Erotic Classics I

by Various Authors

  However, when the blood began to circulate in her benumbed limbs, she saw Ralph kneeling beside her, holding her hands and watching for the return of consciousness.

  “Did you meet Noun?” she asked him. “I saw her pass along there,” she added, pointing to the river, distracted by her fixed idea. “I tried to follow her, but she walked too fast, and I am not strong enough to walk. It was like a nightmare.”

  Ralph looked at her in sore distress. He too felt as if his head were bursting and his brain running wild.

  “Let us go,” she continued; “but first see if you can find my feet; I lost them on the stones.”

  Ralph saw that her feet were wet and paralyzed by cold. He carried her in his arms to a house nearby, where the kindly care of a hospitable woman restored her to consciousness. Meanwhile Ralph sent word to Monsieur Delmare that his wife was found; but the colonel had not returned home when the news arrived. He was continuing his search in a frenzy of anxiety and wrath. Ralph, being more perspicacious, had gone to Monsieur de Ramière’s, but he had found Raymon, who had just gone to bed and who was very cool and ironical in his reception of him. Then he had thought of Noun and had followed the river in one direction, while his servant did the same in the other direction. Ophelia had speedily found her mistress’s scent and had led Ralph to the place where he found her.

  When Indiana was able to recall what had taken place during that wretched night, she tried in vain to remember the occurrences of her moments of delirium. She was unable therefore to explain to her cousin what thoughts had guided her action during the last hour; but he divined them and understood the state of her heart without questioning her. He simply took her hand and said to her in a gentle but grave tone:

  “Cousin, I require one promise from you; it is the last proof of friendship which I shall ever ask at your hands.”

  “Tell me what it is,” she replied; “to oblige you is the only pleasure that is left to me.”

  “Well then,” rejoiced Ralph, “swear to me that you will not resort to suicide without notifying me. I swear to you on my honor that I will not oppose your design in any way. I simply insist on being notified: as for life, I care about it as little as you do, and you know that I have often had the same idea.”

  “Why do you talk of suicide?” said Madame Delmare. “I have never intended to take my own life. I am afraid of God; if it weren’t for that!—”

  “Just now, Indiana, when I seized you in my arms, when this poor beast”—and he patted Ophelia—”caught your dress, you had forgotten God and the whole universe, poor Ralph with the rest.”

  A tear stood in Indiana’s eye. She pressed Sir Ralph’s hand.

  “Why did you stop me?” she said sadly; “I should be on God’s bosom now, for I was not guilty, I did not know what I was doing.”

  “I saw that, and I thought that it was better to commit suicide after due reflection. We will talk about it again if you choose.”

  Indiana shuddered. The cab stopped in front of the house where she was to confront her husband. She had not the strength to mount the steps and Ralph carried her to her room. Their whole retinue was reduced to a single maid servant, who had gone to discuss Madame Delmare’s flight with the neighbors, and Lelièvre, who, in despair, had gone to the morgue to inspect the bodies brought in that morning. So Ralph remained with Madame Delmare to nurse her. She was suffering intensely when a loud peal of the bell announced the colonel’s return. A shudder of terror and hatred ran through her every vein. She seized her cousin’s arm.

  “Listen, Ralph,” she said; “if you have the slightest affection for me, you will spare me the sight of that man in my present condition. I do not want to arouse his pity, I prefer his anger to that. Do not open the door, or else send him away; tell him that I haven’t been found.”

  Her lips quivered, her arms clung to Ralph with convulsive strength, to detain him. Torn by two conflicting feelings, the poor baronet could not make up his mind what to do. Delmare was jangling the bell as if he would break it, and his wife was almost dying in his chair.

  “You think only of his anger,” said Ralph at last; “you do not think of his misery, his anxiety; you still believe that he hates you. If you had seen his grief this morning!”

  Indiana dropped her arms, thoroughly exhausted, and Ralph went and opened the door.

  “Is she here?” cried the colonel, rushing in. “Ten thousand devils! I have run about enough after her; I am deeply obliged to her for putting such a pleasant duty on me! Deuce take her! I don’t want to see her, for I should kill her!”

  “You forget that she can hear you,” replied Ralph in an undertone. “She is in no condition to bear any painful excitement. Be calm.”

  “Twenty-five thousand maledictions!” roared the colonel. “I have endured enough myself since this morning. It’s a good thing for me that my nerves are like cables. Which of us is the more injured, the more exhausted, which of us has the better right to be sick, I pray to know,—she or I? And where did you find her? what was she doing? She is responsible for my having outrageously insulted that foolish old woman, Carvajal, who gave me ambiguous answers and blamed me for this charming freak! Damnation! I am dead beat!”

  As he spoke thus in his harsh, hoarse voice, Delmare had thrown himself on a chair in the ante-room; he wiped his brow from which the perspiration was streaming despite the intense cold; he described with many oaths his fatigues, his anxieties, his sufferings; he asked a thousand questions, and, luckily, did not listen to the answers, for poor Ralph could not lie, and he could think of nothing in what he had to tell that was likely to appease the colonel. So he sat on a table, as silent and unmoved as if he were absolutely without interest in the sufferings of those two, and yet he was really more unhappy in their unhappiness than they themselves were.

  Madame Delmare, when she heard her husband’s imprecations, felt stronger than she expected. She preferred this fierce wrath, which reconciled her with herself, to a generous forbearance which would have aroused her remorse. She wiped away the last trace of her tears and summoned what remained of her strength, which she was well content to expend in a day, so heavy a burden had life become to her. Her husband accosted her in a harsh and imperious tone, but suddenly changed his expression and his manner and seemed sorely embarrassed, overmatched by the superiority of her character. He tried to be as cool and dignified as she was; but he could not succeed.

  “Will you condescend to inform me, madame,” he said, “where you passed the morning and perhaps the night?”

  That perhaps indicated to Madame Delmare that her absence had not been discovered until late. Her courage increased with that knowledge.

  “No, monsieur,” she replied, “I do not propose to tell you.”

  Delmare turned green with anger and amazement.

  “Do you really hope to conceal the truth from me?” he said, in a trembling voice.

  “I care very little about it,” she replied in an icy tone. “I refuse to tell you solely for form’s sake. I propose to convince you that you have no right to ask me that question?”

  “I have no right, ten thousand devils. Who is master here, pray tell, you or I? Which of us wears a petticoat and ought to be running a distaff? Do you propose to take the beard off my chin? It would look well on you, hussy!”

  “I know that I am the slave and you the master. The laws of this country make you my master. You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my acts. You have the right of the stronger, and society confirms you in it; but you cannot command my will, monsieur; God alone can bend it and subdue it. Try to find a law, a dungeon, an instrument of torture that gives you any hold on it! you might as well try to handle the air and grasp space.”

  “Hold your tongue, you foolish, impertinent creature; your high-flown novelist’s phrases weary me.”

  “You can impose silence on me,
but not prevent me from thinking.”

  “Silly pride! pride of a poor worm! you abuse the compassion I have had for you! But you will soon see that this mighty will can be subdued without too much difficulty.”

  “I don’t advise you to try it; your repose would suffer, and you would gain nothing in dignity.”

  “Do you think so?” he said, crushing her hand between his thumb and forefinger.

  “I do think so,” she said, without wincing.

  Ralph stepped forward, grasped the colonel’s arm in his iron hand and bent it like a reed, saying in a pacific tone:

  “I beg that you will not touch a hair of that woman’s head.”

  Delmare longed to fly at him; but he felt that he was in the wrong and he dreaded nothing in the world so much as having to blush for himself. So he simply pushed him away, saying:

  “Attend to your own business.”

  Then he returned to his wife.

  “So, madame,” he said, holding his arms tightly against his sides to resist the temptation to strike her, “you rebel against me, you refuse to go to Ile Bourbon with me, you desire a separation? Very well! Mordieu! I too—”

  “I desire it no longer,” she replied. “I did desire it yesterday, it was my will; it is not so this morning. You resorted to violence and locked me in my room; I went out through the window to show you that there is a difference between exerting an absurd control over a woman’s actions and reigning over her will. I passed several hours away from your domination; I breathed the air of liberty in order to show you that you are not morally my master, and that I look to no one on earth but myself for orders. As I walked along I reflected that I owed it to my duty and my conscience to return and place myself under your control once more. I did it of my own free will. My cousin accompanied me here, he did not bring me back. If I had not chosen to come with him, he could not have forced me to do it, as you can imagine. So, monsieur, do not waste your time fighting against my determination; you will never control it, you lost all right to change it as soon as you undertook to assert your right by force. Make your preparations for departure; I am ready to assist you and to accompany you, not because it is your will, but because it is my pleasure. You may condemn me, but I will never obey anyone but myself.”

  “I am sorry for the derangement of your mind,” said the colonel, shrugging his shoulders.

  And he went to his room to put his papers in order, well satisfied in his heart with Madame Delmare’s resolution and anticipating no further obstacles; for he respected her word as much as he despised her ideas.

  Chapter XXII

  Raymon, yielding to fatigue, slept soundly after his curt reception of Sir Ralph, who came to his house to make inquiries. When he awoke, his heart was full of a feeling of intense relief; he believed that the worst crisis of his intrigue had finally come and gone. For a long time he had foreseen that there would come a time when he would be brought face to face with that woman’s love and would have to defend his liberty against the exacting demands of a romantic passion; and he encouraged himself in advance by arguing against such pretensions. He had at last reached and crossed that dangerous spot: he had said no, he would have no occasion to go there again, for everything had happened for the best. Indiana had not wept overmuch, had not been too insistent. She had been quite reasonable; she had understood at the first word and had made up her mind quickly and proudly.

  Raymon was very well pleased with his providence; for he had one of his own, in whom he believed like a good son, and upon whom he relied to arrange everything to other people’s detriment rather than his own. That providence had treated him so well thus far that he did not choose to doubt it. To anticipate the result of his wrongdoing and to be anxious concerning it would have been in his eyes a crime against the good Lord who watched over him.

  He rose, still very much fatigued by the efforts of the imagination which the circumstances of that painful scene had compelled him to make. His mother returned; she had been to Madame de Carvajal to inquire as to Madame Delmare’s health and frame of mind. The marchioness was not disturbed about her; she was, however, very much disgusted when Madame de Ramière shrewdly questioned her. But the only thing that impressed her in Madame Delmare’s disappearance was the scandal that would result from it. She complained very bitterly of her niece, whom, only the day before, she had extolled to the skies; and Madame de Ramière understood that the unfortunate Indiana had, by this performance, alienated her kinswoman and lost the only natural prop that she still possessed.

  To one who could read in the depths of the marchioness’s soul, this would have seemed no great loss; but Madame de Carvajal was esteemed virtuous beyond reproach, even by Madame de Ramière. Her youth had been enveloped in the mysteries of prudence, or lost in the whirlwind of revolutions.

  “But what will become of the unhappy creature?” said Madame de Ramière. “If her husband maltreats her, who will protect her?”

  “That will be as God wills,” replied the marchioness; “for my part, I’ll have nothing more to do with her and I never wish to see her again.”

  Madame de Ramière, kind-hearted and anxious, determined to obtain news of Madame Delmare at any price. She bade her coachman drive to the end of the street on which she lived and sent a footman to question the concierge, instructing him to try to see Sir Ralph if he were in the house. She awaited in her carriage the result of this manoeuvre, and Ralph himself soon joined her there.

  The only person, perhaps, who judged Ralph accurately was Madame de Ramière; a few words sufficed to make each of them understand the other’s sincere and unselfish interest in the matter. Ralph narrated what had passed during the morning; and, as he had nothing more than suspicions concerning the events of the night, he did not seek confirmation of them. But Madame de Ramière deemed it her duty to inform him of what she knew, imparting to him her desire to break off this ill-omened and impossible liaison. Ralph, who felt more at ease with her than with anybody else, allowed the profound emotion which her information caused him to appear on his face.

  “You say, madame,” he murmured, repressing a sort of nervous shudder that ran through his veins, “that she passed the night in your house?”

  “A solitary and sorrowful night, no doubt. Raymon, who certainly was not guilty of complicity, did not come home until six o’clock, and at seven he came up to me to ask me to go down and soothe the poor child’s mind.”

  “She meant to leave her husband! she meant to destroy her good name!” rejoined Ralph, his eyes fixed on vacancy and a strange oppression at his heart. “Then she must love this man, who is so unworthy of her, very dearly!”

  Ralph forgot that he was talking to Raymon’s mother.

  “I have suspected this a long while,” he continued; “why could I not have foretold the day on which she would consummate her ruin! I would have killed her first!”

  Such language in Ralph’s mouth surprised Madame de Ramière beyond measure; she supposed that she was speaking to a calm, indulgent man, and she regretted that she had trusted to appearances.

  “Mon Dieu!” she said in dismay, “do you judge her without mercy? will you abandon her as her aunt has? Are you incapable of pity or forgiveness? Will she not have a single friend left after a fault which has already caused her such bitter suffering?”

  “Have no fear of anything of the sort on my part, madame,” Ralph replied; “I have known all for six months and I have said nothing. I surprised their first kiss and I did not hurl Monsieur de Ramière from his horse; I often intercepted their love messages in the woods and did not tear them in pieces with my whip. I met Monsieur de Ramière on the bridge he must cross to go to join her; it was night, we were alone and I am four times as strong as he; and yet I did not throw the man into the river; and when, after allowing him to escape, I discovered that he had eluded my vigilance and had stolen into her house, instea
d of bursting in the doors and throwing him out of the window, I quietly warned them of the husband’s approach and saved the life of one in order to save the other’s honor. You see, madame, that I am indulgent and merciful. This morning I had that man under my hand; I was well aware that he was the cause of all our misery, and, if I had not the right to accuse him without proofs, I certainly should have been justified in quarreling with him for his arrogant and mocking manner. But I bore with his insulting contempt because I knew that his death would kill Indiana; I allowed him to turn over and fall asleep again on the other side, while Indiana, insane and almost dead, was on the shore of the Seine, preparing to join his other victim. You see, madame, that I practise patience with those whom I hate and indulgence with those I love.”