And, all at once, three men started from a thicket of bushes and made for the two ladies.
They accosted them. A few words were exchanged. The ladies gave visible signs of dread. One of the men went up to the shorter of the two and tried to snatch the gold purse which she was carrying in her hand. They cried out; and the three men flung themselves upon them.
“Now or never!” said the prince.
And he rushed forward. In ten seconds he had almost reached the brink of the water. At his approach, the three men fled.
“Run away, you vagabonds,” he chuckled; “run for all you are worth! Here’s the rescuer coming!”
And he set out in pursuit of them. But one of the ladies entreated him:
“Oh, sir, I beg of you … my friend is ill.”
The shorter lady had fallen on the grass in a dead faint.
He retraced his steps and, anxiously:
“She is not wounded?” he asked. “Did those scoundrels …”
“No … no … it’s only the fright … the excitement … Besides you will understand … the lady is Mrs. Kesselbach …”
“Oh!” he said.
He produced a bottle of smelling-salts, which the younger woman at once applied to her friend’s nostrils. And he added:
“Lift the amethyst that serves as a stopper … You will see a little box containing some tabloids. Give madame one of them … one, no more … they are very strong …”
He watched the young woman helping her friend. She was fair-haired, very simply dressed; and her face was gentle and grave, with a smile that lit up her features even when she was not smiling.
“That is Geneviève,” he thought. And he repeated with emotion, “Geneviève … Geneviève …”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kesselbach gradually recovered consciousness. She was astonished at first, seemed not to understand. Then, her memory returning, she thanked her deliverer with a movement of the head.
He made a deep bow and said:
“Allow me to introduce myself … I am Prince Sernine …”
She said, in a faint voice:
“I do not know how to express my gratitude.”
“By not expressing it at all, madame. You must thank chance, the chance that turned my steps in this direction. May I offer you my arm?”
A few minutes later, Mrs. Kesselbach rang at the door of the House of Retreat and said to the prince:
“I will ask one more service of you, monsieur. Do not speak of this assault.”
“And yet, madame, it would be the only way of finding out …”
“Any attempt to find out would mean an inquiry; and that would involve more noise and fuss about me, examinations, fatigue; and I am worn out as it is.”
The prince did not insist. Bowing to her, he asked:
“Will you allow me to call and ask how you are?”
“Oh, certainly …”
She kissed Geneviève and went indoors.
Meantime, night was beginning to fall. Sernine would not let Geneviève return alone. But they had hardly entered the path, when a figure, standing out against the shadow, hastened toward them.
“Grandmother!” cried Geneviève.
She threw herself into the arms of an old woman, who covered her with kisses:
“Oh, my darling, my darling, what has happened? How late you are! … And you are always so punctual!”
Geneviève introduced the prince:
“Prince Sernine … Mme. Ernemont, my grandmother …”
Then she related the incident, and Mme. Ernemont repeated:
“Oh, my darling, how frightened you must have been! … I shall never forget your kindness, monsieur, I assure you … But how frightened you must have been, my poor darling!”
“Come, granny, calm yourself, as I am here …”
“Yes, but the fright may have done you harm … One never knows the consequences … Oh, it’s horrible! …”
They went along a hedge, through which a yard planted with trees, a few shrubs, a playground and a white house were just visible. Behind the house, sheltered by a clump of elder-trees arranged to form a covered walk, was a little gate.
The old lady asked Prince Sernine to come in and led the way to a little drawing-room or parlor. Geneviève asked leave to withdraw for a moment, to go and see her pupils, whose supper-time it was. The prince and Mme. Ernemont remained alone.
The old lady had a sad and a pale face, under her white hair, which ended in two long, loose curls. She was too stout, her walk was heavy and, notwithstanding her appearance and her dress, which was that of a lady, she had something a little vulgar about her; but her eyes were immensely kind.
Prince Sernine went up to her, took her head in his two hands and kissed her on both cheeks:
“Well, old one, and how are you?”
She stood dumfounded, wild-eyed, open-mouthed. The prince kissed her again, laughing.
She spluttered:
“You! It’s you! O mother of God! … O mother of God! … Is it possible! … O mother of God! …”
“My dear old Victoire!”
“Don’t call me that,” she cried, shuddering. “Victoire is dead … your old servant no longer exists.* I belong entirely to Geneviève.” And, lowering her voice, “O mother of God! … I saw your name in the papers: then it’s true that you have taken to your wicked life again?”
“And yet you swore to me that it was finished, that you were going away for good, that you wanted to become an honest man.”
“I tried. I have been trying for four years … You can’t say that I have got myself talked about during those four years!”
“Well?”
“Well, it bores me.”
She gave a sigh and asked:
“Always the same … You haven’t changed … Oh, it’s settled, you never will change … So you are in the Kesselbach case?”
“Why, of course! But for that, would I have taken the trouble to arrange for an attack on Mrs. Kesselbach at six o’clock, so that I might have the opportunity of delivering her from the clutches of my own men at five minutes past? Looking upon me as her rescuer, she is obliged to receive me. I am now in the heart of the citadel and, while protecting the widow, can keep a lookout all round. Ah, you see, the sort of life which I lead does not permit me to lounge about and waste my time on little questions of politeness and such outside matters. I have to go straight to the point, violently, brutally, dramatically …”
She looked at him in dismay and gasped:
“I see … I see … it’s all lies about the attack … But then … Geneviève …”
“Why, I’m killing two birds with one stone! It was as easy to rescue two as one. Think of the time it would have taken, the efforts—useless efforts, perhaps—to worm myself into that child’s friendship! What was I to her? What should I be now? An unknown person … a stranger. Whereas now I am the rescuer. In an hour I shall be … the friend.”
She began to tremble:
“So … so you did not rescue Geneviève … So you are going to mix us up in your affairs …” And, suddenly, in a fit of rebellion, seizing him by the shoulders, “No, I won’t have it, do you understand? You brought the child to me one day, saying, ‘Here, I entrust her to you … her father and mother are dead … take her under your protection.’ Well, she’s under my protection now and I shall know how to defend her against you and all your manœuvers!”
Standing straight upright, in a very determined attitude, Mme. Ernemont seemed ready for all emergencies.
Slowly and deliberately Sernine loosened the two hands, one after the other, that held him, and in his turn, took the old lady by the shoulders, forced her into an arm-chair, stooped over and, in a very calm voice, said:
“Rot!”
She began to cry and, clasping her hands together, implored him:
“I beseech you, leave us in peace. We were so happy! I thought that you had forgotten us and I
blessed Heaven every time a day had passed. Why, yes … I love you just the same. But, Geneviève … you see, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for that child. She has taken your place in my heart.”
“So I perceive,” said he, laughing. “You would send me to the devil with pleasure. Come, enough of this nonsense! I have no time to waste. I must talk to Geneviève.”
“You’re going to talk to her?”
“Well, is that a crime?”
“And what have you to tell her?”
“A secret … a very grave secret … and a very touching one …”
The old lady took fright:
“And one that will cause her sorrow, perhaps? Oh, I fear everything, I fear everything, where she’s concerned! …”
“She is coming,” he said.
“No, not yet.”
“Yes, yes, I hear her … Wipe your eyes and be sensible.”
“Listen,” said she, eagerly, “listen. I don’t know what you are going to say, what secret you mean to reveal to this child whom you don’t know. But I, who do know her, tell you this: Geneviève has a very plucky, very spirited, but very sensitive nature. Be careful how you choose your words … You might wound feelings … the existence of which you cannot even suspect …”
“Lord bless me! And why not?”
“Because she belongs to another race than you, to a different world … I mean, a different moral world … There are things which you are forbidden to understand nowadays. Between you and her, the obstacle is insurmountable … Geneviève has the most unblemished and upright conscience … and you …”
“And I?”
“And you are not an honest man!”
Geneviève entered, bright and charming:
“All my babies have gone to bed; I have ten minutes to spare … Why, grandmother, what’s the matter? You look quite upset … Is it still that business with the …”
“No, mademoiselle,” said Sernine, “I believe I have had the good fortune to reassure your grandmother. Only, we were talking of you, of your childhood; and that is a subject, it seems, which your grandmother cannot touch upon without emotion.”
“Of my childhood?” said Geneviève, reddening. “Oh, grandmother!”
“Don’t scold her, mademoiselle. The conversation turned in that direction by accident. It so happens that I have often passed through the little village where you were brought up.”
“Aspremont?”
“Yes, Aspremont, near Nice. You used to live in a new house, white all over …”
“Yes,” she said, “white all over, with a touch of blue paint round the windows … I was only seven years old when I left Aspremont; but I remember the least things of that period. And I have not forgotten the glare of the sun on the white front of the house, nor the shade of the eucalyptus-tree at the bottom of the garden.”
“At the bottom of the garden, mademoiselle, was a field of olive-trees; and under one of those olive-trees stood a table at which your mother used to work on hot days …”
“That’s true, that’s true,” she said, quite excitedly, “I used to play by her side …”
“And it was there,” said he, “that I saw your mother several times … I recognized her image the moment I set eyes on you … but it was a brighter, happier image.”
“Yes, my poor mother was not happy. My father died on the very day of my birth, and nothing was ever able to console her. She used to cry a great deal. I still possess a little handkerchief with which I used to dry her tears at that time.”
“A little handkerchief with a pink pattern.”
“What!” she exclaimed, seized with surprise. “You know …”
“I was there one day when you were comforting her … And you comforted her so prettily that the scene remained impressed on my memory.”
She gave him a penetrating glance and murmured, almost to herself:
“Yes, yes … I seem to … The expression of your eyes … and then the sound of your voice …”
She lowered her eyelids for a moment and reflected as if she were vainly trying to bring back a recollection that escaped her. And she continued:
“Then you knew her?”
“I had some friends living near Aspremont and used to meet her at their house. The last time I saw her, she seemed to me sadder still … paler … and, when I came back again …”
“It was all over, was it not?” said Geneviève. “Yes, she went very quickly … in a few weeks … and I was left alone with neighbors who sat up with her … and one morning they took her away … And, on the evening of that day, some one came, while I was asleep, and lifted me up and wrapped me in blankets …”
“A man?” asked the prince.
“Yes, a man. He talked to me, quite low, very gently … his voice did me good … and, as he carried me down the road and also in the carriage, during the night, he rocked me in his arms and told me stories … in the same voice … in the same voice …”
She broke off gradually and looked at him again, more sharply than before and with a more obvious effort to seize the fleeting impression that passed over her at moments. He asked:
“And then? Where did he take you?”
“I can’t recollect clearly … it is just as though I had slept for several days … I can remember nothing before the little town of Montégut, in the Vendée, where I spent the second half of my childhood, with Father and Mother Izereau, a worthy couple who reared me and brought me up and whose love and devotion I shall never forget.”
“And did they die, too?”
“Yes,” she said, “of an epidemic of typhoid fever in the district … but I did not know that until later … As soon as they fell ill, I was carried off as on the first occasion and under the same conditions, at night, by some one who also wrapped me up in blankets … Only, I was bigger, I struggled, I tried to call out … and he had to close my mouth with a silk handkerchief.”
“How old were you then?”
“Fourteen … it was four years ago.”
“Then you were able to see what the man was like?”
“No, he hid his face better and he did not speak a single word to me … Nevertheless, I have always believed him to be the same one … for I remember the same solicitude, the same attentive, careful movements …”
“And after that?”
“After that, came oblivion, sleep, as before … This time, I was ill, it appears; I was feverish … And I woke in a bright, cheerful room. A white-haired lady was bending over me and smiling. It was grandmother … and the room was the one in which I now sleep upstairs.”
She had resumed her happy face, her sweet, radiant expression; and she ended, with a smile:
“That was how she became my grandmother and how, after a few trials, the little Aspremont girl now knows the delights of a peaceful life and teaches grammar and arithmetic to little girls who are either naughty or lazy … but who are all fond of her.”
She spoke cheerfully, in a tone at once thoughtful and gay, and it was obvious that she possessed a reasonable, well-balanced mind. Sernine listened to her with growing surprise and without trying to conceal his agitation:
“Have you never heard speak of that man since?” he asked.
“Never.”
“And would you be glad to see him again?”
“Oh, very glad.”
“Well, then, mademoiselle …”
Geneviève gave a start:
“You know something … the truth perhaps …”
“No … no … only …”
He rose and walked up and down the room. From time to time, his eyes fell upon Geneviève; and it looked as though he were on the point of giving a more precise answer to the question which she had put to him. Would he speak?
Mme. Ernemont awaited with anguish the revelation of the secret upon which the girl’s future peace might depend.
He sat down beside Geneviève, appeared to hesitate, and s
aid at last:
“No … no … just now … an idea occurred to me … a recollection …”
“A recollection? … And …”
“I was mistaken. Your story contained certain details that misled me.”
“Are you sure?”
He hesitated and then declared:
“Absolutely sure.”
“Oh,” said she, greatly disappointed. “I had half guessed … that that man whom I saw twice … that you knew him … that …”
She did not finish her sentence, but waited for an answer to the question which she had put to him without daring to state it completely.
He was silent. Then, insisting no further, she bent over Mme. Ernemont:
“Good night, grandmother. My children must be in bed by this time, but they could none of them go to sleep before I had kissed them.”
She held out her hand to the prince:
“Thank you once more …”
“Are you going?” he asked quickly.
“Yes, if you will excuse me; grandmother will see you out.”
He bowed low and kissed her hand. As she opened the door, she turned round and smiled. Then she disappeared. The prince listened to the sound of her footsteps diminishing in the distance and stood stock-still, his face white with emotion.
“Well,” said the old lady, “so you did not speak?”
“No …”
“That secret …”
“Later … To-day … oddly enough … I was not able to.”
“Was it so difficult? Did not she herself feel that you were the stranger who took her away twice … A word would have been enough …”
“Later, later,” he repeated, recovering all his assurance. “You can understand … the child hardly knows me … I must first gain the right to her affection, to her love … When I have given her the life which she deserves, a wonderful life, such as one reads of in fairy-tales, then I will speak.”
The old lady tossed her head:
“I fear that you are making a great mistake. Geneviève does not want a wonderful life. She has simple tastes.”
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