Part 67

The Countess did not finish her sentence; she simply fainted away. The artist rang, and the maid came in. When Louise tried to get her mistress into her bedroom, a serious nervous attack came on, with violent hysterics. Stidmann, like any man who by an involuntary indiscretion has overthrown the structure built on a husband’s lie to his wife, could not conceive that his words should produce such an effect; he supposed that the Countess was in such delicate health that the slightest contradiction was mischievous.

The cook presently returned to say, unfortunately in loud tones, that her master was not in the studio. In the midst of her anguish, Hortense heard, and the hysterical fit came on again.

“Go and fetch madame’s mother,” said Louise to the cook. “Quick--run!”

“If I knew where to find Steinbock, I would go and fetch him!” exclaimed Stidmann in despair.

“He is with that woman!” cried the unhappy wife. “He was not dressed to go to his work!”

Stidmann hurried off to Madame Marneffe’s, struck by the truth of this conclusion, due to the second-sight of passion.

At that moment Valerie was posed as Delilah. Stidmann, too sharp to ask for Madame Marneffe, walked straight in past the lodge, and ran quickly up to the second floor, arguing thus: “If I ask for Madame Marneffe, she will be out. If I inquire point-blank for Steinbock, I shall be laughed at to my face.--Take the bull by the horns!”

Reine appeared in answer to his ring.

“Tell Monsieur le Comte Steinbock to come at once, his wife is dying--”

Reine, quite a match for Stidmann, looked at him with blank surprise.

“But, sir--I don’t know--did you suppose----”

“I tell you that my friend Monsieur Steinbock is here; his wife is very ill. It is quite serious enough for you to disturb your mistress.” And Stidmann turned on his heel.

“He is there, sure enough!” said he to himself.

And in point of fact, after waiting a few minutes in the Rue Vanneau, he saw Wenceslas come out, and beckoned to him to come quickly. After telling him of the tragedy enacted in the Rue Saint-Dominique, Stidmann scolded Steinbock for not having warned him to keep the secret of yesterday’s dinner.

“I am done for,” said Wenceslas, “but you are forgiven. I had totally forgotten that you were to call this morning, and I blundered in not telling you that we were to have dined with Florent.--What can I say? That Valerie has turned my head; but, my dear fellow, for her glory is well lost, misfortune well won! She really is!--Good Heavens!--But I am in a dreadful fix. Advise me. What can I say? How can I excuse myself?”

“I! advise you! I don’t know,” replied Stidmann. “But your wife loves you, I imagine? Well, then, she will believe anything. Tell her that you were on your way to me when I was on my way to you; that, at any rate, will set this morning’s business right. Good-bye.”

Lisbeth, called down by Reine, ran after Wenceslas and caught him up at the corner of the Rue Hillerin-Bertin; she was afraid of his Polish artlessness. Not wishing to be involved in the matter, she said a few words to Wenceslas, who in his joy hugged her then and there. She had no doubt pushed out a plank to enable the artist to cross this awkward place in his conjugal affairs.

At the sight of her mother, who had flown to her aid, Hortense burst into floods of tears. This happily changed the character of the hysterical attack.

“Treachery, dear mamma!” cried she. “Wenceslas, after giving me his word of honor that he would not go near Madame Marneffe, dined with her last night, and did not come in till a quarter-past one in the morning.--If you only knew! The day before we had had a discussion, not a quarrel, and I had appealed to him so touchingly. I told him I was jealous, that I should die if he were unfaithful; that I was easily suspicious, but that he ought to have some consideration for my weaknesses, as they came of my love for him; that I had my father’s blood in my veins as well as yours; that at the first moment of such discovery I should be mad, and capable of mad deeds--of avenging myself--of dishonoring us all, him, his child, and myself; that I might even kill him first and myself after--and so on.

“And yet he went there; he is there!--That woman is bent on breaking all our hearts! Only yesterday my brother and Celestine pledged their all to pay off seventy thousand francs on notes of hand signed for that good-for-nothing creature.--Yes, mamma, my father would have been arrested and put into prison. Cannot that dreadful woman be content with having my father, and with all your tears? Why take my Wenceslas?--I will go to see her and stab her!”

Madame Hulot, struck to the heart by the dreadful secrets Hortense was unwittingly letting out, controlled her grief by one of the heroic efforts which a magnanimous mother can make, and drew her daughter’s head on to her bosom to cover it with kisses.

“Wait for Wenceslas, my child; all will be explained. The evil cannot be so great as you picture it!--I, too, have been deceived, my dear Hortense; you think me handsome, I have lived blameless; and yet I have been utterly forsaken for three-and-twenty years--for a Jenny Cadine, a Josepha, a Madame Marneffe!--Did you know that?”

“You, mamma, you! You have endured this for twenty----”

She broke off, staggered by her own thoughts.

“Do as I have done, my child,” said her mother. “Be gentle and kind, and your conscience will be at peace. On his death-bed a man may say, ‘My wife has never cost me a pang!’ And God, who hears that dying breath, credits it to us. If I had abandoned myself to fury like you, what would have happened? Your father would have been embittered, perhaps he would have left me altogether, and he would not have been withheld by any fear of paining me. Our ruin, utter as it now is, would have been complete ten years sooner, and we should have shown the world the spectacle of a husband and wife living quite apart--a scandal of the most horrible, heart-breaking kind, for it is the destruction of the family. Neither your brother nor you could have married.

“I sacrificed myself, and that so bravely, that, till this last connection of your father’s, the world has believed me happy. My serviceable and indeed courageous falsehood has, till now, screened Hector; he is still respected; but this old man’s passion is taking him too far, that I see. His own folly, I fear, will break through the veil I have kept between the world and our home. However, I have held that curtain steady for twenty-three years, and have wept behind it--motherless, I, without a friend to trust, with no help but in religion--I have for twenty-three years secured the family honor----”

Hortense listened with a fixed gaze. The calm tone of resignation and of such crowning sorrow soothed the smart of her first wound; the tears rose again and flowed in torrents. In a frenzy of filial affection, overcome by her mother’s noble heroism, she fell on her knees before Adeline, took up the hem of her dress and kissed it, as pious Catholics kiss the holy relics of a martyr.

“Nay, get up, Hortense,” said the Baroness. “Such homage from my daughter wipes out many sad memories. Come to my heart, and weep for no sorrows but your own. It is the despair of my dear little girl, whose joy was my only joy, that broke the solemn seal which nothing ought to have removed from my lips. Indeed, I meant to have taken my woes to the tomb, as a shroud the more. It was to soothe your anguish that I spoke.--God will forgive me!