File No. 113 - Emile Gaboriau (large screen ebook reader TXT) 📗

In the meantime, M. Fauvel had returned home, and Valentine resumed her accustomed duties.

But she was no longer the happy mother and devoted wife, whose smiling presence was wont to fill the house with sunshine and comfort. She was melancholy, anxious, and at times irritable.

Hearing nothing of Clameran, she expected to see him appear at any moment; trembling at every knock, and turning pale when a strange step was heard to enter, she dared not leave the house, for fear he should come during her absence.

Her agony was like that of a condemned man, who, each day as he wakes from his uneasy slumber, asks himself, “Am I to die to-day?”

Clameran did not come; he wrote, or rather, as he was too prudent to furnish arms which could be used against him, he had a note written, which Mme. Fauvel alone might understand, in which he said that he was quite ill, and unable to call upon her; and hoped she would be so good as to come to his room the next day; she had only to ask for 317, Hotel du Louvre.

The letter was almost a relief for Mme. Fauvel. Anything was preferable to suspense. She was ready to consent to everything.

She burned the letter, and said, “I shall go.”

The next day at the appointed hour, she dressed herself in a plain black silk, a large bonnet which concealed her face, and, putting a thick veil in her pocket to be used if she found it necessary, started forth.

After hurriedly walking several squares, she thought she might, without fear of being recognized, call a coach. In a few minutes she was set down at the Hotel du Louvre. Here her uneasiness increased. Her circle of acquaintances being large, she was in terror of being recognized. What would her friends think if they saw her at the Hotel du Louvre disguised in this old dress?

Anyone would naturally suspect an intrigue, a rendezvous; and her character would be ruined forever.

This was the first time since her marriage that she had had occasion for mystery; and her efforts to escape notice were in every way calculated to attract attention.

The porter said that the Marquis of Clameran’s rooms were on the third floor.

She hurried up the stairs, glad to escape the scrutinizing glances of several men standing near; but, in spite of the minute directions given by the porter, she lost her way in one of the long corridors of the hotel.

Finally, after wandering about for some time, she found a door bearing the number sought—317.

She stood leaning against the wall with her hand pressed to her throbbing heart, which seemed bursting.

Now, at the moment of risking this decisive step, she felt paralyzed with fright. She would have given all she possessed to find herself safe in her own home.

The sight of a stranger entering the corridor ended her hesitation.

With a trembling hand she knocked at the door.

“Come in,” said a voice from within.

She entered the room.

It was not the Marquis of Clameran who stood in the middle of the room, but a young man, almost a youth, who bowed to Mme. Fauvel with a singular expression on his handsome face.

Mme. Fauvel thought that she had mistaken the room.

“Excuse me, monsieur,” she said, blushing deeply. “I thought that this was the Marquis of Clameran’s room.”

“It is his room, madame,” replied the young man; then, seeing she was silent and about to leave, he added:

“I presume I have the honor of addressing Mme. Fauvel?”

She bowed affirmatively, shuddering at the sound of her own name, frightened at this proof of Clameran’s betrayal of her secret to a stranger.

With visible anxiety she awaited an explanation.

“Reassure yourself, madame,” said the young man: “you are as safe here as if you were in your own house. M. de Clameran desired me to make his excuses; he will not have the honor of seeing you to-day.”

“But, monsieur, from an urgent letter sent by him yesterday, I was led to suppose—to infer—that he–-”

“When he wrote to you, madame, he had projects in view which he has since renounced.”

Mme. Fauvel was too agitated and troubled to think clearly. Beyond the present she could see nothing.

“Do you mean,” she asked with distrust, “that he has changed his intentions?”

The young man’s face was expressive of sad compassion, as if he shared the sufferings of the unhappy woman before him.

“The marquis has renounced,” he said, in a melancholy tone, “what he wrongly considered a sacred duty. Believe me, he hesitated a long time before he could decide to apply to you on a subject painful to you both. When he began to explain his apparent intrusion upon your private affairs, you refused to hear him, and dismissed him with indignant contempt. He knew not what imperious reasons dictated your conduct. Blinded by unjust anger, he swore to obtain by threats what you refused to give voluntarily. Resolved to attack your domestic happiness, he had collected overwhelming proofs against you. Pardon him: an oath given to his dying brother bound him.

“These convincing proofs,” he continued, as he tapped his finger on a bundle of papers which he had taken from the mantel, “this evidence that cannot be denied, I now hold in my hand. This is the certificate of the Rev. Dr. Sedley; this is the declaration of Mrs. Dobbin, the farmer’s wife; and these others are the statements of the physician and of several persons of high social position who were acquainted with Mme. de la Verberie during her stay in London. Not a single link is missing. I had great difficulty in getting these papers away from M. de Clameran. Had he anticipated my intention of thus disposing of them, they would never have been surrendered to my keeping.”

As he finished speaking, the young man threw the bundle of papers into the fire where they blazed up; and in a moment nothing remained of them but a little heap of ashes.

“All is now destroyed, madame,” he said, with a satisfied air. “The past, if you desire it, is as completely annihilated as those papers. If anyone, thereafter, dares accuse you of having had a son before your marriage, treat him as a vile calumniator. No proof against you can be produced; none exists. You are free.”

Mme. Fauvel began to understand the sense of this scene; the truth dawned upon her bewildered mind.

This noble youth, who protected her from the anger of De Clameran, who restored her peace of mind and the exercise of her own free will, by destroying all proofs of her past, was, must be, the child whom she had abandoned: Valentin-Raoul.

In an instant, all was forgotten save the present. Maternal tenderness, so long restrained, now welled up and overflowed as with intense emotion she murmured:

“Raoul!”

At this name, uttered in so thrilling a tone, the youth started and tottered, as if overcome by an unhoped-for happiness.

“Yes, Raoul,” he cried, “Raoul, who would a thousand times rather die than cause his mother a moment’s pain; Raoul, who would shed his life’s blood to spare her one tear.”

She made no attempt to struggle against nature’s yearnings; her longing to clasp to her heart this long-pined-for first-born must be gratified at all costs.

She opened her arms, and Raoul sprang forward with a cry of joy:

“Mother! my blessed mother! Thanks be to God for this first kiss!”

Alas! this was the sad truth. The deserted child had never been blest by a mother’s kiss. This dear son whom she had never seen before, had been taken from her, despite her prayers and tears, without a mother’s blessing, a mother’s embrace. After twenty years waiting, should it be denied him now?

But joy so great, following upon so many contending emotions, was more than the excited mother could bear; she sank back in her chair almost fainting, and with distended eyes gazed in a bewildered, eager way upon her long-lost son, who was now kneeling at her feet.

With tenderness she stroked the soft chestnut curls, and drank in the tenderness of his soft dark eyes, and expressive mouth, as he murmured words of filial affection in her craving ear.

“Oh, mother!” he said, “words cannot describe my feelings of pain and anguish upon hearing that my uncle had dared to threaten you. He threaten you! He repents already of his cruelty; he did not know you as I do. Yes, my mother, I have known you for a long, long time. Often have my father and I hovered around your happy home to catch a glimpse of you through the window. When you passed by in your carriage, he would say to me, ‘There is your mother, Raoul!’ To look upon you was our greatest joy. When we knew you were going to a ball, we would wait near the door to see you enter, in your satin and diamonds. How often have I followed your fast horses to see you descend from the carriage and enter wealthy doors, which I could never hope to penetrate! And how my noble father loved you always! When he told his brother to apply to you in my behalf, he was unconscious of what he said; his mind was wandering.”

Tears, the sweetest tears she had ever shed, coursed down Mme. Fauvel’s cheeks, as she listened to the musical tones of Raoul’s voice.

This voice was so like Gaston’s, that she seemed once more to be listening to the lover of her almost forgotten youth.

She was living over again those stolen meetings, those long hours of bliss, when Gaston was at her side, as they sat and watched the river rippling beneath the trees.

It seemed only yesterday that Gaston had pressed her to his faithful heart; she saw him still saying gently:

“In three years, Valentine! Wait for me!”

Andre, her two sons, Madeleine, all were forgotten in this new-found affection.

Raoul continued in tender tones:

“Only yesterday I discovered that my uncle had been to demand for me a few crumbs of your wealth. Why did he take such a step? I am poor, it is true, very poor; but I am too familiar with poverty to bemoan it. I have a clear brain and willing hands: that is fortune enough for a young man. You are very rich. What is that to me? Keep all your fortune, my beloved mother; but do not repel my affection; let me love you. Promise me that this first kiss shall not be the last. No one will ever know of my new-found happiness; not by word or deed will I do aught to let the world suspect that I possess this great joy.”

And Mme. Fauvel had dreaded this son! Ah, how bitterly did she now reproach herself for not having flown to meet him the instant she heard that he was living!

She questioned him regarding the past; she wished to know how he had lived, what he had been doing.

He replied that he had nothing to conceal; his existence had been that of every poor boy, who had nothing to look forward to but a life of labor and privation.

The farmer’s wife who had brought him up was a kind-hearted woman, and had always treated him with affection. She had even given him an education superior to his condition in life, because, as she always said, he would make himself a great name, and attain to wealth, if he were taught.

When about sixteen years of age, she procured him a situation in a banking-house; and he was getting a salary, which, though small, was enough to support him and supply a few luxuries for his