In the Avenue d'Antin.
New Year's Day. Or, as the French more emphatically term it, the Jour
de l'An. Gay groups went strolling along the Boulevards in the glowing
sunshine, gazing at the costly étrennes displayed in the tempting
shops: women glancing at the perfect attire of other women that
passed; men doffing their hats so perpetually that it almost seemed
they might as well have kept them off altogether; children in their
fantastic costumes chattering to their mothers, and turning their
little heads on all sides: all, men, women, and children, apparently
free from every care, save that of pleasure, which constitutes so
observable a feature in Parisian life.
Amidst the crowd, passing onwards with a listless step, as if pleasure
had no part in his heart and he had no use for étrennes, was a
solitary individual: a distinguished looking man of pleasing features
and altogether refined face, whom few of the traversers could have
mistaken for aught but an Englishman. His mourning apparel and a
certain air of sadness that pervaded his face seemed to be in unison.
Several women--ingrained coquettes from their birth, as French women
nearly always are born to be--threw glances of admiration at the
handsome man, in spite of the fact that their husbands--for that one
day--were at their side; and wondered what near relative he had lost.
But the gentleman passed on his listless way, seeing them not, and
utterly unconscious that any answering glances from his own eyes were
coveted. It was Sir Karl Andinnian.
Close upon the burial of his ill-fated brother Adam, Mrs. Andinnian,
prostrate with grief and trouble, took to confine herself to her own
apartment at Foxwood Court: for it was at that residence she
thenceforth took up her abode. Karl found himself nearly altogether
excluded from her presence. Even at meals she declined to join him,
and caused them to be served for herself apart. "Do you wish me away
from Foxwood?" Karl one day asked her. "I do; I would be entirely
alone," was her reply. "I am aware that Foxwood is yours now, Karl,
and you may think I have no right even to express a hint that you
might for a time leave it; but I feel that the chance of my regaining
strength and spirits would be greater if left entirely to myself: your
presence here is a strain upon me."
The answer was to Karl welcome as sunshine in harvest. He had been
longing to travel; to try and find some relief from his thoughts in
hitherto untrodden scenes: consideration for his mother--the
consciousness that it would be wrong both in duty and affection
to leave her--had alone prevented his proposing it. Within
four-and-twenty hours after this he had quitted Foxwood.
But Karl was not so soon to quit England. Various matters had to be
settled in regard to the estate; and when he reached London his
lawyers, Plunkett and Plunkett, said they should want him for a little
while. The crime committed by Sir Adam so immediately upon the death
of Sir Joseph, had caused a vast deal of necessary business to remain
in abeyance. Certain indispensable law proceedings to be gone through,
had to be gone through now. So Karl Andinnian perforce took up his
temporary abode in London; and at the end of a week or two, when he
found himself at liberty, he crossed over the water, Vienna being his
first halting place. The sojourn there of a former brother officer,
Captain Lamprey, who had been Karl's chiefest friend and stuck to him
in his misfortunes, induced it. Captain Lamprey was staying in Vienna
with his newly married wife, and he wrote to ask Karl to join them.
Karl did so. Captain Lamprey's term of leave expired the end of
December. He and his wife were going home to spend the Christmas, and
Karl accompanied them as far as Paris. Mrs. Andinnian, in answer to a
question from Karl, whether she would like him to return to her for
Christmas, had written back to him a resolute and ungracious No.
So here he was, in Paris. It was all the same to him; this
resting-place or that resting-place. His life had been blighted in
more ways than one. Of Lucy Cleeve he thought still a great deal too
much for his peace. She was far enough removed from him in all senses
of the word. In a letter received by Captain Lamprey from some friends
at Winchester, it was stated that the Cleeves were wintering in Egypt.
Where Karl's own place of sojourn was next to be, he had not decided,
but his thoughts rather turned towards every chief continental city
that was famed for its gallery of paintings. He thought he would make
a pilgrimage to all of them. Karl had the eye of a true artist: to
gaze at good paintings was now the only pleasure of his life. He had
not yet anything like done with those in Paris and Versailles.
On, upon his course along the Boulevards, passed he. Now and again his
eyes turned towards the lovely étrennes with a longing: once in a way,
when the throngs allowed him, he halted to look and admire: a longing
to buy étrennes himself, and that he had some one to give them to when
bought. It was not well possible for any body to feel more completely
isolated from the happy world than did Karl Andinnian.
"How d'ye do, Sir Karl? Charming day for the holiday, is it not!"
Sir Karl made some answering assent, raised his hat, bowed, and passed
on. The remark had come from an Englishman with whom he had a slight
acquaintance, who had come out shop-gazing with his flock of
daughters.
He went straight home then to his hotel--Hotel Montaigne, Rue
Montaigne. As he crossed the courtyard, the landlord--a ponderous
gentleman with a ponderous watch-chain--came out and gave him some
letters. From some cause the English delivery had been late that
morning.
One of the letters was from Captain Lamprey, the other from Plunkett
and Plunkett. Neither contained any interest; neither thought to wish
him happiness for the New Year. It was all the same to Karl Andinnian:
the New Year could not have much happiness in store for him.
He strolled out again, turning his steps towards the Champs Elysées.
It was but one o'clock yet, and the brightest part of the day. At one
of the windows of the palace he fancied he caught a transient glimpse
of the Empress. Shortly afterwards, the peculiar clatter of the Prince
Imperial's escort was heard advancing, surrounding the little prince
in his carriage.
The Champs Elysées were bright to-day. Children attired in silks and
satins were playing in the sun, their bonnes sitting by in their
holiday costume. New Year's Day and All Saints' Day are the two most
dressy epochs in the year in France--as everybody knows. Invalids sat
in the warmth: ladies flitted hither and thither like gay butterflies.
By a mere chance, Karl always thought it so, his eyes fell on two
ladies seated alone on a distant bench. Involuntarily his steps
halted; his heart leaped up with a joyous bound. They were Mrs. and
Miss Cleeve.
But, ah how ill she looked--Lucy. The bounding heart fell again as
though some dead weight were pressing it. Thin, worn, white; with dark
circles round the eyes, and lips that seemed to have no life in them.
For a moment Karl wondered whether he might not approach and question
her: but he remembered his bargain with Colonel Cleeve.
They did not see him: they were looking at some children in front of
them; playing at "Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre." Karl pursued the
path he was on, which would carry him away from their bench at right
angles. He resolved that if they saw him he would go up and speak: if
they did not, he must continue his way.
And he had to continue it. Mrs. Cleeve, Who did not look to be in
strong health either, seemed absorbed by the play and the childish
voices chanting the chanson; Lucy had now bent her forehead upon her
hand, as though some ache were there. Karl went on, out of sight, his
brow aching too.
"Bon jour, monsieur."
The salutation, which had a touch of surprised pleasure in its tone,
came from a natty-looking little Frenchwoman, with a thin red face and
shrewd grey eyes. She might have been given five-and-thirty years: but
in the register of her native _Mairie_ she would have been found hard
upon forty. Sir Karl stopped. She was Lucy's maid: formerly Lucy's
nurse.
"C'est vous, Aglaé!"
"Mais oui, monsieur."
"I thought I saw Mrs. and Miss Cleeve sitting on a bench just now,"
continued Karl; changing his language. "Are you staying in Paris?"
"Oh, very long since," replied Aglaé, to whom both languages were
nearly alike. "Our apartment is close by, sir--a small house in the
Avenue d'Antin. The delight to find myself in my proper land again,
where I can go about without one of those vilain bonnets and hear no
street gamins hoot at me for it, is untellable."
"I understood that Colonel Cleeve and his family had gone to Egypt for
the winter," observed Karl.
"To Egypt, or to some other place of barbarisme: so it was projected,
sir. But my young lady, Miss Lucy, is not strong enough to be taken."
"What is the matter with her?" asked Karl, with assumed quietness.
"The matter? Oh! The matter is, that she has got no happiness left in
her heart, sir," cried Aglaé, explosively, as if in deep resentment
against things in general. "It's dried up. And if they don't mind, she
will just go unwarningly out of life. That's my opinion: and, mind,
sir, I do not go to say it without reason."
A slight blush mantled in Karl's face. He seemed to be watching a red
paper kite, that was sailing beneath the blue sky.
"They see it now, both of them; the Colonel and Madame; they see that
she's just slipping away from them, and _they_ are ill. Ah but! the
senseless--what you call it--distinctions--that the English set up!"
"But what is the cause?" asked Karl. Though it seemed to him that he
could discern quite well without being answered.
Aglaé threw her shrewd eyes into his.
"I think, sir, you might tell it for yourself, that. She has not been
well since that fever. She was not well before the fever, since--since
about the month of May."
He drew in his lips. Aglaé, with native independence, continued to
stare at him.
"Why don't you call and see her, sir?"
"Because--well, I suppose you know, Aglaé. I should not be welcome to
Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve."
"And the poor young lady, who never did harm to living soul, is to be
let shrink down into her grave for the sake of English prejudice! _I_
can see. I've got my wits about me, and have seen it all along. My
service to you, sir. Bon jour."
The maid went on in a rage, her dainty cap nodding, her smart boots
going down rather more noisily than was needful. Sir Karl passed on
his way, thinking deeply. He walked about until the daylight was
fading, and then strode back rapidly to his hotel, with the air of a
man who is about to carry out some resolution that will not wait. _He_
was. A resolution that had been floating in his mind before he' saw
Lucy or encountered her maid.
Colonel Cleeve was seated alone that evening in his dining-room in the
Avenue d'Antin, when a letter was delivered to him. For a few minutes
he let it lie unheeded. The thoughts he was buried in were very
sad ones--they ran on the decaying strength of his only daughter. It
seemed to him and Mrs. Cleeve that unless some wonderful change--say a
miracle, for instance--interposed, Lucy's life was not worth many
weeks' purchase. They knew now--he and his wife--that the parting with
Karl Andinnian had been too cruel for her.
Arousing himself from his gloomy visions, the Colonel opened the
note--which had been left by hand. Why here was a strange thing!--he
started in surprise. Started when he saw the contents of the letter
and the signature appended. Had the miracle come?
It was one of the plain, candid, straightforward letters, so
characteristic of Karl Andinnian. He said that he had chanced to see
Miss Cleeve that day, that he had been shocked by her appearance; that
he had happened to hear from Aglaé subsequently how very alarmingly
she was failing. He went on to add with shrinking deprecation, every
word of which told of the most sensitive refinement, that he feared
the trouble of last May might have had something to do with it, and be
still telling upon her. He then put a statement of his affairs, as to
possessions and income, before Colonel Cleeve, and asked whether he
might presume again to address Lucy now that he could offer a good
settlement and make her Lady Andinnian.
Three times over Colonel Cleeve read the note, pausing well to reflect
between each time. Then he sent for his wife.
"He is of no family--and there's that dreadful slur upon it besides,"
remarked the Colonel, talking it over. "But it may be the saving of
Lucy's life."
"It is a good letter," said Mrs. Cleeve, reading it through her
eye-glass.
"It's as good and proper a letter as any young man could write. All
his instincts are honourable. Some men might have written to Lucy
herself. Putting aside his lack of family and the other disrepute, we
could not wish a better son-in-law than Sir Karl Andinnian."
"Yes," deliberated Mrs. Cleeve, after a pause. "True. The
disadvantages are great: but they seem little when balanced against
the chance of restoring Lucy's life. She will be a baronet's wife; she
will be sufficiently rich; and--I think--she will be intensely happy."
"Then I'll send for him," said Colonel Cleeve.
The interview took place on the following morning. It was a peculiar
one. Just as plainly open as Karl had been in his letter, so was the
Colonel now.
"I think it may be the one chance for saving my child's life," he
said; "for there is no denying that she was very much attached to you,
Sir Karl. Sitting alone after dinner last evening, I was telling
myself that nothing short of a miracle could help her: the doctors say
they can do nothing, the malady is on her mind--though for my part I
think the chief ill is the weakness left by that ague-fever. Your
letter came to interrupt my thoughts; and when I read it I wondered
whether that was the miracle."
"If you will only give me Lucy, my whole life shall be devoted to her
best comfort, sir," he said in a low tone. "My happiness was wrecked
equally with hers: but I am a man and therefore stronger to bear."
"Nothing would have induced me to give her to you had your brother
lived," resumed the Colonel. "If I am too plain in what I say I must
beg you to excuse it: but it is well that we should understand each
other thoroughly. Yourself I like; I always have liked you; but the
disgrace reflected upon you was so great while your brother was
living, a convict, that to see Lucy your wife then would I think have
killed both me and Mrs. Cleeve. Take it at the best, it would have
embittered our lives for ever."
"Had my unfortunate brother lived, I should never have attempted to
ask for her, Colonel Cleeve."
"Right. I have observed that on most subjects your ideas coincide with
my own. Rather than that--the disgrace to her and to us; and grievous
though the affliction it would have brought to me and her mother--we
would rather have laid our child to rest."
The deep emotion with which Colonel Cleeve spoke--the generally
self-contained man whose calmness almost bordered upon apathy--proved
how true the words were, and how terribly the sense of disgrace would
have told upon him.
"But your unhappy brother has paid the forfeit of his crimes by
death," he continued, "and it is to be hoped and expected that in time
the remembrance of him and of what he did will die out of people's
minds. Therefore we have resolved to trust to this hope, and give you
Lucy. It will be better than to let her die." Sir Karl Andinnian drew
in his slender lips. But that he had passed through a course of most
bitter humiliation--and _that_, wherever it falls, seems for the time
to wash out pride--he might have shown resentment at the last words.
The Colonel saw he felt the sting: and he wished it had not been his
province to inflict it.
"It was best to explain this, Sir Karl. Pardon me for its sound of
harshness. And now that it is over and done with, let me say that
never for a moment have I or Mrs. Cleeve blamed you. It was not your
fault that your brother lost himself; neither could you have helped
it: and we have both felt almost as sorry for you as though you had
been a relative of our own. I beg that henceforth his name may never
be mentioned between you and us: the past, so far as regards him, must
be as though it had never been. You will observe this reticence?"
"Unquestionably."
"The affair is settled then, Andinnian. Will you see Lucy?"
"If I may," replied Karl, a bright smile succeeding to the sadness on
his face. "Does she know I am here?"
"She knows nothing. Her mother thought it might be better that I
should speak to you first. You can tell her all yourself. But mind you
do it quietly, for she is very weak."
Lucy happened to be alone in, the salon. She sat in a red velvet
arm-chair as big as a canopy, looking at the pretty étrenne her mother
had given her the previous day--a bracelet of links studded with
turquoise and a drooping turquoise heart. A smile of gratitude parted
her lips; though tears stood in her eyes, for she believed she should
not live to wear it long.
"Lucy," said her father, looking in as he opened the door. "I-have
brought you a visitor who has called--Sir Karl Andinnian."
Lucy rose in trembling astonishment; the morocco case, which had been
on her lap, falling to the ground. She wore a dress of violet silk,
and Aglaé had folded about her a white shawl--for chillness was
present with her still. Karl advanced, and the Colonel shut them in
together.
He took both her hands in his, slipping the bracelet on to her
attenuated wrist,--and quietly held them. The poor wan face and the
hectic colour his presence had called up, had all his attention just
then.
"I saw you in the Champs Elysées yesterday, Lucy. It pained me very
much to see you so much changed."
"Did you see me? I was there with mamma. It is the fever I had in the
summer that hangs about me and does not let me yet get strong."
"Is it _nothing_ else, Lucy?"
The hectic deepened to crimson. The soft brown eyes drooped beneath
the gaze of his.
"I fancied there might be another cause for it, Lucy, and I have
ventured to say so to Colonel Cleeve. He agrees with me."
"You--you were not afraid to call here!" she exclaimed, as if the fact
were a subject of wonder.
"What I had to say to Colonel Cleeve I wrote by letter. After that, he
invited me to call."
Karl sat down on the red sofa opposite the chair, and put Lucy by him,
his arm entwining her waist. "I want you," he said, "to tell me
exactly what it is that keeps you from getting strong, Lucy."
"But I cannot tell you, for I don't know," she answered with a little
sob. "I wish I could get well, Karl--for poor papa and mamma's sake."
"Do you think I could do anything towards the restoration, Lucy?" he
continued, drawing her closer to his side.
"What could you do?"
"Watch you, and tend you, and love you. And--and make you my wife."
"Don't jest, Karl," she said, whispering and trembling. "You know it
may not be."
"But if Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve say that it may be?"
The tone of his voice was redolent of anything but jesting: it was one
of deep truthful emotion. Lucy looked questioningly up at him.
"Oh Karl, don't play with me! What do you mean?"
He caught the sweet face, and held it to his. His own hands were
trembling, his race was pale as hers. But she could not mistake his
grave earnestness.
"It means, my darling, that you are to be mine for ever. My wife. They
are going to give you to me: your father brought me here that I might
myself break it to you."
A minute's doubting look; a slight shiver as if the joy were too
great; and then with a sigh she let her head fall on his breast--its
future resting-place.
"And what's this that you were looking at, Lucy?" he asked after a
while, turning the pretty bracelet round and round her wrist.
"Mamma bought it me yesterday for my New Year's étrenne. I was
thinking--before you came--that I might not live to wear it."
"I was thinking yesterday, Lucy, as I walked along the Boulevards,
that I would give a great deal to have some one to buy étrennes for.
It is not too late, is it? Meanwhile----"
Breaking off his sentence, he took a very rare ring from his finger,
one of the most brilliant of opals encompassed by diamonds. She had
never seen him wear it before.
"Oh, how very beautiful!" she exclaimed, as it flashed in a gleam of
reflected sunlight.
"I do not give it you, Lucy," he said, putting it upon her finger. "I
lend it you until I can find another fit to replace it. That may be in
a day, or so. This ring was my father's: made a present of to him by
an Eastern Sultan, to whom he was able to render an essential service.
At my father's death it came to my brother: and--later--to me."
Karl's voice dropped as he was concluding. Lucy Cleeve felt for him;
she knew what _he_ must feel at the allusion. She glided her hand into
his, unsought.
"So until then this ring shall be the earnest of our betrothal, Lucy.
You will take care of it: and of my love."
The ring was the same that had been seen on Sir Adam's finger at the
trial. On that same day, after his condemnation, he had taken it off,
and caused it to be conveyed to Karl--his, from henceforth. But Karl
had never put it on his own finger until after his brother's death.