Chapter 16

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.

XIV

Cold and white as a marble statue, Valentine stood on the bank of the river, watching the frail bark which was carrying her lover away. It flew along the Rhone like a bird in a tempest, and after a few seconds appeared like a black speck in the midst of the heavy fog which floated over the water, then was lost to view.

Now that Gaston was gone, Valentine had no motive for concealing her despair; she wrung her hands and sobbed as if her heart would break. All her forced calmness, her bravery and hopefulness, were gone. She felt crushed and lost, as if the sharp pain in her heart was the forerunner of the torture in store for her; as if that swiftly gliding bark had carried off the better part of herself.

While Gaston treasured in the bottom of his heart a ray of hope, she felt there was nothing to look forward to but shame and sorrow.

The horrible facts which stared her in the face convinced her that happiness in this life was over; the future was worse than blank. She wept and shuddered at the prospect.

She slowly retraced her footsteps through the friendly little gate which had so often admitted poor Gaston; and, as she closed it behind her, she seemed to be placing an impassable barrier between herself and happiness.

Before entering, Valentine walked around the chateau, and looked up at the windows of her mother’s chamber.

They were brilliantly lighted, as usual at this hour, for Mme. de la Verberie passed half the night in reading, and slept till late in the day.

Enjoying the comforts of life, which are little costly in the country, the selfish countess disturbed herself very little about her daughter.

Fearing no danger in their isolation, she left her at perfect liberty; and day and night Valentine might go and come, take long walks, and sit under trees for hours at a time, without restriction.

But on this night Valentine feared being seen. She would be called upon to explain the torn, muddy condition of her dress, and what answer could she give?

Fortunately she could reach her room without meeting anyone.

She needed solitude in order to collect her thoughts, and to pray for strength to bear the heavy burden of her sorrows, and to withstand the angry storm about to burst over her head.

Seated before her little work-table, she emptied the purse of jewels, and mechanically examined them.

It would be a sweet, sad comfort to wear the simplest of the rings, she thought, as she slipped the sparkling gem on her finger; but her mother would ask her where it came from. What answer could she give? Alas, none.

She kissed the purse, in memory of Gaston, and then concealed the sacred deposit in her bureau.

When she thought of going to Clameran, to inform the old marquis of the miraculous preservation of his son’s life, her heart sank.

Blinded by his passion, Gaston did not think, when he requested this service, of the obstacles and dangers to be braved in its performance.

But Valentine saw them only too clearly; yet it did not occur to her for an instant to break her promise by sending another, or by delaying to go herself.

At sunrise she dressed herself.

When the bell was ringing for early mass, she thought it a good time to start on her errand.

The servants were all up, and one of them named Mihonne, who always waited on Valentine, was scrubbing the vestibule.

“If mother asks for me,” said Valentine to the girl, “tell her I have gone to early mass.”

She often went to church at this hour, so there was nothing to be feared thus far; Mihonne looked at her sadly, but said nothing.

Valentine knew that she would have difficulty in returning to breakfast. She would have to walk a league before reaching the bridge, and it was another league thence to Clameran; in all she must walk four leagues.

She set forth at a rapid pace. The consciousness of performing an extraordinary action, the feverish anxiety of peril incurred, increased her haste. She forgot that she had worn herself out weeping all night; that this fictitious strength could not last.

In spite of her efforts, it was after eight o’clock when she reached the long avenue leading to the main entrance of the chateau of Clameran.

She had only proceeded a few steps, when she saw old St. Jean coming down the path.

She stopped and waited for him; he hastened his steps at sight of her, as if having something to tell her.

He was very much excited, and his eyes were swollen with weeping.

To Valentine’s surprise, he did not take off his hat to bow, and when he came up to her, he said, rudely:

“Are you going up to the chateau, mademoiselle?”

“Yes.”

“If you are going after M. Gaston,” said the servant, with an insolent sneer, “you are taking useless trouble. M. the count is dead, mademoiselle; he sacrificed himself for the sake of a worthless woman.”

Valentine turned white at this insult, but took no notice of it. St. Jean, who expected to see her overcome by the dreadful news, was bewildered at her composure.

“I am going to the chateau,” she said, quietly, “to speak to the marquis.”

St. Jean stifled a sob, and said:

“Then it is not worth while to go any farther.”

“Why?”

“Because the Marquis of Clameran died at five o’clock this morning.”

Valentine leaned against a tree to prevent herself from falling.

“Dead!” she gasped.

“Yes,” said St. Jean, fiercely; “yes, dead!”

A faithful servant of the old regime, St. Jean shared all the passions, weaknesses, friendships, and enmities of his master. He had a horror of the La Verberies. And now he saw in Valentine the woman who had caused the death of the marquis whom he had served for forty years, and of Gaston whom he worshipped.

“I will tell you how he died,” said the bitter old man. “Yesterday evening, when those hounds came and told the marquis that his eldest son was dead, he who was as hardy as an oak, and could face any danger, instantly gave way, and dropped as if struck by lightning. I was there. He wildly beat the air with his hands, and fell without opening his lips; not one word did he utter. We put him to bed, and M. Louis galloped into Tarascon for a doctor. But the blow had struck too deeply. When Dr. Raget arrived he said there was no hope.

“At daybreak, the marquis recovered consciousness enough to ask for M. Louis, with whom he remained alone for some minutes. The last words he uttered were, ‘Father and son the same day; there will be rejoicing at La Verberie.’”

Valentine might have soothed the sorrow of the faithful servant, by telling him Gaston still lived; but she feared it would be indiscreet, and, unfortunately, said nothing.

“Can I see M. Louis?” she asked after a long silence.

This question seemed to arouse all the anger slumbering in the breast of poor St. Jean.

“You! You would dare take such a step, Mlle. de la Verberie? What! would you presume to appear before him after what has happened? I will never allow it! And you had best, moreover, take my advice, and return home at once. I will not answer for the tongues of the servants here, when they see you.”

And, without waiting for an answer, he hurried away.

What could Valentine do? Humiliated and miserable, she could only wearily drag her aching limbs back the way she had so rapidly come early that morning. On the road, she met many people coming from the town, where they had heard of the events of the previous night; and the poor girl was obliged to keep her eyes fastened to the ground in order to escape the insulting looks and mocking salutations with which the gossips passed her.