Part 19 (2/2)
”No, I do not abjure it,” replied Maud, ”for it was on recurring to it--it was on returning to my early impressions--that I could find not an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct. I remembered what you related to me of the misfortunes of your childhood and of your youth, and how you had grown up between your father and your mother, pa.s.sing six months with one, six months with the other--not caring for, not being able to judge either of them--forced to hide from one your feelings for the other. I saw for the first time that your parents'
separation had the effect of saddening your heart at that epoch. It is that which perverted your character.... And I read in advance Luc's history in yours.... Listen, Boleslas! I speak to you as I would speak before G.o.d! My first feeling when that thought presented itself to my mind was not to resume life with you; such a life would be henceforth too bitter. No, it was to say to myself, I will have my son to myself.
He shall feel my influence alone. I saw you set out this morning--set out to insult me once more, to sacrifice me once more! If you had been truly repentant would you have offered me that last affront? And when you returned--when they informed me that you had a broken arm--I wished to tell the little one myself that you were ill.... I saw how much he loved you, I discovered what a place you already occupied in his heart, and I comprehended that, even if the law gave him to me, as I know it would, his childhood would be like yours, his youth like your youth.”
”Then,” she went on, with an accent in which emotion struggled through her pride, ”I did not feel justified in destroying the respect so deep, the love so true, he bears you, and I have come to say to you: You have wronged me greatly. You have killed within me something that will never come to life again. I feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my mind and on my heart at the thought that you could have betrayed me as you have. But I feel that for our boy this separation on which I had resolved is too perilous. I feel that I shall find in the certainty of avoiding a moral danger for him the strength to continue a common existence, and I will continue it. But human nature is human nature, and that strength I can have only on one condition.”
”And that is?” asked Boleslas. Maud's speech, for it was a speech carefully reflected upon, every phrase of which had been weighed by that scrupulous conscience, contrasted strongly in its lucid reasoning with the state of nervous excitement in which he had lived for several days.
He had been more pained by it than he would have been by pa.s.sionate reproaches. At the same time he had been moved by the reference to his son's love for him, and he felt that if he did not become reconciled with Maud at that moment his future domestic life would be ended. There was a little of each sentiment in the few words he added to the anxiety of his question. ”Although you have spoken to me very severely, and although you might have said the same thing in other terms, although, above all, it is very painful to me to have you condemn my entire character on one single error, I love you, I love my son, and I agree in advance to your conditions. I esteem your character too much to doubt that they will be reconcilable with my dignity. As for the duel of this morning,” he added, ”you know very well that it was too late to withdraw without dishonor.”
”I should like your promise, first of all,” replied Madame Gorka, who did not answer his last remark, ”that during the time in which you are obliged to keep your room no one shall be admitted.... I could not bear that creature in my house, nor any one who would speak to me or to you of her.”
”I promise,” said the young man, who felt a flood of warmth enter his soul at the first proof that the jealousy of the loving woman still existed beneath the indignation of the wife. And he added, with a smile, ”That will not be a great sacrifice. And then?”
”Then?... That the doctor will permit us to go to England. We will leave orders for the management of things during our absence. We will go this winter wherever you like, but not to this house; never again to this city.”
”That is a promise, too,” said Boleslas, ”and that will be no great sacrifice either; and then?”
”And then,” said she in a low voice, as if ashamed of herself. ”You must never write to her, you must never try to find out what has become of her.”
”I give you my word,” replied Boleslas, taking her hand, and adding: ”And then?”
”There is no then,” said she, withdrawing her hand, but gently. And she began to realize herself her promise of pardon, for she rearranged the pillows under the wounded man's head, while he resumed:
”Yes, my n.o.ble Maud, there is a then. It is that I shall prove to you how much truth there was in my words of yesterday, in my a.s.surance that I love you in spite of my faults. It is the mother who returns to me today. But I want my wife, my dear wife, and I shall win her back.”
She made no reply. She experienced, on hearing him p.r.o.nounce those last words with a transfigured face, an emotion which did not vanish. She had acquired, beneath the shock of her great sorrow, an intuition too deep of her husband's nature, and that facility, which formerly charmed her by rendering her anxious, now inspired her with horror. That man with the mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself.
It sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation of years, and to respect himself for it--as if that was really sufficient--for the difficult task. At least during the eight days which lapsed between that conversation and their departure he strictly observed the promise he had given his wife. In vain did Cibo, Pietrapertosa, Hafner, Ardea try to see him. When the train which bore them away steamed out he asked his wife, with a pride that time justified by deeds:
”Are you satisfied with me?”
”I am satisfied that we have left Rome,” said she, evasively, and it was true in two senses of the word:
First of all, because she did not delude herself with regard to the return of the moral energy of which Boleslas was so proud. She knew that his variable will was at the mercy of the first sensation. Then, what she had not confessed to her husband, the sorrow of a broken friends.h.i.+p was joined in her to the sorrows of a betrayed wife. The sudden discovery of the infamy of Alba's mother had not destroyed her strong affection for the young girl, and during the entire week, busy with her preparations for a final departure, she had not ceased to wonder anxiously: ”What will she think of my silence?... What has her mother told her?... What has she divined?”
She had loved the ”poor little soul,” as she called the Contessina in her pretty English term. She had devoted to her the friends.h.i.+p peculiar to young women for young girls--a sentiment--very strong and yet very delicate, which resembles, in its tenderness, the devotion of an elder sister for a younger. There is in it a little naive protection and also a little romantic and gracious melancholy. The elder friend is severe and critical. She tries to a.s.suage, while envying them, the excessive enthusiasms of the younger. She receives, she provokes her confidence with the touching gravity of a counsellor. The younger friend is curious and admiring. She shows herself in all the truth of that graceful awakening of thoughts and emotions which precede her own period before marriage. And when there is, as was the case with Alba Steno, a certain discord of soul between that younger friend and her mother, the affection for the sister chosen becomes so deep that it can not be broken without wounds on both sides. It was for that reason that, on leaving Rome, faithful and n.o.ble Maud experienced at once a sense of relief and of pain--of relief, because she was no longer exposed to the danger of an explanation with Alba; of pain, because it was so bitter a thought for her that she could never justify her heart to her friend, could never aid her in emerging from the difficulties of her life, could, finally, never love her openly as she had loved her secretly.
She said to herself as she saw the city disappear in the night with its curves and its lights:
”If she thinks badly of me, may she divine nothing! Who will now prevent her from yielding herself up to her sentiment for that dangerous and perfidious Dorsenne? Who will console her when she is sad? Who will defend her against her mother? I was perhaps wrong in writing to the woman, as I did, the letter, which might have been delivered to her in her daughter's presence.... Ah, poor little soul!... May G.o.d watch over her!”
She turned, then, toward her son, whose hair she stroked, as if to exorcise, by the evidence of present duty, the nostalgia which possessed her at the thought of an affection sacrificed forever. Hers was a nature too active, too habituated to the British virtue of self-control to submit to the languor of vain emotions.
The two persons of whom her friends.h.i.+p, now impotent, had thought, were, for various reasons, the two fatal instruments of the fate of the ”poor little soul,” and the vague remorse which Maud herself felt with regard to the terrible note sent to Madame Steno in the presence of the young girl, was only too true. When the servant had given that letter to the Countess, saying that Madame Gorka excused herself on account of indisposition, Alba Steno's first impulse had been to enter her friend's room.
”I will go to embrace her and to see if she has need of anything,” she said.
”Madame has forbidden any one to enter her room,” replied the footman, with embarra.s.sment, and, at the same moment, Madame Steno, who had just opened the note, said, in a voice which struck the young girl by its change:
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