CHAPTER II.

Away from the hot, crowded city--away from the brilliantly lighted ball room. Away to a peaceful cottage before which rippled a lake, while round the trees whispered sorrowing peace through the livelong day.

Living at peace, but not happy. No, not for one moment happy. Always before her flitting in the air, the menacing fatal future, always treading on a flowery path resting on a volcano.

Again, want stepped in. These ladies always live up to the extent of their means; so, if money suddenly fails them, they are quite poor. Not actual want of bread, but want of luxuries, which are necessities to them. Besides, she had debts: and when she deserted her gay life in Paris, her creditors, who knew of her miserable health, noisily demanded payment. She kept all this from the man whom she had grown to honestly love. So first her carriage, then her diamonds, then her cashmeres went to appease the raging creditors, and pay their daily bills. The youth was poor, there was no income now. So they lived, and she staved off debts by the sale of the presents of old admirers.

A wretched life truly, and useful only as a warning.

He learnt at last the sacrifices she was making, and grew ashamed of himself. He had a small fortune of his own, and at least he was honorable enough to make preparations to throw it into the common vortex. He wrote to his lawyer, desiring him to dispose of his entire property; and a few days after, telling her he had important business in the city, and bidding her keep up her spirits, left the cottage, and came to Paris, meaning to carry his poor fortune back to her, and bid her place it in the common bank.

Gone. Marguerite sat dreaming of her past life and her present position: who, she asked herself, would have thought that she, the gayest of the gay, should ever love such a tranquillity as she now enjoyed--passing days as happy as hers could be wholly with one whom, but three months ago, she did not even know. She would sit for hours hearing him read, and wonder when those hours had fled. At times she doubted whether she was the same woman--pictured her other self, still living the old weary life. And--and then she perhaps hoped that, away there in the hot bustling city, they had forgotten her. She often pictured herself gorgeously attired, the brilliant center of a ball-room crowd, and then shuddering at the sight, she turned from it, and saw herself seated near this new lover in their boat upon the lake and quietly gliding on the peaceful moonlit waters. She asked herself, Who would take this to be Marguerite?

She sat thinking, thinking for a long time, and at last she had a glimpse of such a bright future that she feared she might never live to reach it. She would sell all she possessed, all that could remind her of the past, and then they would live quietly in a couple of little rooms, and live as honest as they might. This was the first break of light in her gloomy life. Nevertheless, a great storm was gathering about her. We set up our little plans, we poor mortals, and the wind passes by and blows them down as easily as a breath overthrows the houses of cards, that children build on winters’ evenings.

The lawyer had, with great prudence, warned the young man’s father of the proposed sale. Coming up to Paris, the old man learnt the whole dismal truth. Portions of it had filtered home, indeed, and had done harm there; terrible harm; but no idea had the father that his son actually proposed to ruin himself for this lost woman.

Duval, the father, immediately took steps to discover his son’s residence; and upon the very day that Armand left his quiet country house for Paris, the father turned his face towards it.

Marguerite was still dreaming--now hopefully--when a servant came and said that a gentleman wished to speak with her.

Given permission to enter, an old gentleman came in with a quick, haughty step, and suddenly announced himself as the youth’s father.

Trembling, she answered that his son was not in the house.

“I know that, but ’tis with _you_ I would speak. I presume that you know my son is degraded, and is ruining himself by remaining with you.”

“Pardon; I know that no one speaks of me, and that I have not ruined your son. I have received not one piece of money from him.”

“By which you mean to say that my son is fallen so low as to dissipate with you what you have received from others.”

“Pardon me again; I am a woman, and in my own house; two reasons which demand your courtesy, and--and you will allow me to--to leave you.”

“Truly, as I look upon and hear you, madame, I can hardly believe the scandals I have heard of you, you, who I have been told, are dangerous company.”

“Dangerous to myself, perhaps.”

“But this lawyer’s letter, does it not prove my poor son’s ruin? does it not show he is realizing all he is worth?”

She took the letter in her hand, and glanced hastily over its contents.

“I declare to you I know nothing of this act. I declare to you that your son knows I would refuse to take money from him.”

“You have not always spoken so.”

“I have not always been the woman that I am.”

The unfortunate creature then burst into an incoherent declaration of her passion for the youth, but the disbelieving gentleman merely shrugged his shoulders.

She added she knew the oaths of such as she were not believed, yet she could swear she knew nothing of Armand’s collecting his fortune into his own hands; but M. Duval, still being in doubt, she nervously took from a drawer a folded paper, and gave it into his hands.

It was a paper on which she had noted down what each of her valuables would probably realize; and, as her visitor had come without warning, he saw that she could not have prepared it in anticipation of his present visit. Then, believing her words were true, he began to show a courtesy to her which an hour before he would not have dreamed of using. Indeed, he expressed himself sorry that he had entered so abruptly, and told her that he thought, perhaps, she had a good heart after all. “And,” he added, “perhaps so good that it will prompt you to make a sacrifice greater than all you have yet made.”

She trembled violently; but strong in his duty, the old man went mercilessly on.

Gradually as he proceeded, the place grew dark around her; gradually all happiness drifted away, and she was left tossing about on a sea of troubles quite alone, with no guide, no hope.

He began by saying he had more than one child--he had a daughter, whose happiness rested on her brother’s will. She might be married, but on one condition--that her brother led an honest life. As Marguerite covered her mouth, that she might save herself from hearing her own cry of terror, he added, that away in the provinces, they looked more severely on sin than they did in large cities; and indeed he had that morning received a letter from the father of his daughter’s proposed husband, which peremptorily said that if Armand did not at once break off his connexion with Marguerite, all intercourse between the families must immediately cease. “See,” he continued, “refined as you may have become, even in my eyes, by your affection for my son, the world will only look on your past life, and will forever close its doors to you.”

She said she comprehended, and would obey him. She must leave his son for a time--only for a time? And he might write to her?

He required more--she must leave his son altogether--for good.

She said, “Never, never!” And with pardonable selfishness she cried, “that dying, as she was, having but a few years of life left she had built upon these few years for peace and love near the man who had reclaimed her. To leave him, it would kill her.”

“No, no my child, not kill you. Let us be calm and do not let us exaggerate. You take for a mortal disease that which is but the fatigue of a weary life; you will not die before that age when we are all prepared to die, I hope. I may seem severe, but consider that you have known my son but for three months, and I will believe that you love him; but shall your love supplant ours? Shall your love destroy a whole future, for in staying near my son, you do destroy _his_ future. And again, are you sure this love will last? Are you sure of yourself? And if now, a little later, you should dethrone him. And, pardon me--your past justifies the supposition. Again, can _he_ be sure of himself? Can you both, at your ages, be sure of yourselves--of your hearts. Consider this--he who loves you so now, but a little time gone by poured out his wealth of love on us at home. Hearts will change--does not a man love his wife more than he loves his parents? Then his children more than his wife? If nature gives prodigally, she extorts rigorously. I say, you may be deceiving yourselves, both of you. This is a probability. Now will you see realities--certainties, for you are listening to me, are you not?”

She answered him but with a look; a long, terrible, miserable look.

“You are willing to sacrifice all to my son, and what equal sacrifice can he offer to you? He shall bask in your best years, and later on, when he is sated--and satiety will come--what shall happen? If he be worldly, he will spread your past before you and leave you, saying, he does but as others have done. And if he be an honest man, he will marry you, or at least not desert you. And this marriage, or this life, not based on virtue, nor supported by religion, this life, pardonable, perhaps, in a young man, how shall it be named, when age is creeping on? For this man, for my son, what ambition dare he breathe, what path is open to him? What consolation shall this son then be to me--to me, who have watched and tended him for twenty years? Your love for each other--it is a passion, the most earthly and wholly human, it is born of the caprice of one, and the imagination of the other. Your love is a result, not a cause. What shall remain of it when you are both grown old and weary? Who assures you that the first wrinkle on your forehead shall not sweep the veil from his eyes? Who assures you his love shall not pass away with your youth.”

“OH, THE TRUTH, THE TRUTH?”

“Then yours would be double age, doubly desolate, and doubly useless. What retrospect would you have, what happiness to look back upon? Ah, Marguerite, there are cruel necessities in this life, against which we must fight, if we would not be dashed to death against them. You and my son have different roads in life; chance has thrown you together for a little while, but reason must separate you. In the life you have entered, you saw not the end, and to your three months’ happiness no more can be added. Keep the remembrance of this time, and let it strengthen you always. I speak harshly, but consider that I plead where I might command. It is a man of the world who speaks to you, a father who implores you. So, Marguerite, courage, and show you love my son truly, by leaving him to the care of those who have a family claim upon his obedience.”

“So--she who falls shall never rise.” (She was speaking lowly to herself.) “Heaven may pardon me, the world never. And truly, what right have I to a place in this honest family? I love! What reason! And what proofs can I give of this love? Who would believe them? What, poor girl--thou to speak of heart, and future--these are new words to thee. Look back on thy past, what man would call thee wife? What child would call thee mother?”

Then turning to her visitor, she said: “Nearly all you have said I have half asked myself--oh, how often, but never, never wholly. You are right, you speak kindly, and you are very merciful. Ah well, I will obey you, and one day you will say to the pure honest girl, your daughter--once there lived a poor erring woman who had but one hope in the world, and at the invocation of _thy_ name, this erring woman renounced that hope, laid her hands heavily upon her breast, and so died; for I shall die, I shall die. You say, ‘poor creature,’ you pity me, sir, and methinks you even weep. Ah well, I tell you I will obey you; command me.”

“Tell him that you love him no more.”

“He would not believe me.”

“Leave this place.”

“He would follow me. You hesitate? Sir, lay your hand upon my head as you would upon your daughter’s head. And now I promise you that in eight days he shall be with you, unhappy perhaps, but wholly cured, and I promise you that he shall know nothing of this visit; oh, fear nothing, he shall HATE me.”

Yet a little and the father was leaving the room. “And,” she murmured, “when all is ended, and I am dead, I pray you tell him how I loved, and proved my love. Good bye; we shall, perhaps, never see each other more. I pray you may be happy.”

Left to herself, she sat down, miserably, and wrote a letter which was to destroy his love for her. But it was still unfinished when he arrived. She hid the paper, and trembled.

After a time she walked quickly from the room, saying she should soon return.

* * * * *

And she was gone to return no more.

He waited as the night came on. Then, growing unaccountably frightened, called for lights. No one answered. Running from the room to the grounds, he shrieked out her name. No answer. He ran over the house; it was deserted. She and her servants had left the place, and it was silent, and lifeless.

And still, hoping against hope, he wandered about the house in search of his lost love.