Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame | Page 5

half frowned. Absurdly enough, he
resented in secret this amiability on the part of M. Villefort toward his
own wife. He was quite prepared to be severe upon the reading, but was
surprised to be compelled to acknowledge that M. Villefort read
wondrously well, and positively with hints of delicate perception. His
voice was full and yet subtly flexible. Edmondstone tried to protest
against this also, but uselessly. Finally he was soothed, and from being
fretfully wide-awake suddenly passed into sleep as Bertha had
commanded. How long his slumber lasted he could not have told. All at
once he found himself aroused and wide-awake as ever. His headache
had departed; his every sense seemed to have gained keenness. M.
Villefort's voice had ceased, and for a few seconds utter, dead silence
reigned. Then he heard the fire crackling, and shortly afterward a
strange, startling sound--a sharp, gasping sob!
The pang which seized upon him was strong indeed. In one moment he
seemed to learn a thousand things by intuition--to comprehend her,
himself, the past. Before he moved he knew that Villefort was not in
the room, and he had caught a side glimpse of the pretty blue of
Bertha's dress.
But he had not imagined the face he saw when he turned his head to
look at her. She sat in a rigid attitude, leaning against the high
cushioned back of her chair, her hands clasped above her head. She
stared at the fire with eyes wide and strained with the agony of tears
unshed, and amid the rush of all other emotions he was peculiarly
conscious of being touched by the minor one of his recognition of her
look of extreme youth--the look which had been wont to touch people
in the girl, Bertha Trent. He had meant to speak clearly, but his voice
was only a loud whisper when he sprang up, uttering her name.
"Bertha! Bertha! Bertha!" as he flung himself upon his knees at her
side.
Her answer was an actual cry, and yet it reached no higher pitch than
his own intense whisper.

"I thought you were asleep?"
Her hands fell and he caught them. His sad impassioned face bowed
itself upon her palms.
"I am awake, Bertha," he groaned. "I am awake--at last."
She regarded him with a piteous, pitying glance. She knew him with a
keener, sadder knowledge than he would ever comprehend; but she did
not under-estimate the depth of his misery at this one overwhelming
moment. He was awake indeed and saw what he had lost.
"If you could but have borne with me a little longer," he said. "If I had
only not been so shallow and so blind. If you could but have borne with
me a little longer!"
"If I could but have borne with myself a little longer," she answered. "If
I could but have borne a little longer with my poor, base pride! Because
I suffered myself, I have made another suffer too."
He knew she spoke of M. Villefort, and the thought jarred upon him.
"He does not suffer," he said. "He is not of the fibre to feel pain."
And he wondered why she shrank from him a little and answered with a
sad bitterness:--
"Are you sure? You did not know that!"--
"Forgive me," he said brokenly, the face he lifted, haggard with his
unhappiness. "Forgive me, for I have lost so much."
She wasted few words and no tears. The force and suddenness of his
emotion and her own had overborne her into this strange unmeant
confession; but her mood was unlike his,--it was merely receptive. She
listened to his unavailing regrets, but told him little of her own past.
"It does not matter," she said drearily. "It is all over. Let it rest. The
pain of to-day and tomorrow is enough for us. We have borne yesterday;

why should we want it back again?"
And when they parted she said only one thing of the future:--
"There is no need that we should talk. There is nothing for us beyond
this point. We can only go back. We must try to forget--and be satisfied
with our absinthe."
Instead of returning to his hotel, Edmondstone found his way to the
Champs Élysées, and finally to the Bois. He was too wretched to have
any purpose in his wanderings. He walked rapidly, looking straight
before him and seeing nobody. He scarcely understood his own fierce
emotions Hitherto his fancies had brought him a vague rapture; now he
experienced absolute anguish, Every past experience had become trivial.
What happiness is so keen as one's briefest pain? As he walked he lived
again the days he had thrown away. He remembered a thousand old, yet
new, phases of Bertha's girlhood. He thought of times when she had