A Love Crime

by Paul Bourget

The cab went slowly along the streets, and every moment Helen said to herself: "Shall I see him again?" She was now facing the irresistible thought, the mere appearance of which had hurried her to the immediate quest of Armand when she had barely emerged from her horrible delirium. She must be able to cry to this man that he had ruined her. Yes, she must do this, and he must at last believe her and understand the infamy of his behaviour. She would say to her former lover:

"I am Monsieur de Varades's mistress, and you are the cause of it—you, your injustice, and your desertion." And how could the man help believing her when she went on to say to him: "Before knowing you I was pure."

This indisputable proof of the genuineness of her love, this proof which she had so greatly desired, she now held fast, and she would not let it go. Would not her present sincerity be a guarantee of her past sincerity? If she acknowledged the guilt of to-day, what motive of modesty, hypocrisy or interest could prompt her to deny that of yesterday? This strange reasoning appeared to her to carry with it a sort of obviousness from which Armand could not escape. He would believe her, and this should be her revenge. "But how will he receive me? Yet, what does it matter? I will spit my misery and my shame, and his responsibility for them, into his face."

Her distempered soul found relief in the audacity of this plan. She hated Armand now, she trembled lest he should be absent, lest he should escape her. "Faster," she said several times to the driver. Would she ever arrive soon enough? She recognised the smallest details of the road—the road traversed with such lightness of heart the last time that she had visited him! And the scene which she had been obliged to go through showed in her mind still more terrible and clear. During that scene she had been choked with indignation. She had been unable to make any reply. He could not have believed her then, but he should believe her now. She would show him what had been the drama of her existence for months past. She would at last lay bare all her heart's hidden wounds. She would make him touch with his finger the work of death that he had wrought, and she would depart, leaving him, if he had any honour left, at least this hideous remorse, this poisoned arrow in his conscience. Then she thought: "In what condition shall I find him. What has he been doing since our rupture?"

At last the vehicle stopped at the corner of the Rue Lincoln and the Champs-Élysées. In two minutes Helen had gained the door of Armand's house. How her voice shook as she asked the porter: "Is Monsieur de Querne at home?" How completely the affirmative reply upset her. She hesitated for a second in spite of the resolve she had taken; then she climbed the staircase with deliberate foot. Her hand pressed the bell without hesitation. A servant's footstep became audible. The door opened. It was no longer possible to draw back.

What had Armand been doing during that period in which she had been in the throes of despair? Had she known, even when in front of the open door, disgust would perhaps have restrained her and drawn her back. She would have fled in horror from the threshold of the abode to which she had come in order to defend, not her person, not her happiness, but the truth of her former love, as we defend the memory of the dead.

The young man had spoken the truth in his note to Chazel. A ten days' journey had brought him to an estate which he possessed close to Nantes—the De Querne family came from this town—and he had stayed there to arrange some business respecting farm rents. Then he had returned to Paris, persuaded that the rupture was a final one, seeing that during those ten days Helen had not hazarded any attempt at reconciliation.

By a contradiction in his nature, too usual with him to cause him astonishment, these early moments had been melancholy ones. He was one of those men who are moved by memories after having remained nearly indifferent to the reality, who become enamoured of the women whom they cast off, just as they regret the places of which they tired when living in them—a restless race, who know nothing of the present but its weariness, and for whom the past assumes a unique and affecting charm from the mere fact that it is the past.

Armand had never loved poor Helen; he applauded himself for breaking with her as for an action that was most reasonable, regard being had to his own interests, and withal exceedingly meritorious, seeing that he had responded to Alfred's generosity with similar generosity; but neither the grounds of interest nor those of merit could prevent him from thinking with painful emotions of the sweet and dainty mistress who after all had never deceived him except for the purpose of pleasing him the more. To be sure he doubted less than ever that she had had that first intrigue with De Varades at Bourges, of which Lucien Rieume had spoken to him. What more evident token could there have been of this than the manner in which she had received the accusation? Immediately she had bowed her head, and had, as it were, collapsed beneath the insult.

But even though he had had two, three, four predecessors, by what right had he been indignant against her? Had she not displayed during their connexion all the loyalty of which such amours are capable? Had she ever manifested so much as a trace of coquetry towards any one? Had she made him jealous for but a single hour, with jealousy such as women of the world, more abandoned in this than abandoned women themselves, do not hesitate to inflict upon a lover, in order to gratify the pettiest impulse of vanity, to please a man who has some claim or other to celebrity or who has merely been noticed by another woman. No, Helen had been perfect towards him. The consciousness of this pleased and at the same time tormented him, for, if she flattered his pride, she also rendered more present to him the faded charm of a love which he had not been able to enjoy at the time when he dreaded its obligations.