A Love Crime

by Paul Bourget

Helen would have blushed with indignation and shame had she been told of the part played by these trifles in her conjugal aversion. But is not the life of the heart, like physical life, a summing of the infinitely little? Moreover, these minute facts, which formed a mass in their totality, symbolised an essential ground for dissociation between the husband and wife, namely, the absolute distinction between the minds of both. Helen's instruction had not been of a very solid kind; she had not been fortified by that sum of positive learning which alone is able to balance intense development of thought. Thus, all her reading as a girl and as a young woman had been directed towards those works of imagination for which Alfred professed the innocent contempt of a scientist whose literary culture is almost non-existent. It appeared extraordinary to him, and he used ingenuously to say so, that in an age of chemistry, steam, and electricity, intelligent beings should occupy themselves with the composition of such trash. Hence, in conversation, husband and wife had not a single opinion in common. Alfred was quite sensible that an abyss, growing constantly more impassable, was yawning between Helen and himself, and he was pained by it, but in the way that he would have been pained by an incomprehensible misfortune.

"What does she want to make her happy?" he would ask himself, and then he would in thought draw up a list of the conditions for happiness that were realised about his wife: "We have money, and a dear child; she wished to live in Paris, and here we are; I give her every freedom; I have the most absolute confidence in her; I do her honour by my position; everything smiles upon us and flatters us—and she is not happy!"

No, Helen had not been happy, and on the morning of this winter day, which was to prove to her a date that could never be forgotten, she felt her whole melancholy past surging back upon her. A thousand scenes showed themselves, and she discerned that through them all she had been advancing towards the hour at which, as she believed, her true life would begin. Often at Bourges, while walking with her husband along the Seraucourt promenade, she had asked herself whether she should ever, ever be acquainted with happiness, with the warm radiancy within her of a light that might illumine the cold darkness in which she languished. Her husband conversed with her about his plans, his college life, and his companions, with the calmness which he displayed in all matters, holding it a principle that a man should look at life on its good side, should be submissive, and accept.

These talks prostrated her with sadness. She sighed vaguely after an infinitude of emotion which she conceived to be possible, and the tokens, the reflection of which she discovered in a few phrases in the novels of her reading when they treated of love. Of all the emotions of life this was the only one with which she was unacquainted. She had been a daughter, and had loved her father, but her affection had been cruelly deceived. She had been a sister, but little Adèle, Monsieur de Vaivre's daughter by his second marriage, resembled her mother, and Helen had never been able to become unreservedly attached to her. She had had friends, but it had always seemed to her that these friends did not feel as she did, and she had never ventured to speak to them of what touched her most closely, of what was dearest to her heart. She would have been pious had not the sight of her step-mother's piety given her an aversion to religious practices which, as she saw only too clearly, might be made a justification for the worst egotism. She was a mother, and she loved her son; but, as formerly, in the case of her little sister, a resemblance checked her in her feeling. Little Henry recalled Alfred too much at certain moments.

Then it was, when she had fathomed the bankruptcy of her first youth, that her imagination pictured to her the dawn of a reparative feeling; and what could this mysterious feeling be if it were not that one with which she was unacquainted, and the sweetness, power and happiness of which were celebrated by all?

"But no," she said to herself, "it is a crime to love when one is not free."

Then she recalled conversations heard on her friends' "days" at Bourges, and the manner in which people spoke of a doctor's wife who had eloped with a young Conseiller de Préfecture. And then she met with men who had so little resemblance to the image that she had formed of him whom she might have loved! She remembered the painful surprise which had been caused her by that very Monsieur de Varades, of whom De Querne had heard. She had believed in the genuineness of his sympathy. He came to see her. They used to have a little music together. Then, had he not offered violence to her one evening when they were alone in the house? She had said nothing to her husband from dread of a scandal and a duel; but she had never received the young officer again when alone. She did not suspect that he had revenged himself upon her by saying that she had been his mistress.

By what familiarities had she challenged the audacity of this garrison Don Juan? Yet she was not a coquette. The feeling that sprang up within her in the presence of a stranger was rather an apprehension of offence than a desire to please. She had been as little of a coquette with Armand de Querne. If there was a man whom she would have refrained from approaching with a desire to seduce, it was assuredly he. Her husband had so often extolled him to her.

"When we were at college, Armand and I," or, "Armand used to say to me," or, "Armand wrote to me." And so on.

Helen had anticipated another and a more pretentious Alfred. She had told herself that some day, if ever she left the country, she would be obliged to endure in her home the presence of this friend, who would be a hostile judge, and would raise fresh difficulties between her husband and herself. If they were separated for so many reasons the one from the other, her own reserve and Alfred's good nature at least prevented the separation from breaking out in scenes and disputes. What would be the outcome of the intrusion of Alfred's old chum into their home, she almost anxiously asked herself on the occasion of her first visit to Paris.