Chapter 15
“They expected me,” he thought.
And he hesitated. Should he see Miss Brandon? But for what end? He was just turning away, when a sudden thought occurred to him. Why should he not talk with her, come to an understanding, and perhaps make a bargain with her?
“Show me to Miss Brandon’s room,” he said to the servant.
She sat, as she always did when left alone in the house, in the little boudoir, where Daniel had already once been carried by her. Dressed in a long dressing-wrapper of pale-blue cashmere, her hair scarcely taken up at all, she was reading, reclining on a sofa.
As the door opened, she raised herself carelessly a little, and, without turning around, asked,--
“Who is that?”
But, when the servant announced the name of M. Champcey, she rose with a bound, almost terrified, dropping the book which she had in her hand.
“You!” she murmured as soon as the servant had left. “Here, and of your own accord?”
Firmly resolved this time to remain master of his sensations, Daniel had stopped in the middle of the room, as stiff as a statue.
“Don’t you know, madam, what brings me here? All your combinations have succeeded admirably; you triumph, and we surrender.”
She looked at him in perfect amazement, stammering--
“I do not understand you. I do not know what you mean.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and continued in an icy tone,--
“Do me the honor to think that I am not altogether a fool. I have seen the letter which you have sent to the minister, signed with my name. I have held that masterpiece of forgery in my hand and know now how you free yourself of my presence!”
Miss Brandon interrupted him with an angry gesture,--
“Then it is really so! He has done it; he has dared do it!”
“Who is this he? M. Thomas Elgin, no doubt?”
“No, not he; another man.”
“Name him!”
She hesitated, hung her head, and then said with a great effort,--
“I knew they wished to separate us; and, without knowing precisely what means they would employ, I suspected them. And, when I came to you the other day, I wanted to say to you, ‘Have a care!’ and you, M. Champcey, you drove me from you.”
He looked upon her with such an ironical smile that she broke off, and cried,--
“Ah, he does not believe me! Tell me that you do not believe me!”
He bowed ceremoniously, and replied in his gravest manner,--
“I believe, Miss Brandon, that you desire to become Countess Ville- Handry; and you clear everything out of your path that can hinder you in your plans.”
She was about to answer; but he did not give her time, and continued,--
“Mark, I pray, that I make no charges. Come, let us play openly. You are too sensible and too practical to hate us--Miss Henrietta and myself--from gratuitous and purely platonic motives. You hate us because we are in your way. How are we in your way? Tell me; and, if you will promise to help us, we--Henrietta and I--pledge ourselves not to stand in your way.”
Miss Brandon looked as if she could not trust her ears.
“But, sir, this is a bargain, I should say, which you propose?”
“Yes, indeed! And, that there may be no misunderstanding, I will mention the precise terms: if you will swear to be kind to Henrietta during my absence, to protect her against violence on the part of her father, and never to force her to act contrary to her sentiments for me, I will give you, in return, my word that I shall give up to you, without dispute and without reserve, the whole immense fortune possessed by Count Ville-Handry.”
Succumbing to her grief, Miss Brandon seemed to be almost fainting; and big tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Have I not yet been humiliated sufficiently?” she said in a low voice. “Must you add shame to shame? Daniel, you think I am very mean.”
And, checking the sobs which impeded her words, she went on,--
“And yet I cannot blame you for it, I cannot. No, you are right! Every thing is against me; every thing bears witness against me. Yes, I must appear a very wicked girl in your eyes. If you knew the truth, however, Daniel--if I could, if I dared, tell you all!”
She drew nearer to him, all trembling; and then continued in a still lower tone of voice, as if she feared to be overheard,--
“Do you not understand yet that I am no longer my own? Unfortunate as I am, they have taken me, bound me, fettered me. I have no longer the right to have a will of my own. If they say, ‘Do this!’ I must needs do it. What a life I lead! Great God! Ah, if you had been willing, Daniel! If you were willing even now!”
She became excited almost to exaltation; her eyes, moist with tears, shone with matchless splendor; passing blushes colored her face; and her voice had strange, weird vibrations.
Was she forgetting herself? Was she really about to betray her secret? or was she merely inventing a new falsehood? Why should he not let her go on?
“That is no answer, Miss Brandon,” at last said Daniel. “Will you promise me to protect Henrietta?”
“Do you really love her so dearly, your Henrietta?”
“Better than life!”
Miss Brandon turned as white as the lace on her dress; a flash of indignation shot through her eyes; and, drying her tears, she said curtly,--
“Oh!”
Then Daniel replied,--
“You will give me no answer, madam?”
And, as she persisted in her silence, he resumed,--
“Very well, then, I understand. You declare open war. Be it so! Only listen to me carefully. I am setting out on a dangerous expedition, and you hope I shall never return. Undeceive yourself, Miss Brandon; I shall return. With a passion like mine, with so much love in one’s heart, and so much hatred, a man can defy every thing. The murderous climate will not touch me; and, if I had ten rifle-balls in my body, I should still have the strength to return, and hold you to an account for what you have done to Henrietta. And if you have touched a hair on her head, if you have made her shed a single tear, by all that is holy, it will bring ill luck to you, and ill luck to others!”
He was going to leave her, when a thought struck him.
“I ought to tell you, moreover,” he added, “that I leave a faithful friend behind me; and, if the count or his daughter should die very suddenly, the coroner will be informed. And now, madam, farewell--or, rather, till we meet again!”
At eight o’clock on the evening of the next day, after having left in M. de Brevan’s hands a long letter for Henrietta, and after having given him his last instructions, Daniel took his seat in the train which was to take him to his new post.
XIII.
It was a week after Daniel’s departure, a Wednesday, and about half- past eleven o’clock.
Some thirty carriages, the most elegant, by all means, that Paris could boast of, were standing alongside of the Church of St. Clothilda. In the pretty little square before the building, some hundred and fifty or two hundred idlers were waiting with open mouths. The passers-by, noticing the crowd, went up and asked,--
“What is going on?”
“A wedding,” was the answer.
“And a grand wedding, apparently.”
“Why, the grandest thing you ever saw. It is a nobleman, and an immensely rich one, who is going to be married,--Count Ville-Handry. He marries an American lady. They have been in the church now for some time, and they will soon come out again.”
Under the porch a dozen men, in the orthodox black costume, with yellow kid gloves, and white cravats showing under their overcoats, evidently men belonging to the wedding-party, were chatting merrily while they were waiting for the end of the ceremony. If they were amused, they hardly showed it; for some made an effort to hide their yawning, while others kept up a broken conversation, when a small _coupe_ drove up, and stopped at the gate.
“Gentlemen,” said a young man, “I announce M. de Brevan.”
It was he really.
He stepped leisurely out of his carriage, and came up in his usual phlegmatic manner. He knew the majority, perhaps, of the young men in the crowd; and so he commenced at once shaking hands all around, and then said in an easy tone of voice,--
“Who has seen the bride?”
“I!” replied an old beau, whose perpetual smile displayed all the thirty-two teeth he owed to the dentist.
“Well, what do you think of her?”
“She is always sublime in her beauty, my dear. When she walked up the aisle to kneel down at the altar, a murmur of admiration followed her all the way. Upon my word of honor, I thought they would applaud.”
This was too much enthusiasm. M. de Brevan cut it short, asking,--
“And Count Ville-Handry?”
“Upon my word,” replied the old beau ironically, “the good count can boast of a valet who knows almost as much as Rachel, the famous English enameller. At a little distance you would have sworn that he was sixteen years old, and that he was going, not to be married, but to be confirmed.”
“And how did he look?”
“Restless, I think.”
“He might well be,” observed a stout, elderly gentleman, who was said not to be very happily married.
Everybody laughed; but a very young man, a mere youth, who did not catch the joke, said,--
“Why so?”
A man of about thirty years, a perfect model of elegance, whom the others called, according to the degree of intimacy which they could claim, either “Your Grace,” or “Duke” simply replied,--
“Because, my dear viscount, Miss Brandon is one of those ladies who never are married. They are courted; they are worshipped; they make us commit a thousand follies for their sakes; they allow us to ruin ourselves, and, finally, to blow our brains out for them, all right! But to bear our name, never!”
“It is true,” said Brevan, “that they tell a number of stories about her; but it is all gossip. However”--
“You certainly would not ask,” replied the duke, “that I should prove her to have been brought before a police-court, or to have escaped from the penitentiary?”
And, without permitting himself to be interrupted, he went on,--
“Good society in France, they say, is very exclusive. It does not deserve that reputation. Except, perhaps, a score of houses, where old traditions are still preserved, all other houses are wide open to the first-comer, man or woman, who drives up in a carriage. And the number of such first-comers is prodigiously large. Where do they come from? No one knows. From Russia, from Turkey, from America, from Hungary, from very far, from everywhere, from below, I do not count the impudent fellows who are still muddy from the gutter in which they have been lying. How do all these people live? That is a mystery. But they do live, and they live well. They have, or at least seem to have, money; and they shine, they intrigue, they conspire, they make believe, and they extort. So that I verily believe all this high-life society, by dint of helping one another, of pushing and crowding in, will, in the end, be master of all. You may say that I am not in the crowd. Very true. I willingly shake hands with the workmen who work for me, and who earn their living worthily; but I do not shake hands with these ambiguous personages in yellow kids, who have no title but their impudence, and no means of living but their underhand intrigues.”
He addressed himself apparently to no one, following, with his absent- minded glance, the crowd in the garden; and yet, by his peculiar manner, you would have known that he was speaking at some one among the listeners.
However, it was evident that he had no success, and that his doctrine seemed to be utterly out of season, and almost ridiculous. A young man with a delicate black mustache, and extremely well dressed, even turned to his neighbor, and asked,--
“Who is our friend, the preacher?”
“What! don’t you know him?” replied the other.
“That is the Duke of Champdoce, you know, who has married a princess of Mussidan. Quite an original.”
M. de Brevan, however, had remained perfectly impassive, and now said,--
“At all events, I suppose it was not altogether a question of interest which made Miss Brandon marry the count.”
“Why not?”
“Because she is immensely rich.”
“Pshaw!”
An old gentleman came up, and said,--
“She must needs be perfectly disinterested; for I have it from the count himself that none of the property is to be settled upon Miss Brandon.”
“That certainly is marvellously disinterested.”
Having said what he meant to say, the duke had entered the church; and the old beau now took the word.
“The only thing that is clear to me in this matter is, that I think I know the person whom this wedding will not please particularly.”
“Whom do you mean?”
“Count Ville-Handry’s daughter, a young girl, eighteen years old, and wondrously pretty. Just imagine! Besides, I have looked for her all over the church, and she is not there.”
“She is not present at the wedding,” replied the old gentleman, the friend of Count Ville-Handry, “because she was suddenly taken ill.”
“So they say,” interposed the young man; “but the fact is, that a friend of mine has just seen her driving out in her carriage in full dress.”
“That can hardly be so.”
“My friend was positive. She intended this pretty piece of scandal as a wedding-present for her stepmother.”
M. de Brevan shrugged his shoulders, and said in an undertone,--
“Upon my word, I should not like to stand in the count’s shoes.”
As a faithful echo of the gossip that was going on in society, this conversation, carried on in broken sentences, under the porch of St. Clothilda, made it quite clear that public opinion was decidedly in favor of Miss Brandon. It would have been surprising if it should have been otherwise. She triumphed; and the world is always on the side of the victor. That Duke of Champdoce, an original, was the only one there who was disposed to remember the past; the others had forgotten it. The brilliancy of her success was even reflected on those who belonged to her; and a young man who copied to exaggeration English fashions was just singing the praises of M. Thomas Elgin and Mrs. Brian, when a great commotion was noticed under the porch.
People came out, and said,--
“It is all over. The wedding-guests are in the vestry now to sign their names.”
The conversation stopped at once. The old beau alone exclaimed,--
“Gentlemen, if we wish to present our respects to the newly-married couple, we must make haste.”
And with these words he hurried into the church, followed by all the others, and soon reached the vestry, which was too small to hold all the guests invited by Count Ville-Handry. The parish register had been placed upon a small table; and every one approached, as his turn came, taking off his gloves before seizing the pen. Fronting the door, and leaning against one of the cupboards in which the holy vessels are kept, stood Miss Brandon, now Countess Ville-Handry, having at her side grim Mrs. Brian, and tall, stiff M. Elgin.
Her admirers had exaggerated nothing. In her white bridal costume she looked amazingly beautiful; and her whole person exhaled a perfume of innocence and ingenuous purity.
She was surrounded by eight or ten young persons, who overwhelmed her with congratulations and compliments. She replied with a slightly tremulous voice, and casting down her eyes with the long, silky eyelashes. Count Ville-Handry stood in the centre of the room, swelling with almost comic happiness; and at every moment, in replying to his friends, used the words, “My wife,” like a sweet morsel which he rolled on his tongue.
Still a careful observer might have noticed underneath his victorious airs a trace of almost painful restraint. From time to time his face darkened as one of those unlucky, awkward people, who turn up everywhere, asked him,--
“I hope Miss Henrietta is not complaining much? How very sorry she must be to be detained at home!”
It is true, that, among these unlucky ones, there were not a few malicious ones. Nobody was ignorant that something unpleasant had happened in the count’s family. They had suspected something from the beginning of the ceremony.
For the count had hardly knelt down by Miss Brandon’s side, on a velvet cushion, when a servant wearing his livery had come up, and whispered a few words in his ear. The guests who were nearest had seen him turn pale, and utter an expression of furious rage.
What had the servant told him?
It became soon known, thanks to the Countess Bois, who went about telling everybody with inexhaustible volubility, that she had just met Miss Ville-Handry in the street.
When the last name had been signed, nobody was, therefore, surprised at seeing Count Ville-Handry give his arm to his wife, and hand her hurriedly to her carriage,--a magnificent state-carriage. He had invited some twenty people, former friends of his, to a great wedding- breakfast; but he seemed to have forgotten them. And once in his carriage, alone with Mrs. Brian, M. Elgin, and the young countess, he broke forth in incoherent imprecations and absurd threatenings.
When they reached the palace, he did not wait for the coachman to drive as usually around the yard, but jumped out, and, rushing up to the vestibule, cried out,--
“Ernest! send Ernest here!”
Ernest was his own valet, the clever artist to whom he was indebted for the roses of his complexion. As soon as he appeared, he asked,--
“Where is the young lady?”
“Gone out.”
“When?”
“Immediately after you, sir.”
The young countess, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin, had, in the meantime, come up, and gone into the room in the lower story, where this scene took place.
“Do you hear that?” he asked them.
Then, turning again to the valet, he asked,--
“How did it happen?”
“Very naturally. The gates had not been closed behind your carriage, sir, when the young lady rang the bell. They went up to see what she wanted, and she ordered the landau to be brought round. She was told very respectfully, that all three coachmen were out, and that there was no one there to drive her. ‘If that be so,’ she answered, ‘I want you to run and get me a hired carriage.’ And, when the servant to whom she gave the order hesitated, she added, ‘If you do not go instantly, I shall go myself.’”
The count trembled with rage.
“And then?” he asked, seeing that the man was hesitating.
“Then the servant was frightened, and did what she wanted.”
“He is dismissed, the fool!” exclaimed Count Ville-Handry.
“But allow me to _say_,” commenced Ernest.
“No! Let his wages be paid. And you go on.”
Without showing any embarrassment, the valet shrugged his shoulders, and continued in a lazy tone,--
“Then the hack came into the court-yard; and we saw the young lady come down in a splendid toilet, such as we have never seen her wear before,--not pretty exactly, but so conspicuous, that it must have attracted everybody’s attention. She settled herself coolly on the cushions, while we looked at her, utterly amazed; and, when she was ready, she said, ‘Ernest, you will tell my father that I shall not be back for breakfast. I have a good many visits to make; and, as the weather is fine, I shall afterwards go to the Bois de Boulogne.’ Thereupon the gates were opened, and off they went. It was then that I took the liberty to send you word, sir.”
In all his life Count Ville-Handry had not been so furious. The veins in his neck began to swell; and his eyes became bloodshot, as if he had been threatened with a fit of apoplexy.
“You ought to have kept her from going out,” he said hoarsely. “Why did you not prevent her? You ought to have made her go back to her room, use force if necessary, lock her up, bind her.”
“You had given no orders, sir.”
“You ought to have required no orders to do your duty. To let a mad woman run about! an impudent girl whom I caught the other day in the garden with a man!”
He cried out so loud, that his voice was heard in the adjoining room, where the invited guests were beginning to assemble. The unhappy man! He disgraced his own child. The young countess at once came up to him and said,--
“I beseech you, my dear friend, be calm!”
“No, this must end; and I mean to punish the wicked girl.”
“I beseech you, my dear count, do not destroy the happiness of the first day of our married life. Henrietta is only a child; she did not know what she was doing.”
Mrs. Brian was not of the same opinion. She declared,--
“The count is right. The conduct of this young lady is perfectly shocking.”
Then Sir Thorn interrupted her, saying,--
“Ah, ah! Brian, where is our bargain? Was it not understood that we would have nothing to do with the count’s private affairs?”
Thus every one took up at once his assigned part. The countess advocated forbearance; Mrs. Brian advised discipline; and Sir Thorn was in favor of silent impartiality.
Besides, they easily succeeded in calming the count. But, after such a scene, the wedding breakfast could not be very merry. The guests, who had heard nearly all, exchanged strange looks with each other.
“The count’s daughter,” they thought, “and a lover? That can hardly be!”
In vain did the count try to look indifferent; in vain did the young countess display all her rare gifts. Everybody was embarrassed; nobody could summon up a smile; and every five minutes the conversation gave out. At half-past four o’clock, the last guest had escaped, and the count remained alone with his new family. It was growing dark, and they were bringing in the lamps, when the rolling of carriage-wheels was heard on the sand in the court-yard. The count rose, turning pale.
“Here she comes!” he said. “Here is my daughter!”
It was Henrietta.
How could a young girl, usually so reserved, and naturally so timid, make up her mind to cause such scandal? Because the most timid people are precisely the boldest on certain occasions. Forced to abandon their nature, they do not reason, and do not calculate, and, losing all self-possession, rush blindly into danger, impelled by a kind of madness resembling that of sheep when they knock their heads against the walls of their stable.
Now, for nearly a fortnight, the count’s daughter had been upset by so many and so violent emotions, that she was no longer herself. The insults which her father heaped upon her when he surprised her with Daniel had unsettled her mind completely.
For Count Ville-Handry, acting under a kind of overexcitement, had that day lost all self-control, and forgot himself so far as to treat his daughter as no gentleman would have treated his child while in his senses, and that in the presence of his servants!
And then, what tortures she had had to endure in the week that followed! She had declared that she would not be present at the reading of the marriage-contract, nor at the ceremonies of the civil marriage, nor at church; and her father had tried to make her change her intentions. Hence every day a new lamentable scene, as the decisive moment drew nearer.
If the count had at least used a little discretion, if he had tried the powers of persuasion, or sought to touch his daughter’s heart by speaking to her of herself, of her future, of her happiness, of her peace!
But no! He never came to her room without a new insult, thinking of nothing, as he acknowledged himself, but of sparing Miss Brandon’s feelings, and of saving her all annoyance. The consequence was, that his threats, so far from moving Henrietta, had only served to strengthen her in her determination.
The marriage-contract had been read and signed at six o’clock, just before a grand dinner. At half-past five, the count had once more come to his daughter’s room. Without telling her any thing of it, he had ordered her dressmaker to send her several magnificent dresses; and they were lying about now, spread out upon chairs.
“Dress yourself,” he said in a tone of command, “and come down!”
She, the victim of that kind of nervous exaltation which makes martyrdom appear preferable to yielding, replied obstinately,--
“No, I shall not come down.”
She did not care for any subterfuge or excuse; she did not even pretend to be unwell; she said resolutely--
“I will not!”