Cousin Betty Part 76

"You will be happier," said the Baroness, "for no one could then blame you. You would satisfy G.o.d! Ask her if she was married without the sacrament of marriage!"

Atala looked at the Italian.

"How is she any better than I am?" she asked. "I am prettier than she is."

"Yes, but I am an honest woman," said the wife, "and you may be called by a bad name."

"How can you expect G.o.d to protect you if you trample every law, human and divine, under foot?" said the Baroness. "Don't you know that G.o.d has Paradise in store for those who obey the injunctions of His Church?"

"What is there in Paradise? Are there playhouses?"

"Paradise!" said Adeline, "is every joy you can conceive of. It is full of angels with white wings. You see G.o.d in all His glory, you share His power, you are happy for every minute of eternity!"

Atala listened to the lady as she might have listened to music; but Adeline, seeing that she was incapable of understanding her, thought she had better take another line of action and speak to the old man.

"Go home, then, my child, and I will go to see Monsieur Vyder. Is he a Frenchman?"

"He is an Alsatian, madame. But he will be quite rich soon. If you would pay what he owes to that vile Samanon, he would give you back your money, for in a few months he will be getting six thousand francs a year, he says, and we are to go to live in the country a long way off, in the Vosges."

At the word _Vosges_ the Baroness sat lost in reverie. It called up the vision of her native village. She was roused from her melancholy meditation by the entrance of the stove-fitter, who came to a.s.sure her of his prosperity.

"In a year's time, madame, I can repay the money you lent us, for it is G.o.d's money, the money of the poor and wretched. If ever I make a fortune, come to me for what you want, and I will render through you the help to others which you first brought us."

"Just now," said Madame Hulot, "I do not need your money, but I ask your a.s.sistance in a good work. I have just seen that little Judici, who is living with an old man, and I mean to see them regularly and legally married."

"Ah! old Vyder; he is a very worthy old fellow, with plenty of good sense. The poor old man has already made friends in the neighborhood, though he has been here but two months. He keeps my accounts for me. He is, I believe, a brave Colonel who served the Emperor well. And how he adores Napoleon!--He has some orders, but he never wears them. He is waiting till he is straight again, for he is in debt, poor old boy! In fact, I believe he is hiding, threatened by the law--"

"Tell him that I will pay his debts if he will marry the child."

"Oh, that will soon be settled.--Suppose you were to see him, madame; it is not two steps away, in the Pa.s.sage du Soleil."

So the lady and the stove-fitter went out.

"This way, madame," said the man, turning down the Rue de la Pepiniere.

The alley runs, in fact, from the bottom of this street through to the Rue du Rocher. Halfway down this pa.s.sage, recently opened through, where the shops let at a very low rent, the Baroness saw on a window, screened up to a height with a green, gauze curtain, which excluded the prying eyes of the pa.s.ser-by, the words:

"ECRIVAIN PUBLIC"; and on the door the announcement:

BUSINESS TRANSACTED.

_Pet.i.tions Drawn Up, Accounts Audited, Etc._

_With Secrecy and Dispatch._

The shop was like one of those little offices where travelers by omnibus wait the vehicles to take them on to their destination. A private staircase led up, no doubt, to the living-rooms on the entresol which were let with the shop. Madame Hulot saw a dirty writing-table of some light wood, some letter-boxes, and a wretched second-hand chair. A cap with a peak and a greasy green shade for the eyes suggested either precautions for disguise, or weak eyes, which was not unlikely in an old man.

"He is upstairs," said the stove-fitter. "I will go up and tell him to come down."

Adeline lowered her veil and took a seat. A heavy step made the narrow stairs creak, and Adeline could not restrain a piercing cry when she saw her husband, Baron Hulot, in a gray knitted jersey, old gray flannel trousers, and slippers.

"What is your business, madame?" said Hulot, with a flourish.

She rose, seized Hulot by the arm, and said in a voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion:

"At last--I have found you!"

"Adeline!" exclaimed the Baron in bewilderment, and he locked the shop door. "Joseph, go out the back way," he added to the stove-fitter.

"My dear!" she said, forgetting everything in her excessive joy, "you can come home to us all; we are rich. Your son draws a hundred and sixty thousand francs a year! Your pension is released; there are fifteen thousand francs of arrears you can get on showing that you are alive.

Valerie is dead, and left you three hundred thousand francs.

"Your name is quite forgotten by this time; you may reappear in the world, and you will find a fortune awaiting you at your son's house.

Come; our happiness will be complete. For nearly three years I have been seeking you, and I felt so sure of finding you that a room is ready waiting for you. Oh! come away from this, come away from the dreadful state I see you in!"

"I am very willing," said the bewildered Baron, "but can I take the girl?"

"Hector, give her up! Do that much for your Adeline, who has never before asked you to make the smallest sacrifice. I promise you I will give the child a marriage portion; I will see that she marries well, and has some education. Let it be said of one of the women who have given you happiness that she too is happy; and do not relapse into vice, into the mire."

"So it was you," said the Baron, with a smile, "who wanted to see me married?--Wait a few minutes," he added; "I will go upstairs and dress; I have some decent clothes in a trunk."

Adeline, left alone, and looking round the squalid shop, melted into tears.

"He has been living here, and we rolling in wealth!" said she to herself. "Poor man, he has indeed been punished--he who was elegance itself."

The stove-fitter returned to make his bow to his benefactress, and she desired him to fetch a coach. When he came back, she begged him to give little Atala Judici a home, and to take her away at once.

"And tell her that if she will place herself under the guidance of Monsieur the Cure of the Madeleine, on the day when she attends her first Communion I will give her thirty thousand francs and find her a good husband, some worthy young man."

"My eldest son, then madame! He is two-and-twenty, and he wors.h.i.+ps the child."

The Baron now came down; there were tears in his eyes.

"You are forcing me to desert the only creature who had ever begun to love me at all as you do!" said he in a whisper to his wife. "She is crying bitterly, and I cannot abandon her so--"

"Be quite easy, Hector. She will find a home with honest people, and I will answer for her conduct."

"Well, then, I can go with you," said the Baron, escorting his wife to the cab.

Hector, the Baron d'Ervy once more, had put on a blue coat and trousers, a white waistcoat, a black stock, and gloves. When the Baroness had taken her seat in the vehicle, Atala slipped in like an eel.

"Oh, madame," she said, "let me go with you. I will be so good, so obedient; I will do whatever you wish; but do not part me from my Daddy Vyder, my kind Daddy who gives me such nice things. I shall be beaten--"

"Come, come, Atala," said the Baron, "this lady is my wife--we must part--"

"She! As old as that! and shaking like a leaf!" said the child. "Look at her head!" and she laughingly mimicked the Baroness' palsy.