Chapter XIV (1)
It was New Year’s Day, 1832, and the Duchesse was doing up a small packet. She believed absolutely in a system of rewards and punishments, and she thought that when people had done what was right they should be suitably recompensed. This, therefore, was a present of five hundred francs for Martha.
The doctor called in to attend an attack which the Dowager now permitted herself had given it as his opinion that the family of La Roche-Guyon had to thank the English attendant for the recovery of Madame la Comtesse. It was three weeks now since Martha’s fortunate experiment, and a marked change had taken place in its subject. Horatia was beginning to be about again as usual. She drove out daily, and was receiving visitors. She had entirely dropped her peculiar attitude towards the child, and was behaving like a reasonable being, far more reasonably, indeed, than the Duchesse could have expected. To the Dowager her unnatural dislike of her son had been no more objectionable than her absorption before his birth, her extravagant preparations for his advent, her intention of having an English nurse for him. Providence, however, had defeated the latter project, and had caused that treasure Madame Carré to be installed. And the latitude which Armand had allowed to Horatia’s fancies for redecoration and upholstery of the nurseries the Dowager had put down to his shrewdness, for which she had a considerable respect. No doubt the young scamp was glad to see his wife so harmlessly occupied, so long as he had his own freedom. It was true that the consequences of his indulgence in that freedom had been rather disastrous, but, though the Duchesse could not be got to believe his protestations of innocence, she no longer treated him to homilies on the subject, considering that the conditions of his ménage were improving. For not only did Horatia, though she visited the nursery daily, refrain from disturbing the régime established by the Duchesse herself, but she had consented to appear publicly with Armand next week, so, evidently, the breach was healed. Could anything be more satisfactory?
The old lady finished sealing up the packet for Martha. It then occurred to her to reward the Blessed Virgin also, and she wrote an order on her bank for one of Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon’s charities.
(2)
In reality the domestic affairs of the Comte and Comtesse were not prospering as the dispenser of rewards upstairs believed. At the very moment when the Duchesse was indulging in these reflections, Horatia was on the point of doing something she had long intended to do.
Armand had just come into her boudoir with his arms full of flowers.
“I have brought you some lilac,” he said, laying down a sheaf of white blossoms, and with them, almost furtively, a leather case which, from its shape, contained a necklace. “Here are some roses, too. I thought you might like them as a New Year’s gift for Maurice, It is his first New Year’s Day.”
“You are very kind,” replied his wife evenly. “If you will ring for Joséphine I will tell her to put them in the nursery.”
Armand walked across the room in silence to the bell. Then he moved away without ringing it, murmuring something about taking the flowers to Maurice himself.
“Armand,” said his wife, looking at the unopened case, “I think I would rather that you did not give me presents. I am afraid that you do not understand.”
“Understand what?” asked the young man uneasily. “I understand, my dear, that you are getting better at last, and that you are more beautiful than ever.”
Horatia motioned him back. “I am afraid that is not true,” she said in a very matter-of-fact way. “Will you sit down? I have been waiting to be strong enough to have a talk with you.”
Armand did not sit down. “I see that you have not forgiven me for my ever-to-be-regretted deception,” he said, regarding her with some apprehension.
“I do not think that there is much question of forgiving, or of not forgiving,” replied Horatia. “I really do not mind if you deceive me or no; I am past that now. Since my illness something has happened to me—I am different. I believe that the last thing I said before I fainted was that I hated you. I take that back; it is not true. One cannot hate a... a person who does not exist... I would rather you understood.”
“Merci, mon amie, you make yourself perfectly plain,” said Armand with a rather forced lightness. He had broken off a stem of the lilac and holding it in his hand, was gazing at it. “But I assure you that I do not regard myself as a ghost, ma foi, not in the least!”
Suddenly he looked up and met her glance full. “Then you still do not believe me?”
“I cannot I am sorry,” said his wife in a low voice, and, leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes. She was no longer, as before, a duellist needing to see what parry her antagonist would next use; she was a judge, pronouncing sentence. Armand said something under his breath, breaking up the lilac stem.
But in a moment Horatia reopened her eyes and sat up. “I have been so humiliated already,” she resumed, “that I cannot bear any more. Must I make myself more explicit? Take your freedom; do what you like with it. I shall ask no questions.”
“You are proposing, then, to make a scandal,” returned her husband, lifting angry eyes. “That will not do much to silence the other gossip, which you found so objectionable, will it?”
“That story does not touch me now,” said Horatia. “And there shall be no scandal, I promise you that. In public I shall be your wife. I will do my duty by your child. When we have to appear together I do not think you will have any cause to complain of me.”
Armand suddenly flung the tortured branch of lilac into the fire. “For the last time, Horatia, will you believe me?” he said with passion. “I have given you my word of honour; do you expect me to beg your forgiveness for a fault which I have not committed? I have been patient, for you have been very ill—you are ill now, or you would not create this causeless and ridiculous situation.”
“O, do not delude yourself with that idea,” returned his wife. “I am quite well now, and I know what I am saying, and I mean it. I have not been near death without learning many things. I am sorry if the situation seems to you ridiculous; to me it is more than that. I do not want you to speak any more about forgiveness. I can never believe you, and that is the end of the matter.”
Armand was whiter even than she. But the armour of weakness and weariness which, unrealising, she wore, was potent. He controlled himself with obvious difficulty.
“That is your last word, Horatia?”
“Yes, I think so,” said she wearily. “Would you mind going now, and telling Martha to come to me.”
“Soit!” said the Comte between his teeth, and walked to the door.
“There is one thing more,” said the tired, even voice. “Would you be so good as to explain matters to Madame de Vigerie. She has called twice to see me. Naturally I shall not receive her, and I have not yet learned how to lie.”
It is enormously to Armand’s credit that he did not bang the door.
(3)
As soon as her husband’s footsteps had died away Horatia got up rather unsteadily from her chair and turned the key in the lock. Somehow or other victory had intensified rather than relieved the misery of life. She had got what she wanted, and she was frightened at her own success. She was not accustomed to compromise with her conscience, and she had an uneasy feeling that she was not acting quite rightly—and yet how otherwise could she go on living in the same house with Armand? He ought to be thankful that she had not insisted on returning to her father. Now, of course, he would go at once to that woman!
It was curious that her jealous hate should still be mixed with pain, and that the treachery of her friend should still have power to wound her, when greater things than friendship were at stake, but she had been very near loving the Vicomtesse, and she had trusted her from the first time that she had seen her. For no other woman before had she ever had quite the same feeling.... Well, it only proved that even liars could sometimes speak the truth, for Armand had said over and over again that no woman could be true to another. So that was the last of her illusions. There was nothing left to live for, and every day she was getting stronger.
A door opened and shut at the end of the corridor, but in the short interval there came the cry of an infant. Horatia sat up intent and listening—half rose, and leant back again. She was determined not to yield to the absurd weakness of being unable to sit still and hear Maurice cry. There were plenty of people to quiet him, and besides, in such a world he might as well get used to crying... It was no good. She got up, unlocked her door, and listened. The sound had ceased.
Horatia was very far now from feeling any kind of repulsion for the baby. All the strange obsession of her illness had vanished that afternoon when Martha had had the temerity to leave him on her lap. The living warmth of his tiny body had unsealed the frozen spring of tenderness, and for that reason it was very seldom that she allowed herself to take him in her arms. He was Armand’s son, and she was determined not to forget it—Armand’s, who had deceived her and lied to her from the beginning. With the shock of her husband’s treachery, the realisation that the unborn child was his as well as hers, had seemed to burn itself into her consciousness. It had wrung from her the cry, “I hate you, I hate your child!” She did not hate Armand now, for, as she had told him, he was dead to her, and she did not hate Maurice, but he was not the child of her dreams. He was Armand’s son, a stranger and a foreigner, a captive already to the family tradition. He would grow up French in nurture, French in thought; he would grow up like his father. And this was the child who was to have been welcomed into a world wholly English, prepared for him by his mother. She could hardly bear to enter the nursery now, to hear French spoken, where only English was to have been, and to know that the press against the wall remained closed, because his nurses could not or would not dress him in the English babyclothes laid there lovingly so short a time before. The beautiful copy of the Raphael Madonna was all that remained to remind her of a child and his mother, and a nursery that might have been.
(4)
The reason for the abrupt cessation of Armand’s visits at the end of October was not known to Madame de Vigerie for some days. Then she had a note from him telling her the news, but without any hint of what had occasioned the premature arrival of his heir. The Vicomtesse was greatly perturbed on Horatia’s account (though understanding that she was now out of danger), and she went herself to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon to inquire, and sent her flowers, more than once or twice, having no suspicion how those flowers would have been received had Armand allowed them to reach his wife’s sick-room. When Madame de Vigerie heard that Horatia was well enough to receive an intimate friend for a few minutes she called again, fully expecting to be admitted, since she was well aware that she herself was the only friend with the slightest claim to real intimacy with the English girl. Much to her disappointment a message was brought that Madame la Comtesse was too tired to see her that day. There was, however, no hope expressed that she would call again, and Laurence de Vigerie drove away feeling rather dashed.
Possibly, she told herself, Horatia was shocked at her temerity in venturing to the house in spite of Armand’s prohibition. As a matter of fact the Vicomtesse considered that she had disposed of that prohibition, about the necessity of which she had more than once had doubts. She was sure now, from what she had heard, that the reason for the secrecy of Armand’s visits had gone—but with its vanishing had ceased the visits, too. For nine weeks she neither saw him nor heard from him. And it was during those weeks that she learnt to miss him more and more intensely, to hope that each succeeding winter’s day might bring him, as of old.
The winter’s day which brought him, at length, was the second of the New Year. Paris was ringing with the festivities of the season, and Madame de Vigerie’s salon was full of gifts and flowers. Into this warm, lamplit, scented atmosphere, when her other visitors had departed, came at last Armand de la Roche-Guyon, pale, almost grim, and empty-handed.
Laurence de Vigerie’s heart moved in her breast to meet him, and she made no attempt to disguise that she was glad.
“My dear friend,” she exclaimed, giving him both her hands, “where have you been these years—these centuries? And how is Horatia?”
“She is better, thank you,” replied Armand in a curious tone, as he lifted her hands to his lips. “And I... O, I have been playing the devoted husband... to very small purpose.”
After so explicit an avowal the extraction of the whole story was not difficult. Laurence de Vigerie sat motionless while, pacing restlessly to and fro, the young man unfolded it to her. All his bitterly hurt self-esteem was in the tale.
“I have lied to Horatia and I have lied to you,” he ended. “You see what wreckage I have made. I have alienated my wife for ever; I have involved you in a scandal. It seems to me that there is nothing left but to blow my brains out, or to slip into the Seine.”
“I think Horatia should have believed you,” said Madame de Vigerie in rather a hard voice.
“I had lied too much,” answered Armand, and there was silence. A petal from a hothouse flower fell on the shining table at the Vicomtesse’s elbow. She took it up and began to twist it in her fingers. At the other side of the room, Armand sat on a couch with his head in his hands.
“If I had been seeing her as I used to do it could never have happened. Why did you make up that story to keep us apart?”
The young man gave a sound like a groan. “Must you know the real reason?”
“If I am ever to forgive you.”
“It was because I wanted you so madly, and because I saw that I had no chance while you were her friend. You were too honourable. It was a base trick... but I would have stooped to anything... I suppose you will never have anything to do with me again, and I have nothing but my own cursed folly to thank for it. If I had not been blinded I should have seen long ago that you were the only woman in the universe for me—Laurence, Laurence, you could have made something of me... and I have deceived you, and damaged your reputation. I will say good-bye, I think, before you send me away.” He got up. Madame de Vigerie had buried her face in her hands.
“Good-bye,” he repeated. “Do not fear that I am going to shoot myself. I am not worth such an heroic ending.” He laughed unsteadily. “Will you not even say good-bye, Laurence?”
Never, in all his hours of gaiety and success had Armand de la Roche-Guyon so appealed to Laurence de Vigerie as now. He had made wreckage, and he would be the first to suffer. She saw him swept to the feet of the worthless.
“O, I must save you!” she cried, more to herself than to him. “Armand, my poor Armand, I do not cast off my friends like that...” She held out her hands, her eyes full of tears.