It was with an interest languid and listless indeed, compared with
that which he would have felt a day before, that Graham mused over the
remarkable advances towards the discovery of Louise Duval which were
made in the letters he had perused. She had married, then, first a
foreigner, whom she spoke of as noble, and whose name and residence
could be easily found through the Countess von Rudesheim. The marriage
did not seem to have been a happy one. Left a widow in reduced
circumstances, she had married again, evidently without affection. She
was living so late as 1861, and she had children living is 1859: was the
child referred to by Richard King one of them?
The tone and style of the letters served to throw some light on the
character of the writer: they evinced pride, stubborn self-will, and
unamiable hardness of nature; but her rejection of all pecuniary aid
from a man like the late Marquis de Rochebriant betokened a certain
dignity of sentiment. She was evidently, whatever her strange ideas
about her first marriage with Richard King, no vulgar woman of
gallantry; and there must have been some sort of charm about her to
have excited a friendly interest in a kinsman so remote, and a man of
pleasure so selfish, as her high-born correspondent.
But what now, so far as concerned his own happiness, was the hope, the
probable certainty, of a speedy fulfilment of the trust bequeathed to
him? Whether the result, in the death of the mother, and more especially
of the child, left him rich, or, if the last survived, reduced his
fortune to a modest independence, Isaura was equally lost to him, and
fortune became valueless. But his first emotions on recovering from the
shock of hearing from Isaura’s lips that she was irrevocably affianced
to another, were not those of self-reproach. They were those of intense
bitterness against her who, if really so much attached to him as he had
been led to hope, could within so brief a time reconcile her heart
to marriage with another. This bitterness was no doubt unjust; but I
believe it to be natural to men of a nature so proud and of affections
so intense as Graham’s, under similar defeats of hope. Resentment is
the first impulse in a man loving with the whole ardour of his soul,
rejected, no matter why or wherefore, by the woman by whom he had cause
to believe he himself was beloved; and though Graham’s standard of
honour was certainly the reverse of low, yet man does not view honour in
the same light as woman does, when involved in analogous difficulties of
position. Graham conscientiously thought that if Isaura so loved him
as to render distasteful an engagement to another which could only very
recently have been contracted, it would be more honourable frankly so to
tell the accepted suitor than to leave him in ignorance that her heart
was estranged. But these engagements are very solemn things with girls
like Isaura, and hers was no ordinary obligation of woman-honour. Had
the accepted one been superior in rank-fortune--all that flatters the
ambition of woman in the choice of marriage; had he been resolute, and
strong, and self-dependent amid the trials and perils of life--then
possibly the woman’s honour might find excuse in escaping the penalties
of its pledge. But the poor, ailing, infirm, morbid boy-poet, who looked
to her as his saving angel in body, in mind, and soul-to say to him,
“Give me back my freedom,” would be to abandon him to death and to sin.
But Graham could not of course divine why what he as a man thought right
was to Isaura as woman impossible: and he returned to his old prejudiced
notion that there is no real depth and ardour of affection for human
lovers in the poetess whose mind and heart are devoted to the creation
of imaginary heroes. Absorbed in reverie, he took his way slowly and
with downcast looks towards the British embassy, at which it was well to
ascertain whether the impending war yet necessitated special passports
for Germany.
“Bon-jour, cher ami,” said a pleasant voice; “and how long have you been
at Paris?”
“Oh, my dear M. Savarin! charmed to see you looking so well! Madame well
too, I trust? My kindest regards to her. I have been in Paris but a day
or two, and I leave this evening.”
“So soon? The war frightens you away, I suppose. Which way are you going
now?”
“To the British embassy.”
“Well, I will go with you so far--it is in my own direction. I have to
call at the charming Italian’s with my congratulations--on news I only
heard this morning.”
“You mean Mademoiselle Cicogna--and the news that demands
congratulations--her approaching marriage!”
“Mon Dieu! when could you have heard of that?”
“Last night at the house of M. Duplessis.”
“Parbleu! I shall scold her well for confiding to her new friend Valerie
the secret she kept from her old friends, my wife and myself.”
“By the way,” said Graham, with a tone of admirably-feigned
indifference, “who is the happy man? That part of the secret I did not
hear.”
“Can’t you guess?” “NO.”
“Gustave Rameau.”
“Ah!” Graham almost shrieked, so sharp and shrill was his cry. “Ah! I
ought indeed to have guessed that!”
“Madame Savarin, I fancy, helped to make up the marriage. I hope it may
turn out well; certainly it will be his salvation. May it be for her
happiness!”
“No doubt of that! Two poets-born for each other, I dare say. Adieu, my
dear Savarin! Here we are at the embassy.”