“The world does not stone men,” said Renée.
“Can’t I make you feel that I am not thinking of myself?” Beauchamp stamped in his extreme perplexity. He was gagged; he could not possibly talk to her, who had cast the die, of his later notions of morality and the world’s dues, fees, and claims on us.
“No, friend, I am not complaining.” Renée put out her hand to him; with compassionate irony feigning to have heard excuses. “What right have I to complain? I have not the sensation. I could not expect you to be everlastingly the sentinel of love. Three times I rejected you! Now that I have lost my father—Oh! poor father: I trifled with my lover, I tricked him that my father might live in peace. He is dead. I wished you to marry one of your own countrywomen, Nevil. You said it was impossible; and I, with my snake at my heart, and a husband grateful for nursing and whimpering to me for his youth like a beggar on the road, I thought I owed you this debt of body and soul, to prove to you I have some courage; and for myself, to reward myself for my long captivity and misery with one year of life: and adieu to Roland my brother! adieu to friends! adieu to France! Italy was our home. I dreamed of one year in Italy; I fancied it might be two; more than that was unimaginable. Prisoners of long date do not hope; they do not calculate: air, light, they say; to breathe freely and drop down! They are reduced to the instincts of the beasts. I thought I might give you happiness, pay part of my debt to you. Are you remembering Count Henri? That paints what I was! I could fly to that for a taste of life! a dance to death! And again you ask: Why, if I loved you then, not turn to you in preference? No, you have answered it yourself, Nevil;—on that day in the boat, when generosity in a man so surprised me, it seemed a miracle to me; and it was, in its divination. How I thank my dear brother Roland for saving me the sight of you condemned to fight, against your conscience! He taught poor M. d’Henriel his lesson. You, Nevil, were my teacher. And see how it hangs: there was mercy for me in not having drawn down my father’s anger on my heart’s beloved. He loved you. He pitied us. He reproached himself. In his last days he was taught to suspect our story: perhaps from Roland; perhaps I breathed it without speaking. He called heaven’s blessings on you. He spoke of you with tears, clutching my hand. He made me feel he would have cried out: ‘If I were leaving her with Nevil Beauchamp!’ and ‘Beauchamp,’ I heard him murmuring once: ‘take down Froissart’: he named a chapter. It was curious: if he uttered my name Renée, yours, ‘Nevil,’ soon followed. That was noticed by Roland. Hope for us, he could not have had; as little as I! But we were his two: his children. I buried him—I thought he would know our innocence, and now pardon our love. I read your letters, from my name at the beginning, to yours at the end, and from yours back to mine, and between the lines, for any doubtful spot: and oh, rash! But I would not retrace the step for my own sake. I am certain of your love for me, though...” She paused: “Yes, I am certain of it. And if I am a burden to you?”
“About as much as the air, which I can’t do without since I began to breathe it,” said Beauchamp, more clear-mindedly now that he supposed he was addressing a mind, and with a peril to himself that escaped his vigilance. There was a secret intoxication for him already in the half-certainty that the step could not be retraced. The idea that he might reason with her, made her seductive to the heart and head of him.
“I am passably rich, Nevil,” she said. “I do not care for money, except that it gives wings. Roland inherits the château in Touraine. I have one in Burgundy, and rentes and shares, my notary informs me.”
“I have money,” said he. His heart began beating violently. He lost sight of his intention of reasoning. “Good God! if you were free!”
She faltered: “At Tourdestelle...”
“Yes, and I am unchanged,” Beauchamp cried out. “Your life there was horrible, and mine’s intolerable.” He stretched his arms cramped like the yawning of a wretch in fetters. That which he would and would not became so intervolved that he deemed it reasonable to instance their common misery as a ground for their union against the world. And what has that world done for us, that a joy so immeasurable should be rejected on its behalf? And what have we succeeded in doing, that the childish effort to move it should be continued at such a cost?
For years, down to one year back, and less—yesterday, it could be said—all human blessedness appeared to him in the person of Renée, given him under any condition whatsoever. She was not less adorable now. In her decision, and a courage that he especially prized in women, she was a sweeter to him than when he was with her in France: too sweet to be looked at and refused.
“But we must live in England,” he cried abruptly out of his inner mind.