SELECT SCENES CONTINUED.
We have lost sight of the other characters in our narrative, and it
is now time that we return to them. The reader will remember, in the
dark-eyed, sharp-tongued Jeannette of a past scene, the contrasted type
of another class of adventuress, whose schemes seemed to have been
rapidly culminating. Her success, indeed, seemed now to be absolutely
assured; the coveted conquest had been achieved—Edmond was daily at her
feet. They were, as it was understood, soon to be publicly married.
In the meanwhile, she occupied the best room in the house, and became
daily more and more imperious and overbearing towards the woman Marie,
as she believed the time to be approaching when she would no longer
need her services.
In common with her type the world over, she was incredibly selfish and
ungrateful, where she had once fawned and cringed. This little weakness
of arrogance she had begun to make some slight exhibitions of, even
towards Edmond himself; while, as for the woman Marie, she hectored her
on all occasions with the pitiless volubility of a most caustic wit.
In this, however, she made a most fatal mistake; she little dreamed of
the dark and terrible subtlety of the reptile she thus hourly trampled
with her ruthless scorn. She, too, was doomed to feel the fearful
poison of the hidden sting she carried, and writhe beneath its hideous
tortures.
There had been a more than usually bitter scene between them, in
which Jeannette had loftily taunted her with the abjectness of the
game she was now playing, in putting forward her own daughter, as the
attraction, by which to hold Manton any longer near her. It was not
that Madame Jeannette was so much shocked at any villany in the act
itself, but that her lofty pride was revolted at the inconceivable
meanness it displayed; for, as among thieves and robbers, there is
among adventuresses a certain _esprit du corps_,—and the haughty
Jeannette aspired to be a sort of banditti chieftainess in sentiment,
and was really a person of refined cultivation, so far as mere
intellect was concerned,—it is little wonder, that at such a time
of unbounded confidence in the security of her own position, and
independence, as she supposed, of any farther aid from the woman,
that she should have given way to a natural feeling of disgust and
abhorrence, in a moment of irritation. But that taunt proved to her the
most deadly error of her life.
The woman, who feared her presence mortally, left the room hurriedly
and in silence, shivering in an ague-fit of rage. In another moment
she left the house, without speaking a word to any one. Indeed, she
seemed incapable of speaking. Her eyes looked bloodshot and hideously
awry; the veins of her face swollen as if to bursting, and the skin
absolutely livid.
It was a long walk she had set out upon, and gradually the headlong
rapidity of her gait subsided into a more measured tread. Her face
became pale, as it had before suffused, and a sort of ghastly calmness
succeeded. At length, in White Street, she rang the bell of an
old-fashioned, but respectable-looking mansion, and shot past the
servant in the passage, when, instead of turning into the parlor, she
hurried up-stairs to the chamber of the lady.
A somewhat masculine voice answered her tap, and she passed in. A
woman of stout symmetrical figure, imperious bearing, whose somewhat
coarse features were relieved by the animal splendor of her large black
eyes, the luxuriance of her jetty hair, and voluptuous _embonpoint_ of
person, greeted her in a short, abrupt style, as she looked up with a
cold glance from some lacework over which she was bending.
“What is it, Marie? You look flurried.”
“No, no,” said she, throwing off her bonnet and sinking into a chair.
“I’m only tired! It’s a long walk from my place here; and then it is
very hot to-day. But, Eugenie,” she said abruptly, changing her tone,
“I came this morning to tell you about Edmond.”
“What of him?” said the other sharply, turning full upon her.
“Dear Eugenie, the fact is, I could not restrain myself longer—I should
not be acting truly by you or him, if I did so. You know you love him
still.”
The face of the French-woman flushed slightly; her head was thrown back
with a haughty curve of the neck.
“Ah, no,” said the woman, interrupting her quickly as she was about to
speak.
“No nonsense, Eugenie; you remember that proud as you are, you loved
him well enough to risk the loss of your social position for him. You
never loved any one as well since, and never will again; and _I_ know
that he loves you, and you only, to this hour. It was your pride caused
the separation, it is your pride that has reduced him so low as to
become, in sheer despair, the victim of such a sapless, bodiless, dry
and sharp-set speculator, as this Jeannette! Why, would you believe it,
she has tormented him at last into a promise to marry her!”
“What!” said the other, springing to her feet; “what! marry that
starvling! Edmond marry that pauper adventuress, after having loved
me! Pshaw! Marie, you are mistaken. He only tells her this to get rid
of her importunities. He’s trifling with her: he’s not in earnest—he
can’t be—he’s too proud: and besides, his father would disinherit him!”
“Sit down and keep cool, Eugenie. I am not mistaken; so far from it,
that every day he comes to me, grievously bewailing his hard fate, in
having so far committed himself to Jeannette, whom he curses, while he
mourns over this obdurate pride of yours, in refusing to see him again.
He says if he could only see you once more he would be strong enough
to break with Jeannette forever. I’ve shown him how he could easily
buy her off, in case of reconciliation with you—that her object, from
the first, had been simply money, and the _eclat_ of the position it
would give her abroad—and that when she had become convinced that a
separation must take place, she would soon be brought to compromise her
claims. Beside, the marriage is impossible; I have seen his father and
his brother, and have given them some seasonable hints in regard to
her; and the testy old man now swears that he will disinherit him, if
he dares to marry what he considers to be little better than a common
adventuress. And the brother, whom you know is the most influential of
the two with the old man, is equally violent about it. So you see, my
dear Eugenie, I have been working for you faithfully all the while,
while you considered me as co-operating with Jeannette.”
“Yes,” said the other, who had resumed her seat quite calmly, “I dare
say I did you injustice, for I had conceived all the time, that it
was through you that this affair, between Jeannette and Edmond, had
been brought about; that you had had some interest in it you have not
thought proper to explain to me; and an explanation of which I have not
chosen to ask of you. It is quite sufficient for me to know that you
now desire to supplant Jeannette, and thereby undo your own work. Now,
if you choose to explain to me what the object you wish to accomplish
is, so that I can understand your motive, then, perhaps, we may come
together in this matter—for I know you, Marie, that you never do things
without a motive for yourself. Come, out with it! Has Jeannette
crossed your track in any way? Has she foiled you? In a word, do you
hate her now?”
“Of course I hate her now,” said the woman, “or why this visit? Why
the deliberate care I have taken to prepare the way to foil her
dearest schemes? She has outraged me beyond endurance by her insolent
superiority. She frightens, bullies and taunts me. She has insulted me
beyond the possibility of woman’s forgiveness to another! I hate her as
deeply as I love revenge!”
“All this may be very true, Marie,” said the other, with a cool smile,
“but knowing you as I do, I should prefer to be informed specifically
in what this insult consisted. Tell me what she said and did, give
me all the circumstances in detail, and then I shall understand your
motive and know how far we can act together!”
The woman paused an instant as if in hesitation, her eye grew hideously
askance once more, her forehead blazed, and her lips quivered, as
glancing furtively around the room, with a stealthy movement, she
glided closely to the side of the French-woman, and whispered in her
ear, with purple lips, a rapid, eager communication for a few moments,
and then sank back into her chair again, pale as death and seemingly
exhausted.
The French-woman bent her ear to listen, with her needle suspended in
her hand, and as the other finished, a fierce, electric gleam darted
from her eye, and with untrembling fingers she finished her stitch,
while she said in a low tone—
“That will do, Marie; that’s enough to secure your faith. We will
punish her. Edmond shall come back to my feet!”
* * * * *
The results of the last scene may be rapidly traced. Very soon there
commenced a series of mysterious calls by a dark-veiled lady, whom
Manton was induced to suppose was a patient who was desirous to retain
her incognito. She came and went always at unusual hours, and though a
vague suspicion once or twice forced itself upon his mind that there
was something unusual going on, yet in his pre-occupation it created
but little attention. But we, who have undertaken from the first to be
somewhat closer and more widely-awakened observers than he, can see
something more significant than met his eye in all this.
An _accidental_ meeting in one of the rooms of the house soon occurred
between Edmond and Eugenie, upon the privacy of which we are not
disposed to intrude. Let the consequences suffice.
In a few weeks the imperious tone of Jeannette, who, too, had been
kept entirely ignorant of what was going on, was lowered, though the
covert and sardonic vindictiveness of her wit had clearly lost nothing
of its directness and ferocity even; because, as she daily became less
exultant, the moroseness of her temper increased.
It would be anything but a pleasant picture to unveil the harrowing
struggles of such a woman to regain an ascendency, which she felt was
daily driven by some malign and invisible power beyond the breath of
her heretofore ascendant will. She only felt its devastation amidst
her towering hopes, and the moon-stone battlements of regal schemes
that she had nourished in daring fancies. She only felt the shadow of
desolation on her soul, but her vision was not strong enough to see the
demon wing that threw it.
She was passing through the valley and the shadow, yet knew not where
to aim the lightning of her curse. She sank at last, bewildered,
stunned, and utterly humiliated; for she had crawled upon her very
knees to Edmond to plead for mercy, but he was inexorable. The old
passion had been restored to his life, and her proud, voluptuous rival
held the sensual philosopher a prisoner, “rescue or no rescue,” once
more.
For days and days after the tremendous realisation of her loss had been
forced upon her, she lay upon her bed, tossing in dumb and tearless
torture: then her concentrated madness took a new and sudden turn; she
shrieked and wailed, she cursed heaven, and earth, and men, and even
Edmond, with the lurid curses of madness, while she kissed the hand
and blessed the ministerings of the soft-gliding genius of her ruin,
who hung with a cunning science about her suffering bed.
But Jeannette was clearly not the stuff to die of any one passion less
intense than her love of self. She came through at last, haggard and
broken, and humble enough, but she received her pension nevertheless,
and soon after sailed for England, leaving the field to her stronger
rival, to whom Edmond was soon afterwards married.