White Lies Part 42

"For my mistress," said she, with an air of mystery.

"Why not take it to her, then?" inquired Rose.

"I thought you might like to see it first, mademoiselle," said Jacintha, with quiet meaning.

"Is it from the dear doctor?" asked Josephine.

"La, no, mademoiselle, don't you know the doctor is come home? Why, he has been in the house near an hour. He is with my lady."

The doctor proved Jacintha correct by entering the room in person soon after; on this Rose threw down the letter, and she and the whole party were instantly occupied in greeting him.

When the ladies had embraced him and Camille shaken hands with him, they plied him with a thousand questions. Indeed, he had not half satisfied their curiosity, when Rose happened to catch sight of the letter again, and took it up to carry to the baroness. She now, for the first time, eyed it attentively, and the consequence was she uttered an exclamation, and took the first opportunity to beckon Aubertin.

He came to her; and she put the letter into his hand.

He put up his gla.s.ses, and eyed it. "Yes!" whispered he, "it is from HIM."

Josephine and Camille saw something was going on; they joined the other two, with curiosity in their faces.

Rose put her hand on a small table near her, and leaned a moment. She turned half sick at a letter coming from the dead. Josephine now came towards her with a face of concern, and asked what was the matter.

The reply came from Aubertin. "My poor friends," said he, solemnly, "this is one of those fearful things that you have not seen in your short lives, but it has been more than once my lot to witness it. The s.h.i.+ps that carry letters from distant countries vary greatly in speed, and are subject to detaining accidents. Yes, this is the third time I have seen a letter come written by a hand known to be cold. The baroness is a little excited to-day, I don't know from what cause. With your approbation, Madame Raynal, I will read this letter before I let her see it."

"Read it, if you please."

"Shall I read it out?"

"Certainly. There may be some wish expressed in it; oh, I hope there is!"

Camille, from delicacy, retired to some little distance, and the doctor read the letter in a low and solemn voice.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I hope all are well at Beaurepaire, as I am, or I hope soon to be. I received a wound in our last skirmish; not a very severe one; but it put an end to my writing for some time."

"Poor fellow! it was his death wound. Why, when was this written?--why,"

and the doctor paused, and seemed stupefied: "why, my dears, has my memory gone, or"--and again he looked eagerly at the letter--"what was the date of the battle in which he was killed? for this letter is dated the 15th of May. Is it a dream? no! this was written since the date of his death."

"No, doctor," said Rose, "you deceive yourself."

"Why, what was the date of the Moniteur, then?" asked Aubertin, in great agitation.

"Considerably later than this," said Camille.

"I don't think so; the journal! where is it?"

"My mother has it locked up. I'll run."

"No, Rose; no one but me. Now, Josephine, do not you go and give way to hopes that may be delusive. I must see that journal directly. I will go to the baroness. I shall excuse her less than you would."

He was scarcely gone when a cry of horror filled the room, a cry as of madness falling like a thunderbolt on a human mind. It was Josephine, who up to this had not uttered one word. But now she stood, white as a corpse, in the middle of the room, and wrung her hands. "What have I done? What shall I do? It was the 3d of May. I see it before me in letters of fire; the 3d of May! the 3d of May!--and he writes the 15th."

"No! no!" cried Camille wildly. "It was long, long after time 3d."

"It was the 3d of May," repeated Josephine in a hoa.r.s.e voice that none would have known for hers.

Camille ran to her with words of comfort and hope; he did not share her fears. He remembered about when the Moniteur came, though not the very day. He threw his arm lovingly round her as if to protect her against these shadowy terrors. Her dilating eyes seemed fixed on something distant in s.p.a.ce or time, at some horrible thing coming slowly towards her. She did not see Camille approach her, but the moment she felt him she turned upon him swiftly.

"Do you love me?" still in the hoa.r.s.e voice that had so little in it of Josephine. "I mean, does one grain of respect or virtue mingle in your love for me?"

"What words are these, my wife?"

"Then leave Raynal's house upon the instant. You wonder I can be so cruel? I wonder too; and that I can see my duty so clear in one short moment. But I have lived twenty years since that letter came. Oh! my brain has whirled through a thousand agonies. And I have come back a thousand times to the same thing; you and I must see each other's face no more."

"Oh!" cried Rose, "is there no way but this?"

"Take care," she screamed, wildly, to her and Camille, "I am on the verge of madness; is it for you two to thrust me over the precipice?

Come, now, if you are a man of honor, if you have a spark of grat.i.tude towards the poor woman who has given you all except her fair name--that she will take to the grave in spite of you all--promise that you will leave Raynal's house this minute if he is alive, and let me die in honor as I have lived."

"No, no!" cried Camille, terror-stricken; "it cannot be. Heaven is merciful, and Heaven sees how happy we are. Be calm! these are idle fears; be calm! I say. For if it is so I will obey you. I will stay; I will go; I will die; I will live; I will obey you."

"Swear this to me by the thing you hold most sacred," she almost shrieked.

"I swear by my love for you," was his touching reply.

Ere they had recovered a miserable composure after this pa.s.sionate outburst, all the more terrible as coming from a creature so tender as Josephine, agitated voices were heard at the door, and the baroness tottered in, followed by the doctor, who was trying in vain to put some bounds to her emotion and her hopes.

"Oh, my children! my children!" cried she, trembling violently. "Here, Rose, my hands shake so; take this key, open the cabinet, there is the Moniteur. What is the date?"

The journal was found, and rapidly examined. The date was the 20th of May.

"There!" cried Camille. "I told you!"

The baroness uttered a feeble moan. Her hopes died as suddenly as they had been born, and she sank drooping into a chair, with a bitter sigh.

Camille stole a joyful look at Josephine. She was in the same att.i.tude looking straight before her as at a coming horror. Presently Rose uttered a faint cry, "The battle was BEFORE."

"To be sure," cried the doctor. "You forget, it is not the date of the paper we want, but of the battle it records. For Heaven's sake, when was the battle?"

"The 3d of May," said Josephine, in a voice that seemed to come from the tomb.

Rose's hands that held the journal fell like a dead weight upon her knees, journal and all. She whispered, "It was the 3d of May."

"Ah!" cried the baroness, starting up, "he may yet be alive. He must be alive. Heaven is merciful! Heaven would not take my son from me, a poor old woman who has not long to live. There was a letter; where is the letter?"

"Are we mad, not to read the letter?" said the doctor. "I had it; it has dropped from my old fingers when I went for the journal."

A short examination of the room showed the letter lying crumpled up near the door. Camille gave it to the baroness. She tried to read it, but could not.