The revelation just made by Madame de Guéran to MM. Périères and de
Morin was certainly calculated to drive them to despair. If they had
had any doubts about the power she exercised over them, their
feelings and sufferings during the past few days would have removed
them all. They were as deeply, seriously in love as it was possible
for men to be; absolutely conquered and enslaved. And it was at this
very moment, when they were acknowledging to themselves their defeat
and the intensity of their love, that they heard her say—"Give up all
hope, give me up, for I belong no more to myself!"
The blow, however, was not so severe as they might have supposed,
because its effect had been weakened, deadened by the revulsion of
feeling they had just experienced. For had they not sought Madame de
Guéran for the sole purpose of heaping reproaches upon her,
complaining of her treason, and saying farewell to her? They had
looked upon her as lost after the cruellest fashion, M. de Morin
picturing himself as sacrificed to M. Périères, and the latter, on
the other hand, assuming that his rival was the lucky man, the
victor, and the husband elect. Jealousy is the legitimate offspring
of wounded _amour-propre_, the two sentiments depend on one another,
are natural to each other, and one springs from the other. Get rid of
_amour-propre_, and jealousy will disappear; do away with jealousy,
and the most unhappy love will, at all events, be calm and tranquil.
Say to love—"Your beloved will not have anything to say to you
because she loves another"—and off he will go in desperation,
meditating revenge or suicide, according to his temperament. But say
to him—"This woman keeps you at a distance simply because she neither
can nor will belong to any one; she loves you, but she will never
tell you so, nor will she allow you to tell her"—and away goes his
anger; he loves still, perhaps may love always, but quietly and
resignedly.
MM. Périères and de Morin had experienced the first of these
feelings; they had now arrived at the second, and there they stopped.
Madame de Guéran had certainly banished them and treated them with
coldness, but she had neither deceived nor betrayed them. Each of
them might still suppose himself to be preferred before his rival.
They were neither of them being sacrificed to any particular person,
but to an idea, a vague hope, an abstract and almost legendary
husband.
The two young men no longer looked at each other so fiercely as they
had done some moments previously. On the contrary, they appeared
anxious for an excuse to be near each other, and to exchange a smile
and a warm shake of the hand, such as had of late been conspicuous by
their absence. They looked like two friends delighted at seeing each
other again after a long absence.
A tender expression stole into their eyes as they turned them towards
the Baroness. How could they have suspected that charming woman? How
could they have allowed themselves for a moment to doubt that
character, so open, so firm, so straightforward? Was she the woman to
deceive them, to play them false, or to lower herself?
They all three looked at each other stealthily—she, overcome by the
revelation she had just made, and they, ashamed of their suspicion,
their jealousy, and their anger. At length, M. de Morin thought it
time to speak.
"You have said," he commenced, with a still rather unsteady voice,
"that we must quit you and return to France, leaving you to pursue
your journey, run all sorts of danger, and face death itself,
perhaps, alone. We will discuss that question when the proper time
comes; for the present we can put it aside. First of all allow me to
presume on our friendship so far as to ask you for a few details in
connection with the circumstance you have just mentioned. M. de
Guéran lives, so you say; how do you know that it is so? How far can
you put any faith in the reports which are current with regard to his
resurrection, hitherto unrevealed?"^
"I have irrefutable proofs," answered Madame de Guéran, "not that M.
de Guéran lives, but that he did not die at the time, nor at the
place, nor in the manner he was reported to have died. According to
these reports, his death took place in October, 1871. Well, he wrote
to me in January, 1872! He was said to have been buried in the Bongo
country, the goal of my pilgrimage, as I told you some time ago. That
country was traversed by him in safety, and long after the day on
which he was supposed to have died, he was seen in the territory of
the Monbuttoos!"
"Who saw him?" asked M. Périères.
"A man worthy of all credence, sent to me with his strongest
recommendations, a negro of the Dinka tribe and an old soldier taken
by Schweinfurth into his service as guide and interpreter."
"How was it, then, that Schweinfurth, who was in these countries you
mention in 1871, and whom you, as you have told us, went to Germany
to see, did not give you any information about M. de Guéran?"
"That is easily explained. Schweinfurth, it is true, travelled
through these countries in 1871, but he was then on his way back to
Khartoum, which he reached on the 21st June. In the beginning of the
preceding year, failing to obtain from Munza, King of the Monbuttoos,
permission to continue his journey southwards, he left his territory
and proceeded northwards, in company with his friend, Aboo-Sammit,
the ivory merchant."
"Granted," replied M. Périères, "but how does it happen that the
servant, to whom you have alluded, is better informed than his
master? How did he manage to see amongst the Monbuttoos a European
whom Schweinfurth could not possibly meet, because at that time he
was in the midst of other tribes?"
"The reply to that is still easier. The man in question, whose name
is Nassar, did not leave at the same time with the rest of the
caravan, because Aboo-Sammit had entrusted him with the
superintendence of one of those branches which, in furtherance of his
business, he establishes in the various fresh countries to which he
extends his operations. It was at this place, where he remained for
eighteen months with the same Nubian soldiers, and which is situated
between the third and fourth degree north of the Equator, and the
twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of longitude, east of the meridian of
Paris—it was here that, in January, 1872, a caravan, under the
command of a white man, asked for shelter for a few hours. This man,
this European, was my husband! I could not doubt either the
description of him given by Nassar, or the few hasty lines that M. de
Guéran scribbled in his memorandum-book and entrusted to his host."
"And why," asked M. de Morin, "did not this man contrive in some way
or other that those lines should reach you?"
"For many reasons, amongst which due allowance must be made for the
apathy and indifference of Orientals in general, and negroes in
particular. We in England were, at one time, for two years without
news of Livingstone, and we believed him dead because a man,
implicitly trusted by him, neglected to send his despatches to
Europe. But the best reason of all is this: the address, written in
pencil upon a scrap of paper, had, through constant exposure to
tropical sun and rain, become partly illegible."
"He should have taken it, even if it had been only a single word, on
his return to Khartoum, to some Consul," observed M. Périères, "who
would doubtless have deciphered it, and would possibly have concluded
that it came from M. de Guéran, in which case your mind would have
been at rest long ago."
"Very true, but would the Consul have given Nassar his anticipated
reward? Once more, my friend, you are excluding from your
calculations the rapacity of certain negro tribes; you forget that
they turn everything into money, that they sell the right of passing
through and of remaining in their country, and that they will let you
perish in misery and want if you cannot give them a piece of copper,
or an armlet, or some cowries, in exchange for the meat and drink you
so sorely need. Nassar preferred to wait until somebody came forward
to purchase his letter, and his calculations were tolerably accurate,
seeing that I have paid him a very high price for it."
"Then," asked M. de Morin, "you have no longer any doubt? It was
really your husband's handwriting—you recognized it?"
"Perfectly; and, more than that, I recognize, too, the train of
thought I knew so well for two years of my life. In a few touching
lines, he asks my forgiveness again for having left me so abruptly,
and having dared to undertake such a journey. He left me, he says,
with the intention of revisiting, for the last time, the districts he
had formerly explored, and of taking a final farewell of them.
According to his first idea his absence would not have been of long
duration, but the exploration fever, that species of madness which
draws people towards the unknown, had seized upon him, carried him
away like a whirlwind, and taken him far from his intended track. I
have often heard discussions upon that strange attraction to which we
owe many of the discoveries made during the last half century. When
once a man has tasted Africa he longs to get back to it. Livingstone
passed twenty years of his life there. Mdlle. Tinne returned thither
three times, and Speke was on his way back when he was accidentally
shot. Baker managed to get himself made a general in the Egyptian
army and secured an official appointment as the leader of an
expedition, in order to give himself an excuse for seeing again the
sources of the Nile he is always seeking, and the splendid lakes he
loves so well. Indeed, in my own case, I will not go so far as to say
that I was not impelled onward by some irresistible force,
independent, perhaps, of the end I had in view. But to return to the
subject—in other words, my husband's letter.
"He had ascended the Nile, he writes, as far as the Gazelle River,
which he thought would be completely blocked by floating vegetation,
but, on the contrary, he had been able to navigate it with ease, and
to reach the district of the Reks. There M. de Guéran confesses he
might easily have turned back, but marvellous tales had been told him
of the open districts in front of him. He could not fight against his
longing, his morbid passion, his folly, whatever it may please you to
call it, and he set out. He assures me that he wrote to me when with
the Dinkas, the Djours, and the Niam-Niam. Not one of those letters
have I ever received, and that is not to be wondered at, seeing that
an accident alone has put me in possession of his last.
"He concludes by telling me that he has gone too far to put back, and
that he has neither the courage nor the right to retrace his steps
just at the moment when he is on the point of reaching his goal, and
solving those problems which have so long been under investigation.
Indeed, he is the first European who has passed beyond the Monbuttoo
territory, and everything is conjecture in connection with the
territories extending thence for some degrees south-east and south-west.
If he succeeds, he says, in passing through certain districts,
up to the present time supposed to be impassable, he does not despair
of reaching the Blue Mountains, of which Baker speaks, of crossing
the Albert Nyanza, and so reaching in succession the Victoria Nyanza,
Kazé, and Zanzibar. If he is induced to penetrate still farther
southwards, he will make for the Lake Tanganyika, explored by
Livingstone; and if westward, for the banks of the Congo and the
Atlantic Ocean. Finally, he bids me adieu, and asks me once more to
forgive him."
Madame de Guéran, who had maintained her composure wonderfully up to
this point, now broke down, and could say no more. M. Périères went
to her and said—
"And you are going to tempt these unknown lands, as your husband has
done?"
"Yes," she replied, decisively.
"Alone?" he asked.
"With, Miss Poles, the guide who brought me M. de Guéran's letter,
one or two Arab interpreters, and the caravan which they are about to
organize."
"And we?"
"You cannot come with me."
"Why not?" asked M. de Morin, getting up quickly from his seat, and
taking her hand in his.