The Parisians — Complete, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton [christmas read aloud .TXT] 📗

offer me his arm; but I walked by his side in the direction he chose. As we walked he told me in very few words that my mother had been separated from her husband, and for certain family reasons had found it so difficult to rear and provide for me herself, that she had accepted the offer of Madame Surville to adopt me as her own child. While he spoke, there came dimly back to me the remembrance of a lady who had taken me from my first home, when I had been, as I understood, at nurse, and left me with poor dear Madame Surville, saying, ‘This is henceforth your mamma.’

“I never again saw that lady. It seems that many years afterwards my true mother desired to regain me. Madame Surville was then dead. She failed to trace me out, owing, alas! to my own faults and change of name. She then entered a nunnery, but, before doing so, assigned a sum of 100,000 francs to this gentleman, who was distantly connected with her, with full power to him to take it to himself, or give it to my use should he discover me, at his discretion. ‘I ask you,’ continued the Monsieur, ‘to go with me to Mons. N———‘s, because the sum is still in his hands. He will confirm my statement. All that I have now to say is this, If you accept my guardianship, if you obey implicitly my advice, I shall consider the interest of this sum which has accumulated since deposited with M. ——- due to you; and the capital will be your dot on marriage, if the marriage be with my consent.’”

Gustave had listened very attentively, and without interruption, until now; when he looked up, and said with his customary sneer, “Did your Monsieur, fort bel homme, you say, inform you of the value of the advice, rather of the commands, you were implicitly to obey?”

“Yes,” answered Julie, “not then, but later. Let me go on. We arrived at M. N——-’s, an elderly grave man. He said that all he knew was that he held the money in trust for the Monsieur with me, to be given to him, with the accumulations of interest, on the death of the lady who had deposited it. If that Monsieur had instructions how to dispose of the money, they were not known to him. All he had to do was to transfer it absolutely to him on the proper certificate of the lady’s death. So you see, Gustave, that the Monsieur could have kept all from me if he had liked.”

“Your Monsieur is very generous. Perhaps you will now tell me his name.”

“No; he forbids me to do it yet.”

“And he took this apartment for you, and gave you money to buy that smart dress and these furs. Bah! mon enfant, why try to deceive me? Do I not know my Paris? A fort bel homme does not make himself guardian to a fort belle fine so young and fair as Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin without certain considerations which shall be nameless, like himself.”

Julie’s eyes flashed. “Ah, Gustave! ah, Monsieur!” she said, half angrily, half plaintively, “I see that my guardian knew you better than I did. Never mind; I will not reproach. Thou halt the right to despise me.”

“Pardon! I did not mean to offend thee,” said Gustave, somewhat disconcerted. “But own that thy story is strange; and this guardian, who knows me better than thou—does he know me at all? Didst thou speak to him of me?”

“How could I help it? He says that this terrible war, in which he takes an active part, makes his life uncertain from day to day. He wished to complete the trust bequeathed to him by seeing me safe in the love of some worthy man who”—she paused for a moment with an expression of compressed anguish, and then hurried on—“who would recognise what was good in me,—would never reproach me for—for—the past. I then said that my heart was thine: I could never marry any one but thee.”

“Marry me,” faltered Gustave—“marry!”

“And,” continued the girl, not heeding his interruption, “he said thou wert not the husband he would choose for me: that thou wert not—no, I cannot wound thee by repeating what he said unkindly, unjustly. He bade me think of thee no more. I said again, that is impossible.”

“But,” resumed Rameau, with an affected laugh, “why think of anything so formidable as marriage? Thou lovest me, and—” He approached again, seeking to embrace her. She recoiled. “No, Gustave, no. I have sworn solemnly by the memory of my lost mother—O—that I will never sin again. I will never be to thee other than thy friend—or thy wife.”

Before Gustave could reply to these words, which took him wholly by surprise, there was a ring at the outer door, and the old bonne ushered in Victor de Mauleon. He halted at the threshold, and his brow contracted.

“So you have already broken faith with me, Mademoiselle?”

“No, Monsieur, I have not broken faith,” cried Julie; passionately. “I told you that I would not seek to find out Monsieur Rameau. I did not seek, but I met him unexpectedly. I owed to him an explanation. I invited him here to give that explanation. Without it, what would he have thought of me? Now he may go, and I will never admit him again without your sanction.”

The Vicomte turned his stern look upon Gustave, who though, as we know, not wanting in personal courage, felt cowed by his false position; and his eye fell, quailed before De Mauleon’s gaze.

“Leave us for a few minutes alone, Mademoiselle,” said the Vicomte. “Nay, Julie,” he added, in softened tones, “fear nothing. I, too, owe explanation—friendly explanation—to M. Rameau.”

With his habitual courtesy towards women, he extended his hand to Julie, and led her from the room. Then, closing the door, he seated himself, and made a sign to Gustave to do the same.

“Monsieur,” said De Mauleon, “excuse me if I detain you. A very few words will suffice for our present interview. I take it for granted that Mademoiselle has told you that she is no child of Madame Surville’s: that her own mother bequeathed her to my protection and guardianship with a modest fortune which is at my disposal to give or withhold. The little I have seen already of Mademoiselle impresses me with sincere interest in her fate. I look with compassion on what she may have been in the past; I anticipate with hope what she may be in the future. I do not ask you to see her in either with my eyes. I say frankly that it is my intention, and I may add, my resolve, that the ward thus left to my charge shall be henceforth safe from the temptations that have seduced her poverty, her inexperience, her vanity, if you will, but have not yet corrupted her heart. Bref, I must request you to give me your word of honour that you will hold no further communication with her. I can allow no sinister influence to stand between her fate and honour.”

“You speak well and nobly, M. le Vicomte,” said Rameau, “and I give the promise you exact.” He added, feelingly: “It is true her heart has never been corrupted that is good, affectionate, unselfish as a child’s. J’ai l’honneur de vous saluer, M. le Vicomte.”

He bowed with a dignity unusual to him, and tears were in his eyes as he passed by De Mauleon and gained the anteroom. There