A SWEET REVENGE.
CONCLUSION.
IV.
At this moment the door-handle was touched on the outside, and M. Rouvière sprang hastily from his chair and stationed himself with his back to the fire, looking very straight and stiff and aggressive. The door slowly opened and Mme. Dupuis entered, pushing out, at the same time, the unfortunate cat which was trying to slip in with her.
“No, no, pussy,” said the lady, “you got yourself turned out, and you must stay out. O the naughty men!” she exclaimed, laughingly, as she closed the door, “they have been smoking.”
“Have we been smoking?” said Rouvière, sniffing. “Bless me! I really believe we have; it shows how absent-minded one can be. I hadn’t perceived it, so absorbed were George and I in our great project.”
“What project?” asked madame as she took off her hood and cloak. “Are you going to stay with us, M. Rouvière?”
“Not exactly,” replied the guest, “but for George and me the result is the same. Are you good at guessing riddles, madame?”
“You are not going to take George away with you, are you?” asked the wife, her brown eyes resting firmly on his.
“With your permission, dear lady,” answered Rouvière, bowing with ironical politeness.
“No, no, it cannot be!” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis, with a forced, flickering smile, looking at him inquiringly and speaking low and hurriedly. “You will think me very silly to take a joke so seriously, but I cannot help it. You are playing with my life-spring. Tell me—I pray you tell me, dear M. Rouvière, that you are not going to take my husband away.”
“I shall certainly leave his heart with you, my dear lady,” answered 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 misunderstand, 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.”
“I think that you would have felt as I felt then,” replied Rouvière with melancholy gravity; “the death which God has ordained for men—the death which most men die, which finds consolation and resignation in the tears of tender regret shed by loving friends—that death appeared to me, in my solitary agony, like a sweet, untroubled feast.... I made many a singular reflection that night! But come, George, are you ready?”
“When you will; ... but, first, what were your reflections?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I lost somewhat of my self-sufficiency. And then I congratulated myself a little less on the path I had chosen for my life’s journey. Why not say it? The book of life seemed suddenly to be opened before me, and I read on every page, traced by God’s own hand, the words ‘duty and sacrifice.’ I had rejected that law. Hitherto I had only seen its hardships; now I recognized its benefits. I had avoided its bonds that I might live independently, and exile and isolation had been my lot. I had fancied that, by escaping the usual dull routine of humble duties, I should win for myself a happiness unknown—pleasures inconceivable to the vulgar crowd. Alas! I found that I had experienced nothing save a loveless youth, a solitary old age, and an unlamented death. Then, George—then I understood what an erroneous price we pay for the indulgence of our selfishness.”
“Were you long in this agitated state?” asked Dupuis.
“Long enough for it to be indelibly impressed on my memory,” replied his friend. “When the young physician perceived that I was looking at him, he arose and approached me, and I felt the touch of his hand, cold and indifferent as his heart. I pushed it away and closed my eyes. And then a vision of my father’s death-bed flashed before me, distinct and clear. I saw again, grouped around it, the faithful friends of his youth—our ancient servants, the old doctor, the white-haired priest, and, dearest of all, my mother, my good mother. They leaned over him, they wiped his damp brow, they smiled at him through their tears; they had gladdened his life, and they were beside him now, to cheer and sustain him as he passed away! My dried-up heart melted within me as I gazed on this vision of a scene I had long since ceased to recall, and I burst into tears; they saved me!”
Rouvière stopped, overpowered by his emotion, and, covering his eyes with his hand, leant forward against the mantle-shelf.
“These recollections are too painful,” said Dupuis gently.
“They are painful,” replied Rouvière, his voice hoarse and trembling, “and everything I see around me here awakens them. Oh! how alike these old houses are,” he continued, speaking to himself and looking around the room. “All this is familiar to me. There stood my mother’s little work-table near the window, just as that is—I always found her seated at it when I came home for a holiday—and there, in the chimney-corner, was the great arm-chair in which my father always sat. And the family portraits looked down from the walls just as these do. There, as here, the trace of two lives closely entwined, never to be separated, was visible everywhere. Why did I not learn by their example? Why was I compelled to drag my weary, vagrant life, my unceasing remorse, all over the wide world, ere I could comprehend that they were happy? Did they know that they were happy? I doubt it. How often I have heard my father speak with envy of the very pleasures I have found so hollow! How often they confided to me their mutual grievances! And yet when one went the other could not stay. Dear old father! dearest mother!”
“My dear friend!” whispered George.
“And I,” continued Rouvière, with increasing emotion—“I sold their home as soon as it was empty—I had the heart to do that! I sold the room where I was born; I sold all our family traditions; I sold the ancient, faithful friendships which seemed to adhere to the house and soil. I alienated my patrimony.... I riveted the chain of egotism I was so eagerly forging. I did my work well; no kind care, no friendly companionship will ever be the solace of my old age. I have nothing to offer in return—not even the bribe of a legacy. I cannot even buy back that humble home; my last days may not be sheltered by those walls whose very shadows I have learned to love. I may not even die there. Come! let us go,” he added with vehemence, dashing away the tears which suddenly inundated his face.
“Yes, Tom, we will go”—and George seized his friend’s hand—“we will go, if you refuse to accept a brother’s place by my fireside. And you, Reine,” he said, turning to his wife, “dry your tears and forget this hour’s ingratitude. It was the first; it shall be the last!”
“O George, my husband!” sobbed the sweet little woman as she gave him the kiss of pardon; then, approaching Rouvière with gentle grace, she said softly and beseechingly:
“Will not the happiness you have restored to us tempt you to remain with us? We should be so glad to share it with you!”
“Madame, dear, good friends,” stammered the guest.... “O George! you have caught me in the very snare I spread for you.”
He sank into a chair, overcome by his emotion, while George and Reine stood by him, clasping his hands in theirs. “Oh!” sighed he at last, “it is too sweet a dream for such a forlorn wretch as I am.”
“He will stay with us!” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis joyfully.
“And I will go and make his bed in the best blue chamber,” cried Marianne, wiping her eyes with her apron. The poor girl had been standing quietly near the door, an involuntary listener, during almost the whole of Rouvière’s confession.
“What! the deuce! Marianne!” growled Rouvière, rising hastily from his seat.
“I’m going to make your bed, sir!” cried Marianne, in great good-humor.
“Very well, then; but don’t let the head be lower than the heels, my good creature, as you house-maids generally manage it. Slope it down gently from head to foot, mind you, and....” He stopped a moment, then smilingly resumed: “Make it as you will, Marianne; I’m sure it will be first-rate. You see,” he added, turning toward his hosts when Marianne had left the room, “how this disgusting egotism crops up incessantly; ... you must try to cure me of it. Oh! what a rest I’m going to have now,” he exclaimed as he threw himself on the sofa.... “Madame, dear madame, will you do me a favor? I know what the pains of exile are by sad experience—pray, let the cat come in!”