Josephine sang with her, and, singing, watched with a smile her boy drop off by degrees to sleep under the gentle motion and the lulling song.They sang and rocked till the lids came creeping down, and hid the great blue eyes; but still they sang and rocked, lulling the boy, and gladdening their own hearts; for the quaint old Breton ditty was tunable as the lark that carols over the green wheat in April; and the words so ****** and motherly, that a nation had taken them to heart.Such songs bind ages together and make the lofty and the low akin by the great ties of music and the heart.Many a Breton peasant's bosom in the olden time had gushed over her sleeping boy as the young dame's of Beaurepaire gushed now--in this quaint, tuneful lullaby.
Now, as they kneeled over the cradle, one on each side, and rocked it, and sang that ancient chant, Josephine, who was opposite the screen, happening to raise her eyes, saw a strange thing.
There was the face of a man set close against the side of the screen, and peeping and peering out of the gloom.The light of her candle fell full on this face; it glared at her, set pale, wonder-struck, and vivid in the surrounding gloom.
Horror! It was her husband's face.
At first she was quite stupefied, and looked at it with soul and senses benumbed.Then she trembled, and put her hand to her eyes;for she thought it a phantom or a delusion of the mind.No: there it glared still.Then she trembled violently, and held out her left hand, the fingers working convulsively, to Rose, who was still singing.
But, at the same moment, the mouth of this face suddenly opened in a long-drawn breath.At this, Josephine uttered a violent shriek, and sprang to her feet, with her right hand quivering and pointing at that pale face set in the dark.
Rose started up, and, wheeling her head round, saw Raynal's gloomy face looking over her shoulder.She fell screaming upon her knees, and, almost out of her senses, began to pray wildly and piteously for mercy.
Josephine uttered one more cry, but this was the faint cry of nature, sinking under the shock of terror.She swooned dead away, and fell senseless on the floor ere Raynal could debarrass himself of the screen, and get to her.
This, then, was the scene that met Edouard's eyes.His affianced bride on her knees, white as a ghost, trembling, and screaming, rather than crying, for mercy.And Raynal standing over his wife, showing by the working of his iron features that he doubted whether she was worthy he should raise her.
One would have thought nothing could add to the terror of this scene.Yet it was added to.The baroness rang her bell violently in the room below.She had heard Josephine's scream and fall.
At the ringing of this shrill bell Rose shuddered like a maniac, and grovelled on her knees to Raynal, and seized his very knees and implored him to show some pity.
"O sir! kill us! we are culpable"--
Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! pealed the baroness's bell again.
"But do not tell our mother.Oh, if you are a man! do not! do not!
Show us some pity.We are but women.Mercy! mercy! mercy!""Speak out then," groaned Raynal."What does this mean? Why has my wife swooned at sight of me?--whose is this child?""Whose?" stammered Rose.Till he said that, she never thought there COULD be a doubt whose child.
Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring!
"Oh, my God!" cried the poor girl, and her scared eyes glanced every way like some wild creature looking for a hole, however small, to escape by.
Edouard, seeing her hesitation, came down on her other side."Whose is the child, Rose?" said he sternly.
"You, too? Why were we born? mercy! oh! pray let me go to my sister."Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! went the terrible bell.
The men were excited to fury by Rose's hesitation; they each seized an arm, and tore her screaming with fear at their violence, from her knees up to her feet between them with a single gesture.
"Whose is the child?"
"You hurt me!" said she bitterly to Edouard, and she left crying and was terribly calm and sullen all in a moment.
"Whose is the child?" roared Edouard and Raynal, in one raging breath."Whose is the child?""It is mine."
