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

“Here she comes!” he said. “Here is my daughter!”

It was Henrietta.

How could a young girl, usually so reserved, and naturally so timid, make up her mind to cause such scandal? Because the most timid people are precisely the boldest on certain occasions. Forced to abandon their nature, they do not reason, and do not calculate, and, losing all self-possession, rush blindly into danger, impelled by a kind of madness resembling that of sheep when they knock their heads against the walls of their stable.

Now, for nearly a fortnight, the count’s daughter had been upset by so many and so violent emotions, that she was no longer herself. The insults which her father heaped upon her when he surprised her with Daniel had unsettled her mind completely.

For Count Ville-Handry, acting under a kind of overexcitement, had that day lost all self-control, and forgot himself so far as to treat his daughter as no gentleman would have treated his child while in his senses, and that in the presence of his servants!

And then, what tortures she had had to endure in the week that followed! She had declared that she would not be present at the reading of the marriage-contract, nor at the ceremonies of the civil marriage, nor at church; and her father had tried to make her change her intentions. Hence every day a new lamentable scene, as the decisive moment drew nearer.

If the count had at least used a little discretion, if he had tried the powers of persuasion, or sought to touch his daughter’s heart by speaking to her of herself, of her future, of her happiness, of her peace!

But no! He never came to her room without a new insult, thinking of nothing, as he acknowledged himself, but of sparing Miss Brandon’s feelings, and of saving her all annoyance. The consequence was, that his threats, so far from moving Henrietta, had only served to strengthen her in her determination.

The marriage-contract had been read and signed at six o’clock, just before a grand dinner. At half-past five, the count had once more come to his daughter’s room. Without telling her any thing of it, he had ordered her dressmaker to send her several magnificent dresses; and they were lying about now, spread out upon chairs.

“Dress yourself,” he said in a tone of command, “and come down!”

She, the victim of that kind of nervous exaltation which makes martyrdom appear preferable to yielding, replied obstinately,—

“No, I shall not come down.”

She did not care for any subterfuge or excuse; she did not even pretend to be unwell; she said resolutely—

“I will not!”

And he, finding himself unable to overcome this resistance, maddened and enraged, broke out in blasphemies and insane threats.

A chambermaid, who had been attracted by the loud voice, had come, and, putting her ear to the keyhole, had heard every thing; and the same evening she told her friends how the count had struck his daughter, and that she had heard the blows.

Henrietta had always denied the charge.

Nevertheless, it was but too true, that, in consequence of these last insults, she had come to the determination to make her protest as public as she could by showing herself to all Paris while her father was married at St. Clothilda to Miss Brandon. The poor girl had no one to whom she could confide her griefs, no one to tell her that all the disgrace would fall back upon herself.

So she had carried out her plan bravely. Putting on a very showy costume, so as to attract as much attention as possible, she had spent the day in driving about to all the places where she thought she would meet most of her acquaintances. Night alone had compelled her to return, and she felt broken to pieces, exhausted, upset by unspeakable anguish of soul, but upheld by the absurd idea that she had done her duty and shown herself worthy of Daniel.

She had just alighted, and was about to pay the coachman, when the count’s valet came up, and said to her in an almost disrespectful tone of voice,—

“My master has ordered me to tell you to come to him as soon as you should come home.”

“Where is my father?”

“In the large reception-room.”

“Alone?”

“No. The countess, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin are with him.”

“Very well. I am coming.”

Gathering all her courage, and looking whiter and colder than the marble of the statues in the vestibule, she went to the reception-room, opened the door, and entered stiffly.

“Here you are!” exclaimed Count Ville-Handry, restored to a certain degree of calmness by the very excess of his wrath,—“here you are!”

“Yes, father.”

“Where have you been?”

She had at a glance taken in the whole room; and at the sight of the new countess, and those whom she called her accomplices, all her resentment arose. She smiled haughtily, and said carelessly,—

“I have been at the Bois de Boulogne. In the morning I went out to make some purchases; later, knowing that the Duchess of Champdoce is a little unwell, and does not go out, I went to lunch with her; after that, as the weather was so fine”—

Count Ville-Handry could endure it no longer.

Seizing his daughter by the wrists, he lifted her bodily, and, dragging her up to the Countess Sarah, he hurled out,—

“On your knees, unhappy child! on your knees, and ask the best and noblest of women to pardon you for all these insults!”

“You hurt me terribly, father,” said the young girl coldly.

But the countess had already thrown herself between them.

“For Heaven’s sake, madam,” she said, “spare your father!”

And, as Henrietta measured her from head to foot with an insulting glance, she went on,—

“Dear count, don’t you see that your violence is killing me?”

Promptly Count Ville-Handry let his daughter go, and, drawing back, he said,—

“Thank her, thank this angel of goodness who intercedes in your behalf! But have a care! my patience is at an end. There are such things as houses of correction for rebellious children and perverse daughters.”

She interrupted him by a gesture, and exclaimed with startling energy,—

“Be it so, father! Choose among all these houses the very strictest, and send me there. Whatever I may have to suffer there, it will be better than being here, as long as I see in the place of my mother that—woman!”

“Wretch!” howled the count.