Chapter 21

“Alas! that is precisely what I have said to myself.”

“Still, I am convinced that with some assistance you might overcome your mother’s resistance, and even your father’s pretentions.”

“Yes, but where could I find protectors?”

The viscount’s gravity seemed to increase. “Listen to me,” said he; “I will do for you what I would not do for any one else. I will endeavor to interest in your cause one of my friends, who is all powerful by reason of his name, his fortune, and his connections--the Marquis de Valorsay, in fact.”

“The one who is so well known upon the turf?”

“The same.”

“And you will introduce me to him?”

“Yes. Be ready to-morrow at eleven o’clock, and I will call for you and take you to his house. If he interests himself in your cause, it is as good as gained.” And as his companion overwhelmed him with thanks, he rose, and said: “I must go now. No more foolishness, and be ready to-morrow at the appointed time.”

Thanks to the surprising mutability of temper which was the most striking characteristic of his nature, M. Wilkie was already consoled for his blunder.

He had received M. de Coralth as an enemy; but he now escorted him to the door with every obsequious attention--in fact, just as if he looked upon him as his preserver. A word which the viscount had dropped during the conversation had considerably helped to bring about this sudden revulsion of feelings. “You cannot fail to understand that if the Marquis de Valorsay espouses your cause, you will want for nothing. And if a lawsuit is unavoidable, he will be perfectly willing to advance the necessary funds.” How could M. Wilkie lack confidence after that? The brightest hopes, the most ecstatic visions had succeeded the gloomy forebodings of a few hours before. The mere thought of being presented to M. de Valorsay, a nobleman celebrated for his adventures, his horses, and his fortune, more than sufficed to make him forget his troubles. What rapture to become that illustrious nobleman’s acquaintance, perhaps his friend! To move in the same orbit as this star of the first magnitude which would inevitably cast some of its lustre upon him! Now he would be a somebody in the world. He felt that he had grown a head taller, and Heaven only knows with what disdain poor Costard and Serpillon would have been received had they chanced to present themselves at that moment.

It is needless to say that Wilkie dressed with infinite care on the following morning, no doubt in the hope of making a conquest of the marquis at first sight. He tried his best to solve the problem of appearing at the same time most recherche but at ease, excessively elegant and yet unostentatious; and he devoted himself to the task so unreservedly that he lost all conception of the flight of time: so that on seeing M. de Coralth enter his rooms, he exclaimed in unfeigned astonishment: “You here already?”

It seemed to him that barely five minutes had elapsed since he took his place before the looking-glass to study attitudes and gestures, with a new and elegant mode of bowing and sitting down, like an actor practising the effects which are to win him applause.

“Why do you say ‘already?’” replied the viscount. “I am a quarter of an hour behind time. Are you not ready?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Let us start at once, then; my brougham is outside.”

The drive was a silent one. M. Ferdinand de Coralth, whose smooth white skin would ordinarily have excited the envy of a young girl, did not look like himself. His face was swollen and covered with blotches, and there were dark blue circles round his eyes. He seemed, moreover, to be in a most savage humor. “He hasn’t had sleep enough,” thought M. Wilkie, with his usual discernment; “he hasn’t a bronze constitution like myself.”

M. Wilkie himself was insensible to fatigue, and although he had not closed his eyes the previous night, he only felt that nervous trepidation which invariably attacks debutants, and makes the throat so marvellously dry. For the first, and probably the last time in his life, M. Wilkie distrusted his own powers, and feared that he was not “quite up to the mark,” as he elegantly expressed it.

The sight of the Marquis de Valorsay’s handsome mansion was not likely to restore his assurance. When he entered the courtyard, where the master’s mail-phaeton stood in waiting; when through the open doors of the handsome stables he espied the many valuable horses neighing in their stalls, and the numerous carriages shrouded in linen covers; when he counted the valets on duty in the vestibule, and when he ascended the staircase behind a lackey attired in a black dress-coat, and as serious in mien as a notary; when he passed through the handsome drawing-rooms, filled to overflowing with pictures, armor, statuary, and all the trophies gained by the marquis’s horses upon the turf, M. Wilkie mentally acknowledged that he knew nothing of high life, and that what he had considered luxury was scarcely the shadow of the reality. He felt actually ashamed of his own ignorance. This feeling of inferiority became so powerful that he was almost tempted to turn and fly, when the man clothed in black opened the door and announced, in a clear voice: “M. le Vicomte de Coralth!--M. Wilkie.”

With a most gracious and dignified air--the air of a true GRAND seigneur--the only portion of his inheritance which he had preserved intact, the marquis rose to his feet, and, offering his hand to M. de Coralth, exclaimed: “You are most welcome, viscount. This gentleman is undoubtedly the young friend you spoke of in the note I received from you this morning?”

“The same; and really he stands greatly in need of your kindness. He finds himself in an extremely delicate position, and knows no one who can lend him a helping hand.”

“Ah, well, I will lend him one with pleasure, since he is your friend. But I must know the circumstances before I can act. Sit down, gentlemen, and enlighten me.”

M. Wilkie had prepared his story in advance, a touching and witty narrative; but when the moment came to begin it, he found himself unable to speak. He opened his mouth, but no sound issued from his lips, and it seemed as if he had been stricken dumb. Accordingly it was M. de Coralth who made a statement of the case, and he did it well. The narrative thus gained considerably in clearness and precision; and even M. Wilkie noticed that his friend understood how to present the events in their most favorable light, and how to omit them altogether when his heartless conduct would have appeared too odious. He also noticed--and he considered it an excellent omen--that M. de Valorsay was listening with the closest attention.

Worthy marquis! if his own interests had been in jeopardy he could not have appeared more deeply concerned. When the viscount had concluded his story, he gravely exclaimed: “Your young friend is indeed in a most critical position, a position from which he cannot escape without being terribly victimized, if he’s left dependent on his own resources.”

“But it is understood that you will help him, is it not?”

M. de Valorsay reflected for a little, and then, addressing M. Wilkie, replied: “Yes, I consent to assist you, monsieur. First, because your cause seems to me just, and, also, because you are M. de Coralth’s friend. I promise you my aid on one condition--that you will follow my advice implicitly.”

The interesting young man lifted his hand, and, by dint of a powerful effort, he succeeded in articulating: “Anything you wish!--upon my sacred word!”

“You must understand that when I engage in an enterprise, it must not fail. The eye of the public is upon me, and I have my PRESTIGE to maintain. I have given you a great mark of confidence, for in lending you my influence I become, in some measure at least, your sponsor. But I cannot accept this great responsibility unless I am allowed absolute control of the affair.”

“And I think that we ought to begin operations this very day. The main thing is to circumvent your father, the terrible man with whom your mother has threatened you.”

“Ah! but how?”

“I shall dress at once and go to the Hotel de Chalusse, in order to ascertain what has occurred there. You on your side must hasten to Madame d’Argeles and request her politely, but firmly, to furnish you with the necessary proofs to assert your rights. If she consents, well and good! If she refuses, we will consult some lawyer as to the next step. In any case, call here again at four o’clock.”

But the thought of meeting Madame d’Argeles again was anything but pleasing to Wilkie. “I would willingly yield that undertaking to some one else,” said he. “Cannot some one else go in my place?”

Fortunately M. de Coralth knew how to encourage him. “What! are you afraid?” he asked.

Afraid! he?--never! It was easy to see that by the way he settled his hat on his head and went off, slamming the door noisily behind him.

“What an idiot!” muttered M. de Coralth. “And to think that there are ten thousand in Paris built upon the very same plan!”

M. de Valorsay gravely shook his head. “Let us thank fortune that he is as he is. No youth who possessed either heart or intelligence would play the part that I intend for him, and enable me to obtain proud Marguerite and her millions. But I fear he won’t go to Madame d’Argeles’s house. You noticed his repugnance!”

“Oh, you needn’t trouble yourself in the least on that account--he’ll go. He would go to the devil if the noble Marquis de Valorsay ordered him to do so.”

M. de Coralth understood Wilkie perfectly. The fear of being considered a coward by a nobleman like the Marquis de Valorsay was more than sufficient, not only to divest him of all his scruples, but even to induce him to commit any act of folly, or actually a crime. For if he had looked upon M. de Coralth as an oracle, he considered the marquis to be a perfect god.

Accordingly, as he hastened toward Madame d’Argeles’s residence, he said to himself: “Why shouldn’t I go to her house? I’ve done her no injury. Besides, she won’t eat me.” And remembering that he should be obliged to render a report of this interview, he resolved to assert his superiority and to remain cool and unmoved, as he had seen M. de Coralth do so often.

However, the unusual aspect of the house excited his surprise, and puzzled him not a little. Three huge furniture vans, heavily laden, were standing outside the gate. In the courtyard there were two more vehicles of the same description, which a dozen men or so were busily engaged in loading. “Ah, ha!” muttered M. Wilkie, “it was fortunate that I came--very fortunate; so she was going to run away!” Thereupon, approaching a group of servants who were in close conference in the hall, he demanded, in his most imperious manner: “Madame d’Argeles!”

The servants remembered the visitor perfectly; they now knew who he really was, and they could not understand how he could have the impudence and audacity to come there again so soon after the shameful scene of the previous evening. “Madame is at home,” replied one of the men, in anything but a polite tone; “and I will go and see if she will consent to see you. Wait here.”

He went off, leaving M. Wilkie in the vestibule to settle his collar and twirl his puny mustaches, with affected indifference; but in reality he was far from comfortable. For the servants did not hesitate to stare at him, and it was quite impossible not to read their contempt in their glances. They even sneered audibly and pointed at him; and he heard five or six epithets more expressive than elegant which could only have been meant for himself. “The fools!” thought he, boiling with anger. “The scoundrels! Ah! if I dared. If a gentleman like myself was allowed to notice such blackguards, how I’d chastise them!”

But the valet who had gone to warn Madame d’Argeles soon reappeared and put an end to his sufferings. “Madame will see you,” said the man, impudently. “Ah! if I were in her place----”

“Come, make haste,” rejoined Wilkie, indignantly, and following the servant, he was ushered into a room which had already been divested of its hangings, curtains, and furniture. He here found Madame d’Argeles engaged in packing a large trunk with household linen and sundry articles of clothing.

By a sort of miracle the unfortunate woman had survived the terrible shock which had at first threatened to have an immediately fatal effect. Still she had none the less received her death-blow. It was only necessary to look at her to be assured of that. She was so greatly changed that when M. Wilkie’s eyes first fell on her, he asked himself if this were really the same person whom he had met on the previous evening. Henceforth she would be an old woman. You would have taken her for over fifty, so terrible had been the sufferings caused her by the shameful conduct of her son. In this sad-eyed, haggard-faced woman, clad in black, no one would have recognized the notorious Lia d’Argeles, who, only the evening before, had driven round the lake, reclining on the cushions of her victoria, and eclipsing all the women around her by the splendor of her toilette. Nothing now remained of the gay worldling but the golden hair which she was condemned to see always the same, since its tint had been fixed by dyes as indelible as the stains upon her past.

She rose with difficulty when M. Wilkie entered, and in the expressionless voice of those who are without hope, she asked: “What do you wish of me?”

As usual, when the time came to carry out his happiest conceptions, his courage failed him. “I came to talk about our affairs, you know,” he replied, “and I find you moving.”

“I am not moving.”

“Nonsense! you can’t make me believe that! What’s the meaning of these carts in the courtyard?”

“They are here to convey all the furniture in the house to the auction-rooms.”

Wilkie was struck dumb for a moment, but eventually recovering himself a little, he exclaimed: “What! you are going to sell everything?”

“Yes.”

“Astonishing, upon my honor! But afterward?”

“I shall leave Paris.”

“Bah! and where are you going?”

With a gesture of utter indifference, she gently replied: “I don’t know; I shall go where no one will know me, and where it will be possible for me to hide my shame.”

A terrible disquietude seized hold of Wilkie. This sudden change of residence, this departure which so strongly resembled flight, this cold greeting when he expected passionate reproaches, seemed to indicate that Madame d’Argeles’s resolution would successfully resist any amount of entreaty on his part. “The devil,” he remarked, “I don’t think this at all pleasant! What is to become of me? How am I to obtain possession of the Count de Chalusse’s estate? That’s what I am after! It’s rightfully mine, and I’m determined to have it, as I told you once before. And when I’ve once taken anything into my head----”

He paused, for he could no longer face the scornful glances that Madame d’Argeles was giving him. “Don’t be alarmed,” she replied bitterly, “I shall leave you the means of asserting your right to my parents’ estate.”

“Ah--so----”

“Your threats obliged me to decide contrary to my own wishes. I felt that no amount of slander or disgrace would daunt you.”

“Of course not, when so many millions are at stake.”

“I reflected, and I saw that nothing would arrest you upon your downward path except a large fortune. If you were poor and compelled to earn your daily bread--a task which you are probably incapable of performing--who can tell what depths of degradation you might descend to? With your instincts and your vices, who knows what crime you wouldn’t commit to obtain money? It wouldn’t be long before you were in the dock, and I should hear of you only through your disgrace. But, on the other hand, if you were rich, you would probably lead an honest life, like many others, who, wanting for nothing, are not tempted to do wrong, who, in fact, show virtue in which there is nothing worthy of praise. For real virtue implies temptation--a struggle and victory.”

Although he did not understand these remarks very well, M. Wilkie evinced a desire to offer some objections; but Madame d’Argeles had already resumed: “So I went to my notary this morning. I told him everything; and by this time my renunciation of my rights to the estate of the Count de Chalusse is already recorded.”

“What! your renunciation. Oh! no.”

“Allow me to finish since you don’t understand me. As soon as I renounce the inheritance it becomes yours.”

“Truly?”

“I have no wish to deceive you. I only desire that the name of Lia d’Argeles should not be mentioned. I will give you the necessary proofs to establish your identity; my marriage contract and your certificate of birth.”

It was joy that made M. Wilkie speechless now. “And when will you give me these documents?” he faltered, after a short pause.

“You shall have them before you leave this house; but first of all I must talk with you.”

XV.

Agitated and excited though he was, M. Wilkie had not once ceased to think of M. de Coralth and the Marquis de Valorsay. What would they do in such a position, and how should he act to conform himself to the probable example of these models of deportment? Manifestly he ought to assume that stolid and insolent air of boredom which is considered a sure indication of birth and breeding. Convinced of this, and seized with a laudable desire to emulate such distinguished examples, he had perched himself upon a trunk, where he still sat with his legs crossed. He now pretended to suppress a yawn, as he growled, “What! some more long phrases--and another melodramatic display?”

Absorbed in the memories she had invoked, Madame d’Argeles paid no heed to Wilkie’s impertinence. “Yes, I must talk with you,” she said, “and more for your sake than for my own. I must tell you who I am, and through what strange vicissitudes I have passed. You know what family I belong to. I will tell you, however--for you may be ignorant of the fact--that our house is the equal of any in France in lineage, splendor of alliance, and fortune. When I was a child, my parents lived at the Hotel de Chalusse, in the Faubourg Saint Germain, a perfect palace, surrounded by one of those immense gardens, which are no longer seen in Paris--a real park, shaded with century-old trees. Certainly everything that money could procure, or vanity desire, was within my reach; and yet my youth was wretchedly unhappy. I scarcely knew my father, who was devoured by ambition, and had thrown himself body and soul into the vortex of politics. Either my mother did not love me, or thought it beneath her dignity to make any display of sensibility; but at all events her reserve had raised a wall of ice between herself and me. As for my brother he was too much engrossed in pleasure to think of a mere child. So I lived quite alone, too proud to accept the love and friendship of my inferiors--abandoned to the dangerous inspirations of solitude, and with no other consolation than my books--books which had been chosen for me by my mother’s confessor, and which were calculated to fill my imagination with visionary and romantic fancies. The only conversation I heard dealt with the means of leaving all the family fortune to my brother, so that he might uphold the splendor of the name, and with the necessity of marrying me to some superannuated nobleman who would take me without a dowry, or of compelling me to enter one of those aristocratic convents, which are the refuge, and often the prison, of poor girls of noble birth.

“I do not pretend to justify my fault, I am only explaining it. I thought myself the most unfortunate being in the world--and such I really was, since I honestly believed it--when I happened to meet Arthur Gordon, your father. I saw him for the first time at a fete given at the house of the Comte de Commarin. How he, a mere adventurer, had succeeded in forcing his way into the most exclusive society in the world, is a point which I have never been able to explain. But, alas! it is only too true that when our glances met for the first time, my heart was stirred to its inmost depths; I felt that it was no longer mine--that I was no longer free! Ah! why does not God allow a man’s face to reflect at least something of his nature? This man, who was a corrupt and audacious hypocrite, had that air of apparent nobility and frankness which inspires you with unlimited confidence, and the melancholy expression on his features seemed to indicate that he had known sorrow, and had good cause to rail at destiny. In his whole appearance there was certainly a mysterious and fatal charm. I afterward learned that this was only a natural result of the wild life he had led. He was only twenty-six, and he had already been the commander of a slave ship, and had fought in Mexico at the head of one of those guerilla bands which make politics an excuse for pillage and murder. He divined only too well the impression he had made upon my heart. I met him twice afterward in society. He did not speak to me; he even pretended to avoid me, but standing a little on one side, he watched my every movement with burning eyes in which I fancied I could read a passion as absorbing as my own. At last he ventured to write to me. The moment a letter addressed to me in an unknown hand was covertly handed me by my maid, I divined that it came from him. I was frightened, and my first impulse was to take it, not to my mother--whom I regarded as my natural enemy--but to my father. However, he chanced to be absent; I kept the letter, I read it, I answered it--and he wrote again.

“Alas! from that moment my conduct was inexcusable. I knew that it was worse than a fault to continue this clandestine correspondence. I knew my parents would never give my hand in marriage to a man who was not of noble birth. I knew that I was risking my reputation, the spotless honor of our house, my happiness, and life! Still I persisted--I was possessed with a strange madness that made me ready to brave every danger. Besides, he gave me no time to breathe, or reflect. Everywhere, constantly, every instant, he compelled me to think of him. By some miracle of address and audacity, he had discovered a means of intruding upon my presence, even in my father’s house. For instance, every morning I found the vases in my room full of choice flowers, though I was never able to discover what hands had placed them there. Ah! how can one help believing in an omnipresent passion which one inhales with the very air one breathes! How can one resist it?

“I only discovered Arthur Gordon’s object when it was too late. He had come to Paris with the fixed determination of trapping some rich heiress, and forcing her family to give her to him with a large dowry, after one of those disgraceful scandals which render a marriage inevitable. At the very same time he was pursuing two other rich young girls, persuaded that one of the three would certainly become his victim.

“I was the first to yield. One of those unforeseen events which are the work of Providence, was destined to decide my fate. Several times, already, in compliance with Arthur’s urgent entreaties, I had met him at night time in a little pavilion in our garden. This pavilion contained a billiard-room and a spacious gallery in which my brother practised fencing and pistol shooting with his masters and friends. There, thanks to the liberty I enjoyed, we thought ourselves perfectly secure from observation, and we were imprudent enough to light the candles. One night when I had just joined Arthur in the pavilion, I thought I heard the sound of hoarse, heavy breathing behind me. I turned round in a fright and saw my brother standing on the threshold. Oh! then I realized how guilty I had been! I felt that one or the other of these two men--my lover or my brother--would not leave that room alive.