She and he; Lavinia; Memoir

by George Sand

"Listen to me," said Palmer, evading the question, "and you will see that I have had, during the last few days, much rough experience that may well have made me lose my head. You will also understand why, having first known you when you were very young and when it was possible for me to think of marrying you, I let slip a happiness which I have never ceased to dream of and to regret. I was at that time the lover of a woman who has deceived me in a thousand ways. For ten years I considered myself in duty bound to keep her on her feet and shelter her. At last, she put the finishing-touch to her ingratitude and treachery, and I was able to leave her, to forget her, and to dispose of myself as I chose. But I fell in with that woman, whom I supposed to be in England, in Florence, just as Laurent was about to leave. Abandoned by a new lover who had taken my place, she desired and expected to recapture me: so many times before had she found me generous or weak! She wrote me a threatening letter, and, feigning an utterly absurd jealousy, she declared that she would come to insult you in my presence. I knew that she was a woman who would recoil from no scandal, and I would not for anything in the world have had you see her in one of her fits of frenzy. I could not persuade her not to appear on the scene, except by promising to have an explanation with her the same day. She was living in the same hotel where we were living with our sick man, and when Laurent's carriage was at the door, she was on hand, determined to make a scene. Her detestable and ridiculous plan was to exclaim before all the hotel people and the whole street that I shared my new mistress with Laurent de Fauvel. That is why I sent you away with him, and why I remained behind, in order to have done with that mad woman without compromising you, and without exposing you to the necessity of seeing her or listening to her. Now, do not say again that my purpose was to subject you to a test by leaving you alone with Laurent. I suffered enough on that account, God knows! don't reproach me! And when I thought of your having gone with him, all the demons of hell attacked me."

"And that is what I reproach you for," said Thérèse.

"Ah! what can you expect!" cried Palmer; "I have been so miserably deceived in my life! That wretched woman stirred up a whole world of bitterness and contempt in me."

"And that contempt overflowed on me!"

"Oh! don't say so, Thérèse!"

"But I, too, have been deceived," she rejoined, "and I believe in you none the less."

"Let us say no more about it, my love; I regret that I have been driven to tell you the story of my past. You will believe that it may react on my future, and that, like Laurent, I shall make you pay for the treachery with which I have been sated. Come, come, my dear Thérèse, let us have done with these depressing thoughts. This place you are in is enough to give one the blues. The boat is waiting; come and take up your quarters at Spezzia."

"No," said Thérèse, "I shall stay here."

"What? what does this mean? hard feeling between us?"

"No, no, my dear Dick," she replied, offering him her hand; "I can never be angry with you. Oh! I implore you, let our affection be ideally sincere; for my part, I will do all that it is possible for a trustful heart to do to that end; but I did not know that you were jealous, whereas you were and you admit it. Be sure that it is not in my power to avoid suffering keenly from your jealousy. It is so entirely opposed to what you promised me, that I cannot help asking myself whither we are going now, and why it was necessary that, on making my escape from a hell, I should enter a purgatory, when I aspired to naught save repose and solitude.—Not for myself alone do I dread these new tortures which seem to be brewing for me; if it were possible that in love one of the two should be happy while the other suffers, the path of self-sacrifice would be all marked out and easy to follow; but, as you see, that is not the case: I cannot have a moment's pain that you do not feel. So here am I, who sought to render my life inoffensive, in a fair way to ruin your life, and I am beginning to make a man unhappy! No, Palmer, believe me, we thought that we knew each other, but we did not. What attracted me in you was a trait which you have already lost—confidence. Don't you understand that, debased as I was, I needed that, and nothing else, in order to love you? If I should now accept your affection with its blemishes and weaknesses, with its doubts and tempests, would you not be justified in saying to yourself that I was influenced by selfish motives in marrying you? Oh! do not say that idea will never occur to you; it will occur to you in spite of yourself. I know too well how a person goes from one suspicion to another, and what a steep incline hurries us from a first disenchantment to humiliating repulsion! Now I, for my part, have drunk enough of that gall! I want no more of it, and I do not assume too much in saying I am no longer capable of undergoing what I have undergone; I told you so the very first day, and, although you may have forgotten it, I remember it. Let us put aside this idea of marriage," she added, "and remain friends. I retract my promise provisionally, until I can rely upon your esteem, such esteem as I supposed that I possessed. If you are not willing to submit to a trial, let us part at once. As for myself, I swear that I do not propose to owe anything to you, not even the most trivial service, while I am in my present position. I must tell you what that position is, for you must fully understand my purpose. I have board and lodging here on the strength of my word, for I am absolutely penniless, I gave all I had to Vicentino to pay the expenses of Laurent's journey; but it happens that I can make lace quicker and better than the women hereabout, and, pending the arrival of my money from Genoa, I can earn enough from day to day to pay my excellent landlady for the very frugal board with which she supplies me, if not to reward her. I am neither distressed nor humiliated by this state of things, and it must continue until my money arrives. Then I will see what it is best to do. Until then, return to Spezzia, and come to see me when you choose; I will make lace as we chat."