As she passed before those yawning doorways, Thérèse caught a glimpse of one interior which seemed cleaner than the others and which exhaled a somewhat less acrid odor of oil. In the doorway was a poor woman whose pleasant and honest face inspired confidence; and the woman anticipated her by speaking to her in Italian or something approaching it. Thus she and Thérèse were able to understand each other. The goodwoman asked her pleasantly if she were looking for any one. She went in, looked about, and asked if she could hire a room for the night.
"Yes, to be sure, a better room than this, and you will be much quieter than at the inn, where you would hear the sailors singing all night long! But I am not an innkeeper, and if you don't want me to have quarrels on my hands, you will say publicly in the street to-morrow that you knew me before you came here."
"Very well," said Thérèse, "show me the room."
She was led up several steps and found herself in an enormous, miserable room, which commanded a panorama of vast extent on the bay and on the open sea; she took a liking to the room at first sight, for no special reason, unless it was that it seemed to her a sort of refuge against new bonds which she did not wish to be forced to accept. In that room she wrote on the following day to her mother:
"MY DEAREST LOVE:
"For twelve hours I have been at peace and in full possession of my free will for—I know not how many days or years. Everything is unsettled again in my mind, and you shall form your own opinion of the situation of affairs.
"That fatal love which alarmed you so is not renewed and never will be. You may set your mind at rest on that point. I came here with my patient, and put him aboard ship last night. If I have not saved his poor heart, and I hardly dare flatter myself that I have, I have made it better at all events, and through me it has enjoyed the sweet pleasure of friendship for a few moments. If I could have believed him, he was cured forever of his tempestuous outbreaks; but I could see plainly enough, from his contradictions and his relapses with respect to me, that the foundation of his nature is still unchanged, and the something still exists that I cannot define otherwise than as the love of that which is not.
"Alas! yes, that child would like to have for his mistress some one like the Venus de Milo, enlivened with the breath of my patron Sainte Thérèse, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the same woman should be Sappho to-day and Jeanne d'Arc to-morrow. It is most unfortunate for me that I ever believed that, after adorning me in his imagination with all the attributes of the Divinity, he would not open his eyes the next day! It must be that, without suspecting it, I am very vain, to have accepted the task of inspiring a cult! But, no, I was not, I give you my word! I did not think of myself; on the day when I allowed myself to be placed on that altar, I said to him: 'Since you absolutely insist upon adoring me instead of loving me, which I should much prefer, why, adore me, reserving the right to crush me to-morrow!'
"And he has crushed me! But of what can I complain? I anticipated it, and resigned myself to it beforehand.
"But I was weak, undignified, and wretched when that horrible moment came. My courage returned, however, and God permitted me to recover more quickly than I hoped.
"Now, I must speak to you of Palmer. You wish me to marry him, he wishes it, and I, too, did wish it! Do I wish it still? What shall I say, my beloved? I still am tortured by scruples and fears. Perhaps it is his fault. He could not or would not pass with me the last moments that I passed with Laurent; he left me alone with him three days, three days which I knew would be, and which actually were, without danger for me; but did he, Palmer, know it, and could he be sure of it? or—which would be much worse—did he say to himself that he must find out how far he could depend on me? There was on his part either a display of romantic unselfishness or an exaggerated discretion, which, in such a man, can come only from some worthy sentiment, but which has given me food for reflection none the less.
"I have written you what took place between us; it seemed to me that he had taken it upon himself as a sacred duty to rehabilitate me by marriage, after the affronts to which I had been subjected. I felt the enthusiasm of gratitude and the emotion that follows profound admiration. I said yes, I promised to be his wife, and to-day I feel that I love him as much as it is in my power to love.
"And yet to-day I hesitate, because it seems to me that he repents. Am I dreaming? I have no idea; but why could he not come here with me? When I learned of my poor Laurent's terrible illness, he did not wait for me to say: 'I am going to Florence;' but he said to me: 'Let us go!'—The twenty nights that I passed at Laurent's bedside, he passed in the next room, and he never said to me: 'You are killing yourself!' but simply: 'Take a little rest, so that you can go on with it.'—I have never detected the shadow of jealousy in him. It seemed that in his eyes I could never do too much to save the ungrateful boy whom we had both of us adopted, as it were. He knew, noble heart, that his confidence and generosity increased my love for him, and I was infinitely grateful to him for understanding it. In that way he raised me in my own eyes, and made me proud to belong to him.
"Very well; then why this whim or this obstacle at the last moment? An unforeseen obstacle? With the strong will that I know him to possess, I hardly believe in obstacles; it seems more probable that he wished to test me. That humiliates me, I confess. Alas! I have become horribly sensitive since I fell! Is it not natural? why did not he, who understands everything, understand that?
"Or, perhaps he has thought better of it, and has said to himself all that I said to him, from principle, in order to prevent his thinking of me; what would there be surprising in that? I had always known Palmer as a prudent and sensible man. When I discovered in him stores of enthusiasm and trust, I was greatly surprised. Might he not be one of those who take fire when they see others suffer, and who fall to loving the victims passionately? That is a natural instinct in those who are strong, it is the sublime pity of pure and happy hearts! There were moments when I said that to myself, in order to reconcile me with myself,—when I loved Laurent, for it was his suffering, before and above all else, that attached me to him!
"All this that I am saying to you, my dearest love, I should not dare to say to Richard Palmer if he were here. I should be afraid that my doubts would cause him horrible pain, and I am sorely embarrassed, for I have these doubts in spite of myself, and I am afraid, for to-morrow at all events, if not for to-day. Will he not cover himself with ridicule by marrying a woman whom he has loved, he says, for ten years, to whom he has never lisped a word of anything of the sort, and whom he decides to attack on the day that he finds her crushed and bleeding under the feet of another man?
"I am sojourning in a horrible yet magnificent little seaport, where I passively await the command of my destiny. Perhaps Palmer is at Spezzia, three leagues away. That was where we had arranged to meet. And I, like a sulking, or rather like a timid, child, cannot make up my mind to go to him and say: 'Here I am!'—No, no! if he suspects me, no further relations between us are possible! I forgave the other five or six insults a day. With this one I could not overlook the shadow of a suspicion. Is this unjust? No! henceforth I must have a sublime love or nothing! Did I seek his love? He forced it upon me, saying: 'It will be heaven!'—The other had told me that perhaps what he brought me would be hell. He did not deceive me. Nor must Palmer deceive me, while deceiving himself; for, after this new error, nothing would be left for me but to deny everything, to say to myself that, like Laurent, I have forfeited forever, by my own fault, the right to believe; and I do not know whether, with that certainty, I could endure life!
"Forgive me, my beloved; my perplexities distress you, I am sure, although you would say that I must spare you none of them! At all events, have no anxiety concerning my health; I am exceedingly well, I have the loveliest bit of ocean before my eyes, and over my head the loveliest sky that can be imagined. I lack nothing, I am boarding with excellent people, and it is likely that I shall write you to-morrow that my uncertainties have disappeared. Do not forget to love your Thérèse, who adores you."
Palmer had actually been at Spezzia since the preceding night. He had purposely arrived just an hour after the sailing of the Ferruccio. Not finding Thérèse at the Maltese Cross, and learning that she had planned to put Laurent on board at the mouth of the bay, he awaited her return. At nine o'clock, the boatman she had hired in the morning, who belonged to the hotel, returned alone. The worthy man was not accustomed to drink too much. He had been surprised by a bottle of Cyprus, which Laurent gave him after his lunch on the grass with Thérèse, and which he drank during their stay on the Isola Palmaria; so that he remembered well enough that he had put the signor and signora aboard the Ferruccio, but had no remembrance of having afterward taken the signora to Porto Venere.
If Palmer had questioned him calmly, he would soon have discovered that the man's ideas were not very clear on the latter point; but the American, notwithstanding his serious and impassive manner, was very irritable and very passionate. He believed that Thérèse had gone with Laurent, gone shamefacedly, afraid or unwilling to confess the truth to him. He was thoroughly convinced, and returned to the hotel, where he passed a terrible night.
We have not undertaken to tell the story of Richard Palmer. We have entitled our tale She and He, that is to say, Thérèse and Laurent. Of Palmer, therefore, we shall say no more than it is necessary to say to make it possible to understand the events in which he was involved, and we think that his character will be sufficiently explained by his conduct. Let us hasten to say simply this, that Richard was as ardent as he was romantic, that he had an abundance of pride, pride in the good and the beautiful, but that the strength of his character did not always come up to the idea he had formed of it, and that, while striving constantly to rise above human nature, he cherished a noble dream, but one probably impossible of realization in love.
He rose early, and walked by the shore of the bay, thinking seriously of suicide, from which he was turned aside, however, by a feeling of something like contempt for Thérèse; then the fatigue of a night of intense agitation asserted itself and gave him sensible advice. Thérèse was a woman, and he should not have subjected her to a hazardous trial. But since he had done so, since Thérèse, whom he had placed so high in his esteem, had been vanquished by a deplorable passion after her sacred promises, why, he must never believe in any woman, and no woman deserved the sacrifice of a good man's life. Palmer had progressed thus far when he saw a graceful black cutter drawing near the place where he stood, with a naval officer at the stern. The eight oarsmen who pulled the long and narrow craft swiftly through the smooth water tossed their white oars by way of salute, with military precision; the officer stepped ashore and walked toward Richard, whom he had recognized in the distance.
It was Captain Lawson, in command of the American frigate Union, which had been stationed in the bay for a year. It is common knowledge that the different maritime powers are accustomed to station war vessels, for months or even for years, all over the globe to safeguard their commercial interests.