Valentine (30 page)

Their security was the greater because Valentine had not kept in her service any of those servants born in livery, insolent, ungrateful, low-minded fellows who besmirch everything they look at, and whom the Comtesse de Raimbault delighted to have about her, that she might seem to have slaves to tyrannize over. After her marriage Valentine had made many changes in her household. It now consisted only of those excellent servants, semi-villagers, who make a contract to enter one's service, and do their work gravely, moderately—
obligingly,
if we may so describe it; who reply:
Certainly,
or:
I'll see to it,
to your orders, vex you often and drive you to despair, break your porcelain, never steal a sou, but by their clumsiness and awkwardness cause terrible damage in a fine house ; intolerable but most worthy folk, who recall all the virtues of a patriarchal age; who, in their sturdy good sense and their blissful ignorance, have no idea of the swift and debasing servility of domestic service as we understand it; who obey without haste, but with respect; invaluable servants, who still believe in their duty because their duty is the result of a plain and equitable agreement; stout fellows who would return a dandy's blows with his riding-whip; who do nothing
except from affection; who cannot be prevented either from loving or cursing; whom you long a hundred times a day to send to the devil, but whom you never make up your mind to discharge.

The old marchioness might have been an obstacle in the way of our three friends' plans, and Valentine was on the point of taking her into her confidence and winning her over to her side. But just at that time she very nearly died of an attack of apoplexy. Her mind and her memory were so seriously affected that they could not hope to make her understand what was taking place. She was no longer strong and active; she was almost wholly confined to her room, and passed her time with her companion in trivial religious exercises. Religion, of which she had made a plaything all her life, became a necessary amusement to her, and her enfeebled memory had no other exercise than reciting paternosters. Thus there was only one person who had it in her power to injure Valentine ; that was the marchioness's companion. Mademoiselle de Beaujon—that was her name—desired but one thing on earth,—to remain with her mistress and to obtain such influence over her that the old lady would leave her as large a legacy as it was in her power to do. Valentine, although she watched her closely enough to make sure that she never abused her empire over the marchioness's mind, realized that she earned by her zeal and her care all the reward she could obtain, and treated her with a degree of confidence for which she was grateful. Madame de Raimbault, having received a hint from public rumor—for it is impossible to keep anything absolutely secret, try as hard as we may—wrote to her to inquire what she should believe with respect to the different reports that had come to her ears. She had great confidence in this Beaujon, who had never been fond of
Valentine, but, on the other hand, had always been fond of slander. But La Beaujon, in an epistle remarkable for its peculiar style and orthography, hastened to set her mind at rest, and to assure her that she had never heard a word of those strange rumors, which had been invented probably in some of the small towns in the neighborhood. La Beaujon intended to go out of service as soon as the old marchioness was dead ; she cared very little for the countess's wrath so long as she succeeded in leaving the château with well-filled pockets.

Monsieur de Lansac wrote very rarely, and manifested no impatience to see his wife—no disposition to give any attention to his affairs of the heart. Thus a number of favorable circumstances combined to shelter the happiness which Louise, Valentine and Bénédict pilfered, so to speak, from the law of conventionalities and prejudices. Valentine caused a fence to be built around that part of the park where the pavilion stood. That little reservation was very thickly planted and very dark. On its borders they planted clumps of climbing plants, ramparts of wild vine and birthwort, and hedges of young cypresses of the sort that are trimmed like a curtain and form a barrier impenetrable to the eye. Amid all this verdure, and behind those trustworthy barriers of shade, the pavilion stood in a delightful situation, near a spring, from which a bubbling stream escaped among the rocks, maintaining an incessant cool murmur about that mysterious and dreamy retreat. No one was admitted save Valentine, Louise and Bénédict, and Athénaïs, when she could elude the watchful eye of her husband, who was not much pleased to see her friendly relations with her cousin. Valentin, who had a key to the pavilion, went thither every morning to wait for Valentine. He watered the flowers, put fresh ones in the salon, tried a tune
or two on the piano, or attended to the aviary. Sometimes he sat on a bench, absorbed in the vague and restless reveries common at his age ; but the instant that he spied his aunt's slender figure through the trees he would resume his work. Valentine loved to observe the similarity of their natures and inclinations. She was delighted to detect in that boy, despite the difference of sex, the quiet tastes, the fondness for a domestic, retired life of which she herself was conscious. And then she loved him because of Bénédict, who gave him lessons, and of whom he brought to her a sort of reflection every day.

Valentin, although he did not realize the strength of the bonds which bound him to Valentine and Bénédict, already loved them with an earnestness and delicacy of feeling beyond his years. That child, born in tears, his mother's greatest scourge and greatest comfort, had given proof early in life of that delicate sensibility which is developed much later in ordinary lives. As soon as he was old enough to understand what she said, Louise had told him, without evasion, of her position in society, her unhappy destiny, the stain upon his birth, the sacrifices she had made for him, and all that she had had to face in order to perform those duties which are so easy and so sweet to other mothers. Valentin had felt it all profoundly; his easily moved and loving disposition had taken on a tinge of melancholy pride. He had conceived a passionate gratitude for his mother, and in all her sorrows she had found in him compensation and comfort.

But it must be admitted that Louise, who was capable of such great courage and of so many sacrifices beyond the reach of common mortals, was by no means agreeable in ordinary life. Passionately earnest on every subject, and, in spite of herself, susceptible to all the wounds
of which she should have been able to deaden the sting, she often caused the bitterness of her heart to rebound upon the sweet and impressionable nature of her son. Thus, by dint of irritating those youthful faculties, she had already dulled them a little. There was something like the stamp of old age on that brow of fifteen years, and that child, his petals scarcely opened to life, already felt fatigued with living, and loved to find rest in a calm and stormless existence. Like a lovely flower born on the cliff in the morning, and beaten down by the wind before blooming, he hung his pale face on his breast, and his smile had a touch of languor unsuited to his years. So it was that his intimate relation with the serene and loving Valentine, and the prudent and unflagging devotion of Bénédict began a new era for him. He felt his petals open in that atmosphere, which was so much more favorable to his nature. His frail and slender body grew more rapidly, and the dull whiteness of his cheeks was softly tinged with red. Athénaïs, who thought more of physical beauty than of anything else in the world, declared that she had never seen such an enchanting face as that lovely boy's, with its frame of pale fair hair, like Valentine's, falling in great curls on a neck as white and smooth as that of the statue of Antinoüs. The giddy creature lost no opportunity to remark that he was a child and of no consequence, so that she might have the right to kiss from time to time that pure, smooth brow, and to pass her fingers through that soft hair, which she compared to the raw silk of the golden cocoons.

Thus the pavilion was a place of rest and pleasure to all at the close of day. Valentine admitted no profane interloper to the sanctuary, and allowed no communication with the people of the château. Catherine alone was allowed to enter, to take care of the place. It was
Valentine's Elysium, the world of her poetic fancy, her golden life. At the château all was ennui, slavery, depression ; her invalid grandmother, unwelcome visitors, painful reflections, and her oratory with its remorse-laden atmosphere; at the pavilion, happiness, friends, pleasant reveries, fears forgotten, and the pure delights of a chaste love. It was like an enchanted island in the midst of real life, like an oasis in the desert.

At the pavilion, Valentine forgot her secret vexations, her repressed emotions, her hidden love. Bénédict, overjoyed at Valentine's unresisting trust in his good faith, seemed to have changed his nature. He had laid aside his uneven temper, his injustice, his cruel outbursts of wrath. He was almost as attentive to Louise as to her sister ; he walked with her under the lindens in the park, with her arm in his. He talked to her of Valentin, extolled his good qualities, his intelligence, his rapid progress; he thanked her for giving him a friend and a son. Poor Louise wept as she listened, and strove to look upon Bénédict's friendship as more flattering and sweeter than his love would have been.

Athénaïs, frolicsome and merry, recovered all the heedlessness of her age at the pavilion. She forgot there her domestic troubles, the stormy affection and jealous distrust of Pierre Blutty. She still loved Bénédict, but not in the same way as before; she no longer saw in him anything more than a sincere friend. He called her his sister, like Louise and Valentine, but he preferred to call her his little sister. Athénaïs had not enough poetic feeling to persist in keeping alive a hopeless passion. She was young enough and lovely enough to aspire to a reciprocated love, and thus far Pierre Blutty had done nothing to wound her wifely vanity. She spoke of him with esteem, with a blush on her cheeks and a smile on
her lips; and then, at the slightest mischievous remark from Louise, she would run away down one of the paths in the park, playful and light of foot, dragging after her the shy Valentin, whom she treated as a schoolboy, but who was barely a year younger than she.

But it would be impossible to describe the silent and reserved affection of Bénédict and Valentine, that exquisite sentiment of modesty and self-sacrifice which held in check in both of them the ardent passion which was always ready to overflow. There were in that never-ending conflict a thousand pangs and a thousand joys, and it may be that Bénédict delighted equally in both. Valentine might often still fear lest she were offending God, and suffer because of her religious scruples; but he, having a less clear conception of a wife's duties, congratulated himself upon not having lured Valentine into sin and given her any cause for repentance. He gladly sacrificed to her the ardent aspirations which consumed him. He was proud of his ability to suffer and to triumph: secretly his imagination was often excited by desires and dreams innumerable ; but aloud he blessed Valentine for her most trifling favors. To breathe upon her hair, to inhale the perfumes that emanated from her, to lie on the grass at her feet, his head resting on a corner of her silk apron, to take from Valentin's forehead the kiss which she had just placed there, to carry away stealthily at night the flowers which had withered at her waist—these were the momentous incidents and the great joys of that life of privation, love and happiness.

Fifteen months passed thus; fifteen months of tranquillity and happiness in the lives of five persons is almost supernatural. Yet so it was. The only thing that caused Bénédict to grieve was that Valentine was sometimes pale and meditative. At such times he made haste to ascertain the reason, and he always found that it was connected with something that had alarmed her pious and fearful soul. He always succeeded in dispelling these light clouds, for Valentine could no longer doubt his strength and his perfect submission. Monsieur de Lansac's conduct contributed to her sense of security. She had deemed it best to write to him that Louise was settled at the farm with her son, and that Monsieur Lhéry—Bénédict—was attending to the young man's education, without a word as to the intimate terms upon which she was living with those three persons. She had explained her relations with Louise to this extent, affecting to consider Monsieur de Lansac bound by a previous promise to allow her to see her sister. The whole story had impressed Monsieur de Lansac as peculiar and absurd. If he had not divined the whole truth, he was, at all events, on the track. He had reflected, with a shrug, upon the wretched taste and wretched form of an intrigue between his wife and a provincial bumpkin.

But, taking everything into consideration, he was better pleased that it should be so than not. He had married with the firm determination not to be embarrassed by Madame de Lansac, and for the moment he
was maintaining relations with a
première danseuse
at St. Petersburg, which caused him to take a very philosophical view of life. So that he considered it eminently fair that his wife, on her side, should form ties which would enable her to bear his absence without reproaches or murmurs. All that he desired was that she should be prudent, and that she should not, by her dissolute behavior, subject him to the foolish and unjust ridicule which is visited upon betrayed husbands. Now, he had sufficient confidence in Valentine's character to sleep in peace in that respect ; and, as the deserted young wife must necessarily have what he called some occupation for her heart, he much preferred that she should seek it in the mystery of a secluded life, rather than amid the clamor and publicity of fashionable salons. So he was careful not to criticize or blame her mode of life, and his letters expressed, in most affectionate and respectful terms, the very profound indifference with which he had determined to accept whatever Valentine might do.