Beatrix

“ Beatrix, in order to write to you, I have silenced my youth, I have laid aside myself, I have aged my thoughts,—or, rather, it is you who have aged them, by this week of dreadful sufferings caused, innocently indeed, by you. Do not think me one of those common lovers at whom I have heard you laugh so justly. What merit is there in loving a young and beautiful and wise and noble woman. Alas! I have no merit! What can I be to you? A child, attracted by effulgence of beauty and by moral grandeur, as the insects are attracted to the light. ”

“ But if you persist in this cold silence, this deadly disdain, you will make me think you fear me. Ah, Beatrix, be with me what you are,—charming, witty, gay, and tender. Talk to me of Conti, as Camille has talked to me of Claude. I have no other spirit in my soul, no other genius but that of love; nothing is there that can make you fear me; I will be in your presence as if I loved you not. Can you reject so humble a prayer?—the prayer of a child who only asks that his Light shall lighten him, that his Sun may warm him. He whom you love can be with you at all times, but I, poor Calyste! ”

“ Few women could resist such constant deification. Beatrix felt herself sure of being obeyed and understood. She might have asked Calyste to risk his life for the slightest of her caprices, and he would never have reflected for a moment. This consciousness gave her a certain noble and imposing air. She saw love on the side of its grandeur; and her heart sought for some foothold on which she might remain forever the loftiest of women in the eyes of her young lover, over whom she now wished her power to be eternal. ”

“ Her air of innocence and candour impressed the misanthropic heart of Beatrix, and she smiled kindly. While leading her before the mirror to assist in arraying her for breakfast, the bosom of the unfortunate castaway could not repress a sigh, and a scanty tear trembled in either eye, as she writhed her withered fingers in the soft masses of Lilian's hair.
"I will shew thee my bairn what a braw busker I am," said Beatrix, "though 'tis long since these poor fingers have had aught to do with top-knots and fantanges." ”

“ I know my destiny, and the pride of a Breton can rise to the height of the woman who makes her pride a virtue.
Therefore, dear Beatrix, be kind, be consoling to me. When victims were selected, they crowned them with flowers; so do you to me; you owe me the flowers of pity, the music of my sacrifice. Am I not a proof of your grandeur? Will you not rise to the level of my disdained love,—disdained in spite of its sincerity, in spite of its immortal passion?
Ask Camille how I behaved to her after the day she told me, on her return to Les Touches, that she loved Claude Vignon. ”

“ The letter revealed to her the depths of the gulf into which his passion was hurling Calyste.
Calyste to Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.
What care I for the race of the du Guenics in these days, Beatrix? what is their name to me? My name is Beatrix; the happiness of Beatrix is my happiness; her life is my life, and all my fortune is in her heart. Our estates have been mortgaged these two hundred years, and so they may remain for two hundred more; our farmers have charge of them; no one can take them from us. To see you, to love you,—that is my property, my object, my religion! ”

“ When he heard this little jest, said in sweet, caressing tones which betrayed a change of heart in Beatrix, Calyste knelt down, took her moist hand which she yielded to him, and kissed it humbly.
“You have the right to reject my love forever,” he said, “and I, I have no right to say one word to you.”
“Ah!” cried Camille, seeing the expression on Beatrix’s face and comparing it with that obtained by her diplomacy, “love has a wit of its own, wiser than that of all the world! ”

“ But, Beatrix, I will tell you this: in case I am abandoned, my choice is made."
"What is it?" cried Beatrix, with an eagerness that made Camille shudder.
The two friends looked at each other with the keen attention of Venetian inquisitors; their souls clashed in that rapid glance, and struck fire like flints. The marquise lowered her eyes.
"After man, there is nought but God," said the celebrated woman. "God is the Unknown. I shall fling myself into that as into some vast abyss. Calyste has sworn to me that he admires you only as he would a picture; but alas! ”

“ Beatrix was charming as she stood there, her features softened by the shadow of a rice-straw hat, on which were tufts and knots of scarlet ribbon. She wore a muslin gown with a pattern of flowers, and was leaning with one well-gloved hand on a slender parasol. Nothing is finer to the eyes than a woman poised on a rock like a statue on its pedestal. Conti could see Calyste from the vessel as he approached Camille. ”

“ Beatrix looked at him. She had merely accepted him before. He was like the bronze figure of "The Runner" come to life, with his small head and broad, deep chest, hard muscular arms, clean, hipless lines, tremendous strength. The sight of him gave her a sudden, unexplainable sense of shyness. ”

“ I know, Beatrix, that you cannot love me without the loss of your self-esteem; therefore I ask for no return. Camille once said there was some hidden fatality in names, a propos of hers. That fatality I felt for myself on the jetty of Guerande, when I read on the shores of the ocean your name. Yes, you will pass through my life as Beatrice passed through that of Dante. My heart will be a pedestal for that white statue, cold, distant, jealous, and oppressive. It is forbidden to you to love me; I know that. You will suffer a thousand deaths, you will be betrayed, humiliated, unhappy ”

“ He was writing to Beatrix, for distrust of Camille had come into his mind. The air and manner of the marquise during their brief interview in the garden had singularly encouraged him.
No first love-letter ever was or ever will be, as may readily be supposed, a brilliant effort of the mind. In all young men not tainted by corruption such a letter is written with gushings from the heart, too overflowing, too multifarious not to be the essence, the elixir of many other letters begun, rejected, and rewritten. ”

“ That morning Camille’s brow had worn the halo of thoughts born of these researches during a night-time of painful struggle. Calyste was ever before her like a celestial image. The beautiful youth, to whom she had secretly devoted herself, had become to her a guardian angel. Was it not he who led her into those loftier regions, where suffering ceased beneath the weight of incommensurable infinity? and now a certain air of triumph about Beatrix disturbed her. No woman gains an advantage over another without allowing it to be felt, however much she may deny having taken it. ”

“ Well, Calyste is one of those dreams, those visions, realized. He has the regal power of a lion, tranquilly unsuspicious of its royalty. When he feels at his ease, he is witty; and I love his girlish timidity. My soul rests in his heart away from all corruptions, all ideas of knowledge, literature, the world, society, politics,—those useless accessories under which we stifle happiness. I am what I have never been,—a child! I am sure of him, but I like to play at jealousy; he likes it too. Besides, that is part of my secret.”
Beatrix walked on pensively, in silence. ”

“ The scene of reconciliation, in which Beatrix made Calyste swear and reswear hatred to the wife, who, she said, was playing comedy, took place in a perfect bower where she played off her graces amid ravishing flowers, and rare plants of the costliest luxury. The science of nothings, the trifles of the day, she carried to excess. Fallen into a mortifying position through Conti’s desertion, Beatrix was determined to have, at any rate, the fame which unprincipled conduct gives. The misfortune of the poor young wife, a rich and beautiful Grandlieu, should be her pedestal. ”

“ The ocean before her was an image of the infinite. No great spirit can face the infinite, admitting the immortality of the soul, without the conviction of a future of holiness. The thought filled her mind. How petty then seemed the part that she was playing! there was no real greatness in giving Beatrix to Calyste! So thinking, she felt the earthly woman die within her, and the true woman, the noble and angelic being, veiled until now by flesh, arose in her place. ”

“ Beatrix hardly understood what the words meant, but she knew that they were intended to hurt both her and Gilbert, and she saw by his face what he felt. Knowing as she did that the Queen was very strongly attracted by him, she would not have been human if she had not felt in her throat the pulse of triumph, as she stood beside the most beautiful woman in the world, pale, slight, sad-eyed, but preferred before the other's supreme beauty by the one man whose preference meant anything at all. ”

“ If you yourself chose this state of solitude and abnegation, Beatrix, I swear to you, you have my word, that it was because you did not yet know your own heart. The commitment that you made in your then ignorance of those feelings that are natural to all that breathes, is null and void before God as it is before men. You have carelessly betrayed your destiny as a wife, as a lover, and as a mother! ”

“ Franklin allowed Beatrix to avoid a talk with him until many of the guests had gone to bed. Between the moment when she had slipped her arm through his and made that urgent and almost childlike appeal which had carried him off his feet and left him without caution and sanity, and the one when he stalked across the pompous hall to her side and drew her into an alcove, he had done some peculiar thinking. He was a straight-going, honest fellow, who, like Beatrix, had gone through life having his own way. No living soul had ever before coerced him from the path that he had chosen. ”

“ Lynne—" began Beatrix, hurriedly.
"She has never been a sister to me," panted the dying woman, wildly; "and I have carefully concealed from her the secret of my life, because she was not fit to share it. But no matter now; the papers will tell you all. Now I am tired and must sleep. Kiss me, Beatrix; I am dying, and I am—your—"
She strove hard with a mighty struggle to speak another word, but the rigid lips refused to give it utterance. The word which was not spoken in life could never be spoken in death. Beatrix stooped and kissed her. ”

“ Cold, fragile, thin, hard women like Madame de Rochefide, women whose necks turn in a manner to give them a vague resemblance to the feline race, have souls of the same pale tint as their light eyes, green or gray; and to melt them, to fuse those blocks of stone it needs a thunderbolt. To Beatrix, Calyste's fury of love and his mad action came as the thunderbolt that nought resists, which changes all natures, even the most stubborn. She felt herself inwardly humbled; a true, pure love bathed her heart with its soft and limpid warmth. ”

“ We have no more right to require different characters to be alike in the expression of feelings than we have to expect the same fruits from different trees. Beatrix was at this moment undergoing an inward struggle; she hesitated between herself and Calyste,—between the world she still hoped to re-enter, and the young happiness offered to her; between a second and an unpardonable love, and social rehabilitation. ”

“ He pitied Beatrix for having fallen in love with a scamp who was only after her money. But as the days went by a change came over Beatrix that puzzled him.
Some of her shyness, her timidity, her sadness wore off. A look of contentment dawned on the fair face and in the dark eyes. Her cheeks gained color and roundness. She even laughed sometimes, a mellow laugh that was so sweet and glad it thrilled one's heart to hear it. Mrs. Le Roy was puzzled.
"She is certainly not pining for her lover," she said to her son. ”

“ The hermit folded his arms and leaned against a tree. Beatrix, with a sigh, settled down upon the mat of pine needles like a bluebird upon her nest. The hermit followed suit; drawing his feet rather awkwardly under his gunny-sacking.
"It must be nice to be a mountain," said he, with ponderous lightness, "and have angels in blue climb up you instead of flying over you."
"Mamma had neuralgia," said Beatrix, "and went to bed, or I couldn't have come. It's dreadfully hot at that horrid old inn. ”

“ Beatrix would certainly have been killed but for the chance which had thrown the mare across the narrow way, and he had risked his life to save another woman. It mattered not that the other was the Queen; that was not the reason why he had leapt upon the bridle. He had done it for a glance of her eyes, for the tone of her voice, as it were in an instant of temptation, when he had stepped out of the rank to face destruction for a dearer sake. ”

“ To her, he seemed pale indeed, after the brilliancy of the night before, and he caused not the faintest emotion to the hungry Beatrix. A great love is a credit opened to a power so voracious that bankruptcy is sure to come sooner or later.
In spite of the fatigue of this day (the day when a woman is bored by a lover) Beatrix trembled with fear at the thought of a possible meeting between La Palferine and Calyste, a man of courage without assertion. ”

“ Beatrix did not go back down to the choir without emotion. She went back to see her companions whose faith she had betrayed, and who had aged, immune to reproach, in the practice of an austere duty. She slid among her sisters lowering her head, and ready to humble herself at the first shout to announce her fault. ”