—Gentle pityTugged at her heartstrings with complaining cries.
This watching of Camille saddened even her. When she was with him his pride bore him up: but when he was alone as he thought, his anguish and despair were terrible, and broke out in so many ways that often Rose shrank in terror from her peep hole.
She dared not tell Josephine the half of what she saw: what she did tell her agitated her so terribly: and often Rose had it on the tip of her tongue to say, “Do pray go and see if you can say nothing that will do him good;” but she fought the impulse down. This battle of feeling, though less severe than her sister’s, was constant; it destroyed her gayety. She, whose merry laugh used to ring like chimes through the house, never laughed now, seldom smiled, and often sighed.
Dr. Aubertin was the last to succumb to the deep depression, but his time came: and he had been for a day or two as grave and as sad as the rest, when one day that Rose was absent, spying on Camille, he took the baroness and Josephine into his confidence; and condescended finally to ask their advice.
“It is humiliating,” said he, “after all my experience, to be obliged to consult unprofessional persons. Forty years ago I should have been TOO WISE to do so. But since then I have often seen science baffled and untrained intelligences throw light upon hard questions: and your sex in particular has luminous instincts and reads things by flashes that we men miss with a microscope. Our dear Madame Raynal suspected that plausible notary, and to this day I believe she could not tell us why.”
Josephine admitted as much very frankly.
“There you see,” said the doctor. “Well, then, you must help me in this case. And this time I promise to treat your art with more respect.”
“And pray who is it she is to read now?” asked the baroness.
“Who should it be but my poor patient? He puzzles me. I never knew a patient so faint-hearted.”
“A soldier faint-hearted!” exclaimed the baroness. “To be sure these men that storm cities, and fire cannon, and cut and hack one another with so much spirit, are poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie quiet and suffer.”
The doctor walked the room in great excitement. “It is not his wound that is killing him, there’s something on his mind. You, Josephine, with your instincts do help me: do pray, for pity’s sake, throw off that sublime indifference you have manifested all along to this man’s fate.”
“She has not,” cried the baroness, firing up. “Did I not see her lining his dressing-gown for him? and she inspects everything that he eats: do you not?”
“Yes, mother.” She then suggested in a faltering voice that time would cure the patient, and time alone.
“Time! you speak as if time was a quality: time is only a measure of events, favorable or unfavorable; it kills as many as it cures.”
“Why, you surely would not imply his life is in any danger?” This was the baroness.
“Madame, if the case was not grave, should I take this unusual step? I tell you if some change does not take place soon, he will be a dead man in another fortnight. That is all TIME will do for him.”
The baroness uttered an exclamation of pity and distress. Josephine put her hand to her bosom, and a creeping horror came over her, and then a faintness. She sat working mechanically, and turning like ice within. After a few minutes of this, she rose with every appearance of external composure and left the room. In the passage she met Rose coming hastily towards the salon laughing: the first time she had laughed this many a day. Oh, what a contrast between the two faces that met there—the one pale and horror stricken, the other rosy and laughing!
“Well, dear, at last I am paid for all my trouble, and yours, by a discovery; he never drinks a drop of his medicine; he pours it into the ashes under the grate; I caught him in the fact.”
“Then this is too much: I can resist no longer. Come with me,” said Josephine doggedly.
“Where?”
“To him.”
Josephine paused on the landing, and laid her hand on Rose’s shoulder. It was so cold it made Rose shudder, and exacted a promise from her not to contradict a word she should say to Camille. “I do not go to him for my pleasure, but for his life,” she said; “I must deceive him and save him; and then let me lie down and die.”
“Oh, that the wretch had never been born!” cried Rose, in despair. But she gave the required promise, and offered to go and tell Camille Josephine was coming to visit him.
But Josephine declined this. “No,” said she; “give me every advantage; I must think beforehand every word I shall say; but take him by surprise, coward and doubleface that I am.”
Rose knocked at the door. A faint voice said, “Come in.” The sisters entered the room very softly. Camille sat on the sofa, his head bowed over his hands. A glance showed Josephine that he was doggedly and resolutely thrusting himself into the grave. Thinking it was only Rose—for he had now lost all hope of seeing Josephine come in at the door—he never moved. Some one glided gently but rapidly up to him. He looked up. Josephine was kneeling to him.
He lifted his head with a start, and trembled all over.
She whispered, “I am come to you to beg your pity; to appeal to your generosity; to ask a favor; I who deserve so little of you.”
“You have waited a long time,” said Camille, agitated greatly; “and so have I.”
“Camille, you are torturing one who loved you once, and who has been very weak and faithless, but not so wicked as she appears.”
“How am I torturing you?”
“With remorse; do I not suffer enough? Would you make me a murderess?”
“Why have you never been near me?” retorted Camille. “I could forgive your weakness, but not your heartlessness.”
“It is my duty. I have no right to seek your society. If you really want mine, you have only to get well, and so join us down-stairs a week or two before you leave us.”
“How am I to get well? My heart is broken.”
“Camille, be a man. Do not fling away a soldier’s life because a fickle, worthless woman could not wait for you. Forgive me like a man, or else revenge yourself like a man. If you cannot forgive me, kill me. See, I kneel at your feet. I will not resist you. Kill me.”
“I wish I could. Oh! if I could kill you with a look and myself with a wish! No man should ever take you from me, then. We would be together in the grave at this hour. Do not tempt me, I say;” and he cast a terrible look of love, and hatred, and despair upon her. Her purple eye never winced; it poured back tenderness and affection in return. He saw and turned away with a groan, and held out his hand to her. She seized it and kissed it. “You are great, you are generous; you will not strike me as a woman strikes; you will not die to drive me to despair.”
“I see,” said he, more gently, “love is gone, but pity remains. I thought that was gone, too.”
“Yes, Camille,” said Josephine, in a whisper, “pity remains, and remorse and terror at what I have done to a man of whom I was never worthy.”
“Well, madame, as you have come at last to me, and even do me the honor to ask me a favor—I shall try—if only out of courtesy—to—ah, Josephine! Josephine! when did I ever refuse you anything?”
At this Josephine sank into a chair, and burst out crying. Camille, at this, began to cry too; and the two poor things sat a long way from one another, and sobbed bitterly.
The man, weakened as he was, recovered his quiet despair first.
“Don’t cry so,” said he. “But tell me what is your will, and I shall obey you as I used before any one came between us.”
“Then, live, Camille. I implore you to live.”
“Well, Josephine, since you care about it, I will try and live. Why did not you come before and ask me? I thought I was in your way. I thought you wanted me dead.”
Josephine cast a look of wonder and anguish on Camille, but she said nothing. She rang the bell, and, on Jacintha coming up, despatched her to Dr. Aubertin for the patient’s medicine.
“Tell the doctor,” said she, “Colonel Dujardin has let fall the glass.” While Jacintha was gone, she scolded Camille gently. “How could you be so unkind to the poor doctor who loves you so? Only think: to throw away his medicines! Look at the ashes; they are wet. Camille, are you, too, becoming disingenuous?”
Jacintha came in with the tonic in a glass, and retired with an obeisance. Josephine took it to Camille.
“Drink with me, then,” said he, “or I will not touch it.” Josephine took the glass. “I drink to your health, Camille, and to your glory; laurels to your brow, and some faithful woman to your heart, who will make you forget this folly: it is for her I am saving you.” She put the glass with well-acted spirit to her lips; but in the very action a spasm seized her throat and almost choked her; she lowered her head that he might not see her face, and tried again; but the tears burst from her eyes and ran into the liquid, and her lips trembled over the brim, and were paralyzed.
“No, no! give it me!” he cried; “there is a tear of yours in it.” He drank off the bitter remedy now as if it had been nectar.
Josephine blushed.
“If you wanted me to live, why did you not come here before?”
“I did not think you would be so foolish, so wicked, so cruel as to do what you have been doing.”
“Come and shine upon me every day, and you shall have no fresh cause of complaint; things flourish in the sunshine that die in the dark: Rose, it is as if the sun had come into my prison; you are pale, but you are beautiful as ever—more beautiful; what a sweet dress! so quiet, so modest, it sets off your beauty instead of vainly trying to vie with it.” With this he put out his hand and took her gray silk dress, and went to kiss it as a devotee kisses the altar steps.
She snatched it away with a shudder.
“Yes, you are right,” said she; “thank you for noticing my dress; it is a beautiful dress—ha! ha! A dress I take a pride in wearing, and always shall, I hope. I mean to be buried in it. Come, Rose. Thank you, Camille; you are very good, you have once more promised me to live. Get well; come down-stairs; then you will see me every day, you know—there is a temptation. Good-by, Camille!—are you coming, Rose? What are you loitering for? God bless you, and comfort you, and help you to forget what it is madness to remember!”
With these wild words she literally fled; and in one moment the room seemed to darken to Camille.
Outside the door Josephine caught hold of Rose. “Have I committed myself?”
“Over and over again. Do not look so terrified; I mean to me, but not to him. How blind he is! and how much better you must know him than I do to venture on such a transparent deceit. He believes whatever you tell him. He is all ears and no eyes. Yes, love, I watched him keenly all the time. He really thinks it is pity and remorse, nothing more. My poor sister, you have a hard life to lead, a hard game to play; but so far you have succeeded; yet could look poor Raynal in the face if he came home to-day.”
“Then God be thanked!” cried Josephine. “I am as happy to-day as I can ever hope to be. Now let us go through the farce of dressing—it is near dinner-time—and then the farce of talking, and, hardest of all, the farce of living.”
From that hour Camille began to get better very slowly, yet perceptibly.
The doctor, afraid of being mistaken, said nothing for some days, but at last he announced the good news at the dinner-table. “He is to come down-stairs in three days,” added the doctor.
But I am sorry to say that as Camille’s body strengthened some of the worst passions in our nature attacked him. Fierce gusts of hate and love combined overpowered this man’s high sentiments of honor and justice, and made him clench his teeth, and vow never to leave Beaurepaire without Josephine. She had been his four years before she ever saw this interloper, and she should be his forever. Her love would soon revive when they should meet every day, and she would end by eloping with him.
Then conscience pricked him, and reminded him how and why Raynal had married her: for Rose had told him all. Should he undermine an absent soldier, whose whole conduct in this had been so pure, so generous, so unselfish?
But this was not all. As I have already hinted, he was under a great personal obligation to his quondam comrade Raynal. Whenever this was vividly present to his mind, a great terror fell on him, and he would cry out in anguish, “Oh! that some angel would come to me and tear me by force from this place!” And the next moment passion swept over him like a flood, and carried away all his virtuous resolves. His soul was in deep waters; great waves drove it to and fro. Perilous condition, which seldom ends well. Camille was a man of honor. In no other earthly circumstance could he have hesitated an instant between right and wrong. But such natures, proof against all other temptations, have often fallen, and will fall, where sin takes the angel form of her they love. Yet, of all men, they should pray for help to stand; for when they fall they still retain one thing that divides them from mean sinners.
Remorse, the giant that rends the great hearts which mock at fear.
The day came in which the doctor had promised his patient he should come down-stairs. First his comfortable sofa was taken down into the saloon for his use: then the patient himself came down leaning on the doctor’s arm, and his heart palpitating at the thought of the meeting. He came into the room; the baroness was alone. She greeted him kindly, and welcomed him. Rose came in soon after and did the same. But no Josephine. Camille felt sick at heart. At last dinner was announced; “She will surely join us at dinner,” thought he. He cast his eyes anxiously on the table; the napkins were laid for four only. The baroness carelessly explained this to him as they sat down. “Madame Raynal dines in her own room. I am sorry to say she is indisposed.”
Camille muttered polite regrets: the rage of disappointment drove its fangs into him, and then came the heart-sickness of hope deferred. The next day he saw her, but could not get a word with her alone. The baroness tortured him another way. She was full of Raynal. She loved him. She called him her son; was never weary of descanting on his virtues to Camille. Not a day passed that she did not pester Camille to make a calculation as to the probable period of his return, and he was obliged to answer her. She related to him before Josephine and Rose, how this honest soldier had come to them like a guardian angel and saved the whole family. In vain he muttered that Rose had told him.
“Let me have the pleasure of telling it you my way,” cried she, and told it diffusely, and kept him writhing.
The next thing was, Josephine had received no letter from him this month; the first month he had missed. In vain did Rose represent that he was only a few days over his time. The baroness became anxious, communicated her anxieties to Camille among the rest; and, by a torturing interrogatory, compelled him to explain to her before Josephine and them all, that ships do not always sail to a day, and are sometimes delayed. But oh! he winced at the man’s name; and Rose observed that he never mentioned it, nor acknowledged the existence of such a person as Josephine’s husband, except when others compelled him. Yet they were acquainted; and Rose sometimes wondered that he did not detract or sneer.
“I should,” said she; “I feel I should.”
“He is too noble,” said Josephine, “and too wise. For, if he did, I should respect him less, and my husband more than I do—if possible.”
Certainly Camille was not the sort of nature that detracts, but the reason he avoided Raynal’s name was simply that his whole internal battle was to forget such a man existed. From this dream he was rudely awakened every hour since he joined the family, and the wound his self-deceiving heart would fain have skinned over, was torn open. But worse than this was the torture of being tantalized. He was in company with Josephine, but never alone. Even if she left the room for an instant, Rose accompanied her and returned with her. Camille at last began to comprehend that Josephine had decided there should be no private interviews between her and him. Thus, not only the shadow of the absent Raynal stood between them, but her mother and sister in person, and worst of all, her own will. He called her a cold-blooded fiend in his rage. Then the thought of all her tenderness and goodness came to rebuke him. But even in rebuking it maddened him. “Yes, it is her very nature to love; but since she can make her heart turn whichever way her honor bids, she will love her husband; she does not now; but sooner or later she will. Then she will have children—(he writhed with anguish and fury at this thought)—loving ties between him and her. He has everything on his side. I, nothing but memories she will efface from her heart. Will efface? She must have effaced them, or she could not have married him.” I know no more pitiable state of mind than to love and hate the same creature. But when the two feelings are both intense, and meet in an ardent bosom, such a man would do well to spend a day or two upon his knees, praying for grace divine. For he who with all his soul loves and hates one woman is next door to a maniac, and is scarcely safe an hour together from suicide or even from homicide; this truth the newspapers tell us, by examples, every month; but are wonderfully little heeded, because newspapers do not, nor is it their business to, analyze and dwell upon the internal feelings of the despairing lover, whose mad and bloody act they record. With such a tempest in his heart did Camille one day wander into the park. And soon an irresistible attraction drew him to the side of the stream that flowed along one side of it. He eyed it gloomily, and wherever the stagnant water indicated a deeper pool than usual he stopped, and looked, and thought, “How calm and peaceful you are!”
He sat down at last by the water-side, his eyes bent on a calm, green pool.
It looked very peaceful; and it could give peace. He thought, oh! what a blessing; to be quit of rage, jealousy, despair, and life, all in a minute!
Yet that was a sordid death for a soldier to die, who had seen great battles. Could he not die more nobly than that? With this he suddenly felt in his pocket; and there sure enough fate had placed his pistols. He had put them into this coat; and he had not worn this coat until to-day. He had armed himself unconsciously. “Ah!” said he; “it is to be; all these things are preordained.” (This notion of fate has strengthened many a fatal resolution.) Then he had a cruel regret. To die without a word; a parting word. Then he thought to himself, it was best so; for perhaps he should have taken her with him.
“Sir! colonel!” uttered a solemn voice behind him.
Absorbed and strung up to desperation as he was, this voice seemed unnaturally loud, and discordant with Camille’s mood; a sudden trumpet from the world of small things.
It was Picard, the notary.
“Can you tell me where Madame Raynal is?”
“No. At the chateau, I suppose.”
“She is not there; I inquired of the servant. She was out. You have not seen her, colonel?”
“Not I; I never see her.”
“Then perhaps I had better go back to the chateau and wait for her: stay, are you a friend of the family? Colonel, suppose I were to tell you, and ask you to break it to Madame Raynal, or, better still, to the baroness, or Mademoiselle Rose.”
“Monsieur,” said Camille coldly, “charge me with no messages, for I cannot deliver them. I AM GOING ANOTHER WAY.”
“In that case, I will go to the chateau once more; for what I have to say must be heard.”
Picard returned to the chateau wondering at the colonel’s strange manner.
Camille, for his part, wondered that any one could be so mad as to talk to him about trifles; to him, a man standing on the brink of eternity. Poor soul, it was he who was mad and unlucky. He should have heard what Picard had to say. The very gentleness and solemnity of manner ought to have excited his curiosity.
He watched Picard’s retiring form. When he was out of sight, then he turned round and resumed his thoughts as if Picard had been no more than a fly that had buzzed and then gone.
“Yes, I should have taken her with me,” he said. He sat gloomy and dogged like a dangerous maniac in his cell; never moved, scarce thought for more than half an hour; but his deadly purpose grew in him. Suddenly he started. A lady was at the style, about a hundred yards distant. He trembled. It was Josephine.
She came towards him slowly, her eyes bent on the ground in a deep reverie. She stopped about a stone’s throw from him, and looked at the river long and thoughtfully; then casting her eye around, she caught sight of Camille. He watched her grimly. He saw her give a little start, and half turn round; but if this was an impulse to retreat, it was instantly suppressed; for the next moment she pursued her way.
Camille stood gloomy and bitter, awaiting her in silence. He planted himself in the middle of the path, and said not a word.
She looked him all over, and her color came and went.
“Out so far as this,” she said kindly; “and without your cap.”
He put his hand to his head, and discovered that he was bareheaded.
“You will catch your death of cold. Come, let us go in and get your cap.”
She made as if she would pass him. He planted himself right before her.
“No.”
“Camille!”
“Why do you shun me as if I was a viper?”
“I do not shun you. I but avoid conferences that can lead to no good; it is my duty.”
“You are very wise; cold-hearted people can be wise.”
“Am I cold-hearted, Camille?”
“As marble.”
She looked him in the face; the water came into her eyes; after awhile she whispered, sorrowfully, “Well, Camille, I am.”
“But with all your wisdom and all your coldness,” he went on to say, “you have made a mistake; you have driven me to madness and despair.”
“Heaven forbid!” said she.
“Your prayer comes too late; you have done it.”
“Camille, let me go to the oratory, and pray for you. You terrify me.”
“It is no use. Heaven has no mercy for me. Take my advice; stay where you are; don’t hurry; for what remains of your life you gave to pass with me, do you understand that?”
“Ah!” And she turned pale.
“Can you read my riddle?”
She looked him in the face. “I can read your eyes, and I know you love me. I think you mean to kill me. I have heard men kill the thing they love.”
“Of course they do; sooner than another should have it, they kill it—they kill it.”
“God has not made them patient like us women. Poor Camille!”
“Patience dies when hope dies. Come, Madame Raynal, say a prayer, for you are going to die.”
“God bless you, Camille!” said the poor girl, putting her hands together in her last prayer. At this sweet touch of affection, Camille hung his head, and sobbed. Then suddenly lashing himself into fury, he cried,—
“You are my betrothed! you talk of duty; but you forget your duty to me. Are you not my betrothed this four years? Answer me that.”
“Yes, Camille, I was.”
“Did I not suffer death a hundred times for you, to keep faith with you, you cold-blooded traitress with an angel’s face?”
“Ah, Camille! can you speak so bitterly to me? Have I denied your right to kill me? You shall never dishonor me, but you shall kill me, if it is your pleasure. I do not resist. Why, then, speak to me like that; must the last words I hear from your mouth be words of anger, cruel Camille?”
“I was wrong. But it is so hard to kill her I love in cold blood. I want anger as well as despair to keep me to it. Come, turn your head away from me, and all our troubles shall end.”
“No, Camille, let me look at you. Then you will be the last thing I shall see on earth.”
At this he hesitated a moment; then, with a fierce stamp at what he thought was weakness, he levelled a pistol at her.
She put up her hands with a piteous cry, “Oh! not my face, Camille! pray do not disfigure my face. Here—kill me here—in my bosom—my heart that loved you well, when it was no sin to love you.”
“I can’t shoot you. I can’t spill your blood. The river will end all, and not disfigure your beauty, that has driven me mad, and cost you, poor wretch, your life.”
“Thank you, dear Camille. The water does not frighten me as a pistol does; it will not hurt me; it will only kill me.”
“No, it is but a plunge, and you will be at peace forever; and so shall I. Come, take my hand, Madame Raynal, Madame Raynal.”
She gave him her hand with a look of infinite love. She only said, “My poor mother!” That word did not fall to the ground. It flashed like lightning at night across the demented lover, and lighted up his egotism (suicide, like homicide, is generally a fit of maniacal egotism), even to his eyes blinded by fury.
“Wretch that I am,” he shrieked. “Fly, Josephine, fly! escape this moment, that my better angel whispers to me. Do you hear? begone, while it is time.”
“I will not leave you, Camille.”
“I say you shall. Go to your mother and Rose; go to those you love, and I can pity; go to the chapel and thank Heaven for your escape.”
“Yes, but not without you, Camille. I am afraid to leave you.”
“You have more to fear if you stay. Well, I can’t wait any longer. Stay, then, and live; and learn from me how to love Jean Raynal.”
He levelled the pistol at himself.
Josephine threw herself on him with a cry, and seized his arm. With the strength excitement lent her she got the better, and all but overpowered him. But, as usual, the man’s strength lasted longer, and with a sustained effort he threw her off; then, pale and panting, raised the pistol to take his life. This time she moved neither hand nor foot; but she palsied his rash hand with a word.
“No; I LOVE YOU.”
There lie the dead corpses of those words on paper; but my art is powerless to tell you how they were uttered, those words, potent as a king’s, for they saved a life.
They were a cry of terror and a cry of reproach and a cry of love unfathomable.
The weapon shook in his hand. He looked at her with growing astonishment and joy; she at him fixedly and anxiously, her hands clasped in supplication.
“As you used to love me?”
“More, far more. Give me the pistol. I love you, dearest. I love you.”
At these delicious words he lost all power of resistance, she saw; and her soft and supple hand stole in and closed upon his, and gently withdrew the weapon, and threw it into the water. “Good Camille! now give me the other.”
“How do you know there is another?”
“I know you are not the man to kill a woman and spare yourself. Come.”
“Josephine, have pity on me, do not deceive me; pray do not take this, my only friend, from me, unless you really love me.”
“I love you; I adore you,” was her reply.
She leaned her head on his shoulder, but with her hand she sought his, and even as she uttered those loving words she coaxed the weapon from his now unresisting grasp.
“There, it is gone; you are saved from death—saved from crime.” And with that, the danger was over, she trembled for the first time, and fell to sobbing hysterically.
He threw himself at her knees, and embraced them again and again, and begged her forgiveness in a transport of remorse and self-reproach.
She looked down with tender pity on him, and heard his cries of penitence and shame.
“Rise, Camille, and go home with me,” said she faintly.
“Yes, Josephine.”
They went slowly and in silence. Camille was too ashamed and penitent to speak; too full of terror too at the abyss of crime from which he had been saved. The ancients feigned that a virgin could subdue a lion; perhaps they meant that a pure gentle nature can subdue a nature fierce but generous. Lion-like Camille walked by Josephine’s side with his eyes bent on the ground, the picture of humility and penitence.
“This is the last walk you and I shall take together,” said Josephine solemnly.
“I know it,” said he humbly. “I have forfeited all right to be by your side.”
“My poor, lost love,” sighed Josephine, “will you never understand me? You never stood higher in my esteem than at this moment. It is the avowal you have forced from ME that parts us. The man to whom I have said ‘I’—must not remain beneath my husband’s roof. Does not your sense of honor agree with mine?”
“It does,” faltered he.
“To-morrow you must leave the chateau.”
“I will obey you.”
“What, you do not resist, you do not break my heart by complaints, by reproaches?”
“No, Josephine, all is changed. I thought you unfeeling: I thought you were going to be HAPPY with him; that was what maddened me.”
“I pray daily YOU may be happy, no matter how. But you and I are not alike, dear as we are to one another. Well, do not fear: I shall never be happy—will that soothe you, Camille?”
“Yes, Josephine, all is changed; the words you have spoken have driven the fiends out of my heart. I have nothing to do now but to obey, you to command: it is your right. Since you love me a little still, dispose of me. Bid me live: bid me die: bid me stay: bid me go. I shall never disobey the angel who loves me, my only friend upon the earth.”
A single deep sob from Josephine was all the answer.
Then he could not help asking her why she had not trusted him?
“Why did you not say to me long ago, ‘I love you, but I am a wife; my husband is an honest soldier, absent, and fighting for France: I am the guardian of his honor and my own; be just, be generous, be self-denying; depart and love me only as angels love’? Perhaps this might have helped me to show you that I too am a man of honor.”
“Perhaps I was wrong,” sighed Josephine. “I think I should have trusted more to you. But then, who would have thought you could really doubt my love? You were ill; I could not bear you to go till you were well, quite well. I saw no other way to keep you but this, to treat you with feigned coldness. You saw the coldness, but not what it cost me to maintain it. Yes, I was unjust; and inconsiderate, for I had many furtive joys to sustain me: I had you in my house under my care—that thought was always sweet—I had a hand in everything that was for your good, for your comfort. I helped Jacintha make your soup and your chocolate every day. I had the delight of lining the dressing-gown you were to wear. I had always some little thing or other to do for you. These kept me up: I forgot in my selfishness that you had none of these supports, and that I was driving you to despair. I am a foolish, disingenuous woman: I have been very culpable. Forgive me!”
“Forgive you, angel of purity and goodness? I alone am to blame. What right had I to doubt your heart? I knew the whole story of your marriage; I saw your sweet pale face; but I was not pure enough to comprehend angelic virtue and unselfishness. Well, I am brought to my senses. There is but one thing for me to do—you bade me leave you to-morrow.”
“I was very cruel.”
“No! not cruel, wise. But I will be wiser. I shall go to-night.”
“To-night, Camille?” said Josephine, turning pale.
“Ay! for to-night I am strong; to-morrow I may be weak. To-night everything thrusts me on the right path. To-morrow everything will draw me from it. Do not cry, beloved one; you and I have a hard fight. We must be true allies; whenever one is weak, then is the time for the other to be strong. I have been weaker than you, to my shame be it said; but this is my hour of strength. A light from heaven shows me my path. I am full of passion, but like you I have honor. You are Raynal’s wife, and—Raynal saved my life.”
“Ah! is it possible? When? where? may Heaven bless him for it!”
“Ask HIM; and say I told you of it—I have not strength to tell it you, but I will go to-night.”
Then Josephine, who had resisted till all her strength was gone, whispered with a blush that it was too late to get a conveyance.
“I need none to carry my sword, my epaulets, and my love for you. I shall go on foot.”
Josephine said nothing, but she began to walk slower and slower. And so the unfortunate pair came along creeping slowly with drooping heads towards the gate of the Pleasaunce. There their last walk in this world must end. Many a man and woman have gone to the scaffold with hearts less heavy and more hopeful than theirs.
“Dry your eyes, Josephine,” said Camille with a deep sigh. “They are all out on the Pleasaunce.”
“No, I will not dry my eyes,” cried Josephine, almost violently. “I care for nothing now.”
The baroness, the doctor, and Rose, were all in the Pleasaunce: and as the pair came in, lo! every eye was bent on Josephine.
She felt this, and her eyes sought the ground: benumbed as she was with despondency, she began now to dread some fresh stroke or other.
Camille felt doubly guilty and confused. How they all look at us, he thought. Do they know what a villain I have been? He determined to slip away, and pack up, and begone. However, nobody took any notice of him. The baroness drew Josephine apart. And Rose followed her mother and sister with eyes bent on the ground.
There was a strange solemnity about them all.
Aubertin remained behind. But even he took no notice of Camille, but walked up and down with his hands behind him, and a sad and troubled face. Camille felt his utter desolation. He was nothing to any of them. He resolved to go at once, and charge Aubertin with his last adieus to the family. It was a wise and manly resolve. He stopped Aubertin in the middle of his walk, and said in a faint voice of the deepest dejection,—
“Doctor, the time is come that I must once more thank you for all your goodness to me, and bid you all farewell.”
“What, going before your strength is re-established?” said the doctor politely, but not warmly.
“I am out of all danger, thanks to your skill.”
“Colonel, at another time I should insist upon your staying a day or two longer; but now I think it would be unadvisable to press you to stay. Ah, colonel, you came to a happy house, but you leave a sad one. Poor Madame Raynal!”
“Sir!”
“You saw the baroness draw her aside.”
“Y-yes.”
“By this time she knows it.”
“In Heaven’s name what do you mean?” asked Camille.
“I forgot; you are not aware of the calamity that has fallen upon our beloved Josephine; on the darling of the house.”
Camille turned cold with vague apprehension. But he contrived to stammer out, “No; tell me! for Heaven’s sake tell me.”
The doctor thus pressed revealed all in a very few words. “My poor friend,” said he solemnly, “her husband—is dead.”
The baroness, as I have said, drew Josephine aside, and tried to break to her the sad news: but her own grief overcame her, and bursting into tears she bewailed the loss of her son. Josephine was greatly shocked. Death!—Raynal dead—her true, kind friend dead—her benefactor dead. She clung to her mother’s neck, and sobbed with her. Presently she withdrew her face and suddenly hid it in both her hands.
She rose and kissed her mother once more: and went to her own room: and then, though there was none to see her, she hid her wet, but burning, cheeks in her hands.
Josephine confined herself for some days to her own room, leaving it only to go to the chapel in the park, where she spent hours in prayers for the dead and in self-humiliation. Her “tender conscience” accused herself bitterly for not having loved this gallant spirit more than she had.
Camille realized nothing at first; he looked all confused in the doctor’s face, and was silent. Then after awhile he said, “Dead? Raynal dead?”
“Killed in action.”
A red flush came to Camille’s face, and his eyes went down to the ground at his very feet, nor did he once raise them while the doctor told him how the sad news had come. “Picard the notary brought us the Moniteur, and there was Commandant Raynal among the killed in a cavalry skirmish.” With this, he took the journal from his pocket, and Camille read it, with awe-struck, and other feelings he would have been sorry to see analyzed. He said not a word; and lowered his eyes to the ground.
“And now,” said Aubertin, “you will excuse me. I must go to my poor friend the baroness. She had a mother’s love for him who is no more: well she might.”
Aubertin went away, and left Dujardin standing there like a statue, his eyes still glued to the ground at his feet.
The doctor was no sooner out of sight, than Camille raised his eyes furtively, like a guilty person, and looked irresolutely this way and that: at last he turned and went back to the place where he had meditated suicide and murder; looked down at it a long while, then looked up to heaven—then fell suddenly on his knees: and so remained till night-fall. Then he came back to the chateau.
He whispered to himself, “And I am afraid it is too late to go away to-night.” He went softly into the saloon. Nobody was there but Rose and Aubertin. At sight of him Rose got up and left the room. But I suppose she went to Josephine; for she returned in a few minutes, and rang the bell, and ordered some supper to be brought up for Colonel Dujardin.
“You have not dined, I hear,” said she, very coldly.
“I was afraid you were gone altogether,” said the doctor: then turning to Rose, “He told me he was going this evening. You had better stay quiet another day or two,” added he, kindly.
“Do you think so?” said Camille, timidly.
He stayed upon these terms. And now he began to examine himself. “Did I wish him dead? I hope I never formed such a thought! I don’t remember ever wishing him dead.” And he went twice a day to that place by the stream, and thought very solemnly what a terrible thing ungoverned passion is; and repented—not eloquently, but silently, sincerely.
But soon his impatient spirit began to torment itself again. Why did Josephine shun him now? Ah! she loved Raynal now that he was dead. Women love the thing they have lost; so he had heard say. In that case, the very sight of him would of course be odious to her: he could understand that. The absolute, unreasoning faith he once had in her had been so rudely shaken by her marriage with Raynal, that now he could only believe just so much as he saw, and he saw that she shunned him.
He became moody, sad, and disconsolate: and as Josephine shunned him, so he avoided all the others, and wandered for hours by himself, perplexed and miserable. After awhile, he became conscious that he was under a sort of surveillance. Rose de Beaurepaire, who had been so kind to him when he was confined to his own room, but had taken little notice of him since he came down, now resumed her care of him, and evidently made it her business to keep up his heart. She used to meet him out walking in a mysterious way, and in short, be always falling in with him and trying to cheer him up: with tolerable success.
Such was the state of affairs when the party was swelled and matters complicated by the arrival of one we have lost sight of.
Edouard Riviere retarded his cure by an impatient spirit: but he got well at last, and his uncle drove him in the cabriolet to his own quarters. The news of the house had been told him by letter, but, of course, in so vague and general a way that, thinking he knew all, in reality he knew nothing.
Josephine had married Raynal. The marriage was sudden, but no doubt there was an attachment: he had some reason to believe in sudden attachments. Colonel Dujardin, an old acquaintance, had come back to France wounded, and the good doctor had undertaken his cure: this incident appeared neither strange nor any way important. What affected him most deeply was the death of Raynal, his personal friend and patron. But when his tyrants, as he called the surgeon and his uncle, gave him leave to go home, all feelings were overpowered by his great joy at the prospect of seeing Rose. He walked over to Beaurepaire, his arm in a sling, his heart beating. He was coming to receive the reward of all he had done, and all he had attempted. “I will surprise them,” thought he. “I will see her face when I come in at the door: oh, happy hour! this pays for all.” He entered the house without announcing himself; he went softly up to the saloon; to his great disappointment he found no one but the baroness: she received him kindly, but not with the warmth he expected. She was absorbed in her new grief. He asked timidly after her daughters. “Madame Raynal bears up, for the sake of others. You will not, however, see her: she keeps her room. My daughter Rose is taking a walk, I believe.” After some polite inquiries, and sympathy with his accident, the baroness retired to indulge her grief, and Edouard thus liberated ran in search of his beloved.
He met her at the gate of the Pleasaunce, but not alone. She was walking with an officer, a handsome, commanding, haughty, brilliant officer. She was walking by his side, talking earnestly to him.
An arrow of ice shot through young Riviere; and then came a feeling of death at his heart, a new symptom in his young life.
The next moment Rose caught sight of him. She flushed all over and uttered a little exclamation, and she bounded towards him like a little antelope, and put out both her hands at once. He could only give her one.
“Ah!” she cried with an accent of heavenly pity, and took his hand with both hers.
This was like the meridian sun coming suddenly on a cold place. He was all happiness.
When Josephine heard he was come her eye flashed, and she said quickly, “I will come down to welcome him—dear Edouard!”
The sisters looked at one another. Josephine blushed. Rose smiled and kissed her. She colored higher still, and said, “No, she was ashamed to go down.”
“Why?”
“Look at my face.”
“I see nothing wrong with it, except that it eclipses other people’s, and I have long forgiven you that.”
“Oh, yes, dear Rose: look what a color it has, and a fortnight ago it was pale as ashes.”
“Never mind; do you expect me to regret that?”
“Rose, I am a very bad woman.”
“Are you, dear? then hook this for me.”
“Yes, love. But I sometimes think you would forgive me if you knew how hard I pray to be better. Rose, I do try so to be as unhappy as I ought; but I can’t, I can’t. My cold heart seems as dead to unhappiness as once it was to happiness. Am I a heartless woman after all?”
“Not altogether,” said Rose dryly. “Fasten my collar, dear, and don’t torment yourself. You have suffered much and nobly. It was Heaven’s will: you bowed to it. It was not Heaven’s will that you should be blighted altogether. Bow in this, too, to Heaven’s will: take things as they come, and do cease to try and reconcile feelings that are too opposite to live together.”
“Ah! these are such comfortable words, Rose; but mamma will see this dreadful color in my cheek, and what can I say to her?”
“Ten to one it will not be observed; and if it should, I will say it is the excitement of seeing Edouard. Leave all to me.”
Josephine greeted Edouard most affectionately, drew from him his whole history, and petted him and sympathized with him deliciously, and made him the hero of the evening. Camille, who was not naturally of a jealous temper, bore this very well at first, but at last he looked so bitter at her neglect of him, that Rose took him aside to soothe him. Edouard, missing the auditor he most valued, and seeing her in secret conference with the brilliant colonel, felt a return of the jealous pangs that had seized him at first sight of the man; and so they played at cross purposes.
At another period of the evening the conversation became more general; and Edouard took a dislike to Colonel Dujardin. A young man of twenty-eight nearly always looks on a boy of twenty-one with the air of a superior, and this assumption, not being an ill-natured one, is apt to be so easy and so undefined that the younger hardly knows how to resent or to resist it. But Edouard was a little vain as we know; and the Colonel jarred him terribly. His quick haughty eye jarred him. His regimentals jarred him: they fitted like a glove. His mustache and his manner jarred him, and, worst of all, his cool familiarity with Rose, who seemed to court him rather than be courted by him. He put this act of Rose’s to the colonel’s account, according to the custom of lovers, and revenged himself in a small way by telling Josephine in her ear “that the colonel produced on his mind the effect of an intolerable puppy.”
Josephine colored up and looked at him with a momentary surprise. She said quietly, “Military men do give themselves some airs, but he is very amiable at bottom. You must make a better acquaintance with him, and then he will reveal to you his nobler qualities.”—“Oh! I have no particular desire,” sneered unlucky Edouard. Sweet as Josephine was, this was too much for her: she said nothing; but she quietly turned Edouard over to Aubertin, and joined Rose, and under cover of her had a sweet timid chat with her falsely accused.
This occupied the two so entirely that Edouard was neglected. This hurt his foible, and seemed to be so unkind on the very first day of his return that he made his adieus to the baroness, and marched off in dudgeon unobserved.
Rose missed him first, but said nothing.
When Josephine saw he was gone, she uttered a little exclamation, and looked at Rose. Rose put on a mien of haughty indifference, but the water was in her eyes.
Josephine looked sorrowful.
When they talked over everything together at night, she reproached herself. “We behaved ill to poor Edouard: we neglected him.”
“He is a little cross, ill-tempered fellow,” said Rose pettishly.
“Oh, no! no!”
“And as vain as a peacock.”
“Has he not some right to be vain in this house?”
“Yes,—no. I am very angry with him. I won’t hear a word in his favor,” said Rose pouting: then she gave his defender a kiss. “Yes, dear,” said Josephine, answering the kiss, and ignoring the words, “he is a dear; and he is not cross, nor so very vain, poor boy! now don’t you see what it was?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do, you little cunning thing: you are too shrewd not to see everything.”
“No, indeed, Josephine; do tell me, don’t keep me waiting: I can’t bear that.”
“Well, then—jealous! A little.”
“Jealous? Oh, what fun! Of Camille? Ha! ha! Little goose!”
“And,” said Josephine very seriously, “I almost think he would be jealous of any one that occupied your attention. I watched him more or less all the evening.”
“All the better. I’ll torment my lord.”
“Heaven forbid you should be so cruel.”
“Oh! I will not make him unhappy, but I’ll tease him a little; it is not in nature to abstain.”
This foible detected in her lover, Rose was very gay at the prospect of amusement it afforded her.
And I think I have many readers who at this moment are awaiting unmixed enjoyment and hilarity from the same source.
I wish them joy of their prospect.
Edouard called the next day: he wore a gloomy air. Rose met this with a particularly cheerful one; on this, Edouard’s face cleared up, and he was himself again; agreeable as this was, Rose felt a little disappointed. “I am afraid he is not very jealous after all,” thought she.
Josephine left her room this day and mingled once more with the family. The bare sight of her was enough for Camille at first, but after awhile he wanted more. He wanted to be often alone with her; but several causes co-operated to make her shy of giving him many such opportunities: first, her natural delicacy, coupled with her habit of self-denial; then her fear of shocking her mother, and lastly her fear of her own heart, and of Camille, whose power over her she knew. For Camille, when he did get a sweet word alone with her, seemed to forget everything except that she was his betrothed, and that he had come back alive to marry her. He spoke to her of his love with an ardor and an urgency that made her thrill with happiness, but at the same time shrink with a certain fear and self-reproach. Possessed with a feeling no stronger than hers, but single, he did not comprehend the tumult, the trouble, the daily contest in her heart. The wind seemed to him to be always changing, and hot and cold the same hour. Since he did not even see that she was acting in hourly fear of her mother’s eye, he was little likely to penetrate her more hidden sentiments; and then he had not touched her key-note,—self-denial.
Women are self-denying and uncandid. Men are self-indulgent and outspoken.
And this is the key to a thousand double misunderstandings; for believe me, good women are just as stupid in misunderstanding men as honest men are in misunderstanding women.
To Camille, Josephine’s fluctuations, joys, tremors, love, terror, modesty, seemed one grand total, caprice. The component parts of it he saw not; and her caprice tortured him almost to madness. Too penitent to give way again to violent passion, he gently fretted. His health retrograded and his temper began to sour. The eye of timid love that watched him with maternal anxiety from under its long lashes saw this with dismay, and Rose, who looked into her sister’s bosom, devoted herself once more to soothe him without compromising Josephine’s delicacy. Matters were not so bad but what a fine sprightly girl like Rose could cheer up a dejected but manly colonel; and Rose was generally successful.
But then, unfortunately, this led to a fresh mystification. Riviere’s natural jealousy revived, and found constant food in the attention Rose paid Camille, a brilliant colonel living in the house while he, poor wretch, lived in lodgings. The false position of all the parties brought about some singular turns. I give from their number one that forms a link, though a small one, in my narrative.
One day Edouard came to tell Rose she was making him unhappy; he had her alone in the Pleasaunce; she received him with a radiant smile, and they had a charming talk,—a talk all about HIM: what the family owed him, etc.
On this, his late jealousy and sense of injury seemed a thing of three years ago, and never to return. So hard it is for the loving heart to resist its sun.
Jacintha came with a message from the colonel: “Would it be agreeable to Mademoiselle Rose to walk with him at the usual hour?”
“Certainly,” said Rose.
As Jacintha was retiring Edouard called to her to stop a minute.
Then, turning to Rose, he begged her very ceremoniously to reconsider that determination.
“What determination?”
“To sacrifice me to this Colonel Dujardin.” Still politely, only a little grimly.
Rose opened her eyes. “Are you mad?” inquired she with quiet hauteur.
“Neither mad nor a fool,” was the reply. “I love you too well to share your regard with any one, upon any terms; least of all upon these, that there is to be a man in the world at whose beck and call you are to be, and at whose orders you are to break off an interview with me. Perdition!”
“Dear Edouard, what folly! Can you suspect me of discourtesy, as well as of—I know not what. Colonel Dujardin will join us, that is all, and we shall take a little walk with him.”
“Not I. I decline the intrusion; you are engaged with me, and I have things to say to you that are not fit for that puppy to hear. So choose between me and him, and choose forever.”
Rose colored. “I should be very sorry to choose either of you forever; but for this afternoon I choose you.”
“Oh, thank you—my whole life shall prove my gratitude for this preference.”
Rose beckoned Jacintha, and sent her with an excuse to Colonel Dujardin. She then turned with an air of mock submission to Edouard. “I am at monsieur’s ORDERS.”
Then this unhappy novice, being naturally good-natured, thanked her again and again for her condescension in setting his heart at rest. He proposed a walk, since his interference had lost her one. She yielded a cold assent. This vexed him, but he took it for granted it would wear off before the end of the walk. Edouard’s heart bounded, but he loved her too sincerely to be happy unless he could see her happy too; the malicious thing saw this, or perhaps knew it by instinct, and by means of this good feeling of his she revenged herself for his tyranny. She tortured him as only a woman can torture, and as even she can torture only a worthy man, and one who loves her. In the course of that short walk this inexperienced girl, strong in the instincts and inborn arts of her sex, drove pins and needles, needles and pins, of all sorts and sizes, through her lover’s heart.
She was everything by turns, except kind, and nothing for long together. She was peevish, she was ostentatiously patient and submissive, she was inattentive to her companion and seemingly wrapped up in contemplation of absent things and persons, the colonel to wit; she was dogged, repulsive, and cold; and she never was herself a single moment. They returned to the gate of the Pleasaunce. “Well, mademoiselle,” said Riviere very sadly, “that interloper might as well have been with us.”
“Of course he might, and you would have lost nothing by permitting me to be courteous to a guest and an invalid. If you had not played the tyrant, and taken the matter into your own hands, I should have found means to soothe your jeal—I mean your vanity; but you preferred to have your own way. Well, you have had it.”
“Yes, mademoiselle, you have given me a lesson; you have shown me how idle it is to attempt to force a young lady’s inclinations in anything.”
He bade her good-day, and went away sorrowful.
She cut Camille dead for the rest of the day.
Next morning, early, Edouard called expressly to see her. “Mademoiselle Rose,” said he, humbly, “I called to apologize for the ungentlemanly tone of my remonstrances yesterday.”
“Fiddle-dee,” said Rose. “Don’t do it again; that is the best apology.”
“I am not likely to offend so again,” said he sadly. “I am going away. I am sorry to say I am promoted; my new post is ten leagues. HE WILL HAVE IT ALL HIS OWN WAY NOW. But perhaps it is best. Were I to stay here, I foresee you would soon lose whatever friendly feeling you have for me.”
“Am I so changeable? I am not considered so,” remonstrated Rose, gently.
Riviere explained; “I am not vain,” said he, with that self-knowledge which is so general an attribute of human beings; “no man less so, nor am I jealous; but I respect myself, and I could never be content to share your time and your regard with Colonel Dujardin, nor with a much better man. See now; he has made me arrogant. Was I ever so before?”
“No! no! no! and I forgive you now, my poor Edouard.”
“He has made you cold as ice to me.”
“No! that was my own wickedness and spitefulness.”
“Wickedness, spitefulness! they are not in your nature. It is all that wretch’s doing.”
Rose sighed, but she said nothing; for she saw that to excuse Camille would only make the jealous one more bitter against him.
“Will you deign to write to me at my new post? once a month? in answer to my letters?”
“Yes, dear. But you will ride over sometimes to see us.”
“Oh, yes; but for some little time I shall not be able. The duties of a new post.”
“Perhaps in a month—a fortnight?”
“Sooner perhaps; the moment I hear that man is out of the house.”
Edouard went away, dogged and sad; Rose shut herself up in her room and had a good cry. In the afternoon Josephine came and remonstrated with her. “You have not walked with him at all to-day.”
“No; you must pet him yourself for once. I hate the sight of him; it has made mischief between Edouard and me, my being so attentive to him. Edouard is jealous, and I cannot wonder. After all, what right have I to mystify him who honors me with his affection?”
Then, being pressed with questions by Josephine, she related to her all that had passed between Edouard and her, word for word.
“Poor Camille!” sighed Josephine the just.
“Oh, dear, yes! poor Camille! who has the power to make us all miserable, and who does it, and will go on doing it until he is happy himself.”
“Ah! would to Heaven I could make him as happy as he deserves to be.”
“You could easily make him much happier than that. And why not do it?”
“O Rose,” said Josephine, shocked, “how can you advise me so?”
She then asked her if she thought it possible that Camille could be ignorant of her heart.
“Josephine,” replied Rose, angrily, “these men are absurd: they believe only what they see. I have done what I can for you and Camille, but it is useless. Would you have him believe you love him, you must yourself be kind to him; and it would be a charitable action: you would make four unhappy people happy, or, at least, put them on the road; NOW they are off the road, and, by what I have seen to-day, I think, if we go on so much longer, it will be too late to try to return. Come, Josephine, for my sake! Let me go and tell him you will consent—to all our happinesses. There, the crime is mine.” And she ran off in spite of Josephine’s faint and hypocritical entreaties. She returns the next minute looking all aghast. “It is too late,” said she. “He is going away. I am sure he is, for he is packing up his things to go. I spied through the old place and saw him. He was sighing like a furnace as he strapped his portmanteau. I hate him, of course, but I was sorry for him. I could not help being. He sighed so all the time, piteously.”
Josephine turned pale, and lifted her hands in surprise and dismay.
“Depend on it, Josephine, we are wrong,” said Rose, firmly: “these wretches will not stand our nonsense above a certain time: they are not such fools. We are mismanaging: one gone, the other going; both losing faith in us.”
Josephine’s color returned to her cheek, and then mounted high. Presently she smiled, a smile full of conscious power and furtive complacency, and said quietly, “He will not go.”
Rose was pleased, but not surprised, to hear her sister speak so confidently, for she knew her power over Camille. “That is right,” said she, “go to him, and say two honest words: ‘I bid you stay.’”
“O Rose! no!”
“Poltroon! You know he would go down on his knees, and stay directly.”
“No: I should blush all my life before you and him. I COULD not. I should let him go sooner, almost. Oh, no! I will never ask a man to stay who wishes to leave me. But just you go to him, and say Madame Raynal is going to take a little walk: will he do her the honor to be her companion? Not a word more, if you love me.”