CHAPTER XLVII.

The revelation just made by Madame de Guéran to MM. Périères and de Morin was certainly calculated to drive them to despair. If they had had any doubts about the power she exercised over them, their feelings and sufferings during the past few days would have removed them all. They were as deeply, seriously in love as it was possible for men to be; absolutely conquered and enslaved. And it was at this very moment, when they were acknowledging to themselves their defeat and the intensity of their love, that they heard her say—"Give up all hope, give me up, for I belong no more to myself!"

The blow, however, was not so severe as they might have supposed, because its effect had been weakened, deadened by the revulsion of feeling they had just experienced. For had they not sought Madame de Guéran for the sole purpose of heaping reproaches upon her, complaining of her treason, and saying farewell to her? They had looked upon her as lost after the cruellest fashion, M. de Morin picturing himself as sacrificed to M. Périères, and the latter, on the other hand, assuming that his rival was the lucky man, the victor, and the husband elect. Jealousy is the legitimate offspring of wounded _amour-propre_, the two sentiments depend on one another, are natural to each other, and one springs from the other. Get rid of _amour-propre_, and jealousy will disappear; do away with jealousy, and the most unhappy love will, at all events, be calm and tranquil. Say to love—"Your beloved will not have anything to say to you because she loves another"—and off he will go in desperation, meditating revenge or suicide, according to his temperament. But say to him—"This woman keeps you at a distance simply because she neither can nor will belong to any one; she loves you, but she will never tell you so, nor will she allow you to tell her"—and away goes his anger; he loves still, perhaps may love always, but quietly and resignedly.

MM. Périères and de Morin had experienced the first of these feelings; they had now arrived at the second, and there they stopped. Madame de Guéran had certainly banished them and treated them with coldness, but she had neither deceived nor betrayed them. Each of them might still suppose himself to be preferred before his rival. They were neither of them being sacrificed to any particular person, but to an idea, a vague hope, an abstract and almost legendary husband.

The two young men no longer looked at each other so fiercely as they had done some moments previously. On the contrary, they appeared anxious for an excuse to be near each other, and to exchange a smile and a warm shake of the hand, such as had of late been conspicuous by their absence. They looked like two friends delighted at seeing each other again after a long absence.

A tender expression stole into their eyes as they turned them towards the Baroness. How could they have suspected that charming woman? How could they have allowed themselves for a moment to doubt that character, so open, so firm, so straightforward? Was she the woman to deceive them, to play them false, or to lower herself?

They all three looked at each other stealthily—she, overcome by the revelation she had just made, and they, ashamed of their suspicion, their jealousy, and their anger. At length, M. de Morin thought it time to speak.

"You have said," he commenced, with a still rather unsteady voice, "that we must quit you and return to France, leaving you to pursue your journey, run all sorts of danger, and face death itself, perhaps, alone. We will discuss that question when the proper time comes; for the present we can put it aside. First of all allow me to presume on our friendship so far as to ask you for a few details in connection with the circumstance you have just mentioned. M. de Guéran lives, so you say; how do you know that it is so? How far can you put any faith in the reports which are current with regard to his resurrection, hitherto unrevealed?"^

"I have irrefutable proofs," answered Madame de Guéran, "not that M. de Guéran lives, but that he did not die at the time, nor at the place, nor in the manner he was reported to have died. According to these reports, his death took place in October, 1871. Well, he wrote to me in January, 1872! He was said to have been buried in the Bongo country, the goal of my pilgrimage, as I told you some time ago. That country was traversed by him in safety, and long after the day on which he was supposed to have died, he was seen in the territory of the Monbuttoos!"

"Who saw him?" asked M. Périères.

"A man worthy of all credence, sent to me with his strongest recommendations, a negro of the Dinka tribe and an old soldier taken by Schweinfurth into his service as guide and interpreter."

"How was it, then, that Schweinfurth, who was in these countries you mention in 1871, and whom you, as you have told us, went to Germany to see, did not give you any information about M. de Guéran?"

"That is easily explained. Schweinfurth, it is true, travelled through these countries in 1871, but he was then on his way back to Khartoum, which he reached on the 21st June. In the beginning of the preceding year, failing to obtain from Munza, King of the Monbuttoos, permission to continue his journey southwards, he left his territory and proceeded northwards, in company with his friend, Aboo-Sammit, the ivory merchant."

"Granted," replied M. Périères, "but how does it happen that the servant, to whom you have alluded, is better informed than his master? How did he manage to see amongst the Monbuttoos a European whom Schweinfurth could not possibly meet, because at that time he was in the midst of other tribes?"

"The reply to that is still easier. The man in question, whose name is Nassar, did not leave at the same time with the rest of the caravan, because Aboo-Sammit had entrusted him with the superintendence of one of those branches which, in furtherance of his business, he establishes in the various fresh countries to which he extends his operations. It was at this place, where he remained for eighteen months with the same Nubian soldiers, and which is situated between the third and fourth degree north of the Equator, and the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of longitude, east of the meridian of Paris—it was here that, in January, 1872, a caravan, under the command of a white man, asked for shelter for a few hours. This man, this European, was my husband! I could not doubt either the description of him given by Nassar, or the few hasty lines that M. de Guéran scribbled in his memorandum-book and entrusted to his host."

"And why," asked M. de Morin, "did not this man contrive in some way or other that those lines should reach you?"

"For many reasons, amongst which due allowance must be made for the apathy and indifference of Orientals in general, and negroes in particular. We in England were, at one time, for two years without news of Livingstone, and we believed him dead because a man, implicitly trusted by him, neglected to send his despatches to Europe. But the best reason of all is this: the address, written in pencil upon a scrap of paper, had, through constant exposure to tropical sun and rain, become partly illegible."

"He should have taken it, even if it had been only a single word, on his return to Khartoum, to some Consul," observed M. Périères, "who would doubtless have deciphered it, and would possibly have concluded that it came from M. de Guéran, in which case your mind would have been at rest long ago."

"Very true, but would the Consul have given Nassar his anticipated reward? Once more, my friend, you are excluding from your calculations the rapacity of certain negro tribes; you forget that they turn everything into money, that they sell the right of passing through and of remaining in their country, and that they will let you perish in misery and want if you cannot give them a piece of copper, or an armlet, or some cowries, in exchange for the meat and drink you so sorely need. Nassar preferred to wait until somebody came forward to purchase his letter, and his calculations were tolerably accurate, seeing that I have paid him a very high price for it."

"Then," asked M. de Morin, "you have no longer any doubt? It was really your husband's handwriting—you recognized it?"

"Perfectly; and, more than that, I recognize, too, the train of thought I knew so well for two years of my life. In a few touching lines, he asks my forgiveness again for having left me so abruptly, and having dared to undertake such a journey. He left me, he says, with the intention of revisiting, for the last time, the districts he had formerly explored, and of taking a final farewell of them. According to his first idea his absence would not have been of long duration, but the exploration fever, that species of madness which draws people towards the unknown, had seized upon him, carried him away like a whirlwind, and taken him far from his intended track. I have often heard discussions upon that strange attraction to which we owe many of the discoveries made during the last half century. When once a man has tasted Africa he longs to get back to it. Livingstone passed twenty years of his life there. Mdlle. Tinne returned thither three times, and Speke was on his way back when he was accidentally shot. Baker managed to get himself made a general in the Egyptian army and secured an official appointment as the leader of an expedition, in order to give himself an excuse for seeing again the sources of the Nile he is always seeking, and the splendid lakes he loves so well. Indeed, in my own case, I will not go so far as to say that I was not impelled onward by some irresistible force, independent, perhaps, of the end I had in view. But to return to the subject—in other words, my husband's letter.

"He had ascended the Nile, he writes, as far as the Gazelle River, which he thought would be completely blocked by floating vegetation, but, on the contrary, he had been able to navigate it with ease, and to reach the district of the Reks. There M. de Guéran confesses he might easily have turned back, but marvellous tales had been told him of the open districts in front of him. He could not fight against his longing, his morbid passion, his folly, whatever it may please you to call it, and he set out. He assures me that he wrote to me when with the Dinkas, the Djours, and the Niam-Niam. Not one of those letters have I ever received, and that is not to be wondered at, seeing that an accident alone has put me in possession of his last.

"He concludes by telling me that he has gone too far to put back, and that he has neither the courage nor the right to retrace his steps just at the moment when he is on the point of reaching his goal, and solving those problems which have so long been under investigation. Indeed, he is the first European who has passed beyond the Monbuttoo territory, and everything is conjecture in connection with the territories extending thence for some degrees south-east and south-west. If he succeeds, he says, in passing through certain districts, up to the present time supposed to be impassable, he does not despair of reaching the Blue Mountains, of which Baker speaks, of crossing the Albert Nyanza, and so reaching in succession the Victoria Nyanza, Kazé, and Zanzibar. If he is induced to penetrate still farther southwards, he will make for the Lake Tanganyika, explored by Livingstone; and if westward, for the banks of the Congo and the Atlantic Ocean. Finally, he bids me adieu, and asks me once more to forgive him."

Madame de Guéran, who had maintained her composure wonderfully up to this point, now broke down, and could say no more. M. Périères went to her and said—

"And you are going to tempt these unknown lands, as your husband has done?"

"Yes," she replied, decisively.

"Alone?" he asked.

"With, Miss Poles, the guide who brought me M. de Guéran's letter, one or two Arab interpreters, and the caravan which they are about to organize."

"And we?"

"You cannot come with me."

"Why not?" asked M. de Morin, getting up quickly from his seat, and taking her hand in his.