“I am twenty-two, but I don’t think I am very young; I am old in experience and bitterness. Well, if you care to risk the experiment, I will be your wife. I will do my best to make you happy.”
They were married. And this marriage was the turning point in Valerie’s life. If everything had gone smoothly, she might have forgotten those bitter experiences, outlived her still more bitter rancour against the prosperous and well-to-do.
Unfortunately the friends of Monsieur Varenne would not forgive him for this false step, so unpardonable in a man of his intelligence and position. He was a fool, that was clear, but they were not going to abet him in his mad folly. Their doors were shut against his wife, this creature of the music halls, to whom he was going to leave his fortune.
After this bitter experience, the iron entered even deeper into her soul. Her husband was kindness and tenderness itself. In his devotion to his young wife, he paid no attention to the fact that he had cut himself off from his old friends, his old social life.
He was ready to comply with her slightest wish. He showered on her the most costly gifts, his purse was absolutely at her disposal. She had everything that wealth could give, except the one thing she craved, to mix on equal terms with these people who despised her.
When the kindly old man died, she mourned him sincerely. If she had never loved him, in the true sense of the word, she had felt for him a very warm and grateful affection. On his death-bed, she had faltered forth a few words of self-reproach, had blamed herself for taking advantage of his generosity, for not having sufficiently counted the cost to himself.
On this point he had reassured her. “I have been very happy, my dear, happier than I ever expected to be. I would not have anything changed.”
She came into that considerable fortune which was of so little use to her. During her few years of married life she had educated herself into a woman of considerable accomplishments, for she had a very quick and acute intelligence.
Her socialist proclivities were now fully developed, after the scurvy treatment at the hands of her husband’s friends. The circles where these doctrines were preached readily opened their doors to an attractive and enthusiastic young woman, whose wealth would be very useful for propaganda. She was more than the equal of these purse-proud parvenus, who would not accept her acquaintance, in intellect and behaviour. She felt it bitterly.
Very soon she came under the influence of Contraras, who was possessed of great personal magnetism. His reasoned arguments, his fiery eloquence, quickly led her a step further—from socialism to anarchy. In a very short space she became one of the leading spirits of the brotherhood. As the old régime would not receive her, she would do her best to overthrow it, and assert the doctrine of absolute equality.