The baroness and Aubertin were just getting out of their carriage, when
suddenly they heard shrieks of terror in the Pleasaunce. They came with
quaking hearts as fast as their old limbs would carry them. They found
Rose and Josephine crouched over the body of a man, an officer.
Rose was just tearing open his collar and jacket. Dard and Jacintha had
run from the kitchen at the screams. Camille lay on his back, white and
motionless.
The doctor was the first to come up. “Who! what is this? I seem to know
his face.” Then shaking his head, “Whoever it is, it is a bad case.
Stand away, ladies. Let me feel his pulse.”
Whilst the old man was going stiffly down on one knee, Jacintha uttered
a cry of terror. “See, see! his shirt! that red streak! Ah, ah! it is
getting bigger and bigger:” and she turned faint in a moment, and would
have fallen but for Dard.
The doctor looked. “All the better,” said he firmly. “I thought he
was dead. His blood flows; then I will save him. Don’t clutch me so,
Josephine; don’t cling to me like that. Now is the time to show your
breed: not turn sick at the sight of a little blood, like that foolish
creature, but help me save him.”
“Take him in-doors,” cried the baroness.
“Into our house, mamma?” gasped Rose; “no, no.”
“What,” said the baroness, “a wounded soldier who has fought for France!
leave him to lie and die outside my door: what would my son say to that?
He is a soldier himself.”
Rose cast a hasty look at Josephine. Josephine’s eyes were bent on the
ground, and her hands clenched and trembling.
“Now, Jacintha, you be off,” said the doctor. “I can’t have cowards
about him to make the others as bad. Go and stew down a piece of good
beef for him. Stew it in red wine and water.”
“That I will: poor thing!”
“Why, I know him,” said the baroness suddenly; “it is an old
acquaintance, young Dujardin: you remember, Josephine. I used to suspect
him of a fancy for you, poor fellow! Why, he must have come here to see
us, poor soul.”
“No matter who it is; it is a man. Now, girls, have you courage, have
you humanity? Then come one on each side of him and take hands beneath
his back, while I lift his head and Dard his legs.”
“And handle him gently whatever you do,” said Dard. “I know what it is
to be wounded.”
These four carried the lifeless burden very slowly and gently across the
Pleasaunce to the house, then with more difficulty and caution up the
stairs.
All the while the sisters’ hands griped one another tight beneath the
lifeless burden, and spoke to one another. And Josephine’s arm upheld
tenderly but not weakly the hero she had struck down. She avoided Rose’s
eye, her mother’s, and even the doctor’s: one gasping sob escaped her as
she walked with head half averted, and vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and
her victim on her sustaining arm.
The doctor selected the tapestried chamber for him as being most airy.
Then he ordered the women out, and with Dard’s help undressed the still
insensible patient.
Josephine sat down on the stairs in gloomy silence, her eyes on the
ground, like one waiting for her deathblow.
Rose, sick at heart, sat silent too at some distance. At last she said
faintly, “Have we done well?”
“I don’t know,” said Josephine doggedly. Her eyes never left the ground.
“We could not let him die for want of care.”
“He will not thank us. Better for him to die than live. Better for me.”
At this instant Dard came running down. “Good news, mesdemoiselles, good
news! the wound runs all along; it is not deep, like mine was. He has
opened his eyes and shut them again. The dear good doctor stopped the
blood in a twinkle. The doctor says he’ll be bound to save him. I must
run and tell Jacintha. She is taking on in the kitchen.”
Josephine, who had risen eagerly from her despairing posture, clasped
her hands together, then lifted up her voice and wept. “He will live! he
will live!”
When she had wept a long while, she said to Rose, “Come, sister, help
your poor Josephine.”
“Yes, love, what shall we do?”
“My duty,” faltered Josephine. “An hour ago it seemed so sweet,” and
she fell to weeping patiently again. They went to Josephine’s room. She
crept slowly to a wardrobe, and took out a gray silk dress.
“Oh, never mind for to-day,” cried Rose.
“Help me, Rose. It is for myself as well; to remind me every moment I am
Madame Raynal.”
They put the gray gown on her, both weeping patiently. It will be known
at the last day, all that honest women have suffered weeping silently in
this noisy world.
Camille soon recovered his senses and a portion of his strength: then
the irritation of his wound brought on fever. This in turn retired
before the doctor’s remedies and a sound constitution, but it left
behind it a great weakness and general prostration. And in this state
the fate of the body depends greatly on the mind.
The baroness and the doctor went constantly to see him, and soothe him:
he smiled and thanked them, but his eager eyes watched the door for one
who came not.
When he got well enough to leave his bed the largest couch was sent up
to him from the saloon; a kind hand lined the baron’s silk dressing-gown
for him warm and soft and nice; and he would sit or lie on his couch, or
take two turns in the room leaning upon Rose’s shoulder, and glad of the
support; and he looked piteously in her eyes when she came and when she
went. Rose looked down; she could do nothing, she could say nothing.
With his strength, Camille lost a portion of his pride: he pined for a
sight of her he no longer respected; pined for her, as the thirsty pine
for water in Sahara.
At last one day he spoke out. “How kind you are to me, Rose! how kind
you all are--but one.”
He waited in hopes she would say something, but she held her tongue.
“At least tell me why it is. Is she ashamed? Is she afraid?”
“Neither.”
“She hates me: it is true, then, that we hate those whom we have
wounded. Cruel, cruel Josephine! Oh, heart of marble against which my
heart has wrecked itself forever!”
“No, no! She is anything but cruel: but she is Madame Raynal.”
“Ah! I forgot. But have I no claim on her? Nearly four years she has
been my betrothed. What have I done? Was I ever false to her? I could
forgive her for what she has done to me, but she cannot forgive me. Does
she mean never to see me again?”
“Ask yourself what good could come of it.”
“Very well,” said Camille, with a malicious smile. “I am in her way. I
see what she wants; she shall have it.”
Rose carried these words to Josephine. They went through her like a
sword.
Rose pitied her. Rose had a moment’s weakness.
“Let us go to him,” she said; “anything is better than this.”
“Rose, I dare not,” was the wise reply.
But the next day early, Josephine took Rose to a door outside the house,
a door that had long been disused. Nettles grew before it. She produced
a key and with great difficulty opened this door. It led to the
tapestried chamber, and years ago they used to steal up it and peep into
the room.
Rose scarcely needed to be told that she was to watch Camille, and
report to her. In truth, it was a mysterious, vague protection against
a danger equally mysterious. Yet it made Josephine easier. But so
unflinching was her prudence that she never once could be prevailed on
to mount those stairs, and peep at Camille herself. “I must starve my
heart, not feed it,” said she. And she grew paler and more hollow-eyed
day by day.
Yet this was the same woman who showed such feebleness and irresolution
when Raynal pressed her to marry him. But then dwarfs feebly drew
her this way and that. Now giants fought for her. Between a feeble
inclination and a feeble disinclination her dead heart had drifted
to and fro. Now honor, duty, gratitude,--which last with her was a
passion,--dragged her one way: love, pity, and remorse another.
Not one of these giants would relax his grasp, and nothing yielded
except her vital powers. Yes; her temper, one of the loveliest Heaven
ever gave a human creature, was soured at times.
Was it a wonder? There lay the man she loved pining for her; cursing her
for her cruelty, and alternately praying Heaven to forgive him and to
bless her: sighing, at intervals, all the day long, so loud, so deep, so
piteously, as if his heart broke with each sigh; and sometimes, for he
little knew, poor soul, that any human eye was upon him, casting aside
his manhood in his despair, and flinging himself on the very floor, and
muffling his head, and sobbing; he a hero.
And here was she pining in secret for him who pined for her? “I am not a
woman at all,” said she, who was all woman. “I am crueller to him than a
tiger or any savage creature is to the victim she tears. I must cure him
of his love for me; and then die; for what shall I have to live for? He
weeps, he sighs, he cries for Josephine.”
Her enforced cruelty was more contrary to this woman’s nature than black
is to white, or heat to cold, and the heart rebelled furiously at times.
As when a rock tries to stem a current, the water fights its way on more
sides than one, so insulted nature dealt with Josephine. Not only did
her body pine, but her nerves were exasperated. Sudden twitches came
over her, that almost made her scream. Her permanent state was utter
despondency, but across it came fitful flashes of irritation; and then
she was scarce mistress of herself.
Wherefore you, who find some holy woman cross and bitter, stop a moment
before you sum her up vixen and her religion naught: inquire the history
of her heart: perhaps beneath the smooth cold surface of duties well
discharged, her life has been, or even is, a battle against some
self-indulgence the insignificant saint’s very blood cries out for: and
so the poor thing is cross, not because she is bad, but because she is
better than the rest of us; yet only human.
Now though Josephine was more on her guard with the baroness than with
Rose, or the doctor, or Jacintha, her state could not altogether escape
the vigilance of a mother’s eye.
But the baroness had not the clew we have; and what a difference that
makes! How small an understanding, put by accident or instruction on the
right track, shall run the game down! How great a sagacity shall wander
if it gets on a false scent!
“Doctor,” said the baroness one day, “you are so taken up with your
patient you neglect the rest of us. Do look at Josephine! She is ill,
or going to be ill. She is so pale, and so fretful, so peevish, which is
not in her nature. Would you believe it, doctor, she snaps?”
“Our Josephine snap? This is new.”
“And snarls.”
“Then look for the end of the world.”
“The other day I heard her snap Rose: and this morning she half snarled
at me, just because I pressed her to go and console our patient. Hush!
here she is. My child, I am accusing you to the doctor. I tell him you
neglect his patient: never go near him.”
“I will visit him one of these days,” said Josephine, coldly.
“One of these days,” said the baroness, shocked. “You used not to be so
hard-hearted. A soldier, an old comrade of your husband’s, wounded
and sick, and you alone never go to him, to console him with a word of
sympathy or encouragement.”
Josephine looked at her mother with a sort of incredulous stare. Then,
after a struggle, she replied with a tone and manner so spiteful and icy
that it would have deceived even us who know her had we heard it. “He
has plenty of nurses without me.” She added, almost violently, “My
husband, if he were wounded, would not have so many, perhaps not have
one.”
With this she rose and went out, leaving them aghast. She sat down in
the passage on a window-seat, and laughed hysterically. Rose heard her
and ran to her. Josephine told her what her mother had said to her.
Rose soothed her. “Never mind, you have your sister who understands you:
don’t you go back till they have got some other topic.”
Rose out of curiosity went in, and found a discussion going on. The
doctor was fathoming Josephine, for the benefit of his companion.
“It is a female jealousy, and of a mighty innocent kind. We are so taken
up with this poor fellow, she thinks her soldier is forgotten.”
“Surely, doctor, our Josephine would not be so unreasonable, so unjust,”
suggested her mother.
“She belongs to a sex, be it said without offending you, madame, among
whose numberless virtues justice does not fill a prominent place.”
The baroness shook her head. “That is not it. It is a piece of prudery.
This young gentleman was a sort of admirer of hers, though she did not
admire him much, as far as I remember. But it was four years ago; and
she is married to a man she loves, or is going to love.”
“Well, but, mamma, a trifling excess of delicacy is surely excusable.”
This from Rose.
“No, no; it is not delicacy; it is prudery. And when people are sick and
suffering, an honest woman should take up her charity and lay down her
prudery, or her coquetry: two things that I suspect are the same thing
in different shapes.”
Here Jacintha came in. “Mademoiselle, here is the colonel’s broth;
Madame Raynal has flavored it for him, and you are to take it up to him,
and keep him company while he eats it.”
“Come,” cried the baroness, “my lecture has not been lost.”
Rose followed Jacintha up-stairs.
Rose was heart and head on Raynal’s side.
She had deceived him about Josephine’s attachment, and felt all the more
desirous to guard him against any ill consequences of it. Then he had
been so generous to her: he had left her her sister, who would have gone
to Egypt, and escaped this misery, but for her.
But on the other hand,
--Gentle pity
Tugged at her heartstrings with complaining cries.
This watching of Camille saddened even her. When she was with him his
pride bore him up: but when he was alone as he thought, his anguish and
despair were terrible, and broke out in so many ways that often Rose
shrank in terror from her peep hole.
She dared not tell Josephine the half of what she saw: what she did tell
her agitated her so terribly: and often Rose had it on the tip of her
tongue to say, “Do pray go and see if you can say nothing that will
do him good;” but she fought the impulse down. This battle of feeling,
though less severe than her sister’s, was constant; it destroyed her
gayety. She, whose merry laugh used to ring like chimes through the
house, never laughed now, seldom smiled, and often sighed.
Dr. Aubertin was the last to succumb to the deep depression, but his
time came: and he had been for a day or two as grave and as sad as the
rest, when one day that Rose was absent, spying on Camille, he took the
baroness and Josephine into his confidence; and condescended finally to
ask their advice.
“It is humiliating,” said he, “after all my experience, to be obliged to
consult unprofessional persons. Forty years ago I should have been TOO
WISE to do so. But since then I have often seen science baffled and
untrained intelligences throw light upon hard questions: and your sex
in particular has luminous instincts and reads things by flashes that
we men miss with a microscope. Our dear Madame Raynal suspected that
plausible notary, and to this day I believe she could not tell us why.”
Josephine admitted as much very frankly.
“There you see,” said the doctor. “Well, then, you must help me in this
case. And this time I promise to treat your art with more respect.”
“And pray who is it she is to read now?” asked the baroness.
“Who should it be but my poor patient? He puzzles me. I never knew a
patient so faint-hearted.”
“A soldier faint-hearted!” exclaimed the baroness. “To be sure these men
that storm cities, and fire cannon, and cut and hack one another with so
much spirit, are poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie
quiet and suffer.”
The doctor walked the room in great excitement. “It is not his wound
that is killing him, there’s something on his mind. You, Josephine,
with your instincts do help me: do pray, for pity’s sake, throw off that
sublime indifference you have manifested all along to this man’s fate.”
“She has not,” cried the baroness, firing up. “Did I not see her lining
his dressing-gown for him? and she inspects everything that he eats: do
you not?”
“Yes, mother.” She then suggested in a faltering voice that time would
cure the patient, and time alone.
“Time! you speak as if time was a quality: time is only a measure of
events, favorable or unfavorable; it kills as many as it cures.”
“Why, you surely would not imply his life is in any danger?” This was
the baroness.
“Madame, if the case was not grave, should I take this unusual step? I
tell you if some change does not take place soon, he will be a dead man
in another fortnight. That is all TIME will do for him.”
The baroness uttered an exclamation of pity and distress. Josephine put
her hand to her bosom, and a creeping horror came over her, and then a
faintness. She sat working mechanically, and turning like ice within.
After a few minutes of this, she rose with every appearance of external
composure and left the room. In the passage she met Rose coming hastily
towards the salon laughing: the first time she had laughed this many a
day. Oh, what a contrast between the two faces that met there--the one
pale and horror stricken, the other rosy and laughing!
“Well, dear, at last I am paid for all my trouble, and yours, by a
discovery; he never drinks a drop of his medicine; he pours it into the
ashes under the grate; I caught him in the fact.”
“Then this is too much: I can resist no longer. Come with me,” said
Josephine doggedly.
“Where?”
“To him.”