“It is not so idle as it sounds. I mean, that although Gaston himself has returned to me, he seems to have Regnard’s nature. Remember, I knew them both well. Do you recollect how the old dog, Bold, saw the change in Gaston? Well, one day about a month after you left Capello, the dog, which had shown a steady dislike to Gaston, flew at him—flew at his master whom he had loved so well. Some hours after, I went to my husband—he was standing on the terrace—and said:
“‘You must have worried the dog, I never knew him to attack any one before.’ ‘He will not attack any one again,’ replied Gaston. ‘I thought it best that he should be put out of the way, and to spare you the knowledge I had the dog drowned an hour ago.’ I can not express to you, Babache, my feelings at this. I do not know what I did, or what I said, but that, without hat or mantle, I rushed to the lake, below the Italian garden—I seemed to know by instinct that it was there they 388 would drown him. Some stablemen were then dragging the poor drowned creature—my dog—my Bold—out of the water. They were frightened at what they had done, when they saw me. I retained my senses enough to say nothing before those men,—I, Francezka Capello, unable to reprove mere stablemen for the destruction of a creature dear to me for years!
“I fled to the Italian garden; I was in an agony of terror, as well as grief. I repeated to myself, over and over again, ‘It was but a worn-out old dog—Gaston did it in mercy to me—’ I tried, amid all my distress, to reason with myself—to present Gaston’s cause. ‘It is a trifle,’ I said, but some inward voice told me it was no trifle, but a matter of the greatest moment to me. Suppose he should turn against me in the same way? I know not how long I sat there; it seemed to me not a quarter of an hour, but it was a long, long time.
“Presently, I saw Gaston approach. He seated himself by me; he took my hand; he begged my pardon a thousand times over; he swore to me it was solely for love of me he had it done—that the dog might have turned against me as against him, and that apprehension had made him have the poor creature drowned; and knowing I would object, he had it done secretly—and much more of the same kind. He was so affectionate to me that my heart was melted. He told me he would have the dog buried anywhere I wished and see it decently done himself. I said I would have my poor friend buried under the statue of Petrarch—and it was done that very afternoon. We left the garden, hand in hand, like lovers. I never felt more in love with my husband than at that moment—and yet—and yet—there 389 was a concealed fear of something—I know not what—in the very depths of my soul. To think that he should cherish such a design and that I should not know it; that he should be so utterly indifferent as he had been, ever since his return, to a creature once so dear to him as his dog! This is one of the mysterious and unexplored places in Gaston’s nature since his return, that gives me the strangest, the most terrifying sense of unfamiliarity with him—and he, the tenderest, the most devoted husband—a man I should admire even if I did not love him.”
This story, told with Francezka’s dramatic fire, impressed me more than I would have admitted to her; and however wildly fanciful her idea was that Regnard’s soul had got into Gaston’s body, yet, had not I, myself, felt that strangeness she described toward the man I had lived with as a brother for more than seven years? But I was not guilty of the folly of encouraging her in the unfortunate notions of which she was already possessed.
“It is a pity, Madame,” I said, coolly, “that you seem to attach more consequence to a dead dog than to a living husband, whom you admit you would admire even if you did not love. There is a troublesome old dog who shows malice. You are inordinately fond of this old dog. Your husband, tenderly anxious for you, has the brute drowned without your knowledge. For that you call yourself the most miserable creature on earth.”
Francezka’s face turned scarlet with wrath. She half arose from her chair, looking at me in surprise and anger. I bore her scrutiny calmly, my heart reproaching 390 me somewhat for speaking as I had done of my old friend Bold.
Francezka seated herself in her old pensive attitude, her cheek upon her hand, and there was a long silence, broken only by the dropping of the embers, and occasionally a faint cry from afar. The hunting party had returned, and the chase was proceeding merrily in the great corridors below.
“Babache,” she said presently. “One of the chief joys of love is the living over of past delights. But Gaston and I live together as having no past. One of the cruelest things about the wound in his head is that he had long periods of forgetfulness, and certain parts of his life are absolutely blotted from his mind. And one of those great gaps is everything that pertained to our courtship and marriage. He remembers the summer in which we were married, but could not recall the date until I told him. He also remembers that we were secretly married and why. By some strange misfortune—perhaps because his mind was always groping after me in those sad days of wandering, both in mind and body—all else—those days when we were boy and girl traveling through Courland; those evenings on the island in the lake—all, all that pertains to our love is lost to him. He does not even remember why O Richard, O mon roi was so dear to us. It was not strange that he should lose his voice for singing, but it is so sad that he can not remember any of those songs which interpreted our hearts to each other.
“I tried at first to bring it all back to his mind, telling him the whole sweet story so deeply written on my heart, but it only distressed him with the sense of his lapse of 391 memory. He told me it was his chief agony when he was recovering, in those intolerable days in the isles of the East, when he knew not how or why he came there, trying to recall this lost happiness; he never forgot me, but he could not remember, for a long time, whether we were married or not.”