"Within an hour the gold shall be here. You have nothing else to say to me, my lord?"
"No, M. Doublet."
"A hundred and twenty-six thousand francs per annum, wholly uninc.u.mbered," repeated the steward, as he was about to quit the room; "this is a glorious day for me to see; I almost feared at one time that we should not secure this desirable property. Your lordship"s most humble servant, I take my leave."
"Good morning, M. Doublet."
As the door closed upon the steward, M. d"Harville, overcome with the mental agony he had repressed thus far, threw himself into an armchair, leaned his elbows on the desk before which he sat, and covering his face with his hands, for the first time since receiving the fatal _billet_, gave vent to a flood of hot, burning tears.
"Cruel mockery of fate!" cried he, at length, "to have made me rich, but to have given me only shame and dishonour to place within the gilded frame: the perjury of Clemence, the disgrace which will descend upon my innocent child. Can I suffer this? Or shall I for the sake of her unoffending offspring spare the guilty mother from the opprobrium of an exposure?" Then rising suddenly from his seat, with sparkling eyes and clenched teeth he cried, in a deep, determined voice, "No, no! Blood, blood! The fearful protection from laughter and derision. Ah, full well I can now comprehend her coldness, her antipathy, wretched, wretched woman!" Then, stopping all at once, as though melted by some tender recollection, he resumed, in a hoa.r.s.e tone, "Aversion! Alas! too well I know its cause. I inspire her with loathing, with disgust!" Then, after a lengthened silence, he cried, in a voice broken by sighs, "Yet, was it my fault or my misfortune? Should she have wronged me thus for a calamity beyond my power to avert? Surely I am a more fitting object for her pity than scorn and hatred." Again rekindling into his excited feelings, he reiterated, "Nothing but blood--the blood of both--can wash out this guilty stain! Doubtless he, the favoured lover, has been informed why she flies her husband"s arms."
This latter thought redoubled the fury of the marquis. He elevated his tightly compressed hands towards heaven, as though invoking its vengeance; then, pa.s.sing his burning fingers over his eyes as he recollected the necessity that existed for concealing his emotion from the servants of his establishment, he returned to his sleeping-apartment with an appearance of perfect tranquillity. There he found Joseph.
"Well, in what state are the guns?"
"In perfect order. Please to examine them, my lord."
"I came for the purpose of so doing. Has your lady yet rung?"
"I do not know, my lord."
"Then inquire."
Directly the servant had quitted the room, M. d"Harville hastily took from the gun-case a small powder-flask, some b.a.l.l.s and caps; then, locking the case, put the key in his pocket. Then going to the stand of arms, he took from it a pair of moderate-sized Manton"s pistols, loaded them, and placed them without difficulty in the pockets of his morning wrapper. Joseph returned with the intimation that Madame d"Harville was in her dressing-room.
"Has your lady ordered her carriage?"
"My lord, I heard Mlle. Juliette say to the head-coachman, when he came to inquire her ladyship"s orders for the day, that, "as it was cold, dry walking, if her ladyship went out at all, she would prefer going on foot.""
"Very well. Stay,--I forgot. I shall not go out hunting before to-morrow, or probably, next day. Desire Williams to look the small travelling-britcska carefully over. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly, my lord; it shall be attended to. Will not your lordship require a stick?"
"No. Pray tell me, is there not a hackney coach-stand near here?"
"Quite close, my lord,--in the Rue de Lille."
After a moment"s hesitation, the marquis continued: "Go and inquire of Mlle. Juliette whether Madame d"Harville can see me for a few minutes."
Joseph obeyed.
"Yes," murmured the marquis, "I will see the cause of all my misery,--my disgrace. I will contemplate the guilty mask beneath which the impure heart conceals its adulterous designs. I will listen to the false lips that speak the words of innocence, while deep dishonour lurks in the candid smile,--a smile that seemed to me as that of an angel. Yet "tis an appalling spectacle to watch the words, the looks, of one who, breathing only the sentiments of a chaste wife and mother, is about to sully your name with one of those deep, deadly stains which can only be washed out in blood. Fool that I am to give her the chance of again bewildering my senses! She will look at me with her accustomed sweetness and candour; greet me (all guilty as she is) with the same pure smile she bestows upon her child, as, kneeling at her lap, it lisps its early prayer. That look,--those eyes, mirrors of the soul,--the more modest and pure the glance" (D"Harville shuddered with contempt) "the greater must be the innate corruption and falsehood! Alas! she has proved herself a consummate dissembler; and I--I--have been the veriest dupe!
Only let me consider with what sentiments must that woman look upon me, if just previous to her meeting with her favoured lover I pay her my accustomed visit, and express my usual devotion and love for her,--the young, the virtuous wife, the tender, sensible, and devoted mother, as until this wretched moment I would have died to prove her. Can I, dare I, trust myself in her presence, with the knowledge of her being but too impatient for the arrival of that blessed hour which conveys her to her guilty rendezvous and infamous paramour? Oh, Clemence, Clemence, you in whom all my hopes and fondest affections were placed, is this a just return? No! no! no!" again repeated M. d"Harville, with rapidly returning excitement. "False, treacherous woman! I will not see you! I will not trust my ears to your feigned words! Nor you, my child. At the sight of your innocent countenance I should unman myself, and compromise my just revenge."
Quitting his apartment, M. d"Harville, instead of repairing to those of the marquise, contented himself with leaving a message for her through Mlle. Juliette, to the effect that he wished a short conversation with Madame d"Harville, but that being obliged to go out just then, he should be glad, if it a.s.sorted with Madame la Marquise"s perfect convenience, to breakfast with her at twelve o"clock.
"And so," said the unhappy M. d"Harville, "fancying that after twelve o"clock I shall be safe at home, she will consider herself more at liberty to follow out her own plans."
He then repaired to the coach-stand contiguous to his mansion, and summoned a vehicle from the ranks.
"Now, coachee," said he, affecting to disguise his rank, "what"s o"clock?"
"All right, master," said the man, drawing up to the side of the footway, "where am I to drive to? Let"s have a right understanding, and a look at the clock. Why, it"s as close on half-after eleven as may be."
"Now, then, drive to the corner of the Rue St. Dominique, and wait at the end of the garden wall which runs along there; do you understand?"
"Yes, yes,--I know."
M. d"Harville then drew down the blinds of the _fiacre_; the coachman drove on, and soon arrived opposite the Hotel d"Harville, from which point of observation it was impossible for any person to enter or quit the house without the marquis having a full view of them. One o"clock was the hour fixed in the note; and with his eyes riveted on the entrance-gates of the mansion, the marquis waited in painful suspense, absorbed in a whirl of fearful thoughts and maddening conjectures. Time stole on imperceptibly; twelve o"clock reverberated from the dome of St.
Thomas Aquinas, when the door opened slowly at the Hotel d"Harville, and Madame d"Harville herself came timidly forth.
"Already?" exclaimed the unhappy husband; "how punctual she is! She fears to keep him waiting," cried the marquis, with a mixture of irony and savage rage.
The cold was excessive; the pavement hard and dry. Clemence was dressed in a black velvet bonnet, covered with a veil of the same colour, and a thickly wadded pelisse of dark ruby satin, a large shawl of dark blue cashmere fell to the very hem of her pelisse, which she lightly and gracefully held up while crossing the street. Thanks to this movement, the taper foot and graceful ankle of Madame d"Harville, cased in an exquisitely fitting boot of black satin, were exposed to view.
It was strange, that amid the painful and bewildering ideas that crowded the brain of D"Harville, he should have found one thought to waste upon the beauty of his wife"s foot; but so it was; and at the moment that was about to separate them for ever, to his eager gaze that fairy foot and well-turned ankle had never looked so charming; and then, as by a rapid train of thought he recalled the matchless loveliness of his wife, and, as he had ever believed till now, her purity, her mental graces, he groaned aloud as he remembered that another was preferred to him, and that the light figure that glided on before his fixed gaze, was but the hollow spectre of fallen goodness, a lost, degraded creature, hastening to steep her husband and infant in irremediable disgrace, for the indulging of a base and guilty pa.s.sion. Even in that wretched moment he felt how dearly, how exclusively he had loved her; and for the first time during the blow which had fallen on him, he knew that he mourned the lovely woman almost equally with the virtuous mother and chaste wife. A cry of rage and mingled fury escaped him, as he pictured the rapture of her meeting with the lover of her choice; and a sharp, darting pain quivered through his heart as he remembered that Clemence, with all her youth and beauty, her countless charms, both of body and mind, was lost to him for ever.
Hitherto his pa.s.sionate grief had been unmixed by any alloy of self. He had bewailed the sanct.i.ty of the marriage-vow trampled under foot, the abandonment of all sworn and sacred duties; but his sufferings of rage, jealousy, and regret almost overpowered him, and with much difficulty was he able to command his voice sufficiently to say to the coachman, while partially drawing up the blind:
"Do you see that lady in the blue shawl and black bonnet walking along by the wall?"
"Yes, yes! I see her safe enough."
"Well, then, go slowly along, and keep up with her. Should she go to the coach-stand I had you from, pull up; and when she has got into a _fiacre_, follow it wherever it goes."
"All right,--I understand! Now this is what I call a good joke!"
M. d"Harville had conjectured rightly. Madame d"Harville repaired directly to the coach-stand, and beckoning a _fiacre_ off the stand, instantly got in, and drove off, closely followed by the vehicle containing her husband.
They had proceeded but a very short distance, when the coachman took the road to the church of St. Thomas Aquinas, and, to the surprise of M.
d"Harville, pulled up directly in front.
"What is this for? What are you about?"
"Why, master, the lady you told me to follow has just alighted here, and a smart, tidy leg and foot of her own she has got. Her dress somehow caught; so, you see, I couldn"t help having a peep, nohow. This is downright good fun though, this is!"
A thousand varied thoughts agitated M. d"Harville. One minute he fancied that his wife, fearing pursuit, had taken this step to escape detection; then hope whispered that the letter which had given him so much uneasiness, might after all be only an infamous calumny; for if guilty, what could be gained by this false a.s.sumption of piety? Would it not be a species of sacrilegious mockery? At this suggestion a bright ray of hope shot across the troubled mind of M. d"Harville, arising from the striking contrast between Clemence"s present occupation and the crime alleged as her motive for quitting her home. Alas! this consolatory illusion was speedily destroyed. Leaning in at the open window the coachman observed:
"I say, master, that nice little woman you are after has got back into her coach."
"Then follow quickly."
"I"m off! Now this is what I call downright good fun. Capital; hang me if it ain"t!"
The vehicle reached the Quais, the Hotel de Ville, the Rue St. Avoye, and, at last, Rue du Temple.
"I say," said the coachman, turning round to speak to M. d"Harville from his seat, "master, just look. My mate, there, has stopped at No. 17; we are about at 13. Shall I stop here or go on to 17?"
"Stop here."