Chapter 2

But he could not quite break away. Sometimes for a week the Villeforts missed him, and then again they saw him every day. He spent his mornings with them, joined them in their drives, at their opera-box, or at the entertainments of their friends. He also fell into his old place in the Trent household, and listened with a vague effort at interest to Mrs. Trent’s maternal gossip about the boys’ college expenses, Bertha’s household, and Jenny’s approaching social _début_ He was continually full of a feverish longing to hear of Bertha,--to hear her name spoken, her ingoings and out-comings discussed, her looks, her belongings.

“The fact is,” said Mrs. Trent, as the winter advanced, “I am anxious about Bertha. She does not look strong. I don’t know why I have not seen it before, but all at once I found out yesterday that she is really thin. She was always slight and even a little fragile, but now she is actually thin. One can see the little bones in her wrists and fingers. Her rings and her bracelets slip about quite loosely.”

“And talking of being thin, mother,” cried Jenny, who was a frank, bright sixteen-year-old, “look at cousin Ralph himself. He has little hollows in his cheeks, and his eyes are as much too big as Bertha’s. Is the sword wearing out the scabbard, Ralph? That is what they always say about geniuses, you know.”

“Ralph has not looked well for some time,” said Mrs. Trent. “As for Bertha, I think I shall scold her a little, and M. Villefort too. She has been living too exciting a life. She is out continually. She must stay at home more and rest. It is rest she needs.”

“If you tell Arthur that Bertha looks ill “--began Jenny.

Edmondstone turned toward her sharply. “Arthur!” he repeated. “Who is Arthur?”

Mrs. Trent answered with a comfortable laugh.

“It is M. Villefort’s name,” she said, “though none of us call him Arthur but Jenny. Jenny and he are great friends.”

“I like him better than any one else,” said Jenny stoutly. “And I wish to set a good example to Bertha, who never calls him anything but M. Villefort, which is absurd. Just as if they had been introduced to each other about a week ago.”

“I always hear him address her as Madame Villefort,” reflected Edmondstone, somewhat gloomily.

“Oh yes!” answered Jenny, “that is his French way of studying her fancies. He would consider it taking an unpardonable liberty to call her ‘Bertha,’ since she only favors him with ‘M. Villefort.’ I said to him only the other day, ‘Arthur, you are the oddest couple! You’re so grand and well-behaved, I cannot imagine you scolding Bertha a little, and I have never seen you kiss her since you were married.’ I was half frightened after I had said it. He started as if he had been shot, and turned as pale as death. I really felt as if I had done something frightfully improper.”

“The French are so different from the Americans,” said Mrs. Trent, “particularly those of M. Villefort’s class. They are beautifully punctilious, but I don’t call it quite comfortable, you know.”

Her mother was not the only person who noticed a change in Bertha Villefort. Before long it was a change so marked that all who saw her observed it. She had become painfully frail and slight. Her face looked too finely cut, her eyes had shadowy hollows under them, and were always bright with a feverish excitement.

“What is the matter with your wife?” demanded Madame de Castro of M. Villefort. Since their first meeting she had never loosened her hold upon the husband and wife, and had particularly cultivated Bertha.

There was no change in the expression of M. Villefort, but he was strangely pallid as he made his reply.

“It is impossible for me to explain, Madame.”

“She is absolutely attenuated,” cried Madame» “She is like a spirit. Take her to the country--to Normandy--to the sea--somewhere! She will die if there is not a change. At twenty, one should be as plump as a young capon.”

A few days after this, Jenny Trent ran in upon Bertha as she lay upon a lounge, holding an open book, but with closed eyes. She had come to spend the morning, she announced. She wanted to talk--about people, about her dress, about her first ball which was to come off shortly.

“And Arthur says”--she began.

Bertha turned her head almost as Edmondstone had done.

“Arthur!” she repeated. For the second time Jenny felt a little embarrassed.

“I mean M. Villefort,” she said, hesitantly.

She quite forgot what she had been going to say, and for a moment or so regarded the fire quite gravely. But naturally this could not last long. She soon began to talk again, and it was not many minutes before she found M. Villefort in her path once more.

“I never thought I could like a Frenchman so much,” she said, in all enthusiastic good faith. “At first, you know,” with an apologetic half laugh, “I wondered why you had not taken an American instead, when there were so many to choose from, but now I understand it. What beautiful tender things he can say, Bertha, and yet not seem in the least sentimental. Everything comes so simply right from the bottom of his heart. Just think what he said to me yesterday when he brought me those flowers. He helps me with mine, and it is odd how things will cheer up and grow for him, I said to him, ‘Arthur, how is it that no flower ever fails you?’ and he answered in the gentlest quiet way, ‘Perhaps because I never fail them. Flowers are like people,--one must love and be true to them, not only to-day and to-morrow, but every day--every hour--always.’ And he says such things so often. That is why I am so fond of him.”

As she received no reply, she turned toward the lounge. Bertha lay upon it motionless and silent,--only a large tear trembled on her cheek. Jenny sprung up, shocked and checked, and went to’ her.

“Oh, Bertha!” she cried, “how thoughtless I am to tire you so, you poor little soul! Is it true that you are so weak as all that? I heard mamma and Arthur talking about it, but I scarcely believed it. They said you must go to Normandy and be nursed.”

“I don’t want to go to Normandy,” said Bertha, “I--I am too tired. I only want to lie still and rest. I have been out too much.”

Her voice, however, was so softly weak that in the most natural manner Jenny was subdued into shedding a few tears also, and kissed her fervently.

“Oh, Bertha!” she said, “you must do anything--anything that will make you well--if it is only for Arthur’s sake. He loves you so--so terribly.”

Whereupon Bertha laughed a little hysterically. “Does he,” she said, “love me so ‘terribly’? Poor M. Villefort?”

She did not go to Normandy, however, and still went into society, though not as much as had been her habit. When she spent her evenings at home, some of her own family generally spent them with her, and M. Villefort or Edmondstone read aloud or talked.

In fact, Edmondstone came oftener than ever. His anxiety and unhappiness grew upon him, and made him moody, irritable, and morbid.

One night, when M. Villefort had left them alone together for a short time, he sprang from his chair and came to her couch, shaken with suppressed emotion.

“That man is killing you!” he exclaimed. “You are dying by inches! I cannot bear it!”

“It is not _he_ who is killing me,” she answered; and then M. Villefort returned to the room with the book he had been in search of.

In this case Edmondstone’s passion took new phases. He wrote no sonnets, painted no pictures. He neglected his work, and spent his idle hours in rambling here and there in a gloomy, unsociable fashion.

“He looks,” said M. Renard, “as if his soul had been playing him some evil trick.”

He had at first complained that Bertha had taken a capricious fancy to Madame de Castro, but in course of time he found his way to the old woman’s _salon_ too, though it must be confessed that Madame herself never showed him any great favor. But this he did not care for. He only cared to sit in the same room with Bertha, and watch her every movement with a miserable tenderness.

One night, after regarding him cynically for some time, Madame broke out to Bertha with small ceremony:--

“What a fool that young man is!” she exclaimed. “He sits and fairly devours you with his eyes. It is bad taste to show such an insane passion for a married woman.”

It seemed as if Bertha lost at once her breath and every drop of blood in her body, for she had neither breath nor color when she turned and looked Madame de Castro in the face.

“Madame,” she said, “if you repeat that to me, you will never see me again--never!”

Upon which Madame snapped her up with some anger at being so rebuked for her frankness.

“Then it is worse than I thought,” she said.

It was weeks before she saw her young friend again. Indeed, it required some clever diplomacy to heal the breach made, and even in her most amusing and affectionate moods, she often felt afterward that she was treated with a reserve which held her at arm’s length.

By the time the horse-chestnuts bloomed pink and white on the Avenue des Champs Élysées, there were few people in the Trent and Villefort circles who had not their opinions on the subject of Madame Villefort and her cousin.

There was a mixture of French and American gossip and comment, frank satire, or secret remark. But to her credit be it spoken, Madame de Castro held grim silence, and checked a rumor occasionally with such amiable ferocity as was not without its good effect.

The pink and white blossoms were already beginning to strew themselves at the feet of the pedestrians, when one morning M. Villefort presented himself to Madame, and discovered her sitting alone in the strangest of moods.

“I thought I might have the pleasure of driving home with Madame Villefort. My servant informed me that I should find her here.”

Madame de Castro pointed to a chair.

“Sit down,” she commanded.

M. Villefort obeyed her in some secret but well-concealed amazement. He saw that she was under the influence of some unusual excitement. Her false front was pushed fantastically away, her rouge and powder were rubbed off in patches, her face looked set and hard. Her first words were abominably blunt.

“M. Villefort,” she said, “do you know what your acquaintances call you?”

A deep red rose slowly to his face, but he did not answer.

“Do you know that you are designated by them by an absurd title--that they call you in ridicule ‘Le Monsieur de la petite Dame?’ Do you know that?”

His look was incomprehensible, but he bowed gravely.

“Madame,” he answered, “since others have heard the title so often, it is but natural that I myself should have heard it more than once.”

She regarded him in angry amazement. She was even roused to rapping upon the floor with her gold-headed cane.

“Does it not affect you?” she cried. “Does it not move you to indignation?”

“That, Madame,” he replied, “can only be my affair. My friends will allow me my emotions at least.”

Then she left her chair and began to walk up and down, striking the carpet hard with her cane at every step.

“You are a strange man,” she remarked.

Suddenly, however, when just on the point of starting upon a fresh tour, she wheeled about and addressed him sharply.

“I respect you,” she said; “and because I respect you, I will do you a good turn.”

She made no pretense at endeavoring to soften the blow she was about to bestow. She drew forth from her dress a letter, the mere sight of which seemed to goad her to a mysterious excitement.

“See,” she cried; “it was M. Ralph Edmondstone who wrote this,--it was to Madame Villefort it was written. It means ruin and dishonor. I offer it to you to read.”

M. Villefort rose and laid his hand upon his chair to steady himself.

“Madame,” he answered, “I will not touch it.”

She struck herself upon her withered breast.

“Behold me!” she said. “_Me!_ I am seventy years old! Good God! seventy! I am a bad old woman, and it is said I do not repent of my sins. I, too, have been a beautiful young girl. I, too, had my first lover. I, too, married a man who had not won my heart. It does not matter that the husband was worthy and the lover was not,--one learns that too late. My fate was what your wife’s will be if you will not sacrifice your pride and save her.”

“Pride!” he echoed in a bitter, hollow voice. “My pride, Madame!”

She went on without noticing him:--

“They have been here this morning--both of them. He followed her, as he always does. He had a desperate look which warned me. Afterward I found the note upon the floor. Now will you read it?”

“Good God!” he cried, as he fell into his chair again, his brow sinking into his hands.

“I have read it,” said Madame, with a tragic gesture, “and I choose to place one stumbling-block in the path that would lead her to an old age like mine. I do not like your Americans; but I have sometimes seen in her girl’s face a proud, heroic endurance of the misery she has brought upon herself, and it has moved me. And this let ter--you should read it, to see how such a man can plead. It is a passionate cry of despair--it is a poem in itself. I, myself, read it with sobs in my throat and tears in my eyes. ‘If you love me!--if you have ever loved me!’ he cries, ‘for God’s sake!--for love’s sake!--if there is love on earth--if there is a God in heaven, you will not let me implore you in vain!’ And his prayer is that she will leave Paris with him tonight--. to-night! There! Monsieur, I have done. Behold the letter! Take it or leave it, as you please.” And she flung it upon the floor at his feet.

She paused a moment, wondering what he would do.

He bent down and picked the letter up.

“I will take it,” he said.

All at once he had become calm, and when he rose and uttered his last words to her, there was upon his face a faint smile.

“I, too,” he said,--“I, too, Madame, suffer from a mad and hopeless passion, and thus can comprehend the bitterness of M. Edmondstone’s pangs. I, too, would implore in the name of love and God,--if I might, but I may not.” And so he took his departure.

Until evening Bertha did not see him. The afternoon she spent alone and in writing letters, and having completed and sealed the last, she went to her couch and tried to sleep. One entering the room, as she lay upon the violet cushions, her hands at her sides, her eyes closed, might well have been shocked. Her spotless pallor, the fine sharpness of her face, the shadows under her eyes, her motionlessness, would have excused the momentary feeling. But she was up and dressed for dinner when M. Villefort presented himself. Spring though it was, she was attired in a high, close dress of black velvet, and he found her almost cowering over the open fire-place. Strangely enough, too, she fancied that when she looked up at him she saw him shiver, as if he were struck with a slight chill also.

“You should not wear that,” he said, with a half smile at her gown.

“Why?” she asked.

“It makes you so white--so much like a too early lily. But--but perhaps you thought of going out?”

“No,” she answered; “not to-night.”

He came quite close to her.

“If you are not too greatly fatigued,” he said, “it would give me happiness to take you with me on my errand to your mother’s house. I must carry there my little birthday gift to your sister,” smiling again.

An expression of embarrassment showed itself upon her face.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “to think that I had forgotten it! She will feel as if I did not care for her at all.”

She seemed for the moment quite unhappy.

“Let me see what you have chosen.”

He drew from his pocket a case and opened it.

“Oh,” she cried, “how pretty and how suitable for a girl!”

They were the prettiest, most airy set of pearls imaginable.

She sat and looked at them for a few seconds thoughtfully, and then handed them back.

“You are very good, and Jenny will be in ecstasies,” she said.

“It is a happiness to me to give her pleasure,” he returned. “I feel great tenderness for her. She is not like the young girls I have known. Her innocence is of a frank and noble quality, which is better than ignorance. One could not bear that the slightest shadow of sin or pain should fall upon her. The atmosphere surrounding her is so bright with pure happiness and the courage of youth.”

Involuntarily he held out his hand.

“Will you”--he began. His voice fell and broke. “Will you go with me?” he ended.

He saw that she was troubled.

“Now?” she faltered.

“Yes--now.”

There was a peculiar pause,--a moment, as it seemed to him, of breathless silence. This silence she broke by her rising slowly from her seat.

“Yes,” she responded, “I will go. Why should I not?”

It was midnight when they left the Trents’, and Jenny stood upon the threshold, a bright figure in a setting of brightness, and kissed her hand to them as they went down the steps.

“I hope you will be better to-morrow, Arthur,” she said.

He turned quickly to look up at her.

“I?”

“Yes. You look so tired. I might say haggard, if it was polite.”

“It would not be polite,” said Bertha, “so don’t say it. Good-night, Jenny!”

But when they were seated in the carriage she glanced at her husband’s face.

“_Are_ you unwell?” she asked.

He passed his hand quickly across his forehead.

“A little fatigued,” he replied. “It is nothing. To-morrow--to-morrow it will be all over.”

And so silence fell upon them.

As they entered the drawing-room a clock chimed the half hour.

“So late as that!” exclaimed Bertha, and sank into a chair with a faint laugh. “Why, to-day is over,” she said. “It is to-morrow.”

M. Villefort had approached a side table. Upon it lay a peculiar-looking oblong box.

“Ah,” he said, softly, “they have arrived.”

“What are they?” Bertha asked.

He was bending over the box to open it, and did not turn toward her, as he replied:--

“It is a gift for a young friend of mine,--a brace of pistols. He has before him a long journey in the East, and he is young enough to have a fancy for firearms.”

He was still examining the weapons when Bertha crossed the room on her way up-stairs, and she paused an instant to look at them.

“They are very handsome,” she said. “One could almost wear them as ornaments.”

“But they would have too threatening a look,” he answered, lightly.

As he raised his eyes they met hers. She half started backward, moved by a new sense of the haggardness of his face.

“You _are_ ill!” she exclaimed. “You are as colorless as marble.”

“And you, too,” he returned, still with the same tender lightness. “Let us hope that our ‘to-morrow’ will find us both better, and you say it is tomorrow now. Good-night!”

She went away without saying more. Weary as she was, she knew there was no sleep for her, and after dismissing her maid, she threw herself upon the lounge before the bedroom fire and lay there. To-night she felt as if her life had reached its climax. She burst into a passion of tears.

“Jenny! Jenny!” she cried, “how I envy--how I envy you!”

The recollection of Jenny shining in her pretty gala dress, and delighting in her birthday presents, and everybody else’s pride and affection, filled her with a morbid misery and terror. She covered her face with her hands as she thought of it.

“Once,” she panted, “as I looked at her tonight, for a moment I almost hated her. Am I so bad as that?--am I?”

Scarcely two seconds afterward she had sprung to her feet and was standing by the side of her couch, her heart beating with a rapid throb of fright, her limbs trembling. A strange sound had fallen suddenly upon the perfect silence of the night--a sound loud, hard, and sharp--the report of a pistol! What dread seized her she knew not. She was across the room and had wrenched the door open in an instant, then with flying feet down the corridor and the staircase. But half-way down the stairs she began to cry out aloud, “Arthur! Arthur!” not conscious of her own voice--“Arthur, what is it?” The door of the drawing-room flew open before the fierce stroke of her palm.

M. Villefort stood where she had left him; but while his left hand supported his weight against the table, his right was thrust into his breast. One of the pistols lay at his feet.

She thought it was Death’s self that confronted her in his face, but he spoke to her, trying faintly to smile.

“Do not come in,” he said, “I have met with--an accident. It is nothing. Do not come in. A servant----”

His last recollection was of her white face and white draperies as he fell, and somehow, dizzy, sick, and faint as he was, he seemed to hear her calling out, in a voice strangely like Jenny’s, “Arthur! Arthur!”

In less than half an hour the whole house was astir. Upstairs physicians were with the wounded man, downstairs Mrs. Trent talked and wept over her daughter, after the manner of all good women. She was fairly terrified by Bertha’s strange shudderings, quick, strained breath, and dilated eyes. She felt as if she could not reach her--as if she hardly made herself heard.

“You must calm yourself, Bertha,” she would say. “Try to calm yourself. We must hope for the best. Oh, how could it have happened!”

It was in the midst of this that a servant entered with a letter, which he handed to his mistress. The envelope bore upon it nothing but her own name.

She looked at it with a bewildered expression.

“For me?” she said.

“It fell from Monsieur’s pocket as we carried him upstairs,” replied the man.

“Don’t mind it now, Bertha,” said her mother, “Ah, poor M. Villefort!”

But Bertha had opened it mechanically and was reading it

At first it seemed as if it must have been written in a language she did not understand; but after the first few sentences a change appeared. Her breath came and went more quickly than before--a kind of horror grew in her eyes. At the last she uttered a low, struggling cry. The paper was crushed in her hand, she cast one glance around the room as if in bewildering search for refuge, and flung herself upon her mother’s breast.

“Save me, mother!” she said. “Help me! If he dies now, I shall go mad!”

Afterward, in telling her story at home, good Mrs. Trent almost broke down.

“Oh, Jenny!” she said. “Just to think of the poor fellow’s having had it in his pocket then! Of course I did not see it, but one can fancy that it was something kind and tender,--perhaps some little surprise he had planned for her. It seemed as if she could not bear it.”

M. Villefort’s accident was the subject of discussion for many days. He had purchased a wonderful pair of pistols as a gift for a young friend. How it had happened that one had been loaded none knew; it was just possible that he had been seized with the whim to load it himself--at all events, it had gone off in his hands. An inch--nay, half an inch--to the right, and Madame Villefort, who flew downstairs at the sound of the report, would only have found a dead man at her feet.

“_Ma foi!_” said M. Renard, repressing his smile; “this is difficult for Monsieur, but it may leave ‘_la petite Dame_’ at liberty.”

Madame de Castro flew at him with flashing eyes.

“Silence!” she said, “if you would not have me strike you with my cane.” And she looked as if she were capable of doing it.

Upon his sick-bed M, Villefort was continually haunted by an apparition--an apparition of a white face and white draperies, such as he had seen as he fell. Sometimes it was here, sometimes there, sometimes near him, and sometimes indistinct and far away. Sometimes he called out to it and tried to extend his arms; again he lay and watched, it murmuring gentle words, and smiling mournfully.

Mrs. Trent and the doctor were in despair. Madame Villefort obstinately refused to be forced from her husband’s room. There were times when they thought she might sink and die there herself. She would not even leave it when they obliged her to sleep. Having been slight and frail from ill health before, she became absolutely attenuated. Soon all her beauty would be gone.