The Mystery of Orcival, Emile Gaboriau [people reading books TXT] 📗

"Sauvresy!" he exclaimed, stupefied.

"Yes," said the young man, hot, and out of breath, "I've been watching you the last two minutes; what were you doing here?"

"Why—nothing."

"How! What they told me at your house this morning was true, then! I went there."

"What did they say?"

"That nobody knew what had become of you, and that you declared to Jenny when you left her the night before that you were going to blow your brains out. The papers have already announced your death, with details."

This news seemed to have a great effect on the count.

"You see, then," he answered tragically, "that I must kill myself!"

"Why? In order to save the papers from the inconvenience of correcting their error."

"People will say that I shrunk—"

"Oh, 'pon my word now! According to you, a man must make a fool of himself because it has been reported that he would do it. Absurd, old fellow. What do you want to kill yourself for?"

Hector reflected; he almost saw the possibility of living.

"I am ruined," answered he, sadly.

"And it's for this that—stop, my friend, let me tell you, you are an ass! Ruined! It's a misfortune, but when a man is of your age he rebuilds his fortune. Besides, you aren't as ruined as you say, because I've got an income of a hundred thousand francs."

"A hundred thousand francs—"

"Well, my fortune is in land, which brings in about four per cent."

Tremorel knew that his friend was rich, but not that he was as rich as this. He answered with a tinge of envy in his tone:

"Well, I had more than that; but I had no breakfast this morning."

"And you did not tell me! But true, you are in a pitiable state; come along, quick!"

And he led him toward the restaurant.

Tremorel reluctantly followed this friend, who had just saved his life. He was conscious of having been surprised in a distressingly ridiculous situation. If a man who is resolved to blow his brains out is accosted, he presses the trigger, he doesn't conceal his pistol. There was one alone, among all his friends, who loved him enough not to see the ludicrousness of his position; one alone generous enough not to torture him with raillery; it was Sauvresy.

But once seated before a well-filled table, Hector could not preserve his rigidity. He felt the joyous expansion of spirit which follows assured safety after terrible peril. He was himself, young again, once more strong. He told Sauvresy everything; his vain boasting, his terror at the last moment, his agony at the hotel, his fury, remorse, and anguish at the pawnbroker's.

"Ah!" said he. "You have saved me! You are my friend, my only friend, my brother."

They talked for more than two hours.

"Come," said Sauvresy at last, "let us arrange our plans. You want to disappear awhile; I see that. But to-night you must write four lines to the papers. To-morrow I propose to take your affairs in hand, that's a thing I know how to do. I don't know exactly how you stand; but I will agree to save something from the wreck. We've got money, you see; your creditors will be easy with us."

"But where shall I go?" asked Hector, whom the mere idea of isolation terrified.

"What? You'll come home with me, parbleu, to Valfeuillu. Don't you know that I am married? Ah, my friend, a happier man than I does not exist! I've married—for love—the loveliest and best of women. You will be a brother to us. But come, my carriage is right here near the door."

M. Plantat stopped. His companions had not suffered a gesture or a word to interrupt him. M. Lecoq, as he listened, reflected. He asked himself where M. Plantat could have got all these minute details. Who had written Tremorel's terrible biography? As he glanced at the papers from which Plantat read, he saw that they were not all in the same handwriting.

The old justice of the peace pursued the story:

Bertha Lechaillu, though by an unhoped-for piece of good fortune she had become Madame Sauvresy, did not love her husband. She was the daughter of a poor country school-master, whose highest ambition had been to be an assistant teacher in a Versailles school; yet she was not now satisfied. Absolute queen of one of the finest domains in the land, surrounded by every luxury, spending as she pleased, beloved, adored, she was not content. Her life, so well regulated, so constantly smooth, without annoyances and disturbance, seemed to her insipid. There were always the same monotonous pleasures, always recurring each in its season. There were parties and receptions, horse rides, hunts, drives—and it was always thus! Alas, this was not the life she had dreamed of; she was born for more exciting pleasures. She yearned for unknown emotions and sensations, the unforeseen, abrupt transitions, passions, adventures. She had not liked Sauvresy from the first day she saw him, and her secret aversion to him increased in proportion as her influence over him grew more certain. She thought him common, vulgar, ridiculous. She thought the simplicity of his manners, silliness. She looked at him, and saw nothing in him to admire. She did not listen to him when he spoke, having already decided in her wisdom that he could say nothing that was not tedious or commonplace. She was angry that he had not been a wild young man, the terror of his family.

He had, however, done as other young men do. He had gone to Paris and tried the sort of life which his friend Tremorel led. He had enough of it in six months, and hastily returned to Valfeuillu, to rest after such laborious pleasures. The experience cost him a hundred thousand francs, but he said he did not regret purchasing it at this price.

Bertha was wearied with the constancy and adoration of her husband. She had only to express a desire to be at once obeyed, and this blind submission to all her wishes appeared to her servile in a man. A man is born, she thought, to command, and not to obey; to be master, and not slave. She would have preferred a husband who would come in in the middle of the night, still warm from his orgy, having lost at play, and who would strike her if she upbraided him. A tyrant, but a man. Some months after her marriage she suddenly took it into her head to have absurd freaks and extravagant caprices. She wished to prove him, and see how far his constant complacence would go. She thought she would tire him out. It was intolerable to feel absolutely sure of her husband, to know that she so filled his heart that he had room for no other, to have nothing to fear, not even the caprice of an hour. Perhaps there was yet more than this in Bertha's aversion. She knew herself, and confessed to herself that had Sauvresy wished, she would have been his without being his wife. She was so lonely at her father's, so wretched in her poverty, that she would have fled from her home, even for this. And she despised her husband because he had not despised her enough!

People were always telling her that she was the happiest of women. Happy! And there were days when she wept when she thought that she was married. Happy! There were times when she longed to fly, to seek adventure and pleasure, all that she yearned for, what she had not had and never would have. The fear of poverty—which she knew well—restrained her. This fear was caused in part by a wise precaution which her father, recently dead, had taken. Sauvresy wished to insert in the marriage-contract a settlement of five hundred thousand francs on his affianced. The worthy Lechailin had opposed this generous act.

"My daughter," he said, "brings you nothing. Settle forty thousand francs on her if you will, not a sou more; otherwise there shall be no marriage."

As Sauvresy insisted, the old man added:

"I hope that she will be a good and worthy wife; if so, your fortune will be hers. But if she is not, forty thousand francs will be none too little for her. Of course, if you are afraid that you will die first, you can make a will."

Sauvresy was forced to yield. Perhaps the worthy school-master knew his daughter; if so he was the only one. Never did so consummate a hypocrisy minister to so profound a perversity, and a depravity so inconceivable in a young and seemingly innocent girl. If, at the bottom of her heart, she thought herself the most wretched of women, there was nothing of it apparent—it was a well-kept secret. She knew how to show to her husband, in place of the love she did not feel, the appearance of a passion at once burning and modest, betraying furtive glances and a flush as of pleasure, when he entered the room.

All the world said:

"Bertha is foolishly fond of her husband."

Sauvresy was sure of it, and he was the first to say, not caring to conceal his joy:

"My wife adores me."

Such were man and wife at Valfeuillu when Sauvresy found Tremorel on the banks of the Seine with a pistol in his hand. Sauvresy missed his dinner that evening for the first time since his marriage, though he had promised to be prompt, and the meal was kept waiting for him. Bertha might have been anxious about this delay; she was only indignant at what she called inconsiderateness. She was asking herself how she should punish her husband, when, at ten o'clock at night, the drawing-room door was abruptly thrown open, and Sauvresy stood smiling upon the threshold.

"Bertha," said he, "I've brought you an apparition."

She scarcely deigned to raise her head. Sauvresy continued:

"An apparition whom you know, of whom I have often spoken to you, whom you will like because I love him, and because he is my oldest comrade, my best friend."

And standing aside, he gently pushed Hector into the room.

"Madame Sauvresy, permit me to present to you Monsieur the Count de
Tremorel."

Bertha rose suddenly, blushing, confused, agitated by an indefinable emotion, as if she saw in reality an apparition. For the first time in her life she was abashed, and did not dare to raise her large, clear blue eyes.

"Monsieur," she stammered, "you are welcome."

She knew Tremorel's name well. Sauvresy had often mentioned it, and she had seen it often in the papers, and had heard it in the drawing-rooms of all her friends. He who bore it seemed to her, after what she had heard a great personage. He was, according to his reputation, a hero of another age, a social Don Quixote, a terribly fast man of the world. He was one of those men whose lives astonish common people, whom the well-to-do citizen thinks faithless and lawless, whose extravagant passions overleap the narrow bounds of social prejudice; a man who tyrannizes over others, whom all fear, who fights on the slightest provocation, who scatters gold with a prodigal hand, whose iron health resists the most terrible excesses. She had often in her miserable reveries tried to imagine what kind of man this Count de Tremorel was. She awarded him with such qualities as she desired for her fancied hero, with whom she could fly from her husband in search of new adventures. And now, of a sudden, he appeared before her.

"Give Hector your hand, dear," said Sauvresy. She held out her hand, which Tremorel lightly pressed, and his touch seemed to give her an electric shock.

Sauvresy threw himself into an arm-chair.

"You see, Bertha," said he, "our friend Hector is exhausted with the life he has been leading. He has been advised to rest, and has come to seek it here, with us."

"But, dear," responded Bertha, "aren't you afraid that the count will be bored a little here?"

"Why?"

"Valfeuillu is very quiet, and we are but dull country folks."

Bertha talked for the sake of talking, to break a silence which embarrassed her, to make Tremorel speak, and hear his voice. As she talked she observed him, and studied the impression she made on him. Her radiant beauty usually struck those who saw her for the first time with open admiration. He remained impassible. She recognized the worn-out rake of title, the fast man who has tried, experienced, exhausted all things, in his coldness and superb indifference. And because he did not admire her she admired him the more.

"What