Valentine (32 page)

The next forenoon Monsieur de Lansac and Monsieur Grapp walked out together.

“Well,” said the vulgar little man, “ have you spoken to your
spouse?”
*

“How fast you go, my dear fellow! For heaven's sake give me time to breathe.”

“I have no time for that myself, monsieur. This matter must be settled within a week. You know that I can't wait any longer.”

“Oh ! be patient!” said the count, testily.

“Patient!” retorted the creditor, in a surly tone. “I have been patient for ten years now, monsieur, and I tell you that my patience is at an end. You were to pay up when you married, and here it is two years already that you——”

“But what in the devil are you afraid of ? This estate is worth five hundred thousand francs, and there is no incumbrance on it.”

“I don't say that I run any risk,” rejoined the intractable creditor; “ but I say that I want to collect what is owing me, get my money together, and without delay. That was understood, monsieur, and I trust that you don't mean to do again as you have done before.”

“God forbid! I took this infernal journey for the express purpose of getting rid of you forever—of your claim, I mean—and I long to be free from worry at last. Within a week you shall be paid.”

“I don't feel so easy about it as you do,” retorted the other, in the same persistent, uncompromising tone; “your wife—that is to say, your
spouse
—may ruin all your plans ; she may refuse to sign.”

“She won't refuse.”

“ Hein!
perhaps you will say that I go too far, but after all I have a right to understand your family affairs. It seemed to me that you two weren't so overjoyed to meet as you led me to expect.”

“What do you say ?” exclaimed the count, turning pale with wrath at the fellow's insolence.

“No, no!” rejoined the usurer, tranquilly. “Madame la comtesse seemed to be only moderately pleased. I know what I am talking about.”

“Monsieur!” said the count, in a thundering tone.

“Monsieur!” said the usurer, in a still more
threatening tone, and fixing his little wild boar's eyes on his debtor; “listen to me; frankness is essential in business, and you haven't been frank in this matter. Listen, I say, listen ; this is no time to fly into a rage. I know that with a single word Madame de Lansac can prolong my time of waiting indefinitely; and, then, what can I get out of you ? Even if I should have you shut up at Sainte-Pélagie, I should have to pay for your keep there ; and it isn't at all certain that, in the present state of your wife's affection, she would care to release you very soon.”

“Tell me explicitly what you mean, monsieur ?” cried the count, in a rage ; “ upon what do you base——”

“I mean, monsieur, that I, too, have a pretty young wife. What can't one get with money ? Very good ; when I have been away for no more than a fortnight, although my house is as big as yours, my wife—I mean my
spouse
—doesn't sleep on the first floor and I on the ground-floor. Whereas here, monsieur—I know very well that the old nobility have kept to the old customs and sleep apart from their wives ; but
mordieu !
monsieur, you have been away from yours two years.”

The count angrily stripped the leaves from a branch which he had picked up to keep himself in countenance.

“Enough of this, monsieur!” he exclaimed, choking with wrath. “You have no right to meddle in my affairs to this extent; to-morrow you shall have the guaranty you require, and then I will convince you that you have gone too far.”

The tone in which he said this had very little effect on Monsieur Grapp. The usurer was inured to threats, and there was one thing which he dreaded more than a caning—namely, the insolvency of his debtors.

The day was passed inspecting the estate. Monsieur Grapp had sent for a clerk from the land registry office
in the morning. He visited the woods, the fields, the meadows, estimating the value of everything, haggling over a furrow or a felled tree, decrying everything, taking notes, tormenting the count and driving him frantic, so that he was tempted twenty times to throw him into the river. The family at Grangeneuve were much surprised at the arrival of the noble count in person, attended by his acolyte, who scrutinized everything, and seemed to be on the point of drawing up an inventory of the cattle and the farming outfit. Monsieur and Madame Lhéry fancied that they could detect, in this step of their new landlord, a manifestation of distrust and a purpose to cancel their lease. They asked nothing better. A wealthy iron-master, a kinsman and friend of the family, had recently died childless, and had left by his will two hundred thousand francs to
his dear and estimable goddaughter,
Athénaïs Lhéry, Madame Blutty. So Père Lhéry suggested to Monsieur de Lansac that the lease should be cancelled, and Monsieur Grapp undertook to see to it that the parties should come to an understanding in that respect within three days.

Valentine had sought in vain an opportunity to talk with her husband alone, and to broach the subject of Louise. After dinner, Monsieur de Lansac suggested to Grapp that they inspect the park. They went out together, and Valentine followed them, dreading, not without reason, any examination of her little reservation. Monsieur de Lansac offered her his arm, and ostentatiously chatted with her in a perfectly friendly and unembarrassed tone.

She was beginning to recover her courage, and had ventured to ask him a few questions, when the peculiar barrier with which she had surrounded her
reservation
attracted Monsieur de Lansac's attention.

“May I ask you, my dear, what this partition means ?” he inquired in a perfectly natural tone. “One would say that it was a game preserve. Have you taken up the royal sport of hunting, pray ?”

Valentine, struggling to assume a heedless tone, explained that she had fixed upon that spot for her private retreat, and that she came there to be alone, so that she could work more freely.

“Bless my soul!” said Monsieur de Lansac, “what profound and conscientious work can you be engaged upon that demands such precautions ? What! palisades, barred gates, impenetrable shrubbery! Why, you must have transformed the pavilion into a fairy palace ! And to think that I imagined that the solitude at the château was so hard for you ! But you despise anything so trivial! Here is the secrecy of the cloister ! Here is the mystery which your dark meditations demand ! Tell me, are you in search of the philosopher's stone, or the most perfect form of government ? I see that we are wasting time out in the world cudgelling our brains over the destiny of empires; it is all pondered and arranged and unravelled in the pavilion in your park.”

Valentine, overwhelmed and terrified by this jesting, in which it seemed to her that there was less merriment than malice, would have been glad, for many reasons, to turn Monsieur de Lansac's mind away from that subject; but he insisted that she should do the honors of her retreat, and she had no choice but to submit. She had hoped to tell him of her daily meetings with her sister and her son before he started on his walk. Consequently she had not told Catherine to remove such traces of their daily presence as her friends might have left there. Poetry written on the walls by Bénédict, in praise of the pleasures of friendship and of the repose of
country life ; Valentin's name, which, like a true schoolboy, he had written everywhere; pieces of music belonging to Bénédict, and marked with his initials; a pretty little fowling-piece with which Valentin sometimes hunted rabbits in the park,—all were minutely scrutinized by Monsieur de Lansac, and furnished him with a theme for divers half-bitter, half-jesting remarks. At last he picked up from an easy-chair a dainty velvet cap belonging to Valentin, and said with a forced laugh, calling Valentine's attention to it:

“Is this the cap of the invisible alchemist whom you invoke in this retreat ?”

He tried it on, satisfied himself that it was too small for a man, and coolly tossed it on the piano; then, turning to Grapp, as if a paroxysm of vindictive wrath against his wife had caused him to forget the consideration he owed to her position, he demanded sharply.

“What do you value this pavilion at ?”

“Almost nothing,” was the reply. “These luxuries and fancy buildings are worth nothing on a country estate. The Black Band
*
wouldn't give five hundred francs for it. In a city it's different. But when there's a field of barley around this building, or an artificial meadow, we'll say, what will it be good for ? Just to tear down for the stone and lumber that are in it.”

The serious tone in which Grapp made this reply sent an involuntary chill through Valentine's veins. Who was this man with the repulsive face, whose forbidding glance seemed to be making an inventory of her property, whose voice called down destruction on the dwelling of her fathers, whose imagination drove a plough
through those gardens, but now the secret hiding-place of pure and modest happiness ?

She glanced trembling at Monsieur de Lansac, whose placid, nonchalant air was impenetrable.

About ten o'clock in the evening, as Grapp was preparing to go to his room, he led the count out on the stoop.

“Look you,” he said angrily, “here's a whole day wasted; try to arrange some settlement of my matters to-night, or I'll have an understanding with Madame de Lansac to-morrow. If she refuses to pay your debts, I shall at least know where I stand. I see clearly enough that she doesn't like my face. I don't want to annoy her, but I do not propose to be fooled with. Besides, I have no time to amuse myself with country life. Tell me, monsieur, will you have an interview with your
spouse
to-night ?”

“Morbleu!
monsieur,” cried Lansac, testily, grasping the gilded railing, “you are a perfect butcher!”

“Possibly,” retorted Grapp, eager to avenge himself by insult for the hatred and contempt he inspired ; “ but take my advice and move your pillow up one flight.”

He withdrew, mumbling some vile insinuation. The count was refined in manner, if not in heart. He could not at that moment avoid the reflection that the chaste and sanctified institution of marriage had been shockingly debased in its progress through the avaricious centuries of our civilization.

But other thoughts, bearing more directly upon his present position, soon took possession of his keen and calculating mind.

*
Epouse.
It is a vulgarism, in French, to speak, in ordinary conversation, of a man's wife as his
spouse; femme
is the proper word. The distinction can only be indicated, not expressed, by the use of the English word
spouse.

*
The Black Band—
Bande Noire—was
an association of speculators, who made a business of buying large estates in order to sell them in small lots.

Monsieur de Lansac was in one of the most delicate situations which are likely to present themselves in the life of a man of the world. There are several varieties of honor in France : the honor of the peasant is different from that of the noble; that of the noble is different from that of the bourgeois. There is a kind of honor for every rank, and, it may be, for every individual. One thing is certain, that Monsieur de Lansac was a man of honor after his fashion. A philosopher in some respects, he had the prejudices of his caste in many others. In these days of enlightenment, of bold conceptions and general renovation, the old ideas of right and wrong must necessarily change to some extent, and individual opinions hover uncertainly about innumerable quarrels as to the dividing line.

Monsieur de Lansac was quite willing to be betrayed, but not to be deceived. In that respect he was quite right. Considering the doubts which certain discoveries had aroused in his mind relative to his wife's fidelity, it may be imagined that he was not disposed to bring about a more intimate union, and to shield her by his voluntary act from the consequences of a presumed misstep. The ugliest feature of his position was this, that vile pecuniary considerations fettered the exercise of his dignity and compelled him to take a crooked course toward his goal.

He was immersed in these reflections when, about midnight, it seemed to him that he heard a faint voice in
the house, where everything had been peaceful and silent for an hour.

A glass door opened into the garden from the salon, on the same floor as the count's apartments, but at the other end of the building ; it seemed to him that somebody was cautiously opening that door. Instantly, the recollection of what he had seen the preceding night, added to his eager desire to obtain proofs which would place his wife in his power, roused him to action. He hastily put on a dressing-gown and slippers, and, walking in the darkness with all the precautions of a man accustomed to be prudent in everything, he went out through the door of the salon, which was still ajar, and followed Valentine into the park.

Although she had locked the gate in the fence behind her, he had no difficulty in entering her reservation a few minutes after her, by scaling the fence itself.

Guided by instinct and by faint sounds, he reached the pavilion, and, crouching out of sight among the tall dahlias which grew in front of the principal window, he could hear everything that was said.

Valentine, oppressed by the conflicting emotions which such a step caused her, had sunk without speaking on the sofa in the salon. Bénédict, standing beside her, and no less moved than she, also remained silent for several moments ; then he made an effort to put an end to that painful situation.

“I was very anxious,” he said; “I was afraid that you didn't receive my note.”

“Ah ! Bénédict,” replied Valentine, sadly, “that note was written by a madman, and I must be mad myself to comply with such a reckless and wicked summons. Oh! I was very near not coming, but I had not the strength to resist. May God forgive me !”