The Mystery of Orcival, Émile Gaboriau [fiction novels to read TXT] 📗

melted Bertha’s callousness; remorse had already taken possession of her, as her disgust of Trémorel increased.

“Poison?” she cried, eagerly, “never!”

“You must give me some, though, presently, so as to help me to die.”

“You die, Clement? No; I want you to live, so that I may redeem the past. I am a wretch, and have committed a hideous crime⁠—but you are good. You will live; I don’t ask to be your wife, but only your servant. I will love you, humiliate myself, serve you on my knees, so that some day, after ten, twenty years of expiation, you will forgive me!”

Hector in his mortal terror and anguish, was scarcely able to distinguish what was taking place. But he saw a dim ray of hope in Bertha’s gestures and accent, and especially in her last words; he thought that perhaps it was all going to end and be forgotten, and that Sauvresy would pardon them. Half-rising, he stammered:

“Yes, forgive us, forgive us!”

Sauvresy’s eyes glittered, and his angry voice vibrated as if it came from a throat of metal.

“Forgive!” cried he, “pardon! Did you have pity on me during all this year that you have been playing with my happiness, during this fortnight that you have been mixing poison in all my potions? Pardon? What, are you fools? Why do you think I held my tongue, when I discovered your infamy, and let myself be poisoned, and threw the doctors off the scent? Do you really hope that I did this to prepare a scene of heartrending farewells, and to give you my benediction at the end? Ah, know me better!”

Bertha was sobbing; she tried to take her husband’s hand, but he rudely repulsed her.

“Enough of these falsehoods,” said he. “Enough of these perfidies. I hate you! You don’t seem to perceive that hate is all that is still living in me.”

Sauvresy’s expression was at this moment ferocious. “It is almost two months since I learned the truth; it broke me up, soul and body. Ah, it cost me a good deal to keep quiet⁠—it almost killed me. But one thought sustained me; I longed to avenge myself. My mind was always bent on that; I searched for a punishment as great as this crime; I found none, could find none. Then you resolved to poison me. Mark this⁠—that the very day when I guessed about the poison I had a thrill of joy, for I had discovered my vengeance!”

A constantly increasing terror possessed Bertha, and now stupefied her, as well as Trémorel.

“Why do you wish for my death? To be free and marry each other? Very well; I wish that also. The Count de Trémorel will be Madame Sauvresy’s second husband.”

“Never!” cried Bertha. “No, never!”

“Never!” echoed Hector.

“It shall be so; nevertheless because I wish it. Oh, my precautions have been well taken, and you can’t escape me. Now hear me. When I became certain that I was being poisoned, I began to write a minute history of all three of us; I did more⁠—I have kept a journal day by day and hour by hour, narrating all the particulars of my illness; then I kept some of the poison which you gave me⁠—”

Bertha made a gesture of denial. Sauvresy proceeded:

“Certainly, I kept it, and I will tell you how. Every time that Bertha gave me a suspicious potion, I kept a portion of it in my mouth, and carefully ejected it into a bottle which I kept hid under the bolster. Ah, you ask how I could have done all this without your suspecting it, or without being seen by any of the servants. Know that hate is stronger than love, be sure that I have left nothing to chance, nor have I forgotten anything.”

Hector and Bertha looked at Sauvresy with a dull, fixed gaze. They forced themselves to understand him, but could scarcely do so.

“Let’s finish,” resumed the dying man, “my strength is waning. This very morning, the bottle containing the poison I have preserved, our biographies, and the narrative of my poisoning, have been put in the hands of a trustworthy and devoted person, whom, even if you knew him, you could not corrupt. He does not know the contents of what has been confided to him. The day that you get married this friend will give them all up to you. If, however, you are not married in a year from today, he has instructions to put these papers and this bottle into the hands of the officers of the law.”

A double cry of horror and anguish told Sauvresy that he had well chosen his vengeance.

“And reflect,” added he, “that this package once delivered up to justice, means the galleys, if not the scaffold for both of you.”

Sauvresy had overtasked his strength. He fell panting upon the bed, his mouth open, his eyes filmy, and his features so distorted that he seemed to be on the point of death. But neither Bertha nor Trémorel thought of trying to relieve him. They remained opposite each other with dilated eyes, stupefied, as if their thoughts were bent upon the torments of that future which the implacable vengeance of the man whom they had outraged imposed upon them. They were indissolubly united, confounded in a common destiny; nothing could separate them but death. A chain stronger and harder than that of the galley-slave bound them together; a chain of infamies and crimes, of which the first link was a kiss, and the last a murder by poison. Now Sauvresy might die; his vengeance was on their heads, casting a cloud upon their sun. Free in appearance, they would go through life crushed by the burden of the past, more slaves than the blacks in the American rice-fields. Separated by mutual hate and contempt, they saw themselves riveted together by the common terror of punishment, condemned to an eternal embrace.

Bertha at this moment admired her husband. Now that he was so feeble that he breathed as painfully as an infant, she looked upon