The Greatest Works of Émile Gaboriau. Emile Gaboriau
will inform her of everything, Valentine, and think how she will make you suffer!”
“No matter. The dictates of conscience must be obeyed. Ah, why can I not, at the price of my life, spare her the agony of hearing that her only daughter, her Valentine, has disgraced her name? She may be hard, cruel, pitiless toward me; but have I not deserved it? Oh, my only friend, we have been revelling in a dream too beautiful to last! I have long dreaded this awakening. Like two weak, credulous fools we imagined that happiness could exist beyond the pale of duty. Sooner or later stolen joys must be dearly paid for. After the sweet comes the bitter; we must bow our heads, and drink the cup to the dregs.”
This cold reasoning, this sad resignation, was more than the fiery nature of Gaston could bear.
“You shall not talk thus!” he cried. “Can you not feel that the bare idea of your suffering humiliation drives me mad?”
“Alas! I see nothing but disgrace, the most fearful disgrace, staring me in the face.”
“What do you mean, Valentine?”
“I have not told you, Gaston, I am——”
Here she stopped, hesitated, and then added:
“Nothing! I am a fool.”
Had Gaston been less excited, he would have suspected some new misfortune beneath this reticence of Valentine; but his mind was too full of one idea—that of possessing her.
“All hope is not lost,” he continued. “My father is kind-hearted, and was touched by my love and despair. I am sure that my letters, added to the intercession of my brother Louis, will induce him to ask Mme. de la Verberie for your hand.”
This proposition seemed to frighten Valentine.
“Heaven forbid that the marquis should take this rash step!”
“Why, Valentine?”
“Because my mother would reject his offer; because, I must confess it now, she has sworn I shall marry none but a rich man; and your father is not rich, Gaston, so you will have very little.”
“Good heavens!” cried Gaston, with disgust, “is it to such an unnatural mother that you sacrifice me?”
“She is my mother; that is sufficient. I have not the right to judge her. My duty is to remain with her, and remain I shall.”
Valentine’s manner showed such determined resolution, that Gaston saw that further prayers would be in vain.
“Alas!” he cried, as he wrung his hands with despair, “you do not love me; you have never loved me!”
“Gaston, Gaston! you do not think what you say! Have you no mercy?”
“If you loved me,” he cried, “you could never, at this moment of separation, have the cruel courage to coldly reason and calculate. Ah, far different is my love for you. Without you the world is void; to lose you is to die. What have I to live for? Let the Rhone take back this worthless life, so miraculously saved; it is now a burden to me!”
And he rushed toward the river, determined to bury his sorrow beneath its waves; Valentine seized his arm, and held him back.
“Is this the way to show your love for me?” she asked.
Gaston was absolutely discouraged.
“What is the use of living?” he said, dejectedly. “What is left to me now?”
“God is left to us, Gaston; and in his hands lies our future.”
As a shipwrecked man seizes a rotten plank in his desperation, so Gaston eagerly caught at the word “future,” as a beacon in the gloomy darkness surrounding him.
“Your commands shall be obeyed,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Away with weakness! Yes, I will live, and struggle, and triumph. Mme. de la Verberie wants gold; well, she shall have it; in three years I will be rich, or I shall be dead.”
With clasped hands Valentine thanked Heaven for this sudden determination, which was more than she had dared hope for.
“But,” said Gaston, “before going away I wish to confide to you a sacred deposit.”
He drew from his pocket the purse of jewels, and, handing them to Valentine, added:
“These jewels belonged to my poor mother; you, my angel, are alone worthy of wearing them. I thought of you when I accepted them from my father. I felt that you, as my affianced wife, were the proper person to have them.”
Valentine refused to accept them.
“Take them, my darling, as a pledge of my return. If I do not come back within three years, you may know that I am dead, and then you must keep them as a souvenir of him who so much loved you.”
She burst into tears, and took the purse.
“And now,” said Gaston, “I have a last request to make. Everybody believes me dead, but I cannot let my poor old father labor under this impression. Swear to me that you will go yourself to-morrow morning, and tell him that I am still alive.”
“I will tell him, myself,” she said.
Gaston felt that he must now tear himself away before his courage failed him; each moment he was more loath to leave the only being who bound him to this world; he enveloped Valentine in a last fond embrace, and started up.
“What is your plan of escape?” she asked.
“I shall go to Marseilles, and hide in a friend’s house until I can procure a passage to America.”
“You must have assistance; I will secure you a guide in whom I have unbounded confidence; old Menoul, the ferryman, who lives near us. He owns the boat which he plies on the Rhone.”
The lovers passed through the little park gate, of which Gaston had the key, and soon reached the boatman’s cabin.
He was asleep in an easy-chair by the fire. When Valentine stood before him with Gaston, the old man jumped up, and kept rubbing his eyes, thinking it must be a dream.
“Pere Menoul,” said Valentine, “M. Gaston is compelled to fly the country; he wants to be rowed out to sea, so that he can secretly embark. Can you take him in your boat as far as the mouth of the Rhone?”
“It is impossible,” said the old man, shaking his head; “I would not dare venture on the river in its present state.”
“But, Pere Menoul, it would be of immense service to me; would you not venture for my sake?”
“For your sake? certainly I would, Mlle. Valentine: I will do anything to gratify you. I am ready to start.”
He looked at Gaston, and, seeing his clothes wet and covered with mud, said to him:
“Allow me to offer you my dead son’s clothes, monsieur; they will serve as a disguise: come this way.”
In a few minutes Pere Menoul returned with Gaston, whom no one would have recognized in his sailor dress.
Valentine went with them to the place where the boat was moored. While the old man was unfastening it, the disconsolate lovers tearfully embraced each other for the last time.
“In three years, my own Valentine; promise to wait three years for me! If alive, I will then see you.”
“Adieu, mademoiselle,” interrupted the boatman; “and you, monsieur, hold fast, and keep steady.”
Then with a vigorous stroke of the boat-hook he sent the bark into the middle of the stream.
Three days later, thanks to the assistance of Pere Menoul, Gaston was concealed on the three-masted American vessel, Tom Jones, which was to start the next day for Valparaiso.
XIV