Baron Trigault's Vengeance, Emile Gaboriau [rom com books to read .txt] 📗

She said this, and tried her best to believe it; but in her secret heart she felt that she could no longer depend upon the baron’s assistance. “I wounded him this morning,” she thought. “He went away more angry than I had ever seen him before. He is incensed with me; and who knows how long it will be before he comes again?”

Still she waited, with feverish anxiety, listening breathlessly to every sound in the street, and trembling each time she heard or fancied she heard a carriage stop at the door. However, at two o’clock in the morning the baron had not made his appearance. “It is too late—he won’t come!” she murmured.

But now her sufferings were less intolerable, for excess of wretchedness had deadened her sensibility. Utter prostration paralyzed her energies and benumbed her mind. Ruin seemed so inevitable that she no longer thought of avoiding it; she awaited it with that blind resignation displayed by Spanish women, who, when they hear the roll of thunder, fall upon their knees, convinced that lightning is about to strike their defenceless heads. She tottered to her room, flung herself on the bed, and instantly fell asleep. Yes, she slept the heavy, leaden slumber which always follows a great mental crisis, and which falls like God’s blessing upon a tortured mind. On waking up, her first act was to ring for her maid, in order to send a message to Job, to go out again in search of the baron. But the faithful servant had divined his mistress’s wishes, and had already started off of his own accord. It was past mid-day when he returned, but his face was radiant; and it was in a triumphant voice that he announced: “Monsieur le Baron Trigault.”

Madame d’Argeles sprang up, and greeted the baron with a joyful exclamation. “Ah! how kind of you to come!” she exclaimed. “You are most welcome. If you knew how anxiously I have been waiting for you!” He made no reply. “If you knew,” continued Madame d’Argeles, “if you only knew.” But she paused, for in spite of her own agitation, she was suddenly struck by the peculiar expression on her visitor’s face. He was standing silent and motionless in the centre of the room, and his eyes were fixed upon her with a strange, persistent stare in which she could read all the contradictory feelings which were battling for mastery in his mind—anger, hatred, pity, and forgiveness. Madame d’Argeles shuddered. So her cup of sorrow was not yet full. A new misfortune was about to fall upon her. She had hoped that the baron would be able to alleviate her wretchedness, but it seemed as if he were fated to increase it. “Why do you look at me like that?” she asked, anxiously. “What have I done?”

“You, my poor Lia—nothing!”

“Then—what is it? Oh, my God! you frighten me.”

“What is it? Well, I am going to tell you,” he said, as he stepped forward and took her hand in his own. “You know that I have been infamously duped and deceived, that the happiness of my life has been destroyed by a scoundrel who tempted the wife I so fondly loved to forget her duty, and trample her honor under foot. You have heard my vows of vengeance if I ever succeeded in discovering him. Ah, well, Lia, I have discovered him. The man who stole my share of earthly happiness was the Count de Chalusse, your brother.”

With a sudden gesture Madame d’Argeles freed her hand from the baron’s grasp, and recoiled as terrified as if she had seen a spectre rise up before her. Then with her hands extended as if to ward off the horrible apparition, she exclaimed: “O, my God!”

A bitter smile curved the baron’s lips. “What do you fear?” he asked. “Isn’t your brother dead? He has defrauded me alike of happiness and vengeance!”

If her son’s life had depended on a single word, Madame d’Argeles could not have uttered it. She knew what mental agony had urged the baron to a sort of moral suicide, and led him to contract the vice in which he wasted his life and squandered, or, at least risk, his millions.

“Nor is this all,” he continued. “Listen. As I have often told you, I was sure that my wife became a mother in my absence. I sought the child for years, hoping that through the offspring I might discover the father. Ah, well! I’ve found what I sought, at last. The child is now a beautiful young girl. She lives at the Hotel de Chalusse as your brother’s daughter. She is known as Mademoiselle Marguerite.”

Madame d’Argeles listened, leaning against the wall for support, and trembling like a leaf. Her reason was shaken by so many repeated blows, and her son, her brother, Marguerite, Pascal Ferailleur, Coralth, Valorsay—all those whom she loved or feared, or hated—rose like spectres before her troubled brain. The horror of the truth exceeded her most frightful apprehensions. The strangeness of the reality surpassed every flight of fancy. And, moreover, the baron’s calmness increased her stupor. She so often had heard him give vent to his rage and despair in terrible threats, that she could not believe he would be thus resigned. But was his calmness real? Was it not a mask, would not his fury suddenly break forth?

However, he continued, “It is thus that destiny makes us its sport—it is thus that it laughs at our plans. Do you remember, Lia, the day when I met you wandering through the streets of Paris—with your child in your arms—pale and half dead with fatigue, faint for want of food, homeless and penniless? You saw no refuge but in death, as you have since told me. How could I imagine when I rescued you that I was saving my greatest enemy’s sister from suicide—the sister of the man whom I was vainly pursuing? And yet this might not be the end, if I chose to have it otherwise. The count is dead, but I can still return him disgrace for disgrace. He dishonored me. What prevents me from casting ineffaceable opprobrium upon the great name of Chalusse, of which he was so proud? He seduced my wife. To-day I can tell all Paris what his sister has been and what she is to-day.”

Ah! it was this—yes, it was this that Madame d’Argeles had dreaded. She fell upon her knees, and, with clasped hands she entreated: “Pity!—oh! have pity—forgive me! Have mercy! Have I not always been a faithful and devoted friend to you? Think of the past you have just invoked! Who helped you then to bear your intolerable sufferings? Don’t you remember the day when you, yourself, had determined to die by your own hand? There was a woman who persuaded you to abandon the thought of suicide. It was I!”

He looked at her for a moment with a softer expression, tears came to his eyes, and rolled down his cheeks. Then suddenly he raised her, and placed her in an arm-chair, exclaiming: “Ah! you know very well that I shall not do what I said. Don’t you know me better than that? Are you not sure of my affection, are you not aware that you are sacred in my eyes?” He was evidently striving hard to master his emotion. “Besides,” he added, “I had already pardoned before coming here. It was foolish on my part, perhaps, and for nothing in the world would I confess it to my acquaintances, but it is none the less true. I shall have my revenge in a certain fashion, however. I need only hold my peace, and the daughter of M. de Chalusse and Madame Trigault would become a lost woman. Is this not so? Very well, I shall offer her my assistance. It may, or may not, be another absurd and