Valentine (25 page)

She sat up to take a glass of water from the table, and found Bénédict's letter. She turned it over slowly in her fingers, not conscious of what she was doing. At last she looked at it, and, on recognizing the writing, started, and opened it with a convulsive hand. The curtain had fallen ; her whole life was laid bare before her eyes.

On hearing her heart-rending shrieks, Catherine hastened to her side. The good woman's face was intensely agitated : Valentine instantly realized the truth.

“Speak !” she cried ; “where is Bénédict ? what has become of Bénédict ?”

And observing the nurse's distress and consternation, she added, clasping her hands :

“O
mon Dieu!
it is really true, it is all over!”

“Alas ! mademoiselle, how do you know about it ?” said Catherine, sitting down on the bed. “Who could have come into this room ? I had the key in my pocket. Did you hear anything ? But Mademoiselle Beaujon told me about it in such a low tone, for fear of waking you. I knew that the news would make you unhappy.”

“Ah ! it is indeed everything to me !” cried Valentine impatiently, springing suddenly to her feet. “Speak, I say! What has become of Bénédict ?”

Terrified by her vehemence, the nurse hung her head and dared not reply.

“He is dead, I know it!” said Valentine, falling back on her bed, pale and gasping for breath; “ but how long since ?”

“Alas !” said the nurse, “ no one knows ; the unfortunate young man was found on the edge of the field this
morning at daybreak. He was lying in a ditch and covered with blood. The farmers from the Croix-Bleue found him when they were going to pasture with their cattle, and they carried him to his house at once. He had a pistol bullet in his head, and the pistol was still in his hand. The law people met there right away. Ah !
mon Dieuf
what a misfortune ! What can have made that young man so unhappy ? Nobody can say that it was poverty. Monsieur Lhéry loved him like his own son, and Madame Lhéry, what will she say ? It will be a terrible blow to them.”

Valentine was not listening; she had fallen back upon her bed, cold and stiff. In vain did Catherine try to rouse her by calling her name and by her caresses ; she was like one dead. The good nurse, trying to open her clinched hands, found a crumpled letter in them. She did not know how to read, but she had that instinct which warns us that the person we love is in danger ; she took the letter from her and concealed it carefully before calling for help.

Valentine's chamber was soon full of people, but all their efforts to revive her were fruitless. A physician who was hastily summoned found a very serious cerebral congestion, and succeeded, by bleeding her, in restoring the circulation; but that state of unconsciousness was succeeded by convulsions, and for a week Valentine hovered between life and death.

The nurse was careful to say nothing as to the cause of her mistress's dangerous agitation. She told the physician alone, under the seal of secrecy. This is how she was forced to believe that there was, behind all these distressing events, a liaison which no one must be allowed to suspect. Finding that Valentine was a little better after the bloodletting, on the day of the event
which caused her illness, she began to reflect upon the supernatural way in which her young mistress had been informed of that event. The letter she found in her hand reminded her of the note which she had been asked to give her on the previous day, before the wedding, and which had been handed to her by Bénédict's old housekeeper. Happening to go down for a moment to the butler's pantry, she heard the servants discussing the cause of the suicide, and saying to one another, under their breath, that Pierre Blutty and Bénédict had quarrelled the night before on the subject of Mademoiselle de Raimbault. They added that Bénédict was still living, and that the same physician who was attending Valentine had dressed his wound in the morning, and had refused to give a positive opinion as to his condition. One bullet had entered his forehead and come out above the ear. That wound, although serious, might not prove fatal; but no one knew how many bullets there were in the pistol. It might be that a second one had lodged in the skull, and in that case the respite which the wounded man was enjoying at that moment might serve simply to prolong his suffering.

Thus it was proved to Catherine's satisfaction that that catastrophe and the painful events immediately preceding it were directly responsible for Valentine's alarming condition. The good creature fancied that a gleam of hope, however feeble it might be, would have more effect upon her mistress's trouble than all the physician's remedies. She hurried to Bénédict's cottage, which was only half a league from the château, and assured herself with her own eyes that the poor fellow was still alive. Many neighbors, drawn thither by curiosity rather than concern, were gathered about the door, but the physician had given orders that only a few should be admitted,
and Monsieur Lhéry, who was installed by the dying man's bedside, allowed Catherine to enter only after much resistance. Madame Lhéry was still in ignorance of the sad news; she had gone to Pierre Blutty's farm to pay the wedding visit.

Catherine, after examining the wounded man and asking Lhéry's opinion, turned away, knowing as little as before of the probable results of the wound, but fully enlightened as to the cause of the suicide. Just as she was leaving the house, she happened to glance at a chair on which Bénédict's blood-stained clothes had been placed. She started, and as it always happens, do what we will, that our eyes are attracted by a shocking or disgusting object, Catherine could not remove hers from that chair, and she discovered there a handkerchief of India silk, horribly stained with blood. She instantly recognized the kerchief which she herself had tied about Valentine's neck when she left the house on the evening before the wedding, and which she had lost during her walk in the fields. That was an indisputable ray of light; so she took advantage of a moment when no one was looking at her to possess herself of the handkerchief, which might have compromised Valentine, and thrust it in her pocket.

When she returned to the château, she lost no time in concealing it in her room, and gave no further thought to it. On the rare occasions when she was left alone with Valentine, she tried to make her understand that Bénédict might be saved, but it was all in vain. Valentine's mental faculties seemed to be completely exhausted ; she did not raise her eyelids to see who spoke to her. If she had any thought at all in her mind, it was one of satisfaction to see that she was dying.

A week passed in this way. Then there was a
perceptible change for the better; Valentine seemed to recover her memory, and found relief in floods of tears. But as no one could induce her to divulge the cause of her grief, they believed that there was still some trouble with the brain. The nurse alone was on the watch for a favorable moment to speak, but Monsieur de Lansac, being on the eve of going away,
made it his duty
not to leave his wife's apartments.

Monsieur de Lansac had received his appointment as first secretary of Embassy—hitherto he had been only second secretary—and, at the same time, orders to join his chief at once, and to start for Russia, with or without his wife.

Monsieur de Lansac had never really intended to take his wife abroad with him. In the days when he had been most fascinating to Valentine, she had asked him if he would take her to his post of duty, and he, in order not to fall short of the devotion which he affected, had answered that it was his most fervent wish never to be parted from her. But he had secretly determined to use all his adroitness and, if necessary, his authority, to preserve his wandering life from domestic annoyances. Thus the coincidence of an illness, which was no longer desperate, but which threatened to be of long duration, with the necessity of leaving France immediately, was favorable to Monsieur de Lansac's interests and desires. Although Madame de Raimbault was very shrewd in financial matters, she had allowed herself to be completely circumvented by the far superior skill of her son-in-law. The marriage contract, after discussions most revolting as to substance, but most refined as to form, had been drawn altogether in Monsieur de Lansac's favor. He had availed himself to the greatest possible extent of the elasticity of the laws, to make himself master of
his wife's fortune, and he had made the
contracting parties
consent to offer his creditors flattering expectations based on the estate of Raimbault. These trifling peculiarities of his conduct had come very near breaking off the marriage ; but, by dint of flattering all the countess's pet ambitions, he had succeeded in obtaining a stronger hold upon her than before. As for Valentine, she was so ignorant of business, and had such a distaste for it, that she agreed, without understanding anything about it, to whatever was demanded of her.

So it was that Monsieur de Lansac, seeing that his debts were paid, so to speak, left Raimbault with no great regret for his wife, and he rubbed his hands as he felicitated himself inwardly upon having brought so delicate and advantageous an affair to a satisfactory conclusion. His orders to repair to his post arrived most opportunely to relieve him from the difficult part he had been playing at Raimbault since his marriage. Suspecting, perhaps, that a thwarted fancy was the cause of Valentine's distress and illness, and, at all events, bitterly aggrieved by the feeling which she manifested for him, he had had no excuse thus far for showing his irritation. Under the eyes of those two mothers, who made a great parade of their affection and their anxiety, he dared not allow the ennui and impatience which consumed him to make themselves manifest. So that his situation was extremely trying ; whereas, by going away for an indefinite time, he would avoid, in addition, the disagreeable consequences sure to result from the forced sale of the Raimbault estates; for his principal creditor was imperatively demanding the amount of his claim, which was about five hundred thousand francs; and before long that beautiful domain, which Madame de Raimbault had taken so much pride in improving, would be, to her
unbounded disgust, dismembered and reduced to paltry dimensions.

At the same time, Monsieur de Lansac would escape from the tears and whims of a newly-married wife.

“In my absence,” he said to himself, “ she will have a chance to accustom herself to the idea of having given up her liberty. Her placid and retiring nature will accommodate itself to the quiet and secluded life to which I leave her; or, if her repose is disturbed by some romantic love-affair, why, she will have time to cure herself of it or tire of it before I return.”

Monsieur de Lansac was a man without prejudices, in whose eyes all sentiment, all argument, all conviction was governed by that omnipotent word which rules the universe: money.

Madame de Raimbault had other estates in various provinces, and law-suits everywhere. Law-suits were the principal business of her life. She declared that they wore her out with fatigue and excitement, but without them she would have been bored to death. Since the loss of her social grandeur they were all that her activity and her love of intrigue had to feed upon. In them, too, she vented all the spleen which the vexations of her position heaped up in her heart. At that moment, she was engaged in a very important suit in Sologne, against the inhabitants of a village who disputed her title to a vast tract of moorland. The case was about to be tried, and the countess was most anxious to be present to spur on her counsel, cajole the judges, threaten her opponents; in a word, to give free rein to that feverish restlessness which is the gnawing worm of minds long fed upon ambition. But for Valentine's illness, she would have gone, as she intended, on the day following the wedding, to attend personally to that matter; now, seeing that her
daughter was out of danger, and having to be absent but a short time, she decided to go with her son-in-law, who was going to Paris, and who bade her adieu at the seat of the litigation, halfway to the capital.

Valentine was left alone with her grandmother and her nurse, at the château of Raimbault, for several days.

One night, Bénédict, who had been so crushed hitherto by horrible pain that he had been unable to think, woke feeling somewhat relieved, and made an effort to recall his situation. His head was so swathed in bandages that a part of his face was covered. He raised his hand to remove the obstacle and to recover the power to use the first faculty which comes to life within us—sight, which precedes even thought. Instantly, a light hand removed the pins, lifted a bandage, and enabled him to gratify his longing. He glanced at the pale-faced woman who was leaning over him, and, by the flickering gleam of a night light, distinguished a pure and noble profile which resembled Valentine's. He thought that he was dreaming, and his hand groped for the phantom's. The phantom seized his hand and pressed her lips to it.

“Who are you ?” queried Bénédict, with a shudder.

“Can you ask me ?” replied the voice of Louise.

The kind-hearted Louise left everything to go to nurse her friend. She was at her post day and night, hardly allowing Madame Lhéry to relieve her for an hour or two in the morning, devoting herself to the
depressing duties of a nurse at the bedside of a man at the point of death, with almost no hope of recovery. However, thanks to Louise's wonderful nursing and to his own youthful strength, Bénédict escaped almost certain death, and one day he mustered strength enough to thank her and reproach her in the same breath for saving his life.

“My friend,” said Louise, terrified by his mental prostration, “if I have unfeelingly recalled you to a life which my affection has no power to brighten for you, I have done it from consideration for Valentine.”

Bénédict started.

“To preserve her life,” continued Louise, “which is at this moment in at least as much danger as yours.”

“In danger ? why ?” cried Bénédict.