“Well?”
“You shall be obeyed this very night,” she replied.
And by a kind of miracle of energy, she went out of the room calmly, her
head on high; without having shed a tear.
But God knew what she suffered.
To give up those little rooms in which she had spent so many happy
hours, where every thing recalled to her sweet memories, certainly that
was no small grief: it was nothing however, in comparison with that
frightful perspective of having to live under the wary eye of Countess
Sarah, under lock and key.
They would not even leave her at liberty to weep. Her intolerable
sufferings would not extort a sigh from her that the countess did not
hear on the other side of the partition, and delight in.
She was thus harassing herself, when she suddenly remembered the letter
which she had written to Daniel. If M. de Brevan was to have it that
same day, there was not a moment to lose. Already it was too late for
the mail; and she would have to send it by a commissionaire.
She rang the bell, therefore, for Clarissa, her confidante, for the
purpose of sending it to the Rue Laffitte. But, instead of Clarissa, one
of the housemaids appeared, and said,--
“Your own maid is not in the house. Mrs. Brian has sent her to Circus
Street. If I can do any thing for you”--
“No, I thank you!” replied Henrietta.
It seemed, then, that she counted for nothing any more in the house.
She was not allowed to eat in her rooms; she was turned out of her own
rooms; and the maid, long attached to her service, was taken from her.
And here she was forced to submit to such humiliations without a chance
of rebelling.
But time was passing; and every minute made it more difficult to let M.
de Brevan have her letter in time for the mail.
“Well,” said Henrietta to herself, “I will carry it myself.”
And although she had, perhaps, in all her life not been more than twice
alone in the street, she put on her bonnet, wrapped herself up in a
cloak, and went down swiftly.
The concierge, a large man, very proud of his richly laced livery,
was sitting before the little pavilion in which he lived, smoking, and
reading his paper.
“Open the gates!” said Henrietta.
But the man, without taking his pipe out of his mouth, without even
getting up from his seat, answered in a surly tone,--
“The count has sent me orders never to let you go out without a verbal
or written permission; so that”--
“Impudence!” exclaimed Henrietta.
And resolutely she went up to the ponderous gates of the court-yard,
stretching out her hand to pull the bolt. But the man, divining her
intention, and quicker than she, had rushed up to the gate, and, crying
out as loud as he could, he exclaimed,--
“Miss, miss! Stop! I have my orders, and I shall lose my place.”
At his cries a dozen servants who were standing idly about in the
stables, the vestibule, and the inner court, came running up. Then Sir
Thorn appeared, ready to go out on horseback, and finally the count
himself.
“What do you want? What are you doing there?” he asked his daughter.
“You see, I want to go out.”
“Alone?” laughed the count. Then he continued harshly, pointing at the
concierge,--
“This man would be instantly dismissed if he allowed you to leave the
house alone. Oh, you need not look at me that way! Hereafter you will
only go out when, and with whom, it pleases me. And do not hope to
escape my watchful observation. I have foreseen every thing. The little
gate to which you had a key has been nailed up. And, if ever a man
should dare to steal into the garden, the gardeners have orders to shoot
him down like a dog, whether it be the man with whom I caught you the
other day, or some one else.”
Under this mean and cowardly insult Henrietta staggered; but,
immediately collecting herself, she exclaimed,--
“Great God! Am I delirious? Father, are you aware of what you are
saying?”
And, as the suppressed laughter of the servants reached her, she added
with--almost convulsive vehemence,--
“At least, say who the man was with whom I was in the garden, so
that all, all may hear his name. Tell them that it was M. Daniel
Champcey,--he whom my sainted mother had chosen for me among all,--he
whom for long years you have daily received at your house, to whom you
have solemnly promised my hand, who was my betrothed, and who would now
be my husband, if we had chosen to approve of your unfortunate marriage.
Tell them that it was M. Daniel Champcey, whom you had sent off the day
before, and whom a crime, a forgery committed by your Sarah, forced to
go to sea; for he had to be put out of the way at any _hazard_. As
long as he was in Paris, you would never have dared treat me as I am
treated.”
Overcome by this unexpected violence, the count could only stammer out
a few incoherent words. Henrietta was about to go on, when she felt
herself taken by the arm, and gently but irresistibly taken up to the
house. It was Sir Thorn, who tried to save her from her own excitement.
She looked at him; a big tear was slowly rolling down the cheek of the
impassive gentleman.
Then, when he had led her as far as the staircase, and she had laid hold
of the balusters, he said,--
“Poor girl!”
And went away with rapid steps.
Yes, “poor girl” indeed!
Her resolve was giving way under all these terrible blows; and seized
with a kind of vertigo, out of breath, and almost beside herself, she
had rushed up the steps, feeling as if she still heard the abominable
accusations of her father, and the laughter of the servants.
“O God,” she sobbed, “have pity on me!”
She felt in her heart that she had no hope left now but God, delivered
up as she was to pitiless adversaries, sacrificed to the implacable
hatred of a stepmother, abandoned by all, and betrayed and openly
renounced by her own father.
Hour by hour she had seen how, by an incomprehensible combination of
fatal circumstances, the infernal circle narrowed down, within which she
was wretchedly struggling, and which soon would crush her effectually.
What did they want of her? Why did they try every thing to exasperate
her to the utmost? Did they expect some catastrophe to result from her
despair?
Unfortunately, she did not examine this question carefully, too
inexperienced as she was to suspect the subtle cunning of people whose
wickedness would have astonished a criminal judge. Ah, how useful one
word from Daniel would have been to her at this crisis! But, trembling
with anguish for his betrothed, the unhappy man had not dared repeat
to her the terrible words which had escaped M. de Brevan, in his first
moment of expansion,--
“Miss Brandon leaves the dagger and the poisoned cup to fools, as too
coarse and too dangerous means to get rid of people. She has safer
means to suppress those who are in her way--means which justice never
discovers.”
Lost in sombre reflections, the poor girl was forgetting the hour,
and did not notice that it had become dark already, when she heard the
dinner-bell ring. She was free not to go down; but she revolted at the
idea that the Countess Sarah might think her overcome. So she said to
herself,--
“No. She shall never know how much I suffer!”