While this conversation was going on, Toni, who had seen Lucie go
chasing after the butterfly, watched Captain and Madame Ravenel. Paul
had told him there was something mysterious about the pair, and Toni
was vaguely conscious of this strangeness, and felt in his childish,
ignorant way, like Paul, the charm of Madame Ravenel's touching beauty.
He heard Madame Ravenel say:
"What can have become of the child?" and Captain Ravenel got up at once
to look for her, going a little way along the path down which Lucie had
disappeared. And then a strange thing happened before Toni's eyes. A
young officer coming by, with a waxed mustache and his cap set jauntily
on the side of his head, stopped directly in front of Madame Ravenel,
and looked at her with a smile which Toni did not at all understand,
but which made Madame Ravenel's pale face flush to the roots of her
dark hair. Then the officer said, in an insolent yet insinuating voice:
"May I be permitted, Madame, to admire your beauty a little
closer?"--and sat down on the bench without any invitation, throwing
his arm around the back of it so as almost to embrace Madame Ravenel,
who started up with a cry. At that moment, Captain Ravenel appeared at
the back of the bench. He was not so big a man as the young officer,
but, catching him by his collar, he threw him sprawling on the ground,
and then deliberately stamped upon him as he lay prostrate. Madame
Ravenel stood as still as a statue. The officer sprang from the ground
and would have flown at Captain Ravenel's throat, but two other
officers passing ran toward them and separated them, and pinioned the
arms of the officer to his side. Toni heard Captain Ravenel say, as he
handed his card to one of the officers:
"I saw this man grossly insult this lady, and he shall pay for it with
his life,"--and then Madame Ravenel swayed a minute or two and fell
over in a dead faint. The two officers hurried their comrade off,
leaving Captain Ravenel alone with Madame Ravenel, who lay prone on the
grass, quite insensible.
Toni remembered having once seen a lady faint in the park, and that
some one fetched water from the fountain close by, and dashed it on
her face, but he had nothing to fetch it in, having no hat on his
head--a hat being a useless incumbrance which he only wore on those
rare Sundays when his mother dragged him to church against his earnest
protests. But there was Paul Verney's hat. Toni scampered down the path
and in two minutes had found Paul. Lucie was just leaving him, and
Toni, mysteriously beckoning to him, whispered:
"Fill your cap with water and take it to Madame Ravenel. She is lying
on the grass fainting like I saw a lady once, and somebody at that time
threw water on the lady."
Paul, with the true lover's instinct to serve those loved by his adored
one, ran to the fountain and filled his cap with water, and then flew
as fast as his legs would carry him to the place where Madame Ravenel
still lay. Most of the water was spilled over his white linen suit, but
there was enough left to revive Madame Ravenel.
"Thank you, my boy," said Captain Ravenel, as he dashed the water on
Madame Ravenel's face. Then she opened her eyes and tried to stand up.
Paul ran for more water, and came back with about a tablespoonful
left in his cap, while he himself was dripping like a water spaniel.
But Madame Ravenel, by that time, was sitting up on the bench, pale,
with her dark hair disheveled, and her hat still lying on the ground.
Captain Ravenel was supporting her.
Paul Verney, being a gentleman at twelve years of age, felt
instinctively that having done a service it was his place to retire. He
received a tremulous "Thank you" from Madame Ravenel, who then asked
anxiously of Captain Ravenel:
"Where is Lucie--what has become of the child?"
But Lucie at that moment appeared, and Paul, longing to remain and hear
more interesting stories about grown people from Lucie's cherry lips,
still felt bound to retire, which he did.
Toni, on the contrary, making no pretensions to being a gentleman, had
to see the whole thing played through. He concealed himself behind the
shrubbery, and saw with pain, but with deep interest, Madame Ravenel
weep a little--tears which Captain Ravenel tried to check. Then, in
a moment, Harper appeared and Lucie went off, her usually sparkling,
dimpling little face quite sorrowful; and then Madame Ravenel, leaning
on Captain Ravenel's arm, walked away.
Toni stood and pondered these things to himself. What queer creatures
grown people were after all! Still they were very interesting if one
got rid of all their scrapes and muddles. What did that dashing-looking
officer want to put his arm around Madame Ravenel for? Toni, reflecting
on these things, took Jacques out and asked him about them, but Jacques
replied that he knew no more about them than Toni did.
That night Toni, not being made to go to bed at eight o'clock like
Paul Verney and all other well-conducted boys, was prowling around the
garden of the commandant's house, of which the back was toward the
little street in which Madame Marcel lived. The garden gate was open,
and Toni sneaked in and seated himself on the grass, just outside the
window on the ground floor which looked into a room that was Colonel
Duquesne's study.
Toni had an object in this. There was a great clump of gooseberry
bushes under this window, and Toni loved to gorge himself on Colonel
Duquesne's gooseberries. True, he could have had all the gooseberries
he wished from his mother, but they did not have the delicious flavor
of those surreptitiously confiscated from Colonel Duquesne's garden.
Toni was afraid of the commandant, as he was afraid of the monument in
the public square and of old Marie, and of everybody, in fact, except
his mother, and Paul Verney, and little Denise, and Jacques. But he
knew the garden much better than the commandant did, and his short legs
were quick enough to save him in case any one should come out of the
house.
Toni saw, through the window, the two officers, who had separated the
other officer and Captain Ravenel, sitting in grave conversation with
the colonel.
"It is most unfortunate!" said the colonel, a grave-looking,
gray-mustached man. "What could have induced Ravenel to come to
Bienville to live? It would seem to be the last place on earth that he
and Madame Ravenel would select."
Then one of the other officers said to the colonel:
"I understand that they came here principally on account of Madame
Ravenel's health, and besides, Ravenel owns the house in which they
live. It isn't much of a house, but I hear that Delorme spent every
franc of Madame Ravenel's money, and they have nothing but this house
and Ravenel's half-pay to live on, which probably accounts for their
being in Bienville. But I must say that they have kept themselves as
much out of sight as possible."
"I knew Delorme," said the colonel, "and a more unprincipled scoundrel
never lived. It is a great pity that Ravenel didn't knock the fellow's
brains out on the day when Madame Delorme left Delorme. Nobody would
have been sorry for it. I have known both Ravenel and Madame Ravenel
for years, and they are the last people living that I should expect
to commit the folly they did, going off together and remaining two
or three weeks before they separated. It was a species of madness,
but they have paid dearly for it. I understand that Madame Ravenel is
tormented by religious scruples about her divorce."
The colonel got up from his chair and walked up and down two or three
times. The vision of Sophie Ravenel in her triumphant beauty ten years
before, and the pale conscience-stricken Sophie of to-day, overwhelmed
him. He remembered Ravenel, spirited, gay, and caring for no other than
a soldier's life, and now cut off from all comrades, his life-work
ended. Surely these two had paid the full price for their three weeks'
desperate folly, of love, shame, rapture and despair. Then awakening
suddenly to the madness of what they had done, they had separated,
not to see each other again until Delorme had obtained a divorce; and
Sophie, after having been branded as a wife who had dishonored her
husband, was married to Ravenel, who, for her sake, had sacrificed all
his worldly prospects. The colonel was a strict moralist, but in his
heart he reckoned that there were many worse people in the world than
Sophie and Ravenel. The two officers sat silent while the colonel took
a couple of turns about the room, and then he sat down and spoke again:
"But the question is--what are we to do about Creci?"
"Creci swears," said the older of the two officers, "that Madame
Ravenel smiled at him as he passed and gave him an invitation to come
and sit by her."
"I am afraid," said the colonel, in a very cold voice, as he shook the
ash from his cigar, "that Creci is mistaken."
"Mistaken!" thought Toni to himself, "Creci was lying, pure and
simple." That Toni knew, for he had seen the whole transaction.
"We are bound, under the circumstances," said Captain Merrilat, "to
take Lieutenant Creci's word for it. Naturally Madame Ravenel's word
can not be taken."
Colonel Duquesne pondered for a while, stroking his mustache, and then
said:
"Come to me in two days--I will see what can be done,"--and then, after
a little more talk, the two officers got up and went away, and Colonel
Duquesne strolled out in the garden where Toni was still behind the
gooseberry bushes.
The colonel knew the Widow Marcel's boy and disapproved of him on
general principles, but did not suspect the little scamp was hidden
behind the gooseberry bushes which the colonel passed as he walked up
and down the dark path. As he turned to pass the third time, he heard
Tom's shrill, boyish voice piping out:
"You know, Jacques, I saw it all--I was watching Captain and Madame
Ravenel, and I saw Captain Ravenel when he got up and went away--and
then the young officer came along, and Madame Ravenel wasn't looking
his way at all--she was looking down with her hands in her lap, and I
don't think she even saw the lieutenant until he came up to her quite
close and said something impudent to her, and then Madame Ravenel's
face got as red as red could be, and the lieutenant plumped himself
down as close to her as he could and threw his arm around the back of
the bench, and Madame Ravenel looked scared to death and jumped up,
and then Captain Ravenel came and caught the lieutenant by the collar
and threw him on the ground and wiped his foot on him, and you know,
Jacques, you saw that just as I did."
The colonel stopped suddenly in his walk, and looking about, saw Toni's
little black head among the gooseberry bushes. He did not see the other
boy with whom Toni was talking, but he understood well enough what Toni
meant. Then Toni kept on:
"Jacques, I tell you, Madame Ravenel wasn't even looking at the
lieutenant, and I know she hates him by the way she pushed him off when
he sat down by her."
The colonel walked around the gooseberry bushes and there sat Toni on
the ground, but Jacques, whom the colonel innocently supposed to be
another boy, was not in sight, being then in Toni's pocket.
"So, my lad," said the colonel, "you saw the fight between Captain
Ravenel and Lieutenant Creci?"
But Toni, looking up at the colonel's short, soldierly figure and
determined air, was seized with one of those sudden panics which often
overcame him. He could not have said a word to save his life, with the
colonel's keen eyes fixed on him. So, jumping up and seizing hold of
Jacques in his pocket, Toni ran as fast as his legs would take him to
the garden gate, through the narrow street, and up into his own little
attic room, and did not feel safe until he was tucked in his own bed
with Jacques under the pillow to keep him company.
It was the habit of the colonel to take a walk in the park very early
every morning directly after his breakfast coffee, and it was also
Captain Ravenel's practice to pass through the park at the same hour.
His, however, was not a pleasure stroll, but was for the purpose of
taking to the post-office some hundreds of envelopes which he addressed
every day for a pittance, with which to eke out his half-pay. The two
men had been friends in past days, although the colonel was much older
and higher in rank than Ravenel, but they passed each other morning
after morning without a word being exchanged, Ravenel gravely saluting
the colonel, and the colonel slightly returning the bow, and each man
felt a tug at his heart for the other man.
Colonel Duquesne was a great stickler for the moralities, and Ravenel's
fall had been to him a terrible shock. He understood what little
Lucie, and Paul Verney, and Toni did not understand in the least, the
particular thing which had befallen Madame Ravenel. It was the old, sad
story of a villainous husband to a sensitive and dependent woman, of a
man a thousand times better than the husband loving the wife silently,
of hearing her unjustly accused in his presence, and even suffering
the indignity of a blow. That blow drove Sophie Delorme into Ravenel's
arms. It seemed to her, in the horror and shock of the moment, as if
there were no other place for her. She could not go to her grandmother,
Madame Bernard, who had arranged the match between Sophie and Delorme
and who had shut her eyes stubbornly to the wretchedness of the
marriage. Apart from Madame Bernard, Sophie was singularly alone in the
world. Her small fortune had been squandered by Delorme. She loved
Ravenel because she could not help it, and so these two poor souls,
like goodly ships driven against each other by storms and hurricanes,
to their destruction, this man and this woman were driven together,
driven to transgress the moral law, driven by the iron hand of fate
into a position, the last on earth that would have been expected of
them.
The victory of passion and despair over honor had been brief. In three
weeks they recoiled from what they had done. Delorme had promptly begun
proceedings for a divorce and Ravenel had besought Sophie to repair
their fault as far as possible in the eyes of the world by marrying him
as soon as the decree of divorce should be granted. But Sophie was a
deeply religious woman and it seemed to her an increase of wrong-doing
to marry Ravenel. There was but one way out of it and Ravenel, by
employing one of the best ecclesiastical lawyers in France, discovered
that there were certain technicalities in the religious marriage
that Delorme had not complied with, and it was possible to have the
marriage, religious as well as civil, annulled. Only then did Sophie
consent to marry him. For her he had sacrificed his position in the
army, his standing in the world and his modest fortune, and had done it
as if it were a privilege instead of a sacrifice.
No woman of Sophie Ravenel's lofty ideals could fail to appreciate
this, but neither could she forget that she had fallen from her high
estate. However she might strive to be happy, Ravenel could not but
see that she would live and die a conscience-stricken woman. She made
no moan, however, but secretly took on herself the whole sin. Ravenel
did the same, taking on himself all the blame. And so their married
life, although sad and colorless, was one of exquisite harmony. They
led a most retired life, rarely leaving their house except for Sophie's
early visit to the church and the walk in the park in the afternoons.
Whenever she appeared on the street, as Paul often had noticed, Ravenel
was never far away, and Sophie, had any affront been offered her, had
his protection close at hand. To them one place was the same as another
and, as Colonel Duquesne had imagined, necessity had much to do with
their settling in Bienville. An officer on half-pay has not much choice
of residence, and the little old house in Bienville at least gave them
a shelter. So they had come, bringing their remorse with them, likewise
their love.
The wages of sin in their case was not luxury. They lived as poorly
as gentle people could live and exist. They kept no servant, and as
it was painful for them to have to dine at the cafés, Sophie, with
the assistance of one old woman who was still active at seventy-five,
prepared all their meals. With her own hands she made those cheap and
simple black gowns whose fit and style were the despair and admiration
of the professional dressmakers in Bienville. In this matter of her
dress and appearance, Sophie retained all the pride which had ever been
hers when she was, as little Lucie said, the gayest and best-dressed
woman in Châlons. It was a part of a duty that she owed Ravenel, for
with the fine generosity of a woman she reckoned herself much in
Ravenel's debt, and felt she should lose as few as possible of those
charms that had won him to his downfall. She never lost her appearance
of elegance, by dint of an ingenuity, little short of miraculous. She
uttered no complaining word, and no day passed over her head that she
did not tell Ravenel he was the best man in the world.
There was a wheezy old piano in the little house, and on this she
played to him the airs that had charmed him in the days at Châlons. She
was externally the most modest and reserved woman in Bienville,--and
who shall say that she was not the same in her soul? Be not too free,
you virtuous people, to condemn this poor lady; there are sinners and
sinners, if you please.
As for Captain Ravenel, his wrong-doing had placed on him, according
to his way of thinking, an obligation of a life most spotless. He had
always been, as Colonel Duquesne had said, a man of high character, but
when love and misery and fate had made him, in a way, the destroyer
of the woman he loved and respected most on earth, it raised him to
a pitch of heroic virtue. Like Sophie, no drudgery was too great for
him and when she was preparing their modest dinner, Captain Ravenel
was digging in the garden. By the labor of his own hands, he raised
the most beautiful pease, potatoes and melons that had ever been seen.
He would have worked every hour of the day, except that he felt as
Sophie did with regard to him, that he must not lose all of those
graces and habits of a gentleman which had first made her love him.
In the afternoon he dressed himself in his well-brushed frock coat
and together he and Sophie took a walk, and sat and listened to the
band playing in the park. This was their chief recreation. At night
he sat up many hours addressing those envelopes and circulars which
he took to the post-office early in the morning and for which he was
paid a pittance. Like Sophie, no complaint escaped him, and for every
protestation of love and gratitude she made to him, he returned in
twofold. They were not happy--life had no happiness to give two souls
like theirs, situated as they were--but they would have died if they
had been torn apart.
[Illustration: "Not daring so much as to lift her eyes to the altar."]
It was a portion of Sophie's self-imposed punishment that she should
never go fully into a church, halting, as Paul Verney had noticed, just
within the door, and, like the publican, not daring so much as to lift
her eyes to the altar, but calling herself a sinner and feeling herself
to be the greatest sinner on earth. Another part of her punishment was
the separation from Lucie, the little half-sister whom she had attended
from the hour of her birth with a mother's care, and toward whom she
had taken a mother's place. But she made no complaint of this, nor of
anything else; and when Lucie, by her own ingenuity, had contrived to
come back to her, it brought a gleam of joy into Sophie's life such as
she had never expected to feel again.
Madame Bernard remained unforgiving. As Lucie had truly said, although
as stern and uncompromising in looks as the monument in the public
square at Bienville and old Marie who sat on the bench and knitted
sternly, Madame Bernard was, at heart, a greater coward about people
than little Toni. She knew if she once saw Sophie everything would
be forgiven, and so she avoided seeing her, and dared not even write
to her. Little Lucie had had no real difficulty in accomplishing her
object of seeing Sophie by the means she had retailed to Paul, and
otherwise wrapped the stately Madame Bernard around her little finger.
Lucie, who was accustomed to luxury, adapted herself with ingenuous
perversity to the plain way of living of the Ravenels. She even learned
to make omelettes herself, and with her little lace-trimmed gown tucked
up around her waist, to the horror of Harper, the nursery governess,
actually learned to broil a chop as well as Sophie could.
Lucie was a child of many passions. Her attachment to Sophie was one
of the strongest, and Sophie alone, of everybody on earth, could bend
Lucie to her will,--that is, as long as they were together, for,
childlike, Lucie forgot all the gentle commands and recommendations
laid upon her by Sophie when they separated, and remembered few of the
admirable things which Sophie asked her to do. But she loved Sophie
with a determined constancy that none of Madame Bernard's blandishments
nor all the bonbons in Paris could change.