Two sisters and A confession

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. On the Platform of the Station 1

II. A Comic Opera Star and a Hero of a

Chapter One. On The Platform Of The Station

The express train which comes from Coire and stops at Ragatz at about six o’clock in the evening was twenty-five minutes late, a circumstance not at all regretted by two sisters who were walking back and forth on the platform of the little station. For it was the first time during the two weeks which Mme, de M6ris, the elder, had been spending with her sister, Mme. Li^baut (whose young daughter Charlotte was taking the treatment at the Springs) that they had conversed with any real intimacy. Perhaps it was now the sentiment which comes at parting that was softening their hearts, or it may be that they sensed the poetical country around them which seemed to diffuse itself and to hold them in a gentle but irresistible fascination.

This verdant and extensive valley of Ragatz, where the young Rhine runs so swift and so cold among the many poplar trees, lay stretched out before them in a peaceful abandonment. Around them were the sublime Alps, standing forth like bulwarks of tbe valley to surround and protect the delightful little village, the fresh fields, and clusters of old trees from the rough outside world. The delicate line of the Faulknis chain standing out with its zig-zag edges of a violet color against the light of the setting sun might well raise one to the truth that there is a great sense of nobility derived from these heights of mountains. The wild gorge opposite which leads to Pfafers sinks just here into an enormous rocky chasm, and around the ruin of Wartenstein as it crumbles away on the bold point of a peak there ever dwells that halo of romance.

It had been a hot August day, but just now a light wind was blowing, laden with the freshness of the glaciers over which it had passed before descending into the valley. Thus not a single discord broke the sweet charm of this hour.

At the station scarcely a dozen passengers were awaiting, like themselves, the belated train, for it was at a time of year when the express returns back to Paris almost empty. The porters Were leaning against the outgoing trunks with a stolidity entirely Helvetian, and in the general silence of things the most distinct sound which came to the ears of these two French women was the light rhythm of their own feet as they passed from the graveled part of the ground on to the hard concrete. The accord of their footsteps told of the ease and abandon with which they were conversing. Graceful, strikingly alike in outline and in features, they made a remarkable couple whom every one about them was drawn to look at. Although Agathe was the elder by one year (she being thirty and Madeleine twenty-nine), this difference, insignificant enough, was not at all recognizable, so that they gave the impression at first of being twins, and disconcerted many persons who saw them rarely or one in the absence of the other. The hair of both was blond with chestnut tints. They had the same blue eyes of a transparent delicacy suggestive of the fragile petals of certain flowers. The nose was fine; the line of cheek and the curve of the full arched brows were noble. The same dimpled chin, a pleasing mouth with an irregularity that was charming, behind which shone teeth, a little large perhaps, but well arranged, completed the category of their resemblances.

On studying them, however, this sort of illusion and magic spell which it cast as to their almost complete identity disappeared. Differences entirely physical might be noticed. The elder was, perhaps, an inch or two shorter than

Madeleine, while the latter had a more luxuriant growth of hair, a somewhat stouter figure, and a face which was slightly more plump.

To study them still more was to discover a more essential difference, so radical, in fact, that, once caught, the seeming identities of these two creatures brought out that difference in an astonishing degree. One might imagine that two diametrically opposite personalities lived, felt and thought in these two so similar bodies. A tormented soul full of complications and discontent looked out from the eyes of Agathe, eyes that were inclined to scrutinize to the degree that Madeleine’s were inclined to open the wider with a caressing and a contagious animation. A certain defiance of Nature easier to feel than to define contracted the smile of Agathe, while the other sister, on the other hand, with a manner that was tolerant and ingratiating, created all around her an atmosphere of refined good 1 nature. Indeed, she possessed the genius of her sex, for she was one of those whose sole presence radiates a sweetness for which one is tempted to thank them.

Their manner of dressing revealed no less clearly the difference of their characters. Both were in the elegant attire of prosperous Parisians of to-day. Just a few words will suffice to sum up their social history. (We all have one in these times of rapid ascent up the social ladder and this history governs frequently the destiny of the heart, however hidden and apparently outside the play of events may be to our inmost consciousness. ) Agathe and Madeleine were the Hennequin young ladies of the house of Hennequin, known ten years ago as one of the largest shops for ribbons and gauzes in the rue des Jeuneurs. Having lost their parents when very young, the considerable dowry which was theirs permitted them to make whatever marriage they chose. Agathe had married a Monsieur de Meris, titled indeed but ruined, who, however, just previous to his death inherited enough from his uncle so that she was left a widow without children, and twenty thousand francs income. Madeleine had married more simply and into the middle class. She had taken a physician whose daily increasing practice assured him a brilliant future. These figures will suggest to those who know Paris just what degree of elegance and costliness marked the two sisters’ attire as they waited on the platform of the station. Dress today is like a livery which shows up the size of one’s income. Only if the black mohair dress and black broadcloth cloak with white passementerie trimming which Agathe wore as traveling costume came from the same shop and was of the same elegance as Madeleine’s costume of white serge, it had the means of making its wearer appear stiff and affected as if in harness while the other was all grace and suppleness. Madame de Mdris’ jewels of half-mourning, a chain of platinum decorated w r ith black pearls, and her black enameled brooches set with diamonds, emphasized a something of the pretentious which enveloped her whole person, while Madeleine’s lack of jewelry, except for the large pins which pierced her flowered hat, and the chain bracelet in which was set her watch gave an impression of singular simplicity. From time to time while talking with the traveler whom she had accompanied to the train (she herself was not leaving Ragatz) she would glance at this watch on her wrist with a movement that bespoke uneasiness, not that she felt any impatience to see the locomotive emerge from the tunnel below them, but because on the contrary she apprehended its arrival all too soon.

The conversation which had been taking place during the last few minutes was of so rare an occurrence that it happened to be the very first

Ttvo Sisters since Agathe’s arrival at the Spa two weeks before. The singularity of relationship between the two sisters could not be attributed to the spontaneous nature of Madeleine; the elder was alone responsible through certain faults of character for which idioms are lacking, so truly do they pertain to the deepest part of one’s being. Agathe displeased while Madeleine pleased by that indefinable combination of things that one calls personality. She felt it; she had always felt it. A persistent impression of some secret discord between herself and Life had produced in her a kind of irritability which quickly ends in what an Anglo-Saxon names “moral dyspepsia.” Alais ! in spite of the apparent success of her ambitions she had gained but little contentment and bore badly the greater tranquility which she knew to have permeated the younger’s life. Not that she envied her, for she had too much nobility under her harsh exterior to permit such a sentiment in her heart. But she suffered from the realization that such was the case, and from the contrast of certain personal traits of Madeleine’s and shortcomings of her own.

She disdained that easy good nature of Madeleine’s in which she could not but see a little vulgarity, although nothing could be less so, and she reproached her for that simple joy in living in which she was not far from discerning an egoism, which was again altogether unjust. She hated her success in society which she would have attributed to a little coquetry. But of what use is it to analyze delicate relations which it suffices merely to suggest? The conversation to which this conversation serves as prologue will bring out these anomalies with a clearness with which no preliminary commentary would compare.

Their conversation had opened with an impulsive remark made by Madeleine. She had been thinking aloud, so to speak, about her sister’s journey which was to be made straight to Normandy with barely a stopover at Paris. There in Normandy she was to visit a friend for whom Madeleine had a certain dislike.

“I am sorry not to keep you here for two reasons,” she said, “first, because I want you here for company with me, being a little worried about Charlotte.” This allusion to her daughter for whose health she had come to the Spa brought a sad light into her eyes, “but more than anything else,” she went on, “because I should like to keep you from going to the Fugr^s.”

“I am not in the habit of neglecting my friends when they are in trouble. If you reflect a moment you will confess that you would not like me to,” Agathe responded in a tone that told plainly that the antipathy of the other for the Fugr6 family had not escaped her. Ordinarily in such cases where a word risked opening a discussion between them, Mme. Liebaut kept silence. This Fugre allusion suggested a recent trouble which Madeleine and her husband had had with one of his comrades, a man who had recklessly risked his own and wife’s and children’s fortunes on the stock exchange. He had become ruined, and because indignantly reproached by the physician before the catastrophe, had refused on account of self-love and wounded pride to effect a reconciliation afterwards. Mme. de M6ris had blamed her brother-in-law for his meddling and awkward action. Madeleine now recalled her sister’s attitude of blame which at the time had hurt her, but feeling a certain anxiety for her future, and desiring to help her as much as possible before her departure, she ventured to respond, “If Clotilde is unhappy, you will own, I hope, that it is her own fault.” And she tossed slightly her head. “Her husband’s wrong-doing reduces itself to caring too much for his estates, his horses, and his hunting, and not enough for Paris, to suit her !”

“You know as well as I do how it is,” returned the elder, in an impatient tone. “He is meanly jealous of her. He has devised this means of sequestering her at the age of twenty-five, when a young woman has the right to growth, certainly when she is honorable like Clotilde. It is abominable !”

“Why, then, did she let him become jealous?” asked Madeleine. “It is a simple enough thing to prevent the malady, for it is one. Why, when she discovered it getting the best of him, did she not yield to Fugrd on all the points that irritated him? Then she would have all the right on her side and he all the wrong.” But she corrected the impression she was making so as to prevent a protestation from her sister by adding, “I should none the less dread your visit with them. For one cause or another the Fugrds are a bad lot, and it cannot be in their society that you would entertain the idea of marrying again.”

“Of marrying again?” repeated Agathe quickly, with one of those expressive smiles which rendered her face suddenly so different from the other’s. A slight trembling agitated her lips, which contracted more on the right side, an unevenness which would have disfigured very much a physiognomy less lovely than her own. “Then you have not yet given up that idea?” she continued. “You think that I did not have enough from my first experience?”

“I think that you draw from a particular case general conclusions which are not just,” Madeleine responded tenderly. “You had bad luck the first time, which ought to be a motive for trying for better the second. You were very young when you married Kaoul ; you were taken by his manners and elegance. It was very natural also that you were attracted by the world into which he introduced you.”

“Don’t hesitate to say that I married through vanity, since you and your husband have always thought so,” said Agathe.

“We have never thought that,” replied Mme. Lidbaut with warmth. “There is not the slightest connection between this mean sentiment and that ingenuous attraction which high society exercises over a girl of nineteen when she is as pretty and bright and as suited to become a grande dame as were you. What I wish to say is, that now you are permitted to make your life again and that you ought to do it.” She emphasized the last. “It is my favorite maxim, you know, that one ought to desire to live! For a woman of thirty years, beautiful and intelligent, and with as much feeling as you, it is surely not living to have nothing or no one to truly love. For a woman to be neither wife nor mother, ah! it is a great pity! You are my darling sister, and I can not let you have this destiny.”

“I thank you for your good intentions,” replied Mme. de Meris, with the same irony. Then she said in all earnestness, “You have never altogether understood me, my poor Madeleine. ‘ Don’t suppose I am angry. But this favorite maxim of yours is according to your own particular taste. It is your character. You would have married Raoul and would have found the means of being happy — I see that as clearly as if it were really the case!” and she accompanied her banter with a little dry laugh. “His brutalities would have been interpreted by you as naturalness. He would have deceived you as he did me, and you would have said to yourself that it was your own fault, as you now say it of Clotilde. My dear sister, do you wish me to point out the thing which separates us, and which always will separate us? It’s this: you have always accepted and always will accept your life whatever it happens to be. As for me, I desired to use choice with mine. I have not succeeded in it, but perhaps there is more nobility in certain misfortunes than in certain happiness. And then one can not make over one’s life. I shall not marry again for the sake of remarrying, bear that in mind once for all. I shall marry again, if I do so at all, when I believe that I have met some one whom I could truly and absolutely love. Believe me, the quarrels of the household of Clotilde and Julien would not prevent me from marrying some one who took my fancy if I met him, and neither does your advice make me change my existence simply for the sake of changing it. This existence has its hours of cruel solitude, it is true. It has no hours of sweet memories to attach itself to, but it is my own, what I have chosen, and pride suffices me.”

“You make yourself out stronger than you really are, fortunately,” replied the other. “If you really thought what you are saying you would be simply an embodiment of pride, the most conceited being imaginable, and you are not that. You are a thorough woman and full of tenderness! You deny this, but you cannot deceive your little sister who loves you. Commission me only to search for him, this ‘some one’

who would take possession of your heart, and I shall find him.”

She had spoken these words in a tone of half fun and half emotion, habitual to beings of sensibility when they long to tame a heart they love and which they feel is hostile. The charm of her voice and her laughing glance while expressing this strange proposition held in check for a minute the latent ill-will of Mme. de Mdris. She began to smile and responding to her sister’s childish fancy replied, this time without a tinge of bitterness:

“I have no objection to your searching, provided that I am free to refuse.”

“Do you realize that I am extremely serious in my offer,” the younger sister parried, “and that I am going to set about it the moment that I have your consent?”

“You have it,” rejoined Agathe, in the same tone of affected fun; “but if it is among these rheumatics and neurasthenics of Eagatz ”

“Anything may happen,” interrupted Madeleine; then, pointing to the outlines of the locomotive at the end of the railroad track, “and at any time as this train just coming •”

The express was emerging, in truth, from the tunneled bridge which is here constructed over the Rhine, and the little station was in the meantime rapidly changing its appearance.

The travelers, more numerous now, were pressing forward to the edge of the platform. The porters were manoeuvring with their heavy trucks of trunks. Mme. de Mdris’ maid had come promptly to the side of her mistress, carrying in one hand the traveling bag and in the other a bundle of shawls. The rumbling of the cars rolling along more and more softly before the final halt scarcely covered the clatter of voices which were calling above and around the heads of the two sisters, as they walked the length of the train on the watch for the number of the compartment reserved for Agathe. At last, when it was found and the traveler was installed among the innumerable objects with 1 which every woman who lives in this station of life is uselessly and elegantly encumbered — cushions for the back, a small leather book-covering, smelling bottles, a tiny clock to measure time, and all the rest — she leaned for some moments on the open window of the door to exchange a last farewell with Madeleine. They made at that moment a picture of exquisite beauty as their faces so similar in feature were turned to each other, looking with eyes so alike and a smile so identical in its charm. In spite of all kinds of complications in mood and temperament on the part of the elder and repeated pardonings on the part of the younger, they cherished a deep affection for each other. Now an identical emotion possessed them which emphasized their likeness. The light of the sun, already very low, fell upon them, gilding with reflections which were still warm the glossiness of their pretty hair and the transparency of the fresh complexions.

This double and charming apparition was so uncommon that it would have provoked anywhere the curiosity of witnesses of this pretty farewell scene. Indeed, what pictures are lost in the last moment before a departure ! Agathe and Madeleine could fondly look and smile at each other with perfect liberty, as if they had not been in a public place exposed to indiscretions. All of a sudden, however, the smile was arrested on Agathe’s lips. Her eyes became strained, color mounted her cheeks, and almost at the same moment the same change of expression took place in Madeleine. Both had just discovered that they were being looked at fixedly by a stranger standing motionless a few steps away. It was a man of about thirty years, himself of too unusual a physiognomy to be passed by unnoticed. He was rather short, and dressed with a something of awkwardness which distinguishes professional soldiers whenever they don civilian garb. The extreme energy of his face, quite hallowed under the short beard, was as if veiled and immersed in a melancholy which was out of all accord both with his proud, imperious look and with the severe lines of his mouth. His eyes, which were very brown — almost black — literally glowed. His thinness and the bronze shade of his complexion bespoke an invalid condition which, however, had nothing in common with the look of exhaustion that characterized most of the city people at Ragatz. His military bearing suggested the idea of some faraway campaign, and of enormous fatigues endured in a deadly climate. A letter which he carried showed that he was going to the mail-car, evidently having missed the hour of the post, until he was stopped by the pretty apparition of these two women. He had then stopped being thrown, as it were, into a contemplation of which he felt himself the impropriety, for he blushed on his part and continued on to the mail-car, walking swiftly without again turning in their direction.

In the meantime the younger was saying with some amusement to her sister :

“You’ll confess that among these rheumatics and neurasthenics here at the Springs you meet with romantic figures as well.”

“I suppose you mean gentlemen who lack good breeding,” Agathe responded.

“Just because he looked at you when he believed you were not looking at him?” asked Madeleine. “The way in which he blushed when we caught him proves that he has not the habit of such bad manners.”

“Why do you pretend that it was I whom he was looking at?” asked Mme. de M6ris. “It was you.”

“Me?” Mme. Li6baut laughingly replied. “It was certainly you. He could not see me.”

“Grant then that it was both of us,” responded Agathe. “He is then twice ill-bred. Whatever you may say, Vodla tout!” Then, laughing outright, she added, “You needn’t introduce to me this candidate wdth his jaundice look, for he wouldn’t have a chance. I have no faculty for professional nursing.”

The train was beginning to move while she spoke these last words. She threw a kiss with the tip of her gloved hand to her sister, who for a long time remained standing on the little deserted platform looking after the trail of cars as they serpentined through the valley.

“Poor Agathe!” she said to herself. “It is true that her life is bare and sad. She is sometimes a little embittered, but when you think of what she has gone through, is it surprising? If I only could find for her this husband whom she pretends she doesn’t w ant ! . . . It is a strange thing, but one might almost believe that she is afraid to feel, though overflowing with feeling, and afraid to love, though quivering with tenderness,, . . . Ah, my poor, my dear sister!”

Chapter Two. A Comic Opera Star And A Hero Of A Romance

This anxiety about the future of her sister Madeleine had felt very frequently, and just as frequently she had had the impression that some secret jealousy was poisoning the other’s heart. Should it rightly be called jealousy? Was it possible that Agathe who had married deliberately a man of title could be jealous of the younger in her union with a modest physician? Yet the vanity of a girl brought up in the midst of the merchant class who has had her dreams of social triumphs often abounds in contradictions. To really and truly disdain the destiny of another person does not prevent one from hating the success of that destiny. Madeleine felt this in her sister with her fine sensitiveness, and if her partial love for Agathe forbade her to give in to her flashes of intuition, she none the less suffered certain evidences of it. Without exception whenever she talked most confidentially with Agathe she felt herself saddened and depressed. Such was now the case. A strange melancholy weighed 20 down upon her while she was returning from the little station to her home in the twilight.

She was living for the season in an out-of-the-way pavilion adjoining an annex of one of the hotels which are crowded together around the little park of the bathing establishment. Thanks to the relations of her husband with one of the physicians at Ragatz, she had there a separate apartment shaded by great beech trees which veiled with their foliage the balcony out of her little salon. Here her daughter with her governess, herself and maid, had made it very homelike.

One of Madeleine’s talents w r hich her sister most frequently criticised was this of adapting herself to all circumstances: wherever she was people and things around her seemed to conspire to render themselves easily adjusted. Her good humor, her graciousness, her keenness of mind, explain the kind of domination which she exercised over the trivial incidents of life. She was appreciative of what she ingenuously called sa chance , all the modest happiness of her existence, just as if she had not gained them by her own fine qualities. And this evening when on entering her cosy reception-room her eyes fell upon her daughter, she w^as suffused wdth a feeling of overwhelming gratitude for the joy this child represented to her and a feeling of pity for the sister who had just departed all alone. “Yes,” she said to herself, “this is contentment, this is life. She must have a child to live for.” And embracing the little one she kept her in her arms while she listened to a recital of the little doings the child had been engaged in during the afternoon hours and herself had answered inquiries about the departure of Agathe. A treasure though the pretty Charlotte was, she was at the same time one which occasioned much uneasiness. She was only nine years old, but the large brilliant eyes in the tiny face, the slender limbs and apparent nervousness told plainly in what danger the child was of being swept away out of the stream of life. The year before she had had an attack of rheumatism and the commencement of chorea which a short visit at Ragatz had helped cure, and now for a second time they had come here to prevent the return of any illness. Agathe frequently reproached Madeleine for her foolish optimism about the future of such a fragile child. The elder sister did not like to see in the depths of the mother’s eyes the passionate anguish which at times darkened them, together with the craving no less passionate to make the delicate child live. For Madeleine was one of those courageous souls who accept suffering for those they love and who prefer this risk of martyrdom to the coldness of indifference. This innate and yet deliberate generosity sustained her in the continual trial which this fragile young life gave her. She would often reason a long time to persuade herself that her instinct was wisdom, prolonging, like all dreamers, her conversations with those she loved 1 into interminable discourses.

One which was going on in her consciousness now, an hour and a half after bidding her sister adieu at the station while making her way alone to the hotel for dinner, may be taken as a type of the fluctuations of her thought on the concealed cares of her private life.

“To wish for a woman a husband and a child,” she was saying to herself, “is, however, to wish her all possible unhappiness. For has not Agathe suffered through Mdris just as I have suffered from Charlotte? But if I were to lose her Georges could not fill her place (this was the name of her son who was with his father in Paris). And even if this awful misfortune were to befall me, should I wish that I had never brought her into the world? . . . Ah, no!

To love is to run the risk of being wounded and it is the risk one must run. Outside of it life is a barren waste. We must suffer in order to live. Oh, if Agathe could but have this life! What a depth there was in her voice just now when she said to me: ‘Some one whom I could love but truly — absolutely/ and how mocking she was in defying me. ‘I have never prevented you from looking for him. . . .’ she said. I

have a mind to try to carry out what I threatened half in joke. She’ll not take to it — for she doesn’t fall in easily with anything. That’s her whole trouble. Her first motive is always to shrink and draw back. There on the platform when this stranger looked at her — for it was she at whom he was staring — her instinct was to say that this young man was not well-bred and then to add to me that he was ugly. Now the truth is that he was anything but that. . . .

I have rarely seen a more interesting countenance. One hears now and then of chance meetings at a water-place which entirely change the destiny of a woman. . . . However, there