Led Astray and The Sphinx Part 18

"Yes, you are my mother's husband; and what is more, you are, according to my notion, a very bad husband for my mother."

"According to your notion!" said Lucan, quietly. "And why so?"

"Because you are not at all suited to her."

"Have you consulted your mother on that subject, my dear madam? It seems to me that she must be a better judge of it than yourself."

"I need not consult her. It is enough to see you both together. My mother is an angelic creature, whereas you;--no!"

"What am I, then?"

"A romantic, restless man--the very reverse, in fact. Sooner or later, you'll betray her."

"Never!" said Lucan, somewhat sternly.

"Are you quite sure of that, sir?" said Julia, riveting her gaze upon him from the depths of her hood.

"Dear madam," replied Monsieur de Lucan, "you were asking me, a moment since, to explain to you what was proper and what was improper; well, it is improper that we should take, you your mother, and I my wife, as the text for a jest of that kind, and consequently, it is proper that we should drop the subject."

She hushed, remained motionless and closed her eyes. In the course of a minute or two, Lucan saw a tear fall down her long eyelashes and roll over her cheek.

"Mon Dieu! my child," he said, "I have wounded your feelings! Allow me to tender you my sincere apologies."

"Keep your apologies to yourself!" she said, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, opening her eyes wide at the same time. "I have no need of your apologies any more than of your lessons! Your lessons! What have I done to deserve such a humiliation? I cannot understand. What is there more innocent than my words, and what do you expect me to tell you? Is it my fault if I am here alone with you! if I am compelled to speak to you?--if I know not what to say? Why am I exposed to such things? Why ask me more than I can do? It is presuming too much on my strength! It is enough--it is a thousand times too much already--to be compelled to act such a comedy as I am compelled to act every day. G.o.d knows I am tired of it!"

Lucan found it difficult to overcome the painful surprise that had seized him.

"Julia," he said at last, "you were kind enough to tell me that we were friends; I believed you. Is it not true, then?"

"No!"

After launching that word with somber energy, she wrapped up her head and face in her hood and vail, and remained during the rest of the way plunged into a silence which Monsieur de Lucan did not attempt to disturb.

CHAPTER VI.

A DISILLUSION.

After a few hours of painful sleep, Monsieur de Lucan rose the next day, his brain laden with cares.

The resumption of hostilities, which had been clearly signified to him foreboded surely fresh troubles for his peace and fresh anguish for Clotilde's happiness. Was he, then, about returning to those odious agitations which had so long hara.s.sed his existence, and this time without any hopes of escape? How, indeed, was it possible not to despair of that untamable nature which age and reason, which so much attention and affection had left unmoved in her prejudices and her hatred? How was it possible to understand, and, above all, ever to overcome the quixotic sentiment, or rather the mania which had taken possession of that concentrated soul, and which was smoldering in it, ever ready to break forth in furious outbursts?

Clotilde and Julia had not yet made their appearance. Lucan went to take a walk in the garden, to breathe once more the peace of his beloved solitude, pending the antic.i.p.ated storms. At the extremity of an alley of evergreens, he discovered the Count de Moras, his arm resting on the pedestal of an old statue, and his eyes fixed on the ground.

Monsieur de Moras had never been a dreamer, but since his arrival at the chateau, he had, on more than one occasion, manifested to Lucan a melancholy state of mind quite foreign to his natural disposition. Lucan had felt alarmed; nevertheless, as he did not himself like any one to intrude upon his confidence, he had abstained from questioning him.

They shook hands as they met.

"You came home late last night?" inquired the count.

"At about three o'clock."

"Oh! _povero! Apropos_, thanks for your kindness to Julia. How did she behave to you?"

"Why--well enough," said Lucan--"a little peculiar, as usual."

"Oh! peculiar of course!"

He smiled rather sadly, took Monsieur de Lucan's arm, and leading him through the meandering paths of the garden:

"_Voyons, mon cher_," he said in a suppressed voice, "between you and me, what is Julia?"

"How, my friend?"

"Yes, what sort of a woman is my wife? If you know, do tell me, I beg of you."

"Excuse me, but it is the very question I would like to ask of you myself."

"Of me?" said the count. "But I have not the slightest idea. She is a Sphinx, a riddle, the solution of which escapes me completely. She both charms and frightens me. She is peculiar, you said? She is more than that; she is fantastic. She is not of this world. I know not whom or what I have married. You remember that cold and beautiful creature in the Arabian tales who rose at night to go and feast in the graveyard. It's absurd, but she reminds me of that."

The count's troubled look, the constrained laugh with which he accompanied his words, moved Lucan deeply.

"So, then," said the latter, "you are unhappy?"

"It is impossible to be more so," replied the count, pressing his hand hard. "I adore her, and I am jealous--without knowing of whom and of what!

She does not love me--and yet she loves some one--she must love some one!

How can I doubt it? Look at her; she is the very embodiment of pa.s.sion; the fire of pa.s.sion overflows in her words, in her looks, in the blood of her veins! And near me, she is as cold as the statue upon a tomb!"

"Frankly, _mon cher_," said Lucan, "you seem to exaggerate your disasters greatly. In reality they seem to amount to very little. In the first place, you are seriously in love for the first time in your life, I think; you had heard a great deal said about love, about pa.s.sion, and perhaps you were expecting of them excessive wonders. In the second place, I must beg you to observe that very young women are rarely very pa.s.sionate. The sort of coolness of which you complain is therefore quite easy to explain without the intervention of anything supernatural. Young women, I repeat, are generally idealists; their love has no substance. You ask of whom or of what you should be jealous? Be jealous, then, of all those vague and romantic aspirations that torment youthful imaginations; be jealous of the wind, of the tempest, of the barren moors, of the rugged cliffs, of my old manor, of my words and of my ruins--for Julia adores all that. Be jealous, above all, of that ardent worship she has avowed to her father's memory, and which still absorbs her--I have lately had a proof of the fact--the keenest of her pa.s.sion."

"You do me good," rejoined Pierre de Moras, breathing more freely, "and yet I had already thought of all these things. But if she does not love now, she will some day--and suppose it should not be me! Were she to bestow upon another all that she refuses me! my friend," added the count, whose handsome features turned pale, "I would kill her with my own hand!"

"So much for being in love," said Lucan; "and I, am I nothing more to you, then?"

"You, my friend," said Moras with emotion, "you see my confidence in you!

I have revealed to you weaknesses of which I am ashamed. Ah! why have I ever known any other feeling than that of friendship! Friendship alone returns as much as it receives; it fortifies instead of enervating; it is the only pa.s.sion worthy of a man. Never forsake me, my friend; you will console me, whatever may happen."

The bell that was ringing for breakfast called them back to the chateau.

Julia pretended being tired and ailing. Under shelter of this pretext, her silent humor, her more than dry answers to Lucan's polite questions, pa.s.sed at first without awakening either her mother's or her husband's attention; but during the remainder of the day, and amid the various incidents of family life, Julia's aggressive tone and disagreeable manners toward Lucan became too strongly marked not to be noticed. However, as Lucan had the patience and good taste not to seem to notice them, each one kept his own impressions to himself. The dinner was, that day, more quiet than usual. The conversation fell, toward the end of the meal, upon extremely delicate ground, and it was Julia who brought it there, though, however, without the least thought of evil. She was exhausting her mocking _verve_ upon a little boy of eight or ten--the son of the Marchioness de Boisfresnay--who had annoyed her extremely the night before, by parading through the ball his own pretentious little person, and by throwing himself pleasantly like a top between the legs of the gentlemen and through the dresses of the ladies. The marchioness went into ecstasies at these charming pranks. Clotilde defended her mildly, alleging that this child was her only son.

"That is no reason for bestowing upon society one scoundrel the more,"

said Lucan.

"However," rejoined Julia, who hastened to be no longer of her own opinion as soon as her step-father seemed to have rallied to it, "it is a well acknowledged fact that spoiled children are those who turn out the best."

"There are at least some exceptions," said Lucan, coldly.