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

placard, on which places were offered from thirty-five up to a thousand francs a month. She went up stairs. A very loquacious gentleman made her first deposit a considerable sum, and then told her he had exactly what she wanted. She went ten times back to the office, and always in vain. After an eleventh appointment, he gave her the address of two houses, in one of which he assured her she would certainly be employed. These two houses turned out to be two small shops, where pretty young ladies were wanted to pour out absinthe, and to wait upon the customers.

This was Henrietta’s last effort. For ten months she had now been struggling with a kind of helpless fury against inconquerable difficulties, and at last the springs of her energy had lost their elasticity. Now, crushed in body and mind, overwhelmed and conquered, she gave up.

It lacked still eighteen months before she would become of age. Since she had escaped from her father’s house, she had not received a line from Daniel, although she had constantly written to him, and she had, of course, no means of ascertaining the date of his return. She had once, following M. de Brevan’s advice, summoned courage enough to go to the navy department, and there to inquire if they had any news about “The Conquest.” A clerk had replied to her, with a joke, that “The Conquest” might be afloat yet “a year or two.” How could the poor girl wait till then? Why should she any longer maintain the useless struggle? She felt acute pains in her chest; she coughed; and, after walking a few yards, her legs gave way under her, and she broke out in cold perspiration. She now spent her days almost always in bed, shivering with chills, or plunged in a kind of stupor, during which her mind was filled with dismal visions. She felt as if the very sources of life were drying up within her, and as if all her blood was, drop by drop, oozing out of her through an open wound.

“If I could die thus!” she thought.

This was the last favor she asked of God. Henceforth, a miracle alone could save her; and she hardly wished to be saved. A perfect indifference and intense distaste of every thing filled her soul. She thought she had exhausted all that man can suffer; and there was nothing left for her to fear.

A last misfortune which now befell her did not elicit even a sigh from her. One afternoon, while she had been down stairs, she had left the window open. The wind had suddenly sprung up, slammed the blinds, and thus upset a chair. On this chair hung her cashmere; it fell into the fireplace, in which a little fire was still burning; and when she came back she found the shawl half-burnt to ashes. It was the only article of value which she still possessed; and she might at any time have procured several hundred francs for it.

“Well,” she said, “what does it matter? It means three months taken from my life; that is all.”

And she did not think of it any more; she did not even trouble herself about the rent, which became due in October.

“I shall not be able to pay it,” she said to herself. “Mrs. Chevassat will give me notice, and then the hour will have come.”

Still, to her great surprise, the worthy woman from below did not scold her for not having the money ready, and even promised she would make the owner of the house give her time. This inexplicable forbearance gave Henrietta a week’s respite. But at last, one morning, she woke up, having not a cent left, having nothing even, she thought, that she could get money for, and being very hungry.

“Well,” she thought, as if announcing to her own soul that the catastrophe had at last come, “all I need now is a few minutes’ courage.”

She said so in her mind; but in reality she was chilled to the heart by the fearful certainty that the crisis had really come: she felt as if the executioner were at the door of the room, ready to announce her sentence of death. And yet, for a month now, she had thought of suicide only; and the evening before she had thought it over with a kind of delight.

“I am surely not such a coward?” she said to herself in a fit of rage.

Yes, she was afraid. Yes, she told herself in vain that there was no other choice left to her but that between death and Sir Thorn, or M. de Brevan. She was terrified.

Alas! she was only twenty years old; she had never felt such exuberance of life within her; she wanted to live,—to live a month more, a week, a day!

If only her shawl had not been burnt! Then, examining with haggard eyes her chamber, she saw that exquisite piece of embroidery which she had undertaken. It was a dress, covered all over with work of marvellous delicacy and exquisite outlines. Unfortunately, it was far from being finished.

“Never mind!” she said to herself; “perhaps they will give me something for it.”

And, wrapping the dress up hastily, she hurried to offer it for sale to the old woman who had already bought her ear-rings, and then her watch. The fearful old hag seemed to be overcome with surprise when she saw this marvel of skill.

“That’s very fine,” she said; “why, it is magnificent! and, if it were finished, it would be worth a mint of money; but as it is no one would want it.”

She consented, however, to give twenty francs for it, solely from love of art, she said; for it was money thrown away. These twenty francs were, for Henrietta, an unexpected release.

“It will last me a month,” she thought, determined to live on dry bread only; “and who can tell what a month may bring forth?”

And this unfortunate girl had an inheritance from her mother of more than a million! If she had but known it, if she had but had a single friend to advise her in her inexperience! But she had been faithful to her vow never to let her secret be known to a living soul; and the most terrible anguish had never torn from her a single complaint.

M. de Brevan knew this full well; for he had continued his weekly visits with implacable regularity. This perseverance, which had at first served to maintain Henrietta’s courage, had now become a source of unspeakable torture.

“Ah, I shall be avenged!” she said to him one day. “Daniel will come back.”

But he, shrugging his shoulders, had answered,—

“If you count upon that alone, you may as well surrender, and become my wife at once.”

She turned her head from him with an expression of ineffable disgust. Rather the icy arms of Death! And still the pulsations of her heart were apparently counted. Since the end of November her twenty francs had been exhausted; and to prolong her existence she had had to resort to the last desperate expedients of extreme poverty. All that she possessed, all that she could carry from her chamber without being stopped by the concierge, she had sold, piece by piece, bit after