White Lies Part 34

She rose and kissed her mother once more: and went to her own room: and then, though there was none to see her, she hid her wet, but burning, cheeks in her hands.

Josephine confined herself for some days to her own room, leaving it only to go to the chapel in the park, where she spent hours in prayers for the dead and in self-humiliation. Her "tender conscience" accused herself bitterly for not having loved this gallant spirit more than she had.

Camille realized nothing at first; he looked all confused in the doctor's face, and was silent. Then after awhile he said, "Dead? Raynal dead?"

"Killed in action."

A red flush came to Camille's face, and his eyes went down to the ground at his very feet, nor did he once raise them while the doctor told him how the sad news had come. "Picard the notary brought us the Moniteur, and there was Commandant Raynal among the killed in a cavalry skirmish."

With this, he took the journal from his pocket, and Camille read it, with awe-struck, and other feelings he would have been sorry to see a.n.a.lyzed. He said not a word; and lowered his eyes to the ground.

"And now," said Aubertin, "you will excuse me. I must go to my poor friend the baroness. She had a mother's love for him who is no more: well she might."

Aubertin went away, and left Dujardin standing there like a statue, his eyes still glued to the ground at his feet.

The doctor was no sooner out of sight, than Camille raised his eyes furtively, like a guilty person, and looked irresolutely this way and that: at last he turned and went back to the place where he had meditated suicide and murder; looked down at it a long while, then looked up to heaven--then fell suddenly on his knees: and so remained till night-fall. Then he came back to the chateau.

He whispered to himself, "And I am afraid it is too late to go away to-night." He went softly into the saloon. n.o.body was there but Rose and Aubertin. At sight of him Rose got up and left the room. But I suppose she went to Josephine; for she returned in a few minutes, and rang the bell, and ordered some supper to be brought up for Colonel Dujardin.

"You have not dined, I hear," said she, very coldly.

"I was afraid you were gone altogether," said the doctor: then turning to Rose, "He told me he was going this evening. You had better stay quiet another day or two," added he, kindly.

"Do you think so?" said Camille, timidly.

He stayed upon these terms. And now he began to examine himself. "Did I wish him dead? I hope I never formed such a thought! I don't remember ever wis.h.i.+ng him dead." And he went twice a day to that place by the stream, and thought very solemnly what a terrible thing ungoverned pa.s.sion is; and repented--not eloquently, but silently, sincerely.

But soon his impatient spirit began to torment itself again. Why did Josephine shun him now? Ah! she loved Raynal now that he was dead. Women love the thing they have lost; so he had heard say. In that case, the very sight of him would of course be odious to her: he could understand that. The absolute, unreasoning faith he once had in her had been so rudely shaken by her marriage with Raynal, that now he could only believe just so much as he saw, and he saw that she shunned him.

He became moody, sad, and disconsolate: and as Josephine shunned him, so he avoided all the others, and wandered for hours by himself, perplexed and miserable. After awhile, he became conscious that he was under a sort of surveillance. Rose de Beaurepaire, who had been so kind to him when he was confined to his own room, but had taken little notice of him since he came down, now resumed her care of him, and evidently made it her business to keep up his heart. She used to meet him out walking in a mysterious way, and in short, be always falling in with him and trying to cheer him up: with tolerable success.

Such was the state of affairs when the party was swelled and matters complicated by the arrival of one we have lost sight of.

Edouard Riviere r.e.t.a.r.ded his cure by an impatient spirit: but he got well at last, and his uncle drove him in the cabriolet to his own quarters. The news of the house had been told him by letter, but, of course, in so vague and general a way that, thinking he knew all, in reality he knew nothing.

Josephine had married Raynal. The marriage was sudden, but no doubt there was an attachment: he had some reason to believe in sudden attachments. Colonel Dujardin, an old acquaintance, had come back to France wounded, and the good doctor had undertaken his cure: this incident appeared neither strange nor any way important. What affected him most deeply was the death of Raynal, his personal friend and patron.

But when his tyrants, as he called the surgeon and his uncle, gave him leave to go home, all feelings were overpowered by his great joy at the prospect of seeing Rose. He walked over to Beaurepaire, his arm in a sling, his heart beating. He was coming to receive the reward of all he had done, and all he had attempted. "I will surprise them," thought he.

"I will see her face when I come in at the door: oh, happy hour! this pays for all." He entered the house without announcing himself; he went softly up to the saloon; to his great disappointment he found no one but the baroness: she received him kindly, but not with the warmth he expected. She was absorbed in her new grief. He asked timidly after her daughters. "Madame Raynal bears up, for the sake of others. You will not, however, see her: she keeps her room. My daughter Rose is taking a walk, I believe." After some polite inquiries, and sympathy with his accident, the baroness retired to indulge her grief, and Edouard thus liberated ran in search of his beloved.

He met her at the gate of the Pleasaunce, but not alone. She was walking with an officer, a handsome, commanding, haughty, brilliant officer. She was walking by his side, talking earnestly to him.

An arrow of ice shot through young Riviere; and then came a feeling of death at his heart, a new symptom in his young life.

The next moment Rose caught sight of him. She flushed all over and uttered a little exclamation, and she bounded towards him like a little antelope, and put out both her hands at once. He could only give her one.

"Ah!" she cried with an accent of heavenly pity, and took his hand with both hers.

This was like the meridian sun coming suddenly on a cold place. He was all happiness.

When Josephine heard he was come her eye flashed, and she said quickly, "I will come down to welcome him--dear Edouard!"

The sisters looked at one another. Josephine blushed. Rose smiled and kissed her. She colored higher still, and said, "No, she was ashamed to go down."

"Why?"

"Look at my face."

"I see nothing wrong with it, except that it eclipses other people's, and I have long forgiven you that."

"Oh, yes, dear Rose: look what a color it has, and a fortnight ago it was pale as ashes."

"Never mind; do you expect me to regret that?"

"Rose, I am a very bad woman."

"Are you, dear? then hook this for me."

"Yes, love. But I sometimes think you would forgive me if you knew how hard I pray to be better. Rose, I do try so to be as unhappy as I ought; but I can't, I can't. My cold heart seems as dead to unhappiness as once it was to happiness. Am I a heartless woman after all?"

"Not altogether," said Rose dryly. "Fasten my collar, dear, and don't torment yourself. You have suffered much and n.o.bly. It was Heaven's will: you bowed to it. It was not Heaven's will that you should be blighted altogether. Bow in this, too, to Heaven's will: take things as they come, and do cease to try and reconcile feelings that are too opposite to live together."

"Ah! these are such comfortable words, Rose; but mamma will see this dreadful color in my cheek, and what can I say to her?"

"Ten to one it will not be observed; and if it should, I will say it is the excitement of seeing Edouard. Leave all to me."

Josephine greeted Edouard most affectionately, drew from him his whole history, and petted him and sympathized with him deliciously, and made him the hero of the evening. Camille, who was not naturally of a jealous temper, bore this very well at first, but at last he looked so bitter at her neglect of him, that Rose took him aside to soothe him. Edouard, missing the auditor he most valued, and seeing her in secret conference with the brilliant colonel, felt a return of the jealous pangs that had seized him at first sight of the man; and so they played at cross purposes.

At another period of the evening the conversation became more general; and Edouard took a dislike to Colonel Dujardin. A young man of twenty-eight nearly always looks on a boy of twenty-one with the air of a superior, and this a.s.sumption, not being an ill-natured one, is apt to be so easy and so undefined that the younger hardly knows how to resent or to resist it. But Edouard was a little vain as we know; and the Colonel jarred him terribly. His quick haughty eye jarred him. His regimentals jarred him: they fitted like a glove. His mustache and his manner jarred him, and, worst of all, his cool familiarity with Rose, who seemed to court him rather than be courted by him. He put this act of Rose's to the colonel's account, according to the custom of lovers, and revenged himself in a small way by telling Josephine in her ear "that the colonel produced on his mind the effect of an intolerable puppy."

Josephine colored up and looked at him with a momentary surprise. She said quietly, "Military men do give themselves some airs, but he is very amiable at bottom. You must make a better acquaintance with him, and then he will reveal to you his n.o.bler qualities."--"Oh! I have no particular desire," sneered unlucky Edouard. Sweet as Josephine was, this was too much for her: she said nothing; but she quietly turned Edouard over to Aubertin, and joined Rose, and under cover of her had a sweet timid chat with her falsely accused.

This occupied the two so entirely that Edouard was neglected. This hurt his foible, and seemed to be so unkind on the very first day of his return that he made his adieus to the baroness, and marched off in dudgeon un.o.bserved.

Rose missed him first, but said nothing.

When Josephine saw he was gone, she uttered a little exclamation, and looked at Rose. Rose put on a mien of haughty indifference, but the water was in her eyes.

Josephine looked sorrowful.

When they talked over everything together at night, she reproached herself. "We behaved ill to poor Edouard: we neglected him."

"He is a little cross, ill-tempered fellow," said Rose pettishly.

"Oh, no! no!"

"And as vain as a peac.o.c.k."

"Has he not some right to be vain in this house?"