CHAPTER IV

The packet was approaching the Folkestone pier. The slender hull heaved on the sea, which was perfectly green, and was scantily striated with silver foam. The two white funnels gave forth smoke which curved behind under the pressure of the air rent by the course of the vessel. The two huge red wheels beat the waves, and behind the boat stretched a hollow moving track--a sort of glaucous path, fringed with foam. It was a day with a pale, hazy blue sky, such as frequently occurs on the English coast towards the end of winter--a day of tenderness, and one which harmonised divinely with the young man's thoughts. He had rested his elbows on the netting in the fore part of the vessel, and had not stirred since the beginning of the passage, which had been one of rare smoothness. He could now see the smallest details of the approach to the harbour: the chalky line of coast to the right, with its covering of meagre turf; to the left the pier resting on its piles; and beyond the pier, and still more to the left, the little town, with its houses rising one above another from the base of the cliff to the crest. One by one he scanned these houses, which stood out with a clearness that grew constantly more distinct. Which among them all was the refuge where his happiness was awaiting him in the loved features of Theresa de Sauve? Which of them was the Star Hotel, chosen by his friend from the guide-book on account of its name?

"I am superstitious," she had said childishly; "and then, are you not my dear star?"

She would employ these sudden caresses in language which afterwards occupied Hubert's thoughts for an indefinite time. He was quite aware that she would not be waiting for him on the quay, and his eyes sought for her in spite of himself. But she had multiplied precautions even to arriving herself the evening before by Calais and Dover. The packet is still approaching. It is possible to distinguish the faces of some inhabitants of the town, whose only diversion consists in coming to the end of the pier in order to witness the arrival of the tidal boat. A few minutes more and Hubert will be beside Theresa. Ah, if she were to fail him at the rendezvous! What if she had been sick or overtaken, or if she had died on the way! The whole legion of foolish suppositions file before the thoughts of the restless lover.

The boat is in the harbour; the passengers land and hurry to the train. Hubert was almost the only one to halt in the little town. He allowed his trunk to go on to London, and took his seat with his portmanteau in one of the flies standing in front of the terminus. He had felt something like a touch of melancholy when speaking to the driver and thus ascertaining how correct and intelligible his English was, notwithstanding that it was his first journey to England. He recalled his childhood, his Yorkshire governess, his mother's care to make him speak every day. If this poor mother were to see him now! Then these memories were gradually effaced as the light vehicle, drawn by a pony at a trot, briskly climbed the rude ascent by which the upper part of the town is reached.

To the left of the young man stretched the wonderful landscape of the sea, an immense gulf of pale green, blending in its extreme line with a gulf of blue, and dotted all over with barques, schooners, and steamers. On the summit the road turned.

The carriage left the cliff, entered a street, then a second, and then a third, all lined with low houses, whose projecting windows showed rows of red geraniums and ferns behind their panes. At a turning Hubert perceived the door of a vast Gothic building and a black plate, the mere inscription on which, in its gilt letters, made his heart leap. He found himself in front of the Star Hotel. There was an interval for inquiring at the office whether Madame Sylvie had arrived--this was the name that Theresa had chosen to assume on account of the initials engraven on all her toilet articles, and she was to have been entered in the books as a dramatic artist; for ascending two storeys and passing down a long corridor; then the servant opened the door of a small apartment, and there, seated at a table in a drawing-room, the paleness of her face increased by deep emotion, and her form clad in a garment of a red silky material whose graceful folds outlined without accentuating her figure,--there was Theresa. The coal fire glowed in the fireplace, the inner sides of which were covered with coloured ware. A rotunda-like window, of the kind that the English call "bow windows," was at the end of the apartment, to which the furniture usual in such rooms in Great Britain gave an aspect of quiet homeliness.

"Ah! it is really you," said the young man, going up to Theresa, who was smiling at him, and he laid his hand upon his mistress's bosom as though to convince himself of her existence. This gentle pressure enabled him to feel beneath the slight material the passionate beatings of the happy woman's heart.

"Yes, it is really I," she replied, with more languor than usual.

He sat down beside her and their lips met. It was one of those kisses of supreme delight in which two lovers meeting after absence strive to impart, together with the tenderness of the present hour, all the unexpressed tendernesses of the hours that have been lost. A tap at the door separated them.

"It is for your luggage," said Theresa, pushing her lover away with a gesture of regret; then, with a subtle smile: "Would you like to see your room? I have been here since yesterday evening; I hope that you will be pleased with everything. I thought so much of you in getting the little room ready."

She drew him by the hand into an apartment which adjoined the drawing-room, and the window of which looked upon the garden of the hotel. The fire was lighted in the fireplace. Vases, gay with flowers, stood on the bracket and also on the table, over which Theresa, to give it a more homelike appearance, had spread a Japanese cloth which she had brought. On it she had placed three frames with those portraits of herself which the young man preferred. He turned to thank her, and he encountered one of those looks which make the heart quite faint, and with which an affectionate woman seems to thank him whom she loves for the pleasure which he has been pleased to receive from her. But the presence of the servant engaged in setting down and opening the portmanteau prevented him from replying to this look with a kiss.

"You must be tired," she said; "while you are settling down I will go and tell them to get tea ready in the drawing-room. If you knew how sweet it is to me to wait on you----."

"Go," he said, unable to find a phrase in reply, so completely was his soul possessed with happy emotion. "How I love her!" he added in a whisper, and to himself, as he watched her disappearing through the door with that figure and walk of a young girl which were still left her by her childless marriage; and he was obliged to sit down that he might not swoon before the evidence of his felicity. The human creature is naturally so organised for misfortune that there is something ravishing in the complete realisation of desire, like a sudden entry upon a miracle or a dream, and, at a certain degree of intensity, it seems as if the joy were not true. And then, was not the novelty of the situation bound to act like a sort of opium upon the brain of this child, who could not comprehend that his mistress had seized upon the circumstance to evade by this very strangeness the difficulties preliminary to a more complete surrender of her person?

Yes, was this joy true? Hubert asked himself the question a quarter of an hour later, seated beside Madame de Sauve in the little drawing-room at the square table, on which were placed all the apparatus necessary to lend it enjoyment: the silver teapot, the ewer of hot water, the delicate cups. Had she not brought those two cups from Paris with her in order, doubtless, always to have them? She waited on him, as she had said, with her pretty hands, from which she had taken her wedding ring, in order to remove from the young man's thoughts all occasion for remembering that she was not free. During those afternoon hours, the silence of the little town was almost palpable around them, and the sense of a common solitude deepening in their hearts was so intense that they did not speak, as though they feared that their words might awake them from the intoxicating kind of sleep which was creeping over their souls. Hubert had his head resting upon his hand, and was looking at Theresa. He felt her at this moment so completely his own, so near to his most secret being, that he had even ceased to experience the need of her caresses.

She was the first to break the silence, of which she suddenly became afraid. She rose from her chair and came and sat down upon the ground at the young man's feet, with her head on his knees, and, as he still continued motionless, there was disquiet in her eyes; then submissively, and in that subdued tone of voice which no lover has ever resisted, she said:

"If you knew how I tremble lest I should displease you! I cried yesterday evening beside the fire in this room, where I was waiting for you, thinking that you would be sure to love me less after my coming here. Ah! you will be angry with me for loving you too much, and for venturing to do what I have done for you!"

The anguish preying upon this charming woman was so great that Hubert saw her features change somewhat as she uttered these words. The whole drama which had been enacted within her from the beginning of this attachment took form for the first time. At this moment especially, seeing him so young, so pure, so free from brutality, so completely in accordance with her dream, she felt a mad longing to lavish marks of her tenderness upon him, and she trembled more than ever lest she should offend him, or perhaps--for there are such strange recesses in feminine consciences--corrupt him. Giving herself up to the pleasure of thinking aloud upon these things for the first time, she went on:

"We women, when we love, can do nothing else but love. From the day when I met you coming back from the country I have belonged to you. I would have followed you wherever you had asked me to follow you. Nothing has had any further existence for me--nothing but yourself; no," she added with a fixed look, "neither good nor evil, nor duty, nor remembrance. But can you understand that--you who think, as all men do, that it is a crime to love when one is not free?"

"I have ceased to know," replied Hubert, bending towards her to raise her, "except that you are to me the noblest and dearest of women."

"No, let me remain at your feet, like your little slave," she rejoined, with an expression of ecstacy; "but is it truly true? Ah! swear to me that you will never speak ill to yourself of this hour."

"I swear it," said the young man, who was overcome by his mistress's emotion without well knowing why.

At this simple speech she raised her head; she stood up as lightly as a young girl, and leaning over Hubert began to cover his face with passionate kisses, then, knitting her brows and making an effort, as it were, over herself, she left him, drew her hands over her eyes, and said in a calmer, though still uncertain voice:

"I am foolish; we must go out. I will go and put on my bonnet and we will take a drive. Will you be so kind as to ask for a carriage?" she added in English.

When she spoke this language her pronunciation became something perfectly graceful and almost child-like; and giving him a coquettish little salute with her hand she left the drawing-room by a door opposite to that of Hubert's apartment.

This same mixture of fond anxiety, sudden exaltation, and tender childishness continued on her part through the whole drive, which, to both of them, was made up of a sequence of supreme emotions. By a chance such as does not occur twice in the course of a human life, they found themselves placed precisely in such circumstances as must lift their souls to the highest possible degree of love. The social world, with its murderous duties, was far away. It had as little existence for their minds as the driver, who, perched up behind them and invisible, drove the light cab in which they found themselves alone together, along the route from Folkestone to Sandgate and Hythe. The world of hope, on the other hand, opened up before them like a garden arrayed in the most beautiful flowers. They saw themselves rewarded--he for his innocence, and she for the reserve imposed by her upon her reason, with an experience as delicious as it is rare: they enjoyed the intimacy of heart which usually comes only after long possession, and they enjoyed it in all the freshness of timid desire. But this timid desire had in both cases a background of intoxicating certainty, lucid to Theresa though still obscure to Hubert; and it was in a vast and noble landscape that they were filled with these rare sensations.

They were now following the road from Folkestone to Hythe, a slender ribbon running along by the sea. The green cliff is devoid of rocks, but its height is sufficient to give the road over which it hangs that look of a sheltered retreat which imparts a restful charm to valleys lying at mountain bases. The shingle beach was covered by the high tide. Not a bird was flying over the wide, moving sea. Its greenish immensity shaded to violet as the closing day shadowed the cold azure of the sky. The vehicle went quickly on its two wheels, drawn by a strong-backed horse, whose over-large bit forced him at times to throw up his head with a wrench of his mouth. Theresa and Hubert, close to each other in their sort of sentry-box on wheels, held each other's hands beneath the travelling plaid that was wrapped about them. They suffered their passion to dilate like the ocean, to tremble within them with the plentitude of the billows, to grow wild like that barren coast.

Since the young woman had asked that singular oath of her lover, she seemed somewhat calmer, in spite of flashes of sudden reverie which dissolved into mute effusions. On his side, he had never loved her so completely. He could not refrain from taking her ceaselessly to him and pressing her in his arms. An infinite longing to draw still more closely to her mounted to his brain and intoxicated him, and yet he dreaded the coming of the evening with the mortal anguish of those to whom the feminine universe is a mystery. In spite of the proofs of passion that Theresa showed him, he felt himself in her presence a prey to an insurmountable impotence of will, which would have grown to pain had he not at the same time had an immense confidence in the soul of this woman. The feeling of an unknown abyss into which their love was about to plunge, and which might have terrified him with an almost animal fear, became more tranquil because he was descending into the abyss with her. In truth she had a charming understanding of the troubles which must agitate him whom she loved; was it not in order to spare his overstrung nerves that she had brought him for this drive, during which the grandeur of the prospect, the breeze from the offing, and the walking at intervals, kept both herself and him above the disquietude inevitable to a too ardent desire.

They went on in this manner until the tragic hour when the stars shine in the nocturnal sky, now walking over the shingle, now getting into the little carriage again, ceaselessly following the same paths again and again, without being able to make up their minds to return, as though understanding that they might again experience other moments of happiness, but of happiness such as this, never! The dim intuition of the universal soul, of which visible forms and invisible feelings are alike the effect, revealed to them, unknown to themselves, a mysterious analogy, and, as it were, a divine correspondence between the particular face of this corner of nature and the undefined essence of their tenderness. She said to him:

"To be with you here is a happiness too great to admit of a return to life," and he did not smile with incredulity at these words, as she felt assured when he said to her:

"It seems to me that I have never opened my eyes upon a landscape until this moment."

And when they walked it was he who took Theresa's arm and leaned coaxingly upon it. Without knowing it he thus symbolised the strange reversal of parts in this attachment in accordance with which he, with his frail person, his entire innocence, and the purity of his timorous emotions, had always represented the feminine element. Certainly she, on her part, was quite a woman, with the suppleness of her gait, the feline refinement of her manners, and those liquid eyes which threw themselves into every look. Nevertheless she appeared a stronger creature and one better armed for life than the delicate child, the fragile handiwork of the tenderness of two pure women, whom she had enmeshed in so slight a tissue of seduction, and who, scarcely taller than herself by a quarter of an inch of forehead, surrendered himself with fraternal confidence; while the mere movement of their gait spoke clearly enough in its perfect, rhythmical harmony, of the complete union of their hearts, causing them to beat at that moment closely together.

They went in again. The dinner following this afternoon of dreams was a silent and almost sombre one. It seemed as though they were both afraid the one of the other. Or was it merely with her a recrudescence of that dread of displeasing him which had made her defer the surrender of her person until this hour, and with him that sort of intractable melancholy which is the last sign of primitive animality, and which precedes in man every entry into complete love? As happens at such times, their speech was calmer and more indifferent in proportion as the disquietude of their hearts was increased. These two lovers, who had spent the day in the most romantic exaltation, and who were met in the solitude of this foreign retreat, seemed to have nothing to say to each other but sentences concerning the world that they had left.

They separated early, and just as if they had said good-bye until the following day, although they both knew perfectly well that to sleep apart from each other was impossible to them. Thus Hubert was not astonished, although his heart beat as if it would break when, at the very moment that he was about to seek her, he heard the key turn in the door, and Theresa entered, clad in a long, pliant wrapper of white lace, and with an impassioned sweetness in her eyes.

"Ah!" she said, closing Hubert's eyelids with her perfumed fingers, "I want so much to rest upon your heart."

Towards midnight the young man awoke, and seeking the face of his mistress with his lips, found that her cheeks, which he could not see, were bathed in tears.

"You are grieved," he said to her.

"No," she replied, "they are tears of gratitude. Ah!" she went on, "how could they fail to take you from me beforehand, my angel, and how unworthy I am of you!"

Enigmatic words which Hubert was often to remember later on, and which, even at this moment, and in spite of the kisses, raised suddenly within him that vapour of sadness which is the customary accompaniment of pleasure. Through it he could see, as by a lightning flash, a house that was familiar to him, and, bending down beneath the lamp, among the family portraits, the faces of the two women who had reared him. It was only for a second, and he laid his head upon Theresa's breast, there to forget all thought, while the vague complaining of the sea reached him, softened by the distance--a mysterious and distant murmur like the approach of fate.