Led Astray and The Sphinx Part 16

CHAPTER IV.

A GREWSOME ABODE.

Vastville, the patrimonial domain of the Lucan family, is situated a short distance from the sea, on the west coast of the Norman Finisterre. It is a manor with high roof and wrought-iron balconies, which dates from the time of Louis XIII., and which has taken the place of the old castle, a few ruins of which still serve to ornament the park. It is concealed in a thickly shaded depression of the soil, and a long avenue of antique elms precedes it. The aspect of it is singularly retired and melancholy, owing to the dense woods that surround it on all sides. This wooded thicket marks, on this point of the peninsula, the last effort of the vigorous vegetation of Normandy. As soon as its edge has been crossed, the view extends suddenly and without obstacle over the vast moors which form the triangular plateau of the Cape La Hague; fields of furze and heather, stone fences without cement, here and there a cross of granite, on the right and on the left the distant undulations of the ocean--such is the severe but grand landscape that is suddenly unfolded to the eyes beneath the un.o.bstructed light of the heavens.

Monsieur de Lucan was born in Vastville. The poetic reminiscences of childhood mingled in his imagination with the natural poetry of that site, and made it dear to him. Under pretext of hunting, he came on a pilgrimage to it every year. Since his marriage only, he had given up that habit of the heart, in order not to leave Clotilde, who was detained in Paris by her daughter; but it had been agreed upon that they would go and bury themselves in that retreat for a season as soon as they had recovered their liberty. Clotilde only knew Vastville from her husband's enthusiastic descriptions; she loved it on his representations, and it was for her, in advance, an enchanted spot. Nevertheless, when the carriage that brought her from the station entered, at nightfall, among the wooded hills, in the gloomy avenue that led up to the chateau, she felt an impression as of cold.

"Mon Dieu! my dear," she said, laughingly, "your chateau is a perfect castle of Udolpho!"

Lucan excused his chateau as best he could, and protested, moreover, that he was ready to leave it the very next day, if she were not better pleased with its appearance after sunrise.

It was not long before she became pa.s.sionately fond of it. Her happiness, hitherto so constrained, blossomed freely for the first time in that solitude, and shed upon it a charming light. She even expressed the wish of spending the winter and waiting there for Julia, who was to return to France in the course of the following year. Lucan offered some slight opposition to that project, which appeared to him rather over-heroic for a Parisian, but ended by adopting it, too happy himself to harbor the romance of his love in that romantic spot. He began, however, taxing his ingenuity to attenuate what there might be too austere in that abode, by opening relations with some of the neighbors for Clotilde's benefit, and by procuring her, at intervals, her mother's society. Madame de Pers was kind enough to lend herself to that combination, although the country was generally repulsive to her, and Vastville in particular had in her eyes a sinister character. She pretended that she heard at night noises in the walls and moans in the woods. She slept with one eye open and two candles burning. The magnificent cliffs that bordered the coast a short distance off, and which they tried to make her admire, caused her a painful sensation.

"Very fine!" she said, "very wild! quite wild! But it makes me sick; I feel as though I were on top of the towers of Notre Dame! Besides, my children, love beautifies everything, and I understand your transports perfectly. As to myself, you must excuse me if I do not share them. I can never go into ecstasies over such a country as this. I am as fond of the country as any one, but this is not the country--it is the desert, Arabia Petroea, I know not what. And as to your chateau, my dear friend--I am sorry to tell you so: it has a savor of crime. Look well, and you'll see that a murder has been committed in it."

"Why, no, my dear madam," replied Lucan laughingly, "I know perfectly the history of my family, and I can guarantee you--"

"Rest a.s.sured, my friend, that some one has been killed in it--in old times. You know how little they troubled themselves about those things formerly!"

Julia's letters to her mother were frequent. It was a regular journal of travels written helter-skelter, with a striking originality of style, in which the vivacity of the impressions was corrected by that shade of haughty irony which was a peculiarity of the writer. Julia spoke rather briefly of her husband, but always in pleasant terms. There was generally a rapid and kindly postscript addressed to Monsieur de Lucan.

Monsieur de Moras was more chary of descriptions. He seemed to see no one but his wife in Italy. He extolled her beauty, still further enhanced, he said, by the contact of all those marvels of art with which she was becoming impregnated; he praised her extraordinary taste, her intelligence, and even her good disposition. In this latter respect, she was extremely matured, and he found her almost too staid and too grave for her age. These particulars delighted Clotilde, and finished instilling into her heart a peace she had never yet enjoyed.

The count's letters were not less rea.s.suring for the future than the present. He did not think it necessary, he said, to urge Julia on the subject of her reconciliation with her step-father; but he felt that she was quite ready for it. He was, besides, preparing her more and more for it by conversing habitually with her of the old friendship that united him to Monsieur de Lucan, of their past life, of their travels, of the perils they had braved together. Not only did Julia hear these narratives without revolt, but she often solicited them, as if she had regretted her prejudices, and had sought good reasons to forget them.

"Come, Pylades, speak to me of Orestes!" she would say.

After having spent the whole winter season and part of the spring in Italy, Monsieur and Madame de Moras visited Switzerland, announcing their intention of sojourning there until the middle of summer. The thought occurred to Monsieur and Madame de Lucan to go and join them there, and thus abruptly bring about a reconciliation that seemed henceforth to be but a mere matter of form. Clotilde was preparing to submit that project to her daughter when she received, one beautiful May morning, the following letter dated from Paris:

"BELOVED MOTHER:--'No more Switzerland!' too much Switzerland! Here I am; don't disturb yourself. I know how much you are enjoying yourself at Vastville. We'll go and join you there one of these fine mornings, and we'll all come home together in the autumn. I only ask of you a few days to look after our future establishment here.

"We are at the Grand Hotel. I did not choose to stop at your house, for all sorts of reasons, nor at my grandmother's, who, however, insisted very kindly upon our doing so:

"'Oh! mon Dieu! my dear children--that must not be--in a hotel! why, that is not proper. You cannot remain in a hotel! come and stay with me. mon Dieu! you'll be very uncomfortable. You'll be camping out, as it were. I don't even know how I'll manage to give you anything to eat, for my cook is sick abed, and that stupid coachman of mine, by the way, has a stye on his eye! But why not let people know you were coming? You fall upon me like two flower-pots from a window! It's incredible! You are in good health, my friend? I need not ask you. It shows plainly enough. And you, my beautiful pet? Why! it is the sun; the sun itself. Hide yourself--you are dazzling my eyes! Have you any luggage? Well, we'll just put it in the parlor; it can't be helped. And as to yourselves, I'll give you my own room. I'll engage a housekeeper and hire a driver from some livery stable.

You'll not be in my way at all, not at all, not at all!'

"In short, we did not accept.

"But the explanation of this sudden return! Here it is:

"'Are you not tired of Switzerland, my dear?' I asked of my husband.

"'I am tired of Switzerland,' replied that faithful echo.

"'Suppose we go away, then?'

"And away we went.

"Glad and moved to the bottom of my soul at the thought of soon kissing you,

JULIA.

"P.S.--I beg Monsieur de Lucan not to intimidate me."

The days that followed were delightfully busy for Clotilde. She herself unpacked the parcels that constantly kept coming, and put the contents away with her own maternal hands. She unfolded and folded again, she caressed those skirts, those waists of fine and perfumed linen, which were already to her like a part of her daughter's person. Lucan, a little jealous, surprised her meditating lovingly over these pretty things. She went to the stables to see Julia's horse, which had followed soon after the boxes; she gave him lumps of sugar and chatted with him. She filled with flowers and verdant foliage the apartments set apart for the young couple.

This fever of happiness soon came to its happy termination. About a week after her arrival in Paris, Julia wrote to her mother that they expected, her husband and herself, to leave that evening, and that they would be in Cherbourg the next morning. Clotilde prepared, of course, to go and meet them with her carriage. Monsieur de Lucan, after duly conferring with her on the subject, thought best not to accompany her. He feared that he might interfere with the first emotions of the return, and yet, not wishing that Julia should attribute his absence to a lack of attention, he resolved to go and meet the travelers on horseback.

CHAPTER V.

FATHER AND STEP-DAUGHTER.

It was on one of the first days of June. Clotilde had left early in the morning, fresh and radiant as the dawn. Two hours later, Lucan mounted his horse and started at a walk. The roads are lovely in Normandy at this season. The hawthorn hedges perfume the country, and sprinkle here and there the edges of the road with their rosy snow. A profusion of fresh verdure, dotted with wild flowers, covers the face of the ditches. All that, under the gay morning sun, is a feast for the eyes. M. de Lucan, however, greatly contrary to his custom, bestowed but very slight attention upon the spectacle of that smiling nature. He was preoccupied, to a degree that surprised himself, with his coming meeting with his step-daughter. Julia had been such a besetting thought in his mind that he had retained of her an exaggerated impression. He strove in vain to restore her to her natural proportions, which were, after all, only those of a child, formerly a naughty child, now a prodigal child. He had become accustomed to invest her, in his imagination, with a mysterious importance and a sort of fatal power, of which he found it difficult to strip her. He laughed and felt irritated at his own weakness; but he experienced an agitation mingled with curiosity and vague uneasiness, at the moment of beholding face to face that sphinx whose shadow had so long disturbed his life, and who now came in person to sit at his fireside.

An open barouche, decked with parasols, appeared at the summit of a hill; Lucan saw a head leaning and a handkerchief waving outside the carriage; he urged at once his horse to a gallop. Almost at the same instant the carriage stopped, and a young woman jumped lightly upon the road; she turned around to address a few words to her traveling-companions, and advanced alone toward Lucan. Not wishing to be outdone in politeness, he alighted also, handed his horse to the groom who followed him, and started with cheerful alacrity in the direction of the young woman, whom he did not recognize, but who was evidently Julia. She was coming toward him without haste, with a sliding walk, rocking gently her flexible figure. As she drew near, she threw off her vail with a rapid motion of her hand, and Lucan was enabled to find again upon that youthful face, in those large and slightly clouded eyes, and the pure and stretching arch of the eyebrows, some features of the child he had known.

When Julia's glance met that of Lucan, her pale complexion became suffused with a purple blush.

He bowed very low to her, and with a smile full of affectionate grace:

"Welcome!" he said.

"Thank you, sir," said Julia, in a voice whose grave and melodious suavity struck Lucan; "friends, are we not?" And she held out both her hands to him with charming resolution.

He drew her gently to himself to kiss her; but thinking that he felt a slight resistance in the suddenly stiffening arms of his step-daughter, he contented himself with kissing her wrist just above her glove. Then affecting to look at her with a polite admiration, which, however, was perfectly sincere:

"I really feel," he said, laughingly, "like asking you to whom I have the honor of speaking."

"You find me grown?" she said, showing her dazzling teeth.

"Surprisingly so," said Lucan; "most surprisingly. I understand Pierre perfectly now."

"Poor Pierre!" said Julia; "he is so fond of you. Don't let us keep him waiting any longer, if you please."

They started in the direction of the carriage, in front of which Monsieur de Moras was awaiting them, and while walking side by side:

"What a lovely country!" resumed Julia. "And the sea quite near?"

"Quite near."

"We'll take a ride on horseback after breakfast, will we not?"

"Quite willingly; but you must be horribly fatigued, my dear child. Excuse me! my dear--? By the way, how do you wish me to call you?"