And yet something was lacking, and an indefinable depression of spirits had taken possession of her since she had dwelt upon that livid-hued cliff of Porto Venere. It was as if she were held aloof from life, which, at times, was not without a charm for her; but there was a touch of gloom and dejection in her feelings, which was unnatural to her and which she could not explain to herself.
It was impossible for her to do what Laurent asked with regard to Palmer; she wrote of him briefly in the highest terms, and conveyed the most affectionate messages from him; but she could not make up her mind to make him a confidant of their relations. She felt disinclined to divulge her real situation, that is to say, to confide to him plans concerning which she had not absolutely made up her own mind. And even if she had decided, would it not have been too early to say to Laurent: "You are still suffering? so much the worse for you! I am to be married!"
The money that she expected did not arrive for a fortnight. She made lace during that fortnight with a perseverance that drove Palmer to despair. When, at last, she found herself in possession of a few bank-notes, she paid her kind landlady handsomely, and indulged in a sail around the bay with Palmer; but she desired to remain at Porto Venere a little longer, although she could not explain why she clung to that dismal and wretched hamlet.
There are phases of the mind which one feels much more distinctly than one can describe them. In her letters to her mother, Thérèse succeeded in pouring out her whole heart.
"I am still here," she wrote in July, "notwithstanding the intense heat. I have attached myself like a shell-fish to this rock where no tree has ever thought of growing, but where brisk and revivifying breezes blow. The climate is severe but healthy, and the constant view of the sea, which formerly I could not endure, has become, in a certain sense, necessary to me. The country which lies behind me, and which I can reach by boat in less than two hours, was fascinating in the spring. On walking inland from the head of the bay, two or three leagues from the shore, you come across some most peculiar spots. There is one place where the ground was all torn up by earthquakes Heaven knows how many years ago, where the surface presents most extraordinary irregularities. There is a series of hills of red sand, covered with pines and heather, rising one above another, with natural paths of considerable width on their summits, which paths end abruptly on the brink of sheer precipices and leave you sorely perplexed as to how you are to go on. If you retrace your steps and lose your way in the labyrinth of narrow paths trodden by the herds, you come to other precipices, and Palmer and I have passed whole hours on those wooded hill-tops, unable to find the path by which we had come. Beyond these hills is a vast expanse of tilled land, broken here and there, with something like regularity, by similar curious excrescences, and beyond that vast expanse stretches the blue immensity of the sea. The horizon seems boundless in that direction. Toward the north and east are the Maritime Alps, whose sharply outlined peaks were still covered with snow when I arrived here.
"But it is all over with the great fields of wild roses and the trees of white heather which gave forth so sweet and delicious a perfume in the early days of May. Then it was an earthly paradise: the woods were full of Alpine ebony-trees, of Judas-trees, of fragrant genesta, and laburnum gleaming like gold amid the black clumps of myrtle. Now everything is burned, the pines exhale an acrid odor, the fields of lupin, lately so fragrant and so bright with blossoms, display naught but shorn stalks, as black as if they had been overrun by fire; the crops are harvested, the ground smokes in the noonday sun, and one must rise early in order to walk without discomfort. So that, as it takes at least four hours, whether by boat or on foot, to reach the wooded part of the country, the return journey is far from pleasant, and all the heights on the immediate shores of the bay, magnificent as they are in shape and in the views they afford, are so bare, that it is cooler at Porto Venere and on Isola Palmaria.
"And then there is a scourge at Spezzia: I mean the mosquitoes, bred by the stagnant waters of a small pond near by and of the vast marshes, possession of which the hand of the husbandman disputes with the waters of the sea. Here there is no water on shore to annoy us; we have only the sea and the bare rock, consequently no insects, and not a blade of grass; but such golden and purple clouds, such sublime tempests, such solemn calms! The sea is a picture which changes in color and feeling at every moment of the day and night. There are chasms here filled with uproars of which you cannot conceive the terrifying variety; the sobbing of despair, the imprecations of hell, seem to have appointed a meeting there, and, from my little window, at night, I hear those voices of the abyss, sometimes roaring a nameless bacchanalian refrain, sometimes singing wild hymns, awe-inspiring even in their mildest form.
"And I love all this now, I who always cherished rustic tastes and a love for tranquil little green nooks. Is it because in that fatal love-affair I became accustomed to storms and to a craving for tumult? Perhaps so. We women are such strange creatures! I must confess to you, my own beloved, that many days passed before I could accustom myself to the absence of my daily torment. I did not know what to do with myself, having nobody to wait upon and nurse. Palmer would have done well to be a little overbearing; but observe my injustice: as soon as he showed signs of being so, I rebelled, and now that he has become as kind as an angel once more, I don't know how to deal with the horrible ennui that assails me now and again. Woe is me! that is the truth.—And must I tell you? No, it is better that I should not find out myself, or if I do, that I should not grieve you with my madness. I intended to write of nothing but the country, my walks, my occupations, and my dull chamber under the roof, or rather on the roof, where I take pleasure in being alone, unknown, forgotten by the world, with no duties, no customers, no business, no other work than that which it pleases me to do. I get little children to pose for me, and I amuse myself arranging them in groups; but all this will not satisfy you, and if I don't tell you where I stand with regard to my heart and my desires, you will be more anxious than ever. Very well; it is a fact that I have fully decided to marry Palmer, and that I love him; but I have not yet been able to make up my mind to appoint a time for the marriage; I fear for him and for myself the morrow of that indissoluble union. I have passed the age of illusions, and after such a life as mine one has had a hundred years of experience and consequently of terrors! I believed that I was absolutely severed from Laurent, and so, in fact, I was, at Genoa, on the day that he told me I was his scourge, the assassin of his genius and his glory. But now I no longer feel so entirely independent of him; since his sickness, his repentance, and the letters he has written me during these last two months, letters adorable in their gentleness and resignation, I feel that a solemn duty still binds me to that ill-fated child, and I am reluctant to wound him by a complete desertion. And yet that is just what is likely to happen on the day after my marriage. Palmer has had a moment's jealousy, and that jealousy may return on the day that he has the right to say to me: I wish it! I no longer love Laurent, my beloved, I swear it, I would rather die than love him; but on the day that Palmer seeks to break the friendship which has survived that unhappy passion in my heart, perhaps I shall cease to love Palmer.
"I have told him all this; he understands it, for he prides himself on being a great philosopher, and he persists in believing what seems fair and right to him to-day will never bear a different aspect in his eyes. I believe it also, and yet I ask him to allow the days to pass, without counting them, and without disturbing our present calm and pleasant situation. I have attacks of spleen, it is true; but Palmer is not naturally very keen-sighted, and I can conceal them from him. I can wear before him what Laurent used to call my sick bird's face, without frightening him. If my future suffering is limited to this, that I may have irritated nerves and gloomy thoughts without his noticing it or being affected by it, we can live together as happily as possible. If he should begin to scrutinize my absent-minded glances, to seek to pierce the veil of my reveries, to do, in short, ali the cruel, childish things with which Laurent used to overwhelm me in my hours of moral weakness, I feel that I have not the strength to struggle longer, and I should prefer that he would kill me at once; it would be done with the sooner."
About the same time, Thérèse received from Laurent so ardent a letter that she was alarmed by it. It was no longer the enthusiasm of friendship, but of love. The silence that Thérèse had maintained concerning her relations with Palmer had restored the artist's hope of renewing his intimacy with her. He could not live without her; he had made vain efforts to return to a life of pleasure. Disgust had seized him by the throat.