Chapter 25

“It was especially brought into notice that the noble count’s personal fortune was nearly equal to the whole capital of the new company,--ten millions. Hence he was risking his own money rather than the money of others.

“It is now a year since these dazzling promises were made. What remains of them all? Shares, worth five dollars yesterday, worth, perhaps, nothing at all to-morrow, and a more than doubtful capital.

“Who could have expected in our day a new edition of Law’s Mississippi Scheme?”

The paper fell from the hands of the poor girl. She had turned as pale as death, and was staggering so, that Papa Ravinet’s sister took her in her arms to support her.

“Horrible,” she murmured; “this is horrible!” Still she had not yet read all. The old man picked up the paper, and read from another article, below the lines which carried poison in every word, the following comments:--

“Two delegates of the stockholders of the Pennsylvania Petroleum Company were to sail this morning from Brest for New York.

“These gentlemen have been sent out by their fellow-sufferers to examine the lands on which the oil-wells are situated which constitute the only security of the shareholders. Certain people have gone so far as to doubt even the existence of such oil-wells.”

And in another place, under the head of local items:--

“The palace of Count Ville-Handry was sold last week. This magnificent building, with the princely real estate belonging to it, was knocked down to the highest bidder for the sum of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. The misfortune is, that house and lot are burdened with mortgages, which amount together to nearly a hundred thousand dollars.”

Henrietta was overcome, and had sunk into a chair.

“But that is simply infamous,” she stammered out in an almost inaudible tone. “Nobody will believe such atrocious libels.”

Pale and deeply grieved, Papa Ravinet and his sister exchanged looks of distress. Evidently the poor girl did not at all realize the terrible nature of the circumstances. And yet, seeing her thus crushed, they did not dare to enlighten her. At last the old dealer, knowing but too well that uncertainty is more agonizing than the most painful reality, said,--

“Your father is fearfully calumniated. But I have tried to inform myself. Two facts are but too certain. Count Ville-Handry is ruined; and the shares of the company of which he is the president have fallen to five dollars, because”--

His voice changed, and he added in a very low tone,--

“Because it is believed that the capital of the company has been appropriated to other purposes, and lost in speculations on ‘Change.”

The poor old dealer was suffering intensely, and showed it.

“Ah, madam, perfectly as I am convinced of Count Ville-Handry’s uprightness and integrity, I also know that he was utterly ignorant of business. What did he understand of these speculations into which he was drawn? Nothing. It is a difficult and often a dangerous thing to manage large capitals. They have no doubt deceived him, cheated him, misled him, and driven him at last to the verge of bankruptcy.”

“Who?”

Papa Ravinet trembled on his chair, and, raising his hands to the ceiling, exclaimed,--

“Who? You ask who? Why, those who had an interest in it, the wretches by whom he was surrounded,--Sarah, Sir Thorn”--

Henrietta shook her head and said,--

“_I_ do not think the Countess Sarah looked with a favorable eye upon the formation of this company.”

And, when objection was made, she went on,--

“Besides, what interest could she have in ruining my father? Evidently none. To ruin him was to ruin herself, since she was absolute mistress of her fortune, and free to dispose of it as she chose.”

Proud of the accuracy of her decision, she was looking triumphantly at the old dealer. The latter saw now that he must strike a decisive blow; and his sister encouraged him by a gesture. He said,--

“Pray, listen to me, madam. So far I have only repeated to you the report on ‘Change. I told you: They say the capital of the Pennsylvania Petroleum _Company_ has been swallowed up by unlucky speculations on ‘Change. But I do not believe these reports. I am, on the contrary, convinced, I am quite sure even, that these millions were not lost on ‘Change, because they never were used for the purpose of speculating.”

“Still”--

“Still they have disappeared, none the less; and your father is probably the last man in the world to tell us how and where they have disappeared. But I know it; and, when the question is raised how to recover these enormous sums, I shall cry out, ‘Search Sarah Brandon, Countess Ville-Handry; search M. Thomas Elgin and Mrs. Brian; search Maxime de Brevan,’ the wretched tool of these wicked women!”

Now at last a terrible light broke upon Henrietta’s mind.

“Then,” she stammered, “these infamous slanders are only put out to conceal an impudent robbery?”

“Yes.”

The young girl’s face showed that she was making a great effort to comprehend; and then she said again,--

“And in that case, the articles in the papers”--

“Were written by the wretches who have robbed your father, yes, madam!” And, shaking his fist with a threatening air, he added,--

“Oh! there is no mistaking it. Since when does this journal exist? Since about six months ago. From the day on which it was established, it was the aim and purpose of the founders to publish in it the articles which you haven’t read.”

Even if she could not well understand by what ingenious combinations such enormous sums could be abstracted, Henrietta was conquered by Papa Ravinet’s sincere and earnest conviction.

“Then,” she went on, “these wretches who have robbed my father now mean to ruin him!”

“They must do it for their own safety. The money has been stolen, you see; therefore there must be a thief. For the world, for the courts, the guilty one will be Count Ville-Handry.”

“For the courts?”

“Alas, yes!”

The poor girl’s eyes went from the brother to the sister with a terrible expression of bewilderment. At last she asked,--

“And do you believe Sarah will allow my father’s name to be thus dishonored,--the name which she bears, and of which she was so proud?”

“She will, perhaps, even insist upon it.”

“Great God! What do you mean? Why should she?”

Seeing her brother’s hesitation, the old lady took it upon herself to answer. She touched the poor girl’s arm, and said in a subdued voice,--

“Because, you see, my poor child, now that Sarah has gotten possession of the fortune she wanted, your father is in her way; because, you see, she wants to be free--do you understand?--free!”

Henrietta uttered a cry of such horror that both the brother and the sister saw at once that she had not misunderstood the horrible meaning of that word “free.”

But, since the blow had fallen, the old dealer did not think the rest need be concealed from Henrietta. He got up, therefore, and, leaning against the mantlepiece, he addressed the poor girl, trembling in all her limbs with terror, and looking at him with a fixed and painful gaze, in these words,--

“You must at last learn to know, madam, the execrable woman who has sworn to ruin you. You see, I know, because I have experienced it myself, of what crimes she is capable; and I see clear in the dark night of her infernal intrigues. I know that this woman with the chaste brow, the open smile, and the soft eyes, has the genius and the instinct of a murderess, and has never counted upon any thing else, but murder for the gratification of her lusts.”

The attitude of the old man, who raised his head on high while his breast swelled, breathed in every one of his sharp and threatening gestures an intense thirst of vengeance. He no longer measured his words carefully; and they overflowed from his lips as they came boiling up under the pressure of his rage.

“Anthony!” said the old lady more than once,--“Anthony, brother! I beseech you!”

But this friendly voice, ordinarily all-powerful, was not even heard by him now. He went on,--

“And now, madam, must I still explain to you the simple and yet formidable plan by which Sarah Brandon has succeeded in obtaining by one effort the immense fortune of the Ville-Handry family? From the first day, she has seen that you were standing between her and those millions; therefore she attacked you first of all. A brave and honest man, M. Daniel Champcey, loved you; he would have protected you; therefore she got him out of the way. The world might have become interested in you, might have taken your side; she beguiled your father, in his blind passion, to calumniate you, to ruin your reputation, and to expose you to the contempt of the world. Still you might have wished to secure a protector, you might have found one. She placed by your side her wretched tool, her spy, a forger, a criminal whom she knew to be able of doing things from which even an accomplished galley-slave would have shrunk with disgust and horror: I mean Maxime de Brevan.”

The very excess, of eruption had restored a part of her energy to Henrietta. She said, therefore,--

“Alas, _sir_! have I not told you, on, the contrary, that Daniel himself had confided me to the care of M. de Brevan? Have I not told you”--

The old dealer smiled almost contemptuously, and then continued,--

“What does that prove? Nothing but the skill of M. de Brevan in carrying out Sarah Brandon’s orders. In order to get the more completely the mastery over you, he began by obtaining the mastery over M. Champcey. How he succeeded in doing this, I do not know. But we shall know it when we want to know it; for we are going to find out every thing. Thus Sarah was, through M. de Brevan, kept informed of all your thoughts, of all your hopes, of _every_ word you wrote to M. Champcey, and of all he said in reply; for you need not doubt he did answer, and they suppressed the letters, just as they, very probably, intercepted all of your letters which you did not yourself carry to the post-office. Still, as long as you were living under your father’s roof, Sarah could do nothing against your life. She resolved, therefore, to force you to flee; and those mean persecutions of M. Elgin served their purpose. You thought, and perhaps, they think, that bandit really wanted your hand. Undeceive yourself. Your enemies knew your character too well to hope that you would ever break your word, and become faithless to M. Champcey. But they were bent upon handing you over to M. de Brevan. And thus, poor child! you were handed over to him. Maxime had as little idea of marrying you as Sir Thomas; he was quite prepared, when he dared to approach you with open arms, to be rejected with disgust. But he had received orders to add the horror of his persecutions to the horror of your isolation and your destitution.

“For he was quite sure, the scoundrel! that the secret of your sufferings would be well kept. He had carefully chosen the house in which you were to die of hunger and misery. The two Chevassats were bound to be his devoted accomplices, even unto death. This is what gave him the amazing boldness, the inconceivable brutality, to watch your slow agony; no doubt he became quite impatient at your delaying suicide so long.

“Finally you were driven to it; and your death would have realized their atrocious hopes, if Providence had not miraculously stepped in,--that Providence which always, sooner or later, takes its revenge, whatever the wicked may say to the contrary. Yes, these wretches thought they had now surely gotten rid of you, when I came in. That very morning, the woman Chevassat had told them, no doubt, ‘She’ll do it to-night!’ And that evening, Sarah, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin asked, no doubt, full of hope, ‘Is it all over?’”

Immovable, and white as marble, her eyes dilated beyond measure, and her lips half-open, poor Henrietta listened. She felt as if a bright ray of the sun had suddenly illumined the darkest depths of the abyss from which she had been barely snatched.

“Yes,” she said, “yes; now I see it all.”

Then, as the old dealer, out of breath, and his voice hoarse with indignation, paused a moment, she asked,--

“Still there is one circumstance which I cannot understand: Sarah insists upon it that she knew nothing of the forged letter by means of which Daniel was sent abroad. She told me, on the contrary, that she had wished to keep him here, because she loved him, and he loved her.”

“Ah! do not believe a word of those infamous stories,” broke in Papa Ravinet’s sister.

But the old man scratched his head, and said,--

“No, certainly not! We ought not to believe such stories. And yet, I wonder if there is not some new trick in that. Unless, indeed--But no, that would be almost too lucky for us! Unless Sarah should really love M. Champcey!”

And, as if he was afraid of having given rise to hopes which he founded upon this contingency, he added at once,--

“But let us return to facts. When Sarah was sure of you, she turned her attention to your father. While they were murdering you slowly, she abused the inexperience of Count Ville-Handry to lead him into a path at the end of which he could not but leave his honor behind him. Notice, pray, that the articles which you read are dated on the very day on which you would probably have died. That is a clear evidence of her crime. Thinking that she had gotten rid of you, she evidently said to herself, ‘And now for the father.’”

Henrietta grew red in her face, as if a jet of fire had blazed up in it. She exclaimed,--

“Great God! The proofs are coming out; the crime will be disclosed. I have no doubt the assassins told each other that Count Ville-Handry would never survive such a foul stain on his honor. And they dared all, sure as they were that that honorable man would carry the secret of their wickedness and of their unheard-of robbery with him to the grave.”

Papa Ravinet leisurely wiped the perspiration from his brow. Then he replied in a hoarse voice,--

“Yes, that was probably, that was assuredly, the way Sarah Brandon reasoned within herself.”

But Henrietta, full of admirable energy, had roused herself; and, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes, she said to him,--

“What! you knew all this? You knew that they were assassinating my father, and you did not warn him? Ah, that was cruel cautiousness!”

And quick like lightning she dashed forward, and would have rushed out, if the old lady had not promptly stepped in front of the door, saying,--

“Henrietta, poor child! where are you going?”

“To save my father, madam, who, perhaps at this very moment is struggling in the last agonies of death, as I was struggling in like manner only two nights ago.”

Quite beside herself, she had clasped the knob of the door in her hands, and tried with all the strength she still possessed to move the old lady out of the way. But Papa Ravinet seized her by the arm, and said to her solemnly,--

“Madam, I swear to you by all you hold sacred, and my sister will swear to you in like manner, that your father’s life is in no kind of danger.”

She gave up the struggle; but her face bore the expression of the most harassing anxiety. The old man continued,--

“Do you wish to defeat our triumph? Would you like to give warning to our enemies, to put _them_ on their guard, and to deprive us of all hopes of revenge?”

Henrietta almost mechanically passed her hand to and fro across her brow, as if she hoped she could thus restore peace to her mind.

“And mind,” continued the old man with a persuasive voice, “mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon’s? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father’s faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, and murmuring with his last breath words of supreme love for her who kills him.”

These arguments were so overwhelming, that Henrietta let go the door- knob, and slowly went back to her seat by the fire. And yet she was far from being reassured.

“If I were to appeal to the police,” she suddenly proposed.

The old lady had come and taken a seat by Henrietta’s side. She took her hands in her own now, and said, gently,--

“Poor child! Do you not see that the whole power of this abominable creature lies in the fact that she employs means which are not within the reach of human justice. Believe me, my child, it is best for you to rely blindly on my brother.”

Once more the old dealer had come up to the mantlepiece. He repeated,--

“Yes, Miss Henrietta, rely on me. I have as much reason to curse Sarah Brandon as you have, and perhaps I hate her more. Rely on me; for my hatred has now been watching and waiting for years, ever anxious to reach her, and to avenge my sufferings. Yes, for long years I have been lying in wait, thirsting for vengeance, lost in darkness, but pursuing her tracks with the unwearied perseverance of the Indian. For the purpose of finding out who she is, and who her accomplices are, whence they came, and how they have met to plot together such fearful crimes,--for that purpose I have walked in the deepest mud, and stirred up heaps of infamy. But I have found out all. And yet in the whole life of Sarah Brandon,--a life of theft and murder,--I have till this moment not found a single fact which would bring her within the reach of the law, so cunning is her wickedness.”

His face brightened with an air of triumph; and his voice rose high as he added,--

“But now! This time success seemed to her so sure and so easy, that she has neglected her usual precautions. Eager to enjoy her millions, and, in proportion, weary of playing a comedy of love with your father, she has been too eager. And she is lost if we, on our side, are not also too eager.

“As to your father, madam, I have my reasons for feeling safe about him. According to your mother’s marriage contract, and in consequence of a bequest of a million and a half which were left her by one of her uncles, your father’s estate is your debtor to the amount of two millions; and that sum is invested in mortgages on his estates in Anjou. That sum he cannot touch, even if he is bankrupt. Should he die before you, that sum remains still yours; but, if you die before him, it goes to him. Now Sarah has sworn, in her insatiate cupidity, that she will have these two millions also.”

“Ah,” said Henrietta, “you are right! It is Sarah’s interest that my father should live; and he will live, therefore, as long as she does not know whether I am dead or alive, in fact, as long as she does not know what has become of me.”

“And she must not know that for some time,” chimed in the old man.

Then laughing his odd, silent laugh,--

“You ought to see the anxiety of your enemies since you have slipped out of their hands. That woman Chevassat had, last night, come to the conclusion that you were gone, and gone forever; but this morning matters looked very differently. Maxime de Brevan had been there, making a terrible row, and beating her (God forgive him!) because she had relaxed in her watchfulness. The rascal! The fellow has been spending the whole day in running from the police office to the Morgue, and back again. Destitute as you were, and almost without clothes, what could have become of you? I, for my part, did not show; and the Chevassats are far from suspecting that I had any thing to do with the whole affair. Ah! It will soon be our turn, and if you will only accept my suggestions, madam”--

It was past nine o’clock when the old dealer, his sister, and Henrietta sat down to their modest meal. But in the interval a hopeful smile had reappeared on Henrietta’s face, and she looked almost happy, when, about midnight, Papa Ravinet left them with the words,--

“To-morrow evening I shall have news. I am going to the navy department.”

The next day he reappeared precisely at six o’clock, but in what a condition! He had in his hand a kind of carpet-bag; and his looks and gestures made him look almost insane.

“Money!” he cried out to his sister as he entered. “I am afraid I have not enough; and make haste. I have to be at the Lyons Railway at seven o’clock.”

And when his sister and Henrietta, terribly frightened, asked him,--

“What is the matter? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” he replied joyously, “but that Heaven itself declares in our favor. I went to the department. ‘The Conquest’ will remain another year in Cochin China; but M. Champcey is coming back to Europe. He was to have taken passage on board a merchant vessel, ‘The Saint Louis,’ which is expected in Marseilles every day, if she has not already come in. And I--I am going to Marseilles, I must see M. Champcey before anybody else can see him.”

When his sister had given him notes to the amount of four hundred dollars, he rushed out, exclaiming,--

“To-morrow I will send you a telegram!”

XXII.

If there is in our civilized states a profession more arduous than others it is surely that of the sailor. So arduous is it, that we are almost disposed to ask how men can be found bold enough to embrace _it_, and firm enough in their resolution not to abandon it after having tried it. Not because of the hazards, the fatigues, and the dangers connected with it, but because it creates an existence apart, and because the conditions it imposes seem to be incompatible with free will.

Still no one is more attached to his home than the sailor. There are few among them who are not married. And by a kind of special grace they are apt to enjoy their short happiness as if it were for eternity, indifferent as to what the morning may bring.

But behold! one fine morning, all of a sudden, a big letter comes from the department.

It is an order to sail.

He must go, abandoning every thing and everybody,--mother, family, and friends, the wife he has married the day before, the young mother who sits smiling by the cradle of her first-born, the betrothed who was looking joyfully at her bridal veil. He must go, and stifle all those ominous voices which rise from the depth of his heart, and say to him, “Will you ever return? and, if you return, will you find them all, your dear ones? and, if you find them, will they not have changed? will they have preserved your memory as faithfully as you have preserved theirs?”

To be happy, and to be compelled to open to mishap this fatal door, absence! Hence it is only in comic operas, and inferior novels, that the sailors are seen to sing their most cheerful songs at the moment when a vessel is about to sail on a long and perilous voyage. The moment is, in reality, always a sad one, very grave and solemn.

Such could not fail to be the scene also, when “The Conquest” sailed,--the ship on board of which Daniel Champcey had been ordered as lieutenant. And certainly there had been good reasons for ordering him to make haste and get down to the port where she lay; for the very next day after his arrival, she hoisted anchor. She had been waiting for him only.

Having reached Rochefort at five o’clock in the morning, he slept the same night on board; and the next day “The Conquest” sailed. Daniel suffered more than any other man on board, although he succeeded in affecting a certain air of indifference. The thought of Henrietta being left in the hands of adventurers who were capable of any thing was a thorn in his side, which caused him great and constant pain. As he gradually calmed down, and peace returned to his mind, a thousand doubts assailed him concerning Maxime de Brevan: would he not be exposed to terrible temptation when he found himself thrown daily into the company of a great heiress? Might he not come to covet her millions, and try to abuse her peculiar situation in order to secure them to himself?