“I’ll go. Hypocrite!”
Josephine received Camille with a bright smile. She seemed in unusually good spirits, and overflowing with kindness and innocent affection. On this his high gloomy brow relaxed, and all his prospects brightened as by magic. Then she communicated to him a number of little plans for next week and the week after. Among the rest he was to go with her and Rose to Frejus. “Such a sweet place: I want to show it you. You will come?”
He hesitated a single moment: a moment of intense anxiety to the smiling Josephine.
“Yes! he would come: it was a great temptation, he saw so little of her.”
“Well, you will see more of me now.”
“Shall I see you every day—alone, I mean?”
“Oh, yes, if you wish it,” replied Josephine, in an off-hand, indifferent way.
He seized her hand and devoured it with kisses. “Foolish thing!” murmured she, looking down on him with ineffable tenderness. “Should I not be always with you if I consulted my inclination?—let me go.”
“No! consult your inclination a little longer.”
“Must I?”
“Yes; that shall be your punishment.”
“For what? What have I done?” asked she with an air of great innocence.
“You have made me happy, me who adore you,” was the evasive reply.
Josephine came in from her walk with a high color and beaming eyes, and screamed, “Run, Rose!”
On this concise, and to us not very clear instruction, Rose slipped up the secret stair. She saw Camille come in and gravely unpack his little portmanteau, and dispose his things in the drawers with soldier-like neatness, and hum an agreeable march. She came and told Josephine.
“Ah!” said Josephine with a little sigh of pleasure, and a gentle triumph in her eyes.
She had not only got her desire, but had arrived at it her way,—woman’s way, round about.
This adroit benevolence led to more than she bargained for. She and Camille were now together every day: and their hearts, being under restraint in public, melted together all the more in their stolen interviews.
At the third delicious interview the modest Camille begged Josephine to be his wife directly.
Have you noticed those half tame deer that come up to you in a park so lovingly, with great tender eyes, and, being now almost within reach, stop short, and with bodies fixed like statues on pedestals, crane out their graceful necks for sugar, or bread, or a chestnut, or a pocket-handkerchief? Do but offer to put your hand upon them, away they bound that moment twenty yards, and then stand quite still, and look at your hand and you, with great inquiring, suspicious, tender eyes.
So Josephine started at Camille’s audacious proposal. “Never mention such a thing to me again: or—or, I will not walk with you any more:” then she thrilled with pleasure at the obnoxious idea, “she Camille’s wife!” and colored all over—with rage, Camille thought. He promised submissively not to renew the topic: no more he did till next day. Josephine had spent nearly the whole interval in thinking of it; so she was prepared to put him down by calm reasons. She proceeded to do so, gently, but firmly.
Lo and behold! what does he do, but meets her with just as many reasons, and just as calm ones: and urges them gently, but firmly.
Heaven had been very kind to them: why should they be unkind to themselves? They had had a great escape: why not accept the happiness, as, being persons of honor, they had accepted the misery? with many other arguments, differing in other things, but agreeing in this, that they were all sober, grave, and full of common-sense.
Finding him not defenceless on the score of reason, she shifted her ground and appealed to his delicacy. On this he appealed to her love, and then calm reason was jostled off the field, and passion and sentiment battled in her place.
In these contests day by day renewed, Camille had many advantages.
Rose, though she did not like him, had now declared on his side. She refused to show him the least attention. This threw him on Josephine: and when Josephine begged her to help reduce Camille to reason, her answer would be,—
“Hypocrite!” with a kiss: or else she would say, with a half comic petulance, “No! no! I am on his side. Give him his own way, or he will make us all four miserable.”
Thus Josephine’s ally went over to the enemy.
And then this coy young lady’s very power of resistance began to give way. She had now battled for months against her own heart: first for her mother; then, in a far more terrible conflict for Raynal, for honor and purity; and of late she had been battling, still against her own heart, for delicacy, for etiquette, things very dear to her, but not so great, holy, and sustaining as honor and charity that were her very household gods: and so, just when the motives of resistance were lowered, the length of the resistance began to wear her out.
For nothing is so hard to her sex as a long steady struggle. In matters physical, this is the thing the muscles of the fair cannot stand; in matters intellectual and moral, the long strain it is that beats them dead.
Do not look for a Bacona, a Newtona, a Handella, a Victoria Huga.
Some American ladies tell us education has stopped the growth of these.
No! mesdames. These are not in nature.
They can bubble letters in ten minutes that you could no more deliver to order in ten days than a river can play like a fountain. They can sparkle gems of stories: they can flash little diamonds of poems. The entire sex has never produced one opera nor one epic that mankind could tolerate: and why? these come by long, high-strung labor. But, weak as they are in the long run of everything but the affections (and there giants), they are all overpowering while their gallop lasts. Fragilla shall dance any two of you flat on the floor before four o’clock, and then dance on till the peep of day.
Only you trundle off to your business as usual, and could dance again the next night, and so on through countless ages.
She who danced you into nothing is in bed, a human jelly tipped with headache.
What did Josephine say to Rose one day? “I am tired of saying ‘No! no! no! no! no!’ forever and ever to him I love.”
But this was not all. She was not free from self-reproach. Camille’s faith in her had stood firm. Hers in him had not. She had wronged him, first by believing him false, then by marrying another. One day she asked his pardon for this. He replied that he had forgiven that; but would she be good enough to make him forget it?
“I wish I could.”
“You can. Marry me: then your relation to that man will seem but a hideous dream. I shall be able to say, looking at you, my wife, ‘I was faithful: I suffered something for her; I came home: she loved me still; the proof is, she was my wife within three months of my return.’”
When he said that to her in the Pleasaunce, if there had been a priest at hand—. In a word, Josephine longed to show him her love, yet wished not to shock her mother, nor offend her own sense of delicacy; but Camille cared for nothing but his love. To sacrifice love and happiness, even for a time, to etiquette, seemed to him to be trifling with the substance of great things for the shadow of petty things; and he said so: sometimes sadly, sometimes almost bitterly.
So Josephine was a beleagured fortress, attacked with one will, and defended by troops, one-third of which were hot on the side of the besiegers.
When singleness attacks division, you know the result beforehand. Why then should I spin words? I will not trace so ill-matched a contest step by step, sentence by sentence: let me rather hasten to relate the one peculiarity that arose out of this trite contest, where, under the names of Camille and Josephine, the two great sexes may be seen acting the whole world-wide distich,—
“It’s a man’s part to try,And a woman’s to deny [for a while?].”
Finding her own resolutions oozing away, Josephine caught at another person.
She said to Camille before Rose,—
“Even if I could bring myself to snatch at happiness in this indelicate way—scarce a month after, oh!” And there ended the lady’s sentence. In the absence of a legitimate full stop, she put one hand before her lovely face to hide it, and so no more. But some two minutes after she delivered the rest in the form and with the tone of a distinct remark, “No: my mother would never consent.”
“Yes, she would if you could be brought to implore her as earnestly as I implore you.”
“Now would she?” asked Josephine, turning quickly to her sister.
“No, never. Our mother would look with horror on such a proposal. A daughter of hers to marry within a twelvemonth of her widowhood!”
“There, you see, Camille.”
“And, besides, she loved Raynal so; she has not forgotten him as we have, almost.”
“Ungrateful creature that I am!” sighed Josephine!
“She mourns for him every day. Often I see her eyes suddenly fill; that is for him. Josephine’s influence with mamma is very great: it is double mine: but if we all went on our knees to her, the doctor and all, she would never consent.”
“There you see, Camille: and I could not defy my mother, even for you.”
Camille sighed.
“I see everything is against me, even my love: for that love is too much akin to veneration to propose to you a clandestine marriage.”
“Oh, thank you! bless you for respecting as well as loving me, dear Camille,” said Josephine.
These words, uttered with gentle warmth, were some consolation to Camille, and confirmed him, as they were intended to do, in the above good resolution. He smiled.
“Maladroit!” muttered Rose.
“Why maladroit?” asked Camille, opening his eyes.
“Let us talk of something else,” replied Rose, coolly.
Camille turned red. He understood that he had done something very stupid, but he could not conceive what. He looked from one sister to the other alternately. Rose was smiling ironically, Josephine had her eyes bent demurely on a handkerchief she was embroidering.
That evening Camille drew Rose aside, and asked for an explanation of her “maladroit.”
“So it was,” replied Rose, sharply.
But as this did not make the matter quite clear, Camille begged a little further explanation.
“Was it your part to make difficulties?”
“No, indeed.”
“Was it for you to tell her a secret marriage would not be delicate? Do you think she will be behind you in delicacy? or that a love without respect will satisfy her? yet you must go and tell her you respected her too much to ask her to marry you secretly. In other words, situated as she is, you asked her not to marry you at all: she consented to that directly; what else could you expect?”
“Maladroit! indeed,” said Camille, “but I would not have said it, only I thought”—
“You thought nothing would induce her to marry secretly, so you said to yourself, ‘I will assume a virtue: I will do a bit of cheap self-denial: decline to the sound of trumpets what another will be sure to deny me if I don’t—ha! ha!’—well, for your comfort, I am by no means so sure she might not have been brought to do ANYTHING for you, except openly defy mamma: but now of course”—
And here this young lady’s sentence ended: for the sisters, unlike in most things, were one in grammar.
Camille was so disconcerted and sad at what he had done, that Rose began to pity him: so she rallied him a little longer in spite of her pity: and then all of a sudden gave him her hand, and said she would try and repair the mischief.
He began to smother her hand with kisses.
“Oh!” said she, “I don’t deserve all that: I have a motive of my own; let me alone, child, do. Your unlucky speech will be quoted to me a dozen times. Never mind.”
Rose went and bribed Josephine to consent.
“Come, mamma shall not know, and as for you, you shall scarcely move in the matter; only do not oppose me very violently, and all will be well.”
“Ah, Rose!” said Josephine; “it is delightful—terrible, I mean—to have a little creature about one that reads one like this. What shall I do? What shall I do?”
“Why, do the best you can under all the circumstances. His wound is healed, you know; he must go back to the army; you have both suffered to the limits of mortal endurance. Is he to go away unhappy, in any doubt of your affection? and you to remain behind with the misery of self-reproach added to the desolation of absence?—think.”
“It is cruel. But to deceive my mother!”
“Do not say deceive our mother; that is such a shocking phrase.”
Rose then reminded Josephine that their confessor had told them a wise reticence was not the same thing as a moral deceit. She reminded her, too, how often they had acted on his advice and always with good effect; how many anxieties and worries they had saved their mother by reticence. Josephine assented warmly to this.
Was there not some reason to think they had saved their mother’s very life by these reticences? Josephine assented. “And, Josephine, you are of age; you are your own mistress; you have a right to marry whom you please: and, sooner or later, you will certainly marry Camille. I doubt whether even our mother could prevail on you to refuse him altogether. So it is but a question of time, and of giving our mother pain, or sparing her pain. Dear mamma is old; she is prejudiced. Why shock her prejudices? She could not be brought to understand the case: these things never happened in her day. Everything seems to have gone by rule then. Let us do nothing to worry her for the short time she has to live. Let us take a course between pain to her and cruelty to you and Camille.”
These arguments went far to convince Josephine: for her own heart supported them. She went from her solid objections to untenable ones—a great point gained. She urged the difficulty, the impossibility of a secret marriage.
Camille burst in here: he undertook at once to overcome these imaginary difficulties. “They could be married at a distance.”
“You will find no priest who will consent to do such a wicked thing as marry us without my mother’s knowledge,” objected Josephine.
“Oh! as to that,” said Rose, “you know the mayor marries people nowadays.”
“I will not be married again without a priest,” said Josephine, sharply.
“Nor I,” said Camille. “I know a mayor who will do the civil forms for me, and a priest who will marry me in the sight of Heaven, and both will keep it secret for love of me till it shall please Josephine to throw off this disguise.”
“Who is the priest?” inquired Josephine, keenly.
“An old cure: he lives near Frejus: he was my tutor, and the mayor is the mayor of Frejus, also an old friend of mine.”
“But what on earth will you say to them?”
“That is my affair: I must give them some reasons which compel me to keep my marriage secret. Oh! I shall have to tell them some fibs, of course.”
“There, I thought so! I will not have you telling fibs; it lowers you.”
“Of course it does; but you can’t have secrecy without a fib or two.”
“Fibs that will injure no one,” said Rose, majestically.
From this day Camille began to act as well as to talk. He bought a light caleche and a powerful horse, and elected factotum Dard his groom. Camille rode over to Frejus and told a made-up story to the old cure and the mayor, and these his old friends believed every word he said, and readily promised their services and strict secrecy.
He told the young ladies what he had done.
Rose approved. Josephine shook her head, and seeing matters going as her heart desired and her conscience did not quite approve, she suddenly affected to be next to nobody in the business—to be resigned, passive, and disposed of to her surprise by Queen Rose and King Camille, without herself taking any actual part in their proceedings.
At last the great day arrived on which Camille and Josephine were to be married at Frejus.
The mayor awaited them at eleven o’clock. The cure at twelve. The family had been duly prepared for this excursion by several smaller ones.
Rose announced their intention over night; a part of it.
“Mamma,” said she, blushing a little, “Colonel Dujardin is good enough to take us to Frejus tomorrow. It is a long way, and we must breakfast early or we shall not be back to dinner.”
“Do so, my child. I hope you will have a fine day: and mind you take plenty of wraps with you in case of a shower.”
At seven o’clock the next morning Camille and the two ladies took a hasty cup of coffee together instead of breakfast, and then Dard brought the caleche round.
The ladies got in, and Camille had just taken the reins in his hand, when Jacintha screamed to him from the hall, “Wait a moment, colonel, wait a moment! The doctor! don’t go without the doctor!” And the next moment Dr. Aubertin appeared with his cloak on his arm, and, saluting the ladies politely, seated himself quietly in the vehicle before the party had recovered their surprise.
The ladies managed to keep their countenances, but Dujardin’s discomfiture was evident.
He looked piteously at Josephine, and then asked Aubertin if they were to set him down anywhere in particular.
“Oh, no; I am going with you to Frejus,” was the quiet reply.
Josephine quaked. Camille was devoured with secret rage: he lashed the horse and away they went.
It was a silent party. The doctor seemed in a reverie. The others did not know what to think, much less to say. Aubertin sat by Camille’s side; so the latter could hold no secret communication with either lady.
Now it was not the doctor’s habit to rise at this time of the morning: yet there he was, going with them to Frejus uninvited.
Josephine was in agony; had their intention transpired through some imprudence of Camille?
Camille was terribly uneasy. He concluded the secret had transpired through female indiscretion. Then they all tortured themselves as to the old man’s intention. But what seemed most likely was, that he was with them to prevent a clandestine marriage by his bare presence, without making a scene and shocking Josephine’s pride: and if so, was he there by his own impulse? No, it was rather to be feared that all this was done by order of the baroness. There was a finesse about it that smacked of a feminine origin, and the baroness was very capable of adopting such a means as this, to spare her own pride and her favorite daughter’s. “The clandestine” is not all sugar. A more miserable party never went along, even to a wedding.
After waiting a long time for the doctor to declare himself, they turned desperate, and began to chatter all manner of trifles. This had a good effect: it roused Aubertin from his reverie, and presently he gave them the following piece of information: “I told you the other day that a nephew of mine was just dead; a nephew I had not seen for many years. Well, my friends, I received last night a hasty summons to his funeral.”
“At Frejus?”
“No, at Paris. The invitation was so pressing, that I was obliged to go. The letter informed me, however, that a diligence passes through Frejus, at eleven o’clock, for Paris. I heard you say you were going to Frejus; so I packed up a few changes of linen, and my MS., my work on entomology, which at my last visit to the capital all the publishers were mad enough to refuse: here it is. Apropos, has Jacintha put my bag into the carriage?”
On this a fierce foot-search, and the bag was found. Meantime, Josephine leaned back in her seat with a sigh of thankfulness. She was more intent on not being found out than on being married. But Camille, who was more intent on being married than on not being found out, was asking himself, with fury, how on earth they should get rid of Aubertin in time.
Well, of course, under such circumstances as these the diligence did not come to its time, nor till long after; and all the while, they were waiting for it they were failing their rendezvous with the mayor, and making their rendezvous with the curate impossible. But, above all, there was the risk of one or other of those friends coming up and blurting all out, taking for granted that the doctor must be in their confidence, or why bring him.
At last, at half-past eleven o’clock, to their great relief, up came the diligence. The doctor prepared to take his place in the interior, when the conductor politely informed him that the vehicle stopped there a quarter of an hour.
“In that case I will not abandon my friends,” said the doctor, affectionately.
One of his friends gnashed his teeth at this mark of affection. But Josephine smiled sweetly.
At last he was gone; but it wanted ten minutes only to twelve.
Josephine inquired amiably, whether it would not be as well to postpone matters to another day—meaning forever. “My ARDOR is chilled,” said she, and showed symptoms of crying at what she had gone through.
Camille replied by half dragging them to the mayor. That worthy received them with profound, though somewhat demure respect, and invited them to a table sumptuously served. The ladies, out of politeness, were about to assent, but Camille begged permission to postpone that part until after the ceremony.
At last, to their astonishment, they were married. Then, with a promise to return and dine with the mayor, they went to the cure. Lo and behold! he was gone to visit a sick person. “He had waited a long time for them,” said the servant.
Josephine was much disconcerted, and showed a disposition to cry again. The servant, a good-natured girl, nosed a wedding, and offered to run and bring his reverence in a minute.
Presently there came an old silvery-haired man, who addressed them all as his children. He took them to the church, and blessed their union; and for the first time Josephine felt as if Heaven consented. They took a gentle farewell of him, and went back to the mayor’s to dine; and at this stage of the business Rose and Josephine at last effected a downright simultaneous cry, apropos of nothing that was then occurring.
This refreshed them mightily, and they glowed at the mayor’s table like roses washed with dew.
But oh! how glad at heart they all were to find themselves in the carriage once more going home to Beaurepaire.
Rose and Josephine sat intertwined on the back seat; Camille, the reins in his right hand, nearly turned his back on the horse, and leaned back over to them and purred to Rose and his wife with ineffable triumph and tenderness.
The lovers were in Elysium, and Rose was not a little proud of her good management in ending all their troubles. Their mother received them back with great, and as they fancied, with singular, affection. She was beginning to be anxious about them, she said. Then her kindness gave these happy souls a pang it never gave them before.
Since the above events scarce a fortnight had elapsed; but such a change! Camille sunburnt and healthy, and full of animation and confidence; Josephine beaming with suppressed happiness, and more beautiful than Rose could ever remember to have seen her. For a soft halo of love and happiness shone around her head; a new and indefinable attraction bloomed on her face. She was a wife. Her eye, that used to glance furtively on Camille, now dwelt demurely on him; dwelt with a sort of gentle wonder and admiration as well as affection, and, when he came or passed very near her, a keen observer might have seen her thrill.
She kept a good deal out of her mother’s way; for she felt within that her face must be too happy. She feared to shock her mother’s grief with her radiance. She was ashamed of feeling unmixed heaven. But the flood of secret bliss she floated in bore all misgivings away. The pair were forever stealing away together for hours, and on these occasions Rose used to keep out of her mother’s sight, until they should return. So then the new-married couple could wander hand in hand through the thick woods of Beaurepaire, whose fresh green leaves were now just out, and hear the distant cuckoo, and sit on mossy banks, and pour love into one another’s eyes, and plan ages of happiness, and murmur their deep passion and their bliss almost more than mortal; could do all this and more, without shocking propriety. These sweet duets passed for trios: for on their return Rose would be out looking for them, or would go and meet them at some distance, and all three would go up together to the baroness, as from a joint excursion. And when they went up to their bedrooms, Josephine would throw her arms round her sister’s neck, and sigh, “It is not happiness, it is beatitude!”
Meantime, the baroness mourned for Raynal. Her grief showed no decrease. Rose even fancied at times she wore a gloomy and discontented look as well; but on reflection she attributed that to her own fancy, or to the contrast that had now sprung up in her sister’s beaming complacency.
Rose, when she found herself left day after day alone for hours, was sad and thought of Edouard. And this feeling gained on her day by day.
At last, one afternoon, she locked herself in her own room, and, after a long contest with her pride, which, if not indomitable, was next door to it, she sat down to write him a little letter. Now, in this letter, in the place devoted by men to their after-thoughts, by women to their pretended after-thoughts; i. e., to what they have been thinking of all through the letter, she dropped a careless hint that all the party missed him very much, “even the obnoxious colonel, who, by-the-by, has transferred his services elsewhere. I have forgiven him that, because he has said civil things about you.”
Rose was reading her letter over again, to make sure that all the principal expressions were indistinct, and that the composition generally, except the postscript, resembled a Delphic oracle, when there was a hasty footstep, and a tap at her door, and in came Jacintha, excited.
“He is come, mademoiselle,” cried she, and nodded her head like a mandarin, only more knowingly; then she added, “So you may burn that.” For her quick eye had glanced at the table.
“Who is come?” inquired Rose, eagerly.
“Why, your one?”
“My one?” asked the young lady, reddening, “my what?”
“The little one—Edouard—Monsieur Riviere.”
“Oh, Monsieur Riviere,” said Rose, acting nonchalance. “Why could you not say so? you use such phrases, who can conjecture what you mean? I will come to Monsieur Riviere directly; mamma will be so glad.”
Jacintha gone, Rose tore up the letter and locked up the pieces, then ran to the glass. Etc.
Edouard had been so profoundly miserable he could stand it no longer; in spite of his determination not to visit Beaurepaire while it contained a rival, he rode over to see whether he had not tormented himself idly: above all, to see the beloved face.
Jacintha put him into the salle a manger. “By that you will see her alone,” said the knowing Jacintha. He sat down, hat and whip in hand, and wondered how he should be received—if at all.
In glides Rose all sprightliness and good-humor, and puts out her hand to him; the which he kisses.
“How could I keep away so long?” asked he vaguely, and self-astonished.
“How indeed, and we missing you so all the time!”
“Have YOU missed me?” was the eager inquiry.
“Oh, no!” was the cheerful reply; “but all the rest have.”
Presently the malicious thing gave a sudden start.
“Oh! such a piece of news; you remember Colonel Dujardin, the obnoxious colonel?”
No answer.
“Transferred his attentions. Fancy!”
“Who to?”
“To Josephine and mamma. But such are the military. He only wanted to get rid of you: this done (through your want of spirit), he scorns the rich prize; so now I scorn HIM. Will you come for a walk?”
“Oh, yes!”
“We will go and look for my deserter. I say, tell me now; cannot I write to the commander-in-chief about this? a soldier has no right to be a deserter, has he? tell me, you are a public man, and know everything except my heart.”
“Is it not too bad to tease me to-day?”
“Yes! but please! I have had few amusements of late. I find it so dull without you to tease.”
Formal permission to tease being conceded, she went that instant on the opposite tack, and began to tell him how she had missed him, and how sorry she had been anything should have occurred to vex their kind good friend. In short, Edouard spent a delightful day, for Rose took him one way to meet Josephine, who, she knew, was coming another. At night the last embers of jealousy got quenched, for Josephine was a wife now, and had already begun to tell Camille all her little innocent secrets; and she told him all about Edouard and Rose, and gave him his orders; so he treated Rose with great respect before Edouard; but paid her no marked attention; also he was affable to Riviere, who, having ceased to suspect, began to like him.
In the course of the evening, the colonel also informed the baroness that he expected every day an order to join the army of the Rhine.
Edouard pricked his ears.
The baroness said no more than politeness dictated. She did not press him to stay, but treated his departure as a matter of course. Riviere rode home late in the evening in high spirits.
The next day Rose varied her late deportment; she sang snatches of melody, going about the house; it was for all the world like a bird chirping. In the middle of one chirp Jacintha interfered. “Hush, mademoiselle, your mamma! she is at the bottom of the corridor.”
“What was I thinking of?” said Rose.
“Oh! I dare say you know, mademoiselle,” replied the privileged domestic.
A letter of good news came from Aubertin. That summons to his nephew’s funeral was an era in his harmless life.
The said nephew was a rich man and an oddity; one of those who love to surprise folk. Moreover, he had no children, and detected his nephews and nieces being unnaturally civil to him. “Waiting to cut me up,” was his generous reading of them. So with this he made a will, and there defied, as far as in him lay, the laws of nature; for he set his wealth a-flowing backwards instead of forwards; he handed his property up to an ancestor, instead of down to posterity.
All this the doctor’s pen set down with some humor, and in the calm spirit with which a genuine philosopher receives prosperity as well as adversity. Yet one natural regret escaped him; that all this wealth, since it was to come, had not come a year or two sooner.
All at Beaurepaire knew what their dear old friend meant.
His other news to them was that they might expect him any moment.
So here was another cause of rejoicing.
“I am so glad,” said Josephine. “Now, perhaps, he will be able to publish his poor dear entomology, that the booksellers were all so unkind, so unfeeling about.”
I linger on the brink of painful scenes to observe that a sweet and loving friendship, such as this was between the good doctor and three persons of another sex, is one of the best treasures of the human heart. Poverty had strengthened it; yet now wealth could not weaken it. With no tie of blood it yet was filial, sisterly, brotherly, national, chivalrous; happy, unalloyed sentiment, free from ups and downs, from heats and chills, from rivalry, from caprice; and, indeed, from all mortal accidents but one—and why say one? methinks death itself does but suspend these gentle, rare, unselfish amities a moment, then waft them upward to their abiding home.
It was a fair morning in June: the sky was a bright, deep, lovely, speckless blue: the flowers and bushes poured perfume, and sprinkled song upon the balmy air. On such a day, so calm, so warm, so bright, so scented, so tuneful, to live and to be young is to be happy. With gentle hand it wipes all other days out of the memory; it smiles, it smells, it sings, and clouds and rain and biting wind seem as far off and impossible as grief and trouble.
Camille and Josephine had stolen out, and strolled lazily up and down close under the house, drinking the sweet air, fragrant with perfume and melody; the blue sky, and love.
Rose was in the house. She had missed them; but she thought they must be near; for they seldom took long walks early in the day. Meeting Jacintha on the landing of the great staircase, she asked her where her sister was.
“Madame Raynal is gone for a walk. She has taken the colonel with her. You know she always takes the colonel out with her now.”
“That will do. You can finish your work.”
Jacintha went into Camille’s room.
Rose, who had looked as grave as a judge while Jacintha was present, bubbled into laughter. She even repeated Jacintha’s words aloud, and chuckled over them. “You know she always takes the colonel out with her now—ha, ha, ha!”
“Rose!” sighed a distant voice.
She looked round, and saw the baroness at some distance in the corridor, coming slowly towards her, with eyes bent gloomily on the ground. Rose composed her features into a settled gravity, and went to meet her.
“I wish to speak with you,” said the baroness; “let us sit down; it is cool here.”
Rose ran and brought a seat without a back, but well stuffed, and set it against the wall. The old lady sat down and leaned back, and looked at Rose in silence a good while; then she said,—
“There is room for you; sit down, for I want to speak seriously to you.”
“Yes, mamma; what is it?”
“Turn a little round, and let me see your face.”
Rose complied; and began to feel a little uneasy.
“Perhaps you can guess what I am going to say to you?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, I am going to put a question to you.”
“With all my heart, dear mamma.”
“I invite you to explain to me the most singular, the most unaccountable thing that ever fell under my notice. Will you do this for your mother?”
“O mamma! of course I will do anything to please you that I can; but, indeed, I don’t know what you mean.”
“I am going to tell you.”
The old lady paused. The young one, naturally enough, felt a chill of vague anxiety strike across her frame.
“Rose,” said the old lady, speaking very gently but firmly, and leaning in a peculiar way on her words, while her eye worked like an ice gimlet on her daughter’s face, “a little while ago, when my poor Raynal—our benefactor—was alive—and I was happy—you all chilled my happiness by your gloom: the whole house seemed a house of mourning—tell me now why was this.”
“Mamma!” said Rose, after a moment’s hesitation, “we could hardly be gay. Sickness in the house! And if Colonel Raynal was alive, still he was absent, and in danger.”
“Oh! then it was out of regard for him we were all dispirited?”
“Why, I suppose so,” said Rose, stoutly; but then colored high at her own want of candor. However, she congratulated herself that her mother’s suspicion was confined to past events.
Her self-congratulation on that score was short; for the baroness, after eying her grimly for a second or two in silence, put her this awkward question plump.
“If so, tell me why is it that ever since that black day when the news of his DEATH reached us, the whole house has gone into black, and has gone out of mourning?”
“Mamma,” stammered Rose, “what DO you mean?”
“Even poor Camille, who was so pale and wan, has recovered like magic.”
“O mamma! is not that fancy?” said Rose, piteously. “Of what do you suspect me? Can you think I am unfeeling—ungrateful? I should not be YOUR daughter.”
“No, no,” said the baroness, “to do you justice, you attempt sorrow; as you put on black. But, my poor child, you do it with so little skill that one sees a horrible gayety breaking through that thin disguise: you are no true mourners: you are like the mutes or the undertakers at a funeral, forced grief on the surface of your faces, and frightful complacency below.”
“Tra la! lal! la! la! Tra la! la! Tra la! la!” carolled Jacintha, in the colonel’s room hard by.
The ladies looked at one another: Rose in great confusion.
“Tra la! la! la! Tra lal! lal! la! la! la!”
“Jacintha!” screamed Rose angrily.
“Hush! not a word,” said the baroness. “Why remonstrate with HER? Servants are but chameleons: they take the color of those they serve. Do not cry. I wanted your confidence, not your tears, love. There, I will not twice in one day ask you for your heart: it would be to lower the mother, and give the daughter the pain of refusing it, and the regret, sure to come one day, of having refused it. I will discover the meaning of it all by myself.” She went away with a gentle sigh; and Rose was cut to the heart by her words; she resolved, whatever it might cost her and Josephine, to make a clean breast this very day. As she was one of those who act promptly, she went instantly in search of her sister, to gain her consent, if possible.
Now, the said Josephine was in the garden walking with Camille, and uttering a wife’s tender solicitudes.
“And must you leave me? must you risk your life again so soon; the life on which mine depends?”
“My dear, that letter I received from headquarters two days ago, that inquiry whether my wound was cured. A hint, Josephine—a hint too broad for any soldier not to take.”
“Camille, you are very proud,” said Josephine, with an accent of reproach, and a look of approval.
“I am obliged to be. I am the husband of the proudest woman in France.”
“Hush! not so loud: there is Dard on the grass.”
“Dard!” muttered the soldier with a word of meaning. “Josephine,” said he after a pause, and a little peevishly, “how much longer are we to lower our voices, and turn away our eyes from each other, and be ashamed of our happiness?”
“Five months longer, is it not?” answered Josephine quietly.
“Five months longer!”
Josephine was hurt at this, and for once was betrayed into a serious and merited remonstrance.
“Is this just?” said she. “Think of two months ago: yes, but two months ago, you were dying. You doubted my love, because it could not overcome my virtue and my gratitude: yet you might have seen it was destroying my life. Poor Raynal, my husband, my benefactor, died. Then I could do more for you, if not with delicacy, at least with honor; but no! words, and looks, and tender offices of love were not enough, I must give stronger proof. Dear Camille, I have been reared in a strict school: and perhaps none of your sex can know what it cost me to go to Frejus that day with him I love.”
“My own Josephine!”
“I made but one condition: that you would not rob me of my mother’s respect: to her our hasty marriage would appear monstrous, heartless. You consented to be secretly happy for six months. One fortnight has passed, and you are discontented again.”
“Oh, no! do not think so. It is every word true. I am an ungrateful villain.”
“How dare you say so? and to me! No! but you are a man.”
“So I have been told; but my conduct to you, sweet one, has not been that of a man from first to last. Yet I could die for you, with a smile on my lips. But when I think that once I lifted this sacrilegious hand against your life—oh!”
“Do not be silly, Camille. I love you all the better for loving me well enough to kill me. What woman would not? I tell you, you foolish thing, you are a man: monseigneur is one of the lordly sex, that is accustomed to have everything its own way. My love, in a world that is full of misery, here are two that are condemned to be secretly happy a few months longer: a hard fate for one of your sex, it seems: but it is so much sweeter than the usual lot of mine, that really I cannot share your misery,” and she smiled joyously.
“Then share my happiness, my dear wife.”
“I do; only mine is deep, not loud.”
“Why, Dard is gone, and we are out of doors; will the little birds betray us?”
“The lower windows are open, and I saw Jacintha in one of the rooms.”
“Jacintha? we are in awe of the very servants. Well, if I must not say it loud I will say it often,” and putting his mouth to her ear, he poured a burning whisper of love into it—“My love! my angel! my wife! my wife! my wife!”
She turned her swimming eyes on him.
“My husband!” she whispered in return.
Rose came out, and found them billing and cooing. “You MUST not be so happy, you two,” said she authoritatively.
“How can we help it?” asked Camille.
“You must and shall help it, somehow,” retorted this little tyrant. “Mamma suspects. She has given me such a cross-examination, my blood runs cold. No, on second thoughts, kiss her again, and you may both be as happy as you like; for I am going to tell mamma all, and no power on earth shall hinder me.”
“Rose,” said Camille, “you are a sensible girl; and I always said so.”
But Josephine was horrified. “What! tell my mother that within a month of my husband’s death?”—
“Don’t say your husband,” put in Camille wincing; “the priest never confirmed that union; words spoken before a magistrate do not make a marriage in the sight of Heaven.”
Josephine cut him short. “Amongst honorable men and women all oaths are alike sacred: and Heaven’s eye is in a magistrate’s room as in a church. A daughter of Beaurepaire gave her hand to him, and called herself his wife. Therefore, she was his wife: and is his widow. She owes him everything; the house you are all living in among the rest. She ought to be proud of her brief connection with that pure, heroic spirit, and, when she is so little noble as to disown him, then say that gratitude and justice have no longer a place among mankind.”
“Come into the chapel,” said Camille, with a voice that showed he was hurt.
They entered the chapel, and there they saw something that thoroughly surprised them: a marble monument to the memory of Raynal. It leaned at present against the wall below the place prepared to receive it. The inscription, short, but emphatic, and full of feeling, told of the battles he had fought in, including the last fatal skirmish, and his marriage with the heiress of Beaurepaire; and, in a few soldier-like words, the uprightness, simplicity, and generosity of his character.
They were so touched by this unexpected trait in Camille that they both threw their arms round his neck by one impulse. “Am I wrong to be proud of him?” said Josephine, triumphantly.
“Well, don’t say too much to me,” said Camille, looking down confused. “One tries to be good; but it is very hard—to some of us—not to you, Josephine; and, after all, it is only the truth that we have written on that stone. Poor Raynal! he was my old comrade; he saved me from death, and not a soldier’s death—drowning; and he was a better man than I am, or ever shall be. Now he is dead, I can say these things. If I had said them when he was alive, it would have been more to my credit.”
They all three went back towards the house; and on the way Rose told them all that had passed between the baroness and her. When she came to the actual details of that conversation, to the words, and looks, and tones, Josephine’s uneasiness rose to an overpowering height; she even admitted that further concealment would be very difficult.
“Better tell her than let her find out,” said Rose. “We must tell her some day.”
At last, after a long and agitated discussion, Josephine consented; but Rose must be the one to tell. “So then, you at least will make your peace with mamma,” argued Josephine, “and let us go in and do this before our courage fails; besides, it is going to rain, and it has turned cold. Where have all these clouds come from? An hour ago there was not one in the sky.”
They went, with hesitating steps and guilty looks, to the saloon. Their mother was not there. Here was a reprieve.
Rose had an idea. She would take her to the chapel, and show her the monument, and that would please her with poor Camille. “After that,” said Rose, “I will begin by telling her all the misery you have both gone through; and, when she pities you, then I will show her it was all my fault your misery ended in a secret marriage.”
The confederates sat there in a chilly state, waiting for the baroness. At last, as she did not come, Rose got up to go to her. “When the mind is made up, it is no use being cowardly, and putting off,” said she, firmly. For all that, her cheek had but little color left in it, when she left her chair with this resolve.
Now as Rose went down the long saloon to carry out their united resolve, Jacintha looked in; and, after a hasty glance to see who was present, she waited till Rose came up to her, and then whipped a letter from under her apron and gave it her.
“For my mistress,” said she, with an air of mystery.
“Why not take it to her, then?” inquired Rose.
“I thought you might like to see it first, mademoiselle,” said Jacintha, with quiet meaning.
“Is it from the dear doctor?” asked Josephine.
“La, no, mademoiselle, don’t you know the doctor is come home? Why, he has been in the house near an hour. He is with my lady.”
The doctor proved Jacintha correct by entering the room in person soon after; on this Rose threw down the letter, and she and the whole party were instantly occupied in greeting him.
When the ladies had embraced him and Camille shaken hands with him, they plied him with a thousand questions. Indeed, he had not half satisfied their curiosity, when Rose happened to catch sight of the letter again, and took it up to carry to the baroness. She now, for the first time, eyed it attentively, and the consequence was she uttered an exclamation, and took the first opportunity to beckon Aubertin.
He came to her; and she put the letter into his hand.
He put up his glasses, and eyed it. “Yes!” whispered he, “it is from HIM.”
Josephine and Camille saw something was going on; they joined the other two, with curiosity in their faces.
Rose put her hand on a small table near her, and leaned a moment. She turned half sick at a letter coming from the dead. Josephine now came towards her with a face of concern, and asked what was the matter.
The reply came from Aubertin. “My poor friends,” said he, solemnly, “this is one of those fearful things that you have not seen in your short lives, but it has been more than once my lot to witness it. The ships that carry letters from distant countries vary greatly in speed, and are subject to detaining accidents. Yes, this is the third time I have seen a letter come written by a hand known to be cold. The baroness is a little excited to-day, I don’t know from what cause. With your approbation, Madame Raynal, I will read this letter before I let her see it.”
“Read it, if you please.”
“Shall I read it out?”
“Certainly. There may be some wish expressed in it; oh, I hope there is!”
Camille, from delicacy, retired to some little distance, and the doctor read the letter in a low and solemn voice.
“MY DEAR MOTHER,—I hope all are well at Beaurepaire, as I am, or I hope soon to be. I received a wound in our last skirmish; not a very severe one; but it put an end to my writing for some time.”
“Poor fellow! it was his death wound. Why, when was this written?—why,” and the doctor paused, and seemed stupefied: “why, my dears, has my memory gone, or”—and again he looked eagerly at the letter—“what was the date of the battle in which he was killed? for this letter is dated the 15th of May. Is it a dream? no! this was written since the date of his death.”
“No, doctor,” said Rose, “you deceive yourself.”
“Why, what was the date of the Moniteur, then?” asked Aubertin, in great agitation.
“Considerably later than this,” said Camille.
“I don’t think so; the journal! where is it?”
“My mother has it locked up. I’ll run.”
“No, Rose; no one but me. Now, Josephine, do not you go and give way to hopes that may be delusive. I must see that journal directly. I will go to the baroness. I shall excuse her less than you would.”
He was scarcely gone when a cry of horror filled the room, a cry as of madness falling like a thunderbolt on a human mind. It was Josephine, who up to this had not uttered one word. But now she stood, white as a corpse, in the middle of the room, and wrung her hands. “What have I done? What shall I do? It was the 3d of May. I see it before me in letters of fire; the 3d of May! the 3d of May!—and he writes the 15th.”
“No! no!” cried Camille wildly. “It was long, long after time 3d.”
“It was the 3d of May,” repeated Josephine in a hoarse voice that none would have known for hers.
Camille ran to her with words of comfort and hope; he did not share her fears. He remembered about when the Moniteur came, though not the very day. He threw his arm lovingly round her as if to protect her against these shadowy terrors. Her dilating eyes seemed fixed on something distant in space or time, at some horrible thing coming slowly towards her. She did not see Camille approach her, but the moment she felt him she turned upon him swiftly.
“Do you love me?” still in the hoarse voice that had so little in it of Josephine. “I mean, does one grain of respect or virtue mingle in your love for me?”
“What words are these, my wife?”
“Then leave Raynal’s house upon the instant. You wonder I can be so cruel? I wonder too; and that I can see my duty so clear in one short moment. But I have lived twenty years since that letter came. Oh! my brain has whirled through a thousand agonies. And I have come back a thousand times to the same thing; you and I must see each other’s face no more.”
“Oh!” cried Rose, “is there no way but this?”
“Take care,” she screamed, wildly, to her and Camille, “I am on the verge of madness; is it for you two to thrust me over the precipice? Come, now, if you are a man of honor, if you have a spark of gratitude towards the poor woman who has given you all except her fair name—that she will take to the grave in spite of you all—promise that you will leave Raynal’s house this minute if he is alive, and let me die in honor as I have lived.”
“No, no!” cried Camille, terror-stricken; “it cannot be. Heaven is merciful, and Heaven sees how happy we are. Be calm! these are idle fears; be calm! I say. For if it is so I will obey you. I will stay; I will go; I will die; I will live; I will obey you.”
“Swear this to me by the thing you hold most sacred,” she almost shrieked.
“I swear by my love for you,” was his touching reply.
Ere they had recovered a miserable composure after this passionate outburst, all the more terrible as coming from a creature so tender as Josephine, agitated voices were heard at the door, and the baroness tottered in, followed by the doctor, who was trying in vain to put some bounds to her emotion and her hopes.
“Oh, my children! my children!” cried she, trembling violently. “Here, Rose, my hands shake so; take this key, open the cabinet, there is the Moniteur. What is the date?”
The journal was found, and rapidly examined. The date was the 20th of May.
“There!” cried Camille. “I told you!”
The baroness uttered a feeble moan. Her hopes died as suddenly as they had been born, and she sank drooping into a chair, with a bitter sigh.
Camille stole a joyful look at Josephine. She was in the same attitude looking straight before her as at a coming horror. Presently Rose uttered a faint cry, “The battle was BEFORE.”
“To be sure,” cried the doctor. “You forget, it is not the date of the paper we want, but of the battle it records. For Heaven’s sake, when was the battle?”
“The 3d of May,” said Josephine, in a voice that seemed to come from the tomb.
Rose’s hands that held the journal fell like a dead weight upon her knees, journal and all. She whispered, “It was the 3d of May.”
“Ah!” cried the baroness, starting up, “he may yet be alive. He must be alive. Heaven is merciful! Heaven would not take my son from me, a poor old woman who has not long to live. There was a letter; where is the letter?”
“Are we mad, not to read the letter?” said the doctor. “I had it; it has dropped from my old fingers when I went for the journal.”
A short examination of the room showed the letter lying crumpled up near the door. Camille gave it to the baroness. She tried to read it, but could not.
“I am old,” said she; “my hand shakes and my eyes are troubled. This young gentleman will read it to us. His eyes are not dim and troubled. Something tells me that when I hear this letter, I shall find out whether my son lives. Why do you not read it to me, Camille?” cried she, almost fiercely.
Camille, thus pressed, obeyed mechanically, and began to read Raynal’s letter aloud, scarce knowing what he did, but urged and driven by the baroness.
“MY DEAR MOTHER,—I hope all are well at Beaurepaire, as I am, or I hope soon to be. I received a wound in our last skirmish; not a very severe one, but it put an end to my writing for some time.”
“Go on, dear Camille! go on.”
“The page ends there, madame.”
The paper was thin, and Camille, whose hand trembled, had some difficulty in detaching the leaves from one another. He succeeded, however, at last, and went on reading and writhing.
“By the way, you must address your next letter to me as Colonel Raynal. I was promoted just before this last affair, but had not time to tell you; and my wound stopped my writing till now.”
“There, there!” cried the baroness. “He was Colonel Raynal, and Colonel Raynal was not killed.”
The doctor implored her not to interrupt.
“Go on, Camille. Why do you hesitate? what is the matter? Do for pity’s sake go on, sir.”
Camille cast a look of agony around, and put his hand to his brow, on which large drops of cold perspiration, like a death dew, were gathering; but driven to the stake on all sides, he gasped on rather than read, for his eye had gone down the page.
“A namesake of mine, Commandant Raynal,”—
“Ah!”
“has not been—so fortunate. He”—
“Go on! go on!”
The wretched man could now scarcely utter Raynal’s words; they came from him in a choking groan.
“he was killed, poor fellow! while heading a gallant charge upon the enemy’s flank.”
He ground the letter convulsively in his hand, then it fell all crumpled on the floor.
“Bless you, Camille!” cried the baroness, “bless you! bless you! I have a son still.”
She stooped with difficulty, took up the letter, and, kissing it again and again, fell on her knees, and thanked Heaven aloud before them all. Then she rose and went hastily out, and her voice was heard crying very loud, “Jacintha! Jacintha!”
The doctor followed in considerable anxiety for the effects of this violent joy on so aged a person. Three remained behind, panting and pale like those to whom dead Lazarus burst the tomb, and came forth in a moment, at a word. Then Camille half kneeled, half fell, at Josephine’s feet, and, in a voice choked with sobs, bade her dispose of him.
She turned her head away. “Do not speak to me; do not look at me; if we look at one another, we are lost. Go! die at your post, and I at mine.”
He bowed his head, and kissed her dress, then rose calm as despair, and white as death, and, with his knees knocking under him, tottered away like a corpse set moving.
He disappeared from the house.
The baroness soon came back, triumphant and gay.
“I have sent her to bid them ring the bells in the village. The poor shall be feasted; all shall share our joy: my son was dead, and lives. Oh, joy! joy! joy!”
“Mother!” shrieked Josephine.
“Mad woman that I am, I am too boisterous. Help me, Rose! she is going to faint; her lips are white.”
Dr. Aubertin and Rose brought a chair. They forced Josephine into it. She was not the least faint; yet her body obeyed their hands just like a dead body. The baroness melted into tears; tears streamed from Rose’s eyes. Josephine’s were dry and stony, and fixed on coming horror. The baroness looked at her with anxiety. “Thoughtless old woman! It was too sudden; it is too much for my dear child; too much for me,” and she kneeled, and laid her aged head on her daughter’s bosom, saying feebly through her tears, “too much joy, too much joy!”
Josephine took no notice of her. She sat like one turned to stone looking far away over her mother’s head with rigid eyes fixed on the air and on coming horrors.
Rose felt her arm seized. It was Aubertin. He too was pale now, though not before. He spoke in a terrible whisper to Rose, his eye fixed on the woman of stone that sat there.
“IS THIS JOY?”
Rose, by a mighty effort, raised her eyes and confronted his full. “What else should it be?” said she.
And with these words this Spartan girl was her sister’s champion once more against all comers, friend or foe.