It required on the part of M. de Camors, this morning, an exertion of all his courage to perform his duty as a gentleman in going to receive Madame de Tecle at the station. But courage had been for some time past his sole remaining virtue; and this at least he sought never to lose. He received, then, most gracefully his mother-in-law, robed in her mourning attire. She was surprised at not seeing her daughter with him. He informed her that she had been a little indisposed since the preceding evening. Notwithstanding the precautions he took in his language and by his smile, he could not prevent Madame de Tecle from feeling a lively alarm.
He did not pretend, however, entirely to reassure her. Under his reserved and measured replies, she felt the presentiment of some disaster. After first pressing him with many questions, she kept silent during the rest of the drive.
The young Countess, to spare her mother the first shock, had quitted her bed; and the poor child had even put a little rouge on her pale cheeks. M. de Camors himself opened for Madame de Tecle the door of her daughter’s chamber, and then withdrew.
The young woman raised herself with difficulty from her couch, and her mother took her in her arms.
All that passed between them at first was a silent interchange of mutual caresses. Then the mother seated herself near her daughter, drew her head on her bosom, and looked into the depths of her eyes.
“What is the matter?” she said, sadly.
“Oh, nothing—nothing hopeless! only you must love your little Mary more than ever. Will you not?”
“Yes; but why?”
“I must not worry you; and I must not wrong myself either—you know why!”
“Yes; but I implore you, my darling, to tell me.”
“Very well; I will tell you everything; but, mother, you must be brave as I am.”
She buried her head lower still on her mother’s breast, and recounted to her, in a low voice, without looking up once, the terrible revelation which had been made to her, and which her husband’s avowal had confirmed.
Madame de Tecle did not once interrupt her during this cruel recital. She only imprinted a kiss on her hair from time to time. The young Countess, who did not dare to raise her eyes to her, as if she were ashamed of another’s crime, might have imagined that she had exaggerated the gravity of her misfortune, since her mother had received the confidence with so much calmness. But the calmness of Madame de Tecle at this terrible moment was that of the martyrs; for all that could have been suffered by the Christians under the claws of the tiger, or on the rack of the torturer, this mother was suffering at the hands of her best-beloved daughter. Her beautiful pale face—her large eyes upturned to heaven, like those that artists give to the pure victims kneeling in the Roman circus—seemed to ask God whether He really had any consolation for such torture.
When she had heard all, she summoned strength to smile at her daughter, who at last looked up to her with an expression of timid uncertainty—embracing her more tightly still.
“Well, my darling,” said she, at last, “it is a great affliction, it is true. You are right, notwithstanding; there is nothing to despair of.”
“Do you really believe so?”
“Certainly. There is some inconceivable mystery under all this; but be assured that the evil is not so terrible as it appears.”
“My poor mother! but he has acknowledged it?”
“I am better pleased that he has acknowledged it. That proves he has yet some pride, and that some good is left in his soul. Then, too, he feels very much afflicted—he suffers as much as we. Think of that. Let us think of the future, my darling.”
They clasped each other’s hands, and smiled at each other to restrain the tears which filled the eyes of both. After a few minutes—“I wish much, my child,” said Madame de Tecle, “to repose for half an hour; and then also I wish to arrange my toilet.”
“I will conduct you to your chamber. Oh, I can walk! I feel a great deal better.”
Madame de Camors took her mother’s arm and conducted her as far as the door of the chamber prepared for her. On the threshold she left her.
“Be sensible,” said Madame de Tecle, turning and giving her another smile.
“And you also,” said the young woman, whose voice failed her.
Madame de Tecle, as soon as the door was closed, raised her clasped hands toward heaven; then, falling on her knees before the bed, she buried her head in it, and wept despairingly.
The library of M. de Camors was contiguous to this chamber. He had been walking with long strides up and down this corridor, expecting every moment to see Madame de Tecle enter. As the time passed, he sat himself down and tried to read, but his thoughts wandered. His ear eagerly caught, against his will, the slightest sounds in the house. If a foot seemed approaching him, he rose suddenly and tried to compose his countenance. When the door of the neighboring chamber was opened, his agony was redoubled. He distinguished the whispering of the two voices; then, an instant after, the dull fall of Madame de Tecle upon the carpet; then her despairing sobs. M. de Camors threw from him violently the book which he was forcing himself to read, and, placing his elbows on the bureau which was before him, held, for a long time, his pale brow tightened in his contracted hands. When the sound of sobs abated little by little, and then ceased, he breathed freer. About midday he received this note:
“If you will permit me to take my daughter to the country for a few
days, I shall be grateful to you.
“ELISE DE TECLE.”
He returned immediately this simple reply:
“You can do nothing of which I do not approve to-day and always.
CAMORS.”
Madame de Tecle, in fact, having consulted the inclination and the strength of her daughter, had determined to remove her without delay, if possible, from the impressions of the spot where she had suffered so severely from the presence of her husband, and from the unfortunate embarrassment of their situation. She desired also to meditate in solitude, in order to decide what course to take under such unexampled circumstances. Finally, she had not the courage to see M. de Camors again—if she ever could see him again—until some time had elapsed. It was not without anxiety that she awaited the reply of the Count to the request she had addressed him.
In the midst of the troubled confusion of her ideas, she believed him capable of almost anything; and she feared everything from him. The Count’s note reassured her. She hastened to read it to her daughter; and both of them, like two poor lost creatures who cling to the smallest twig, remarked with pleasure the tone of respectful abandonment with which he had reposed their destinies in their own hands. He spent his whole day at the session of the Corps Legislatif; and when he returned, they had departed.
Madame de Camors woke up the next morning in the chamber where her girlhood had passed. The birds of spring were singing under her windows in the old ancestral gardens. As she recognized these friendly voices, so familiar to her infancy, her heart melted; but several hours’ sleep had restored to her her natural courage. She banished the thoughts which had weakened her, rose, and went to surprise her mother at her first waking. Soon after, both of them were walking together on the terrace of lime-trees. It was near the end of April; the young, scented verdure spread itself out beneath the sunbeams; buzzing flies already swarmed in the half-opened roses, in the blue pyramids of lilacs, and in the clusters of pink clover. After a few turns made in silence in the midst of this fresh and enchanting scene, the young Countess, seeing her mother absorbed in reverie, took her hand.
“Mother,” she said, “do not be sad. Here we are as formerly—both of us in our little nook. We shall be happy.”
The mother looked at her, took her head and kissed her fervently on the forehead.
“You are an angel!” she said.
It must be confessed that their uncle, Des Rameures, notwithstanding the tender affection he showed them, was rather in the way. He never had liked Camors; he had accepted him as a nephew as he had accepted him for a deputy—with more of resignation than enthusiasm. His antipathy was only too well justified by the event; but it was necessary to keep him in ignorance of it. He was an excellent man; but rough and blunt. The conduct of Camors, if he had but suspected it, would surely have urged him to some irreparable quarrel. Therefore Madame de Tecle and her daughter, in his presence, were compelled to make only half utterances, and maintain great reserve—as much as if he had been a stranger. This painful restraint would have become insupportable had not the young Countess’s health, day by day, assumed a less doubtful character, and furnished them with excuses for their preoccupation, their disquiet, and their retired life.
Madame de Tecle, who reproached herself with the misfortunes of her daughter, as her own work, and who condemned herself with an unspeakable bitterness, did not cease to search, in the midst of those ruins of the past and of the present, some reparation, some refuge for the future. The first idea which presented itself to her imagination had been to separate absolutely, and at any cost, the Countess from her husband. Under the first shock of fright which the duplicity of Camors had inflicted upon her, she could not dwell without horror on the thought of replacing her child at the side of such a man. But this separation-supposing they could obtain it, through the consent of M. de Camors, or the authority of the law—would give to the public a secret scandal, and might entail redoubled catastrophes. Were it not for these consequences she would, at least, have dug between Madame de Camors and her husband an eternal abyss. Madame de Tecle did not desire this. By force of reflection she had finally seen through the character of M. de Camors in one day—not probably more favorably, but more truly. Madame de Tecle, although a stranger to all wickedness, knew the world and knew life, and her penetrating intelligence divined yet more than she knew certainly. She then very nearly understood what species of moral monster M. de Camors was. Such as she understood him, she hoped something from him still. However, the condition of the Countess offered her some consolation in the future, which she ought not to risk depriving herself of; and God might permit that this pledge of this unfortunate union might some day reunite the severed ties.
Madame de Tecle, in communicating her reflections, her hopes, and her fears to her daughter, added: “My poor child, I have almost lost the right to give you counsel; but I tell you, were it myself I should act thus.”
“Very well, mother, I shall do so,” replied the young woman.
“Reflect well on it first, for the situation which you are about to accept will have much bitterness in it; but we have only a choice of evils.”
At the close of this conversation, and eight days after their arrival in the country, Madame de Tecle wrote M. de Camors a letter, which she read to her daughter, who approved it.
“I understood you to say, that you would restore to your wife her liberty if she wished to resume it. She neither wishes, nor could she accept it. Her first duty is to the child which will bear your name. It does not depend on her to keep this name stainless. She prays you, then, to reserve for her a place in your house. You need not fear any trouble or any reproach from her. She and I know how to suffer in silence. Nevertheless, I supplicate you to be true to her—to spare her. Will you leave her yet a few days in peace, then recall, or come for her?”
This letter touched M. de Camors deeply. Impassive as he was, it can easily be imagined that after the departure of his wife he had not enjoyed perfect ease of mind. Uncertainty is the worst of all evils, because everything may be apprehended. Deprived entirely of all news for eight days, there was no possible catastrophe he did not fancy floating over his head. He had the haughty courage to conceal from Madame de Campvallon the event that had occurred in his house, and to leave her undisturbed while he himself was sleepless for many nights. It was by such efforts of energy and of indomitable pride that this strange man preserved within his own consciousness a proud self-esteem. The letter of Madame de Tecle came to him like a deliverance. He sent the following brief reply:
“I accept your decision with gratitude and respect. The resolution
of your daughter is generous. I have yet enough of generosity left
myself to comprehend this. I am forever, whether you wish it or
not, her friend and yours.
“CAMORS.”
A week later, having taken the precaution of announcing his intention, he arrived one evening at Madame de Tecle’s.
His young wife kept her chamber. They had taken care to have no witnesses, but their meeting was less painful and less embarrassing than they apprehended.
Madame de Tecle and her daughter found in his courteous reply a gleam of nobleness which inspired them with a shadow of confidence. Above all, they were proud, and more averse to noisy scenes than women usually are. They received him coldly, then, but calmly. On his part, he displayed toward them in his looks and language a subdued seriousness and sadness, which did not lack either dignity or grace.
The conversation having dwelt for some time on the health of the Countess, turned on current news, on local incidents, and took, little by little, an easy and ordinary tone. M. de Camors, under the pretext of slight fatigue, retired as he had entered—saluting both the ladies, but without attempting to take their hands. Thus was inaugurated, between Madame de Camors and her husband, the new, singular relation which should hereafter be the only tie in their common life.
The world might easily be silenced, because M. de Camors never had been very demonstrative in public toward his wife, and his courteous but reserved manner toward her did not vary from his habitual demeanor. He remained two days at Reuilly.
Madame de Tecle vainly waited for these two days for a slight explanation, which she did not wish to demand, but which she hoped for.
What were the terrible circumstances which had overruled the will of M. de Camors, to the point of making him forget the most sacred sentiments? When her thoughts plunged into this dread mystery, they never approached the truth. M. de Camors might have committed this base action under the menace of some great danger to save the fortune, the honor, probably the life of Madame de Campvallon. This, though a poor excuse in the mother’s eyes, still was an extenuation. Probably also he had in his heart, while marrying her daughter, the resolution to break off this fatal liaison, which he had again resumed against his will, as often happens. On all these painful points she dwelt after the departure of M. de Camors, as she had previous to his arrival; confined to her own conjectures, when she suggested to her daughter the most consolatory appearances. It was agreed upon that Madame de Camors should remain in the country until her health was reestablished: only her husband expressed the desire that she should reside ordinarily on his estate at Reuilly, the chateau on which had recently been restored with the greatest taste.
Madame de Tecle felt the propriety of this arrangement. She herself abandoned the old habitation of the Comte de Tecle, to install herself near her daughter in the modest chateau which belonged to the maternal ancestors of M. de Camors, and which we have already described in another place, with its solemn avenue, its balustrades of granite, its labyrinths of hornbeams and the black fishpond, shaded with poplars.
Both dwelt there in the midst of their sweetest and most pleasant souvenirs; for this little chateau, so long deserted—the neglected woods which surrounded it the melancholy piece of water—the solitary nymph all this had been their particular domain, the favorite framework of their reveries, the legend of their infancy, the poetry of their youth. It was doubtless a great grief to revisit again, with tearful eyes and wounded hearts and heads bowed by the storms of life, the familiar paths where they once knew happiness and peace. But, nevertheless, all these dear confidants of past joys, of blasted hopes, of vanished dreams—if they are mournful witnesses they are also friends. We love them; and they seem to love us. Thus these two poor women, straying amid these woods, these waters, these solitudes, bearing with them their incurable wounds, fancied they heard voices which pitied them and breathed a healing sympathy. The most cruel trial reserved to Madame de Camors in the life which she had the courage and judgment to adopt, was assuredly the duty of again seeing the Marquise de Campvallon, and preserving with her such relations as might blind the eyes of the General and of the world.
She resigned herself even to this; but she desired to defer as long as possible the pain of such a meeting. Her health supplied her with a natural excuse for not going, during that summer, to Campvallon, and also for keeping herself confined to her own room the day the Marquise visited Reuilly, accompanied by the General.
Madame de Tecle received her with her usual kindness. Madame de Campvallon, whom M. de Camors had already warned, did not trouble herself much; for the best women, like the worst, excel in comedy, and everything passed off without the General having conceived the shadow of a suspicion.
The fine season had passed. M. de Camors had visited the country several times, strengthening at every interview the new tone of his relations with his wife. He remained at Reuilly, as was his custom, during the month of August; and under the pretext of the health of the Countess, did not multiply his visits that year to Campvallon. On his return to Paris, he resumed his old habits, and also his careless egotism, for he recovered little by little from the blow he had received. He began to forget his sufferings and those of his wife; and even to felicitate himself secretly on the turn that chance had given to her situation. He had obtained the advantage and had no longer any annoyance. His wife had been enlightened, and he no longer deceived her—which was a comfortable thing for him. As for her, she would soon be a mother, she would have a plaything, a consolation; and he designed redoubling his attentions and regards to her.
She would be happy, or nearly so; as much so as two thirds of the women in the world.
Everything was for the best. He gave anew the reins to his car and launched himself afresh on his brilliant career-proud of his royal mistress, and foreseeing in the distance, to crown his life, the triumphs of ambition and power. Pleading various doubtful engagements, he went to Reuilly only once during the autumn; but he wrote frequently, and Madame de Tecle sent him in return brief accounts of his wife’s health.
One morning toward the close of November, he received a despatch which made him understand, in telegraphic style, that his presence was immediately required at Reuilly, if he wished to be present at the birth of his son.
Whenever social duties or courtesy were required of M. de Camors, he never hesitated. Seeing he had not a moment to spare if he wished to catch the train which left that morning, he jumped into a cab and drove to the station. His servant would join him the next morning.
The station at Reuilly was several miles distant from the house. In the confusion no arrangement had been made to receive him on his arrival, and he was obliged to content himself with making the intermediate journey in a heavy country-wagon. The bad condition of the roads was a new obstacle, and it was three o’clock in the morning when the Count, impatient and travel-worn, jumped out of the little cart before the railings of his avenue. He strode toward the house under the dark and silent dome of the tufted elms. He was in the middle of the avenue when a sharp cry rent the air. His heart bounded in his breast: he suddenly stopped and listened attentively. The cry echoed through the stillness of the night. One would have deemed it the despairing shriek of a human being under the knife of a murderer.
These dolorous sounds gradually ceasing, he continued his walk with greater haste, and only heard the hollow and muffled sound of his own beating heart. At the moment he saw the lights of the chateau, another agonized cry, more shrill and alarming than the first, arose.
This time Camors stopped. Notwithstanding that the natural explanation of these agonized cries presented itself to his mind, he was troubled.
It is not unusual that men like him, accustomed to a purely artificial life, feel a strange surprise when one of the simplest laws of nature presents itself all at once before them with a violence as imperious and irresistible as a divine law. Camors soon reached the house, and receiving some information from the servants, notified Madame de Tecle of his arrival. Madame de Tecle immediately descended from her daughter’s room. On seeing her convulsed features and streaming eyes, “Are you alarmed?” Camors asked, quickly.
“Alarmed? No,” she replied; “but she suffers much, and it is very long.”
“Can I see her?”
There was a moment’s silence.
Madame de Tecle, whose forehead was contracted, lowered her eyes, then raised them. “If you insist on it,” she said.
“I insist on nothing! If you believe my presence would do her harm—” The voice of Camors was not as steady as usual.
“I am afraid,” replied Madame de Tecle, “that it would agitate her greatly; and if you will have confidence in me, I shall be much obliged to you.”
“But at least,” said Camors, “she might probably be glad to know that I have come, and that I am here—that I have not abandoned her.”
“I shall tell her.”
“It is well.” He saluted Madame de Tecle with a slight movement of his head, and turned away immediately.
He entered the garden at the back of the house, and walked abstractedly from alley to alley. We know that generally the role of men in the situation in which M. de Camors at this moment was placed is not very easy or very glorious; but the common annoyance of this position was particularly aggravated to him by painful reflections. Not only was his assistance not needed, but it was repelled; not only was he far from a support on the contrary, he was but an additional danger and sorrow. In this thought was a bitterness which he keenly felt. His native generosity, his humanity, shuddered as he heard the terrible cries and accents of distress which succeeded each other without intermission. He passed some heavy hours in the damp garden this cold night, and the chilly morning which succeeded it. Madame de Tecle came frequently to give him the news. Near eight o’clock he saw her approach him with a grave and tranquil air.
“Monsieur,” she said, “it is a boy.”
“I thank you. How is she?”
“Well. I shall request you to go and see her shortly.”
Half an hour later she reappeared on the threshold of the vestibule, and called:
“Monsieur de Camors!” and when he approached her, she added, with an emotion which made her lips tremble:
“She has been uneasy for some time past. She is afraid that you have kept terms with her in order to take the child. If ever you have such a thought—not now, Monsieur. Have you?”
“You are severe, Madame,” he replied in a hoarse voice.
She breathed a sigh.
“Come!” she said, and led the way upstairs. She opened the door of the chamber and permitted him to enter it alone.
His first glance caught the eyes of his young wife fixed upon him. She was half sitting up in bed, supported by pillows, and whiter than the curtains whose shadow enveloped her. She held clasped to her breast her sleeping infant, which was already covered, like its mother, with lace and pink ribbons. From the depths of this nest she fixed on her husband her large eyes, sparkling with a kind of savage light—an expression in which the sentiment of triumph was blended with one of profound terror. He stopped within a few feet of the bed, and saluted her with his most winning smile.
“I have pitied you very much, Marie,” he said.
“I thank you!” she replied, in a voice as feeble as a sigh.
She continued to regard him with the same suppliant and affrighted air.
“Are you a little happier now?” he continued.
The glittering eye of the young woman was fastened on the calm face of her infant. Then turning toward Camors:
“You will not take him from me?”
“Never!” he replied.
As he pronounced these words his eyes were suddenly dimmed, and he was astonished himself to feel a tear trickling down his cheek. He experienced a singular feeling, he bent over, seized the folds of the sheet, raised them to his lips, rose immediately and left the room.
In this terrible struggle, too often victorious against nature and truth, the man was for once vanquished. But it would be idle to imagine that a character of this temperament and of this obduracy could transform itself, or could be materially modified under the stroke of a few transitory emotions, or of a few nervous shocks. M. de Camors rallied quickly from his weakness, if even he did not repent it. He spent eight days at Reuilly, remarking in the countenance of Madame de Tecle and in her manner toward him, more ease than formerly.
On his return to Paris, with thoughtful care he made some changes in the interior arrangement of his mansion. This was to prepare for the Countess and her son, who were to join him a few weeks later, larger and more comfortable apartments, in which they were to be installed.
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