One of the sweetest sensations in the world is that of a man who has just escaped the fantastic terrors of night mare; and who, awaking, his fore head bathed with icy sweat, says to himself, “It was only a dream!” This was, in some degree, the impression which Camors felt on awaking, the morning after his arrival at Reuilly, when his first glance fell on the sunlight streaming over the foliage, and when he heard beneath his window the joyous laugh of his little son. He, however, was not dreaming; but his soul, crushed by the horrible tension of recent emotions, had a moment’s respite, and drank in, almost without alloy, the new calm that surrounded him. He hastily dressed himself and descended to the garden, where his son ran to meet him.
M. de Camors embraced the child with tenderness; and leaning toward him, spoke to him in a low voice, and asked after his mother and about his amusements, with a singularly soft and sad manner. Then he let him go, and walked with a slow step, breathing the fresh morning air, examining the leaves and the flowers with extraordinary interest. From time to time a deep, sad sigh broke from his oppressed chest; he passed his hand over his brow as if to efface the importunate images. He sat down amid the quaintly clipped boxwood which ornamented the garden in the antique fashion, called his son again to him, held him between his knees, interrogating him again, in a low voice, as he had done before; then drew him toward him and clasped him tightly for a long time, as if to draw into his own heart the innocence and peace of the child’s. Madame de Camors surprised him in this gush of feeling, and remained mute with astonishment. He rose immediately and took her hand.
“How well you bring him up!” he said. “I thank you for it. He will be worthy of you and of your mother.”
She was so surprised at the soft, sad tone of his voice, that she replied, stammering with embarrassment, “And worthy of you also, I hope.”
“Of me?” said Camors, whose lips were slightly tremulous. “Poor child, I hope not!” and rapidly withdrew.
Madame de Camors and Madame de Tecle had learned, the previous morning, of the death of the General. The evening of the Count’s arrival they did not speak to him on the subject, and were cautious not to make any allusion to it. The next day, and the succeeding ones, they practised the same reserve, though very far from suspecting the fatal circumstances which rendered this souvenir so painful to M. de Camors. They thought it only natural he should be pained at so sudden a catastrophe, and that his conscience should be disturbed; but they were astonished when this impression prolonged itself from day to day, until it took the appearance of a lasting sentiment.
They began to believe that there had arisen between Madame de Campvallon and himself, probably occasioned by the General’s death, some quarrel which had weakened the tie between them.
A journey of twenty-four hours, which he made fifteen days after his arrival, was to them a confirmation of the truth they before suspected; but his prompt return, his new tastes, which kept him at Reuilly during the summer, seemed to them favorable symptoms.
He was singularly sad, pensive, and more inactive than usual in his habits. He took long walks alone. Sometimes he took his son with him, as if by chance. He sometimes attempted a little timid tenderness with his wife; and this awkwardness, on his part, was quite touching.
“Marie,” he said to her one day, “you, who are a fairy, wave your wand over Reuilly and make of it an island in mid-ocean.”
“You say that because you know how to swim,” said she, laughing and shaking her head; but the heart of the young woman was joyful.
“You embrace me now every moment, my little one,” said Madame de Tecle to her. “Is this really all intended for me?”
“My adorable mother,” while embracing her again, “I assure you he is really courting me again. Why, I am ignorant; but he is courting me and you also, my mother. Observe it!”
Madame de Tecle did observe it. In his conversation with her, M. de Camors sought, under every pretext, to recall the souvenirs of the past, common to them both. It seemed he wished to link the past with his new life; to forget the rest, and pray of them to forget it also.
It was not without fear that these two charming women abandoned themselves to their hopes. They remembered they were in the presence of an uncertain person; they little trusted a change so sudden, the reason of which they could not comprehend. They feared it was some passing caprice, which would return to them, if they were its dupes, all their misfortunes, without the dignity which had hitherto attended them.
They were not the only ones struck by this transformation. M. des Rameures remarked it to them. The neighboring country people felt in the Count’s language something new—as it were, a tender humility; they said that in other years he had been polite, but this year he was angelic. Even the inanimate things, the woods, the trees, the heavens, should have borne the same testimony, for he looked at and studied them with a benevolent curiosity with which he had never before honored them.
In truth, a profound trouble had invaded him and would not leave him. More than once, before this epoch, his soul, his philosophy, his pride, had received a rude shock, but he had no less pursued his path, rising after every blow, like a lion wounded, but unconquered. In trampling under his feet all moral belief which binds the vulgar, he had reserved honor as an inviolable limit. Then, under the empire of his passions, he said to himself that, after all, honor, like all the rest, was conventional. Then he encountered crime—he touched it with his hand—horror seized him—and he recoiled. He rejected with disgust the principle which had conducted him there—asked himself what would become of human society if it had no other.
The simple truths which he had misunderstood now appeared to him in their tranquil splendor. He could not yet distinguish them clearly; he did not try to give them a name, but he plunged with a secret delight into their shadows and their peace. He sought them in the pure heart of his child, in the pure love of his young wife, in the daily miracles of nature, in the harmonies of the heavens, and probably already in the depths of his thoughts—in God. In the midst of this approach toward a new life he hesitated. Madame de Campvallon was there. He still loved her vaguely. Above all, he could not abandon her without being guilty of a kind of baseness. Terrible struggles agitated him. Having done so much evil, would he now be permitted to do good, and gracefully partake of the joys he foresaw? These ties with the past, his fortune dishonestly acquired, his fatal mistress—the spectre of that old man would they permit it?
And we may add, would Providence suffer it? Not that we should lightly use this word Providence, and suspend over M. de Camors a menace of supernatural chastisement. Providence does not intervene in human events except through the logic of her eternal laws. She has only the sanction of these laws; and it is for this reason she is feared. At the end of August M. de Camors repaired to the principal town in the district, to perform his duties in the Council-General. The session finished, he paid a visit to Madame de Campvallon before returning to Reuilly. He had neglected her a little in the course of the summer, and had only visited Campvallon at long intervals, as politeness compelled him. The Marquise wished to keep him for dinner, as she had no guests with her. She pressed him so warmly that, reproaching himself all the time, he consented. He never saw her without pain. She always brought back to him those terrible memories, but also that terrible intoxication. She had never been more beautiful. Her deep mourning embellished yet more her languishing and regal grace; it made her pale complexion yet more fair, and it heightened the brilliancy of her look. She had the air of a young tragic queen, or of an allegory of Night. In the evening an hour arrived when the reserve which for some time had marked their relations was forgotten. M. de Camors found himself, as in olden time, at the feet of the young Marquise—his eyes gazing into hers, and covering with kisses her lovely hands. She was strange that evening. She looked at him with a wild tenderness, instilling, at pleasure, into his veins the poison of burning passion then escaping him, the tears gathering in her eyes. Suddenly, by one of those magical movements of hers, she enveloped with her hands the head of her lover, and spoke to him quite low beneath the shadow of this perfumed veil.
“We might be so happy!” she said.
“Are we not so?” said Camors.
“No! I at least am not, for you are not all mine, as I am yours. This appears harder, now that I am free. If you had remained free—when I think of it! or if you could become so, it would be heaven!”
“You know that I am not so! Why speak of it?”
She drew nearer to him, and with her breath, more than with her voice, answered:
“Is it impossible? Tell me!”
“How?” he demanded.
She did not reply, but her fixed look, caressing and cruel, answered him.
“Speak, then, I beg of you!” murmured Camors.
“Have you not told me—I have not forgotten it—that we are united by ties stronger than all others; that the world and its laws exist no longer for us; that there is no other good, no other bad for us, but our happiness or our unhappiness? Well, we are not happy, and if we could be so—listen, I have thought well over it!”
Her lips touched the cheek of Camors, and the murmur of her last words was lost in her kisses.
Camors roughly repelled her, sprang up, and stood before her.
“Charlotte,” he said, sternly, “this is only a trial, I hope; but, trial or no, never repeat it—never! Remember!”
She also quickly drew herself up.
“Ah! how you love her!” she cried. “Yes, you love her, it is she you love-I know it, I feel it, and I-I am only the wretched object of your pity, or of your caprice. Very well, go back to her—go and protect her, for I swear to you she is in peril!”
He smiled with his haughty irony.
“Let us see your plot,” he said. “So you intend to kill her?”
“If I can!” she said; and her superb arm was stretched out as if to seize a weapon.
“What! with your own hand?”
“The hand shall be found.”
“You are so beautiful at this moment!” said Camors; “I am dying with the desire to fall at your feet. Acknowledge only that you wished to try me, or that you were mad for a moment.”
She gave a savage smile.
“Oh! you fear, my friend,” she said, coldly; then raising again her voice, which assumed a malignant tone, “You are right, I am not mad, I did not wish to try you; I am jealous, I am betrayed, and I shall revenge myself—no matter what it costs me—for I care for nothing more in this world!—Go, and guard her!”
“Be it so; I go,” said Camors. He immediately left the salon and the chateau; he reached the railway station on foot, and that evening arrived at Reuilly.
Something terrible there awaited him.
During his absence, Madame de Camors, accompanied by her mother, had gone to Paris to make some purchases. She remained there three days. She had returned only that morning. He himself arrived late in the evening. He thought he observed some constraint in their reception of him, but he did not dwell upon it in the state of mind in which he was.
This is what had occurred: Madame de Camors, during her stay in Paris, had gone, as was her custom, to visit her aunt, Madame de la Roche-Jugan. Their intercourse had always been very constrained. Neither their characters nor their religion coincided. Madame de Camors contented herself with not liking her aunt, but Madame de la Roche-Jugan hated her niece. She found a good occasion to prove this, and did not lose it. They had not seen each other since the General’s death. This event, which should have caused Madame de la Roche-Jugan to reproach herself, had simply exasperated her. Her bad action had recoiled upon herself. The death of M. Campvallon had finally destroyed her last hopes, which she had believed she could have founded on the anger and desperation of the old man. Since that time she was animated against her nephew and the Marquise with the rage of one of the Furies. She learned through Vautrot that M. de Camors had been in the chamber of Madame de Campvallon the night of the General’s death. On this foundation of truth she did not fear to frame the most odious suspicions; and Vautrot, baffled like her in his vengeance and in his envy, had aided her. A few sinister rumors, escaping apparently from this source, had even crept at this time into Parisian society.
M. de Camors and Madame de Campvallon, suspecting that they had been betrayed a second time by Madame de la Roche-Jugan, had broken with her; and she could presume that, should she present herself at the door of the Marquise, orders would have been given not to admit her. This affront made her angrier still. She was still a prey to the violence of her wrath when she received a visit from Madame de Camors. She affected to make the General’s death the theme of conversation, shed a few tears over her old friend, and kissed the hand of her niece with a burst of tenderness.
“My poor little thing!” she said to her; “it is for you also I weep—for you will yet be more unhappy than heretofore, if that can be possible.”
“I do not understand you, Madame,” answered the young woman, coldly.
“If you do not understand me, so much the better,” replied Madame de la Roche-Jugan, with a shade of bitterness; then, after a moment’s pause—“Listen, my dear! this is a duty of conscience which I comply with. You see, an honest creature like you merits a better fate; and your mother too, who is also a dupe. That man would deceive the good God. In the name of my family, I feel bound to ask your pardon for both of them.”
“I repeat, Madame, that I do not understand you.”
“But it is impossible, my child—come!—it is impossible that all this time you have suspected nothing.”
“I suspect nothing, Madame,” said Madame de Camors, “because I know all.”
“Ah!” continued Madame de la Roche-Jugan, dryly; “if this be so, I have nothing to say. But there are persons, in that case, who can accommodate their consciences to very strange things.”
“That is what I thought a moment ago, Madame,” said the young woman, rising.
“As you wish, my dear; but I speak in your own interest, and I shall reproach myself for not having spoken to you more clearly. I know my nephew better than you will ever know him; and the other also. Notwithstanding you say so, you do not know all; let me tell you. The General died very suddenly; and after him, it is your turn! Be very careful, my poor child!”
“Oh, Madame!” cried the young woman, becoming ghastly pale; “I shall never see you again while I live!” She left on the instant-ran home, and there found her mother. She repeated to her the terrible words she had just heard, and her mother tried to calm her; but she herself was disturbed. She went immediately to Madame de la Roche-Jugan, and supplicated her to have pity on them and to retract the abominable innuendo she had thrown out, or to explain it more fully. She made her understand that she would inform M. de Camors of the affair in case of need, and that he would hold his cousin Sigismund responsible. Terrified in her turn, Madame de la Roche-Jugan judged the best method was to destroy M. de Camors in the estimation of Madame de Tecle. She related what had been told her by Vautrot, being careful not to compromise herself in the recital. She informed her of the presence of M. de Camors at the General’s house the night of his death. She told her of the reports that were circulated, and mingling calumny with truth, redoubling at the same time her affection, her caresses, and her tears, she succeeded in giving Madame de Tecle such an estimate of the character of M. de Camors, that there were no suspicions or apprehensions which the poor woman, from that moment, did not consider legitimate as connected with him.
Madame de la Roche-Jugan finally offered to send Vautrot to her, that she might herself interrogate him. Madame de Tecle, affecting an incredulity and a tranquillity she did not feel, refused and withdrew.
On her returning to her daughter, she forced herself to deceive her as to the impressions she had received, but she did not succeed; for her anxious face belied her reassuring words. They separated the following night, mutually concealing the trouble and distress of their souls; but accustomed so long to think, feel, and suffer together, they met, so to speak, in the same reflections, the same reasonings, and in the same terrors. They went over, in their memories, all the incidents of the life of Camors—all his faults; and, under the shadow of the monstrous action imputed to him, his faults took a criminal character which they were surprised they had not seen before. They discovered a series and a sequence in his designs, all of which were imputed to him as crimes—even his good actions. Thus his conduct during the last few months, his strange ways, his fancy for his child and for his wife, his assiduous tenderness toward her, were nothing more than the hypocritical meditation of a new crime—a mask which he was preparing in advance.
What was to be done? What kind of life was it possible to live in common, under the weight of such thoughts? What present—what future? These thoughts bewildered them. Next day Camors could not fail remarking the singular change in their countenances in his presence; but he knew that his servant, without thinking of harm, had spoken of his visit to Madame de Campvallon, and he attributed the coldness and embarrassment of the two women to this fact. He was less disquieted at this, because he was resolved to keep them entirely safe. As a result of his reflections during the night, he had determined to break off forever his intrigue with Madame de Campvallon. For this rupture, which he had made it a point of honor not to provoke, Madame de Campvallon had herself furnished him a sufficient pretext.
The criminal thought she had suggested was, he knew, only a feint to test him, but it was enough to justify his abandonment of her. As to the violent and menacing words the Marquise had used, he held them of little value, though at times the remembrance of them troubled him. Nevertheless, for many years he had not felt his heart so light. This wicked tie once broken, it seemed as if he had resumed, with his liberty, his youth and virtue. He walked and played a part of the day with his little son. After dinner, just as night fell, clear and pure, he proposed to Madame de Camors a tete-a-tete excursion in the woods. He spoke to her of a view which had struck him shortly before on such a night, and which would please, he said laughingly, her romantic taste.
He would not permit himself to be surprised at the disinclination she manifested, at the disquietude which her face indicated, or at the rapid glance she exchanged with her mother.
The same thought, and that a most fearful one; entered the minds of both these unfortunate women at the same moment.
They were still under the impression of the shock which had so weakened their nerves, and the brusque proposition of M. de Camors, so contrary to his usual habits-the hour, the night, and the solitary walk—had suddenly awakened in their brains the sinister images which Madame de la Roche-Jugan had laid there. Madame de Camors, however, with an air of resolution the circumstances did not seem entitled to demand, prepared immediately to go out, then followed her husband from the house, leaving her little son in charge of her mother. They had only to cross the garden to find themselves on the edge of the wood which almost touched their dwelling, and which stretched to the old fields inherited from the Comte de Tecle. The intention of Camors in seeking this tete-a-tete was to confide to his wife the decisive determination he had taken of delivering up to her absolutely and without reserve his heart and life, and to enjoy in these solitudes his first taste of true happiness. Surprised at the cold distraction with which his young wife replied to the affectionate gayety of his language, he redoubled his efforts to bring their conversation to a tone of more intimacy and confidence. While stopping at intervals to point out to her some effects of light and shadow in their walk, he began to question her on her recent trip to Paris, and on the persons she had seen there. She named Madame Jaubert and a few others; then, lowering her voice against her will, mentioned Madame de la Roche-Jugan.
“That one,” said Camors, “you could very well have dispensed with. I forgot to warn you that I no longer recognize her.”
“Why?” asked she, timidly.
“Because she is a bad woman,” said Camors. “When we are a little more intimate with each other, you and I,” he added, laughing, “I shall edify you on this character, I shall tell you all—all, understand.”
There was so much of nature, and even of goodness in the accent with which he pronounced these words, that the Countess felt her heart half comforted from the oppression which had weighed it down. She gave herself up with more abandon to the gracious advances of her husband and to the slight incidents of her walk.
The phantoms disappeared little by little from her mind, and she began to say to herself that she had been the sport of a bad dream, and of a true madness, when a singular change in her husband’s face renewed all her terrors. M. de Camors, in his turn, had become absent and visibly preoccupied with some grave care. He spoke with an effort, made half replies, meditated; then stopped quickly to look around him, like a frightened child. These strange ways, so different from his former temper, alarmed the young woman, the more so as she just then found herself in the most distant part of the wood.
There was an extraordinary similarity in the thoughts which occupied them both. At the moment when Madame Camors was trembling for fear near her husband, he was trembling for her.
He thought he detected that they were followed; at different times he thought he heard in the thicket the cracking of branches, rattling of leaves, and finally the sound of stealthy steps. These noises always ceased on his stopping, and began again the moment he resumed his walk. He thought, a moment later, he saw the shadow of a man pass rapidly among the underwood behind them. The idea of some woodman came first to his mind, but he could not reconcile this with the persistence with which they were followed.
He finally had no doubt that they were dogged—but by whom? The repeated menaces of Madame de Campvallon against the life of Madame de Camors, the passionate and unbridled character of this woman, soon presented itself to his thoughts, suggested this mysterious pursuit, and awakened these frightful suspicions.
He did not imagine for a moment that the Marquise would charge herself personally with the infliction of her vengeance; but she had said—he then remembered—that the hand would be found. She was rich enough to find it, and this hand might now be here.
He did not wish to alarm his wife by calling her attention to this spectre, which he believed at her side, but he could not hide from her his agitation, which every movement of his caused her to construe as falsely as cruelly.
“Marie,” he said, “let us walk a little faster, I beg of you! I am cold.”
He quickened his steps, resolved to return to the chateau by the public road, which was bordered with houses.
When he reached the border of the woods, although he thought he still heard at intervals the sound which had alarmed him, he reassured himself and resumed his flow of spirits as if a little ashamed even of his panic. He stopped the Countess to look at the pretext of this excursion. This was the rocky wall of the deep excavation of a marl-pit, long since abandoned. The arbutus-trees of fantastic shape which covered the summit of these rocks, the pendant vines, the sombre ivy which carpeted the cliffs, the gleaming white stones, the vague reflections in the stagnant pool at the bottom of the pit, the mysterious light of the moon, made a scene of wild beauty.
The ground in the neighborhood of the marl-pit was so irregular, and the thorny underbrush so thick, that when pedestrians wished to reach the nearest highway they, were compelled either to make a long detour or to cross the deepest part of the excavation by means of the trunks of two great trees, which had been cut in half, lashed together, and thrown across the chasm. Thus they formed a crude bridge, affording a passage across the deep hollow and adding to the picturesque aspect of this romantic spot.
Madame de Camors never had seen anything like this peculiar bridge, which had been laid recently at her husband’s orders. After they had gazed in silence a moment into the depths of the marl-pit, Camors called his wife’s attention to the unique construction.
“Do you intend to cross that?” she asked, briefly.
“Yes, if you are not afraid,” said Camors; “I shall be close beside you, you know.”
He saw that she hesitated, and, looking at her closely in the moonlight, he thought her face was strangely pale, and could not refrain from saying:
“I believed that you had more courage.”
She hesitated no longer, but stepped upon the dangerous bridge. In spite of herself, she turned her head half around, in a backward glance, and her steady step faltered. Suddenly she tottered. M. de Camors sprang forward, and, in the agitation of the moment, seized her in an almost violent grasp. The unhappy woman uttered a piercing shriek, made a gesture as if to defend herself, repelling his touch; then, running wildly across the bridge, she rushed into the woods. M. de Camors, astounded, alarmed, not knowing how to interpret his wife’s strange conduct, immediately followed her. He found her a short distance beyond the bridge, leaning against the first tree she had been able to reach. She turned to face him, with an expression of mingled terror and menace, and as he approached, she shot forth the single word:
“Coward!”
He stared at her in sheer amazement. At that moment there was a sound of hurried footsteps; a shadowy form glided toward them from the depth of the thicket, and the next instant Camors recognized Madame de Tecle. She ran, dishevelled and breathless, toward her daughter, seized her by the hand and, drawing herself up, said to Camors:
“If you kill one of us, kill both!”
He understood the mystery in a flash. A stifled cry escaped him; for an instant he buried his face in his hands; then; flinging out his arms in a gesture of despair, he said:
“So you took me for a murderer!”
There was a moment of dead silence.
“Well!” he cried, stamping his foot with sudden violence, “why do you stay here, then? Run! Fly! Save yourselves from me!”
Overcome with terror, the two women fled, the mother dragging her daughter. The next moment they had disappeared in the darkness of the woods.
Camors remained in that lonely spot many hours, without being aware of the passage of time. At intervals he paced feverishly to and fro along the narrow strip of land between the woods and the bridge; then, stopping short, with fixed eyes, he became lost in thought, and stood as motionless as the trunk of the tree against which he leaned. If, as we hope, there is a Divine hand which measures justly our sorrows according to our sins, the unhappy man, in this dark hour, must have rendered his account.
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