Erotic Classics I

by Various Authors

  “Moreover, an indefinable vague feeling of suspense weighed upon that impressionable soul and its delicate fibres. Weak creatures live on alarms and presentiments. Madame Delmare had all the superstitions of a nervous, sickly Creole; certain nocturnal sounds, certain phases of the moon were to her unfailing presages of specific events, of impending misfortunes, and the night spoke to that dreamy, melancholy creature a language full of mysteries and phantoms which she alone could understand and translate according to her fears and her sufferings.

  “You will say again that I am mad,” she said, withdrawing her hand, which Sir Ralph still held, “but some disaster, I don’t know what, is preparing to fall upon us. Some danger is impending over someone—myself, no doubt—but, look you, Ralph, I feel intensely agitated, as at the approach of a great crisis in my destiny. I am afraid,” she added, with a shudder, “I feel faint.”

  And her lips became as white as her cheeks. Sir Ralph, terrified, not by Madame Delmare’s presentiments, which he looked upon as symptoms of extreme mental exhaustion, but by her deathly pallor, pulled the bell rope violently to summon assistance. No one came, and as Indiana grew weaker and weaker, Sir Ralph, more alarmed in proportion, moved her away from the fire, deposited her in a reclining chair, and ran through the house at random, calling the servants, looking for water or salts, finding nothing, breaking all the bell ropes, losing his way in the labyrinth of dark rooms, and wringing his hands with impatience and anger against himself.

  At last it occurred to him to open the glass door that lead into the park, and to call alternately Lelièvre and Noun, Madame Delmare’s Creole maid.

  A few moments later Noun appeared from one of the dark paths in the park, and hastily inquired if Madame Delmare were worse than usual.

  “She is really ill,” replied Sir Ralph.

  They returned to the salon and devoted themselves to the task of restoring the unconscious Madame Delmare, one with all the ardor of useless and awkward zeal, the other with the skill and efficacy of womanly affection.

  Noun was Madame Delmare’s foster sister; the two young women had been brought up together and loved each other dearly. Noun was tall and strong, glowing with health, active, alert, overflowing with ardent, passionate creole blood; and she far outshone with her resplendent beauty the frail and pallid charms of Madame Delmare; but the tenderness of their hearts and the strength of their attachment killed every feeling of feminine rivalry.

  When Madame Delmare recovered consciousness, the first thing that she observed was the unusual expression of her maid’s features, the damp and disordered condition of her hair and the excitement which was manifest in her every movement.

  “Courage, my poor child,” she said kindly; “my illness is more disastrous to you than to myself. Why, Noun, you are the one to take care of yourself; you are growing thin and weeping as if it were not your destiny to live; dear Noun, live is so bright and fair before you!”

  Noun pressed Madame Delmare’s hand to her lips effusively, and said, in a sort of frenzy, glancing wildly about the room:

  “Mon Dieu! madame, do you know why Monsieur Delmare is in the park?”

  “Why?” echoed Indiana, losing instantly the faint flush that had reappeared on her cheeks. “Wait a moment—I don’t know—You frighten me! What is the matter, pray?”

  “Monsieur Delmare declares that there are thieves in the park,” replied Noun in a broken voice. “He is making the rounds with Lelièvre, both armed with guns.”

  “Well?” said Indiana, apparently expecting some shocking news.

  “Why, madame,” rejoined Noun, clasping her hands frantically, “isn’t it horrible to think that they are going to kill a man?”

  “Kill a man!” cried Madame Delmare, springing to her feet with the terrified credulity of a child frightened by its nurse’s tales.

  “Ah! yes, they will kill him,” said Noun, stifling her sobs.

  “These two women are mad,” thought Sir Ralph, who was watching this strange scene with a bewildered air. “Indeed,” he added mentally, “all women are.”

  “But why do you say that, Noun,” continued Madame Delmare; “do you believe that there are any thieves there?”

  “Oh! if they were really thieves! but some poor peasant perhaps, who has come to pick up a handful of wood for his family!”

  “Yes, that would be ghastly, as you say! But it is not probable; right at the entrance to Fontainebleau forest, when it is so easy to steal wood there, nobody would take the risk of a park enclosed by walls. Bah! Monsieur Delmare won’t find anybody in the park, so don’t you be afraid.”

  But Noun was not listening; she walked from the window to her mistress’s chair, her ears strained to catch the slightest sound; she seemed torn between the longing to run after Monsieur Delmare and the desire to remain with the invalid.

  Her anxiety seemed so strange, so uncalled-for to Monsieur Brown, that he laid aside his customary mildness of manner, and said, grasping her arm roughly:

  “Have you lost your wits altogether? don’t you see that you frighten your mistress and that your absurd alarms have a disastrous effect upon her?”

  Noun did not hear him; she had turned her eyes upon her mistress, who had just started on her chair as if the concussion of the air had imparted an electric shock to her senses. Almost at the same instant the report of a gun shook the windows of the salon, and Noun fell upon her knees.

  “What miserable woman’s terrors!” cried Sir Ralph, worn out by their emotion; “in a moment a dead rabbit will be brought to you in triumph, and you will laugh at yourselves.”

  “No, Ralph,” said Madame Delmare, walking with a firm step toward the door, “I tell you that human blood has been shed.”

  Noun uttered a piercing shriek and fell upon her face.

  The next moment they heard Lelièvre’s voice in the park: “He’s there! he’s there! Well aimed, my colonel! the brigand is down!”

  Sir Ralph began to be excited. He followed Madame Delmare. A few moments later a man covered with blood and giving no sign of life was brought under the peristyle.

  “Not so much noise! less shrieking!” said the colonel with rough gayety to the terrified servants who crowded around the wounded man; “this is only a joke; my gun was loaded with nothing but salt. Indeed I don’t think I touched him; he fell from fright.”

  “But what about this blood, monsieur?” said Madame Delmare in a profoundly reproachful tone, “was it fear that caused it to flow?”

  “Why are you here, madame?” cried Monsieur Delmare, “what are you doing here?”

  “I have come to repair the harm that you have done, as it is my duty to do,” replied Madame Delmare coldly.

  She walked up to the wounded man with a courage of which no one of the persons present had as yet felt capable, and held a light to his face. Thereupon, instead of the plebeian features and garments which they expected to see, they discovered a young man with noble features and fashionably dressed, albeit in hunting costume. He had a trifling wound on one hand, but his torn clothes and his swoon indicated a serious fall.

  “I should say as much!” said Lelièvre; “he fell from a height of twenty feet. He was just putting his leg over the wall when the colonel fired, and a few grains of small shot or salt in the right hand prevented his getting a hold. The fact is, I saw him fall, and when he got to the bottom he wasn’t thinking much about running away, poor devil!”

  “Would anyone believe,” said one of the female servants, “that a man so nicely dressed would amuse himself by stealing?”

  “And his pockets are full money!” said another, who had unbuttoned the supposed thief’s waistcoat.

  “It is very strange,” said the colonel, gazing, not without emotion, at the man stretched out before him. “If the man is dead it’s not my fault; examine his hand, madame, and se
e if you can find a particle of lead in it.”

  “I prefer to believe you, monsieur,” replied Madame Delmare, who, with a self-possession and moral courage of which no one would have deemed her capable, was closely scrutinizing his pulse and the arteries of his neck. “Certainly,” she added, “he is not dead, and he requires speedy attention. The man hasn’t the appearance of a thief and perhaps he deserves our care; even if he does not deserve it, our duty calls upon us women to care for him none the less.”

  Thereupon Madame Delmare ordered the wounded man to be carried to the billiard room, which was nearest. A mattress was placed on several chairs, and Indiana, assisted by her women, busied herself in dressing the wounded hand, while Sir Ralph, who had some surgical knowledge, drew a large quantity of blood from him.

  Meanwhile, the colonel, much embarrassed, found himself in the position of a man who has shown more ill-temper than he intended to show. He felt the necessity of justifying himself in the eyes of the others, or rather of making them justify him in his own eyes. So he had remained under the peristyle, surrounded by his servants, and indulging with them in the excited, prolix and perfectly useless disquisitions which are always forthcoming after the event. Lelièvre had already explained twenty times, with the most minute details, the shot, the fall and its results, while the colonel, who had recovered his good nature among his own people, according to his custom after giving way to his anger, impeached the purposes of a man who entered private property in the nighttime over a wall. Everyone agreed with the master, when the gardener, quietly leading him aside, assured him that the thief was the living image of a young landowner who had recently settled in the neighborhood, and whom he had seen talking with Mademoiselle Noun three days before at the rustic fête at Rubelles.

  This information gave a different turn to Monsieur Delmare’s ideas; on his ample forehead, bald and glistening, appeared a huge swollen vein, which was always the precursor of the tempest.

  “Morbleu!” he said, clenching his fists, “Madame Delmare takes a deal of interest in this puppy, who sneaks into my park over the wall!”

  And he entered the billiard room, pale and trembling with wrath.

  Chapter III

  “You may be reassured, monsieur,” said Indiana; “the man you killed will be quite well in a few days; at least we hope so, although he is not yet able to talk.”

  “That’s not the question, madame,” said the colonel, in a voice that trembled with suppressed passion; “I insist upon knowing the name of this interesting patient of yours, and how it came about that he mistook the wall of my park for the avenue to my house.”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” replied Madame Delmare with such a cold and haughty air that her redoubtable spouse was bewildered for an instant.

  But his jealous suspicions soon regained the upper hand.

  “I shall find out, madame,” he said in an undertone; “you may be sure that I shall find out.”

  Thereupon, as Madame Delmare pretended not to notice his rage and continued her attentions to the wounded man, he left the room, in order not to explode before the women, and recalled the gardener.

  “What is the name of the man who, you say, resembles our prowler?”

  “Monsieur de Ramière. It is he who has just bought Monsieur de Cercy’s little English house.”

  “What sort of man is he? a nobleman, a fop, a fine gentleman?”

  “A fine gentleman, monsieur; noble, I think.”

  “Undoubtedly,” rejoined the colonel with emphasis. “Monsieur de Ramière! Tell me Louis,” he added, lowering his voice, “have you ever seen this fop prowling about here?”

  “Last night, monsieur,” Louis replied, with an embarrassed air, “I certainly saw—as to its being a fop, I can’t say, but it was a man, sure enough.”

  “And you saw him?”

  “As plainly as I see you, under the windows of the orangery.”

  “And you didn’t fall upon him with the handle of your shovel?”

  “I was just going to do it, monsieur; but I saw a woman meet him. At that moment I said to myself: ‘Perhaps it’s monsieur and madame, who have taken a fancy to walk a bit before daybreak;’ and I went back to bed. But this morning I heard Lelièvre talking about a thief whose tracks he had seen in the park, and I said to myself: ‘There’s something under this.’ “

  “And why didn’t you tell me immediately, stupid?”

  “Dame! monsieur, there are some things in life that are so delicate! “

  “I understand—you presume to have doubts. You are a fool; if you ever have another insolent idea of this sort I’ll cut off your ears. I know very well who the thief is and why he came into the garden. I have put all these questions to you simply to find out what care you take of your orangery. Remember that I have some rare plants there that madame sets great store by, and that there are collectors who are insane enough to rob their neighbors’ hothouses; it was I whom you saw last night with Madame Delmare.”

  And the poor colonel walked away, more tormented, more exasperated than before, leaving his gardener far from convinced that there are horticulturists fanatical enough to risk a bullet in order to purloin a shoot or a cutting.

  Monsieur Delmare returned to the billiard-room and, paying no heed to the symptoms of returning consciousness which the wounded man displayed at last, he was preparing to search the pockets of his jacket which lay on a chair, when he put out his hand and said in a faint voice:

  “You wish to know who I am, monsieur, but it is useless. I will tell you when we are alone. Until then spare me the embarrassment of making myself known in my present disagreeable and absurd position.”

  “It is a great pity in truth!” retorted the colonel sourly; “but I confess that I hardly appreciate it. However, as I trust that we shall meet again, and alone, I consent to defer an acquaintance until then. Meanwhile will you kindly tell me where I shall have you taken.”

  “To the public house in the nearest village, if you please.”

  “But monsieur is no condition to be moved, is he, Ralph?” said Madame Delmare hastily.

  “Monsieur’s condition affects you far too much, madame,” said the colonel. “Leave the room, all of you,” he said to the women in attendance. “Monsieur feels better, and he will find strength now to explain his presence on my premises.”

  “Yes, monsieur,” rejoined the wounded man, “and I beg all those who have been kind enough to bestow any care upon me to listen to my acknowledgement of my misconduct. I feel that is of much importance that there should be no misunderstanding here of my motives, and it is of importance to myself that I should not be deemed what I am not. Let me tell you than what rascally scheme brought me to your park. You have installed, monsieur, by methods of extreme simplicity, known to you alone, a factory which is immeasurably superior to all similar factories in the province, both in respect to its processes and its product. My brother owns a very similar establishment in the south of France, but the cost of running it is enormous. His business was approaching shipwreck when I learned of the success of your venture; whereupon I determined to come and ask you to give me advice on certain points,—a generous service which could not possibly injure your own interests, as my brother’s output is of an entirely different nature from yours. But the gate of your English garden was rigorously closed to me; and when I asked for an interview with you, I was told that you would not even allow me to look over your establishment. Repelled by these discourteous refusals, I determined to save my brother’s life and honor even at the peril of my own; I entered your premises at night by scaling the wall, and tried to obtain entrance to the factory in order to determine the machinery. I had determined to hide in a corner; to bribe your workmen, to steal your secret,—in a word, to enable an honest man to profit by it without injuring you. Such was my crime. Now, monsieur, if you demand any other reparatio
n than that which you have just taken, I am ready to offer it to you as soon as I am strong enough; indeed, I may perhaps demand it.”

  “I think that we should cry quits, monsieur,” replied the colonel, half relieved form great anxiety. “Take notice, all of you, of the explanation monsieur has given me. I am over-avenged, assuming that I require any revenge. Go now and leave us to discuss my profitable business operations.”