She rose. Her face wore a threatening look, and it was clear that her feelings of honour were now thoroughly roused. There was no longer any thought of fatigue or of a sprained foot. She walked straight out, and with such an angry mien that the poet, utterly crushed by what he had undergone, saw her depart without doing anything to stop her. She had been gone some minutes before he rushed off in the direction she had taken. But he did not find her. Whilst he was trying first one staircase and then another she had crossed the courtyard and jumped into a cab, which rapidly bore her, exulting and in ecstasy, to the Rue Murillo.
Whilst René was employed in seeking means to get her to reconsider her hasty decision he would have no time to reflect upon the rapidity with which his Madonna had led him to make, and had herself made, a declaration of love. So much for her exultation. The recollection of the poet's words, of his face beaming with love, and his eyes eloquent with passion, enchanted her as with a promise of most perfect happiness. So much for her ecstasy. She was already drawing up her plans for the future. He would write to her, of course—but to his first two letters he would get no answer. On receipt of his third or fourth letter she would pretend to believe in his threats of suicide and drop upon him at home—to save him! Just as her thoughts had carried her as far as this, chance, which is sometimes as sarcastic as an ill-tempered friend, made her eyes fall upon Baron Desforges walking along the Boulevard Haussmann. He was probably going to her house to ask her to lunch out with him. She looked at the pretty little gold watch that hung from her bracelet and saw that it was only twenty minutes past twelve. She would be home in good time, and, thoroughly pleased with her morning's outing, she took a keen delight in pulling down the little window-curtain as she passed quite close to the Baron without being seen.
CHAPTER XII
CRUEL TO BE KIND
When René Vincy had got as far as the Museum gates without finding Suzanne a crowd of contradictory ideas burst so suddenly upon him that he was lifted, metaphorically speaking, off his feet. Suzanne had not been mistaken in her calculations, the double blow she had dealt the young poet paralysing all his powers of analysis and reflection. Had she simply told him that she loved him he would probably have opened his eyes and perceived the striking contrast between the angelic attitude assumed by Suzanne and the bluntness of this declaration. He would have had to acknowledge that the angel's wings were very loosely attached if they could be so easily laid aside. But instead of committing the mistake of laying them aside the angel had spread her bright pinions out wide and disappeared. 'She loves me, and will never forgive me for having dragged that confession from her,' said René to himself.
He fully believed that she had gone away resolved never to see him again, and all his thoughts became concentrated upon that idea. How could he hope to shake the resolution of a creature so sincere that she had been unable to conceal her feelings, so saint-like that she had immediately regarded her involuntary confession as a crime? And René again saw her before him with terror written on her face and tears starting from her eyes. Lost in these thoughts, he walked straight before him, unable to bear the sight of a human being, even were it Emilie, his dear confidante. Hailing a cab, he told the driver to take him to Saint-Cloud. This was the first name that rose to his lips, because Suzanne had described to him two fêtes at which she had been present in the palace when quite a girl. On getting out of the cab he felt a savage delight in plunging into the denuded wood. A pale February sun lit up the bleak wintry landscape and the dry leaves cracked under his tread as he strode along. Now and then, through a network of blackened trunks and naked branches, he could see the dreary ruins of the old palace and the blue waters of the little lake upon which, in bygone days, Madame Moraines had seen the unhappy Prince, since killed at the Cape.
The impressions produced by his surroundings and by these memories of a tragic past did not distract the poet's thoughts from the one idea that hypnotised him, as it were—by what means he could conquer the will of this woman whom he loved, who loved him in return, and whom he was determined to see again at all costs. What was to be done? Call at her house and demand admittance? Inflict his presence upon her by frequenting the houses she visited? Waylay her at street corners and at theatres? No—he felt that he could not do anything that might furnish Suzanne with a single reason for loving him less. It was to her that he looked for everything, even for the right of beholding her. The memory of the ideals he had cherished in the first years of his manhood and the purer years of his youth inspired him with serious thoughts of doing absolutely nothing to approach her, of obeying her as Dante would have obeyed Beatrice, Petrarch his Laura, Cino da Pistoia his Sylvia—those noble poets of the ages of chivalry who gave voice to the lofty conceptions of an imaginative and holy love full of ideal devotion. He had so often dipped with delight into the Vita Nuova and devoured the sonnets these dreamers wrote their lady-loves. But how could such literature, of almost ascetic purity, hold its own against the poison of sensuous passion which, unknown to him, Suzanne's beauty and surroundings had instilled into his blood? Obey her! No—that he could not do. Fresh ideas welled up within him, and he sought to calm his overwrought nerves by exercise, the only palliative for the terrible mental agonies he was suffering.
Night fell—a wintry night preceded by a short, dismal twilight. Worn out by the excess of emotion, René at last decided to adopt the only course that could be put into immediate execution—that of writing to Suzanne. On reaching the village of Saint-Cloud he entered a café, and there, on a beer-stained blotting-pad, with a spluttering pen, disgusted with the paper he used and the place he was in, disturbed by the noise of billiard balls and blinded by the smoke of the players' pipes, he wrote, under the insolent gaze of a dirty waiter, first one letter, then another, and finally a third. How horrified he would have been had Suzanne seen him sitting there! But, on the other hand, he felt that he could not wait until he got home to tell her what he had to say, and in the following terms, that would have greatly surprised Baron Desforges had he read them and been told that they were addressed to his Suzette of the Rue du Mont-Thabor, he gave vent to his excessive grief:
'I have written you several letters, madame, and torn them up, and I am not sure that I shall send you this one, so great is my fear of displeasing you by the crude expression of sentiments which I am sure would not displease you if you really knew them. Alas! we cannot bare our hearts, and will you believe me when I tell you that the feelings which prompt me to write this letter have nothing in them that would offend the most sensitive and pure-minded woman—not even yourself, madame? But you know so little of me, and the feeling which, with the divine sincerity of a soul that abhors concealment, you have permitted me to see, has been such a surprise that, by the time I am writing these lines, it has probably been already banished and effaced from your heart for ever. If that be so, do not answer this letter—do not even read it. I shall know what to make of your silence, and will bow to your decision. I shall suffer cruelly, but my gratitude to you will be eternal for having procured me the absolute and unalloyed delight of seeing the Ideal of all my youthful dreams in the flesh. For such happiness I can never be sufficiently grateful, even were I to die of grief through having met you only to lose you. You crossed my path, and by your existence alone you have proved that my ideal was no myth. However hard my lot may one day be, this dear, divine memory will be to me a talisman, a magic charm.
'But, unworthy as I am, should the feeling that I read in your eyes this morning—how beautiful they were at that moment, and how I shall always remember them!—should, I say, that feeling conquer your virtuous indignation, should that sympathy with which you reproached yourself still live in your heart, should you remain, in spite of yourself, the woman who wept when she heard me confess my love and adoration—then I conjure you, madame, to wrest some pity from that sympathy. Before confirming the sentence to which I am quite ready to submit—that terrible sentence never to see you more—let me ask you to put me to one single proof. My request is so humble, and so subservient to your will. Hear it, I beg. If I have guessed rightly from the all too short and fleeting conversations we have had, your life, though apparently so complete, is devoid of many things. Have you never felt the need of having near you a friend to whom you could confide your troubles, a friend who would never speak to you again as he once dared to do, but who would be content to breathe the same air as yourself, and to share your joys and sorrows—a friend on whom you could rely, whom you could take or leave at your sweet will—in a word, a thing of your own, whose very thoughts would be yours? Such a friend, with no desire beyond that of serving you, regretting only that he has not always done so, and entertaining no criminal hopes whatever, is what I dreamt of becoming before that interview in which my feelings were stronger than my will. And I feel that I love you sufficiently to realise that dream even now. Nay, do not shake your head. I am sincere in my entreaties, sincere in my determination never to utter a word which will make you repent your forbearance if you decide to put me to this proof. Will it not be time enough to banish me from your presence when you think me in danger of breaking the promise I now make?