He found it impossible to answer this question. When a man loves, he conceives happiness as coming from the woman he loves, and how could he imagine a single minute of happiness as coming from Helen now? He might return to Paris, try to renew relations with her, carry her off, take her to a land where everything should be strange to them, and where they might forget! He felt that the worst follies committed for her would remove nothing of his present anguish. Therefore he did not love her.
But then, why this cruel throbbing of the heart at the mere thought of the act to which despair had led her? Why this continual anxiety which caused him at the sight of Chazel's letters to pause with trembling hand before opening them, as though he were about to read some fresh intrigue that had been at last discovered by the unhappy man? Why was he unable to take a book, or sit down to table, or go out, or come in, without having the spectre of this woman beside him. Yet he had not killed her, he had not shed her blood with his hands. Why this unwearied recurrence to their mutual relations with the everlasting reflection as a despairing background: "If I had known?" If he had known the worth of what she gave him when she was giving it to him, if he had felt as he was feeling now when she used to come and rest so tenderly, so sincerely, upon his heart, if he had had that in his heart towards her which was in it now, then—then he would have loved her—he would have loved her!
That impotence to arrive at complete emotion, the martyrdom of egotism to which he had been a victim, his lack of feeling, his barren rancour, his vexation of spirit in solitude and distress, all his moral miseries would have been brought to an end if he had had a simpler heart, if he had understood, if he had believed! He believed in her now, and it was too late. He understood her when she had ceased to be pure. He loved her when she had endured pollution from the endearments of another. He was discovering that he had passed by the side of happiness, now that the enchanted palace which he had traversed without seeing it was closed to him for ever. He was beginning to cherish her, like one dead to whom he could never speak more. But one that is dead remains sheltered from pollutions, and Helen? "All the perfumes of Arabia," he repeated, rubbing his hand like the blood-stained queen. The weight was again on his heart. How could he ever remove it?
But what if this remorse were merely a mirage fostered by absence? When children are afraid of a dim form at night, what remedy does their father adopt? He leads them to the object of their terror, and by touching it cures their panic. What if he, too, tried this remedy? What if he saw Helen again, and with his own eyes measured the evil that he had wrought her? "It is the only step that is left to try," he said to himself one day, and he abruptly resolved to return to Paris. He had spent more than six weeks in preying thus upon his heart.
[CHAPTER XI]
What a charming and coquettish summer-like Paris Armand passed through in going from the Rue Lincoln to the Rue de La Rochefoucauld on the day after his return! It was two o'clock; a slight breeze was quivering among the green leaves of the trees in the Champs Élysées, and the carriages were driving gaily along. There was a light such as makes all women pretty, but he had darkness within.
His memories rose from the pavement to form his melancholy escort, and especially those of that cold winter night when he had passed on foot through the same avenue on the eve of their first secret meeting. An entire year had not passed away since then. How swift is time, and how it carries away chances of happiness with it! Certainly, he had been mournful even to death on that night, but not with the same sadness as to-day, and yet he recognised that to-day's sadness was of higher worth than the other. He would no longer act as he had done. Had, then, his remorse purified while torturing him? Is there, then, a source of ennoblement in sorrow? But of what use is this nobleness if it only serves to show what a criminal use we have made of our powers?
He passed in front of the Marché de la Madeleine, and inhaled on the warm wind the aroma of the bouquets and plants. He recollected that the previous winter he used to bring violets to his mistress. On each occasion she used to place one of these violets between the leaves of some favourite book. There was one that was quite filled with these love relics, one that she had lent one day with these words written in her own handwriting on the first page: "Take care of my little flowers." It was a childlike and charming token of the tender carefulness which she bestowed upon the smallest detail of their mutual romance! And what had he made of this passionate tenderness with which he had inspired her but a means of perdition?
At last he was in front of the door of the little house. He rang, and had scarcely entered the narrow courtyard when a joyful voice cried: "Monsieur de Querne! Monsieur de Querne!" and little Henry Chazel, who was making ready to go out with his nurse, ran up to him to welcome him. The child's reception increased still more the melancholy of his return. Armand was pained by encountering the brightness of affection in the eyes of the son of the woman whom he had tortured and the man whom he had betrayed.
"Is your father at home?" he asked.