The baroness, as I have said, drew Josephine aside, and tried to break to her the sad news: but her own grief overcame her, and bursting into tears she bewailed the loss of her son.Josephine was greatly shocked.Death!--Raynal dead--her true, kind friend dead--her benefactor dead.She clung to her mother's neck, and sobbed with her.Presently she withdrew her face and suddenly hid it in both her hands.
She rose and kissed her mother once more: and went to her own room:
and then, though there was none to see her, she hid her wet, but burning, cheeks in her hands.
Josephine confined herself for some days to her own room, leaving it only to go to the chapel in the park, where she spent hours in prayers for the dead and in self-humiliation.Her "tender conscience" accused herself bitterly for not having loved this gallant spirit more than she had.
Camille realized nothing at first; he looked all confused in the doctor's face, and was silent.Then after awhile he said, "Dead?
Raynal dead?"
"Killed in action."
A red flush came to Camille's face, and his eyes went down to the ground at his very feet, nor did he once raise them while the doctor told him how the sad news had come."Picard the notary brought us the Moniteur, and there was Commandant Raynal among the killed in a cavalry skirmish." With this, he took the journal from his pocket, and Camille read it, with awe-struck, and other feelings he would have been sorry to see analyzed.He said not a word; and lowered his eyes to the ground.
"And now," said Aubertin, "you will excuse me.I must go to my poor friend the baroness.She had a mother's love for him who is no more: well she might."Aubertin went away, and left Dujardin standing there like a statue, his eyes still glued to the ground at his feet.
The doctor was no sooner out of sight, than Camille raised his eyes furtively, like a guilty person, and looked irresolutely this way and that: at last he turned and went back to the place where he had meditated suicide and murder; looked down at it a long while, then looked up to heaven--then fell suddenly on his knees: and so remained till night-fall.Then he came back to the chateau.
He whispered to himself, "And I am afraid it is too late to go away to-night." He went softly into the saloon.Nobody was there but Rose and Aubertin.At sight of him Rose got up and left the room.
But I suppose she went to Josephine; for she returned in a few minutes, and rang the bell, and ordered some supper to be brought up for Colonel Dujardin.
"You have not dined, I hear," said she, very coldly.
"I was afraid you were gone altogether," said the doctor: then turning to Rose, "He told me he was going this evening.You had better stay quiet another day or two," added he, kindly.
"Do you think so?" said Camille, timidly.
He stayed upon these terms.And now he began to examine himself.
"Did I wish him dead? I hope I never formed such a thought! Idon't remember ever wishing him dead." And he went twice a day to that place by the stream, and thought very solemnly what a terrible thing ungoverned passion is; and repented--not eloquently, but silently, sincerely.
But soon his impatient spirit began to torment itself again.Why did Josephine shun him now? Ah! she loved Raynal now that he was dead.Women love the thing they have lost; so he had heard say.In that case, the very sight of him would of course be odious to her:
he could understand that.The absolute, unreasoning faith he once had in her had been so rudely shaken by her marriage with Raynal, that now he could only believe just so much as he saw, and he saw that she shunned him.
He became moody, sad, and disconsolate: and as Josephine shunned him, so he avoided all the others, and wandered for hours by himself, perplexed and miserable.After awhile, he became conscious that he was under a sort of surveillance.Rose de Beaurepaire, who had been so kind to him when he was confined to his own room, but had taken little notice of him since he came down, now resumed her care of him, and evidently made it her business to keep up his heart.She used to meet him out walking in a mysterious way, and in short, be always falling in with him and trying to cheer him up:
with tolerable success.
Such was the state of affairs when the party was swelled and matters complicated by the arrival of one we have lost sight of.
Edouard Riviere retarded his cure by an impatient spirit: but he got well at last, and his uncle drove him in the cabriolet to his own quarters.The news of the house had been told him by letter, but, of course, in so vague and general a way that, thinking he knew all, in reality he knew nothing.
Josephine had married Raynal.The marriage was sudden, but no doubt there was an attachment: he had some reason to believe in sudden attachments.Colonel Dujardin, an old acquaintance, had come back to France wounded, and the good doctor had undertaken his cure: this incident appeared neither strange nor any way important.What affected him most deeply was the death of Raynal, his personal friend and patron.But when his tyrants, as he called the surgeon and his uncle, gave him leave to go home, all feelings were overpowered by his great joy at the prospect of seeing Rose.He walked over to Beaurepaire, his arm in a sling, his heart beating.
He was coming to receive the reward of all he had done, and all he had attempted."I will surprise them," thought he."I will see her face when I come in at the door: oh, happy hour! this pays for all."He entered the house without announcing himself; he went softly up to the saloon; to his great disappointment he found no one but the baroness: she received him kindly, but not with the warmth he expected.She was absorbed in her new grief.He asked timidly after her daughters."Madame Raynal bears up, for the sake of others.You will not, however, see her: she keeps her room.My daughter Rose is taking a walk, I believe." After some polite inquiries, and sympathy with his accident, the baroness retired to indulge her grief, and Edouard thus liberated ran in search of his beloved.
