All the earlier part of that next day, Graham Vane remained in-doors--a
lovely day at Paris that 8th of July, and with that summer day all hearts
at Paris were in unison. Discontent was charmed into enthusiasm--
Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism and Socialism
and other "isms" not to be realised except in some undiscovered Atlantis!
The Emperor was the idol of the day--the names of Jules Favre and
Gambetta were by-words of scorn. Even Armand Monnier, still out of work,
beginning to feel the pinch of want, and fierce for any revolution that
might turn topsy-turvy the conditions of labour,--even Armand Monnier was
found among groups that were laying immortelles at the foot of the column
in the Place Vendome, and heard to say to a fellow malcontent, with eyes
uplifted to the statue of the First Napoleon, "Do you not feel at this
moment that no Frenchman can be long angry with the Little Corporal? He
denied La Liberte, but he gave La Gloire."
Heeding not the stir of the world without, Graham was compelling into one
resolve the doubts and scruples which had so long warred against the
heart which they ravaged, but could not wholly subdue.
The conversations with Mrs. Morley and Rochebriant had placed in a light
in which he had not before regarded it, the image of Isaura.
He had reasoned from the starting-point of his love for her, and had
sought to convince himself that against that love it was his duty to
strive.
But now a new question was addressed to his conscience as well as to his
heart. What though he had never formally declared to her his affection--
never, in open words, wooed her as his own--never even hinted to her the
hopes of a union which at one time he had fondly entertained,--still was
it true that his love had been too transparent not to be detected by her,
and not to have led her on to return it?
Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he was not indifferent to her:
at Enghien, a year ago, that he had gained her esteem, and perhaps
interested her fancy.
We know also how he had tried to persuade himself that the artistic
temperament, especially when developed in women, is too elastic to suffer
the things of real life to have lasting influence over happiness or
sorrow,--that in the pursuits in which her thought and imagination found
employ, in the excitement they sustained, and the fame to which they
conduced, Isaura would be readily consoled for a momentary pang of
disappointed affection. And that a man so alien as himself, both by
nature and by habit, from the artistic world, was the very last person
who could maintain deep and permanent impression on her actual life or
her ideal dreams. But what if, as he gathered from the words of the fair
American--what if, in all these assumptions, she was wholly mistaken?
What if, in previously revealing his own heart, he had decoyed hers--what
if, by a desertion she had no right to anticipate, he had blighted her
future? What if this brilliant child of genius could love as warmly, as
deeply, as enduringly as any simple village girl to whom there is no
poetry except love? If this were so--what became the first claim on his
honour, his conscience, his duty?
The force which but a few days ago his reasonings had given to the
arguments that forbade him to think of Isaura, became weaker and weaker,
as now in an altered mood of reflection he resummoned and reweighed them.
All those prejudices--which had seemed to him such rational common-sense
truths, when translated from his own mind into the words of Lady Janet's
letter,--was not Mrs. Morley right in denouncing them as the crotchets of
an insolent egotism? Was it not rather to the favour than to the
disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in the man's narrow-minded view of
woman's dignity, that this orphan girl could, with character so
unscathed, pass through the trying ordeal of the public babble, the
public gaze-command alike the esteem of a woman so pure as Mrs. Morley,
the reverence of a man so chivalrously sensitive to honour as Alain de
Rochebriant?
Musing thus, Graham's countenance at last brightened--a glorious joy
entered into and possessed him. He felt as a man who had burst asunder
the swathes and trammels which had kept him galled and miserable with the
sense of captivity, and from which some wizard spell that took strength
from his own superstition had forbidden to struggle.
He was free!--and that freedom was rapture!--yes, his resolve was taken.
The day was now far advanced. He should have just time before the dinner
with Duplessis to drive to A------, where he still supposed Isaura
resided. How, as his _fiacre_ rolled along the well-remembered road--
how completely he lived in that world of romance of which he denied
himself to be a denizen.
Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied only by workmen--it was
under repair. No one could tell him to what residence the ladies who
occupied it the last year had removed.
"I shall learn from Mrs. Morley," thought Graham, and at her house he
called in going back, but Mrs. Morley was not at home; he had only just
time, after regaining his apartment, to change his dress for the dinner
to which he was invited. As it was, he arrived late, and while
apologising to his host for his want of punctuality, his tongue faltered.
At the farther end of the room he saw a face, paler and thinner than when
he had seen it last--a face across which a something of grief had gone.
The servant announced that dinner was served.
"Mr. Vane," said Duplessis, "will you take into dinner Mademoiselle
Cicogna?"