White Lies Part 43

"I am old," said she; "my hand shakes and my eyes are troubled. This young gentleman will read it to us. His eyes are not dim and troubled.

Something tells me that when I hear this letter, I shall find out whether my son lives. Why do you not read it to me, Camille?" cried she, almost fiercely.

Camille, thus pressed, obeyed mechanically, and began to read Raynal's letter aloud, scarce knowing what he did, but urged and driven by the baroness.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I hope all are well at Beaurepaire, as I am, or I hope soon to be. I received a wound in our last skirmish; not a very severe one, but it put an end to my writing for some time."

"Go on, dear Camille! go on."

"The page ends there, madame."

The paper was thin, and Camille, whose hand trembled, had some difficulty in detaching the leaves from one another. He succeeded, however, at last, and went on reading and writhing.

"By the way, you must address your next letter to me as Colonel Raynal.

I was promoted just before this last affair, but had not time to tell you; and my wound stopped my writing till now."

"There, there!" cried the baroness. "He was Colonel Raynal, and Colonel Raynal was not killed."

The doctor implored her not to interrupt.

"Go on, Camille. Why do you hesitate? what is the matter? Do for pity's sake go on, sir."

Camille cast a look of agony around, and put his hand to his brow, on which large drops of cold perspiration, like a death dew, were gathering; but driven to the stake on all sides, he gasped on rather than read, for his eye had gone down the page.

"A namesake of mine, Commandant Raynal,"--

"Ah!"

"has not been--so fortunate. He"--

"Go on! go on!"

The wretched man could now scarcely utter Raynal's words; they came from him in a choking groan.

"he was killed, poor fellow! while heading a gallant charge upon the enemy's flank."

He ground the letter convulsively in his hand, then it fell all crumpled on the floor.

"Bless you, Camille!" cried the baroness, "bless you! bless you! I have a son still."

She stooped with difficulty, took up the letter, and, kissing it again and again, fell on her knees, and thanked Heaven aloud before them all.

Then she rose and went hastily out, and her voice was heard crying very loud, "Jacintha! Jacintha!"

The doctor followed in considerable anxiety for the effects of this violent joy on so aged a person. Three remained behind, panting and pale like those to whom dead Lazarus burst the tomb, and came forth in a moment, at a word. Then Camille half kneeled, half fell, at Josephine's feet, and, in a voice choked with sobs, bade her dispose of him.

She turned her head away. "Do not speak to me; do not look at me; if we look at one another, we are lost. Go! die at your post, and I at mine."

He bowed his head, and kissed her dress, then rose calm as despair, and white as death, and, with his knees knocking under him, tottered away like a corpse set moving.

He disappeared from the house.

The baroness soon came back, triumphant and gay.

"I have sent her to bid them ring the bells in the village. The poor shall be feasted; all shall share our joy: my son was dead, and lives.

Oh, joy! joy! joy!"

"Mother!" shrieked Josephine.

"Mad woman that I am, I am too boisterous. Help me, Rose! she is going to faint; her lips are white."

Dr. Aubertin and Rose brought a chair. They forced Josephine into it.

She was not the least faint; yet her body obeyed their hands just like a dead body. The baroness melted into tears; tears streamed from Rose's eyes. Josephine's were dry and stony, and fixed on coming horror. The baroness looked at her with anxiety. "Thoughtless old woman! It was too sudden; it is too much for my dear child; too much for me," and she kneeled, and laid her aged head on her daughter's bosom, saying feebly through her tears, "too much joy, too much joy!"

Josephine took no notice of her. She sat like one turned to stone looking far away over her mother's head with rigid eyes fixed on the air and on coming horrors.

Rose felt her arm seized. It was Aubertin. He too was pale now, though not before. He spoke in a terrible whisper to Rose, his eye fixed on the woman of stone that sat there.

"IS THIS JOY?"

Rose, by a mighty effort, raised her eyes and confronted his full. "What else should it be?" said she.

And with these words this Spartan girl was her sister's champion once more against all comers, friend or foe.

CHAPTER XVI.

Dr. Aubertin received one day a note from a publis.h.i.+ng bookseller, to inquire whether he still thought of giving the world his valuable work on insects. The doctor was amazed. "My valuable work! Why, Rose, they all refused it, and this person in particular recoiled from it as if my insects could sting on paper."

The above led to a correspondence, in which the convert to insects explained that the work must be published at the author's expense, the publisher contenting himself with the profits. The author, thirsting for the public, consented. Then the publisher wrote again to say that the immortal treatise must be spiced; a little politics flung in: "Nothing goes down, else." The author answered in some heat that he would not dilute things everlasting with the fleeting topics of the day, nor defile science with politics. On this his Mentor smoothed him down, despising him secretly for not seeing that a book is a matter of trade and nothing else. It ended in Aubertin going to Paris to hatch his Phoenix. He had not been there a week, when a small deputation called on him, and informed him he had been elected honorary member of a certain scientific society. The compliment was followed by others, till at last certain ladies, with the pliancy of their s.e.x, find out they had always secretly cared for b.u.t.terflies. Then the naturalist smelt a rat, or, in other words, began to scent that entomology, a form of idiocy in a poor man, is a graceful decoration of the intellect in a rich one.

Philosopher without bile, he saw through this, and let it amuse, not shock him. His own species, a singularly interesting one in my opinion, had another trait in reserve for him.

He took a world of trouble to find out the circ.u.mstances of his nephew's nephews and nieces: then he made arrangements for distributing a large part of his legacy among them. His intentions and the proportions of his generosity transpired.

Hitherto they had been silent, but now they all fell-to and abused him: each looking only to the amount of his individual share, not at the sum total the doctor was giving way to an ungrateful lot.

The donor was greatly amused, and noted down the incident and some of the remarks in his commonplace book, under the general head of "Bestiarium;" and the particular head of "h.o.m.o."

Paris with its seductions netted the good doctor, and held him two or three months; would have detained him longer, but for alarming accounts the baroness sent of Josephine's health. These determined him to return to Beaurepaire; and, must I own it, the announcement was no longer hailed at Beaurepaire with universal joy as heretofore.

Josephine Raynal, late Dujardin, is by this time no stranger to my intelligent reader. I wish him to bring his knowledge of her character and her sensibility to my aid. Imagine, as the weary hours and days and weeks roll over her head, what this loving woman feels for her lover whom she has dismissed; what this grateful wife feels for the benefactor she has unwittingly wronged; but will never wrong with her eyes open; what this lady pure as snow, and proud as fire, feels at the seeming frailty into which a cruel combination of circ.u.mstances has entrapped her.