Valentine (9 page)

“Oh! I remember very well,” said Valentine; “I have yours too. How many times I have read them, and how I have cried over them ! This one I wrote to you from the convent. How I trembled ; how I quivered with fear and joy when a woman I did not know handed me yours in the parlor! She slipped it into my hand with a significant nod, as she gave me some sweets which she pretended to have brought me from my grandmother. And two years later, when I was in the suburbs of Paris, I saw a woman at the garden gate pretending to ask alms, and, although I had never seen her but once, I instantly recognized her. I said to her: ‘Have you a letter for me ?'—‘Yes,' said she, ‘and I'll come for the answer to-morrow.' Then I ran to shut myself up in my room, but someone called me, and I was watched all the rest of the day. At night my governess sat by my bed working until nearly midnight. I had to pretend to be asleep all that time, and when she left me and went to her own room she took the light. With what pains and precautions I finally succeeded in obtaining a match and a candle and writing materials, without making
a noise, without rousing my keeper! However, I succeeded ; but I splashed a little ink on my sheet, and the next day I was questioned and scolded and threatened! How impudently I lied ! how willingly I submitted to the penance they imposed on me ! The old woman returned and wanted to sell me a little kid. I handed her the letter and I reared the kid. Although it did not come to me directly from you, I loved it on your account. O Louise! I believe that I owe it to you that I haven't an evil heart. They tried to wither mine early in life ; they did everything imaginable to crush my natural delicacy of feeling in the germ ; but your dear image, your loving caresses, your goodness to me, had left an ineradicable impression on my memory. Your letters reawoke in my heart the sentiment of gratitude you had left there. Those four letters marked four very distinct epochs in my life ; each of them inspired me with a stronger determination to be a good woman, to detest intolerance, to despise prejudices; and I venture to say that each of them marked a step forward in my moral life. Louise, my sister, you have really been my teacher to this very day.”

“You are an angel of purity and virtue!” cried Louise; “I am the one who should be at your feet.”

“Come ! quickly!” cried Bénédict's voice at the foot of the stairs ; “ come away, Mademoiselle de Raimbault! Monsieur de Lansac is looking for you.”

*
Louise used the familiar
toi,
Valentine
vous.

Valentine rushed from the room. Monsieur de Lansac's arrival was an agreeable incident to her. She longed to tell him of her happiness, but, to her great displeasure, Bénédict informed her that he had thrown him off the scent by telling him that he had heard nothing of Mademoiselle de Raimbault since the fête. Bénédict excused himself on the plea that he had no idea what Monsieur de Lansac's feeling might be with regard to Louise. But in the bottom of his heart he had felt an indefinable thrill of malignant joy in sending the unfortunate lover to scour the country in the middle of the night, while he, Bénédict, had his fiancée under his protection.

“The falsehood may have been ill-timed,” he said; “but I told it with the best intentions, and it is too late to retract it. Allow me, mademoiselle, to urge you to return to the château at once. I will attend you as far as the gate of the park, and you can say that you lost your way, and that you chanced to find it again without assistance.”

“Of course,” replied Valentine, evidently much disturbed, “that is the least compromising thing to do after deceiving Monsieur de Lansac and sending him away. But suppose we meet him ?”

“I will say,” replied Bénédict, eagerly, “ that I shared his alarm and took my horse to help him to find you ; and that fortune was more kind to me than to him.”

Valentine was more than a little troubled by the
possible consequences of this adventure, but she was hardly given time to think of them. Louise had thrown a cloak over her shoulders and had gone down into the lower room with her. She seized the candle which Bénédict had in his hand, held it near her sister's face in order to see her plainly, and, having gazed at her with a rapt expression, she exclaimed enthusiastically, turning to Bénédict:

“Just see how lovely my Valentine is!”

Valentine blushed, and Bénédict blushed even more than she. Louise was too engrossed by her own joy to notice their embarrassment. She covered her sister with kisses, and, when Bénédict tried to part them, she overwhelmed him with reproaches. But, passing abruptly to a juster appreciation of the state of affairs, she effusively threw her arms about her young friend's neck, telling him that all her blood would not pay for the happiness he had afforded her.

“For your reward,” she added, “I am going to ask her to do as I do. Will not you too, Valentine, give a sisterly kiss to this poor Bénédict, who, when he found himself alone with you, remembered Louise ?”

“Why,” said Valentine, blushing, “it will be the second time to-day !”

“And the last time in my life,” said Bénédict, bending his knee before the young countess. “Let this one efface all the suffering which I shared when I obtained the first against your will.”

Lovely Valentine recovered her serenity, but she raised her eyes toward heaven with an expression of dignified modesty.

“God is my witness,” she said, “that I give you this token of my truest esteem from the bottom of my heart.”

She leaned toward the young man, and lightly
deposited on his forehead a kiss which he dared not return even on her hand.

He rose, filled with an indescribable feeling of respect and pride. He had not known such sweet peace of mind, such delicious emotion since the day when, a credulous and pious young villager, he had taken the first communion, one lovely spring morning, amid the perfume of incense and flowers.

They returned as they had come, and Bénédict felt perfectly calm as he rode by Valentine's side. That kiss had bound them together by a sacred bond of fraternal affection. Mutual confidence was established between them, and, when they parted at the park gate, Bénédict promised to come soon to Raimbault with news of Louise.

“I hardly dare ask you to do it,” said Valentine, “and yet I desire it very earnestly. But my mother is so harsh in her prejudices!”

“I shall have no difficulty in submitting to every sort of humiliation in your service,” Bénédict replied, “and I flatter myself that I can expose myself to danger without compromising anybody else.”

He bowed low and disappeared.

Valentine took the darkest path through the park; but she soon spied, through the leaves, beneath those long galleries of verdure, the gleam of torches moving to and fro. She found the whole household in commotion, and her mother wringing the coachman's hands, abusing the footman, appealing humbly to some, flying into a passion with others, weeping like a mother, issuing orders like a queen, and, probably for the first time in her life, appealing for help to the compassion of others. But as soon as she recognized the step of Valentine's horse, instead of giving way to an outburst of joy, she abandoned herself
to the wrath which had long been held in check by anxiety. Her daughter read in her eyes no feeling save resentment for having suffered.

“Where have you been ?” she cried in a loud voice, pulling her from her saddle with a violence which nearly threw her to the ground. “Do you worry me to death for amusement ? Do you think this a well-chosen time to dream by moonlight and forget yourself wandering over the country ? After I have worn myself out to humor your whims, do you think it's decent to stay away until this time of night ? Is this all the respect you have for your mother, even if you don't love her ?”

She dragged her to the salon, overwhelming her thus with the bitterest reproaches and the most cruel accusations. Valentine stammered a few words in her own defence, but had no need of the presence of mind which she would have been compelled to exert in explanations which luckily she was not called upon to give. She found her grandmother in the salon, drinking tea ; the old lady held out her arms, crying :

“Ah ! here you are, my love ! Do you know that you have caused your mother much uneasiness? For my part, I knew perfectly well that nothing serious could have happened to you in this country, where everybody reveres the name you bear. Come, kiss me, and let's forget all about it. As you are found again, I can eat with a better appetite. That ride in the calèche has made me infernally hungry.”

As she spoke, the old marchioness, whose teeth were still sound, attacked a slice of English
toast,
which her companion had prepared for her. The painstaking care with which the woman performed the task proved how important a matter the proper preparation of that delicacy was in her mistress's eyes. Meanwhile the countess, in
whom overbearing pride and a violent temper were at all events the vices of an impressionable nature, had yielded to the force of her emotions and fallen half-fainting upon a chair.

Valentine threw herself at her feet, assisted to unlace her, covered her hands with tears and kisses, and sincerely regretted the taste of happiness she had enjoyed, when she saw what suffering it had caused her mother. The marchioness abandoned her supper, taking little pains to dissemble the annoyance she felt, and hustled about her daughter-in-law with her usual alertness and vivacity, assuring her that it would amount to nothing.

When the countess opened her eyes, she pushed Valentine roughly away, and told her that she had too much reason to complain of her to accept her attentions; and when the poor child expressed her sorrow, and with clasped hands asked her pardon, she was sternly ordered to bed, without the maternal kiss.

The marchioness, who prided herself on being the consoling angel of the family, took her granddaughter's arm to go up to her room, and said to her as they parted, after kissing her on the forehead :

“Come, come, dear girl, don't worry. Your mother's a little out of sorts to-night, but it's nothing. Don't amuse yourself by worrying about it; you will have blotches on your face to morrow, and that won't suit our good Lansac.”

Valentine forced herself to smile, and, when she was alone in her room, threw herself on her bed, utterly worn out with grief, joy, fatigue, fear, hope and a thousand conflicting feelings, which jostled one another in her heart.

About an hour later she heard the sound of Monsieur de Lansac's spurred boots in the corridor. The
marchioness, who never went to bed before midnight, called him into her room, and Valentine, hearing their voices, at once joined them.

“Ah !” said the marchioness, with the malevolent joy of old age, which respects none of the finer feelings of modesty, because it no longer knows what modesty is, “I was very sure that the hussy, instead of going to sleep, was waiting for her fiancé's return, with ear on the alert and throbbing heart! Well, well, my children, I think it's high time you were married.”

Nothing could have been less appropriate than that suggestion to Valentine's placid and dignified attachment to Monsieur de Lansac. She flushed with annoyance, but the mild and respectful expression of her fiancé reassured her.

“I could not sleep, it is true,” she said, “until I had asked your pardon for all the anxiety I have caused you.”

“When a person is dear to us,” replied Monsieur de Lansac, with the utmost grace, “we love even the torments of anxiety she causes us.”

Valentine retired, confused and agitated. She felt that she had involuntarily treated Monsieur de Lansac very badly, and her conscience was vexed at the thought that she must wait some hours more before confessing it.

If she had had less refinement of sentiment and more knowledge of the world, she would have refrained from making that confession.

Monsieur de Lansac had played the most important part in the evening's adventure, and, however innocent Valentine might be, it might, perhaps, seem a difficult matter to that man of the world to forgive his fiancée fully and freely for the species of conspiracy she had entered into with another man to deceive him. But
Valentine was ashamed to be an accessory to a falsehood told to the man who was to be her husband.

The next morning she went to him in the salon.

“Evariste,” she said, going straight to the goal, “I have a troublesome secret on my mind ; I must tell it to you. If I am blameworthy, you will blame me. but at all events you shall not reproach me for my lack of loyalty.”

“Mon Dieu!
my dear Valentine, you make me shudder ! What can be coming after this solemn preamble ? Think of the position in which we stand ! No, no, I do not choose to listen to anything. This is the day that I am to leave you, to go to my post and sadly await the end of the everlasting month which stands between me and my happiness, and I do not propose to have this day, which is sad enough already, made sadder by a communication which will evidently be painful to you. Whatever you may have to say to me, whatever
crime
you may have committed, I forgive you. I tell you, Valentine, your heart is too noble, your life too pure for me to have the insolence to presume to confess you.”

“What I have to tell you will not sadden you,” replied Valentine, recovering all her confidence in Monsieur de Lansac's judgment. “On the contrary, even if you should accuse me of acting too precipitately, you will rejoice with me none the less, I am sure, over an event which fills my heart with joy. I have found my sister——”

“Hush!” exclaimed Monsieur de Lansac, hastily, with a comical affectation of alarm. “Don't mention that name here! Your mother already has suspicions which are driving her to desperation. What would happen, great God! if she knew how far you had gone! Take my advice, my dear Valentine, keep this secret closely guarded in your heart, and don't mention it even to me. If you do, you will deprive me of the means of
convincing your mother, which my present air of perfect innocence gives me. And then,” he added, with a smile which took from his words all their harsh significance, “I am not yet your master—that is to say your protector—to a sufficient degree to consider myself justified in sanctioning an overt act of rebellion against the maternal will. Wait a month. It will seem much less long to you than to me.”