“They have been here this morning--both of them. He followed her, as he
always does. He had a desperate look which warned me. Afterward I found
the note upon the floor. Now will you read it?”
“Good God!” he cried, as he fell into his chair again, his brow sinking
into his hands.
“I have read it,” said Madame, with a tragic gesture, “and I choose to
place one stumbling-block in the path that would lead her to an old age
like mine. I do not like your Americans; but I have sometimes seen in
her girl’s face a proud, heroic endurance of the misery she has brought
upon herself, and it has moved me. And this let ter--you should read it,
to see how such a man can plead. It is a passionate cry of despair--it
is a poem in itself. I, myself, read it with sobs in my throat and tears
in my eyes. ‘If you love me!--if you have ever loved me!’ he cries, ‘for
God’s sake!--for love’s sake!--if there is love on earth--if there is a
God in heaven, you will not let me implore you in vain!’ And his prayer
is that she will leave Paris with him tonight--. to-night! There!
Monsieur, I have done. Behold the letter! Take it or leave it, as you
please.” And she flung it upon the floor at his feet.
She paused a moment, wondering what he would do.
He bent down and picked the letter up.
“I will take it,” he said.
All at once he had become calm, and when he rose and uttered his last
words to her, there was upon his face a faint smile.
“I, too,” he said,--“I, too, Madame, suffer from a mad and hopeless
passion, and thus can comprehend the bitterness of M. Edmondstone’s
pangs. I, too, would implore in the name of love and God,--if I might,
but I may not.” And so he took his departure.
Until evening Bertha did not see him. The afternoon she spent alone and
in writing letters, and having completed and sealed the last, she went
to her couch and tried to sleep. One entering the room, as she lay upon
the violet cushions, her hands at her sides, her eyes closed, might well
have been shocked. Her spotless pallor, the fine sharpness of her face,
the shadows under her eyes, her motionlessness, would have excused
the momentary feeling. But she was up and dressed for dinner when M.
Villefort presented himself. Spring though it was, she was attired in a
high, close dress of black velvet, and he found her almost cowering over
the open fire-place. Strangely enough, too, she fancied that when she
looked up at him she saw him shiver, as if he were struck with a slight
chill also.
“You should not wear that,” he said, with a half smile at her gown.
“Why?” she asked.
“It makes you so white--so much like a too early lily. But--but perhaps
you thought of going out?”
“No,” she answered; “not to-night.”
He came quite close to her.
“If you are not too greatly fatigued,” he said, “it would give me
happiness to take you with me on my errand to your mother’s house. I
must carry there my little birthday gift to your sister,” smiling again.
An expression of embarrassment showed itself upon her face.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “to think that I had forgotten it! She will feel as
if I did not care for her at all.”
She seemed for the moment quite unhappy.
“Let me see what you have chosen.”
He drew from his pocket a case and opened it.
“Oh,” she cried, “how pretty and how suitable for a girl!”
They were the prettiest, most airy set of pearls imaginable.
She sat and looked at them for a few seconds thoughtfully, and then
handed them back.
“You are very good, and Jenny will be in ecstasies,” she said.
“It is a happiness to me to give her pleasure,” he returned. “I feel
great tenderness for her. She is not like the young girls I have known.
Her innocence is of a frank and noble quality, which is better than
ignorance. One could not bear that the slightest shadow of sin or pain
should fall upon her. The atmosphere surrounding her is so bright with
pure happiness and the courage of youth.”
Involuntarily he held out his hand.
“Will you”--he began. His voice fell and broke. “Will you go with me?”
he ended.
He saw that she was troubled.
“Now?” she faltered.
“Yes--now.”
There was a peculiar pause,--a moment, as it seemed to him, of
breathless silence. This silence she broke by her rising slowly from her
seat.
“Yes,” she responded, “I will go. Why should I not?”
It was midnight when they left the Trents’, and Jenny stood upon the
threshold, a bright figure in a setting of brightness, and kissed her
hand to them as they went down the steps.
“I hope you will be better to-morrow, Arthur,” she said.
He turned quickly to look up at her.
“I?”
“Yes. You look so tired. I might say haggard, if it was polite.”
“It would not be polite,” said Bertha, “so don’t say it. Good-night,
Jenny!”
But when they were seated in the carriage she glanced at her husband’s
face.
“_Are_ you unwell?” she asked.
He passed his hand quickly across his forehead.
“A little fatigued,” he replied. “It is nothing. To-morrow--to-morrow it
will be all over.”
And so silence fell upon them.
As they entered the drawing-room a clock chimed the half hour.
“So late as that!” exclaimed Bertha, and sank into a chair with a faint
laugh. “Why, to-day is over,” she said. “It is to-morrow.”
M. Villefort had approached a side table. Upon it lay a peculiar-looking
oblong box.
“Ah,” he said, softly, “they have arrived.”
“What are they?” Bertha asked.
He was bending over the box to open it, and did not turn toward her, as
he replied:--
“It is a gift for a young friend of mine,--a brace of pistols. He has
before him a long journey in the East, and he is young enough to have a
fancy for firearms.”
He was still examining the weapons when Bertha crossed the room on her
way up-stairs, and she paused an instant to look at them.
“They are very handsome,” she said. “One could almost wear them as
ornaments.”
“But they would have too threatening a look,” he answered, lightly.
As he raised his eyes they met hers. She half started backward, moved by
a new sense of the haggardness of his face.
“You _are_ ill!” she exclaimed. “You are as colorless as marble.”
“And you, too,” he returned, still with the same tender lightness. “Let
us hope that our ‘to-morrow’ will find us both better, and you say it is
tomorrow now. Good-night!”
She went away without saying more. Weary as she was, she knew there was
no sleep for her, and after dismissing her maid, she threw herself upon
the lounge before the bedroom fire and lay there. To-night she felt as
if her life had reached its climax. She burst into a passion of tears.
“Jenny! Jenny!” she cried, “how I envy--how I envy you!”
The recollection of Jenny shining in her pretty gala dress, and
delighting in her birthday presents, and everybody else’s pride and
affection, filled her with a morbid misery and terror. She covered her
face with her hands as she thought of it.
“Once,” she panted, “as I looked at her tonight, for a moment I almost
hated her. Am I so bad as that?--am I?”
Scarcely two seconds afterward she had sprung to her feet and was
standing by the side of her couch, her heart beating with a rapid throb
of fright, her limbs trembling. A strange sound had fallen suddenly upon
the perfect silence of the night--a sound loud, hard, and sharp--the
report of a pistol! What dread seized her she knew not. She was across
the room and had wrenched the door open in an instant, then with flying
feet down the corridor and the staircase. But half-way down the stairs
she began to cry out aloud, “Arthur! Arthur!” not conscious of her own
voice--“Arthur, what is it?” The door of the drawing-room flew open
before the fierce stroke of her palm.
M. Villefort stood where she had left him; but while his left hand
supported his weight against the table, his right was thrust into his
breast. One of the pistols lay at his feet.
She thought it was Death’s self that confronted her in his face, but he
spoke to her, trying faintly to smile.
“Do not come in,” he said, “I have met with--an accident. It is nothing.
Do not come in. A servant----”
His last recollection was of her white face and white draperies as he
fell, and somehow, dizzy, sick, and faint as he was, he seemed to hear
her calling out, in a voice strangely like Jenny’s, “Arthur! Arthur!”
In less than half an hour the whole house was astir. Upstairs physicians
were with the wounded man, downstairs Mrs. Trent talked and wept
over her daughter, after the manner of all good women. She was fairly
terrified by Bertha’s strange shudderings, quick, strained breath, and
dilated eyes. She felt as if she could not reach her--as if she hardly
made herself heard.
“You must calm yourself, Bertha,” she would say. “Try to calm yourself.
We must hope for the best. Oh, how could it have happened!”
It was in the midst of this that a servant entered with a letter, which
he handed to his mistress. The envelope bore upon it nothing but her own
name.
She looked at it with a bewildered expression.
“For me?” she said.
“It fell from Monsieur’s pocket as we carried him upstairs,” replied the
man.
“Don’t mind it now, Bertha,” said her mother, “Ah, poor M. Villefort!”