CHAPTER XXXIV.
WHEN MANHOOD IS LOST WOMAN'S TIME IS COME.
In the misery of awakening to a consciousness of existing facts, Leonard could see no possibility of extrication from the bog of degradation into which he had fallen. With excellent intentions on the part of his pastors and masters, he had been trained to dishonest depreciation of his own strength, and he was now without confidence or courage. His days had been without guile, and the unaccustomed aspect of guilt overwhelmed him with hopeless terror. The precepts instilled from infancy thundered direful threats, dwelling lingeringly on the curses of Omnipotence; and in the moment of the acquirement of the dread knowledge that he had been self-deceived, that the Grace of God had not been his, that he, like other doomed and defrauded sinners, had mistaken those "common operations of the spirit," that even non-elect may have, for the effectual call addressed only to the few chosen from eternity, and which to all others is a monstrous mockery—in the moment of this awful revelation he felt all the suffocating horror of that which he had taught as truth: that for the weak there is no Father, no path but the path of evil.
The woman looked upon the exhibition of misery thus presented with compassion tinged with scorn, yet with bewilderment. She had never seen a sinner like this before; but instinctively she felt that when manhood is lost woman's time has come.
"Voyons, chéri," she said, "what is it all about?" and she drew his head to her bosom.
He grasped at the offered sympathy as a starving man may grasp a loaf. The picture he presented was not adorable, but there was truth in it, if, also, some unconscious comedy; and her compassion was not without sincerity, though his broken story was of less interest to her than the simplicity of the narrator. She felt that she had been fashioned fit for this man's needs; and while she soothed him, his spirits rose a little, and he experienced a sort of satisfaction that, since he had taken this direction, he had gone amazingly far. See, now, what Natalie had done!
They rescued Berthe's clothes and left the boarding-house, and were soon quartered in a small French hotel, bathed and well dressed. The surroundings were cheerful; the lunch table, with its bright glassware and silver, white napery and bottle of champagne in its bucket of ice, was inviting; the woman was gay, yet still compassionate and tender. With the first glass of wine Leonard felt actually happy; and as he sat opposite the well-clad woman with the great dark eyes, now languid and inviting, now bright with challenge, and listened to the prattle, which women of her nation can make so engaging, he, looking back upon the past week, was enraptured by the contrast. Of such as she really was he had no perception; he could no more estimate her character than could the veriest college freshman, weary with knowledge of the world. Her brightness of intellect was apparent, and there was neither coarseness nor ignorance of amenities in her bearing. She had said to the mistress of the boarding-house that she was a "lady," and she fitted sufficiently the ordinary acceptation of a much-abused term. She told her story (with the essential suppressions and variations), and he saw in her one who had suffered from the injustice of the world. She admitted being in the last stress of poverty, and confessed to having suffered actual hunger, thanking him, with the first sheen of tears in her eyes, for rescuing her clothes from the clutches of the hawk landlady.
All these confidences, sweetened by moderate draughts of champagne—for Berthe preached moderation, and economy as well—insensibly disposed the man to further confidences of his own, and she listened eagerly to the tale, of which she had heard disjointed fragments in his first outbreak of despair.
"It is all plain, chéri" was her comment. "Mademoiselle—I mean your wife—never loved you."