XII.—ISOLATION.
Blassemare kept his counsel and his word. He dropped no hint to Le Prun of his interview with the Marquis de Secqville. His own vanity was at once mortified and excited by the discovery he had made. He was resolved to obliterate the disgrace of having been duped, by the reality of his meditated triumph. Love and war have much in common, a truth perhaps embodied in the allegoric loves of Mars and Venus. Certain, at least, it is, that in each pursuit all authorities agree that every stratagem is fair. Blassemare was not the man to rob this canon of its force by any morbid scruples of conscience; and having the courage of a lion, associated with some of the vulpine attributes, and a certain prankish love of mischief, he was tolerably qualified by nature for the enterprises of rivalry and intrigue.
Le Prun brooded savagely over his suspected wrongs. He awaited with affected contempt, but a real and malignant anxiety, the verdict of Blassemare, who insisted upon deferring his interview with Madame Le Prun until some weeks had passed over the grave of that "high and puissant signer, the Visconte de Charrebourg."
It was nearly a month after the death of that old gentleman, when Blassemare, happening to meet Madame Le Prun as she walked upon one of the terraces, dressed in so exquisite a suit of mourning, and looking altogether so irresistibly handsome, that, for the life of him, he could not forbear saluting, approaching, and addressing her. He was affably received, and the conversation, at first slight and indifferent, turned gradually, without premeditation on his part, but, as it were, by a sort of irresistible fatality, into that sombre and troubled channel whither, sooner or later, though not exactly then, he had determined to direct it.
"Monsieur Le Prun is unaccountably out of spirits, madame—I should say morose, ill-tempered. I almost fear to approach him."
"Is there any thing to surprise one in that?"
"Why, no, considering his provocations."
"Provocations! what do you mean, sir?"
"Madame must pardon me. I happen to be in possession of some secrets."
There was a short pause, during which Madame Le Prun's color came and went more than once.
"Will Madame Le Prun be so kind as to sit down here for a few minutes, and I will convince her that I have kept those secrets well, and that I am—I dare not say her friend—but the most devoted of her servants?"
Madame Le Prun sat down upon the marble couch that stood there, carved with doves and Cupids, and embowered, in the transparent shadows of myrtle, like a throne of Venus. Blassemare fancied that he had never beheld so beautiful and piquante an image as Lucille at that moment presented: her cheeks glowing, her long lashes half dropped over the quenched fires of her proud dark eyes; her countenance full of a confusion that was at once beautiful and sinister; one hand laid upon her heart, as if to quell its beatings, and shut with an expression half defiant, half irresolute—and the pretty fingers of the other unconsciously playing with the tendrils of a pavenche.
Blassemare enjoyed this pretty picture too much to disturb it by a word. Perhaps, too, there was comfort to his vanity in the spectacle of her humiliation; at all events he suffered some time to pass before he spoke to her. When he did, it was with a great deal of respect; for Blassemare, notwithstanding his coarseness, had a sufficiency of tact.
"Madame perceives that I am not without discretion and zeal in her service."
"Sir, you speak enigmas; you talk of secrets and provocation; and while you affect an air of deference, your meaning is full of insolence."
It was plain her pride was mastering her fears, Blassemare thought it high time to lower his key. He therefore said, with a confident smile and an easy air—
"My meaning may be disagreeable, but that is chargeable not upon me, but on the circumstances of our retrospect; and if I am enigmatical rather than explicit, I am so from respect, not insolence. My dear madame, on the honor of a gentleman, I saw Monsieur le Marquis de Secqville take his abrupt departure from your window—you understand. I not only saw him, but found and retained proofs of his identity, armed with which, I taxed him with the fact, and obtained his full confession. Now, madame, perhaps you will give me credit for something better than hypocrisy and insolence."
Lucille looked thunderstruck for a moment, then rising, she darted on him a glance of rage and defiance, and overpowered by the tumult within her, she burst into a flood of tears, and covering her face with her hands, sobbed in silence, almost hysterically.
Blassemare waited patiently while she wept on. Suddenly she looked full and fiercely on him, and cried—
"Perhaps you have told me falsehoods, and dared thus to trifle with me."
"I swear, madame, on the honor of a nobleman of France, I have told you the simple truth. De Secqville did not venture to deny the fact; on the contrary, he confessed it frankly."
"Yes—I see you tell me the truth; it was base of De Secqville!"
"Well, to say truth, I did think he might have kept a lady's secret better."
Blassemare was ready and unscrupulous; but all is fair in love.
"I am innocent!" she cried, with abrupt vehemence, and fixing her fiery gaze upon him.
"Of course, madame."
"I say I am innocent, sir. Why do you say of course!"
"Because I never knew a lady yet, who was otherwise than innocent."
She looked at him with a lowering contempt—he thought it guilt—for a few moments, then dropping her gaze gloomily, she murmured, in bitter abstraction—
"Yes, it was base of De Secqville; he ought to have perished rather."
"Egad," thought Blassemare, "my project prospers—she is at my mercy—and disgusted with the Marquis. I'm no general or she surrenders at discretion."
"De Secqville, madame, is a handsome fellow; but he admires nobody but himself. He has been all his life—and trust me, he is not quite so young as he pretends—a man of intrigue. He is not content with his bonnes fortunes, but he boasts of his conquests, and sacrifices reputations to his vanity. Such men are not to be trusted with impunity, or loved without disgrace. It is best never to have favored them, and next best to discard them promptly."
He fancied his speech had hit the fierce temper of his auditor. He paused for a time, to let it work, and then, in a tone of profound humility, said—
"As for me, madame, if one so unworthy dare invite a passing thought of yours, I have but to ask your forgiveness; if I have said one word that gave you pain, I implore your forgiveness."
Here he sank upon his knee. Lucille was by no means as experienced in the ways of the wicked gender as many younger women. Blassemare looked very humble, and she took his humility in good faith. She looked on him then with a softened aspect, and the heart of the profligate beat thick with anticipated triumph.
"You have had, madame, in these recent transactions, signal proofs of my fidelity. The secret so lightly esteemed by De Secqville, I would rather lose my last drop of blood than reveal to a living mortal. I am secrecy itself. Judge what I have endured. I have striven—how vainly my own heart tells me—to hide the sentiments of my soul from you, madame. I could see with comparative indifference the happiness of that rival whom the forms of law, and not the preference of the heart, had elevated; but judge how I could endure the fortune of an unworthy and faithless competitor. Imagine, if you can, my despair. Compassionate, I conjure you, my misery, and with one relenting word or look of pity, raise me from the abyss, and see at your feet the happiest, as he is the most devoted, of mortals."
At the same moment Blassemare attempted to take Lucille's hand; it was, however, instantly withdrawn, and the back of it, instead, struck him in the face, with all the force of enraged and insulted pride.
"How dare you, sirrah, hold such language to me—how dare you? Another word, and I denounce you to my husband—ay, sir, I—to Monsieur Le Prun. I defy you."
Blassemare had started to his feet, very much astonished; his cheek tingling, his self-love stung to the quick. But he was too experienced in such affairs to indulge any tragical emotions on the occasion. He stared at her for a minute, with an expression of absurd bewilderment. There was no very graceful exit from the undignified predicament to which he had, like a simpleton, reduced himself. Recovering his self-possession, however, he broke into a cold laugh, and said—
"Madame, I have misunderstood you with a vengeance; I pray you believe that you have misunderstood me. We now, however, thoroughly understand one another. I keep your little secret on condition that you keep mine."
Lucille deigned no answer; but the compact had, it seemed, been silently ratified by her, for Le Prun and Blassemare continued to be the best friends imaginable.
Blassemare was not vindictive, but he was exquisitely vain. He had a good-humored turn for mischief, too; and, notwithstanding the repulse he had experienced, or perhaps, such is human perversity—in consequence of it—he was more than ever resolved to pursue his guilty designs upon the heart of Madame Le Prun.
His hands were, therefore, tolerably full; for he had not only this little affair to attend to, but to exercise his vigilance to prevent De Secqville's hearing of his breach of faith, and at the same time to confirm and exasperate, in furtherance of his own schemes, the suspicions of Monsieur Le Prun.
This latter task circumstances rendered an easy one, and Blassemare executed it without giving any definite direction to Le Prun's inflamed jealousy. So far, indeed, was he from suspecting the identity of the criminal, that he brought De Secqville two or three times to sup at the Chateau des Anges, an act of temerity which excited Blassemare's anxiety and vigilance. That gentleman had therefore kept so close and constant a watch upon the handsome Marquis, that he had not, upon any of these occasions, an opportunity of exchanging a single sentence with Madame Le Prun.
The occasional appearance of De Secqville at the Chateau des Anges was a sufficient proof that Blassemare had kept the secret with fidelity. Madame Le Prun, therefore, was far from suspecting that he was in secret the inspiring cause of that ominous restraint, the pressure of which she began to feel every day more and more severely. One by one her personal attendants were removed. Gradually she felt the process of isolation shrouding her from the eyes of her fellow-creatures. Her walks were prescribed and restricted; and with bitter resentment she perceived that she was subjected to the outrage of a systematic espionage. The face of M. Le Prun was always darkened with hatred and menace. Every day made his power more directly felt, and more nearly reduced her to his solitary, rare, and sinister companionship. At last a note, in M. Le Prun's hand, upon her table, announced in a few barbarous and insulting words that his niece Julie had been removed, by his orders, from the contagion of a companionship unfit for innocence. This was to Lucille a frightful blow. Her solitude was now virtually complete. Her own old faithful servant, Marguerite, had been withdrawn; and a tall pale Norman matron, taciturn and sardonic, was now her sole attendant. It was plain, too, that M. Le Prun had gradually removed his establishment from the Chateau des Anges. The gay and gorgeous staff of servants and grooms had disappeared. The salons, halls, and lobbies of the vast mansion were silent as the chambers of a mausoleum—the outer courts still and deserted. She was becoming the prisoner of an enraged tyrant, alone, in the midst of an impenetrable and funereal solitude.
In fact, many prisoners of state enjoyed a great deal more liberty than she; for not only was she restricted to her own apartment, but confined to the range of the small court which lay immediately under her own windows.
The indignation and fury which these outrages inspired, by degrees gave place to something like despair and panic. With the exception of her ill-looking handmaid, and the no less sinister-visaged sentinel who stealthily watched her movements, and between both of whom a sort of ominous correspondence seemed to be carried on by signals, she had latterly seen no one, but at rare intervals the hated and dreaded apparition of Le Prun at a distance, and Blassemare once or twice.