Valentine (31 page)

Her husband's confidence, which she ascribed to a much nobler motive, tormented Valentine secretly for a long while. Gradually, however, the susceptibility of her rigidly upright mind became drowsy and fell asleep on Bénédict's breast. Such respect, stoicism, unselfishness, a love so pure and so brave, touched her deeply. A time came when she said to herself that, far from being a dangerous sentiment, it was a priceless and heroic virtue, that God and the laws of honor sanctioned their bonds, that her heart was purified and strengthened in that sacred fire. All the sublime utopias suggested by courageous and patient love dazzled her vision. She ventured to thank heaven for having given her for her savior and her support in the perils of life that powerful and generous confederate who protected her and
shielded her against herself. Hitherto, religion had been to her like a code of consecrated principles, based upon sound reasoning, and solemnly repeated every day for the better defence of her morals; now it changed its nature in her mind, and became a poetic and enthusiastic passion, a source of ardent but ascetic dreams, which, far from serving as a breastwork of her heart, laid it open on all sides to the attacks of passion. This new conception of religion seemed to her preferable to the old. As she felt that it was more intense and more fruitful of keen emotions, of ardent aspirations toward heaven, she welcomed it imprudently, and took pleasure in thinking that Bénédict's love had kindled it.

“Just as fire refines gold,” she said to herself, “virtuous love elevates the soul and guides its flight toward God, the source of all love.”

But alas ! Valentine did not see that that faith, tempered in the flame of human passions, often compromised with the duties imposed upon it by its celestial origin and descended to terrestrial alliances. She allowed the moral force which twenty years of tranquillity and ignorance had stored up within her to be scattered to the winds; she allowed that faith to invade and change her convictions, formerly so clearly defined and unbending, and to cover with its deceitful flowers the narrow, stony path of duty. Her prayers increased in length. Bénédict's name and image were constantly blended with them, and she no longer repelled them ; she evoked them in order that she might pray more fervently. It was an infallible means, but a hazardous one. Valentine would come out from her oratory intensely excited, with her nerves on edge and the blood flowing hotly through her veins. At such times Bénédict's glances and words laid waste her heart like a
stream of molten lava. If he had been hypocritical or adroit enough to present adultery to her in a mystic light, Valentine would have been ruined with a prayer on her lips.

But the one thing that was likely to be their safeguard for a long time was the perfect sincerity of the young man, who had a genuinely upright mind. He fancied that, at the slightest attempt to shake Valentine's virtue, he would certainly forfeit her esteem and confidence, which he had found it so difficult to acquire. He did not know that, when once started down the steep incline of passion, one does not often retrace one's steps. He was not conscious of his power; had he been, perhaps he would not have used it, that young and inexperienced heart was still so loyal and honorable.

You should have heard the noble fatuity, the sublime paradoxes with which they sanctioned their imprudent love.

“How could I urge you to be false to your principles,” Bénédict would say, “I who adore you for the manly strength with which you resist me ? I who prefer your virtue to your beauty, your mind to your body ? I who would kill both you and myself, if I could be sure of possessing you instantly in heaven, as the angels possess God ?”

“No, you cannot lie,” Valentine would reply, “you whom God sent to me to teach me to know Him and love Him, through whom I first formed a true conception of His power, and who first showed me the marvels of creation. Alas ! I thought that I was so insignificant and so limited ! But you have magnified the meaning of the prophecies; you have given me the key to the sacred poems; you have revealed to me the existence of a vast universe of which pure love is the connecting bond and
the essence. I know now that we were created for each other, and that the non-material alliance we have formed is preferable to all earthly ties.”

One evening they were all assembled in the small salon of the pavilion. Valentin, who had a fresh and agreeable voice, was trying a song; his mother was playing the accompaniment. Athénaïs, with one elbow resting on the piano, was watching her young favorite closely, and refused to see how uncomfortable she made him. Bénédict and Valentine sat near the window, intoxicating themselves with the evening perfumes, the perfect calm, pure air, melody and love. Never had Valentine had such a sense of absolute security. Enthusiasm stole farther and farther into her heart, and beneath the veil of just admiration for her lover's virtue, increased her intense and swiftly-moving passion. By the dim light of the stars they could hardly see each other. To replace the chaste but perilous pleasure which the meeting of the eye affords, they allowed their fingers to become entwined. Gradually the clasp became more ardent, more eager; their chairs insensibly drew nearer ; their hair touched, and the electric spark passed from one to the other; their breaths mingled, and the evening breeze grew stifling about them. Bénédict, overwhelmed by the weight of the subtle, penetrating happiness born of a love which is both spurned and shared, leaned over the window-sill and rested his forehead on Valentine's hand, which he still held in his. Drunken and trembling with joy, he dared not move for fear of alarming her other hand, which had fallen upon his head and was moving among his coarse black locks as soft and light as the breath of a will-o'-the-wisp. His emotion burst the walls of his breast and sent all his blood rushing to his heart. He thought that he was dying, but he would
have died rather than reveal his emotion, so afraid was he of arousing Valentine's suspicions and remorse. If she had known what torrents of bliss she was pouring into his heart she would have gone away. To enjoy that unrestraint, those soft caresses, that heart-breaking rapture, he must seem insensible to it. Bénédict held his breath and restrained the frenzy of his fever. His silence embarrassed Valentine at last; she spoke to him in a low tone, to divert her own thoughts from the too intense emotion which was beginning to distress her as well.

“Are we not happy ?” she said, perhaps to give him, or herself, to understand that they must not desire to be more so.

“Oh !” said Bénédict, doing his utmost to make his voice steady, “we ought to die like this !”

A rapid step crossing the lawn toward the pavilion was distinctly audible during the silence. An indefinable presentiment terrified Bénédict. He pressed Valentine's hand convulsively, and held it against his heart, which was beating as loudly in his breast as the disturbing sound of those unexpected footsteps. Valentine felt her own heart stand still under the spell of an ill-defined but terrible fear ; she suddenly withdrew her hand and walked toward the door. But it was opened before she reached it, and Catherine, panting for breath, appeared in the doorway.

“Madame,” she said, with a hurried, terrified air, “Monsieur de Lansac is at the château !”

The words produced upon all who heard them the same effect as a stone cast into the clear and motionless water of a lake; the sky, the trees, the lovely landscape which are reflected therein, are thrown into confusion and disappear; a pebble has sufficed to reduce an
enchanting scene to chaos. In like manner was the delightful harmony destroyed which had reigned in that room a moment before. The pleasant dream of happiness in which that little family were blissfully existing was shattered. Scattered suddenly, like the leaves which the wind whirls about in eddying heaps, they parted full of anxiety and fear. Valentine embraced Louise and her son.

“I am yours forever!” she said as she left them. “We will meet again soon, I trust; perhaps to-morrow.”

Valentin sadly shook his head ; he had an indefinable thrill of pride and hatred at the name of Monsieur de Lansac. He had often thought that that nobleman might drive him from his house ; that thought had sometimes poisoned the happiness he enjoyed there.

“That man will do well to make you happy,” he said to his aunt, with a bellicose air which made her smile with emotion; “if he doesn't, he will have to deal with me!”

“What can you fear with such a knight ? “ Athénaïs asked Madame de Lansac, striving to seem cheerful, and giving the young man's flushed cheek a gentle tap with her soft, plump hand.

“Are you coming, Bénédict ?” asked Louise, as she walked toward the gate of the park leading into the fields.

“In a moment,” he replied.

He followed Valentine toward the other exit, and, while Catherine hastily put out the candles and closed the pavilion, he said to her in a hollow and violently agitated voice:

“Valentine!”

He could say no more. Indeed, how could he venture to mention the subject of his dread and his frenzy.

Valentine understood him. She gave him her hand with a determined air, and said, with a smile of love and pride:

“Never fear.”

The expression of her voice and her glance exerted so powerful an influence on Bénédict that he went away in docile obedience to her wish and with his mind almost at rest.

Monsieur de Lansac, in travelling costume, and feigning great fatigue, was reclining in a nonchalant pose on the couch in the large salon. He went to meet Valentine with a great show of courteous ardor, as soon as he caught sight of her. Valentine trembled and felt as if she were about to faint. Her pallor and her evident consternation did not escape the count; he pretended not to notice them, and complimented her on the brightness of her eyes and the fresh bloom of her complexion. Then he began to chat with the ease of manner which the habit of dissembling imparts ; and the tone in which he spoke of his journey, the joy which he expressed to be with his wife once more, the affectionate questions he asked concerning her health, and concerning her sources of amusement in her seclusion, assisted her to recover from her emotion, and to appear calm and gracious and courteous, like him.

Not until then did she notice in a corner of the salon a short, thickset man with a rough, unrefined face. Monsieur de Lansac introduced him as
a friend of his.
There
was evident constraint in Monsieur de Lansac's manner as he pronounced that phrase. The man's dull and forbidding expression, and the stiff, awkward bow which he bestowed upon her, aroused in Valentine an irresistible feeling of repulsion for that unattractive person, who seemed to feel out of his element in her presence, and strove by a display of impudence to disguise the discomfort of his situation.

Having supped at the same table with and opposite to this stranger whose external aspect was so repellent, Valentine was requested by Monsieur de Lansac to order one of the best rooms in the château to be prepared for his
dear Monsieur Grapp.
Valentine obeyed, and a few moments later Monsieur Grapp retired, after exchanging a few words in an undertone with Monsieur de Lansac, and saluting his wife with the same embarrassment and the same insolently servile glance as before.

When the husband and wife were left alone, Valentine was seized with a deadly terror. With pale face and downcast eyes she was trying in vain to make up her mind to renew the conversation, when Monsieur de Lansac broke the silence by asking her permission to retire, on the ground that he was completely tired out.

“I have come from St. Petersburg in a fortnight,” he said with a sort of affectation. “I stopped in Paris only twenty-four hours; and I think—yes, I certainly am feverish.”

“Oh! of course, you have—you must be feverish,” echoed Valentine, with ill-advised eagerness.

A contemptuous smile played about the diplomat's wary lips.

“You act like Rosine in the
Barbier!”
he said in a half-jesting, half-sneering tone;
“Buona sera, Don Basiliol
—Ah!” he added, dragging himself toward the
door, as if utterly exhausted, “I really must have some sleep! One more night on the road, and I should have been ill. It is enough to make one ill, isn't it, my dear Valentine ?”

“Yes, yes, indeed,” she replied, “you need rest; I have had prepared——”

“The room in the pavilion, I suppose, my love ? I can sleep better there. I am very fond of that pavilion ; it will remind me of the happy time when I saw you every day.”

“The pavilion ?” said Valentine, with an expression of dismay which did not escape her husband, and served him as a starting-point for the investigations he proposed to make very shortly.

“You haven't disposed of the pavilion, have you ?” he said, with an absolutely artless and indifferent air.

“I have made it into a sort of study,” she replied with some embarrassment, for she did not know how to lie. “The bed has been taken away; it couldn't be put back again to-night. But my mother's rooms on the ground-floor are all ready for you—if they will be satisfactory to you.”

“I shall, perhaps, ask for other quarters to-morrow,” said Monsieur de Lansac, with savagely vindictive meaning and a smile of mawkish affection ; “ meanwhile, I will put up with those you give me.”

He kissed her hand. His lips seemed as cold as ice to Valentine. She rubbed that hand with the other, when she was alone, to restore the circulation. Despite Monsieur de Lansac's compliance with her wishes, she was so far from understanding his real purpose, that, at first, fear overshadowed all the pain at her heart. She locked herself in her room, and, as the confused memory of that night of torpor which she had passed there with
Bénédict recurred to her mind, she rose and paced the floor with an agitated step, to banish the painful and deceptive ideas aroused by the thought of the events of that night. About three o'clock, being unable to sleep or to breathe freely, she opened her window. Her eyes rested for a long while on a motionless object, the nature of which she could not definitely determine, for it was so blended with the tree-trunks that it seemed to be one of them. All at once she saw it move and approach the house, and she recognized Bénédict. Terrified to see him show himself openly thus in front of Monsieur de Lansac's windows, which were directly beneath hers, she leaned out to impress upon him, by signs, the danger to which he was exposed. But Bénédict, instead of being alarmed by it, felt a thrill of keen delight when he learned that his rival occupied that apartment. He clasped his hands, raised them toward the sky in his gratitude, and disappeared. Unluckily, Monsieur de Lansac, who was also prevented from sleeping by the feverish excitement caused by this long journey, had watched this scene from behind a curtain which concealed him from Bénédict.