Beck Center English Dept. University Libraries Emory University
Emory Women Writers Resource Project Collections:
Women's Genre Fiction Project

Adrienne, an electronic edition

by Rita

date: 1898
source publisher: Hutchinson & Co.
collection: Genre Fiction

Table of Contents

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| | 97

CHAPTER VIII.

THE news of André Brizeaux's flight spread rapidly enough. It reached the château, and startled Mdlle. de Valtour and Adrienne, and brought a cynical smile to the lips of Armand de Valtour.

"He is a young fool!" he said. "But he has done the best thing he could. His life was wasted here."

"But you will befriend him, Armand?" urged his wife. "You have interest--wealth. You will aid him, will you not? But for us he might have been content here still."

"I doubt that," said the Count. "The fever of discontent was upon him long ere he saw us. I am not sure, ma chère, that your flowers did not aggravate it into delirium. However, I will do what I can for him. In Paris he will soon find his own level."

"And poor little Maï," murmured Cèline de Valtour. "What a grief for her! She loved him so dearly. I must go and see her."

"I am going up to Brizeaux's farm myself," answered her brother carelessly. "I will take any message from you that you wish to send; or, perhaps, you would like the child to come here?"

"I should, indeed," answered his sister. "Tell her to come this evening."

| | 98

"May I not accompany you, Armand?" asked Adrienne timidly. "I should like the walk so much."

A slight frown darkened Armand de Valtour's brow. He answered her impatiently--

"No, chérie. The walk is long; it is too far in this heat; you will be fatigued."

Adrienne said no more. She was already learning that her husband hated contradiction, that his will must not be gainsaid. It did not even occur to her to think that if ever he went to Brizeaux's now, he always went alone; always found some excuse to keep her at home with his sister.

Her mind and nature were too lofty for suspicion, and where she loved she could not doubt. She would have liked to go to the farm, and cheer the lonely old man, and beg him not to think too hardly of his son; but she consoled herself with the reflection that Armand would perhaps do it better--that probably he had some generous scheme on hand, of which he wished no one to know; so she and Céline de Valtour took their work and wandered out into the shady old garden of the château, and spent the long drowsy afternoon there together, as they often did now. Mdlle. de Valtour was growing to love her young sister-in-law very dearly; all the more dearly, perhaps, in that she read the truth, and purity, and fearlessness of her nature so well, and dreaded with a strange unaccountable dread that future which stretched before her.

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"He is not half worthy of her--not half!" she thought again and again. "But yet, how she loves him!"

And she was right. Unsuited as were their natures--dissimilar as were their feelings on most points, Adrienne loved her husband even more passionately and devotedly than she had loved him as her lover. Perhaps, after all, forcible contrasts are a bond stronger than any similarity or sympathy. It would almost seem so, seeing how women love.

While Adrienne sat there under the shade of the boughs, her fingers busy at her work, and her lips smiling at her own happy thoughts, her husband was riding swiftly along in the direction of the farm, a light of triumph in his eyes, and a sense of exultation in his heart.

Presently he drew rein and stopped.

In the garden by which he passed was a little laborious figure, with her petticoats twisted high, and her back bent, in the labour of hoeing the potato beds among which she worked. Armand de Valtour looked over the hedge with ease, and, holding in his horse, he called out to the girl. She started, and came forward at once, the hoe still in her hand, her cheeks flushed with exercise, fragments of the damp cool earth she had been digging still about her feet.

"How busy you are. Come here; I want to speak to you," said Armand de Valtour.

She approached, and curtsied silently.

"You don't look well, Are you fretting?" asked | | 100 the Count, gazing with his bold handsome eyes into the little flower-like face, troubled and perplexed, and with traces of tears about the downcast lids.

She coloured hotly.

"You have heard, then?" she said.

"Of course I have heard," he said mockingly. "André has run away--taken the reins into his own hands for once. It is the best thing he could have done."

"He has broken his father's heart," said the girl sadly. "Is that best?"

"Oh, stuff!" laughed the Count carelessly. "Hearts don't break so easily, child. What about yours? Is it broken, too?"

The girl looked at him, a little bewildered; that idle, cynical tone always puzzled and displeased her.

"I am sorry," she said, and there were no tears now in the downcast eyes. "But he will come back; he will not forget!"

"Do you think so?" smiled Armand de Valtour. "I hope your faith will be rewarded, my dear. You don't know Paris, and you don't know much of men, so it is easy to believe your idyllic lover will return as he left. For my own part, I doubt it."

Maï was silent.

She stirred the ground at her feet with the hoe in her restless brown hands; her heart was aching--a sense of sorrow and injustice was heavy upon her young trustful heart. She wished the Count would go away. Why did he come so often now, and why, | | 101 when he talked, did that uneasiness and distrust always rise in her mind, and that perplexity and discontent weigh down her spirit? She could not answer these questions, so she stood there without speaking, while those bold dark eyes were resting mockingly on her face, where the colour came and went every moment beneath the clear brown skin.

"How pretty she is!" thought Armand de Valtour; "how very pretty! In Paris, now--"

He did not finish the thought, for suddenly she looked up and met his eyes, and something in the frankness and purity of that gaze shamed and rebuked him all in one.

"I am busy, monsieur," she said, quietly. "I have these beds to dig for Gran'mère. Do you want me any longer?"

"I have a message for you from Mdlle. de Valtour. She wants you to come to the château to-night," he answered, a little confused by the clear gaze, the calm question.

"I will come," she answered, and half turned away.

He stretched out a detaining hand.

"Stay," said he. "I wanted to ask you about yourself,--about Gran'mère. Is there anything you want--anything I can do for you?"

"You are very kind, monsieur," said the girl gratefully. "But we have all we want--we are content."

"Content!" exclaimed Armand de Valtour in- | | 102 voluntarily. He looked at her coarse dress, her bare feet, her humble home. Could such things satisfy anyone, and least of all a woman, young, and with a rich, ripe beauty like a flower that the sun has kissed into bloom and fragrance? Content! He almost laughed.

"Would you not like to be rich--to have fine clothes--to live in a beautiful house?" he asked involuntarily.

The girl turned, and her clear eyes looked up to him with frank contempt.

"Such things are not for me!" she said. "I was not born to them."

Once again the smile she hated curled his lips.

"They are for all women who choose them," he said, and then was silent, and watched her as the words fell on her ears and sank into her heart, to move her to wonder or envy or discontent--according to her nature.

But they did none of these. The trouble in her face deepened--the curve of the young lips grew a shade more sorrowful; but the temptation never moved her by a hair's-breadth.

"Why do you say such things to me?" she said calmly. "I do not understand quite--but I am happy enough. Leave me here; the future you paint is for women different to myself. I want nothing."

"Nothing! Not even André's love and respect; | | 103 not even the knowledge that no other can outrival you in his eyes."

Her lips trembled. "He loved me for what I was," she said. "If his love be worth the name, it will see no change in me when he comes back again. For would he wish me other than I am?"

Armand de Valtour laughed. "Nonsense!" he said. "In the great world whither he has gone he will see women beautiful, talented, rich. When he comes back here--if, indeed, he ever does--do you think he will not contrast you with them? And to whose advantage? Certainly not yours. If you were wise you would rise as he rises--keep up to his own level, for he may be great and famous one day. Then, when that day comes, you will feel no shame to be chosen by him from out the world of women who will seek his love."

The girl's face grew very pale. "What you say is impossible," she said. "I am but as I am; I cannot change. I desire no more. I want no other life. If André is ashamed of me hereafter--if his love fail, I cannot help it. Do not speak of these things to me again. They trouble me and can do no good."

Armand de Valtour felt rebuked--ashamed. This was no Gretchen to be lightly tempted--no woman to be soon beguiled. He argued no more--it would have been no use.

"I suppose you know best," he said coldly; "only if in time to come you lose your lover, the fault will | | 104 be your own. Do not expect him to return here as he left."

He gave his horse the rein and rode slowly off, while she went back to her labours again. But her heart felt heavy, and her eyes were aching with the scorching of the hot, slow tears that gathered beneath their lids.

"He will be true; I am sure he will be true," she thought, going to and fro among the upturned earth. "And if he loves me at all it is for what I am. Why should I seek to change?"

But all the same the words she had heard troubled her greatly, and her heart ached, and no song left her lips or lightened her labours as she worked on till the sunset hour was long past, and Gran'mère's voice called to her from the cottage door in tender rebuke for her prolonged industry.

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