Led Astray and The Sphinx Part 8

"You can do much toward it."

"I, madam?"

"I have allowed you to take, I know not how--I really do not know how!--a great influence over my destiny. Will you be willing to use it? That is the question."

"And in what capacity could I do so, pray, madam?" I said slowly and in a tone of cold reserve.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, in a hoa.r.s.e and energetic accent, "how can you ask me that? It is too hard! you humiliate me too much!"

She left my arm and returned abruptly into the parlor. I remained for some time uncertain as to what course to pursue. I thought first of following Madame de Palme and explaining to her that she was mistaken--which was true--as to the interrogative answer which had offended her. She had applied that answer to some thought that pervaded her mind, which I did not understand, or at least which her words had revealed to me much less clearly than she had imagined; but after thinking over it, I shrank from the new and formidable explanation which such a course must inevitably bring about.

I left the conservatory, and walked into the garden to escape the hum of the ball-room, which importuned my ears. The night was cold but beautiful.

With my heart still filled with the bitterness of this scene, I wandered instinctively beyond the luminous zone projected around the chateau through the apertures of the resplendent windows. I walked rapidly toward a double row of spruce trees, crossed by a rustic bridge thrown over a small brook which divided the garden from the park, and where the shade was more dense. I had just reached this somber spot, when a hand was laid on my arm and stopped me; at the same time a short and troubled voice, which I could not mistake, said:

"I must speak to you!"

"Madam! for mercy's sake! in the name of Heaven! what are you doing? you will ruin your reputation! Do return to the house! Come, come, let me escort you back!"

I attempted to seize her arm, but she eluded my grasp.

"I want to speak to you--I have decided to do so. Oh, mon Dieu! how awkwardly I do go about it, don't I? You must believe me more than ever a miserable creature! and yet there is nothing in it, not a thing; it's the truth, the pure truth, mon ami! You are the first man for whose sake I have forgotten--all that I am now forgetting! Yes, the first! Never has any other man heard from my lips a single word of tenderness, never! And you do not believe!"

I took both her hands in mine:

"I believe you, I swear it--I swear that I esteem you--that I respect you as a beloved daughter--but listen to me; pray, listen! do not brave openly this pitiless world--return to the ball-room--I'll join you there soon, I promise you--but in the name of Heaven, do not compromise your fair fame!"

The poor child melted into tears, and I felt that she was staggering; I supported her and helped her to a seat on a bench close by. I remained standing before her, holding one of her hands. The darkness was intense around us; I gazed into s.p.a.ce, and I listened, in a state of vague stupor, to the clear and regular murmur of the brook flowing under the spruce trees, to the convulsive sobs that swelled the unhappy woman's bosom, and to the odious sounds of revelry which the orchestra sent us at intervals from afar. It was one of those moments that can never be forgotten.

She succeeded in mastering her grief at last, and seemed, after this explosion, to recover all her firmness.

"Monsieur," she said, rising and withdrawing her hand, "have no fears about my reputation. The world is accustomed to my follies. However, I have taken care that the present one shall not be noticed. Besides, I would not care if it was. You are the only man whose esteem I have ever desired, and, unfortunately the only one also whose contempt I have incurred--that is most cruel!--and yet something must tell you that I do not deserve it."

"Madam!"

"Listen to me! and may G.o.d convince you. This is a solemn hour in my existence. Since the first glance you ever cast upon me, sir--on that day when I went up to you while you were sketching the old church--since that first glance, I belonged to you. I have never loved, I shall never love any man but you. Will you take me for your wife? I am worthy of it--I swear it to you in the presence of that Heaven which is looking down upon us!"

"Dear madam--dear child--your kindness, your affection move me to the depths of my soul; in mercy, be more calm; let me retain a gleam of reason!"

"Ah! if your heart speaks, listen to it, sir! It is not with reason that I can be judged! Alas! I feel it! you still doubt me, you still doubt my past life. Oh, Heavens! that opinion of the world which I have always scorned, how it is killing me now!"

"No, madam, you are mistaken; but what could I offer you in exchange for all you wish to sacrifice for my sake--for the habits, the tastes, the pleasures of your whole life?"

"But that life inspires me with horror! You think that I would regret it?

You think that some day I may again become the woman I have been, the madcap you have known?--you think so! And how can I help your believing it? And yet I know very well that I would never cause you that sorrow, nor any other--never! I have discovered in your eyes a new world I did not know--a more dignified, more lofty world, of which I had never conceived the idea--and outside of which I can no longer live. Ah! you must certainly feel that I am telling you the truth!"

"Yes, madam, you are telling me the truth--the truth of the hour--of a moment of fever and excitement; but this new world, which appears dimly to you now--this ideal world in which you desire to seek an eternal refuge against mere transient evils--would never keep all it seems to promise.

Disappointment, regret, misery await you within it--and do not await you alone. I know not if there be a man gifted with a sufficiently n.o.ble mind, with a sufficiently lofty soul to make you love the new existence of which you are dreaming to preserve in the reality the almost divine character which your imagination imparts to it; but I do know that such a task, sweet as it might be, is beyond my strength; I would be insane, I would be a wretch, if I were to accept it."

"Is that your final decision? Cannot reflection alter it in any way?"

"In no way."

"Farewell then, sir--ah! unhappy woman that I am!--farewell!"

She grasped my hand, which she wrung convulsively, and then left me.

After she had disappeared, I sat down on the bench, upon which she had been seated. There, my dear Paul, my whole strength gave way. I hid my head in my hands and I wept like a child. Thank G.o.d, she did not return!

I had at last to gather all my courage in order to appear once more and for a moment in the ball-room. There was nothing to indicate that my absence had been noticed, or unfavorably commented upon. Madame de Palme was dancing and displaying a degree of gayety amounting almost to delirium. Soon after, supper was announced, and I availed myself of the general commotion attending that incident, to retire to my room.

Early this morning, I requested a private interview with Madame de Malouet. It appeared to me that my entire confidence was due to her. She heard me with profound sadness, but without manifesting any surprise.

"I had guessed," she told me, "something of the kind--I did not sleep all night. I believe that you have done your duty as a wise man and as an honest man. Yes, you have. Still, it seems very hard. Society life is detestable in this, that it creates fict.i.tious characters and pa.s.sions, unexpected situations, subtle shades, which complicate strangely the practice of duty, and obscure the straight path which ought to be always simple and easy to discover. And now you wish to leave, I suppose?"

"Certainly, madam."

"Very well; but you had better stay two or three days longer. You will thus remove from your departure the semblance of flight which, after what may have been observed, might prove somewhat ridiculous and perhaps damaging. It is a sacrifice I ask of you. To-day, we are all to dine at Madame de Breuilly's; I'll undertake to excuse you. In this manner, this day at least will rest lightly upon you. To-morrow, we'll act for the best. Day after to-morrow, you can leave."

I accepted these terms. I shall soon see you again, then, Paul. But in the meantime, how lonely and forsaken I feel! How I long to grasp your firm and loyal hand; to hear your voice tell me: "You have done right!"

CHAPTER VIII.

"I AM A DISGRACED WOMAN."

ROZEL, _October 10_.

Here I am back in my cell, my friend. Why did I ever leave it? Never has a man felt a more troubled heart beat between these cold walls, than my own wretched heart! Ah! I will not curse our poor human reason, our philosophy; are they not, after all, the n.o.blest and best conquests of our nature? But, great Heaven! how little they amount to! What unreliable guides, and what feeble supports! Listen to a sad story: Yesterday, thanks to Madame de Malouet, I remained alone at the chateau the whole day and the whole evening. I was therefore as much at peace as it was possible for me to be. Toward midnight I heard the carriages returning, and soon after all noise ceased. It was, I think, about three o'clock in the morning when I was aroused from the species of torpor that has stood me in lieu of sleep for the past few nights, by the sound quite close to me, of a door cautiously opened or closed in the yard. I know not by what strange and sudden connection of ideas so simple an incident attracted my attention and disturbed my mind. I left abruptly the arm-chair in which I had been slumbering, and I went up to a window. I distinctly saw a man moving off with discreet steps in the direction of the avenue. I had no difficulty in satisfying myself that the door through which he had just pa.s.sed, was that which gives access to the wing of the chateau contiguous to the library. This part of the house contains several rooms devoted to transient guests; I knew that all were vacant at this moment, unless Madame de Palme, as it often happened, had occupied for the night the lodging that was always set apart for her in that wing.

You may guess what strange thought floated across my brain. I repelled it at first as sheer madness; but remembering, within the field of my somewhat extended experience, certain facts that lent probability to that thought, I entertained it with a sort of cynical irony, and I was almost ready to admit it, as an odious but decisive denouement. The early dawn found me struggling still in this mental anguish, calling up my recollections, examining in a childish way the most minute circ.u.mstances that might tend to confirm or to banish my suspicions. Excess of fatigue, brought on at last two hours of prostration, from which I emerged with a better command of my reason. It was impossible for me to doubt the reality of the apparition that had struck my eyes during the night; but it appeared to me that I had put upon it a hasty and senseless construction, and that my ailing spirit had attributed to it the least likely explanation.

I went down at half past ten o'clock as usual. Madame de Palme was in the parlor; she must therefore have spent the night at the chateau.

Nevertheless, a mere glance at her was enough to remove from my mind the very shadow of suspicion. She was talking quietly in the center of a group. She greeted me with her usual gentle smile. I felt relieved of an immense weight. I was escaping a torment of such a painful and bitter nature, that the positive impression of my previous grief, freed from the disgraceful complications with which I had for a moment thought it aggravated, appeared almost pleasant. Never had my heart rendered to this woman a more tender and more sincere homage. I was grateful to her from the bottom of my soul, for having restored purity to my wound and to my memory.

The afternoon was to be devoted to a horseback ride along the sea-sh.o.r.e.

In the effusion of heart that succeeded the anxieties of the night, I yielded quite readily to the entreaties of Monsieur de Malouet, who, arguing on my approaching departure, was urging me to accompany him on this excursion. It was about two o'clock when our cavalcade, recruited as usual by a few young men of the neighborhood, marched out of the chateau's gate. We had been traveling merrily for a few minutes, and I was not the least merry of the band, when Madame de Palme suddenly came to take her place by my side.

"I am about to be guilty of a base deed," she said; "and yet, I had so strongly resolved--but I am choking!"

I looked at her; the haggard expression of her eyes and of her features suddenly struck me with terror.

"Well!" she went on, in a voice of which I shall never forget the tone, "you have willed it so! I am a disgraced woman!"

She urged at once her horse forward, leaving me crushed by this blow, the more terrible that I had wholly ceased to fear it, and that it struck me with a keen cruelty I had not even foreseen. There had indeed been in the unhappy woman's voice no trace whatever of insolent swaggering; it was the very voice of despair, a cry of heart-rending grief and timid reproach; everything that might add in my soul to the torture of a stained and shattered love, the disorder of a profound pity and an uneasy conscience.

When I had found strength enough to look around me I was surprised at my own blindness. Among Madame de Palme's most a.s.siduous courtiers, figures one Monsieur de Mauterne, whose antipathy for me, though confined within the limits of good-breeding, often seemed to me to a.s.sume an almost hostile tinge. Monsieur de Mauterne is a man of my age, tall, blonde, with a figure more robust than elegant, and features regularly handsome, but stiff and without expression. He possesses social accomplishments, much audacity, and no wit. His bearing and his conduct during the course of that fatal ride would have informed me from the start, if I had only thought of observing them, that he believed he had the right of fearing henceforth no rivalry near Madame de Palme. He a.s.sumed frankly the leading part in all the scenes in which she partic.i.p.ated; he overwhelmed her with attentions, affected to speak to her in a whisper, and neglected nothing, in a word, to initiate the public into the secret of his success. In that respect, he lost his trouble; the world, after exhausting its wickedness upon imaginary errors, seems thus far to refuse the evidence which vainly stares it in the face.