The Grip of Desire Part 32

There was a movement by his side, and he felt, close to his flesh, the burning flesh of Veronica; she was awake and looking at him with a smile.

She felt no remorse; she was proud and happy, and her eyes burning with pleasure and want of sleep were fixed on her new lover with restless curiosity.

[PLATE IV: MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM. ...he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.... And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Doubtless she was saying to herself: "Is it really possible? Am I then in bed with this handsome priest? Is my dream then realised?"

And to a.s.sure herself that she was not dreaming, that she was really in the Cure of Althausen's bed, she spoke to him in mincing tones:

--You say nothing, my handsome master. You seem to be dejected. What! you are not tired out already?

And she put out her hand to give him a caress. But he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.

--Ah, true, she said, happiness makes us forgetful. I was forgetting your Ma.s.s.

And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm.

LV.

IN THE FOOT-PATH.

"'Tis the comer blest where G.o.d's creatures dwell, The wild birds' haunt and the dragon-fly's home, Where the queen-bee flies when she leaves her cell, Where Spring in the verdant glades doth roam."

CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Les Rustiques_).

"Abomination of abomination!" murmured Marcel, and he went out in haste; he would not remain another minute in that cursed house. It seemed to him that the walls of his room reeked of debauchery, and that everything there was impregnated with the odour of foul orgies.

He went out of the village, unconscious of his road, like a hunted criminal; he tried to escape from himself, for that harsh officer, remorse, had laid vigorous hold of his conscience. Be followed at random the foot-paths, lined by gardens by which he had pa.s.sed so many times with placid brow and a clean heart; he walked on, he walked on, with bare head, and blank and haggard eyes, thinking of nothing but his crime, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, not oven the bell which summoned him to his morning Ma.s.s, as it cheerfully filled the air with its silver notes.

The morning was as bright as the face of a bride. May was shedding its perfumes and flowers on the paths, and displaying everywhere its marvellous adornments of universal life,--labour and love. The children were already tumbling about in the foot-paths, the birds were warbling in the hawthorn hedges, and in the moist gra.s.s the gra.s.shopper was saluting the rising sun.

And he, in the midst of all this joy and all this life, was walking on with his head filled with vague ideas of suicide. A few peasants pa.s.sed near him and sainted him: he saw them not; he saw not the children who stopped still and gazed in bewilderment at his strange appearance: he saw not Suzanne who was approaching at the end of the path.

She was only a few paces away when he raised his head, and all his blood rushed to his heart. Vision blessed and cursed at the same time. She, she there, at the vary moment of the consummation of his shame. She before him when he had just dug an abyss between them. What should he say? Would she not read on his troubled face the shameful secret of the drama within? Was not his crime written on his sullied brow in indelible soars? He would have wished the earth to open under his feet.

Meanwhile she advanced blus.h.i.+ng, perhaps as greatly agitated as himself.

And from the smile on her rosy lips, from the brightness of her dark eyes, from the gram of her carriage, from the chaste swelling of her bosom, from the folds of her dress which, blown by the morning breeze, revealed the harmonious outlines of her fairy leg, from all those inexpressible maiden charms, there breathed forth that _something_, for which there is no name in the language of men, but which accelerates the beating of the heart, which pours into the veins an unknown fluid, and bids us murmur low to the stranger who pa.s.ses by, and whom perhaps we may never see again: "My life is thine, is thine!"

Mysterious sensation, which, in the golden days of youth, we have all experienced once at least with ravis.h.i.+ng delight.

And everything seemed to say to Marcel: "Fool! If thou hadst wished it, we were thine. The delights of paradise were thine, and thou hast preferred the impurities of h.e.l.l!"

Oh, if he had been able, if he had dared, he would have cast himself at this maiden's feet, he would have kissed her knees, he would have grovelled on the ground and cried with tears: "Pardon! pardon! Fate has caused it all. Almighty G.o.d will never pardon me, but it is thou whom I implore, and what matters it, if thou, thou dost pardon me."

The feeling of the reality recalled him to himself. Who was aware of his fault, and what was there, besides, in common between this young girl and himself? One evening when alone with her, he had acted imprudently, that was all, and it was now long ago. Then, through desperation and also to show that he attached no importance to that act of imprudence which he had almost forgotten, he a.s.sumed an icy demeanour.

She advanced with a smile, but she felt it congeal on her lips before this insolent coldness, while he, gravely bowing to her as before, a stranger, pa.s.sed on.

LVI.

DOUBLE REMORSE.

"Ah, how much better are the love-tales which we spelt in our eyes with our hearts."

CAMILLE LEMONNIER (_Croquis d'automne_).

His Ma.s.s said, Marcel did not want to return to the parsonage. He made his way slowly to the wood, absorbed by a world of thoughts. All was quite changed since the day before, and what a revolution had been wrought in his soul in one day.

The day before there was still time to stop, there was time to cast far away temptations and impure desires, to avoid the infernal snares and ambushes, to take refuge, according to the Apostle's advice, in the bosom of G.o.d; now it was too late, it was no longer in his power; he found himself hemmed in within the circle of abominations, and he did not see how he could get forth.

A double remorse tormented him, and wrung his conscience with fierce fingers.

On the one hand, there was his servant, become his accomplice and his mistress, an odious thing; his servant defiling his couch, hitherto immaculate; his couch of a virtuous priest.

Then, on the other, there was the fair pale face of Suzanne, full of reproaches, surprised and sad. Why had he not stopped? What fury had urged him forward, cold and scornful, when he burned to hear once again the sound of that voice which stirred his heart!

And the memory of that meeting, at the very moment of the consummation of his infamy, was the blow of the lash which laid bare the open wound of his remorse. He did not curse his crime more than the inopportuneness and the awkwardness of that crime.

What! be had given himself up to a despicable old woman, he had slaked the thirst of that ghoul with his generous blood, he had abandoned to that h.e.l.l-hag the promises of his young body and his virgin soul, while a young girl whose like he had never seen but in fairy tales and dreams, came to him and seemed to say to him: "You may love me."

And he had repulsed her in order to give himself up to the former: that horrible creature, that hypocrite, that sorceress.

And now that his judgment was calm, he could not understand how he had allowed himself to be carried away by such clumsy manoeuvres, that he had fallen in so cowardly a way, and for such an object.

If, at least, it had been in the arms of the lovely school-girl! If his virtue had melted under the kisses of her charming lips! But no, none of all that: none of those unparalleled joys, of those ineffable delights, of those divine and sweet pleasures.

Unclean touches, a withered body, an impure mouth. Lewdness instead of love.

And his servant's caresses recurred to him and froze him like the infernal spectres of a hideous nightmare.

He saw again her face, lighted up by amorous fever, her fiery lecherous look, fastening on him with all the wild fury of her forty-five years, with the cynicism of the sham saint who has thrown away her mask, and who, after long fasting, continence and privation, finds at length the means of glutting herself, and wallows more than any other in the sewer of obscenities and Saturnalia.

He saw her again like the old courtesan of Horace,

...._Mulier nigris dignissima barris_

soliciting horribly her too avaricious caresses, and employing all the a.r.s.enal of her filthy seduction to excite him.

Meanwhile the hours were pa.s.sing away. The spirit travels in vain into the land of phantoms; nature performs her modest functions without caring for the wanderings of the spirit.