Fearing that they might be overheard and in order to keep him at a distance, she had been speaking as though to a friend. But her lover"s sadness broke down her reserve.
"No, I love you... . I shall always love you."
The simplicity with which she said this and her sudden tenderness of tone revived Desnoyers" hopes.
"And the other one?" he asked anxiously.
Upon receiving her reply, it seemed to him as though something had just pa.s.sed across the sun, veiling its light temporarily. It was as though a cloud had drifted over the land and over his thoughts, enveloping them in an unbearable chill.
"I love him, too."
She said it with a look that seemed to implore pardon, with the sad sincerity of one who has given up lying and weeps in foreseeing the injury that the truth must inflict.
He felt his hard wrath suddenly dwindling like a crumbling mountain. Ah, Marguerite! His voice was tremulous and despairing. Could it be possible that everything between these two was going to end thus simply? Were her former vows mere lies? ... They had been attracted to each other by an irresistible affinity in order to be together forever, to be one... .
And now, suddenly hardened by indifference, were they to drift apart like two unfriendly bodies? ... What did this absurdity about loving him at the same time that she loved her former husband mean, anyway?
Marguerite hung her head, murmuring desperately:
"You are a man, I am a woman. You would never understand me, no matter what I might say. Men are not able to comprehend certain of our mysteries... . A woman would be better able to appreciate the complexity."
Desnoyers felt that he must know his fate in all its cruelty. She might speak without fear. He felt strong enough to bear the blow... . What had Laurier said when he found that he was being so tenderly cared for by Marguerite? ...
"He does not know who I am... . He believes me to be a war-nurse, like the rest, who pities him seeing him alone and blind with no relatives to write to him or visit him... . At certain times, I have almost suspected that he guesses the truth. My voice, the touch of my hands made him shiver at first, as though with an unpleasant sensation. I have told him that I am a Beigian lady who has lost her loved ones and is alone in the world. He has told me his life story very sketchily, as if he desired to forget a hated past... . Never one disagreeable word about his former wife. There are nights when I think that he knows me, that he takes advantage of his blindness in order to prolong his feigned ignorance, and that distresses me. I long for him to recover his sight, for the doctors to save that doubtful eye--and yet at the same time, I feel afraid. What will he say when he recognizes me? ... But no; it is better that he should see, no matter what may result. You cannot understand my anxiety, you cannot know what I am suffering."
She was silent for an instant, trying to regain her self-control, again tortured with the agony of her soul.
"Oh, the war!" she resumed. "What changes in our life! Two months ago, my present situation would have appeared impossible, unimaginable... .
I caring for my husband, fearing that he would discover my ident.i.ty and leave me, yet at the same time, wishing that he would recognize me and pardon me... . It is only one week that I have been with him. I disguise my voice when I can, and avoid words that may reveal the truth ... but this cannot keep up much longer. It is only in novels that such painful situations turn out happily."
Doubt suddenly overwhelmed her.
"I believe," she continued, "that he has recognized me from the first.
... He is silent and feigns ignorance because he despises me ...
because he can never bring himself to pardon me. I have been so bad!
... I have wronged him so!"...
She was recalling the long and reflective silences of the wounded man after she had dropped some imprudent words. After two days of submission to her care, he had been somewhat rebellious, avoiding going out with her for a walk. Because of his blind helplessness, and comprehending the uselessness of his resistance, he had finally yielded in pa.s.sive silence.
"Let him think what he will!" concluded Marguerite courageously. "Let him despise me! I am here where I ought to be. I need his forgiveness, but if he does not pardon me, I shall stay with him just the same.
... There are moments when I wish that he may never recover his sight, so that he may always need me, so that I may pa.s.s my life at his side, sacrificing everything for him."
"And I?" said Desnoyers.
Marguerite looked at him with clouded eyes as though she were just awaking. It was true--and the other one? ... Kindled by the proposed sacrifice which was to be her expiation, she had forgotten the man before her.
"You!" she said after a long pause. "You must leave me... . Life is not what we have thought it. Had it not been for the war, we might, perhaps, have realized our dream, but now! ... Listen carefully and try to understand. For the remainder of my life, I shall carry the heaviest burden, and yet at the same time it will be sweet, since the more it weighs me down the greater will my atonement be. Never will I leave this man whom I have so grievously wronged, now that he is more alone in the world and will need protection like a child. Why do you come to share my fate? How could it be possible for you to live with a nurse constantly at the side of a blind and worthy man whom we would constantly offend with our pa.s.sion? ... No, it is better for us to part. Go your way, alone and untrammelled. Leave me; you will meet other women who will make you more happy than I. Yours is the temperament that finds new pleasures at every step."
She stood firmly to her decision. Her voice was calm, but back of it trembled the emotion of a last farewell to a joy which was going from her forever. The man would be loved by others ... and she was giving him up! ... But the n.o.ble sadness of the sacrifice restored her courage. Only by this renunciation could she expiate her sins.
Julio dropped his eyes, vanquished and perplexed. The picture of the future outlined by Marguerite terrified him. To live with her as a nurse taking advantage of her patient"s blindness would be to offer him fresh insult every day... . Ah, no! That would be villainy, indeed! He was now ashamed to recall the malignity with which, a little while before, he had regarded this innocent unfortunate. He realized that he was powerless to contend with him. Weak and helpless as he was sitting there on the garden bench, he was stronger and more deserving of respect than Julio Desnoyers with all his youth and elegance. The victim had amounted to something in his life; he had done what Julio had not dared to do.
This sudden conviction of his inferiority made him cry out like an abandoned child, "What will become of me?" ...
Marguerite, too--contemplating the love which was going from her forever, her vanished hopes, the future illumined by the satisfaction of duty fulfilled but monotonous and painful--cried out:
"And I... . What will become of me?" ...
As though he had suddenly found a solution which was reviving his courage, Desnoyers said:
"Listen, Marguerite: I can read your soul. You love this man, and you do well. He is superior to me, and women are always attracted by superiority... . I am a coward. Yes, do not protest, I am a coward with all my youth, with all my strength. Why should you not have been impressed by the conduct of this man! ... But I will atone for past wrongs. This country is yours, Marguerite; I will fight for it. Do not say no... ."
And moved by his hasty heroism, he outlined the plan more definitely. He was going to be a soldier. Soon she would hear him well spoken of.
His idea was either to be stretched on the battlefield in his first encounter, or to astound the world by his bravery. In this way the impossible situation would settle itself--either the oblivion of death or glory.
"No, no!" interrupted Marguerite in an anguished tone. "You, no! One is enough... . How horrible! You, too, wounded, mutilated forever, perhaps dead! ... No, you must live. I want you to live, even though you might belong to another... . Let me know that you exist, let me see you sometimes, even though you may have forgotten me, even though you may pa.s.s me with indifference, as if you did not know me."
In this outburst her deep love for him rang true--her heroic and inflexible love which would accept all penalties for herself, if only the beloved one might continue to live.
But then, in order that Julio might not feel any false hopes, she added:--"Live; you must not die; that would be for me another torment.
... But live without me. No matter how much we may talk about it, my destiny beside the other one is marked out forever."
"Ah, how you love him! ... How you have deceived me!"
In a last desperate attempt at explanation she again repeated what she had said at the beginning of their interview. She loved Julio ... and she loved her husband. They were different kinds of love. She could not say which was the stronger, but misfortune was forcing her to choose between the two, and she was accepting the most difficult, the one demanding the greatest sacrifices.
"You are a man, and you will never be able to understand me... . A woman would comprehend me."
It seemed to Julio, as he looked around him, as though the afternoon were undergoing some celestial phenomenon. The garden was still illuminated by the sun, but the green of the trees, the yellow of the ground, the blue of the sky, all appeared to him as dark and shadowy as though a rain of ashes were falling.
"Then ... all is over between us?"
His pleading, trembling voice charged with tears made her turn her head to hide her emotion. Then in the painful silence the two despairs formed one and the same question, as if interrogating the shades of the future: "What will become of me?" murmured the man. And like an echo her lips repeated, "What will become of me?"
All had been said. Hopeless words came between the two like an obstacle momentarily increasing in size, impelling them in opposite directions.
Why prolong the painful interview? ... Marguerite showed the ready and energetic decision of a woman who wishes to bring a scene to a close.
"Good-bye!" Her face had a.s.sumed a yellowish cast, her pupils had become dull and clouded like the gla.s.s of a lantern when the light dies out.
"Good-bye!" She must go to her patient.
She went away without looking at him, and Desnoyers instinctively went in the opposite direction. As he became more self-controlled and turned to look at her again, he saw her moving on and giving her arm to the blind man, without once turning her head.
He now felt convinced that he should never see her again, and became oppressed by an almost suffocating agony. And could two beings, who had formerly considered the universe concentrated in their persons, thus easily be separated forever? ...
His desperation at finding himself alone made him accuse himself of stupidity. Now his thoughts came tumbling over each other in a tumultuous throng, and each one of them seemed to him sufficient to have convinced Marguerite. He certainly had not known how to express himself.
He would have to talk with her again ... and he decided to remain in Lourdes.
He pa.s.sed a night of torture in the hotel, listening to the ripple of the river among its stones. Insomnia had him in his fierce jaws, gnawing him with interminable agony. He turned on the light several times, but was not able to read. His eyes looked with stupid fixity at the patterns of the wall paper and the pious pictures around the room which had evidently served as the lodging place of some rich traveller. He remained motionless and as abstracted as an Oriental who thinks himself into an absolute lack of thought. One idea only was dancing in the vacuum in his skull--"I shall never see her again... . Can such a thing be possible?"
He drowsed for a few seconds, only to be awakened with the sensation that some horrible explosion was sending him through the air. And so, with sweats of anguish, he wakefully pa.s.sed the hours until in the gloom of his room the dawn showed a milky rectangle of light, and began to be reflected on the window curtains.