Volume Ii Part 22 (1/2)
”What obdurate sinner could have remained indifferent at the sight of Angela beaming in the fulness of her heavenly beauty, comforting her old father with sweet, delicious words, the deepest affection, and the most childlike purity and goodness streaming from the depths of her heart?
”Things were very different with the Chevalier. An entire pandemonium of torture and pangs of conscience awoke within him. Angela seemed to him to be the punis.h.i.+ng angel of G.o.d, before whose s.h.i.+ning glory the cloud-shroud of sinful deception which had surrounded him vanished away, so that with terror he clearly saw himself in all his repulsive nakedness.
”And through the midst of those h.e.l.l-flames, which were consuming and raging in his heart, there came piercing a heavenly, pure beam of radiance, whose light was the sweetest bliss and the very joy of heaven, though the brightness of this ray had the effect of rendering the inexpressible torture more terrible.
”The Chevalier had never known love before; and the instant he saw Angela he was seized by the most pa.s.sionate affection for her, and, at the same time, with the destroying pain of complete hopelessness, for surely there could be no hope for one who had appeared to her in the light in which he had.
”He longed to say something, but his tongue seemed to be paralysed. At length he so far mastered himself as to say, stammering, and in a trembling voice, 'Signor Vertua, listen. I have not won anything from you--nothing of the kind. There is my strong box; take it, it is yours.
Yes; and I have to pay you more than that. I am in your debt. Take it, take it!'
”'Oh, my girl!' cried Vertua. But Angela went up to the Chevalier, beamed a proud look upon him, and said, gravely and calmly, 'Learn, Chevalier, that there are higher things than money and possessions--things which you have no knowledge of--which, while filling our souls with the happiness of heaven, make us spurn your gifts with compa.s.sion and contempt. Keep the mammon upon which lies the curse which pursues you, heartless, accursed gambler.'
”'Yes!' cried the Chevalier wildly; 'cursed, cursed in verity may I be, if ever this hand of mine touches a card again. And if you repel me, Angela, it will be you who will bring inevitable destruction upon me.
Oh, you don't understand me. You must think me mad; but you will know it all when I lie before you with my skull s.h.i.+vered into fragments.
Angela, it is life or death with me. Adieu!'
”With this he dashed away in utter desperation. Vertua thoroughly understood him; he saw what had been pa.s.sing in his heart, and tried to make the lovely Angela comprehend how certain eventualities might arise which would render it necessary to accept the Chevalier's offers.
Angela was afraid to allow herself to understand her father; she did not think it would ever be possible to regard the Chevalier otherwise than with contempt; but that mysterious chain of events which often forms itself within the profundities of the human heart, without our cognisance, brought to pa.s.s that which seemed unimagined--undreamt of.
”The Chevalier felt as if suddenly awakened from a horrible dream. He saw himself standing on the brink of the abyss of h.e.l.l, stretching his arms out in vain to the s.h.i.+ning form of light which had appeared to him, not to save him, but to tell him of his d.a.m.nation.
”To the surprise of all Paris his banque opened no more, and he himself was no more seen, so that the most marvellous tales concerning him became current, each of them a greater falsehood than the others. He avoided all society; his love took the form of the profoundest, most unconquerable melancholy. One day he met old Vertua and his daughter in one of the lonely, shady walks of the garden at Malmaison.
”Angela, who had believed she would never be able to look upon the Chevalier again but with horror and contempt, felt strangely moved when she saw him so pale and distressed, scarce able to lift his eyes to her in the excess of his reverence for her. She knew that, since that eventful night, he had given play up entirely, and completely altered his mode of life, and that she--she alone--was the cause of this. She had saved him from destruction; could anything flatter a woman more?
”When old Vertua had exchanged the ordinary civilities with him, she spoke to him in a tone of gentle pity, saying, 'What is the matter, Chevalier? You look ill and unhappy. You ought to go and consult a doctor.'
”We can understand that her words filled him with comfort and hope. He was a different man in a moment. He lifted his head, and managed to talk once more in the manner which, when it welled from his very heart in former days, used to attract and endear him to all who knew him.
Vertua reminded him that he had not come to take possession of the house he had won.
”'Very well, I will come,' he answered, with an inspiration breaking upon him. 'I will come to-morrow; but we must discuss all the conditions at proper length and leisure, even if it should take months.'
”'So be it, Chevalier,' said Vertua, with a smile. 'Perhaps we may come to discuss matters which we do not quite see into at present.'
”The Chevalier, inwardly comforted, resumed all the charm of manner and all the delightful qualities which had distinguished him before he was carried away by his devouring pa.s.sion. His visits at Vertua's became more and more frequent, and Angela grew more and more disposed towards the man whose guardian angel she had been, till at last she believed she loved him with all her heart, and promised him her hand, to the great joy of old Vertua, who saw in this the settlement of his losses.
”One day Angela, now the happy betrothed of the Chevalier Menars, was sitting at a window, lost in all the sweet dreams and happy fancies which young ladies in her position are believed to be wont to entertain, when a regiment of Jaegers came marching along, with trumpets sounding bravely, on their way to join in the Spanish campaign. She was looking with pitiful sympathy at the men thus going to face death in this war, when a very young officer, who was reining his horse quickly to one side, looked up at her, and she fell back fainting in her seat.
”Alas! This young Jaeger, marching off to face death in the field, was no other than young Duvernet, the son of a neighbour, with whom she had grown up, who had been nearly daily in the house, and had only kept out of the way since the Chevalier had made his appearance. In the look of bitter reproach which the lad cast at her--and the bitterness of death itself was in it--she now, for the first time, read not only how unspeakably he loved her, but how boundlessly she loved him, without having been aware, whilst dazzled by the Chevalier's brilliance. Now.
for the first time, she understood Duvernet's anxious sighs?--his silent, una.s.suming, un.o.btrusive attentions; now, and now only, she read her own embarra.s.sed heart--what moved her disquiet breast when Duvernet came, when she heard his voice.
”'Too late! he is lost to me!' cried the voice in her heart. She had the resolution to beat down and conquer the hopeless pain which would have torn her heart; and just because she had this resolution she was successful.
”The Chevalier was too observant not to see that something had been occurring to disturb her; but, tenderly enough, he refrained from trying to unriddle a mystery which she thought herself bound to conceal from him. He contented himself, by way of clearing anything hostile out of the path, with hastening on the wedding. The arrangements connected with it he ordered with such admirable consideration and such delicate tact, that from his very care in this respect for her state of mind, she could not but form a higher opinion of his amiability than even before.
”His conduct to her was marked with such observance of the most trifling of her wishes, with the sincere courtesy which springs from the truest and purest affection, that the remembrance of Duvernet naturally faded more and more from her memory. So that the first cloud-shadow which fell upon the brightness of their life was the illness and death of old Vertua.
”Since the night when he had lost all he possessed to the Chevalier, he had never touched a card. But in the closing moments of his life all his faculties seemed to be engrossed with the game. Whilst the priest, who had come to administer the consolations of the Church to him on his departure from this life, spoke to him of spiritual things, he lay with closed eyes, murmuring between his teeth, '_Perd!_--_Gagne_,' and making, with hands quivering in the spasms of death, the motions of dealing and playing out cards. Angela and the Chevalier, bending over him, called him by the tenderest names. He did not seem to hear them, or to know they were there. With a faint sigh of '_Gagne!_' he gave up the ghost.