To return for a moment to Rose. She parted from Edouard, and went in at
the front door: but the next moment she opened it softly and watched her
lover unseen. “Dear Edouard!” she murmured: and then she thought, “how
sad it is that I must deceive him, even to-night: must make up an excuse
to get him from me, when we were so happy together. Ah! he little knows
how I shall welcome our wedding-day. When once I can see my poor martyr
on the road to peace and content under the good doctor’s care. And oh!
the happiness of having no more secrets from him I love! Dear Edouard!
when once we are married, I never, never, will have a secret from you
again--I swear it.”
As a comment on these words she now stepped cautiously out, and peered
in every direction.
“St--st!” she whispered. No answer came to this signal.
Rose returned into the house and bolted the door inside. She went up
to the tapestried room, and found the doctor in the act of wishing
Josephine good-night. The baroness, fatigued a little by her walk, had
mounted no higher than her own bedroom, which was on the first floor
just under the tapestried room. Rose followed the doctor out. “Dear
friend, one word. Josephine talked of telling Raynal. You have not
encouraged her to do that?”
“Certainly not, while he is in Egypt.”
“Still less on his return. Doctor, you don’t know that man. Josephine
does not know him. But I do. He would kill her if he knew. He would kill
her that minute. He would not wait: he would not listen to excuses: he
is a man of iron. Or if he spared her he would kill Camille: and that
would destroy her by the cruellest of all deaths! My friend, I am a
wicked, miserable girl. I am the cause of all this misery!”
She then told Aubertin all about the anonymous letter, and what Raynal
had said to her in consequence.
“He never would have married her had he known she loved another. He
asked me was it so. I told him a falsehood. At least I equivocated, and
to equivocate with one so loyal and simple was to deceive him. I am the
only sinner: that sweet angel is the only sufferer. Is this the justice
of Heaven? Doctor, my remorse is great. No one knows what I feel when I
look at my work. Edouard thinks I love her so much better than I do
him. He is wrong: it is not love only, it is pity: it is remorse for the
sorrow I have brought on her, and the wrong I have done poor Raynal.”
The high-spirited girl was greatly agitated: and Aubertin, though he did
not acquit her of all blame, soothed her, and made excuses for her.
“We must not always judge by results,” said he. “Things turned
unfortunately. You did for the best. I forgive you for one. That is, I
will forgive you if you promise not to act again without my advice.”
“Oh, never! never!”
“And, above all, no imprudence about that child. In three little weeks
they will be together without risk of discovery. Well, you don’t answer
me.”
Rose’s blood turned cold. “Dear friend,” she stammered, “I quite agree
with you.”
“Promise, then.”
“Not to let Josephine go to Frejus?” said Rose hastily. “Oh, yes! I
promise.”
“You are a good girl,” said Aubertin. “You have a will of your own. But
you can submit to age and experience.” The doctor then kissed her, and
bade her farewell.
“I leave for Paris at six in the morning,” he said. “I will not try your
patience or hers unnecessarily. Perhaps it will not be three weeks ere
she sees her child under her friend’s roof.”
The moment Rose was alone, she sat down and sighed bitterly. “There
is no end to it,” she sobbed despairingly. “It is like a spider’s web:
every struggle to be free but multiplies the fine yet irresistible
thread that seems to bind me. And to-night I thought to be so happy;
instead of that, he has left me scarce the heart to do what I have to
do.”
She went back to the room, opened a window, and put out a white
handkerchief, then closed the window down on it.
Then she went to Josephine’s bedroom-door: it opened on the tapestried
room.
“Josephine,” she cried, “don’t go to bed just yet.”
“No, love. What are you doing? I want to talk to you. Why did you say
promise? and what did you mean by looking at me so? Shall I come out to
you?”
“Not just yet,” said Rose; she then glided into the corridor, and passed
her mother’s room and the doctor’s, and listened to see if all was
quiet. While she was gone Josephine opened her door; but not seeing Rose
in the sitting-room, retired again.
Rose returned softly, and sat down with her head in her hand, in a calm
attitude belied by her glancing eye, and the quick tapping of her other
hand upon the table.
Presently she raised her head quickly; a sound had reached her ear,--a
sound so slight that none but a high-strung ear could have caught it. It
was like a mouse giving a single scratch against a stone wall.
Rose coughed slightly.
On this a clearer sound was heard, as of a person scratching wood with
the finger-nail. Rose darted to the side of the room, pressed against
the wall, and at the same time put her other hand against the rim of one
of the panels and pushed it laterally; it yielded, and at the opening
stood Jacintha in her cloak and bonnet.
“Yes,” said Jacintha, “under my cloak--look!”
“Ah! you found the things on the steps?”
“Yes! I nearly tumbled over them. Have you locked that door?”
“No, but I will.” And Rose glided to the door and locked it. Then she
put the screen up between Josephine’s room and the open panel: then she
and Jacintha were wonderfully busy on the other side the screen, but
presently Rose said, “This is imprudent; you must go down to the foot of
the stairs and wait till I call you.”
Jacintha pleaded hard against this arrangement, and represented that
there was no earthly chance of any one coming to that part of the
chateau.
“No matter; I will be guarded on every side.”
“Mustn’t I stop and just see her happy for once?”
“No, my poor Jacintha, you must hear it from my lips.”
Jacintha retired to keep watch as she was bid. Rose went to Josephine’s
room, and threw her arms round her neck and kissed her vehemently.
Josephine returned her embrace, then held her out at arm’s length and
looked at her.
“Your eyes are red, yet your little face is full of joy. There, you
smile.”
“I can’t help that; I am so happy.”
“I am glad of it. Are you coming to bed?”
“Not yet. I invite you to take a little walk with me first. Come!”
and she led the way slowly, looking back with infinite archness and
tenderness.
“You almost frighten me,” said Josephine; “it is not like you to be all
joy when I am sad. Three whole weeks more!”
“That is it. Why are you sad? because the doctor would not let you go to
Frejus. And why am I not sad? because I had already thought of a way to
let you see Edouard without going so far.”
“Rose! O Rose! O Rose!”
“This way--come!” and she smiled and beckoned with her finger, while
Josephine followed like one under a spell, her bosom heaving, her eye
glancing on every side, hoping some strange joy, yet scarce daring to
hope.
Rose drew back the screen, and there was a sweet little berceau that had
once been Josephine’s own, and in it, sunk deep in snow-white lawn, was
a sleeping child, that lay there looking as a rose might look could it
fall upon new-fallen snow.
At sight of it Josephine uttered a little cry, not loud but deep--ay, a
cry to bring tears into the eye of the hearer, and she stood trembling
from head to foot, her hands clasped, and her eye fascinated and fixed
on the cradle.
“My child under this roof! What have you done?” but her eye, fascinated
and fixed, never left the cradle.
“I saw you languishing, dying, for want of him.”
“Oh, if anybody should come?” But her eye never stirred an inch from the
cradle.
“No, no, no! the door is locked. Jacintha watches below; there is no
dan--Ah, oh, poor sister!”
For, as Rose was speaking, the young mother sprang silently upon her
child. You would have thought she was going to kill him; her head reared
itself again and again like a crested snake’s, and again and again and
again and again plunged down upon the child, and she kissed his little
body from head to foot with soft violence, and murmured, through her
streaming tears, “My child! my darling! my angel! oh, my poor boy! my
child! my child!”
I will ask my female readers of every degree to tell their brothers and
husbands all the young noble did: how she sat on the floor, and had her
child on her bosom; how she smiled over it through her tears; how she
purred over it; how she, the stately one, lisped and prattled over it;
and how life came pouring into her heart from it.
Before she had had it in her arms five minutes, her pale cheek was as
red as a rose, and her eyes brighter than diamonds.
“Bless you, Rose! bless you! bless you! in one moment you have made me
forget all I ever suffered in my life.”
“There is a cold draught,” cried she presently, with maternal anxiety;
“close the panel, Rose.”
“No, dear; or I could not call to Jacintha, or she to me; but I will
shift the screen round between him and the draught. There, now, come to
his aunt--a darling!”
Then Rose sat on the floor too, and Josephine put her boy on aunt’s
lap, and took a distant view of him. But she could not bear so vast a
separation long. She must have him to her bosom again.
Presently my lord, finding himself hugged, opened his eyes, and, as a
natural consequence, his mouth.
“Oh, that will never do,” cried Rose, and they put him back in the
cradle with all expedition, and began to rock it. Young master was
not to be altogether appeased even by that. So Rose began singing an
old-fashioned Breton chant or lullaby.
Josephine sang with her, and, singing, watched with a smile her boy drop
off by degrees to sleep under the gentle motion and the lulling song.
They sang and rocked till the lids came creeping down, and hid the
great blue eyes; but still they sang and rocked, lulling the boy, and
gladdening their own hearts; for the quaint old Breton ditty was tunable
as the lark that carols over the green wheat in April; and the words so
simple and motherly, that a nation had taken them to heart. Such songs
bind ages together and make the lofty and the low akin by the great ties
of music and the heart. Many a Breton peasant’s bosom in the olden time
had gushed over her sleeping boy as the young dame’s of Beaurepaire
gushed now--in this quaint, tuneful lullaby.
Now, as they kneeled over the cradle, one on each side, and rocked it,
and sang that ancient chant, Josephine, who was opposite the screen,
happening to raise her eyes, saw a strange thing.
There was the face of a man set close against the side of the screen,
and peeping and peering out of the gloom. The light of her candle fell
full on this face; it glared at her, set pale, wonder-struck, and vivid
in the surrounding gloom.
Horror! It was her husband’s face.
At first she was quite stupefied, and looked at it with soul and senses
benumbed. Then she trembled, and put her hand to her eyes; for she
thought it a phantom or a delusion of the mind. No: there it glared
still. Then she trembled violently, and held out her left hand, the
fingers working convulsively, to Rose, who was still singing.
But, at the same moment, the mouth of this face suddenly opened in a
long-drawn breath. At this, Josephine uttered a violent shriek, and
sprang to her feet, with her right hand quivering and pointing at that
pale face set in the dark.
Rose started up, and, wheeling her head round, saw Raynal’s gloomy
face looking over her shoulder. She fell screaming upon her knees, and,
almost out of her senses, began to pray wildly and piteously for mercy.
Josephine uttered one more cry, but this was the faint cry of nature,
sinking under the shock of terror. She swooned dead away, and fell
senseless on the floor ere Raynal could debarrass himself of the screen,
and get to her.
This, then, was the scene that met Edouard’s eyes. His affianced bride
on her knees, white as a ghost, trembling, and screaming, rather than
crying, for mercy. And Raynal standing over his wife, showing by the
working of his iron features that he doubted whether she was worthy he
should raise her.
One would have thought nothing could add to the terror of this scene.
Yet it was added to. The baroness rang her bell violently in the room
below. She had heard Josephine’s scream and fall.
At the ringing of this shrill bell Rose shuddered like a maniac, and
grovelled on her knees to Raynal, and seized his very knees and implored
him to show some pity.
“O sir! kill us! we are culpable”--
Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! pealed the baroness’s bell again.
“But do not tell our mother. Oh, if you are a man! do not! do not! Show
us some pity. We are but women. Mercy! mercy! mercy!”
“Speak out then,” groaned Raynal. “What does this mean? Why has my wife
swooned at sight of me?--whose is this child?”
“Whose?” stammered Rose. Till he said that, she never thought there
COULD be a doubt whose child.
Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring!
“Oh, my God!” cried the poor girl, and her scared eyes glanced every way
like some wild creature looking for a hole, however small, to escape by.
Edouard, seeing her hesitation, came down on her other side. “Whose is
the child, Rose?” said he sternly.
“You, too? Why were we born? mercy! oh! pray let me go to my sister.”
Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! went the terrible bell.
The men were excited to fury by Rose’s hesitation; they each seized an
arm, and tore her screaming with fear at their violence, from her knees
up to her feet between them with a single gesture.
“Whose is the child?”
“You hurt me!” said she bitterly to Edouard, and she left crying and was
terribly calm and sullen all in a moment.
“Whose is the child?” roared Edouard and Raynal, in one raging breath.
“Whose is the child?”
“It is mine.”