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

yet. I came to ask your advice, and I find you more cowardly than a woman. Let me act, then; don't do anything yourself; I will do all."

He essayed an objection.

"Enough," said she. "He must not ruin us after all—I will see—I will think."

Someone below called her. She went down, leaving Hector overcome with despair.

That evening, during which Bertha seemed happy and smiling, his face finally betrayed so distinctly the traces of his anguish, that Sauvresy tenderly asked him if he were not ill?

"You exhaust yourself tending on me, my good Hector," said he. "How can
I ever repay your devotion?"

Tremorel had not the strength to reply.

"And that man knows all," thought he. "What courage! What fate can he be reserving for us?"

The scene which was passing before Hector's eyes made his flesh creep. Every time that Bertha gave her husband his medicine, she took a hair-pin from her tresses, and plunged it into the little vial which she had shown him, taking up thus some small, white grains, which she dissolved in the potions prescribed by the doctor.

It might be supposed that Tremorel, enslaved by his horrid position, and harassed by increasing terror, would renounce forever his proposed marriage with Laurence. Not so. He clung to that project more desperately than ever. Bertha's threats, the great obstacles now intervening, his anguish, crime, only augmented the violence of his love for her, and fed the flame of his ambition to secure her as his wife. A small and flickering ray of hope which lighted the darkness of his despair, consoled and revived him, and made the present more easy to bear. He said to himself that Bertha could not be thinking of marrying him the day after her husband's death. Months, a whole year must pass, and thus he would gain time; then some day he would declare his will. What would she have to say? Would she divulge the crime, and try to hold him as her accomplice? Who would believe her? How could she prove that he, who loved and had married another woman, had any interest in Sauvresy's death? People don't kill their friends for the mere pleasure of it. Would she provoke the law to exhume her husband? She was now in a position, thought he, wherein she could, or would not exercise her reason. Later on, she would reflect, and then she would be arrested by the probability of those dangers, the certainty of which did not now terrify her.

He did not wish that she should ever be his wife at any price. He would have detested her had she possessed millions; he hated her now that she was poor, ruined, reduced to her own narrow means. And that she was so, there was no doubt, Sauvresy indeed knew all. He was content to wait; he knew that Laurence loved him enough to wait for him one, or three years, if necessary. He already had such absolute power over her, that she did not try to combat the thoughts of him, which gently forced themselves on her, penetrated to her soul, and filled her mind and heart. Hector said to himself that in the interest of his designs, perhaps it was well that Bertha was acting as she did. He forced himself to stifle his conscience in trying to prove that he was not guilty. Who thought of this crime? Bertha. Who was executing it? She alone. He could only be reproached with moral complicity in it, a complicity involuntary, forced upon him, imposed somehow by the care for his own life. Sometimes, however, a bitter remorse seized him. He could have understood a sudden, violent, rapid murder; could have explained to himself a knife-stroke; but this slow death, given drop by drop, horribly sweetened by tenderness, veiled under kisses, appeared to him unspeakably hideous. He was mortally afraid of Bertha, as of a reptile, and when she embraced him he shuddered from head to foot.

She was so calm, so engaging, so natural; her voice had the same soft and caressing tones, that he could not forget it. She plunged her hair-pin into the fatal vial without ceasing her conversation, and he did not surprise her in any shrinking or shuddering, nor even a trembling of the eyelids. She must have been made of brass. Yet he thought that she was not cautious enough; and that she put herself in danger of discovery; and he told her of these fears, and how she made him tremble every moment.

"Have confidence in me," she answered. "I want to succeed—I am prudent."

"But you may be suspected."

"By whom?"

"Eh! How do I know? Everyone—the servants, the doctor."

"No danger. And suppose they did suspect?"

"They would make examinations, Bertha; they would make a minute scrutiny."

She gave a smile of the most perfect security.

"They might examine and experiment as much as they pleased, they would find nothing. Do you think I am such a fool as to use arsenic?"

"For Heaven's sake, hush!"

"I have procured one of those poisons which are as yet unknown, and which defy all analysis; one of which many doctors—and learned ones, too—could not even tell the symptoms!"

"But where did you get this—this—"

He dared not say, "poison."

"Who gave you that?" resumed he.

"What matters it? I have taken care that he who gave it to me should run the same danger as myself, and he knows it. There's nothing to fear from that quarter. I've paid him enough to smother all his regrets."

An objection came to his lips; he wanted to say, "It's too slow;" but he had not the courage, though she read his thought in his eyes.

"It is slow, because that suits me," said she. "Before all, I must know about the will—and that I am trying to find out."

She occupied herself constantly about this will, and during the long hours that she passed at Sauvresy's bedside, she gradually, with the greatest craft and delicacy, led her husband's mind in the direction of his last testament, with such success that he himself mentioned the subject which so absorbed Bertha.

He said that he did not comprehend why people did not always have their worldly affairs in order, and their wishes fully written down, in case of accident. What difference did it make whether one were ill or well? At these words Bertha attempted to stop him. Such ideas, she said, pained her too much. She even shed real tears, which fell down her cheeks and made her more beautiful and irresistible than before; real tears which moistened her handkerchief.

"You dear silly creature," said Sauvresy, "do you think that makes one die?"

"No; but I do not wish it."

"But, dear, have we been any the less happy because, on the day after our marriage, I made a will bequeathing you all my fortune? And, stop; you have a copy of it, haven't you? If you were kind, you would go and fetch it for me."

She became very red, then very pale. Why did he ask for this copy? Did he want to tear it up? A sudden thought reassured her; people do not tear up a document which can be cancelled by a scratch of the pen on another sheet of paper. Still, she hesitated a moment.

"I don't know where it can be."

"But I do. It is in the left-hand drawer of the glass cupboard; come, please me by getting it."

While she was gone, Sauvresy said to Hector:

"Poor girl! Poor dear Bertha! If I died, she never would survive me!"

Tremorel thought of nothing to reply; his anxiety was intense and visible.

"And this man," thought he, "suspects something! No; it is not possible."

Bertha returned.

"I have found it," said she.

"Give it to me."

He took the copy of his will, and read it with evident satisfaction, nodding his head at certain passages in which he referred to his love for his wife. When he had finished reading, he said:

"Now give me a pen and some ink."

Hector and Bertha reminded him that it would fatigue him to write; but he insisted. The two guilty ones, seated at the foot of the bed and out of Sauvresy's sight, exchanged looks of alarm. What was he going to write? But he speedily finished it.

"Take this," said he to Tremorel, "and read aloud what I have just added."

Hector complied with his friend's request, with trembling voice:

"This day, being sound in mind, though much suffering, I declare that I do not wish to change a line of this will. Never have I loved my wife more—never have I so much desired to leave her the heiress of all I possess, should I die before her.

"CLEMENT SAUVRESY."

Mistress of herself as Bertha was, she succeeded in concealing the unspeakable satisfaction with which she was filled. All her wishes were accomplished, and yet she was able to veil her delight under an apparent sadness.

"Of what good is this?" said she, with a sigh.

She said this, but half an hour afterward, when she was alone with
Hector, she gave herself up to the extravagance of her delight.

"Nothing more to fear," exclaimed she. "Nothing! Now we shall have liberty, fortune, love, pleasure, life! Why, Hector, we shall have at least three millions; you see, I've got this will myself, and I shall keep it. No more agents or notaries shall be admitted into this house henceforth. Now I must hasten!"

The count certainly felt a satisfaction in knowing her to be rich, for he could much more easily get rid of a millionnaire widow than of a poor penniless woman. Sauvresy's conduct thus calmed many sharp anxieties. Her restless gayety, however, her confident security, seemed monstrous to Hector. He would have wished for more solemnity in the execution of the crime; he thought that he ought at least to calm Bertha's delirium.

"You will think more than once of Sauvresy," said he, in a graver tone.

She answered with a "prrr," and added vivaciously:

"Of him? when and why? Oh, his memory will not weigh on me very heavily. I trust that we shall be able to live still at Valfeuillu, for the place pleases me; but we must also have a house at Paris—or we will buy yours back again. What happiness, Hector!"

The mere prospect of this anticipated felicity so shocked Hector, that his better self for the moment got the mastery; he essayed to move Bertha.

"For the last time," said he, "I implore you to renounce this terrible, dangerous project. You see that you were mistaken—that Sauvresy suspects nothing, but loves you as well as ever."

The expression of Bertha's face suddenly changed; she sat quite still, in a pensive revery.

"Don't let's talk any more of that," said she, at last. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps he only had doubts—perhaps, although he has discovered something, he hopes to win me back by his goodness. But you see—"

She stopped. Doubtless she did not wish to alarm him.

He was already much alarmed. The next day he went off to Melun without a word; being unable to bear the sight of this agony, and fearing to betray himself. But he left his address, and when she sent word that Sauvresy was always crying out for him, he hastily returned. Her letter was most imprudent and absurd, and made his hair stand on end. He had intended, on his arrival, to reproach her; but it was she who upbraided him.

"Why this flight?"

"I could not stay here—I suffered, trembled, felt as if I were dying."

"What a coward you are!"

He would have replied, but she put her finger on his mouth, and pointed with her other hand to the door of the next room.

"Sh! Three doctors have been in consultation there for the past hour, and I haven't been able to hear a word of what they said. Who knows what they are about? I shall not be easy till they go away."

Bertha's fears were not without foundation. When Sauvresy had his last relapse, and complained of a severe neuralgia in the face and an irresistible craving for pepper, Dr. R—- had uttered a significant exclamation. It was nothing, perhaps—yet Bertha had heard it, and she thought she surprised a sudden suspicion on the doctor's part; and this now disturbed her, for she thought that it might be the subject of the consultation. The suspicion, however, if there had ever been any, quickly vanished. The symptoms entirely changed twelve hours later, and the next day the sick man felt