The Widow Lerouge Part 9

"You unhappy?" exclaimed the magistrate at length, "and through me? Claire, you are cruel! In heaven's name, what have I done? What is the matter? Speak! Anything rather then this anxiety which is killing me."

He knelt before her on the gravelled walk, and again made an attempt to take her hand. She repulsed him with an imploring gesture.

"Let me weep," said she: "I suffer so much, you are going to hate me, I feel it. Who knows! you will, perhaps, despise me, and yet I swear before heaven that I never expected what you have just said to me, that I had not even a suspicion of it!"

M. Daburon remained upon his knees, awaiting his doom.

"Yes," continued Claire, "you will think you have been the victim of a detestable coquetry. I see it now! I comprehend everything! It is not possible, that, without a profound love, a man can be all that you have been to me. Alas! I was but a child. I gave myself up to the great happiness of having a friend! Am I not alone in the world, and as if lost in a desert? Silly and imprudent, I thoughtlessly confided in you, as in the best, the most indulgent of fathers."

These words revealed to the unfortunate magistrate the extent of his error. The same as a heavy hammer, they smashed into a thousand fragments the fragile edifice of his hopes. He raised himself slowly, and, in a tone of involuntary reproach, he repeated,-"Your father!"

Mademoiselle d'Arlange felt how deeply she had wounded this man whose intense love she dare not even fathom. "Yes," she resumed, "I love you as a father! Seeing you, usually so grave and austere, become for me so good, so indulgent, I thanked heaven for sending me a protector to replace those who are dead."

M. Daburon could not restrain a sob; his heart was breaking.

"One word," continued Claire,-"one single word, would have enlightened me. Why did you not p.r.o.nounce it! It was with such happiness that I leant on you as a child on its mother; and with what inward joy I said to myself, 'I am sure of one friend, of one heart into which runs the overflow of mine!' Ah! why was not my confidence greater? Why did I withhold my secret from you? I might have avoided this fearful calamity. I ought to have told you long since. I no longer belong to myself freely and with happiness, I have given my life to another."

To hover in the clouds, and suddenly to fall rudely to the earth, such was M. Daburon's fate; his sufferings are not to be described.

"Far better to have spoken," answered he; "yet no. I owe to your silence, Claire, six months of delicious illusions, six months of enchanting dreams. This shall be my share of life's happiness."

The last beams of closing day still enabled the magistrate to see Mademoiselle d'Arlange. Her beautiful face had the whiteness and the immobility of marble. Heavy tears rolled silently down her cheeks. It seemed to M. Daburon that he was beholding the frightful spectacle of a weeping statue.

"You love another," said he at length, "another! And your grandmother does not know it. Claire, you can only have chosen a man worthy of your love. How is it the marchioness does not receive him?"

"There are certain obstacles," murmured Claire, "obstacles which perhaps we may never be able to remove; but a girl like me can love but once. She marries him she loves, or she belongs to heaven!"

"Certain obstacles!" said M. Daburon in a hollow voice. "You love a man, he knows it, and he is stopped by obstacles?"

"I am poor," answered Mademoiselle d'Arlange, "and his family is immensely rich. His father is cruel, inexorable."

"His father," cried the magistrate, with a bitterness he did not dream of hiding, "his father, his family, and that withholds him! You are poor, he is rich, and that stops him! And yet he knows you love him! Ah! why am I not in his place? and why have I not the entire universe against me? What sacrifice can compare with love? such as I understand it. Nay, would it be a sacrifice? That which appears most so, is it not really an immense joy? To suffer, to struggle, to wait, to hope always, to devote oneself entirely to another; that is my idea of love."

"It is thus I love," said Claire with simplicity.

This answer crushed the magistrate. He could understand it. He knew that for him there was no hope; but he felt a terrible enjoyment in torturing himself, and proving his misfortune by intense suffering.

"But," insisted he, "how have you known him, spoken to him? Where? When? Madame d'Arlange receives no one."

"I ought now to tell you everything, sir," answered Claire proudly. "I have known him for a long time. It was at the house of one of my grandmother's friends, who is a cousin of his,-old Mademoiselle Goello, that I saw him for the first time. There we spoke to each other; there we meet each other now."

"Ah!" exclaimed M. Daburon, whose eyes were suddenly opened, "I remember now. A few days before your visit to Mademoiselle Goello, you are gayer than usual; and, when you return, you are often sad."

"That is because I see how much he is pained by the obstacles he cannot overcome."

"Is his family, then, so ill.u.s.trious," asked the magistrate harshly, "that it disdains alliance with yours?"

"I should have told you everything, without waiting to be questioned, sir," answered Mademoiselle d'Arlange, "even his name. He is called Albert de Commarin."

The marchioness at this moment, thinking she had walked enough, was preparing to return to her rose-coloured boudoir. She therefore approached the arbour, and exclaimed in her loud voice:- "Worthy magistrate, piquet awaits you."

Mechanically the magistrate arose, stammering, "I am coming."

Claire held him back. "I have not asked you to keep my secret, sir," said she.

"O mademoiselle!" said M. Daburon, wounded by this appearance of doubt.

"I know," resumed Claire, "that I can count upon you; but, come what will, my tranquillity is gone."

M. Daburon looked at her with an air of surprise; his eyes questioned her.

"It is certain," continued she, "that what I, a young and inexperienced girl, have failed to see, has not pa.s.sed unnoticed by my grandmother. That she has continued to receive you is a tacit encouragement of your addresses; which I consider, permit me to say, as very honourable to myself."

"I have already mentioned, mademoiselle," replied the magistrate, "that the marchioness has deigned to authorise my hopes."

And briefly he related his interview with Madame d'Arlange, having the delicacy, however, to omit absolutely the question of money, which had so strongly influenced the old lady.

"I see very plainly what effect this will have on my peace," said Claire sadly. "When my grandmother learns that I have not received your homage, she will be very angry."

"You misjudge me, mademoiselle," interrupted M. Daburon. "I have nothing to say to the marchioness. I will retire, and all will be concluded. No doubt she will think that I have altered my mind!"

"Oh! you are good and generous, I know!"

"I will go away," pursued M. Daburon; "and soon you will have forgotten even the name of the unfortunate whose life's hopes have just been shattered."

"You do not mean what you say," said the young girl quickly.

"Well, no. I cherish this last illusion, that later on you will remember me with pleasure. Sometimes you will say, 'He loved me,' I wish all the same to remain your friend, yes, your most devoted friend."

Claire, in her turn, clasped M. Daburon's hands, and said with great emotion:-"Yes, you are right, you must remain my friend. Let us forget what has happened, what you have said to-night, and remain to me, as in the past, the best, the most indulgent of brothers."

Darkness had come, and she could not see him; but she knew he was weeping, for he was slow to answer.

"Is it possible," murmured he at length, "what you ask of me? What! is it you who talk to me of forgetting? Do you feel the power to forget? Do you not see that I love you a thousand times more than you love-" He stopped, unable to p.r.o.nounce the name of Commarin; and then, with an effort he added: "And I shall love you always."

They had left the arbour, and were now standing not far from the steps leading to the house.

"And now, mademoiselle," resumed M. Daburon, "permit me to say, adieu! You will see me again but seldom. I shall only return often enough to avoid the appearance of a rupture."

His voice trembled, so that it was with difficulty he made it distinct.

"Whatever may happen," he added, "remember that there is one unfortunate being in the world who belongs to you absolutely. If ever you have need of a friend's devotion, come to me, come to your friend. Now it is over ... I have courage. Claire, mademoiselle, for the last time, adieu!"

She was but little less moved than he was. Instinctively she approached him, and for the first and last time he touched lightly with his cold lips the forehead of her he loved so well. They mounted the steps, she leaning on his arm, and entered the rose-coloured boudoir where the marchioness was seated, impatiently shuffling the cards, while awaiting her victim.

"Now, then, incorruptible magistrate," cried she.

But M. Daburon felt sick at heart. He could not have held the cards. He stammered some absurd excuses, spoke of pressing affairs, of duties to be attended to, of feeling suddenly unwell, and went out, clinging to the walls.

His departure made the old card-player highly indignant. She turned to her grand-daughter, who had gone to hide her confusion away from the candles of the card table, and asked, "What is the matter with Daburon this evening?"

"I do not know, madame," stammered Claire.

"It appears to me," continued the marchioness, "that the little magistrate permits himself to take singular liberties. He must be reminded of his proper place, or he will end by believing himself our equal."

Claire tried to explain the magistrate's conduct: "He has been complaining all the evening, grandmamma; perhaps he is unwell."

"And what if he is?" exclaimed the old lady. "Is it not his duty to exercise some self-denial, in return for the honour of our company? I think I have already related to you the story of your granduncle, the Duke de St Hurluge, who, having been chosen to join the king's card party on their return from the chase, played all through the evening and lost with the best grace in the world two hundred and twenty pistoles. All the a.s.sembly remarked his gaiety and his good humour. On the following day only it was learned, that, during the hunt, he had fallen from his horse, and had sat at his majesty's card table with a broken rib. n.o.body made any remark, so perfectly natural did this act of ordinary politeness appear in those days. This little Daburon, if he is unwell, would have given proof of his breeding by saying nothing about it, and remaining for my piquet. But he is as well as I am. Who can tell what games he has gone to play elsewhere!"

CHAPTER VII.

M. Daburon did not return home on leaving Mademoiselle d'Arlange. All through the night he wandered about at random, seeking to cool his heated brow, and to allay his excessive weariness.

"Fool that I was!" said he to himself, "thousand times fool to have hoped, to have believed, that she would ever love me. Madman! how could I have dared to dream of possessing so much grace, n.o.bleness, and beauty! How charming she was this evening, when her face was bathed in tears! Could anything be more angelic? What a sublime expression her eyes had in speaking of him! How she must love him! And I? She loves me as a father, she told me so,-as a father! And could it be otherwise? Is it not justice? Could she see a lover in a sombre and severe-looking magistrate, always as sad as his black coat? Was it not a crime to dream of uniting that virginal simplicity to my detestable knowledge of the world? For her, the future is yet the land of smiling chimeras; and long since experience has dissipated all my illusions. She is as young as innocence, and I am as old as vice."

The unfortunate magistrate felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. He understood Claire, and excused her. He reproached himself for having shown her how he suffered; for having cast a shadow upon her life. He could not forgive himself for having spoken of his love. Ought he not to have foreseen what had happened?-that she would refuse him, that he would thus deprive himself of the happiness of seeing her, of hearing her, and of silently adoring her?

"A young and romantic girl," pursued he, "must have a lover she can dream of,-whom she can caress in imagination, as an ideal, gratifying herself by seeing in him every great and brilliant quality, imagining him full of n.o.bleness, of bravery, of heroism. What would she see, if, in my absence, she dreamed of me? Her imagination would present me dressed in a funeral robe, in the depth of a gloomy dungeon, engaged with some vile criminal. Is it not my trade to descend into all moral sinks, to stir up the foulness of crime? Am I not compelled to wash in secrecy and darkness the dirty linen of the most corrupt members of society? Ah! some professions are fatal. Ought not the magistrate, like the priest, to condemn himself to solitude and celibacy? Both know all, they hear all, their costumes are nearly the same; but, while the priest carries consolation in the folds of his black robe, the magistrate conveys terror. One is mercy, the other chastis.e.m.e.nt. Such are the images a thought of me would awaken; while the other,-the other-"

The wretched man continued his headlong course along the deserted quays. He went with his head bare, his eyes haggard. To breathe more freely, he had torn off his cravat and thrown it to the winds.

Sometimes, unconsciously, he crossed the path of a solitary wayfarer, who would pause, touched with pity, and turn to watch the retreating figure of the unfortunate wretch he thought deprived of reason. In a by-road, near Grenelle, some police officers stopped him, and tried to question him. He mechanically tendered them his card. They read it, and permitted him to pa.s.s, convinced that he was drunk.

Anger,-a furious anger, began to replace his first feeling of resignation. In his heart arose a hate, stronger and more violent than even his love for Claire. That other, that preferred one, that haughty viscount, who could not overcome those paltry obstacles, oh, that he had him there, under his knee!

At that moment, this n.o.ble and proud man, this severe and grave magistrate experienced an irresistible longing for vengeance. He began to understand the hate that arms itself with a knife, and lays in ambush in out-of-the-way places; which strikes in the dark, whether in front or from behind matters little, but which strikes, which kills, whose vengeance blood alone can satisfy.

At that very hour he was supposed to be occupied with an inquiry into the case of an unfortunate, accused of having stabbed one of her wretched companions. She was jealous of the woman, who had tried to take her lover from her. He was a soldier, coa.r.s.e in manners, and always drunk.

M. Daburon felt himself seized with pity for this miserable creature, whom he had commenced to examine the day before. She was very ugly, in fact truly repulsive; but the expression of the eyes, when speaking of her soldier, returned to the magistrate's memory.

"She loves him sincerely," thought he. "If each one of the jurors had suffered what I am suffering now, she would be acquitted. But how many men in this world have loved pa.s.sionately? Perhaps not one in twenty."

He resolved to recommend this girl to the indulgence of the tribunal, and to extenuate as much as possible her guilt.

For he himself had just determined upon the commission of a crime. He was resolved to kill Albert de Commarin.

During the rest of the night he became all the more determined in this resolution, demonstrating to himself by a thousand mad reasons, which he found solid and inscrutable, the necessity for and the justifiableness of this vengeance.

At seven o'clock in the morning, he found himself in an avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, not far from the lake. He made at once for the Porte Maillot, procured a cab, and was driven to his house.

The delirium of the night continued, but without suffering. He was conscious of no fatigue. Calm and cool, he acted under the power of an hallucination, almost like a somnambulist.

He reflected and reasoned, but without his reason. As soon as he arrived home he dressed himself with care, as was his custom formerly when visiting the Marchioness d'Arlange, and went out. He first called at an armourer's and bought a small revolver, which he caused to be carefully loaded under his own eyes, and put it into his pocket. He then called on the different persons he supposed capable of informing him to what club the viscount belonged. No one noticed the strange state of his mind, so natural were his manners and conversations.

It was not until the afternoon that a young friend of his gave him the name of Albert de Commarin's club, and offered to conduct him thither, as he too was a member.

M. Daburon accepted warmly, and accompanied his friend. While pa.s.sing along, he grasped with frenzy the handle of the revolver which he kept concealed, thinking only of the murder he was determined to commit, and the means of insuring the accuracy of his aim.

"This will make a terrible scandal," thought he, "above all if I do not succeed in blowing my own brains out. I shall be arrested, thrown into prison, and placed upon my trial at the a.s.sizes. My name will be dishonoured! Bah! what does that signify? Claire does not love me, so what care I for all the rest? My father no doubt will die of grief, but I must have my revenge!"

On arriving at the club, his friend pointed out a very dark young man, with a haughty air, or what appeared so to him, who, seated at a table, was reading a review. It was the viscount.

M. Daburon walked up to him without drawing his revolver. But when within two paces, his heart failed him; he turned suddenly and fled, leaving his friend astonished at a scene, to him, utterly inexplicable.

Only once again will Albert de Commarin be as near death.

On reaching the street, it seemed to M. Daburon that the ground was receding from beneath him, that everything was turning around him. He tried to cry out, but could not utter a sound; he struck at the air with his hands, reeled for an instant, and then fell all of a heap on the pavement.

The pa.s.sers-by ran and a.s.sisted the police to raise him. In one of his pockets they found his address, and carried him home. When he recovered his senses, he was in his bed, at the foot of which he perceived his father.

"What has happened?" he asked. With much caution they told him, that for six weeks he had wavered between life and death. The doctors had declared his life saved; and, now that reason was restored, all would go well.

Five minutes' conversation exhausted him. He shut his eyes, and tried to collect his ideas; but they whirled hither and thither wildly, as autumn leaves in the wind. The past seemed shrouded in a dark mist; yet, in the midst of the darkness and confusion, all that concerned Mademoiselle d'Arlange stood out clear and luminous. All his actions from the moment when he embraced Claire appeared before him. He shuddered, and his hair was in a moment soaking with perspiration.

He had almost become an a.s.sa.s.sin. The proof that he was restored to full possession of his faculties was, that a question of criminal law crossed his brain.

"The crime committed," said he to himself, "should I have been condemned? Yes. Was I responsible? No. Is crime merely the result of mental alienation? Was I mad? Or was I in that peculiar state of mind which usually precedes an illegal attempt? Who can say? Why have not all judges pa.s.sed through an incomprehensible crisis such as mine? But who would believe me, were I to recount my experience?"

Some days later, he was sufficiently recovered to tell his father all. The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders, and a.s.sured him it was but a reminiscence of his delirium.

The good old man was moved at the story of his son's luckless wooing, without seeing therein, however, an irreparable misfortune. He advised him to think of something else, placed at his disposal his entire fortune, and recommended him to marry a stout Poitevine heiress, very gay and healthy, who would bear him some fine children. Then, as his estate was suffering by his absence, he returned home. Two months later, the investigating magistrate had resumed his ordinary avocations. But try as he would, he only went through his duties like a body without a soul. He felt that something was broken.

Once he ventured to pay a visit to his old friend, the marchioness. On seeing him, she uttered a cry of terror. She took him for a spectre, so much was he changed in appearance.

As she dreaded dismal faces, she ever after shut her door to him.

Claire was ill for a week after seeing him. "How he loved me," thought she! "It has almost killed him! Can Albert love me as much?" She did not dare to answer herself. She felt a desire to console him, to speak to him, attempt something; but he came no more.

M. Daburon was not, however, a man to give way without a struggle. He tried, as his father advised him, to distract his thoughts. He sought for pleasure, and found disgust, but not forgetfulness. Often he went so far as the threshold of debauchery; but the pure figure of Claire, dressed in white garments, always barred the doors against him.

Then he took refuge in work, as in a sanctuary; condemned himself to the most incessant labour, and forbade himself to think of Claire, as the consumptive forbids himself to meditate upon his malady.

His eagerness, his feverish activity, earned him the reputation of an ambitious man, who would go far; but he cared for nothing in the world.

At length, he found, not rest, but that painless benumbing which commonly follows a great catastrophe. The convalescence of oblivion was commencing.

These were the events, recalled to M. Daburon's mind when old Tabaret p.r.o.nounced the name of Commarin. He believed them buried under the ashes of time; and behold they reappeared, just the same as those characters traced in sympathetic ink when held before a fire. In an instant they unrolled themselves before his memory, with the instantaneousness of a dream annihilating time and s.p.a.ce.