“Tell me all you know about her,” said I.
The woman eagerly complied. The facts which she gave me, together with
a few others afterwards gleaned by me from a different source, form
the basis of the following history, a history which I am sure you
will pardon me for giving in my own words rather than in those of my
informants:
Elise Lepage was not a beauty, yet in her earlier youth, at least, she
possessed a charm which always insured her the admiration and very
often the love of those with whom she came in contact. Her father, who
was a musician of somewhat mediocre talent, recognized this charm, and
in his simple way calculated upon its winning her a suitable husband,
notwithstanding his small means and her consequent lack of a dowry.
To him she was a paragon, and when, at the close of a long day of
unremitting labor at the piano, he saw her approaching him in a dainty
fresh robe ready for their usual walk on the boulevard, his face would
light up with such pride and joy that the loving girl who watched him
felt the tear gush to her eye at the same moment the smile rose to her
lip.
They lived in a plain but sufficiently comfortable apartment, and had
for neighbors two young men by the name of Picard,——brothers. These
two young men occupied the apartment above them; and one of them,
the youngest, having some taste for music, a natural acquaintance
had sprung up between him and M. Lepage, which presently involved
the older brother and Mlle. Lepage. The consequence was that Jean,
the elder brother, fell in love with the fresh, charming young girl,
and, being himself a man of no conventional prejudices——the future
Communist in fact——he offered to marry her without any other fortune
than that of her youth and many virtues. The old father was delighted.
First, because he felt himself failing in health and was anxious to
see his darling’s future secured; and secondly, because he liked this
man better than any one else in the world save and excepting always
his dear and much admired daughter. Why he felt this extraordinary
affection for a man of whom he was forced to acknowledge to himself
he knew but little, he could not have told had he tried. Certainly
it was not because he understood him, for he did not; neither was it
because the other possessed attractions of a peculiar or marked nature.
Jean Picard was not handsome, nor was he even gifted in manner or
conversation, yet old Mr. Lepage loved him and hailed the prospect of
his being his son-in-law with as much fervor as if he were the owner
of millions instead of being the physician of one of the poorest and
worst paying quarters in the whole city. He trusted him, and that fact,
perhaps, illustrates the character of the two men. For Jean Picard was
to be trusted in all matters of the heart and conscience; it was only
his head that was at fault, or, perhaps, I should say his temperament.
He had inherited traditions of the First Revolution, and believed
absolutely in the might of the people. But of this he had nothing to
say in those days, his head and his heart being joined in the one wish,
the one hope, the one purpose, to make Elise his wife.
The evening which he had chosen to speak to M. Lepage——he had never
breathed a word of his desires to Elise herself——was, as he afterwards
remembered, an especially beautiful one. The moon was shining, and as,
filled with the joy of a successful suit, he stepped from the apartment
of M. Lepage, something in the quiet beauty of this round and serene
orb touched the poetry that exists with all true love in the heart,
and drew him, in spite of his usually active ways, to a window opening
from the corridor on to a small garden belonging to the _concierge_. He
was looking from this window and dreaming of Elise, when his glance,
which had been mechanically fixed upon a leafy retreat beneath him,
became earnest, deep, and inquiring, and with a startled gesture of
surprise, he bent forward and listened as if his life depended upon
his hearing what went on in the garden below him. Had he seen anything
which threatened his happiness, and if so, what?
His firm and controlled countenance tells little, but his wandering
look and the unsteady step with which he leaves the window and betakes
himself to his own room bespeak strong agitation. If we follow him
and watch him as a half hour later he slowly rouses from the deep and
troubled brooding into which he had sunk immediately upon his entrance,
and turning towards the door, waits with a look not to be mistaken for
the advance of the step just becoming audible upon the stairs, we shall
undoubtedly learn from his own lips what it is that has disturbed him
so deeply at a moment he esteemed himself so profoundly blessed.
Yet is he going to speak? His lips have opened, his face has assumed
a terrible expression, he has even advanced two paces toward the door
to meet the expected comer, when suddenly he pauses. The face he sees
before him is not the one he anticipated. It is that of his brother, to
be sure, but it does not wear the look he had schooled himself to meet,
the triumphant look that goes with happy love, however wrongfully it
may be won. The surprise upsets him, and for a moment the words falter
on his tongue, then all his manhood re-asserts itself, and imperiously
beckoning his brother to enter, he closes the door and stands with the
handle still in his grasp, looking at Camille.
“You are in trouble,” said he shortly. “What is it?” Then as he saw his
brother start and uneasily drop his eyes, added bitterly: “Have you
told her what you are, and does she refuse to marry you?”
Camille, who was of a fiery nature, but who for certain reasons stood
somewhat in awe of his brother, looked for a moment as if he could have
leaped at his throat; but he restrained himself, and while the veins
swelled on his forehead and his face grew fiery red, he stammered:
“Whom do you mean by her? I do not understand you.”
“That is not true; you understand me perfectly,” was the rude but brave
Jean’s straightforward response. “But if you must have names I allude
to Elise, the pure, innocent, high-minded girl whom by arts I do not
profess to understand you have succeeded in pleasing, till, for aught I
know, she considers you a model of virtue and goodness.”
“And if she did?” broke in the other impetuously.
Jean drew a deep breath and stepped slowly back.
“I should undeceive her,” he declared, “if by the act I alienated her
good-will forever.”
Camille, who for some cause did not resent the first clause of this
sentence, started at the second, and gave his brother a sharp look.
“_Mon Dieu!_” exclaimed he, with as much wonder as jealousy in his
tone. “Do you love her too?”
The look which Jean turned upon his brother made that other’s weak and
selfish heart stand still.
“I love her,” said he, “I will not say _too_, for you do not love her.
Had you loved her you would have fled from her instead of using all
your arts secretly to win her. A criminal——”
“Hush!” exclaimed the other, with a terrified look around him that for
some reason made Jean quail with a sense of apprehension. “Do you want
to draw the police upon me?”
With a stride Jean advanced upon his brother, and, laying his strong
hand on his shoulders, uncompromisingly turned him towards the light.
“You tremble,” he muttered under his breath. “You shrink, and your face
is like marble. _Mon Dieu!_ Camille, is there anything new?”
With a suppressed cry Camille tore himself from his brother’s hands.
“Who has given you the right to question me?” he cried. “I will not
have it. I have had enough of your spying.” And flinging himself
violently towards the door of his own room, he was on the point of
disappearing from Jean’s presence, when the latter, with another
movement of his strong arm, drew him back and himself entered the
apartment.
In an instant he came back. His face was like stone, and he had in his
hand a valise fully packed, which he set heavily down on the table
before Camille’s eyes.
“What does this mean?” he asked. “Where are you going and why have you
kept your departure a secret from me?”
For a moment the stricken Camille did not reply; then he broke down,
and flinging himself on his knees, burst forth with the cry:
“I am a ruined man, Jean; I——I tried it again, and this time it will be
found out. To-morrow, to-night, possibly, my employer will look over
his books, and——”
“How much is it?” broke in Jean, in a low, strained voice.
“Ten thousand francs,” murmured the other. “All gone.”
“Lost at play?”
Camille nodded his head.
Jean drew back, covering his face for a moment with his hands.
“I have just that amount,” he said, “saved up. Your employer shall have
it to-morrow. As for you,” he added bitterly, “I wash my hands of you.
This is twice.”
His voice broke, and he hurriedly withdrew to the window, as if the
sight of his brother’s face maddened him.
He returned almost instantly, however, and walking straight up to
Camille, demanded:
“What were you doing there?” pointing sternly below. “This bag shows
you intended to abscond to-night. Were you bidding her farewell or——”
He had not strength to finish, but his look filled up the hiatus left
in his speech.
Camille faltered beneath that glance. If he could have seen a way to
escape, his furtive, worried look showed he would have availed himself
of it. But his brother’s eye held him and would have the truth. With a
gasp he broke forth:
“I have bidden her farewell. She does not know why I go. She loves me
and she trusts me. I——I would have persuaded her to go with me if I
could. I love her, I say, whatever you may call it. I love her, do you
hear, and if I could have induced her to leave her father you would not
have caught me in this box. It was my despair.”
He stopped. There was something in Jean’s face which told him that
silence was better than speech at this moment. The first words of Jean
convinced him of it.
“You are a villain,” said he, “and the punishment of your villainy
shall be a confession. I hope to marry Elise Lepage,” he went on,
raising his hand for silence as he saw his brother about to protest,
“and I do not intend she shall waste her life in useless regrets
over the loss of one so unworthy as yourself. Come, then, and in her
presence, if not in that of her father, proclaim yourself the criminal
that you are or——”
“Or what?” asked the other, with a wild gleam, half of defiance, half
of fear.
“Or I keep my ten thousand francs and leave you to the tender mercies
of a man whose justice, you have reason to know, is stronger than his
mercy.”
A cold sweat broke out on Camille’s face. He looked at his brother with
great staring eyes as if he could hardly believe in the alternative
that was offered him. Seeing it, Jean continued:
“It is three years since the day I first awoke to the knowledge that I
had for my brother a man who had provoked the justice of the law, and
only escaped by the ignorance or blindness of those he had defrauded.
In those three years I have spared nothing, either in the way of money
or effort, to give you what you wanted and save you, if possible,
from the repetition of your dastardly crime. How have you repaid me?
By stealing the fancy of the woman I loved, or,” as Camille faintly
objected, “the fancy of a girl whom you knew I respected, and whom you
also knew would never have given you her regard had she known your
real character or suspected the shadow that hung above you. She thinks
you true, you say, and trusts you. That means she will remember you
lovingly in your absence, possibly wait for your return, when return
you never will. Elise is too fine a girl to be thus sacrificed,”
asserted Jean, “and if I did not love her I should still say, ‘Come
below, and show yourself to her for what you are.’ Better she should
suffer this one shock, that in itself carries healing, than linger on
for years a prey to a pain of longing that will be none the less keen
because it will be so bravely hidden.”
But Camille had sunk before this prospect.
“I cannot,” he murmured, “I would rather go to the galleys.”
[Illustration: “SHE SAT IN HER OWN LITTLE ROOM.”]
Meantime, in her own little room below, Elise was bitterly weeping. She
had loved Camille almost unconsciously. Not till she saw him about to
leave her did she realize how deeply he had entered into her dreams and
hopes. Then the mystery of his departure heightened its effect. Though
the ready tale he told of the fine position which had been offered him
in a mercantile house in Peru was plausible enough, there was something
in his manner and the fact that he wished to carry her away with him
secretly that struck an icy doubt to her heart, and, devoted as she was
to him, she felt as if she would give all the world, were it hers, to
throw herself into her father’s arms and ask him for his sympathy and
counsel. But that was expressly forbidden. Her father must know nothing
of her sorrow or her love; her wilful lover would not have it. And
young as she was, innocent as her thoughts were of wrong or deception,
there was something in this ban laid between her and the father she
so idolized, that awakened strange doubts and fears in her otherwise
trusting bosom.
Her room adjoined that of M. Lepage, and more than once during her
grief and tears she had heard his restless foot approach the door of
communication, as though he were about to call her to him. But he did
not; she was so quiet he evidently thought she was asleep, and finally
all became as still in his room as it was deathlike in hers. And Elise
wept on.
Suddenly there came a tap, not on the door she had been so fearful
of seeing open, but on the one which led into the hall. Astonished,
frightened almost, she crept to it and faintly asked who was there. A
woman’s voice answered. It was the _concierge_, who handed her a small
note. Hurriedly lighting her candle, Elise unfolded it and read:
“MADEMOISELLE——It is indispensable that I should have a few
minutes’ conversation with you to-night. It is 10 o’clock,
therefore your father has retired and your little sitting-room
will be free. I shall not come alone.
“Respectfully,
JEAN PICARD.”
A whirl of thoughts swept through Elise’s brain. She felt dizzy, almost
sick, but she did not hesitate. Opening the door into her father’s
room, she glided in. All was quiet. The good man was evidently asleep.
Hastily crossing the floor, she gained the little sitting-room beyond,
and, closing the door behind her, struck a light. Then, stopping but a
moment to regain breath and still the nervous beatings of her heart,
she approached the hall door and softly opened it. A low cry escaped
her as she did so, the two men standing on the threshold bore in their
countenances such signs of subdued agitation.
“What is it?” she faintly breathed, falling back with a slow step as
they entered. “Why are you here so late? And together?” she could not
help adding, as her eyes roamed from the one face to the other, both
so white, both so drawn, both so filled with that strange look which a
woman only sees on the countenance of the man who loves her.
As Camille did not answer, Jean replied:
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I have come here on a very disagreeable duty.
I have come to hear my brother tell you the truth. Camille, speak.”
Camille, thus abjured, cast one glance of burning anguish at his
brother, then in a voice so unnatural Elise could scarcely believe it
his own, exclaimed bitterly:
“He wishes me to tell you I am a villain. It is not a pleasant thing
to say of one’s self, Mademoiselle, but it is true. I am a villain,
and——and I advise you to forget me.”
The deep misery expressed in his tones shook Jean a little, but he was
inexorable. Giving one glance at Elise, who, seemingly turned into
stone by the terrible nature of her lover’s words, stood breathless and
pale before them, he said:
“It is not enough, Camille; tell her why you go away to-night. Tell her
it is a flight.”
“You have said it,” murmured the other, half savagely; then as Jean
remained unchanged in look and attitude, cried harshly: “Mademoiselle,
I am unworthy of your attention. I——I am no longer an honest man.
I——have——”
“Stolen,” added a deep, firm voice.
The silence that followed this word was such as could be felt.
“And you wished to take me with you!” were the words that first
interrupted it.
“I love you,” murmured Camille in a broken, miserable tone.
Elise turned slowly away.
“My father! my father!” burst involuntarily from her lips, and she held
out her arms in dumb entreaty to the door that separated her from her
beloved parent.
Instantly and as if in answer to her appeal, a strange murmur arose
from that room, an inarticulate, almost an agonized murmur that struck
terror to the hearts of those who heard it.
“My father!” again cried Elise, and this time she rushed at the door
and tore it widely open. Her father lay stretched before her on the
floor, having evidently fallen in his efforts to answer her summons.
* * * * *
It was midnight, two hours after the fatal event recorded in the above
lines. Around the bedside of M. Lepage were grouped a physician, a
priest, the _concierge_, Jean Picard, and his daughter. Camille was
already far away.
The physician had given them no hope. In an hour or less the poor
musician’s soul would be far away. He was sensible of it himself. Upon
his first return to consciousness he had said:
“This is death.”
Elise, overwhelmed as she was, could not weep. Her one thought seemed
to be: “Supposing I had listened to Camille’s entreaties, and had been
flying from Paris in this terrible hour!”
Jean Picard, on the contrary, shed more than one tear. Perhaps the
restraint he had put upon himself in the tragic scene which had
preceded this catastrophe was having its revenge upon him now, or
perhaps the look of peace with which the old man surveyed him and his
daughter, standing, as they were, side by side, struck him by its
contrast to the sad reality. It was midnight, as I have said, and the
clock was striking. As it ceased, the dying man spoke:
“May I not see your two hands joined?” he asked, gazing tenderly at
Jean and Elise.
As though a thunderbolt had fallen at her feet, Elise started and fell
back. Jean hastily cleared the room and then leading her gently up to
the bedside, he said solemnly:
“Mademoiselle, you must pardon your father. Three hours ago I had the
honor to ask of him your hand in marriage, and he had the goodness to
accord it to me. He does not know that we have had no conversation on
this matter since, and that therefore such words must fall upon you
with a shock.”
“Did you——were you——” she stammered, “thinking of this when you——”
“Mademoiselle,” interrupted Jean, “whatever I have ever done or said
has been more for your sake than my own; believe that.” And he threw a
glance at M. Lepage which she could not fail to understand.
Hiding her face in her hands, Elise knelt by the bedside. She could
feel her father’s hand fall on her head, caressingly, lingeringly. In a
minute more she heard him say:
“He is a good man; you will marry him, Elise?” Then as she did not
answer, he added softly, “I should die so happy.”
With a spring she stood upright. “Jean Picard,” she said, “do you wish
me for your wife?”
A great light which she could not help noticing in that solemn hour
settled slowly over all his face.
“There is nothing I wish so much,” he answered; “it has been my dream
for months.”
“After what you know of my heart?” she murmured, but so low the dying
man could not hear her.
“Elise,” was the equally low answer, “I do not expect you to love me
just yet, but you need a protector; let me be that protector. You need
some one to comfort you and provide you with a home; let me be that
friend, and I will trust my love to make you satisfied in the end.”
“You are a good man,” she murmured, in unconscious repetition of her
father’s words; and, scarcely knowing what she did, she laid her hand
in his, seeing more clearly the smile that parted her poor father’s
lips at the action than the solemn look above with which Jean Picard
accepted the trust thus imparted to him.
And so it was that Elise Lepage became the wife of Jean Picard, and a
tragedy of the heart was begun which ended, as we have seen, in her
death. For Elise was a conscientious woman, and once married set all
her hopes on the prospect of some day becoming as much a wife in heart
as she was now in name. But that heart was at first too sore with the
violent wrench it had sustained to experience much beyond gratitude,
and months rolled by without Jean Picard discovering in his young
wife’s studiously kind manner any token of that passion which informed
his own life. Yet the germ if not the flower of it was in her breast.
Unconsciously to herself her husband was becoming all in all to her,
but the feeling she experienced for him was so different from that she
had given to his unworthy brother that she did not recognize it for
what it was, and called it simply friendship.
The stirring events of the war and the opening days of the Commune
did not alter matters. A numbness seemed to settle upon Elise as she
saw her husband gradually identifying himself with a cause she both
mistrusted and feared. That her coldness drove him into the savage
warfare of the barricades she did not think. She knew him well enough
to perceive that, however it was with others, with him it was a matter
of conscience to uphold what he called the rights of the people. And
perceiving this, she did not lose her respect for him, though her
terrors accumulated and an element of dread came into her regard for
him which caused her less and less to suspect the true nature of the
emotions he inspired.
Nor did the culmination of his career and his subsequent downfall fully
awaken her. Like a dream the dreadful days passed in which he was
tried, condemned, and sentenced to exile; like a dream came the time
of parting. And not till she felt herself torn from his clasping arms
did she realize that life was ending for her, that the moment of death
had come and she had never told him she loved him. Making a vigorous
effort, for her senses seemed to be leaving her, she turned, all
tremulous with passionate feeling, and holding out her arms to him, was
about to utter what would have illumined his exile, when doubt, that
black shadow of the soul, glided again across her spirit, and, saying
to herself, “’Tis but a boundless regret at the loss of his goodness,”
she permitted herself only to cry:
“Good-by, Jean. I will be true to you in your absence, and work if need
be with my own hands, to sustain myself till you come back.”
His sad smile told her, when too late, what she had done, or rather
had omitted to do.
The memory of that smile never left her. It haunted her day and night.
The struggle into which she was forced for her daily bread only served
to perpetuate her remorse. From a somewhat practical woman she became
a dreamer of dreams. All her soul centred in the one wish, the one
hope of seeing him again, if only to whisper in his ear the truth that
was every day becoming more and more apparent in her own heart. She
dared not write it to him. The first few dutiful letters she had sent
had never been answered, and she was of a temperament that made it
impossible for her to risk the chance of her heart’s story falling into
alien or unsympathetic hands. But she could not entirely smother her
desire for utterance. So the letters came to be written, which, though
never sent, contained the beatings of her heart through that long and
dreary separation, letters which she evidently fully expected would
meet his eyes, and tell him in sweetest language what her own tongue
had failed to do on that memorable day of their parting.
But hope cherished to the last, went suddenly out like a candle
extinguished. The ship which was to bring the exiles home arrived in
safety, and she saw it and saw them, but did not see him. The blow was
fatal. Without asking a question, or doubting the doom which had fallen
upon him and therefore upon her, she returned home and put, as we have
seen, a desperate end to her own life. Love long repressed had had its
full revenge. She could not live without its object.
Such was the story of Elise Picard, told me in substance by the good
woman who had befriended her and in detail by the letters she had left
behind her in this same woman’s charge. I had scarcely reached the end,
that is, had scarcely laid the last letter down, when a sudden hubbub
rose in the hall without, followed by a pitiful low moan which somehow
or other awoke in me a peculiar apprehension. Springing to the door
I flung it open. Never shall I forget the picture that met my eyes.
Frozen each in his place by some great emotion, the eager crowd before
me stood silent, aghast, gazing at a figure that, emaciated almost
beyond the semblance of a man, crouched against the wall which led
towards the room of death.
The hush, the intolerable anguish expressed by that form, bent almost
double by the sudden weight of woe which had fallen upon it, touched me
to the quick. Grasping the hand of the first person I could reach, I
asked:
“Who is he? What does this mean?”
But I did not need an answer to my question; I knew without words that
Jean Picard stood before me.
* * * * *
I learned afterwards that he was among the men that passed before her
eyes on the wharf, but he was so changed by disease and grief she had
not recognized him. He had been spending the last two hours in a search
for her.