Palmer had a reserve store of good sense and pride which did not allow him to hope to make Thérèse happy after such a scene as had just occurred. He felt that his jealousy would never be cured, and he persisted in believing that it was well-founded. He wrote to Thérèse:
"Forgive me, my friend, if I have pained you; but it is impossible for me not to realize that I was about to drag you down into an abyss of despair. You love Laurent, you have always loved him in spite of yourself, and in all probability you will always love him. It is your destiny. I tried to relieve you from it; you tried with me. I also realize that in accepting my love you were sincere, and that you did your utmost to respond to it. I indulged in many illusions, but I have felt them slipping from me every day since we left Florence. If he had persisted in being ungrateful, I should have been saved; but his repentance and gratitude touched your heart. I myself was touched by them, and yet I strove to believe that I was perfectly calm. It was of no avail. Thenceforth there were between you, because of me, sorrows of which you never told me, but which I divined. He recurred to his former love for you, and you, although you fought against the feeling, regretted that you belonged to me. Alas! Thérèse, that was the time when you should have retracted your promise. I was ready to give it back to you. I left you at liberty to go with him from Spezzia: why did you not do it?
"Forgive me; I rebuke you for having suffered terribly to make me happy and to become attached to me. I have fought hard, too, I promise you! And now, if you care to accept my devotion, I am ready to struggle and suffer anew. Tell me if you are yourself willing to suffer, and if, by going with me to America, you hope to be cured of this wretched passion which threatens you with a pitiable future. I am ready to take you with me; but let us say no more of Laurent, I implore you, and do not look upon it as a crime on my part to have guessed the truth. Let us remain friends, come and live with my mother, and if, a few years hence, you find me not unworthy of you, accept my name and a permanent home in America, with no thought of ever returning to France.
"I will wait in Paris a week for your reply.
"RICHARD."
Thérèse rejected an offer which wounded her pride. She still loved Palmer, and yet she felt so insulted by the offer to take her as a favor when she had no reason to reproach herself, that she concealed the pain that tore her heart. She felt, too, that she could not resume any sort of connection with him without prolonging a torture which he no longer had the strength to dissemble, and that their life thenceforth would be a constant struggle or constant misery. She left Paris with Catherine, telling no one where she was going, and hid herself in a small country-house in the provinces, which she hired for three months.
[XII]
Palmer sailed for America, bearing with dignity a very deep wound, but utterly unable to admit that he had been mistaken. He had an obstinate streak in his mind, which sometimes reacted upon his disposition, but only to make him do this or that thing with resolution, not to make him persist in a painful and really difficult undertaking. He had believed that he was capable of curing Thérèse of her fatal love, and he had performed that miracle by his enthusiastic and, if you please, imprudent faith; but he lost the fruit just as he was on the point of plucking it, because, when the last test came, his faith failed him.
It should be said also, that, in establishing a genuine, serious connection between two persons, nothing can be more unfortunate than an attempt to take possession too quickly of a heart that has been broken. The dawn of such a connection is attended by the noblest illusions; but jealousy of the past is an incurable disease, and stirs up storms which even old age does not always dispel.
If Palmer had been a really strong man, or if his strength had been calmer and less unreasoning, he might have saved Thérèse from the disasters that he foresaw for her. It was his duty to do it, perhaps, for she had confided herself to him with a sincerity and disinterestedness worthy of solicitude and respect; but many who aspire to strength of character and believe that they possess it possess nothing more than energy, and Palmer was one of those as to whom one may be mistaken for a long while. Such as he was, he surely deserved Thérèse's regrets. We shall see ere long that he was capable of the noblest impulses and the bravest deeds. His whole mistake consisted in believing in the unassailable duration of that which in him was simply a spontaneous effort of the will.
Laurent knew nothing at first of Palmer's departure for America; he was dismayed to find that Thérèse, too, had gone away without bidding him adieu. He had received from her only these few words:
"You are the only person in France who knew of my projected marriage to Palmer. The marriage is broken off. Keep our secret. I am going away."
As she wrote these ice-cold words to Laurent, Thérèse was conscious of a bitter feeling toward him. Was not that fatal child the cause of all the misfortunes and all the sorrows of her life?