IT was Madame who first
entered the box, and Madame was bright with youthful bloom, bright with jewels,
and, moreover, a beauty. She was a little creature, with childishly large eyes,
a low, white forehead, reddish-brown hair, and Greek nose and mouth.
"Clearly,"
remarked the old lady in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth
is too girlish, and she has too petulant an air of indifference."
This old lady in the
box opposite was that venerable and somewhat severe aristocrat, Madame de
Castro, and having gazed for a moment or so a little disapprovingly at the new
arrival, she turned her glasses to the young beauty's companion and uttered an
exclamation.
It was at Monsieur she
was looking now. Monsieur had followed his wife closely, bearing her fan and
bouquet and wrap, and had silently seated himself a little behind her and in
the shadow.
" Ciel!"
cried Madame de Castro, "what an ugly little man!"
It was not an unnatural
exclamation. Fate had not been so kind to the individual referred to as she might
have been--in fact she had been definitely cruel. He was small of figure,
insignificant, dark, and wore a patient sphynx-like air of gravity. He did not
seem to speak or move, simply sat in the shadow holding his wife's belongings,
apparently almost entirely unnoticed by her.
"I don't know him
at all," said Madame de Castro; "though that is not to be wondered
at, since I have exiled myself long enough to forget and be forgotten by half
Paris. What is his name?"
The gentleman at her
side--a distinguished-looking old young man, with a sarcastic smile--began with
the smile, and ended with a half laugh.
"They call
him," he replied, "Le Monsieur de la petite Dame. His name is
Villefort."
"Le Monsieur de la
petite Dame," repeated Madame, testily. "That is a title of new
Paris--the Paris of your American and English. It is villainously
ill-bred."
M. Renard's laugh
receded into the smile again, and the smile became of double significance.
"True," he
acquiesced, "but it is also villainously apropos. Look for yourself."
Madame did so, and her
next query, after she had dropped her glass again, was a sharp one.
"Who is she--the
wife?"
"She is what you
are pleased to call one of our Americans! You know the class,"--with a
little wave of the hand,--"rich, unconventional; comfortable people, who
live well and dress well, and have an incomprehensibly naive way of going to
impossible places and doing impossible things by way of enjoyment. Our fair
friend there, for instance, has probably been round the world upon several
occasions, and is familiar with a number of places and objects of note fearful
to contemplate. They came here as tourists, and became fascinated with European
life. The most overwhelming punishment which could be inflicted upon that
excellent woman, the mother, would be that she should be compelled to return to
her New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston, whichsoever it may be."
"Humph!"
commented Madame. "But you have not told me the name."
"Madame
Villefort's? No, not yet. It was Trent--Mademoiselle Bertha Trent."
"She is not twenty
yet," said Madame, in a queer, grumbling tone. "What did she marry
that man for?"
"God knows,"
replied M. Renard, not too devoutly, "Paris does not."
For some reason best
known to herself, Madame de Castro looked angry. She was a shrewd old person,
with strong whims of her own, even at seventy. She quite glared at the pretty
American from under her bushy eyebrows.
"Le Monsieur de la
petite Dame!" she fumed. "I tell you it is low-- low to give a man
such names."
"Oh!"
returned Renard, shrugging his shoulders, "we did not give it to him. It
was an awkward servant who dubbed him so at first. She was new to her position,
and forgot his name, and being asked who had arrived, stumbled upon this bon
mot: `Un monsieur, Madame--le monsieur de la petite dame,'--and, being repeated
and tossed lightly from hand to hand, it has become at last an established
witticism, albeit bandied under breath."
It was characteristic
of the august De Castro that during the remainder of the evening's
entertainment she should occupy herself more with her neighbors than with the
opera. She aroused M. Renard to a secret ecstasy of mirth by the sharp
steadiness of her observation of the inmates of the box opposite them. She
talked about them, too, in a tone not too well modulated, criticising the
beautifully dressed little woman, her hair, her eyes, her Greek nose and mouth,
and, more than all, her indifferent expression and her manner of leaning upon
the edge of her box and staring at the stage as if she did not care for, and
indeed scarcely saw, what was going on upon it.
"That is the way
with your American beauties," she said. "They have no respect for
things. Their people spoil them--their men especially. They consider themselves
privileged to act as their whims direct. They have not the gentle timidity of
French women. What French girl would have the sang froid to sit in one of the
best boxes of the Nouvelle Opera and regard, with an actual air of ennui, such
a performance as this. She does not hear a word that is sung."
"And we--do we
hear?" bantered M. Renard.
" Pouf!"
cried Madame. "We! We are world-dried and weather-beaten. We have not a
worm-eaten emotion between us. I am seventy, and you, who are thirty-five, are
the older of the two. Bah! At that girl's age I had the heart of a dove."
"But that is long
ago," murmured M. Renard, as if to himself. It was quite human that he
should slightly resent being classed with an unamiable grenadier of seventy.
"Yes!" with
considerable asperity. "Fifty years!" Then, with harsh voice and
withered face melted suddenly into softness quite naive, "Mon Dieu!"
she said, "Fifty years since Arsene whispered into my ear at my first
opera, that he saw tears in my eyes!"
It was at this instant
that there appeared in the Villefort box a new figure,--that of a dark, slight
young man of graceful movements,--in fact, a young man of intensely striking
appearance. M. Villefort rose to receive him with serious courtesy, but the
pretty American was not so gracious. Not until he had seated himself at her
side and spoken to her did she turn her head and permit her eyes simply to rest
upon his face.
M. Renard smiled again.
"Enter," he
remarked in a low tone,--enter M. Ralph Edmonstone, the cousin of Madame."
His companion asked no
questions, but he proceeded, returning to his light and airy tone:
"M. Ralph
Edmonstone is a genius," he said. "He is an artist, he is a poet, he
is also a writer of subtle prose. His sonnets to Euphrasie--in the day of
Euphrasie--awakened the admiration of the sternest critics: they were so
tender, so full of purest fire! Some of the same critics also could scarcely
choose between these and his songs to Aglae in her day, or Camille in hers. He
is a young man of fine fancies, and possesses the amiable quality of being
invariably passionately in earnest. As he was serious in his sentiments
yesterday, so he will be to- morrow, so he is to-day."
"To-day!"
echoed Madame de Castro. "Nonsense!"
Madame Villefort did
not seem to talk much. It was M. Ralph Edmondstone who conversed, and this,
too, with so much of the charm of animation that it was pleasurable even to be
a mere looker-on. One involuntarily strained one's ears to catch a
sentence,--he was so eagerly absorbed, so full of rapid, gracefully unconscious
and unconventional gesture.
"I wonder what he
is saying?" Madame de Castro was once betrayed into exclaiming.
Something metaphysical,
about a poem, or a passage of music, or a picture,--or perhaps his soul,"
returned M. Renard. "His soul is his strong point,--he pets it and wonders
at it. He puts it through its paces. And yet, singularly enough, he is never
ridiculous--only fanciful and naive. It is his soul which so fascinates
women."
Whether this last was
true of other women or not, Madame Villefort scarcely appeared fascinated. As
she listened, her eyes still rested upon his eager, mobile face, but with a
peculiar expression,--an expression of critical attention, and yet one which
somehow detracted from her look of youth, as if she weighed his words as they
fell from his lips and classified them without any touch of the enthusiasm
which stirred within himself.
Suddenly she rose from
her seat and addressed her husband, who immediately rose also. Then she spoke
to M. Edmondstone, and without more ado, the three left the box,--the young
beauty, a little oddly, rather followed than accompanied by her companions,--at
the recognition of which circumstance Madame de Castro uttered a series of
sharp ejaculations of disapproval.
"Bah! Bah!"
she cried. "She is too young for such airs!--as if she were Madame
l'Imperatrice herself! Take me to my carriage. I am tired also."
Crossing the pavement
with M. Renard, they passed the carriage of the Villeforts. Before its open
door stood M. Villefort and Edmondstone, and the younger man, with bared head,
bent forward speaking to his cousin.
"If I come
to-morrow," he was saying, you will be at home, Bertha?"
"Yes."
"Then,
good-night,"--holding out his hand,--"only I wish so that you would
go to the Aylmers' instead of home. That protegee of Mrs. Aylmer's--the little
singing girl--would touch your heart with her voice. On hearing her, one thinks
at once of some shy wild bird high in a clear sky,---far enough above earth to
have forgotten to be timid."
"Yes," came
quietly from the darkness within the carriage; "but I am too tired to care
about voices just now. Good-night, Ralph!"
M. Renard's reply of
"God knows, Paris does not," to Madame de Castro's query as to why
Madame Villefort had married her husband, contained a strong element of truth,
and yet there were numbers of Parisian-Americans, more especially the young,
well- looking and masculine, who at the time the marriage had taken place had
been ready enough with sardonic explanations.
"There are women
who are avaricious enough to sell their souls," they cried; "and the
maternal Trent is one of them. The girl is only to blame for allowing herself
to be bullied into the match."
"But the weak
place in this argument," said M. Renard, "is that the people are too
rich to be greatly influenced by money. If there had been a title,--but there
was no title."
Neither did Bertha
Trent comport herself like a cowed creature. She took her place in society as
Madame Villefort in such a manner as could give rise to no comment whatever;
only one or two of the restless inquisitive wondered if they had not been
mistaken in her. She was, as I have said already, a childishly small and slight
creature,--the kind of woman to touch one with suggestions of helplessness and
lack of will; and yet, notwithstanding this, a celebrated artist--a shrewd,
worldly-wise old fellow--who had painted her portrait, had complained that he
was not satisfied with it because he had not done justice to "the
obstinate endurance in her eye."
It was to her cousin,
Ralph Edmondstone, he had said this with some degree of testiness, and
Edmondstone had smiled and answered :
"What! have you
found that out? Few people do."
At the time of the
marriage Edmondstone had been in Rome singeing his wings in the light of the
eyes of a certain Marchesa who was his latest poetic passion. She was not his
first fancy, nor would she be his last, but she had power enough for the time
being to have satisfied the most exacting of women.
He was at his banker's
when he heard the news spoken of as the latest item from American Paris, and
his start and exclamation of disgust drew forth some cynical after-comment from
men who envied him.
"Who?" he
said, with indiscreet impatience. "That undersized sphynx of a Villefort?
Faugh!"
But insignificant
though he might be, it was M. Villefort who had won, and if he was nothing
more, he was at least a faithful attendant. Henceforth, those who saw his wife
invariably saw him also,--driving with her in her carriage, riding with her
courageously if ungracefully, standing or seated near her in the shadow of her
box at the Nouvelle Opera, silent, impassive, grave, noticeable only through the
contrast he afforded to her girlish beauty and bloom.
"Always
there!" commented a sharp American belle of mature years, "like an
ugly little Conscience."
Edmondstone's first
meeting with his cousin after his return to Paris was accidental. He had rather
put off visiting her, and one night, entering a crowded room, he found himself
standing behind a girl's light figure and staring at an abundance of
reddish-brown hair. When, almost immediately the pretty head to which this hair
belonged turned with a slow, yet involuntary- looking movement toward him, he
felt that he became excited without knowing why.
"Ah, Bertha!"
he exclaimed.
She smiled a little and
held out her hand, and he immediately became conscious of M. Villefort being
quite near and regarding him seriously.
It was the perverseness
of fate that he should find in Bertha Villefort even more than he had once seen
in Bertha Trent, and there had been a time when he had seen a great deal in
Bertha Trent. In the Trent household he had been a great favorite. No social
evening or family festivity had seemed complete without his presence. The very
children had felt that they had a claim upon his good-humor and his tendency to
break forth into whimsical frolic. Good Mrs. Trent had been wont to scold him
and gossip with him. He had read his sonnets and metaphysical articles to
Bertha, and occasionally to the rest; in fact his footing in the family was a
familiar and firmly established one. But since her marriage Bertha had become a
little incomprehensible, and on that account a little more interesting. He was
sure she had developed, but could not make out in what direction. He found
occasion to reproach her sometimes with the changes he found in her.
"There are times
when I hardly know you," he would say, "you are so finely orthodox
and well controlled. It was not so with you once, Bertha. Don't--don't become
that terrible thing, a fine lady, and worse still, a fine lady who is
desillusionee."
It baffled him that she
never appeared much moved by his charges. Certainly she lived the life of a
"fine lady,"--a brilliant life, a luxurious one, a life full of
polite dissipation. Once, when in a tenderly fraternal mood, he reproached her
with this also, she laughed at him frankly.
"It is
absinthe," she said. "It is my absinthe at least, and who does not
drink a little absinthe--of one kind or another?"
He was sincerely
convinced that from this moment he understood and had the right to pity and
watch over her. He went oftener to see her. In her presence he studied her
closely, absent he brooded over her. He became impatiently intolerant of M.
Villefort and prone to condemn him, he scarcely knew for what.
"He has no
dignity--no perception," was his mental decision. "He has not even
the delicacy to love her, or he would have the tenderness to sacrifice his own
feelings and leave her to herself I could do it for a woman I loved."
But M. Villefort was
always there,--gravely carrying the shawls, picking up handkerchiefs, and
making himself useful.
" Imbecile!"
muttered M. Renard under cover of his smile and his mustache, as he stood near
his venerable patroness the first time she met the Villeforts.
"Blockhead!"
stealthily ejaculated that amiable aristocrat. But though she looked grimly at
M. Villefort, M. Renard was uncomfortably uncertain that it was he to whom she
referred.
"Go and bring them
to me," she commanded. "Go and bring them to me before some one else
engages them. I want to talk to that girl."
It was astonishing how
agreeable she made herself to her victims when she had fairly entrapped them.
Bertha hesitated a little before accepting her offer of a seat at her side, but
once seated she found herself oddly amused. When Madame de Castro chose to rake
the embers of her seventy years, many a lively coal discovered itself among the
ashes.
Seeing the two women
together, Edmondstone shuddered in fastidious protest.
"How could you
laugh at that detestable old woman?" he exclaimed on encountering Bertha
later in the evening. "I wonder that M. Villefort would permit her to talk
to you. She is a wicked, cynical creature, who has the hardihood to laugh at
her sins instead of repenting of them.
"Perhaps that is
the reason she is so amusing," said Bertha.
Edmondstone answered
her with gentle mournfulness.
"What!" he
said. "Have you begun to say such things? You too, Bertha----"
The laugh with which
she stopped him was both light and hard.
"Where is M.
Villefort?" she asked. "I have actually not seen him for fifteen
minutes. Is it possible that Madame de Castro has fascinated him into
forgetting me?"
Edmondstone went to his
hotel that night in a melancholy mood. He even lay awake to think what a dreary
mistake his cousin's marriage was. She had been such a tender and easily swayed
little soul as a girl, and now it really seemed as if she was hardening into a
woman of the world. In the old times he had been wont to try his sonnets upon
Bertha as a musician tries his chords upon his most delicate instrument. Even
now he remembered certain fine, sensitive expressions of hers which had
thrilled him beyond measure.
"How could she
marry such a fellow as that--how could she?" he groaned. "What does
it mean? It must mean something."
He was pale and
heavy-eyed when he wandered round to the Villeforts' the following morning. M.
Villefort was sitting with Bertha and reading aloud. He stopped to receive
their visitor punctiliously and inquire after his health.
"M. Edmondstone
cannot have slept well," he remarked.
"I did not sleep
at all," Edmondstone answered, "and naturally have a headache."
Bertha pointed to a
wide lounge of the pouf order.
"Then go to sleep
now," she said, "M. Villefort will read. When I have a headache he
often reads me to sleep, and I am always better on awaking."
Involuntarily
Edmondstone half frowned. Absurdly enough, he resented in secret this
amiability on the part of M. Villefort toward his own wife. He was quite
prepared to be severe upon the reading, but was surprised to be compelled to
acknowledge that M. Villefort read wondrously well, and posi-tively with hints
of delicate perception. His voice was full and yet subtly flexible. Edmondstone
tried to protest against this also, but uselessly. Finally he was soothed, and
from being fretfully wide-awake suddenly passed into sleep as Bertha had
commanded. How long his slumber lasted he could not have told all at once. He
found himself aroused and wide-awake as ever. His headache had departed; his
every sense seemed to have gained keenness. M. Villefort's voice had ceased,
and for a few seconds utter dead silence reigned. Then he heard the fire
crackling, and shortly afterward a strange, startling sound--a sharp grasping
sob!
The pang which seized
upon him was strong indeed. In one moment he seemed to learn a thousand things
by intuition--to comprehend her, himself, the past. Before he moved he knew
that Villefort was not in the room, and he had caught a side glimpse of the
pretty blue of Bertha's dress.
But he had not imagined
the face he saw when he turned his head to look at her. She sat in a rigid
attitude, leaning against the high cushioned back of her chair, her hands
clasped above her head. She stood at the fire with eyes wide and strained, with
the agony of tears unshed, and amid the rush of all other emotions he was
peculiarly conscious of being touched by the minor one of his recognition of
her look of extreme youth- -the look which had been wont to touch people in the
girl, Bertha Trent. He had meant to speak clearly, but his voice was only a
loud whisper when be sprang up, uttering her name.
"Bertha! Bertha!
Bertha!" as he flung himself upon his knees at her side.
Her answer was an
actual cry, and yet it reached no higher pitch than his own intense whisper.
"I thought you
were asleep?"
Her hands fell and he
caught them. His sad impassioned face bowed itself upon her palms.
"I am awake,
Bertha," he groaned. "I am awake--at last."
She regarded him with a
piteous, pitying glance. She knew him with a keener, sadder knowledge than he
would ever comprehend; but she did not underestimate the depth of his misery at
this one overwhelming moment. He was awake indeed and saw what he had lost.
"If you could but
have home with me a little longer," he said. "If I had only not been
so shallow and so blind. If you could but have borne with me a little
longer!"
"If I could but
have home with myself a little longer," she answered. "If I could but
have home a little longer with my poor base pride! Because I suffered myself, I
have made another suffer too."
He knew she spoke of M.
Villefort, and the thought jarred upon him.
"He does not
suffer," he said. "He is not of the fiber to feel pain."
And he wondered why she
shrank from him a little, and answered with a sad bitterness:
"Are you sure? You
did not know that I----"
"Forgive me,"
he said brokenly, the face he lifted, haggard with his unhappiness.
"Forgive me, for I have lost so much."
She wasted few words
and no tears. The force and suddenness of his emotion and her own had overborne
her into this strange unmeant confession; but her mood was unlike his,--it was
merely receptive. She listened to his unavailing regrets, but told him little
of her own past.
"It does not
matter," she said drearily.
It is all over. Let it
rest. The pain of to-day and to- morrow is enough for us. We have borne
yesterday; why should we want it back again?"
And when they parted
she said only one thing of the future:
"There is no need
that we should talk. There is nothing for us beyond this point. We can only go
back. We must try to forget--and be satisfied with our absinthe."
Instead of returning to
his hotel, Edmondstone found his way to the Champs Elysees, and finally to the
Bois. He was too wretched to have any purpose in his wanderings. He walked
rapidly, looking straight before him and seeing nobody. He scarcely understood
his own fierce emotions. Hitherto his fancies had brought him a vague rapture;
now he experienced absolute anguish. Every past experience had become trivial.
What happiness is so keen as one's briefest pain? As he walked he lived again
the days he had thrown away. He remembered a thousand old, yet new, phases of
Bertha's girlhood. He thought of times when she had touched or irritated or
pleased him. When he had left Paris for Rome she had not bidden him good-bye.
Jenny, her younger sister, had told him that she was not well.
"If I had seen her
then," he cried inwardly, "I might have read her heart--and my
own."
M. Renard, riding a
very tall horse in the Bois, passed him and raised his eyebrows at the sight of
his pallor and his fagged yet excited look.
"There will be a
new sonnet," he said to himself. "A sonnet to Despair or Melancholy
or Loss."
Afterward, when society
became a little restive and eager, M. Renard looked on with sardonic interest.
"That happy man,
M. Villefort," he said to Madame de Castro, "is a good soul--a good
soul. He has no small jealous follies," and his smile was scarcely a
pleasant thing to see.
"There is nothing
for us beyond this past," Bertha had said, and Edmonstone had agreed with
her hopelessly.
But he could not quite
break away. Sometime for a week the Villeforts missed him, and then again they
saw him every day. He spent his mornings with them, joined them in their
drives, at their opera-box or at the entertainments of their friends. He also
fell into his old place in the Trent household, and listened with a vague
effort at interest to Mrs. Trent's maternal gossip about the boys' college
expenses, Bertha's household and Jenny's approaching social debut. He was
continually full of a feverish longing to hear of Bertha,--to hear her name
spoken, her ingoings and outcomings discussed, her looks, her belongings.
"The fact
is," said Mrs. Trent, as the winter advanced, "I am anxious about
Bertha. She does not look strong. I don't know why I have not seen it before,
but all at once I found out yesterday that she is really thin. She was always
slight and even a little fragile, but now she is actually thin. One can see the
little bones in her wrists and fingers. Her rings and her bracelets slip about
quite loosely."
"And talking of
being thin, mother," cried Jenny, who was a frank, bright sixteen-year-old,
"Look at cousin Ralph himself. He has little hollows in his cheeks, and
his eyes are as much too big as Bertha's. Is the sword wearing out the
scabbard, Ralph? That is what they always say about geniuses, you know."
"Ralph has not
looked well for some time," said Mrs. Trent. "As for Bertha, I think
I shall scold her a little, and M. Villefort too. She has been living too
exciting a life. She is out continually. She must stay at home more and rest.
It is rest she needs."
"If you tell
Arthur that Bertha looks ill----" began Jenny.
Edmonstone turned
toward her sharply.
"Arthur!" he
repeated. "Who is Arthur?"
Mrs. Trent answered
with a comfortable laugh.
"It is M.
Villefort's name," she said, though none of us call him Arthur but Jenny.
Jenny and he are great friends."
"I like him better
than any one else," said Jenny stoutly. "And I wish to set a good
example to Bertha, who never calls him anything but M. Villefort, which is
absurd. Just as if they had been introduced to each other about a week
ago."
"I always hear him
address her as Madame Villefort," reflected Edmondstone, somewhat
gloomily.
"Oh yes!"
answered Jenny, "that is his French way of studying her fancies. He would
consider it taking an unpardonable liberty to call her `Bertha,' since she only
favors him with `M. Villefort.' I said to him only the other day, `Arthur, you
are the oddest couple! You're so grand and well-behaved, I cannot imagine you
scolding Bertha a little, and I have never seen you kiss her since you were married.'
I was half frightened after I had said it. He started as if he had been shot,
and turned as pale as death. I really felt as If I had done something
frightfully improper."
"The French are so
different from the Americans," said Mrs. Trent, "particularly those
of M. Villefort's class. They are beautifully punctilious, but I don't call it
quite comfortable, you know."
Her mother was not the
only person who noticed a change in Bertha Villefort. Before long it was a
change so marked that all who saw her observed it. She had become painfully
frail and slight. Her face looked too finely cut, her eyes had shadowy hollows
under them, and were always bright with a feverish excitement.
"What is the
matter with your wife?" demanded Madame de Castro of M. Villefort. Since
their first meeting she had never loosened her hold upon the husband and wife,
and had particularly cultivated Bertha.
There was no change in
the expression of M. Villefort; but he was strangely pallid as he made his
reply.
"It is impossible
for me to explain, Madame."
"She is absolutely
attenuated," cried Madame. "She is like a spirit. Take her to the
country--to Normandy--to the sea-- somewhere! She will die if there is not a
change. At twenty, one should be as plump as a young capon."
A few days after this,
Jenny Trent ran in upon Bertha as she lay upon a lounge, holding an open book,
but with closed eyes. She had come to spend the morning, she announced. She
wanted to talk--about people, about her dress, about her first ball which was
to come off shortly. "And Arthur says----" she began.
Bertha turned her head
almost as Edmondstone had done. "Arthur," she repeated.
For the second time
Jenny felt a little embarrassed. "I mean M. Villefort," she said,
hesitantly.
She quite forgot what
she had been going to say, and for a moment or so regarded the fire quite
gravely. But naturally this could not last long. She soon began to talk again,
and it was not many minutes before she found M. Villefort in her path once
more.
"I never thought I
could like a Frenchman so much," she said in all enthusiastic good faith.
"At first, you know," with an apologetic half laugh, "I wondered
why you had not taken an American instead, when there were so many to choose
from, but now I understand it. What beautiful tender things he can say, Bertha,
and yet not seem in the least sentimental. Everything comes so simply right
from the bottom of his heart. Just think what he said to me yesterday when he
brought me those flowers. He helps me with mine, and it is odd how things will
cheer up and grow for him. I said to him, `Arthur, how is it that no flower
ever fails you?' and he answered in the gentlest quiet way, `Perhaps because I
never fail them. Flowers are like people,-- one must love and be true to them, not
only to-day and to-morrow, but every day--every hour--always.' And he says such
things so often. That is why I am so fond of him."
As she received no
reply, she turned toward the lounge. Bertha lay upon it motionless and
silent,--only a large tear trembled on her cheek. Jenny sprung up, shocked and
checked, and went to her.
"Oh, Bertha!"
she cried, "how thoughtless I am to tire you so, you poor little soul! Is
it true that you are so weak as all that? I heard mamma and Arthur talking
about it, but I scarcely believed it. They said you must go to Normandy and be
nursed."
"I don't want to
go to Normandy," said Bertha. "I--I am too tired. I only want to lie
still and rest. I have been out too much."
Her voice, however, was
so softly weak that in the most natural manner Jenny was subdued into shedding
a few tears also, and kissed her quite fervently.
"Oh, Bertha!"
she said, "you must do anything--anything that will make you well--if it
is only for Arthur's sake. He loves you so--so terribly." Whereupon Bertha
laughed a little hysterically.
"Does he,"
she said, "love me so `terribly?' Poor M. Villefort!"
She did not go to
Normandy, however, and still went into society, though not as much as had been
her habit. When she spent her evenings at home, some of her own family
generally spent them with her, and M. Villefort or Edmondstone read aloud or
talked.
In fact, Edmondstone
came oftener than ever. His anxiety and unhappiness grew upon him and made him
moody, irritable and morbid.
One night, when M.
Villefort had left them alone together for a short time, he sprang from his
chair and came to her couch, shaken with suppressed emotion.
"That man is
killing you!" he exclaimed. "You are dying by inches! I cannot bear
it!"
"It is not he who
is killing me," she answered; and then M. Villefort returned to the room
with the book he had been in search of.
In this case
Edmondstone's passion took new phases. He wrote no sonnets, painted no
pictures. He neglected his work, and spent his idle hours in rambling here and
there in a gloomy, unsociable fashion.
"He looks,"
said M. Renard, "as if his soul had been playing him some evil
trick."
He had at first
complained that Bertha had taken a capricious fancy to Madame de Castro, but in
course of time he found his way to the old woman's salon too, though it must be
confessed that Madame herself never showed him any great favor. But this he did
not care for. He only cared to sit in the same room with Bertha, and watch her
every movement with a miserable tenderness.
One night, after
regarding him cynically for some time, Madame broke out to Bertha with small
ceremony.
"What a fool that
young man is!" she exclaimed. "He sits and fairly devours you with
his eyes. It is bad taste to show such an insane passion for a married
woman."
It seemed as if Bertha
lost at once her breath and every drop of blood in her body, for she had
neither breath nor color when she turned and looked Madame de Castro in the
face.
"Madame," she
said, "if you repeat that to me, you will never see me again--never!"
Upon which Madame
snapped her up with some anger at being so rebuked for her frankness.
"Then it is worse
than I thought," she said.
It was weeks before she
saw her young friend again. Indeed, it required some clever diplomacy to heal
the breach made, and even in her most amusing and affectionate moods, she often
felt afterward that she was treated with a reserve which held her at arm's
length.
By the time the
horse-chestnuts bloomed pink and white on the Avenue des Champs Elysees, there
were few people in the Trent and Villefort circles who had not their opinions
on the subject of Madame Villefort and her cousin.
There was a mixture of
French and American gossip and comment, frank satire, or secret remark. But to
her credit be it spoken, Madame de Castro held grim silence, and checked a
rumor occasionally with such amiable ferocity as was not without its good
effect.
The pink and white
blossoms were already beginning to strew themselves at the feet of the
pedestrians, when one morning M. Villefort presented himself to Madame and
discovered her sitting alone in the strangest of moods.
"I thought I might
have the pleasure of driving home with Madame Villefort. My servant informed me
that I should find her here." Madame de Castro pointed to a chair.
"Sit down," she commanded.
M. Villefort obeyed her
in some secret but well-concealed amazement. He saw that she was under the
influence of some unusual excitement. Her false front was pushed fantastically
away, her rouge and powder were rubbed off in patches, her face looked set and
hard. Her first words were abominably blunt.
"M.
Villefort," she said, "do you know what your acquaintances call
you?"
A deep red rose slowly
to his face, but he did not answer.
"Do you know that
you are designated by them by an absurd title--that they call you in ridicule
`Le Monsieur de la petite Dame?' Do you know that?"
His look was incomprehensible,
but he bowed gravely.
"Madame," he
answered, "since others have heard the title so often, it is but natural
that I myself should have heard it more than once."
She regarded him in
angry amazement. She was even roused to rapping upon the floor with her
gold-headed cane.
"Does it not
affect you?" she cried. "Does it not move you to indignation?"
"That,
Madame," he replied, "can only be my affair. My friends will allow me
my emotions at least."
Then she left her chair
and began to walk up and down, striking the carpet hard with her cane at every
step.
"You are a strange
man," she remarked.
Suddenly, however, when
just on the point of starting upon a fresh tour, she wheeled about and
addressed him sharply.
"I respect
you," she said; "and because I respect you, I will do you a good
turn."
She made no pretense at
endeavoring to soften the blow she was about to bestow. She drew forth from her
dress a letter, the mere sight of which seemed to goad her to a mysterious
excitement.
"See," she
cried; "it was M. Ralph Edmondstone who wrote this,--it was to Madame
Villefort it was written. It means ruin and dishonor. I offer it to you to
read."
M. Villefort rose and
laid his hand upon his chair to steady himself.
"Madame," he
answered, "I will not touch it."
She struck herself upon
her withered breast.
"Behold me!"
she said. " Me! I am seventy years old! Good God! seventy! I am a bad old
woman, and it is said I do not repent of my sins. I, too, have been a beautiful
young girl. I, too, had my first lover. I, too, married a man who had not won
my heart. It does not matter that the husband was worthy and the lover was
not,--one learns that too late. My fate was what your wife's will be if you
will not sacrifice your pride and save her."
"Pride!" he
echoed in a little hollow voice. "My pride, Madame!" She went on
without noticing him:
"They have been
here this morning--both of them. He followed her, as he always does. He had a
desperate look which warned me. Afterward I found the note upon the floor. Now
will you read it?"
"Good God!"
he cried, as he fell into his chair again, his brow sinking into his bands.
"I have read
it," said Madame, with a tragic gesture, "and I choose to place one
stumbling-block in the path that would lead her to an old age like mine. I do
not like your Americans; but I have sometimes seen in her girl's face a proud,
heroic endurance of the misery she has brought upon herself, and it has moved
me. And this letter--you should read it, to see how such a man can plead. It is
a passionate cry of despair--it is a poem in itself. I, myself, read it with
sobs in my throat and tears in my eyes. `If you love me!--If you have ever
loved me!' he cries, `for God's sake!--for love's sake!--if there is love on
earth--if there is a God in heaven, you will not let me implore you--in vain!'
And his prayer is that she will leave Paris with him to- night--to-night!
There! Monsieur, I have done. Behold the letter! Take it or leave it, as you
please." And she flung it upon the floor at his feet.
She paused a moment,
wondering what he would do.
He bent down and picked
the letter up. "I will take it," he said.
All at once he had
become calm, and when he rose and uttered his last words to her, there was upon
his face a faint smile.
"I, too," he
said,--"I, too, Madame, suffer from a mad and hopeless passion, and thus
can comprehend the bitterness of M. Edmondstone's pangs. I, too, would implore
in the name of love and God,--if I might,--but I may not." And so he took
his departure.
Until evening Bertha
did not see him. The afternoon she spent alone and in writing letters, and
having completed and sealed the last, she went to her couch and tried to sleep.
One entering the room, as she lay upon the violet cushions, her hands at her sides,
her eyes closed, might well have been shocked. Her spotless pallor, the fine
sharpness of her face, the shadows under her eyes, her motionlessness, would
have excused the momentary feeling. But she was up and dressed for dinner when
M. Villefort presented himself. Spring though it was, she was attired in a
high, close dress of black velvet, and he found her almost cowering over the
open fire-place. Strangely enough, too, she fancied that when she looked up at
him she saw him shiver, as if he were struck with a slight chill also.
"You should not
wear that," he said, with a half smile at her gown. "Why?" she
asked.
"It makes you so
white--so much like a too early lily. But-- but perhaps you thought of going
out?" "No," she answered; "not to-night." He came
quite close to her.
"If you are not
too greatly fatigued," he said, "it would give me happiness to take
you with me on my errand to your mother's house. I must carry there my little
birthday gift to your sister," smiling again.
An expression of embarrassment
showed itself upon her face.
"Oh!" she
exclaimed, "to think that I had forgotten it! She will feel as if I did
not care for her at all." She seemed for the moment quite unhappy.
"Let me see what you have chosen."
He drew from his pocket
a case and opened it.
"Oh!" she
cried, "how pretty and how suitable for a girl."
They were the
prettiest, most airy set of pearls imaginable.
She sat and looked at
them for a few seconds thoughtfully, and then handed them back.
"You are very
good, and Jenny will be in ecstasies," she said.
"It is a happiness
to me to give her pleasure," he returned. "I feel great tenderness
for her. She is not like the young girls I have known. Her innocence is of a
frank and noble quality, which is better than ignorance. One could not bear
that the slightest shadow of sin or pain should fall upon her. The atmosphere
surrounding her is so bright with pure happiness and the courage of
youth." Involuntarily he held out his hand.
"Will
you----" he began. His voice fell and broke. "Will you go with
me?" he ended. He saw that she was troubled. "Now?" she
faltered. "Yes--now."
There was a peculiar
pause,--a moment, as it seemed to him, of breathless silence. This silence she
broke by her rising slowly from her seat.
"Yes," she
responded, "I will go. Why should I not?" * * * * * * *
It was midnight when
they left the Trents', and Jenny stood upon the threshold, a bright figure in a
setting of brightness, and kissed her hand to them as they went down the steps.
"I hope you will
be better to-morrow, Arthur," she said. He turned quickly to look up at
her. "I?"
"Yes. You look so
tired. I might say haggard, if it was polite."
"It would not be
polite," said Bertha, "so don't say it. Good-night, Jenny!"
But when they were
seated in the carriage she glanced at her husband's face.
" Are you
unwell?" she asked.
He passed his hand
quickly across his forehead.
"A little
fatigued," he replied. "It is nothing. To-morrow-- to-morrow it will
be all over."
And so silence fell
upon them.
As they entered the
drawing-room a clock chimed the half hour.
"So late as
that!" exclaimed Bertha, and sank into a chair with a faint laugh.
"Why, to-day is over," she said. It is to- morrow."
M. Villefort had
approached a side table. Upon it lay a peculiar-looking oblong box.
"Ah," he said, softly, "they have arrived." "What are
they?" Bertha asked.
He was bending over the
box to open it, and did not turn toward her, as he replied:
It is a gift for a
young friend of mine,--an odd one,--a brace of pistols. He has before him a
long journey in the East, and he is young enough to have a fancy for
firearms."
He was still examining
the weapons when Bertha crossed the room on her way upstairs, and she paused an
instant to look at them.
"They are very
handsome," she said. "One could almost wear them as ornaments."
"But they would
have too threatening a look," he answered, lightly.
As he raised his eyes
they met hers. She half started backward, moved by a new sense of the
haggardness of his face.
"You are
ill!" she exclaimed. "You are as colorless as marble."
"And you,
too," he returned, still with the same tender lightness. "Let us hope
that our `to-morrow' will find us both better, and you say it is to-morrow now.
Good-night!"
She went away without
saying more. Weary as she was, she knew there was no sleep for her, and after
dismissing her maid, she threw herself upon the lounge before the bedroom fire
and lay there. To-night she felt as if her life had reached its climax. She
burst into a passion of tears.
"Jenny!
Jenny!" she cried, "how I envy--how I envy you!"
The recollection of
Jenny shining in her pretty gala dress, and delighting in her birthday
presents, and everybody else's pride and affection, filled her with a morbid
misery and terror. She covered her face with her hands as she thought of it.
"Once," she
panted, "as I looked at her to-night for a moment, I almost hated her. Am
I so bad as that?--am I?"
Scarcely two seconds
afterward she had sprung to her feet and was standing by the side of her couch,
her heart beating with a rapid throb of fright, her limbs trembling. A strange
sound had fallen suddenly upon the perfect silence of the night--a sound loud,
hard and sharp--the report of a pistol! What dread seized her she knew not. She
was across the room and had wrenched the door open in an instant, then with
flying feet down the corridor and the staircase. But half way down the stairs
she began to cry out aloud, "Arthur! Arthur!" not conscious of her
own voice-- "Arthur, what is it?" The door of the drawing-room flew
open before the fierce stroke of her palm.
M. Villefort stood
where she had left him; but while his left hand supported his weight against
the table, his right was thrust into his breast. One of the pistols lay at his
feet.
She thought it was
Death's self that confronted her in his face, but he spoke to her, trying
faintly to smile.
"Do not come
in," he said, "I have met with--an accident. It is nothing. Do not
come in. A servant----"
His last recollection
was of her white face and white draperies as he fell and somehow, dizzy, sick
and faint as he was, he seemed to hear her calling out, in a voice strangely
like Jenny's, "Arthur! Arthur!"
In less than half an
hour the whole house was astir. Upstairs physicians were with the wounded man,
down-stairs Mrs. Trent talked and wept over her daughter, after the manner of
all good women. She was fairly terrified by Bertha's strange shudderings,
quick, strained breath, and dilated eyes. She felt as if she could not reach
her--as if she hardly made herself heard.
"You must calm
yourself, Bertha," she would say. "Try to calm yourself. We must hope
for the best. Oh! how could it have happened!"
It was in the midst of
this that a servant entered with a letter, which he handed to his mistress. The
envelope bore upon it nothing but her own name.
She looked at it with a
bewildered expression. "For me?" she said.
"It fell from
Monsieur's pocket as we carried him upstairs," replied the man.
"Don't mind it
now, Bertha," said her mother. "Ah! poor M. Villefort!"
But Bertha opened it
mechanically and was reading it.
At first it seemed as
if it must have been written in a language she did not understand; but after
the first few sentences a change appeared. Her breath came and went more
quickly than before--a kind of horror grew in her eyes. At the last she uttered
a low, struggling cry. The paper was crushed in her hand, she cast one glance
around the room as if in bewildering search for refuge, and flung herself upon
her mother's breast.
"Save me,
mother!" she said. "Help me! If he dies now, I shall go mad!"
Afterward, in telling
her story at home, good Mrs. Trent almost broke down.
"Oh, Jenny!"
she said. "Just to think of the poor fellow's having had it in his pocket
then! Of course I did not see it, but one can fancy that it was something kind
and tender--perhaps some little surprise he had planned for her. It seemed as
if she could not bear it.
M. Villefort's accident
was the subject of discussion for many days. He had purchased a wonderful pair
of pistols as a gift for a young friend. How it had happened that one had been
loaded none knew; it was just possible that he had been seized with the whim to
load it himself--at all events, it had gone off in his hands. An inch--nay,
half an inch--to the right and Madame Villefort, who flew down-stairs at the
sound of the report, would only have found a dead man at her feet.
" Ma foi!"
said M. Renard, repressing his smile; "this is difficult for Monsieur, but
it may leave ` la petite Dame' at liberty."
Madame de Castro flew
at him with flashing eyes.
"Silence!"
she said, "if you would not have me strike you with my cane." And she
looked as if she were capable of doing it.
Upon his sick bed M.
Villefort was continually haunted by an apparition--an apparition of a white
face and white draperies, such as he had seen as he fell. Sometimes it was
here, sometimes there, sometimes near him, and sometimes indistinct and far
away. Sometimes he called out to it and tried to extend his arms; again he lay
and watched it murmuring gentle words, and smiling mournfully.
Mrs. Trent and the
doctor were in despair. Madame Villefort obstinately refused to be forced from
her husband's room. There were times when they thought she might sink and die
there herself. She would not even leave it when they obliged her to sleep.
Having been slight and frail from ill health before, she became absolutely
attenuated. Soon all her beauty would be gone.
"Do you
know," said Mrs. Trent to her husband, "I have found out that she
always carries that letter in her breast? I see her put her hand to it in the
strangest way a dozen times a day."
One night, awakening
from a long sleep to a clearer mental consciousness than usual, M. Villefort
found his apparition standing over him.
She stood with one hand
clinched upon her breast, and she spoke to him.
"Arthur!" she
said,--"Arthur, do you know me?" He answered her, "Yes."
She slipped down upon
her knees, and held up in her hand a letter crushed and broken.
"Try to keep your
mind clear while you listen to me," she implored. "Try--try! I must
tell you, or I shall die. I am not the bad woman you think me. I never had read
it--I had not seen it. I think he must have been mad. Once I loved him, but he
killed my love himself. I could not have been bad like that.
Jenny!--mother!--Arthur! believe me! believe me!"
In this supreme moment
of her anguish and shame she forgot all else. She stretched forth her hands,
panting.
"Believe me! It is
true! Try to understand! Some one is coming! Say one word before it is too
late!"
"I
understand," he whispered, "and I believe." He made a weak
effort to touch her hand, but failed. He thought that perhaps it was the chill
and numbness of death which stole over him and held him bound. When the nurse,
whose footsteps they had heard, entered, she found him lying with glazed eyes,
and Madame Villefort fallen in a swoon at the bedside.
And yet, from this time
forward the outside world began to hear that his case was not so hopeless after
all.
"Villefort will
possibly recover," it was said at first; then, "Villefort improves,
it seems;" and, at last, "Villefort is out of danger. Who would have
thought it?"
Nobody, however, could
say that Madame had kept pace with her husband. When Monsieur was sufficiently
strong to travel, and was advised to do so, there were grave doubts as to the
propriety of his wife's accompanying him. But she would not listen to those
doubts.
"I will not stay
in Paris," she said to her mother. "I want to be free from it, and
Jenny has promised to go with us."
They were to go into
Normandy, and the day before their departure Ralph Edmondstone came to bid them
good-bye.
Of the three he was by
far the most haggard figure, and when Bertha came down to meet him in the empty
drawing-room, he became a wretched figure with a broken, hopeless air. For a
few seconds Bertha did not speak, but stood a pace or two away looking at him.
It seemed, in truth, as she waited there in her dark nun- like dress, that
nearly all her beauty had left her. There remained only her large sad eyes and
pretty hair, and the touching look of extreme youth. In her hand she held the
crushed letter.
"See!" she
said at last, holding this out to him, "I am not so bad--so bad as
that."
He caught it from her
hand and tore it into fragments. He was stabbed through and through with shame
and remorse. After all, his love had been strong enough here, and his
comprehension keen enough to have made him repent in the dust of the earth, in
his first calm hour, the insult he had put upon her.
"Forgive me!"
he cried; "oh, forgive me! "
The few steps between
them might have been a myriad miles.
"I did love
you--long ago," she said; "but you never thought of me. You did not
understand me then--nor afterward. All this winter my love has been dying a
hard death. You tried to keep it alive, but--you did not understand. You only
humiliated and tortured me. And I knew that if I had loved you more, you would
have loved me less. See!" holding up her thin hand, "I have been worn
out in the struggle between my unhappiness and remorse and you."
"You do not know
what love is!" he burst forth, stung into swift resentment. A quick sob
broke from her.
"Yes, I do,"
she answered. "I--I have seen it."
"You mean M.
Villefort!" he cried in desperate jealous misery. "You think that he
----"
She pointed to the
scattered fragments of the letter.
"He had that in
his pocket when he fell," she said. "He thought that I had read it.
If I had been your wife, and you had thought so, would you have thought that I
was worth trying to save--as he tried to save me?"
"What?" he
exclaimed, shamefacedly. "Has he seen it?"
"Yes," she
answered, with another sob, which might have been an echo of the first.
"And that is the worst of all."
There was a pause,
during which he looked down at the floor, and even trembled a little.
"I have done you
more wrong than I thought," he said.
"Yes," she
replied; "a thousand-fold more."
It seemed as if there
might have been more to say, but it was not said.
In a little while he
roused himself with an effort.
"I am not a
villain," he said. "I can do one thing. I can go to Villefort--if you
care."
She did not speak. So
he moved slowly away until he reached the door. With his hand upon the handle he
turned and looked back at her.
"Oh! it is
good-bye--good-bye!" he almost groaned. "Yes."
He could not help
it--few men could have done so. His expression was almost fierce as he spoke
his next words.
"And you will love
him--yes, you will love him."
"No," she
answered, with bitter pain. "I am not worthy." * * * * * * *
It was a year or more
before the Villeforts were seen in Paris again, and Jenny enjoyed her
wanderings with them wondrously. In fact, she was the leading member of the
party. She took them where she chose,--to queer places, to ugly places, to
impossible places, but never from first to last to any place where there were
not, or at least had not been, Americans as absurdly erratic as themselves.
The winter before their
return they were at Genoa among other places; and it was at Genoa that one
morning, on opening a drawer, Bertha came upon an oblong box, the sight of
which made her start backward and put her hand to her beating side. M.
Villefort approached her hurriedly. An instant later, however, he started also
and shut the drawer.
"Come away,"
he said, taking her hand gently. "Do not remain here."
But he was pale, too,
and his hand was unsteady. He led her to the window and made her sit down.
"Pardon me,"
he said. "I should not have left them there."
"You did not send
them to your friend," she faltered.
"No."
He stood for a moment
or so, and looked out of the window at the blue sea which melted into the blue
sky, at the blue sky which bent itself into the blue sea, at the white sails
flecking the deep azure, at the waves hurrying in to break upon the sand.
"That--" he
said at length, tremulously, and with pale lips, "that was false."
"Was false!"
she echoed.
"Yes,"
hoarsely, "it was false. There was no such friend. It was a lie--they were
meant only for myself."
She uttered a low cry
of anguish and dread.
"Ah, mon
Dieu!" he said. "You could not know. I understood all, and had been
silent. I was nothing--a jest--` le monsieur de la petite dame,' as they
said,--only that. I swore that I would save you. When I bade you adieu that
night, I thought it was my last farewell. There was no accident. Yes-- there
was one. I did not die, as I had intended. My hand was not steady enough. And
since then----"
She rose up, crying out
to him as she had done on that terrible night.
"Arthur!"
Arthur!"
He came closer to her.
"Is it true,"
he said,--"is it true that my prayers have not been in vain? Is it true
that at last--at last, you have learned--have learned----"
She stretched forth her
arms to him.
"It is true!"
she cried. "Yes, it is true!--it is true!
I'D rather walk through
shower with thee,
Than with another when
the air
Is soft with summer,
and as fair
The heavens above us as
a sea
Of dim, unfathomed
sapphire, where
Slow drifting on a
liquid sky,
The white-sailed ships
of God float by.
Sweeter in storm to be
with thee,
Dark waters 'round us,
and the roar
Of breakers on an
unseen shore
Resounding louder on
the lee,--
Than with another, sailing
o'er
A rippling lake, where
angry gale
May never rend the
silken sail.