A Reckless Passion
The calm, glittering sea was scarcely stirred by the current of the tide. From the pier all Havre was watching the ships come in—visible as they were from a great distance; some—the big steamers—wreathed in smoke, others—the sailing-vessels—tugged along by almost invisible steamboats, raising their bare masts, like stripped trees, to the sky. These monsters hurried from every quarter of the globe to the narrow entrance of the dock that swallowed them up; and they whistled, they groaned, they shrieked, while they spat up jets of steam like someone gasping for breath.
Two young officers were walking on the crowded mole, bowing and being bowed to, with an occasional stop for a chat. Suddenly the taller of the two, Paul d’Henricel, pressed the arm of his friend, Jean Renoldi, and whispered: “Why, here’s Madame Poinçot, take a good look at her, I’ll swear she’s making eyes at you.”
She was walking arm-in-arm with her husband, a rich shipowner. She was about forty, still beautiful, rather stout, but thanks to this fact she had retained the freshness of youth. Among her friends she was known as the Goddess on account of her proud carriage, big black eyes, and her aristocratic manner. No suspicion of anything wrong had ever smirched her life; she was still without reproach. She was quoted as an example of the simple, honourable woman, so upright that no man had dared to covet her. And now for the past month Paul d’Henricel kept on repeating to his friend Renoldi that Madame Poinçot looked upon him with tenderness. “I know I am not mistaken,” he would say. “I see quite clearly, she loves you, loves you passionately, after the fashion of a chaste woman who has never been in love. Forty is a terrible age for virtuous women when their senses are developed; they simply go mad and do mad things. This woman is moved, old man; she is dropping like a wounded bird and will drop into your arms. Just look at her!”
The tall woman, preceded by her two daughters aged twelve and fifteen, was coming towards them and turned suddenly pale when she noticed the officer. She gazed at him longingly, intently, she had eyes for no one around her, neither her children, her husband, nor the crowd. She returned the greeting of the two young men without lowering a glance so charged with passion that some suspicions did at last enter and tenant Renoldi’s mind. D’Henricel murmured: “I was sure of it. Did you notice this time? By gad, she’s a fine woman!”
But Jean Renoldi had no wish for a society intrigue. Caring little for love, he wanted more than anything else a quiet life and was quite content with the occasional amours which fall to the lot of every young man. He was bored by the sentimentality, the attentions, the tenderness exacted by a well-bred woman. He was afraid of the chain, however light, he would have to drag as a result of an adventure of this kind. He said:
“I shall be sick to death of it at the end of four weeks, and politeness will oblige me to wait patiently for six months.” Then again the thought of a rupture filled him with exasperation, with its scenes, its allusions, and the frenzied clinging of the woman who is being abandoned.
He avoided meeting Madame Poinçot.
But one evening he found himself seated beside her at a dinner-party and felt her passionate glance fixed on him the whole time; their hands met and, almost involuntarily, closed over each other. That was already the beginning of a love affair.
He met her again, always in spite of himself. He knew she loved him, and felt a softening towards her, moved by a kind of pitying vanity at the sight of the woman’s intense passion. So he allowed himself to be adored and was merely attentive, hoping that the matter would go no further.
Then she made an appointment with him, to meet and talk without outside interference, so she explained, and fell fainting into his arms. He had no alternative but to become her lover.
This lasted six months. She loved him with an unbridled, reckless love, forgetting everything in the clutches of her frenzied passion. She had given herself up entirely. Body, soul, reputation, position and happiness had all been cast into the red-hot fire of her love as one casts all one’s precious possessions on the altar of sacrifice.
He had had enough of it for some time and keenly regretted his easy conquest, but he was bound and held prisoner. She was always saying: “I have given you everything; what more do you want?” He would have liked to answer: “But I never asked for anything, if only you would take back what you have given me!” Quite indifferent as to whether anyone saw her, whether she was compromised, or her reputation ruined, she would come to see him every evening, growing more and more ardent as time went on. She would throw herself into his arms, press him to her bosom, swoon under feverish kisses which bored him horribly. He would say languidly: “Come, come, be sensible.” She would reply: “I love you!” and fall upon her knees and gaze at him in an attitude of devotion. This invariably ended by exasperating him, but when he tried to make her get up, saying: “Come, sit down. Let us have a chat,” she muttered: “No, leave me alone,” and remained on her knees in a state of ecstasy.
He said to his friend d’Henricel: “You know, I could beat her. I have had enough of it, enough of it. It must end; and that at once!” adding: “What do you advise me to do?” The friend replied: “Break it off.” Renoldi added with a shrug of the shoulders: “It’s easy enough to say that; you think it’s easy to break with a woman who persecutes you with her tenderness, whose only care is to please you, and whose only fault is to have given herself unasked?”
Then one morning they heard that the regiment was to change garrison, and Renoldi danced for joy. He was saved, saved without scenes, without tears! Saved!—The only thing now required was two months’ patience!—Saved!
In the evening she came to him more excited than ever. She had heard the dreadful news, and, without taking her hat off, she caught hold of his hands, pressing them nervously, her eyes fixed on his, her voice shaking but determined: “You are leaving; I know it,” she said; “I bring you the greatest proof of love that a woman can give; I am going to follow you. For you I am leaving my husband, my children, my family. It will be my ruin but I am happy; it seems as if I were giving myself to you over again. It is the last, the greatest sacrifice; I am yours forever!”
He broke out in a cold perspiration and was filled with a dull, furious rage—the anger of weakness. Nevertheless he calmed down, and with a detached air and gentle voice refused her sacrifice, trying to pacify her, to reason with her, to make her see her folly: she listened silently, looking him straight in the face with her dark eyes, a smile of disdain on her lips. When he stopped, all she said was:
“Can you be a coward? Can you be the kind of man who seduces a woman and then deserts her for the first caprice?”
He paled and tried to reason with her again; he pointed out the inevitable consequences of such an action to both of them as long as they lived: how their lives would be ruined; how all doors would be closed to them. She only replied obstinately: “What does it matter when we love each other?”
Suddenly, he burst out: “Well, then, no! I won’t have it. Do you hear? I won’t, I forbid you to follow me,” and, carried away by his long-repressed grievances, he relieved his mind by saying: “Hang it all, you have loved me long enough, entirely against my wishes; it would be the last straw to take you with me. Thank you for nothing!”
She did not say a word, but her ghastly white face looked drawn and haggard as if every nerve had been twisted out of shape, and she left the house without saying goodbye.
That night she poisoned herself and for a week her life was despaired of. In the town, people gossiped: they pitied her, excusing her lapse because of the strength of her passion; for feelings that are heroic through their intensity always obtain forgiveness for the sin that is in them. A woman who kills herself is, so to speak, no longer an adulteress, and soon there was general disapproval of Lieutenant Renoldi’s behaviour in refusing to see her again—a unanimous feeling that he was to blame.
People said he had deserted her, betrayed her and beaten her. The Colonel, full of pity, discreetly took his officer to task, and Paul d’Henricel called his friend and said: “Damn it all, old man, one can’t let a woman die; it’s a dirty trick!” Renoldi in a rage told his friend to shut up, and, d’Henricel having made use of the word “infamy,” a duel was fought in which Renoldi was wounded to everybody’s satisfaction, and confined to his bed for some time.
She heard about it and only loved him the more, believing he had fought the duel on her account, but as she was too ill to leave her room she did not see him before the regiment left.
When he had been in Lille about three months Madame Poinçot’s sister called upon him. After long suffering and an unconquerable feeling of despair, the end was near and she wished to see him for one minute, only one minute, before closing her eyes forever.
Absence and time had softened the young man’s anger; he was touched, moved to tears, and started at once for Havre. She seemed to be sinking fast. They were left alone together, and by the bedside of the dying woman for whose death he was responsible, he broke down completely. He sobbed, kissed her with gentle passionate kisses, such as he had never given her before, and stammered: “No, you shan’t die, you’ll get better, we’ll love each other—we’ll love each other forever!”
“Is it true? You do love me?” she murmured, and he, in his grief, swore, promised to wait until she was better, and, full of pity, kissed the shrunken hands of the poor woman, whose heartbeat was ominous.
The following day he returned to the garrison, and six weeks later she joined him, terribly aged, unrecognisable, and more enamoured than ever.
With a feeling of desperation he took her back, and because they were living together like a legally married couple the very colonel who had been indignant when Renoldi had deserted the woman, was now scandalised at the irregularity of the situation as being incompatible with the good example that officers owe to their regiment. First he gave his junior a warning, and then he put on the screw, and Renoldi resigned.
They went to live on the shore of the Mediterranean, the classic sea of lovers.
Another three years passed by and Renoldi, now broken in, was a complete slave to the persistent tenderness of the white-haired woman. He looked upon himself as done for, gone under. For him there could be no hope, no ambition, no satisfaction, no pleasure in life.
Then, one morning, a card was brought in with the name, “Joseph Poinçot. Shipowner, Havre.” The husband! The husband who had said nothing, who realised that you cannot struggle against a woman’s desperate infatuation. What could he want?
Poinçot waited in the garden, since he would not go into the house. He bowed politely but refused to sit down, even on a bench in the avenue, and began slowly and clearly: “Monsieur, I have not come to reproach you, I know too well how it all happened. I have been the victim—we have been the victims—of a kind of—of fatality. I would never have disturbed you in your retreat had there not been a change in the situation. I have two daughters. One of them, the elder, loves a young man who loves her. But the young man’s family object to the marriage on account of the irregular position of my daughter’s mother. I feel neither anger nor malice, but I adore my children. I have, therefore, come to ask you for my wife; I hope that she will now agree to come back to my home—to her home. For my part, I will pretend to forget everything for—for the sake of my daughters.”
Renoldi felt his heart give a wild leap: he was beside himself with joy, like a condemned man who is granted a reprieve. He stammered: “Why, yes—certainly, Monsieur—I myself—believe me—no doubt—it is right, only too right!” He wanted to take hold of the man’s hands, hug him in his arms, kiss him on both cheeks. He continued: “Do come in. You will be more comfortable in the drawing room. I’ll go and fetch her.”
This time Monsieur Poinçot accepted the invitation. Renoldi rushed up the stairs; then, pausing before his mistress’s door, he calmed down and, looking very solemn, said: “You are wanted downstairs: it is something about your daughter.” She pulled herself up: “My daughters? What? What is it? They are not dead?” He replied: “No. But there is some complication which you alone can clear up.” She did not wait for more but went quickly downstairs.
Then, very excited, he sank back into a chair and waited.
He waited a long, long time, and as angry voices reached him from downstairs he decided to go down.
Very indignant, Madame Poinçot was standing up, ready to leave the room, while her husband was holding her by her dress, explaining: “But can’t you understand you are bringing ruin on your daughters, your daughters, our children!” She replied stubbornly: “I will not go back to your house.”
Renoldi realised what had happened and went in, his hopes dashed, and gasped: “What? She refuses?”
She turned towards him—shamefacedly refraining from using the familiar “thou” in the presence of her legitimate spouse—and said: “Do you know what he is asking me to do? He wants me to go back and live with him!” She sneered contemptuously at the man almost on his knees before her.
Then Renoldi, with the determination of a gambler playing his last stake, began to talk to her, pleading for them all in turn. And when he paused in the effort to find some fresh argument, Monsieur Poinçot, at his wit’s end, murmured—instinctively speaking as he had spoken to her in the past: “Come, come, Delphine, think of your daughters!”
She swept them both into a glance of sovereign contempt and, making her escape, shouted: “You are a pair of wretches.”
Left alone, they gazed at each other, both equally crestfallen, equally stricken. Monsieur Poinçot picked up his hat, which had fallen on the floor, flicked the dust off his knees with his hand, then, while Renoldi was showing him to the door, with a gesture of despair he exclaimed, bowing:
“We are both very unhappy indeed, Monsieur.”
Then he left the house with a slow, heavy step.