“Come, I see you are like all men, if they pledge their word to another
man, who is a match for them, they consider it a point of honor to keep
it, but if it is a woman, then they do not keep it, and boast of it!”
Daniel was furious; but she pretended not to see it, and said more
coldly,--
“I--I have a better memory than you, sir; and I mean to prove it to you.
I know what has happened at Count Ville-Handry’s house; he has told me
all. You have allowed yourself to be carried away so far as to threaten
him, to raise your hand against him.”
“He was going to strike his daughter, and I held his arm.”
“No, sir! my dear count is incapable of such violence; and yet his own
daughter had dared to taunt him with his weakness, pretending that he
had been induced by me to establish a new industrial company.”
Daniel said nothing.
“And you,” continued Miss Brandon,--“you allowed Miss Henrietta to say
all these offensive and absurd things. I should induce the count to
engage in an enterprise where money might be lost! Why? What interest
could I have?”
Her voice began to tremble; and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.
“Interest!” she went on to say, “money! The world can think of no other
motive nowadays. Money! I have enough of it. If I marry the count, you
know why I do it,--you! And you also know that it depended, and perhaps,
at this moment, still depends upon one single man, whether I shall break
off that match this very day, now.”
As she said this, she looked at him in a manner which would have caused
a statue to tremble on its marble pedestal.
But he, with his heart full of hatred, remained icy, enjoying the
revenge which was thus presented to him.
“I will believe whatever you wish to say,” he answered in a mocking
tone, “if you will answer me a single question.”
“Ask, sir.”
“The other night, when I had left you, where did you go in your
carriage?”
He expected to see her confused, turning pale, stammer. Not at all.
“What, you know that?” she said, with an accent of admirable candor.
“Ah! I committed an act of almost as great imprudence as I now do. If
some fool should see me leave your rooms?”
“Pardon me, Miss Brandon, that is no answer to my question. Where did
you go?”
And as she kept silent, surprised by Daniel’s firmness, he said
sneeringly,--
“Then you confess that it would be madness to believe you? Let us break
off here, and pray to God that I may be able to forget all the wrong you
have done me.”
Miss Brandon’s beautiful eyes filled with tears of grief or of rage. She
folded her hands, and said in a suppliant tone,--
“I conjure you, M. Champcey, grant me only five minutes. I must speak to
you. If you knew”--
He could not turn her out; he bowed profoundly before her, and withdrew
into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. But he immediately
applied his eye to the keyhole, and saw Miss Brandon, her features
convulsed with rage, threaten him with her closed hand, and leave the
room hastily.
“She was going to dig another pit for me,” thought Daniel.
And the idea that he had avoided it made him, for a part of that day
at least, forget his sorrow. But on the following day he found, when
he returned home, a formidable document from the navy department, and
inside two letters.
One informed him that he had been promoted to be a lieutenant.
The other ordered him to report four days hence at Rochefort, on board
the frigate “Conquest,” which was lying in the roadstead waiting for two
battalions of marines to be transferred to Cochin China.
Daniel had for long years, and with all the eager ambition of a young
man, desired the promotion which he now obtained. That rank had been the
supreme goal of all his dreams since the day on which he learned at the
navy school the rudiments of his perilous vocation. How often, as he
stood leaning against the monkey-railing, and saw boats passing by which
carried officers, had he said to himself,--
“When I am a navy lieutenant!”
Well, now he was a lieutenant. But alas! his wishes, thus realized,
filled him only with disgust and bitterness, like those golden apples,
which, at a distance, shine brightly in the branches of magic trees, and
under the touch of the hand turn into dust and ashes.
For with the news of his promotion came also the fatal order to a
distant shore. Why did they send such an order to him, who had at the
department an office in which he could render valuable services, while
so many of his comrades, waiting idly in port, watched anxiously, and
with almost feverish impatience, for a chance to go into active service?
“Ah!” he said to himself, his heart filled with rage, “how could I fail
to recognize in this abominable treachery Miss Brandon’s cunning hand?”
First she had closed against him the gates of Count Ville-Handry’s
palace, and thus separated him from his beloved Henrietta, so that they
could not meet nor speak to each other.
But this was not enough for the accursed adventuress. She wanted to
raise a barrier between them which should be more than a mere moral
and social obstacle, one of those difficulties which no human power, no
lover’s ingenuity, could overcome,--the ocean and thousands of miles.
“Oh, no!” he cried in his anguish, “a thousand times no! Rather give up
my career, rather send in my resignation.”
Hence, the very next day, he put on his uniform, determined to lay the
matter, first before that officer who was his immediate superior, but
resolved, if he should not succeed there, to go up to the minister
himself.
He had never worn that uniform since the night of a large court-ball,
where he had danced with Henrietta. It was nearly a year ago, a few
weeks before the death of the Countess Ville-Handry. As he compared his
happiness in those days with his present desperate condition, he was
deeply moved; and his eyes were still brimful of tears when he reached
the navy department, towards ten o’clock in the morning.
The officer whom he called upon was an old captain, an excellent man,
who had practised the appearance of a grim, stern official so long, that
he had finally become in reality what he only wished to appear.
Seeing Daniel enter his office, he thought he came to inform him of his
promotion, and made a great effort to smile as he hailed him with the
words,--
“Well, Lieut. Champcey, we are satisfied, I hope?”
And, perceiving that Daniel did not wear the epaulets of his new rank,
he added,--
“But how is that, lieutenant? Perhaps you have not heard yet?”
“I beg your pardon, captain.”
“Why on earth, then, have you no epaulets?”
And he began to frown terribly, considering that such carelessness
augured ill for the service. Daniel excused himself as well as he could,
which was very little, and then boldly approached the purpose of his
call.
“I have received an order for active service.”
“I know,--on board ‘The Conquest,’ in the roadstead at Rochefort, for
Cochin China.”
“I have to be at my post in four days.”
“And you think the time too short? It is short. But impossible to grant
you ten minutes more.”
“I do not ask for leave of absence, captain; I want the favor--to be
allowed to keep my place here.”
The old officer could hardly keep his seat.
“You would prefer not going on board ship,” he exclaimed, “the very day
after your promotion? Ah, come, you are mad!”
Daniel shook his head sadly.
“Believe me, captain,” he replied, “I obey the most imperative duty.”
Leaning back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, the captain
seemed to look for such a duty; then he asked suddenly,--
“Is it your family that keeps you?”
“If my place can really not be filled by one of my comrades, I shall be
compelled to send in my resignation.”