Led Astray and The Sphinx Part 22

"Be true and faithful to her, sir!" she said.

The carriage started almost immediately, but not before he had had time to notice that her eyes were filled with tears.

The matter that was engrossing Monsieur de Lucan's attention at the time, and on the subject of which he had had a long conversation that very morning with his lawyer and his advocate, who had come over from Caen during the night, was an old family law-suit which the mayor of Vastville, an ambitious personage and restless busy-body, had taken pride in bringing to light again. The question at issue was a claim for some public property the effect of which would have been to strip Monsieur de Lucan of a portion of his timbered lands and to curtail materially his patrimonial estate. He had gained his suit in the lower court, but an appeal was soon to be heard, and he was not without fears as to the final result. He had no difficulty in using that pretext, to account during the next few days, to the eyes of the inhabitants of the chateau, for a severity of physiognomy, a briefness of language, and a fondness for solitude, which concealed perhaps graver cares. That pretext, however, soon failed him. A telegram informed him, early the following week, that the suit had been finally decided in his favor, and he was compelled to manifest on this occasion an apparent joy that was far indeed from his heart.

He resumed from that moment the usual routine of family life to which Julia continued to impart the movement of her active imagination. However, he ceased to lend himself with the same affectionate familiarity to the caprices of his step-daughter. She noticed it; but she was not the only one who did. Lucan detected surprise in the eyes of Monsieur de Moras, reproaches in those of Clotilde. A new danger appeared before him; he was acting in a manner which it was equally impossible, equally perilous to explain or to allow being interpreted.

With time, however, the frightful light that had flashed across his brain in a recent circ.u.mstance was growing gradually fainter; it had ceased to fill his mind with the same convincing force. He conceived doubts; he accused himself at times on a veritable aberration; he charged the baroness with cruel and guilty prejudices; he thought, in a word, that, at all events, the wisest course was to avoid believing in the drama, and giving it life by taking a serious part in it. Unfortunately Julia's disposition, full of surprises and unforeseen whims, scarcely admitted of any regular plan of conduct toward her.

One beautiful afternoon, the guests of the chateau accompanied by a few of the neighbors, had gone on a horseback excursion to the extremity of Cape La Hague. On the return home, and when they had come about half-way, Julia, who had been remarkably quiet all day, left the princ.i.p.al group of riders, and, casting aside to Monsieur de Lucan an expressive glance, she urged her horse slightly forward. He overtook her almost immediately. She cast upon him again an oblique glance, and abruptly, with her bitterest and most incisive accent:

"Is my presence dangerous to you, sir?"

"How, dangerous?" he said, laughingly. "I do not understand you, my dear madam."

"Why do you avoid me? What have I done to you? What means this new and disagreeable manner which you affect toward me? It is really a very strange thing that you should become less polite to me, as I am more so to you. They persecute one for years to induce me to show you a pleasant countenance, and when I try my best to do so, you pout. What does it mean?

What has got into your head? I should be infinitely curious to know."

"It is quite simple, and I am going to enlighten you in two words. It has got into my head that after being not very amiable to me, you are now almost too much so. I am sincerely touched and charmed at it; but I really fear, sometimes, to turn too much to my own profit attentions to which I am far from having the sole right. You know how fond I am of your husband.

There can be no question of jealousy in this case, of course; but a man's love is proud and prompt to take umbrage. Without stooping to low and otherwise impossible sentiments, Pierre, seeing himself somewhat neglected, might feel offended and afflicted, at which we would both be greatly grieved, would we not?"

"I do not know how to do anything half-way," she said with a gesture of impatience. "How can I change my nature? It is with my own heart, and not with that of another, that I love and that I hate; and then, why should it not enter into my plans to excite Pierre's jealousy? My old traditional hatred for you has perhaps made this deep calculation; he would kill either you or me, and that would be as good a denouement as any other."

"You must allow me to prefer another," said Lucan, still trying, but without much success, to give a cheerful turn to this wildly pa.s.sionate conversation.

"However," she went on, "you may rest easy, my dear sir. Pierre is not jealous. He suspects nothing, as they say in plays!"

She laughed one of her wicked laughs, and added at once in a graver tone:

"And what could he suspect? In being amiable toward you, I am merely acting under order, and no one can tell how much of it is genuine and how much put on."

"I feel quite certain that you don't know yourself," he said, laughingly.

"You are a person of naturally restless disposition; you require agitation, and when there is none you try to imitate it as best as you can. Whether you like, or whether you don't like your step-father, is not a very dramatic affair. There is no room here for any but very simple and very ordinary sentiments. It is well enough to complicate them a little--is it not, my dear?"

"Yes, my dear!" she said, emphasizing ironically the last word.

Whereupon she started her horse at a gallop.

They were then just reaching the edge of the woods. He soon saw her leave the direct road that led across them, and take a path over the heath as if intending to dash through the thickest of the timber. At the same instant Clotilde ran up to him, and touching his shoulder with the tip of her whip:

"Where in the world is Julia going?" she said.

Lucan replied with a vague gesture and a smile.

"I am sure," rejoined Clotilde, "that she is going to drink at that fountain, yonder. She was complaining a little while since of being thirsty. Do follow her, dear, will you, and prevent her doing so. She is so warm! It might be fatal to her. Run, I beg of you."

Monsieur de Lucan gave the reins to his horse, and he started like the wind. Julia had already disappeared under cover of the woods. He followed her track; but among the timber, the roots and the roughness of the ground somewhat checked his speed. At a short distance, in the center of a narrow clearing, the labor of ages and the filtrations of the soil had hollowed out one of those mysterious fountains whose limpid water, moss-grown banks, and aspect of deep solitude delight the imagination, and give rise to so many poetic legends. When Monsieur de Lucan was able once more to see Julia, she had alighted from her horse. The admirably trained animal stood quietly two or three steps away, browsing the young foliage, while his mistress, down on her knees and stooping over the edge of the spring, was drinking from her hands.

"Julia, I beg of you!" exclaimed Monsieur de Lucan in an imploring tone.

She started to her feet with a sort of elastic spring, and greeted him gayly.

"Too late, sir!" she said; "but I only drank a few drops, just a few little wee drops, I a.s.sure you!"

"You must really be out of your mind!" said Lucan who was by this time quite close to her.

"Do you think so?"

She was shaking her beautiful white hands, which had served her for a drinking-cup, and which seemed to throw off a shower of diamonds.

"Give me your handkerchief!"

Lucan handed her his handkerchief. She wiped her hands gravely; then, as she returned the handkerchief with her right hand, she raised herself on tiptoe and held her left hand up to the level of his face:

"There! now; don't scold any more!"

Lucan kissed the hand.

"The other now," she said again. "Please don't turn so pale, sir!"

Monsieur Lucan affected not to have heard these last words, and came down abruptly from his horse.

"I must help you to mount," he said, in a dry and harsh voice.

She was putting on her gloves with downcast look. Suddenly raising her head and looking at him with fixed gaze:

"What a miserable wretch I am, am I not?" she said.

"No," said Lucan; "but what an unhappy being!"

She leaned against one of the trees that shaded the spring, her head partially thrown back and one hand over her eyes.

"Come!" said Lucan.

She obeyed, and he a.s.sisted her to get on her horse. They rode out of the wood without uttering another word, made their way to the road, and soon overtook the cavalcade.

As soon as he had recovered from the anguish of that scene, Monsieur de Lucan did not hesitate to think that the departure of Julia and of her husband must be the immediate and inevitable consequence of it; but when he came to seek some means of bringing about their sudden departure, his mind became lost in difficulties that he could not solve. What motive could he indeed offer to justify, in the eyes of Clotilde and of Monsieur de Moras, a determination so novel and so unexpected? It was now the middle of August, and it had been agreed for a long time that the entire family should return to Paris on the first of September. The very proximity of the time fixed upon for the general departure would only serve to make the pretext invoked to explain this sudden separation appear more unlikely. It was almost impossible that it should not awaken in the mind of Clotilde, and in that of the count, irreparable suspicions and a light fatal to the happiness of both. The remedy seemed indeed more to be dreaded than the evil itself; for, if the evil was great, it was at least unknown to those whose lives and whose hearts it would have shattered, and it could still be hoped that it might remain so forever. Monsieur de Lucan thought for a moment of going away himself; but it was still more impossible to justify his departure than it was that of Julia's.

All these reflections being made, he resolved to arm himself with patience and courage. Once in Paris, separate dwellings, less frequent intercourse, the obligations of the world, and the activity of life, would doubtless afford relief and then a peaceful solution to a painful and formidable situation which it was henceforth impossible for him not to view in its true light. He relied upon himself, and also upon Julia's natural generosity, for reaching without outburst and without rupture the approaching term that was to put an end to their life in common and to its incessant perils. It ought not to be impossible to endure, for the short period of two weeks more, the threatenings of a storm that had been brewing for months without revealing its lightning. He was forgetting with what frightful rapidity the maladies of the soul, as well as those of the body, after reaching slowly and gradually certain stages, suddenly precipitate their progress and their ravages.

Monsieur de Lucan asked himself whether he should not inform Julia of the conduct he had resolved to follow, and of the reasons that had dictated it; but every shadow of an explanation between them appeared to him eminently improper and dangerous. Their confidential understanding upon such a subject would have a.s.sumed an air of complicity which was repugnant to all his sentiments of honor. Despite the terrible light that had flashed forth, there still remained between them something obscure, undecided, and unconfessed that he thought best to preserve at any cost.

Far, therefore, from seeking opportunities for some private interview, he avoided them all from that moment with scrupulous care. Julia seemed penetrated with the same feeling of reserve, and anxious to the same degree as himself to avoid any tete-a-tete, while striving to save appearances; but in that respect she did not dispose of that power of dissimulation which Lucan owed to his natural and acquired firmness. He was able, without visible effort, to hide under his habitual air of gravity the anxieties that consumed him. Julia did not succeed, without an almost convulsive restraint, in carrying with bold and smiling countenance the burden of her thought. To the only witness who knew the secret of her struggles, it was a poignant spectacle to behold the gracious and feverish animation of which the unhappy child sustained the appearance with so much difficulty. He saw her sometimes at a distance, like an exhausted comedienne, retiring to some isolated bench in the garden, and fairly panting with her hand pressing upon her bosom, as if to keep down her rebellious heart. He felt then, in spite of all, overcome with immense pity in presence of so much beauty and so much misery.

Was it only pity?

The att.i.tude, the words, the looks of Clotilde and of Julia's husband were at the same time, for Monsieur de Lucan, the objects of constant and uneasy observation. Clotilde had evidently not conceived the slightest alarm. The gentle serenity of her features remained unaltered. A few oddities, more or less, in Julia's ways did not const.i.tute a sufficient novelty to attract her particular attention. Her mind, moreover, was too far away from the monstrous abysses yawning at her side; she might have stepped into them and been swallowed up, before she had suspected their existence.

The blonde, placid, and handsome countenance of the Count de Moras retained at all times, like Lucan's dark face, a sort of sculptural firmness. It was, therefore, rather difficult to read upon it the impressions of a soul which was naturally strong and self-controlling. On one point, however, that soul had become weak. Monsieur de Lucan was not ignorant of the fact; he was aware of the count's ardent love for Julia, and of the sickly susceptibility of his pa.s.sion.