VIII
ON A SCENT
Landri had not been mistaken—those phrases that had escaped M. de Claviers, to be instantly interrupted:—the "too much, perhaps," and the "but if it were!"—signified that for an instant at least that man, formerly so entirely a stranger to all the meannesses of suspicion, had harbored the unfortunate suspicion that Madame Olier was the denouncer of Madame de Claviers. An utterly insane idea even from a physical standpoint! How could Valentine ever have obtained the letter?—And even more insane morally. It attributed to a young woman, gratuitously, without the slightest evidence, the most shameless of schemes: to separate Landri forever from the man who had hitherto believed him to be his son! And with what object? To marry him with less difficulty?—That theory would not stand a single instant. The wound must in truth have been very deep, that the great-souled grand seigneur should have come so quickly to such a transformation of character.
On leaving the house on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, at the end of that luncheon which had left him with the impression of a nightmare, Landri recalled those words among all the rest, and that insinuation so insulting to his Valentine. He found therein an additional reason for desiring to know who had committed that two-fold private crime, unpunishable by law, yet truly ferocious: that theft of a correspondence, aggravated by an anonymous denunciation. In that interview, the strain of which was almost beyond human endurance, he had seen distinctly that only that knowledge could relieve in any degree the agony with which the marquis was suffocating. He himself realized the necessity of the destruction of those "other documents," as the anonymous writer had said, in heartless official phraseology. Such letters, if retained, constituted a too formidable menace against the dead wife's honor, which the betrayed husband was generously determined to save. How could the son have failed to feel that his self-esteem required him to take part in that work of salvation? And how could Valentine's lover not have it at heart that not even the shadow of the shade of that most unreasonable suspicion should be let hover above the woman whom he was to marry and whom M. de Claviers would never know?
That he could have thought so of her, even in a moment of suffering and frenzy, was enough to intensify the young man's longing to see the light in that abhorrent darkness. But what scent was he to follow, and upon what indications? He asked himself this question, set free at last from that constraint against his natural instincts to which he whom he had so long called the "Émigré" had condemned him—while condemning himself thereto through a sense of honor worthy of another age.
He bent his steps to Valentine's house, to seek in her soft eyes, in her dear smile, in her loved presence, strength to endure this test, the end of which it was not for him to fix. Would he question her, as M. de Claviers had not hesitated to advise him to do? To learn what? That the disinherited relations had told her of Jaubourg's will, and that she had drawn therefrom a conclusion only too evident to one already informed? That she was informed, Landri knew only too well. In the long solitary meditations of his weeks of arrest at Saint-Mihiel, he had succeeded in piecing together the whole story, and in understanding why the Privats had always treated him with a coolness which he had noticed only at a distance.—Yes, what was the use of trying to learn anything more? If it were the Privats from whom the anonymous letter came, Valentine did not know it, and what purpose would it serve to introduce her to such villainy? True lovers have a passionate and rapturous respect for that fine flower of delicacy and of illusion which constitutes the spotless charm of the feminine heart, when it has not been prematurely brutalized by the blighting realities of life. This sentiment alone would have deterred Landri from questioning his sweetheart, even if he had not felt a sort of spasm of horror at the thought of accusing his mother to her. Silence is the pious charity of the son to whom reverence is forbidden. And then, too, even if he had essayed to speak, the young woman would have arrested the blasphemous words on his lips.
He had no sooner crossed the threshold of the little salon on Rue Monsieur, where she awaited him, than from the glance with which she greeted him he became aware that she too dreaded a painful explanation. And how could he mar the delight of their meeting by such a hideous disclosure, finding her as he found her, so youthful and lovely, still in black—although the approaching end of her mourning could already be detected!
Valentine wore a gown of crêpe de Chine and lace, the soft fabrics admirably in harmony with the slender grace of her whole person. On her neck a string of pearls glistened softly, a bunch of violets bloomed at her waist, and on the light curls of her ash-colored hair was a torsade of black tulle. It was, as it were, the rebirth of the woman,—those jewels and flowers, and that evident yet artless desire to please which imparted a flush as of a rose-petal to her thin cheeks, a gleam to her blue eyes, a quiver to her smile.
She had her son with her, and was feverishly smoothing his hair, of a golden shade like the pale gold of her own. She pushed him gently toward Landri as he entered the room, as if he were a symbol of the union of which she dreamed—a union in which nothing of the child's happiness should be sacrificed, in which he should always remain with her and his second father.
"Give Monsieur de Claviers a kiss, Ludovic," she said, "and tell him that you and your mother prayed for him while he was in prison, so unjustly."