IX.—THE UNTOLD SECRET.
Julie, who had heard high words as she traversed the apartments which lay en suite, paused in the lobby at the stair-head—a sort of œil de bœuf, to which several corridors converged, and with a lofty lantern-dome above, from which swung a cluster of rose-colored lamps.
Here she sat down upon a sofa, ill at ease on account of the scene which was then going on so near her; and, in the midst of her reverie, raising her eyes suddenly, she saw Monsieur Le Prun, the thick carpets rendering his tread perfectly noiseless, gliding by her with a countenance guilty and terrible beyond any thing that fancy had ever seen.
Without appearing to see her, like a spectre from the grave he came, passed, and vanished, leaving her frozen with horror, as if she had beheld a phantom from the dead and damned.
With steps winged with hideous alarm she sped through the intervening chambers to that in which she had left Lucille.
She was standing with an ashy smile of triumph on her face, and in her hand was still mechanically grasped the queer little vial with its four spires of gold.
Monsieur Le Prun had recovered his self-possession to a certain extent by the time he reached the apartment where he had left Blassemare. But that observant gentleman did not fail to perceive, at a glance, that something had occurred to agitate his patron profoundly.
"Egad," he thought, "I should not be surprised if the girl were taken at disadvantage by his abrupt visit, and that the venerable Adonis saw something to justify his jealousy. A husband has no right to surprise his wife. Le Prun," he continued carelessly aloud, "I wonder why Nature, who has been so bounteous to the sex, has not furnished husbands, like certain snakes, with rattles to their tails, to give involuntary warning of their approach."
Le Prun poured out a glass of cold water and drank it. Blassemare observed, as he did so, that his hand trembled violently. The fermier-general was silent, and his flippant Mercury did not care just then to hazard any experiment upon his temper.
"Blassemare!" he exclaimed, abruptly arresting his glass, and eyeing his companion with a sort of brutal rage, "I ought to run you through the body, sir, where you stand, for your accursed perfidy."
"What! me?—by my soul, sir, I don't understand you," he replied, at once offended and amazed. "Why the devil should you murder me?"
"You have broken your word with me!"
"In what respect?"
"Exactly where it was most vitally needful to keep it, sir."
"Deuce take me if I know what you mean."
"You do—you do—a thousand curses! You must know it."
"But hang me if I do."
"You have suffered that calumny to reach her ears."
"What calumny?"
"She must have seen her."
"Her!—whom?"
"She must have spoken with her."
"Do say, plainly, what it is all about?"
"About that—that d—— woman; there, is that intelligible? She is at large, sir, in spite of all I've said—in spite of all you undertook, sir; and she has been filling my wife's ears with those hell-born lies that have been whispered to you, sir, and which it was your business to have suppressed and extinguished. By ——, Blassemare, you deserve my curses and my vengeance."
As he concluded, he struck the glass upon the table with a force that shivered it to pieces.
"Monsieur le Prun," said Blassemare, coolly, "I deprecate no man's vengeance, and fear no man's sword; but whatever be the ground of your present convictions, it is utterly fallacious. The person in question has never stirred abroad—you mean the sister of course—since your marriage, except under close and trustworthy attendance; and the other—that you know is out of the question."
"There has been mismanagement somewhere, or else some new device of infernal malice; I say the thing has been misconducted, with the same cursed blundering that has always attended that affair; and I would rather my wife were in her coffin than have seen what I have seen to-night."
"What! in her coffin!" echoed Blassemare, with a sort of fiendish satire.
"Ay, sir, in her coffin!" said Le Prun, with a black defiance which made Blassemare shrug his shoulders and become silent.
The chill and the smell of death seemed to him to have come with these words into the room. But he would not on any account have betrayed his sensations; on the contrary, he pointed gayly to the cards, and looked a smiling interrogatory towards the fermier. But that excellent gentleman was in no mood for picquet. He declined the challenge gloomily and peremptorily.
"Ma foi! you suffer trifles to plague you strangely," said Blassemare, as they parted for the night. "What on earth does it signify after all? Thwart a woman, and she will strive to vex you—there's nothing new in that; why should not Madame Le Prun share the pretty weaknesses of her sex? On the other hand, indulge her, and she will flatter as much as she teased before. You are too sensitive, too fond, and, therefore, exaggerate trifles. Good night."
Monsieur Le Prun withdrew, and Blassemare muttered—
"Remorseless old criminal! I shall keep my eye close upon you, and if I see any sign of the sort——"
He set his teeth together, smiled resolutely and threateningly, and nodded his head twice or thrice in the direction of the door through which the fermier-general had just disappeared.
The violent explosion we have just described was not followed by any very decisive results. The fermier-general and his wife had not been upon very pleasant terms for some time previous to the scene which had so fearfully agitated the millionaire; and, whatever may have been the immediate promptings of his anger, his temper had cooled down sufficiently, before the morning, to enable him to carry the matter off, like a man of the world, with a tolerable grace. Whatever change for the worse had taken place in his feelings towards his wife, he was able to suppress the manifestation of it: but, as we have said, their relations had of late been by no means cordial, and Monsieur Le Prun did not think it necessary to affect any warmer sentiment toward his wife, nor any abatement of the sinister estrangement which had been gradually growing between them.
Meanwhile the preparations for the fête proceeded at the Chateau des Anges upon a scale worthy of the rarity of the occasion and the vastness of the proprietor's fortune.
All these were carried on by Blassemare, who indulged his gallantry by consulting the beautiful young wife of the fermier-general upon every detail of the tasteful and magnificent arrangements as they proceeded.
Monsieur Le Prun had a special object in gratifying the great lady who had insisted upon this sacrifice. Blassemare had, therefore, a carte blanche in the matter. There were to be musicians from Paris, bands of winged instruments among the trees, galleys and singers upon the waters, illuminated marquees and fanciful grottoes, feu d'artifice, and colored lamps of every dye, in unimaginable profusion, theatricals, gaming, feasting, dancing—in a word, every imaginable species of gayety, revelry, and splendor.
As these grand projects began to unfold themselves, Lucille's ill-temper began to abate. Her interest was awakened, and at last she became pleased, astonished, and even delighted.
Now at length she hoped that the long-cherished object of her wishes was about to be supplied, and that she was indeed to emerge from her chrysalis state, and enjoy, among the sweets and gayeties of life, the glittering freedom for which she felt herself so fitted, and had so long sighed in vain; and which, moreover, as the reader may have suspected, she desired also in furtherance of certain secret and cherished aspirations.
Monsieur de Blassemare found his æsthetic and festive confidences most encouragingly received by the handsome and imperious Madame Le Prun. The subject of his consultations delighted her; and knowing well the close relation in which he stood with her husband, she perhaps thought it no such bad policy to secure him, by a little civility, in her interest. She little imagined, perhaps, engrossed as she was with other images, to what aspiring hopes she was thus unconsciously introducing the Sieur de Blassemare. That gentleman was proud of his bonnes fortunes; and the rapid chemistry of his vanity instantaneously transmuted the lightest show of good-humor, in a handsome woman, into the faint but irrepressible evidences of a warmer sentiment of preference.
Perfectly convinced of the reality of the penchant he believed himself to have inspired, you may be sure the lively scoundrel was not a little flattered at his imaginary conquest. He debated, therefore, in his self-complacent reveries, whether he should take prompt advantage of the weakness of his victim, or pique her by the malice of suspense. He chose the latter tactique, and, with a happy self-esteem, reserved the transports of his confession to reward the longings and agitations of a protracted probationary ordeal.
Thus Blassemare was in his glory, superintending the preparations for a fête, which left him nothing in prodigality and magnificence to desire; enjoying, at the same time, the delightful consciousness of having placed, without an effort, the prettiest woman in France at his feet, and the piquant sense, beside, of his little treason against old Le Prun.
Thus matters proceeded; but, strange to say, while the evening for which all these preparations were being made was still more than a week distant, Madame Le Prun, whose impatience of even that brief delay had been unspeakable, on a sudden lost all her interest in the affair. Such, alas! is the volatility, the caprice, of women. The object for sake of which she had led poor Le Prun a dog's life for so long, was now presented to her, and she turned from it with indifference, if not with disgust. This would, indeed, have been very provoking to Le Prun himself, had he been just then upon speaking terms with his wife; but not happening to be so, and being in no mood to talk about her further to his gay familiar, Blassemare, he was wholly ignorant of those feminine fluctuations of interest and of liking which Blassemare himself did not fully comprehend. The change was so abrupt as to excite his surprise. Her apathy, too, was unaccompanied by ill-temper, and was obviously so genuine, that he could hardly believe it affected merely to pique him. We are disposed to think there was a powerful, but mysterious, cause at work in this change.
It was just about this time that one night, Julie, having sat up rather later than usual, and intending to bid Lucille good night, if she were still awake, entered her suite of apartments, and approached her dressing-room door. She heard her rush across the floor, as she did so, and, with a face of terror, she emerged from the door and stood before it, as if to bar ingress to the room.
Julie was disconcerted and agitated by this apparition; and Lucille was evidently, from whatever cause, greatly terrified. The two girls confronted one another with pale and troubled looks. Lucille was white with fear, and, alas! as it seemed to her companion, with the agitation of guilt. Julie looked at her all aghast.
"Good night, Julie, good night," she whispered, hurriedly.
"Good night," answered she; "I fear I have interrupted—I mean, startled you."
"Good night, good night," repeated Lucille.
As Julie retreated across the lobby, she was overtaken by Lucille, who placed her hand upon her shoulder.
"Julie, will you hate me if I tell you all?" she said, in great agitation, as she hurried with her into her apartment.
"Hate you, Lucille! How could I hate my dear friend and companion?"
"Friend, O yes, friend; what a friend I have proved to you!"
"Come, come, you must not let yourself be excited; you know you are my friend, my only friend and confidante, and you know I love you."
Lucille covered her face with her hands and sobbed or shuddered violently. Julie embraced and kissed her tenderly; but, in the midst of these caresses, her unhappy friend threw her arms about her neck, and, looking earnestly in her face for a few seconds, drew her passionately to her heart and kissed her, murmuring as she did so—
"No, no; she never could forgive me."
And, so saying, she mournfully betook herself away, leaving Julie a prey to all manner of vague and perplexing alarms.
Whatever was the cause of Lucille's profound mental agitation, it was an impenetrable mystery to Julie. Blassemare obviously did not know what to make of it; and as the fête drew near without eliciting any corresponding interest on her part, Julie, who had observed with pleasure the delight with which at first she had anticipated the event, was dismayed and astonished at the change. As often as she had endeavored to recall her to the topic so strangely approached, and inexplicably recoiled from, upon the occasion we have just described, Lucille repulsed her curiosity, or at least evaded it with entire and impenetrable secrecy. Finding, therefore, that the subject was obviously distasteful to her, she forbore to return to it, and contented herself with recording the broken conversation of the night in question among the other unexplained mysteries of her life.
"Well, Lucille," she said to her one day, as they were walking upon the terrace together, and interrupting by the remark a long and gloomy silence, "you do not seem to enjoy the prospect of the gay night which my uncle has prepared, now that it approaches, half so much as you did in the distance."
"Enjoy it? no, no."
"But you longed for such an occasion."
"Perhaps, Julie, I had reasons; perhaps it was not all caprice."
"But do you not still enjoy the prospect? surely it has not lost all its charms?"
"I say, Julie, I had reasons—that is, perhaps I had—for wishing it. I have none now."
"Well, but it seems to me it positively depresses you. Surely, if it were merely indifferent, it need not distress you."
"Ah, Julie, Julie, we are strange creatures; we know not ourselves, neither our strength nor our weakness, our good nor our evil, until time and combinations solve the problem, and show us the sad truth."
"It seems to me," said Julie, with a gentle smile, "you take a wondrous moral tone in treating of a ball, my pretty sage; and, notwithstanding all you say, I suspect you like a fête as well as most young women."
"Julie, when I tell you honestly I hate it—that I would gladly be hidden in the roof or the cellar of the loneliest tower in the chateau upon that evening, you will cease to suspect me of so poor a dissimulation. Honestly, then, and sadly, these crowded festivities, I expected but a short time since with so much delight, are now not only indifferent to me, but repulsive. I no longer wish to meet and mix with people; the idea, on the contrary, depresses, nay, even terrifies me."
"Lucille, you are hiding something from me."
"Hiding!—no, nothing—that is, nothing but my own thoughts, the images of my reflections; nothing, dear Julie, that it would not render you unhappy to hear. Why should I throw upon your mind the gloom and shadows of my own?"
"But perhaps your troubles are fantastic and unreal; and, were you to confide in me, I might convince you that they are so."
"Julie, they are real."
"So thinks every body who is haunted by chimeras."
"These are none. Oh, Julie! would I could tell you all. The agony of the relation would be in some sort recompensed by having one human being to tell my thoughts to. But it cannot be; it is quite, quite impossible."
"This impossibility is also one of the imagination."
"No, no, Julie; the effort to repose this confidence would destroy all confidence between us. I have said enough—let us speak of other matters. My innermost grief, be it what it may, I must endure alone. Julie, it is a hard condition; but I must and will—alone."
Here they were interrupted by Blassemare, who gayly joined them, with a prayer that they would resolve a momentous difficulty, by deciding upon the best site for one of his principal batteries of fireworks; and so, with little good-will, they surrendered themselves for a quarter of an hour to the guidance and the light sarcastic conversation of the master of the revels, with whom for the present we shall leave them.