Raymon, yielding to fatigue, slept soundly after his curt reception of
Sir Ralph, who came to his house to make inquiries. When he awoke, his
heart was full of a feeling of intense relief; he believed that the
worst crisis of his intrigue had finally come and gone. For a long time
he had foreseen that there would come a time when he would be brought
face to face with that woman's love and would have to defend his liberty
against the exacting demands of a romantic passion; and he encouraged
himself in advance by arguing against such pretensions. He had at last
reached and crossed that dangerous spot: he had said no, he would have
no occasion to go there again, for everything had happened for the best.
Indiana had not wept overmuch, had not been too insistent. She had been
quite reasonable; she had understood at the first word and had made up
her mind quickly and proudly.
Raymon was very well pleased with his providence; for he had one of his
own, in whom he believed like a good son, and upon whom he relied to
arrange everything to other people's detriment rather than his own. That
providence had treated him so well thus far that he did not choose to
doubt it. To anticipate the result of his wrong-doing and to be anxious
concerning it would have been in his eyes a crime against the good Lord
who watched over him.
He rose, still very much fatigued by the efforts of the imagination
which the circumstances of that painful scene had compelled him to make.
His mother returned; she had been to Madame de Carvajal to inquire as to
Madame Delmare's health and frame of mind. The marchioness was not
disturbed about her; she was, however, very much disgusted when Madame
de Ramière shrewdly questioned her. But the only thing that impressed
her in Madame Delmare's disappearance was the scandal that would result
from it. She complained very bitterly of her niece, whom, only the day
before, she had extolled to the skies; and Madame de Ramière understood
that the unfortunate Indiana had, by this performance, alienated her
kinswoman and lost the only natural prop that she still possessed.
To one who could read in the depths of the marchioness's soul, this
would have seemed no great loss; but Madame de Carvajal was esteemed
virtuous beyond reproach, even by Madame de Ramière. Her youth had been
enveloped in the mysteries of prudence, or lost in the whirlwind of
revolutions.
Raymon's mother wept over Indiana's lot and tried to excuse her; Madame
de Carvajal tartly reminded her that she was not sufficiently
disinterested in the matter to judge.
"But what will become of the unhappy creature?" said Madame de Ramière.
"If her husband maltreats her, who will protect her?"
"That will be as God wills," replied the marchioness; "for my part, I'll
have nothing more to do with her and I never wish to see her again."
Madame de Ramière, kind-hearted and anxious, determined to obtain news
of Madame Delmare at any price. She bade her coachman drive to the end
of the street on which she lived and sent a footman to question the
concierge, instructing him to try to see Sir Ralph if he were in the
house. She awaited in her carriage the result of this manœuvre, and
Ralph himself soon joined her there.
The only person, perhaps, who judged Ralph accurately was Madame de
Ramière; a few words sufficed to make each of them understand the
other's sincere and unselfish interest in the matter. Ralph narrated
what had passed during the morning; and, as he had nothing more than
suspicions concerning the events of the night, he did not seek
confirmation of them. But Madame de Ramière deemed it her duty to
inform him of what she knew, imparting to him her desire to break off
this ill-omened and impossible liaison. Ralph, who felt more at ease
with her than with anybody else, allowed the profound emotion which her
information caused him to appear on his face.
"You say, madame," he murmured, repressing a sort of nervous shudder
that ran through his veins, "that she passed the night in your house?"
"A solitary and sorrowful night, no doubt. Raymon, who certainly was not
guilty of complicity, did not come home until six o'clock, and at seven
he came up to me to ask me to go down and soothe the poor child's mind."
"She meant to leave her husband! she meant to destroy her good name!"
rejoined Ralph, his eyes fixed on vacancy and a strange oppression at
his heart. "Then she must love this man, who is so unworthy of her, very
dearly!"
Ralph forgot that he was talking to Raymon's mother.
"I have suspected this a long while," he continued; "why could I not
have foretold the day on which she would consummate her ruin! I would
have killed her first!"
Such language in Ralph's mouth surprised Madame de Ramière beyond
measure; she supposed that she was speaking to a calm, indulgent man,
and she regretted that she had trusted to appearances.
"_Mon Dieu!_" she said in dismay, "do you judge her without mercy? will
you abandon her as her aunt has? Are you incapable of pity or
forgiveness? Will she not have a single friend left after a fault which
has already caused her such bitter suffering?"
"Have no fear of anything of the sort on my part, madame," Ralph
replied; "I have known all for six months and I have said nothing. I
surprised their first kiss and I did not hurl Monsieur de Ramière from
his horse; I often intercepted their love messages in the woods and did
not tear them in pieces with my whip. I met Monsieur de Ramière on the
bridge he must cross to go to join her; it was night, we were alone and
I am four times as strong as he; and yet I did not throw the man into
the river; and when, after allowing him to escape, I discovered that he
had eluded my vigilance and had stolen into her house, instead of
bursting in the doors and throwing him out of the window, I quietly
warned them of the husband's approach and saved the life of one in order
to save the other's honor. You see, madame, that I am indulgent and
merciful. This morning I had that man under my hand; I was well aware
that he was the cause of all our misery, and, if I had not the right to
accuse him without proofs, I certainly should have been justified in
quarreling with him for his arrogant and mocking manner. But I bore with
his insulting contempt because I knew that his death would kill Indiana;
I allowed him to turn over and fall asleep again on the other side,
while Indiana, insane and almost dead, was on the shore of the Seine,
preparing to join his other victim. You see, madame, that I practise
patience with those whom I hate and indulgence with those I love."
Madame de Ramière, sitting in her carriage opposite Ralph, gazed at him
in surprise mingled with alarm. He was so different from what she had
always seen him that she almost believed that he had suddenly become
deranged. The allusion he had just made to Noun's death confirmed her in
that idea; for she knew absolutely nothing of that story and took the
words that Ralph had let fall in his indignation for a fragment of
thought unconnected with his subject. He was, in very truth, passing
through one of those periods of intense excitement which occur at least
once in the lives of the most placid men, and which border so closely on
madness that one step farther would carry them across the line. His
wrath was restrained and concentrated like that of all cold
temperaments; but it was deep, like the wrath of all noble souls; and
the novelty of this frame of mind, which was truly portentous in him,
made him terrible to look upon.
Madame de Ramière took his hand and said gently:
"You must suffer terribly, my dear Monsieur Ralph, for you wound me
without mercy: you forget that the man of whom you speak is my son and
that his wrong-doing, if he has been guilty of any, must be infinitely
more painful to me than to you."
Ralph at once came to himself, and said, kissing Madame de Ramière's
hand with an effusive warmth of regard, which was almost as unusual a
manifestation on his part as that of his wrath:
"Forgive me, madame; you are right, I do suffer terribly, and I forget
those things which I should respect. Pray, forget yourself the
bitterness I have allowed to appear! my heart will not fail to lock
itself up again."
Madame de Ramière, although somewhat reassured by this reply, could not
rid herself of all anxiety when she saw with what profound hatred Ralph
regarded her son. She tried to excuse him in his enemy's eyes, but he
checked her.
"I divine your thoughts, madame," he said; "but have no fear, Monsieur
de Ramière and I are not likely to meet again at present. As for my
cousin, do not regret having enlightened me. If the whole world abandons
her, I swear that she will always have at least one friend."
When Madame de Ramière returned home, toward evening, she found Raymon
luxuriously ensconced in front of the fire, warming his slippered feet
and drinking tea to banish the last vestiges of the nervous excitement
of the morning. He was still cast down by that artificial emotion; but
pleasant thoughts of the future revivified his faculties; he felt that
he had become free once more, and he abandoned himself unreservedly to
blissful meditations upon that priceless condition, which he had
hitherto been so unsuccessful in maintaining.
"Why am I destined," he said to himself, "to weary so quickly of this
priceless freedom of the heart which I always have to buy so dearly?
When I feel that I am caught in a woman's net, I cannot break it quickly
enough, in order to recover my repose and mental tranquillity. May I be
cursed if I sacrifice them in such a hurry again! The trouble these two
creoles have caused me will serve as a warning, and hereafter I do not
propose to meddle with any but easy-going, laughing Parisian
women--genuine women of the world. Perhaps I should do well to marry and
have done with it, as they say----"
He was absorbed by such comforting, commonplace thoughts as these, when
his mother entered, tired and deeply moved.
"She is better," she said; "everything has gone off as well as possible;
I hope that she will grow calmer and----"
"Who?" inquired Raymon, waking with a start among his castles in Spain.
However, he concluded on the following day that he still had a duty to
perform, namely, to regain that woman's esteem, if not her love. He did
not choose that she should boast of having left him; he proposed that
she should be persuaded that she had yielded to the influence of his
good sense and his generosity. He desired to govern her even after he
had spurned her; and he wrote to her as follows:
"I do not write to ask your pardon, my dear, for a few cruel or
audacious words that escaped me in the delirium of my passion. In the
derangement of fever no man can form perfectly coherent ideas or express
himself in a proper manner. It is not my fault that I am not a god, that
I cannot control in your presence the turbulent ardor of my blood, that
my brain whirls, that I go mad. Perhaps I may have a right to complain
of the merciless _sang-froid_ with which you condemned me to frightful
torture and never took pity on me; but that was not your fault. You are
too perfect to play the same rôle in this world that we common mortals
play, subject as we are to human passions, slaves of our less-refined
organization. As I have often told you, Indiana, you are not a woman,
and, when I think of you tranquilly and without excitement, you are an
angel. I adore you in my heart as a divinity. But alas! in your presence
the _old Adam_ has often reasserted his rights. Often, under the
perfumed breath from your lips, a scorching flame has consumed mine;
often when, as I leaned toward you, my hair has brushed against yours, a
thrill of indescribable bliss has run through my veins, and thereupon I
have forgotten that you were an emanation from Heaven, a dream of
everlasting felicity, an angel sent from God's bosom to guide my steps
in this life and to describe to me the joys of another existence. Why, O
chaste spirit, did you assume the alluring form of a woman? Why, O angel
of light, did you clothe yourself in the seductions of hell? Often have
I thought that I held happiness in my arms, and it was only virtue.
"Forgive me these reprehensible regrets, my love; I was not worthy of
you, but perhaps we should both have been happier if you would have
consented to stoop to my level. But my inferiority has constantly caused
you pain and you have imputed your own virtues to me as crimes.
"Now that you absolve me--as I am sure that you do, for perfection
implies mercy--let me still raise my voice to thank you and bless you.
Thank you, do I say? Ah! no, my life, that is not the word; for my heart
is more torn than yours by the courage that snatches you from my arms.
But I admire you; and, through my tears, I congratulate you. Yes, my
Indiana, you have mustered strength to accomplish this heroic sacrifice.
It tears out my heart and my life; it renders my future desolate, it
ruins my existence. But I love you well enough to endure it without a
complaint; for my honor is nothing, yours is all in all. I would
sacrifice my honor to you a thousand times; but yours is dearer to me
than all the joys you have given me. No, no! I could not have enjoyed
such a sacrifice. In vain should I have tried to blunt my conscience by
delirious transports; in vain would you have opened your arms to
intoxicate me with celestial joys--remorse would have found me out; it
would have poisoned every hour of my life, and I should have been more
humiliated than you by the contempt of men. O God! to see you degraded
and brought to shame by me! to see you deprived of the veneration which
encompassed you! to see you insulted in my arms and to be unable to wipe
out the insult! for, though I should have shed all my blood for you, it
would not have availed you. I might have avenged you, perhaps, but could
never have justified you. My zeal in your defence would have been an
additional accusation against you; my death an unquestionable proof of
your crime. Poor Indiana! I should have ruined you! Ah! how miserably
unhappy I should be!
"Go, therefore, my beloved; go and reap under another sky the fruits of
virtue and religion. God will reward us for such an effort, for God is
good. He will reunite us in a happier life, and perhaps--but the mere
thought is a crime; and yet I cannot refrain from hoping! Adieu,
Indiana, adieu! You see that our love is a sin! Alas! my heart is
broken. Where could I find strength to say adieu to you!"
Raymon himself carried this letter to Madame Delmare's; but she shut
herself up in her room and refused to see him. So he left the house
after handing the letter secretly to the servant and cordially embracing
the husband. As he left the last step behind him, he felt much
better-hearted than usual; the weather was finer, the women fairer, the
shops more brilliant. It was a red-letter day in Raymon's life.
Madame Delmare placed the letter, with the seal unbroken, in a box which
she did not propose to open until she reached her destination. She
wished to go to take leave of her aunt, but Sir Ralph with downright
obstinacy opposed her doing so. He had seen Madame de Carvajal; he knew
that she would overwhelm Indiana with reproaches and scorn; he was
indignant at this hypocritical severity, and could not endure the
thought of Madame Delmare exposing herself to it.
On the following day, as Delmare and his wife were about entering the
diligence, Sir Ralph said to them with his accustomed _sang-froid_:
"I have often given you to understand, my friends, that it was my wish
to accompany you; but you have refused to understand, or, at all events,
to give me an answer. Will you allow me to go with you?"
"To Bordeaux?" queried Monsieur Delmare.
"To Bourbon," replied Sir Ralph.
"You cannot think of it," rejoined Monsieur Delmare; "you cannot shift
your establishment about from place to place at the caprice of a couple
whose situation is precarious and whose future is uncertain. It would be
abusing your friendship shamefully to accept the sacrifice of your whole
life and of your position in society. You are rich and young and free;
you ought to marry again, found a family--"
"That is not the question," said Sir Ralph, coldly. "As I have not the
art of enveloping my ideas in words which change their meaning, I will
tell you frankly what I think. It has seemed to me that in the last six
months our friendship has fallen off perceptibly. Perhaps I have made
mistakes which my dulness of perception has prevented me from detecting.
If I am wrong, a word from you will suffice to set my mind at rest;
allow me to go with you. If I have deserved severe treatment at your
hands, it is time to tell me so; you ought not, by abandoning me thus,
to leave me to suffer remorse for having failed to make reparation for
my faults."
The colonel was so touched by this artless and generous appeal that he
forgot all the wounds to his self-esteem which had alienated him from
his friend. He offered him his hand, swore that his friendship was more
sincere than ever, and that he refused his offers only from delicacy.
Madame Delmare held her peace. Ralph made an effort to obtain a word
from her.
"And you, Indiana," he said in a stifled voice, "have you still a
friendly feeling for me?"
That question reawoke all the filial affection, all the memories of
childhood, of years of intimacy, which bound their hearts together. They
threw themselves weeping into each other's arms, and Ralph nearly
swooned; for strong emotions were constantly fermenting in that robust
body, beneath that calm and reserved exterior. He sat down to avoid
falling and remained for a few moments without speaking, pale as death;
then he seized the colonel's hand in one of his and his wife's in the
other.
"At this moment, when we are about to part, perhaps forever, be frank
with me. You refuse my proposal to accompany you on my account and not
on your own?"
"I give you my word of honor," said Delmare, "that in refusing you I
sacrifice my happiness to yours."
"For my part," said Indiana, "you know that I would like never to leave
you."
"God forbid that I should doubt your sincerity at such a moment!"
rejoined Ralph; "your word is enough for me; I am content with you
both."
And he disappeared.
Six weeks later the brig _Coraly_ sailed from the port of Bordeaux.
Ralph had written to his friends that he would be in that city just
prior to their sailing; but, as his custom was, in such a laconic style
that it was impossible to determine whether he intended to bid them
adieu for the last time or to accompany them. They waited in vain for
him until the last moment, and when the captain gave the signal to weigh
anchor he had not appeared. Gloomy presentiments added their bitterness
to the dull pain that gnawed at Indiana's heart, when the last houses of
the town vanished amid the trees on the shore. She shuddered at the
thought that she was thenceforth alone in the world with the husband
whom she hated! that she must live and die with him, without a friend to
comfort her, without a kinsman to protect her against his brutal
domination.
But, as she turned, she saw on the deck behind her Ralph's placid and
kindly face smiling into hers.
"So you have not abandoned me after all?" she said, as she threw her
arms about his neck, her face bathed in tears.
"Never!" replied Ralph, straining her to his heart.