nimble fingers; it contained one line in a hand like that of a copying clerk: FROM A FRIEND: IN PART PAYMENT OF A GREAT DEBT.
Keen, piquant curiosity now took the place of surprise. Who could it be? The baroness’s suspicion fell at once on Dr. Aubertin. But Rose maintained he had not ten gold pieces in the world. The baroness appealed to Josephine. She only blushed in an extraordinary way, and said nothing. They puzzled, and puzzled, and were as much in the dark as ever, when lo! one of the suspected parties delivered himself into the hands of justice with ludicrous simplicity. It happened to be Dr. Aubertin’s hour of out-a-door study; and he came mooning along, buried in a book, and walked slowly into the group—started, made a slight apology, and was mooning off, lost in his book again. Then the baroness, who had eyed him with grim suspicion all the time, said with well-affected nonchalance, “Doctor, you dropped your purse; we have just picked it up.” And she handed it to him. “Thank you, madame,” said he, and took it quietly without looking at it, put it in his pocket, and retired, with his soul in his book. They stared comically at one another, and at this cool hand. “It’s no more his than it’s mine,” said Jacintha, bluntly. Rose darted after the absorbed student, and took him captive. “Now, doctor,” she cried, “be pleased to come out of the clouds.” And with the word she whipped the purse out of his coat pocket, and holding it right up before his eye, insisted on his telling her whether that was his purse or not, money and all. Thus adjured, he disowned the property mighty coolly, for a retired physician, who had just pocketed it.
“No, my dear,” said he; “and, now I think of it, I have not carried a purse this twenty years.”
The baroness, as a last resource, appealed to his honor whether he had not left a purse and paper on the knights’ bough. The question had to be explained by Josephine, and then the doctor surprised them all by being rather affronted—for once in his life.
“Baroness,” said he, “I have been your friend and pensioner nearly twenty years; if by some strange chance money were to come into my hands, I should not play you a childish trick like this. What! have I not the right to come to you, and say, ‘My old friend, here I bring you back a very small part of all I owe you?’ ”
“What geese we are,” remarked Rose. “Dear doctor, YOU tell us who it is.”
Dr. Aubertin reflected a single moment; then said he could make a shrewd guess.
“Who? who? who?” cried the whole party.
“Perrin the notary.”
It was the baroness’s turn to be surprised; for there was nothing romantic about Perrin the notary. Aubertin, however, let her know that he was in private communication with the said Perrin, and this was not the first friendly act the good notary had done her in secret.
While he was converting the baroness to his view, Josephine and Rose exchanged a signal, and slipped away round an angle of the chateau.
“Who is it?” said Rose.
“It is some one who has a delicate mind.”
“Clearly, and therefore not a notary.”
“Rose, dear, might it not be some person who has done us some wrong, and is perhaps penitent?”
“Certainly; one of our tenants, or creditors, you mean; but then, the paper says ‘a friend.’ Stay, it says a debtor. Why a debtor? Down with enigmas!”
“Rose, love,” said Josephine, coaxingly, “think of some one that might—since it is not the doctor, nor Monsieur Perrin, might it not be—for after all, he would naturally be ashamed to appear before me.”
“Before you? Who do you mean?” asked Rose nervously, catching a glimpse now.
“He who once pretended to love me.”
“Josephine, you love that man still.”
“No, no. Spare me!”
“You love him just the same as ever. Oh, it is wonderful; it is terrible; the power he has over you; over your judgment as well as your heart.”
“No! for I believe he has forgotten my very name; don’t you think so?”
“Dear Josephine, can you doubt it? Come, you do doubt it.”
“Sometimes.”
“But why? for what reason?”
“Because of what he said to me as we parted at that gate; the words and the voice seem still to ring like truth across the weary years. He said, ‘I am to join the army of the Pyrenees, so fatal to our troops; but say to me what you never yet have said, Camille, I love you: and I swear I will come back alive.’ So then I said to him, ‘I love you,’—and he never came back.”
“How could he come here? a deserter, a traitor!”
“It is not true; it is not in his nature; inconstancy may be. Tell me that he never really loved me, and I will believe you; but not that he is a traitor. Let me weep over my past love, not blush for it.”
“Past? You love him to-day as you did three years ago.”
“No,” said Josephine, “no; I love no one. I never shall love any one again.”
“But him. It is that love which turns your heart against others. Oh, yes, you love him, dearest, or why should you fancy our secret benefactor COULD be that Camille?”
“Why? Because I was mad: because it is impossible; but I see my folly. I am going in.”
“What! don’t you care to know who I think it was, perhaps?”
“No,” said Josephine sadly and doggedly; she added with cold nonchalance, “I dare say time will show.” And she went slowly in, her hand to her head.
“Her birthday!” sighed Rose.
The donor, whoever he was, little knew the pain he was inflicting on this distressed but proud family, or the hard battle that ensued between their necessities and their delicacy. The ten gold pieces were a perpetual temptation: a daily conflict. The words that accompanied the donation offered a bait. Their pride and dignity declined it; but these bright bits of gold cost them many a sharp pang. You must know that Josephine and Rose had worn out their mourning by this time; and were obliged to have recourse to gayer materials that lay in their great wardrobes, and were older, but less worn. A few of these gold pieces would have enabled the poor girls to be neat, and yet to mourn their father openly. And it went through and through those tender, simple hearts, to think that they must be disunited, even in so small a thing as dress; that while their mother remained in her weeds, they must seem no longer to share her woe.
The baroness knew their feeling, and felt its piety, and yet could not bow her dignity to say, “Take five of these bits of gold, and let us all look what we are—one.” Yet in this, as in everything else, they supported each other. They resisted, they struggled, and with a wrench they conquered day by day. At last, by general consent, Josephine locked up the tempter, and they looked at it no more. But the little bit of paper met a kinder fate. Rose made a little frame for it, and it was kept in a drawer, in the salon: and often looked at and blessed. Just when they despaired of human friendship, this paper with the sacred word “friend” written on it, had fallen all in a moment on their aching hearts.
They could not tell whence it came, this blessed word.
But men dispute whence comes the dew?
Then let us go with the poets, who say it comes from heaven.
And even so that sweet word, friend, dropped like the dew from heaven on these afflicted ones.
So they locked the potent gold away from themselves, and took the kind slip of paper to their hearts.
The others left off guessing: Aubertin had it all his own way: he upheld Perrin as their silent benefactor, and bade them all observe that the worthy notary had never visited the chateau openly since the day the