第67章 DUEL BETWEEN WOMEN(4)

"So much the better," replied Camille. "I do love him--far too much for my own peace of mind. He may, perhaps, have had a passing fancy for you; for you are, you know, enchantingly fair, while I am as black as a crow; you are slim and willowy, while I have a portly dignity; in short, you are /young/!--that's the final word, and you have not spared it to me. You have abused your advantages as a woman against me. I have done my best to prevent what has now happened. However little of a woman you may think me, I am woman enough, my dear, not to allow a rival to triumph over me unless I choose to help her." (This remark, made in apparently the most innocent manner, cut the marquise to the heart). "You take me for a very silly person if you believe all that Calyste tries to make you think of me. I am neither so great nor so small; I am a woman, and very much of a woman. Come, put off your grand airs, and give me your hand!" continued Camille, taking Madame de Rochefide's hand. "You do not love Calyste, you say; that is true, is it not? Don't be angry, therefore; be hard, and cold, and stern to him to-morrow; he will end by submitting to his fate, especially after certain little reproaches which I mean to make to him. Still, Calyste is a Breton, and very persistent; if he should continue to pay court to you, tell me frankly, and I will lend you my little country house near Paris, where you will find all the comforts of life, and where Conti can come out and see you. You said just now that Calyste calumniated me. Good heavens! what of that? The purest love lies twenty times a day; its deceptions only prove its strength."Camille's face wore an air of such superb disdain that the marquise grew fearful and anxious. She knew not how to answer. Camille dealt her a last blow.

"I am more confiding and less bitter than you," she said. "I don't suspect you of attempting to cover by a quarrel a secret injury, which would compromise my very life. You know me; I shall never survive the loss of Calyste, but I must lose him sooner or later. Still, Calyste loves me now; of that I am sure.""Here is what he answered to a letter of mine, urging him to be true to you," said Beatrix, holding out Calyste's last letter.

Camille took it and read it; but as she read it, her eyes filled with tears; and presently she wept as women weep in their bitterest sorrows.

"My God!" she said, "how he loves her! I shall die without being understood--or loved," she added.

She sat for a few moments with her head leaning against the shoulder of her companion; her grief was genuine; she felt to the very core of her being the same terrible blow which the Baronne du Guenic had received in reading that letter.

"Do you love him?" she said, straightening herself up, and looking fixedly at Beatrix. "Have you that infinite worship for him which triumphs over all pains, survives contempt, betrayal, the certainty that he will never love you? Do you love him for himself, and for the very joy of loving him?""Dear friend," said the marquise, tenderly, "be happy, be at peace; Iwill leave this place to-morrow."

"No, do not go; he loves you, I see that. Well, I love him so much that I could not endure to see him wretched and unhappy. Still, I had formed plans for him, projects; but if he loves you, all is over.""And I love him, Camille," said the marquise, with a sort of /naivete/, and coloring.

"You love him, and yet you cast him off!" cried Camille. "Ah! that is not loving; you do not love him.""I don't know what fresh virtue he has roused in me, but certainly he has made me ashamed of my own self," said Beatrix. "I would I were virtuous and free, that I might give him something better than the dregs of a heart and the weight of my chains. I do not want a hampered destiny either for him or for myself.""Cold brain!" exclaimed Camille, with a sort of horror. "To love and calculate!""Call it what you like," said Beatrix, "but I will not spoil his life, or hang like a millstone round his neck, to become an eternal regret to him. If I cannot be his wife, I shall not be his mistress. He has--you will laugh at me? No? Well, then, he has purified me."Camille cast on Beatrix the most sullen, savage look that female jealousy ever cast upon a rival.

"On that ground, I believed I stood alone," she said. "Beatrix, those words of yours must separate us forever; we are no longer friends.

Here begins a terrible conflict between us. I tell you now; you will either succumb or fly."So saying, Camille bounded into her room, after showing her face, which was that of a maddened lioness, to the astonished Beatrix. Then she raised the portiere and looked in again.

"Do you intend to go to Croisic to-morrow," she asked.

"Certainly," replied the marquise, proudly. "I shall not fly, and Ishall not succumb."

"I play above board," replied Camille; "I shall write to Conti."Beatrix became as white as the gauze of her scarf.

"We are staking our lives on this game," she replied, not knowing what to say or do.

The violent passions roused by this scene between the two women calmed down during the night. Both argued with their own minds and returned to those treacherously temporizing courses which are so attractive to the majority of women,--an excellent system between men and women, but fatally unsafe among women alone. In the midst of this tumult of their souls Mademoiselle des Touches had listened to that great Voice whose counsels subdue the strongest will; Beatrix heard only the promptings of worldly wisdom; she feared the contempt of society.

Thus Felicite's last deception succeeded; Calyste's blunder was repaired, but a fresh indiscretion might be fatal to him.