seat beside her, and now caught her hands in mine.
“Nothing — nothing!” I muttered wildly. “We men never do see anything! We are bats, — moths! — flying desperately into all sorts of light and fire and getting burnt and withered up for our pains! Héloïse! Héloïse! — You loved me, you say — you? — Why, just for the merest hair’s breadth of mercy extended to us, I might have loved you! — we might have been happy!
Why do you pray to God, Héloïse? — how can you pray to Him? Seeing you, knowing you, hearing you, why did He not save me by your grace as by an angers intervention? He could have done so had He willed it! — and I should have believed in Him then! And you — why did you not give me one look — one word! — why did you not employ all the thousand charms of your loveliness to attract me? — why were you always so silent and cold? — was that your mode of defence against yourself and me, child? Oh, my God! — what a waste and havoc of life there is in the world! Listen — there are plenty of women who by a thousand coquetteries and unmistakable signs, give us men plainly to understand what they mean, — and we are only too ready to obey their signals — but you — you, because you are good and innocent, must needs shut up your soul in a prison of ice for the sake of — what? Conventionality, — social usage! A curse on conventionality! Héloïse — Héloïse! — if I had only known! — if I could have guessed that I might have sought your love and found it! — but now! — why have told me note, you beautiful, fond, foolish woman, when it is too late!”
I was breathless with the strange excitement that had seized me, — though I held myself as much as I could in strong restraint, fearing to alarm her by my vehemence, — but my whole soul was so suddenly overpowered by the extent of the desolation I myself had wrought, that I could not check the torrent of words that broke from my lips. It maddened me to realize, as I did, that we two had always been on the verge of love unknowingly, — and yet, by reason of something in ourselves that refused to yield to the attraction of each other’s presence, and something in the whim of chance and circumstance, we had wilfully let love go beyond all possible recall! And she, — oh, she was cold and calm, — or if she were not, she had the nerve to seem so, — all your delicately-strung student women are like that; so full of fine philosophies that they are scarcely conscious of a heart! Her face was quite colourless, — she looked like an exquisitely wrought figure of marble, — her hand lay passively in mine, chill as a frozen snowflake.
“Why” — I repeated half savagely— “why have you told me all this now, when it is too late?”
Her lips trembled apart, — but for a moment no sound issued from them. Then with a slight effort she answered me.
“It is just because it is too late that I have told you, — it is because my love is dead, that I have chosen you should know that it once lived. If there were the smallest pulse of life stirring in it now, you should never have known.”
And she withdrew her hand from my clasp as she spoke.
“You are a strange woman, Héloïse!” I said involuntarily.
“Possibly I may be,” she replied, with a sudden quiver of passion in her voice that added richness to its liquid thrill. “And yet again, perhaps not as strange as you imagine. There are many women who can love without blazoning their love to the world, — there are many too who will die for love and give no sign of suffering. But we need speak no more of this. I only wished to prove to you how impossible it was that I could even seriously and maliciously have wished you ill, — and to ask you, for the sake of the past, to refrain from perpetrating fresh injuries on your life and soul. Surely, however much a man has been wronged by others, he need not wrong himself!”
“If his life were of any value to any one in the world he need not and he would not,” I responded. “But when it is a complete matter of indifference to everybody whether he lives or dies — que voulez-vous?I tell you, Héloïse, I have gone too far for remedy, — even if you loved me now, which you do not, you could not raise me from the depths into which I have fallen, and where I am perfectly contented to remain.”
Her eyes flashed with mingled indignation and sorrow.
“I thank God my love for you has perished then!” she exclaimed passionately. “For had I still loved you, it would have killed me to see you degraded as you are to-day!”
I smiled a little contemptuously.
“Chère Héloïse, do not talk of degradation!” I murmured. “Or if we must talk of it, — let us consider the fate of — Pauline!”
She started, as though I had stabbed her with a dagger’s point.
“Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?” she demanded eagerly.
“Yes — and no,” I replied. “I have seen her twice, — but I have not spoken to her, nor do I know where she lives. I saw her, the first time, wandering shabbily clad, in the back streets of Paris” — Héloïse uttered a faint cry and tears sprang into her eyes, “and when I beheld her for the second time, she was kneeling outside her father’s grave at Père-la-Chaise. But I intend to track her out; — I will find her, wherever she is!”
Oh, what a happy hopeful light swept over the fair pale face beside me!
“You will?” she cried. “You will find her? — you will restore her to her mother? — to me? — the poor poor unhappy child! Ah, Gaston! — if you do this, you will surely make your peace with God!”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Ma, chère, there is time enough for that! Mon sieur le bon Dieu and I have not quarrelled that I am aware of, — and if we had, we should perhaps not be very anxious to renew our friendship! I would rather make my peace with you. If I find Pauline, will you love me again?”
She gave a faint exclamation and recoiled from me as though afraid.
“Oh no! — never — never!” she said shudderingly. “Never! What power can revive a perished passion, Gaston Beauvais? Once dead — it is dead for ever. You are to me the merest phantom of the man I once adored in secret, — I could no more love you now than I could love a corpse long buried!”
She spoke with vehemence and fervour, — and every pulse in my body seemed to rebound with a smarting sense of anger against her. I felt that though she had as she said, once loved me, she now regarded me with something near positive aversion, though that aversion was mingled with a pity which I scorned. She was unjust, — all women are! The subtle nerves of her feminine organization had been wrenched and twisted awry by disappointed passion quite as much as mine had, — and I could read and analyze her emotion — I saw she instinctively despised herself for ever having bestowed a single tender thought on such a piece of unworthiness as I! No matter! — I would meet her on her own ground! — if she could not love me, she should fear me!
“Merci, chère et belle amie!” I said satirically. “We have — for no reason that I can see — played a veritable game of cat and mouse together. You have caught me in your pearly claws — and you have purred prettily concerning your past affection for me, — and now you settle on me tooth and nail, and tear me into shreds of hopelessness and despair. Soit! It is the way of women, — I do not complain. I shall, as I told you, seek out Pauline, — but if I find her, do not imagine I shall restore her to your arms! Pas si bête! I shall keep her for myself. I would not have her for my wife — no! — but there is no earthly objection to my taking her as my mistress! The idea will not shock or shame her — now!”
With one swift movement Héloïse sprang up and faced me — her whole figure trembling with suppressed emotion.
“Oh God! You would not be so base!” she cried. “You could not — you dare not!”
I rose in my turn and confronted her calmly.
“How inconsistent you are, Héloïse!” I said indolently. “Base! I see nothing base in such a proposal to such a woman as your too-much-loved young cousin! She has of her own free-will descended several steps of the ladder of perdition — no force will be needed to persuade her down to the end! You overrate the case—”
“I tell you you shall not harm her!” exclaimed Héloïse, with a sudden fierceness of grief and passion. “I too have searched for her and I will search for her still, — more ardently now that I know she must be defended from you! Oh, I will be near you when you least think it! — I will track you, I will follow you! — I will do anything to save her from the additional vileness of your touch! — your—”
She paused, breathless.
I smiled.
“Do not be melodramatic, ma chère!” I murmured coldly. “It suits you, — you look admirably lovely in anger — but still, — we are in the Bois, — and there may be listeners. I shall be charmed if you will follow me and track me out, as you say — but, — you will find it difficult! You cannot save what is hopelessly lost, — and as for ‘daring’! — Dieu! how little you know me!
— there is nothing I dare not do, — nothing, save one thing!”
She stood still, — her eyes dilated, — her breath coming and going quickly, her hands clenched, — but she said not a word.
“You do not ask what that one thing is,” I went on, keeping my gaze upon her. “But I will tell you. The limit of my courage — such as it is, — stops with you. I dare not, — mark me well! — I dare not affront you, — so that, however much my heart may ache and hunger for love, I dare not love you! You are the one sacred thing on earth to me, and so you will remain — for I have voluntarily resigned home and kindred — my father has disowned me, as completely as I have disowned him — and only the memory of your beauty will cling to me henceforth, as something just a little less valuable and sweet than — Absinthe.”
I laughed, and she surveyed me amazedly.
“Than absinthe!” she repeated mechanically. “I do not understand—”
“No, I suppose you do not,” I went on quietly, “you will probably never understand how absinthe can become dearer to a man than his own life! It is very strange! — but in Paris, very true. You have been in dangerous company, Héloïse, to-day! — be thankful you have escaped all harm! You have talked of past love and passion to a man who has fire in his veins instead of blood, — and who, had he once let slip the leash of difficult self-control might have thought little of taking his fill of kisses from your lips, and killing you afterwards! Do not look so frightened, — I dare not touch you, — I dare not even kiss your hand! You are free as angels are, — free to depart from me in peace and safety, — with what poor blessing a self-ruined man may presume to invoke upon you. But do not ask me to consider Pauline as I consider you, — you might as easily expect me to pardon Silvion Guidèl!”
She was silent, — I think from sheer terror this time, — and a restless inquisitiveness stirred in me, — an anxiety to find out how much she knew concerning the mysterious disappearance of that once holy saint of the Church whom I had sent to find out in other worlds the causes of his creed!
“What has become of him, do you think?” I said suddenly. “Perhaps he is dead?”
How pale she looked! — how scared and strange!
“Perhaps!” she murmured half inaudibly.
“Perhaps” — I went on recklessly, — and laughing as I spoke, “Perhaps he is murdered! Have you ever thought of that? It is quite possible!”
And at that instant our eyes met! What! — was my crime blazoned in my face? I could not tell, — I only know that she uttered a smothered cry, — an exclamation of fear or horror or both, — and with a movement of her hands, as though she thrust some hideous object from her, she turned and fled! I saw the sunlight flash on her hair like the heavenly halo above the forehead of an angel, — I heard the rustle of her dress sweep with a swift shuddering hiss over the long grass that bent beneath her tread, — she was gone! In her haste she had left behind her the book she had been reading, and I took it up mechanically. It was a translation of Plato, — it opened of its own accord at a passage she had marked.
“When one is attempting noble things, it is surely noble also to suffer whatever it may befall us to suffer.”
Aye! — for the grand old Greeks this was truth, — but for modern men what does it avail? Who attempts “noble things” nowadays without being deemed half mad for his or her effort? And as for suffering there is surely enough of that without going out of one’s way in search of it! Good Plato! — you are not in favour at this period of time, — your philosophies are as unacceptable to our “advanced” condition as Christ’s Christianity! So I thought; — but I took the volume with me all the same, — it had the signature of “Héloïse St. Cyr” — written on its fly-leaf in a firm characteristic woman’s hand, — and I had a superstitious idea that it might act like a talisman to shield me from evil. Polly of course! — for there is no talisman in earth or in heaven that can defend a man from the baser part of himself. And to that baser part I had succumbed, — and I had no repentance — no! — not though I should have sacrificed the love of a thousand women as fair and pure-souled as this strange girl Héloïse who had loved me once, and whose love I myself had turned into hatred. And yet, — yet — I was more awake to the knowledge of my own utter vileness than I had ever been before, as with the Plato in my hand, and my hat pulled low down over my brows I went slinkingly by side-paths and byeways out of the Bois like the accursed thing I was, accursed, and for once, fully conscious of my curse!
XXX.
WEEKS went past; with me their progress was scarcely noticed, for I lived in a sort of wild nightmare of delirium that could no more be called life than fever is called health. I was beginning to learn a few of the heavier penalties attached to the passion that absorbed me, — and the mere premonitory symptoms of those penalties were terrifying enough to shake the nerves of many a bolder man than I. I drank more and more Absinthe to drown my sensations, — sometimes I obtained a stupefying result with the required relief, but that relief was only temporary. The visions that now haunted me were more varied and unnatural in character, — yet it was not so much of visions I had to complain as impressions. These were forcible, singular, and alarmingly realistic. For example, I would be all at once seized by the notion that everything about me was of absurdly abnormal proportions, or the reverse; men and women would, as I looked at them, suddenly assume the appearance of monsters both in height and breadth, and again, would reduce themselves in the twinkling of an eye to the merest pigmies. This happened frequently, — I knew it was only an impression or distortion of the brain-images, but it was nevertheless troublesome and confusing. Then there were the crowds of persons I saw who were not real, — and whom I classed under the head of “visions,” — but, whereas once there was a certain order and method in the manner of their appearance, there was now none, — they rushed before me in disorderly masses, with faces and gestures that were indescribably hideous and revolting.
Therefore my chief aim now was to try and deaden my brain utterly, — I was tired of the torture and perplexity its subtle mechanism caused me to suffer. Meanwhile I gained some little distraction, by searching everywhere for Pauline, — this was the only object apart from Absinthe that interested me in the least. The rest of the world was the most tiresome pageantry-show, — sometimes dim and indistinct — sometimes lucidly brilliant — but always spectral, — always like a thing set apart from me with which I had no connection whatsoever.
So, imperceptibly to my consciousness, the summer faded and died, — and autumn also came to its sumptuously coloured end in a glory of gold and crimson foliage which fell to the ground almost before one had time to realize its rich beauty. A chill November began, attended with pale fog and drizzling rain, — the leaves lately so gay of tint, dropped in dead heaps or drifted mournfully on the sweeping wings of the gusty blast, — the little tables outside all the cafés were moved within, and the sombreness of approaching winter began to loom darkly over Paris, not that Paris ever cares particularly for threatening skies or inclement weather, its bright interior life bidding defiance to the dullest day. If you have even a very moderate income, just sufficient to rent the tiniest maisonette in Paris, you can live more agreeably there perhaps than in any other city in the world. You are certain to have lively colouring about you — for no little, “appartement” in Paris but is cheerful with painted floral designs, gilding, and mirrors, — if you be a woman your admirers will bring you white lilac and orchids in the middle of December, arranged with that perfectly fine French taste which is unequalled throughout the globe, — and on a frosty day your cuisinière will make you “bouillon” such as no English cook has any idea of, — while, no matter whether you be on the topmost floor of the tallest house, you need only look out of window to see some piece of merriment or other afoot, — for we Parisians, whatever our faults, are merry enough, — and even when, monkey-like, we tear some grand ideal to bits and throw it in the gutter, we always grin over it! We dance on graves, — we snap our fingers in the face of the criminal who is just going to be guillotined — why not? “Tout casse, tout passe!” — we may as well laugh at the whole Human Comedy while we can! Now I, for example, have never been in England, — but I have read much about it, and I have met many English people, and on the whole I am inclined to admire “perfide Albion.” Her people are so wise in their generation. When your English lord is conscious of having more vices in his composition than there are days in the year, he builds a church and endows a hospital — can anything be more excellent? He becomes virtuous at once in the eyes of the world at large, and yet he need never resign one of his favourite little peccadilloes! We do not manage these things quite so well in France, — we are blagueurs — even if we are vicious, nous blaguons la chose! How much better it is to be secretive à l’Anglaise! — to appear good no matter how bad we are, — and to seem as though all the Ten Commandments were written on our brows even while we are coveting our neighbour’s wife! But I digress. I ought to keep to the thread of my story, ought I not, dear critics on the press? — you who treat every narrative, true or imaginative, that goes into print, as a gourmet treats a quail, leaving nothing on the plate but a fragment of picked bone which you present to the public and call it a “review!” Ah mes garçons! — take care! Do not indulge your small private spites and jealousies too openly, or you may lose your occupation, which, though it only pay you at the rate of half-a-guinea a column, and sometimes less, is still an occupation. The Public itself is the Supreme Critic now, — its “review” does not appear in print, but nevertheless its unwritten verdict declares itself with such an amazing weight of influence, that the ephemeral opinions of a few ill-paid journalists are the merest straws beating against the strong force of a whirlwind. Digression again? Yes! — what else do you expect of an absintheur? I do not think I am more discursive than Gladstone of Hawarden, or more flighty than Boulanger of Jersey! Allons, — I will try to be explicit and tell you how pretty schoolgirl Pau line de Charmilles ended her troubles, — but I confess I have dallied with the subject purposely. Why? Why, because I hate yet rejoice to think of it, — because I dwell on it with loving and with loathing, — because it makes me laugh with ecstasy — and anon, weep and tremble and implore! — though what I implore, and to whom I address any sort of appeal, I cannot explain to you. Sometimes cowering on the ground I wail aloud— “Oh God — God!” half credulous, half despairing, — and then when the weak paroxysm is past, and the pitiless blank Silence of things hurls itself down on my soul as the crushing answer to my cry, I rise to my feet, calm, tearless, and myself again — knowing that there is no God! — none at least that ever replies to the shriek of torture or the groan of misery. How strange it is that there are some folks who still continue to pray!
