Part 15 (1/2)
XI. FEMALE DIPLOMACY
Calyste ran with the lightness of a young fawn to Les Touches and reached the portico just as Camille and Beatrix were leaving the grand salon after their dinner. He had the sense to offer his arm to Felicite.
”So you have abandoned your viscountess and her daughter for us,” she said, pressing his arm; ”we are able now to understand the full merit of that sacrifice.”
”Are these Kergarouets related to the Portendueres, and to old Admiral de Kergarouet, whose widow married Charles de Vandenesse?” asked Madame de Rochefide.
”The viscountess is the admiral's great-niece,” replied Camille.
”Well, she's a charming girl,” said Beatrix, placing herself gracefully in a Gothic chair. ”She will just do for you, Monsieur du Guenic.”
”The marriage will never take place,” said Camille hastily.
Mortified by the cold, calm air with which the marquise seemed to consider the Breton girl as the only creature fit to mate him, Calyste remained speechless and even mindless.
”Why so, Camille?” asked Madame de Rochefide.
”Really, my dear,” said Camille, seeing Calyste's despair, ”you are not generous; did I advise Conti to marry?”
Beatrix looked at her friend with a surprise that was mingled with indefinable suspicions.
Calyste, unable to understand Camille's motive, but feeling that she came to his a.s.sistance and seeing in her cheeks that faint spot of color which he knew to mean the presence of some violent emotion, went up to her rather awkwardly and took her hand. But she left him and seated herself carelessly at the piano, like a woman so sure of her friend and lover that she can afford to leave him with another woman. She played variations, improvising them as she played, on certain themes chosen, unconsciously to herself, by the impulse of her mind; they were melancholy in the extreme.
Beatrix seemed to listen to the music, but she was really observing Calyste, who, much too young and artless for the part which Camille was intending him to play, remained in rapt adoration before his real idol.
After about an hour, during which time Camille continued to play, Beatrix rose and retired to her apartments. Camille at once took Calyste into her chamber and closed the door, fearing to be overheard; for women have an amazing instinct of distrust.
”My child,” she said, ”if you want to succeed with Beatrix, you must seem to love me still, or you will fail. You are a child; you know nothing of women; all you know is how to love. Now loving and making one's self beloved are two very different things. If you go your own way you will fall into horrible suffering, and I wish to see you happy. If you rouse, not the pride, but the self-will, the obstinacy which is a strong feature in her character, she is capable of going off at any moment to Paris and rejoining Conti; and what will you do then?”
”I shall love her.”
”You won't see her again.”
”Oh! yes, I shall,” he said.
”How?”
”I shall follow her.”
”Why, you are as poor as Job, my dear boy.”
”My father, Ga.s.selin, and I lived for three months in Vendee on one hundred and fifty francs, marching night and day.”
”Calyste,” said Mademoiselle des Touches, ”now listen to me. I know that you have too much candor to play a part, too much honesty to deceive; and I don't want to corrupt such a nature as yours. Yet deception is the only way by which you can win Beatrix; I take it therefore upon myself.
In a week from now she shall love you.”
”Is it possible?” he said clasping his hands.
”Yes,” replied Camille, ”but it will be necessary to overcome certain pledges which she has made to herself. I will do that for you. You must not interfere in the rather arduous task I shall undertake. The marquise has a true aristocratic delicacy of perception; she is keenly distrustful; no hunter could meet with game more wary or more difficult to capture. You are wholly unable to cope with her; will you promise me a blind obedience?”