Valentine knew, that fatal evening, that Gaston would have to walk to Tarascon, to cross the bridge over the Rhone which connected Tarascon with Beaucaire, and did not expect to see him until eleven o’clock, the hour which they had fixed upon the previous evening.
But, happening to look up at the windows of Clameran, she saw lights hurrying to and fro in an unusual manner, even in rooms that she knew to be unoccupied.
A presentiment of impending misfortune chilled her blood, and stopped the beatings of her heart.
A secret and imperious voice within told her that something extraordinary was going on at the chateau of Clameran.
What was it? She could not imagine; but she knew, she felt, that some dreadful misfortune had happened.
With her eyes fastened upon the dark mass of stone looming in the distance, she watched the going and coming of the lights, as if their movements would give her a clew to what was taking place within those walls.
She raised her window, and tried to listen, fancying she could hear an unusual sound, even at such a distance. Alas! she heard nothing but the rushing roar of the angry river.
Her anxiety grew more insufferable every moment; and she felt as if she would faint were this torturing suspense to last much longer, when the well-known, beloved signal appeared suddenly in Gaston’s window, and told her that her lover was about to swim across the Rhone.
She could scarcely believe her eyes; she must be under the influence of a dream; her amazement prevented her answering the signal, until it had been repeated three times.
Then, more dead than alive, with trembling limbs she hastened along the park to the river-bank.
Never had she seen the Rhone so furious. Since Gaston was risking his life in order to see her, she could no longer doubt that something fearful had occurred at Clameran.
She fell on her knees, and with clasped hands, and her wild eyes fixed upon the dark waters, besought the pitiless waves to yield up her dear Gaston.
Every dark object which she could distinguish floating in the middle of the torrent assumed the shape of a human form.
At one time, she thought she heard, above the roaring of the water, the terrible, agonized cry of a drowning man.
She watched and prayed, but her lover came not.
Still she waited.
While the gendarmes and hussars slowly and silently returned to the chateau of Clameran, Gaston experienced one of those miracles which would seem incredible were they not confirmed by the most convincing proof.
When he first plunged into the river, he rolled over five or six times, and was then drawn toward the bottom. In a swollen river the current is unequal, being much stronger in some places than in others; hence the great danger.
Gaston knew it, and guarded against it. Instead of wasting his strength in vain struggles, he held his breath, and kept still. About twenty-five yards from the spot where he had plunged in, he made a violent spring which brought him to the surface.
Rapidly drifting by him was the old tree.
For an instant, he was entangled in the mass of weeds and debris which clung to its roots, and followed in its wake; an eddy set him free. The tree and its clinging weeds swept on. It was the last familiar friend, gone.
Gaston dared not attempt to reach the opposite shore. He would have to land where the waves dashed him.
With great presence of mind he put forth all his strength and dexterity to slowly take an oblique course, knowing well that there was no hope for him if the current took him crosswise.
This fearful current is as capricious as a woman, which accounts for the strange effects of inundations; sometimes it rushes to the right, sometimes to the left, sparing one shore and ravaging the other.
Gaston was familiar with every turn of the river; he knew that just below Clameran was an abrupt turning, and relied upon the eddy formed thereby, to sweep him in the direction of La Verberie.
His hopes were not deceived. An oblique current suddenly swept him toward the right shore, and, if he had not been on his guard, would have sunk him.
But the eddy did not reach as far as Gaston supposed, and he was still some distance from the shore, when, with the rapidity of lightning, he was swept by the park of La Verberie.
As he floated by, he caught a glimpse of a white shadow among the trees; Valentine still waited for him.
He was gradually approaching the bank, as he reached the end of La Verberie, and attempted to land.
Feeling a foothold, he stood up twice, and each time was thrown down by the violence of the waves. He escaped being swept away by seizing some willow branches, and, clinging to them, raised himself, and climbed up the steep bank.
He was safe at last.
Without taking time to breathe, he darted in the direction of the park.
He came just in time. Overcome by the intensity of her emotions, Valentine had fainted, and lay apparently lifeless on the damp river-bank.
Gaston’s entreaties and kisses aroused her from her stupor.
“Gaston!” she cried, in a tone that revealed all the love she felt for him. “Is it indeed you? Then God heard my prayers, and had pity on us.”
“No, Valentine,” he murmured. “God has had no pity.”
The sad tones of Gaston’s voice convinced her that her presentiment of evil was true.
“What new misfortune strikes us now?” she cried. “Why have you thus risked your life—a life far dearer to me than my own? What has happened?”
“This is what has happened, Valentine: our love-affair is the jest of the country around; our secret is a secret no longer.”
She shrank back, and, burying her face in her hands, moaned piteously.
“This,” said Gaston, forgetting everything but his present misery, “this is the result of the blind enmity of our families. Our noble and pure love, which ought to be a glory in the eyes of God and man, has to be concealed, and, when discovered, becomes a reproach as though it were some evil deed.”
“Then all is known—all is discovered!” murmured Valentine. “Oh, Gaston, Gaston!”
While struggling for his life against furious men and angry elements, Gaston had preserved his self-possession; but the heart-broken tone of his beloved Valentine overcame him. He swung his arms above his head, and exclaimed:
“Yes, they know it; and oh, why could I not crush the villains for daring to utter your adored name? Ah, why did I only kill two of the scoundrels!”
“Have you killed someone, Gaston?”
Valentine’s tone of horror gave Gaston a ray of reason.
“Yes,” he replied with bitterness, “I have killed two men. It was for that that I have crossed the Rhone. I could not have my father’s name disgraced by being tried and convicted for murder. I have been tracked like a wild beast by mounted police. I have escaped them, and now I am flying my country.”
Valentine struggled to preserve her composure under this last unexpected blow.
“Where do you hope to find an asylum?” she asked.
“I know not. Where I am to go, what will become of me, God only knows! I only know that I am going to some strange land, to assume a false name and a disguise. I shall seek some lawless country which offers a refuge to murderers.”
Gaston waited for an answer to this speech. None came, and he resumed with vehemence:
“And before disappearing, Valentine, I wished to see you, because now, when I am abandoned by everyone else, I have relied upon you, and had faith in your love. A tie unites us, my darling, stronger and more indissoluble than all earthly ties—the tie of love. I love you more than life itself, my Valentine; before God you are my wife; I am yours and you are mine, for ever and ever! Would you let me fly alone, Valentine? To the pain and toil of exile, to the sharp regrets of a ruined life, would you, could you, add the torture of separation?”
“Gaston, I implore you—”
“Ah, I knew it,” he interrupted, mistaking the sense of her exclamation; “I knew you would not let me go off alone. I knew your sympathetic heart would long to share the burden of my miseries. This moment effaces the wretched suffering I have endured. Let us go! Having our happiness to defend, having you to protect, I fear nothing; I can brave all, conquer all. Come, my Valentine, we will escape, or die together! This is the long-dreamed-of happiness! The glorious future of love and liberty open before us!”
He had worked himself into a state of delirious excitement. He seized Valentine around the waist, and tried to draw her toward the gate.
As Gaston’s exaltation increased, Valentine became composed and almost stolid in her forced calmness.
Gently, but with a quiet firmness, she withdrew herself from his embrace, and said sadly, but resolutely:
“What you wish is impossible, Gaston!”
This cold, inexplicable resistance confounded her lover.
“Impossible? Why, Valentine——”
“You know me well enough, Gaston, to be convinced that sharing the greatest hardships with you would to me be the height of happiness. But above the tones of your voice to which I fain would yield, above the voice of my own heart which urges me to follow the one being upon whom all its affections are centred, there is another voice—a powerful, imperious voice—which bids me to stay: the voice of duty.”
“What! Would you think of remaining here after the horrible affair of to-night, after the scandal that will be spread to-morrow?”
“What do you mean? That I am lost, dishonored? Am I any more so to-day than I was yesterday? Do you think that the jeers and scoffs of the world could make me suffer more than do the pangs of my guilty conscience? I have long since passed judgment upon myself, Gaston; and, although the sound of your voice and the touch of your hand would make me forget all save the bliss of your love, no sooner were you away than I would weep tears of shame and remorse.”
Gaston listened immovable, stupefied. He seemed to see a new Valentine standing before him, an entirely different woman from the one whose tender soul he thought he knew so well.
“Your mother, what will she say?” he asked.
“It is my duty to her that keeps me here. Do you wish me to prove an unnatural daughter, and desert a poor, lonely, friendless old woman, who has nothing but me to cling to? Could I abandon her to follow a lover?”
“But our enemies will inform her of everything, Valentine, and think how she will make you suffer!”
“No matter. The dictates of conscience must be obeyed. Ah, why can I not, at the price of my life, spare her the agony of hearing that her only daughter, her Valentine, has disgraced her name? She may be hard, cruel, pitiless toward me; but have I not deserved it? Oh, my only friend, we have been revelling in a dream too beautiful to last! I have long dreaded this awakening. Like two weak, credulous fools we imagined that happiness could exist beyond the pale of duty. Sooner or later stolen joys must be dearly paid for. After the sweet comes the bitter; we must bow our heads, and drink the cup to the dregs.”
This cold reasoning, this sad resignation, was more than the fiery nature of Gaston could bear.
“You shall not talk thus!” he cried. “Can you not feel that the bare idea of your suffering humiliation drives me mad?”
“Alas! I see nothing but disgrace, the most fearful disgrace, staring me in the face.”
“What do you mean, Valentine?”
“I have not told you, Gaston, I am——”
Here she stopped, hesitated, and then added:
“Nothing! I am a fool.”
Had Gaston been less excited, he would have suspected some new misfortune beneath this reticence of Valentine; but his mind was too full of one idea—that of possessing her.
“All hope is not lost,” he continued. “My father is kind-hearted, and was touched by my love and despair. I am sure that my letters, added to the intercession of my brother Louis, will induce him to ask Mme. de la Verberie for your hand.”
This proposition seemed to frighten Valentine.
“Heaven forbid that the marquis should take this rash step!”
“Why, Valentine?”
“Because my mother would reject his offer; because, I must confess it now, she has sworn I shall marry none but a rich man; and your father is not rich, Gaston, so you will have very little.”
“Good heavens!” cried Gaston, with disgust, “is it to such an unnatural mother that you sacrifice me?”
“She is my mother; that is sufficient. I have not the right to judge her. My duty is to remain with her, and remain I shall.”
Valentine’s manner showed such determined resolution, that Gaston saw that further prayers would be in vain.
“Alas!” he cried, as he wrung his hands with despair, “you do not love me; you have never loved me!”
“Gaston, Gaston! you do not think what you say! Have you no mercy?”
“If you loved me,” he cried, “you could never, at this moment of separation, have the cruel courage to coldly reason and calculate. Ah, far different is my love for you. Without you the world is void; to lose you is to die. What have I to live for? Let the Rhone take back this worthless life, so miraculously saved; it is now a burden to me!”
And he rushed toward the river, determined to bury his sorrow beneath its waves; Valentine seized his arm, and held him back.
“Is this the way to show your love for me?” she asked.
Gaston was absolutely discouraged.
“What is the use of living?” he said, dejectedly. “What is left to me now?”
“God is left to us, Gaston; and in his hands lies our future.”
As a shipwrecked man seizes a rotten plank in his desperation, so Gaston eagerly caught at the word “future,” as a beacon in the gloomy darkness surrounding him.
“Your commands shall be obeyed,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Away with weakness! Yes, I will live, and struggle, and triumph. Mme. de la Verberie wants gold; well, she shall have it; in three years I will be rich, or I shall be dead.”
With clasped hands Valentine thanked Heaven for this sudden determination, which was more than she had dared hope for.
“But,” said Gaston, “before going away I wish to confide to you a sacred deposit.”
He drew from his pocket the purse of jewels, and, handing them to Valentine, added:
“These jewels belonged to my poor mother; you, my angel, are alone worthy of wearing them. I thought of you when I accepted them from my father. I felt that you, as my affianced wife, were the proper person to have them.”
Valentine refused to accept them.
“Take them, my darling, as a pledge of my return. If I do not come back within three years, you may know that I am dead, and then you must keep them as a souvenir of him who so much loved you.”
She burst into tears, and took the purse.
“And now,” said Gaston, “I have a last request to make. Everybody believes me dead, but I cannot let my poor old father labor under this impression. Swear to me that you will go yourself to-morrow morning, and tell him that I am still alive.”
“I will tell him, myself,” she said.
Gaston felt that he must now tear himself away before his courage failed him; each moment he was more loath to leave the only being who bound him to this world; he enveloped Valentine in a last fond embrace, and started up.
“What is your plan of escape?” she asked.
“I shall go to Marseilles, and hide in a friend’s house until I can procure a passage to America.”
“You must have assistance; I will secure you a guide in whom I have unbounded confidence; old Menoul, the ferryman, who lives near us. He owns the boat which he plies on the Rhone.”
The lovers passed through the little park gate, of which Gaston had the key, and soon reached the boatman’s cabin.
He was asleep in an easy-chair by the fire. When Valentine stood before him with Gaston, the old man jumped up, and kept rubbing his eyes, thinking it must be a dream.
“Pere Menoul,” said Valentine, “M. Gaston is compelled to fly the country; he wants to be rowed out to sea, so that he can secretly embark. Can you take him in your boat as far as the mouth of the Rhone?”
“It is impossible,” said the old man, shaking his head; “I would not dare venture on the river in its present state.”
“But, Pere Menoul, it would be of immense service to me; would you not venture for my sake?”
“For your sake? certainly I would, Mlle. Valentine: I will do anything to gratify you. I am ready to start.”
He looked at Gaston, and, seeing his clothes wet and covered with mud, said to him:
“Allow me to offer you my dead son’s clothes, monsieur; they will serve as a disguise: come this way.”
In a few minutes Pere Menoul returned with Gaston, whom no one would have recognized in his sailor dress.
Valentine went with them to the place where the boat was moored. While the old man was unfastening it, the disconsolate lovers tearfully embraced each other for the last time.
“In three years, my own Valentine; promise to wait three years for me! If alive, I will then see you.”
“Adieu, mademoiselle,” interrupted the boatman; “and you, monsieur, hold fast, and keep steady.”
Then with a vigorous stroke of the boat-hook he sent the bark into the middle of the stream.
Three days later, thanks to the assistance of Pere Menoul, Gaston was concealed on the three-masted American vessel, Tom Jones, which was to start the next day for Valparaiso.
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