"She hates me: it is true, then, that we hate those whom we have wounded.Cruel, cruel Josephine! Oh, heart of marble against which my heart has wrecked itself forever!""No, no! She is anything but cruel: but she is Madame Raynal.""Ah! I forgot.But have I no claim on her? Nearly four years she has been my betrothed.What have I done? Was I ever false to her?
I could forgive her for what she has done to me, but she cannot forgive me.Does she mean never to see me again?""Ask yourself what good could come of it.""Very well," said Camille, with a malicious smile."I am in her way.I see what she wants; she shall have it."Rose carried these words to Josephine.They went through her like a sword.
Rose pitied her.Rose had a moment's weakness.
"Let us go to him," she said; "anything is better than this.""Rose, I dare not," was the wise reply.
But the next day early, Josephine took Rose to a door outside the house, a door that had long been disused.Nettles grew before it.
She produced a key and with great difficulty opened this door.It led to the tapestried chamber, and years ago they used to steal up it and peep into the room.
Rose scarcely needed to be told that she was to watch Camille, and report to her.In truth, it was a mysterious, vague protection against a danger equally mysterious.Yet it made Josephine easier.
But so unflinching was her prudence that she never once could be prevailed on to mount those stairs, and peep at Camille herself."Imust starve my heart, not feed it," said she.And she grew paler and more hollow-eyed day by day.
Yet this was the same woman who showed such feebleness and irresolution when Raynal pressed her to marry him.But then dwarfs feebly drew her this way and that.Now giants fought for her.
Between a feeble inclination and a feeble disinclination her dead heart had drifted to and fro.Now honor, duty, gratitude,--which last with her was a passion,--dragged her one way: love, pity, and remorse another.
Not one of these giants would relax his grasp, and nothing yielded except her vital powers.Yes; her temper, one of the loveliest Heaven ever gave a human creature, was soured at times.
Was it a wonder? There lay the man she loved pining for her;cursing her for her cruelty, and alternately praying Heaven to forgive him and to bless her: sighing, at intervals, all the day long, so loud, so deep, so piteously, as if his heart broke with each sigh; and sometimes, for he little knew, poor soul, that any human eye was upon him, casting aside his manhood in his despair, and flinging himself on the very floor, and muffling his head, and sobbing; he a hero.
And here was she pining in secret for him who pined for her? "I am not a woman at all," said she, who was all woman."I am crueller to him than a tiger or any savage creature is to the victim she tears.
I must cure him of his love for me; and then die; for what shall Ihave to live for? He weeps, he sighs, he cries for Josephine."Her enforced cruelty was more contrary to this woman's nature than black is to white, or heat to cold, and the heart rebelled furiously at times.As when a rock tries to stem a current, the water fights its way on more sides than one, so insulted nature dealt with Josephine.Not only did her body pine, but her nerves were exasperated.Sudden twitches came over her, that almost made her scream.Her permanent state was utter despondency, but across it came fitful flashes of irritation; and then she was scarce mistress of herself.
Wherefore you, who find some holy woman cross and bitter, stop a moment before you sum her up vixen and her religion naught: inquire the history of her heart: perhaps beneath the smooth cold surface of duties well discharged, her life has been, or even is, a battle against some self-indulgence the insignificant saint's very blood cries out for: and so the poor thing is cross, not because she is bad, but because she is better than the rest of us; yet only human.
Now though Josephine was more on her guard with the baroness than with Rose, or the doctor, or Jacintha, her state could not altogether escape the vigilance of a mother's eye.
But the baroness had not the clew we have; and what a difference that makes! How small an understanding, put by accident or instruction on the right track, shall run the game down! How great a sagacity shall wander if it gets on a false scent!
"Doctor," said the baroness one day, "you are so taken up with your patient you neglect the rest of us.Do look at Josephine! She is ill, or going to be ill.She is so pale, and so fretful, so peevish, which is not in her nature.Would you believe it, doctor, she snaps?""Our Josephine snap? This is new."
"And snarls."
"Then look for the end of the world."
"The other day I heard her snap Rose: and this morning she half snarled at me, just because I pressed her to go and console our patient.Hush! here she is.My child, I am accusing you to the doctor.I tell him you neglect his patient: never go near him.""I will visit him one of these days," said Josephine, coldly.
"One of these days," said the baroness, shocked."You used not to be so hard-hearted.A soldier, an old comrade of your husband's, wounded and sick, and you alone never go to him, to console him with a word of sympathy or encouragement."Josephine looked at her mother with a sort of incredulous stare.
