XX
Time passed. Hector and Bertha repaired to Sauvresy's room; he wasasleep. They noiselessly took chairs beside the fire, as usual, and themaid retired. In order that the sick man might not be disturbed by thelight of the lamp, curtains had been hung so that, when lying down, hecould not see the fireplace and mantel. In order to see these, he musthave raised himself on his pillow and leaned forward on his right arm.But now he was asleep, breathing painfully, feverish, and shudderingconvulsively. Bertha and Hector did not speak; the solemn and sinistersilence was only broken by the ticking of the clock, or by the leaves ofthe book which Hector was reading. Ten o'clock struck; soon afterSauvresy moved, turned over, and awoke. Bertha was at his side in aninstant; she saw that his eyes were open.
"Do you feel a little better, dear Clement?" she asked.
"Neither better nor worse."
"Do you want anything?"
"I am thirsty."
Hector, who had raised his eyes when his friend spoke, suddenly resumedhis reading.
Bertha, standing by the mantel, began to prepare with great care Dr.R--- 's last prescription; when it was ready, she took out the fatallittle vial as usual, and thrust one of her hair-pins into it.
She had not time to draw it out before she felt a light touch upon hershoulder. A shudder shook her from head to foot; she suddenly turned anduttered a loud scream, a cry of terror and horror.
"Oh!"
The hand which had touched her was her husband's. While she was busiedwith the poison at the mantel, Sauvresy had softly raised himself; moresoftly still, he had pulled the curtain aside, and had stretched out hisarm and touched her. His eyes glittered with hate and anger.
Bertha's cry was answered by another dull cry, or rather groan; Tremorelhad seen and comprehended all; he was overwhelmed.
"All is discovered!" Their eyes spoke these three words to each other.They saw them everywhere, written in letters of fire. There was a momentof stupor, of silence so profound that Hector heard his temples beat.Sauvresy had got back under the bed-clothes again. He laughed loudly,wildly, just as a skeleton might have laughed whose jaws and teethrattled together.
But Bertha was not one of those persons who are overcome by a singleblow, terrible as it might be. She trembled like a leaf; her legsstaggered; but her mind was already at work seeking a subterfuge. Whathad Sauvresy seen--anything? What did he know? For even had he seen thevial, this might be explained. It could only have been by simple chancethat he had touched her at the moment when she was using the poison. Allthese thoughts flashed across her mind in a moment, as rapid aslightning shooting between the clouds. And then she dared to approachthe bed, and, with a frightfully constrained smile, to say:
"How you frightened me then!"
He looked at her a moment, which seemed to her an age--and simplyreplied:
"I understand it."
There was no longer any uncertainty. Bertha saw only too well in herhusband's eyes that he knew something. But what--how much? She nervedherself to go on:
"Are you still suffering?"
"No."
"Then why did you get up?"
He raised himself upon his pillow, and with a sudden strength, hecontinued:
"I got up to tell you that I have had enough of these tortures, that Ihave reached the limits of human energy, that I cannot endure one daylonger the agony of seeing myself put to death slowly, drop by drop, bythe hands of my wife and my best friend!"
He stopped. Hector and Bertha were thunderstruck. "I wanted to tell youalso, that I have had enough of your cruel caution, and that I suffer.Ah, don't you see that I suffer horribly? Hurry, cut short my agony!Kill me, and kill me at a blow--poisoners!"
At the last word, the Count de Tremorel sprang up as if he had moved bya spring, his eyes haggard, his arms stretched out. Sauvresy, seeingthis, quickly slipped his hand under the pillow, pulled out a revolver,and pointed the barrel at Hector, crying out:
"Don't advance a step!"
He thought that Tremorel, seeing that they were discovered, was going torush upon him and strangle him; but he was mistaken. It seemed to Hectoras though he were losing his mind. He fell down as heavily as if he werea log. Bertha was more self-possessed; she tried to resist the torpor ofterror which she felt coming on.
"You are worse, my Clement," said she. "This is that dreadful feverwhich frightens me so. Delirium--"
"Have I really been delirious?" interrupted he, with a surprised air.
"Alas, yes, dear, that is what haunts you, and fills your poor sick headwith horrid visions."
He looked at her curiously. He was really stupefied by this boldness,which constantly grew more bold.
"What! you think that we, who are so dear to you, your friends, I,your--"
Her husband's implacable look forced her to stop, and the words expiredon her lips.
"Enough of these lies, Bertha," resumed Sauvresy, "they are useless. No,I have not been dreaming, nor have I been delirious. The poison is onlytoo real, and I could tell you what it is without your taking it out ofyour pocket."
She recoiled as if she had seen her husband's hand stretched out tosnatch the blue vial.
"I guessed it and recognized it at the very first; for you have chosenone of those poisons which, it is true, leave scarcely any trace ofthemselves, but the symptoms of which are not deceptive. Do you rememberthe day when I complained of a morbid taste for pepper? The next day Iwas certain of it, and I was not the only one. Doctor R---, too, had asuspicion."
Bertha tried to stammer something; her husband interrupted her.
"People ought to try their poisons," pursued he, in an ironical tone,"before they use them. Didn't you understand yours, or what its effectswere? Why, your poison gives intolerable neuralgia, sleeplessness, andyou saw me without surprise, sleeping soundly all night long! Icomplained of a devouring fire within me, while your poison freezes theblood and the entrails, and yet you are not astonished. You see all thesymptoms change and disappear, and that does not enlighten you. You arefools, then. Now see what I had to do to divert Doctor R--- 'ssuspicions. I hid the real pains which your poison caused, andcomplained of imaginary, ridiculous ones. I described sensations justthe opposite of those which I felt. You were lost, then--and I savedyou."
Bertha's malignant energy staggered beneath so many successive blows.She wondered whether she were not going mad; had she heard aright? Wasit really true that her husband had perceived that he was beingpoisoned, and yet said nothing; nay, that he had even deceived thedoctor? Why? What was his purpose?
Sauvresy paused several minutes, and then went on:
"I have held my tongue and so saved you, because the sacrifice of mylife had already been made. Yes, I had been fatally wounded in the hearton the day that I learned that you were faithless to me."
He spoke of his death without apparent emotion; but at the words, "Youwere faithless to me," his voice faltered and trembled.
"I would not, could not believe it at first. I doubted the evidence ofmy senses, rather than doubt you. But I was forced to believe at last. Iwas no longer anything in my house but a laughing-stock. But I was inyour way. You and your lover needed more room and liberty. You weretired of constraint and hypocrisy. Then it was that, believing that mydeath would make you free and rich, you brought in poison to ridyourselves of me."
Bertha had at least the heroism of crime. All was discovered; well, shethrew down the mask. She tried to defend her accomplice, who layunconscious in a chair.
"It is I that have done it all," cried she. "He is innocent."
Sauvresy turned pale with rage.
"Ah, really," said he, "my friend Hector is innocent! It wasn't he,then, who, to pay me up--not for his life, for he was too cowardly tokill himself; but for his honor, which he owes to me--took my wife fromme? Wretch! I hold out my hand to him when he is drowning, I welcome himlike a brother, and in return, he desolates my hearth!... And youknew what you were doing, my friend Hector--for I told you a hundredtimes that
my wife was my all here below, my present and my future, mydream and happiness and hope and very life! You knew that for me to loseher was to die. But if you had loved her--no, it was not that you lovedher; you hated me. Envy devoured you, and you could not tell me to myface, 'You are too happy.' Then, like a coward, you dishonored me in thedark. Bertha was only the instrument of your rancor; and she weighs uponyou to-day--you despise and fear her. My friend, Hector, you have beenin this house the vile lackey who thinks to avenge his baseness byspitting upon the meats which he puts on his master's table!"
The count only responded by a shudder. The dying man's terrible wordsfell more cruelly on his conscience than blows upon his cheek.
"See, Bertha," continued Sauvresy, "that's the man whom you havepreferred to me, and for whom you have betrayed me. You never lovedme--I see it now--your heart was never Mine. And I--I loved you so! Fromthe day I first saw you, you were my only thought; as if your heart hadbeaten in place of Mine. Everything about you was dear and precious tome; I adored your whims, caprices, even your faults. There was nothing Iwould not do for a smile from you, so that you would say to me, Thankyou, between two kisses. You don't know that for years after ourmarriage it was my delight to wake up first so as to gaze upon you asyou lay asleep, to admire and touch your lovely hair, lying dishevelledacross the pillow. Bertha!"
He softened at the remembrance of these past joys, which would not comeagain. He forgot their presence, the infamous treachery, the poison;that he was about to die, murdered by this beloved wife; and his eyesfilled with tears, his voice choked.
Bertha, more motionless and pallid than marble, listened to himbreathlessly.
"It is true, then," continued the sick man, "that these lovely eyesconceal a soul of filth! Ah, who would not have been deceived, as I was?Bertha, what did you dream of when you were sleeping in my arms?Tremorel came, and you thought you saw in him the ideal of your dreams.You admired the precocious wrinkles which betrayed an exhausted life,like the fatal seal which marks the fallen archangel's forehead. Yourlove, without thought of mine, rushed toward him, though he did notthink of you. You went to evil as if it were your nature. And yet Ithought you more immaculate than the Alpine snows. You did not even havea struggle with yourself; you betrayed no confusion which would revealyour first fault to me. You brought me your forehead soiled with hiskisses without blushing."
Weariness overcame his energies; his voice became little by littlefeebler and less distinct.
"You had your happiness in your hands, Bertha, and you carelesslydestroyed it, as the child breaks the toy of whose value he is ignorant.What did you expect from this wretch for whom you had the frightfulcourage to kill me, with a kiss upon your lips, slowly, hour by hour?You thought you loved him, but disgust ought to have come at last. Lookat him, and judge between us. See which is the--man--I, extended on thisbed where I shall soon die, or he shivering there in a corner. You havethe energy of crime, but he has only the baseness of it. Ah, if my namewas Hector de Tremorel, and a man had spoken as I have just done, thatman should live no longer, even if he had ten revolvers like this I amholding to defend himself with!"
Hector, thus taunted, tried to get up and reply; but his legs would notsupport him, and his throat only gave hoarse, unintelligible sounds.Bertha, as she looked at the two men, recognized her error with rage andindignation. Her husband, at this moment, seemed to her sublime; hiseyes gleamed, his face was radiant; while the other--the other! She feltsick with disgust when she but glanced toward him.
Thus all these deceptive chimeras after which she had run, love,passion, poetry, were already hers; she had held them in her hands andshe had not been able to perceive it. But what was Sauvresy's purpose?
He continued, painfully:
"This then, is our situation; you have killed me, you are going to befree, yet you hate and despise each other--"
He stopped, and seemed to be suffocating; he tried to raise himself onhis pillow and to sit up in bed, but found himself too feeble.
"Bertha," said he, "help me get up."
She leaned over the bed, and taking her husband in her arms, succeededin placing him as he wished. He appeared more at ease in his newposition, and took two or three long breaths.
"Now," he said, "I should like something to drink. The doctor lets metake a little old wine, if I have a fancy for it; give me some."
She hastened to bring him a glass of wine, which he emptied and handedback to her.
"There wasn't any poison in it, was there?" he asked.
This ghastly question and the smile which accompanied it, meltedBertha's callousness; remorse had already taken possession of her, asher disgust of Tremorel increased.
"Poison?" she cried, eagerly, "never!"
"You must give me some, though, presently, so as to help me to die."
"You die, Clement? No; I want you to live, so that I may redeem thepast. I am a wretch, and have committed a hideous crime--but you aregood. You will live; I don't ask to be your wife, but only your servant.I will love you, humiliate myself, serve you on my knees, so that someday, after ten, twenty years of expiation, you will forgive me!"
Hector in his mortal terror and anguish, was scarcely able todistinguish what was taking place. But he saw a dim ray of hope inBertha's gestures and accent, and especially in her last words; hethought that perhaps it was all going to end and be forgotten, and thatSauvresy would pardon them. Half-rising, he stammered:
"Yes, forgive us, forgive us!"
Sauvresy's eyes glittered, and his angry voice vibrated as if it camefrom a throat of metal.
"Forgive!" cried he, "pardon! Did you have pity on me during all thisyear that you have been playing with my happiness, during this fortnightthat you have been mixing poison in all my potions? Pardon? What, areyou fools? Why do you think I held my tongue, when I discovered yourinfamy, and let myself be poisoned, and threw the doctors off the scent?Do you really hope that I did this to prepare a scene of heartrendingfarewells, and to give you my benediction at the end? Ah, know mebetter!"
Bertha was sobbing; she tried to take her husband's hand, but he rudelyrepulsed her.
"Enough of these falsehoods," said he. "Enough of these perfidies. Ihate you! You don't seem to perceive that hate is all that is stillliving in me."
Sauvresy's expression was at this moment ferocious. "It is almost twomonths since I learned the truth; it broke me up, soul and body. Ah, itcost me a good deal to keep quiet--it almost killed me. But one thoughtsustained me; I longed to avenge myself. My mind was always bent onthat; I searched for a punishment as great as this crime; I found none,could find none. Then you resolved to poison me. Mark this--that thevery day when I guessed about the poison I had a thrill of joy, for Ihad discovered my vengeance!"
A constantly increasing terror possessed Bertha, and now stupefied her,as well as Tremorel.
"Why do you wish for my death? To be free and marry each other? Verywell; I wish that also. The Count de Tremorel will be Madame Sauvresy'ssecond husband."
"Never!" cried Bertha. "No, never!"
"Never!" echoed Hector.
"It shall be so; nevertheless because I wish it. Oh, my precautions havebeen well taken, and you can't escape me. Now hear me. When I becamecertain that I was being poisoned, I began to write a minute history ofall three of us; I did more--I have kept a journal day by day and hourby hour, narrating all the particulars of my illness; then I kept someof the poison which you gave me--"
Bertha made a gesture of denial. Sauvresy proceeded:
"Certainly, I kept it, and I will tell you how. Every time that Berthagave me a suspicious potion, I kept a portion of it in my mouth, andcarefully ejected it into a bottle which I kept hid under the bolster.Ah, you ask how I could have done all this without your suspecting it,or without being seen by any of the servants. Know that hate is strongerthan love, be sure that I have left nothing to chance, nor have Iforgotten anything."
Hector and Bertha looked at Sauvresy with a dull, fixed gaze. Theyforc
ed themselves to understand him, but could scarcely do so.
"Let's finish," resumed the dying man, "my strength is waning. This verymorning, the bottle containing the poison I have preserved, ourbiographies, and the narrative of my poisoning, have been put in thehands of a trustworthy and devoted person, whom, even if you knew him,you could not corrupt. He does not know the contents of what has beenconfided to him. The day that you get married this friend will give themall up to you. If, however, you are not married in a year from to-day,he has instructions to put these papers and this bottle into the handsof the officers of the law."
A double cry of horror and anguish told Sauvresy that he had well chosenhis vengeance.
"And reflect," added he, "that this package once delivered up tojustice, means the galleys, if not the scaffold for both of you."
Sauvresy had overtasked his strength. He fell panting upon the bed, hismouth open, his eyes filmy, and his features so distorted that he seemedto be on the point of death. But neither Bertha nor Tremorel thought oftrying to relieve him. They remained opposite each other with dilatedeyes, stupefied, as if their thoughts were bent upon the torments ofthat future which the implacable vengeance of the man whom they hadoutraged imposed upon them. They were indissolubly united, confounded ina common destiny; nothing could separate them but death. A chainstronger and harder than that of the galley-slave bound them together; achain of infamies and crimes, of which the first link was a kiss, andthe last a murder by poison. Now Sauvresy might die; his vengeance wason their heads, casting a cloud upon their sun. Free in appearance, theywould go through life crushed by the burden of the past, more slavesthan the blacks in the American rice-fields. Separated by mutual hateand contempt, they saw themselves riveted together by the common terrorof punishment, condemned to an eternal embrace.
Bertha at this moment admired her husband. Now that he was so feeblethat he breathed as painfully as an infant, she looked upon him assomething superhuman. She had had no idea of such constancy and courageallied with so much dissimulation and genius. How cunningly he had foundthem out! How well he had known how to avenge himself! To be the master,he had only to will it. In a certain way she rejoiced in the strangeatrocity of this scene; she felt something like a bitter pride in beingone of the actors in it. At the same time she was transported with rageand sorrow in thinking that she had had this man in her power, that hehad been at her feet. She almost loved him. Of all men, it was he whomshe would have chosen were she mistress of her destinies; and he wasgoing to escape her.
Tremorel, while these strange ideas crowded upon Bertha's mind, began tocome to himself. The certainty that Laurence was now forever lost forhim occurred to him, and his despair was without bounds. The silencecontinued a full quarter of an hour. Sauvresy at last subdued the spasmwhich had exhausted him, and spoke.
"I have not said all yet," he commenced.
His voice was as feeble as a murmur, and yet it seemed terrible to hishearers.
"You shall see whether I have reckoned and foreseen well. Perhaps, whenI was dead, the idea of flying and going abroad would strike you. Ishall not permit that. You must stay at Orcival--at Valfeuillu.A--friend--not he with the package--is charged, without knowing thereason for it, with the task of watching you. Mark well what I say--ifeither of you should disappear for eight days, on the ninth, the man whohas the package would receive a letter which would cause him to resortat once to the police."
Yes, he had foreseen all, and Tremorel, who had already thought offlight, was overwhelmed.
"I have so arranged, besides, that the idea of flight shall not temptyou too much. It is true I have left all my fortune to Bertha, but Ionly give her the use of it; the property itself will not be hers untilthe day after your marriage."
Bertha made a gesture of repugnance which her husband misinterpreted.
"You are thinking of the copy of my will which is in your possession. Itis a useless one, and I only added to it some valueless words because Iwanted to put your suspicions to sleep. My true will is in the notary'shands, and bears a date two days later. I can read you the rough draftof it."
He took a sheet of paper from a portfolio which was concealed; like therevolver, under the bolster, and read:
"Being stricken with a fatal malady, I here set down freely, and in thefulness of my faculties, my last wishes:
"My dearest wish is that my well-beloved widow, Bertha, should espouse,as soon as the delay enjoined by law has expired, my dear friend, theCount Hector de Tremorel. Having appreciated the grandeur of soul andnobleness of sentiment which belong to my wife and friend, I know thatthey are worthy of each other, and that each will be happy in the other.I die the more peacefully, as I leave my Bertha to a protector whose--"
It was impossible for Bertha to hear more.
"For pity's sake," cried she, "enough."
"Enough? Well, let it be so," responded Sauvresy. "I have read thispaper to you to show you that while I have arranged everything to insurethe execution of my will; I have also done all that can preserve to youthe world's respect. Yes, I wish that you should be esteemed andhonored, for it is you alone upon whom I rely for my vengeance. I haveknit around you a net-work which you can never burst asunder. Youtriumph; my tombstone shall be, as you hoped, the altar of yournuptials, or else--the galleys."
Tremorel's pride at last revolted against so many humiliations, so manywhip-strokes lashing his face.
"You have only forgotten one thing, Sauvresy; that a man can die."
"Pardon me," replied the sick man, coldly. "I have foreseen that also,and was just going to tell you so. Should one of you die suddenly beforethe marriage, the police will be called in."
"You misunderstood me; I meant that a man can kill himself."
"You kill yourself? Humph! Jenny, who disdains you almost as much as Ido, has told me about your threats to kill yourself. You! See here; hereis my revolver; shoot yourself, and I will forgive my wife!"
Hector made a gesture of anger, but did not take the pistol.
"You see," said Sauvresy, "I knew it well. You are afraid." Turning toBertha, he added, "This is your lover."
Extraordinary situations like this are so unwonted and strange that theactors in them almost always remain composed and natural, as ifstupefied. Bertha, Hector, and Sauvresy accepted, without taking note ofit, the strange position in which they found themselves; and they talkednaturally, as if of matters of every-day life, and not of terribleevents. But the hours flew, and Sauvresy perceived his life to be ebbingfrom him.
"There only remains one more act to play," said he. "Hector, go and callthe servants, have those who have gone to bed aroused, I want to seethem before dying."
Tremorel hesitated.
"Come, go along; or shall I ring, or fire a pistol to bring them here?"
Hector went out; Bertha remained alone with her husband--alone! She hada hope that perhaps she might succeed in making him change his purpose,and that she might obtain his forgiveness. She knelt beside the bed.Never had she been so beautiful, so seductive, so irresistible. The keenemotions of the evening had brought her whole soul into her face, andher lovely eyes supplicated, her breast heaved, her mouth was held outas if for a kiss, and her new-born passion for Sauvresy burst out intodelirium.
"Clement," she stammered, in a voice full of tenderness, "my husband,Clement!"
He directed toward her a glance of hatred.
"What do you wish?"
She did not know how to begin--she hesitated, trembled and sobbed.
"Hector would not kill himself," said she, "but I--"
"Well, what do you wish to say? Speak!"
"It was I, a wretch, who have killed you. I will not survive you."
An inexpressible anguish distorted Sauvresy's features. She killherself! If so, his vengeance was vain; his own death would then appearonly ridiculous and absurd. And he knew that Bertha would not be wantingin courage at the critical moment.
She waited, while he reflected.
"You
are free," said he, at last, "this would merely be a sacrifice toHector. If you died, he would marry Laurence Courtois, and in a yearwould forget even our name."
Bertha sprang to her feet; she pictured Hector to herself married andhappy. A triumphant smile, like a sun's ray, brightened Sauvresy's paleface. He had touched the right chord. He might sleep in peace as to hisvengeance. Bertha would live. He knew how hateful to each other werethese enemies whom he left linked together.
The servants came in one by one; nearly all of them had been long inSauvresy's service, and they loved him as a good master. They wept andgroaned to see him lying there so pale and haggard, with the stamp ofdeath already on his forehead. Sauvresy spoke to them in a feeble voice,which was occasionally interrupted by distressing hiccoughs. He thankedthem, he said, for their attachment and fidelity, and wished to apprisethem that he had left each of them a goodly sum in his will. Thenturning to Bertha and Hector, he resumed:
"You have witnessed, my people, the care and solicitude with which mybedside has been surrounded by this incomparable friend and my adoredBertha. You have seen their devotion. Alas, I know how keen their sorrowwill be! But if they wish to soothe my last moments and give me a happydeath, they will assent to the prayer which I earnestly make, to them,and will swear to espouse each other after I am gone. Oh, my belovedfriends, this seems cruel to you now; but you know not how all humanpain is dulled in me. You are young, life has yet much happiness instore for you. I conjure you yield to a dying man's entreaties!"
They approached the bed, and Sauvresy put Bertha's hand into Hector's.
"Do you swear to obey me?" asked he.
They shuddered to hold each other's hands, and seemed near fainting; butthey answered, and were heard to murmur:
"We swear it."
The servants retired, grieved at this distressing scene, and Berthamuttered:
"Oh, 'tis infamous, 'tis horrible!"
"Infamous--yes," returned Sauvresy, "but not more so than your caresses,Bertha, or than your hand-pressures, Hector; not more horrible than yourplans, than your hopes--"
His voice sank into a rattle. Soon the agony commenced. Horribleconvulsions distorted his limbs; twice or thrice he cried out:
"I am cold; I am cold!"
His body was indeed stiff, and nothing could warm it.
Despair filled the house, for a death so sudden was not looked for. Thedomestics came and went, whispering to each other, "He is going, poormonsieur; poor madame!"
Soon the convulsions ceased. He lay extended on his back, breathing sofeebly that twice they thought his breath had ceased forever. At last, alittle before ten o'clock, his cheeks suddenly colored and he shuddered.He rose up in bed, his eye staring, his arm stretched out toward thewindow, and he cried:
"There--behind the curtain--I see them--I see them!"
A last convulsion stretched him again on his pillow.
Clement Sauvresy was dead!