Chapter XII: Part 12

"Madame," he said, "you have played with me too long. It is impossible that you should not know how I love you, and I think it very cruel of you to treat me as if I acted on one of those fancies which are born and die in a day. My love for you is a sentiment that will endure throughout my days; and if you do not accept my consecration of my life to you, you will see, madame, that a man of the world may lose all respect for the proprieties, and throw off the sway of cold reason. Oh! do not reduce me to despair, or else beware of its effects."

"So you wish me to speak frankly, do you?" replied Lavinia. "Very well; I will do so. Do you know my story, monsieur?"

"Yes, madame; I know all. I know that a miserable wretch, whom I look upon as the lowest of men, shamefully deceived you and abandoned you. The pity which that misfortune arouses in me adds to my fervor. Only great hearts are doomed to be victims of men and of public opinion."

"But, monsieur," rejoined Lavinia, "you must know that I have been able to profit by the stern lessons of my destiny; that I am on my guard to-day against my own heart and against another's. I know that it is not always in a man's power to keep his oaths, and that whatever he obtains he misuses. That being so, monsieur, do not hope to move me. If you are speaking seriously, here is my reply: I am invulnerable. This woman who has been so decried for her youthful errors, is surrounded henceforth by a stouter rampart than virtue--distrust."

"Ah! I see that you do not understand me, madame," cried the count, falling on his knees. "May I be accursed if I have ever had a thought of presuming upon your misfortunes, to hope for sacrifices which your pride condemns."

"Are you perfectly sure that you have never had such a thought?" said Lavinia, with her sad smile.

"Well, I will be frank," said Monsieur de Morangy, with an accent of truth in which the mannerisms of the great nobleman vanished entirely. "Perhaps I may have had, before I knew you, the thought which I spurn now with profound remorse. In your presence, feigning is impossible, Lavinia; you subdue the will, you reduce cunning to naught, you command veneration. Oh! since I have known what you are, I swear that my adoration has been worthy of you. Listen to me, madame, and let me await my sentence at your feet. I desire to devote my whole future to you by oaths that cannot be broken. It is an honorable name, I venture to believe, and a handsome fortune, of which, as you are aware, I am not vain, that I lay at your feet, as well as a heart that adores you, a heart that beats for you alone."

"So you really mean to offer me marriage?" said Lady Lavinia, without, however, exhibiting offensive surprise. "I thank you, monsieur, for this proof of esteem and attachment."

And she offered him her hand with much warmth.

"God of mercy! she accepts!" cried the count, covering that hand with kisses.

"No, monsieur," said Lavinia; "I ask you to give me time for reflection."

"Alas! but may I hope?"

"I do not know; rely, at all events, upon my gratitude. Adieu. Go back to the ball; I insist upon it. I will be there in an instant."

The count passionately kissed the hem of her cape, and left the room. As soon as he had closed the door, Lionel put aside the curtain, ready to receive permission from Lady Blake to return. But she was sitting on the sofa, with her back to the window. Lionel could see her face reflected in the mirror opposite them. Her eyes were fixed on the floor, her attitude dejected and thoughtful. Buried in absorbing meditation, she had completely forgotten Lionel, and the exclamation of surprise that escaped her when he suddenly appeared in the room was an ingenuous avowal of that painful absorption.

He was pale with anger; but he restrained himself.

"You must agree," he said to her, "that I respected your new attachment, madame. It required the most profound disinterestedness to listen to insulting remarks about myself, purposely provoked, perhaps,--and to remain quietly in my hiding-place."

"Purposely?" repeated Lavinia, gazing sternly at him. "How dare you think so of me, monsieur? If you entertain such ideas, go!"

"No, no; I do not think so," said Lionel, walking toward her, and grasping her arm excitedly. "Pay no heed to what I say. I am very much disturbed.--You surely must have relied upon my strength of mind, to force me to witness such a scene."

"On your strength of mind, Lionel? I don't understand that phrase. You mean, do you not, that I counted upon your indifference?"

"Laugh at me as much as you choose; be pitiless, trample on me! you have the right to do it. But I am very unhappy!"

He was deeply moved. Lavinia believed, or pretended to believe, that he was acting a part.

"Let us have done with this," she said, rising. "You should have taken advantage of the reply you heard me make just now to the Comte de Morangy; and yet that man's love does not offend me.--Farewell, Lionel! Let us part forever, but not in bitterness of spirit. Here are your letters and your portrait. Come, release my hand; I must return to the ball."

"You must return to dance with Monsieur de Morangy, I suppose?" said Lionel, dashing his picture angrily on the floor, and grinding it under his heel.

"Listen," said Lavinia, slightly pale, but calm; "the Comte de Morangy offers me high rank and complete rehabilitation in society. My marriage to an elderly nobleman never cleansed me completely from the cruel stain that disfigures an abandoned woman. Every one knows that an old man always receives more than he gives. But a wealthy, noble young man, envied by all, loved by the women,--that is a very different matter! That deserves consideration, Lionel; and I am very glad that I have handled the count carefully thus far. I divined long ago the honesty of his intentions."

"O woman! vanity never dies in you!" exclaimed Lionel angrily, when she had gone.

He joined Henry at the inn. His friend was awaiting him impatiently.

"The devil take you, Lionel!" he cried. "Here have I been waiting in my stirrups a good hour for you! Think of it! two hours for an interview of this sort! Come, off we go! you can tell me about it on the road."

"Good-night, Henry. Go, tell Miss Margaret that the bolster lying in my bed is at death's door. I remain here."

"Heavens and earth! what do you say?" cried Henry; "you don't mean to go to Luchon?"

"I will go some other time; I shall remain here now."

"Why, you are dreaming, man! It isn't possible! You can't have made it up with Lady Blake?"

"No, not so far as I know; far from it! But I am tired and out of sorts, lame all over; I am going to remain here."

Henry fell from the clouds. He exhausted all his eloquence to induce Lionel to go; but, failing utterly, he dismounted, and tossed his bridle to the hostler.

"Well, if you are determined, I will also stay," he exclaimed. "It seems to me such a good joke, that I propose to see it through to the end. To the devil with love-affairs at Bagnères, and the plans we made on the road! My excellent friend Sir Lionel Bridgemont is giving a performance for my benefit; I will be an attentive and absorbed witness of his drama."

Lionel would have given all the world to be rid of this irresponsible, bantering spy upon his actions; but it was impossible.

"As you are determined to follow me," he said, "I warn you that I am going to the ball."

"To the ball? very good. Dancing is an excellent remedy for the spleen and lameness."

Lavinia was dancing with Monsieur de Morangy. Lionel had never seen her dance. When she had come to England, she knew nothing but the _bolero_, and she had never ventured to dance it under the austere skies of Great Britain. Since then, she had learned our contradances, and she displayed in them the voluptuous grace of the Spaniard combined with an indefinable touch of English prudery, which tempered its exuberance. People stood on the benches to watch her dance. The Comte de Morangy was triumphant. Lionel was lost in the crowd.

_When Lavinia returned to her place, Lionel--the count's attention being distracted for a moment--glided adroitly to her side, and picked up her fan, which she had just dropped._]

There is so much vanity in the heart of man! Lionel suffered bitterly to see her who was long swayed and imprisoned by her love for him, who was once his alone, and whom the world would not have dared to come to take from his arms, now free and proud, encompassed by homage, and finding in every glance revenge or reparation for the past. When she returned to her place, Lionel--the count's attention being distracted for a moment--glided adroitly to her side, and picked up her fan, which she had just dropped. Lavinia did not expect to see him there. A feeble cry escaped her, and her face turned perceptibly pale.

"Ah! great heaven!" she exclaimed; "I thought that you were on the road to Bagnères."

"Have no fear, madame," he said, in an undertone; "I will not compromise you with the Comte de Morangy."

However, he could not restrain himself for long, but soon returned and asked her to dance.

She accepted his invitation.

"Must I not ask Monsieur le Comte de Morangy's permission also?" he asked.

The ball lasted until daybreak; Lady Lavinia was sure of making such functions last as long as she remained. Under cover of the confusion which always creeps into the most orderly festivity as the night advances, Lionel was able to speak with her frequently. That night completely turned his head. Intoxicated by the charms of Lady Blake, spurred on by the rivalry of the count, irritated by the homage of the crowd, which constantly thrust itself between him and her, he strove with all his power to rekindle that extinct passion, and self-esteem made its spur felt so sharply that he left the ball in a state of indescribable excitement.

He tried in vain to sleep. Henry, who had paid court to all the women, and danced all the contradances, snored lustily. As soon as he awoke, and while rubbing his eyes, he said:

"Well, Lionel, God save us, my dear fellow! this is a very entertaining episode, this reconciliation between you and my cousin; for you need not hope to deceive me, I know the secret now. When we entered the ballroom, Lavinia was sad, and dancing with an absent-minded air; as soon as she saw you, her eyes lighted up, her brow cleared. She was radiant during the waltz, when you whirled her through the crowd like a feather. Lucky Lionel! a lovely fiancée and a fine dowry at Luchon, a lovely mistress and a grand triumph at Saint-Sauveur!"

"A truce to your nonsense!" said Lionel, angrily. Henry was dressed first. He went out to see what was going on, and soon returned, making his accustomed uproar on the staircase.

"Alas! Henry," said his friend, "will you never lose that gasping voice and that frantic gesticulation? You always act as if you had just started a hare, and as if you took the people you were talking to for uncoupled hounds."

"To horse! to horse!" cried Henry. "Lady Lavinia Blake is in the saddle; she is about starting for Gèdres with ten other young madcaps and Heaven knows how many beaux, the Comte de Morangy at their head--which does not mean that she has not the Comte de Morangy in her head, be it understood!"

"Silence, _clown_!" cried Lionel. "To horse, as you say, and let us be off!"

The riding-party had the start of them. The road to Gèdres is a steep path, a sort of staircase cut in the rock, skirting the precipice, presenting innumerable obstacles to horses, innumerable real dangers to their riders. Lionel started off at a gallop. Henry thought that he was mad; but, considering that his honor was involved in not being left behind, he rode after him. Their arrival created a strange effect on the caravan. Lavinia shuddered at sight of those two reckless creatures riding along the edge of a frightful abyss. When she recognized Lionel and her cousin, she turned pale and nearly fell from her horse. The Comte de Morangy noticed it, and did not take his eyes from her face. He was jealous.

His jealousy acted as an additional spur to Lionel. Throughout the day, he fought obstinately for Lavinia's slightest glance. The difficulty of speaking to her, the excitement of the ride, the emotions aroused by the sublime spectacle of the region through which they rode, the clever and always good-humored resistance of Lady Blake, her skill in managing her horse, her courage, her grace, the words, always natural and always poetic, in which she described her sensations,--all combined to stir Sir Lionel to the depths of his being. It was a very fatiguing day for the poor woman, beset by two lovers between whom she tried to hold the scales even; so that she accorded a grateful welcome to her jovial cousin and his noisy nonsense, when he spurred his horse between her and her adorers.

At night-fall, the sky was covered with clouds. A severe storm seemed imminent. The riders quickened their pace, but they were still more than a league from Saint-Sauveur when the storm burst. It grew very dark; the horses were frightened, and the Comte de Morangy's ran away with him. The little cavalcade became scattered, and the utmost efforts of the guides, who accompanied them on foot, were required to prevent some serious accident from bringing to a melancholy close a day that had begun so merrily.

Lionel, lost in the appalling darkness, compelled to walk along the edge of the cliff, leading his horse, for fear of falling over the precipice with him, was tormented by the keenest disquietude. He had lost sight of Lavinia, despite all his efforts, and had been seeking her anxiously for fifteen minutes, when a flash of lightning revealed the figure of a woman seated on a rock just above the road. He stopped, listened, and recognized Lady Blake's voice; but a man was with her; it could be no one but Monsieur de Morangy. Lionel cursed him in his heart; and, bent upon disturbing his rival's happiness, if he could do no more, he walked toward the couple as best he could. What was his joy on recognizing Henry with his cousin! He, like the kind-hearted, devil-may-care comrade he was, gave up his place to him, and walked away to hold the horses.

Nothing is so solemn and magnificent as the tumult of a storm in the mountains. The loud voice of the thunder, rumbling over the chasms, is repeated and echoes loudly in their depths; the wind, lashing the tall fir-trees and forcing them against the perpendicular cliff as a garment clings to the human form, also plunges into the gorges and utters shrill, long-drawn laments like sobs. Lavinia, absorbed in contemplation of the imposing spectacle, listened to the numberless noises of the storm-riven mountain, waiting until another flash should cast its bluish glare over the landscape. She started when it showed her Sir Lionel seated by her side, in the place occupied by her cousin a moment before. Lionel thought that she was frightened by the storm, and he took her hand to reassure her. Another flash showed her to him, with one elbow resting on her knee, and her chin on her hand, gazing enthusiastically at the wonderful scene produced by the raging elements. "Great heaven!" she exclaimed; "how beautiful it is! how dazzling and soft at once that blue glare! Did you see the jagged edges of the rock that gleamed like sapphires, and that livid background against which the ice-clad peaks towered aloft like giant spectres in their shrouds? Did you notice, too, that, in the sudden passage from darkness to light and from light to darkness, everything seemed to move and waver, as if the mountains were tottering to their fall?"

"I see nothing but you, Lavinia," he said, vehemently; "I hear no voice but yours, I breathe no air but your breath, I have no emotion except that of feeling that you are near me. Do you know that I love you madly? Yes, you know it; you must have seen it to-day, and perhaps you wanted it to be so. Very well! if that is so, enjoy your triumph. I am at your feet, I ask you to forgive me and to forget the past,--I ask it with my face in the dust; I ask you to give me the future, oh! I ask it with passionate fervor, and you must grant my request, Lavinia; for I want you with all my heart, and I have rights over you----"

"Rights?" she repeated, withdrawing her hand.

"Does not the wrong I did you give me a right, a ghastly right, Lavinia? And if you allowed me to assume it in order to ruin your life, can you take it from me to-day, when I seek to claim it anew and to repair my crimes?"

We know all that a man can say under such circumstances. Lionel was more eloquent than I should have been in his place. He became strangely excited; and, despairing of his ability to overcome Lady Blake's resistance in any other way, seeing, moreover, that by making a less complete submission than his rival he gave him a very valuable advantage, he rose to the same level of devotion: he offered Lavinia his name and his fortune.

"Can you dream of such a thing?" she said, with emotion. "You would abandon Miss Ellis, when she is betrothed to you, when your marriage is already appointed?"

"I will do it," he replied. "I will do what the world will call insulting and criminal. Perhaps I shall have to atone for it with my blood; but I am ready to do anything to obtain you; for the greatest crime of my life is my failure to appreciate you, and my first duty, to return to you. Oh! speak, Lavinia! give me back the happiness I lost when I lost you. To-day, I shall know how to appreciate and retain it; for I, too, have changed: I am no longer the ambitious, restless man whom an unknown future tormented with its deceitful promises. I know life to-day, I know what the world and its false splendor are worth. I know that not one of my triumphs was worth a single glance from you; and the chimera of happiness I have pursued, has always avoided me until this day, when it leads me back to you. Oh! Lavinia, do you, too, come back to me! Who will love you as I will? who will see, as I see, the grandeur, patience, and pity that your heart contains?"

Lavinia did not speak, but her heart beat with a violence which Lionel detected. Her hand trembled in his, and she did not try to withdraw it, nor a lock of hair which the wind had loosened and which Lionel covered with kisses. They did not feel the rain, which was falling in large but infrequent drops. The wind had diminished, the sky became somewhat lighter, and the Comte de Morangy came toward them as quickly as his lame and shoeless horse, which had nearly killed him by falling over a rock, could bring him.

Lavinia perceived him at last, and abruptly tore herself away from Lionel's caresses. Lionel, furious at the interruption, but full of love and hope, assisted her to remount, and escorted her to her door. There she said to him, lowering her voice:

"Lionel, you have made me an offer of which I realize the full value. I cannot reply without mature reflection."

"O God! that is the same reply you gave Monsieur de Morangy!"

"No, no; it is not the same thing," she replied, in an altered voice. "But your presence here may give rise to many absurd reports. If you really love me, Lionel, you will swear to obey me."

"I swear it by God and by you."

"Very well! go away at once, and return to Bagnères; on my part, I promise you that you shall have my reply within forty hours."

"But what will become of me, great God! during that century of suspense?"

"You will hope," said Lavinia, hurriedly closing the door, as if she were afraid of saying too much.

Lionel did hope. His reasons for hoping were a word from Lavinia and all the arguments of his own self-esteem.

"You are wrong to abandon the game," said Henry, as they rode away; "Lavinia was beginning to melt. On my word, Lionel, that doesn't seem like you. Even if for no other reason than not to leave Morangy master of the field---- But I see that you are more in love with Miss Ellis than I thought."

Lionel was too preoccupied to listen to him. He passed the interval fixed by Lavinia, locked in his room, representing that he was ill; and did not deign to confide in Sir Henry, who lost himself in conjectures concerning his conduct. At last the letter arrived; it was in these terms:

"_Neither the one nor the other!_ When you receive this letter, when Monsieur de Morangy, whom I have sent to Tarbes, receives his reply, I shall be far from you both; I shall have gone, gone forever, gone irrevocably, so far as you and he are concerned.

"You offer me name and rank and fortune; you believe that a brilliant position in society has a great fascination for a woman. Oh, no! not for her who knows society and despises it as I do. Do not think, however, Lionel, that I disdain the offer you made to sacrifice a brilliant marriage, and bind yourself to me forever.

"You realized what a cruel blow it is to a woman's self-esteem to be abandoned, what a glorious triumph it is to bring back a once faithless swain to her feet, and you thought to compensate me by that triumph for all I have suffered; so I give you my esteem once more, and I would forgive you the past had I not done so long ago.

"But understand, Lionel, that it is not in your power to repair the wrong. No, it is in no man's power. The blow I received was a deadly blow; it killed the power to love in me forever; it extinguished the torch of illusions, and life appears to me in a dull and miserable light.

"But I do not complain of my destiny; it was bound to come, sooner or later. We all live to grow old, and to see all our joys overshadowed by disappointments. My disillusionment came when I was rather young, to be sure, and the craving for love survived for a long while the faculty of having faith in man. I have struggled long and often against my youth, as against a desperate foe; I have always succeeded in beating it.

"And do you imagine that this last struggle against you, this resistance to the promises you have made, is not exceedingly hard and painful? I may confess it, now that flight has placed me beyond all danger of surrender: I love you still, I feel it; the imprint of the first object of one's love is never entirely effaced; it seems to have vanished; we fall asleep, oblivious of the pain we have suffered; but let the image of the past arise, let the old idol reappear, and we are ready to bend the knee as before. Oh! fly, fly, phantom and falsehood! you are but a shadow, and if I should venture to follow you, you would lead me again among the reefs, and leave me there shattered and dying. Fly! I no longer believe in you. I know that you cannot arrange the future as you will, and that, though your lips may be sincere to-day, the frailty of your heart will force you to lie to-morrow.

"And why should I blame you for being like that? are we not all weak and fickle? Was I not myself calm and cold when I approached you yesterday? Was I not perfectly certain that I could not love you? Had I not encouraged the Comte de Morangy's suit? And yet, in the evening, when you sat beside me on that rock, when you spoke, to me in such an impassioned tone, amid the wind and the storm, did I not feel my heart soften and melt? Ah! now that I reflect, I know that it was your voice of the old days, your passion of the old days, you, my first love, my youth, that came back to me all at once, for a moment!

"And now, when my blood is cool, I feel a deathly depression; for I am awake, and I remember that I dreamed a lovely dream in the midst of a melancholy life.

"Farewell, Lionel! Assuming that your desire to marry me should last until the moment of its fulfilment (and even now, perhaps, you are beginning to feel that I may be right in refusing you), you would have been unhappy in the constraint imposed by such a bond; you would have found that the world--always ungrateful and sparing of praise for our good deeds--would look upon yours as the performance of a duty, and would deny you the triumph which perhaps you would expect. Then you would have thrown away self-content, and have failed to obtain the admiration upon which you counted. Who knows! perhaps I myself should have forgotten too quickly all that was noble in your return to me, and have accepted your new love as a reparation due to your honor. Oh! let us not mar the hour of honest impulse and mutual confidence we enjoyed last night; let us remember it always, but never seek to repeat it.

"Have no fear for your self-esteem so far as the Comte de Morangy is concerned; I have never loved him. He is one of the innumerable weak creatures who have failed--even with my assistance, alas!--to make my dead heart beat again. I would not even want him for a husband. A man of his rank always sells too dear the protection he bestows, by always making it felt. And then, I detest marriage, I detest all men, I detest everlasting pledges, promises, plans, the arranging of the future, in advance, by contracts and bargains at which Destiny always snaps its fingers. I no longer care for anything but travel, reverie, solitude, the uproar of the world, to walk through it and laugh at it, and poetry to endure the past, and God to give me hope for the future."

Sir Lionel Bridgemont's self-esteem was deeply mortified at first; for, to console those readers who may have become too warmly interested in him, we must say that in forty hours he had reflected seriously. In the first place, he thought of taking horse, following Lady Blake, overcoming her resistance, and triumphing over her cold common-sense. Then he thought that she might persist in her refusal, and that, meanwhile, Miss Ellis might take offence at his conduct, and break off the match.--He remained.

"Well," said Henry to him, the next day, when he saw him kiss Miss Margaret's hand, who bestowed that mark of forgiveness on him, after a sharp quarrel concerning his absence; "next year, we will enter Parliament."

[Footnote 2: Written thus, in English, in the original.]