“Truly I do not,” replied Michelle, “but the very highest respect.”
She had then reached the middle of the room, where she made another deep curtsey, which Bess returned with a bow; and at the door Michelle made a third and last one, deeper and more courteous even than before, and then melted away into the shadows of the evening, that were creeping fast into the room.
Michelle returned to the dark and gloomy building of the Scotch Benedictine nuns. In their house, where she had spent so many happy hours, so many periods of thought and study, she had a little room, as bare as any nun’s cell among them. To it she had come directly upon her return from Pont-à-Mousson. Only once before had she left it, when at the King’s command she had gone to Marly to tell her sad story. She had met with kindness—Louis the Fourteenth was commonly chivalrous to women—and she had returned at ease in her mind respecting how she had performed her duty at Orlamunde. Louis, in fact, had begun to think his two hundred thousand livres a year very ill laid out in buying the good-will and alliance of so poor a creature as Prince Karl of Orlamunde, and was rather glad to have an excuse for intermitting it. So far, no soul, except the mother superior at Pont-à-Mousson, and as Michelle surmised, the Duke of Berwick, knew anything of those sweet, those evil days at la Rivière. Not even Madame de Beaumanoir suspected it, and Michelle felt there was scarcely a chance that it could ever be known. But her conscience ever accused her, and the accusation brought with it that haunting fear of discovery. She felt she had harmed Roger Egremont without that, and if that were known, it would go near to ruin him.
She went to her little room, high up under the roof, when she returned from her interview with Bess Lukens. She felt shaken and agitated, and unequal even to seeing the gentle nuns. And shutting her door, she walked to the open window, through which she could see all Paris lying below her,—the lights showing here and there like golden sparks in the purple dusk, the river winding darkly among its quays, flowing, flowing softly through the busy town until it reached the fair country, flowing, flowing to St. Germains, to those sweet meadows where first she had seen Roger Egremont.
Her eye at this moment fell upon a letter lying on the floor at her feet. She picked it up with trembling fingers. Some presentiment of evil made her hold it in her hand, unread, for a long time before lighting her candle. It had a perfume she hated,—a strong, coarse perfume, used by the Countess Bertha. Nothing renews associations like perfumes, and that one, so pungent, so overpowering, brought back to her that Palace of Little Ease, the palace of Monplaisir, with all its iniquities. At last she forced herself to look at the letter by the light of the flickering candle. Yes, she recognized Prince Karl’s slovenly, illiterate handwriting in the superscription. She did not ask herself how it came to her; she felt sure the letter would tell her, as it did. It was brief. Prince Karl was as inexpert with the pen as Roger Egremont was expert.
“I wish you to return to me,—not that I care if I never see your scornful face again, but your absence will cost me two hundred thousand livres a year, which I cannot do without. Bernstein will be waiting for you with a travelling-chaise at the corner of the street at daylight on the morning after you receive this letter. If you do not return to Orlamunde with him, all the children of the French families at Orlamunde will die of a quick and mysterious disease. I have promised my protection to these French people, and so have quieted their fears; but if you refuse to come, or betray this letter, those children will die. You know I always keep promises of this sort. So come.”
One afternoon in early October, the little inn near Orlamunde where Michelle had stopped two days before her marriage saw her again. There were no young girls robed in white to receive her; no ladies-in-waiting to attend her; no state coach to convey her to her husband. Only Bernstein, a bad man, but a great improvement on his master, was her escort. She was weary and unfit to travel farther; but not for that would Bernstein have stopped. The horses had given out, and a night’s rest would be good for them. So the wife of the reigning Prince of Orlamunde, although of less account than four good post-horses, was suffered, for the sake of those four good post-horses, to have a few hours of rest before again experiencing the joys of that noble palace of Monplaisir. It was still early when they arrived, and the red October light shone upon the russet country, the garden, now desolate, and the little wood in which Michelle had first confessed her love for Roger Egremont.
Yes, she knew the very spot; for there had her steps been drawn against her will. The trees were quite bare, and the dead, dank leaves lay all about her. There was the stone bench on which Roger had sat when she told him that she was going to be married the next day but one. He was a stalwart man, but she remembered that his strength had seemed to fail him somewhat, and he fell, rather than seated himself, on the bench. She sat down on it now from sheer weakness, and her lovely, miserable eyes looked at the scene she knew so well,—changed from spring to autumn, but not so changed as she, poor unfortunate.
She had never been strictly beautiful, and three weeks of travel toward Monplaisir had done its work. She looked haggard and pale beyond description; and her light and charming walk, as graceful as the swallow’s flight, was no more. She moved slowly, because hopelessly, and, besides, she had no more strength left. The going back to Orlamunde was not the worst of what she was called upon to endure. Prince Karl and the Countess Bertha and the Marochetti woman—these were bad, but they were the least of Michelle’s agonies. What would Roger Egremont think of her? It was that which had brought her to look like a ghost; it was that which had made sleep and food well-nigh impossible to her. He could not have a great opinion of her after la Rivière. Although she had of herself left that spot of all delight, she had remained long enough to ruin him eternally if it were known that they had ever been there. There were not in the world many women more miserable than the Princess Michelle on that October afternoon.
Presently, as she sat with her eyes fixed on the ground, she heard a step on the dry leaves close to her. She started violently. The strange resemblance which Bess Lukens had divined between the step of Roger Egremont and his half-brother flashed through her. She raised her eyes and saw Hugo Stein standing before her.