Kitabı oku: «The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XIII
HUSBAND AND WIFE
COUNT CHARNY was clad in black, mourning for his brother slain two days before.
This mourning was not solely in his habit, but in the recesses of his heart, and his pallid cheeks attested what grief he had undergone. Never are handsome faces finer than after sorrow, and the rapid glance of his wife perceived that he had never looked more superb.
She closed her eyes an instant, slightly held back her head to draw a full breath and laid her hand on her heart which seemed about to break.
When she opened them, after a second, Charny was in the same place.
“Is the carriage to wait?” inquired the servant, urged by the footman at the door.
An unspeakable look shot from the yearning eyes of the visitor upon his wife, who was dazed into closing her own again, while she stood breathless as though she had not noticed the glance or heard the question. Both had penetrated to her heart.
Charny sought in this lovely living statue for some token to indicate what answer he should make. As her shiver might be read both ways, he said: “Bid the coachman wait.”
The door closed and perhaps for the first time since their wedding the lord and his lady were alone together.
“Pardon me,” said the count, breaking the silence, “but is my unexpected call intrusion? I have not seated myself and the carriage waits so that I can depart as I came.”
“No, my lord, quite the contrary,” quickly said Andrea. “I knew you were well and safe, but I am not the less happy to see you after recent events.”
“You have been good enough then to ask after me?”
“Of course; yesterday, and this morning, when I was answered that you were at Versailles; and this evening, when I learnt that you were in attendance on the Queen.”
Were those last words spoken simply or did they contain a reproach? Not knowing what to make of them, the count was evidently set thinking by them. But probably leaving to the outcome of the dialogue the lifting of the veil lowered on his mind for the time, he replied almost instantly:
“My lady, a pious duty retained me at Versailles yesterday and this day; one as sacred in my eyes brought me instantly on my arrival in town beside her Majesty.”
Andrea tried in her turn to discover the true intent of the words. Thinking that she ought to respond, she said:
“Yes, I know of the terrible loss which —you have experienced.” She had been on the point of saying “we,” but she dared not, and continued: “You have had the misfortune to lose your brother Valence de Charny.”
The count seemed to be waiting for the clue, for he had started on hearing the pronoun “Your.”
“Yes, my lady. As you say, a terrible loss for me, but you cannot appreciate the young man, as you little knew poor Valence, happily.”
In the last word was a mild and melancholy reproach, which his auditor comprehended, though no outward sign was manifested that she gave it heed.
“Still, one thing consoles me, if anything can console me; poor Valence died doing his duty, as probably his brother Isidore will die, and I myself.”
This deeply affected Andrea.
“Alas, my lord,” she asked, “do you believe matters so desperate that fresh sacrifices of blood are necessary to appease the wrath of heaven?”
“I believe that the hour comes when the knell of kings is to peal; that an evil genius pushes monarchy unto the abysm. In short I think, if it is to fall, it will be accompanied, and should be so, by all those who took part in its splendor.”
“True, but when comes that day, believe that it will find me ready like yourself for the utmost devotion,” said Andrea.
“Your ladyship has given too many proofs of that devotion in the past, for any one to doubt it for the future – I least of all – the less as I have for the first time flinched about an order from the Queen. On arriving from Versailles, I found the order to present myself to her Majesty instantly.”
“Oh,” said Andrea, sadly smiling; “it is plain,” she added, after a pause, “like you, the Queen sees the future is sombre and mysterious and wishes to gather round her all those she can depend on.”
“You are wrong, my lady,” returned Charny, “for the Queen summoned me, not to bid me stand by her, but to send me afar.”
“Send you away?” quickly exclaimed the countess, taking a step towards the speaker. “But I am keeping you standing,” she said, pointing to a chair.
So saying, she herself sank, as though unable to remain on foot any longer, on the sofa where she had been sitting with Sebastian shortly before.
“Send you away? in what end?” she said with emotion not devoid of joy at the thought that the suspected lovers were parting.
“To have me go to Turin to confer with Count Artois and the Duke of Bourbon, who have quitted the country.”
“And you accepted?”
“No, my lady,” responded Charny, watching her fixedly.
She lost color so badly that he moved as if to assist her, but this revived her strength and she recovered.
“No? you have answered No to an order of the Queen’s, my lord?” she faltered, with an indescribable accent of doubt and astonishment.
“I answered that I believed my presence here at present more necessary than in Italy. Anybody could bear the message with which I was to be honored; I had a second brother, just arrived from the country, to place at the orders of the King, and he was ready to start in my stead.”
“Of course the Queen was happy to see the substitute,” exclaimed Andrea, with bitterness she could not contain, and not appearing to escape Charny.
“It was just the other way, for she seemed to be deeply wounded by the refusal. I should have been forced to go had not the King chanced in and I made him the arbiter.”
“The King held you to be right?” sneered the lady with an ironical smile: “he like you advised your staying in the Tuileries? Oh, how good his Majesty is!”
“So he is,” went on the count, without wincing: “he said that my brother Isidore would be well fitted for the mission and the more so as it was his first visit to court, so that his absence would not be remarked. He added that it would be cruel for the Queen to require my being sent away from you at present.”
“The King said, from me?” exclaimed Andrea.
“I repeat his own words, my lady. Looking round and addressing me, he wanted to know where the Countess of Charny was. ‘I have not seen her this evening,’ said he. As this was specially directed to me, I made bold to reply. ‘Sire,’ I said, ‘I have so seldom the pleasure of seeing the countess that I am in the state of impossibility to tell where she is; but if your Majesty wishes to know, he might inquire of the Queen who, knowing, will reply!’ I insisted as I judged from the Queen looking black, that some difference had arisen between you.”
Andrea was so enwrapt in the listening that she did not think of saying anything.
“The Queen made answer that the Countess of Charny had gone away from the palace with no intention to return. ‘Why, what motive can your best friend have in quitting the palace at this juncture?’ inquired the King. ‘Because she is uncomfortable here,’ replied the Queen who had started at the title you were given. ‘Well, that may be so; but we will find accommodation for her and the count beside our own rooms,’ went on the King. ‘You will not be very particular, eh, my lord?’ I told him that I should be satisfied with any post as long as I could serve him in it. ‘I know it well: so that we only want the lady called back from – ’ the Queen did not know whither you had departed. ‘Not know where your friend has gone?’ exclaimed the King. ‘When my friends leave me I do not inquire after them.’ ‘Good, some woman’s quarrel,’ said Louis; ‘my Lord Charny, I have to speak a while with the Queen. Kindly wait for me and present your brother who shall start for Turin this evening. I am of your opinion that I shall require you and I mean to keep you by me.’ So I sent for my brother who was awaiting me in the Green Saloon, I was told.”
At the mention, Andrea, who had nearly forgotten Sebastian in her interest in her husband’s story, was made to think of all that had passed between mother and son, and she threw her eyes with anguish on the bedroom door where she had placed him.
“But you must excuse me for talking of matters but slightly interesting you while you are no doubt wishful to know why I have come here.”
“No, my lord, what you say does engage me,” replied the countess; “your presence can only be agreeable on account of the fears I have felt on your account. I pray you to continue. The King asked you to wait for him and to bring your brother.”
“We went to the royal apartments, where he joined us in ten minutes. As the mission for the princes was urgent he began by that. Their Highnesses were to be instructed about what had happened. A quarter of an hour after the King came, my brother was on the road, and the King and I were left alone. He stopped suddenly in pacing the room and said: ‘My lord, do you know what has passed between the Queen and the countess?’ I was ignorant. ‘Something must have happened,’ he went on, ‘for the Queen is in a temper fit to massacre everybody, and it appears to me unjust to the countess – which is odd, as the Queen usually defends her friends through thick and thin, even when they are wrong.’ ‘I repeat I know nothing, but I venture to assert that the countess has done no wrong – even if we cannot admit that a queen ever does so.'”
“I thank your lordship for having so good an opinion of me,” said Andrea.
“'I suppose as the countess has a house in town that she has retired there,’ I suggested. ‘Of course! I will give you leave of absence till to-morrow on condition that you bring back the countess,’ said the King.”
Charny looked at his wife so fixedly that she was unable to bear the glance and had to close her eyes.
“Then, seeing that I was in mourning, he stayed me to say that my loss was one of those which monarchs could not repair; but that if my brother left a widow or a child he would help them, and would like them presented to him, at any rate; the Queen should take care of the widow and he would of the children.”
Charny spoke with tears in his voice.
“I daresay the King was only repeating what the Queen had said,” remarked the lady.
“The Queen did not honor me with a word on the subject,” returned Charny, “and that is why the King’s speech affected me most deeply. He ended by bidding me ‘Go to our dear Andrea; for though those we love cannot console us they can mourn with us, and that is a relief!’ Thus it is that I come by the King’s order, which may be my excuse, my lady,” concluded the count.
“Did you doubt your welcome?” cried the lady, quickly rising and holding out both hands to him.
He grasped them and kissed them; she uttered a scream as though they were redhot iron, and sank back on the divan. But her hands were clinging to his and he was drawn down so as to be placed sitting beside her.
But it was then that she thought she heard a noise in the next room, and she started from him so abruptly that he rose and stood off a little, not knowing to what to attribute the outcry and the repulsion so suddenly made.
Leaning on the sofa back, he sighed. The sigh touched her deeply.
At the very time when the bereaved mother found her child, something like the dawn of love beamed on her previously dismal and sorrowful horizon. But by a strange coincidence, proven that she was not born to happiness, the two events were so combined that one annulled the other: the return of the husband thrust aside the son’s love as the latter’s presence destroyed the budding passion.
Charny could not divine this in the exclamation and the starting aloof, the silence full of sadness following, although the cry was of love and the retreat from fear, not repulsion.
He gazed upon her with an expression which she could not have mistaken if she had been looking up.
“What answer am I to carry to the King?” he inquired emitting a sigh.
“My lord,” she replied, starting at the sound and raising her clear and limpid eyes to him, “I suffered so much while in the court that I accepted the leave to go when accorded by the Queen, with thankfulness. I am not fitted to live in society, and in solitude I have found repose if not happiness. My happiest days were those spent as a girl at Taverney and in the convent of St. Denis with the noble princess of the House of France, the Lady Louise. But, with your lordship’s permission, I will dwell in this summerhouse, full of recollections which are not without some sweetness spite of their sadness.”
Charny bowed at this suggestion of his permission being sought, like a man who was obeying an order, far more than granting a request.
“As this is a fixed resolve,” he said, marking how steady she was with all her meekness, “am I to be allowed to call on you here?”
She fastened her eyes on him, usually clear but now full of astonishment and blandness.
“Of course, my lord,” was her response, “and as I shall have no company, you can come any time that your duties at the palace allow you to set aside a little while to me.”
Never had Charny seen so much charm in her gaze, or such tenderness in her voice. Something ran through his veins, like the shudder from a lover’s first kiss. He glanced at the place whence he had risen when Andrea got up; he would have given a year of life to take his seat there again if she would not once more repel him. But the soldier was timid, and he dared not allow himself the liberty.
On her part, Andrea would have given ten years, sooner than only one, to have him in that place, but, unfortunately, each was ignorant of the other’s mood, and they stood still, in almost painful expectation.
“You were saying that you had to endure a great deal at court. Was not the Queen pleasant towards you?”
“I have nothing to blame her Majesty for,” replied the ex-lady of honor, “and I should be unjust if I did not acknowledge her Majesty’s kind treatment.”
“I hinted at this, because I have lately noticed that the friendship seemed to show a falling off,” continued the count.
“That is possible, and that is why I am leaving the court.”
“But you will live so lonely?”
“Have I not always lived so, my lord?” sighed Andrea, “as maid – wife – “ she stopped, seeing that she was going too far.
“Do you make me a reproach?”
“What right have I in heaven’s name to make reproaches to your lordship?” retorted the countess: “do you believe I have forgot the circumstances under which we were plighted? Just the opposite of those who vow before the altar reciprocal love and mutual protection, we swore eternal indifference and complete separation. The blame would be to the one who forgot that oath.”
Charny caught the sigh which these words had not entirely suppressed, from the speaker’s heart.
“But this is such a small dwelling,” he said: “a countess in one sitting room with only another to eat in, and this for repose – “
She sprang in between him and the bedroom, seeing Sebastian behind the door, in her mind’s eye.
“Oh, my lord, do not go that way, I entreat you,” she exclaimed, barring the passage with her extended arms.
“Oh, my lady,” said he, looking at her so pale and trembling, with fright never more plain on a human face, “I knew that you did not like me: but I had no idea you hated me to this degree.”
Incapable of remaining any longer beside his wife without an outburst, he reeled for a space like an intoxicated man; recovering himself, he rushed out of the room with an exclamation of pain which echoed in the depths of the hearer’s heart.
She watched him till he was out of sight; she listened till she could no longer hear his departing carriage, and then with a breaking heart, dreading that she had not enough motherly love to combat with this other passion, she darted into the bedroom, calling out:
“Sebastian,” but no voice replied.
By the trembling of the night-lamp in a draft she perceived that the window was open. It was the same by which the child was kidnapped fifteen years before.
“This is justice,” she muttered; “did he not say that I was no more his mother?”
Comprehending that she had lost both husband and child at the period when she had recovered them, Andrea threw herself on the couch, at the end of her resignation and her prayers exhausted.
Suddenly it seemed to her that something more dreadful than her sorrowful plight glided in between grief and her tears.
She looked up and beheld a man, after climbing in at the open window, standing on the floor.
She wished to shriek and ring for help; but he bent on her the fascinating gaze which caused her the invincible lethargy she remembered Cagliostro could impose upon her: but in this mesmerist and his spell-binding look and bearing, she recognized Gilbert.
How was it the execrated father stood in the stead of his beloved son?
CHAPTER XIV
IN SEARCH OF THEIR SON
IT was Dr. Gilbert who was closeted with the King when the usher inquired after him on the order of Isidore and the entreaty of Sebastian.
The upright heart of Louis XVI. had appreciated the loyalty in the doctor’s. After half an hour, the latter came forth and went into the Queen’s ante-chamber, where he saw Isidore.
“I asked for you, doctor, but I have another with me who wants still more to see you. It will be cruel to detain you from him: so let us hasten to the Green Saloon.”
But the room was empty and such was the confusion in the palace that no servant was at hand to inform them what had become of the young man.
“It was a person I met on the road, eager to get to Paris and coming here on foot only for my giving him a ride.”
“Are you speaking of the peasant Pitou?”
“No, doctor – of your son, Sebastian.”
At this, the usher who had taken Isidore away returned.
He was ignorant of what had happened but, luckily, a second footman had seen the singular disappearance of the boy in the carriage of a court lady.
They hastened to the gates where the janitor well recalled that the direction to the coachman was “No. 9 Coq-Heron Street, first carriage entrance from Plastriere Street.”
“My sister-in-law’s,” exclaimed Isidore, “the countess of Charny!”
“Fatality,” muttered Gilbert. “He must have recognized her,” he said in a lower tone.
“Let us go there,” suggested the young noble.
Gilbert saw all the dangers of Andrea’s son being discovered by her husband.
“My lord,” he said, “my son is in safety in the hands of the Countess of Charny, and as I have the honor to know her, I think I can call by myself. Besides it is more proper that you should be on your road; for I presume you are going to Turin, from what I heard in the King’s presence.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Receive my thanks for your kindness to Sebastian, and be off! When a father says he is not uneasy, you need feel no anxiety.”
Isidore held out his hand which the revolutionist shook with more heartiness than he had for most of his class; while the nobleman returned within the palace, he went along to the junction of the streets Coq-Heron and Plastriere.
Both were painful memories.
In the latter he had lived, a poor boy, earning his bread by copying music, by receiving instruction from the author Rousseau. From his window he had contemplated Andrea at her own casement, under the hands of her maid, Nicole, his first sweetheart, and to that window he had made his way by a rope and by scaling the wall, to view more closely and satisfy his passion for the high-born lady who had bewitched him.
Rousseau was dead, but Andrea was rich and nobler still; he had also attained wealth and consideration.
But was he any happier than when he walked out of doors to dip his crust in the waters of this public fountain?
He could not help walking up to the door where Rousseau had lived. It was open on the alley which ran under the building to the yard at the back as well as up to the attic where he was lodged.
He went up to the first floor back, where the window on the landing gave a view of the rear house where Baron Taverney had dwelt.
No one disturbed him in his contemplation; the house had come down in the world; no janitor; the inhabitants were poor folk who did not fear thieves.
The garden at Taverney’s house was the same as a dozen years before. The vine still hung on the trellis which had served him as ladder in his night clamberings within the enclosure.
He was unaware whether Count Charny was with his wife, but he was so bent on learning about Sebastian that he meant to risk all.
He climbed the wall and descended on the other side. In the garden nothing obstructed him, and thus he reached the window of Andrea’s Bedroom.
In another instant, as related, the two enemies stood face to face.
The lady’s first feeling was invincible repugnance rather than profound terror.
For her the Americanized Gilbert, the friend of Washington and Lafayette, aristocratic through study, science and genius, was still the hangdog Gilbert of her father’s manor house, and the gardener’s boy of Trianon Palace.
Gilbert no longer bore her the ardent love which had driven him to crime in his youth, but the deep and tender affection, spite of her insults and persecutions, of a man ready to do a service at risk of his life.
With the insight nature had given him and the justice education implanted, Gilbert had weighed himself: he understood that Andrea’s misfortunes arose from him, and he would never be quits with her until he had made her as happy as he had the reverse.
But how could he blissfully affect her future.
It was impossible for him yet to comprehend.
On seeing this but to so much despair, again the prey to woe, all his fibres of mercy were moved for so much misery.
Instead of using his hypnotic power to subdue her, he spoke softly to her, ready to master her if she became rebellious.
The result was that the medium felt the ethereal fluid fade away like a dissolving fog, by Gilbert’s permission, and she was able to speak of her own free will.
“What do you want, sir? how came you here?”
“By the way I used before,” replied the doctor. “Hence you can be easy – no one will know of it. Why? because I come to claim a treasure, of no consequence to you, but precious to me, my son. I want you to tell what has become of my son, taken away in your carriage and brought here.”
“How do I know? taught by you to hate his mother, he has fled.”
“His mother? are you really a mother to him?”
“Oh, you see my grief, you have heard my cries, and looking on my despair, you ask me if I am his mother?”
“How then are you ignorant what has become of him?”
“But I tell you he has fled; that I came into this room for him and found the window open and the room vacant.”
“Where could he have gone – good God!” exclaimed Gilbert. “It is past midnight and he does not know the town.”
“Do you believe anything evil has befallen him?” asked she, approaching.
“We shall hear, for it is you who shall tell me.”
And with a wave of the hand he began anew to plunge her into the mesmeric sleep.
She uttered a sigh and fell off into repose.
“Am I to put forth all my will power or will you answer voluntarily?” asked Gilbert when she was under control.
“Will you tell the boy again that I am not his mother?”
“That depends. Do you love him?”
“Ardently, with all my soul.”
“Then you are his mother as I am his father, for it is thus I love him. Loving him, you shall see him again. When did you part from the boy?”
“About half an hour ago, when Count Charny called. I had pushed him into this room.”
“What were his last words?”
“That I was no more his mother: because I had told him that you were a villain.”
“Look into the poor boy’s heart and see what harm you wrought.”
“Oh, God forgive me,” said Andrea: “forgive me, my son.”
“Did Count Charny suspect the boy was here?”
“No, I am sure.”
“Why did he not stay?”
“Because he never stays long with me. Oh, wretch that I am,” she interrupted herself, “he was returning to me after refusing that mission – because he loves me – he loves me!”
Gilbert began to see more clearly into this drama which his eye was first to penetrate.
“But do you love him?” he demanded.
“I see your intention is good: you wish to make up to me for the grief you have caused: but I refuse the boon coming from you. I hate you and wish to continue in my hatred.”
“Poor mortality,” muttered the philosopher, “have you had so much happiness that you can dally with a certain amount offered you? so you love him?”
“Yes. Since first I saw him, as the Queen and I sat with him in a hackney-carriage in which we returned from Paris to Versailles one night.”
“You know what love is, Andrea,” queried Gilbert, mournfully.
“I know that love has been given as a standard by which we can measure how much sadness we can endure,” replied she.
“It is well: you are a true woman and a true mother: a rough diamond, you were shaped by the stern lapidary known as Grief. Return to Sebastian.”
“Yes, I see him leaving the house with clenched hands and knit brow. He wanders up the street – he goes up to a woman and asks her for St. Honore Street – “
“My street: he was seeking for my house. Poor child! he will be there awaiting me.”
“Hold! he has gone astray – he is in New St. Roch Street. Oh, he does not see that vehicle coming down Sourdiere Street, but I see the horses – Ah!”
She drew herself up with an awful scream, maternal anguish depicted on her visage, down which rolled tears and perspiration.
“Oh, if harm befalls him, remember that it will recoil on your head,” hissed Gilbert.
“Ah,” sighed Andrea in relief, without hearing or heeding him, “God in heaven be praised! it is the horse’s breast which struck him, and he is thrown out of the rut of the wheel. There he lies, stunned, but he is not killed. Only swooned. Hasten to help him. It is my son! They form a crowd round him: is there not a doctor or surgeon among them all?”
“Oh, I shall run,” said Gilbert.
“Wait,” said Andrea, stopping him by the arm, “they are dividing to let help come. It is the doct – oh, do not let that man approach him – I loathe him – he is a vampire, he is hideous!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, do not lose sight of Sebastian,” said Gilbert, shuddering.
“This ghoul carries him away – up the street – into the blind alley, called St. Hyacinthe: where he goes down some steps. He places him on a table where books and printed papers are heaped. He takes off his coat and rolls up his sleeve. He ties the arm with bandages from a woman as dirty and hideous as himself. He finds a lance in a case – he is going to bleed him. Oh, I cannot bear to see my son’s blood flow. Run, run, and you will find him as I say.”
“Shall I awaken you at once with recollection: or would you sleep till the morning and know nothing of what has happened?”
“Awaken me at once with full memory.”
Gilbert described a double curve with his hands so that his thumbs came upon the medium’s eyelids; he breathed on her forehead and said merely:
“Awake!”
Instantly her eyes became animated; her limbs were supple; she looked at Gilbert almost without terror, and continuing, though aroused, the impulse in her vision, she cried:
“Oh, run, run, and snatch the boy from the hands of that man who causes me so much fright!”
