After a few hours of painful sleep, Monsieur de Lucan rose the next day, his brain laden with cares.
The resumption of hostilities, which had been clearly signified to him foreboded surely fresh troubles for his peace and fresh anguish for Clotilde's happiness. Was he, then, about returning to those odious agitations which had so long harassed his existence, and this time without any hopes of escape? How, indeed, was it possible not to despair of that untamable nature which age and reason, which so much attention and affection had left unmoved in her prejudices and her hatred? How was it possible to understand, and, above all, ever to overcome the quixotic sentiment, or rather the mania which had taken possession of that concentrated soul, and which was smoldering in it, ever ready to break forth in furious outbursts?
Clotilde and Julia had not yet made their appearance. Lucan went to take a walk in the garden, to breathe once more the peace of his beloved solitude, pending the anticipated storms. At the extremity of an alley of evergreens, he discovered the Count de Moras, his arm resting on the pedestal of an old statue, and his eyes fixed on the ground.
Monsieur de Moras had never been a dreamer, but since his arrival at the chateau, he had, on more than one occasion, manifested to Lucan a melancholy state of mind quite foreign to his natural disposition. Lucan had felt alarmed; nevertheless, as he did not himself like any one to intrude upon his confidence, he had abstained from questioning him.
They shook hands as they met.
"You came home late last night?" inquired the count.
"At about three o'clock."
"Oh! povero! Apropos, thanks for your kindness to Julia. How did she behave to you?"
"Why—well enough," said Lucan—"a little peculiar, as usual."
"Oh! peculiar of course!"
He smiled rather sadly, took Monsieur de Lucan's arm, and leading him through the meandering paths of the garden:
"Voyons, mon cher," he said in a suppressed voice, "between you and me, what is Julia?"
"How, my friend?"
"Yes, what sort of a woman is my wife? If you know, do tell me, I beg of you."
"Excuse me, but it is the very question I would like to ask of you myself."
"Of me?" said the count. "But I have not the slightest idea. She is a Sphinx, a riddle, the solution of which escapes me completely. She both charms and frightens me. She is peculiar, you said? She is more than that; she is fantastic. She is not of this world. I know not whom or what I have married. You remember that cold and beautiful creature in the Arabian tales who rose at night to go and feast in the graveyard. It's absurd, but she reminds me of that."
The count's troubled look, the constrained laugh with which he accompanied his words, moved Lucan deeply.
"So, then," said the latter, "you are unhappy?"
"It is impossible to be more so," replied the count, pressing his hand hard. "I adore her, and I am jealous—without knowing of whom and of what! She does not love me—and yet she loves some one—she must love some one! How can I doubt it? Look at her; she is the very embodiment of passion; the fire of passion overflows in her words, in her looks, in the blood of her veins! And near me, she is as cold as the statue upon a tomb!"
"Frankly, mon cher," said Lucan, "you seem to exaggerate your disasters greatly. In reality they seem to amount to very little. In the first place, you are seriously in love for the first time in your life, I think; you had heard a great deal said about love, about passion, and perhaps you were expecting of them excessive wonders. In the second place, I must beg you to observe that very young women are rarely very passionate. The sort of coolness of which you complain is therefore quite easy to explain without the intervention of anything supernatural. Young women, I repeat, are generally idealists; their love has no substance. You ask of whom or of what you should be jealous? Be jealous, then, of all those vague and romantic aspirations that torment youthful imaginations; be jealous of the wind, of the tempest, of the barren moors, of the rugged cliffs, of my old manor, of my words and of my ruins—for Julia adores all that. Be jealous, above all, of that ardent worship she has avowed to her father's memory, and which still absorbs her—I have lately had a proof of the fact—the keenest of her passion."
"You do me good," rejoined Pierre de Moras, breathing more freely, "and yet I had already thought of all these things. But if she does not love now, she will some day—and suppose it should not be me! Were she to bestow upon another all that she refuses me! my friend," added the count, whose handsome features turned pale, "I would kill her with my own hand!"
"So much for being in love," said Lucan; "and I, am I nothing more to you, then?"
"You, my friend," said Moras with emotion, "you see my confidence in you! I have revealed to you weaknesses of which I am ashamed. Ah! why have I ever known any other feeling than that of friendship! Friendship alone returns as much as it receives; it fortifies instead of enervating; it is the only passion worthy of a man. Never forsake me, my friend; you will console me, whatever may happen."
The bell that was ringing for breakfast called them back to the chateau. Julia pretended being tired and ailing. Under shelter of this pretext, her silent humor, her more than dry answers to Lucan's polite questions, passed at first without awakening either her mother's or her husband's attention; but during the remainder of the day, and amid the various incidents of family life, Julia's aggressive tone and disagreeable manners toward Lucan became too strongly marked not to be noticed. However, as Lucan had the patience and good taste not to seem to notice them, each one kept his own impressions to himself. The dinner was, that day, more quiet than usual. The conversation fell, toward the end of the meal, upon extremely delicate ground, and it was Julia who brought it there, though, however, without the least thought of evil. She was exhausting her mocking verve upon a little boy of eight or ten—the son of the Marchioness de Boisfresnay—who had annoyed her extremely the night before, by parading through the ball his own pretentious little person, and by throwing himself pleasantly like a top between the legs of the gentlemen and through the dresses of the ladies. The marchioness went into ecstasies at these charming pranks. Clotilde defended her mildly, alleging that this child was her only son.
"That is no reason for bestowing upon society one scoundrel the more," said Lucan.
"However," rejoined Julia, who hastened to be no longer of her own opinion as soon as her step-father seemed to have rallied to it, "it is a well acknowledged fact that spoiled children are those who turn out the best."
"There are at least some exceptions," said Lucan, coldly.
"I know of none," said Julia.
"Mon Dieu!" said the Count de Moras in a tone of conciliation, "right or wrong, it is quite the fashion, nowadays, to spoil children."
"It is a criminal fashion," said Lucan. "Formerly their parents whipped them, and thus made men of them."
"When a man has such a disposition as that," said Julia, "he does not deserve to have any children—and he has none!" she added with a direct look that further aggravated the unkind and even cruel intention of her words.
Monsieur de Lucan turned very pale. Clotilde's eyes filled with tears. Julia, embarrassed at her triumph, left the room. Her mother, after remaining for a few moments, her face covered with her hands, rose from the table and went to join her.
"Now, mon cher," said Monsieur de Moras as soon as he found himself alone with Lucan, "what the mischief took place between you two last night? You did tell me something about it this morning, but I was so much absorbed in my own selfish preoccupations, that I paid no attention to it. But tell me, what did take place between you?"
"Nothing serious. Only I was able to satisfy myself that she had not yet forgiven my occupying a place which, according to her ideas, should never have been filled."
"What would you advise me to do, George?" rejoined Monsieur de Moras. "I am ready to do whatever you say.
"My dear friend," said Lucan, laying gently his hands upon Pierre's shoulders, "don't be offended, but life in common, under such conditions, becomes a very difficult matter. It is best not to wait until some irreparable scene. In Paris we will be able to see each other without difficulty. I advise you to take her away."
"Suppose she is not willing."
"I should speak firmly," said Lucan, looking him straight in the eyes; "I have some work to do this evening; it happens well and will give you a good opportunity. In the meantime, au revoir."
Monsieur de Lucan locked himself up in his library. An hour later, Clotilde came to join him.
He could see that she had wept a great deal; but she held out her forehead to him with her sweetest smile. While he was kissing her, she murmured simply and in a whisper:
"Forgive her for my sake!"
And the charming creature withdrew in haste to hide her emotions.
The next morning, Monsieur de Lucan, who, as usual, had risen quite early, had been writing for some time near the library window, which opened at quite a moderate height on the garden. He was not a little surprised to see his step-daughter's face appear among the honeysuckle vines that crept over the iron trellis of the balcony:
"Monsieur," she said in her most melodious tone, "are you very busy?"
"Oh, not at all!" he replied, rising at the same time.
"It's because, you see, the weather is perfectly delightful," she said. "Will you come and take a walk with me?"
"Of course I will."
"Well, come then. Good Heavens! how sweet this honeysuckle does smell!"
And she snatched off a few flowers, which she threw to Lucan through the window, with a burst of laughter. He fastened them in his button-hole, making the gesture of a man who understands nothing of what is going on, but who has no reason to be angry.
He found her in fresh morning costume, stamping upon the sand with her light and impatient foot.
"Monsieur de Lucan," she cries, gayly, "my mother wishes me to be amiable with you, my husband wishes it, Heaven wills it, too, I suppose; that's why I am willing also, and I assure you that I can be very amiable when I try. You'll see!"
"Is it possible?" said Lucan.
"You'll see, sir!" she replied, dropping him with all possible grace, a regular stage curtsey.
"And where are we going, pray, madam?"
"Wherever you like—through the woods, at random, if you please."
The wooded hills came so close to the chateau, that they bordered with a fringe of shade one side of the yard. Monsieur de Lucan and Julia took the first path that came in their way; but it was not long before Julia left the beaten road-way, to walk at hazard from tree to tree, wandering at random, beating the thickets with her cane, picking flowers or leaves, stopping in ecstasy before the luminous bands that striped here and there the mossy carpets, frankly intoxicated with movement, open air, sunshine, and youth. While walking, she cast to her companion words of pleasant fellowship, playful interpellation, childish jests, and caused the woods to ring again with the melody of her laughter.
In her admiration for the wild flowers, she had gradually collected a regular bundle, of which Monsieur de Lucan accepted the burden with cheerful resignation. Noticing that he was almost bending under the weight, she sat down upon the gnarled roots of an old oak, in order, she said, to make a selection among all this pell-mell. She then took upon her lap the bundles of grass and flowers, and began throwing out everything that appeared to her of inferior quality. She handed over to Lucan, seated a step or two from her, whatever she thought fit to retain for the final bouquet, justifying gravely her decision upon each plant that she examined:
"You, my dear, you are too thin! you're pretty, but too short! you, you smell bad! you, you look stupid."
Then, turning abruptly into another train of thought, which was not at first without causing some uneasiness to Monsieur de Lucan:
"It was you, wasn't it, who advised Pierre to speak to me with firmness?"
"I?" said Lucan, "what an idea!"
"It must have been you. You," she went on again, speaking to her flowers, "you look sickly, good-night! Yes, it must have been you. One might think you quite meek, to look at you, whereas, on the contrary, you are very harsh, very tyrannical."
"Ferocious!" said Lucan.
"At any rate, I have no fault to find with you for that. You were right; poor Pierre is too weak with me. I like a man to be a man. And yet he is very brave, is he not?"
"Extremely so," said Lucan; "he is capable of the most energetic actions."
"He looks like it, and yet with me—he is an angel."
"It is because he loves you."
"Quite probable!—some of those flowers are so curious. Look at this one; it looks like a little lady!"
"I hope that you love him too, my good Pierre?"
"Quite probable, too!"
After a pause, she shook her head:
"And why should I love him?"
"What a question!" said Lucan. "Why, because he is perfectly worthy of being loved; because he has every quality; intelligence, heart, and even beauty—finally, because you have married him."
"Monsieur de Lucan, will you allow me to tell you something confidentially?"
"I beg you to do so."
"That trip to Italy has been very injurious to me."
"In what way?"
"Before my marriage, I did not think myself positively ugly, but I fancied myself at least quite plain."
"Yes! Well?"
"Well! while traveling about Italy, among all those souvenirs and those marbles, so much admired, I made strange reflections. I said to myself that, after all, these princesses and goddesses of the ancient world, who drove shepherds and kings mad, for whose sake wars broke out and sacrileges were committed, were persons pretty much after my own style. Then occurred to me the fatal idea of my own beauty! I felt that I disposed of an exceptional power; that I was a sacred object that could not be given away for a vulgar trifle, and which could only be the reward—how can I say?—of a great deed or of a crime!"
Lucan remained for a moment astonished at the audacious naivete of that language. He thought best, however, to laugh at it.
"But, my dear Julia," he said, "take care; you mistake the age. We are no longer in the days when nations went to war for the sake of a woman's pretty eyes. However, speak about it to Pierre; he has everything required to furnish the great action you want. As to the crime, I think you had better give it up."
"Do you think so?" said Julia. "What a pity!" she added, bursting out into a hearty laugh. "You see, I tell you all the nonsense that comes in my head. That's amiable enough, I hope, is it not?"
"It is certainly extremely amiable," said Lucan. "Keep on."
"With such precious encouragement, sir!" she said, rising and finishing her sentence with a courtesy; "but for the present, let us go to breakfast. I recommend my bouquet to your attention. Hold the head down. Walk ahead, sir, and by the shortest road, if you please, for I have an appetite that is bringing tears to my eyes."
Lucan took the path that led most directly to the chateau. She followed him with nimble step, at times humming a cavatina, at others addressing him fresh instructions as to the manner of holding her bouquet, or touching him lightly with the end of her cane, to make him admire some birds perched upon a branch.
Clotilde and Monsieur de Moras were waiting for them, seated upon a bench outside the gate of the chateau. The anxiety depicted upon their countenances vanished at the sound of Julia's laughing voice.
As soon as she saw them, she snatched the bouquet from Lucan's hands, ran toward Clotilde, and throwing on her lap her fragrant harvest:
"Mother," she said, "we have had a delightful walk—I had a great deal of fun; Monsieur de Lucan also, and what's more, he has improved very much by my conversation, I opened up new horizons to him!"
She described with her hand a great curve in the air, to indicate the immensity of the horizons she had opened up to Monsieur de Lucan. Then, drawing her mother toward the dining-room, and snuffing the air with apparent relish:
"Oh! that kitchen of my mother's!" she said. "What an aroma!"
This charming humor, which was a source of great rejoicing to all the guests of the chateau, never flagged during that entire day, and, most unexpected of all, it continued during the next and the following days without perceptible change. If Julia did still nurture any remnants of her moody cares, she had at least the kindness of keeping them to herself, and to suffer alone. More than once, still, she was seen returning from her solitary excursions with gloomy eye and clouded brow; but she shook off these equivocal dispositions as soon as she found herself again in the family circle, and was all amiability.
Toward Monsieur de Lucan particularly she showed herself most agreeable; feeling, probably, that she had many amends to make in that direction. She went so far as to take up a great deal of his time without much discretion, and to call him a little too often in requisition for walks or rides, for tapestry drawings, for playing duets with her, sometimes for nothing, simply to disturb him, standing in front of his windows, and asking him, in the midst of his reading, all sorts of burlesque questions. All this was charming; Monsieur de Lucan lent himself to it with the utmost good nature, and did not surely deserve great credit for doing so.
About this time, the Baroness de Pers came to spend three days with her daughter. She was at once advised, with full particulars, of the miraculous change that had taken place in Julia's character, and of her behavior toward her step-father. On witnessing the gracious attentions which she lavished upon Monsieur de Lucan, Madame de Pers manifested the liveliest satisfaction, in the midst of which, however, could be seen at times some slight traces of her former prejudices against her grand-daughter.
The day before the expected departure of the baroness, some of the neighbors were invited to dinner for her gratification, for she had but very little taste for the intimacy of family life, and was passionately fond of strangers. For want of time to do any better, they gave her for company, the cure of Vastville, the local physician, the receiver of taxes, and recorder of deeds, all of whom were tolerably frequent guests at the chateau, and great admirers of Julia. It was doubtless not a great deal; it was enough, however, to furnish to the baroness an occasion for wearing one of her handsome dinner-dresses.
Julia, during the dinner, seemed to make it a point to effect the conquest of the cure, a simple old man, who yielded to his fair neighbor's fascinations with a sort of joyous stupor. She made him eat, she made him drink, she made him laugh.
"What a little serpent she is, isn't she, Monsieur le Cure?" said the baroness.
"She is very lovely," said the cure.
"Enough to make one shudder," rejoined the baroness.
In the evening, after waltzing for a little while around the room, Julia, accompanied by her husband, sang in her beautiful, grave voice, some unpublished melodies and national songs she had brought back from Italy. One of these tunes having reminded her of a sort of tarentella she had seen danced by some women at Procida, she requested her husband to play it. She was explaining at the same time, with much animation, how this tarentella was danced, giving a rapid outline of the steps, the gestures and the attitudes; then, suddenly carried away by the ardor of her narrative:
"Wait a moment, Pierre," she said, "I am going to dance it. That will be much more simple."
She lifted the long train of her dress, which impeded her movements, and requested her mother to loop it up with pins. In the meantime she was right busy herself; there were on the mantel-piece, and on the consoles, vases filled with flowers and verdure; she drew freely from them with her nimble fingers, and, standing before a mirror, she fastened and twined pell-mell, in her magnificent hair, flowers, leaves, bunches, ears, anything that happened to fall under her hands. With her head loaded with that heavy and quivering wreath, she came to place herself in the center of the parlor.
"Go on now, dear!" she said to Monsieur de Moras. He played the tarentella, that began with a sort of slow and measured ballet-step, which Julia performed in her own masterly style, folding and unfolding in turn, like two garlands, her peri's arms; then the rhythm becoming more and more animated, she struck the floor with her rapid and repeated steps, with the wild suppleness and the wanton smile of a young bacchante. Suddenly she brought the performance to a close with a long slide that carried her, all panting, before Monsieur de Lucan, seated opposite to her. There, she bent one knee, lay with rapid gesture both her hands upon her hair, and tossing about at the same time her inclined head, she shook off her crown in a shower of flowers at the feet of Lucan, saying in her sweetest voice, and in a tone of gracious homage:
"There! sir!"
After which, she rose, and, still sliding, made her way to an arm-chair, into which she threw herself, and taking up the cure's three-cornered hat, she began to fan herself vigorously with it.
In the midst of the applause and the laughter that filled the parlor, the Baroness de Pers drew gently nearer to Lucan on the sofa which they were jointly occupying, and said to him in a whisper:
"Tell me, my dear sir, what in the world is the meaning of this new system? Do you know that I still preferred the old style myself?"
"How, dear madam? And why so?" said Lucan simply.
But before the baroness had time to explain, admitting that such was her intention, Julia was taken with another fancy.
"Really," she said, "I am smothering here. Monsieur de Lucan, do offer me your arm."
She went out, and Lucan followed her. She stopped in the vestibule to cover her head with her great white vail, seemed to hesitate between the door that led into the garden and that which led into the yard, and then deciding:
"To the Ladies' Walk," she said; "it's coolest there."
"The Ladies' Walk," which was Julia's favorite strolling resort, opened opposite the avenue, on the other side of the court-yard. It was a gently sloping path contrived between the rocky base of the wooded hill and the banks of a ravine that seemed to have been one of the moats of the old castle. A brook flowed at the bottom of this ravine with a melancholy murmur; it became merged, a little farther off, into a small lake shaded by willows, and guarded by two old marble nymphs, to which the Ladies' Walk was indebted for its name, consecrated by the local tradition. Half-way between the yard and the pond, fragments of wall and broken arches, the evident remnants of some outer fortification, rose against the hill-side; for the space of a few paces, these ruins bordered the path with their heavy buttresses, and projected into it, together with festoons of ivy and briar, a mass of shade which night changed into densest darkness. It looked then as if the passage was broken by an abyss. The gloomy character of this site was not, however, without some mitigating features; the path was strewn with fine, dry sand; rustic benches stood against the bluff; finally, the grassy banks that sloped down into the ravine were dotted with hyacinths, violets, and dwarf roses whose perfume rose and lingered in that shaded alley like the odor of incense in a church.
It was then about the end of July, and the heat had been overpowering during the day. After leaving the atmosphere of the court-yard, still aglow with the fires of the setting sun, Julia breathed eagerly the cool air of the woods and of the brook.
"Dieu! how delightful this is!" she said.
"But I am afraid this may be a little too delightful," said Lucan; "allow me."
And he wound up in a double fold round her neck the floating ends of her vail.
"What! do you value my life, then?" she said.
"Most undoubtedly."
"That's magnanimous!"
She walked a few steps in silence, resting lightly upon the arm of her companion, and rocking, in her peculiar way, her graceful figure.
"Your good cure must take me for a species of demon," she added.
"He is not the only one," said Lucan, with ironical coldness.
She laughed a short and constrained laugh; then, after another pause, and while continuing to walk with downcast eyes:
"You must certainly hate me a little less now; say, don't you?"
"A little less."
"Be serious, will you? I know that I have made you suffer a great deal. Are you beginning to forgive me now?"
Her voice had assumed an accent of tenderness quite unusual to it, and which touched Monsieur de Lucan.
"I forgive you with all my heart, my child," he replied.
She stopped, and grasping his two hands:
"True? We will not hate each other any more?" she said, in a low and apparently timid tone. "You love me a little?"
"Thank you," said Lucan, with grave emotion; "thank you; I love you very much."
As she was drawing him gently toward her he clasped her in a frank and affectionate embrace, and pressed his lips upon the forehead she was holding up to him; but at the same instant he felt her supple figure stiffen; her head rolled back; then she sank bodily, and slipped in his arms like a flower whose stem has suddenly been mowed down.
There was a bench within two steps; he carried her there, but after laying her upon it, instead of affording her the required assistance, he remained in an attitude of strange immobility before that lovely and helpless form. A long silence followed, broken only by the gentle and monotonous ripple of the brook. Shaking off his stupor at last, Monsieur de Lucan called out several times in a loud and almost harsh voice:
"Julia! Julia!"
As she remained motionless still, he ran down into the ravine, took some water in the hollow of his hand, and bathed her temples with it. In the course of a minute or two, he saw her eyes opening in the darkness, and he helped her raise her head.
"What is it?" she said, looking at him with a wild expression; "what has happened, sir?"
"Why, you fainted," said Lucan, laughing.
"Fainted?" repeated Julia.
"Of course; that's just what I feared; you must have been benumbed by the cold. Can you walk? Come, try."
"Perfectly well," she said, rising and taking his arm.
Like all those who experience sudden prostration, Julia remembered, but in a very indistinct manner, the circumstance that had brought about her fainting.
In the meantime they had resumed their walk slowly in the direction of the chateau.
"Fainted!" she repeated, gayly; "mon Dieu! how perfectly ridiculous!"
Then, with sudden animation:
"But what did I say? Did I speak at all?"
"You said, 'I am cold!' and away you went!"
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Did you think I was dead?"
"I did hope for a moment that you were," said Lucan, coldly.
"How horrid of you! But we were talking before that. What were we saying?"
"We were making a pact of amity and friendship."
"Well! it doesn't look much like it now, Monsieur de Lucan!"
"Madam?"
"You seem positively angry with me because I fainted."
"Of course I am. In the first place, I don't like that sort of adventures, and then, it is wholly your own fault; you are so imprudent, so unreasonable!"
"Oh! mon Dieu! Don't you want a switch?"
And as the lights of the chateau were coming into sight:
"Apropos, don't trouble mother with any of that nonsense, will you?"
"Certainly not; you may rest easy on that score."
"You are just as cross as you can be, you know?"
"Probably I am; but I have just spent there a few minutes so very painful."
"I pity you with all my heart," said Julia, dryly.
She threw off her vail in the vestibule, and returned to the parlor.
The Baroness de Pers, who was to leave early the next day, had already retired. Julia performed some four-handed pieces on the piano with her mother. Monsieur de Lucan took the place of the "dummy" at the whist table, and the evening ended quietly.
CHAPTER VII.
VICTORY AND DEFEAT.
The next morning, Clotilde was preparing to accompany her mother to the station in the carriage; Monsieur de Lucan, detained at the chateau by a business appointment, was present to take leave of his mother-in-law. He remarked the thoughtful countenance of the baroness; she was silent, much against her habit, and she cast embarrassed looks upon him; she approached him several times with a constrained smile and confidential manner, but confined herself to addressing to him a few commonplace words. Availing herself at last of a moment when Clotilde was giving some orders, she leaned out of the carriage-window, and, pressing significantly Monsieur de Lucan's hand:
"Be true and faithful to her, sir!" she said.
The carriage started almost immediately, but not before he had had time to notice that her eyes were filled with tears.
The matter that was engrossing Monsieur de Lucan's attention at the time, and on the subject of which he had had a long conversation that very morning with his lawyer and his advocate, who had come over from Caen during the night, was an old family law-suit which the mayor of Vastville, an ambitious personage and restless busy-body, had taken pride in bringing to light again. The question at issue was a claim for some public property the effect of which would have been to strip Monsieur de Lucan of a portion of his timbered lands and to curtail materially his patrimonial estate. He had gained his suit in the lower court, but an appeal was soon to be heard, and he was not without fears as to the final result. He had no difficulty in using that pretext, to account during the next few days, to the eyes of the inhabitants of the chateau, for a severity of physiognomy, a briefness of language, and a fondness for solitude, which concealed perhaps graver cares. That pretext, however, soon failed him. A telegram informed him, early the following week, that the suit had been finally decided in his favor, and he was compelled to manifest on this occasion an apparent joy that was far indeed from his heart.
He resumed from that moment the usual routine of family life to which Julia continued to impart the movement of her active imagination. However, he ceased to lend himself with the same affectionate familiarity to the caprices of his step-daughter. She noticed it; but she was not the only one who did. Lucan detected surprise in the eyes of Monsieur de Moras, reproaches in those of Clotilde. A new danger appeared before him; he was acting in a manner which it was equally impossible, equally perilous to explain or to allow being interpreted.
With time, however, the frightful light that had flashed across his brain in a recent circumstance was growing gradually fainter; it had ceased to fill his mind with the same convincing force. He conceived doubts; he accused himself at times on a veritable aberration; he charged the baroness with cruel and guilty prejudices; he thought, in a word, that, at all events, the wisest course was to avoid believing in the drama, and giving it life by taking a serious part in it. Unfortunately Julia's disposition, full of surprises and unforeseen whims, scarcely admitted of any regular plan of conduct toward her.
One beautiful afternoon, the guests of the chateau accompanied by a few of the neighbors, had gone on a horseback excursion to the extremity of Cape La Hague. On the return home, and when they had come about half-way, Julia, who had been remarkably quiet all day, left the principal group of riders, and, casting aside to Monsieur de Lucan an expressive glance, she urged her horse slightly forward. He overtook her almost immediately. She cast upon him again an oblique glance, and abruptly, with her bitterest and most incisive accent:
"Is my presence dangerous to you, sir?"
"How, dangerous?" he said, laughingly. "I do not understand you, my dear madam."
"Why do you avoid me? What have I done to you? What means this new and disagreeable manner which you affect toward me? It is really a very strange thing that you should become less polite to me, as I am more so to you. They persecute one for years to induce me to show you a pleasant countenance, and when I try my best to do so, you pout. What does it mean? What has got into your head? I should be infinitely curious to know."
"It is quite simple, and I am going to enlighten you in two words. It has got into my head that after being not very amiable to me, you are now almost too much so. I am sincerely touched and charmed at it; but I really fear, sometimes, to turn too much to my own profit attentions to which I am far from having the sole right. You know how fond I am of your husband. There can be no question of jealousy in this case, of course; but a man's love is proud and prompt to take umbrage. Without stooping to low and otherwise impossible sentiments, Pierre, seeing himself somewhat neglected, might feel offended and afflicted, at which we would both be greatly grieved, would we not?"
"I do not know how to do anything half-way," she said with a gesture of impatience. "How can I change my nature? It is with my own heart, and not with that of another, that I love and that I hate; and then, why should it not enter into my plans to excite Pierre's jealousy? My old traditional hatred for you has perhaps made this deep calculation; he would kill either you or me, and that would be as good a denouement as any other."
"You must allow me to prefer another," said Lucan, still trying, but without much success, to give a cheerful turn to this wildly passionate conversation.
"However," she went on, "you may rest easy, my dear sir. Pierre is not jealous. He suspects nothing, as they say in plays!"
She laughed one of her wicked laughs, and added at once in a graver tone:
"And what could he suspect? In being amiable toward you, I am merely acting under order, and no one can tell how much of it is genuine and how much put on."
"I feel quite certain that you don't know yourself," he said, laughingly. "You are a person of naturally restless disposition; you require agitation, and when there is none you try to imitate it as best as you can. Whether you like, or whether you don't like your step-father, is not a very dramatic affair. There is no room here for any but very simple and very ordinary sentiments. It is well enough to complicate them a little—is it not, my dear?"
"Yes, my dear!" she said, emphasizing ironically the last word.
Whereupon she started her horse at a gallop.
They were then just reaching the edge of the woods. He soon saw her leave the direct road that led across them, and take a path over the heath as if intending to dash through the thickest of the timber. At the same instant Clotilde ran up to him, and touching his shoulder with the tip of her whip:
"Where in the world is Julia going?" she said.
Lucan replied with a vague gesture and a smile.
"I am sure," rejoined Clotilde, "that she is going to drink at that fountain, yonder. She was complaining a little while since of being thirsty. Do follow her, dear, will you, and prevent her doing so. She is so warm! It might be fatal to her. Run, I beg of you."
Monsieur de Lucan gave the reins to his horse, and he started like the wind. Julia had already disappeared under cover of the woods. He followed her track; but among the timber, the roots and the roughness of the ground somewhat checked his speed. At a short distance, in the center of a narrow clearing, the labor of ages and the filtrations of the soil had hollowed out one of those mysterious fountains whose limpid water, moss-grown banks, and aspect of deep solitude delight the imagination, and give rise to so many poetic legends. When Monsieur de Lucan was able once more to see Julia, she had alighted from her horse. The admirably trained animal stood quietly two or three steps away, browsing the young foliage, while his mistress, down on her knees and stooping over the edge of the spring, was drinking from her hands.
"Julia, I beg of you!" exclaimed Monsieur de Lucan in an imploring tone.
She started to her feet with a sort of elastic spring, and greeted him gayly.
"Too late, sir!" she said; "but I only drank a few drops, just a few little wee drops, I assure you!"
"You must really be out of your mind!" said Lucan who was by this time quite close to her.
"Do you think so?"
She was shaking her beautiful white hands, which had served her for a drinking-cup, and which seemed to throw off a shower of diamonds.
"Give me your handkerchief!"
Lucan handed her his handkerchief. She wiped her hands gravely; then, as she returned the handkerchief with her right hand, she raised herself on tiptoe and held her left hand up to the level of his face:
"There! now; don't scold any more!"
Lucan kissed the hand.
"The other now," she said again. "Please don't turn so pale, sir!"
Monsieur Lucan affected not to have heard these last words, and came down abruptly from his horse.
"I must help you to mount," he said, in a dry and harsh voice.
She was putting on her gloves with downcast look. Suddenly raising her head and looking at him with fixed gaze:
"What a miserable wretch I am, am I not?" she said.
"No," said Lucan; "but what an unhappy being!"
She leaned against one of the trees that shaded the spring, her head partially thrown back and one hand over her eyes.
"Come!" said Lucan.
She obeyed, and he assisted her to get on her horse. They rode out of the wood without uttering another word, made their way to the road, and soon overtook the cavalcade.
As soon as he had recovered from the anguish of that scene, Monsieur de Lucan did not hesitate to think that the departure of Julia and of her husband must be the immediate and inevitable consequence of it; but when he came to seek some means of bringing about their sudden departure, his mind became lost in difficulties that he could not solve. What motive could he indeed offer to justify, in the eyes of Clotilde and of Monsieur de Moras, a determination so novel and so unexpected? It was now the middle of August, and it had been agreed for a long time that the entire family should return to Paris on the first of September. The very proximity of the time fixed upon for the general departure would only serve to make the pretext invoked to explain this sudden separation appear more unlikely. It was almost impossible that it should not awaken in the mind of Clotilde, and in that of the count, irreparable suspicions and a light fatal to the happiness of both. The remedy seemed indeed more to be dreaded than the evil itself; for, if the evil was great, it was at least unknown to those whose lives and whose hearts it would have shattered, and it could still be hoped that it might remain so forever. Monsieur de Lucan thought for a moment of going away himself; but it was still more impossible to justify his departure than it was that of Julia's.
All these reflections being made, he resolved to arm himself with patience and courage. Once in Paris, separate dwellings, less frequent intercourse, the obligations of the world, and the activity of life, would doubtless afford relief and then a peaceful solution to a painful and formidable situation which it was henceforth impossible for him not to view in its true light. He relied upon himself, and also upon Julia's natural generosity, for reaching without outburst and without rupture the approaching term that was to put an end to their life in common and to its incessant perils. It ought not to be impossible to endure, for the short period of two weeks more, the threatenings of a storm that had been brewing for months without revealing its lightning. He was forgetting with what frightful rapidity the maladies of the soul, as well as those of the body, after reaching slowly and gradually certain stages, suddenly precipitate their progress and their ravages.
Monsieur de Lucan asked himself whether he should not inform Julia of the conduct he had resolved to follow, and of the reasons that had dictated it; but every shadow of an explanation between them appeared to him eminently improper and dangerous. Their confidential understanding upon such a subject would have assumed an air of complicity which was repugnant to all his sentiments of honor. Despite the terrible light that had flashed forth, there still remained between them something obscure, undecided, and unconfessed that he thought best to preserve at any cost. Far, therefore, from seeking opportunities for some private interview, he avoided them all from that moment with scrupulous care. Julia seemed penetrated with the same feeling of reserve, and anxious to the same degree as himself to avoid any tete-a-tete, while striving to save appearances; but in that respect she did not dispose of that power of dissimulation which Lucan owed to his natural and acquired firmness. He was able, without visible effort, to hide under his habitual air of gravity the anxieties that consumed him. Julia did not succeed, without an almost convulsive restraint, in carrying with bold and smiling countenance the burden of her thought. To the only witness who knew the secret of her struggles, it was a poignant spectacle to behold the gracious and feverish animation of which the unhappy child sustained the appearance with so much difficulty. He saw her sometimes at a distance, like an exhausted comedienne, retiring to some isolated bench in the garden, and fairly panting with her hand pressing upon her bosom, as if to keep down her rebellious heart. He felt then, in spite of all, overcome with immense pity in presence of so much beauty and so much misery.
Was it only pity?
The attitude, the words, the looks of Clotilde and of Julia's husband were at the same time, for Monsieur de Lucan, the objects of constant and uneasy observation. Clotilde had evidently not conceived the slightest alarm. The gentle serenity of her features remained unaltered. A few oddities, more or less, in Julia's ways did not constitute a sufficient novelty to attract her particular attention. Her mind, moreover, was too far away from the monstrous abysses yawning at her side; she might have stepped into them and been swallowed up, before she had suspected their existence.
The blonde, placid, and handsome countenance of the Count de Moras retained at all times, like Lucan's dark face, a sort of sculptural firmness. It was, therefore, rather difficult to read upon it the impressions of a soul which was naturally strong and self-controlling. On one point, however, that soul had become weak. Monsieur de Lucan was not ignorant of the fact; he was aware of the count's ardent love for Julia, and of the sickly susceptibility of his passion.
It seemed unlikely that such a sentiment, if it were seriously set at defiance, should not betray itself in some violent or at least perceptible exterior sign. Monsieur de Lucan, in reality, was unable to observe any of these dreaded symptoms. If he did occasionally surprise a fugitive wrinkle on his brow, a doubtful intonation, a fugitive or absent glance, he might believe at most in some return of that vague and chimerical jealousy with which he knew the count to have been long tormented. Besides, he saw him carrying into their family circle the same impassive and smiling face, and he continued to receive from him the same tokens of cordiality. Oppressed, nevertheless by his legitimate scruples of loyalty and friendship, he had for one moment the mad temptation of revealing to the count the trial that was imposed upon them; but while revealing his own heart, would not such a delicate and cruel confession break the heart of his friend? And, moreover, would not such a pretended act of loyalty, involving the betrayal of a woman's secret, be tainted with cowardice and treason?
It was necessary, therefore, amid so many dangers and so much anxiety, to sustain alone, and to the end, the weight of that trial, more complicated and more perilous still, perhaps, than Monsieur de Lucan was willing to admit to himself.
It was to come to an end much sooner than he could possibly have anticipated.
Clotilde and her husband, accompanied by Monsieur and Madame de Moras, went one day, in the carriage, to visit the ruins of a covered gallery which is one of the rarest of druidical antiquities in the country. These ruins lay at the back of a picturesque little bay, scooped out in the rocky wall that borders the eastern shore of the peninsula. Their shapeless masses are strewn over one of those grass-clad spurs that extend here and there to the foot of the cliff like giant buttresses. They are reached, despite the steepness of the hill, by an easy winding road that leads, with long, meandering turns, down to the yellow, sandy beach of the little bay. Clotilde and Julia made a sketch of the old Celtic temple while the gentlemen were smoking; then they amused themselves for some time watching the rising waves spreading upon the sand its fringes of foam. It was agreed to return to the top of the hill on foot in order to relieve the horses.
The carriage, on a sign from Lucan, started ahead. Clotilde took the arm of Monsieur de Moras, and they began ascending slowly the sinuous road. Lucan was waiting Julia's good pleasure before following them; she had remained a few steps aside, engaged in animated conversation with an old fisherman who was busy setting his bait in the hollow of the rocks. She turned toward Lucan, and slightly raising her voice:
"He says there is another path, much shorter and quite easy, close by here, along the face of the cliff. I am strongly inclined to take it and avoid that tiresome road."
"Believe me, do nothing of the kind," said Lucan; "what is a very easy path for the country people may prove a very arduous one for you and even for me."
After further conference with the fisherman:
"He says," rejoined Julia, "that there is really no danger, and that children go up and down that way every day. He is going to guide me to the foot of the path, and then I'll only have to go straight up. Tell mother I'll be up there as soon as you all are."
"Your mother will be dreadfully anxious."
"Tell her there is no danger."
Lucan, giving up the attempt to resist any longer a fancy that was growing impatient, went up to the footman who carried Julia's album and shawl; he requested him to reassure Clotilde and Monsieur de Moras, who had already disappeared behind one of the angles of the road; then returned to Julia.
"Whenever you are ready," he said.
"You are coming with me?"
"As a matter of course."
The old fisherman preceded them, following close to the foot of the cliffs. After leaving the sandy beach of the bay, the shore was covered with angular rocks and gigantic fragments of granite that made walking extremely painful. Although the distance was very short, they were already breaking down with fatigue when they reached the entrance to the path, which appeared to Lucan, and perhaps to Julia herself, much less safe and commodious than the fisherman had pretended. Neither one nor the other, however, attempted to make any objection. After a few last recommendations and directions, their old guide withdrew, quite pleased with Lucan's generosity. Both began then resolutely to scale the cliff which, at this point of the coast, is known as the cliff of Jobourg, and rises some three hundred feet above the level of the ocean.
At the beginning of this ascension, they broke the silence they had hitherto maintained, in order to exchange some jesting remarks upon the charms and comforts of this goat's-path; but the real and even alarming difficulties of the road soon proved sufficient to absorb their entire attention. The faintly beaten path disappeared at times on the barren rock, or under some recent land-slide. They had much trouble finding the broken thread again. Their feet hesitated upon the polished surface of the stone, or the short and slippery grass. There were moments when they felt as if they stood upon an almost vertical slope, and if they attempted to stop and take breath, the vast spaces stretching before them, the boundless extent, the dazzling and metallic brilliancy of the sea, caused them a sensation of dizziness and as of a floating motion. Though the sky was low and cloudy, a heavy and storm-laden heat weighed upon them and stimulated the action of their blood. Lucan walked first, with a sort of feverish excitement, turning around from time to time to cast a glance at Julia, who followed him closely, then looking up to see some resting-point, some platform upon which they might breathe for a moment in safety. But above him, as below, there was naught save the perpendicular and sometimes overhanging cliff. Suddenly Julia called out to him in a tone of anguish:
"Monsieur! monsieur! please, oh! please—my head is whirling!"
He walked rapidly back a few steps at the risk of tumbling down, and, grasping her hand energetically:
"Come! come!" he said, with a smile, "what is the matter?—a brave person like you!"
"It would require wings!" she said, faintly.
Lucan began at once to climb the path again, supporting and almost dragging Julia, who had nearly fainted.
He had at last the gratification of setting his foot upon a projection of the ground, a sort of narrow esplanade jutting from the rock. He succeeded in drawing Julia upon it. But she sank at once in his arms, and her head rested upon his chest. He could hear her arteries and her heart throbbing with frightful force. Then, gradually, her agitation subsided. She lifted her head gently, opened her long eyelashes, and looking at him with rapturous eyes:
"I am so happy!" she murmured; "I wish I could die so!"
Lucan pushed her off from him the length of his arm, then, suddenly seizing her again and clasping her tightly to his heart, he cast upon her a troubled glance, and then another upon the abyss. She certainly thought they were about to die. A slight tremor passed across her lips; she smiled; her head half rolled back:
"With you?" she said—"what happiness!"
At the same moment, the sound of voices was heard a short distance above them. Lucan recognized Clotilde's and the count's voices. His arm suddenly relaxed and dropped from Julia's waist. He pointed out to her, without speaking, but with an imperious gesture, the path that wound around the rock.
"Without you, then!" she said, in a gentle and proud tone. And she began ascending.
Two minutes later, they reached the plateau above the cliff, and related to Clotilde the perils of their ascension, which explained sufficiently their evident agitation. At least they thought so.
During the evening of this same day, Julia, Monsieur de Moras, and Clotilde were walking after dinner under the evergreens of the garden. Monsieur de Lucan, after keeping them company for a short time, had just retired, under pretense of writing some letters. He remained, however, but a few minutes in the library, where the sound of the others' voices reached his ears and disturbed his attention. A desire for absolute solitude, for meditation, perhaps also some whimsical and unaccountable feeling, led him to that very ladies' walk stamped for him with such an indelible recollection.
He walked slowly through it for some time, in the deepening shades with which the falling night was rapidly filling it. He wished to consult his soul, as it were, face to face, to probe like a man his mind to its utmost depths. What he discovered there terrified him. It was a mad intoxication, which the savor of crime further heightened. Duty, loyalty, honor, all that rose before his passion to oppose it only exasperated its fury. The pagan Venus was gnawing at his heart, and instilling her most subtle poisons into it. The image of the fatal beauty was there without truce, present in his burning brain, before his dazzled eyes; he inhaled with avidity and in spite of himself, its languor, its perfume, its breath.
The sound of light footsteps upon the sand caused him to suspend his march. He caught through the darkness a glimpse of a white form approaching him.
It was she!
Without giving scarce a thought to the act, he threw himself behind the obscure angle formed by one of those massive pillars that supported the ruins against the side of the hill. A mass of verdure made the darkness there more dense still. She went by, her eyes fixed upon the ground, with her supple and rhythmical step. She walked as far as the little pond that received the waters of the brook, stood dreaming for a few moments upon its edge, and then returned. A second tune she went by the ruins, without raising her eyes, and as if deeply absorbed. Lucan remained convinced that she had not suspected his presence, when suddenly she turned her head slightly around, without interrupting her march, and she cast behind her that single word, "Farewell," in a tone so gentle, so musical, so sorrowful, that it was somewhat like the sound of a tear falling upon a sonorous crystal.
That minute was a supreme one. It was one of those moments during which a man's life is decided for eternal good or for eternal evil. Monsieur de Lucan felt it so. Had he yielded to the attraction of passion, of intoxication, of pity, that was urging him with almost irresistible force on the footsteps of that beautiful and unhappy woman—that was on the point of casting him at her feet, upon her heart—he felt that he became at once and forever a lost and desperate soul. Such a crime, were it even to remain wholly ignored, separated him forever from all he had ever respected, all he had ever held sacred and inviolate; there was nothing left for him either upon earth or in heaven; there was no longer any faith, probity, honor, friend, or God! The whole moral world vanished for him in that single instant.
He accepted her farewell, and made no reply. The white form moved away and soon disappeared in the darkness.
The evening was spent in the home circle as usual. Julia, pale, moody, and haughty, worked silently at her tapestry. Lucan observed that on taking leave of her mother she was kissing her with unusual effusion.
He soon retired also. Assailed by the most formidable apprehensions, he did not undress. Toward morning only, he threw himself all dressed upon the bed. It was about five o'clock, and scarcely daylight as yet, when he fancied he heard muffled steps on the carpet, in the hall and on the stairs. He rose again at once. The windows of his room opened upon the court. He saw Julia cross it, dressed in riding costume. She went into the stable and came out again after a few moments. A groom brought her her horse, and assisted her in mounting. The man, accustomed to Julia's somewhat eccentric manners, saw apparently nothing alarming in that fancy for an early ride. Monsieur de Lucan, after a few minutes of excited thought, took his resolution. He directed his steps toward the room of the Count de Moras. To his extreme surprise, he found him up and dressed. The count, seeing Lucan coming in, seemed struck with astonishment. He fastened upon him a penetrating and visibly agitated look.
"What is the matter?" he said, at last, in a low and tremulous voice.
"Nothing serious, I hope," replied Lucan. "Nevertheless, I am uneasy. Julia has just gone out on horseback. You have, doubtless, seen and heard her as I have myself, since you are up."
"Yes," said Moras, who had continued to gaze upon Lucan with an expression of indescribable stupor; "yes," he repeated, recovering himself, not without difficulty, "and I am glad, really very glad to see you, my dear friend."
While uttering these simple words, the voice of Moras became hesitating; a damp cloud obscured his eyes.
"Where can she be going at this hour?" he resumed with his usual firmness of speech.
"I do not know; merely some new fancy, I suppose. At any rate, she has seemed to me lately more strange, more moody, and I feel uneasy. Let us try and follow her, if you like."
"Let us go, my friend," said the count after a pause of singular hesitation.
They both left the chateau together, taking their fowling-pieces with them, in order to induce the belief that they were going, according to a quite frequent habit, to shoot sea-birds. At the moment of selecting a direction, Monsieur de Moras turned to Lucan with an inquiring glance.
"I see no danger," said Lucan, "save in the direction of the cliffs. A few words that escaped her yesterday lead me to fear that the peril may be there; but with her horse, she is compelled to make a long detour. By cutting across the woods, we'll be there ahead of her."
They entered the timber to the west of the chateau, and walked in silence and with rapid steps.
The path they had taken led them directly to the plateau overlooking the cliffs they had visited the previous day. The woods extended in that direction in an irregular triangle, the last trees of which almost touched the very brink of the cliff.
As they were approaching with feverish steps that extreme point, Lucan suddenly stopped.
"Listen!" he said.
The sound of a horse's gallop upon the hard soil could be distinctly heard. They ran.
A sloping bank of moderate elevation divided the wood from the plateau. This they climbed half way with the help of trailing branches; screened then by the bushes and the foliage, they beheld before them a most impressive spectacle. At a short distance to the left, Julia was coming on at break-neck speed; she was following the oblique line of the woods, apparently shaping her course straight toward the edge of the cliff. They thought at first that her horse had run away, but they saw that she was lashing him with her whip to further accelerate his speed.
She was still some hundred paces from the two men, and she was about passing before them. Lucan was preparing to leap to the other side of the bank, when the hand of Monsieur de Moras fell violently upon his arm and held him back—firmly.
They looked at each other. Lucan was amazed at the profound alteration that had suddenly contracted the count's features and sunken his eyes; he read at the same time in his fixed gaze an immense sorrow, but also an immovable resolve. He understood that there was no longer any secret between them. He yielded to that glance, which, so far as he was concerned—he felt sure of that—conveyed nothing but an expression of confidence and friendly supplication. He grasped his friend's hand within his own and remained motionless. The horse shot by within a few steps of them, his flanks white with foam, while Julia, beautiful, graceful, and charming still in that terrible moment, sat lightly upon the saddle.
Within a few feet of the edge of the cliff, the horse, scenting the danger, shied violently and wheeled around in a semi-circle. She led him back upon the plateau, and, urging him both with whip and voice, she started him again toward the yawning chasm.
Lucan felt Monsieur de Moras' nails cutting into his flesh. At last the horse was conquered; the ground gave way under his hind feet, which only met the vacant space. He fell backward; his fore legs pawed the air convulsively.
The next moment the plateau was empty. No sound had been heard. In that deep chasm the fall had been noiseless and death instantaneous.
[THE END.]