Calyste welcomed that word with a kiss, and felt the marquise tremble under it convulsively, with passionate joy. At that instant Gasselin's hob-nailed shoes sounded on the rock above them. The old Breton was followed by Camille, and together they sought for some means of saving the lovers.
"There's but one way, mademoiselle," said Gasselin. "I must slide down there, and they can climb on my shoulders, and you must pull them up.""And you?" said Camille.
The man seemed surprised that he should be considered in presence of the danger to his young master.
"You must go to Croisic and fetch a ladder," said Camille.
Beatrix asked in a feeble voice to be laid down, and Calyste placed her on the narrow space between the bush and its background of rock.
"I saw you, Calyste," said Camille from above. "Whether Beatrix lives or dies, remember that this must be an accident.""She will hate me," he said, with moistened eyes.
"She will adore you," replied Camille. "But this puts an end to our excursion. We must get her back to Les Touches. Had she been killed, Calyste, what would have become of you?""I should have followed her."
"And your mother?" Then, after a pause, she added, feebly, "and me?"Calyste was deadly pale; he stood with his back against the granite motionless and silent. Gasselin soon returned from one of the little farms scattered through the neighborhood, bearing a ladder which he had borrowed. By this time Beatrix had recovered a little strength.
The ladder being placed, she was able, by the help of Gasselin, who lowered Camille's red shawl till he could grasp it, to reach the round top of the rock, where the Breton took her in his arms and carried her to the shore as though she were an infant.
"I should not have said no to death--but suffering!" she murmured to Felicite, in a feeble voice.
The weakness, in fact the complete prostration, of the marquise obliged Camille to have her taken to the farmhouse from which the ladder had been borrowed. Calyste, Gasselin, and Camille took off what clothes they could spare and laid them on the ladder, making a sort of litter on which they carried Beatrix. The farmers gave her a bed.
Gasselin then went to the place where the carriage was awaiting them, and, taking one of the horses, rode to Croisic to obtain a doctor, telling the boatman to row to the landing-place that was nearest to the farmhouse.
Calyste, sitting on a stool, answered only by motions of the head, and rare monosyllables when spoken to; Camille's uneasiness, roused for Beatrix, was still further excited by Calyste's unnatural condition.
When the physician arrived, and Beatrix was bled, she felt better, began to talk, and consented to embark; so that by five o'clock they reached the jetty at Guerande, whence she was carried to Les Touches.
The news of the accident had already spread through that lonely and almost uninhabited region with incredible rapidity.
Calyste passed the night at Les Touches, sitting at the foot of Beatrix's bed, in company with Camille. The doctor from Guerande had assured them that on the following day a little stiffness would be all that remained of the accident. Across the despair of Calyste's heart there came a gleam of joy. He was there, at her feet; he could watch her sleeping or waking; he might study her pallid face and all its expressions. Camille smiled bitterly as her keen mind recognized in Calyste the symptoms of a passion such as man can feel but once,--a passion which dyes his soul and his faculties by mingling with the fountain of his life at a period when neither thoughts nor cares distract or oppose the inward working of this emotion. She saw that Calyste would never, could never see the real woman that was in Beatrix.
And with what guileless innocence the young Breton allowed his thoughts to be read! When he saw the beautiful green eyes of the sick woman turned to him, expressing a mixture of love, confusion, and even mischief, he colored, and turned away his head.
"Did I not say truly, Calyste, that you men promised happiness, and ended by flinging us down a precipice?"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, Ihave 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! Take your composing-draught, my dear friend, and go to sleep."
That night, spent by Calyste beside Mademoiselle des Touches, who read a book of theological mysticism while Calyste read "Indiana,"--the first work of Camille's celebrated rival, in which is the captivating image of a young man loving with idolatry and devotion, with mysterious tranquillity and for all his life, a woman placed in the same false position as Beatrix (a book which had a fatal influence upon him),--that night left ineffaceable marks upon the heart of the poor young fellow, whom Felicite soothed with the assurance that unless a woman were a monster she must be flattered in all her vanities by being the object of such a crime.
"You would never have flung /me/ into the water," said Camille, brushing away a tear.
Toward morning, Calyste, worn-out with emotion, fell asleep in his arm-chair; and the marquise in her turn, watched his charming face, paled by his feelings and his vigil of love. She heard him murmur her name as he slept.
"He loves while sleeping," she said to Camille.
"We must send him home," said Felicite, waking him.
No one was anxious at the hotel du Guenic, for Mademoiselle des Touches had written a line to the baroness telling her of the accident.
