“To-morrow we will consult with each other.”
The shipwrecked man who is saved at the last moment, when, strength and
spirits being alike exhausted, he feels himself sinking into the abyss,
cannot, upon feeling once more firm ground under his feet, experience
a sense of greater happiness than Henrietta did that night. For the
delicious sensation had become deeper and intenser by the evening spent
in company with Papa Ravinet’s sister.
The widow, free from embarrassment as from affectation, possessed a
quiet dignity which appeared in certain words and ways she had, and
which made Henrietta guess the principal events of her life. Ruined all
of a sudden,--she did not say how,--some months after the death of her
husband, she, who had been accustomed to all the comforts of opulence
had seen herself reduced to poverty, and all its privations. This had
happened about five years ago. Since then she had imposed upon herself
the strictest economy, although she never neglected her appearance. She
had but one servant, who came every morning to clean up the house;
she herself did all the other work, washing and ironing her own linen,
cooking only twice a week, and eating cold meat on the other days, as
much to save money as to save time.
For her time had its value. She worked on her frame patterns for
embroideries, for which a fashionable store paid her very good prices.
There were days in summer when she earned three francs.
The blow had been a severe one; she did not conceal it. Gradually,
however, she had become reconciled to it, and taken up this habit of
economizing with unflinching severity, and down to the smallest
details. At present, she felt in these very privations a kind of secret
satisfaction which results from the sense of having accomplished a
duty,--a satisfaction all the greater, the harder the duty is.
What duty, she did not say.
“That lady is a noble creature among many!” said Henrietta to herself
that night, when she retired after a modest repast.
Still she could not get over the mystery which surrounded the lives of
these two personages, whom fate, relenting at last, had placed in her
way. What was the mystery in the past of this brother and sister? For
there was one; and, so far from trying to conceal it, they had begged
Henrietta not to inquire into it. And how was their past connected
with her own past? How could their future depend in any way on her own
future?
But fatigue soon made an end to her meditations, and confused her ideas;
and, for the first time in two years, she fell asleep with a sense
of perfect security; she slept peacefully, without starting at the
slightest noise, without being troubled by silence, without wondering
whether her enemies were watching her, without suspecting the very walls
of her room.
When she awoke next morning, calm and refreshed, it was broad daylight,
nearly ten o’clock; and a pale ray of the sun was playing over the
polished furniture. When she opened her eyes, she saw the dealer’s
sister standing at the foot of her bed, like a good genius who had been
watching over her slumbers.
“Oh, how lazy I am!” she exclaimed with the hearty laugh of a child; for
she felt quite at home in this little bedroom, where she had only spent
a night; she felt as much at home here as in her father’s palace when
her mother was still alive; and it seemed to her as if she had lived
here many a year.
“My brother was here about half an hour ago to talk with you,” said the
old lady; “but we did not like to wake you. You needed repose so much!
He will be back in the evening, and dine with us.”
The bright smile which had lighted up Henrietta’s face went out
instantly. Absorbed in the happiness of the moment, she had forgotten
every thing; and these few words brought her back to the reality of
her position, and recalled to her the sufferings of the past and the
uncertainty of the future.
The good widow in the meantime assisted her in getting up; and they
spent the day together in the little parlor, busily cutting out and
making up a black silk dress for which Papa Ravinet had brought the
material in the morning, and which was to take the place of Henrietta’s
miserable, worn-out, alpaca dress. When the young girl had first seen
the silk, she had remembered all the kind widow had told her of their
excessive economy, and with difficulty only succeeded in checking her
tears.
“Why should you go to such an expense?” she had said very sadly. “Would
not a woollen dress have done quite as well? The hospitality which you
offer me must in itself be quite a heavy charge upon you. I should never
forgive myself for becoming a source of still greater privations to such
very kind friends.”