One cold dark evening, — how minutely I remember every small incident connected with it! — I was wandering home in my usual desultory fashion, a little more heavily drugged than usual, and in a state of sublime indifference to the weather, which was wet and gusty, when I heard a woman’s voice singing in one of the bye-streets down which I generally took my way. There was something sweet and liquid in the thrill of the notes as they rose upward softly through the mist and rain, — and I could hear the words of the song distinctly, — ft was a well-known convent chant to the “Guardian Angel;” — these heavenly messengers seem rather idle in the world nowadays!
“Viens sur ton aile, Ange fidèle
Prendre mon cœur!
C’est le plus ardent de mes vœux; —
Près de Marie
Place-moi bientôt dans les cieux!
O guide aimable, sois favorable
A mon désir
Et viens finir
Ma triste vie
Avec Marie!”
A wavering child-like pathos in the enunciation of the last lines struck me with a sense of familiarity; — involuntarily, I thought of Héloïse and of the way she used to play the violin, and of the pleasant musical evenings we used to pass all together at the house of the De Charmilles. I sauntered into the street and down it lazily — the woman who sang was standing at the side of the curbstone, and there were a few people about her listening; — one or two dropped coins in her timidly outstretched hand. As I came close within view of her I stopped and stared, doubtful for a moment as to her identity, — then, in doubt no longer, I sprang to her side.
“Pauline!” I exclaimed.
She started, and shuddered back from me, her face growing paler than ever, her eyes opening wide in wistful wonder and fear. The little group that had listened to her song broke up and dispersed, — they had no particular interest in her more than in any other wandering street-vocalist, and in less than a minute we were almost alone.
“Pauline!” I said again, — then, breaking into a derisive laugh, I went on— “What! — has it come to this? — you, the sole daughter of a proud and ancient house, singing in the highways and the byeways for bread! Dieu! — one would have thought there were more comfortable ways of earning a living — for you at any rate! — you, with your fair face and knowledge of evil could surely have done better than this!”
She looked at me steadfastly but made no answer, — she was apparently as amazed and stricken at the sight of me as her cousin Héloïse had been. Meanwhile I surveyed her with a swift yet intent scrutiny — I noticed her shabby, almost threadbare clothes, — the thin starved look of her figure, — the lines of suffering about her mouth and eyes, — and yet with all this she was still beautiful, — beautiful as an angel or fairy over whom the cloud of sorrow hangs like blight on a flower.
“Well!” I resumed roughly, after waiting in vain for her to speak, “we have met at last, it seems! I have searched for you everywhere — so have your relatives and friends. You have kept the secret of your hiding-place very well all these months — no doubt for some good reason! Who is your lover?”
Still the same steadfast look, — the same plaintive, patient uplifting of the eyes!
“My lover?” she echoed after me softly and with surprise. “If you are, as I suppose you must be, Gaston Beauvais, then you know — you have always known his name. Whom can I love — who can love me, — if not Silvion?”
I laughed again.
“Bien! You can love the dead then? Nay! — you are too fair to waste your beauty thus! A corpse can give no caresses, — and le beau Silvion by this time is something less even than a corpse! How you stare! Did you not know that he was dead?”
Her face grew grey as ashes, — and rigid in the extremity of her fear.
“Dead!” she gasped. “No — no! That could not be! Dead? Silvion? No, no! — you are cruel — you always were cruel — you are Gaston Beauvais, the cruellest of all cruel men, and you tell me lies to torture me! You were always glad to torture me! — yes, even after you had loved me! I never could understand that — for if one loves at all, one always forgives. And so I do not believe you, — Silvion is not dead, — he could not die — he is too young—”
“Oh, little fool!” — I interrupted her fiercely— “do not the young die? The young, the strong, and the beautiful, like your Silvion, are generally the first to go; — they are too good, say the old women, for this wicked world! Too good! — ha ha! — the axiom is excellent in the case of Silvion Guidèl, who was so perfect a saint! Come here, Pauline” — and I seized her hand. “Do not try to resist me, or it will be the worse for you! One look at my face will tell you what I have become, — as vile a man as you are a woman — scum, both of us, on the streets of Paris! Come with me, I tell you! Scream or struggle, and as sure as these clouds drop rain from heaven I will kill you! I never had much mercy in my disposition — I dare say you remember that — I have less than ever now. There are many things I must say to you, — things which you must hear, — which you shall hear! — come to some remoter place than this, where we shall not be noticed, — where no one will interrupt us, or think that we are more than two beggars discoursing of the day’s gains!”
And clutching her arm I half dragged, half led her with me, — I myself full of a strange rising fury that savoured of madness, — she almost paralyzed, I think, with sheer terror. Out of the street we hurried, — and passed into a small obscure side-alley or court, from the corner of which could be perceived the shimmer of the Seine and the lights on the Pont Neuf.
“Now!” I said hoarsely, drawing her by force up so near to me that our faces were close together, and our eyes, peering into each other’s, seemed to ravage out as by fire the secrets hidden in our hearts— “now let us speak the truth, you and I, — and since you were always the most graceful liar of the two, perhaps you had best begin! Fling off the mask, Pauline de Charmilles! — make open confession, and so in part mend the wounds of your soul! — tell me how you have lived all this while and what you have been doing? I know your past, — I can imagine your present! — but — speak out! Tell me how Paris has treated you, — what you were I can remember, — and all I want to know now, is what you are!”
How strangely quiet she had become! — this one playful, childish, coquettish creature I had loved! She never flinched beneath my gaze, — she never tried to draw her hands away from mine — her features were colourless, but her lips were firmly set, and no tears dimmed the feverish lustre of her eyes.
“What I am?” she murmured in faint yet clear accents. “I am what I have always been, — a poor, broken-hearted woman who is faithful!”
Faithful! I flung her hands from me in derision, — I stared at her, amazed at her effrontery.
“Faithful,” I echoed. “You! You, who sported with a man’s heart as though it were a toy, — you, who ruined an honest man’s life to gratify a selfish, guilty passion, — you! — you dare to speak of faithfulness — you—”
“Stop!” she said softly and with perfect composure.
“I think you do not understand, — it is seldom men can understand women. In selfishness, if we speak of that, you are surely more to blame than I, — for you think of nothing but your own wrong — a wrong for which, God knows, I would have made any possible reparation. And I repeat it, I am faithful! You cannot, you dare not call the woman false who is true to the memory of the only love she ever yielded herself to, body and soul! She who surrenders her life to many lovers — she it is who is unfaithful — she it is who is base, — but not such an one as I! For I have had but one passion, — one thought — one hope — one thread to bind me to existence, — Silvion! You know, for I told you all the truth, that my love was never centred upon you, — you know that I had never wakened to the least comprehension of love till he, Silvion, made me see all its glory, all its misery! — and neither he nor I are to blame for our unhappy destiny! Blame Nature, blame Fate, blame God, blame Love itself, �
� the joy, the despair of it all was to be! But faithfulness! Ah, Gaston Beauvais! — if ever any woman in the world was faithful, I am that woman! I can keep that one poor pride to comfort me when I die! If, in these weary months any other man’s hand had touched mine with a gesture of affection, — if another man’s lips had touched mine with the lightest caress — then, — then you might have spurned me as a vile and fallen thing — then you would have had the right to loathe me as I should have loathed myself! But I am as one vowed and consecrated — yes! consecrated to love, and to love’s companion, sorrow, — and though I have, against my wish and will, brought grief to you and many who once were dear to me, I am faithful! — faithful to the one passion of my life, and I shall be faithful still until the end!”
Oh, quixotic fool! I thought, as I heard her impassioned words fall one by one, musically on the careless air. Why she might have been a saint for her fearless and holy look! — she of the corrupt heart and wayward will — even she, — it was laughable — she might have been a saint! My God! — for one wild fleeting moment I thought her so, — for a comparison between her life and mine passed over me and caused me to recoil from her as one unworthy to be near so pure a thing! Pure? — what? Because she had been true to her betrayer? Fine purity, indeed! — what was I dreaming of? The rain and mist were dark about us, — no heavenly aureole shone above her brows — she was a mere bedraggled wretch with a worn face, feigning a wondrous honesty! Faithful? Faithful to — that bruised and battered thing I had flung out into the river with such infinite trouble, — faithful, — to that forbidding lump of clay thrown long ago into the common grave of nameless suicides! What a jest! — what a mockery! I looked at her as she stood before me — as frail and slight a woman as ever was born to misery. (Wormwood Novel)
“So! And with all this famous fidelity you boast of, how have you lived?” I asked her derisively.
“I have worked,” she replied simply— “and when I could get no work, I have sung, as you saw me tonight, in the poorer streets, — for the poor are more generous than the rich, — and many people have been very good to me. And sometimes I have starved, — but I have always hoped and waited—”
“For what?” I cried. “Oh, most foolish of all foolish women, — waited and hoped for what?”
“For one glimpse of Silvion!” and she raised her eyes with a trustful light in their dark blue depths to the murky and discontented heavens. “I have always felt that some day he would come to Paris, — and that I should see his face once more! I would ask him for nothing but a word of blessing, — I would not call him from the life he has been compelled to choose, and I would not reproach him for choosing it, — I should be quite, quite happy just to kiss his hand and let him go — but — I should have seen him! Then I would go into some quiet convent of the poor and end my days, — I would pray for him—’
“Aye! — as though he were another Abelard!” I interrupted her harshly. “Your prayers would probably take the form of Colardeau’s poesy—”
“‘Un Dieu parle à mon coeur, ‘De ce Dieu, ton rival, sois encore le vainqueur!’
We all understand the ulterior meaning of such pretty sentiment! What! will you actually swear to me that you have lived hidden apart like this to work and starve on the mere hope of seeing your lover again, when you know that by his own act he separated himself from you for ever?”
She did not speak; but she made a sign of patient assent.
I burst into laughter, loud, long and irresistible.
“And they say that God exists!” I cried— “a God of justice, — who allows His creatures to torment themselves with shadows! Oh, sublime justice! Listen, listen, you child who hold fast to fidelity which nowadays is counted as a mere dog’s virtue, — listen, and learn from me what a spendthrift you have been of your time, and how you have wasted your prayers! Listen — listen!” and again I caught her hands in mine and bent my face downwards to hers— “Listen, for I am in the humour to tell you everything, — everything! You have spoken, — it is my turn to speak now. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God! Do you hear that? That is a proper legal oath, — it suffices for a court of justice where not a man believes in the God adjured, — it must suffice for you who do believe — or so you say! Well then, by that oath, and by everything holy and blasphemous in this sacred and profane world of ours I swear to you Silvion Guidèl is dead! You can think his soul is in heaven if you like, — if it consoles you to think, — but wherever his soul is, his body is dead, — and it was his fine, fair body you knew, — his body you so loved, — you surely will not be such a hypocrite as to deny that! Well, that body is dead, — dead and turned to hideous corruption! — Ha! — you shudder? — you struggle” — for she was striving to tear her hands from my grip. “Perhaps you can guess how he died? Not willingly, I assure you! — he was not by any means glad to go to the paradise whose perfect joys he proclaimed! No! — he was a rebellious priest, — he fought for every breath of the strong, rich, throbbing life that made mere manhood glorious to him, — but he was conquered!
— he gave in at last — Silence! — do not scream or I shall kill you! — He is dead, I say! — stone dead! — who should know it better than I, seeing that I — murdered him!”
XXXI.
WHAT fools women are! To break their hearts is sometimes as easy as to break fine glass, — a word will do it. A mere word! — one uttered at random out of the thousands in the dictionary. “Murder” for example, — a word of six letters, — it has a ludicrously appalling effect, on human nerves. On the silly Pauline it fell like a thunderbolt sped suddenly from the hand of God; — and down she dropped at my feet, white as snow, inert as stone. I might have struck her across the brows with a heavy hammer or pierced her body with some sharp weapon, she lay so stunned and helpless. The sight of her figure there, huddled in a motionless heap, made me angry, — she looked as though she were dead. I was not sorry for her; no! — I was sorry for nothing now; — but I lifted her up from the wet pavement in my arms, and held her close against my breast in a mechanical endeavour to warm her back to consciousness.
“Poor pretty little toy!” I thought, as I chafed one of her limp cold hands, — and then — hardty knowing what I did, I kissed her. Some subtle honey or poison, or both, was surely on her lips, for as I touched them I grew mad! What! — only one kiss for me who had been deprived of them so long? No! — ten, twenty, a hundred! I rained them down on cheeks, eyes, brow and hair, — though I might as well have kissed a corpse, she was so still and cold. But she breathed, — her heart against mine, — I could feel its faint pulsations; and I renewed my kisses with the ardour, not of love, but of hatred! You do not think it possible to kiss a woman you hate? Fair lady! — (for it cannot be one of my sex that suggests the doubt!) you know little of men! We are, when roused, tigers in our loves and hatreds, — and we are quite capable of embracing a woman whom we mentally loathe, so long as she has physical attraction, — aye! — the very fact of our loathing will often redouble the fascination we have for her company! Oh, we are not all lath-and-plaster men, with a stereotyped smile and company manners! The most seeming-cold of us have strange depths of passion in our natures which, if once stirred, leap into flame and destroy all that is within our reach. Such fire was in me now as my lips almost breathlessly caressed the fair face that lay against my heart like a white flower, — and when at last the dark blue eyes opened and regarded me, first with vague doubt and questioning, then with affright and abhorrence, a sense of the fiercest triumph was in me, — a triumph which grew hotter with every instant, as I reflected that now — now at any rate Pauline was in my power — I could make her mine if I choose! — she had been faithful to Silvion living, but she should not remain faithful to him dead! I held her fast in my arms with all my strength, — with all my strength? — my strength was as a reed in the wind before the sudden access of superhuman power that rushed upon her as she recovered from her swoon! She broke from my
clasp, — she pushed me violently from her, and then stood irresolute, feebly pressing her hand against her eyes as though in an effort to recall her thoughts.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 235
