A few wounded soldiers of the brigade lay still till dusk. Then they crept back to the trenches. These had all been struck down or disabled short of the bastion. Of those that had taken the place no one came home.
Raynal, after the first stupefaction, pressed hard and even angrily for an immediate assault on the whole Prussian line. Not they. It was on paper that the assault should be at daybreak to-morrow. Such leaders as they were cannot IMPROVISE.
Rage and grief in his heart, Raynal waited chafing in the trenches till five minutes past midnight. He then became commander of the brigade, gave his orders, and took thirty men out to creep up to the wreck of the bastion, and find the late colonel’s body.
Going for so pious a purpose, he was rewarded by an important discovery. The whole Prussian lines had been abandoned since sunset, and, mounting cautiously on the ramparts, Raynal saw the town too was evacuated, and lights and other indications on a rising ground behind it convinced him that the Prussians were in full retreat, probably to effect that junction with other forces which the assault he had recommended would have rendered impossible.
They now lighted lanterns, and searched all over and round the bastion for the poor colonel, in the rear of the bastion they found many French soldiers, most of whom had died by the bayonet. The Prussian dead had all been carried off.
Here they found the talkative Sergeant La Croix. The poor fellow was silent enough now. A terrible sabre-cut on the skull. The colonel was not there. Raynal groaned, and led the way on to the bastion. The ruins still smoked. Seven or eight bodies were discovered by an arm or a foot protruding through the masses of masonry. Of these some were Prussians; a proof that some devoted hand had fired the train, and destroyed both friend and foe.
They found the tube of Long Tom sticking up, just as he had shown over the battlements that glorious day, with this exception, that a great piece was knocked off his lip, and the slice ended in a long, broad crack.
The soldiers looked at this. “That is our bullet’s work,” said they. Then one old veteran touched his cap, and told Raynal gravely, he knew where their beloved colonel was. “Dig here, to the bottom,” said he. “HE LIES BENEATH HIS WORK.”
Improbable and superstitious as this was, the hearts of the soldiers assented to it.
Presently there was a joyful cry outside the bastion. A rush was made thither. But it proved to be only Dard, who had discovered that Sergeant La Croix’s heart still beat. They took him up carefully, and carried him gently into camp. To Dard’s delight the surgeon pronounced him curable. For all that, he was three days insensible, and after that unfit for duty. So they sent him home invalided, with a hundred francs out of the poor colonel’s purse.
Raynal reported the evacuation of the place, and that Colonel Dujardin was buried under the bastion, and soon after rode out of the camp.
The words Camille had scratched with a pencil, and sent him from the edge of the grave, were few but striking.
“A dead man takes you once more by the hand. My last thought, thank God, is France. For her sake and mine, Raynal. GO FOR GENERAL BONAPARTE. Tell him, from a dying soldier, the Rhine is a river to these generals, but to him a field of glory. He will lay out our lives, not waste them.”
There was nothing to hinder Raynal from carrying out this sacred request: for the 24th brigade had ceased to exist: already thinned by hard service, it was reduced to a file or two by the fatal bastion. It was incorporated with the 12th; and Raynal rode heavy at heart to Paris, with a black scarf across his breast.
You see now into what a fatal entanglement two high-minded young ladies were led, step by step, through yielding to the natural foible of their sex—the desire to hide everything painful from those they love, even at the expense of truth.
A nice mess they made of it with their amiable dishonesty. And pray take notice that after the first White Lie or two, circumstances overpowered them, and drove them on against their will. It was no small part of all their misery that they longed to get back to truth and could not.
We shall see presently how far they succeeded in that pious object, for the sake of which they first entered on concealments. But first a word is due about one of the victims of their amiable, self-sacrificing lubricity. Edouard Riviere fell in one night, from happiness and confidence, such as till that night he had never enjoyed, to deep and hopeless misery.
He lost that which, to every heart capable of really loving, is the greatest earthly blessing, the woman he adored. But worse than that, he lost those prime treasures of the masculine soul, belief in human goodness, and in female purity. To him no more could there be in nature a candid eye, a virtuous ready-mantling cheek: for frailty and treachery had put on these signs of virtue and nobility. Henceforth, let him live a hundred years, whom could he trust or believe in?
Here was a creature whose virtues seemed to make frailty impossible: treachery, doubly impossible: a creature whose very faults—for faults she had—had seemed as opposite to treachery as her very virtues were. Yet she was all frailty and falsehood.
He passed in that one night of anguish from youth to age. He went about his business like a leaden thing. His food turned tasteless. His life seemed ended. Nothing appeared what it had been. The very landscape seemed cut in stone, and he a stone in the middle of it, and his heart a stone in him. At times, across that heavy heart came gushes of furious rage and bitter mortification; his heart was broken, and his faith was gone, for his vanity had been stabbed as fiercely as his love. “Georges Dandin!” he would cry, “curse her! curse her!” But love and misery overpowered these heats, and froze him to stone again.
The poor boy pined and pined. His clothes hung loose about him; his face was so drawn with suffering, you would not have known him. He hated company. The things he was expected to talk about!—he with his crushed heart. He could not. He would not. He shunned all the world; he went alone like a wounded deer. The good doctor, on his return from Paris, called on him to see if he was ill: since he had not come for days to the chateau. He saw the doctor coming and bade the servant say he was not in the village.
He drew down the blind, that he might never see the chateau again. He drew it up again: he could not exist without seeing it. “She will be miserable, too,” he cried, gnashing his teeth. “She will see whether she has chosen well.” At other times, all his courage, and his hatred, and his wounded vanity, were drowned in his love and its despair, and then he bowed his head, and sobbed and cried as if his heart would burst. One morning he was so sobbing with his head on the table, when his landlady tapped at his door. He started up and turned his head away from the door.
“A young woman from Beaurepaire, monsieur.”
“From Beaurepaire?” his heart gave a furious leap. “Show her in.”
He wiped his eyes and seated himself at a table, and, all in a flutter, pretended to be the state’s.
It was not Jacintha, as he expected, but the other servant. She made a low reverence, cast a look of admiration on him, and gave him a letter. His eye darted on it: his hand trembled as he took it. He turned away again to open it. He forced himself to say, in a tolerably calm voice, “I will send an answer.”
The letter was apparently from the baroness de Beaurepaire; a mere line inviting him to pay her a visit. It was written in a tremulous hand. Edouard examined the writing, and saw directly it was written by Rose.
Being now, naturally enough, full of suspicion, he set this down as an attempt to disguise her hand. “So,” said he, to himself, “this is the game. The old woman is to be drawn into it, too. She is to help to make Georges Dandin of me. I will go. I will baffle them all. I will expose this nest of depravity, all ceremony on the surface, and voluptuousness and treachery below. O God! who could believe that creature never loved me! They shall none of them see my weakness. Their benefactor shall be still their superior. They shall see me cold as ice, and bitter as gall.”
But to follow him farther just now, would be to run too far in advance of the main story. I must, therefore, return to Beaurepaire, and show, amongst other things, how this very letter came to be written.
When Josephine and Rose awoke from that startled slumber that followed the exhaustion of that troubled night, Rose was the more wretched of the two. She had not only dishonored herself, but stabbed the man she loved.
Josephine, on the other hand, was exhausted, but calm. The fearful escape she had had softened down by contrast her more distant terrors.
She began to shut her eyes again, and let herself drift. Above all, the doctor’s promise comforted her: that she should go to Paris with him, and have her boy.
This deceitful calm of the heart lasted three days.
Carefully encouraged by Rose, it was destroyed by Jacintha.
Jacintha, conscious that she had betrayed her trust, was almost heart-broken. She was ashamed to appear before her young mistress, and, coward-like, wanted to avoid knowing even how much harm she had done.
She pretended toothache, bound up her face, and never stirred from the kitchen. But she was not to escape: the other servant came down with a message: “Madame Raynal wanted to see her directly.”
She came quaking, and found Josephine all alone.
Josephine rose to meet her, and casting a furtive glance round the room first, threw her arms round Jacintha’s neck, and embraced her with many tears.
“Was ever fidelity like yours? how COULD you do it, Jacintha? and how can I ever repay it? But, no; it is too base of me to accept such a sacrifice from any woman.”
Jacintha was so confounded she did not know what to say. But it was a mystification that could not endure long between two women, who were both deceived by a third. Between them they soon discovered that it must have been Rose who had sacrificed herself.
“And Edouard has never been here since,” said Josephine.
“And never will, madame.”
“Yes, he shall! there must be some limit even to my feebleness, and my sister’s devotion. You shall take a line to him from me. I will write it this moment.”
The letter was written. But it was never sent. Rose found Josephine and Jacintha together; saw a letter was being written, asked to see it; on Josephine’s hesitating, snatched it out of her hand, read it, tore it to pieces, and told Jacintha to leave the room. She hated the sight of poor Jacintha, who had slept at the very moment when all depended on her watchfulness.
“So you were going to send to HIM, unknown to me.”
“Forgive me, Rose.” Rose burst out crying.
“O Josephine! is it come to this? Would you deceive ME?”
“You have deceived ME! Yes! it has come to that. I know all. Twill not consent to destroy ALL I love.”
She then begged hard for leave to send the letter.
Rose gave an impetuous refusal. “What could you say to him? foolish thing, don’t you know him, and his vanity? When you had exposed yourself to him, and showed him I had insulted him for you, do you think he would forgive me? No! this is to make light of my love—to make me waste the sacrifice I have made. I feel that sacrifice as much as you do, more perhaps, and I would rather die in a convent than waste that night of shame and agony. Come, promise me, no more attempts of that kind, or we are sisters no more, friends no more, one heart and one blood no more.”
The weaker nature, weakened still more by ill-health and grief, was terrified into submission, or rather temporized. “Kiss me then,” said Josephine, “and love me to the end. Ah, if I was only in my grave!”
Rose kissed her with many sighs, but Josephine smiled. Rose eyed her with suspicion. That deep smile; what did it mean? She had formed some resolution. “She is going to deceive me somehow,” thought Rose.
From that day she watched Josephine like a spy. Confidence was gone between them. Suspicion took its place.
Rose was right in her misgivings. The moment Josephine saw that Edouard’s happiness and Rose’s were to be sacrificed for her whom nothing could make happy, the poor thing said to herself, “I CAN DIE.”
And that was the happy thought that made her smile.
The doctor gave her laudanum: he found she could not sleep: and he thought it all-important that she should sleep.
Josephine, instead of taking these small doses, saved them all up, secreted them in a phial, and so, from the sleep of a dozen nights, collected the sleep of death: and now she was tranquil. This young creature that could not bear to give pain to any one else, prepared her own death with a calm resolution the heroes of our sex have not often equalled. It was so little a thing to her to strike Josephine. Death would save her honor, would spare her the frightful alternative of deceiving her husband, or of telling him she was another’s. “Poor Raynal,” said she to herself, “it is so cruel to tie him to a woman who can never be to him what he deserves. Rose would then prove her innocence to Edouard. A few tears for a weak, loving soul, and they would all be happy and forget her.”
One day the baroness, finding herself alone with Rose and Dr. Aubertin, asked the latter what he thought of Josephine’s state.
“Oh, she was better: had slept last night without her usual narcotic.”
The baroness laid down her knitting and said, with much meaning, “And I tell you, you will never cure her body till you can cure her mind. My poor child has some secret sorrow.”
“Sorrow!” said Aubertin, stoutly concealing the uneasiness these words created, “what sorrow?”
“Oh, she has some deep sorrow. And so have you, Rose.”
“Me, mamma! what DO you mean?”
The baroness’s pale cheek flushed a little. “I mean,” said she, “that my patience is worn out at last; I cannot live surrounded by secrets. Raynal’s gloomy looks when he left us, after staying but one hour; Josephine ill from that day, and bursting into tears at every word; yourself pale and changed, hiding an unaccountable sadness under forced smiles—Now, don’t interrupt me. Edouard, who was almost like a son, gone off, without a word, and never comes near us now.”
“Really you are ingenious in tormenting yourself. Josephine is ill! Well, is it so very strange? Have you never been ill? Rose is pale! you ARE pale, my dear; but she has nursed her sister for a month; is it a wonder she has lost color? Edouard is gone a journey, to inherit his uncle’s property: a million francs. But don’t you go and fall ill, like Josephine; turn pale, like Rose; and make journeys in the region of fancy, after Edouard Riviere, who is tramping along on the vulgar high road.”
This tirade came from Aubertin, and very clever he thought himself. But he had to do with a shrewd old lady, whose suspicions had long smouldered; and now burst out. She said quietly, “Oh, then Edouard is not in this part of the world. That alters the case: where IS he?”
“In Normandy, probably,” said Rose, blushing.
The baroness looked inquiringly towards Aubertin. He put on an innocent face and said nothing.
“Very good,” said the baroness. “It’s plain I am to learn nothing from you two. But I know somebody who will be more communicative. Yes: this uncomfortable smiling, and unreasonable crying, and interminable whispering; these appearances of the absent, and disappearances of the present; I shall know this very day what they all mean.”
“Really, I do not understand you.”
“Oh, never mind; I am an old woman, and I am in my dotage. For all that, perhaps you will allow me two words alone with my daughter.”
“I retire, madame,” and he disappeared with a bow to her, and an anxious look at Rose. She did not need this; she clenched her teeth, and braced herself up to stand a severe interrogatory.
Mother and daughter looked at one another, as if to measure forces, and then, instead of questioning her as she had intended, the baroness sank back in her chair and wept aloud. Rose was all unprepared for this. She almost screamed in a voice of agony, “O mamma! mamma! O God! kill me where I stand for making my mother weep!”
“My girl,” said the baroness in a broken voice, and with the most touching dignity, “may you never know what a mother feels who finds herself shut out from her daughters’ hearts. Sometimes I think it is my fault; I was born in a severer age. A mother nowadays seems to be a sort of elder sister. In my day she was something more. Yet I loved my mother as well, or better than I did my sisters. But it is not so with those I have borne in my bosom, and nursed upon my knee.”
At this Rose flung herself, sobbing and screaming, at her mother’s knees. The baroness was alarmed. “Come, dearest, don’t cry like that. It is not too late to take your poor old mother into your confidence. What is this mystery? and why this sorrow? How comes it I intercept at every instant glances that were not intended for me? Why is the very air loaded with signals and secrecy? (Rose replied only by sobs.) Is some deceit going on? (Rose sobbed.) Am I to have no reply but these sullen sobs? will you really tell me nothing?”
“I’ve nothing to tell,” sobbed Rose.
“Well, then, will you do something for me?”
Such a proposal was not only a relief, but a delight to the deceiving but loving daughter. She started up crying, “Oh, yes, mamma; anything, everything. Oh, thank you!” In the ardor of her gratitude, she wanted to kiss her mother; but the baroness declined the embrace politely, and said, coldly and bitterly, “I shall not ask much; I should not venture now to draw largely on your affection; it’s only to write a few lines for me.”
Rose got paper and ink with great alacrity, and sat down all beaming, pen in hand.
The baroness dictated the letter slowly, with an eye gimleting her daughter all the time.
“Dear—Monsieur—Riviere.”
The pen fell from Rose’s hand, and she turned red and then pale.
“What! write to him?”
“Not in your own name; in mine. But perhaps you prefer to give me the trouble.”
“Cruel! cruel!” sighed Rose, and wrote the words as requested.
The baroness dictated again,—
“Oblige me by coming here at your very earliest convenience.”
“But, mamma, if he is in Normandy,” remonstrated Rose, fighting every inch of the ground.
“Never you mind where he is,” said the baroness. “Write as I request.”
“Yes, mamma,” said Rose with sudden alacrity; for she had recovered her ready wit, and was prepared to write anything, being now fully resolved the letter should never go.
“Now sign my name.” Rose complied. “There; now fold it, and address it to his lodgings.” Rose did so; and, rising with a cheerful air, said she would send Jacintha with it directly.
She was half across the room when her mother called her quietly back.
“No, mademoiselle,” said she sternly. “You will give me the letter. I can trust neither the friend of twenty years, nor the servant that stayed by me in adversity, nor the daughter I suffered for and nursed. And why don’t I trust you? Because YOU HAVE TOLD ME A LIE.”
At this word, which in its coarsest form she had never heard from those high-born lips till then, Rose cowered like a hare.
“Ay, A LIE,” said the baroness. “I saw Edouard Riviere in the park but yesterday. I saw him. My old eyes are feeble, but they are not deceitful. I saw him. Send my breakfast to my own room. I come of an ancient race: I could not sit with liars; I should forget courtesy; you would see in my face how thoroughly I scorn you all.” And she went haughtily out with the letter in her hand.
Rose for the first time, was prostrated. Vain had been all this deceit; her mother was not happy; was not blinded. Edouard might come and tell her his story. Then no power could keep Josephine silent. The plot was thickening; the fatal net was drawing closer and closer.
She sank with a groan into a chair, and body and spirit alike succumbed. But that was only for a little while. To this prostration succeeded a feverish excitement. She could not, would not, look Edouard in the face. She would implore Josephine to be silent; and she herself would fly from the chateau. But, if Josephine would not be silent? Why, then she would go herself to Edouard, and throw herself upon his honor, and tell him the truth. With this, she ran wildly up the stairs, and burst into Josephine’s room so suddenly, that she caught her, pale as death, on her knees, with a letter in one hand and a phial of laudanum in the other.
Josephine conveyed the phial into her bosom with wonderful rapidity and dexterity, and rose to her feet. But Rose just saw her conceal something, and resolved to find out quietly what it was. So she said nothing about it, but asked Josephine what on earth she was doing.
“I was praying.”
“And what is that letter?”
“A letter I have just received from Colonel Raynal.”
Rose took the letter and read it. Raynal had written from Paris. He was coming to Beaurepaire to stay a month, and was to arrive that very day.
Then Rose forgot all about herself, and even what she had come for. She clung about her sister’s neck, and implored her, for her sake, to try and love Raynal.
Josephine shuddered, and clung weeping to her sister in turn. For in Rose’s arms she realized more powerfully what that sister would suffer if she were to die. Now, while they clung together, Rose felt something hard, and contrived just to feel it with her cheek. It was the phial.
A chill suspicion crossed the poor girl. The attitude in which she had found Josephine; the letter, the look of despair, and now this little bottle, which she had hidden. WHY HIDE IT? She resolved not to let Josephine out of her sight; at all events, until she had seen this little bottle, and got it away from her.
She helped her to dress, and breakfasted with her in the tapestried room, and dissembled, and put on gayety, and made light of everything but Josephine’s health.
Her efforts were not quite in vain. Josephine became more composed; and Rose even drew from her a half promise that she would give Raynal and time a fair trial.
And now Rose was relieved of her immediate apprehensions for Josephine, but the danger of another kind, from Edouard, remained. So she ran into her bedroom for her bonnet and shawl, determined to take the strong measure of visiting Edouard at once, or intercepting him. While she was making her little toilet, she heard her mother’s voice in the room. This was unlucky; she must pass through that room to go out. She sat down and fretted at this delay. And then, as the baroness appeared to be very animated, Rose went to the keyhole, and listened. Their mother was telling Josephine how she had questioned Rose, and how Rose had told her an untruth, and how she had made that young lady write to Edouard, etc.; in short, the very thing Rose wanted to conceal from Josephine.
Rose lost all patience, and determined to fly through the room and out before anybody could stop her. She heard Jacintha come in with some message, and thought that would be a good opportunity to slip out unmolested. So she opened the door softly. Jacintha, it seemed, had been volunteering some remark that was not well received, for the baroness was saying, sharply, “Your opinion is not asked. Go down directly, and bring him up here, to this room.” Jacintha cast a look of dismay at Rose, and vanished.
Rose gathered from that look, as much as from the words, who the visitor was. She made a dart after Jacintha. But the room was a long one, and the baroness intercepted her: “No,” said she, gravely, “I cannot spare you.”
Rose stood pale and panting, but almost defiant. “Mamma,” said she, “if it is Monsieur Riviere, I MUST ask your leave to retire. And you have neither love nor pity, nor respect for me, if you detain me.”
“Mademoiselle!” was the stern reply, “I FORBID you to move. Be good enough to sit there;” with which the baroness pointed imperiously to a sofa at the other side of the room. “Josephine, go to your room.” Josephine retired, casting more than one anxious glance over her shoulder.
Rose looked this way and that in despair and terror; but ended by sinking, more dead than alive, into the seat indicated; and even as she drooped, pale and trembling, on that sofa, Edouard Riviere, worn and agitated, entered the room, and bowed low to them all, without a word.
The baroness looked at him, and then at her daughter, as much as to say, now I have got you; deceive me now if you can. “Rose, my dear,” said this terrible old woman, affecting honeyed accents, “don’t you see Monsieur Riviere?”
The poor girl at this challenge rose with difficulty, and courtesied humbly to Edouard.
He bowed to her, and stealing a rapid glance saw her pallor and distress; and that showed him she was not so hardened as he had thought.
“You have not come to see us lately,” said the baroness, quietly, “yet you have been in the neighborhood.”
These words puzzled Edouard. Was the old lady all in the dark, then? As a public man he had already learned to be on his guard; so he stammered out, “That he had been much occupied with public duties.”
Madame de Beaurepaire despised this threadbare excuse too much to notice it at all. She went on as if he had said nothing. “Intimate as you were with us, you must have some reason for deserting us so suddenly.”
“I have,” said Edouard, gravely.
“What is it?”
“Excuse me,” said Edouard, sullenly.
“No, monsieur, I cannot. This neglect, succeeding to a somewhat ardent pursuit of my daughter, is almost an affront. You shall, of course, withdraw yourself altogether, if you choose. But not without an explanation. This much is due to me; and, if you are a gentleman, you will not withhold it from me.”
“If he is a gentleman!” cried Rose; “O mamma, do not you affront a gentleman, who never, never gave you nor me any ground of offence. Why affront the friends and benefactors we have lost by our own fault?”
“Oh, then, it is all your fault,” said the baroness. “I feared as much.”
“All my fault, all,” said Rose; then putting her pretty palms together, and casting a look of abject supplication on Edouard, she murmured, “my temper!”
“Do not you put words into his mouth,” said the shrewd old lady. “Come, Monsieur Riviere, be a man, and tell me the truth. What has she said to you? What has she done?”
By this time the abject state of terror the high-spirited Rose was in, and her piteous glances, had so disarmed Edouard, that he had not the heart to expose her to her mother.
“Madame,” said he, stiffly, taking Rose’s hint, “my temper and mademoiselle’s could not accord.”
“Why, her temper is charming: it is joyous, equal, and gentle.”
“You misunderstand me, madame; I do not reproach Mademoiselle Rose. It is I who am to blame.”
“For what?” inquired the baroness dryly.
“For not being able to make her love me.”
“Oh! that is it! She did not love you?”
“Ask herself, madame,” said Edouard, bitterly.
“Rose,” said the baroness, her eye now beginning to twinkle, “were you really guilty of such a want of discrimination? Didn’t you love monsieur?”
Rose flung her arms round her mother’s neck, and said, “No, mamma, I did not love Monsieur Edouard,” in an exquisite tone of love, that to a female ear conveyed the exact opposite of the words.
But Edouard had not that nice discriminating ear. He sighed deeply, and the baroness smiled. “You tell me that?” said she, “and you are crying!”
“She is crying, madame?” said Edouard, inquiringly, and taking a step towards them.
“Why, you see she is, you foolish boy. Come, I must put an end to this;” and she rose coolly from her seat, and begging Edouard to forgive her for leaving him a moment with his deadly enemy, went off with knowing little nods into Josephine’s room; only, before she entered it, she turned, and with a maternal smile discharged this word at the pair.
“Babies!”
But between the alienated lovers was a long distressing silence. Neither knew what to say; and their situation was intolerable. At last Rose ventured in a timorous voice to say, “I thank you for your generosity. But I knew that you would not betray me.”
“Your secret is safe for me,” sighed Edouard. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Rose shook her head sadly.
Edouard moved to the door.
Rose bowed her head with a despairing moan. It took him by the heart and held him. He hesitated, then came towards her.
“I see you are sorry for what you have done to me who loved you so; and you loved me. Oh! yes, do not deny it, Rose; there was a time you loved me. And that makes it worse: to have given me such sweet hopes, only to crush both them and me. And is not this cruel of you to weep so and let me see your penitence—when it is too late?”
“Alas! how can I help my regrets? I have insulted so good a friend.”
There was a sad silence. Then as he looked at her, her looks belied the charge her own lips had made against herself.
A light seemed to burst on Edouard from that high-minded, sorrow-stricken face.
“Tell me it is false!” he cried.
She hid her face in her hands—woman’s instinct to avoid being read.
“Tell me you were misled then, fascinated, perverted, but that your heart returned to me. Clear yourself of deliberate deceit, and I will believe and thank you on my knees.”
“Heaven have pity on us both!” cried poor Rose.
“On us! Thank you for saying on us. See now, you have not gained happiness by destroying mine. One word—do you love that man?—that Dujardin?”
“You know I do not.”
“I am glad of that; since his life is forfeited; if he escapes my friend Raynal, he shall not escape me.”
Rose uttered a cry of terror. “Hush! not so loud. The life of Camille! Oh! if he were to die, what would become of—oh, pray do not speak so loud.”
“Own then that you DO love him,” yelled Edouard; “give me truth, if you have no love to give. Own that you love him, and he shall be safe. It is myself I will kill, for being such a slave as to love you still.”
Rose’s fortitude gave way.
“I cannot bear it,” she cried despairingly; “it is beyond my strength; Edouard, swear to me you will keep what I tell you secret as the grave!”
“Ah!” cried Edouard, all radiant with hope, “I swear.”
“Then you are under a delirium. I have deceived, but never wronged you; that unhappy child is not—Hush! HERE SHE COMES.”
The baroness came smiling out, and Josephine’s wan, anxious face was seen behind her.
“Well,” said the baroness, “is the war at an end? What, are we still silent? Let me try then what I can do. Edouard, lend me your hand.”
While Edouard hesitated, Josephine clasped her hands and mutely supplicated him to consent. Her sad face, and the thought of how often she had stood his friend, shook his resolution. He held out his hand, but slowly and reluctantly.
“There is my hand,” he groaned.
“And here is mine, mamma,” said Rose, smiling to please her mother.
Oh! the mixture of feeling, when her soft warm palm pressed his. How the delicious sense baffled and mystified the cold judgment.
Josephine raised her eyes thankfully to heaven.
While the young lovers yet thrilled at each other’s touch, yet could not look one another in the face, a clatter of horses’ feet was heard.
“That is Colonel Raynal,” said Josephine, with unnatural calmness. “I expected him to-day.”
The baroness was at the side window in a moment.
“It is he!—it is he!”
She hurried down to embrace her son.
Josephine went without a word to her own room. Rose followed her the next minute. But in that one minute she worked magic.
She glided up to Edouard, and looked him full in the face: not the sad, depressed, guilty-looking humble Rose of a moment before, but the old high-spirited, and some what imperious girl.
“You have shown yourself noble this day. I am going to trust you as only the noble are trusted. Stay in the house till I can speak to you.”
She was gone, and something leaped within Edouard’s bosom, and a flood of light seemed to burst in on him. Yet he saw no object clearly: but he saw light.
Rose ran into Josephine’s room, and once more surprised her on her knees, and in the very act of hiding something in her bosom.
“What are you doing, Josephine, on your knees?” said she, sternly.
“I have a great trial to go through,” was the hesitating answer.
Rose said nothing. She turned paler. She is deceiving me, thought she, and she sat down full of bitterness and terror, and, affecting not to watch Josephine, watched her.
“Go and tell them I am coming, Rose.”
“No, Josephine, I will not leave you till this terrible meeting is over. We will encounter him hand in hand, as we used to go when our hearts were one, and we deceived others, but never each other.”
At this tender reproach Josephine fell upon her neck and wept.
“I will not deceive you,” she said. “I am worse than the poor doctor thinks me. My life is but a little candle that a breath may put out any day.”
Rose said nothing, but trembled and watched her keenly.
“My little Henri,” said Josephine imploringly, “what would you do with him—if anything should happen to me?”
“What would I do with him? He is mine. I should be his mother. Oh! what words are these: my heart! my heart!”
“No, dearest; some day you will be married, and owe all the mother to your children; and Henri is not ours only: he belongs to some one I have seemed unkind to. Perhaps he thinks me heartless. For I am a foolish woman; I don’t know how to be virtuous, yet show a man my heart. But THEN he will understand me and forgive me. Rose, love, you will write to him. He will come to you. You will go together to the place where I shall be sleeping. You will show him my heart. You will tell him all my long love that lasted to the end. YOU need not blush to tell him all. I have no right. Then you will give him his poor Josephine’s boy, and you will say to him, ‘She never loved but you: she gives you all that is left of her, her child. She only prays you not to give him a bad mother.’”
Poor soul! this was her one bit of little, gentle jealousy; but it made her eyes stream. She would have put out her hand from the tomb to keep her boy’s father single all his life.
“Oh! my Josephine, my darling sister,” cried Rose, “why do you speak of death? Do you meditate a crime?”
“No; but it was on my heart to say it: it has done me good.”
“At least, take me to your bosom, my well-beloved, that I may not SEE your tears.”
“There—tears? No, you have lightened my heart. Bless you! bless you!”
The sisters twined their bosoms together in a long, gentle embrace. You might have taken them for two angels that flowed together in one love, but for their tears.
A deep voice was now heard in the sitting-room.
Josephine and Rose postponed the inevitable one moment more, by arranging their hair in the glass: then they opened the door, and entered the tapestried room.
Raynal was sitting on the sofa, the baroness’s hand in his. Edouard was not there.
Colonel Raynal had given him a strange look, and said, “What, you here?” in a tone of voice that was intolerable.
Raynal came to meet the sisters. He saluted Josephine on the brow.
“You are pale, wife: and how cold her hand is.”
“She has been ill this month past,” said Rose interposing.
“You look ill, too, Mademoiselle Rose.”
“Never mind,” cried the baroness joyously, “you will revive them both.”
Raynal made no reply to that.
“How long do you stay this time, a day?”
“A month, mother.”
The doctor now joined the party, and friendly greetings passed between him and Raynal.
But ere long somehow all became conscious this was not a joyful meeting. The baroness could not alone sustain the spirits of the party, and soon even she began to notice that Raynal’s replies were short, and that his manner was distrait and gloomy. The sisters saw this too, and trembled for what might be coming.
At last Raynal said bluntly, “Josephine, I want to speak to you alone.”
The baroness gave the doctor a look, and made an excuse for going down-stairs to her own room. As she was going Josephine went to her and said calmly,—
“Mother, you have not kissed me to-day.”
“There! Bless you, my darling!”
Raynal looked at Rose. She saw she must go, but she lingered, and sought her sister’s eye: it avoided her. At that Rose ran to the doctor, who was just going out of the door.
“Oh! doctor,” she whispered trembling, “don’t go beyond the door. I found her praying. My mind misgives me. She is going to tell him—or something worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am afraid to say all I dread. She could not be so calm if she meant to live. Be near! as I shall. She has a phial hid in her bosom.”
She left the old man trembling, and went back.
“Excuse me,” said she to Raynal, “I only came to ask Josephine if she wants anything.”
“No!—yes!—a glass of eau sucree.”
Rose mixed it for her. While doing this she noticed that Josephine shunned her eye, but Raynal gazed gently and with an air of pity on her.
She retired slowly into Josephine’s bedroom, but did not quite close the door.
Raynal had something to say so painful that he shrank from plunging into it. He therefore, like many others, tried to creep into it, beginning with something else.
“Your health,” said he, “alarms me. You seem sad, too. I don’t understand that. You have no news from the Rhine, have you?”
“Monsieur!” said Josephine scared.
“Do not call me monsieur, nor look so frightened. Call me your friend. I am your sincere friend.”
“Oh, yes; you always were.”
“Thank you. You will give me a dearer title before we part this time.”
“Yes,” said Josephine in a low whisper, and shuddered.
“Have you forgiven me frightening you so that night?”
“Yes.”
“It was a shock to me, too, I can tell you. I like the boy. She professed to love him, and, to own the truth, I loathe all treachery and deceit. If I had done a murder, I would own it. A lie doubles every crime. But I took heart; we are all selfish, we men; of the two sisters one was all innocence and good faith; and she was the one I had chosen.”
At these words Josephine rose, like a statue moving, and took a phial from her bosom and poured the contents into the glass.
But ere she could drink it, if such was her intention, Raynal, with his eyes gloomily lowered, said, in a voice full of strange solemnity,—
“I went to the army of the Rhine.”
Josephine put down the glass directly, though without removing her hand from it.
“I see you understand me, and approve. Yes, I saw that your sister would be dishonored, and I went to the army and saw her seducer.”
“You saw HIM. Oh, I hope you did not go and speak to him of—of this?”
“Why, of course I did.”
Josephine resolved to know the worst at once. “May I ask,” said she, “what you told him?”
“Why, I told him all I had discovered, and pointed out the course he must take; he must marry your sister at once. He refused. I challenged him. But ere we met, I was ordered to lead a forlorn hope against a bastion. Then, seeing me go to certain death, the noble fellow pitied me. I mean this is how I understood it all at the time; at any rate, he promised to marry Rose if he should live.”
Josephine put out her hand, and with a horrible smile said, “I thank you; you have saved the honor of our family;” and with no more ado, she took the glass in her hand to drink the fatal contents.
But Raynal’s reply arrested her hand. He said solemnly, “No, I have not. Have you no inkling of the terrible truth? Do not fiddle with that glass: drink it, or leave it alone; for, indeed, I need all your attention.”
He took the glass out of her patient hand, and with a furtive look at the bedroom-door, drew her away to the other end of the room; “and,” said he, “I could not tell your mother, for she knows nothing of the girl’s folly; still less Rose, for I see she loves him still, or why is she so pale? Advise me, now, whilst we are alone. Colonel Dujardin was COMPARATIVELY indifferent to YOU. Will you undertake the task? A rough soldier like me is not the person to break the terrible tidings to that poor girl.”
“What tidings? You confuse, you perplex me. Oh! what does this horrible preparation mean?”
“It means he will never marry your sister; he will never see her more.”
Then Raynal walked the room in great agitation, which at once communicated itself to his hearer. But the loving heart is ingenious in avoiding its dire misgivings.
“I see,” said she; “he told you he would never visit Beaurepaire again. He was right.”
Raynal shook his head sorrowfully.
“Ah, Josephine, you are far from the truth. I was to attack the bastion. It was mined by the enemy, and he knew it. He took advantage of my back being turned. He led his men out of the trenches; he assaulted the bastion at the head of his brigade. He took it.”
“Ah, it was noble; it was like him.”
“The enemy, retiring, blew the bastion into the air, and Dujardin—is dead.”
“Dead!” said Josephine, in stupefied tones, as if the word conveyed no meaning to her mind, benumbed and stunned by the blow.
“Don’t speak so loud,” said Raynal; “I hear the poor girl at the door. Ay, he took my place, and is dead.”
“Dead!”
“Swallowed up in smoke and flames, overwhelmed and crushed under the ruins.”
Josephine’s whole body gave way, and heaved like a tree falling under the axe. She sank slowly to her knees, and low moans of agony broke from her at intervals. “Dead, dead, dead!”
“Is it not terrible?” he cried.
She did not see him nor hear him, but moaned out wildly, “Dead, dead, dead!” The bedroom-door was opened.
She shrieked with sudden violence, “Dead! ah, pity! the glass! the composing draught.” She stretched her hands out wildly. Raynal, with a face full of concern, ran to the table, and got the glass. She crawled on her knees to meet it; he brought it quickly to her hand.
“There, my poor soul!”
Even as their hands met, Rose threw herself on the cup, and snatched it with fury from them both. She was white as ashes, and her eyes, supernaturally large, glared on Raynal with terror. “Madman!” she cried, “would you kill her?”
He glared back on her: what did this mean? Their eyes were fixed on each other like combatants for life and death; they did not see that the room was filling with people, that the doctor was only on the other side of the table, and that the baroness and Edouard were at the door, and all looking wonderstruck at this strange sight—Josephine on her knees, and those two facing each other, white, with dilating eyes, the glass between them.
But what was that to the horror, when the next moment the patient Josephine started to her feet, and, standing in the midst, tore her hair by handfuls, out of her head.
“Ah, you snatch the kind poison from me!”
“Poison!”
“Poison!”
“Poison!” cried the others, horror-stricken.
“Ah! you won’t let me die. Curse you all! curse you! I never had my own way in anything. I was always a slave and a fool. I have murdered the man I love—I love. Yes, my husband, do you hear? the man I love.”
“Hush! daughter, respect my gray hairs.”
“Your gray hairs! You are not so old in years as I am in agony. So this is your love, Rose! Ah, you won’t let me die—won’t you? THEN I’LL DO WORSE—I’LL TELL.”
“He who is dead; you have murdered him amongst you, and I’ll follow him in spite of you all—he was my betrothed. He struggled wounded, bleeding, to my feet. He found me married. News came of my husband’s death; I married my betrothed.”
“Married him!” exclaimed the baroness.
“Ah, my poor mother. And she kissed me so kindly just now—she will kiss me no more. Oh, I am not ashamed of marrying him. I am only ashamed of the cowardice that dared not do it in face of all the world. We had scarce been happy a fortnight, when a letter came from Colonel Raynal. He was alive. I drove my true husband away, wretch that I was. None but bad women have an atom of sense. I tried to do my duty to my legal husband. He was my benefactor. I thought it was my duty. Was it? I don’t know: I have lost the sense of right and wrong. I turned from a living creature to a lie. He who had scattered benefits on me and all this house; he whom it was too little to love; he ought to have been adored: this man came here one night to wife proud, joyous, and warm-hearted. He found a cradle, and two women watching it. Now Edouard, now MONSIEUR, do you see that life is IMPOSSIBLE to me? One bravely accused herself: she was innocent. One swooned away like a guilty coward.”
Edouard uttered an exclamation.
“Yes, Edouard, you shall not be miserable like me; she was guilty. You do not understand me yet, my poor mother—and she was so happy this morning—I was the liar, the coward, the double-faced wife, the miserable mother that denied her child. Now will you let me die? Now do you see that I can’t and won’t live upon shame and despair? Ah, Monsieur Raynal, my dear friend, you were always generous: you will pity and kill me. I have dishonored the name you gave me to keep: I am neither Beaurepaire nor Raynal. Do pray kill me, monsieur—Jean, do pray release me from my life!”
And she crawled to his knees and embraced them, and kissed his hand, and pleaded more piteously for death, than others have begged for life.
Raynal stood like a rock: he was pale, and drew his breath audibly, but not a word. Then came a sight scarce less terrible than Josephine’s despair. The baroness, looking and moving twenty years older than an hour before, tottered across the room to Raynal.
“Sir, you whom I have called my son, but whom I will never presume so to call again, I thought I had lived long enough never to have to blush again. I loved you, monsieur. I prayed every day for you. But she who WAS my daughter was not of my mind. Monsieur, I have never knelt but to God and to my king, and I kneel to you: forgive us, sir, forgive us!”
She tried to go down on her knees. He raised her with his strong arm, but he could not speak. She turned on the others.
“So this is the secret you were hiding from me! This secret has not killed you all. Oh! I shall not live under its shame so long as you have. Chateau of Beaurepaire—nest of treason, ingratitude, and immodesty—I loathe you as much as once I loved you. I will go and hide my head, and die elsewhere.”
“Stay, madame!” said he, in a voice whose depth and dignity was such that it seemed impossible to disobey it. “It was sudden—I was shaken—but I am myself again.”
“Oh, show some pity!” cried Rose.
“I shall try to be just.”
There was a long, trembling silence; and during that silence and terrible agitation, one figure stood firm among those quaking, beating hearts, like a rock with the waves breaking round it—the MAN OF PRINCIPLE among the creatures of impulse.
He raised Josephine from her knees, and placed her all limp and powerless in an arm-chair. To her frenzy had now succeeded a sickness and feebleness like unto death.
“Widow Dujardin,” said he, in a broken voice, “listen to me.”
She moaned a sort of assent.
“Your mistake has been not trusting me. I was your friend, and not a selfish friend. I was not enough in love with you to destroy your happiness. Besides, I despise that sort of love. If you had told me all, I would have spared you this misery. By the present law, civil contracts of marriage can be dissolved by mutual consent.”
At this the baroness uttered some sign of surprise.
“Ah!” continued Raynal, sadly, “you are aristocrats, and cannot keep pace with the times. This very day our mere contract shall be formally dissolved. Indeed, it ceases to exist since both parties are resolved to withdraw from it. So, if you married Dujardin in a church, you are Madame Dujardin at this moment, and his child is legitimate. What does she say?”
This question was to Rose, for what Josephine uttered sounded like a mere articulate moan. But Rose’s quick ear had caught words, and she replied, all in tears, “My poor sister is blessing you, sir. We all bless you.”
“She does not understand my position,” said Raynal. He then walked up to Josephine, and leaning over her arm, and speaking rather loud, under the impression that her senses were blunted by grief, he said, “Look here: Colonel Dujardin, your husband, deliberately, and with his eyes open, sacrificed his life for me, and for his own heroic sense of honor. Now, it is my turn. If that hero stood here, and asked me for all the blood in my body, I would give it him. He is gone; but, dying for me, he has left me his widow and his child; they remain under my wing. To protect them is my pride, and my only consolation. I am going to the mayor to annul our unlucky contract in due form, and make us brother and sister instead. But,” turning to the baroness, “don’t you think to escape me as your daughter has done: no, no, old lady, once a mother, always a mother. Stir from your son’s home if you dare!”
And with these words, in speaking which his voice had recovered its iron firmness, he strode out at the door, superb in manhood and principle, and every eye turned with wonder and admiration after him. Even when he was gone they gazed at the door by which a creature so strangely noble had disappeared.
The baroness was about to follow him without taking any notice of Josephine. But Rose caught her by the gown. “O mother, speak to poor Josephine: bid her live.”
The baroness only made a gesture of horror and disgust, and turned her back on them both.
Josephine, who had tottered up from her seat at Rose’s words, sank heavily down again, and murmured, “Ah! the grave holds all that love me now.”
Rose ran to her side. “Cruel Josephine! what, do not I love you? Mother, will you not help me persuade her to live? Oh! if she dies, I will die too; you will kill both your children.”
Stern and indignant as the baroness was, yet these words pierced her heart. She turned with a piteous, half apologetic air to Edouard and Aubertin. “Gentlemen,” said she, “she has been foolish, not guilty. Heaven pardons the best of us. Surely a mother may forgive her child.” And with this nature conquered utterly; and she held out her arms, wide, wide, as is a mother’s heart. Her two erring children rushed sobbing violently into them; and there was not a dry eye in the room for a long time.
After this, Josephine’s heart almost ceased to beat. Fear and misgivings, and the heavy sense of deceit gnawing an honorable heart, were gone. Grief reigned alone in the pale, listless, bereaved widow.
The marriage was annulled before the mayor; and, three days afterwards, Raynal, by his influence, got the consummated marriage formally allowed in Paris.
With a delicacy for which one would hardly have given him credit, he never came near Beaurepaire till all this was settled; but he brought the document from Paris that made Josephine the widow Dujardin, and her boy the heir of Beaurepaire; and the moment she was really Madame Dujardin he avoided her no longer; and he became a comfort to her instead of a terror.
The dissolution of the marriage was a great tie between them. So much that, seeing how much she looked up to Raynal, the doctor said one day to the baroness, “If I know anything of human nature, they will marry again, provided none of you give her a hint which way her heart is turning.”
They, who have habituated themselves to live for others, can suffer as well as do great things. Josephine kept alive. A passion such as hers, in a selfish nature, must have killed her.
Even as it was, she often said, “It is hard to live.”
Then they used to talk to her of her boy. Would she leave him—Camille’s boy—without a mother? And these words were never spoken to her quite in vain.
Her mother forgave her entirely, and loved her as before. Who could be angry with her long? The air was no longer heavy with lies. Wretched as she was, she breathed lighter. Joy and hope were gone. Sorrowful peace was coming. When the heart comes to this, nothing but Time can cure; but what will not Time do? What wounds have I seen him heal! His cures are incredible.
The little party sat one day, peaceful, but silent and sad, in the Pleasaunce, under the great oak.
Two soldiers came to the gate. They walked feebly, for one was lame, and leaned upon the other, who was pale and weak, and leaned upon a stick.
“Soldiers,” said Raynal, “and invalided.”
“Give them food and wine,” said Josephine.
Rose went towards them; but she had scarcely taken three steps ere she cried out,—
“It is Dard! it is poor Dard! Come in, Dard, come in.”
Dard limped towards them, leaning upon Sergeant La Croix. A bit of Dard’s heel had been shot away, and of La Croix’s head.
Rose ran to the kitchen.
“Jacintha, bring out a table into the Pleasaunce, and something for two guests to eat.”
The soldiers came slowly to the Pleasaunce, and were welcomed, and invited to sit down, and received with respect; for France even in that day honored the humblest of her brave.
Soon Jacintha came out with a little round table in her hands, and affected a composure which was belied by her shaking hands and her glowing cheek.
After a few words of homely welcome—not eloquent, but very sincere—she went off again with her apron to her eyes. She reappeared with the good cheer, and served the poor fellows with radiant zeal.
“What regiment?” asked Raynal.
Dard was about to answer, but his superior stopped him severely; then, rising with his hand to his forehead, he replied, with pride, “Twenty-fourth brigade, second company. We were cut up at Philipsburg, and incorporated with the 12th.”
Raynal instantly regretted his question; for Josephine’s eye fixed on Sergeant La Croix with an expression words cannot paint. Yet she showed more composure, real or forced, than he expected.
“Heaven sends him,” said she. “My friend, tell me, were you—ah!”
Colonel Raynal interfered hastily. “Think what you do. He can tell you nothing but what we know, not so much, in fact, as we know; for, now I look at him, I think this is the very sergeant we found lying insensible under the bastion. He must have been struck before the bastion was taken even.”
“I was, colonel, I was. I remember nothing but losing my senses, and feeling the colors go out of my hand.”
“There, you see, he knows nothing,” said Raynal.
“It was hot work, colonel, under that bastion, but it was hotter to the poor fellows that got in. I heard all about it from Private Dard here.”
“So, then, it was you who carried the colors?”
“Yes, I was struck down with the colors of the brigade in my hand,” cried La Croix.
“See how people blunder about, everything; they told me the colonel carried the colors.”
“Why, of course he did. You don’t think our colonel, the fighting colonel, would let me hold the colors of the brigade so long as he was alive. No; he was struck by a Prussian bullet, and he had just time to hand the colors to me, and point with his sword to the bastion, and down he went. It was hot work, I can tell you. I did not hold them long, not thirty seconds, and if we could know their history, they passed through more hands than that before they got to the Prussian flag-staff.”
Raynal suddenly rose, and walked rapidly to and fro, with his hands behind him.
“Poor colonel!” continued La Croix. “Well, I love to think he died like a soldier, and not like some of my poor comrades, hashed to atoms, and not a volley fired over him. I hope they put a stone over him, for he was the best soldier and the best general in the army.”
“O sir!” cried Josephine, “there is no stone even to mark the spot where he fell,” and she sobbed despairingly.
“Why, how is this, Private Dard?” inquired La Croix, sternly.
Dard apologized for his comrade, and touching his own head significantly told them that since his wound the sergeant’s memory was defective.
“Now, sergeant, didn’t I tell you the colonel must have got the better of his wound, and got into the battery?”
“It’s false, Private Dard; don’t I know our colonel better than that? Would ever he have let those colors out of his hand, if there had been an ounce of life left in him?”
“He died at the foot of the battery, I tell you.”
“Then why didn’t we find him?”
Here Jacintha put in a word with the quiet subdued meaning of her class. “I can’t find that anybody ever saw the colonel dead.”
“They did not find him, because they did not look for him,” said Sergeant La Croix.
“God forgive you, sergeant!” said Dard, with some feeling. “Not look for OUR COLONEL! We turned over every body that lay there,—full thirty there were,—and you were one of them.”
“Only thirty! Why, we settled more Prussians than that, I’ll swear.”
“Oh! they carried off their dead.”
“Ay! but I don’t see why they should carry our colonel off. His epaulets was all the thieves could do any good with. Stop! yet I do, Private Dard; I have a horrible suspicion. No, I have not; it is a certainty. What! don’t you see, ye ninny? Thunder and thousands of devils, here’s a disgrace. Dogs of Prussians! they have got our colonel, they have taken him prisoner.”