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

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CHAPTER XXIV.

IN a darkened room, with all the light and beauty of the summer time shut out from her aching sight, Adrienne lay day after day. She was too conscious of her misery to lose its pain, too hopeless and weary to rouse herself or make even an effort to forget.

Mdlle. de Valtour grew seriously alarmed as time passed on and no improvement in her condition took place. She seemed to have lost all interest, to be nothing but a passive agent in the hands of those around her.

Life had been so sweet and bright a thing to her just for that short period of her mental blindness; now it seemed bitter as wormwood and empty as a broken vessel. Of faith, and love, and all pure and holy things that had filled her heart to overflowing once, she had no thought nor any belief. It seemed to her that life held but one mercy, and that was--death.

Many a human soul thinks the same as it shrinks at the first lesson of pain; the first great shock to all its preconceived ideas of happiness!

Sooner or later in every human life that cry is raised. Well, indeed, is it for many a one that it is not answered as they in their madness desire.

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Céline de Valtour was in despair. The Marquise stayed on for a few days, but, finding that she could do no good, and afraid that her own restlessness and her own unflagging spirits were wearisome to both Adrienne and her sister-in-law, she took herself off to Paris again. That much-dreaded scandal must be stopped, at any cost, and she longed to hear what the world was saying of the rupture in the De Valtour household.

Céline, deeply as she felt for Adrienne, yet thought she had acted with undue precipitancy. Men were all alike--everyone knew that. It was so little use to make any outcry about their peccadilloes. The wife was always the injured party, whether she was in the right or not. Yet at times she felt afraid as she looked at Adrienne, as she saw the change in the sweet face, the sleepless haunted look of the beautiful eyes. If she would only weep, or moan, or complain like other women, it would have been more natural--she would have understood it. But she did none of these things, only lay there patient, mute, with the shadow of suffering always about her, and before her in the future, the greatest trial of a woman's life. No wonder Céline trembled for her safety, and grew despairing as day after day passed on and there was neither improvement nor change in her condition.

From Armand de Valtour there came no word or sign. Madame de Savigny wrote daily from Paris.

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"It was all right there," she assured Mdlle. de Valtour. "No one thought anything except that sudden illness had been the cause of Adrienne's disappearance, and Armand was supposed to have gone with her to Valtours. It is the object of my life to keep this sad occurrence a secret," she wrote. "I hope I may succeed, because I really am convinced that their reconciliation is only a question of time. Adrienne loved her husband devotedly once--he also loved her very dearly. It is true they drifted somewhat apart, but I think that is because neither of them made allowances for the other. Adrienne in particular was far too exigéante. Modern society has spoilt men. They won't stand interference or restraint. All wives ought to know that, only our dear child is so different to most women. I always told her she would have to buy her experience very dearly. I wish she had some of my philosophy."

Mdlle. de Valtour smiled a little mournfully as she read those words. Truly the philosophy of the little Marquise was unique in its way, but to think of her stately, pure-souled Adrienne adopting it was rather amusing.

"She wants rousing--interesting," said the doctor one day, after paying an unusually long visit to the château. "I think she would be better away from here for a time. Can you not take her somewhere?"

"She does not wish to go," said Céline de Valtour despairingly.

"Wish! Oh, of course not--but you must not | | 261 listen to a sick person's vagaries! Tell her of the future--tell her that her child's life is at stake. That will rouse her if anything will. If she stays on here, and makes no better progress than she seems inclined to do since I have attended her, she will never have strength for her trial. That I tell you."

Céline de Valtour went to Adrienne and threw herself beside her couch, and begged her to rouse herself to some interest in life once more.

"It has been a sad trial to you, of course," she said, as those mournful eyes looked steadily at her. "But one should not grieve always. It is wrong to God, who sends these trials. You are so young. Life may still hold some joy or sweetness for you. And Armand may repent. He may see his folly and acknowledge it. Surely you are not always going to be unforgiving."

Adrienne shuddered. "My love seems killed," she said. "I prayed heaven once that I might never know him otherwise than I had fancied him so long. I would believe no one--nothing--only the evidence of my own senses. Oh! what had I ever done to be used so cruelly?--to be cast aside for a toy that any other man's money could have purchased as easily as his? No, Céline, I cannot forget. It is as if one had broken a flower from its stem and thrown it into the dust and darkness of a pit, there to languish and die. That is how Armand has treated me."

"But there is some one besides Armand to think of now," said Mdlle. de Valtour gravely. "It is not | | 262 right to yourself--to the gift that God will send you, to cast aside all care for your health--all interest in life. The sweetest hope of a woman's life is yours Think how your child's love will comfort you for its father's errors--how that link between your heart and his may once more rivet the chain of your love, and keep it secure for evermore!"

But Adrienne only turned wearily away from all such pleading. Her child! what comfort was in that thought? It would only in some way necessitate her husband's return. It might be a son--his heir--his first-born. It was not probable that Armand would consent to leave him with his mother as sole guardian. There was no joy for her even in that thought. Love had been robbed of all its sweetness; motherhood of all its bliss. Céline de Valtour's words only made her heart grow more sick and desolate. She felt cold to all human sympathy--thankless with the cruelty of youth that has tasted sorrow for the first time, and thinks life is all desolate henceforth.

A great grief looks often like ingratitude. Its magnitude dwarfs all other interests and duties into insignificance.

It was so with Adrienne now. She lay there while the long bright summer days rolled on, while the scent of flowers and sound of singing birds made gay the gardens of the old château. The warm, dreamy hours would flow on, bringing nothing of any hope or peace to her, and she would turn her eyes away from sunlight, and shudder at the beauty of the | | 263 rosy clouds, and long almost that the earth might become dark and desolate as her own life.

In after days, she wondered she did not die then; but youth is stronger than grief, and slowly and steadily she seemed to gain her hold on life again, and even her listlessness and apathy forsook her. With the stronger pulse of health came also the return of better feelings. She thought of Céline's unwavering kindness and devoted care, and saw, too, how anxious her eyes looked whenever they rested on her. It nerved her to a greater effort. Someone at least loved her--would be faithful to her. She could not but feel grateful even though all human love seemed to her of so little profit or value.

When she was able once more to leave her room, her sister-in-law again resumed her persuasions to induce her to leave Valtours and go away somewhere for change of air and scene. Adrienne listened more patiently now. She had no right to be reckless of her health; that she knew, and the long hot summer had weakened her greatly.

"Let us go to the sea," she said; and Mdlle. de Valtour answered delightedly that they would. She made all necessary preparations. Adrienne only stipulated that they should go to the quietest place possible, where there would be no chance of meeting any of her gay Parisian acquaintances, and this Mdlle. de Valtour readily promised.

It looked to her a more hopeful sign that Adrienne should wish to have some change at last, but a great | | 264 fear and a great dread were ever in her heart as she looked at the changed and saddened face, the weary, listless figure. It seemed as if the very springs of the girl's life had been sapped by the greatness of her sorrow, and in her eyes was a sleepless, haunted look, as if the nights held for her no rest or peace, only the ghosts of dead memories--of a lost love.

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