Beatrix Part 12

At this moment Calyste appeared.

"I ought not to leave you ignorant that I am here," he said.

Mademoiselle des Touches showed the utmost fear; a sudden flush colored her impa.s.sible face with tints of fire. During this strange scene she was more beautiful than at any other moment of her life.

"We thought you gone, Calyste," said Claude. "But this involuntary discretion on both sides will do no harm; perhaps, indeed, you may be more at your ease at Les Touches by knowing Felicite as she is. Her silence shows me I am not mistaken as to the part she meant me to play.

As I told you before, she loves you, but it is for yourself, not for herself,--a sentiment that few women are able to conceive and practise; few among them know the voluptuous pleasure of sufferings born of longing,--that is one of the magnificent pa.s.sions reserved for man.

But she is in some sense a man," he added, sardonically. "Your love for Beatrix will make her suffer and make her happy too."

Tears were in the eyes of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was unable to look either at the terrible Vignon or the ingenuous Calyste. She was frightened at being understood; she had supposed to impossible for a man, however keen his perception, to perceive a delicacy so self-immolating, a heroism so lofty as her own. Her evident humiliation at this unveiling of her grandeur made Calyste share the emotion of the woman he had held so high, and now beheld so stricken down. He threw himself, from an irresistible impulse, at her feet, and kissed her hands, laying his face, covered with tears, upon them.

"Claude," she said, "do not abandon me, or what will become of me?"

"What have you to fear?" replied the critic. "Calyste has fallen in love at first sight with the marquise; you cannot find a better barrier between you than that. This pa.s.sion of his is worth more to you than I.

Yesterday there might have been some danger for you and for him; to-day you can take a maternal interest in him," he said, with a mocking smile, "and be proud of his triumphs."

Mademoiselle des Touches looked at Calyste, who had raised his head abruptly at these words. Claude Vignon enjoyed, for his sole vengeance, the sight of their confusion.

"You yourself have driven him to Madame de Rochefide," continued Claude, "and he is now under the spell. You have dug your own grave. Had you confided in me, you would have escaped the sufferings that await you."

"Sufferings!" cried Camille Maupin, taking Calyste's head in her hands, and kissing his hair, on which her tears fell plentifully. "No, Calyste; forget what you have heard; I count for nothing in all this."

She rose and stood erect before the two men, subduing both with the lightning of her eyes, from which her soul shone out.

"While Claude was speaking," she said, "I conceived the beauty and the grandeur of love without hope; it is the sentiment that brings us nearest G.o.d. Do not love me, Calyste; but I will love you as no woman will!"

It was the cry of a wounded eagle seeking its eyrie. Claude himself knelt down, took Camille's hand, and kissed it.

"Leave us now, Calyste," she said, "it is late, and your mother will be uneasy."

Calyste returned to Guerande with lagging steps, turning again and again, to see the light from the windows of the room in which was Beatrix. He was surprised himself to find how little pity he felt for Camille. But presently he felt once more the agitations of that scene, the tears she had left upon his hair; he suffered with her suffering; he fancied he heard the moans of that n.o.ble woman, so beloved, so desired but a few short days before.

When he opened the door of his paternal home, where total silence reigned, he saw his mother through the window, as she sat sewing by the light of the curiously constructed lamp while she awaited him. Tears moistened the lad's eyes as he looked at her.

"What has happened?" cried f.a.n.n.y, seeing his emotion, which filled her with horrible anxiety.

For all answer, Calyste took his mother in his arms, and kissed her on her cheeks, her forehead and hair, with one of those pa.s.sionate effusions of feeling that comfort mothers, and fill them with the subtle flames of the life they have given.

"It is you I love, you!" cried Calyste,--"you, who live for me; you, whom I long to render happy!"

"But you are not yourself, my child," said the baroness, looking at him attentively. "What has happened to you?"

"Camille loves me, but I love her no longer," he answered.

The next day, Calyste told Ga.s.selin to watch the road to Saint-Nazaire, and let him know if the carriage of Mademoiselle des Touches pa.s.sed over it. Ga.s.selin brought word that the carriage had pa.s.sed.

"How many persons were in it?" asked Calyste.

"Four,--two ladies and two gentlemen."

"Then saddle my horse and my father's."

Ga.s.selin departed.

"My, nephew, what mischief is in you now?" said his Aunt Zephirine.

"Let the boy amuse himself, sister," cried the baron. "Yesterday he was dull as an owl; to-day he is gay as a lark."

"Did you tell him that our dear Charlotte was to arrive to-day?" said Zephirine, turning to her sister-in-law.

"No," replied the baroness.

"I thought perhaps he was going to meet her," said Mademoiselle du Guenic, slyly.

"If Charlotte is to stay three months with her aunt, he will have plenty of opportunities to see her," said his mother.

"Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel wants me to marry Charlotte, to save me from perdition," said Calyste, laughing. "I was on the mall when she and the Chevalier du Halga were talking about it. She can't see that it would be greater perdition for me to marry at my age--"

"It is written above," said the old maid, interrupting Calyste, "that I shall not die tranquil or happy. I wanted to see our family continued, and some, at least, of the estates brought back; but it is not to be.

What can you, my fine nephew, put in the scale against such duties? Is it that actress at Les Touches?"

"What?" said the baron; "how can Mademoiselle des Touches hinder Calyste's marriage, when it becomes necessary for us to make it? I shall go and see her."

"I a.s.sure you, father," said Calyste, "that Felicite will never be an obstacle to my marriage."

Ga.s.selin appeared with the horses.

"Where are you going, chevalier?" said his father.

"To Saint-Nazaire."

"Ha, ha! and when is the marriage to be?" said the baron, believing that Calyste was really in a hurry to see Charlotte de Kergarouet. "It is high time I was a grandfather. Spare the horses," he continued, as he went on the portico with f.a.n.n.y to see Calyste mount; "remember that they have more than thirty miles to go."

Calyste started with a tender farewell to his mother.

"Dear treasure!" she said, as she saw him lower his head to ride through the gateway.

"G.o.d keep him!" replied the baron; "for we cannot replace him."

The words made the baroness shudder.

"My nephew does not love Charlotte enough to ride to Saint-Nazaire after her," said the old blind woman to Mariotte, who was clearing the breakfast-table.

"No; but a fine lady, a marquise, has come to Les Touches, and I'll warrant he's after her; that's the way at his age," said Mariotte.

"They'll kill him," said Mademoiselle du Guenic.

"That won't kill him, mademoiselle; quite the contrary," replied Mariotte, who seemed to be pleased with Calyste's behavior.