to come. I shall die more at peace.”
Monsieur de Rionne, much affected by this gentle remark, wept afresh.
Blanche continued without noticing:
“Do not despair. I no longer suffer. I am at peace. I am happy. I have only one wish, and that is to wipe out all dissension that may have existed between us. I do not wish to carry away with me ill thoughts of you, and I do not desire you to have the least remorse when I am gone. If I have caused you offence, forgive me, as I have forgiven you.”
These words acted very sensibly on Monsieur de Rionne’s nerves, and his heart felt as if it would for the moment break. His impatience of grief was over for the time. “I have nothing to forgive you,” he stammered. “You are good. I regret that the difference of our characters should have separated us from each other. You see I weep. I am in despair.”
Blanche looked at him as he struggled to address her. He seemed to her a pitiful object This man could not find one word of condemnation for himself. He besought her in no way to grant him forgiveness. He was simply intoxicated with fear.
She realised that if God had by a miracle spared her, the very next day he would have resumed his old way of life, and deserted her afresh. But she was dying, and her death taught him no lesson; it was merely a lamentable accident at which he was obliged to assist.
She began smiling again, looking him full in the face, subduing him by her will.
“Bid me goodbye,” she said. “I have no ill-will towards you; I swear it. Later this assurance will perhaps be a consolation to you. I trust it will.”
And as she ceased speaking — “What are your last wishes?” asked Monsieur de Rionne.
“I have none,” she answered, quietly. “I have nothing to ask of you, nothing to give you advice about. Act according to the dictates of your own heart.”
She would not speak to him of their daughter. She thought it might be acting ill to extract vows from him which he would not keep. So then, in a still softer voice she repeated, “Goodbye — do not distress yourself,” and with a motion of her hand waved him slowly away, closing her eyes in order not to see him any more. He retired to the foot of the bed, powerless to withdraw his looks from such a terrible sight.
The servants had gone to fetch the doctor, and he had just arrived, knowing, however, that his attendance would be of no avail. An old priest, who had ministered to the dying woman in the morning, had also arrived. He knelt down, and was reciting in quiet tones the prayers for the dying.
Blanche grew weaker and weaker. The end was near. But she raised herself up abruptly and asked for her daughter. As Monsieur de Rionne did not stir, Daniel, who had remained silent, keeping back his tears, ran and fetched Jeanne, who was in the midst of her games in the next room. The poor mother, with distended eyes, as if she were out of her mind, gazed at her daughter, and endeavoured to hold out her arms to her. But she failed to raise them, and Daniel was obliged to hold Jeanne up, with her feet resting on the wooden sides of the bed.
The child did not cry. She looked at her mother’s disordered face with a sort of innocent astonishment. Then, as that face grew calmer — it seemed to fill with heavenly joy, and shone with tenderness — the little girl recognised her sweet smile, and she also began to smile, holding out her little hands.
So Blanche died, a smile on her own face and on that of her child. She fixed her last look on Daniel — a look at once of supplication and command. He was supporting Jeanne; his mission had begun.
Monsieur de Rionne knelt down by the body of his wife, remembering that it was the custom on such occasions so to act. The doctor had just left, and one of the watchers hastened to light two candles. The priest, who had risen to offer the crucifix to Blanche’s lips, resumed his prayers.
Daniel kept Jeanne in his arms, and as the atmosphere of the room became stifling, he took up his position by the window of a neighbouring room. There he wept in silence, whilst the child amused herself by watching the rapidly passing lamps of the carriages on the boulevard.
The air outside was still. In the distance could be heard the clarions of the Ecole Militaire sounding the tatoo.
CHAPTER III
TOWARDS morning Daniel again went up to his room. This big fellow of eighteen had the heart of a child. The peculiar circumstances under which he found himself had deeply stirred his affectionate disposition. He made himself laughable by his youth and devotion.
It will, no doubt, have been recognised by this time that he was the orphan mentioned in the Semaphore. Blanche de Rionne, the young unknown protector, had had him educated, and when he grew older, put him to the Lycée at Marseilles. She made it a rule seldom to see him, wishing that he should barely know her, and that he should only, so to speak, have Providence to thank for his position.
When she married she did not even speak to Monsieur de Rionne of her adopted child. This was one of her many secret good works.
At the Lycée Daniel’s awkward manners, joined to the timidity of an orphan, drew upon him the ridicule of his companions, and he was deeply wounded at being treated as a pariah. Then his gait became yet more ungainly. He was left alone, and thus he kept all his early innocence. He escaped all those first lessons in vice that youths of fifteen and upwards, in France particularly, impart to each other.
He was ignorant of everything, and had no knowledge of life whatever. In the loneliness created by his awkwardness an ardent love of study had seized him.
His quick and emotional intellect, which should have made him a poet, drove him, by a seeming contradiction, to the study of science, for in his nature there was a deep desire for truth.
He discovered a profound joy in seeking step by step the solution of some intricate problem in mathematics, and thus in a way he made poetry. He withdrew into himself and Nature, and circumstances led him to a life of meditation.
He was at home in science, for in its pursuit he had nothing to do with men; he had nothing to do with schoolmates, who laughed at his yellow hair. All human society terrified him; he loved better to live higher up in the regions of pure speculation, of absolute truth. There he could theorise poetically at his ease; he was no longer encumbered by his awkwardness of person. These scholars — these aged children of timid manners whom one meets in the streets — are sometimes great poets.
Railed at by his companions, his nerves always highly strung, Daniel hid away his affections in the recesses of his heart. All he had to love in this world was that unknown mother who watched over him, and he had loved her with all the intensity of passion which is centred on one object alone. Side by side with the poet-mathematician there was the passionate adorer, with an affection which grew in warmth the more it was repulsed. Daniel’s adoration of the good fairy had grown with years and made his existence sweet for him. The obscurity in which she kept herself made her all the more saintly to him. He knew her face thoroughly from having met her two or three times, and he spoke of her as he would of something wonderful and sacred.
One day, when he was almost eighteen, as he was leaving the Lycée he was told that Madame de Rionne had sent for him to be with her in Paris. He nearly went out of his mind with joy, for now he would be able to see her freely, to thank and love her, at his ease.
The
