“This theory, however, is not applicable to me, since I unfortunately am an example to the contrary; nor to you, whom it can never concern.”
A burning but clammy hand was laid on mine, and rested there, in silence.
“You have a noble soul, Félix,” said the Count, putting his arm not ungraciously round his wife’s waist, and drawing her to him, as he said: “Forgive me, my dear—a poor invalid who longs to be loved more, no doubt, than he deserves.”
“Some hearts are all generosity,” said she, leaning her head on the Count’s shoulder, and he took the speech for himself.
The mistake caused some strange revulsion in the Countess. She shuddered, her comb fell out, her hair fell down, and she turned pale; her husband, who was supporting her, gave a deep groan as he saw her faint away. He took her up as he might have taken his daughter, and carried her on to the sofa in the drawing-room, where we stood beside her. Henriette kept my hand in hers as if to say that we alone knew the secret of this scene, apparently so simple, but so terribly heartrending for her.
“I was wrong,” she said in a low voice, at a moment when the Count had gone to fetch a glass of orange-flower water. “A thousand times wrong in treating you so as to drive you to despair when I ought to have admitted you to mercy. My dear, you are adorably kind; I alone can know how kind.—Yes, I know, some forms of kindness are inspired by passion. Men have many ways of being kind—from disdain, from impulse, from self-interest, from indolence of temper; but you, my friend, have been simply, absolutely kind.”
“If so,” said I, “remember that all that is great in me comes from you. Do you not know that I am wholly what you have made me?”
“Such a speech is enough for a woman’s happiness,” she answered, just as the Count came in. “I am better,” said she, rising. “I want some fresh air.”
We all went down to the terrace, now scented by the acacias still in bloom. She had taken my right arm and pressed it to her heart, thus expressing her painful thoughts; but, to use her own words, it was a pain she loved. She wished, no doubt, to be alone with me; but her imagination, unpractised in woman’s wiles, suggested no reason for dismissing the children and her husband; so we talked of indifferent matters while she racked her brain trying to find a moment when she could at last pour out her heart into mine.
“It is a very long time since I took a drive,” said she at length, seeing the evening so fine. “Will you give the orders, monsieur, that I may make a little round?”
She knew that no explanation was possible before prayer-time, and feared that the Count would want a game of backgammon. She might indeed come out here again, on this sheltered terrace, after the Count was gone to bed; but perhaps she was afraid to linger under these boughs through which the light fell with such a voluptuous play, or to walk by the parapet whence our eyes could trace the course of the Indre through the meadows. Just as a cathedral, with its gloomy and silent vault, suggests prayer, so does foliage spangled by moonlight, perfumed with piercing scents, and alive with the mysterious sounds of spring, stir every fibre and relax the will. The country, which calms an old man’s passions, fires those of youthful hearts—and we knew it.
Two peals of a bell called us to prayers. The Countess started.
“My dear Henriette, what ails you?”
“Henriette is no more,” said she. “Do not call her back to life again; she was exacting and capricious. Now you have a friend whose virtue is confirmed by the words which Heaven must have dictated to you. We will speak of this later. Let us be punctual for prayers. It is my turn to read them today.”
When the Countess used the words in which she besought God to preserve us against all the adversities of life, she gave them an emphasis which I was not alone in noticing; she seemed to have used her gift of second-sight to discern the dreadful agitation she was fated to go through in consequence of my clumsiness in forgetting my agreement with Arabella.
“We have time to play three hits while the horses are put in,” said the Count, leading me off to the drawing-room. “Then you will drive with my wife. I shall go to bed.”
Like all our games, this one was stormy. From her own room or Madeleine’s the Countess could hear her husband’s voice.
“You make a strange misuse of hospitality,” she said to her husband when she came back to the room.
I looked at her in bewilderment; I could not get used to her sternness; in former times she would never have tried to shield me from the Count’s tyranny; she had liked to see me sharing her penalties and enduring them patiently for love of her.
“I would give my life,” said I in her ear, “to hear you murmur once more—Poor dear, poor dear!”
She looked down, recalling the occasion to which I alluded; her eyes turned on me with a sidelong glance, and expressed the joy of a woman who sees the most fugitive accents of her heart more highly prized than the deepest delights of any other love.
Then, as ever when she had done me such an injustice, I forgave her, feeling that she understood me. The Count was losing; he said he was tired, to break off the game, and we went to walk round the lawn while waiting for the carriage. No sooner had he left us than my face beamed so
