The Clique of Gold, Emile Gaboriau [if you liked this book .txt] 📗

Greeting Daniel with a sweet glance of her eyes, Henrietta walked up to the count, and offered him her forehead to kiss; but he pushed her back rudely, and said, assuming an air of supreme solemnity,—

“I have sent for you, my daughter, to inform you that to-morrow fortnight I shall marry Miss Brandon.”

Henrietta must have been prepared for something of the kind, for she did not move. She turned slightly pale; and a ray of wrath shot from her eyes. The count went on,—

“Under these circumstances, it is not proper, it is hardly decent, that you should not know her who is to be your mother hereafter. I shall therefore present you to her this very day, in the afternoon.”

The young girl shook her head gently, and then she said,—

“No!”

Count Ville-Handry had become very red. He exclaimed,—

“What! You dare! What would you say if I threatened to carry you forcibly to Miss Brandon’s house?”

“I, should say, father, that that is the only way to make me go there.”

Her attitude was firm, though not defiant. She spoke in a calm, gentle voice, but betrayed in every thing a resolution firmly formed, and not to be shaken by any thing. The count seemed to be perfectly amazed at this audacity shown by a girl who was usually so timid. He said,—

“Then you detest, you envy, this Miss Brandon?”

“I, father? Why should I? Great God! I only know that she cannot become the Countess Ville-Handry,—she who has filled all Paris with evil reports.”

“Who has told you so? No doubt, M. Champcey.”

“Everybody has told me, father.”

“So, because she has been slandered, the poor girl”—

“I am willing to think she is innocent; but the Countess Ville-Handry must not be a slandered woman.”

She raised herself to her full height, and added in a higher voice,—

“You are master here, father; you can do as you choose. But I—I owe it to myself and to the sacred memory of my mother, to protest by all the means in my power; and I shall protest.”

The count stammered and stared. The blood rose to his head. He cried out,—

“At last I know you, Henrietta, and I understand you. I was not mistaken. It was you who sent M. Daniel Champcey to Miss Brandon, to insult her at her own house.”

“Sir!” interrupted M. Daniel in a threatening tone.

But the count could not be restrained; and, with his eyes almost starting from their sockets, he continued,—

“Yes, I read your innermost heart, Henrietta. You are afraid of losing a part of your inheritance.”

Stung by this insult, Henrietta had stepped up close to her father,—

“But don’t you see, father, that it is this woman who wants your fortune, and that she does not like us, and cannot like us?”

“Why, if you please?”

Once before, Count Ville-Handry had asked this question of his daughter in almost the same words. Then she had not dared answer him; but now, carried away by her bitterness at being insulted by a woman whom she despised, she forgot every thing. She seized her father’s hand, and, carrying him to a mirror, she said in a hoarse voice,—

“‘Why?’—you ask. Well, look there! look at yourself!”

If Count Ville-Handry had trusted nature, he would have looked like a man of barely sixty, still quite robust and active. But he had allowed art to spoil every thing. And this morning, with his few hairs, half white, half dyed, with the rouge and the white paint of yesterday cracked, and fallen away in places, he looked as if he had lived a few thousand years.

Did he see himself as he really was,—hideous?

He certainly became livid; and coldly, for his excessive rage gave him the appearance of composure, he said,—

“You are a wretch, Henrietta!”

And as she broke out in sobs, terrified by his words, he said,—

“Oh, don’t play comedy! Presently, at four o’clock precisely, I shall call for you. If I find you dressed, and ready to accompany me to Miss Brandon’s house, all right. If not M. Champcey has been here for the last time in his life; and you will never—do you hear?—never be his wife. Now I leave you alone; you can reflect!”

And he went out, closing the door so violently, that the whole house seemed to shake.

“All is over!”

Both Henrietta and Daniel were crushed by this certain conviction.

The crisis could no longer be postponed. A few hours more, and the mischief would be done. Daniel was the first to shake off the stupor of despair; and, taking Henrietta’s hand, he asked her,—

“You have heard what your father said. What will you do?”

“What I said I would do, whatever it may cost me.”

“But could you yield?”

“Yield?” exclaimed the young girl.

And, looking at Daniel with grieved surprise, she added,—

“Would you really dare give me that advice,—you who had only to look at Miss Brandon to lose your self-control so far as to overwhelm her with insults?”

“Henrietta, I swear”—

“And this to such an extent, that father accused you of having done so at my bidding. Ah, you have been very imprudent, Daniel!”

The unhappy man wrung his hands with despair. What punishment he had to endure for a moment’s forgetfulness! He felt as if he had rendered himself guilty already by not revealing the mean conduct of M. Elgin and Mrs. Brian while Miss Brandon was driving about Paris. And now, at this very hour, he was put into a still more difficult position, because he could not even give a glimpse of the true state of things.

He said nothing; and Henrietta gloried in his silence.

“You see,” she said, “that if your heart condemns me, your reason and your conscience approve of my decision.”

He made no reply, but, rising suddenly, he began to walk up and down in the room like a wild beast searching for some outlet from the cage in which it has been imprisoned. He felt he was caught, hemmed in on all sides, and he could do nothing, nothing at all.

“Ah, we must surrender!” he exclaimed at last, overcome with grief; “we must do it; we are almost helpless. Let us give up the struggle; reason