CHAPTER IX

The cab went slowly along the streets, and every moment Helen said to herself: "Shall I see him again?" She was now facing the irresistible thought, the mere appearance of which had hurried her to the immediate quest of Armand when she had barely emerged from her horrible delirium. She must be able to cry to this man that he had ruined her. Yes, she must do this, and he must at last believe her and understand the infamy of his behaviour. She would say to her former lover:

"I am Monsieur de Varades's mistress, and you are the cause of it--you, your injustice, and your desertion." And how could the man help believing her when she went on to say to him: "Before knowing you I was pure."

This indisputable proof of the genuineness of her love, this proof which she had so greatly desired, she now held fast, and she would not let it go. Would not her present sincerity be a guarantee of her past sincerity? If she acknowledged the guilt of to-day, what motive of modesty, hypocrisy or interest could prompt her to deny that of yesterday? This strange reasoning appeared to her to carry with it a sort of obviousness from which Armand could not escape. He would believe her, and this should be her revenge. "But how will he receive me? Yet, what does it matter? I will spit my misery and my shame, and his responsibility for them, into his face."

Her distempered soul found relief in the audacity of this plan. She hated Armand now, she trembled lest he should be absent, lest he should escape her. "Faster," she said several times to the driver. Would she ever arrive soon enough? She recognised the smallest details of the road--the road traversed with such lightness of heart the last time that she had visited him! And the scene which she had been obliged to go through showed in her mind still more terrible and clear. During that scene she had been choked with indignation. She had been unable to make any reply. He could not have believed her then, but he should believe her now. She would show him what had been the drama of her existence for months past. She would at last lay bare all her heart's hidden wounds. She would make him touch with his finger the work of death that he had wrought, and she would depart, leaving him, if he had any honour left, at least this hideous remorse, this poisoned arrow in his conscience. Then she thought: "In what condition shall I find him. What has he been doing since our rupture?"

At last the vehicle stopped at the corner of the Rue Lincoln and the Champs-Élysées. In two minutes Helen had gained the door of Armand's house. How her voice shook as she asked the porter: "Is Monsieur de Querne at home?" How completely the affirmative reply upset her. She hesitated for a second in spite of the resolve she had taken; then she climbed the staircase with deliberate foot. Her hand pressed the bell without hesitation. A servant's footstep became audible. The door opened. It was no longer possible to draw back.

What had Armand been doing during that period in which she had been in the throes of despair? Had she known, even when in front of the open door, disgust would perhaps have restrained her and drawn her back. She would have fled in horror from the threshold of the abode to which she had come in order to defend, not her person, not her happiness, but the truth of her former love, as we defend the memory of the dead.

The young man had spoken the truth in his note to Chazel. A ten days' journey had brought him to an estate which he possessed close to Nantes--the De Querne family came from this town--and he had stayed there to arrange some business respecting farm rents. Then he had returned to Paris, persuaded that the rupture was a final one, seeing that during those ten days Helen had not hazarded any attempt at reconciliation.

By a contradiction in his nature, too usual with him to cause him astonishment, these early moments had been melancholy ones. He was one of those men who are moved by memories after having remained nearly indifferent to the reality, who become enamoured of the women whom they cast off, just as they regret the places of which they tired when living in them--a restless race, who know nothing of the present but its weariness, and for whom the past assumes a unique and affecting charm from the mere fact that it is the past.

Armand had never loved poor Helen; he applauded himself for breaking with her as for an action that was most reasonable, regard being had to his own interests, and withal exceedingly meritorious, seeing that he had responded to Alfred's generosity with similar generosity; but neither the grounds of interest nor those of merit could prevent him from thinking with painful emotions of the sweet and dainty mistress who after all had never deceived him except for the purpose of pleasing him the more. To be sure he doubted less than ever that she had had that first intrigue with De Varades at Bourges, of which Lucien Rieume had spoken to him. What more evident token could there have been of this than the manner in which she had received the accusation? Immediately she had bowed her head, and had, as it were, collapsed beneath the insult.

But even though he had had two, three, four predecessors, by what right had he been indignant against her? Had she not displayed during their connexion all the loyalty of which such amours are capable? Had she ever manifested so much as a trace of coquetry towards any one? Had she made him jealous for but a single hour, with jealousy such as women of the world, more abandoned in this than abandoned women themselves, do not hesitate to inflict upon a lover, in order to gratify the pettiest impulse of vanity, to please a man who has some claim or other to celebrity or who has merely been noticed by another woman. No, Helen had been perfect towards him. The consciousness of this pleased and at the same time tormented him, for, if she flattered his pride, she also rendered more present to him the faded charm of a love which he had not been able to enjoy at the time when he dreaded its obligations.

But what he regretted in Helen, even more than her gracious tenderness, was her physical person. From the time that he had become her lover he had, contrary to all his principles, remained entirely faithful to her, and this fidelity increased in him the exactitude of the memory of the senses. He could again see in thought the room in the Rue de Stockholm, and on the pillow that refined head, its eyes laden with mysterious voluptuousness. Slight and scarcely observed details recurred to him: a certain fashion that she had of leaning her pretty face over him, the aroma which hung about her kisses and their special flavour.

A yearning then seized him, against which he employed the infallible remedy to which he was accustomed. He felt that he must place between Helen and himself bodily shapes that might afford his senses a pasture of beauty, bosoms fit to serve for the modelling of cups, sinking shoulders worthy of statues, supple hips, slender legs, and skilful caresses. Such instruments of forgetfulness abound in first-class houses of pleasure. The young man used them on this occasion, as on others, even to excess, so that when Helen rang at the door in the Rue Lincoln, she had come to be almost as great a stranger to him as though he had never known her.

He was turning over the leaves of a book, lying rather than sitting in an easy-chair, and waiting until it should be time to dress in order to rejoin some dinner companions at the club. He was in that condition of pleasing weariness which heartless pleasure always brings to men who are wise enough to ask nothing of women but the enjoyment of palpable beauty. Helen and the intrigue of the previous months were, so far as he was concerned, shrinking into a background that each day made more inaccessible than before. It was another chapter to be added to the others in the mournful romance of gallantry in the course of which his feelings had been exhausted without being expended.

Already, as he thought about it, he had ceased to feel anything more than a sick spot in his heart. He was sorry for having so greatly misunderstood Chazel, but a satisfied conscience softened this sorrow. Had he not unhesitatingly sacrified to his friend's confidence all the pleasure that his intrigue might still have brought him? Accordingly, he experienced the most disagreeable of surprises when, after being informed by his servant that a lady wished to speak to him, he saw Helen. She had not taken the trouble to put on a veil. He perceived at a glance her wasted countenance, her discoloured eyes, her bright and steady gaze, her bitter lips. Mechanically, he pushed an arm-chair towards her, which she declined.

"It is not worth while," she said, "what I have to say to you will not take long. I shall not take up much of your time."

"Well," he thought to himself, "another scene. It shall be the last."

The complete absence of physical desire resulting from his recent debauches, made him singularly dry and hard. He reflected that it had been very stupid on his part not to close his door against her, and he forthwith determined to enter into no explanations, and to keep her at a distance by the employment of the most commonplace politeness.

"I feel quite put out," he said to her, just as though there had never been anything but the most official relations between them; "I ought to have called on you after my return, and then a dozen wretched trifles prevented me. You know how it is when one is on the point of going away. I expect to be in London towards the end of the month."

"Do not trouble yourself to make excuses," Helen interrupted, shrugging her shoulders; "what is the use? Why should you have come? To avoid compromising me? I will dispense with such delicacy on your part. To tell me again that you do not love me, and have never loved me, and to see me suffer? You are not a monster. All that you had to tell me you told me. Do not be afraid," she added with a nerveless smile, "it is not to resume our former conversation that I am here."

She paused as though the words that she was about to utter were already burning her lips, the lips parched by so many feverish nights. She had spoken in so bitter and withal so grave a voice that the young man felt a pang. On seeing her again he had expected a pleading scene, the eager appeal of a forsaken mistress who entreats for but a day of the old happiness, and the solemnity of Helen's accents heralded a prayerless, hopeless revelation, tidings such as to her appeared of tragic importance. Was she going to tell him that she was pregnant? Or had she in an hour of wildness confessed everything to her husband? She remained silent, and it was his turn to be impatient.

"Speak," he said, "I am listening to you."

"In that last conversation, which once more I have no wish to resume," she went on, "you told me that you were acquainted with my life. You even entered into particulars by mentioning a name, the name of Monsieur de Varades. You asserted that this man had been my lover."

"I told you what had been told to me," he said with emphasis.

"And that you believed it?" she questioned.

"As people do believe such things," he returned; "you misunderstood me, or else I expressed myself badly, very badly." And he thought: "She is going to produce some letter or other from her pocket, witnessing to De Varades's deep respect for her." He recollected having written similar letters to former mistresses, to be shown to one having special privileges. "A foolish discussion," he sighed to himself, "but how is it to be avoided?"

"Well," she retorted with strange energy, "if you are told that now, you may believe it, and reply that you have it from a sure source." And looking at him with an air at once of triumph and of despair, she added: "I am Monsieur de Varades's mistress, do you hear?" And she repeated: "I am Monsieur de Varades's mistress."

Armand listened to her repetition of these words by which she was inflicting dishonour upon herself, and his feeling was one rather of pain than of sorrow. It appeared to him as well piteous as insane that, impelled by some sickly appetite for drama and emotion, she should thus come and tell him of the renewal of her amour with her former lover. On the other hand, he had not, at the period of his first suspicions, been in possession of an absolute, indisputable assurance respecting the guilty nature of the relations between Helen and De Varades, and now she had come to denounce herself to him in so brutal a fashion that he could not help feeling a spasm of base jealousy; and he replied with involuntary abruptness:

"You are perfectly free; how do you think that concerns me? Unless," he added, cruelly, "I can be of use to you?"

"Don't play the wit," she went on more violently still. "You owe it to me to listen to me; the least a man can do is to listen to the woman he has ruined. For you have ruined me; yes, you, and I wish you to know it. Ah! you thought that I was lying, that I was showing off to please you, when I told you that I had never had a lover before yourself; will you believe me now when I tell you in the same breath that I am to-day Monsieur de Varades's mistress, and that I was not so before? I have met him again, and I have given myself to him. Do not ask me why, but it is a fact. You see that I am not seeking to play a part, that I am not afraid of your contempt, that I have not come to renew relations with you; but it is equally true that I have degraded and polluted all that is in me. And when I gave myself to you I was so pure! I had nothing, nothing on my conscience! I had kept myself for you alone, as though I had known that I was one day to meet you. Ah! that is what I want you to know. A woman who accuses herself as I am doing now has nothing left to be careful about, has she? Why should I lie to you now? Tell me, why? You will be forced to believe me, and you will say to yourself: 'I was her first love; she did not deny herself because she loved me. She loved me as man dreams of being loved, with her whole heart, her whole being, and not in the present merely, but in the past. And see what I have made of the woman who loved me thus--a creature who has ceased to believe in anything or respect anything, who has taken a fresh lover in caprice, who will take a second and a third--a ruined woman.' Yes, once more, it is you who have ruined me, and I want, I want you to know it, and it will be my revenge that you will never more be able to doubt it. Ruined! Ruined! You have ruined me--you! you! you!"

She had hurled forth these words in a panting voice, drawing closer to Armand as she went on in a convulsion of frenzy, and in the tone of her voice, in her looks, in the whole of her agitated person, there was that levelling power of truth against which doubt in vain tries to stand. The kind of frightful, dishonouring proof of her former purity resting upon the cynical avowal of her present infamy became irrefutable through the evident exaltation which possessed her and which did not suffer her to conceal anything in her thoughts. But what rendered this reasoning still more decisive to the man listening to the miserable confession with a blending of astonishment and terror, was the sudden crisis of emotion wrought in her after she had spoken. Passion, sated by this frantic utterance, suddenly gave way to despair. All at once she looked at Armand with eyes in which the flush of indignation was drowned in tears, and uttering a shriek she sank upon the floor.

There, stretched at length, she began to moan. It was a slow, continuous sob, the dull, uniform wail of a dying creature. It came up, up to Armand, and this supreme wail gathered into itself the echoes of all the wails that she had stifled, of all the sighs that had been checked on the margin of her heart. It was the throes of many days breathed forth in a last appeal. If on coming into contact with Alfred's distress, Armand had experienced an irresistible feeling of sorrowful humanity, how much the more and with how much greater power was he visited with this feeling now, on coming into contact with the distress of the woman lying thus on the ground? The frail and potent tie which had united him to this vanquished being, the unconquerable tie of mutual voluptuousness, suddenly bound him to her anew. He believed that he had forgotten her, and here, beneath the two-fold influence of unconscious jealousy and physical pity, he was again finding within himself feelings of which he had deemed himself no longer capable. A passionate impulse prompted him to fling himself upon his knees, and he strove to raise her as though she had been his mistress still.

"Helen," he said, "recover yourself. In pity to me do not weep in this way. Stand up."

She obeyed, and slowly turned towards him her swimming eyes and parted lips. An expression of unspeakable gratitude passed across her mournful countenance. He seated her in an arm-chair, placing himself at her feet to wipe away her tears. Then she was able to speak again.

"Ah!" she said, "all is over--over! Ah! never again--! You do not know, Armand, how I loved you, how I love you. Ah! why have I done what I did? You see, I was like a madwoman. I could do nothing, I could do nothing but love you. You were my whole life, my whole faith, all that to me was noble and good. And then, suddenly, it all failed me! I have suffered so greatly! I could always hear you saying those frightful words to me. It was like a knife turning every moment in my heart. I wanted to forget you, to forget myself, to destroy everything, unhappy woman! What have I done? Why did I not come to entreat you to take me back again, to believe in me? I should have found words to convince you. Now, all is over. Do not touch me; I loathe myself."

And she freed herself, and repulsed him. He perceived that she had just seen the other, her new lover. Then she went on passionately:

"No! tormentor! tormentor! 'Tis your fault. Yes, 'tis you who flung me there. Had you any right to treat me so? Answer. What wrong had I done you? When had I deceived you? Why did you doubt me? No, my love. 'Tis you who are so good, so kind, whom I love so much. Forgive me! Forgive me! Grief is killing me!"

Thus she lamented, revealing by the reciprocation of her alternately reviling and loving utterances the incoherence of the feelings whose tempest was shaking her. Then came relief from this frenzy, and she said:

"Let me weep a little. It eases me. Do not speak to me. Presently."

And he left her side. How powerless he felt in presence of this outbreak of despair. He began to pace backwards and forwards in the room, which was being invaded by the melancholy of the twilight; and Helen's sobbing had grown quite humble now, quite low, almost like that of a little girl. Instead of the frantic rebellion that there had been at first, there was a long sigh, ceaselessly broken and ceaselessly resumed, which completed the young man's perturbation. He no longer tried to comfort her, and he tried no more to contest the cruel evidence that had become fixed within him, never more to leave him. Pity for such agony, shivering horror at such irretrievable pollution, and the sight of the cruel injustice which he had committed, blended together to torture him. But what more than all beside overwhelmed him, and laid upon his heart a weight which he could feel would thenceforward be irremovable, was the feeling of his own terrible responsibility for the ruin of this woman. What! it was through knowing him and loving him that the unhappy woman had sunk so low! Helen's instinct had not deceived her; he could doubt no longer. He believed her, and in all respects. He believed that she had really loved him. He believed that before meeting him she had been pure. He believed that frenzy at an iniquitous desertion had led her so far astray as to throw her into the arms of another, and that he, Armand, was the cause, the sole cause of it all. He continued to walk up and down, and every time that he turned to retrace his steps he could see between the dismally lighted windows that sunken form, that face standing out so pale against the background of shadow! What had become of his indifference before Helen's entrance? And his power of negation, what had he done with it? People do not dispute with a death-rattle, and he had been present at the death of a soul. It was too true that she asked for nothing and wished for nothing, unless that he should see her heart laid bare; he had seen it, he saw it still and the blood that flowed from the wound inflicted by himself. How long did they continue thus without speaking, he still walking, and she still weeping? In the end he went up to her, took her hand with a shudder at feeling this soft, damp, cold hand, raised it to his lips, and let fall upon it the first tears that he had shed for years. In the depths of the abyss of despair in which she was lying, she could still find pity for her tormentor's tears. "Do not weep," she said to him, and drawing him to her, she passionately covered his face with kisses. He could feel burning lips traverse his eyes, his brow, his mouth. Then she disengaged herself from him. She rose. Once again had she just seen the other.

"Ah," she exclaimed, in anguish, "I cannot even comfort you now. Good-bye, good-bye," she repeated, "and this time it is good-bye for ever."

She passed her hands over the young man's hair, and over his face, as though to convince herself of the real existence of the countenance she had loved so dearly, and then she broke away, hastening towards the door.

"Where are you going?" he asked her.

"I am flying from you," she said wildly, and already she was out of the room.

The outer door had closed after her and he had not found energy enough to follow her. He remained standing on the spot where she had left him, as though he had been smitten with a stroke of paralysis. A terrible dread suddenly sent an icy shiver through his whole body. What if Helen in the frenzy of her despair had fled from his house in order to kill herself? For a moment he had before his eyes a horrible hallucination--the shadow of a quay, the great, dim, moving sheet of river, and a woman's body rolled along in the icy water. In his turn he rushed away. He descended the staircase four steps at a time. On the footpath there was a woman going in the direction of the Champs Élysées. He hurried after her. It was not she. He reached the Avenue, which was filled with a swarm of passengers and vehicles. How could he find her in such a crowd? How guess in what direction the unhappy woman had fled. A drizzling rain was falling. He hailed several cabs in vain, and not until he had reached the crossways could he stop one. He gave the driver the address in the Rue de La Rochefoucauld, and on the way he, too, knew an anguish driven to the point of madness. But he was already at the foot of the street and in front of the little house. It was with a trembling of his entire heart that he drew the bell at the door, and asked the servant whether Madame Chazel had come in. On hearing the man's affirmative reply he nearly fell to the ground in the excess of his emotion. And forthwith--for the play of the passions constantly causes us to conflict with these countless trifles of existence--he felt like a fool in presence of the man, who stood aside to let him pass. How could he endure Helen's presence at that moment, or, more than all, Alfred's? He stammered out a sentence alleging that he had forgotten a piece of business, and saying that he would return in the evening. He threw himself again into his cab.

"The thought of her son has saved her!" he said to himself. "I am at least not a murderer!"