Valentine (20 page)

So it was a fact, that man was there ! He was going to marry Valentine ! Bénédict hid his face in his hands, and passed twelve hours in a ditch, absorbed by a sort of stupefied despair.

For her part, the poor girl submitted to her fate with passive and silent resignation. Her love for Bénédict had made such swift progress that she had been compelled to admit the truth to herself; but, between the consciousness of her sin and the determination to abandon
herself to it, there was a long distance to travel, especially as Bénédict was no longer there to destroy with a glance the whole result of a day of good resolutions. Valentine was pious; she confided herself to God's care, and awaited Monsieur de Lansac with the hope that she should feel once more what she believed that she had previously felt for him.

But, as soon as he appeared, she realized how far removed the blind and indulgent good-will which she had accorded him was from genuine affection. He seemed to her to have lost all the charm with which her imagination had endowed him for an instant. She felt dull and bored in his company. She listened to him with a distraught air, and replied only as a matter of courtesy. He was much disturbed at first, but when he found that the preparations for the marriage went forward none the less briskly, and that Valentine did not seem inclined to make the slightest opposition, he was readily consoled for a caprice which he did not try to fathom, and pretended not to see.

Valentine's repugnance increased from hour to hour, however. She was pious, even devout, by education and conviction. She shut herself up to pray for hours at a time, always hoping to find in meditation and devout fervor the power which she lacked to return to a sense of duty. But these meditations in seclusion fatigued her brain more and more, and intensified the influence which Bénédict possessed over her heart. She came forth more exhausted, more agitated than ever. Her mother was surprised by her depression, became seriously angry with her, and accused her of trying to poison that moment which is always so sweet, she said, to a mother's heart. It is certain that all these annoyances were terribly wearisome to Madame de Raimbault. She had
determined, in order to diminish their force, that the nuptials should take place quietly and simply in the country. She was in great haste to have done with them, and to be free to return to society, where Valentine's presence had always been extraordinarily embarrassing to her.

Bénédict conceived a thousand absurd plans. The last, upon which he determined, and which restored his tranquillity to some extent, was to see Valentine once before she went out of his life forever; for he almost believed that he should no longer love her when she had submitted to Monsieur de Lansac's embraces. He hoped that Valentine would soothe him with kindly and comforting words, or would cure him by prudishly denying his request.

He wrote to her:

“Mademoiselle:

“I am your friend in life and death, as you know. You once called me your brother; you imprinted on my brow a sacred proof of your esteem and confidence; you led me to hope, at that moment, that I should find in you an adviser and a support in the difficult crises of my life. I am horribly unhappy. I long to see you for an instant, to ask you, who are so strong and so far above me, for a little courage. It is impossible for you to refuse me this favor. I know your generosity, your contempt for foolish conventionalities and for danger when it is a question of doing good. I saw you with Louise ; I know what you can do. In the name of an affection as pure and holy as hers, I beg you, on my knees, to walk this evening to the end of the field.

“B
ENÉDICT.
”

Valentine loved Bénédict; she could not refuse his request. There is so much innocence and purity in a first love that it hardly suspects the dangers which lurk within it. Valentine refused to consider the causes of Bénédict's unhappiness. She saw that he was unhappy, and she would have imagined the most impossible misfortunes rather than admit to herself what it was that overwhelmed him. There are paths so misleading and such a labyrinth of folds in the purest conscience ! How could a woman who, having an impressionable heart, was forced into the rough and pitiless path of impossible duties, resist the necessity of compromising with them at every instant ? Valentine readily found excuses for believing that Bénédict was the victim of some misfortune of which she knew nothing. Louise had often said of late that the young man distressed her by his melancholy and his heedlessness with respect to the future. She had also told her that it would soon be necessary for him to leave the Lhéry family, and Valentine persuaded herself that, having been cast adrift without means and without friends, he might really need her advice and assistance.

It was quite a difficult matter to escape from the house on the very eve of her wedding, beset as she was by Monsieur de Lansac's courtesies and petty attentions. She succeeded, however, by telling her nurse to say that she had lain down, if anyone should ask for her; and in order to lose no time, and to make it impossible
to reconsider a resolution which was beginning to frighten her, she walked rapidly across the field. The moon was then full, and objects could be seen as distinctly as in broad daylight.

She found Bénédict standing with his arms folded across his breast, so absolutely motionless that she was terrified. As he did not step forward to meet her, she thought for a moment that it was not he, and was on the point of turning back. Then he came toward her. His face was so changed, his voice so faint, that Valentine, overwhelmed by her own sorrows and by those of which she could see the traces in him, could not restrain her tears, and was obliged to sit down.

It was all over with Bénédict's resolutions. He had come to that place, determined to follow religiously the course he had marked out in his note. He intended to talk with Valentine of his separation from the Lhérys, of his uncertainty with respect to the choice of a profession, of his isolation, of all the pretexts farthest removed from his real purpose. That purpose was to see Valentine, to hear the sound of her voice, to find in her feelings toward him courage to live or to die. He expected to find her serious and reserved, armed with a full consciousness of her duties. Indeed, he almost expected not to see her at all.

When he spied her on the farther side of the field, hastening toward him at the top of her speed ; when she sank upon the turf, breathless and overwhelmed with emotion; when her grief found expression, despite her efforts, in tears—Bénédict believed that he was dreaming. Oh ! that was not compassion merely, it was love! A wave of delirious joy swept over him. Once more he forgot both his own unhappiness and Valentine's, both yesterday and the morrow, to see naught but Valentine,
who was by his side, alone with him, Valentine who loved him, and who no longer concealed it from him.

He threw himself on his knees before her; he kissed her feet passionately. It was too severe a trial for Valentine. She felt all her blood congeal in her veins; a mist passed over her eyes. As the fatigue caused by running made the task of concealing her tears even more painful, she fell, pale as death and almost unconscious, into Bénédict's arms.

Their interview was long and tempestuous. They did not attempt to deceive each other as to the nature of the sentiment they felt; they did not seek to avoid the danger of yielding to the most ardent emotions. Bénédict covered Valentine's clothes and hands with tears and kisses. Valentine hid her burning face on Bénédict's shoulder. But they were twenty years old; they were in love for the first time, and Valentine's honor was safe on Bénédict's breast. He dared not even utter the word
love,
which frightens love itself. His lips dared do no more than breathe upon his mistress's lovely hair. First love hardly knows that there exists a greater joy than that of knowing oneself to be loved. Bénédict was the most timid of lovers and the happiest of men.

They parted without making any plans, without deciding upon anything. In those two hours of rapture and oblivion, they had exchanged only a few words concerning their situation, when the clear note of the château clock fell faintly on their ears in the silence of the fields. Valentine counted ten almost inaudible strokes, and suddenly remembered her mother, her fiancé, the morrow. But how could she leave Bénédict ? what could she say to comfort him ? where find the strength of mind to abandon him at such a moment ? The appearance of a
woman a short distance away extorted an exclamation of alarm from her. Bénédict slunk hurriedly into the shrubbery, but Valentine almost instantly recognized in the bright moonlight her nurse Catherine, who was anxiously searching for her. It would have been an easy matter to avoid her glances, but she felt that she ought not to do it; so she walked toward her and asked, as she clung trembling to her arm :

“What is the matter?”

“For the love of God, mademoiselle, come home,” said the good woman ; “ madame has asked for you twice already, and, when I told her that you had lain down on your bed, she told me to let her know as soon as you woke. I was worried then; and as I had seen you go out by the small gate, and as I know that you sometimes come to walk here in the evening, I came out to look for you. Oh ! mademoiselle, to think of going so far all by yourself! You did wrong ; you ought at least to have told me to go with you.”

Valentine kissed the old nurse, cast a sad and anxious glance at the bushes, and purposely dropped her handkerchief—the one she had lent to Bénédict on the occasion of their walk over the farm. When she returned to the house, her nurse looked everywhere for it, and observed that she must have lost it during her stroll.

Valentine found that her mother had been waiting for her for some minutes in her room. She expressed some surprise to find her fully dressed after passing two hours on her bed. Valentine replied that as she had had a headache, she had felt the need of fresh air, and that her nurse had given her her arm for a turn in the park.

Thereupon Madame de Raimbault entered upon a serious dissertation concerning matters of business. She informed her that she would leave to her the château
and estate of Raimbault—the bare name having constituted substantially the whole of her father's inheritance—the value of which, apart from her own fortune, formed a handsome marriage-portion. She asked her to do her the justice to acknowledge that she had been a faithful steward of her fortune, and to bear witness to all the world, so long as she lived, of her mother's just treatment of her. She went into financial details which made of that maternal exhortation a genuine lawyer's interview, and concluded her harangue by saying that, now that the law was about to make them
strangers
to each other, she hoped to find Valentine disposed to be
considerate
and attentive to her.

Valentine did not hear one-half of this long harangue. Her cheeks were pale, her downcast eyes were surrounded by purple rings, and from time to time a shiver ran through every limb. She kissed her mother's hands sadly, and was preparing to go to bed, when her grandmother's maid appeared and informed her with great solemnity of manner that the marchioness wished to see her in her apartments.

Valentine dragged herself to this additional ceremony. She found the old lady's bedroom embellished with a sort of religious decoration. An altar had been made of a table covered with embroidered linen. Flowers arranged like church decorations were wound about a crucifix of guilloched gold. A missal bound in scarlet velvet lay upon the altar. A cushion awaited the pressure of Valentine's knees, and the marchioness, seated in a theatrical pose in her great arm-chair, was making ready with childish satisfaction to play her little conventional comedy.

Valentine entered the room in silence, and, because her piety was genuine, she viewed these absurd preparations without emotion. The maid opened a door on the
opposite side of the room, through which all the female servants of the château entered, with a humble and at the same time curious air. The marchioness ordered them to kneel and pray for the happiness of their young mistress ; then, having bade Valentine also to kneel, she rose, turned the pages of the missal, put on her spectacles, read a few verses of one of the Psalms, bleated a chant with her maid, and ended by laying her hands on Valentine's head and giving her her blessing. Never was a simple, patriarchal ceremony more wretchedly burlesqued by an aged sinner of the time of La Du-barry.

As she kissed her granddaughter, she took—from the improvised altar itself—a case containing a pretty set of cameos, which she presented to her, and, blending devotion with frivolity, said to her almost in the same breath :

“May God give you the virtues of a good mother of a family, my child!—Here, my girl, is your grandmother's little gift; you can wear them with half-dress.”

Valentine was in a fever all night, and did not sleep until morning. She was soon awakened by the sound of bells summoning the whole neighborhood to the chapel of the château. Catherine came to her room with a note which an old woman had given her for Mademoiselle de Raimbault. It contained only these few words in a trembling hand:

“Valentine, there is still time to say no.”

Valentine shuddered and burned the note. She tried to rise, but several times her strength failed her. She was seated, half-dressed, on a chair, when her mother appeared, reproved her for being so late, refused to believe that she was seriously ill, and informed her that several people were already awaiting her in the salon. She herself
assisted her to complete her toilet, and when Valentine stood before her in her bridal dress, wonderfully beautiful, but as white as her veil, she insisted upon putting rouge on her cheeks. Valentine reflected that, perhaps, Bénédict would see her as she passed. She preferred that he should see her pallor, and, for the first time in her life, she resisted her mother's wish.

She found in the salon a number of neighbors of secondary rank; for Madame de Raimbault, having determined that the wedding should be unattended by display, had invited only people of
little consequence.
They were to breakfast in the garden, and the peasants were to have their dance at the other end of the park, at the foot of the hill. Monsieur de Lansac soon appeared, dressed in black from head to foot, and with his buttonhole laden with foreign decorations. The wedding-party was taken in three carriages to the mayor's office, which was in the neighboring village. The church ceremony was performed at the château.