CHAPTER XXIII
MARGUERITE
On entering the room, I was overcome with astonishment at finding Madame de Pënâfiel in almost the same attitude as when I left her.
Her face was deadly pale, fearful to see; it was like a marble mask.
This sickly paleness that had so suddenly changed her appearance, this expression of grief and resignation, touched me so deeply that all my reasonings and all my miserable suspicions vanished in an instant; it seemed as though I loved her for the first time with the most confiding and sincere love. I had no thought, even of asking her forgiveness for all that was hateful in my behaviour towards her.
I had no thoughts to waste on the miserable past. By I know not what magic, all I thought of now was how to console her for some dreadful grief of which I knew nothing. I was about to throw myself at her knees, when she said, in such an altered voice that I scarcely recognised it, although she attempted to give it an accent of firmness:
"I have sent for you, because I wished to see you for the last time, I wished to ask you the meaning of the strange words you said to me this morning,—that is, if you can explain them to yourself; I wished to tell you—"
Here her pale lips contracted tremulously, with that involuntary movement one feels when with tearful eyes an attempt is made to prevent sobbing. "I wished—" said Madame de Pënâfiel in a faint voice. Then as she could say no more, as she was weeping, she hid her head in her hands, and I only heard these words pronounced in a stifled voice, "Ah, poor unhappy woman that I am!"
"Oh, pardon—pardon, Marguerite!" I exclaimed, falling at her feet; "but do you not know how I love you—how I love you!"
"You love me?"
"Wildly, madly!"
"He loves me! He dares to say that he loves me!" she said, with indignation.
"This morning the secret of my soul was twenty times on my lips; but when I saw how unhappy you were—when I listened to your confession—"
"Well!"
"Well! I believed, yes, I believed, that it was love for another, a love that was not returned, scorned perhaps, and that such unrequited love was the cause of all the grief which you said was without cause and unreasonable."
"You believed that,—you!" and she raised her eyes to heaven.
"Yes, I believed it; and then I became wild with hate and despair, for every one of your confessions was a wound, an insult, an agony to me,—to me who loved you so fondly."
"You could believe that,—you!" repeated Marguerite, gazing on me with painful emotion, while two tears trickled slowly down her pale cheeks.
"Yes, and I believe it still."
"You believe it still. But you must think me infamous. Do you not know?"
"I know," I cried out, interrupting her, "I know that I love you to distraction. I know that another man causes you such suffering as I feel for you. Well, then, such thoughts have made me desperate, and I am going away."
"You are going away?"
"Yes, this very night. I did not dare to see you again. I need all my courage, and I will have it."
"You are going to leave me! But mon Dieu! mon Dieu!—and I!"—cried out Marguerite, and she joined her hands in a gesture that was both suppliant and despairing, and then fell on her knees before a chair that stood near by.
How can I ever tell the joy that was awakened in me by that last word of Marguerite's, "and I!"
It was not simply an avowal of love that I heard, but the agonising cry of her broken heart, which no longer had any hope but in my affection.
Although I still believed her to be under the influence of an unrequited passion, I had not the courage to renew the scene I had witnessed in the morning. Still I could not refrain from saying, sadly:
"And that portrait?"
"Here it is," she replied, handing me the medallion, whose crystal was half broken off.
When I held the portrait between my hands I endured for a moment the bitterest anguish; I dared not look at the face, fearing to see the likeness of some one that I knew. When I had overcome this childish terror, I looked at it. It was the face of a stranger! I saw a noble and handsome face whose expression was both mild and severe; the hair was brown, the eyes blue, the whole physiognomy expressed refinement and grace; the costume was very simple, the only decoration being a broad orange ribbon with white edges, and a golden medal worn on the left side of the coat.
"And whose portrait is this?" said I, sadly, to Marguerite.
"It is the portrait of the man I most loved and respected,—M. de Pënâfiel."
She burst into tears and hid her face in her hands.
Then I understood it all, and believed that I should die of shame and remorse.
This one word tore the veil from the past, and showed me the frightful injustice of my suspicions.
"Ah, how you must despise and hate me!" I cried out in my distress. She gave no answer, but held out her hand that I knelt before and kissed with as much veneration as love.
After some time Marguerite became calm. Never in my life can I forget the first look she gave me when she raised her tear-stained face towards mine; in that look there was reproach, pardon, and pity.
"You have been very cruel, or else out of your mind," said she, after a long silence, "but I cannot be angry with you. I should have told you everything; twenty times at least, I have tried to do so, but I was afraid, you were so ironical and cold, your sudden and extraordinary conversion to the pleasures of the world,—everything repelled me."
"Ah, I believe it, I believe it, how can you ever pardon me? But, yes; you will forgive me when I tell you how much I have suffered by this frightful suspicion. Ah, if you knew how unjust and hateful grief can make a man! If you knew what it was to say, 'I love her to distraction, I idolise her, there is not a charm of her mind, her soul, or her person that I do not appreciate and admire, she is for me all in all,—and yet another—' ah, can you not see how such an idea is enough to set one wild, to make a man wish to die? Think of it, and you will have pity on me,—you will excuse because you will understand my rages, which I scarcely am ashamed of because I was wild from suffering."
"Did I not pardon you when I said to you, 'Return,' after that frightful morning?" said she, with the greatest gentleness.
"Oh, my life, my whole life shall be spent in expiation of this hour of folly. Marguerite, I swear that in me you will have the most devoted friend, the kindest brother; let me only come and worship you, let me come each day to contemplate in you the treasures of nobility, candour, and goodness that for an instant I misunderstood. You shall see that I am worthy of your confidence."
"Oh, now I believe you, and you shall know everything. I will tell you all, I will tell you what I have never dared to confide to any other; and yet you must not think that I am about to tell you any extraordinary secret. Nothing is simpler than what you are going to hear. It is only the proof of the saying, 'If the world can always discover false and guilty sentiments, it never believes there are any sentiments that are natural, true, and generous.'"
"Ah, what shame, what remorse must it ever be to me to have shared such stupid and malicious prejudices! Why did I not listen to the inward voice that said to me, 'Believe, have faith in her?' With what noble exultation could I now have said, 'I alone was able to understand her pure and generous nature!'"
"Comfort yourself, my friend, for I will teach you how to understand me. Does not that show that I have more confidence in you than you have in yourself? If I am willing to tell you all, does it not prove that you are the only person whose good opinion I care for? So if I desire to explain to you the apparent singularity of my life, which has been so misunderstood, it is because I wish, I hope, in the future to be able to give utterance to every thought in your hearing. This avowal requires some knowledge of the past; listen to me, then, my story will be short because it is true.
"I was a very rich heiress, free to choose whom I wished, spoiled by the homage that was paid as much to my fortune as to myself. At eighteen I had never loved any one. On a voyage I made to Italy, with M. and Madame de Blémur, I met M. de Pënâfiel. Though he was still young, he was the Spanish ambassador to Naples at a time when political troubles were very complicated; this will show you what a superior man he was. When, in addition, he was handsome,"—here she showed me the portrait,—"with charming manners, high principles, an extremely noble character, perfect taste, superior education, appreciative sense of all the arts, an illustrious name and a large fortune, you will be able to know his worth. I met him, I appreciated him, I loved him. The incidents of our marriage were very simple, for all interests were united. Only, soon after our first interview, he begged me to tell him if I authorised him to ask for my hand, as, knowing that I was entirely free in my choice, he wished to spare me any advances that my uncle might have to make in his name. I told him very innocently the great joy his proposal was to me, but I besought him to give up a career that would necessarily keep him always at a distance from France, and to promise not to live in Spain. His answer was noble and prompt. 'I will sacrifice cheerfully my dreams of ambition,' he said, 'but not the interests of my country. When my mission here is accomplished, I will return to Spain to thank the king for his confidence in me, and render him an account of what I hope to be a successful negotiation; then I will belong entirely to you and do as you think best.' It was thus that he acted. He obtained all that his government had wished, went to Madrid to make his adieux to the king, returned, and we were married. I shall not speak again of our happiness, but I will now tell you that it was perfect and mutual. However, as in the eyes of the world the arrangements had been so suitable, the world would never admit that it had been a love match, but insisted that it was simply a marriage of convenience."
"That is true, at least it is what I have always been given to understand; indeed, it is generally believed that, while you and M. de Pënâfiel were always the best of friends, your existence was, as often happens, quite apart from his."
"How false! What an absurdity! but it must have been believed, for our happiness was so simple and natural that the world, not understanding true love, could not give us credit for it. Besides, we liked to make a sort of mystery of our felicity, so how could society, accustomed as it is to scandal, suppose for an instant that a young wife and a charming husband of equal position and birth could go the length of adoring and wishing to live for one another? Alas! though, nothing was ever more true."
"Now, at last, all is explained clearly to my mind. Do you remember the absurd and malicious interpretation of that race and the story about Ismaël?"
"Of course I do."
"Very well; your marriage was interpreted with about as much truth. As nothing was more evident than the irreproachableness of your conduct, slander arranged for you a mysterious subterranean life. I assure you it is astonishing to listen to. They even told of disguises and a little far away house in the suburbs."
"If I was not so sad, I would smile with you, my friend, at all these wicked falsehoods, but I have got to a period in my souvenirs when all is so cruel, so distressing," and she held out her hand to me, "that I have hardly courage enough to speak of it. After three years of complete and passionate happiness,—after—"
Marguerite could say no more, she burst into tears, and it was some moments before she continued.
"Yes, yes, I know," said I to her as I knelt before her, "I know how admirable and devoted you were all that dreadful time. Now that I have looked into your soul, now that I know who it was that filled it, and fills it still with his souvenir, I understand how agonising such an eternal separation must be to you."
After a few moments of silence Marguerite began again: "Thanks, thanks, for understanding me thus. Mon Dieu! Since that dreadful moment this is the first time that my grief is not unbearable, my tears not bitter, for I can relieve my heart by speaking of my sorrows. I can tell how much I loved and how much I have suffered. Alas! while in the midst of so much felicity I needed no friend to talk about it, but since,—oh, since all this affliction has come to me I have been so lonely! If you only knew what a life I have led! Obliged to hide my grief, my sad regrets, as I used to hide my delights! To whom could I tell them? Who was there to console me? The world sometimes has pity for a guilty love, but for a sacred sorrow like mine it has nothing but abuse, for it is either ridiculous or a lie. Weep thus for one's husband! Regret him so bitterly! Live only in the remembrance of one who was so dear! Who ever would believe that? And then why should I speak of it? And to whom? My relations were quite too worldly to understand my grief; and then I had been so selfish in my happy days that I had never tried to make friends. He—he alone was all I cared for. To whom would I have cared to tell how happy I was? To him, and to him alone! Besides, with all the carelessness of boundless felicity, I never even thought that misfortune could come near me."
"Alas, poor friend, how miserable you must have been! To suffer alone is so frightful!"
"Yes, yes, I have suffered, believe me. Sometimes, through a timidity of which I am ashamed, I was afraid of being alone. In the darkness and silence my grief would almost overpower me. It grew upon me that at times I was terrified, and then I took refuge in society. I detested it, but I needed its noise and excitement to take my mind off thoughts that were strained to such a point that I feared for my reason. When this strain was over and I was calm once more, I railed at the vain joys of the world for having caused me to forget my grief. I lamented my cowardice, and thus my days passed in constant moods of contradiction. This is not all. I knew that my sorrows were the cause of slanderous tales, and yet I neither would nor could justify myself. Oh, if you only knew how cruel it is to have nothing but the truth as a defence,—the truth which, in your eyes, is so sacred, so venerated, that it would seem a profanation to tell it to the incredulous and careless."
Marguerite again wept silently. She continued, after a pause: "Now you can understand my disdain for every one and everything. Soured by my trouble, I became irritable and capricious, and as no one understood the cause, I was called fantastic. The people that surrounded me seemed vulgar when compared to the one whose souvenir shall always be sacred; and so they said I was scornful or deceitful. The useless coquetry that I was reproached with, and to which they assigned the worst motives, was but another tribute to his memory. I wore these beautiful clothes because he loved to see me wear them. All these beautiful surroundings, these flowers, this half-light in which he used to veil my features, alas! they were all so many precious souvenirs. Finally, those scientific smatterings that people chose to call pretentious were only sad reflections of past days, for, being a savant himself, he loved to talk to me of his various attainments.
"What more can I say, my friend? Living alone, the manner of my living seems too ostentatious, and so I am called haughty and vain, and yet it is because this house was his home that I keep it up as he did. Now you know the secret of my life. Before I met you I cared very little whether the world approved of me or not. I was called a vain, extravagant flirt. What did it matter? I cared nothing for their odious tales; they were perfectly uninteresting to me; but since I have learned to appreciate all your good qualities, and have seen how easily you were influenced by the world's ill-natured opinion of me, I set such price on your esteem, your affection, that I could not bear to have you judge me as others do. And besides, you have often generously undertaken to defend me, and I wished to prove to you that your natural instincts were noble and just. And now I have still a painful confession to make to you."
"Marguerite, I implore you—"
"Yes," she continued, blushing, "I have struggled against it a long time. This morning, when you found me so wretched, so forlorn, I had been praying God for strength to resist the need I felt of rehabilitating myself in your sight."
"Why, oh, why? Am I not worthy of your confidence?"
"Yes, yes, you are; you always will be. I believe it, but I reproached myself bitterly that I was not so sure of the purity of my motives, the sincerity of my regrets, to remain indifferent as to the effect the world's calumnies might have on you, for I tremble for the future."
Here there are many pages missing in the "Journal."