White Lies Part 29

But the next day early, Josephine took Rose to a door outside the house, a door that had long been disused. Nettles grew before it. She produced a key and with great difficulty opened this door. It led to the tapestried chamber, and years ago they used to steal up it and peep into the room.

Rose scarcely needed to be told that she was to watch Camille, and report to her. In truth, it was a mysterious, vague protection against a danger equally mysterious. Yet it made Josephine easier. But so unflinching was her prudence that she never once could be prevailed on to mount those stairs, and peep at Camille herself. "I must starve my heart, not feed it," said she. And she grew paler and more hollow-eyed day by day.

Yet this was the same woman who showed such feebleness and irresolution when Raynal pressed her to marry him. But then dwarfs feebly drew her this way and that. Now giants fought for her. Between a feeble inclination and a feeble disinclination her dead heart had drifted to and fro. Now honor, duty, grat.i.tude,--which last with her was a pa.s.sion,--dragged her one way: love, pity, and remorse another.

Not one of these giants would relax his grasp, and nothing yielded except her vital powers. Yes; her temper, one of the loveliest Heaven ever gave a human creature, was soured at times.

Was it a wonder? There lay the man she loved pining for her; cursing her for her cruelty, and alternately praying Heaven to forgive him and to bless her: sighing, at intervals, all the day long, so loud, so deep, so piteously, as if his heart broke with each sigh; and sometimes, for he little knew, poor soul, that any human eye was upon him, casting aside his manhood in his despair, and flinging himself on the very floor, and m.u.f.fling his head, and sobbing; he a hero.

And here was she pining in secret for him who pined for her? "I am not a woman at all," said she, who was all woman. "I am crueller to him than a tiger or any savage creature is to the victim she tears. I must cure him of his love for me; and then die; for what shall I have to live for? He weeps, he sighs, he cries for Josephine."

Her enforced cruelty was more contrary to this woman's nature than black is to white, or heat to cold, and the heart rebelled furiously at times.

As when a rock tries to stem a current, the water fights its way on more sides than one, so insulted nature dealt with Josephine. Not only did her body pine, but her nerves were exasperated. Sudden twitches came over her, that almost made her scream. Her permanent state was utter despondency, but across it came fitful flashes of irritation; and then she was scarce mistress of herself.

Wherefore you, who find some holy woman cross and bitter, stop a moment before you sum her up vixen and her religion naught: inquire the history of her heart: perhaps beneath the smooth cold surface of duties well discharged, her life has been, or even is, a battle against some self-indulgence the insignificant saint's very blood cries out for: and so the poor thing is cross, not because she is bad, but because she is better than the rest of us; yet only human.

Now though Josephine was more on her guard with the baroness than with Rose, or the doctor, or Jacintha, her state could not altogether escape the vigilance of a mother's eye.

But the baroness had not the clew we have; and what a difference that makes! How small an understanding, put by accident or instruction on the right track, shall run the game down! How great a sagacity shall wander if it gets on a false scent!

"Doctor," said the baroness one day, "you are so taken up with your patient you neglect the rest of us. Do look at Josephine! She is ill, or going to be ill. She is so pale, and so fretful, so peevish, which is not in her nature. Would you believe it, doctor, she snaps?"

"Our Josephine snap? This is new."

"And snarls."

"Then look for the end of the world."

"The other day I heard her snap Rose: and this morning she half snarled at me, just because I pressed her to go and console our patient. Hus.h.!.+

here she is. My child, I am accusing you to the doctor. I tell him you neglect his patient: never go near him."

"I will visit him one of these days," said Josephine, coldly.

"One of these days," said the baroness, shocked. "You used not to be so hard-hearted. A soldier, an old comrade of your husband's, wounded and sick, and you alone never go to him, to console him with a word of sympathy or encouragement."

Josephine looked at her mother with a sort of incredulous stare. Then, after a struggle, she replied with a tone and manner so spiteful and icy that it would have deceived even us who know her had we heard it. "He has plenty of nurses without me." She added, almost violently, "My husband, if he were wounded, would not have so many, perhaps not have one."

With this she rose and went out, leaving them aghast. She sat down in the pa.s.sage on a window-seat, and laughed hysterically. Rose heard her and ran to her. Josephine told her what her mother had said to her.

Rose soothed her. "Never mind, you have your sister who understands you: don't you go back till they have got some other topic."

Rose out of curiosity went in, and found a discussion going on. The doctor was fathoming Josephine, for the benefit of his companion.

"It is a female jealousy, and of a mighty innocent kind. We are so taken up with this poor fellow, she thinks her soldier is forgotten."

"Surely, doctor, our Josephine would not be so unreasonable, so unjust,"

suggested her mother.

"She belongs to a s.e.x, be it said without offending you, madame, among whose numberless virtues justice does not fill a prominent place."

The baroness shook her head. "That is not it. It is a piece of prudery.

This young gentleman was a sort of admirer of hers, though she did not admire him much, as far as I remember. But it was four years ago; and she is married to a man she loves, or is going to love."

"Well, but, mamma, a trifling excess of delicacy is surely excusable."

This from Rose.

"No, no; it is not delicacy; it is prudery. And when people are sick and suffering, an honest woman should take up her charity and lay down her prudery, or her coquetry: two things that I suspect are the same thing in different shapes."

Here Jacintha came in. "Mademoiselle, here is the colonel's broth; Madame Raynal has flavored it for him, and you are to take it up to him, and keep him company while he eats it."

"Come," cried the baroness, "my lecture has not been lost."

Rose followed Jacintha up-stairs.

Rose was heart and head on Raynal's side.

She had deceived him about Josephine's attachment, and felt all the more desirous to guard him against any ill consequences of it. Then he had been so generous to her: he had left her her sister, who would have gone to Egypt, and escaped this misery, but for her.

But on the other hand,

--Gentle pity Tugged at her heartstrings with complaining cries.

This watching of Camille saddened even her. When she was with him his pride bore him up: but when he was alone as he thought, his anguish and despair were terrible, and broke out in so many ways that often Rose shrank in terror from her peep hole.

She dared not tell Josephine the half of what she saw: what she did tell her agitated her so terribly: and often Rose had it on the tip of her tongue to say, "Do pray go and see if you can say nothing that will do him good;" but she fought the impulse down. This battle of feeling, though less severe than her sister's, was constant; it destroyed her gayety. She, whose merry laugh used to ring like chimes through the house, never laughed now, seldom smiled, and often sighed.

Dr. Aubertin was the last to succ.u.mb to the deep depression, but his time came: and he had been for a day or two as grave and as sad as the rest, when one day that Rose was absent, spying on Camille, he took the baroness and Josephine into his confidence; and condescended finally to ask their advice.

"It is humiliating," said he, "after all my experience, to be obliged to consult unprofessional persons. Forty years ago I should have been TOO WISE to do so. But since then I have often seen science baffled and untrained intelligences throw light upon hard questions: and your s.e.x in particular has luminous instincts and reads things by flashes that we men miss with a microscope. Our dear Madame Raynal suspected that plausible notary, and to this day I believe she could not tell us why."

Josephine admitted as much very frankly.

"There you see," said the doctor. "Well, then, you must help me in this case. And this time I promise to treat your art with more respect."

"And pray who is it she is to read now?" asked the baroness.

"Who should it be but my poor patient? He puzzles me. I never knew a patient so faint-hearted."

"A soldier faint-hearted!" exclaimed the baroness. "To be sure these men that storm cities, and fire cannon, and cut and hack one another with so much spirit, are poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie quiet and suffer."

The doctor walked the room in great excitement. "It is not his wound that is killing him, there's something on his mind. You, Josephine, with your instincts do help me: do pray, for pity's sake, throw off that sublime indifference you have manifested all along to this man's fate."

"She has not," cried the baroness, firing up. "Did I not see her lining his dressing-gown for him? and she inspects everything that he eats: do you not?"

"Yes, mother." She then suggested in a faltering voice that time would cure the patient, and time alone.

"Time! you speak as if time was a quality: time is only a measure of events, favorable or unfavorable; it kills as many as it cures."

"Why, you surely would not imply his life is in any danger?" This was the baroness.