get married.” He went on to say that he loved Laurence less than ever, but that he coveted her money more and more every day. “To prove this,” he pursued, “if you will find me to-morrow a girl who has twelve hundred thousand francs instead of a million, I will marry her in preference to Mademoiselle Courtois.”
She had never suspected he had so much courage. She had so long moulded him like soft wax, and this unexpected conduct disconcerted her. She was indignant, but at the same time she felt that unhealthy satisfaction that some women feel, when they meet a master who subdues them; and she admired Tremorel more than ever before. This time, he had taken a tone which conquered her; she despised him enough to think him quite capable of marrying for money. When he had done, she said:
“It’s really so, then; you only care for the million of dowry?”
“I’ve sworn it to you a hundred times.”
“Truly now, don’t you love Laurence?”
“I have never loved her, and never shall.” He thought that he would thus secure his peace until the wedding-day; once married, he cared not what would happen. What cared he for Sauvresy? Life is only a succession of broken friendships. What is a friend, after all? One who can and ought to serve you. Ability consists in breaking with people, when they cease to be useful to you.
Bertha reflected.
“Hear me, Hector,” said she at last. “I cannot calmly resign myself to the sacrifice which you demand. Let me have but a few days, to accustom myself to this dreadful blow. You owe me as much —let Clement get well, first.”
He did not expect to see her so gentle and subdued; who would have looked for such concessions, so easily obtained? The idea of a snare did not occur to him. In his delight he betrayed how he rejoiced in his liberty, which ought to have undeceived Bertha; but she did not perceive it. He grasped her hand, and cried:
Chapter XIX
The Count de Tremorel did not anticipate that the respite which Bertha begged would last long. Sauvresy had seemed better during the last week. He got up every day, and commenced to go about the house; he even received numerous visits from the neighbors; without apparent fatigue. But alas, the master of Valfeuillu was only the shadow of himself. His friends would never have recognized in that emaciated form and white face, and burning, haggard eye, the robust young man with red lips and beaming visage whom they remembered. He had suffered so! He did not wish to die before avenging himself on the wretches who had filched his happiness and his life. But what punishment should he inflict? This fixed idea burning in his brain, gave his look a fiery eagerness. Ordinarily, there are three modes in which a betrayed husband may avenge himself. He has the right, and it is almost a duty—to deliver the guilty ones up to the law, which is on his side. He may adroitly watch them, surprise them and kill them. There is a law which does not absolve, but excuses him, in this. Lastly, he may affect a stolid indifference, laugh the first and loudest at his misfortune, drive his wife from his roof, and leave her to starve. But what poor, wretched methods of vengeance. Give up his wife to the law? Would not that be to offer his name, honor, and life to public ridicule? To put himself at the mercy of a lawyer, who would drag him through the mire. They do not defend the erring wife, they attack her husband. And what satisfaction would he get? Bertha and Tremorel would be condemned to a year’s imprisonment, perhaps eighteen months, possibly two years. It seemed to him simpler to kill them. He might go in, fire a revolver at them, and they would not have time to comprehend it, for their agony would be but for a moment; and then? Then, he must become a prisoner, submit to a trial, invoke the judge’s mercy, and risk conviction. As to turning his wife out of doors, that was to hand her over quietly to Hector. He imagined them leaving Valfeuillu, hand in hand, happy and smiling, and laughing in his face. At this thought he had a fit of cold rage; his self-esteem adding the sharpest pains to the wounds in his heart. None of these vulgar methods could satisfy him. He longed for some revenge unheard-of, strange, monstrous, as his tortures were. Then he thought of all the horrible tales he had read, seeking one to his purpose; he had a right to be particular, and he was determined to wait until he was satisfied. There was only one thing that could balk his progress—Jenny’s letter. What had become of it? Had he lost it in the woods? He had looked for it everywhere, and could not find it.
He accustomed himself, however, to feign, finding a sort of fierce pleasure in the constraint. He learned to assume a countenance which completely hid his thoughts. He submitted to his wife’s caresses without an apparent shudder; and shook Hector by the hand as heartily as ever. In the evening, when they were gathered about the drawing-room table, he was the gayest of the three. He built a hundred air-castles, pictured a hundred pleasure-parties, when he was able to go abroad again. Hector rejoiced at his returning health.
“Clement is getting on finely,” said he to Bertha, one evening.
She understood only too well what he meant.
“Always thinking of Laurence?”
“Did you not permit me to hope?”
“I asked you to wait, Hector, and you have done well not to be in a hurry. I know a young girl who would bring you, not one, but three millions as dowry.”
This was a painful surprise. He really had no thoughts for anyone but Laurence, and now a new obstacle presented itself.
“And who is that?”
She leaned over, and whispered tremblingly in his ear:
“I am Clement’s sole heiress; perhaps he’ll die; I might be a widow to-morrow.”
Hector was petrified.
“But Sauvresy, thank God! is getting well fast.”
Bertha fixed her large, clear eyes upon him, and with frightful calmness said:
“What do you know about it?”
Tremorel dared not ask what these strange words meant. He was one of those men who shun explanations, and who, rather than put themselves on their guard in time, permit themselves to be drawn on by circumstances; soft and feeble beings, who deliberately bandage their eyes so as not to see the danger which threatens them, and who prefer the sloth of doubt, and acts of uncertainty to a definite and open position, which they have not the courage to face.
Besides, Hector experienced a childish satisfaction in seeing Bertha’s distress, though he feared and detested her. He conceived a great opinion of his own value and merit, when he saw the persistency and desperation with which she insisted on keeping her hold on him.
“Poor woman!” thought he. “In her grief at losing me, and seeing me another’s, she has begun to wish for her husband’s death!”
Such was the torpor of his moral sense that he did not see the vileness of Bertha’s and his own thoughts.
Meanwhile Sauvresy’s state was not reassuring for Hector’s hopes and plans. On the very day when he had this conversation with Bertha, her husband was forced to take to his bed again. This relapse took place after he had drank a glass of quinine and water, which he had been accustomed to take just before supper; only, this time, the symptoms changed entirely, as if one malady had yielded to another of a very different kind. He complained of a pricking in his skin, of vertigo, of convulsive twitches which contracted and twisted his limbs, especially his arms. He cried out with excruciating neuralgic pains in the face. He was seized with a violent, persistent, tenacious craving for pepper, which nothing could assuage. He was sleepless, and morphine in large doses failed to bring him slumber; while he felt an intense chill within him, as if the body’s temperature were gradually diminishing. Delirium had completely disappeared, and the sick man retained perfectly the clearness of his mind. Sauvresy bore up wonderfully under his pains, and seemed to take a new interest in the business of his estates. He was constantly in consultation with bailiffs and agents, and shut himself up for days together with notaries and attorneys. Then, saying that he must have distractions,