the triumphant friend, “but it is a fact that I am going to carry off
his body for a while. The long and the short of it is this: for some
time past George has been meditating a return to the land of the
living, and he is glad to seize this opportunity to start at once, thus
obviating all minor hindrances.”
Mme. Dupuis listened silently, her eyes cast down; she had not taken a
seat since her entrance into the room, and she continued standing,
leaning against an arm-chair in front of her guest.
“It is true, then,” she murmured when Rouvière ceased speaking.
“Do you hear him?” cried her tormentor, laughing, as a heavy thump was
heard on the floor of the room above them. “The madcap! what a row he
is making up there with his trunk. He’s dragging it about as if it were
a triumphal car. Come, now, madame, you really ought not to feel
surprised that, after living thirty consecutive years in
Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, a man like George....”
“Do not trouble yourself to enter into any explanations—I understand,”
interrupted Mme. Dupuis dryly. “Where are you taking him?”
“Why, to tell the truth, my dear lady, everywhere; first....”
“For how long a time?” again interrupted the victim.
“How long? Well, a year, perhaps, or two years ... at most. Ah! my dear
Mme. Dupuis, what pleasant hours he is preparing for you,” continued M.
Rouvière, who waxed each minute more and more vainglorious and
jubilant. “How vastly will your remarkable collection of curiosities be
enriched by his few months of travel! He will bring you back a dozen
authentic reliquaries, and as many rosaries, blessed by the Holy Father
himself ... _propria manu_! What say you to that?”
But Mme. Dupuis had ceased to listen; she had thrown herself into the
arm-chair before her and was weeping bitterly. “O my God! my God!” were
the only words she spoke between her sobs.
“Good!” growled Rouvière, scowling at the unhappy woman—“the elegiac
style. Come, now,” he continued, making a step towards her and forcing
himself to speak gently—“come, now, my dear lady, you are not
reasonable. What is all this crying about? A journey. A journey don’t
kill a man; am not I a proof of that? And, good God! sailors’
wives—what do they do? Really, this is too bad; you are placing _me_ in
a most annoying position, madame,” suddenly changing his gentle tone to
one of vexation. “You are rendering my mission excessively painful.”
“Excuse me, sir,” sobbed the stricken wife, raising her wet face for a
moment. “You see I ... I can’t....” She could not go on.
M. Rouvière began to pace the room angrily; his tactics were at a loss,
and he found his task more difficult than he had anticipated; the
little “_provinciale_” did not resemble the old Indian vixen as much as
he had imagined. Presently he stopped in front of the weeping lady.
“You are doing, madame,” said he sternly, “precisely what I was
instructed to tell you George wishes to avoid.”
“Shall I not see him before he goes?” asked Madame Dupuis with a
frightened look, half-rising from her seat as she spoke.
“You shall see him, if you can recover your equanimity,” replied
Rouvière; “if you cannot, it will be better for you and for him not to
meet. His resolution is not to be changed.”
“Oh! I will be calm, I promise you,” exclaimed the wife, great drops
flowing fast down her pale cheeks; “in a few minutes ... give me a few
minutes more.... I cannot ... all at once.... O God! merciful God!”
Again she wept despairingly.
“I am compelled to make the remark, madame,” observed Rouvière harshly,
“that all this despair is quite out of proportion with the cause. The
deuce take it! I’m not carrying your husband off to the war.”
“No, no; I believe that he will come back again,” sobbed Mme. Dupuis,
trying to wipe away her tears.
“You are a pious woman, madame, and now’s the hour to show your piety.
Religion does not consist in only going to church. You are not to think
of yourself solely in this world.”
“But you see, M. Rouvière,” replied the good little woman, making a
great effort to control her emotion, “he’s not accustomed, like you, to
a life of continual fatigue; his health is more delicate than you
suspect. You will take care of him,” she added, suddenly seizing her
enemy’s right hand with both of hers—“you will take care of him, will
you not?”
“Why, certainly, madame, certainly,” answered Rouvière a trifle more
gently; “you may rely on me for that. I promise to bring him back to
you as fresh and rosy as any lad in Cotentin. I give you my word of
honor. You understand me, do you not? But now, I beg you, let us have
no more tears, especially no scene at parting.”
“I will do all you wish me to do.” And Mme. Dupuis forthwith smiled
tearfully on the hard, cold man who had so wantonly upset her
happiness.
“Look,” she cried presently, as she wiped away the last hot drops, “it
can’t be perceived that I have been crying.”
“That’s right, madame; that’s the way! I’ve great esteem for strong,
single-hearted women; for wives who are truly Christian and
self-sacrificing. And now that you’ve recovered your calmness, allow me
to repeat to you that there really never was any reason for such great
grief. What is a year? Gracious heavens! it is nothing. You will
probably spend six months of it with your daughter, and the remaining
six months you will pass here in the midst of your remembrances. George
will not be more than half absent, for everything around you will bring
him constantly before you; you will meet him at every step!”
“Take care, sir, take care!” said Mme. Dupuis, shaking her head at him
with a faint smile, “lest, while you seek to comfort me, you increase
the pain, ... which you cannot understand!”
“I beg your pardon, madame; I understand it perfectly,” replied
Rouvière, an angry gleam lighting up his eyes for an instant, “and I
thought that I was proving to you that I do.”
“O sir! believe me, I wish to cast no reflection either on your
intelligence or your kindness; be quite sure of that!”
“Madame!” exclaimed the gentleman.
“But there _are_ things,” continued Mme. Dupuis, giving at last free
utterance to her feelings—“there _are_ things which are _not_ to be
_guessed_. Have you thought how different your life has been to ours?
You have been very wise; you have never allowed your heart to be bound
by any of those ties whose number and strength are only recognized when
they come to be broken. Yes, you may well say that everything here, the
very hearthstone itself, forms a part of our united lives, of our
remembrances, making our very thoughts the same. Everything around us
loves us, everything is dear to us.... So, at least, I believed until
now! A few minutes ago how dearly I prized the simple objects this room
contains—all so familiar to us both during so many years, all bearing
traces of our habits; each one reminding us of the projects, the
pleasures, the sorrows we have shared together! And now they are
nothing to me—they _can_ be nothing to me but the ruins of a false
happiness, the wrecks of a dream!”
“Really, madame, you exaggerate strangely,” replied Rouvière coldly;
“admitting that this journey throws a shade over the present, the past,
at least, remains intact.”
“You are mistaken, sir,” returned Mme. Dupuis. “This journey is
doubtless not much in itself, but it answers cruelly a question which I
have been accustomed to ask myself in secret nearly all my life: Is
George happy? No, he was not happy; I alone was happy. I know the truth
at last! He was resigned”—she struggled a moment to contain her
emotion—“but he was not happy. And yet my heart—I feel it, I am sure of
it—was worthy of his; in every other respect I was inferior to him, and
I felt it bitterly. What companionship could a mind like his find in
the conversation of a poor, provincial girl, ignorant of everything,
knowing nothing but how to love him?”
“You undervalue yourself,” remarked her attentive listener; “as for me,
I declare that the more I know you, the better I appreciate George’s
choice of a wife.”
“You flatter me, M. Rouvière,” replied Mme. Dupuis, smiling; “you see
me unhappy, and you are generous. I will be so too, and forgive you all
the pain you have occasioned me.... I have hated you for years.”
“Me? Impossible! What had I done to deserve it? But first tell me”—and
his voice was quite kind and gentle—“you feel better now, do you not? I
don’t know how it is, but really you look ten years younger!”
“Possibly,” said Mme. Dupuis, with a quiet smile; “I think that I am a
little feverish—so much the better!”
“Come, come, cheer up! And tell me, now, what painful part have I
played in your existence?”
“Well, M. Rouvière,” she began calmly, but became more and more excited
as she went on, “I need scarcely tell you that every woman, from the
very morrow of her wedding-day, finds herself in presence of a
formidable rival—her husband’s _unmarried_ life. Nor need I explain how
difficult is the task to make him forget all that he has given up for
his wife; how almost impossible it is to allay his regret for the
golden age that is gone—regret which grows stronger as those past days
recede farther and farther into the distance and youth fades away. I,
sir, soon perceived that _your_ name, incessantly on his lips, was
George’s favorite symbol of lost pleasures—the incarnation of all the
illusions of by-gone years. In his dear thoughts _you_ represented
liberty, adventure, and the days of fleeting sorrows and of infinite
hopes; while _I_—I was positive life, paltry domestic economy, and
daily anxiety. _I_ was prose and _you_ were poetry. It was with you
then that I had to struggle, and I did so with all my strength and with
all my soul. Alas! it was in vain; you were stronger than I. Each day
George grew more thoughtful, and it seemed to me as if every one of
those moments of sadness was a triumph for you. How often have I wept
secret tears over my defects, here, seated by this hearthstone, or
under the willow-trees in our little garden! But I was young then, and
God took pity on me and gave me my daughter, and you were overcome.
Now”—her voice fell and she paused a moment—“now the angel of our home
is gone, and victory is once more yours.”
“Who knows?” replied Rouvière, his voice strangely hoarse and
trembling. “The last word is not yet spoken. You are going to see
George. Speak to him. You can still prevent his journey.”
“I have promised you that I will not try to do so,” she answered
gently.
“But I give you back your promise!” cried her guest vehemently. “I will
not be your evil genius. I am abrupt, madame, selfish too,
sometimes—that’s a bachelor’s profession, you know; but I am not
bad—pray, believe it.”
“I do believe it,” she replied, looking him frankly and smilingly in
the eyes, “but I know George. All my efforts would be useless; they
would irritate him, and nothing more. Besides, even if, by dint of
tears, I could keep him at home, I would not do it now. I should only
be adding another new and bitter regret to those which have already
poisoned his life. And my heart would seem to reproach me with my
victory every time that I saw him silent or sad. No; he must go!”
“All you say is true—too true,” said Rouvière after a short pause.
“There is nothing to reply; you are right. But depend on me, madame, to
shorten his absence.”
“I will depend on you; thank you.” She rose from her seat as she spoke
and offered her hand to him. The repentant guest clasped it in both of
his and kissed it, bowing low as he did so. At the same moment a loud
noise as of something falling down the stairs, followed by a great
confusion of tongues, was heard outside.
“My God! what is the matter?” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis, pale as death. “It
is he; I hear his voice!”
She rushed towards the door, but before she could reach it her husband
entered, boiling over with passion, and followed by Marianne.
“You’re an awkward dunce! Be silent, I command you!” he shouted, as the
maid tried to excuse herself. “You can’t make me believe that you find
this trunk, which has nothing but a few shirts in it, too heavy for you
to carry. The stupid creature,” he continued, turning to his wife,
“actually let my trunk roll from the top to the bottom of the
staircase!”
“Well, the fact is,” cried Marianne, “ever since you told me that you
were going to Rome I’ve lost all strength in my arms and legs. I’ve no
strength at all. Going to Rome, indeed! What next?”
“The woman is crazy,” said Dupuis, red with indignation. “What business
is it of yours, I should like to know?”
“I don’t say that it’s my business,” replied the maid, who was as red
and angry as her master, “but, all the same, it’s a queer idea to leave
mistress here all alone, at her age too, while you go to Rome. You’ll
be lucky if you find her again when you come back. _I_ won’t answer for
it.”
“Marianne, take care!” cried Dupuis, who had listened, speechless with
amazement, to his old servant’s impertinence. “You must see that I am
far from pleased.”
“I’m not surprised at that,” returned she; “you’re not pleased with
others, because you’re not pleased with yourself. That’s always the
way.”
“I dismiss you from my service,” cried her master, in a fury.
“Go down stairs directly, Marianne,” said her mistress sternly.
“I dismiss you,” repeated Dupuis; “though they should be the last words
I have to speak in my own house, they shall be obeyed. I dismiss you
from my service! It is your fault also, my dear Reine,” he added when
the maid had gone from the room; “you allow your servants to be too
familiar with you. You see the consequence. I hope you understand that
I have dismissed that woman?”
“Yes, George,” answered the lady gently; “I will settle her wages
to-morrow morning, if you do not change your mind.”
“Change my mind!” exclaimed her husband. “Am I accustomed to change my
mind every five minutes? Am I a weathercock, or do you deem me so
weakened by age that I can submit to be lectured by my own servants?”
“I beg you, dear, not to say another word on the subject. She shall go
away to-morrow. But I want to know, George, if you have all you need.
Let me look into your trunk, will you? Men don’t know much about
wearing-apparel, and when one is travelling the merest trifle that is
missing suffices to put one out of sorts for the whole day. I know that
you can buy whatever you want, but where’s the use when you can avoid
it? And then, too, I wish to make you think of me all the time, you
gadabout!”
“Do as you like, love,” said George; “here are the keys.”
“Well, Tom,” he continued, when the lady had closed the door behind
her, “it seems to me that she received the news very well indeed.”
“Perfectly; do you know, George, your wife possesses some great
qualities?”
“I know she does,” returned Dupuis, looking inquisitively at his
friend’s serious, almost downcast countenance.
“She is shy and excessively timid, and that does her wrong,” went on
Rouvière.
“I told you so, my dear friend,” cried Dupuis eagerly. “She was afraid
of you at dinner. Now, I would bet any sum that, the ice once broken,
you hardly recognized her.”
“It is true. Under the influence of deep emotion—for I will not conceal
that she was at first very much affected—she found expressions,
directly from her heart, which astonished me.”
“She has plenty of heart, that’s certain!” exclaimed the gratified
husband.
“And you may add,” said his friend, “that she possesses a most refined
and elevated mind.”
“I know it, Tom—I know it well!” cried Dupuis with delight. “I’m not a
blockhead, hey? Do you suppose that I should have married her, if I had
not known all that? And if it had to be done again, I should do it
again. I am not only happy in the woman I have chosen, Tom, but I am
proud of her! She has some slight defects—I see them as well as any
one—but, bless me! of what consequence is a little awkwardness, or
perhaps a few parish prejudices, when you find in the same woman the
most self-sacrificing tenderness, the most exquisite good sense and
uprightness, the most fervent and unassuming piety—in short, all the
virtues that can captivate an honest man?”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Rouvière, slapping him caressingly on the shoulder.
“An honest man—there you are! Well, well! all right.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dupuis, astonished.
“I mean,” replied Rouvière, “that the conclusion of your little speech
is perfectly clear: thinking better about our journey, and estimating
more coolly the value of the treasure that remains in the house, you
have lost the courage to leave it. In short, you are about to let me go
away alone.... I can understand perfectly that it should be so.”
“But I swear ...” cried Dupuis.
“Say no more, say no more,” interrupted his friend. “I understand it
all perfectly, I tell you.”
“You _mis_understand, you mean,” said Dupuis angrily. “I have never,
for one moment, forgotten my wife’s good qualities, but, were she ten
times the saint she is, it is not less true that I have been living the
life of a snail. Good heavens! I shall be better able to appreciate her
many virtues when no consciousness of intellectual degradation is
present to spoil my enjoyment.”
“You are too absurd, George! You make me laugh with your ‘intellectual
degradation.’”
“You did not laugh half an hour ago,” retorted Dupuis, “when you
depicted it in colors ... well, in colors which not even your
friendship for me could soften.”
“Is it possible that you did not perceive that I was jesting? How
singular it is that there’s not an intelligent man in France who, if he
is condemned to live in the provinces, far from Paris, does not fancy
that he is becoming idiotic! I had a presentiment that you suffered
from this monomania, and I amused myself by exciting it. I had been
drinking, you know; let that be my excuse.”
“However that may be,” answered Dupuis, a cold, stubborn expression
stealing over his face and fixing itself there, “I am more than ever
resolved to travel; if I hesitated before, I do so no longer. I confess
that I was afraid of the effect my intention would produce on my wife,
but her calmness removes all my scruples.”
“Listen to me, George, I beg you,” replied his friend earnestly: “don’t
trust too much to appearances; your wife affects a firmness she is far
from feeling. I know....”
“_You know_!” interrupted Dupuis. “You know that you begin to think
that I shall be in your way, and so you want to cast me over.”
“No, George, no—nothing of the kind. You don’t understand me. I
sincerely believed, from what you said, that you had changed your mind.
I thought that I was anticipating your wishes in giving back your
promise to go with me. But if you really persist in your intentions,
all right ... I am delighted.”
“Here are the horses,” bawled Marianne, opening the door suddenly and
then shutting it with a bang.
“That old woman would take my life, if she could,” said Rouvière,
laughing. “Now, then,” he continued, taking up his cloak, “let’s gird
up our loins. By the bye, I think I remember that you never can sleep
in a coach.”
“I beg your pardon, I can sleep perfectly well.”
“So much the better. _Allons!_ Bravo! Are the horses put to, I wonder?
Does this window look out upon the street?” Rouvière opened the sash as
he spoke, but closed it quickly. “What a wind! It’s terrible—cold
enough to split a rock! Now I think of it, one of the glasses of the
post-chaise is broken. I’m afraid you’ll be frozen to death, George.”
“Don’t trouble yourself about me,” replied Dupuis, putting on his
overcoat. “I can bear cold like a Laplander.”
“All right!”
The clock at this moment struck nine, and Madame Dupuis entered the
room, carrying a soft India shawl suspended from her arm. The poor lady
was very pale.
“Everything is ready,” she said with a trembling voice, “and here are
your keys, dear. You will see that I have added some few little things
that you had forgotten. And here is a comforter for you. I’ve cut my
old cashmere shawl in two, and half of it will be very nice to wrap
round your throat; it is very warm.”
“How foolish of you to cut up your shawl!” cried Dupuis. “However,
since ’tis done, I accept; but it really was very foolish of you.”
“Here is the other half for you, M. Rouvière,” said madame, presenting
it with a kind smile.
“For me!” cried Rouvière, taking it from her with respectful eagerness.
“Thank you, thank you most sincerely!”
“You will remember your promises, will you not?” asked the lady gently,
fixing her eyes on his.
Rouvière bowed and turned away abruptly.
“You will write to our daughter, George? You will not fail?”
“I will write to her—to both of you—often, often,” answered George in a
husky voice, and pulling his travelling-cap over his eyes.
“The 12th of January!” suddenly exclaimed Rouvière, who was warming his
feet at the fire, while he examined an almanac placed on the
chimney-piece. “Is it really the 12th of January to-day?”
“It really is,” replied Mme. Dupuis. “Why do you ask? Is there any
particular remembrance attached to that date?”
“It is a date which interests me only,” replied Rouvière in a tone of
infinite sadness. “Five years ago this very evening, almost at this
same hour, I was passing through an ordeal I shall never forget. Now,
George, _are_ you ready?” he added with abrupt impatience.
“What kind of an ordeal? What had happened to you? An accident?” asked
George, with intense interest.
“No, not an accident, but I was very ill, which is always a
misfortune—and ill in an inn, which is horrible.”
“People are ill everywhere,” remarked Dupuis sententiously.
“True; but the impressions made on you by sickness and death vary
according to the circumstances in which they surprise you; you can
scarcely conceive how much, unless you have had the experience.”
“Pshaw! death is death under all circumstances; it is always equally
unpleasant!” cried Dupuis.
“Ah! you think that.... I should like to have seen you.... Well, I’ll
tell you my story. It happened at Peschiera, on the Lago di Guardia—a
lovely country; we’ll pass through it, and I’ll show you the house. I
was detained there by a fever of a somewhat pernicious character. All
went on well, however, during eight days—for I was delirious the whole
time, and knew nothing of what was passing—till one fine evening, the
evening of the 12th of January, when I suddenly came to myself, so weak
in body, so anxious in spirit, and at the same time with such an
extraordinary lucidity of mind that I felt convinced I was at the point
of death. I have passed through many bitter moments in the course of my
life—cruel moments—which nevertheless I can think of now with a kind of
pleasure; but when I recall to mind my awakening in that inn-chamber, a
cold shiver runs through me; I shudder!”
Rouvière paused as Marianne entered the room; Mme. Dupuis signed to her
imperatively not to interrupt, and the maid remained standing near the
door.
“What did you see that could make such a fearful impression on you?”
asked George, moving a little nearer to his friend.
“Nothing very horrible; only some people who were waiting for me to
die, an old woman and a young doctor who were conversing together in a
corner, and a priest who was kneeling at the foot of my bed.
“They formed to my eye a picture whose accessories were the dirty,
faded curtains of the couch on which I was stretched and the tarnished,
heterogeneous furniture of a lodging-house. But the ignoble
surroundings, the preparations for death even, caused me no emotion;
what revolted me—stirred up my very soul to protest—was the neglect,
the brutal lack of charity—saving the presence of the priest—the
desolate isolation, the void of all human sympathy in which I
_realized_ that I was at that moment dying. How distinctly I can
recollect the pitiful, suppliant look with which I gazed around me, as
if trying to interlink the life that was escaping me with _any_, the
slightest, earthly object; as if seeking to discover some sign of
interest, of pity even, in the impassible faces which looked so calmly
on me! My agonized heart longed for _any_ trifle—a picture, a vase, a
chair—which had _known_ me, and to which I could say farewell. But all
was strange.”
“Death never _can_ be agreeable,” remarked Dupuis crabbedly. “When the
last hour is upon us it is dismal to be alone, I don’t say the
contrary; but I can’t see that it is more cheerful to be surrounded by
a weeping family.”