"Ah, madame, hear me patiently! I am sure that Monsieur de Beaudrillart
repaid it--though I wish to Heaven he had insisted upon proper forms and
claimed a receipt--but we must allow that it is quite possible that
Monsieur Lemaire never heard of the repayment. He says he was told of
the affair by the count; that I take leave to doubt, for it seems to me
an extraordinary revengeful act for a dying man, after he had kept
silence for six years, to put the reputation of his cousin at the mercy
of another. I prefer to believe that Monsieur Lemaire contrived to
ferret out some of the facts, and to jump at other conclusions. And I
base my opinion a good deal upon what I have found out of the man's
life."
"Yes! Pray go on," said Nathalie, leaning forward, her eyes fixed upon
him.
"He is a gambler, extravagant, worthless. His debts amount to a sum
which his inheritance from Monsieur de Cadanet will hardly liquidate,
and here you have a motive for the action. He is a neglectful husband--
said by some to be absolutely unkind. Certainly his wife does not
present the appearance of a very happy woman."
"Might there not be something among Monsieur de Cadanet's papers?"
"Monsieur Lemaire is executor," returned the lawyer, significantly.
"However, we shall not neglect any possibility." She fell into a long
silence, which he did not attempt to break. Among all the De
Beaudrillarts, past and present, who had ever consulted him, he had met
with none in whom he felt so deep an interest as in this young baroness.
He had liked the honesty of her hazel eyes before, but the divine
sympathy he read in them as she looked after her husband appealed more
directly to his heart. Not for years had he felt sentiment so near
gaining the upper hand.
"Madame," he exclaimed at last, "surely your father would be an
excellent person to have with you! Permit me to telegraph for him."
She made a sign in the negative.
"It would not do, monsieur. My poor father is bitterly disappointed.
He was so proud of my position, of the future of his little grandson,
that he cannot forgive us for failing him. It is difficult to explain,
and it may seem only laughable to you, but I think he was more
Beaudrillart than the De Beaudrillarts. He would reproach my husband,
he would think of nothing but the disgrace--no, he must not come."
"I am wondering--"
"What?"
"You must have had a heavy task among so many opposing forces, madame--I
am wondering what you had on your side!"
"My husband's better self," she said, turning her eyes on his. "But you
may conceive that it was difficult for him to fly in the face of a
hundred prejudices."
"Difficult for you, too," reflected the lawyer. Aloud he said: "Well,
madame, courage. Whatever happens we are on the right road, and it is
evident that you know best how to guard the honour of the De
Beaudrillarts. But I wish I could persuade you to make my house your
home. Madame Rodoin would be only too much gratified." He uttered his
last sentence with a gulp, truth presenting itself in forcible
contradiction, and it must be owned that Nathalie's immediate negative
relieved him.
"I pass many hours alone, monsieur," she said, with a flitting smile,
"so do not waste your thoughts on me when there is so much besides to
arrange. If you can find me some task I cannot tell you how grateful I
should be. Is there any possible point on which I could be of
assistance?"
"We shall find something," declared M. Rodoin, mendaciously.
"And I shall see Maitre Barraud?"
They were in the Avenue de l'Opera; Paris, brilliant, indifferent Paris,
spread its gay attractions on either side.
"Oddly enough, there he goes," said the lawyer. She bent forward
eagerly.
"That man? With the face of a boy?"
"Ah, madame, never mind his face. It makes a good mask. But you will
certainly see him. He will have an interview with your husband
to-morrow, and I will arrange for your own as soon as possible. Here we
are in the Rue Neuve Saint Augustin, and here is your hotel. Will you
make me one promise?"
"Let me hear."
"To eat and to sleep."
"That is two," she said, trying to smile, "but I will try."
"Ill, you will only be an added anxiety to Monsieur de Beaudrillart."
"Yes. I shall not be ill. I am stronger than you can conceive. It
frightens me, sometimes, to find how much I can bear."
M. Rodoin saw her ensconced in her rooms at the hotel, and gave his
address to the landlord, in case madame wanted anything. He bade her
farewell with the words, "We shall triumph!" but his solitary
reflections, as he drove towards his own house, were far from cheerful.
"Unless some miracle happens, it is a lost case already," he muttered,
"and so Barraud thinks, and chafes. Yet there's roguery somewhere, I'll
stake my head. If one only knew what proof Lemaire means to bring
forward, or what one has to fight against! It matters nothing; we must
fight somehow. After she has achieved the miracle of endowing my young
baron with a backbone, what other miracles may not follow! And
meanwhile--" He plunged his head in his hands and sat revolving,
considering, rejecting. He hurried in the evening to Maitre Barraud,
and brought upon himself the imprecations of his friend, who was just
issuing from his door, cigar in hand, on his way to the Opera.
"Plague me more about this confounded Beaudrillart case, and I swear
I'll fling the whole thing up. Man, there's a time for all things."
"But, my dear Albert--"
The other waved his cigar.
"Not a word. If you had not unfortunately known me from my cradle, and
basely traded upon that privilege, I should never have been saddled with
a preposterously hopeless muddle, out of which there is nothing to be
got but discomfiture."
"When you have seen Madame Leon--"
"Madame Leon!" The young man uttered a smothered roar. "Out upon you!
It is a few well-applied tears, is it, which has set you to pester your
friends?"
"No, mocker! Madame Leon is a woman who acts, and does not weep. But
you must see her, if only to give her confidence; for, unluckily, I
pointed you out to her as she drove to the hotel to-day, and she took
you for a boy."
Maitre Barraud was an excellent fellow, but his weakness was vanity.
"A boy!" he repeated, in a nettled voice. "A boy! I should like her to
know--Well, what is all this about? Of course I must see the woman in
order to scrape together a few materials upon which to string as many
words as there are onions on the stick a Breton carries over his
shoulder. And I know what I shall get out of the interview:
protestations, and exclamations, and maunderings about false
accusations, and an ill-used angel of a husband, and all the lot of it.
Peste! a woman at the back of a case is the very devil!"
"Some day, my dear friend, Madame Barraud will have her revenge."
"Heaven forbid! At any rate, her charming figure has not yet presented
itself upon the horizon. Here is the Opera, and now I presume I shall
be left in peace. Take with you my assurance that your client will be
condemned to a fine and a year's imprisonment. He will get off with
that because it was six years ago, and our juries, bless them! have a
sneaking sympathy for the follies of youth."
He waved his hand, and ran lightly up the steps, while M. Rodoin
proceeded thoughtfully on his way, resisting the impulse to turn into
the Rue Neuve Saint Augustin, and learn whether Mme. Leon had obeyed
his injunction to dine.
She had forced herself to this, but the sleeping was a different matter.
Exhausted as she was by the emotions of the previous night, she flung
herself on her bed, hoping to lose the too vivid consciousness with
which her mind busied itself round her husband's cruel position. For an
hour she slept. But in that time a storm of wind and rain had risen,
and the rattling of the window and the lashing torrent which beat
against the outer shutters aroused her with the startled fancy that the
fierce gurgle of the river was again in her ears. Alas! the remembrance
of where her husband was spending this night was scarcely less painful.
She slipped out of bed, and fell on her knees by its side. The tears at
which Maitre Barraud had mocked, and which she had so long restrained,
now broke from her with a violence almost suffocating. She pictured his
forlorn misery, the horror of mind which would seize him afresh whenever
he realised where and what he was; she imagined she even heard him
cursing her for having forced this fate upon him. Other wives of whom
she had read had risked everything to save their husbands from prison;
she had made it her task to persuade him to yield himself deliberately
to its disgrace. A profound pity moved her. She knew that she was
stronger than he with his light, butterfly nature. If only she could
have sinned and suffered for him! She could think of herself in a cell
without shrinking, while to picture him there was agony; and her sobs
and prayers redoubled at the sad figure which rose before her eyes.
The tears which exhausted relieved her, but she slept no more. She lay
turning in her heart what she could do for Leon, and conscious of her
own weakness. She had not yet forgotten her former discontent with M.
Rodoin--although she was forced to allow that this time he had presented
himself as a different man--and the sight of Maitre Barraud had caused
her extreme dismay. In his round, chubby face she had seen nothing to
inspire confidence; she distrusted the lawyer's assurances, and the idea
of Leon's fate having been committed to a mere boy added intolerably to
her anxiety, and flung more responsibility upon her own shoulders. If,
as M. Rodoin appeared to think, the trial would be brought on very
shortly, there could scarcely be time to change counsel, but she
promised herself to consult the lawyer as to the possibility of engaging
another of more experience.
She had not the opportunity for this, however, as soon as she desired;
for after waiting in extreme impatience for M. Rodoin's appearance, and
for the permission to see her husband, which she trusted he might bring,
he came at about twelve o'clock, and Maitre Barraud with him.
The young counsel had, it must be owned, the air of a dog dragged with
extreme unwillingness by his chain, or, as it rather appeared to
Nathalie, that of a school-boy in the sulks. Although she could never
lose the nobility of her expression, the sorrow and sleeplessness
through which she had passed had robbed the young wife of much of her
beauty, and left her pale, with dark rings round her eyes, and he was
obstinately determined not to behold the charm of which M. Rodoin
raved. He was enraged with her, too, for her allusion to a sore
subject--his boyish appearance--while as this forced itself upon her
again, she found it difficult to conceal her dismay. But her first
question was as to the interview.
"There is no difficulty," M. Rodoin assured her. "You can see your
husband between two and three. Maitre Barraud has just come from him."
"Oh, monsieur!" She turned to him eagerly. "You have seen him! How is
he? How does he look? Has he slept?"
The young man flung a glance at his friend, which said, "Did I not tell
you? See what you have brought upon me!" and answered aloud, with a
certain brusqueness, "Apparently, madame, monsieur le baron is in his
usual health, but my inquiries did not take that direction."
She coloured.
"Pardon, monsieur; I should have remembered that the situation is not so
novel to you as to us. Did--did your other inquiries give you the
information you require?"
Deaf to the tremor in her voice, Maitre Barraud shrugged his shoulders,
and looked more like a naughty boy than ever.
"No, madame," he said, "I cannot say that I have got much, and I shall
be obliged if you will give me your own account of the case--as shortly
as possible," he added, in alarm.
Nathalie felt no temptation to discursiveness; there was too much pain
in the recital. When she had finished, he hastily got up.
"You do not want anything more, I imagine, madame?" he asked, looking at
his watch.
"One word, monsieur. If--if you find yourself in want of any
assistance--I scarcely know how to express it--you will, I trust, not
spare expense--we should wish my husband to have the best, the very best
advice and experience--"
"Oh, thanks, madame," returned M. Barraud carelessly. "I shall have
the usual juniors; M. Rodoin will take care of that. You are coming?"
he added, severely to his friend.
"I will return, madame, and drive you to the Palais de Justice," said
the lawyer, bowing respectfully over her hand. The next moment she was
alone.
"His juniors!" The words sounded like a mockery, and Nathalie gazed
despairingly at the door out of which this mannerless boy had betaken
himself. The idea that Leon's interests should be in his hands was so
terrible that when M. Rodoin appeared, punctual to his hour, she met
him with reproaches.
"But, madame, madame," cried the amazed lawyer, "you are under some
extraordinary misapprehension! Maitre Barraud's reputation is
world-wide; France has no greater pleader; we are only too fortunate--
owing, I may say, to my friendship with his father--to have secured
him!"
"At his age!" exclaimed Nathalie, incredulously. "Monsieur, it is
impossible! And he does not give one the idea of a man of power."
"Oh, if that is all, I assure you, madame, that you may console
yourself. He has his eccentricities, and one is a dislike to being
taken seriously in private. As to his youth, certainly he is young for
his position, though older than he looks. But that is only a proof of
his amazing talents. No, no, madame, you may be perfectly at your ease
as to Maitre Barraud. If any one can right this unhappy business, he is
the man. Shall we start?"
The poor wife scarcely knew how the interval between leaving the hotel
and arriving at the Palais de Justice was passed. She had a confused
impression of streets, of walls, of eyes which she felt to be full of
curiosity, however much reason assured her that there was nothing in the
carriage to attract attention. Like a sleep-walker, she got out of the
carriage when it stopped, and followed M. Rodoin along passages and up
stairs which to him were long familiar. She noticed nothing; when he
stopped, she stopped; when he went on, she followed. Details were lost
upon her, and the first thing which seemed to bring back her benumbed
senses was the finding herself in her husband's arms.
That roused her, and she had a momentary rapture before she flung back
her head to let her eyes devour his face. It was white, and, in spite
of its roundness, haggard, but not more so than when she left him. She
had lost the proportion of the past days, and her feeling was that they
had been parted for weeks.
"How do they treat you?" she whispered, glancing round. "Not so badly."
He tried to speak cheerfully. "Beyond having to put up with a lot of
questions intended to make me own myself a rascal, I have not much to
complain of. Have you written home!"
"This morning."
"And so have I; but with the conviction that one's letters are read, it
is not possible to be very effusive."
"And, oh, Leon, Maitre Barraud!"
"What of him?" He spoke quickly, and M. Rodoin, who had kept
discreetly in the background, advanced, smiling.
"Madame would be more happy if she could have your assurances, monsieur
le baron, that he is really an eminent man. His appearance affronts
her."
"He is so ridiculously young!" persisted Nathalie.
"Oh, he is all right. But I do not think he is hopeful. Who can be?"
muttered Leon, running his hands through his hair, and losing his
momentary elation. "Now that you have made me give myself away, what is
there to say?"
Her only answer was a mute caress, and a cautious cough from M. Rodoin
was intended to point out that in prisons, at any rate, walls may have
ears. The lawyer remarked, in an undertone:
"If any one can turn this Lemaire inside out and destroy his credit, it
will be Albert Barraud."
"Oh, the scoundrel will have got his story pat."
"We shall demand to examine Monsieur de Cadanet's banking accounts,"
went on the other. "If there is an entry of two hundred thousand francs
about the date of your repayment, it will be to a certain extent a
corroboration. Had the count absolutely no confidential servant in the
house?"