The baroness took the doctor a-shopping; she must buy Rose a gray silk. In doing this she saw many other tempting things. I say no more.
But the young ladies went up to Beaurepaire in the other carriage, for Josephine wished to avoid the gaze of the town, and get home and be quiet. The driver went very fast. He had drunk the bride’s health at the mayor’s, item the bridegroom’s, the bridesmaid’s, the mayor’s, etc., and “a spur in the head is worth two in the heel,” says the proverb. The sisters leaned back on the soft cushions, and enjoyed the smooth and rapid motion once so familiar to them, so rare of late.
Then Rose took her sister gently to task for having offered to go to Egypt. She had forgotten her poor sister.
“No, love,” replied Josephine, “did you not see I dared not look towards you? I love you better than all the world; but this was my duty. I was his wife: I had no longer a feeble inclination and a feeble disinclination to decide between, but right on one side, wrong on the other.”
“Oh! I know where your ladyship’s strength lies: my force is—in—my inclinations.”
“Yes, Rose,” continued Josephine thoughtfully, “duty is a great comfort: it is so tangible; it is something to lay hold of for life or death; a strong tower for the weak but well disposed.”
Rose assented, and they were silent a minute; and when she spoke again it was to own she loved a carriage. “How fast we glide! Now lean back with me, and take my hand, and as we glide shut your eyes and think: whisper me all your feelings, every one of them.”
“Well, then,” said Josephine, half closing her eyes, “in the first place I feel a great calm, a heavenly calm. My fate is decided. No more suspense. My duties are clear. I have a husband I am proud of. There is no perfidy with him, no deceit, no disingenuousness, no shade. He is a human sun. He will make me a better, truer woman, and I him a happier man. Yes, is it not nice to think that great and strong as he is I can teach him a happiness he knows not as yet?” And she smiled with the sense of her delicate power, but said no more; for she was not the one to talk much about herself. But Rose pressed her. “Yes, go on, dear,” she said, “I seem to see your pretty little thoughts rising out of your heart like a bubbling fountain: go on.”
Thus encouraged, Josephine thought on aloud, “And then, gratitude!” said she. “I have heard it said, or read it somewhere, that gratitude is a burden: I cannot understand that sentiment; why, to me gratitude is a delight, gratitude is a passion. It is the warmest of all the tender feelings I have for dear Monsieur Raynal. I feel it glow here, in my bosom. I think I shall love him as I ought long before he comes back.”
“BEFORE?”
“Yes,” murmured Josephine, her eyes still half closed. “His virtues will always be present to me. His little faults of manner will not be in sight. Good Raynal! The image of those great qualities I revere so, perhaps because I fail in them myself, will be before my mind; and ere he comes home I shall love him dearly. I’ll tell you one reason why I wished to go home at once was—no—you must guess.”
“Guess?” said Rose, contemptuously. “As if I did not see it was to put on your gray silk.”
Josephine smiled assent, and said almost with fervor, “Good Raynal! I feel prouder of his honest name than of our noble one. And I am so calm, dear, thanks to you, so tranquil; so pleased that my mother’s mind is at rest, so convinced all is for the best, so contented with my own lot; so hap—py.”
A gentle tear stole from beneath her long lashes. Rose looked at her wistfully: then laid her cheek to hers. They leaned back hand in hand, placid and silent.
The carriage glided fast. Beaurepaire was almost in sight.
Suddenly Josephine’s hand tightened on Rose’s, and she sat up in the carriage like a person awakened from a strange dream.
“What is it?” asked Rose.
“Some one in uniform.”
“Oh, is that all? Ah! you thought it was a message from Raynal.”
“Oh! no! on foot—walking very slowly. Coming this way, too. Coming this way!” and she became singularly restless, and looked round in the carriage. It was one of those old chariots with no side windows, but a peep hole at the back. This aperture, however, had a flap over it. Josephine undid the flap with nimble though agitated fingers; and saw—nothing. The road had taken a turn. “Oh,” said Rose, carelessly, “for that matter the roads are full of soldiers just now.”
“Ay, but not of officers on foot.”
Rose gave her such a look, and for the first time this many a day spoke sternly to her, and asked her what on earth she had to do with uniforms or officers except one, the noblest in the world, her husband.
A month ago that word was almost indifferent to Josephine, or rather she uttered it with a sort of mild complacency. Now she started at it, and it struck chill upon her. She did not reply, however, and the carriage rolled on.
“He seemed to be dragging himself along.” This was the first word Josephine had spoken for some time. “Oh, did he?” replied Rose carelessly; “well, let him. Here we are, at home.”
“I am glad of it,” said Josephine, “very glad.”
On reaching Beaurepaire she wanted to go up-stairs at once and put on her gray gown. But the day was so delightful that Rose begged her to stroll in the Pleasaunce for half an hour and watch for their mother’s return. She consented in an absent way, and presently began to walk very fast, unconscious of her companion. Rose laid a hand upon her playfully to moderate her, and found her skin burning.
“Why, what is the matter?” said she, anxiously.
“Nothing, nothing,” was the sharp reply.
“There’s a fretful tone; and how excited you look, and feel too. Well, I thought you were unnaturally calm after such an event.”
“I only saw his back,” said Josephine. “Did not you see him?”
“See who? Oh, that tiresome officer. Why, how much more are we to hear about him? I don’t believe there WAS one.”
At this moment a cocked hat came in sight, bobbing up and down above the palings that divided the park from the road. Josephine pointed to it without a word.
Rose got a little cross at being practically confuted, and said coldly, “Come, let us go in; the only cocked hat we can see is on the way to Paris.”
Josephine assented eagerly. But she had not taken two steps towards the house ere she altered her mind, and said she felt faint, she wanted air; no, she should stay out a little longer. “Look, Rose,” said she, in a strangely excited way, “what a shame! They put all manner of rubbish into this dear old tree: I will have it all turned out.” And she looked with feigned interest into the tree: but her eyes seemed turned inward.
Rose gave a cry of surprise. “He is waving his hat to me! What on earth does that mean?”
“Perhaps he takes you for me,” said Josephine.
“Who is it? What do you mean?”
“IT IS HE! I knew his figure at a glance.” And she blushed and trembled with joy; she darted behind the tree and peered round at him unseen: turning round a moment she found Rose at her back pale and stern. She looked at her, and said with terrible simplicity, “Ah, Rose, I forgot.”
“Are you mad, Josephine? Into the house this moment; if it IS he, I will receive him and send him about his business.”
But Josephine stood fascinated, and pale as ashes; for now the cocked hat stopped, and a pale face with eyes whose eager fire shone even at that distance, rose above the palings. Josephine crouched behind Rose, and gasped out, “Something terrible is coming, terrible! terrible!”
“Say something hateful,” said Rose, trembling in her turn, but only with anger. “The heartless selfish traitor! He never notices you till you are married to the noblest of mankind; and then he comes here directly to ruin your peace. No; I have altered my mind. He shall not see you, of course; but YOU shall hear HIM. I’ll soon make you know the wretch and loathe him as I do. There, now he has turned the corner; hide in the oak while he is out of sight. Hide, quick, quick.” Josephine obeyed mechanically; and presently, through that very aperture whence her sister had smiled on her lover she hissed out, in a tone of which one would not have thought her capable, “Be wise, be shrewd; find out who is the woman that has seduced him from me, and has brought two wretches to this. I tell you it is some wicked woman’s doing. He loved me once.”
“Not so loud!—one word: you are a wife. Swear to me you will not let him see you, come what may.”
“Oh! never! never!” cried Josephine with terror. “I would rather die. When you have heard what he has to say, then tell him I am dead. No, tell him I adore my husband, and went to Egypt this day with him. Ah! would to God I had!”
“Sh! sh!”
“Sh!”
Camille was at the little gate.
Rose stood still, and nerved herself in silence. Josephine panted in her hiding-place.
Rose’s only thought now was to expose the traitor to her sister, and restore her peace. She pretended not to see Camille till he was near her. He came eagerly towards her, his pale face flushing with great joy, and his eyes like diamonds.
“Josephine! It is not Josephine, after all,” said he. “Why, this must be Rose, little Rose, grown up to a fine lady, a beautiful lady.”
“What do you come here for, sir?” asked Rose in a tone of icy indifference.
“What do I come here for? is that the way to speak to me? but I am too happy to mind. Dear Beaurepaire! do I see you once again!”
“And madame?”
“What madame?”
“Madame Dujardin that is or was to be.”
“This is the first I have ever heard of her,” said Camille, gayly.
“This is odd, for we have heard all about it.”
“Are you jesting?”
“No.”
“If I understand you right, you imply that I have broken faith with Josephine?”
“Certainly.”
“Then you lie, Mademoiselle Rose de Beaurepaire.”
“Insolent!”
“No. It is you who have insulted your sister as well as me. She was not made to be deserted for meaner women. Come, mademoiselle, affront me, and me alone, and you shall find me more patient. Oh! who would have thought Beaurepaire would receive me thus?”
“It is your own fault. You never sent her a line for all these years.”
“Why, how could I?”
“Well, sir, the information you did not supply others did. We know that you were seen in a Spanish village drinking between two guerillas.”
“That is true,” said Camille.
“An honest French soldier fired at you. Why, he told us so himself.”
“He told you true,” said Camille, sullenly. “The bullet grazed my hand; see, here is the mark. Look!” She did look, and gave a little scream; but recovering herself, said she wished it had gone through his heart. “Why prolong this painful interview?” said she; “the soldier told us all.”
“I doubt that,” said Camille. “Did he tell you that under the table I was chained tight down to the chair I sat in? Did he tell you that my hand was fastened to a drinking-horn, and my elbow to the table, and two fellows sitting opposite me with pistols quietly covering me, ready to draw the trigger if I should utter a cry? Did he tell you that I would have uttered that cry and died at that table but for one thing, I had promised her to live?”
“Not he; he told me nothing so incredible. Besides, what became of you all these years? You are a double traitor, to your country and to her.”
Camille literally gasped for breath. “You are a most cruel young lady to insult me so,” said he, and scalding tears forced themselves from his eyes.
Rose eyed him with merciless scorn.
He fought manfully against this weakness, with which his wound and his fatigue had something to do, as well as Rose’s bitter words; and after a gallant struggle he returned her her haughty stare, and addressed her thus: “Mademoiselle, I feel myself blush, but it is for you I blush, not for myself. This is what BECAME of me. I went out alone to explore; I fell into an ambuscade; I shot one of the enemy, and pinked another, but my arm being broken by a bullet, and my horse killed under me, the rascals got me. They took me about, tried to make a decoy of me as I have told you, and ended by throwing me into a dungeon. They loaded me with chains, too, though the walls were ten feet thick, and the door iron, and bolted and double-bolted outside. And there for months and years, in spite of wounds, hunger, thirst, and all the tortures those cowards made me suffer, I lived, because, Rose, I had promised some one at that gate there (and he turned suddenly and pointed to it) that I would come back alive. At last, one night, my jailer came to my cell drunk. I seized him by the throat and throttled him till he was insensible; his keys unlocked my fetters, and locked him in the cell, and I got safely outside. But there a sentinel saw me, and fired at me. He missed me but ran after me, and caught me. You see I was stiff, confined so long. He gave me a thrust of his bayonet; I flung my heavy keys fiercely in his face; he staggered; I wrested his piece from him, and disabled him.”
“Ah!”
“I crossed the frontier in the night, and got to Bayonne; and thence, day and night, to Paris. There I met a reward for all my anguish. They gave me the epaulets of a colonel. See, here they are. France does not give these to traitors, young lady.” He held them out to her in both hands. She eyed them half stupidly; all her thoughts were on the oak-tree hard by. She began to shudder. Camille was telling the truth. She felt that; she saw it; and Josephine was hearing it. “Ay! look at them, you naughty girl,” said Camille, trying to be jocose over it all with his poor trembling lip. He went on to say that from the moment he had left dark Spain, and entered fair France everybody was so kind, so sympathizing. “They felt for the poor worn soldier coming back to his love. All but you, Rose. You told me I was a traitor to her and to France.”
“I was told so,” said Rose, faintly. She was almost at her wits’ end what to say or do.
“Well, are you sorry or not sorry for saying such a cruel thing to a poor fellow?”
“Sorry, very sorry,” whispered Rose. She could not persist in injustice, yet she did not want Josephine to hear.
“Then say no more about it; there’s my hand. You are not a soldier, and did not know what you were talking about.”
“I am very sorry I spoke so harshly to you. But you understand. How you look; how you pant.”
“There, I will show you I forgive you. These epaulets, dear, I have never put them on. I said, no; Josephine shall put them on for me. I will take honor as well as happiness from her dear hand. But you are her sister, and what are epaulets compared with what she will give me? You shall put them on, dear. Come, then you will be sure I bear no malice.”
Rose, faint at heart, consented in silence, and fastened on the epaulets. “Yes, Camille!” she cried, with sudden terror, “think of glory, now; nothing but glory.”
“No one thinks of it more. But to-day how can I think of it, how can I give her a rival? To-day I am all love. Rose, no man ever loved a human creature as I love Josephine. Your mother is well, dear? All are well at Beaurepaire? Oh, where is she all this time? in the house?” He was moving quickly towards the house; but Rose instinctively put out her hand to stop him. He recoiled a little and winced.
“What is the matter?” cried she.
“Nothing, dear girl; you put your hand on my wound, that is all. What is that noise in the tree? Anybody listening to us?”
“I’ll see,” said Rose, with all a woman’s wit, and whipped hastily round to hinder Camille from going. She found Josephine white as death, apparently fainting, and clutching at the tree convulsively with her nails. Such was the intensity of the situation that she left her beloved sister in that piteous state, and even hoped she would faint dead away, and so hear no more. She came back white, and told Camille it was only a bird got into the tree. “And to think you should be wounded,” said she, to divert his attention from the tree.
“Yes,” said he, “and it is rather inflamed, and has worried me all the way. You need not go telling Josephine, though. They wanted me to stop and lay up at Bayonne. How could I? And again at Paris. How could I? They said, ‘You will die.’—‘Not before I get to Beaurepaire,’ said I. I could bear the motion of a horse no longer, so at the nearest town I asked for a carriage. Would you believe it? both his carriages were OUT AT A WEDDING. I could not wait till they came back. I had waited an eternity. I came on foot. I dragged my self along; the body was weak, but the heart was strong. A little way from here my wound seemed inclined to open. I pressed it together tight with my hand; you see I could not afford to lose any more blood, and so struggled on. ‘Die?’ said I, ‘not before Beaurepaire.’ And, O Rose! now I could be content to die—at her feet; for I am happy. Oh! I am happy beyond words to utter. What I have gone through! But I kept my word, and this is Beaurepaire. Hurrah!” and his pale cheek flushed, and his eye gleamed, and he waved his hat feebly over his head, “hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”
“Oh, don’t!—don’t!—don’t!” cried Rose wild with pity and dismay.
“How can I help?—I am mad with joy—hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”
“No! no! no! no! no!”
“What is the matter?”
“And must I stab you worse than all your enemies have stabbed you?” sighed Rose, and tears of womanly pity now streamed down her cheeks.
Camille’s mind began to misgive him. What was become of Josephine? she did not appear. He faltered out, “Your mother is well; all are well I hope. Oh, where is she?” and receiving no reply, began to tremble visibly with the fear of some terrible calamity.
Rose, with a sister fainting close by, and this poor lover trembling before her, lost all self-command, and began to wring her hands and cry wildly. “Camille,” she almost screamed, “there is but one thing for you to do; leave Beaurepaire on the instant: fly from it; it is no place for you.”
“She is dead,” said Camille, very quietly.
When he said that, with an unnatural and monotonous calm such as precedes deliberate suicide, it flashed in one moment across Rose that it was much best he should think so.
She did not reply; but she drooped her head and let him think it.
“She would have come to me ere this if she was alive,” said he. “You are all in white: they mourn in white for angels like her, that go to heaven, virgins. Oh! I was blind. You might have told me at once; you see I can bear it. What does it matter to one who loves as I love? It is only to give her one more proof I lived only for her. I would have died a hundred times but for my promise to her. Yes, I am coming, love; I am coming.”
He fell on his knees and smiled, and whispered, “I am coming, Josephine, I am coming.”
A sob and a moan as of a creature dying in anguish answered him.
Rose screamed with terror when she heard it.
Camille rose to his feet, awestruck. “That was her voice, behind this tree,” he whispered.
“No, no,” cried Rose; “it was me.”
But at that moment a rustle and a rush was heard of some one darting out of the tree.
Camille darted furiously round it in the same direction. Rose tried to stop him, but was too late. The next moment Raynal’s wife was in his arms.
Josephine wrestled long and terribly with nature in that old oak-tree. But who can so struggle forever? Anguish, remorse, horror, despair, and love wrenched her to and fro; and O mysterious human heart! gleams of a mad fitful joy shot through her, coming quick as lightning, going as quickly, and leaving the despair darker. And then the fierce struggle of the soul to make itself heard! More than once she had to close her mouth with her hand: more than once she seized her throat not to cry out. But as the struggle endured, she got weaker and weaker, and nature mightier and mightier. And when the wounded hero fell on his knees so close to her; when he who had resisted death so bravely for her, prepared to give up life calmly for her, her bosom rose beyond all control: it seemed to fill to choking, then to split wide open and give the struggling soul passage in one gasping sob and heart-stricken cry. Could she have pent this in she must have died.
It betrayed her. She felt it had: so then came the woman’s instinct—flight: the coward’s impulse—flight: the chaste wife’s inspiration—flight. She rushed from her hiding-place and made wildly for the house.
But, unluckily, Camille was at that moment darting round the tree: she ran right into the danger she meant to flee. He caught her in his arms. He held her irresistibly. “I have got her; I have got her,” he shouted in wild triumph. “No! I will not let you go. None but God shall ever take you from me, and he has spared you to me. You are not dead: you have kept faith as I have: you have lived. See! look at me. I am alive, I am well, I am happy. I told Rose that I suffered. If I had suffered I should remember it. It is all gone at sight of you, my love! my love! Oh, my Josephine! my love!”
His arm was firm round her waist. His glowing eyes poured love upon her. She felt his beating heart.
All that passed in her then, what mortal can say? She seemed two women: that part of her which could not get away from his strong arm lost all strength to resist, it yielded and thrilled under his embrace, her bosom heaving madly: all that was free writhed away from him; her face was averted with a glare of terror, and both her hands put up between his eyes and it.
“You turn away your head. Rose, she turns away. Speak for me. Scold her; for I don’t know how to scold her. No answer from either; oh, what has turned your hearts against me so?”
“Camille,” cried Rose—the tears streaming down her cheeks—“my poor Camille! leave Beaurepaire. Oh, leave it at once.”
Returned towards her with a look of inquiry.
At that Josephine, like some feeble but nimble wild creature on whom a grasp has relaxed, writhed away from him and got free: “Farewell! Farewell!” she cried, in despair’s own voice, and made swiftly for the house.
Camille stood aghast, and did not follow her.
Now ere she had gone many steps who should meet her right in front but Jacintha.
“Madame Raynal, the baroness’s carriage is just in sight. I thought you’d like to know.” Then she bawled proudly to Rose, “I was the first to call her madame;” and off went Jacintha convinced she had done something very clever.
This blow turned those three to stone.
Josephine had no longer the power or the wish to fly. “Better so,” she thought, and she stood cowering.
The great passions that had spoken so loud were struck dumb, and a deep silence fell upon the place. Madame Raynal’s quivering eye turned slowly and askant towards Camille, but stopped in terror ere it could see him. For she knew by this fearful stillness that the truth was creeping on Camille. And so did Rose.
At last Camille spoke one word in a low whisper.
“Madame?”
Dead silence.
“White? both in white?”
Rose came between him and Josephine, and sobbed out, “Camille, it was our doing. We drove her to it. O sir, look how afraid of you she is. Do not reproach her, if you are a man.”
He waved her out of his way as if she had been some idle feather, and almost staggered up to Josephine.
“It is for you to speak, my betrothed: are you married?”
The poor creature, true to her nature, was thinking more of him than herself. Even in her despair it flashed across her, “If he knew all, he too would be wretched for life. If I let him think ill of me he may be happy one day.” She cowered the picture of sorrow and tongue-tied guilt.
“Are you a wife?”
“Yes.”
He winced and quivered as if a bullet had pierced him.
“This is how I came to be suspected; she I loved was false.”
“Yes, Camille.”
“No, no!” cried Rose; “don’t believe HER: she never suspected you. We have brought her to this, we alone.”
“Be silent, Rose! oh, be silent!” gasped Josephine.
“I lived for you: I would have died for you; you could not even wait for me.”
A low moan, but not a word of excuse.
“What can I do for you now?”
“Forget me, Camille,” said she despairingly, doggedly.
“Forget you? never, never! there is but one thing I can do to show you how I loved you: I will forgive you, and begone. Whither shall I go? whither shall I go now?”
“Camile, your words stab her.”
“Let none speak but I,” said Camille; “none but I have the right to speak. Poor weak angel that loved yet could not wait: I forgive you. Be happy, if you can; I bid you be hap-py.”
The quiet, despairing tones died away, and with them life seemed to end to her, and hope to go out. He turned his back quickly on her. He cried hoarsely, “To the army! Back to the army, and a soldier’s grave!” Then with a prodigious effort he drew himself haughtily up in marching attitude. He took three strides, erect and fiery and bold.
At the next something seemed to snap asunder in the great heart, and the worn body that heart had held up so long, rolled like a dead log upon the ground with a tremendous fall.
The baroness and Aubertin were just getting out of their carriage, when suddenly they heard shrieks of terror in the Pleasaunce. They came with quaking hearts as fast as their old limbs would carry them. They found Rose and Josephine crouched over the body of a man, an officer.
Rose was just tearing open his collar and jacket. Dard and Jacintha had run from the kitchen at the screams. Camille lay on his back, white and motionless.
The doctor was the first to come up. “Who! what is this? I seem to know his face.” Then shaking his head, “Whoever it is, it is a bad case. Stand away, ladies. Let me feel his pulse.”
Whilst the old man was going stiffly down on one knee, Jacintha uttered a cry of terror. “See, see! his shirt! that red streak! Ah, ah! it is getting bigger and bigger:” and she turned faint in a moment, and would have fallen but for Dard.
The doctor looked. “All the better,” said he firmly. “I thought he was dead. His blood flows; then I will save him. Don’t clutch me so, Josephine; don’t cling to me like that. Now is the time to show your breed: not turn sick at the sight of a little blood, like that foolish creature, but help me save him.”
“Take him in-doors,” cried the baroness.
“Into our house, mamma?” gasped Rose; “no, no.”
“What,” said the baroness, “a wounded soldier who has fought for France! leave him to lie and die outside my door: what would my son say to that? He is a soldier himself.”
Rose cast a hasty look at Josephine. Josephine’s eyes were bent on the ground, and her hands clenched and trembling.
“Now, Jacintha, you be off,” said the doctor. “I can’t have cowards about him to make the others as bad. Go and stew down a piece of good beef for him. Stew it in red wine and water.”
“That I will: poor thing!”
“Why, I know him,” said the baroness suddenly; “it is an old acquaintance, young Dujardin: you remember, Josephine. I used to suspect him of a fancy for you, poor fellow! Why, he must have come here to see us, poor soul.”
“No matter who it is; it is a man. Now, girls, have you courage, have you humanity? Then come one on each side of him and take hands beneath his back, while I lift his head and Dard his legs.”
“And handle him gently whatever you do,” said Dard. “I know what it is to be wounded.”
These four carried the lifeless burden very slowly and gently across the Pleasaunce to the house, then with more difficulty and caution up the stairs.
All the while the sisters’ hands griped one another tight beneath the lifeless burden, and spoke to one another. And Josephine’s arm upheld tenderly but not weakly the hero she had struck down. She avoided Rose’s eye, her mother’s, and even the doctor’s: one gasping sob escaped her as she walked with head half averted, and vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and her victim on her sustaining arm.
The doctor selected the tapestried chamber for him as being most airy. Then he ordered the women out, and with Dard’s help undressed the still insensible patient.
Josephine sat down on the stairs in gloomy silence, her eyes on the ground, like one waiting for her deathblow.
Rose, sick at heart, sat silent too at some distance. At last she said faintly, “Have we done well?”
“I don’t know,” said Josephine doggedly. Her eyes never left the ground.
“We could not let him die for want of care.”
“He will not thank us. Better for him to die than live. Better for me.”
At this instant Dard came running down. “Good news, mesdemoiselles, good news! the wound runs all along; it is not deep, like mine was. He has opened his eyes and shut them again. The dear good doctor stopped the blood in a twinkle. The doctor says he’ll be bound to save him. I must run and tell Jacintha. She is taking on in the kitchen.”
Josephine, who had risen eagerly from her despairing posture, clasped her hands together, then lifted up her voice and wept. “He will live! he will live!”
When she had wept a long while, she said to Rose, “Come, sister, help your poor Josephine.”
“Yes, love, what shall we do?”
“My duty,” faltered Josephine. “An hour ago it seemed so sweet,” and she fell to weeping patiently again. They went to Josephine’s room. She crept slowly to a wardrobe, and took out a gray silk dress.
“Oh, never mind for to-day,” cried Rose.
“Help me, Rose. It is for myself as well; to remind me every moment I am Madame Raynal.”
They put the gray gown on her, both weeping patiently. It will be known at the last day, all that honest women have suffered weeping silently in this noisy world.
Camille soon recovered his senses and a portion of his strength: then the irritation of his wound brought on fever. This in turn retired before the doctor’s remedies and a sound constitution, but it left behind it a great weakness and general prostration. And in this state the fate of the body depends greatly on the mind.
The baroness and the doctor went constantly to see him, and soothe him: he smiled and thanked them, but his eager eyes watched the door for one who came not.
When he got well enough to leave his bed the largest couch was sent up to him from the saloon; a kind hand lined the baron’s silk dressing-gown for him warm and soft and nice; and he would sit or lie on his couch, or take two turns in the room leaning upon Rose’s shoulder, and glad of the support; and he looked piteously in her eyes when she came and when she went. Rose looked down; she could do nothing, she could say nothing.
With his strength, Camille lost a portion of his pride: he pined for a sight of her he no longer respected; pined for her, as the thirsty pine for water in Sahara.
At last one day he spoke out. “How kind you are to me, Rose! how kind you all are—but one.”
He waited in hopes she would say something, but she held her tongue.
“At least tell me why it is. Is she ashamed? Is she afraid?”
“Neither.”
“She hates me: it is true, then, that we hate those whom we have wounded. Cruel, cruel Josephine! Oh, heart of marble against which my heart has wrecked itself forever!”
“No, no! She is anything but cruel: but she is Madame Raynal.”
“Ah! I forgot. But have I no claim on her? Nearly four years she has been my betrothed. What have I done? Was I ever false to her? I could forgive her for what she has done to me, but she cannot forgive me. Does she mean never to see me again?”
“Ask yourself what good could come of it.”
“Very well,” said Camille, with a malicious smile. “I am in her way. I see what she wants; she shall have it.”
Rose carried these words to Josephine. They went through her like a sword.
Rose pitied her. Rose had a moment’s weakness.
“Let us go to him,” she said; “anything is better than this.”
“Rose, I dare not,” was the wise reply.
But the next day early, Josephine took Rose to a door outside the house, a door that had long been disused. Nettles grew before it. She produced a key and with great difficulty opened this door. It led to the tapestried chamber, and years ago they used to steal up it and peep into the room.
Rose scarcely needed to be told that she was to watch Camille, and report to her. In truth, it was a mysterious, vague protection against a danger equally mysterious. Yet it made Josephine easier. But so unflinching was her prudence that she never once could be prevailed on to mount those stairs, and peep at Camille herself. “I must starve my heart, not feed it,” said she. And she grew paler and more hollow-eyed day by day.
Yet this was the same woman who showed such feebleness and irresolution when Raynal pressed her to marry him. But then dwarfs feebly drew her this way and that. Now giants fought for her. Between a feeble inclination and a feeble disinclination her dead heart had drifted to and fro. Now honor, duty, gratitude,—which last with her was a passion,—dragged her one way: love, pity, and remorse another.
Not one of these giants would relax his grasp, and nothing yielded except her vital powers. Yes; her temper, one of the loveliest Heaven ever gave a human creature, was soured at times.
Was it a wonder? There lay the man she loved pining for her; cursing her for her cruelty, and alternately praying Heaven to forgive him and to bless her: sighing, at intervals, all the day long, so loud, so deep, so piteously, as if his heart broke with each sigh; and sometimes, for he little knew, poor soul, that any human eye was upon him, casting aside his manhood in his despair, and flinging himself on the very floor, and muffling his head, and sobbing; he a hero.
And here was she pining in secret for him who pined for her? “I am not a woman at all,” said she, who was all woman. “I am crueller to him than a tiger or any savage creature is to the victim she tears. I must cure him of his love for me; and then die; for what shall I have to live for? He weeps, he sighs, he cries for Josephine.”
Her enforced cruelty was more contrary to this woman’s nature than black is to white, or heat to cold, and the heart rebelled furiously at times. As when a rock tries to stem a current, the water fights its way on more sides than one, so insulted nature dealt with Josephine. Not only did her body pine, but her nerves were exasperated. Sudden twitches came over her, that almost made her scream. Her permanent state was utter despondency, but across it came fitful flashes of irritation; and then she was scarce mistress of herself.
Wherefore you, who find some holy woman cross and bitter, stop a moment before you sum her up vixen and her religion naught: inquire the history of her heart: perhaps beneath the smooth cold surface of duties well discharged, her life has been, or even is, a battle against some self-indulgence the insignificant saint’s very blood cries out for: and so the poor thing is cross, not because she is bad, but because she is better than the rest of us; yet only human.
Now though Josephine was more on her guard with the baroness than with Rose, or the doctor, or Jacintha, her state could not altogether escape the vigilance of a mother’s eye.
But the baroness had not the clew we have; and what a difference that makes! How small an understanding, put by accident or instruction on the right track, shall run the game down! How great a sagacity shall wander if it gets on a false scent!
“Doctor,” said the baroness one day, “you are so taken up with your patient you neglect the rest of us. Do look at Josephine! She is ill, or going to be ill. She is so pale, and so fretful, so peevish, which is not in her nature. Would you believe it, doctor, she snaps?”
“Our Josephine snap? This is new.”
“And snarls.”
“Then look for the end of the world.”
“The other day I heard her snap Rose: and this morning she half snarled at me, just because I pressed her to go and console our patient. Hush! here she is. My child, I am accusing you to the doctor. I tell him you neglect his patient: never go near him.”
“I will visit him one of these days,” said Josephine, coldly.
“One of these days,” said the baroness, shocked. “You used not to be so hard-hearted. A soldier, an old comrade of your husband’s, wounded and sick, and you alone never go to him, to console him with a word of sympathy or encouragement.”
Josephine looked at her mother with a sort of incredulous stare. Then, after a struggle, she replied with a tone and manner so spiteful and icy that it would have deceived even us who know her had we heard it. “He has plenty of nurses without me.” She added, almost violently, “My husband, if he were wounded, would not have so many, perhaps not have one.”
With this she rose and went out, leaving them aghast. She sat down in the passage on a window-seat, and laughed hysterically. Rose heard her and ran to her. Josephine told her what her mother had said to her. Rose soothed her. “Never mind, you have your sister who understands you: don’t you go back till they have got some other topic.”
Rose out of curiosity went in, and found a discussion going on. The doctor was fathoming Josephine, for the benefit of his companion.
“It is a female jealousy, and of a mighty innocent kind. We are so taken up with this poor fellow, she thinks her soldier is forgotten.”
“Surely, doctor, our Josephine would not be so unreasonable, so unjust,” suggested her mother.
“She belongs to a sex, be it said without offending you, madame, among whose numberless virtues justice does not fill a prominent place.”
The baroness shook her head. “That is not it. It is a piece of prudery. This young gentleman was a sort of admirer of hers, though she did not admire him much, as far as I remember. But it was four years ago; and she is married to a man she loves, or is going to love.”
“Well, but, mamma, a trifling excess of delicacy is surely excusable.” This from Rose.
“No, no; it is not delicacy; it is prudery. And when people are sick and suffering, an honest woman should take up her charity and lay down her prudery, or her coquetry: two things that I suspect are the same thing in different shapes.”
Here Jacintha came in. “Mademoiselle, here is the colonel’s broth; Madame Raynal has flavored it for him, and you are to take it up to him, and keep him company while he eats it.”
“Come,” cried the baroness, “my lecture has not been lost.”
Rose followed Jacintha up-stairs.
Rose was heart and head on Raynal’s side.
She had deceived him about Josephine’s attachment, and felt all the more desirous to guard him against any ill consequences of it. Then he had been so generous to her: he had left her her sister, who would have gone to Egypt, and escaped this misery, but for her.
But on the other hand,