Valentine (21 page)

Valentine, as she knelt before the altar, emerged for an instant from the species of torpor into which she had fallen. She said to herself that it was too late to withdraw, that men had forced her to make a pledge with God, and that it was no longer possible for her to choose between unhappiness and sacrifice. She prayed fervently, implored heaven to give her strength to keep the oaths which she determined to take with absolute sincerity, and, at the close of the ceremony, exhausted by the superhuman effort she had put forth to remain calm and tranquil, she withdrew to her room to take a little rest. Moved by a secret instinct of discretion and devotion, Catherine seated herself at the foot of her bed and did not leave her.

On the same day the marriage of Athénaïs Lhéry and
Pierre Blutty was celebrated in a small hamlet in the valley, about two leagues from the château. There, too, the young bride was pale and depressed; less so than Valentine, but to a sufficient degree to worry her mother, who was much more affectionate than Madame de Raimbault, and to anger her spouse, who was much more outspoken and less polished than Monsieur de Lansac. It may be that Athénaïs presumed too far on the force of her irritation when she decided so hastily to marry a man whom she did not love. As a result perhaps of the spirit of contradiction commonly attributed to women, her affection for Bénédict reawoke at the very moment when it was too late to change her mind ; and, on returning from church, she regaled her husband with a very tiresome paroxysm of weeping. So Pierre Blutty characterized it when he complained of it to his friend Georges Simonneau.

Nevertheless, the wedding at the farm was much more largely attended, noisier and merrier than the one at the château. The Lhérys had at least sixty cousins and second cousins; the Bluttys were no less rich in relations, and the barn was not large enough to hold the guests.

In the afternoon, when the dancing half of the party had feasted sufficiently on fatted calf and game pie, they abandoned the gastronomic arena to the old people, and gathered on the greensward to open the ball. But the heat was extreme; there was little shade in that spot, and there was no very convenient place for dancing near the farm-house. Someone suggested that there was a very large tract of well-shaped level turf near the château, where five hundred people were dancing at that moment. The countryman is as fond of a crowd as the dandy. To enjoy himself thoroughly, he must have a lot of people about, feet stepping on his, elbows elbowing
him, lungs absorbing the air he exhales; in every country in the world, in all ranks of society, that is pleasure.

Madame Lhéry welcomed the idea eagerly; she had spent enough money on her daughter's dress to wish that people should see it side by side with Mademoiselle de Raimbault's, and that the whole province should talk of its magnificence. She had obtained minute information concerning Valentine's wedding costume. As it was to be such an unpretentious occasion, she was to wear only simple and tasteful ornaments. Madame Lhéry had loaded her daughter with laces and jewels, and, longing to exhibit her in all her glory, she proposed that they should join the festivities at the château, to which she and all her family were invited. Athénaïs remonstrated a little. She dreaded to see hovering about Valentine the pale and gloomy face of Bénédict which had distressed her so at the church on the preceding Sunday. But her mother's obstinacy, the wish of her husband, who was not exempt from vanity, and perhaps, too, a little of that same vanity on her own account, overcame her reluctance. The carriages were made ready ; each horseman took his sister, his cousin or his fiancée
en croupe.
Athénaïs sighed profoundly as her new husband took his place in the wagon, reins in hand, in the seat which Bénédict had occupied so long and would never occupy again.

The dancing in the park at Raimbault was very lively. The peasants, for whose benefit arbors of foliage had been arranged, sang and drank and proclaimed the newly-married couple the handsomest, most fortunate and most honorable in the country. The countess, who was anything but popular, had been very lavish in her preparations for the festival, in order to have done at once, in a single day, with all the affability which another would have distributed throughout a lifetime. She had the most profound contempt for the
canaille,
and declared that, if you only gave them plenty to eat and drink, you could walk on their stomachs without a sign of revolt from them. And the saddest part of it is that Madame de Raimbault was not altogether wrong.

The Marquise de Raimbault was delighted with this opportunity to revive her popularity. She was not very susceptible to the hardships of the poor, but she was no more indifferent in that regard than in regard to the misfortunes of her friends; and, thanks to her fondness for gossip and her disposition to be familiar, she had acquired that reputation for kindness of heart which the poor award with so little reason, alas! to those who, although they do no good, at all events do no harm. As the two ladies passed, one after the other, the shrewd minds of the village whispered to one another under the foliage :

“That one despises us, but she entertains us; the other doesn't entertain us, but she speaks to us.”

And they were content with both. The only one who was really loved was Valentine, because she did not confine herself to a friendly word and smile, to being generous to them and helping them, but shared their sorrows and their joys ; they felt that her kindness was not induced by any selfish interest, or by policy. They had seen her weep over their misfortunes; they had found in her heart genuine sympathy; they were more attached than men of coarse mould commonly are to those of higher station. Many of them knew the story of her intercourse with her sister at the farm, but they kept her secret so religiously that they hardly dared mention Louise's name under their breaths.

Valentine walked from one table to another and strove to smile in answer to their good wishes, but their merriment vanished when she had passed, for they noticed that she seemed depressed and ill; they even went so far as to cast malevolent glances at Monsieur de Lansac.

Athénaïs and her wedding-party dropped into the midst of the festivities, and there was an instant change in the aspect of affairs. Her elegant costume and her husband's affable bearing attracted all eyes. The dancing, which was beginning to flag, became animated once more. Valentine, having embraced her young friend, retired again with her nurse. Madame de Raimbault, being intensely bored, went to her room to rest; Monsieur de Lansac, who always had important letters to write, even on his wedding-day, went to prepare his day's mail. The Lhéry party was left in possession of the field, and the people who had come to see Valentine dance remained to see Athénaïs dance.

It was growing dark. Athénaïs, fatigued by dancing, had sat down to take some refreshment. The Chevalier de Trigaud, Joseph his majordomo, Simonneau, Moret,
and several others who had danced with the bride, had gathered about her at the same table, and were overwhelming her with their attentions. Athénaïs had been so lovely while dancing, her absurdly gorgeous costume was so becoming to her, her husband was gazing at her with such an amorous gleam in his black eye, that she began to be more cheerful and to be reconciled to her wedding-day. The Chevalier de Trigaud, who was moderately drunk, made complimentary remarks in the style of Dorat, which made her laugh and blush at the same time. Little by little the group about her, enlivened by a bottle or two of a light white wine of the province, by the dance, by the bride's lovely eyes, by the occasion and by custom, began to address to her some of those equivocal remarks which are enigmatical at first and end by becoming indecent.

Athénaïs, who realized that she was pretty, saw that she was admired, and did not in the least understand what they said, except that they envied and congratulated her husband, strove to keep upon her lips the smile which enhanced her loveliness, and was even beginning to reply with a sort of coquettish shyness to Pierre Blutty's burning glances, when a person came silently and sat down in the vacant place at her left. Athénaïs, involuntarily stirred by the imperceptible rustling of her dress, turned, stifled a cry of alarm and turned pale: it was Bénédict.

It was Bénédict, even paler than she, but grave, cold and ironical. He had wandered about the woods like a hunted man all day long. When evening came, losing all hope of calming himself by fatigue, he had determined to watch Valentine's wedding festival, to listen to the ribaldry of the peasants, to hear the signal for the newly-married pair to withdraw to the nuptial
chamber, and to cure himself by dint of wrath, pity and disgust.

“If my love survives all this,” he said to himself, “ it must be because there is no remedy for it.”

And, to be prepared for any emergency, he had loaded the pistols which he carried in his pocket.

He had not expected to find this other wedding-party there, and this bride. He had been watching Athénaïs for several minutes. Her merriment aroused his most profound contempt, and he determined to place himself in the very centre of the mortifications he had come there to defy, by taking a seat beside her.

Bénédict, who was by nature peevish and cynical, one of those discontented, grumbling creatures who have little patience with the absurdities and caprices of society, always declared—it was one of his paradoxes—that there could be no more monstrous impropriety, no more scandalous custom than the publicity given to the marriage ceremony. He had never seen, without a feeling of pity, a poor girl amid the hurly-burly of the wedding festival, almost always with some shrinking love concealed in her heart, and compelled to run the gauntlet of insolent attentions and impertinent glances in order to reach the arms of her husband, already defiled by the wanton imaginations of all the men in the crowd. He also pitied the poor young man whose love was placarded at the door of the mayor's office and in the church, and who was compelled to abandon his fiancée's spotless robe to the vulgarities of the town and the surrounding country. He considered that love was profaned by taking from it the veil of mystery. He would have liked to encompass the woman with so much respect that no one would know the object of her choice, and that people would be afraid of offending her by naming him to her.

“How,” he would say, “do you expect your wives to have pure morals when you publicly do violence to their modesty; when you bring them unsullied into the midst of the multitude, and say to them, calling the multitude to witness: ‘You belong to this man, you are a virgin no longer ?' And the crowd claps its hands, laughing exultantly, jeers at the blushes of the husband and wife, and pursues them, even in the seclusion of the nuptial chamber, with its obscene shouts and songs ! The barbarians of the new world had more decent marriage rites. At the festival of the sun, they brought to the temple a man and a woman—virgins both. The multitude, grave and silent, prostrated themselves, blessed the god who created love, and, with all the solemnity of love, physical and divine, the mystery of generation was performed before the altar. That ingenuous ceremony, which disgusts you, was more chaste than your marriages. You have so offended modesty, so neglected love, so degraded woman, that you have fallen to the point of insulting woman, love and modesty.”

When he saw Bénédict seated beside his wife, Pierre Blutty, who knew of Athénaïs's fondness for her cousin, cast a threatening glance at them. His friends exchanged glances of similar import with him. They all hated Bénédict for his superior parts, of which they believed him to be vain. The merry chatter flagged for an instant, but the Chevalier de Trigaud, who esteemed him highly, gave him a cordial greeting, and offered him the bottle with a trembling hand. Bénédict bore himself with a calm and indifferent air which led Athénaïs to think that he had determined to make the best of it; she timidly offered him some attentions, which he received respectfully and without apparent ill-humor.

Little by little the conversation resumed its free and
indelicate tone, with the manifest intention on the part of Blutty and his friends of giving it a turn that would be offensive to Bénédict. He at once detected that intention, and armed himself with the contemptuous tranquillity which his features seemed naturally to express.

Until his arrival, Valentine's name had not been mentioned ; it was the weapon to which Blutty resorted to wound him. He gave the signal to his companions, and they began to draw, in ambiguous terms, a parallel between Pierre Blutty's good fortune and Monsieur de Lansac's, which caused the blood to boil in Bénédict's frozen veins. But he had come there to hear what he was hearing. He put a good face upon it, hoping that the inward rage which was consuming him would soon change to disgust. Moreover, if he had given way to his wrath, he had no right to protect Valentine's name from this besmirching.

But Pierre Blutty did not stop there. He was determined to insult him grievously, and even to make a scene, in order to procure his expulsion from the farm forever. He ventured to say a few words which conveyed the implication that Monsieur de Lansac's good fortune was a bitter blow to the heart of one of the guests. Everyone looked at him in surprise, with a questioning glance, and saw that his eyes were fixed on Bénédict. Thereupon the Morets and the Simonneaus, taking up the ball, fell upon their adversary with more brutality than real force. For a long time he remained impassive; he contented himself with a reproachful glance at poor Athénaïs, who alone could have betrayed his secret. The young woman, in desperation, tried to change the subject, but that was impossible; and she sat there more dead than alive, hoping that her presence would at least restrain her husband to some extent.

“There be some folks,” said Georges, affecting to speak in a more countrified fashion than usual, in order to present a more striking contrast to Bénédict's manner, “there be some folks who try to get their feet higher than their legs and break their noses on the ground. That reminds me of the story about Jean Lory, who didn't like neither dark girls nor light ones, and ended, as everyone knows, by thinking himself mighty lucky to marry a red-haired one.”