V
MARGARET’S BETROTHAL
HUBERT’S death had completely upset Maurice, breaking at last the pride that separated him from his family. Margaret, on her way home from bearing the sad news to him in prison, walked through the streets seeing nothing, shut up in her grief. At her own door she asked the servant:
“Has Mr. Roquevillard come in yet?”
She was hastening to her father’s comfort now as she had gone to Maurice’s, with that power of bearing up in moral sorrow which is less exceptional in a woman than in a man, and permitted her to be of comfort instead of breaking down.
“Not yet, Miss Margaret,” was the answer.
She was surprised, and began to be a little anxious.
“Not yet?”
And yet she had stayed a long time at the gaol, and evening was coming on. Mr. Roquevillard had gone out only for a short walk. He expected Mr. Hamel and Mr. Battard at five o’clock, to make the last arrangements with them for to-morrow’s trial. His prolonged absence under such circumstances was strange.
“But there is a gentleman in the drawing-room who asked to see you,” the servant now added.
“To see me?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Who is it?”
“He told me his name, but I don’t remember it. A doctor.”
She was a girl from the country, not yet quite used to her new ways, and unfamiliar with the names and faces of the town’s people.
“You ought not to have let him in, Melanie,” said Margaret reproachfully. “To-day of all days.”
“That’s right, miss, I thought so, too. But he would not go away. He brought a message for you.”
Margaret went into the drawing-room against her will, keeping on her hat and mourning veil as a hint to the importunate visitor to depart. She found herself face to face with Raymond Bercy.
“Miss Roquevillard,” he murmured, as much overcome as she was.
She recoiled from him instinctively, and he espied the movement, and with an entreating voice he tried to make her stay.
“Miss Margaret, forgive me for having come. I learned last night of your sorrow. Then——”
“Mr. Bercy,” she said, coming forward.
This one formal phrase, firmly uttered, kept him at a distance, seemed to deny him the right to plead. Like her father, she deprecated pity. The man who had been betrothed to her bent his head, disconcerted, and kept silent.
“Why did you insist upon seeing me, sir, to-day?” she said again more gently.
He raised his eyes to her, with an imploring and humble look.
“Because to-morrow it would have been too late,” he sighed.
“Too late? To-morrow? You’ve something to tell me? Is it about Maurice?”
She forgot herself, in an instant, never dreaming that the matter could concern her. Had not all ties between herself and Raymond Bercy been broken off for more than a year? Were they not broken that day when he had not hesitated, in his mother’s house, to break his engagement to her and save the honour of his name? The young man had made no attempt to recapture her affection or her promise to him. Developments had broken on them like a tempest: the accusation by Mr. Frasne, Mrs. Roquevillard’s death, Maurice’s sentence for contempt, the shame and ruin of the family that resulted from it, and, last cruelty of all, the loss of the firstborn son, their future hope and stay. It was more than enough to justify one’s giving up, keeping away from people, forgetting. Was it not the privilege of unhappiness to hide itself? She had enjoyed her tears and her affliction by herself. She had jealously extracted the very essence of her grief, not sharing it with any one. By what right did this man come here again to impose his useless presence and his futile sympathy upon her? But no doubt something else had determined him upon this measure. Perhaps he knew something that would be of value in the defence of her accused brother. On such a pretext, and on this only, she could excuse him for having forced the guards and introduced himself into the house.
He made, no haste to explain himself. He was visibly under the dominion of some great inner trouble.
“Tell me your business, please,” she said.
“It’s nothing to do with Maurice,” he replied blankly.
“What is it then?”
She made a step toward him, and threw back the veil, which had embarrassed her movements and half concealed her. Coming to him thus, straight and rigid, she seemed to him more distant still. Her face, between the black of her dress and her bonnet, stood out so pale, with bruised eyes and lips like a single red line, that he felt her far away from him and sorrowful. He feared lest he should not move her, yet he was greedy to bring her the comfort of his passionate tenderness. He kept back his tears, and summoning all his courage, began to speak, stammering at first, then going on in a voice which little by little grew more firm:
“Miss Roquevillard, listen to me. You must listen. Then you can understand and forgive me. I must speak to you, and speak to-day. I respect your grief. I feel it with you. I have suffered, too, myself, ever since the day.... And my suffering has made me understand others better. I loved you. Oh, don’t stop me! Let me finish. Yes, I loved you. I could not see any future for myself except with you. But I encountered so much opposition at home, so many obstacles, on account—on account of your brother. My mother, who is so good at heart, gives in to every prejudice. My father was set on my career. He is a man of science only. He lives in his office, or rather with his sick people. He’s not the ruler of his house. And I—oh, no, I don’t want to go on accusing other people to excuse my fault. I’ve been a coward, an abominable coward. But I have been well punished for it. I haven’t stood up for you—I haven’t known how to defend you.”
She had attempted at several points to interrupt him with a gesture. Erect again and unconsciously disdainful, she looked him in the face. In her action she showed the haughty air that came naturally to the Roquevillards and had won them so many enemies. But it was mitigated by the veiled melancholy in her eyes, and the mystic expression that came to her from her mother.
“I have not asked you to defend me,” she replied, simply.
“That’s true, Margaret....”
He gave up formality in his emotion, speaking to her as he had used to do in the time when they had been betrothed.
“I even wanted you to despise me,” he added.
“I don’t despise any one, sir.”
“You wounded me so, just in looking at me, that day when you gave me back my promise. You have been so hard....”
“I, hard?”
She pronounced the two words almost in a whisper, deeming all reply useless, inwardly revolted by such injustice.
“Yes,” he replied. “I never understood before that it was right to be proud in misfortune. And I cursed you, but my heart was broken. And I accused you, instead of avowing the wretchedness of my doubts and my mean caring for what people thought. I have changed greatly, I swear to you. And now I admire you, I revere you, adore you. Yes. Don’t say anything. Let me finish. I have tried to forget you. My parents would have had me marry some one else, to have me settle down, as they said. I couldn’t. I love only you, and always shall.”
“I beg of you, sir.”
“What little good I can do, you are the cause of. Little by little I shall raise myself to your level. Men like me, all men, hover between good and evil, between devotion and selfishness. They don’t reflect, they are carried away by all the mediocrity of life. But sometimes one impulse is enough to lift them out of themselves. Your love has given me that impulse, Margaret.”
He stopped, waiting for a word of hope. She lowered her eyes, and the veil, which she no longer held back, fell down to her shoulder, throwing a little shadow on one side of her face. He murmured like a prayer:
“Margaret, take back what you’ve said. Consent to be my wife. I love you. For all your sorrow I love you all the more.”
He saw a shudder run all through her.
“It’s impossible. Don’t ask me that,” she replied unhesitatingly.
Dismayed by this refusal, when a remnant of vanity in him still persuaded him that the course he took was generous, he cried out in distress:
“My life’s happiness, and I’m not to ask you for it?”
She moved nearer to him, and her voice took on a new sweetness as she said to him:
“Another wife will give you this happiness. I’m sure of it. I want it for you.”
“There’s no other woman but you in my eyes.”
“No, no, it’s impossible. Don’t torment me.”
“Impossible? Why, Margaret? Why discourage me? You don’t love me? One day perhaps I shall know how to make you love me. You shake your head? Good God, Margaret, will you send me away without a reason?”
She seemed to search for an answer, and hesitated; then found a way round the difficulty. He watched anxiously for what she should say.
“I’m not the same girl I was last year,” she began.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve no dot any more.”
“Is that it? Margaret, I don’t deserve to have you treat me like this. There’s something in you, in your eyes, like a radiant flame of life. When I look at you I feel courage in me, a desire for good, and a disdain for all the petty satisfactions that material things can give. Beside this, this faith that you give me, which will be my strength, what is money?”
“And if to-morrow——”
As she did not go on with the phrase he repeated:
“If to-morrow?”
“If a still greater misfortune awaits us to-morrow, if to-morrow my brother Maurice is declared guilty?”
“I came to-day on account of that danger. I wanted to claim the honour of supporting your father to-morrow at the trial like a son. I had to see you to-day.”
“Ah!” she murmured, thunderstruck.
He could see from the tone of this simple exclamation that all the indifference she had shown him was falling away at last. On her pale face, whose every expression he had followed, he distinguished suddenly sympathy and gratitude, perhaps something further still. Happiness was there—uncertain, clouded, but still there. And its presence stirred his heart.
Margaret fortified him in this hope by holding out her hand to him.
“I thank you, Raymond,” she said, not afraid to call him by his name as she used to do. “I am touched, deeply touched.”
They were not quite the words he had expected from her. He watched her in an anxious ecstasy, entreatingly. As she kept silent, he murmured timidly:
“Why thank me, when I love you? It seems to me that loving you is worth more than—— Margaret, will you really be my wife?” he added, like a sigh.
There were compassion and sorrow in her beautiful pale face as she answered:
“Raymond, I can’t.”
“You can’t? Then—then you are in love with some one else?”
“Ah, my friend!”
“Yes, you are in love with some one else. Some one who has not been a coward like me, who has known how to divine your thoughts, to understand you, to be worthy of you, while I—well, I have lost my happiness by my own fault. It’s just, but it means unhappiness to one who loves you.”
He stopped and gave a heavy sob.
“Raymond,” she said, trembling, “I beg of you. Don’t talk like this.”
“I don’t accuse you. I’m the guilty one. And your happiness is dearer to me than my own.”
“Raymond, listen to me.”
He was beaten, and with sinking heart he let himself fall heavily into an armchair, hiding his head in his hands, heedless of the show of weakness he made with his tears. She took off her hat with a rapid movement, as a sick-nurse puts off unnecessary garments the better to do her work, and taking hold of his hands, she pulled them aside masterfully.
“Look at me, Raymond.”
She gave her commands, not imperiously, after the fashion of her father, but with persuasive sweetness. She was not constrained any more, no longer assumed the defensive, but came to him in all simplicity. Mechanically he submitted to her ascendancy, and obeyed her. The moment he looked at her, indeed, he ceased to weep. The girl appeared as if transfigured. A look of ecstasy lighted up her pallor. Her eyes glowed with an expression more than human, the expression of those who find peace beyond the agitations and passions that are the moving testimony of our life. She bore in her living features the same serenity that one sees on the faces of the dead that are asleep with God. There was no further trace of sorrow on her bloodless cheeks, or in her bruised eyes, only a deep calm, unalterable, almost frightening.
“Margaret, what is it?” he implored in anguish, like one who cries out to a comrade upon the brink of an abyss.
“Raymond, listen to me,” she repeated. “Yes, I love some one else.”
“Ah, I knew it!”
“Another, of whom you cannot be jealous. I shall never marry. I shall never be the wife of any one. I shall take another path. And yet I am so imperfect that just now when you were speaking to me, I was guilty of a feeling of pride. I am proud still. It is a fault of my people. But we have been so tried, we truly have had to grow a little stiff.”
A frail smile outlined itself at the corner of her mouth, then disappeared, as if to leave the purity of her motionless features undisturbed. She went on, while he said nothing, subdued by the mysterious potency that spread around her:
“No, I shall not forget that you have chosen the hour of my greatest distress to come to me.”
He mourned over her like a child. “I love you.”
“I must not love any more, Raymond. I have heard another call than yours. I’m going to tell you a secret that no one knows, not even my father. I don’t hesitate to tell it to you. Keep it for me. When I lost my mother I promised God to take her place in our home that has been so ravaged by misfortune.”
“Haven’t you done that?”
“I’m not through yet.”
“Will marriage prevent your filling that rôle? We shall not leave Chambéry.”
“You can’t give only half of yourself, Raymond. I have renounced my personal happiness. And from the day I renounced it I have felt a great force in me.”
He gave a violent start, in protest.
“But there’s no sense in it, Margaret. You have no right to deny yourself like this. You will live after your father’s gone. Your brother when he’s acquitted to-morrow will lead his own life, apart from you. And you, what will become of you all alone? What’s the use of sacrificing yourself for needless scruples?”
“My father has been smitten to the heart. My brother is always in danger. Don’t take away any of my courage by telling me I shall not be useful to them.”
Raymond gave in and ceased to struggle. He felt warned intuitively of his defeat, from the look in Margaret’s eyes still more than from her words, yet he tried to put off the moment of defeat. With a timid and softened voice he begged her for a delay.
“And if I wait for you, will you marry me?” he said. “If I remain faithful to you until the time when you have fulfilled your task for your family, will you come to me? I love you so much that rather than lose you I shall know how to be patient. It will be cruel and sweet together. Won’t you, Margaret?”
The girl’s eyes clouded a moment at this romantic and heroic proposal. He saw she was more human, and he believed she was yielding to him. He conceived a new hope from it, which her reply dissipated with its first words.
“No, Raymond, I shan’t consent to build my future on your sorrow. It’s impossible. You have not understood me entirely. I have given myself to God. Don’t try to take me back.”
“Ah, Margaret!”
“To give myself to God is to give myself to all those that suffer.”
“I understand now. You want to join some religious order.”
“I don’t know yet. There are very many ways of serving God. Don’t tell any one yet what I’ve told you. You’re crying. Don’t cry, Raymond. God will console you, as he has consoled me.”
“No, not me.”
And between two sobs he asked her:
“What are you going to do?”
“As long as my father lives I shall help him. As long as Maurice needs me I shall stand by him. At my mother’s death-bed I promised that. Afterwards I’ll devote my strength to the unfortunate, to the old, or maybe to children that have lost their parents. Perhaps I’ll keep a school here for little poor children. I don’t know. I can’t tell now. I mustn’t try to hurry up the future. It will come of itself. You see, now you know all my secrets.”
“And I,” he murmured, “what will become of me? You’re thinking of comforting all wretchedness and you forget mine.”
“Raymond!”
“I am more unhappy than the poorest people there are. They at least have had no glimpse of happiness, but I have, and am cast down after having known joy.”
“No, Raymond, you must have no regrets for me. I was not meant for marriage. God has warned me of it, though it’s been a little hard. For you he has another wife in store, no doubt, who will make you happier than I could.”
“You’re like no other woman, Margaret. You’re not the kind one forgets. You’re not the kind one can replace.”
Darkness was coming into the drawing-room with the waning day, and in the shadow, where the outlines of her black dress were dimmed, the girl’s face shone forth like a last remnant of the light, a light which scarcely animated her pale features. It was as if in touching her cheek one should fear to feel, instead of living warmth, the chill of marble in them.
‘Yes,“ she said, ”you will forget me. You must, and besides, I wish it.”
He looked at her in dismay, like a traveller who beholds from afar the summit that he cannot reach.
“You can’t control my memories,” he said.
“Then remember me without bitter thoughts, as if I were a sister that you had lost.”
“No, Margaret, not without bitterness. You lifted up my thoughts, elevated my heart. They will only fall back now.”
She was moved by this speech, and it was with a grave and almost solemn tone that she responded:
“If you loved me, if you truly loved me, you would give me the supreme joy of thinking that my vocation was not to be useless, for you no less than for others. You can’t be cast down forever over my refusal: it doesn’t really touch you. It can neither wound you nor take from you. My memory ought to be sweet to you, and not spoil your life. For I have loved you, Raymond, my friend. I looked forward contentedly to our wedding-day, and content is the confidence of the soul, our security for the future. An unexpected upheaval has separated us. I’ve seen God’s summons in it. If it is not His will that I should bring you happiness, if He has tested you in your turn, let me believe that this very trial will make you strong, make you grow, and ennoble you. If I, imperfect as I am, have served to elevate you, don’t tell me that you are going to slip back. I shall pray so hard for you.”
She was absorbed in her entreaty, and did not notice that he had slowly bent his knee before her, till suddenly she felt the young man’s lips pressed to her hand.
“What are you doing, Raymond? Get up, I beg of you,” she cried.
She saw him there at her feet and was surprised by this new resolution that he revealed to her. His face seemed no longer tortured and sorrowful, only serious and sad. He had succumbed in spite of himself to the stern and peaceful influence of her faith—that faith which is more potent even over others than ourselves.
“I was not worthy of you,” he murmured. “But I loved you so. No man is worthy of you. That is my consolation,” he added, as he rose, paying her this last homage.
She turned her head as if to put away such praise.
“No, dear friend, you mustn’t talk any more to me like this.”
The completion of the sacrifice was attained. They felt its poignancy with an almost physical sensation, and were hushed. An oppressive stillness followed, charged with melancholy. In the midst of it the maid came into the room, which had now grown quite dark. She had some trouble to see where her mistress was, her shadow was so merged in the darkness.
“Miss Margaret,” she said.
“What is it, Melanie?”
“Those gentlemen have come.”
“Oh! Did you show them into the office?”
“Yes, miss.”
“And Mr. Roquevillard has not come in yet?”
“No, miss.”
“Ask them to wait a few minutes. Mr. Roquevillard will be back soon.”
The delay was becoming disquieting, however, to Margaret. Raymond Bercy was conscious of the fact that the girl’s thoughts were far from him.
“Already!” he thought.
Just now, at least, when she had gently put away his love, he had had a place in her thoughts and heart. Even the sorrow that she caused him brought him nearer to her, was dear because it came from her. He looked at her a last time, with despairing eyes, as if to measure the whole extent of his loss, and leave its impress on his memory. And realising that this was the end, he murmured:
“Good-bye, Margaret.”
She held out her hand to him.
“Good-bye, dear friend. Go in peace. In my prayers each day I’ll join your name with my family’s. Do you want me to?”
“I am grateful, Margaret. I had conceived a great hope, and I have shattered it myself.”
“God willed it, and not you. May God guard you,” she answered gravely.
He bent his head and went out. When she found herself alone she leaned her forehead on her hands a moment, then straightened up again. Then she went to her father’s office, and begged Mr. Hamel and Mr. Battard to be patient a few minutes longer. Finally, as anxiety swayed her more and more, and she was even getting ready to go out and search, she heard the key grating in the outer lock. She hurried toward the door.
“Father, it’s you at last,” she cried.
Mr. Roquevillard, who had walked fast, wiped away the perspiration that gathered on his forehead despite the cold.
“Margaret, have those gentlemen come?” he asked.
“Yes. They’re waiting for you.”
“Good. I’ll go and see them.”
In the lighted hall father and daughter found themselves face to face and were surprised at the change each noted in the other. From having left each other morally discouraged and fagged out, they were surprised now, each of them, to find on the other’s face a sort of victorious serenity over fear and sorrow, a spiritual illumination that made them firm and confident. The father had heard the call of the past rising to him from the depths of the eternal generations. The daughter had heard the voice of God.