The Count de Tremorel did not anticipate that the respite which Bertha
begged would last long. Sauvresy had seemed better during the last week.
He got up every day, and commenced to go about the house; he even
received numerous visits from the neighbors; without apparent fatigue.
But alas, the master of Valfeuillu was only the shadow of himself. His
friends would never have recognized in that emaciated form and white
face, and burning, haggard eye, the robust young man with red lips and
beaming visage whom they remembered. He had suffered so! He did not wish
to die before avenging himself on the wretches who had filched his
happiness and his life. But what punishment should he inflict? This
fixed idea burning in his brain, gave his look a fiery eagerness.
Ordinarily, there are three modes in which a betrayed husband may avenge
himself. He has the right, and it is almost a duty--to deliver the
guilty ones up to the law, which is on his side. He may adroitly watch
them, surprise them and kill them. There is a law which does not
absolve, but excuses him, in this. Lastly, he may affect a stolid
indifference, laugh the first and loudest at his misfortune, drive his
wife from his roof, and leave her to starve. But what poor, wretched
methods of vengeance. Give up his wife to the law? Would not that be to
offer his name, honor, and life to public ridicule? To put himself at
the mercy of a lawyer, who would drag him through the mire. They do not
defend the erring wife, they attack her husband. And what satisfaction
would he get? Bertha and Tremorel would be condemned to a year's
imprisonment, perhaps eighteen months, possibly two years. It seemed to
him simpler to kill them. He might go in, fire a revolver at them, and
they would not have time to comprehend it, for their agony would be but
for a moment; and then? Then, he must become a prisoner, submit to a
trial, invoke the judge's mercy, and risk conviction. As to turning his
wife out of doors, that was to hand her over quietly to Hector. He
imagined them leaving Valfeuillu, hand in hand, happy and smiling, and
laughing in his face. At this thought he had a fit of cold rage; his
self-esteem adding the sharpest pains to the wounds in his heart. None
of these vulgar methods could satisfy him. He longed for some revenge
unheard-of, strange, monstrous, as his tortures were. Then he thought of
all the horrible tales he had read, seeking one to his purpose; he had a
right to be particular, and he was determined to wait until he was
satisfied. There was only one thing that could balk his
progress--Jenny's letter. What had become of it? Had he lost it in the
woods? He had looked for it everywhere, and could not find it.
He accustomed himself, however, to feign, finding a sort of fierce
pleasure in the constraint. He learned to assume a countenance which
completely hid his thoughts. He submitted to his wife's caresses without
an apparent shudder; and shook Hector by the hand as heartily as ever.
In the evening, when they were gathered about the drawing-room table, he
was the gayest of the three. He built a hundred air-castles, pictured a
hundred pleasure-parties, when he was able to go abroad again. Hector
rejoiced at his returning health.
"Clement is getting on finely," said he to Bertha, one evening.
She understood only too well what he meant.
"Always thinking of Laurence?"
"Did you not permit me to hope?"
"I asked you to wait, Hector, and you have done well not to be in a
hurry. I know a young girl who would bring you, not one, but three
millions as dowry."
This was a painful surprise. He really had no thoughts for anyone but
Laurence, and now a new obstacle presented itself.
"And who is that?"
She leaned over, and whispered tremblingly in his ear:
"I am Clement's sole heiress; perhaps he'll die; I might be a widow
to-morrow."
Hector was petrified.
"But Sauvresy, thank God! is getting well fast."
Bertha fixed her large, clear eyes upon him, and with frightful calmness
said:
"What do you know about it?"
Tremorel dared not ask what these strange words meant. He was one of
those men who shun explanations, and who, rather than put themselves on
their guard in time, permit themselves to be drawn on by circumstances;
soft and feeble beings, who deliberately bandage their eyes so as not to
see the danger which threatens them, and who prefer the sloth of doubt,
and acts of uncertainty to a definite and open position, which they have
not the courage to face.
Besides, Hector experienced a childish satisfaction in seeing Bertha's
distress, though he feared and detested her. He conceived a great
opinion of his own value and merit, when he saw the persistency and
desperation with which she insisted on keeping her hold on him.
"Poor woman!" thought he. "In her grief at losing me, and seeing me
another's, she has begun to wish for her husband's death!"
Such was the torpor of his moral sense that he did not see the vileness
of Bertha's and his own thoughts.
Meanwhile Sauvresy's state was not reassuring for Hector's hopes and
plans. On the very day when he had this conversation with Bertha, her
husband was forced to take to his bed again. This relapse took place
after he had drank a glass of quinine and water, which he had been
accustomed to take just before supper; only, this time, the symptoms
changed entirely, as if one malady had yielded to another of a very
different kind. He complained of a pricking in his skin, of vertigo, of
convulsive twitches which contracted and twisted his limbs, especially
his arms. He cried out with excruciating neuralgic pains in the face. He
was seized with a violent, persistent, tenacious craving for pepper,
which nothing could assuage. He was sleepless, and morphine in large
doses failed to bring him slumber; while he felt an intense chill within
him, as if the body's temperature were gradually diminishing. Delirium
had completely disappeared, and the sick man retained perfectly the
clearness of his mind. Sauvresy bore up wonderfully under his pains, and
seemed to take a new interest in the business of his estates. He was
constantly in consultation with bailiffs and agents, and shut himself up
for days together with notaries and attorneys. Then, saying that he must
have distractions, he received all his friends, and when no one called,
he sent for some acquaintance to come and chat with him in order to
forget his illness. He gave no hint of what he was doing and thinking,
and Bertha was devoured by anxiety. She often watched for her husband's
agent, when, after a conference of several hours, he came out of his
room; and making herself as sweet and fascinating as possible, she used
all her cunning to find out something which would enlighten her as to
what he was about. But no one could, or at least would, satisfy her
curiosity; all gave evasive replies, as if Sauvresy had cautioned them,
or as if there were nothing to tell.
No complaints were heard from Sauvresy. He talked constantly of Bertha
and Hector; he wished all the world to know their devotion to him; he
called them his "guardian angels," and blessed Heaven that had given him
such a wife and such a friend. Sauvresy's illness now became so serious
that Tremorel began to despair; he became alarmed; what position would
his friend's death leave him in? Bertha, having become a widow, would be
implacable. He resolved to find out her inmost thoughts at the first
opportunity; she anticipated him, and saved him the trouble of broaching
the subject. One afternoon, when they were alone, M. Plantat being in
attendance at the sick man's bedside, Bertha commenced.
"I want some advice, Hector, and you alone can give it to me. How can I
find out whether Clement, within the past day or two, has not changed
his will in regard to me?"
"His will?"
"Yes, I've already told you that by a will of which I myself have a
copy, Sauvresy has left me his whole fortune. I fear that he may perhaps
revoke it."
"What an idea!"
"Ah, I have reasons for my apprehensions. What are all these agents and
attorneys doing at Valfeuillu? A stroke of this man's pen may ruin me.
Don't you see that he can deprive me of his millions, and reduce me to
my dowry of fifty thousand francs?"
"But he will not do it; he loves you--"
"Are you sure of it? I've told you, there are three millions; I must
have this fortune--not for myself, but for you; I want it, I must have
it! But how can I find out--how? how?"
Hector was very indignant. It was to this end, then, that his delays had
conducted him! She thought that she had a right now to dispose of him in
spite of himself, and, as it were, to purchase him. And he could not,
dared not, say anything!
"We must be patient," said he, "and wait--"
"Wait--for what? Till he's dead?"
"Don't speak so."
"Why not?" Bertha went up to him, and in a low voice, muttered:
"He has only a week to live; and see here--"
She drew a little vial from her pocket, and held it up to him.
"That is what convinces me that I am not mistaken."
Hector became livid, and could not stifle a cry of horror. He
comprehended all now--he saw how it was that Bertha had been so easily
subdued, why she had refrained from speaking of Laurence, her strange
words, her calm confidence.
"Poison!" stammered he, confounded.
"Yes, poison."
"You have not used it?"
She fixed a hard, stern look upon him--the look which had subdued his
will, against which he had struggled in vain--and in a calm voice,
emphasizing each word, answered:
"I have used it."
The count was, indeed, a dangerous man, unscrupulous, not recoiling from
any wickedness when his passions were to be indulged, capable of
everything; but this horrible crime awoke in him all that remained of
honest energy.
"Well," he cried, in disgust, "you will not use it again!"
He hastened toward the door, shuddering; she stopped him.
"Reflect before you act," said she, coldly. "I will betray the fact of
your relations with me; who will then believe that you are not my
accomplice?"
He saw the force of this terrible menace, coming from Bertha.
"Come," said she, ironically, "speak--betray me if you choose. Whatever
happens, for happiness or misery, we shall no longer be separated; our
destinies will be the same."
Hector fell heavily into a chair, more overwhelmed than if he had been
struck with a hammer. He held his bursting forehead between his hands;
he saw himself shut up in an infernal circle, without outlet.
"I am lost!" he stammered, without knowing what he said, "I am lost!"
He was to be pitied; his face was terribly haggard, great drops of
perspiration stood at the roots of his hair, his eyes wandered as if he
were insane. Bertha shook him rudely by the arm, for his cowardice
exasperated her.
"You are afraid," she said. "You are trembling! Lost? You would not say
so, if you loved me as I do you. Will you be lost because I am to be
your wife, because we shall be free to love in the face of all the
world? Lost! Then you have no idea of what I have endured? You don't
know, then, that I am tired of suffering, fearing, feigning."
"Such a crime!"
She burst out with a laugh that made him shudder.
"You ought to have said so," said she, with a look full of contempt,
"the day you won me from Sauvresy--the day that you stole the wife of
this friend who saved your life. Do you think that was a less horrid
crime? You knew as well as I did how much my husband loved me, and that
he would have preferred to die, rather than lose me thus."
"But he knows nothing, suspects nothing of it."
"You are mistaken; Sauvresy knows all."
"Impossible!"
"All, I tell you--and he has known all since that day when he came home
so late from hunting. Don't you remember that I noticed his strange
look, and said to you that my husband suspected something? You shrugged
your shoulders. Do you forget the steps in the vestibule the night I
went to your room? He had been spying on us. Well, do you want a more
certain proof? Look at this letter, which I found, crumpled up and wet,
in one of his vest pockets."
She showed him the letter which Sauvresy had forcibly taken from Jenny,
and he recognized it well.
"It is a fatality," said he, overwhelmed. "But we can separate and break
off with each other. Bertha, I can go away."
"It's too late. Believe me, Hector, we are to-day defending our lives.
Ah, you don't know Clement! You don't know what the fury of a man like
him can be, when he sees that his confidence has been outrageously
abused, and his trust vilely betrayed. If he has said nothing to me, and
has not let us see any traces of his implacable anger, it is because he
is meditating some frightful vengeance."
This was only too probable, and Hector saw it clearly.
"What shall we do?" he asked, in a hoarse voice; he was almost
speechless.
"Find out what change he has made in his will."
"But how?"
"I don't know yet. I came to ask your advice, and I find you more
cowardly than a woman. Let me act, then; don't do anything yourself; I
will do all."
He essayed an objection.
"Enough," said she. "He must not ruin us after all--I will see--I will
think."
Someone below called her. She went down, leaving Hector overcome with
despair.
That evening, during which Bertha seemed happy and smiling, his face
finally betrayed so distinctly the traces of his anguish, that Sauvresy
tenderly asked him if he were not ill?
"You exhaust yourself tending on me, my good Hector," said he. "How can
I ever repay your devotion?"
Tremorel had not the strength to reply.
"And that man knows all," thought he. "What courage! What fate can he be
reserving for us?"
The scene which was passing before Hector's eyes made his flesh creep.
Every time that Bertha gave her husband his medicine, she took a
hair-pin from her tresses, and plunged it into the little vial which she
had shown him, taking up thus some small, white grains, which she
dissolved in the potions prescribed by the doctor.
It might be supposed that Tremorel, enslaved by his horrid position, and
harassed by increasing terror, would renounce forever his proposed
marriage with Laurence. Not so. He clung to that project more
desperately than ever. Bertha's threats, the great obstacles now
intervening, his anguish, crime, only augmented the violence of his love
for her, and fed the flame of his ambition to secure her as his wife. A
small and flickering ray of hope which lighted the darkness of his
despair, consoled and revived him, and made the present more easy to
bear. He said to himself that Bertha could not be thinking of marrying
him the day after her husband's death. Months, a whole year must pass,
and thus he would gain time; then some day he would declare his will.
What would she have to say? Would she divulge the crime, and try to hold
him as her accomplice? Who would believe her? How could she prove that
he, who loved and had married another woman, had any interest in
Sauvresy's death? People don't kill their friends for the mere pleasure
of it. Would she provoke the law to exhume her husband? She was now in a
position, thought he, wherein she could, or would not exercise her
reason. Later on, she would reflect, and then she would be arrested by
the probability of those dangers, the certainty of which did not now
terrify her.
He did not wish that she should ever be his wife at any price. He would
have detested her had she possessed millions; he hated her now that she
was poor, ruined, reduced to her own narrow means. And that she was so,
there was no doubt, Sauvresy indeed knew all. He was content to wait; he
knew that Laurence loved him enough to wait for him one, or three years,
if necessary. He already had such absolute power over her, that she did
not try to combat the thoughts of him, which gently forced themselves on
her, penetrated to her soul, and filled her mind and heart. Hector said
to himself that in the interest of his designs, perhaps it was well that
Bertha was acting as she did. He forced himself to stifle his conscience
in trying to prove that he was not guilty. Who thought of this crime?
Bertha. Who was executing it? She alone. He could only be reproached
with moral complicity in it, a complicity involuntary, forced upon him,
imposed somehow by the care for his own life. Sometimes, however, a
bitter remorse seized him. He could have understood a sudden, violent,
rapid murder; could have explained to himself a knife-stroke; but this
slow death, given drop by drop, horribly sweetened by tenderness, veiled
under kisses, appeared to him unspeakably hideous. He was mortally
afraid of Bertha, as of a reptile, and when she embraced him he
shuddered from head to foot.
She was so calm, so engaging, so natural; her voice had the same soft
and caressing tones, that he could not forget it. She plunged her
hair-pin into the fatal vial without ceasing her conversation, and he
did not surprise her in any shrinking or shuddering, nor even a
trembling of the eyelids. She must have been made of brass. Yet he
thought that she was not cautious enough; and that she put herself in
danger of discovery; and he told her of these fears, and how she made
him tremble every moment.
"Have confidence in me," she answered. "I want to succeed--I am
prudent."
"But you may be suspected."
"By whom?"
"Eh! How do I know? Everyone--the servants, the doctor."
"No danger. And suppose they did suspect?"
"They would make examinations, Bertha; they would make a minute
scrutiny."
She gave a smile of the most perfect security.
"They might examine and experiment as much as they pleased, they would
find nothing. Do you think I am such a fool as to use arsenic?"
"For Heaven's sake, hush!"
"I have procured one of those poisons which are as yet unknown, and
which defy all analysis; one of which many doctors--and learned ones,
too--could not even tell the symptoms!"
"But where did you get this--this--"