It struck two when Daniel jumped out of a carriage before No. 79 in Peletier Street, where the offices of the Pennsylvania Petroleum Company were now, and where Count Ville-Handry lived at present.
Never in his life had he felt so embarrassed, or so dissatisfied with himself. In vain had Papa Ravinet and Mrs. Bertolle brought up all possible arguments to convince him, that, with a woman like Sarah Brandon, all reprisals were fair; he would not be convinced.
Unfortunately, he could not refuse to go without risking the peace of his Henrietta, her confidence, and her whole happiness; so he went as bravely as he could.
A clerk whom he asked told him that the president was in his rooms,--in the third story on the left. He went up. The maid who came to open the door recognized him. It was the same Clarissa who had betrayed him. When he asked for the count she invited him in. She took him through an anteroom, dark, and fragrant with odors from the kitchen; and then, opening a door, she said;--
“Please walk in!”
Before an immense table, covered with papers, sat Count Ville-Handry. He had grown sadly old. His lower lip hung down, giving him a painful expression of weakness of mind; and his watery eyes looked almost senile. Still his efforts to look young had not been abandoned. He was rouged and dyed as carefully as ever. When he recognized Daniel, he pushed back his papers; and offering him his hand, as if they had parted the day before, he said,--
“Ah, here you are back again among us! Upon my word, I am very glad to see you! We know what you have been doing out there; for my wife sent me again and again to the navy department to see if there were any news of you. And you have become an officer of the Legion of Honor! You ought to be pleased.”
“Fortune has favored, me, count.”
“Alas! I am sorry I cannot say as much for myself,” replied the latter with a sigh.
“You must be surprised,” he continued, “to find me living in such a dog’s kennel, I who formerly--But so it goes. ‘The ups and downs of speculations,’ says Sir Thorn. Look here, my dear Daniel, let me give you a piece of advice: never speculate in industrial enterprises! Nowadays it is mere gambling, furious gambling; and everybody cheats. If you stake a dollar, you are in for everything. That is my story, and I thought I would enrich my country by a new source of revenue. From the first day on which I emitted shares, speculators have gotten hold of them, and have crushed me, till my whole fortune has been spent in useless efforts to keep them up. And yet Sir Thorn says I have fought as bravely on this slippery ground as my ancestors did in the lists.”
Every now and then the poor old man passed his hand over his face as if trying to drive away painful thoughts; and then he went on in a different tone of voice,--
“And yet I am far from complaining. My misfortunes have been the source of the purest and highest happiness for me. It is to them I owe the knowledge of the boundless devotion of a beloved wife; they have taught me how dearly Sarah loves me. I alone can tell what treasures are hid in that angelic heart, which they dared to calumniate. Ah! I think I can hear her now, when I told her one evening how embarrassed I had become in my finances.
“‘To have concealed that from me!’ she exclaimed,--‘from me, your wife: that was wrong!’ And the very next day she showed her sublime courage. She sold her diamonds to bring me the proceeds, and gave up to me her whole fortune. And, since we are living here, she goes out on foot, like a simple citizen’s wife; and more than once I have caught her preparing our modest meals with her own hands.”
Tears were flowing down the furrowed cheeks, leaving ghastly lines on the rouged and whitened surface.
“And I,” he resumed in an accent of deepest despair,--“I could not reward her for such love and so many sacrifices. How did I compensate her for being my only consolation, my joy, my sole happiness in life! I ruined her; I impoverished her! If I were to die to-morrow, she would be penniless.”
Daniel trembled.
“Ah, count,” he exclaimed, “don’t speak of dying! People like you live a hundred years.”
But the old man lowered his voice, and said,--
“You see, I have not told you all yet. But you are my friend; and I know I can open my heart to you. I did not have the--the--cleverness to overcome all the restrictions which hamper this kind of business. I was imprudent, in spite of all Sir Thorn’s warnings. To-morrow there will be a meeting of the stockholders; and, if they do not grant me what I shall have to ask of them, I may be in trouble. And, when a man calls himself Count Ville-Handry, rather than appear in a police-court--you know what I mean!”
He was interrupted by one of the clerks, who brought him a letter. He read it, and said,--
“Tell them I am coming.”
Then, turning again to Daniel, he added,--
“I must leave you; but the countess is at home, and she would never forgive me if I did not take you in to present your respects to her. Come! But be careful and don’t say a word of my troubles. It would kill her.”
And, before Daniel could recover from his bewilderment, the count had opened a door, and pushed him into the room, saying,--
“Sarah, M. Champcey.”
Sarah started up as if she had received an electric shock. Her husband had left them; but, even if he had been still in the room, she would probably not have been any more able to control herself.
“You!” she cried, “Daniel, my Daniel!”
And turning to Mrs. Brian, who was sitting by the window, she said,--
“Leave us.”
“Your conduct is perfectly shocking, Sarah!” began the grim lady. But Sarah, as harshly as if she had been speaking to a servant, cut her short, saying,--
“You are in the way, and I beg you will leave the room.”
Mrs. Brian did so without saying a word; and the countess sank into an arm-chair, as if overcome by a sudden good fortune which she was not able to endure, looking intensely at Daniel, who stood in the centre of the room like a statue.
She had on a simple black merino dress; she wore no jewelry; but her marvellous, fatal beauty seemed to be all the more dazzling. The years had passed over her without leaving any more traces on her than the spring breeze leaves on a half-opened rose. Her hair still shone with its golden flashes; her rosy lips smiled sweetly; and her velvet eyes caressed you still, till hot fire seemed to run in your veins.
Once before Daniel had been thus alone with her; and, as the sensations he then felt rose in his mind, he began to tremble violently. Then, thinking of his purpose in coming here, and the treacherous part he was about to act, he felt a desire to escape.
It was she who broke the charm. She began, saying,--
“You know, I presume, the misfortunes that have befallen us. Your betrothed, Henrietta? Has the count told you?”
Daniel had taken a chair. He replied,--
“The count has said nothing about his daughter.”
“Well, then, my saddest presentiments have been fulfilled. Unhappy girl! I did what I could to keep her in the right way. But she fell, step by step, and finally so low, that one day, when a ray of sense fell upon her mind, she went and killed herself.”
It was done. Sarah had overcome the last hesitation which Daniel still felt. Now he was in the right temper to meet cunning with cunning. He answered in an admirably-feigned tone of indifference,--
“Ah!”
Then, encouraged by the joyous surprise he read in Sarah’s face, he went on,--
“This expedition has cost me dear. Count Ville-Handry has just informed me that he has lost his whole fortune. I am in the same category.”
“What! You are”--
“Ruined. Yes; that is to say, I have been robbed,--robbed of every cent I ever had. On the eve of my departure, I intrusted a hundred thousand dollars, all I ever possessed, to M. de Brevan, with orders to hold it at Miss Henrietta’s disposal. He found it easier to appropriate the whole to himself. So, you see, I am reduced to my pittance of pay as a lieutenant. That is not much.”
Sarah looked at Daniel with perfect amazement. In any other man, this prodigious confidence in a friend would have appeared to her the extreme of human folly; in Daniel, she thought it was sublime.
“Is that the reason why they have arrested M. de Brevan?” she asked.
Daniel had not heard of his arrest.
“What!” he said. “Maxime”--
“Was arrested last night, and is kept in close confinement.”
However well prepared Daniel was by Papa Ravinet’s account, he could never have hoped to manage the conversation as well as chance did. He replied,--
“It cannot be for having robbed me. M. de Brevan must have been arrested for having attempted to murder me.”
The lioness who has just been robbed of her whelps does not rise with greater fury in her eyes than Sarah did when she heard these words.
“What!” she cried aloud. “He has dared touch you!”
“Not personally; oh, no! But he hired for the base purpose a wretched felon, who was caught, and has confessed everything. I see that the order to apprehend my friend Maxime must have reached here before me, although it left Saigon some time later than I did.”
Might not M. de Brevan be as cowardly as Crochard when he saw that all was lost? This idea, one would think, would have made Sarah tremble. But it never occurred to her.
“Ah, the wretch!” she repeated. “The scoundrel, the rascal!”
And, sitting down by Daniel, she asked him to tell her all the details of these attempted assassinations, from which he had escaped only by a miracle.
The Countess Sarah, in fact, never doubted for a moment but that Daniel was as madly in love with her as Planix, as Malgat, and Kergrist, and all the others, had been, she had become so accustomed to find her beauty irresistible and all powerful. How could it ever have occurred to her, that this man, the very first whom she loved sincerely, should also be the first and the only one to escape from her snares? She was taken in, besides, by the double mirage of love and of absence.
During the last two years she had so often evoked the image of Daniel, she had so constantly lived with him in her thoughts, that she mistook the illusion of her desires for the reality, and was no longer able to distinguish between the phantom of her dreams and the real person.
In the meantime he entertained her by describing to her his actual position, lamenting over the treachery by which he had been ruined, and adding how hard he would find it at thirty to begin the world anew.
And she, generally, so clearsighted, was not surprised to find that this man, who had been disinterestedness itself, should all of a sudden deplore his losses so bitterly, and value money so highly.
“Why do you not marry a rich woman?” she suddenly asked him.
He replied with a perfection of affected candor which he would not have suspected to be in his power the day before,--
“What? Do you--you, Sarah--give me such advice?”
He said it so naturally, and with such an air of aggrieved surprise, that she was delighted and carried away by it, as if he had made her the most passionate avowal.
“You love me? Do you really, really love me?”
The sound of a key turning in the door interrupted them.
And in an undertone, speaking passionately, she said,--
“Go now! You shall know by to-morrow who she is whom I have chosen for you. Come and breakfast with us at eleven o’clock. Go now.”
And, kissing him on his lips till they burnt with unholy fire, she pushed him out of the room.
The poor man staggered like a drunken man, as he went down the stairs.
“I am playing an abominable game,” he said to himself. “She does love me! What a woman!”
It required nothing less to rouse him from his stupor than the sight of Papa Ravinet, who was waiting for him below, hid in a corner of his carriage.
“Is it you?” he said.
“Yes, myself. And it seems it was well I came. But for me, the count would have kept you; but I came to your rescue by sending him up a letter. Now, tell me all.”
Daniel reported to him briefly, while they were driving along, his conversation with the count and with Sarah. When he had concluded, the old dealer exclaimed,--
“We have the whole matter in our hands now. But there is not a minute to lose. Do you go back to the hotel, and wait for me there. I must go to the court.”
At the hotel Daniel found Henrietta dying with anxiety. Still she only asked after her father. Was it pride, or was it prudence? She did not mention Sarah’s name. They had, however, not much time for conversation. Papa Ravinet came back sooner than they expected, all busy and excited. He drew Daniel aside to give him his last directions, and did not leave him till midnight, when he went away, saying,--
“The ground is burning under our feet; be punctual to-morrow.”
At the precise hour Daniel presented himself in Peletier Street, where the count received him with a delighted air.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “you come just in time. Brian is away; Sir Thorn is out on business; and I shall have to leave you directly after breakfast. You must keep the countess company. Come, Sarah, let us have breakfast.”
It was an ill-omened breakfast.
Under the thick layers of rouge, the count showed his livid pallor; and every moment nervous tremblings shook him from head to foot. The countess affected childish happiness; but her sharp and sudden movements betrayed the storm that was raging in her heart. Daniel noticed that she incessantly filled the count’s glass,--a strong wine it was too,--and that, in order to make him take more, she drank herself an unusual quantity.
It struck twelve, and Count Ville-Handry got up.
“Well,” he said with the air and the voice of a man who braces himself to mount the scaffold, “it must be done; they are waiting for me.”
And, after having kissed his wife with passionate tenderness, he shook hands with Daniel, and went out hurriedly.
Crimson and breathless, Sarah also had risen, and was listening attentively. And, when she was quite sure that the count had gone downstairs, she said,--
“Now, Daniel, look at me! Need I tell you who the woman is whom I have chosen for you? It is--the Countess Ville-Handry.”
He shook and trembled; but he controlled himself by a supreme effort, and calmly smiling, in a half tender, half ironical tone, he replied,--
“Why, oh, why! do you speak to me of unattainable happiness? Are you not married?”
“I may be a widow.”
These words from her lips had a fearful meaning. But Daniel was prepared for them, and said,--
“To be sure you may. But, unfortunately, you, also, are ruined. You are as poor as I am; and we are too clever to think of joining poverty to poverty.”
She looked at him with a strange, sinister smile. She was evidently hesitating. A last ray of reason lighted up the abyss at her feet. But she was drunk with pride and passion; she had taken a good deal of wine; and her usually cool head was in a state of delirium.
“And if I were not ruined?” she said at last in a hoarse voice; “what would you say then?”
“I should say that you are the very woman of whom an ambitious man of thirty might dream in his most glorious visions.”
She believed him. Yes, she was capable of believing that what he said was true; and, throwing aside all restraint, she went on,--
“Well, then, I will tell you. I am rich,--immensely rich. That entire fortune which once belonged to Count Ville-Handry, and which he thinks has been lost in unlucky speculations,--the whole of it is in my hands. Ah! I have suffered horribly, to have to play for two long years the loving wife to this decrepit old man. But I thought of you, my much beloved, my Daniel; and that thought sustained me. I knew you would come back; and I wanted to have royal treasures to give you. And I have them. These much coveted millions are mine, and you are here; and now I can say to you, ‘Take them, they are yours; I give them to you as I give myself to you.’”
She had drawn herself up to her full height as she said this; and she looked splendid and fearful at the same time, in her matchless beauty, diffusing energy and immodesty around her, and shaking her head defiantly, till the waves of golden hair flowed over her shoulders.
The untamed vagabond of the gutter reappeared all of a sudden, breathless and trembling, hoarse, lusting.
Daniel felt as if his reason was giving way. Still he had the strength to say,--
“But unfortunately you are not a widow.”
She drew close up to him, and said in a strident voice,--
“Not a widow? Do you know what Count Ville-Handry is doing at this moment? He is beseeching his stockholders to relieve him from the effects of his mismanagement. If they refuse him, he will be brought up in court, and tried as a defaulter. Well, I tell you! they will refuse him; for among the largest stockholders there are three who belong to me: I have bribed them to refuse. What do you think the count will do when he finds himself dishonored and disgraced? I will tell you again; for I have seen him write his will, and load his revolver.”
But the door of the outer room was opened. She turned as pale as death itself, and, seizing Daniel’s arm violently, she whispered,--
“Listen!”
Heavy steps were heard in the adjoining room, then--nothing more!
“It is he!” she whispered again. “Our fate is hanging in the scales”--
A shot was heard, which made the window-panes rattle, and cut her short. She was seized with spasms from head to foot, but, making a great effort, she cried out,--
“Free at last, Daniel; we are free!”
And, rushing to the door, she opened it.
She opened it, but instantly shut it again violently, and uttered a terrible cry.
On the threshold stood Count Ville-Handry, his features terribly distorted, a smoking revolver in his hand.
“No,” he said, “Sarah, no, you are not free!”
Livid, and with eyeballs starting from their sockets, the wretched woman had shrunk back to a door which opened from the dining-room directly into her chamber.
She was not despairing yet.
It was evident she was looking for one of those almost incredible excuses which are sometimes accepted by credulous old men when violent passions seize them in their dotage.
She abandoned the thought, however, when the count stepped forward, and thus allowed Papa Ravinet to be seen behind him.
“Malgat!” she cried,--“Malgat!”
She held out her hands before her as if to push aside a spectre that had suddenly risen from the grave, and was now opening its arms to seize her, and carry her off.
In the meantime Malgat came forward, with Henrietta leaning on Mrs. Bertolle’s arm.
“She also,” muttered Sarah,--“she too!”
The terrible truth broke at last upon her mind: she saw the snare in which she had been caught, and felt that she was lost. Then turning to Daniel, she said to him,--
“Poor man! Who has made you do this? It was not in your loyal heart to plan such treachery against a woman. Are you mad? And do you not see, that for the privilege of being loved by me as I love you, and were it but for a day, Malgat would again rob his employers, and the count would again give all his millions, and his honor itself?”
She said this; but at the same time she had slipped one of her hands behind her back, and was feeling for the knob of the door. She got hold of it, and instantly disappeared, before any one could have prevented her escape.
“Never mind!” said Malgat. “All the outer doors are guarded.”
But she had not meant to escape. There she was again, pale and cold like marble. She looked defiantly all around her, and said in a mocking tone of voice,--
“I have loved; and now I can die. That is just. I have loved. Ah! Planix, Malgat, and Kergrist ought to have taught me what becomes of people who really love.”
Then looking at Daniel, she went on,--
“And you--you will know what you have lost when I am no more. I may die; but the memory of my love will never die: it will rankle ever in you like a wound which opens daily afresh, and becomes constantly sorer. You triumph now, Henrietta; but remember, that between your lips and Daniel’s there will forever rise the shadow of Sarah Brandon.”
As she said the last words, she raised a small phial, which she held in her hand, with an indescribably swift movement to her lips: she drank the contents, and, sinking into a chair, said,--
“Now I defy you all!”
“Ah, she escapes after all!” exclaimed Malgat, “she escapes from justice!” He rushed forward to assist her; but Daniel stepped between, and said,--
“Let her die.”
Already horrible convulsions began to seize her; and the penetrating smell of bitter almonds, which slowly filled the whole room, told but too plainly that the poison which she had taken was one of those from which there is no rescue.
She was carried to her bed; and in less than ten minutes she was dead: she had never uttered another word.
Henrietta and Mrs. Bertolle were kneeling by the side of the bed, and the count was sobbing in a corner of the room, when a police-sergeant entered.
“The woman Brian is not to be found,” he said; “but M. Elgin has been arrested. Where is the Countess Ville-Handry?”
Daniel pointed at the body.
“Dead?” said the officer. “Then I have nothing more to do here.”
He was going out, when Malgat stopped him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “I wish to state that I am not Ravinet, dealer in curiosities; but that my true name is Malgat, formerly cashier of the Mutual Discount Society, sentenced in contumaciam to ten years’ penal servitude. I am ready to be tried, and place myself in your hands.”
