"I have been cruelly obeyed," she cried. "Yet I never forbade him to write to me. Oh! /he/ has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of Lords.""So you know English."
"Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned."
"Poor little one!" cried Louisa, grasping Julie's hand in hers. "How can you still live?""That is the secret," said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture almost childlike in its simplicity. "Listen, I take laudanum. That duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; Iam only awake for seven hours in the day, and those house I spend with my child."Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend's misery was opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into her face.
"Keep my secret, Louisa," said Julie, after a moment's silence.
Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
"Ah!" she cried, and her face grew white.
"I need not ask from whom it comes," said Mme. de Wimphen, but the Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie's face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet into the fire.
"It burns like fire," she said. "Oh! my heart beats till I cannot breathe."She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
"He did not leave Paris!" she cried.
Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed, jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was something awful about the last words.
"He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken by stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!--He is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband has gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! Ishall die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--/I am afraid!/""But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to come for me," said Mme. de Wimphen.
"Well, then, before you go I will send /him/ away. I will play the executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters of fire."A carriage rolled in under the archway.
"Ah!" cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, "he is coming openly. He makes no mystery of it.""Lord Grenville," announced the servant.
The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of Arthur's white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep up the show of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone, but he controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet for the two women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look in his eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. Their faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact with his horrible pain. The sound of his voice set Julie's heart beating so cruelly that she could not trust herself to speak;she was afraid that he would see the full extent of his power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to look at Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation to which no one listened. Julie glanced at her friend with touching gratefulness in her eyes to thank her for coming to her aid.
By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. "I will be brave," she said, in a low voice. "He came here in the face of all the world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment, when I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet.""Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me," she said, in a faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to take the seat upon the sofa by her side.
"I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near you. The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious frenzy. I am no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task;it is no use, I am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing you, without having heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What a death!"He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol fell out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the weapon; all passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident which seemed like a piece of lovesick strategy.
"/Arthur!/"
"Madame," he said, looking down, "I came here in utter desperation; Imeant----" he broke off.
"You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!""Not alone!" he said in a low voice.
"Not alone! My husband, perhaps----?"
"No, no," he cried in a choking voice. "Reassure yourself," he continued, "I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in silence, and to die alone."Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing he caught a few passionate words, "To know happiness, and then to die.
--Yes, let it be so."