Valentine (8 page)

Bénédict threw himself from his horse.

“Mademoiselle,” he cried, “I fall at your feet! Do not be afraid of me. You see that I cannot follow you on foot. Deign to listen to me a moment. I am a
miserable fool. I offered you a deadly insult, imagining that you did not choose to understand me; and, as I shall simply heap folly upon folly if I try to prepare you, I will go straight to my goal. Have you not recently heard something of a person who is dear to you ?”

“Oh ! speak !” cried Valentine, with a cry that came from her heart.

“I knew it,” said Bénédict, joyfully. “You love her, you are sorry for her; we have not been deceived. You want to see her; you are ready to hold out your arms to her. All that is said of you is true, is it not, mademoiselle ?”

It did not occur to Valentine to distrust Bénédict's sincerity. He had touched the most sensitive chord of her heart; prudence would thenceforth have seemed to her rank cowardice; that is the characteristic of impulsive and generous natures.

“If you know where she is, monsieur,” she cried, clasping her hands, “I bless you, for you will surely tell me.”

“I am about to do a thing that will perhaps be blameworthy in the eyes of society, for I am about to lead you aside from the path of filial obedience. But I shall do it without remorse ; my friendship for that person makes it my duty, and my admiration for you leads me to believe that you will never reproach me for it. This morning she walked four leagues through the dew-laden grass, over the stones in the pastures, wrapped in a peasant's cloak, just to obtain a glimpse of you at your window or in your garden. She returned unsuccessful. Are you willing to compensate her this evening, and to pay her for all the sorrows of her life ?”

“Take me to her, monsieur; I ask it in the name of all that you hold dearest on earth.”

“Very well,” said Bénédict, “trust yourself to me. You must not be seen at the farm. Although my people are still away, the servants might see you. They would talk, and to-morrow your mother, being informed of your visit, would begin to persecute your sister afresh. Let me hitch your horse with mine under these trees, and follow me.”

Valentine sprang lightly to the ground, without waiting for Bénédict to offer her his hand. But she was no sooner on her feet than the instinct of danger, natural to the purest women, awoke in her; she was afraid. Bénédict fastened the horses under a clump of maples. As he walked back toward her, he cried, with evident sincerity:

“Oh ! how happy she will be, and how little she expects the joy that is approaching her!”

These words reassured Valentine. She followed her guide along a path, all damp with the evening dew, to the entrance to a hemp field which was enclosed by a ditch. They had to pass over a tottering plank. Bénédict jumped into the ditch and held it while Valentine crossed.

“Here, Perdreau ! down, keep quiet!” he said to a great dog which rushed toward them growling, and, on recognizing his master, made as much noise by his caresses as he had made by his demonstrations of distrust.

Bénédict sent him away with a kick, and ushered his trembling companion into the farm garden, which was situated behind the buildings, as in most rustic dwellings. The garden was a dense mass of vegetation. Brambles, rose bushes, fruit trees grew there in confusion, and their sturdy shoots, which the gardener's pruning-hook never touched, were so intertwined over the paths as to make them almost impassable. Valentine caught her long
riding-skirt on all the thorns ; the profound darkness amid all that untrammeled vegetation increased her embarrassment, and the violent emotion which she naturally felt at such a moment made her almost too weak to walk.

“If you will give me your hand,” said her guide, “we can go faster.”

Valentine had lost her glove in her excitement ; she placed her bare hand in Bénédict's. It was a strange position for a girl brought up as she had been. The young man walked in front of her, drawing her gently toward him, putting the branches aside with his other arm so that they should not strike his lovely companion's face.

“Mon Dieu!
how you tremble !” he said to her, releasing her hand when they reached an open space.

“Ah ! monsieur, I tremble with joy and impatience,” Valentine replied.

There remained one more obstacle to surmount. Bénédict had not the key to the garden ; in order to get out of it they must climb over a quickset hedge. He proposed to assist her, and she had no choice but to accept. Thereupon the farmer's nephew took the Comte de Lansac's fiancée in his arms. He placed his trembling hands about her slender waist ; he breathed her agitated breath. And that condition of affairs lasted some time, for the hedge was broad, bristling with thorny branches ; the stone in the banking crumbled, and Bénédict was not wholly self-possessed.

However—so great is the modest reserve of this age !—his imagination fell far short of the reality, and the fear of offending his conscience prevented him from realizing his good fortune.

When they reached the door of the house, Bénédict
noiselessly raised the latch, ushered Valentine into the living-room on the second floor, and felt his way to the hearth. He soon had a candle lighted, and, pointing to a wooden staircase not unlike a ladder, said to Mademoiselle de Raimbault:

“That is the way.”

He threw himself into a chair and prepared to do sentry duty, begging her not to remain more than a quarter of an hour with her sister.

Fatigued by her long walk in the morning, Louise had fallen asleep early. The little room which she occupied was one of the worst in the farm-house ; but as she was supposed to be a poor relation from Poitou whom the Lhérys had been helping for a long while, she insisted that the farmer should not disabuse his servants of the error into which they had fallen by receiving her with undue honor. She had voluntarily chosen a sort of little loft with a round window looking on a most fascinating landscape of fields and islets, intersected by the innumerable windings of the Indre, and covered with the most beautiful trees. A reasonably good bed had been hastily made up for her on a wretched pallet; peas were drying on a hurdle, bunches of golden onions hung from the ceiling, skeins of double thread slumbered on a disabled reel. Louise, who had been brought up in opulence, found a charm in these accessories of country life. To Madame Lhéry's great surprise, she had insisted upon allowing her little room to retain that rustic air of disorder and crowding which reminded her of the Flemish paintings of Van Ostade and Gerard Dow. But the things she liked best in that modest retreat were an old chintz curtain covered with faded flowers, and two old-fashioned arm-chairs, the woodwork of which had long ago been gilded. By the merest chance in the world
those things had been relieved from duty at the château about ten years before, and Louise recognized them as having been familiar to her in her childhood. She wept and almost embraced them as old friends, as she remembered how many times in those happy days of peace and ignorance, gone by forever, she had crouched, a laughing, fair-haired girl, between the broad arms of those old chairs.

That night she had fallen asleep with her eyes fixed mechanically on the flowers in the curtain ; and, as she gazed, her memory reviewed her past life to its most trivial details. After a long period of exile, the keen sensation of her former sorrows and her former joys awoke with great force. She fancied that it was only the day after the events which she had atoned for and bewailed during a heart-broken pilgrimage of fifteen years. She fancied that she could see behind that curtain, which the wind blew back and forth across the window, the whole brilliant, fairy-like scene of her younger years, the tower of the old manor-house, the venerable oaks in the great park, the white goat she had loved, the field in which she had plucked corn-flowers. Sometimes the image of her grandmother, a selfish, easy-going creature, rose before her with tears in her eyes, as on the day of her banishment. But that heart, which only half knew how to love, was closed against her, and that consoling apparition vanished with airy indifference.

The only pure and always refreshing image in that imaginary picture was that of Valentine, the lovely child of four, with the long golden hair and rosy cheeks, whom Louise had known. She saw her once more running through the fields of grain taller than herself, like a partridge in a furrow; jumping into her arms with the frank and caressing laughter of childhood which brings
tears to the eyes of the loved one ; passing her plump white hands over her sister's neck, and chattering to her of the thousand artless trifles which make up the life of a child, in that primitive, sensible, sprightly language which always charms and surprises us. From that time Louise had been a mother; she had loved childhood no longer as a source of entertainment but as a sentiment. That love of long ago for her little sister had awakened, more intense and more motherly than before, with the love she bore her own son. She imagined her just as she was when she left her; and when she was told that she was a tall and beautiful woman now, stronger and straighter than herself, Louise could not succeed in believing it for more than an instant; her imagination soon recurred to little Valentine, and she longed to hold her on her knee.

That fresh and smiling apparition played a part in all her dreams since she had passed all her waking hours trying to find a way to see her. Just as Valentine softly ascended the stairs and raised the trap-door which gave access to her chamber, Louise fancied that she saw among the reeds along the Indre her Valentine of four years of age, running after the long blue dragon-flies which skim the water with the tips of their wings. Suddenly the child fell into the river. Louise rushed to rescue her; but Madame de Raimbault, the haughty countess, her stepmother, her implacable foe, appeared before her, pushed her away, and let the child die.

“Sister!” cried Louise, in a choking voice, struggling with the visions of her troubled slumber.

“Sister!” replied a strange voice, as sweet as that of the angels whose singing we hear in our dreams.

Louise, raising herself on her bolster, lost the silk handkerchief which held her long brown hair in place.
In that dishevelled condition, pale, startled, her face lighted by a moonbeam which stole furtively through the chinks in the curtain, she leaned toward the voice that called her. Two arms are thrown about her, two fresh, warm lips cover her cheeks with holy kisses; Louise, speechless with emotion, feels a shower of tears on her face; Valentine, almost fainting, drops exhausted on her sister's bed. When Louise realized that she was no longer dreaming, that Valentine was in her arms, that she had come to her, that her heart was as full of affection and gladness as her own, she was unable to express what she felt otherwise than by embraces and sobs. At last, when they were able to speak, Louise cried: “Is it really you, you of whom I have dreamed so many years ?”

“Is it really you,” cried Valentine, “and do you still love me ?”

“Why this
you?”
*
said Louise; “aren't we sisters ?”

“Oh! but you are my mother too!” Valentine replied. “I have forgotten nothing, you see! You are still present in my memory, as if it were yesterday; I should have known you among a thousand. Oh ! yes, it is you, it is really you ! This is your beautiful brown hair, which I can still see arranged in bands over your forehead; these are your dainty little white hands, and your pale complexion. You are just as I saw you in my dreams.”

“Oh! Valentine, my own Valentine! Do put the curtain aside that I can see you too. They told me that you were beautiful, but you are a hundred times more so than words can express. You are still fair, still spotless ; the same sweet blue eyes, the same caressing smile ! I brought you up, Valentine, do you remember ? It was I who preserved your skin from sunburn and freckles; it was I who took care of your hair and arranged it every day in golden curls. You owe it to me that you are still so lovely, Valentine, for your mother paid little attention to you ; I alone watched over you every moment.”

“Oh! I know it! I know it! I can still remember the songs with which you used to sing me to sleep. I remember that I always found your face leaning over mine when I woke. Oh ! how I cried for you, Louise ! how long it was before I was able to do without you ! how I spurned the help of other women ! My mother has never forgiven me for the species of hatred of her which I exhibited at that time, because my poor nurse had said to me: ‘Your sister is going away; your mother has turned her out of the house.'—Oh ! Louise ! Louise ! you are restored to me at last!”

“And we will never part again, will we ?” cried Louise ; “we will find a way to meet often, to write to each other. You won't allow yourself to be frightened by threats; we will not become strangers again ?”

“Have we ever been strangers ?” was the reply ; “ is it in anyone's power to make us strangers ? You know me very little, Louise, if you think that it is possible to banish you from my heart, when it was impossible to do it even in my helpless childhood. But never fear ; our troubles are at an end. In a month I shall be married. I am to marry a refined, sweet-tempered, sensible man, to whom I have often spoken of you, who approves of my affection for you, and who will allow me to live near you. Then, Louise, you won't be unhappy any more, will you ? You will forget your misery by pouring it out on my bosom. You shall bring up my children, if I have the good fortune to be a mother; we will imagine that we
live again in them. I will dry all your tears, I will devote my life to making up to you for all the sufferings of yours.”

“Sublime child, angelic heart!” cried Louise, weeping with joy; “this day wipes out all the rest. Ah! I will never complain of the lot which affords me such an instant of ineffable happiness. You have already sweetened the memory of my years of exile. See,” she continued, taking from under her pillow a small package carefully wrapped in velvet, “do you recognize these four letters ? You wrote them to me at different times during our separation. I was in Italy when I received this one; you were not ten years old.”