Books: Cosmopolis, v3
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Paul Bourget >> Cosmopolis, v3
"It is all the same. It is necessary that Maud Gorka work with me
against her. There is some one whom she will not pardon, and that is....
Madame Steno." And, in spite of her uneasiness, the wicked woman
trembled with delight at the thought of her work.
CHAPTER VIII
ON THE GROUND
When Maud Gorka left the house on the Rue Leopardi she walked on at first
rapidly, blindly, without seeing, without hearing anything, like a
wounded animal which runs through the thicket to escape danger, to escape
its wounds, to escape itself. It was a little more than half-past three
o'clock when the unhappy woman hastened from the studio, unable to bear
near her the presence of Lydia Maitland, of that sinister worker of
vengeance who had so cruelly revealed to her, with such indisputable
proofs, the atrocious affair, the long, the infamous, the inexpiable
treason.
It was almost six o'clock before Maud Gorka really regained
consciousness. A very common occurrence aroused her from the
somnambulism of suffering in which she had wandered for two hours.
The storm which had threatened since noon at length broke. Maud, who had
scarcely heeded the first large drops, was forced to seek shelter when
the clouds suddenly burst, and she took refuge at the right extremity of
the colonnade of St. Peter's. How had she gone that far? She did not
know herself precisely. She remembered vaguely that she had wandered
through a labyrinth of small streets, had crossed the Tiber--no doubt by
the Garibaldi bridge--had passed through a large garden--doubtless the
Janicule, since she had walked along a portion of the ramparts. She had
left the city by the Porte de Saint-Pancrace, to follow by that of
Cavallegieri the sinuous line of the Urban walls.
That corner of Rome, with a view of the pines of the Villa Pamfili on one
side, and on the other the back part of the Vatican, serves as a
promenade during the winter for the few cardinals who go in search of the
afternoon sun, certain there of meeting only a few strangers. In the
month of May it is a desert, scorched by the sun, which glows upon the
brick, discolored by two centuries of that implacable heat which caresses
the scales of the green and gray lizards about to crawl between the bees
of Pope Urbain VIII's escutcheon of the Barberini family. Madame Gorka's
instinct had at least served her in leading her upon a route on which she
met no one. Now the sense of reality returned. She recognized the
objects around her, and that framework, so familiar to her piety of
fervent Catholicism, the enormous square, the obelisk of Sixte-Quint in
the centre, the fountains, the circular portico crowned with bishops and
martyrs, the palace of the Vatican at the corner, and yonder the facade
of the large papal cathedral, with the Saviour and the apostles erect
upon the august pediment.
On any other occasion in life the pious young woman would have seen in
the chance which led her thither, almost unconsciously, an influence from
above, an invitation to enter the church, there to ask the strength to
suffer of the God who said: "Let him who wishes follow me, let him
renounce all, let him take up his cross and follow me!" But she was
passing through that first bitter paroxysm of grief in which it is
impossible to pray, so greatly does the revolt of nature cry out within
us. Later, we may recognize the hand of Providence in the trial imposed
upon us. We see at first only the terrible injustice of fate, and we
tremble in the deepest recesses of our souls with rebellion at the blow
from which we bleed. That which rendered the rebellion more invincible
and more fierce in Maud, was the suddenness of the mortal blow.
Daily some pure, honest woman, like her, acquires the proof of the
treason of a husband whom she has not ceased to love. Ordinarily, the
indisputable proof is preceded by a long period of suspicion. The
faithless one neglects his hearth. A change takes place in his daily
habits. Various hints reveal to the outraged wife the trace of a rival,
which woman's jealousy distinguishes with a scent as certain as that of a
dog which finds a stranger in the house. And, finally, although there is
in the transition from doubt to certainty a laceration of the heart, it
is at least the laceration of a heart prepared. That preparation, that
adaptation, so to speak, of her soul to the truth, Maud had been deprived
of. The care taken by Madame Steno to strengthen the friendship between
her and Alba had suppressed the slightest signs. Boleslas had no need to
change his domestic life in order to see his mistress at his convenience
and in an intimacy entertained, provoked, by his wife herself. The wife,
too, had been totally, absolutely deceived. She had assisted in her
husband's adultery with one of those illusions so complete that it seemed
improbable to the indifferent and to strangers. The awakening from such
illusions is the most terrible. That man whom society considered a
complaisant husband, that woman who seemed so indulgent a wife, suddenly
find that they have committed a murder or a suicide, to the great
astonishment of the world which, even then, hesitates to recognize in
that access of folly the proof, the blow, more formidable, more
instantaneous in its ravages, than those of love-sudden disillusion.
When the disaster is not interrupted by acts of violence, it causes an
irreparable destruction of the youthfulness of the soul, it is the idea
instilled in us forever that all can betray, since we have been betrayed
in that manner. It is for years, for life, sometimes, that powerlessness
to be affected, to hope, to believe, which caused Maud Gorka to remain,
on that afternoon, leaning against the pedestal of a column, watching the
rain fall, instead of ascending to the Basilica, where the confessional
offers pardon for all sins and the remedy for all sorrows. Alas! It was
consolation simply to kneel there, and the poor woman was only in the
first stage of Calvary.
She watched the rain fall, and she found a savage comfort in the
formidable character of the storm, which seemed like a cataclysm of
nature, to such degree did the flash of the lightning and the roar of the
thunder mingle with the echoes of the vast palace beneath the lash of the
wind. Forms began to take shape in her mind, after the whirlwind of
blind suffering in which she felt herself borne away after the first
glance cast upon that fatal letter. Each word rose before her eyes, so
feverish that she closed them with pain. The last two years of her life,
those which had bound her to Countess Steno, returned to her thoughts,
illuminated by a brilliance which drew from her constantly these words,
uttered with a moan: How could he? She saw Venice and their sojourn in
the villa to which Boleslas had conducted her after the death of their
little girl, in order that there, in the restful atmosphere of the
lagoon, she might overcome the keen paroxysm of pain.
How very kind and delicate Madame Steno had been at that time; at least
how kind she had seemed, and how delicate likewise, comprehending her
grief and sympathizing with it.... Their superficial relations had
gradually ripened into friendship. Then, no doubt, the treason had
begun. The purloiner of love had introduced herself under cover of the
pity in which Maud had believed. Seeing the Countess so generous, she
had treated as calumny the slander of the world relative to a person
capable of such touching kindness of heart. And it was at that moment
that the false woman took Boleslas from her! A thousand details recurred
to her which at the time she had not understood; the sails of the two
lovers in the gondola, which she had not even thought of suspecting; a
visit which Boleslas had made to Piove and from which he only returned
the following day, giving as a pretext a missed train; words uttered
aside on the balcony of the Palais Steno at night, while she talked with
Alba. Yes, it was at Venice that their adultery began, before her who
had divined nothing, her whose heart was filled with inconsolable regret
for her lost darling! Ah, how could he? she moaned again, and the
visions multiplied.
In her mind were then opened all the windows which Gorka's perfidity and
the Countess's as well, had sealed with such care. She saw again the
months which followed their return to Rome, and that mode of life so
convenient for both. How often had she walked out with Alba, thus
freeing the mother and the husband from the only surveillance annoying to
them. What did the lovers do during those hours? How many times on
returning to the Palazzetto Doria had she found Catherine Steno in the
library, seated on the divan beside Boleslas, and she had not mistrusted
that the woman had come, during her absence, to embrace that man, to talk
to him of love, to give herself to him, without doubt, with the charm of
villainy and of danger! She remembered the episode of their meeting at
Bayreuth the previous summer, when she went to England alone with her
son, and when her husband undertook to conduct Alba and the Countess from
Rome to Bavaria. They had all met at Nuremberg. The apartments of the
hotel in which the meeting took place became again very vivid in Maud's
memory, with Madame Steno's bedroom adjoining that of Boleslas's.
The vision of their caresses, enjoyed in the liberty of the night, while
innocent Alba slept near by, and when she rolled away in a carriage with
little Luc, drew from her this cry once more: "Ah, how could he!"....
And immediately that vision awoke in her the remembrance of her husband's
recent return. She saw him traversing Europe on the receipt of an
anonymous letter, to reach that woman's side twenty-four hours sooner.
What a proof of passion was the frenzy which had not allowed him any
longer to bear doubt and absence!.... Did he love the mistress who did
not even love him, since she had deceived him with Maitland? And he was
going to fight a duel on her account!.... Jealousy, at that moment,
wrung the wife's heart with a pang still stronger than that of
indignation. She, the strong Englishwoman, so large, so robust, almost
masculine in form, mentally compared herself with the supple Italian with
her form so round, with her gestures so graceful, her hands so delicate,
her feet so dainty; compared herself with the creature of desire, whose
every movement implied a secret wave of passion, and she ceased her cry--
"Ah, how could he?"--at once. She had a clear knowledge of the power of
her rival.
It is indeed a supreme agony for an honorable woman, who loves, to feel
herself thus degraded by the mere thought of the intoxication her husband
has tasted in arms more beautiful, more caressing, more entwining than
hers. It was, too, a signal for the return of will to the tortured but
proud soul. Disgust possessed her, so violent, so complete, for the
atmosphere of falsehood and of sensuality in which Boleslas had lived two
years, that she drew herself up, becoming again strong and implacable.
Braving the storm, she turned in the direction of her home, with this
resolution as firmly rooted in her mind as if she had deliberated for
months and months.
"I will not remain with that man another day. Tomorrow I will leave for
England with my son."
How many, in a similar situation, have uttered such vows, to abjure them
when they find themselves face to face with the man who has betrayed
them, and whom they love. Maud was not of that order. Certainly she
loved dearly the seductive Boleslas, wedded against her parents' will the
perfidious one for whom she had sacrificed all, living far from her
native land and her family for years, because it pleased him, breathing,
living, only for him and for their boy. But there was within her--as her
long, square chin, her short nose and the strength of her brow revealed--
the force of inflexibility--which is met with in characters of an
absolute uprightness. Love, with her, could be stifled by disgust, or,
rather, she considered it degrading to continue to love one whom she
scorned, and, at that moment, it was supreme scorn which reigned in her
heart. She had, in the highest degree, the great virtue which is found
wherever there is nobility, and of which the English have made the basis
of their moral education--the religion, the fanaticism of loyalty. She
had always grieved on discovering the wavering nature of Boleslas. But
if she had observed in him, with sorrow, any exaggerations of language,
any artificial sentiment, a dangerous suppleness of mind, she had
pardoned him those defects with the magnanimity of love, attributing them
to a defective training. Gorka at a very early age had witnessed a
stirring family drama--his mother and his father lived apart, while
neither the one nor the other had the exclusive guidance of the child.
How could she find indulgence for the shameful hypocrisy of two years'
standing, for the villainy of that treachery practised at the domestic
hearth, for the continued, voluntary disloyalty of every day, every hour?
Though Maud experienced, in the midst of her despair, the sort of
calmness which proves a firm and just resolution, when she reentered the
Palazzetto Doria--what a drama had been enacted in her heart since her
going out!--and it was in a voice almost as calm as usual that she asked:
"Is the Count at home?"
What did she experience when the servant, after answering her in the
affirmative, added: "Madame and Mademoiselle Steno, too, are awaiting
Madame in the salon." At the thought that the woman who had stolen from
her her husband was there, the betrayed wife felt her blood boil, to use
a common but expressive phrase. It was very natural that Alba's mother
should call upon her, as was her custom. It was still more natural for
her to come there that day. For very probably a report of the duel the
following day had reached her. Her presence, however, and at that
moment, aroused in Maud a feeling of indignation so impassioned that her
first impulse was to enter, to drive out Boleslas's mistress as one would
drive out a servant surprised thieving. Suddenly the thought of Alba
presented itself to her mind, of that sweet and pure Alba, of that soul
as pure as her name, of her whose dearest friend she was. Since the
dread revelation she had thought several times of the young girl. But
her deep sorrow having absorbed all the power of her soul, she had not
been able to feel such friendship for the delicate and pretty child.
At the thought of ejecting her rival, as she had the right to do, that
sentiment stirred within her. A strange pity flooded her soul, which
caused her to pause in the centre of the large hall, ornamented with
statues and columns, which she was in the act of crossing. She called
the servant just as he was about to put his hand on the knob of the door.
The analogy between her situation and that of Alba struck her very
forcibly. She experienced the sensation which Alba had so often
experienced in connection with Fanny, sympathy with a sorrow so like her
own. She could not give her hand to Madame Steno after what she had
discovered, nor could she speak to her otherwise than to order her from
her house. And to utter before Alba one single phrase, to make one
single gesture which would arouse her suspicions, would be too
implacable, too iniquitous a vengeance! She turned toward the door which
led to her own room, bidding the servant ask his master to come thither.
She had devised a means of satisfying her just indignation without
wounding her dear friend, who was not responsible for the fact that the
two culprits had taken shelter behind her innocence.
Having entered the small, pretty boudoir which led into her bedroom, she
seated herself at her desk, on which was a photograph of Madame Steno, in
a group consisting of Boleslas, Alba, and herself. The photograph smiled
with a smile of superb insolence, which suddenly reawakened in the
outraged woman her frenzy of rancor, interrupted or rather suspended for
several moments by pity. She took the frame in her hands, she cast it
upon the ground, trampling the glass beneath her feet, then she began to
write, on the first blank sheet, one of those notes which passion alone
dares to pen, which does not draw back at every word:
"I know all. For two years you have been my husband's mistress. Do not
deny it. I have read the confession written by your own hand. I do not
wish to see nor to speak to you again. Never again set foot in my house.
On account of your daughter I have not driven you out to-day. A second
time I shall not hesitate."
She was just about to sign Maud Gorka, when the sound of the door opening
and shutting caused her to turn. Boleslas was before her. Upon his face
was an ambiguous expression, which exasperated the unhappy wife still
more. Having returned more than an hour before, he had learned that Maud
had accompanied to the Rue Leopardi Madame Maitland, who was ill, and he
awaited her return with impatience, agitated by the thought that
Florent's sister was no doubt ill owing to the duel of the morrow, and in
that case, Maud, too, would know all. There are conversations and, above
all, adieux which a man who is about to fight a duel always likes to
avoid. Although he forced a smile, he no longer doubted. His wife's
evident agitation could not be explained by any other cause. Could he
divine that she had learned not only of the duel, but, too, of an
intrigue that day ended and of which she had known nothing for two years?
As she was silent, and as that silence embarrassed him, he tried, in
order to keep him in countenance, to take her hand and kiss it, as was
his custom. She repelled him with a look which he had never seen upon
her face and said to him, handing him the sheet of paper lying before
her:
"Do you wish to read this note before I send it to Madame Steno, who is
in the salon with her daughter?"
Boleslas took the letter. He read the terrible lines, and he became
livid. His agitation was so great that he returned the paper to his wife
without replying, without attempting to prevent, as was his duty, the
insult offered to his former mistress, whom he still loved to the point
of risking his life for her. That man, so brave and so yielding at once,
was overwhelmed by one of those surprises which put to flight all the
powers of the mind, and he watched Maud slip the note into an envelope,
write the address and ring. He heard her say to the servant:
"You will take this note to Countess Steno and you will excuse me to the
ladies.... I feel too indisposed to receive any one. If they insist,
you will reply that I have forbidden you to admit any one. You
understand--any one."
The man took the note. He left the room and he had no doubt fulfilled
his errand while the husband and wife stood there, face to face, neither
of them breaking the formidable silence. They felt that the hour was a
solemn one.
Never, since the day on which Cardinal Manning had united their destinies
in the chapel of Ardrahan Castle, had they been engaged in a crisis so
tragical. Such moments lay bare the very depths of the character.
Courageous and noble, Maud did not think of weighing her words. She did
not try to feed her jealousy, nor to accentuate the cruelty of the cause
of the insult which she had the right to launch at the man toward whom
that very morning she had been so confiding, so tender. The baseness and
the cruelty were to remain forever unknown to the woman who no longer
hesitated as to the bold resolution she had made. No. That which she
expected of the man whom she had loved so dearly, of whom she had
entertained so exalted an opinion, whom she had just seen fall so low,
was a cry of truth, an avowal in which she would find the throb of a last
remnant of honor. If he were silent it was not because he was preparing
a denial. The tenor of Maud's letter left no doubt as to the nature of
the proofs she had in her hand, which she had there no doubt. How?
He did not ask himself that question, governed as he was by a phenomenon
in which was revealed to the full the singular complexity of his nature.
The Slav's especial characteristic is a prodigious, instantaneous
nervousness. It seems that those beings with the uncertain hearts have a
faculty of amplifying in themselves, to the point of absorbing the heart
altogether, states of partial, passing, and yet sincere emotion.
The intensity of their momentary excitement thus makes of them sincere
comedians, who speak to you as if they felt certain sentiments of an
exclusive order, to feel contradictory ones the day after, with the same
ardor, with the same untruthfulness, unjustly say the victims of those
natures, so much the more deceitful as they are more vibrating.
He suffered, indeed, on discovering that Maud had been initiated into his
criminal intrigue, but he suffered more for her than for himself. It was
sufficient for that suffering to occupy a few moments, a few hours. It
reinvested the personality of the impassioned and weak husband who loved
his wife while betraying her. There was, indeed, a shade of it in his
adventure, but a very slight shade. And yet, he did not think he was
telling an untruth, when he finally broke the silence to say to her whom
he had so long deceived:
"You have avenged yourself with much severity, Maud, but you had the
right.... I do not know who has informed you of an error which was very
culpable, very wrong, very unfortunate, too.... I know that I have in
Rome enemies bent upon my ruin, and I am sure they have left me no means
of defending myself. I have deceived you, and I have suffered."
He paused after those words, uttered with a tremor of conviction which
was not assumed. He had forgotten that ten minutes before he had entered
the room with the firm determination to hide his duel and its cause from
the woman for whose pardon he would at that moment have sacrificed his
life without hesitation. He continued, in a voice softened by affection:
"Whatever they have told you, whatever you have read, I swear to you, you
do not know all."
"I know enough," interrupted Maud, "since I know that you have been the
lover of that woman, of the mother of my intimate friend, at my side,
under my very eyes.... If you had suffered by that deception, as you
say, you would not have waited to avow all to me until I held in my hands
the undeniable proof of your infamy.... You have cast aside the mask,
or, rather, I have wrested it from you.... I desire no more.... As for
the details of the shameful story, spare me them. It was not to hear
them that I reentered a house every corner of which reminds me that I
believed in you implicitly, and that you have betrayed me, not one day,
but every day; that you betrayed me the day before yesterday, yesterday,
this morning, an hour ago.... I repeat, that is sufficient."
"But it is not sufficient for me!" exclaimed Boleslas. "Yes, all you
have just said is true, and I deserve to have you tell it to me. But
that which you could not read in those letters shown to you, that which I
have kept for two years in the depths of my heart, and which must now be
told--is that, through all these fatal impulses, I have never ceased to
love you.... Ah, do not recoil from me, do not look at me thus....
I feel it once more in the agony I have suffered since you are speaking
to me; there is something within me that has never ceased being yours.
That woman has been my aberration. She has had my madness, my senses,
my passion, all the evil instincts of my being.... You have remained my
idol, my affection, my religion.... If I lied to you it was because I
knew that the day on which you would find out my fault I should see you
before me, despairing and implacable as you now are, as I can not bear to
have you be. Ah, judge me, condemn me, curse me; but know, but feel,
that in spite of all I have loved you, I still love you."
Again he spoke with an enthusiasm which was not feigned. Though he had
deceived her, he recognized only too well the value of the loyal creature
before him, whom he feared he should lose. If he could not move her at
the moment when he was about to fight a duel, when could he move her?
So he approached her with the same gesture of suppliant and impassioned
adoration which he employed in the early days of their marriage, and
before his treason, when he had told her of his love. No doubt that
remembrance thrust itself upon Maud and disgusted her, for it was with
veritable horror that she again recoiled, replying:
"Be silent! That lie is the worst of all. It pains me. I blush for
you, in seeing that you have not even the courage to acknowledge your
fault. God is my witness, I should have respected you more, had you
said: 'I have ceased loving you. I have taken a mistress. It was
convenient for me to lie to you. I have lied. I have sacrificed all to
my passion, my honor, my duties, my vows and you.'.... Ah, speak to me
like that, that I may have with you the sentiment of truth.... But that
you dare to repeat to me words of tenderness after what you have done to
me, inspires me with repulsion. It is too bitter."