Valentine knew, that fatal evening, that Gaston would have to walk to
Tarascon, to cross the bridge over the Rhone which connected Tarascon
with Beaucaire, and did not expect to see him until eleven o’clock, the
hour which they had fixed upon the previous evening.
But, happening to look up at the windows of Clameran, she saw lights
hurrying to and fro in an unusual manner, even in rooms that she knew to
be unoccupied.
A presentiment of impending misfortune chilled her blood, and stopped
the beatings of her heart.
A secret and imperious voice within told her that something
extraordinary was going on at the chateau of Clameran.
What was it? She could not imagine; but she knew, she felt, that some
dreadful misfortune had happened.
With her eyes fastened upon the dark mass of stone looming in the
distance, she watched the going and coming of the lights, as if their
movements would give her a clew to what was taking place within those
walls.
She raised her window, and tried to listen, fancying she could hear an
unusual sound, even at such a distance. Alas! she heard nothing but the
rushing roar of the angry river.
Her anxiety grew more insufferable every moment; and she felt as if she
would faint were this torturing suspense to last much longer, when the
well-known, beloved signal appeared suddenly in Gaston’s window, and
told her that her lover was about to swim across the Rhone.
She could scarcely believe her eyes; she must be under the influence of
a dream; her amazement prevented her answering the signal, until it had
been repeated three times.
Then, more dead than alive, with trembling limbs she hastened along the
park to the river-bank.
Never had she seen the Rhone so furious. Since Gaston was risking his
life in order to see her, she could no longer doubt that something
fearful had occurred at Clameran.
She fell on her knees, and with clasped hands, and her wild eyes fixed
upon the dark waters, besought the pitiless waves to yield up her dear
Gaston.
Every dark object which she could distinguish floating in the middle of
the torrent assumed the shape of a human form.
At one time, she thought she heard, above the roaring of the water, the
terrible, agonized cry of a drowning man.
She watched and prayed, but her lover came not.
Still she waited.
While the gendarmes and hussars slowly and silently returned to the
chateau of Clameran, Gaston experienced one of those miracles which
would seem incredible were they not confirmed by the most convincing
proof.
When he first plunged into the river, he rolled over five or six times,
and was then drawn toward the bottom. In a swollen river the current is
unequal, being much stronger in some places than in others; hence the
great danger.
Gaston knew it, and guarded against it. Instead of wasting his strength
in vain struggles, he held his breath, and kept still. About twenty-five
yards from the spot where he had plunged in, he made a violent spring
which brought him to the surface.
Rapidly drifting by him was the old tree.
For an instant, he was entangled in the mass of weeds and debris which
clung to its roots, and followed in its wake; an eddy set him free. The
tree and its clinging weeds swept on. It was the last familiar friend,
gone.
Gaston dared not attempt to reach the opposite shore. He would have to
land where the waves dashed him.
With great presence of mind he put forth all his strength and dexterity
to slowly take an oblique course, knowing well that there was no hope
for him if the current took him crosswise.
This fearful current is as capricious as a woman, which accounts for
the strange effects of inundations; sometimes it rushes to the right,
sometimes to the left, sparing one shore and ravaging the other.
Gaston was familiar with every turn of the river; he knew that just
below Clameran was an abrupt turning, and relied upon the eddy formed
thereby, to sweep him in the direction of La Verberie.
His hopes were not deceived. An oblique current suddenly swept him
toward the right shore, and, if he had not been on his guard, would have
sunk him.
But the eddy did not reach as far as Gaston supposed, and he was still
some distance from the shore, when, with the rapidity of lightning, he
was swept by the park of La Verberie.
As he floated by, he caught a glimpse of a white shadow among the trees;
Valentine still waited for him.
He was gradually approaching the bank, as he reached the end of La
Verberie, and attempted to land.
Feeling a foothold, he stood up twice, and each time was thrown down by
the violence of the waves. He escaped being swept away by seizing some
willow branches, and, clinging to them, raised himself, and climbed up
the steep bank.
He was safe at last.
Without taking time to breathe, he darted in the direction of the park.
He came just in time. Overcome by the intensity of her emotions,
Valentine had fainted, and lay apparently lifeless on the damp
river-bank.
Gaston’s entreaties and kisses aroused her from her stupor.
“Gaston!” she cried, in a tone that revealed all the love she felt for
him. “Is it indeed you? Then God heard my prayers, and had pity on us.”
“No, Valentine,” he murmured. “God has had no pity.”
The sad tones of Gaston’s voice convinced her that her presentiment of
evil was true.
“What new misfortune strikes us now?” she cried. “Why have you thus
risked your life--a life far dearer to me than my own? What has
happened?”
“This is what has happened, Valentine: our love-affair is the jest of
the country around; our secret is a secret no longer.”
She shrank back, and, burying her face in her hands, moaned piteously.
“This,” said Gaston, forgetting everything but his present misery, “this
is the result of the blind enmity of our families. Our noble and pure
love, which ought to be a glory in the eyes of God and man, has to be
concealed, and, when discovered, becomes a reproach as though it were
some evil deed.”
“Then all is known--all is discovered!” murmured Valentine. “Oh, Gaston,
Gaston!”
While struggling for his life against furious men and angry elements,
Gaston had preserved his self-possession; but the heart-broken tone of
his beloved Valentine overcame him. He swung his arms above his head,
and exclaimed:
“Yes, they know it; and oh, why could I not crush the villains for
daring to utter your adored name? Ah, why did I only kill two of the
scoundrels!”
“Have you killed someone, Gaston?”
Valentine’s tone of horror gave Gaston a ray of reason.
“Yes,” he replied with bitterness, “I have killed two men. It was for
that that I have crossed the Rhone. I could not have my father’s name
disgraced by being tried and convicted for murder. I have been tracked
like a wild beast by mounted police. I have escaped them, and now I am
flying my country.”
Valentine struggled to preserve her composure under this last unexpected
blow.
“Where do you hope to find an asylum?” she asked.
“I know not. Where I am to go, what will become of me, God only knows!
I only know that I am going to some strange land, to assume a false name
and a disguise. I shall seek some lawless country which offers a refuge
to murderers.”
Gaston waited for an answer to this speech. None came, and he resumed
with vehemence:
“And before disappearing, Valentine, I wished to see you, because now,
when I am abandoned by everyone else, I have relied upon you, and had
faith in your love. A tie unites us, my darling, stronger and more
indissoluble than all earthly ties--the tie of love. I love you more
than life itself, my Valentine; before God you are my wife; I am
yours and you are mine, for ever and ever! Would you let me fly alone,
Valentine? To the pain and toil of exile, to the sharp regrets of a
ruined life, would you, could you, add the torture of separation?”
“Gaston, I implore you--”
“Ah, I knew it,” he interrupted, mistaking the sense of her exclamation;
“I knew you would not let me go off alone. I knew your sympathetic heart
would long to share the burden of my miseries. This moment effaces the
wretched suffering I have endured. Let us go! Having our happiness to
defend, having you to protect, I fear nothing; I can brave all, conquer
all. Come, my Valentine, we will escape, or die together! This is the
long-dreamed-of happiness! The glorious future of love and liberty open
before us!”
He had worked himself into a state of delirious excitement. He seized
Valentine around the waist, and tried to draw her toward the gate.
As Gaston’s exaltation increased, Valentine became composed and almost
stolid in her forced calmness.
Gently, but with a quiet firmness, she withdrew herself from his
embrace, and said sadly, but resolutely:
“What you wish is impossible, Gaston!”
This cold, inexplicable resistance confounded her lover.
“Impossible? Why, Valentine----”
“You know me well enough, Gaston, to be convinced that sharing the
greatest hardships with you would to me be the height of happiness. But
above the tones of your voice to which I fain would yield, above the
voice of my own heart which urges me to follow the one being upon whom
all its affections are centred, there is another voice--a powerful,
imperious voice--which bids me to stay: the voice of duty.”
“What! Would you think of remaining here after the horrible affair of
to-night, after the scandal that will be spread to-morrow?”
“What do you mean? That I am lost, dishonored? Am I any more so to-day
than I was yesterday? Do you think that the jeers and scoffs of
the world could make me suffer more than do the pangs of my guilty
conscience? I have long since passed judgment upon myself, Gaston; and,
although the sound of your voice and the touch of your hand would make
me forget all save the bliss of your love, no sooner were you away than
I would weep tears of shame and remorse.”
Gaston listened immovable, stupefied. He seemed to see a new Valentine
standing before him, an entirely different woman from the one whose
tender soul he thought he knew so well.
“Your mother, what will she say?” he asked.
“It is my duty to her that keeps me here. Do you wish me to prove an
unnatural daughter, and desert a poor, lonely, friendless old woman, who
has nothing but me to cling to? Could I abandon her to follow a lover?”
“But our enemies will inform her of everything, Valentine, and think how
she will make you suffer!”
“No matter. The dictates of conscience must be obeyed. Ah, why can I
not, at the price of my life, spare her the agony of hearing that her
only daughter, her Valentine, has disgraced her name? She may be hard,
cruel, pitiless toward me; but have I not deserved it? Oh, my only
friend, we have been revelling in a dream too beautiful to last! I have
long dreaded this awakening. Like two weak, credulous fools we imagined
that happiness could exist beyond the pale of duty. Sooner or later
stolen joys must be dearly paid for. After the sweet comes the bitter;
we must bow our heads, and drink the cup to the dregs.”
This cold reasoning, this sad resignation, was more than the fiery
nature of Gaston could bear.
“You shall not talk thus!” he cried. “Can you not feel that the bare
idea of your suffering humiliation drives me mad?”
“Alas! I see nothing but disgrace, the most fearful disgrace, staring me
in the face.”
“What do you mean, Valentine?”
“I have not told you, Gaston, I am----”
Here she stopped, hesitated, and then added:
“Nothing! I am a fool.”
Had Gaston been less excited, he would have suspected some new
misfortune beneath this reticence of Valentine; but his mind was too
full of one idea--that of possessing her.
“All hope is not lost,” he continued. “My father is kind-hearted, and
was touched by my love and despair. I am sure that my letters, added to
the intercession of my brother Louis, will induce him to ask Mme. de la
Verberie for your hand.”
This proposition seemed to frighten Valentine.
“Heaven forbid that the marquis should take this rash step!”
“Why, Valentine?”
“Because my mother would reject his offer; because, I must confess it
now, she has sworn I shall marry none but a rich man; and your father is
not rich, Gaston, so you will have very little.”
“Good heavens!” cried Gaston, with disgust, “is it to such an unnatural
mother that you sacrifice me?”
“She is my mother; that is sufficient. I have not the right to judge
her. My duty is to remain with her, and remain I shall.”
Valentine’s manner showed such determined resolution, that Gaston saw
that further prayers would be in vain.
“Alas!” he cried, as he wrung his hands with despair, “you do not love
me; you have never loved me!”
“Gaston, Gaston! you do not think what you say! Have you no mercy?”
“If you loved me,” he cried, “you could never, at this moment of
separation, have the cruel courage to coldly reason and calculate. Ah,
far different is my love for you. Without you the world is void; to lose
you is to die. What have I to live for? Let the Rhone take back this
worthless life, so miraculously saved; it is now a burden to me!”
And he rushed toward the river, determined to bury his sorrow beneath
its waves; Valentine seized his arm, and held him back.
“Is this the way to show your love for me?” she asked.
Gaston was absolutely discouraged.
“What is the use of living?” he said, dejectedly. “What is left to me
now?”
“God is left to us, Gaston; and in his hands lies our future.”
As a shipwrecked man seizes a rotten plank in his desperation, so
Gaston eagerly caught at the word “_future_,” as a beacon in the gloomy
darkness surrounding him.
“Your commands shall be obeyed,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Away with
weakness! Yes, I will live, and struggle, and triumph. Mme. de la
Verberie wants gold; well, she shall have it; in three years I will be
rich, or I shall be dead.”
With clasped hands Valentine thanked Heaven for this sudden
determination, which was more than she had dared hope for.
“But,” said Gaston, “before going away I wish to confide to you a sacred
deposit.”
He drew from his pocket the purse of jewels, and, handing them to
Valentine, added:
“These jewels belonged to my poor mother; you, my angel, are alone
worthy of wearing them. I thought of you when I accepted them from my
father. I felt that you, as my affianced wife, were the proper person to
have them.”
Valentine refused to accept them.
“Take them, my darling, as a pledge of my return. If I do not come back
within three years, you may know that I am dead, and then you must keep
them as a souvenir of him who so much loved you.”
She burst into tears, and took the purse.
“And now,” said Gaston, “I have a last request to make. Everybody
believes me dead, but I cannot let my poor old father labor under this
impression. Swear to me that you will go yourself to-morrow morning, and
tell him that I am still alive.”
“I will tell him, myself,” she said.
Gaston felt that he must now tear himself away before his courage failed
him; each moment he was more loath to leave the only being who bound
him to this world; he enveloped Valentine in a last fond embrace, and
started up.
“What is your plan of escape?” she asked.
“I shall go to Marseilles, and hide in a friend’s house until I can
procure a passage to America.”
“You must have assistance; I will secure you a guide in whom I have
unbounded confidence; old Menoul, the ferryman, who lives near us. He
owns the boat which he plies on the Rhone.”
The lovers passed through the little park gate, of which Gaston had the
key, and soon reached the boatman’s cabin.
He was asleep in an easy-chair by the fire. When Valentine stood before
him with Gaston, the old man jumped up, and kept rubbing his eyes,
thinking it must be a dream.
“Pere Menoul,” said Valentine, “M. Gaston is compelled to fly the
country; he wants to be rowed out to sea, so that he can secretly
embark. Can you take him in your boat as far as the mouth of the Rhone?”
“It is impossible,” said the old man, shaking his head; “I would not
dare venture on the river in its present state.”
“But, Pere Menoul, it would be of immense service to me; would you not
venture for my sake?”
“For your sake? certainly I would, Mlle. Valentine: I will do anything
to gratify you. I am ready to start.”
He looked at Gaston, and, seeing his clothes wet and covered with mud,
said to him:
“Allow me to offer you my dead son’s clothes, monsieur; they will serve
as a disguise: come this way.”
In a few minutes Pere Menoul returned with Gaston, whom no one would
have recognized in his sailor dress.
Valentine went with them to the place where the boat was moored. While
the old man was unfastening it, the disconsolate lovers tearfully
embraced each other for the last time.
“In three years, my own Valentine; promise to wait three years for me!
If alive, I will then see you.”
“Adieu, mademoiselle,” interrupted the boatman; “and you, monsieur, hold
fast, and keep steady.”
Then with a vigorous stroke of the boat-hook he sent the bark into the
middle of the stream.
Three days later, thanks to the assistance of Pere Menoul, Gaston was
concealed on the three-masted American vessel, Tom Jones, which was to
start the next day for Valparaiso.