Calyste ran with the lightness of a young fawn to Les Touches and reached the portico just as Camille and Beatrix were leaving the grand salon after their dinner. He had the sense to offer his arm to Felicite.
“So you have abandoned your viscountess and her daughter for us,” she said, pressing his arm; “we are able now to understand the full merit of that sacrifice.”
“Are these Kergarouets related to the Portendueres, and to old Admiral de Kergarouet, whose widow married Charles de Vandenesse?” asked Madame de Rochefide.
“The viscountess is the admiral’s great-niece,” replied Camille.
“Well, she’s a charming girl,” said Beatrix, placing herself gracefully in a Gothic chair. “She will just do for you, Monsieur du Guenic.”
“The marriage will never take place,” said Camille hastily.
Mortified by the cold, calm air with which the marquise seemed to consider the Breton girl as the only creature fit to mate him, Calyste remained speechless and even mindless.
“Why so, Camille?” asked Madame de Rochefide.
“Really, my dear,” said Camille, seeing Calyste’s despair, “you are not generous; did I advise Conti to marry?”
Beatrix looked at her friend with a surprise that was mingled with indefinable suspicions.
Calyste, unable to understand Camille’s motive, but feeling that she came to his assistance and seeing in her cheeks that faint spot of color which he knew to mean the presence of some violent emotion, went up to her rather awkwardly and took her hand. But she left him and seated herself carelessly at the piano, like a woman so sure of her friend and lover that she can afford to leave him with another woman. She played variations, improvising them as she played, on certain themes chosen, unconsciously to herself, by the impulse of her mind; they were melancholy in the extreme.
Beatrix seemed to listen to the music, but she was really observing Calyste, who, much too young and artless for the part which Camille was intending him to play, remained in rapt adoration before his real idol.
After about an hour, during which time Camille continued to play, Beatrix rose and retired to her apartments. Camille at once took Calyste into her chamber and closed the door, fearing to be overheard; for women have an amazing instinct of distrust.
“My child,” she said, “if you want to succeed with Beatrix, you must seem to love me still, or you will fail. You are a child; you know nothing of women; all you know is how to love. Now loving and making one’s self beloved are two very different things. If you go your own way you will fall into horrible suffering, and I wish to see you happy. If you rouse, not the pride, but the self-will, the obstinacy which is a strong feature in her character, she is capable of going off at any moment to Paris and rejoining Conti; and what will you do then?”
“I shall love her.”
“You won’t see her again.”
“Oh! yes, I shall,” he said.
“How?”
“I shall follow her.”
“Why, you are as poor as Job, my dear boy.”
“My father, Gasselin, and I lived for three months in Vendee on one hundred and fifty francs, marching night and day.”
“Calyste,” said Mademoiselle des Touches, “now listen to me. I know that you have too much candor to play a part, too much honesty to deceive; and I don’t want to corrupt such a nature as yours. Yet deception is the only way by which you can win Beatrix; I take it therefore upon myself. In a week from now she shall love you.”
“Is it possible?” he said clasping his hands.
“Yes,” replied Camille, “but it will be necessary to overcome certain pledges which she has made to herself. I will do that for you. You must not interfere in the rather arduous task I shall undertake. The marquise has a true aristocratic delicacy of perception; she is keenly distrustful; no hunter could meet with game more wary or more difficult to capture. You are wholly unable to cope with her; will you promise me a blind obedience?”
“What must I do?” replied the youth.
“Very little,” said Camille. “Come here every day and devote yourself to me. Come to my rooms; avoid Beatrix if you meet her. We will stay together till four o’clock; you shall employ the time in study, and I in smoking. It will be hard for you not to see her, but I will find you a number of interesting books. You have read nothing as yet of George Sand. I will send one of my people this very evening to Nantes to buy her works and those of other authors whom you ought to know. The evenings we will spend together, and I permit you to make love to me if you can — it will be for the best.”
“I know, Camille, that your affection for me is great and so rare that it makes me wish I had never met Beatrix,” he replied with simple good faith; “but I don’t see what you hope from all this.”
“I hope to make her love you.”
“Good heavens! it cannot be possible!” he cried, again clasping his hands toward Camille, who was greatly moved on seeing the joy that she gave him at her own expense.
“Now listen to me carefully,” she said. “If you break the agreement between us, if you have — not a long conversation — but a mere exchange of words with the marquise in private, if you let her question you, if you fail in the silent part I ask you to play, which is certainly not a very difficult one, I do assure you,” she said in a serious tone, “you will lose her forever.”
“I don’t understand the meaning of what you are saying to me,” cried Calyste, looking at Camille with adorable naivete.
“If you did understand it, you wouldn’t be the noble and beautiful Calyste that you are,” she replied, taking his hand and kissing it.
Calyste then did what he had never before done; he took Camille round the waist and kissed her gently, not with love but with tenderness, as he kissed his mother. Mademoiselle des Touches did not restrain her tears.
“Go now,” she said, “my child; and tell your viscountess that my carriage is at her command.”
Calyste wanted to stay longer, but he was forced to obey her imperious and imperative gesture.
He went home gaily; he believed that in a week the beautiful Beatrix would love him. The players at mouche found him once more the Calyste they had missed for the last two months. Charlotte attributed this change to herself. Mademoiselle de Pen–Hoel was charming to him. The Abbe Grimont endeavored to make out what was passing in the mother’s mind. The Chevalier du Halga rubbed his hands. The two old maids were as lively as lizards. The viscountess lost one hundred sous by accumulated mouches, which so excited the cupidity of Zephirine that she regretted not being able to see the cards, and even spoke sharply to her sister-inlaw, who acted as the proxy of her eyes.
The party lasted till eleven o’clock. There were two defections, the baron and the chevalier, who went to sleep in their respective chairs. Mariotte had made galettes of buckwheat, the baroness produced a tea-caddy. The illustrious house of du Guenic served a little supper before the departure of its guests, consisting of fresh butter, fruits, and cream, in addition to Mariotte’s cakes; for which festal event issued from their wrappings a silver teapot and some beautiful old English china sent to the baroness by her aunts. This appearance of modern splendor in the ancient hall, together with the exquisite grace of its mistress, brought up like a true Irish lady to make and pour out tea (that mighty affair to Englishwomen), had something charming about them. The most exquisite luxury could never have attained to the simple, modest, noble effect produced by this sentiment of joyful hospitality.
A few moments after Calyste’s departure from Les Touches, Beatrix, who had heard him go, returned to Camille, whom she found with humid eyes lying back on her sofa.
“What is it, Felicite?” asked the marquise.
“I am forty years old, and I love him!” said Mademoiselle des Touches, with dreadful tones of agony in her voice, her eyes becoming hard and brilliant. “If you knew, Beatrix, the tears I have shed over the lost years of my youth! To be loved out of pity! to know that one owes one’s happiness only to perpetual care, to the slyness of cats, to traps laid for innocence and all the youthful virtues — oh, it is infamous! If it were not that one finds absolution in the magnitude of love, in the power of happiness, in the certainty of being forever above all other women in his memory, the first to carve on that young heart the ineffaceable happiness of an absolute devotion, I would — yes, if he asked it — I would fling myself into the sea. Sometimes I find myself wishing that he would ask it; it would then be an oblation, not a suicide. Ah, Beatrix, by coming here you have, unconsciously, set me a hard task. I know it will be difficult to keep him against you; but you love Conti, you are noble and generous, you will not deceive me; on the contrary, you will help me to retain my Calyste’s love. I expected the impression you would make upon him, but I have not committed the mistake of seeming jealous; that would only have added fuel to the flame. On the contrary, before you came, I described you in such glowing colors that you hardly realize the portrait, although you are, it seems to me, more beautiful than ever.”
This vehement elegy, in which truth was mingled with deception, completely duped the marquise. Claude Vignon had told Conti the reasons for his departure, and Beatrix was, of course, informed of them. She determined therefore to behave with generosity and give the cold shoulder to Calyste; but at the same instant there came into her soul that quiver of joy which vibrates in the heart of every woman when she finds herself beloved. The love a woman inspires in any man’s heart is flattery without hypocrisy, and it is impossible for some women to forego it; but when that man belongs to a friend, his homage gives more than pleasure — it gives delight. Beatrix sat down beside her friend and began to coax her prettily.
“You have not a white hair,” she said; “you haven’t even a wrinkle; your temples are just as fresh as ever; whereas I know more than one woman of thirty who is obliged to cover hers. Look, dear,” she added, lifting her curls, “see what that journey to Italy has cost me.”
Her temples showed an almost imperceptible withering of the texture of the delicate skin. She raised her sleeves and showed Camille the same slight withering of the wrists, where the transparent tissue suffered the blue network of swollen veins to be visible, and three deep lines made a bracelet of wrinkles.
“There, my dear, are two spots which — as a certain writer ferreting for the miseries of women, has said — never lie,” she continued. “One must needs have suffered to know the truth of his observation. Happily for us, most men know nothing about it; they don’t read us like that dreadful author.”
“Your letter told me all,” replied Camille; “happiness ignores everything but itself. You boasted too much of yours to be really happy. Truth is deaf, dumb, and blind where love really is. Consequently, seeing very plainly that you have your reasons for abandoning Conti, I have feared to have you here. My dear, Calyste is an angel; he is as good as he is beautiful; his innocent heart will not resist your eyes; already he admires you too much not to love you at the first encouragement; your coldness can alone preserve him to me. I confess to you, with the cowardice of true passion, that if he were taken from me I should die. That dreadful book of Benjamin Constant, ‘Adolphe,’ tells us only of Adolphe’s sorrows; but what about those of the woman, hey? The man did not observe them enough to describe them; and what woman would have dared to reveal them? They would dishonor her sex, humiliate its virtues, and pass into vice. Ah! I measure the abyss before me by my fears, by these sufferings that are those of hell. But, Beatrix, I will tell you this: in case I am abandoned, my choice is made.”
“What is it?” cried Beatrix, with an eagerness that made Camille shudder.
The two friends looked at each other with the keen attention of Venetian inquisitors; their souls clashed in that rapid glance, and struck fire like flints. The marquise lowered her eyes.
“After man, there is nought but God,” said the celebrated woman. “God is the Unknown. I shall fling myself into that as into some vast abyss. Calyste has sworn to me that he admires you only as he would a picture; but alas! you are but twenty-eight, in the full magnificence of your beauty. The struggle thus begins between him and me by falsehood. But I have one support; happily I know a means to keep him true to me, and I shall triumph.”
“What means?”
“That is my secret, dear. Let me have the benefits of my age. If Claude Vignon, as Conti has doubtless told you, flings me back into the gulf, I, who had climbed to a rock which I thought inaccessible, — I will at least gather the pale and fragile, but delightful flowers that grow in its depths.”
Madame de Rochefide was moulded like wax in those able hands. Camille felt an almost savage pleasure in thus entrapping her rival in her toils. She sent her to bed that night piqued by curiosity, floating between jealousy and generosity, but most assuredly with her mind full of the beautiful Calyste.
“She will be enchanted to deceive me,” thought Camille, as she kissed her good-night.
Then, when she was alone, the author, the constructor of dramas, gave place to the woman, and she burst into tears. Filling her hookah with tobacco soaked in opium, she spent the greater part of the night in smoking, dulling thus the sufferings of her soul, and seeing through the clouds about her the beautiful young head of her ............