Part 16 (1/2)
”What woman? I understand you still less than I did just now.”
”When we are at home I will speak,”.... replied Lydia, after having looked at Maud with a surprised glance, which was in itself the most terrible reply. The two women were silent. It was Maud who now required the sympathy of friends.h.i.+p, so greatly had the words uttered by Lydia startled her. The companion whose arm rested upon hers in that carriage, and who had inspired her with such pity fifteen minutes before, now rendered her fearful. She seemed to be seated by the side of another person. In the creature whose thin nostrils were dilated with pa.s.sion, whose mouth was distorted with bitterness, whose eyes sparkled with anger, she no longer recognized little Madame Maitland, so taciturn, so reserved that she was looked upon as insignificant. What had that voice, usually so musical, told her; that voice so suddenly become harsh, and which had already revealed to her the great danger suspended over Boleslas? To what woman had that voice alluded, and what meant that sudden reticence?
Lydia was fully aware of the grief into which she would plunge Maud without the slightest premeditation. For a moment she thought it almost a crime to say more to a woman thus deluded. But at the same time she saw in the revelation two certain results. In undeceiving Madame Gorka she made a mortal enemy for Madame Steno, and, on the other hand, never would the woman so deeply in love with her husband allow him to fight for a former mistress. So, when they both entered the small salon of the Moorish mansion, Lydia's resolution was taken. She was determined to conceal nothing of what she knew from unhappy Maud, who asked her, with a beating heart, and in a voice choked by emotion:
”Now, will you explain to me what you want to say?”
”Question me,” replied the other; ”I will answer you. I have gone too far to draw back.”
”You claimed that a woman was the cause of the duel between your brother and my husband?”
”I am sure of it,” replied Lydia.
”What is that woman's name?”
”Madame Steno.”
”Madame Steno?” repeated Maud. ”Catherine Steno is the cause of that duel? How?”
”Because she is my husband's mistress,” replied Lydia, brutally; ”because she has been your husband's, because Gorka came here, mad with jealousy, to provoke Lincoln, and because he met my brother, who prevented him from entering.... They quarrelled, I know not in what manner. But I know the cause of the duel.... Am I right, yes or no, in telling you they are to fight about that woman?”
”My husband's mistress?” cried Maud. ”You say Madame Steno has been my husband's mistress? It is not true. You lie! You lie! You lie! I do not believe it.”
”You do not believe me?” said Lydia, shrugging her shoulders. ”As if I had the least interest in deceiving you; as if one would lie when the life of the only being one loves in the world is in the balance! For I have only my brother, and perhaps to-morrow I shall no longer have him.... But you shall believe me. I desire that we both hate that woman, that we both be avenged upon her, as we both do not wish the duel to take place--the duel of which, I repeat, she is the cause, the sole cause.... You do not believe me? Do you know what caused your husband to return? You did not expect him; confess! It was I--I, do you hear--who wrote him what Steno and Lincoln were doing; day after day I wrote about their love, their meetings, their bliss. Ah, I was sure it would not be in vain, and he returned. Is that a proof?”
”You did not do that?” cried Madame Gorka, recoiling with horror. ”It was infamous.”
”Yes, I did it,” replied Lydia, with savage pride, ”and why not? It was my right when she took my husband from me. You have only to return and to look in the place where Gorka keeps his letters. You will certainly find those I wrote, and others, I a.s.sure you, from that woman. For she has a mania for letter-writing.... Do you believe me now, or will you repeat that I have lied?”
”Never,” returned Maud, with sorrowful indignation upon her lovely, loyal face, ”no, never will I descend to such baseness.”
”Well, I will descend for you,” said Lydia. ”What you do not dare to do, I will dare, and you will ask me to aid you in being avenged. Come,”
and, seizing the hand of her stupefied companion, she drew her into Lincoln's studio, at that moment unoccupied. She approached one of those Spanish desks, called baygenos, and she touched two small panels, which disclosed, on opening, a secret drawer, in which were a package of letters, which she seized. Maud Gorka watched her with the same terrified horror with which she would have seen some one killed and robbed. That honorable soul revolted at the scene in which her mere presence made of her an accomplice. But at the same time she was a prey, as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appet.i.te to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's sister, who continued:
”Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own hand? Yes,” she continued, with cruel irony, ”she loves correspondence, our fortunate rival. Justice must be rendered her that she may make no more avowals. She writes as she feels. It seems that the successor was jealous of his predecessor.... See, is this a proof this time?”....
And, after having glanced at the first letters as a person familiar with them, she handed one of those papers to Maud, who had not the courage to avert her eyes. What she saw written upon that sheet drew from her a cry of anguish. She had, however, only read ten lines, which proved how much mistaken psychological Dorsenne was in thinking that Maitland was ignorant of the former relations between his mistress and Gorka.
Countess Steno's grandeur, that which made a courageous woman almost a heroine in her pa.s.sions, was an absolute sincerity and disgust for the usual pettiness of flirtations. She would have disdained to deny to a new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semiavowals, so common to women, would have seemed to her a cowardice still worse. She had not essayed to hide from Maitland what connection she had broken off for him, and it was upon one of those phrases, in which she spoke of it openly, that Madame Gorka's eyes fell:
”You will be pleased with me,” she wrote, ”and I shall no longer see in your dear blue eyes which I kiss, as I love them, that gleam of mistrust which troubles me. I have stopped the correspondence with Gorka. If you require it, I will even break with Maud, notwithstanding the reason you know of and which will render it difficult for me. But how can you be jealous yet?... Is not my frankness with regard to that liaison the surest guarantee that it is ended? Come, do not be jealous. Listen to what I know so well, that I felt I loved, and that my life began only on the day when you took me in your arms. The woman you have awakened in me, no one has known--”
”She writes well, does she not?” said Lydia, with a gleam of savage triumph in her eyes. ”Do you believe me, now?... Do you see that we have the same interest to-day, a common affront to avenge? And we will avenge it.... Do you understand that you can not allow your husband to fight a duel with my brother? You owe that to me who have given you this weapon by which you hold him.... Threaten him with a divorce. Fortune is with you. The law will give you your child. I repeat, you hold him firmly.
You will prevent the duel, will you not?”
”Ah! What do you think it matters to me now if they fight or not?” said Maud. ”From the moment he deceived me was I not widowed? Do not approach me,” she added, looking at Lydia with wild eyes, while a shudder of repulsion shook her entire frame.... ”Do not speak to me.... I have as much horror of you as of him.... Let me go, let me leave here.... Even to feel myself in the same room with you fills me with horror.... Ah, what disgrace!”
She retreated to the door, fixing upon her informant a gaze which the other sustained, notwithstanding the scorn in it, with the gloomy pride of defiance. She went out repeating: ”Ah, what disgrace!” without Lydia having addressed her, so greatly had surprise at the unexpected result of all her attempts paralyzed her. But the formidable creature lost no time in regret and repentance. She paused a few moments to think. Then, crus.h.i.+ng in her nervous hand the letter she had shown Maud, at the risk of being discovered by her husband later, she said aloud:
”Coward! Lord, what a coward she is! She loves. She will pardon. Will there, then, be no one to aid me? No one to smite them in their insolent happiness.” After meditating awhile, her face still more contracted, she placed the letter in the drawer, which she closed again, and half an hour later she summoned a commissionaire, to whom she intrusted a letter, with the order to deliver it immediately, and that letter was addressed to the inspector of police of the district. She informed him of the intended duel, giving him the names of the two adversaries and of the four seconds. If she had not been afraid of her brother, she would even that time have signed her name.
”I should have gone to work that way at first,” said she to herself, when the door of the small salon closed behind the messenger to whom she had given her order personally. ”The police know how to prevent them from fighting, even if I do not succeed with Florent.... As for him?”.... and she looked at a portrait of Maitland upon the desk at which she had just been writing. ”Were I to tell him what is taking place.... No, I will ask nothing of him.... I hate him too much.”....
And she concluded with a fierce smile, which disclosed her teeth at the corners of her mouth: