CHAPTER I.

AFTER DARK

By Wilkie Collins

PREFACE TO “AFTER DARK.”

I have taken some pains to string together the various stories contained

in this Volume on a single thread of interest, which, so far as I know,

has at least the merit of not having been used before.

The pages entitled “Leah’s Diary” are, however, intended to fulfill

another purpose besides that of serving as the frame-work for my

collection of tales. In this part of the book, and subsequently in the

Prologues to the stories, it has been my object to give the reader one

more glimpse at that artist-life which circumstances have afforded me

peculiar opportunities of studying, and which I have already tried to

represent, under another aspect, in my fiction, “Hide-and-Seek.” This

time I wish to ask some sympathy for the joys and sorrows of a poor

traveling portrait-painter--presented from his wife’s point of view

in “Leah’s Diary,” and supposed to be briefly and simply narrated by

himself in the Prologues to the stories. I have purposely kept these

two portions of the book within certain limits; only giving, in the

one case, as much as the wife might naturally write in her diary at

intervals of household leisure; and, in the other, as much as a modest

and sensible man would be likely to say about himself and about the

characters he met with in his wanderings. If I have been so fortunate as

to make my idea intelligible by this brief and simple mode of treatment,

and if I have, at the same time, achieved the necessary object of

gathering several separate stories together as neatly-fitting parts of

one complete whole, I shall have succeeded in a design which I have for

some time past been very anxious creditably to fulfill.

Of the tales themselves, taken individually, I have only to say, by

way of necessary explanation, that “The Lady of Glenwith Grange” is now

offered to the reader for the first time; and that the other stories

have appeared in the columns of _Household Words_. My best thanks are

due to Mr. Charles Dickens for his kindness in allowing me to set them

in their present frame-work.

I must also gratefully acknowledge an obligation of another kind to the

accomplished artist, Mr. W. S. Herrick, to whom I am indebted for

the curious and interesting facts on which the tales of “The Terribly

Strange Bed” and “The Yellow Mask” are founded.

Although the statement may appear somewhat superfluous to those who know

me, it may not be out of place to add, in conclusion, that these stories

are entirely of my own imagining, constructing, and writing. The fact

that the events of some of my tales occur on foreign ground, and are

acted out by foreign personages, appears to have suggested in some

quarters the inference that the stories themselves might be of foreign

origin. Let me, once for all, assure any readers who may honor me with

their attention, that in this, and in all other cases, they may depend

on the genuineness of my literary offspring. The little children of my

brain may be weakly enough, and may be sadly in want of a helping hand

to aid them in their first attempts at walking on the stage of this

great world; but, at any rate, they are not borrowed children. The

members of my own literary family are indeed increasing so fast as to

render the very idea of borrowing quite out of the question, and to

suggest serious apprehension that I may not have done adding to the

large book-population, on my own sole responsibility, even yet.

AFTER DARK.

LEAVES FROM LEAH’S DIARY.

16th February, 1827.--The doctor has just called for the third time to

examine my husband’s eyes. Thank God, there is no fear at present of my

poor William losing his sight, provided he can be prevailed on to

attend rigidly to the medical instructions for preserving it. These

instructions, which forbid him to exercise his profession for the next

six months at least, are, in our case, very hard to follow. They will

but too probably sentence us to poverty, perhaps to actual want; but

they must be borne resignedly, and even thankfully, seeing that my

husband’s forced cessation from work will save him from the dreadful

affliction of loss of sight. I think I can answer for my own

cheerfulness and endurance, now that we know the worst. Can I answer for

our children also? Surely I can, when there are only two of them. It is

a sad confession to make, but now, for the first time since my marriage,

I feel thankful that we have no more.

17th.--A dread came over me last night, after I had comforted William as

well as I could about the future, and had heard him fall off to sleep,

that the doctor had not told us the worst. Medical men do sometimes

deceive their patients, from what has always seemed to me to be

misdirected kindness of heart. The mere suspicion that I had been

trifled with on the subject of my husband’s illness, caused me such

uneasiness, that I made an excuse to get out, and went in secret to the

doctor. Fortunately, I found him at home, and in three words I confessed

to him the object of my visit.

He smiled, and said I might make myself easy; he had told us the worst.

“And that worst,” I said, to make certain, “is, that for the next six

months my husband must allow his eyes to have the most perfect repose?”

“Exactly,” the doctor answered. “Mind, I don’t say that he may not

dispense with his green shade, indoors, for an hour or two at a time, as

the inflammation gets subdued. But I do most positively repeat that he

must not _employ_ his eyes. He must not touch a brush or pencil; he must

not think of taking another likeness, on any consideration whatever, for

the next six months. His persisting in finishing those two portraits,

at the time when his eyes first began to fail, was the real cause of all

the bad symptoms that we have had to combat ever since. I warned him

(if you remember, Mrs. Kerby?) when he first came to practice in our

neighborhood.”

“I know you did, sir,” I replied. “But what was a poor traveling

portrait-painter like my husband, who lives by taking likenesses first

in one place and then in another, to do? Our bread depended on his using

his eyes, at the very time when you warned him to let them have a rest.”

“Have you no other resources? No money but the money Mr. Kerby can get

by portrait-painting?” asked the doctor.

“None,” I answered, with a sinking at my heart as I thought of his bill

for medical attendance.

“Will you pardon me?” he said, coloring and looking a little uneasy,

“or, rather, will you ascribe it to the friendly interest I feel in you,

if I ask whether Mr. Kerby realizes a comfortable income by the

practice of his profession? Don’t,” he went on anxiously, before I

could reply--“pray don’t think I make this inquiry from a motive of

impertinent curiosity!”

I felt quite satisfied that he could have no improper motive for asking

the question, and so answered it at once plainly and truly.

“My husband makes but a small income,” I said. “Famous London

portrait-painters get great prices from their sitters; but poor unknown

artists, who only travel about the country, are obliged to work hard and

be contented with very small gains. After we have paid all that we owe

here, I am afraid we shall have little enough left to retire on, when we

take refuge in some cheaper place.”

“In that case,” said the good doctor (I am so glad and proud to remember

that I always liked him from the first!), “in that case, don’t make

yourself anxious about my bill when you are thinking of clearing off

your debts here. I can afford to wait till Mr. Kerby’s eyes are well

again, and I shall then ask him for a likeness of my little daughter.

By that arrangement we are sure to be both quits, and both perfectly

satisfied.”

He considerately shook hands and bade me farewell before I could say

half the grateful words to him that were on my lips. Never, never shall

I forget that he relieved me of my two heaviest anxieties at the most

anxious time of my life. The merciful, warm-hearted man! I could almost

have knelt down and kissed his doorstep, as I crossed it on my way home.

18th.--If I had not resolved, after what happened yesterday, to look

only at the cheerful side of things for the future, the events of

to-day would have robbed me of all my courage, at the very outset of

our troubles. First, there was the casting up of our bills, and the

discovery, when the amount of them was balanced against all the money

we have saved up, that we shall only have between three and four pounds

left in the cash-box, after we have got out of debt. Then there was the

sad necessity of writing letters in my husband’s name to the rich people

who were ready to employ him, telling them of the affliction that had

overtaken him, and of the impossibility of his executing their orders

for portraits for the next six months to come. And, lastly, there was

the heart-breaking business for me to go through of giving our landlord

warning, just as we had got comfortably settled in our new abode. If

William could only have gone on with his work, we might have stopped in

this town, and in these clean, comfortable lodgings for at least three

or four months. We have never had the use of a nice empty garret before,

for the children to play in; and I never met with any landlady so

pleasant to deal with in the kitchen as the landlady here. And now we

must leave all this comfort and happiness, and go--I hardly know where.

William, in his bitterness, says to the workhouse; but that shall never

be, if I have to go out to service to prevent it. The darkness is coming

on, and we must save in candles, or I could write much more. Ah, me!

what a day this has been. I have had but one pleasant moment since it

began; and that was in the morning, when I set my little Emily to work

on a bead purse for the kind doctor’s daughter. My child, young as

she is, is wonderfully neat-handed at stringing beads; and even a poor

little empty purse as a token of our gratitude, is better than nothing

at all.

19th.--A visit from our best friend--our only friend here--the doctor.

After he had examined William’s eyes, and had reported that they were

getting on as well as can be hoped at present, he asked where we thought

of going to live? I said in the cheapest place we could find, and added

that I was about to make inquiries in the by-streets of the town that

very day. “Put off those inquiries,” he said, “till you hear from me

again. I am going now to see a patient at a farmhouse five miles

off. (You needn’t look at the children, Mrs. Kerby, it’s nothing

infectious--only a clumsy lad, who has broken his collarbone by a fall

from a horse.) They receive lodgers occasionally at the farmhouse, and

I know no reason why they should not be willing to receive you. If you

want to be well housed and well fed at a cheap rate, and if you like the

society of honest, hearty people, the farm of Appletreewick is the very

place for you. Don’t thank me till you know whether I can get you

these new lodgings or not. And in the meantime settle all your business

affairs here, so as to be able to move at a moment’s notice.” With those

words the kind-hearted gentleman nodded and went out. Pray heaven he may

succeed at the farmhouse! We may be sure of the children’s health, at

least, if we live in the country. Talking of the children, I must not

omit to record that Emily has nearly done one end of the bead purse

already.

20th.--A note from the doctor, who is too busy to call. Such good

news! They will give us two bedrooms, and board us with the family at

Appletreewick for seventeen shillings a week. By my calculations, we

shall have three pounds sixteen shillings left, after paying what we owe

here. That will be enough, at the outset, for four weeks’ living at the

farmhouse, with eight shillings to spare besides. By embroidery-work I

can easily make nine shillings more to put to that, and there is a fifth

week provided for. Surely, in five weeks’ time--considering the number

of things I can turn my hand to--we may hit on some plan for getting a

little money. This is what I am always telling my husband, and what,

by dint of constantly repeating it, I am getting to believe myself.

William, as is but natural, poor fellow, does not take so lighthearted

view of the future as I do. He says that the prospect of sitting

idle and being kept by his wife for months to come, is something more

wretched and hopeless than words can describe. I try to raise his

spirits by reminding him of his years of honest hard work for me and

the children, and of the doctor’s assurance that his eyes will get the

better, in good time, of their present helpless state. But he still

sighs and murmurs--being one of the most independent and high spirited

of men--about living a burden on his wife. I can only answer, what in my

heart of hearts I feel, that I took him for Better and for Worse; that

I have had many years of the Better, and that, even in our present

trouble, the Worse shows no signs of coming yet!

The bead purse is getting on fast. Red and blue, in a pretty striped

pattern.

21st.--A busy day. We go to Appletreewick to-morrow. Paying bills and

packing up. All poor William’s new canvases and painting-things huddled

together into a packing-case. He looked so sad, sitting silent with

his green shade on, while his old familiar working materials were

disappearing around him, as if he and they were never to come together

again, that the tears would start into my eyes, though I am sure I

am not one of the crying sort. Luckily, the green shade kept him from

seeing me: and I took good care, though the effort nearly choked me,

that he should not hear I was crying, at any rate.

The bead purse is done. How are we to get the steel rings and tassels

for it? I am not justified now in spending sixpence unnecessarily, even

for the best of purposes.

22d.-----

23d. _The Farm of Appletreewick._--Too tired, after our move yesterday,

to write a word in my diary about our journey to this delightful place.

But now that we are beginning to get settled, I can manage to make up

for past omissions.

My first occupation on the morning of the move had, oddly enough,

nothing to do with our departure for the farmhouse. The moment breakfast

was over I began the day by making Emily as smart and nice-looking as I

could, to go to the doctor’s with the purse. She had her best silk frock

on, showing the mending a little in some places, I am afraid, and her

straw hat trimmed with my bonnet ribbon. Her father’s neck-scarf, turned

and joined so that nobody could see it, made a nice mantilla for her;

and away she went to the doctor’s, with her little, determined step,

and the purse in her hand (such a pretty hand that it is hardly to

be regretted I had no gloves for her). They were delighted with the

purse--which I ought to mention was finished with some white beads; we

found them in rummaging among our boxes, and they made beautiful rings

and tassels, contrasting charmingly with the blue and red of the rest

of the purse. The doctor and his little girl were, as I have said,

delighted with the present; and they gave Emily, in return, a workbox

for herself, and a box of sugar-plums for her baby sister. The child

came back all flushed with the pleasure of the visit, and quite helped

to keep up her father’s spirits with talking to him about it. So much

for the highly interesting history of the bead purse.

Toward the afternoon the light cart from the farmhouse came to fetch us

and our things to Appletreewick. It was quite a warm spring day, and

I had another pang to bear as I saw poor William helped into the cart,

looking so sickly and sad, with his miserable green shade, in the

cheerful sunlight. “God only knows, Leah, how this will succeed with

us,” he said, as we started; then sighed, and fell silent again.

Just outside the town the doctor met us. “Good luck go with you!” he

cried, swinging his stick in his usual hasty way; “I shall come and see

you as soon as you are all settled at the farmhouse.” “Good-by, sir,”

says Emily, struggling up with all her might among the bundles in the

bottom of the cart; “good-by, and thank you again for the work-box and

the sugar-plums.” That was my child all over! she never wants telling.

The doctor kissed his hand, and gave another flourish with his stick. So

we parted.

How I should have enjoyed the drive if William could only have looked,

as I did, at the young firs on the heath bending beneath the steady

breeze; at the shadows flying over the smooth fields; at the high

white clouds moving on and on, in their grand airy procession over the

gladsome blue sky! It was a hilly road, and I begged the lad who drove

us not to press the horse; so we were nearly an hour, at our slow rate

of going, before we drew up at the gate of Appletreewick.

24th February to 2d March.--We have now been here long enough to know

something of the place and the people. First, as to the place: Where

the farmhouse now is, there was once a famous priory. The tower is still

standing, and the great room where the monks ate and drank--used at

present as a granary. The house itself seems to have been tacked on to

the ruins anyhow. No two rooms in it are on the same level. The children

do nothing but tumble about the passages, because there always happens

to be a step up or down, just at the darkest part of every one of them.

As for staircases, there seems to me to be one for each bedroom. I do

nothing but lose my way--and the farmer says, drolling, that he must

have sign-posts put up for me in every corner of the house from top to

bottom. On the ground-floor, besides the usual domestic offices, we have

the best parlor--a dark, airless, expensively furnished solitude, never

invaded by anybody; the kitchen, and a kind of hall, with a fireplace as

big as the drawing-room at our town lodgings. Here we live and take our

meals; here the children can racket about to their hearts’ content; here

the dogs come lumbering in, whenever they can get loose; here wages are

paid, visitors are received, bacon is cured, cheese is tasted, pipes

are smoked, and naps are taken every evening by the male members of the

family. Never was such a comfortable, friendly dwelling-place devised as

this hall; I feel already as if half my life had been passed in it.

Out-of-doors, looking beyond the flower-garden, lawn, back yards,

pigeon-houses, and kitchen-gardens, we are surrounded by a network of

smooth grazing-fields, each shut off from the other by its neat hedgerow

and its sturdy gate. Beyond the fields the hills seem to flow away

gently from us into the far blue distance, till they are lost in the

bright softness of the sky. At one point, which we can see from our

bedroom windows, they dip suddenly into the plain, and show, over

the rich marshy flat, a strip of distant sea--a strip sometimes

blue, sometimes gray; sometimes, when the sun sets, a streak of fire;

sometimes, on showery days, a flash of silver light.

The inhabitants of the farmhouse have one great and rare merit--they are

people whom you can make friends with at once. Between not knowing them

at all, and knowing them well enough to shake hands at first sight,

there is no ceremonious interval or formal gradation whatever. They

received us, on our arrival, exactly as if we were old friends returned

from some long traveling expedition. Before we had been ten minutes in

the hall, William had the easiest chair and the snuggest corner; the

children were eating bread-and-jam on the window-seat; and I was talking

to the farmer’s wife, with the cat on my lap, of the time when Emily had

the measles.

The family numbers seven, exclusive of the indoor servants, of course.

First came the farmer and his wife--he is a tall, sturdy, loud-voiced,

active old man--she the easiest, plumpest and gayest woman of sixty I

ever met with. They have three sons and two daughters. The two eldest

of the young men are employed on the farm; the third is a sailor, and is

making holiday-time of it just now at Appletreewick. The daughters

are pictures of health and freshness. I have but one complaint to make

against them--they are beginning to spoil the children already.

In this tranquil place, and among these genial, natural people, how

happily my time might be passed, were it not for the saddening sight

of William’s affliction, and the wearing uncertainty of how we are to

provide for future necessities! It is a hard thing for my husband and

me, after having had the day made pleasant by kind words and friendly

offices, to feel this one anxious thought always forcing itself on us at

night: Shall we have the means of stopping in our new home in a month’s

time?

3d.--A rainy day; the children difficult to manage; William miserably

despondent. Perhaps he influenced me, or perhaps I felt my little

troubles with the children more than usual: but, however it was, I have

not been so heavy-hearted since the day when my husband first put on the

green shade. A listless, hopeless sensation would steal over me; but why

write about it? Better to try and forget it. There is always to-morrow

to look to when to-day is at the worst.

4th.--To-morrow has proved worthy of the faith I put in it. Sunshine

again out-of-doors; and as clear and true a reflection of it in my own

heart as I can hope to have just at this time. Oh! that month, that one

poor month of respite! What are we to do at the end of the month?

5th.--I made my short entry for yesterday in the afternoon just before

tea-time, little thinking of events destined to happen with the evening

that would be really worth chronicling, for the sake of the excellent

results to which they are sure to lead. My tendency is to be too

sanguine about everything, I know; but I am, nevertheless, firmly

persuaded that I can see a new way out of our present difficulties--a

way of getting money enough to keep us all in comfort at the farmhouse

until William’s eyes are well again.

The new project which is to relieve us from all uncertainties for the

next six months actually originated with _me!_ It has raised me many

inches higher in my own estimation already. If the doctor only agrees

with my view of the case when he comes to-morrow, William will allow

himself to be persuaded, I know; and then let them say what they please,

I will answer for the rest.

This is how the new idea first found its way into my head:

We had just done tea. William, in much better spirits than usual, was

talking with the young sailor, who is jocosely called here by the very

ugly name of “Foul-weather Dick.” The farmer and his two eldest sons

were composing themselves on the oaken settles for their usual nap. The

dame was knitting, the two girls were beginning to clear the tea-table,

and I was darning the children’s socks. To all appearance, this was not

a very propitious state of things for the creation of new ideas, and yet

my idea grew out of it, for all that. Talking with my husband on various

subjects connected with life in ships, the young sailor began giving us

a description of his hammock; telling us how it was slung; how it was

impossible to get into it any other way than “stern foremost” (whatever

that may mean); how the rolling of the ship made it rock like a cradle;

and how, on rough nights, it sometimes swayed to and fro at such a

rate as to bump bodily against the ship’s side and wake him up with the

sensation of having just received a punch on the head from a remarkably

hard fist. Hearing all this, I ventured to suggest that it must be an

immense relief to him to sleep on shore in a good, motionless, solid

four-post bed. But, to my surprise, he scoffed at the idea; said he

never slept comfortably out of his hammock; declared that he quite

missed his occasional punch on the head from the ship’s side; and ended

by giving a most comical account of all the uncomfortable sensations

he felt when he slept in a four-post bed. The odd nature of one of the

young sailor’s objections to sleeping on shore reminded my husband

(as indeed it did me too) of the terrible story of a bed in a French

gambling-house, which he once heard from a gentleman whose likeness he

took.

“You’re laughing at me,” says honest Foul-weather Dick, seeing William

turn toward me and smile.--“No, indeed,” says my husband; “that last

objection of yours to the four-post beds on shore seems by no means

ridiculous to _me,_ at any rate. I once knew a gentleman, Dick, who

practically realized your objection.”

“Excuse me, sir,” says Dick, after a pause, and with an appearance

of great bewilderment and curiosity; “but could you put ‘practically

realized’ into plain English, so that a poor man like me might have a

chance of understanding you?”--“Certainly!” says my husband, laughing.

“I mean that I once knew a gentleman who actually saw and felt what you

say in jest you are afraid of seeing and feeling whenever you sleep in a

four-post bed. Do you understand that?” Foul-weather Dick understood it

perfectly, and begged with great eagerness to hear what the gentleman’s

adventure really was. The dame, who had been listening to our talk,

backed her son’s petition; the two girls sat down expectant at the

half-cleared tea-table; even the farmer and his drowsy sons roused

themselves lazily on the settle--my husband saw that he stood fairly

committed to the relation of the story, so he told it without more ado.

I have often heard him relate that strange adventure (William is the

best teller of a story I ever met with) to friends of all ranks in many

different parts of England, and I never yet knew it fail of producing an

effect. The farmhouse audience were, I may almost say, petrified by it.

I never before saw people look so long in the same direction, and sit

so long in the same attitude, as they did. Even the servants stole away

from their work in the kitchen, and, unrebuked by master or mistress,

stood quite spell-bound in the doorway to listen. Observing all this in

silence, while my husband was going on with his narrative, the thought

suddenly flashed across me, “Why should William not get a wider audience

for that story, as well as for others which he has heard from time

to time from his sitters, and which he has hitherto only repeated in

private among a few friends? People tell stories in books and get money

for them. What if we told our stories in a book? and what if the book

sold? Why freedom, surely, from the one great anxiety that is now

preying on us! Money enough to stop at the farmhouse till William’s eyes

are fit for work again!” I almost jumped up from my chair as my thought

went on shaping itself in this manner. When great men make wonderful

discoveries, do they feel sensations like mine, I wonder? Was Sir Isaac

Newton within an ace of skipping into the air when he first found out

the law of gravitation? Did Friar Bacon long to dance when he lit the

match and heard the first charge of gunpowder in the world go off with a

bang?

I had to put a strong constraint on myself, or I should have

communicated all that was passing in my mind to William before our

friends at the farmhouse. But I knew it was best to wait until we were

alone, and I did wait. What a relief it was when we all got up at last

to say good-night!

The moment we were in our own room, I could not stop to take so much as

a pin out of my dress before I began. “My dear,” said I, “I never heard

you tell that gambling-house adventure so well before. What an effect it

had upon our friends! what an effect, indeed, it always has wherever you

tell it!”

So far he did not seem to take much notice. He just nodded, and began to

pour out some of the lotion in which he always bathes his poor eyes the

last thing at night.

“And as for that, William,” I went on, “all your stories seem to

interest people. What a number you have picked up, first and last,

from different sitters, in the fifteen years of your practice as a

portrait-painter! Have you any idea how many stories you really do

know?”

No: he could not undertake to say how many just then. He gave this

answer in a very indifferent tone, dabbing away all the time at his eyes

with the sponge and lotion. He did it so awkwardly and roughly, as it

seemed to me, that I took the sponge from him and applied the lotion

tenderly myself.

“Do you think,” said I, “if you turned over one of your stories

carefully in your mind beforehand--say the one you told to-night,

for example--that you could repeat it all to me so perfectly and

deliberately that I should be able to take it down in writing from your

lips?”

Yes: of course he could. But why ask that question?

“Because I should like to have all the stories that you have been in the

habit of relating to our friends set down fairly in writing, by way of

preserving them from ever being forgotten.”

Would I bathe his left eye now, because that felt the hottest to-night?

I began to forbode that his growing indifference to what I was saying

would soon end in his fairly going to sleep before I had developed

my new idea, unless I took some means forthwith of stimulating his

curiosity, or, in other words, of waking him into a proper state of

astonishment and attention. “William,” said I, without another syllable

of preface, “I have got a new plan for finding all the money we want for

our expenses here.”

He jerked his head up directly, and looked at me. What plan?

“This: The state of your eyes prevents you for the present from

following your profession as an artist, does it not? Very well. What are

you to do with your idle time, my dear? Turn author! And how are you to

get the money we want? By publishing a book!”

“Good gracious, Leah! are you out of your senses?” he exclaimed.

I put my arm round his neck and sat down on his knee (the course I

always take when I want to persuade him to anything with as few words as

possible).

“Now, William, listen patiently to me,” I said. “An artist lies under

this great disadvantage in case of accidents--his talents are of no

service to him unless he can use his eyes and fingers. An author, on

the other hand, can turn his talents to account just as well by means of

other people’s eyes and fingers as by means of his own. In your present

situation, therefore, you have nothing for it, as I said before, but

to turn author. Wait! and hear me out. The book I want you to make is a

book of all your stories. You shall repeat them, and I will write them

down from your dictation. Our manuscript shall be printed; we will sell

the book to the public, and so support ourselves honorably in adversity,

by doing the best we can to interest and amuse others.”

While I was saying all this--I suppose in a very excitable manner--my

husband looked, as our young sailor-friend would phrase it, quite _taken

aback._ “You were always quick at contriving, Leah,” he said; “but how

in the world came you to think of this plan?”

“I thought of it while you were telling them the gambling-house

adventure downstairs,” I answered.

“It is an ingenious idea, and a bold idea,” he went on, thoughtfully.

“But it is one thing to tell a story to a circle of friends, and another

thing to put it into a printed form for an audience of strangers.

Consider, my dear, that we are neither of us used to what is called

writing for the press.”

“Very true,” said I, “but nobody is used to it when they first begin,

and yet plenty of people have tried the hazardous literary experiment

successfully. Besides, in our case, we have the materials ready to our

hands; surely we can succeed in shaping them presentably if we aim at

nothing but the simple truth.”

“Who is to do the eloquent descriptions and the striking reflections,

and all that part of it?” said William, perplexedly shaking his head.

“Nobody!” I replied. “The eloquent descriptions and the striking

reflections are just the parts of a story-book that people never read.

Whatever we do, let us not, if we can possibly help it, write so much

as a single sentence that can be conveniently skipped. Come! come!”

I continued, seeing him begin to shake his head again; “no more

objections, William, I am too certain of the success of my plan to

endure them. If you still doubt, let us refer the new project to a

competent arbitrator. The doctor is coming to see you to-morrow. I will

tell him all that I have told you; and if you will promise on your side,

I will engage on mine to be guided entirely by his opinion.”

William smiled, and readily gave the promise. This was all I wanted to

send me to bed in the best spirits. For, of course, I should never have

thought of mentioning the doctor as an arbitrator, if I had not known

beforehand that he was sure to be on my side.

6th.--The arbitrator has shown that he deserved my confidence in him. He

ranked himself entirely on my side before I had half done explaining

to him what my new project really was. As to my husband’s doubts

and difficulties, the dear good man would not so much as hear them

mentioned. “No objections,” he cried, gayly; “set to work, Mr. Kerby,

and make your fortune. I always said your wife was worth her weight in

gold--and here she is now, all ready to get into the bookseller’s scales

and prove it. Set to work! set to work!”

“With all my heart,” said William, beginning at last to catch the

infection of our enthusiasm. “But when my part of the work and my wife’s

has been completed, what are we to do with the produce of our labor?”

“Leave that to me,” answered the doctor. “Finish your book and send

it to my house; I will show it at once to the editor of our country

newspaper. He has plenty of literary friends in London, and he will be

just the man to help you. By-the-by,” added the doctor, addressing me,

“you think of everything, Mrs. Kerby; pray have you thought of a name

yet for the new book?”

At that question it was my turn to be “taken aback.” The idea of naming

the book had never once entered my head.

“A good title is of vast importance,” said the doctor, knitting his

brows thoughtfully. “We must all think about that. What shall it be? eh,

Mrs. Kerby, what shall it be?”

“Perhaps something may strike us after we have fairly set to work,” my

husband suggested. “Talking of work,” he continued, turning to me, “how

are you to find time, Leah, with your nursery occupations, for writing

down all the stories as I tell them?”

“I have been thinking of that this morning,” said I, “and have come to

the conclusion that I shall have but little leisure to write from your

dictation in the day-time. What with dressing and washing the children,

teaching them, giving them their meals, taking them out to walk, and

keeping them amused at home--to say nothing of sitting sociably at work

with the dame and her two girls in the afternoon--I am afraid I shall

have few opportunities of doing my part of the book between breakfast

and tea-time. But when the children are in bed, and the farmer and his

family are reading or dozing, I should have at least three unoccupied

hours to spare. So, if you don’t mind putting off our working-time till

after dark--”

“There’s the title!” shouted the doctor, jumping out of his chair as if

he had been shot.

“Where?” cried I, looking all round me in the surprise of the moment,

as if I had expected to see the title magically inscribed for us on the

walls of the room.

“In your last words, to be sure!” rejoined the doctor. “You said just

now that you would not have leisure to write from Mr. Kerby’s dictation

till _after dark._ What can we do better than name the book after the

time when the book is written? Call it boldly, _After dark._ Stop!

before anybody says a word for or against it, let us see how the name

looks on paper.”

I opened my writing-desk in a great flutter. The doctor selected the

largest sheet of paper and the broadest-nibbed pen he could find, and

wrote in majestic round-text letters, with alternate thin and thick

strokes beautiful to see, the two cabalistic words

AFTER DARK.

We all three laid our heads together over the paper, and in breathless

silence studied the effect of the round-text: William raising his green

shade in the excitement of the moment, and actually disobeying the

doctor’s orders about not using his eyes, in the doctor’s own presence!

After a good long stare, we looked round solemnly in each other’s faces

and nodded. There was no doubt whatever on the subject after seeing the

round-text. In one happy moment the doctor had hit on the right name.

“I have written the title-page,” said our good friend, taking up his hat

to go. “And now I leave it to you two to write the book.”

Since then I have mended four pens and bought a quire of letter-paper

at the village shop. William is to ponder well over his stories in the

daytime, so as to be quite ready for me “after dark.” We are to commence

our new occupation this evening. My heart beats fast and my eyes moisten

when I think of it. How many of our dearest interests depend upon the

one little beginning that we are to make to-night!

PROLOGUE TO THE FIRST STORY.

Before I begin, by the aid of my wife’s patient attention and ready pen,

to relate any of the stories which I have heard at various times from

persons whose likenesses I have been employed to take, it will not be

amiss if I try to secure the reader’s interest in the following pages,

by briefly explaining how I became possessed of the narrative matter

which they contain.

Of myself I have nothing to say, but that I have followed the profession

of a traveling portrait-painter for the last fifteen years. The pursuit

of my calling has not only led me all through England, but has taken

me twice to Scotland, and once to Ireland. In moving from district to

district, I am never guided beforehand by any settled plan. Sometimes

the letters of recommendation which I get from persons who are satisfied

with the work I have done for them determine the direction in which

I travel. Sometimes I hear of a new neighborhood in which there is no

resident artist of ability, and remove thither on speculation. Sometimes

my friends among the picture-dealers say a good word on my behalf to

their rich customers, and so pave the way for me in the large towns.

Sometimes my prosperous and famous brother-artists, hearing of small

commissions which it is not worth their while to accept, mention my

name, and procure me introductions to pleasant country houses. Thus I

get on, now in one way and now in another, not winning a reputation or

making a fortune, but happier, perhaps, on the whole, than many men who

have got both the one and the other. So, at least, I try to think now,

though I started in my youth with as high an ambition as the best of

them. Thank God, it is not my business here to speak of past times and

their disappointments. A twinge of the old hopeless heartache comes over

me sometimes still, when I think of my student days.

One peculiarity of my present way of life is, that it brings me into

contact with all sorts of characters. I almost feel, by this time, as if

I had painted every civilized variety of the human race. Upon the whole,

my experience of the world, rough as it has been, has not taught me to

think unkindly of my fellow-creatures. I have certainly received such

treatment at the hands of some of my sitters as I could not describe

without saddening and shocking any kind-hearted reader; but, taking one

year and one place with another, I have cause to remember with gratitude

and respect--sometimes even with friendship and affection--a very large

proportion of the numerous persons who have employed me.

Some of the results of my experience are curious in a moral point of

view. For example, I have found women almost uniformly less delicate in

asking me about my terms, and less generous in remunerating me for my

services, than men. On the other hand, men, within my knowledge, are

decidedly vainer of their personal attractions, and more vexatiously

anxious to have them done full justice to on canvas, than women. Taking

both sexes together, I have found young people, for the most part, more

gentle, more reasonable, and more considerate than old. And, summing up,

in a general way, my experience of different ranks (which extends, let

me premise, all the way down from peers to publicans), I have met

with most of my formal and ungracious receptions among rich people of

uncertain social standing: the highest classes and the lowest among my

employers almost always contrive--in widely different ways, of course,

to make me feel at home as soon as I enter their houses.

The one great obstacle that I have to contend against in the practice

of my profession is not, as some persons may imagine, the difficulty

of making my sitters keep their heads still while I paint them, but

the difficulty of getting them to preserve the natural look and the

every-day peculiarities of dress and manner. People will assume

an expression, will brush up their hair, will correct any little

characteristic carelessness in their apparel--will, in short, when they

want to have their likenesses taken, look as if they were sitting for

their pictures. If I paint them, under these artificial circumstances,

I fail of course to present them in their habitual aspect; and my

portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter

always included. When we wish to judge of a man’s character by his

handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common

workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the

finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting,

which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of

character recognizably presented to the view of others.

Experience, after repeated trials, has proved to me that the only way

of getting sitters who persist in assuming a set look to resume their

habitual expression, is to lead them into talking about some subject

in which they are greatly interested. If I can only beguile them into

speaking earnestly, no matter on what topic, I am sure of recovering

their natural expression; sure of seeing all the little precious

everyday peculiarities of the man or woman peep out, one after another,

quite unawares. The long, maundering stories about nothing, the

wearisome recitals of petty grievances, the local anecdotes unrelieved

by the faintest suspicion of anything like general interest, which I

have been condemned to hear, as a consequence of thawing the ice off

the features of formal sitters by the method just described, would fill

hundreds of volumes, and promote the repose of thousands of readers. On

the other hand, if I have suffered under the tediousness of the many,

I have not been without my compensating gains from the wisdom and

experience of the few. To some of my sitters I have been indebted for

information which has enlarged my mind--to some for advice which has

lightened my heart--to some for narratives of strange adventure which

riveted my attention at the time, which have served to interest and

amuse my fireside circle for many years past, and which are now, I would

fain hope, destined to make kind friends for me among a wider audience

than any that I have yet addressed.

Singularly enough, almost all the best stories that I have heard from my

sitters have been told by accident. I only remember two cases in which

a story was volunteered to me, and, although I have often tried the

experiment, I cannot call to mind even a single instance in which

leading questions (as the lawyers call them) on my part, addressed to a

sitter, ever produced any result worth recording. Over and over again,

I have been disastrously successful in encouraging dull people to weary

me. But the clever people who have something interesting to say, seem,

so far as I have observed them, to acknowledge no other stimulant

than chance. For every story which I propose including in the present

collection, excepting one, I have been indebted, in the first instance,

to the capricious influence of the same chance. Something my sitter has

seen about me, something I have remarked in my sitter, or in the room in

which I take the likeness, or in the neighborhood through which I pass

on my way to work, has suggested the necessary association, or has

started the right train of recollections, and then the story appeared

to begin of its own accord. Occasionally the most casual notice, on

my part, of some very unpromising object has smoothed the way for the

relation of a long and interesting narrative. I first heard one of the

most dramatic of the stories that will be presented in this book, merely

through being carelessly inquisitive to know the history of a stuffed

poodle-dog.

It is thus not without reason that I lay some stress on the

desirableness of prefacing each one of the following narratives by a

brief account of the curious manner in which I became possessed of it.

As to my capacity for repeating these stories correctly, I can answer

for it that my memory may be trusted. I may claim it as a merit, because

it is after all a mechanical one, that I forget nothing, and that I can

call long-passed conversations and events as readily to my recollection

as if they had happened but a few weeks ago. Of two things at least I

feel tolerably certain beforehand, in meditating over the contents of

this book: First, that I can repeat correctly all that I have heard;

and, secondly, that I have never missed anything worth hearing when my

sitters were addressing me on an interesting subject. Although I cannot

take the lead in talking while I am engaged in painting, I can listen

while others speak, and work all the better for it.

So much in the way of general preface to the pages for which I am about

to ask the reader’s attention. Let me now advance to particulars, and

describe how I came to hear the first story in the present collection. I

begin with it because it is the story that I have oftenest “rehearsed,”

to borrow a phrase from the stage. Wherever I go, I am sooner or later

sure to tell it. Only last night, I was persuaded into repeating it once

more by the inhabitants of the farmhouse in which I am now staying.

Not many years ago, on returning from a short holiday visit to a friend

settled in Paris, I found professional letters awaiting me at my agent’s

in London, which required my immediate presence in Liverpool. Without

stopping to unpack, I proceeded by the first conveyance to my

new destination; and, calling at the picture-dealer’s shop, where

portrait-painting engagements were received for me, found to my great

satisfaction that I had remunerative employment in prospect, in and

about Liverpool, for at least two months to come. I was putting up my

letters in high spirits, and was just leaving the picture-dealer’s shop

to look out for comfortable lodgings, when I was met at the door by the

landlord of one of the largest hotels in Liverpool--an old acquaintance

whom I had known as manager of a tavern in London in my student days.

“Mr. Kerby!” he exclaimed, in great astonishment. “What an unexpected

meeting! the last man in the world whom I expected to see, and yet the

very man whose services I want to make use of!”

“What, more work for me?” said I; “are all the people in Liverpool going

to have their portraits painted?”

“I only know of one,” replied the landlord, “a gentleman staying at my

hotel, who wants a chalk drawing done for him. I was on my way here to

inquire of any artist whom our picture-dealing friend could recommend.

How glad I am that I met you before I had committed myself to employing

a stranger!”

“Is this likeness wanted at once?” I asked, thinking of the number of

engagements that I had already got in my pocket.

“Immediately--to-day--this very hour, if possible,” said the landlord.

“Mr. Faulkner, the gentleman I am speaking of, was to have sailed

yesterday for the Brazils from this place; but the wind shifted last

night to the wrong quarter, and he came ashore again this morning. He

may of course be detained here for some time; but he may also be called

on board ship at half an hour’s notice, if the wind shifts back again

in the right direction. This uncertainty makes it a matter of importance

that the likeness should be begun immediately. Undertake it if you

possibly can, for Mr. Faulkner’s a liberal gentleman, who is sure to

give you your own terms.”

I reflected for a minute or two. The portrait was only wanted in chalk,

and would not take long; besides, I might finish it in the evening, if

my other engagements pressed hard upon me in the daytime. Why not leave

my luggage at the picture-dealer’s, put off looking for lodgings till

night, and secure the new commission boldly by going back at once with

the landlord to the hotel? I decided on following this course almost as

soon as the idea occurred to me--put my chalks in my pocket, and a sheet

of drawing paper in the first of my portfolios that came to hand--and

so presented myself before Mr. Faulkner, ready to take his likeness,

literally at five minutes’ notice.

I found him a very pleasant, intelligent man, young and handsome. He had

been a great traveler; had visited all the wonders of the East; and was

now about to explore the wilds of the vast South American Continent.

Thus much he told me good-humoredly and unconstrainedly while I was

preparing my drawing materials.

As soon as I had put him in the right light and position, and had seated

myself opposite to him, he changed the subject of conversation, and

asked me, a little confusedly as I thought, if it was not a customary

practice among portrait-painters to gloss over the faults in their

sitters’ faces, and to make as much as possible of any good points which

their features might possess.

“Certainly,” I answered. “You have described the whole art and mystery

of successful portrait-painting in a few words.”

“May I beg, then,” said he, “that you will depart from the usual

practice in my case, and draw me with all my defects, exactly as I am?

The fact is,” he went on, after a moment’s pause, “the likeness you are

now preparing to take is intended for my mother. My roving disposition

makes me a great anxiety to her, and she parted from me this last time

very sadly and unwillingly. I don’t know how the idea came into my head,

but it struck me this morning that I could not better employ the time,

while I was delayed here on shore, than by getting my likeness done

to send to her as a keepsake. She has no portrait of me since I was a

child, and she is sure to value a drawing of me more than anything else

I could send to her. I only trouble you with this explanation to prove

that I am really sincere in my wish to be drawn unflatteringly, exactly

as I am.”

Secretly respecting and admiring him for what he had just said, I

promised that his directions should be implicitly followed, and began

to work immediately. Before I had pursued my occupation for ten minutes,

the conversation began to flag, and the usual obstacle to my success

with a sitter gradually set itself up between us. Quite unconsciously,

of course, Mr. Faulkner stiffened his neck, shut his month, and

contracted his eyebrows--evidently under the impression that he was

facilitating the process of taking his portrait by making his face as

like a lifeless mask as possible. All traces of his natural animated

expression were fast disappearing, and he was beginning to change into a

heavy and rather melancholy-looking man.

This complete alteration was of no great consequence so long as I was

only engaged in drawing the outline of his face and the general form

of his features. I accordingly worked on doggedly for more than an

hour--then left off to point my chalks again, and to give my sitter a

few minutes’ rest. Thus far the likeness had not suffered through

Mr. Faulkner’s unfortunate notion of the right way of sitting for his

portrait; but the time of difficulty, as I well knew, was to come.

It was impossible for me to think of putting any expression into the

drawing unless I could contrive some means, when he resumed his chair,

of making him look like himself again. “I will talk to him about foreign

parts,” thought I, “and try if I can’t make him forget that he is

sitting for his picture in that way.”

While I was pointing my chalks Mr. Faulkner was walking up and down

the room. He chanced to see the portfolio I had brought with me leaning

against the wall, and asked if there were any sketches in it. I told him

there were a few which I had made during my recent stay in Paris; “In

Paris?” he repeated, with a look of interest; “may I see them?”

I gave him the permission he asked as a matter of course. Sitting down,

he took the portfolio on his knee, and began to look through it. He

turned over the first five sketches rapidly enough; but when he came to

the sixth, I saw his face flush directly, and observed that he took the

drawing out of the portfolio, carried it to the window, and remained

silently absorbed in the contemplation of it for full five minutes.

After that, he turned round to me, and asked very anxiously if I had any

objection to part with that sketch.

It was the least interesting drawing of the collection--merely a view

in one of the streets running by the backs of the houses in the Palais

Royal. Some four or five of these houses were comprised in the view,

which was of no particular use to me in any way; and which was too

valueless, as a work of art, for me to think of selling it. I begged his

acceptance of it at once. He thanked me quite warmly; and then, seeing

that I looked a little surprised at the odd selection he had made from

my sketches, laughingly asked me if I could guess why he had been so

anxious to become possessed of the view which I had given him?

“Probably,” I answered, “there is some remarkable historical association

connected with that street at the back of the Palais Royal, of which I

am ignorant.”

“No,” said Mr. Faulkner; “at least none that _I_ know of. The only

association connected with the place in _my_ mind is a purely personal

association. Look at this house in your drawing--the house with the

water-pipe running down it from top to bottom. I once passed a night

there--a night I shall never forget to the day of my death. I have had

some awkward traveling adventures in my time; but _that_ adventure--!

Well, never mind, suppose we begin the sitting. I make but a bad return

for your kindness in giving me the sketch by thus wasting your time in

mere talk.”

“Come! come!” thought I, as he went back to the sitter’s chair, “I shall

see your natural expression on your face if I can only get you to talk

about that adventure.” It was easy enough to lead him in the right

direction. At the first hint from me, he returned to the subject of the

house in the back street. Without, I hope, showing any undue curiosity,

I contrived to let him see that I felt a deep interest in everything he

now said. After two or three preliminary hesitations, he at last, to

my great joy, fairly started on the narrative of his adventure. In the

interest of his subject he soon completely forgot that he was sitting

for his portrait--the very expression that I wanted came over his

face--and my drawing proceeded toward completion, in the right

direction, and to the best purpose. At every fresh touch I felt more and

more certain that I was now getting the better of my grand difficulty;

and I enjoyed the additional gratification of having my work lightened

by the recital of a true story, which possessed, in my estimation, all

the excitement of the most exciting romance.

This, as I recollect it, is how Mr. Faulkner told me his adventure:

THE TRAVELER’S STORY OF A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED.

Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to be

staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then,

and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of

our sojourn. One night we were idling about the neighborhood of

the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake

ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati’s; but his suggestion

was not to my taste. I knew Frascati’s, as the French saying is, by

heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for

amusement’s sake, until it was amusement no longer, and was thoroughly

tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social

anomaly as a respectable gambling-house. “For Heaven’s sake,” said I

to my friend, “let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine,

blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming with no false gingerbread glitter

thrown over it all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati’s, to a

house where they don’t mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a

man with no coat, ragged or otherwise.” “Very well,” said my friend, “we

needn’t go out of the Palais Royal to find the sort of company you want.

Here’s the place just before us; as blackguard a place, by all report,

as you could possibly wish to see.” In another minute we arrived at the

door, and entered the house, the back of which you have drawn in your

sketch.

When we got upstairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the

doorkeeper, we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did not

find many people assembled there. But, few as the men were who looked

up at us on our entrance, they were all types--lamentably true types--of

their respective classes.

We had come to see blackguards; but these men were something

worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all

blackguardism--here there was nothing but tragedy--mute, weird tragedy.

The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young

man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards,

never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece

of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won, and how

often red--never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture

eyes and the darned great-coat, who had lost his last _sou,_ and still

looked on desperately, after he could play no longer--never spoke. Even

the voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and

thickened in the atmosphere of the room. I had entered the place to

laugh, but the spectacle before me was something to weep over. I soon

found it necessary to take refuge in excitement from the depression

of spirits which was fast stealing on me. Unfortunately I sought the

nearest excitement, by going to the table and beginning to play. Still

more unfortunately, as the event will show, I won--won prodigiously;

won incredibly; won at such a rate that the regular players at the table

crowded round me; and staring at my stakes with hungry, superstitious

eyes, whispered to one another that the English stranger was going to

break the bank.

The game was _Rouge et Noir_. I had played at it in every city in

Europe, without, however, the care or the wish to study the Theory of

Chances--that philosopher’s stone of all gamblers! And a gambler, in the

strict sense of the word, I had never been. I was heart-whole from the

corroding passion for play. My gaming was a mere idle amusement. I never

resorted to it by necessity, because I never knew what it was to want

money. I never practiced it so incessantly as to lose more than I could

afford, or to gain more than I could coolly pocket without being thrown

off my balance by my good luck. In short, I had hitherto

frequented gambling-tables--just as I frequented ball-rooms and

opera-houses--because they amused me, and because I had nothing better

to do with my leisure hours.

But on this occasion it was very different--now, for the first time in

my life, I felt what the passion for play really was. My success

first bewildered, and then, in the most literal meaning of the word,

intoxicated me. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless true,

that I only lost when I attempted to estimate chances, and played

according to previous calculation. If I left everything to luck, and

staked without any care or consideration, I was sure to win--to win in

the face of every recognized probability in favor of the bank. At first

some of the men present ventured their money safely enough on my color;

but I speedily increased my stakes to sums which they dared not risk.

One after another they left off playing, and breathlessly looked on at

my game.

Still, time after time, I staked higher and higher, and still won. The

excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence was interrupted

by a deep-muttered chorus of oaths and exclamations in different

languages, every time the gold was shoveled across to my side of the

table--even the imperturbable croupier dashed his rake on the floor in

a (French) fury of astonishment at my success. But one man present

preserved his self-possession, and that man was my friend. He came to my

side, and whispering in English, begged me to leave the place, satisfied

with what I had already gained. I must do him the justice to say that he

repeated his warnings and entreaties several times, and only left me

and went away after I had rejected his advice (I was to all intents and

purposes gambling drunk) in terms which rendered it impossible for him

to address me again that night.

Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried: “Permit me,

my dear sir--permit me to restore to their proper place two napoleons

which you have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir! I pledge you my word of

honor, as an old soldier, in the course of my long experience in this

sort of thing, I never saw such luck as yours--never! Go on, sir--_Sacre

mille bombes!_ Go on boldly, and break the bank!”

I turned round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate

civility, a tall man, dressed in a frogged and braided surtout.

If I had been in my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as

being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling,

bloodshot eyes, mangy mustaches, and a broken nose. His voice betrayed a

barrack-room intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair

of hands I ever saw--even in France. These little personal peculiarities

exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the mad excitement,

the reckless triumph of that moment, I was ready to “fraternize” with

anybody who encouraged me in my game. I accepted the old soldier’s

offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and swore he was the

honestest fellow in the world--the most glorious relic of the Grand Army

that I had ever met with. “Go on!” cried my military friend, snapping

his fingers in ecstasy--“Go on, and win! Break the bank--_Mille

tonnerres!_ my gallant English comrade, break the bank!”

And I _did_ go on--went on at such a rate, that in another quarter of an

hour the croupier called out, “Gentlemen, the bank has discontinued for

to-night.” All the notes, and all the gold in that “bank,” now lay in

a heap under my hands; the whole floating capital of the gambling-house

was waiting to pour into my pockets!

“Tie up the money in your pocket-handkerchief, my worthy sir,” said the

old soldier, as I wildly plunged my hands into my heap of gold. “Tie

it up, as we used to tie up a bit of dinner in the Grand Army; your

winnings are too heavy for any breeches-pockets that ever were sewed.

There! that’s it--shovel them in, notes and all! _Credie!_ what luck!

Stop! another napoleon on the floor! _Ah! sacre petit polisson de

Napoleon!_ have I found thee at last? Now then, sir--two tight double

knots each way with your honorable permission, and the money’s safe.

Feel it! feel it, fortunate sir! hard and round as a cannon-ball--_Ah,

bah!_ if they had only fired such cannon-balls at us at Austerlitz--_nom

d’une pipe!_ if they only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier, as

an ex-brave of the French army, what remains for me to do? I ask what?

Simply this: to entreat my valued English friend to drink a bottle of

Champagne with me, and toast the goddess Fortune in foaming goblets

before we part!”

Excellent ex-brave! Convivial ancient grenadier! Champagne by all means!

An English cheer for an old soldier! Hurrah! hurrah! Another English

cheer for the goddess Fortune! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!

“Bravo! the Englishman; the amiable, gracious Englishman, in whose veins

circulates the vivacious blood of France! Another glass? _Ah, bah!_--the

bottle is empty! Never mind! _Vive le vin!_ I, the old soldier, order

another bottle, and half a pound of bonbons with it!”

“No, no, ex-brave; never--ancient grenadier! _Your_ bottle last time;

_my_ bottle this. Behold it! Toast away! The French Army! the great

Napoleon! the present company! the croupier! the honest croupier’s wife

and daughters--if he has any! the Ladies generally! everybody in the

world!”

By the time the second bottle of Champagne was emptied, I felt as if I

had been drinking liquid fire--my brain seemed all aflame. No excess in

wine had ever had this effect on me before in my life. Was it the result

of a stimulant acting upon my system when I was in a highly excited

state? Was my stomach in a particularly disordered condition? Or was the

Champagne amazingly strong?

“Ex-brave of the French Army!” cried I, in a mad state of exhilaration,

“_I_ am on fire! how are _you?_ You have set me on fire! Do you hear, my

hero of Austerlitz? Let us have a third bottle of Champagne to put the

flame out!”

The old soldier wagged his head, rolled his goggle-eyes, until I

expected to see them slip out of their sockets; placed his dirty

forefinger by the side of his broken nose; solemnly ejaculated “Coffee!”

and immediately ran off into an inner room.

The word pronounced by the eccentric veteran seemed to have a magical

effect on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose

to depart. Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but

finding that my new friend was benevolently bent on preventing me from

getting dead drunk, had now abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly on

my winnings. Whatever their motive might be, at any rate they went away

in a body. When the old soldier returned, and sat down again opposite to

me at the table, we had the room to ourselves. I could see the croupier,

in a sort of vestibule which opened out of it, eating his supper in

solitude. The silence was now deeper than ever.

A sudden change, too, had come over the “ex-brave.” He assumed a

portentously solemn look; and when he spoke to me again, his speech was

ornamented by no oaths, enforced by no finger-snapping, enlivened by no

apostrophes or exclamations.

“Listen, my dear sir,” said he, in mysteriously confidential

tones--“listen to an old soldier’s advice. I have been to the mistress

of the house (a very charming woman, with a genius for cookery!) to

impress on her the necessity of making us some particularly strong and

good coffee. You must drink this coffee in order to get rid of your

little amiable exaltation of spirits before you think of going home--you

_must,_ my good and gracious friend! With all that money to take home

to-night, it is a sacred duty to yourself to have your wits about you.

You are known to be a winner to an enormous extent by several gentlemen

present to-night, who, in a certain point of view, are very worthy and

excellent fellows; but they are mortal men, my dear sir, and they have

their amiable weaknesses. Need I say more? Ah, no, no! you understand

me! Now, this is what you must do--send for a cabriolet when you feel

quite well again--draw up all the windows when you get into it--and

tell the driver to take you home only through the large and well-lighted

thoroughfares. Do this; and you and your money will be safe. Do this;

and to-morrow you will thank an old soldier for giving you a word of

honest advice.”

Just as the ex-brave ended his oration in very lachrymose tones, the

coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed

me one of the cups with a bow. I was parched with thirst, and drank it

off at a draught. Almost instantly afterwards, I was seized with a fit

of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The

room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to

be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the piston of a

steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a

feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me. I rose

from my chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered

out that I felt dreadfully unwell--so unwell that I did not know how I

was to get home.

“My dear friend,” answered the old soldier--and even his voice seemed to

be bobbing up and down as he spoke--“my dear friend, it would be madness

to go home in _your_ state; you would be sure to lose your money; you

might be robbed and murdered with the greatest ease. _I_ am going to

sleep here; do _you_ sleep here, too--they make up capital beds in this

house--take one; sleep off the effects of the wine, and go home safely

with your winnings to-morrow--to-morrow, in broad daylight.”

I had but two ideas left: one, that I must never let go hold of my

handkerchief full of money; the other, that I must lie down somewhere

immediately, and fall off into a comfortable sleep. So I agreed to the

proposal about the bed, and took the offered arm of the old soldier,

carrying my money with my disengaged hand. Preceded by the croupier, we

passed along some passages and up a flight of stairs into the bedroom

which I was to occupy. The ex-brave shook me warmly by the hand,

proposed that we should breakfast together, and then, followed by the

croupier, left me for the night.

I ran to the wash-hand stand; drank some of the water in my jug; poured

the rest out, and plunged my face into it; then sat down in a chair and

tried to compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs,

from the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the

apartment I now occupied, the almost equally refreshing change for

my eyes, from the glaring gaslights of the “salon” to the dim, quiet

flicker of one bedroom-candle, aided wonderfully the restorative effects

of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like

a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping

all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still greater risk of

trying to get out after the house was closed, and of going home alone at

night through the streets of Paris with a large sum of money about me.

I had slept in worse places than this on my travels; so I determined

to lock, bolt, and barricade my door, and take my chance till the next

morning.

Accordingly, I secured myself against all intrusion; looked under the

bed, and into the cupboard; tried the fastening of the window; and then,

satisfied that I had taken every proper precaution, pulled off my upper

clothing, put my light, which was a dim one, on the hearth among a

feathery litter of wood-ashes, and got into bed, with the handkerchief

full of money under my pillow.

I soon felt not only that I could not go to sleep, but that I could not

even close my eyes. I was wide awake, and in a high fever. Every nerve

in my body trembled--every one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally

sharpened. I tossed and rolled, and tried every kind of position, and

perseveringly sought out the cold corners of the bed, and all to no

purpose. Now I thrust my arms over the clothes; now I poked them under

the clothes; now I violently shot my legs straight out down to the

bottom of the bed; now I convulsively coiled them up as near my chin

as they would go; now I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed it to

the cool side, patted it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now

I fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against the

board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain;

I groaned with vexation as I felt that I was in for a sleepless night.

What could I do? I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some

method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was in the condition

to imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my brain with forebodings of

every possible and impossible danger; in short, to pass the night in

suffering all conceivable varieties of nervous terror.

I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room--which was

brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window--to

see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at all

clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a

remembrance of Le Maistre’s delightful little book, “Voyage autour de ma

Chambre,” occurred to me. I resolved to imitate the French author,

and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my

wakefulness, by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture

I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of

associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may be

made to call forth.

In the nervous unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found

it much easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections, and

thereupon soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre’s fanciful

track--or, indeed, of thinking at all. I looked about the room at the

different articles of furniture, and did nothing more.

There was, first, the bed I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things

in the world to meet with in Paris--yes, a thorough clumsy British

four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz--the regular fringed

valance all round--the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which

I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts without

particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then

there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had

spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly and

more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then two small chairs, with my coat,

waistcoat, and trousers flung on them. Then a large elbow-chair covered

with dirty-white dimity, with my cravat and shirt collar thrown over the

back. Then a chest of drawers with two of the brass handles off, and a

tawdry, broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the

top. Then the dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass,

and a very large pincushion. Then the window--an unusually large window.

Then a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It

was a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of

towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian, looking upward, shading

his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward--it might be at some

tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate, he had the

appearance of thoroughly deserving it.

This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward too--at

the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an interesting object, and

I looked back at the picture. I counted the feathers in the man’s

hat--they stood out in relief--three white, two green. I observed the

crown of his hat, which was of conical shape, according to the fashion

supposed to have been favored by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was

looking up at. It couldn’t be at the stars; such a desperado was neither

astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was

going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession

of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I counted the feathers

again--three white, two green.

While I still lingered over this very improving and intellectual

employment, my thoughts insensibly began to wander. The moonlight

shining into the room reminded me of a certain moonlight night in

England--the night after a picnic party in a Welsh valley. Every

incident of the drive homeward, through lovely scenery, which the

moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my remembrance, though I

had never given the picnic a thought for years; though, if I had _tried_

to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled little or nothing of

that scene long past. Of all the wonderful faculties that help to tell

us we are immortal, which speaks the sublime truth more eloquently than

memory? Here was I, in a strange house of the most suspicious character,

in a situation of uncertainty, and even of peril, which might seem to

make the cool exercise of my recollection almost out of the question;

nevertheless, remembering, quite involuntarily, places, people,

conversations, minute circumstances of every kind, which I had thought

forgotten forever; which I could not possibly have recalled at will,

even under the most favorable auspices. And what cause had produced in

a moment the whole of this strange, complicated, mysterious effect?

Nothing but some rays of moonlight shining in at my bedroom window.

I was still thinking of the picnic--of our merriment on the drive

home--of the sentimental young lady who _would_ quote “Childe Harold”

because it was moonlight. I was absorbed by these past scenes and past

amusements, when, in an instant, the thread on which my memories hung

snapped asunder; my attention immediately came back to present things

more vividly than ever, and I found myself, I neither knew why nor

wherefore, looking hard at the picture again.

Looking for what?

Good God! the man had pulled his hat down on his brows! No! the hat

itself was gone! Where was the conical crown? Where the feathers--three

white, two green? Not there! In place of the hat and feathers, what

dusky object was it that now hid his forehead, his eyes, his shading

hand?

Was the bed moving?

I turned on my back and looked up. Was I mad? drunk? dreaming? giddy

again? or was the top of the bed really moving down--sinking slowly,

regularly, silently, horribly, right down throughout the whole of its

length and breadth--right down upon me, as I lay underneath?

My blood seemed to stand still. A deadly paralysing coldness stole all

over me as I turned my head round on the pillow and determined to test

whether the bed-top was really moving or not, by keeping my eye on the

man in the picture.

The next look in that direction was enough. The dull, black, frowzy

outline of the valance above me was within an inch of being parallel

with his waist. I still looked breathlessly. And steadily and

slowly--very slowly--I saw the figure, and the line of frame below the

figure, vanish, as the valance moved down before it.

I am, constitutionally, anything but timid. I have been on more than one

occasion in peril of my life, and have not lost my self-possession for

an instant; but when the conviction first settled on my mind that the

bed-top was really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down

upon me, I looked up shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the

hideous machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to

suffocate me where I lay.

I looked up, motionless, speechless, breathless. The candle, fully

spent, went out; but the moonlight still brightened the room. Down and

down, without pausing and without sounding, came the bed-top, and still

my panic-terror seemed to bind me faster and faster to the mattress on

which I lay--down and down it sank, till the dusty odor from the lining

of the canopy came stealing into my nostrils.

At that final moment the instinct of self-preservation startled me out

of my trance, and I moved at last. There was just room for me to roll

myself sidewise off the bed. As I dropped noiselessly to the floor, the

edge of the murderous canopy touched me on the shoulder.

Without stopping to draw my breath, without wiping the cold sweat

from my face, I rose instantly on my knees to watch the bed-top. I was

literally spellbound by it. If I had heard footsteps behind me, I

could not have turned round; if a means of escape had been miraculously

provided for me, I could not have moved to take advantage of it. The

whole life in me was, at that moment, concentrated in my eyes.

It descended--the whole canopy, with the fringe round it, came

down--down--close down; so close that there was not room now to squeeze

my finger between the bed-top and the bed. I felt at the sides, and

discovered that what had appeared to me from beneath to be the ordinary

light canopy of a four-post bed was in reality a thick, broad mattress,

the substance of which was concealed by the valance and its fringe. I

looked up and saw the four posts rising hideously bare. In the middle

of the bed-top was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down

through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down

on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved

without making the faintest noise. There had been no creaking as it came

down; there was now not the faintest sound from the room above. Amid a

dead and awful silence I beheld before me--in the nineteenth century,

and in the civilized capital of France--such a machine for secret

murder by suffocation as might have existed in the worst days of the

Inquisition, in the lonely inns among the Hartz Mountains, in the

mysterious tribunals of Westphalia! Still, as I looked on it, I could

not move, I could hardly breathe, but I began to recover the power of

thinking, and in a moment I discovered the murderous conspiracy framed

against me in all its horror.

My cup of coffee had been drugged, and drugged too strongly. I had been

saved from being smothered by having taken an overdose of some narcotic.

How I had chafed and fretted at the fever fit which had preserved my

life by keeping me awake! How recklessly I had confided myself to the

two wretches who had led me into this room, determined, for the sake

of my winnings, to kill me in my sleep by the surest and most horrible

contrivance for secretly accomplishing my destruction! How many men,

winners like me, had slept, as I had proposed to sleep, in that bed, and

had never been seen or heard of more! I shuddered at the bare idea of

it.

But, ere long, all thought was again suspended by the sight of the

murderous canopy moving once more. After it had remained on the bed--as

nearly as I could guess--about ten minutes, it began to move up again.

The villains who worked it from above evidently believed that their

purpose was now accomplished. Slowly and silently, as it had descended,

that horrible bed-top rose towards its former place. When it reached

the upper extremities of the four posts, it reached the ceiling, too.

Neither hole nor screw could be seen; the bed became in appearance an

ordinary bed again--the canopy an ordinary canopy--even to the most

suspicious eyes.

Now, for the first time, I was able to move--to rise from my knees--to

dress myself in my upper clothing--and to consider of how I should

escape. If I betrayed by the smallest noise that the attempt to

suffocate me had failed, I was certain to be murdered. Had I made any

noise already? I listened intently, looking towards the door.

No! no footsteps in the passage outside--no sound of a tread, light or

heavy, in the room above--absolute silence everywhere. Besides locking

and bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which

I had found under the bed. To remove this chest (my blood ran cold as

I thought of what its contents _might_ be!) without making some

disturbance was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through

the house, now barred up for the night, was sheer insanity. Only one

chance was left me--the window. I stole to it on tiptoe.

My bedroom was on the first floor, above an _entresol,_ and looked into

a back street, which you have sketched in your view. I raised my hand

to open the window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest

hair-breadth, my chance of safety. They keep vigilant watch in a House

of Murder. If any part of the frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was

a lost man! It must have occupied me at least five minutes, reckoning

by time--five _hours,_ reckoning by suspense--to open that window. I

succeeded in doing it silently--in doing it with all the dexterity of

a house-breaker--and then looked down into the street. To leap the

distance beneath me would be almost certain destruction! Next, I

looked round at the sides of the house. Down the left side ran a thick

water-pipe which you have drawn--it passed close by the outer edge of

the window. The moment I saw the pipe I knew I was saved. My breath came

and went freely for the first time since I had seen the canopy of the

bed moving down upon me!

To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed

difficult and dangerous enough--to _me_ the prospect of slipping down

the pipe into the street did not suggest even a thought of peril. I had

always been accustomed, by the practice of gymnastics, to keep up my

school-boy powers as a daring and expert climber; and knew that my head,

hands, and feet would serve me faithfully in any hazards of ascent

or descent. I had already got one leg over the window-sill, when I

remembered the handkerchief filled with money under my pillow. I

could well have afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully

determined that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their

plunder as well as their victim. So I went back to the bed and tied the

heavy handkerchief at my back by my cravat.

Just as I had made it tight and fixed it in a comfortable place, I

thought I heard a sound of breathing outside the door. The chill feeling

of horror ran through me again as I listened. No! dead silence still

in the passage--I had only heard the night air blowing softly into the

room. The next moment I was on the window-sill--and the next I had a

firm grip on the water-pipe with my hands and knees.

I slid down into the street easily and quietly, as I thought I should,

and immediately set off at the top of my speed to a branch “Prefecture”

of Police, which I knew was situated in the immediate neighborhood. A

“Sub-prefect,” and several picked men among his subordinates, happened

to be up, maturing, I believe, some scheme for discovering the

perpetrator of a mysterious murder which all Paris was talking of just

then. When I began my story, in a breathless hurry and in very bad

French, I could see that the Sub-prefect suspected me of being a drunken

Englishman who had robbed somebody; but he soon altered his opinion as

I went on, and before I had anything like concluded, he shoved all

the papers before him into a drawer, put on his hat, supplied me with

another (for I was bareheaded), ordered a file of soldiers, desired his

expert followers to get ready all sorts of tools for breaking open doors

and ripping up brick flooring, and took my arm, in the most friendly and

familiar manner possible, to lead me with him out of the house. I will

venture to say that when the Sub-prefect was a little boy, and was taken

for the first time to the play, he was not half as much pleased as he

was now at the job in prospect for him at the gambling-house!

Away we went through the streets, the Sub-prefect cross-examining and

congratulating me in the same breath as we marched at the head of our

formidable _posse comitatus._ Sentinels were placed at the back and

front of the house the moment we got to it; a tremendous battery of

knocks was directed against the door; a light appeared at a window; I

was told to conceal myself behind the police--then came more knocks and

a cry of “Open in the name of the law!” At that terrible summons bolts

and locks gave way before an invisible hand, and the moment after the

Sub-prefect was in the passage, confronting a waiter half-dressed and

ghastly pale. This was the short dialogue which immediately took place:

“We want to see the Englishman who is sleeping in this house?”

“He went away hours ago.”

“He did no such thing. His friend went away; _he_ remained. Show us to

his bedroom!”

“I swear to you, Monsieur le Sous-prefect, he is not here! he--”

“I swear to you, Monsieur le Garcon, he is. He slept here--he didn’t

find your bed comfortable--he came to us to complain of it--here he

is among my men--and here am I ready to look for a flea or two in his

bedstead. Renaudin! (calling to one of the subordinates, and pointing

to the waiter) collar that man and tie his hands behind him. Now, then,

gentlemen, let us walk upstairs!”

Every man and woman in the house was secured--the “Old Soldier” the

first. Then I identified the bed in which I had slept, and then we went

into the room above.

No object that was at all extraordinary appeared in any part of it. The

Sub-prefect looked round the place, commanded everybody to be silent,

stamped twice on the floor, called for a candle, looked attentively

at the spot he had stamped on, and ordered the flooring there to be

carefully taken up. This was done in no time. Lights were produced, and

we saw a deep raftered cavity between the floor of this room and

the ceiling of the room beneath. Through this cavity there ran

perpendicularly a sort of case of iron thickly greased; and inside the

case appeared the screw, which communicated with the bed-top below.

Extra lengths of screw, freshly oiled; levers covered with felt; all

the complete upper works of a heavy press--constructed with infernal

ingenuity so as to join the fixtures below, and when taken to pieces

again, to go into the smallest possible compass--were next discovered

and pulled out on the floor. After some little difficulty the

Sub-prefect succeeded in putting the machinery together, and, leaving

his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The smothering

canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it

lowered. When I mentioned this to the Sub-prefect, his answer, simple

as it was, had a terrible significance. “My men,” said he, “are working

down the bed-top for the first time--the men whose money you won were in

better practice.”

We left the house in the sole possession of two police agents--every

one of the inmates being removed to prison on the spot. The Sub-prefect,

after taking down my _“proces verbal”_ in his office, returned with me

to my hotel to get my passport. “Do you think,” I asked, as I gave it to

him, “that any men have really been smothered in that bed, as they tried

to smother _me?_”

“I have seen dozens of drowned men laid out at the Morgue,” answered the

Sub-prefect, “in whose pocket-books were found letters stating that they

had committed suicide in the Seine, because they had lost everything

at the gaming table. Do I know how many of those men entered the same

gambling-house that _you_ entered? won as _you_ won? took that bed as

_you_ took it? slept in it? were smothered in it? and were privately

thrown into the river, with a letter of explanation written by the

murderers and placed in their pocket-books? No man can say how many or

how few have suffered the fate from which you have escaped. The people

of the gambling-house kept their bedstead machinery a secret from

_us_--even from the police! The dead kept the rest of the secret for

them. Good-night, or rather good-morning, Monsieur Faulkner! Be at my

office again at nine o’clock--in the meantime, _au revoir!_”

The rest of my story is soon told. I was examined and re-examined; the

gambling-house was strictly searched all through from top to bottom; the

prisoners were separately interrogated; and two of the less guilty among

them made a confession. I discovered that the Old Soldier was the master

of the gambling-house--_justice_ discovered that he had been drummed

out of the army as a vagabond years ago; that he had been guilty of all

sorts of villainies since; that he was in possession of stolen property,

which the owners identified; and that he, the croupier, another

accomplice, and the woman who had made my cup of coffee, were all in the

secret of the bedstead. There appeared some reason to doubt whether the

inferior persons attached to the house knew anything of the suffocating

machinery; and they received the benefit of that doubt, by being treated

simply as thieves and vagabonds. As for the Old Soldier and his two head

myrmidons, they went to the galleys; the woman who had drugged my coffee

was imprisoned for I forget how many years; the regular attendants

at the gambling-house were considered “suspicious” and placed under

“surveillance”; and I became, for one whole week (which is a long time)

the head “lion” in Parisian society. My adventure was dramatized by

three illustrious play-makers, but never saw theatrical daylight; for

the censorship forbade the introduction on the stage of a correct copy

of the gambling-house bedstead.

One good result was produced by my adventure, which any censorship must

have approved: it cured me of ever again trying _“Rouge et Noir”_ as an

amusement. The sight of a green cloth, with packs of cards and heaps of

money on it, will henceforth be forever associated in my mind with the

sight of a bed canopy descending to suffocate me in the silence and

darkness of the night.

Just as Mr. Faulkner pronounced these words he started in his chair, and

resumed his stiff, dignified position in a great hurry. “Bless my soul!”

cried he, with a comic look of astonishment and vexation, “while I have

been telling you what is the real secret of my interest in the sketch

you have so kindly given to me, I have altogether forgotten that I came

here to sit for my portrait. For the last hour or more I must have been

the worst model you ever had to draw from!”

“On the contrary, you have been the best,” said I. “I have been

trying to catch your likeness; and, while telling your story, you have

unconsciously shown me the natural expression I wanted to insure my

success.”

NOTE BY MRS. KERBY.

I cannot let this story end without mentioning what the chance saying

was which caused it to be told at the farmhouse the other night. Our

friend the young sailor, among his other quaint objections to sleeping

on shore, declared that he particularly hated four-post beds, because he

never slept in one without doubting whether the top might not come down

in the night and suffocate him. I thought this chance reference to the

distinguishing feature of William’s narrative curious enough, and

my husband agreed with me. But he says it is scarcely worth while to

mention such a trifle in anything so important as a book. I cannot

venture, after this, to do more than slip these lines in modestly at

the end of the story. If the printer should notice my few last

words, perhaps he may not mind the trouble of putting them into some

out-of-the-way corner.

L. K.

PROLOGUE TO THE SECOND STORY.

The beginning of an excellent connection which I succeeded in

establishing in and around that respectable watering-place,

Tidbury-on-the-Marsh, was an order for a life-size oil portrait of a

great local celebrity--one Mr. Boxsious, a solicitor, who was understood

to do the most thriving business of any lawyer in the town.

The portrait was intended as a testimonial “expressive (to use the

language of the circular forwarded to me at the time) of the eminent

services of Mr. Boxsious in promoting and securing the prosperity of

the town.” It had been subscribed for by the “Municipal Authorities

and Resident Inhabitants” of Tidbury-on-the-Marsh; and it was to

be presented, when done, to Mrs. Boxsious, “as a slight but sincere

token”--and so forth. A timely recommendation from one of my kindest

friends and patrons placed the commission for painting the likeness in

my lucky hands; and I was instructed to attend on a certain day at Mr.

Boxsious’s private residence, with all my materials ready for taking a

first sitting.

On arriving at the house, I was shown into a very prettily furnished

morning-room. The bow-window looked out on a large inclosed meadow,

which represented the principal square in Tidbury. On the opposite side

of the meadow I could see the new hotel (with a wing lately added), and

close by, the old hotel obstinately unchanged since it had first been

built. Then, further down the street, the doctor’s house, with a colored

lamp and a small door-plate, and the banker’s office, with a plain lamp

and a big door-plate--then some dreary private lodging-houses--then,

at right angles to these, a street of shops; the cheese-monger’s very

small, the chemist’s very smart, the pastry-cook’s very dowdy, and

the green-grocer’s very dark, I was still looking out at the view thus

presented, when I was suddenly apostrophized by a glib, disputatious

voice behind me.

“Now, then, Mr. Artist,” cried the voice, “do you call that getting

ready for work? Where are your paints and brushes, and all the rest of

it? My name’s Boxsious, and I’m here to sit for my picture.”

I turned round, and confronted a little man with his legs astraddle,

and his hands in his pockets. He had light-gray eyes, red all round the

lids, bristling pepper-colored hair, an unnaturally rosy complexion, and

an eager, impudent, clever look. I made two discoveries in one glance

at him: First, that he was a wretched subject for a portrait; secondly,

that, whatever he might do or say, it would not be of the least use for

me to stand on my dignity with him.

“I shall be ready directly, sir,” said I.

“Ready directly?” repeated my new sitter. “What do you mean, Mr. Artist,

by ready directly? I’m ready now. What was your contract with the Town

Council, who have subscribed for this picture? To paint the portrait.

And what was my contract? To sit for it. Here am I ready to sit, and

there are you not ready to paint me. According to all the rules of law

and logic, you are committing a breach of contract already. Stop! let’s

have a look at your paints. Are they the best quality? If not, I warn

you, sir, there’s a second breach of contract! Brushes, too? Why,

they’re old brushes, by the Lord Harry! The Town Council pays you well,

Mr. Artist; why don’t you work for them with new brushes? What? you work

best with old? I contend, sir, that you can’t. Does my housemaid clean

best with an old broom? Do my clerks write best with old pens? Don’t

color up, and don’t look as if you were going to quarrel with me! You

can’t quarrel with me. If you were fifty times as irritable a man as

you look, you couldn’t quarrel with me. I’m not young, and I’m not

touchy--I’m Boxsious, the lawyer; the only man in the world who can’t be

insulted, try it how you like!”

He chuckled as he said this, and walked away to the window. It was quite

useless to take anything he said seriously, so I finished preparing

my palette for the morning’s work with the utmost serenity of look and

manner that I could possibly assume.

“There!” he went on, looking out of the window; “do you see that fat

man slouching along the Parade, with a snuffy nose? That’s my favorite

enemy, Dunball. He tried to quarrel with me ten years ago, and he has

done nothing but bring out the hidden benevolence of my character ever

since. Look at him! look how he frowns as he turns this way. And now

look at me! I can smile and nod to him. I make a point of always smiling

and nodding to him--it keeps my hand in for other enemies. Good-morning!

(I’ve cast him twice in heavy damages) good-morning, Mr. Dunball.

He bears malice, you see; he won’t speak; he’s short in the neck,

passionate, and four times as fat as he ought to be; he has fought

against my amiability for ten mortal years; when he can’t fight any

longer, he’ll die suddenly, and I shall be the innocent cause of it.”

Mr. Boxsious uttered this fatal prophecy with extraordinary complacency,

nodding and smiling out of the window all the time at the unfortunate

man who had rashly tried to provoke him. When his favorite enemy was out

of sight, he turned away, and indulged himself in a brisk turn or two up

and down the room. Meanwhile I lifted my canvas on the easel, and was on

the point of asking him to sit down, when he assailed me again.

“Now, Mr. Artist,” he cried, quickening his walk impatiently, “in the

interests of the Town Council, your employers, allow me to ask you for

the last time when you are going to begin?”

“And allow me, Mr. Boxsious, in the interest of the Town Council also,”

said I, “to ask you if your notion of the proper way of sitting for your

portrait is to walk about the room!”

“Aha! well put--devilish well put!” returned Mr. Boxsious; “that’s the

only sensible thing you have said since you entered my house; I begin

to like you already.” With these words he nodded at me approvingly, and

jumped into the high chair that I had placed for him with the alacrity

of a young man.

“I say, Mr. Artist,” he went on, when I had put him into the right

position (he insisted on the front view of his face being taken, because

the Town Council would get the most for their money in that way), “you

don’t have many such good jobs as this, do you?”

“Not many,” I said. “I should not be a poor man if commissions for

life-size portraits often fell in my way.”

“You poor!” exclaimed Mr. Boxsious, contemptuously. “I dispute that

point with you at the outset. Why, you’ve got a good cloth coat, a clean

shirt, and a smooth-shaved chin. You’ve got the sleek look of a man

who has slept between sheets and had his breakfast. You can’t humbug

me about poverty, for I know what it is. Poverty means looking like

a scarecrow, feeling like a scarecrow, and getting treated like a

scarecrow. That was _my_ luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of

trying the law. Poverty, indeed! Do you shake in your shoes, Mr. Artist,

when you think what you were at twenty? I do, I can promise you.”

He began to shift about so irritably in his chair, that, in the

interests of my work, I was obliged to make an effort to calm him.

“It must be a pleasant occupation for you in your present prosperity,”

said I, “to look back sometimes at the gradual processes by which you

passed from poverty to competence, and from that to the wealth you now

enjoy.”

“Gradual, did you say?” cried Mr. Boxsious; “it wasn’t gradual at all. I

was sharp--damned sharp, and I jumped at my first start in business slap

into five hundred pounds in one day.”

“That was an extraordinary step in advance,” I rejoined. “I suppose you

contrived to make some profitable investment--”

“Not a bit of it! I hadn’t a spare sixpence to invest with. I won the

money by my brains, my hands, and my pluck; and, what’s more, I’m proud

of having done it. That was rather a curious case, Mr. Artist. Some men

might be shy of mentioning it; I never was shy in my life and I mention

it right and left everywhere--the whole case, just as it happened,

except the names. Catch me ever committing myself to mentioning names!

Mum’s the word, sir, with yours to command, Thomas Boxsious.”

“As you mention ‘the case’ everywhere,” said I, “perhaps you would not

be offended with me if I told you I should like to hear it?”

“Man alive! haven’t I told you already that I can’t be offended? And

didn’t I say a moment ago that I was proud of the case? I’ll tell you,

Mr. Artist--but stop! I’ve got the interests of the Town Council to look

after in this business. Can you paint as well when I’m talking as when

I’m not? Don’t sneer, sir; you’re not wanted to sneer--you’re wanted to

give an answer--yes or no?”

“Yes, then,” I replied, in his own sharp way. “I can always paint the

better when I am hearing an interesting story.”

“What do you mean by talking about a story? I’m not going to tell you a

story; I’m going to make a statement. A statement is a matter of fact,

therefore the exact opposite of a story, which is a matter of fiction.

What I am now going to tell you really happened to me.”

I was glad to see that he settled himself quietly in his chair before he

began. His odd manners and language made such an impression on me at

the time, that I think I can repeat his “statement” now, almost word for

word as he addressed it to me.

THE LAWYER’S STORY OF A STOLEN LETTER.

I served my time--never mind in whose office--and I started in business

for myself in one of our English country towns, I decline stating which.

I hadn’t a farthing of capital, and my friends in the neighborhood were

poor and useless enough, with one exception. That exception was Mr.

Frank Gatliffe, son of Mr. Gatliffe, member for the county, the richest

man and the proudest for many a mile round about our parts. Stop a bit,

Mr. Artist, you needn’t perk up and look knowing. You won’t trace any

particulars by the name of Gatliffe. I’m not bound to commit myself or

anybody else by mentioning names. I have given you the first that came

into my head.

Well, Mr. Frank was a stanch friend of mine, and ready to recommend me

whenever he got the chance. I had contrived to get him a little timely

help--for a consideration, of course--in borrowing money at a fair

rate of interest; in fact, I had saved him from the Jews. The money was

borrowed while Mr. Frank was at college. He came back from college, and

stopped at home a little while, and then there got spread about all our

neighborhood a report that he had fallen in love, as the saying is, with

his young sister’s governess, and that his mind was made up to marry

her. What! you’re at it again, Mr. Artist! You want to know her name,

don’t you? What do you think of Smith?

Speaking as a lawyer, I consider report, in a general way, to be a fool

and a liar. But in this case report turned out to be something very

different. Mr. Frank told me he was really in love, and said upon his

honor (an absurd expression which young chaps of his age are always

using) he was determined to marry Smith, the governess--the sweet,

darling girl, as _he_ called her; but I’m not sentimental, and _I_ call

her Smith, the governess. Well, Mr. Frank’s father, being as proud as

Lucifer, said “No,” as to marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted

him to say “Yes.” He was a man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he

took the proper business course. He sent the governess away with a

first-rate character and a spanking present, and then he, looked about

him to get something for Mr. Frank to do. While he was looking about,

Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess, who had nobody alive

belonging to her to go to but an aunt--her father’s sister. The aunt

refuses to let Mr. Frank in without the squire’s permission. Mr. Frank

writes to his father, and says he will marry the girl as soon as he is

of age, or shoot himself. Up to town comes the squire and his wife and

his daughter, and a lot of sentimentality, not in the slightest degree

material to the present statement, takes places among them; and the

upshot of it is that old Gatliffe is forced into withdrawing the word

No, and substituting the word Yes.

I don’t believe he would ever have done it, though, but for one lucky

peculiarity in the case. The governess’s father was a man of good

family--pretty nigh as good as Gatliffe’s own. He had been in the army;

had sold out; set up as a wine-merchant--failed--died; ditto his wife,

as to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire

to make inquiries about but the father’s sister--who had behaved, as

old Gatliffe said, like a thorough-bred gentlewoman in shutting the door

against Mr. Frank in the first instance. So, to cut the matter short,

things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the

wedding, and an announcement about it--Marriage in High Life and all

that--put into the county paper. There was a regular biography, besides,

of the governess’s father, so as to stop people from talking--a great

flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his services in

the army; but not a word, mind ye, of his having turned wine-merchant

afterward. Oh, no--not a word about that!

I knew it, though, for Mr. Frank told me. He hadn’t a bit of pride about

him. He introduced me to his future wife one day when I met him out

walking, and asked me if I did not think he was a lucky fellow. I don’t

mind admitting that I did, and that I told him so. Ah! but she was one

of my sort, was that governess. Stood, to the best of my recollection,

five foot four. Good lissom figure, that looked as if it had never been

boxed up in a pair of stays. Eyes that made me feel as if I was under

a pretty stiff cross-examination the moment she looked at me. Fine red,

kiss-and-come-again sort of lips. Cheeks and complexion--No, Mr. Artist,

you wouldn’t identify her by her cheeks and complexion, if I drew you a

picture of them this very moment. She has had a family of children since

the time I’m talking of; and her cheeks are a trifle fatter, and her

complexion is a shade or two redder now, than when I first met her out

walking with Mr. Frank.

The marriage was to take place on a Wednesday. I decline mentioning the

year or the month. I had started as an attorney on my own account--say

six weeks, more or less, and was sitting alone in my office on the

Monday morning before the wedding-day, trying to see my way clear before

me and not succeeding particularly well, when Mr. Frank suddenly bursts

in, as white as any ghost that ever was painted, and says he’s got

the most dreadful case for me to advise on, and not an hour to lose in

acting on my advice.

“Is this in the way of business, Mr. Frank?” says I, stopping him just

as he was beginning to get sentimental. “Yes or no, Mr. Frank?” rapping

my new office paper-knife on the table, to pull him up short all the

sooner.

“My dear fellow”--he was always familiar with me--“it’s in the way of

business, certainly; but friendship--”

I was obliged to pull him up short again, and regularly examine him as

if he had been in the witness-box, or he would have kept me talking to

no purpose half the day.

“Now, Mr. Frank,” says I, “I can’t have any sentimentality mixed up with

business matters. You please to stop talking, and let me ask questions.

Answer in the fewest words you can use. Nod when nodding will do instead

of words.”

I fixed him with my eye for about three seconds, as he sat groaning and

wriggling in his chair. When I’d done fixing him, I gave another rap

with my paper-knife on the table to startle him up a bit. Then I went

on.

“From what you have been stating up to the present time,” says I, “I

gather that you are in a scrape which is likely to interfere seriously

with your marriage on Wednesday?”

(He nodded, and I cut in again before he could say a word):

“The scrape affects your young lady, and goes back to the period of a

transaction in which her late father was engaged, doesn’t it?”

(He nods, and I cut in once more):

“There is a party, who turned up after seeing the announcement of your

marriage in the paper, who is cognizant of what he oughtn’t to know, and

who is prepared to use his knowledge of the same to the prejudice of the

young lady and of your marriage, unless he receives a sum of money to

quiet him? Very well. Now, first of all, Mr. Frank, state what you have

been told by the young lady herself about the transaction of her late

father. How did you first come to have any knowledge of it?”

“She was talking to me about her father one day so tenderly and

prettily, that she quite excited my interest about him,” begins Mr.

Frank; “and I asked her, among other things, what had occasioned his

death. She said she believed it was distress of mind in the first

instance; and added that this distress was connected with a shocking

secret, which she and her mother had kept from everybody, but which she

could not keep from me, because she was determined to begin her married

life by having no secrets from her husband.” Here Mr. Frank began to

get sentimental again, and I pulled him up short once more with the

paper-knife.

“She told me,” Mr. Frank went on, “that the great mistake of her

father’s life was his selling out of the army and taking to the wine

trade. He had no talent for business; things went wrong with him from

the first. His clerk, it was strongly suspected, cheated him--”

“Stop a bit,” says I. “What was that suspected clerk’s name?”

“Davager,” says he.

“Davager,” says I, making a note of it. “Go on, Mr. Frank.”

“His affairs got more and more entangled,” says Mr. Frank; “he was

pressed for money in all directions; bankruptcy, and consequent dishonor

(as he considered it) stared him in the face. His mind was so affected

by his troubles that both his wife and daughter, toward the last,

considered him to be hardly responsible for his own acts. In this state

of desperation and misery, he--” Here Mr. Frank began to hesitate.

We have two ways in the law of drawing evidence off nice and clear from

an unwilling client or witness. We give him a fright, or we treat him to

a joke. I treated Mr. Frank to a joke.

“Ah!” says I, “I know what he did. He had a signature to write; and, by

the most natural mistake in the world, he wrote another gentleman’s name

instead of his own--eh?”

“It was to a bill,” says Mr. Frank, looking very crestfallen, instead

of taking the joke. “His principal creditor wouldn’t wait till he could

raise the money, or the greater part of it. But he was resolved, if he

sold off everything, to get the amount and repay--”

“Of course,” says I, “drop that. The forgery was discovered. When?”

“Before even the first attempt was made to negotiate the bill. He had

done the whole thing in the most absurdly and innocently wrong way. The

person whose name he had used was a stanch friend of his, and a relation

of his wife’s--a good man as well as a rich one. He had influence with

the chief creditor, and he used it nobly. He had a real affection for

the unfortunate man’s wife, and he proved it generously.”

“Come to the point,” says I. “What did he do? In a business way, what

did he do?”

“He put the false bill into the fire, drew a bill of his own to replace

it, and then--only then--told my dear girl and her mother all that had

happened. Can you imagine anything nobler?” asks Mr. Frank.

“Speaking in my professional capacity, I can’t imagine anything

greener,” says I. “Where was the father? Off, I suppose?”

“Ill in bed,” says Mr. Frank, coloring. “But he mustered strength enough

to write a contrite and grateful letter the same day, promising to prove

himself worthy of the noble moderation and forgiveness extended to him,

by selling off everything he possessed to repay his money debt. He

did sell off everything, down to some old family pictures that were

heirlooms; down to the little plate he had; down to the very tables and

chairs that furnished his drawing-room. Every farthing of the debt

was paid; and he was left to begin the world again, with the kindest

promises of help from the generous man who had forgiven him. It was

too late. His crime of one rash moment--atoned for though it had

been--preyed upon his mind. He became possessed with the idea that he

had lowered himself forever in the estimation of his wife and daughter,

and--”

“He died,” I cut in. “Yes, yes, we know that. Let’s go back for a minute

to the contrite and grateful letter that he wrote. My experience in

the law, Mr. Frank, has convinced me that if everybody burned everybody

else’s letters, half the courts of justice in this country might shut

up shop. Do you happen to know whether the letter we are now speaking of

contained anything like an avowal or confession of the forgery?”

“Of course it did,” says he. “Could the writer express his contrition

properly without making some such confession?”

“Quite easy, if he had been a lawyer,” says I. “But never mind that; I’m

going to make a guess--a desperate guess, mind. Should I be altogether

in error if I thought that this letter had been stolen; and that the

fingers of Mr. Davager, of suspicious commercial celebrity, might

possibly be the fingers which took it?”

“That is exactly what I wanted to make you understand,” cried Mr. Frank.

“How did he communicate the interesting fact of the theft to you?”

“He has not ventured into my presence. The scoundrel actually had the

audacity--”

“Aha!” says I. “The young lady herself! Sharp practitioner, Mr.

Davager.”

“Early this morning, when she was walking alone in the shrubbery,” Mr.

Frank goes on, “he had the assurance to approach her, and to say that

he had been watching his opportunity of getting a private interview

for days past. He then showed her--actually showed her--her unfortunate

father’s letter; put into her hands another letter directed to me;

bowed, and walked off; leaving her half dead with astonishment and

terror. If I had only happened to be there at the time!” says Mr. Frank,

shaking his fist murderously in the air, by way of a finish.

“It’s the greatest luck in the world that you were not,” says I. “Have

you got that other letter?”

He handed it to me. It was so remarkably humorous and short, that I

remember every word of it at this distance of time. It began in this

way:

_“To Francis Gatliffe, Esq., Jun._

“SIR--I have an extremely curious autograph letter to sell. The price is

a five-hundred-pound note. The young lady to whom you are to be married

on Wednesday will inform you of the nature of the letter, and the

genuineness of the autograph. If you refuse to deal, I shall send a copy

to the local paper, and shall wait on your highly-respected father with

the original curiosity, on the afternoon of Tuesday next. Having come

down here on family business, I have put up at the family hotel--being

to be heard of at the Gatliffe Arms. Your very obedient servant, ALFRED

DAVAGER.”

“A clever fellow that,” says I, putting the letter into my private

drawer.

“Clever!” cries Mr. Frank, “he ought to be horsewhipped within an inch

of his life. I would have done it myself; but she made me promise,

before she told me a word of the matter, to come straight to you.”

“That was one of the wisest promises you ever made,” says I. “We can’t

afford to bully this fellow, whatever else we may do with him. Do you

think I am saying anything libelous against your excellent father’s

character when I assert that if he saw the letter he would certainly

insist on your marriage being put off, at the very least?”

“Feeling as my father does about my marriage, he would insist on its

being dropped altogether, if he saw this letter,” says Mr. Frank, with

a groan. “But even that is not the worst of it. The generous, noble

girl herself says that if the letter appears in the paper, with all the

unanswerable comments this scoundrel would be sure to add to it, she

would rather die than hold me to my engagement, even if my father would

let me keep it.”

As he said this his eyes began to water. He was a weak young fellow, and

ridiculously fond of her. I brought him back to business with another

rap of the paper-knife.

“Hold up, Mr. Frank,” says I. “I have a question or two more. Did you

think of asking the young lady whether, to the best of her knowledge,

this infernal letter was the only written evidence of the forgery now in

existence?”

“Yes, I did think directly of asking her that,” says he; “and she told

me she was quite certain that there was no written evidence of the

forgery except that one letter.”

“Will you give Mr. Davager his price for it?” says I.

“Yes,” says Mr. Frank, quite peevish with me for asking him such a

question. He was an easy young chap in money matters, and talked of

hundreds as most men talk of sixpences.

“Mr. Frank,” says I, “you came here to get my help and advice in this

extremely ticklish business, and you are ready, as I know without

asking, to remunerate me for all and any of my services at the usual

professional rate. Now, I’ve made up my mind to act boldly--desperately,

if you like--on the hit or miss, win all or lose all principle--in

dealing with this matter. Here is my proposal. I’m going to try if

I can’t do Mr. Davager out of his letter. If I don’t succeed before

to-morrow afternoon, you hand him the money, and I charge you nothing

for professional services. If I do succeed, I hand you the letter

instead of Mr. Davager, and you give me the money instead of giving it

to him. It’s a precious risk for me, but I’m ready to run it. You must

pay your five hundred any way. What do you say to my plan? Is it Yes,

Mr. Frank, or No?”

“Hang your questions!” cries Mr. Frank, jumping up; “you know it’s Yes

ten thousand times over. Only you earn the money and--”

“And you will be too glad to give it to me. Very good. Now go home.

Comfort the young lady--don’t let Mr. Davager so much as set eyes on

you--keep quiet--leave everything to me--and feel as certain as you

please that all the letters in the world can’t stop your being married

on Wednesday.” With these words I hustled him off out of the office, for

I wanted to be left alone to make my mind up about what I should do.

The first thing, of course, was to have a look at the enemy. I wrote to

Mr. Davager, telling him that I was privately appointed to arrange the

little business matter between himself and “another party” (no names!)

on friendly terms; and begging him to call on me at his earliest

convenience. At the very beginning of the case, Mr. Davager bothered

me. His answer was, that it would not be convenient to him to call till

between six and seven in the evening. In this way, you see, he contrived

to make me lose several precious hours, at a time when minutes almost

were of importance. I had nothing for it but to be patient, and to give

certain instructions, before Mr. Davager came, to my boy Tom.

There never was such a sharp boy of fourteen before, and there never

will be again, as my boy Tom. A spy to look after Mr. Davager was, of

course, the first requisite in a case of this kind; and Tom was the

smallest, quickest, quietest, sharpest, stealthiest little snake of a

chap that ever dogged a gentleman’s steps and kept cleverly out of range

of a gentleman’s eyes. I settled it with the boy that he was not to show

at all when Mr. Davager came; and that he was to wait to hear me ring

the bell when Mr. Davager left. If I rang twice, he was to show the

gentleman out. If I rang once, he was to keep out of the way, and follow

the gentleman whereever he went till he got back to the inn. Those were

the only preparations I could make to begin with; being obliged to wait,

and let myself be guided by what turned up.

About a quarter to seven my gentleman came.

In the profession of the law we get somehow quite remarkably mixed up

with ugly people, blackguard people, and dirty people. But far away the

ugliest and dirtiest blackguard I ever saw in my life was Mr. Alfred

Davager. He had greasy white hair and a mottled face. He was low in the

forehead, fat in the stomach, hoarse in the voice, and weak in the legs.

Both his eyes were bloodshot, and one was fixed in his head. He smelled

of spirits, and carried a toothpick in his mouth. “How are you? I’ve

just done dinner,” says he; and he lights a cigar, sits down with his

legs crossed, and winks at me.

I tried at first to take the measure of him in a wheedling, confidential

way; but it was no good. I asked him, in a facetious, smiling manner,

how he had got hold of the letter. He only told me in answer that he had

been in the confidential employment of the writer of it, and that he had

always been famous since infancy for a sharp eye to his own interests.

I paid him some compliments; but he was not to be flattered. I tried to

make him lose his temper; but he kept it in spite of me. It ended in his

driving me to my last resource--I made an attempt to frighten him.

“Before we say a word about the money,” I began, “let me put a case,

Mr. Davager. The pull you have on Mr. Francis Gatliffe is, that you can

hinder his marriage on Wednesday. Now, suppose I have got a magistrate’s

warrant to apprehend you in my pocket? Suppose I have a constable to

execute it in the next room? Suppose I bring you up to-morrow--the day

before the marriage--charge you only generally with an attempt to extort

money, and apply for a day’s remand to complete the case? Suppose, as a

suspicious stranger, you can’t get bail in this town? Suppose--”

“Stop a bit,” says Mr. Davager. “Suppose I should not be the greenest

fool that ever stood in shoes? Suppose I should not carry the letter

about me? Suppose I should have given a certain envelope to a certain

friend of mine in a certain place in this town? Suppose the letter

should be inside that envelope, directed to old Gatliffe, side by side

with a copy of the letter directed to the editor of the local paper?

Suppose my friend should be instructed to open the envelope, and take

the letters to their right address, if I don’t appear to claim them

from him this evening? In short, my dear sir, suppose you were born

yesterday, and suppose I wasn’t?” says Mr. Davager, and winks at me

again.

He didn’t take me by surprise, for I never expected that he had the

letter about him. I made a pretense of being very much taken aback,

and of being quite ready to give in. We settled our business about

delivering the letter, and handing over the money, in no time. I was

to draw out a document, which he was to sign. He knew the document

was stuff and nonsense, just as well as I did, and told me I was only

proposing it to swell my client’s bill. Sharp as he was, he was wrong

there. The document was not to be drawn out to gain money from Mr.

Frank, but to gain time from Mr. Davager. It served me as an excuse to

put off the payment of the five hundred pounds till three o’clock on the

Tuesday afternoon. The Tuesday morning Mr. Davager said he should

devote to his amusement, and asked me what sights were to be seen in the

neighborhood of the town. When I had told him, he pitched his toothpick

into my grate, yawned, and went out.

I rang the bell once--waited till he had passed the window--and then

looked after Tom. There was my jewel of a boy on the opposite side

of the street, just setting his top going in the most playful manner

possible. Mr. Davager walked away up the street toward the market-place.

Tom whipped his top up the street toward the market-place, too.

In a quarter of an hour he came back, with all his evidence collected

in a beautifully clear and compact state. Mr. Davager had walked to a

public-house just outside the town, in a lane leading to the highroad.

On a bench outside the public-house there sat a man smoking. He said

“All right?” and gave a letter to Mr. Davager, who answered “All right!”

and walked back to the inn. In the hall he ordered hot rum-and-water,

cigars, slippers, and a fire to be lit in his room. After that he went

upstairs, and Tom came away.

I now saw my road clear before me--not very far on, but still clear.

I had housed the letter, in all probability for that night, at the

Gatliffe Arms. After tipping Tom, I gave him directions to play about

the door of the inn, and refresh himself when he was tired at the

tart-shop opposite, eating as much as he pleased, on the understanding

that he crammed all the time with his eye on the window. If Mr. Davager

went out, or Mr. Davager’s friend called on him, Tom was to let me know.

He was also to take a little note from me to the head chambermaid--an

old friend of mine--asking her to step over to my office, on a private

matter of business, as soon as her work was done for that night. After

settling these little matters, having half an hour to spare, I turned

to and did myself a bloater at the office fire, and had a drop of

gin-and-water hot, and felt comparatively happy.

When the head chambermaid came, it turned out, as good luck would have

it, that Mr. Davager had drawn her attention rather too closely to his

ugliness, by offering her a testimony of his regard in the shape of a

kiss. I no sooner mentioned him than she flew into a passion; and when I

added, by way of clinching the matter, that I was retained to defend

the interests of a very beautiful and deserving young lady (name not

referred to, of course) against the most cruel underhand treachery

on the part of Mr. Davager, the head chambermaid was ready to go any

lengths that she could safely to serve my cause. In a few words I

discovered that Boots was to call Mr. Davager at eight the next morning,

and was to take his clothes downstairs to brush as usual. If Mr. D------

had not emptied his own pockets overnight, we arranged that Boots was

to forget to empty them for him, and was to bring the clothes downstairs

just as he found them. If Mr. D------‘s pockets were emptied, then, of

course, it would be necessary to transfer the searching process to

Mr. D------‘s room. Under any circumstances, I was certain of the head

chambermaid; and under any circumstances, also, the head chambermaid was

certain of Boots.

I waited till Tom came home, looking very puffy and bilious about the

face; but as to his intellects, if anything, rather sharper than ever.

His report was uncommonly short and pleasant. The inn was shutting

up; Mr. Davager was going to bed in rather a drunken condition; Mr.

Davager’s friend had never appeared. I sent Tom (properly instructed

about keeping our man in view all the next morning) to his shake-down

behind the office-desk, where I heard him hiccoughing half the night, as

even the best boys will, when over-excited and too full of tarts.

At half-past seven next morning, I slipped quietly into Boots’s pantry.

Down came the clothes. No pockets in trousers. Waistcoat-pockets empty.

Coat-pockets with something in them. First, handkerchief; secondly,

bunch of keys; thirdly, cigar-case; fourthly, pocketbook. Of course I

wasn’t such a fool as to expect to find the letter there, but I opened

the pocketbook with a certain curiosity, notwithstanding.

Nothing in the two pockets of the book but some old advertisements cut

out of newspapers, a lock of hair tied round with a dirty bit of ribbon,

a circular letter about a loan society, and some copies of verses not

likely to suit any company that was not of an extremely free-and-easy

description. On the leaves of the pocketbook, people’s addresses

scrawled in pencil, and bets jotted down in red ink. On one leaf, by

itself, this queer inscription:

“MEM. 5 ALONG. 4 ACROSS.”

I understood everything but those words and figures, so of course I

copied them out into my own book.

Then I waited in the pantry till Boots had brushed the clothes, and had

taken them upstairs. His report when he came down was, that Mr. D------

had asked if it was a fine morning. Being told that it was, he had

ordered breakfast at nine, and a saddle-horse to be at the door at ten,

to take him to Grimwith Abbey--one of the sights in our neighborhood

which I had told him of the evening before.

“I’ll be here, coming in by the back way, at half-past ten,” says I to

the head chambermaid.

“What for?” says she.

“To take the responsibility of making Mr. Davager’s bed off your hands

for this morning only,” says I.

“Any more orders?” says she.

“One more,” says I. “I want to hire Sam for the morning. Put it down in

the order-book that he’s to be brought round to my office at ten.”

In case you should think Sam was a man, I’d better perhaps tell you he

was a pony. I’d made up my mind that it would be beneficial to Tom’s

health, after the tarts, if he took a constitutional airing on a nice

hard saddle in the direction of Grimwith Abbey.

“Anything else?” says the head chambermaid.

“Only one more favor,” says I. “Would my boy Tom be very much in the

way if he came, from now till ten, to help with the boots and shoes,

and stood at his work close by this window which looks out on the

staircase?”

“Not a bit,” says the head chambermaid.

“Thank you,” says I; and stepped back to my office directly.

When I had sent Tom off to help with the boots and shoes, I reviewed the

whole case exactly as it stood at that time.

There were three things Mr. Davager might do with the letter. He might

give it to his friend again before ten--in which case Tom would most

likely see the said friend on the stairs. He might take it to his

friend, or to some other friend, after ten--in which case Tom was ready

to follow him on Sam the pony. And, lastly, he might leave it hidden

somewhere in his room at the inn--in which case I was all ready for

him with a search-warrant of my own granting, under favor always of my

friend the head chambermaid. So far I had my business arrangements all

gathered up nice and compact in my own hands. Only two things bothered

me; the terrible shortness of the time at my disposal, in case I failed

in my first experiments, for getting hold of the letter, and that queer

inscription which I had copied out of the pocketbook:

“MEM. 5 ALONG. 4 ACROSS.”

It was the measurement most likely of something, and he was afraid of

forgetting it; therefore it was something important. Query--something

about himself? Say “5” (inches) “along”--he doesn’t wear a wig. Say “5”

(feet) “along”--it can’t be coat, waistcoat, trousers, or underclothing.

Say “5” (yards) “along”--it can’t be anything about himself, unless he

wears round his body the rope that he’s sure to be hanged with one of

these days. Then it is _not_ something about himself. What do I know of

that is important to him besides? I know of nothing but the Letter. Can

the memorandum be connected with that? Say, yes. What do “5 along” and

“4 across” mean, then? The measurement of something he carries about

with him? or the measurement of something in his room? I could get

pretty satisfactorily to myself as far as that; but I could get no

further.

Tom came back to the office, and reported him mounted for his ride.

His friend had never appeared. I sent the boy off, with his proper

instructions, on Sam’s back--wrote an encouraging letter to Mr. Frank

to keep him quiet--then slipped into the inn by the back way a little

before half-past ten. The head chambermaid gave me a signal when the

landing was clear. I got into his room without a soul but her seeing me,

and locked the door immediately.

The case was, to a certain extent, simplified now. Either Mr. Davager

had ridden out with the letter about him, or he had left it in some safe

hiding-place in his room. I suspected it to be in his room, for a reason

that will a little astonish you--his trunk, his dressing-case, and all

the drawers and cupboards, were left open. I knew my customer, and I

thought this extraordinary carelessness on his part rather suspicious.

Mr. Davager had taken one of the best bedrooms at the Gatliffe Arms.

Floor carpeted all over, walls beautifully papered, four-poster, and

general furniture first-rate. I searched, to begin with, on the usual

plan, examining everything in every possible way, and taking more than

an hour about it. No discovery. Then I pulled out a carpenter’s

rule which I had brought with me. Was there anything in the room

which--either in inches, feet, or yards--answered to “5 along” and “4

across”? Nothing. I put the rule back in my pocket--measurement was no

good, evidently. Was there anything in the room that would count up to 5

one way and 4 another, seeing that nothing would measure up to it? I had

got obstinately persuaded by this time that the letter must be in the

room--principally because of the trouble I had had in looking after

it. And persuading myself of that, I took it into my head next, just

as obstinately, that “5 along” and “4 across” must be the right clew to

find the letter by--principally because I hadn’t left myself, after all

my searching and thinking, even so much as the ghost of another guide

to go by. “Five along”--where could I count five along the room, in any

part of it?

Not on the paper. The pattern there was pillars of trellis-work and

flowers, inclosing a plain green ground--only four pillars along the

wall and only two across. The furniture? There were not five chairs

or five separate pieces of any furniture in the room altogether. The

fringes that hung from the cornice of the bed? Plenty of them, at any

rate! Up I jumped on the counterpane, with my pen-knife in my hand.

Every way that “5 along” and “4 across” could be reckoned on those

unlucky fringes I reckoned on them--probed with my penknife--scratched

with my nails--crunched with my fingers. No use; not a sign of a letter;

and the time was getting on--oh, Lord! how the time did get on in Mr.

Davager’s room that morning.

I jumped down from the bed, so desperate at my ill luck that I hardly

cared whether anybody heard me or not. Quite a little cloud of dust rose

at my feet as they thumped on the carpet.

“Hullo!” thought I, “my friend the head chambermaid takes it easy here.

Nice state for a carpet to be in, in one of the best bedrooms at the

Gatliffe Arms.” Carpet! I had been jumping up on the bed, and staring

up at the walls, but I had never so much as given a glance down at the

carpet. Think of me pretending to be a lawyer, and not knowing how to

look low enough!

The carpet! It had been a stout article in its time, had evidently began

in a drawing-room; then descended to a coffee-room; then gone upstairs

altogether to a bedroom. The ground was brown, and the pattern was

bunches of leaves and roses speckled over the ground at regular

distances. I reckoned up the bunches. Ten along the room--eight across

it. When I had stepped out five one way and four the other, and was down

on my knees on the center bunch, as true as I sit on this chair I could

hear my own heart beating so loud that it quite frightened me.

I looked narrowly all over the bunch, and I felt all over it with the

ends of my fingers, and nothing came of that. Then I scraped it over

slowly and gently with my nails. My second finger-nail stuck a little

at one place. I parted the pile of the carpet over that place, and saw

a thin slit which had been hidden by the pile being smoothed over it--a

slit about half an inch long, with a little end of brown thread, exactly

the color of the carpet ground, sticking out about a quarter of an inch

from the middle of it. Just as I laid hold of the thread gently, I heard

a footstep outside the door.

It was only the head chambermaid. “Haven’t you done yet?” she whispers.

“Give me two minutes,” says I, “and don’t let anybody come near the

door--whatever you do, don’t let anybody startle me again by coming near

the door.”

I took a little pull at the thread, and heard something rustle. I took

a longer pull, and out came a piece of paper, rolled up tight like those

candle-lighters that the ladies make. I unrolled it--and, by George!

there was the letter!

The original letter! I knew it by the color of the ink. The letter that

was worth five hundred pounds to me! It was all that I could do to keep

myself at first from throwing my hat into the air, and hurrahing like

mad. I had to take a chair and sit quiet in it for a minute or two,

before I could cool myself down to my proper business level. I knew that

I was safely down again when I found myself pondering how to let Mr.

Davager know that he had been done by the innocent country attorney,

after all.

It was not long before a nice little irritating plan occurred to me.

I tore a blank leaf out of my pocketbook, wrote on it with my pencil,

“Change for a five-hundred-pound note,” folded up the paper, tied the

thread to it, poked it back into the hiding-place, smoothed over the

pile of the carpet, and then bolted off to Mr. Frank. He in his turn

bolted off to show the letter to the young lady, who first certified

to its genuineness, then dropped it into the fire, and then took the

initiative for the first time since her marriage engagement, by flinging

her arms round his neck, kissing him with all her might, and going into

hysterics in his arms. So at least Mr. Frank told me, but that’s not

evidence. It is evidence, however, that I saw them married with my

own eyes on the Wednesday; and that while they went off in a

carriage-and-four to spend the honeymoon, I went off on my own legs to

open a credit at the Town and County Bank with a five-hundred-pound note

in my pocket.

As to Mr. Davager, I can tell you nothing more about him, except what is

derived from hearsay evidence, which is always unsatisfactory evidence,

even in a lawyer’s mouth.

My inestimable boy, Tom, although twice kicked off by Sam the pony,

never lost hold of the bridle, and kept his man in sight from first to

last. He had nothing particular to report except that on the way out to

the Abbey Mr. Davager had stopped at the public-house, had spoken a word

or two to his friend of the night before, and had handed him what looked

like a bit of paper. This was no doubt a clew to the thread that held

the letter, to be used in case of accidents. In every other respect Mr.

D. had ridden out and ridden in like an ordinary sightseer. Tom reported

him to me as having dismounted at the hotel about two. At half-past I

locked my office door, nailed a card under the knocker with “not at home

till to-morrow” written on it, and retired to a friend’s house a mile or

so out of the town for the rest of the day.

Mr. Davager, I have been since given to understand, left the Gatliffe

Arms that same night with his best clothes on his back, and with all

the valuable contents of his dressing-case in his pockets. I am not in

a condition to state whether he ever went through the form of asking for

his bill or not; but I can positively testify that he never paid it, and

that the effects left in his bedroom did not pay it either. When I add

to these fragments of evidence that he and I have never met (luckily for

me, you will say) since I jockeyed him out of his banknote, I have about

fulfilled my implied contract as maker of a statement with you, sir, as

hearer of a statement. Observe the expression, will you? I said it was

a Statement before I began; and I say it’s a Statement now I’ve done. I

defy you to prove it’s a Story! How are you getting on with my portrait?

I like you very well, Mr. Artist; but if you have been taking advantage

of my talking to shirk your work, as sure as you’re alive I’ll split

upon you to the Town Council!

I attended a great many times at my queer sitter’s house before his

likeness was completed. To the last he was dissatisfied with the

progress I made. Fortunately for me, the Town Council approved of the

portrait when it was done. Mr. Boxsious, however, objected to them as

being much too easy to please. He did not dispute the fidelity of the

likeness, but he asserted that I had not covered the canvas with half

paint enough for my money. To this day (for he is still alive), he

describes me to all inquiring friends as “The Painter-Man who jockeyed

the Town Council.”

PROLOGUE TO THE THIRD STORY.

It was a sad day for me when Mr. Lanfray, of Rockleigh Place,

discovering that his youngest daughter’s health required a warm climate,

removed from his English establishment to the South of France.

Roving from place to place, as I am obliged to do, though I make many

acquaintances, I keep but few friends. The nature of my calling is, I

am quite aware, mainly answerable for this. People cannot be blamed for

forgetting a man who, on leaving their houses, never can tell them for

certain when he is likely to be in their neighborhood again.

Mr. Lanfray was one of the few exceptional persons who always remembered

me. I have proofs of his friendly interest in my welfare in the shape

of letters which I treasure with grateful care. The last of these is an

invitation to his house in the South of France. There is little chance

at present of my being able to profit by his kindness; but I like to

read his invitation from time to time, for it makes me fancy, in my

happier moments, that I may one day really be able to accept it.

My introduction to this gentleman, in my capacity of portrait-painter,

did not promise much for me in a professional point of view. I was

invited to Rockleigh--or to “The Place,” as it was more frequently

called among the people of the county--to take a likeness in

water-colors, on a small scale, of the French governess who lived with

Mr. Lanfray’s daughters. My first idea on hearing of this was, that the

governess was about to leave her situation, and that her pupils wished

to have a memorial of her in the shape of a portrait. Subsequent

inquiry, however, informed me that I was in error. It was the eldest of

Mr. Lanfray’s daughters, who was on the point of leaving the house to

accompany her husband to India; and it was for her that the portrait

had been ordered as a home remembrance of her best and dearest friend.

Besides these particulars, I discovered that the governess, though

still called “mademoiselle,” was an old lady; that Mr. Lanfray had been

introduced to her many years since in France, after the death of his

wife; that she was absolute mistress in the house; and that her three

pupils had always looked up to her as a second mother, from the time

when their father first placed them under her charge.

These scraps of information made me rather anxious to see Mademoiselle

Clairfait, the governess.

On the day appointed for my attendance at the comfortable country house

of Rockleigh, I was detained on the road, and did not arrive at my

destination until late in the evening. The welcome accorded to me by

Mr. Lanfray gave an earnest of the unvarying kindness that I was to

experience at his hands in after-life. I was received at once on equal

terms, as if I had been a friend of the family, and was presented the

same evening to my host’s daughters. They were not merely three elegant

and attractive young women, but--what means much more than that--three

admirable subjects for pictures, the bride particularly. Her young

husband did not strike me much at first sight; he seemed rather shy

and silent. After I had been introduced to him, I looked round for

Mademoiselle Clairfait, but she was not present; and I was soon

afterward informed by Mr. Lanfray that she always spent the latter part

of the evening in her own room.

At the breakfast-table the next morning, I again looked for my sitter,

and once more in vain. “Mamma, as we call her,” said one of the ladies,

“is dressing expressly for her picture, Mr. Kerby. I hope you are

not above painting silk, lace, and jewelry. The dear old lady, who is

perfection in everything else, is perfection also in dress, and is bent

on being painted in all her splendor.”

This explanation prepared me for something extraordinary; but I found

that my anticipations had fallen far below the reality when Mademoiselle

Clairfait at last made her appearance, and announced that she was ready

to sit for her portrait.

Never before or since have I seen such perfect dressing and such active

old age in combination. “Mademoiselle” was short and thin; her face

was perfectly white all over, the skin being puckered up in an infinite

variety of the smallest possible wrinkles. Her bright black eyes were

perfect marvels of youthfulness and vivacity. They sparkled, and beamed,

and ogled, and moved about over everybody and everything at such a rate,

that the plain gray hair above them looked unnaturally venerable, and

the wrinkles below an artful piece of masquerade to represent old age.

As for her dress, I remember few harder pieces of work than the painting

of it. She wore a silver-gray silk gown that seemed always flashing out

into some new light whenever she moved. It was as stiff as a board,

and rustled like the wind. Her head, neck, and bosom were enveloped in

clouds of the airiest-looking lace I ever saw, disposed about each part

of her with the most exquisite grace and propriety, and glistening at

all sorts of unexpected places with little fairy-like toys in gold and

precious stones. On her right wrist she wore three small bracelets,

with the hair of her three pupils worked into them; and on her left, one

large bracelet with a miniature let in over the clasp. She had a dark

crimson and gold scarf thrown coquettishly over her shoulders, and

held a lovely little feather-fan in her hand. When she first presented

herself before me in this costume, with a brisk courtesy and a bright

smile, filling the room with perfume, and gracefully flirting the

feather-fan, I lost all confidence in my powers as a portrait-painter

immediately. The brightest colors in my box looked dowdy and dim, and I

myself felt like an unwashed, unbrushed, unpresentable sloven.

“Tell me, my angels,” said mademoiselle, apostrophizing her pupils

in the prettiest foreign English, “am I the cream of all creams this

morning? Do I carry my sixty years resplendently? Will the savages in

India, when my own love exhibits my picture among them, say, ‘Ah! smart!

smart! this was a great dandy?’ And the gentleman, the skillful artist,

whom it is even more an honor than a happiness to meet, does he approve

of me for a model? Does he find me pretty and paintable from top to

toe?” Here she dropped me another brisk courtesy, placed herself in

a languishing position in the sitter’s chair, and asked us all if she

looked like a shepherdess in Dresden china.

The young ladies burst out laughing, and mademoiselle, as gay as any of

them and a great deal shriller, joined in the merriment. Never before

had I contended with any sitter half as restless as that wonderful

old lady. No sooner had I begun than she jumped out of the chair, and

exclaiming, “_Grand Dieu!_ I have forgotten to embrace my angels this

morning,” ran up to her pupils, raised herself on tiptoe before them

in quick succession, put the two first fingers of each hand under their

ears, kissed them lightly on both cheeks, and was back again in the

chair before an English governess could have said, “Good-morning, my

dears, I hope you all slept well last night.”

I began again. Up jumped mademoiselle for the second time, and tripped

across the room to a cheval-glass. “No!” I heard her say to herself, “I

have not discomposed my head in kissing my angels. I may come back and

pose for my picture.”

Back she came. I worked from her for five minutes at the most. “Stop!”

cries mademoiselle, jumping up for the third time; “I must see how this

skillful artist is getting on. _Grand Dieu!_ why he has done nothing!”

For the fourth time I began, and for the fourth time the old lady

started out of her chair. “Now I must repose myself,” said mademoiselle,

walking lightly from end to end of the room, and humming a French air,

by way of taking a rest.

I was at my wit’s end, and the young ladies saw it. They all surrounded

my unmanageable sitter, and appealed to her compassion for me.

“Certainly!” said mademoiselle, expressing astonishment by flinging

up both her hands with all the fingers spread out in the air. “But why

apostrophize me thus? I am here, I am ready, I am at the service of this

skillful artist. Why apostrophize me?”

A fortunate chance question of mine steadied her for some time. I

inquired if I was expected to draw the whole of my sitter’s figure as

well as her face. Mademoiselle replied by a comic scream of indignation.

If I was the brave and gifted man for whom she took me, I ought to be

ready to perish rather than leave out an inch of her anywhere. Dress was

her passion, and it would be an outrage on her sentiments if I did not

do full justice to everything she had on--to her robe, to her lace, to

her scarf, to her fan, to her rings, her jewels, and, above all, to her

bracelets. I groaned in spirit at the task before me, but made my best

bow of acquiescence. Mademoiselle was not to be satisfied by a mere bow;

she desired the pleasure of specially directing my attention, if I would

be so amiable as to get up and approach her, to one of her bracelets in

particular--the bracelet with the miniature, on her left wrist. It had

been the gift of the dearest friend she ever had, and the miniature

represented that friend’s beloved and beautiful face. Could I make

a tiny, tiny copy of that likeness in my drawing! Would I only be so

obliging as to approach for one little moment, and see if such a thing

were possible?

I obeyed unwillingly enough, expecting, from mademoiselle’s expression,

to see a commonplace portrait of some unfortunate admirer whom she

had treated with unmerited severity in the days of her youth. To my

astonishment, I found that the miniature, which was very beautifully

painted, represented a woman’s face--a young woman with kind, sad eyes,

pale, delicate cheeks, light hair, and such a pure, tender, lovely

expressions that I thought of Raphael’s Madonnas the moment I looked at

her portrait.

The old lady observed the impression which the miniature produced on me,

and nodded her head in silence. “What a beautiful, innocent, pure face!”

I said.

Mademoiselle Clairfait gently brushed a particle of dust from the

miniature with her handkerchief, and kissed it. “I have three angels

still left,” she said, looking at her pupils. “They console me for the

fourth, who has gone to heaven.”

She patted the face on the miniature gently with her little, withered,

white fingers, as if it had been a living thing. _“Sister Rose!”_ she

sighed to herself; then, looking up again at me, said, “I should like it

put into my portrait, sir, because I have always worn it since I was a

young woman, for ‘Sister Rose’s’ sake.”

The sudden change in her manner, from the extreme of flighty gayety to

the extreme of quiet sadness, would have looked theatrical in a woman of

any other nation. It seemed, however, perfectly natural and appropriate

in her. I went back to my drawing, rather perplexed. Who was “Sister

Rose”? Not one of the Lanfray family, apparently. The composure of the

young ladies when the name was mentioned showed plainly enough that the

original of the miniature had been no relation of theirs.

I tried to stifle my curiosity on the subject of Sister Rose, by giving

myself entirely to my work. For a full half-hour, Mademoiselle Clairfait

sat quietly before me, with her hands crossed on her lap, and her eyes

fixed on the bracelet. This happy alteration enabled me to do something

toward completing the outline of her face and figure. I might even,

under fortunate circumstances, have vanquished the preliminary

difficulties of my task at one effort; but the fates were against me

that day. While I was still working rapidly and to my satisfaction,

a servant knocked at the door to announce luncheon, and mademoiselle

lightly roused herself from her serious reflection and her quiet

position in a moment.

“Ah me!” she said, turning the miniature round on her wrist till it was

out of sight. “What animals we are, after all! The spiritual part of us

is at the mercy of the stomach. My heart is absorbed by tender thoughts,

yet I am not the less ready for luncheon! Come, my children and

fellow-mortals. _Allons cultiver notre jardin!”_

With this quotation from “Candide,” plaintively delivered, the old lady

led the way out of the room, and was followed by her younger pupils.

The eldest sister remained behind for a moment, and reminded me that the

lunch was ready.

“I am afraid you have found the dear old soul rather an unruly sitter,”

she said, noticing the look of dissatisfaction with which I was

regarding my drawing. “But she will improve as you go on. She has done

better already for the last half-hour, has she not?”

“Much better,” I answered. “My admiration of the miniature on the

bracelet seemed--I suppose, by calling up some old associations--to have

a strangely soothing effect on Mademoiselle Clairfait.”

“Ah yes! only remind her of the original of that portrait, and you

change her directly, whatever she may have been saying or doing the

moment before. Sometimes she talks of _Sister Rose,_ and of all that she

went through in the time of the French Revolution, by the hour together.

It is wonderfully interesting--at least we all think so.”

“I presume that the lady described as ‘Sister Rose’ was a relation of

Mademoiselle Clairfait’s?”

“No, only a very dear friend. Mademoiselle Clairfait is the daughter

of a silk-mercer, once established at Chalons-sur-Marne. Her father

happened to give an asylum in his office to a lonely old man, to

whom ‘Sister Rose’ and her brother had been greatly indebted in the

revolutionary time; and out of a train of circumstances connected with

that, the first acquaintance between mademoiselle and the friend whose

portrait she wears, arose. After the time of her father’s bankruptcy,

and for many years before we were placed under her charge, our good old

governess lived entirely with ‘Sister Rose’ and her brother. She must

then have heard all the interesting things that she has since often

repeated to my sisters and myself.”

“Might I suggest,” said I, after an instant’s consideration, “that the

best way to give me a fair chance of studying Mademoiselle Clairfait’s

face at the next sitting, would be to lead her thoughts again to that

quieting subject of the miniature, and to the events which the portrait

recalls? It is really the only plan, after what I have observed this

morning, that I can think of for enabling me to do myself and my sitter

justice.”

“I am delighted to hear you say so,” replied the lady; “for the

execution of your plan, by me or by my sisters, will be the easiest

thing in the world. A word from us at any time will set mademoiselle

thinking, and talking too, of the friend of her youthful days. Depend

on our assistance so far. And now let me show you the way to the

luncheon-table.”

Two good results followed the ready rendering of the help I had asked

from my host’s daughters. I succeeded with my portrait of Mademoiselle

Clairfait, and I heard the story which occupies the following pages.

In the case of the preceding narratives, I have repeated what was

related to me, as nearly as possible in the very words of my sitters.

In the case of this third story, it is impossible for me to proceed upon

the same plan. The circumstances of “Sister Rose’s” eventful history

were narrated to me at different times, and in the most fragmentary and

discursive manner. Mademoiselle Clairfait characteristically mixed up

with the direct interest of her story, not only references to places and

people which had no recognizable connection with it, but outbursts of

passionate political declamation, on the extreme liberal side--to

say nothing of little tender apostrophes to her beloved friend, which

sounded very prettily as she spoke them, but which would lose

their effect altogether by being transferred to paper. Under these

circumstances, I have thought it best to tell the story in my own

way--rigidly adhering to the events of it exactly as they were related;

and never interfering on my own responsibility except to keep order

in the march of the incidents, and to present them, to the best of my

ability, variously as well as interestingly to the reader.

THE FRENCH GOVERNESS’S STORY OF SISTER ROSE.

PART FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

“Well, Monsieur Guillaume, what is the news this evening?”

“None that I know of, Monsieur Justin, except that Mademoiselle Rose is

to be married to-morrow.”

“Much obliged, my respectable old friend, for so interesting and

unexpected a reply to my question. Considering that I am the valet of

Monsieur Danville, who plays the distinguished part of bridegroom in

the little wedding comedy to which you refer, I think I may assure you,

without offense, that your news is, so far as I am concerned, of the

stalest possible kind. Take a pinch of snuff, Monsieur Guillaume, and

excuse me if I inform you that my question referred to public news, and

not to the private affairs of the two families whose household interests

we have the pleasure of promoting.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by such a phrase as promoting

household interests, Monsieur Justin. I am the servant of Monsieur Louis

Trudaine, who lives here with his sister, Mademoiselle Rose. You are

the servant of Monsieur Danville, whose excellent mother has made up

the match for him with my young lady. As servants, both of us, the

pleasantest news we can have any concern with is news that is connected

with the happiness of our masters. I have nothing to do with public

affairs; and, being one of the old school, I make it my main object in

life to mind my own business. If our homely domestic politics have no

interests for you, allow me to express my regret, and to wish you a very

good-evening.”

“Pardon me, my dear sir, I have not the slightest respect for the

old school, or the least sympathy with people who only mind their own

business. However, I accept your expressions of regret; I reciprocate

your ‘Good-evening’; and I trust to find you improved in temper, dress,

manners, and appearance the next time I have the honor of meeting you.

Adieu, Monsieur Guillaume, and! _Vive la bagatelle!”_

These scraps of dialogue were interchanged on a lovely summer evening

in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, before the back door of

a small house which stood on the banks of the Seine, about three miles

westward of the city of Rouen. The one speaker was lean, old, crabbed

and slovenly; the other was plump, young, oily-mannered and dressed in

the most gorgeous livery costume of the period. The last days of genuine

dandyism were then rapidly approaching all over the civilized world; and

Monsieur Justin was, in his own way, dressed to perfection, as a living

illustration of the expiring glories of his epoch.

After the old servant had left him, he occupied himself for a few

minutes in contemplating, superciliously enough, the back view of the

little house before which he stood. Judging by the windows, it did not

contain more than six or eight rooms in all. Instead of stables and

outhouses, there was a conservatory attached to the building on one

side, and a low, long room, built of wood, gayly painted, on the other.

One of the windows of this room was left uncurtained and through

it could be seen, on a sort of dresser inside, bottles filled with

strangely-colored liquids oddly-shaped utensils of brass and copper, one

end of a large furnace, and other objects, which plainly proclaimed that

the apartment was used as a chemical laboratory.

“Think of our bride’s brother amusing himself in such a place as that

with cooking drugs in saucepans,” muttered Monsieur Justin, peeping into

the room. “I am the least particular man in the universe, but I must

say I wish we were not going to be connected by marriage with an amateur

apothecary. Pah! I can smell the place through the window.”

With these words Monsieur Justin turned his back on the laboratory in

disgust, and sauntered toward the cliffs overhanging the river.

Leaving the garden attached to the house, he ascended some gently rising

ground by a winding path. Arrived at the summit, the whole view of the

Seine, with its lovely green islands, its banks fringed with trees, its

gliding boats, and little scattered water-side cottages, opened before

him. Westward, where the level country appeared beyond the further

bank of the river, the landscape was all aglow with the crimson of the

setting sun. Eastward, the long shadows and mellow intervening lights,

the red glory that quivered on the rippling water, the steady ruby fire

glowing on cottage windows that reflected the level sunlight, led the

eye onward and onward, along the windings of the Seine, until it rested

upon the spires, towers, and broadly-massed houses of Rouen, with the

wooded hills rising beyond them for background. Lovely to look on at

any time, the view was almost supernaturally beautiful now under the

gorgeous evening light that glowed up in it. All its attractions,

however, were lost on the valet; he stood yawning with his hands in

his pockets, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but staring

straight before him at a little hollow, beyond which the ground sloped

away smoothly to the brink of the cliff. A bench was placed here, and

three persons--an old lady, a gentleman, and a young girl--were seated

on it, watching the sunset, and by consequence turning their backs on

Monsieur Justin. Near them stood two gentlemen, also looking toward the

river and the distant view. These five figures attracted the valet’s

attention, to the exclusion of every other object around him.

“There they are still,” he said to himself, discontentedly. “Madame

Danville in the same place on the seat; my master, the bridegroom,

dutifully next to her; Mademoiselle Rose, the bride, bashfully next to

him; Monsieur Trudaine, the amateur apothecary brother, affectionately

next to her; and Monsieur Lomaque, our queer land-steward, officially in

waiting on the whole party. There they all are indeed, incomprehensibly

wasting their time still in looking at nothing! Yes,” continued Monsieur

Justin, lifting his eyes wearily, and staring hard, first up the river

at Rouen, then down the river at the setting sun; “yes, plague take

them! looking at nothing, absolutely and positively at nothing, all this

while.”

Here Monsieur Justin yawned again, and, returning to the garden, sat

himself down in an arbor and resignedly went to sleep.

If the valet had ventured near the five persons whom he had been

apostrophizing from a distance, and if he had been possessed of some

little refinement of observation, he could hardly have failed to remark

that the bride and bridegroom of the morrow, and their companions on

either side, were all, in a greater or less degree, under the influence

of some secret restraint, which affected their conversation, their

gestures, and even the expression of their faces. Madame Danville--a

handsome, richly-dressed old lady, with very bright eyes, and a quick,

suspicious manner--looked composedly and happily enough, as long as her

attention was fixed on her son. But when she turned from him toward

the bride, a hardly perceptible uneasiness passed over her face--an

uneasiness which only deepened to positive distrust and dissatisfaction

whenever she looked toward Mademoiselle Trudaine’s brother. In the same

way, her son, who was all smiles and happiness while he was speaking

with his future wife, altered visibly in manner and look exactly as his

mother altered, whenever the presence of Monsieur Trudaine specially

impressed itself on his attention. Then, again, Lomaque, the

land-steward--quiet, sharp, skinny Lomaque, with the submissive

manner, and the red-rimmed eyes--never looked up at his master’s

future brother-in-law without looking away again rather uneasily, and

thoughtfully drilling holes in the grass with his long sharp-pointed

cane. Even the bride herself--the pretty, innocent girl, with her

childish shyness of manner--seemed to be affected like the others.

Doubt, if not distress, overshadowed her face from time to time, and the

hand which her lover held trembled a little, and grew restless, when she

accidentally caught her brother’s eye.

Strangely enough there was nothing to repel, but, on the contrary,

everything to attract in the look and manner of the person whose mere

presence seemed to exercise such a curiously constraining influence over

the wedding-party. Louis Trudaine was a remarkably handsome man. His

expression was singularly kind and gentle; his manner irresistibly

winning in its frank, manly firmness and composure. His words, when he

occasionally spoke, seemed as unlikely to give offense as his looks;

for he only opened his lips in courteous reply to questions directly

addressed to him. Judging by a latent mournfulness in the tones of his

voice, and by the sorrowful tenderness which clouded his kind, earnest

eyes whenever they rested on his sister, his thoughts were certainly not

of the happy or the hopeful kind. But he gave them no direct expression;

he intruded his secret sadness, whatever it might be, on no one of his

companions. Nevertheless, modest and self-restrained as he was, there

was evidently some reproving or saddening influence in his presence

which affected the spirits of every one near him, and darkened the eve

of the wedding to bride and bridegroom alike.

As the sun slowly sank in the heavens, the conversation flagged more and

more. After a long silence, the bridegroom was the first to start a new

subject.

“Rose, love,” he said, “that magnificent sunset is a good omen for our

marriage; it promises another lovely day to-morrow.”

The bride laughed and blushed.

“Do you really believe in omens, Charles?” she said.

“My dear,” interposed the old lady, before her son could answer, “if

Charles does believe in omens, it is nothing to laugh at. You will soon

know better, when you are his wife, than to confound him, even in the

slightest things, with the common herd of people. All his convictions

are well founded--so well, that if I thought he really did believe in

omens, I should most assuredly make up my mind to believe in them too.”

“I beg your pardon, madame,” Rose began, tremulously, “I only meant--”

“My dear child, have you so little knowledge of the world as to suppose

that I could be offended--”

“Let Rose speak,” said the young man.

He turned round petulantly, almost with the air of a spoiled child,

to his mother, as he said those words. She had been looking fondly and

proudly on him the moment before. Now her eyes wandered disconcertedly

from his face; she hesitated an instant with a sudden confusion which

seemed quite foreign to her character, then whispered in his ear,

“Am I to blame, Charles, for trying to make her worthy of you?”

Her son took no notice of the question. He only reiterated sharply, “Let

Rose speak.”

“I really had nothing to say,” faltered the young girl, growing more and

more confused.

“Oh, but you had!”

There was such an ungracious sharpness in his voice, such an outburst of

petulance in his manner as he spoke, that his mother gave him a warning

touch on the arm, and whispered “Hush!”

Monsieur Lomaque, the land-steward, and Monsieur Trudaine, the

brother, both glanced searchingly at the bride, as the words passed the

bridegroom’s lips. She seemed to be frightened and astonished, rather

than irritated or hurt. A curious smile puckered up Lomaque’s lean face,

as he looked demurely down on the ground, and began drilling a fresh

hole in the turf with the sharp point of his cane. Trudaine turned aside

quickly, and, sighing, walked away a few paces; then came back, and

seemed about to speak, but Danville interrupted him.

“Pardon me, Rose,” he said; “I am so jealous of even the appearance of

any want of attention toward you, that I was nearly allowing myself to

be irritated about nothing.”

He kissed her hand very gracefully and tenderly as he made his excuse;

but there was a latent expression in his eye which was at variance

with the apparent spirit of his action. It was noticed by nobody but

observant and submissive Monsieur Lomaque, who smiled to himself again,

and drilled harder than ever at his hole in the grass.

“I think Monsieur Trudaine was about to speak,” said Madame Danville.

“Perhaps he will have no objection to let us hear what he was going to

say.”

“None, madame,” replied Trudaine, politely. “I was about to take upon

myself the blame of Rose’s want of respect for believers in omens, by

confessing that I have always encouraged her to laugh at superstitions

of every kind.”

“You a ridiculer of superstitions?” said Danville, turning quickly

on him. “You, who have built a laboratory; you, who are an amateur

professor of the occult arts of chemistry--a seeker after the Elixir of

Life. On my word of honor, you astonish me!”

There was an ironical politeness in his voice, look, and manner as he

said this, which his mother and his land-steward, Monsieur Lomaque,

evidently knew how to interpret. The first touched his arm again and

whispered, “Be careful!” the second suddenly grew serious, and left off

drilling his hole in the grass. Rose neither heard the warning of Madame

Danville, nor noticed the alteration in Lomaque. She was looking round

at her brother, and was waiting with a bright, affectionate smile to

hear his answer. He nodded, as if to reassure her, before he spoke again

to Danville.

“You have rather romantic ideas about experiments in chemistry,” he

said, quietly. “Mine have so little connection with what you call the

occult arts that all the world might see them, if all the world thought

it worth while. The only Elixirs of Life that I know of are a quiet

heart and a contented mind. Both those I found, years and years ago,

when Rose and I first came to live together in the house yonder.”

He spoke with a quiet sadness in his voice, which meant far more to his

sister than the simple words he uttered. Her eyes filled with tears; she

turned for a moment from her lover, and took her brother’s hand. “Don’t

talk, Louis, as if you thought you were going to lose your sister,

because--” Her lips began to tremble, and she stopped suddenly.

“More jealous than ever of your taking her away from him!” whispered

Madame Danville in her son’s ear. “Hush! don’t, for God’s sake, take any

notice of it,” she added, hurriedly, as he rose from the seat and faced

Trudaine with undisguised irritation and impatience in his manner.

Before he could speak, the old servant Guillaume made his appearance,

and announced that coffee was ready. Madame Danville again said “Hush!”

and quickly took one of his arms, while he offered the other to Rose.

“Charles,” said the young girl, amazedly, “how flushed your face is, and

how your arm trembles!”

He controlled himself in a moment, smiled, and said to her: “Can’t you

guess why, Rose? I am thinking of to-morrow.” While he was speaking, he

passed close by the land-steward, on his way back to the house with

the ladies. The smile returned to Monsieur Lomaque’s lean face, and a

curious light twinkled in his red-rimmed eyes as he began a fresh hole

in the grass.

“Won’t you go indoors, and take some coffee?” asked Trudaine, touching

the land-steward on the arm.

Monsieur Lomaque started a little and left his cane sticking in the

ground. “A thousand thanks, monsieur,” he said; “may I be allowed to

follow you?”

“I confess the beauty of the evening makes me a little unwilling to

leave this place just yet.”

“Ah! the beauties of Nature--I feel them with you, Monsieur Trudaine;

I feel them here.” Saying this, Lomaque laid one hand on his heart,

and with the other pulled his stick out of the grass. He had looked as

little at the landscape or the setting sun as Monsieur Justin himself.

They sat down, side by side, on the empty bench; and then there followed

an awkward pause. Submissive Lomaque was too discreet to forget his

place, and venture on starting a new topic. Trudaine was preoccupied,

and disinclined to talk. It was necessary, however, in common

politeness, to say something. Hardly attending himself to his own words,

he began with a commonplace phrase: “I regret, Monsieur Lomaque, that we

have not had more opportunities of bettering our acquaintance.”

“I feel deeply indebted,” rejoined the land-steward, “to the admirable

Madame Danville for having chosen me as her escort hither from her son’s

estate near Lyons, and having thereby procured for me the honor of this

introduction.” Both Monsieur Lomaque’s red-rimmed eyes were seized with

a sudden fit of winking, as he made this polite speech. His enemies

were accustomed to say that, whenever he was particularly insincere,

or particularly deceitful, he always took refuge in the weakness of his

eyes, and so evaded the trying ordeal of being obliged to look steadily

at the person whom he was speaking with.

“I was pleased to hear you mention my late father’s name, at dinner, in

terms of high respect,” continued Trudaine, resolutely keeping up the

conversation. “Did you know him?”

“I am indirectly indebted to your excellent father,” answered the

land-steward, “for the very situation which I now hold. At a time when

the good word of a man of substance and reputation was needed to save me

from poverty and ruin, your father spoke that word. Since then I have,

in my own very small way, succeeded in life, until I have risen to the

honor of superintending the estate of Monsieur Danville.”

“Excuse me, but your way of speaking of your present situation rather

surprises me. Your father, I believe, was a merchant, just as Danville’s

father was a merchant; the only difference between them was that one

failed and the other realized a large fortune. Why should you speak of

yourself as honored by holding your present place?”

“Have you never heard?” exclaimed Lomaque, with an appearance of

great astonishment, “or can you have heard, and forgotten, that Madame

Danville is descended from one of the noble houses of France? Has she

never told you, as she has often told me, that she condescended when she

married her late husband; and that her great object in life is to get

the title of her family (years since extinct in the male line) settled

on her son?”

“Yes,” replied Trudaine; “I remember to have heard something of this,

and to have paid no great attention to it at the time, having little

sympathy with such aspirations as you describe. You have lived many

years in Danville’s service, Monsieur Lomaque; have you”--he hesitated

for a moment, then continued, looking the land-steward full in the

face--“have you found him a good and kind master?”

Lomaque’s thin lips seemed to close instinctively at the question, as if

he were never going to speak again. He bowed--Trudaine waited--he only

bowed again. Trudaine waited a third time. Lomaque looked at his host

with perfect steadiness for an instant, then his eyes began to get weak

again. “You seem to have some special interest,” he quietly remarked,

“if I may say so without offense, in asking me that question.”

“I deal frankly, at all hazards, with every one,” returned Trudaine;

“and stranger as you are, I will deal frankly with you. I acknowledge

that I have an interest in asking that question--the dearest, the

tenderest of all interests.” At those last words, his voice trembled

for a moment, but he went on firmly; “from the beginning of my sister’s

engagement with Danville, I made it my duty not to conceal my own

feelings; my conscience and my affection for Rose counseled me to be

candid to the last, even though my candor should distress or offend

others. When we first made the acquaintance of Madame Danville, and

when I first discovered that her son’s attentions to Rose were not

unfavorably received, I felt astonished, and, though it cost me a hard

effort, I did not conceal that astonishment from my sister--”

Lomaque, who had hitherto been all attention, started here, and threw

up his hands in amazement. “Astonished, did I hear you say? Astonished,

Monsieur Trudaine, that the attentions of a young gentleman, possessed

of all the graces and accomplishments of a highly-bred Frenchman, should

be favorably received by a young lady! Astonished that such a dancer,

such a singer, such a talker, such a notoriously fascinating ladies’ man

as Monsieur Danville, should, by dint of respectful assiduity, succeed

in making some impression on the heart of Mademoiselle Rose! Oh,

Monsieur Trudaine, venerated Monsieur Trudaine, this is almost too much

to credit!”

Lomaque’s eyes grew weaker than ever, and winked incessantly as he

uttered this apostrophe. At the end, he threw up his hands again, and

blinked inquiringly all round him, in mute appeal to universal nature.

“When, in the course of time, matters were further advanced,” continued

Trudaine, without paying any attention to the interruption; “when the

offer of marriage was made, and when I knew that Rose had in her own

heart accepted it, I objected, and I did not conceal my objections--”

“Heavens!” interposed Lomaque again, clasping his hands this time with

a look of bewilderment; “what objections, what possible objections to

a man young and well-bred, with an immense fortune and an uncompromised

character? I have heard of these objections; I know they have made bad

blood; and I ask myself again and again, what can they be?”

“God knows I have often tried to dismiss them from my mind as fanciful

and absurd,” said Trudaine, “and I have always failed. It is impossible,

in your presence, that I can describe in detail what my own impressions

have been, from the first, of the master whom you serve. Let it be

enough if I confide to you that I cannot, even now, persuade myself of

the sincerity of his attachment to my sister, and that I feel--in

spite of myself, in spite of my earnest desire to put the most implicit

confidence in Rose’s choice--a distrust of his character and temper,

which now, on the eve of the marriage, amounts to positive terror. Long

secret suffering, doubt, and suspense, wring this confession from me,

Monsieur Lomaque, almost unawares, in defiance of caution, in defiance

of all the conventionalities of society. You have lived for years under

the same roof with this man; you have seen him in his most unguarded and

private moments. I tempt you to betray no confidence--I only ask you if

you can make me happy by telling me that I have been doing your master

grievous injustice by my opinion of him? I ask you to take my hand,

and tell me if you can, in all honor, that my sister is not risking the

happiness of her whole life by giving herself in marriage to Danville

to-morrow!”

He held out his hand while he spoke. By some strange chance, Lomaque

happened just at that moment to be looking away toward those beauties of

Nature which he admired so greatly. “Really, Monsieur Trudaine, really

such an appeal from you, at such a time, amazes me.” Having got so far,

he stopped and said no more.

“When we first sat down together here, I had no thought of making this

appeal, no idea of talking to you as I have talked,” pursued the other.

“My words have escaped me, as I told you, almost unawares; you must

make allowances for them and for me. I cannot expect others, Monsieur

Lomaque, to appreciate and understand my feelings for Rose. We two have

lived alone in the world together; father, mother, kindred, they all

died years since, and left us. I am so much older than my sister that I

have learned to feel toward her more as a father than as a brother.

All my life, all my dearest hopes, all my highest expectations, have

centered in her. I was past the period of my boyhood when my mother put

my little child sister’s hand in mine, and said to me on her death-bed:

‘Louis, be all to her that I have been, for she has no one left to look

to but you.’ Since then the loves and ambitions of other men have not

been my loves or my ambitions. Sister Rose--as we all used to call her

in those past days, as I love to call her still--Sister Rose has

been the one aim, the one happiness, the one precious trust, the one

treasured reward, of all my life. I have lived in this poor house,

in this dull retirement, as in a paradise, because Sister Rose--my

innocent, happy, bright-faced Eve--has lived here with me. Even if the

husband of her choice had been the husband of mine, the necessity of

parting with her would have been the hardest, the bitterest of trials.

As it is, thinking what I think, dreading what I dread, judge what my

feelings must be on the eve of her marriage; and know why, and with what

object, I made the appeal which surprised you a moment since, but which

cannot surprise you now. Speak if you will--I can say no more.” He

sighed bitterly; his head dropped on his breast, and the hand which he

had extended to Lomaque trembled as he withdrew it and let it fall at

his side.

The land-steward was not a man accustomed to hesitate, but he hesitated

now. He was not usually at a loss for phrases in which to express

himself, but he stammered at the very outset of his reply. “Suppose I

answered,” he began, slowly; “suppose I told you that you wronged him,

would my testimony really be strong enough to shake opinions, or rather

presumptions, which have been taking firmer and firmer hold of you for

months and months past? Suppose, on the other hand, that my master had

his little” (Lomaque hesitated before he pronounced the next word)--“his

little--infirmities, let me say; but only hypothetically, mind

that--infirmities; and suppose I had observed them, and was willing to

confide them to you, what purpose would such a confidence answer now,

at the eleventh hour, with Mademoiselle Rose’s heart engaged, with the

marriage fixed for to-morrow? No! no! trust me--”

Trudaine looked up suddenly. “I thank you for reminding me, Monsieur

Lomaque, that it is too late now to make inquiries, and by consequence

too late also to trust in others. My sister has chosen; and on the

subject of that choice my lips shall be henceforth sealed. The events of

the future are with God; whatever they may be, I hope I am strong enough

to bear my part in them with the patience and the courage of a man! I

apologize, Monsieur Lomaque, for having thoughtlessly embarrassed you

by questions which I had no right to ask. Let us return to the house--I

will show you the way.”

Lomaque’s lips opened, then closed again; he bowed uneasily, and his

sallow complexion whitened for a moment.

Trudaine led the way in silence back to the house; the land-steward

following slowly at a distance of several paces, and talking in whispers

to himself. “His father was the saving of me,” muttered Lomaque; “that

is truth, and there is no getting over it; his father was the saving of

me; and yet here am I--no! it’s too late!--too late to speak--too late

to act--too late to do anything!”

Close to the house they were met by the old servant.

“My young lady has just sent me to call you in to coffee, monsieur,”

said Guillaume. “She has kept a cup hot for you, and another cup for

Monsieur Lomaque.”

The land-steward started--this time with genuine astonishment. “For me!”

he exclaimed. “Mademoiselle Rose has troubled herself to keep a cup of

coffee hot for me?” The old servant stared; Trudaine stopped and looked

back.

“What is there so very surprising,” he asked, “in such an ordinary act

of politeness on my sister’s part?”

“Excuse me, Monsieur Trudaine,” answered Lomaque; “you have not passed

such an existence as mine--you are not a friendless old man--you have

a settled position in the world, and are used to be treated with

consideration. I am not. This is the first occasion in my life on which

I find myself an object for the attention of a young lady, and it takes

me by surprise. I repeat my excuses; pray let us go in.”

Trudaine made no reply to this curious explanation. He wondered at it

a little, however, and he wondered still more when, on entering

the drawing-room, he saw Lomaque walk straight up to his sister,

and--apparently not noticing that Danville was sitting at the

harpsichord and singing at the time--address her confusedly and

earnestly with a set speech of thanks for his hot cup of coffee. Rose

looked perplexed, and half inclined to laugh, as she listened to

him. Madame Danville, who sat by her side, frowned, and tapped the

land-steward contemptuously on the arm with her fan.

“Be so good as to keep silent until my son has done singing,” she said.

Lomaque made a low bow, and retiring to a table in a corner, took up a

newspaper lying on it. If Madame Danville had seen the expression that

came over his face when he turned away from her, proud as she was, her

aristocratic composure might possibly have been a little ruffled.

Danville had finished his song, had quitted the harpsichord, and was

talking in whispers to his bride; Madame Danville was adding a word to

the conversation every now and then; Trudaine was seated apart at the

far end of the room, thoughtfully reading a letter which he had taken

from his pocket, when an exclamation from Lomaque, who was still engaged

with the newspaper, caused all the other occupants of the apartment to

suspend their employments and look up.

“What is it?” asked Danville, impatiently.

“Shall I be interrupting if I explain?” inquired Lomaque, getting very

weak in the eyes again, as he deferentially addressed himself to Madame

Danville.

“You have already interrupted us,” said the old lady, sharply; “so you

may now just as well explain.”

“It is a passage from the _Scientific Intelligence_ which has given me

great delight, and which will be joyful news for every one here.” Saying

this, Lomaque looked significantly at Trudaine, and then read from the

newspaper these lines:

“ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, PARIS.--The vacant sub-professorship of chemistry

has been offered, we are rejoiced to hear, to a gentleman whose modesty

has hitherto prevented his scientific merits from becoming sufficiently

prominent in the world. To the members of the academy he has

been long since known as the originator of some of the most

remarkable improvements in chemistry which have been made of late

years--improvements, the credit of which he has, with rare, and we were

almost about to add, culpable moderation, allowed others to profit by

with impunity. No man in any profession is more thoroughly entitled to

have a position of trust and distinction conferred on him by the State

than the gentleman to whom we refer--M. Louis Trudaine.”

Before Lomaque could look up from the paper to observe the impression

which his news produced, Rose had gained her brother’s side and was

kissing him in a flutter of delight.

“Dear Louis,” she cried, clapping her hands, “let me be the first to

congratulate you! How proud and glad I am! You accept the professorship,

of course?”

Trudaine, who had hastily and confusedly put his letter back in his

pocket the moment Lomaque began to read, seemed at a loss for an answer.

He patted his sister’s hand rather absently, and said:

“I have not made up my mind; don’t ask me why, Rose--at least not now,

not just now.” An expression of perplexity and distress came over his

face, as he gently motioned her to resume her chair.

“Pray, is a sub-professor of chemistry supposed to hold the rank of a

gentleman?” asked Madame Danville, without the slightest appearance of

any special interest in Lomaque’s news.

“Of course not,” replied her son, with a sarcastic laugh; “he is

expected to work and make himself useful. What gentleman does that?”

“Charles!” exclaimed the old lady, reddening with anger.

“Bah!” cried Danville, turning his back on her, “enough of chemistry.

Lomaque, now you have begun reading the newspaper, try if you can’t find

something interesting to read about. What are the last accounts from

Paris? Any more symptoms of a general revolt?”

Lomaque turned to another part of the paper. “Bad, very bad prospects

for the restoration of tranquillity,” he said. “Necker, the people’s

Minister, is dismissed. Placards against popular gatherings are posted

all over Paris. The Swiss Guards have been ordered to the Champs

Elysees, with four pieces of artillery. No more is yet known, but the

worst is dreaded. The breach between the aristocracy and the people is

widening fatally almost hour by hour.”

Here he stopped and laid down the newspaper. Trudaine took it from him,

and shook his head forebodingly as he looked over the paragraph which

had just been read.

“Bah!” cried Madame Danville. “The People, indeed! Let those four pieces

of artillery be properly loaded, let the Swiss Guards do their duty, and

we shall hear no more of the People!”

“I advise you not to be sure of that,” said her son, carelessly; “there

are rather too many people in Paris for the Swiss Guards to shoot

conveniently. Don’t hold your head too aristocratically high, mother,

till we are quite certain which way the wind really does blow. Who knows

if I may not have to bow just as low one of these days to King Mob as

ever you courtesied in your youth to King Louis the Fifteenth?”

He laughed complacently as he ended, and opened his snuff-box. His

mother rose from her chair, her face crimson with indignation.

“I won’t hear you talk so--it shocks, it horrifies me!” she exclaimed,

with vehement gesticulation. “No, no! I decline to hear another word. I

decline to sit by patiently while my son, whom I love, jests at the most

sacred principles, and sneers at the memory of an anointed king. This is

my reward, is it, for having yielded and having come here, against

all the laws of etiquette, the night before the marriage? I comply no

longer; I resume my own will and my own way. I order you, my son, to

accompany me back to Rouen. We are the bridegroom’s party, and we have

no business overnight at the house of the bride. You meet no more till

you meet at the church. Justin, my coach! Lomaque, pick up my hood.

Monsieur Trudaine, thanks for your hospitality; I shall hope to

return it with interest the first time you are in our neighborhood.

Mademoiselle, put on your best looks to-morrow, along with your wedding

finery; remember that my son’s bride must do honor to my son’s taste.

Justin! my coach--drone, vagabond, idiot, where is my coach?”

“My mother looks handsome when she is in a passion, does she not, Rose?”

said Danville, quietly putting up his snuff-box as the old lady sailed

out of the room. “Why, you seem quite frightened, love,” he added,

taking her hand with his easy, graceful air; “frightened, let me assure

you, without the least cause. My mother has but that one prejudice, and

that one weak point, Rose. You will find her a very dove for gentleness,

as long as you do not wound her pride of caste. Come, come, on this

night, of all others, you must not send me away with such a face as

that.”

He bent down and whispered to her a bridegroom’s compliment, which

brought the blood back to her cheek in an instant.

“Ah, how she loves him--how dearly she loves him!” thought her brother,

watching her from his solitary corner of the room, and seeing the smile

that brightened her blushing face when Danville kissed her hand at

parting.

Lomaque, who had remained imperturbably cool during the outbreak of

the old lady’s anger--Lomaque, whose observant eyes had watched

sarcastically the effect of the scene between mother and son on Trudaine

and his sister, was the last to take leave. After he had bowed to Rose

with a certain gentleness in his manner, which contrasted strangely with

his wrinkled, haggard face, he held out his hand to her brother “I did

not take your hand when we sat together on the bench,” he said; “may I

take it now?”

Trudaine met his advance courteously, but in silence. “You may alter

your opinion of me one of these days.” Adding those words in a whisper,

Monsieur Lomaque bowed once more to the bride and went out.

For a few minutes after the door had closed the brother and sister kept

silence. “Our last night together at home!” That was the thought which

now filled the heart of each. Rose was the first to speak. Hesitating a

little as she approached her brother, she said to him, anxiously:

“I am sorry for what happened with Madame Danville, Louis. Does it make

you think the worse of Charles?”

“I can make allowance for Madame Danville’s anger,” returned Trudaine,

evasively, “because she spoke from honest conviction.”

“Honest?” echoed Rose, sadly, “honest?--ah, Louis! I know you are

thinking disparagingly of Charles’s convictions, when you speak so of

his mother’s.”

Trudaine smiled and shook his head; but she took no notice of the

gesture of denial--only stood looking earnestly and wistfully into his

face. Her eyes began to fill; she suddenly threw her arms round his

neck, and whispered to him: “Oh, Louis, Louis! how I wish I could teach

you to see Charles with my eyes!”

He felt her tears on his cheek as she spoke, and tried to reassure her.

“You shall teach me, Rose--you shall, indeed. Come, come, we must keep

up our spirits, or how are you to look your best to-morrow?”

He unclasped her arms, and led her gently to a chair. At the same moment

there was a knock at the door, and Rose’s maid appeared, anxious

to consult her mistress on some of the preparations for the wedding

ceremony. No interruption could have been more welcome just at that

time. It obliged Rose to think of present trifles, and it gave her

brother an excuse for retiring to his study.

He sat down by his desk, doubting and heavy-hearted, and placed the

letter from the Academy of Sciences open before him.

Passing over all the complimentary expressions which it contained, his

eye rested only on these lines at the end: “During the first three years

of your professorship, you will be required to reside in or near Paris

nine months out of the year, for the purpose of delivering lectures and

superintending experiments from time to time in the laboratories.” The

letter in which these lines occurred offered him such a position as

in his modest self-distrust he had never dreamed of before; the lines

themselves contained the promise of such vast facilities for carrying

on his favorite experiments as he could never hope to command in his

own little study, with his own limited means; and yet, there he now

sat doubting whether he should accept or reject the tempting honors and

advantages that were offered to him--doubting for his sister’s sake!

“Nine months of the year in Paris,” he said to himself, sadly; “and Rose

is to pass her married life at Lyons. Oh, if I could clear my heart of

its dread on her account--if I could free my mind of its forebodings for

her future--how gladly I would answer this letter by accepting the trust

it offers me!”

He paused for a few minutes, and reflected. The thoughts that were in

him marked their ominous course in the growing paleness of his cheek,

in the dimness that stole over his eyes. “If this cleaving distrust from

which I cannot free myself should be in very truth the mute prophecy of

evil to come--to come, I know not when--if it be so (which God forbid!),

how soon she may want a friend, a protector near at hand, a ready refuge

in the time of her trouble! Where shall she then find protection or

refuge? With that passionate woman? With her husband’s kindred and

friends?”

He shuddered as the thought crossed his mind, and opening a blank sheet

of paper, dipped his pen in the ink. “Be all to her, Louis, that I have

been,” he murmured to himself, repeating his mother’s last words, and

beginning the letter while he uttered them. It was soon completed. It

expressed in the most respectful terms his gratitude for the offer

made to him, and his inability to accept it, in consequence of domestic

circumstances which it was needless to explain. The letter was directed,

sealed; it only remained for him to place it in the post-bag, lying near

at hand. At this last decisive act he hesitated. He had told Lomaque,

and he had firmly believed himself, that he had conquered all ambitions

for his sister’s sake. He knew now, for the first time, that he had

only lulled them to rest--he knew that the letter from Paris had aroused

them. His answer was written, his hand was on the post-bag, and at that

moment the whole struggle had to be risked over again--risked when he

was most unfit for it! He was not a man under any ordinary circumstances

to procrastinate, but he procrastinated now.

“Night brings counsel; I will wait till to-morrow,” he said to himself,

and put the letter of refusal in his pocket, and hastily quitted the

laboratory.

CHAPTER II.

Inexorably the important morrow came: irretrievably, for good or for

evil, the momentous marriage-vow was pronounced. Charles Danville and

Rose Trudaine were now man and wife. The prophecy of the magnificent

sunset overnight had not proved false. It was a cloudless day on

the marriage morning. The nuptial ceremonies had proceeded smoothly

throughout, and had even satisfied Madame Danville. She returned with

the wedding-party to Trudaine’s house, all smiles and serenity. To

the bride she was graciousness itself. “Good girl,” said the old lady,

following Rose into a corner, and patting her approvingly on the cheek

with her fan; “good girl, you have looked well this morning--you have

done credit to my son’s taste. Indeed, you have pleased me, child! Now

go upstairs, and get on your traveling-dress, and count on my maternal

affection as long as you make Charles happy.”

It had been arranged that the bride and bridegroom should pass their

honeymoon in Brittany, and then return to Danville’s estate near Lyons.

The parting was hurried over, as all such partings should be. The

carriage had driven off; Trudaine, after lingering long to look after

it, had returned hastily to the house; the very dust of the whirling

wheels had all dispersed; there was absolutely nothing to see; and yet

there stood Monsieur Lomaque at the outer gate; idly, as if he was an

independent man--calmly, as if no such responsibilities as the calling

of Madame Danville’s coach, and the escorting of Madame Danville back to

Lyons, could possibly rest on his shoulders.

Idly and calmly, slowly rubbing his hands one over the other, slowly

nodding his head in the direction by which the bride and bridegroom

had departed, stood the eccentric land-steward at the outer gate. On

a sudden the sound of footsteps approaching from the house seemed to

arouse him. Once more he looked out into the road, as if he expected

still to see the carriage of the newly-married couple. “Poor girl! ah,

poor girl!” said Monsieur Lomaque softly to himself, turning round to

ascertain who was coming from the house.

It was only the postman with a letter in his hand, and the post-bag

crumpled up under his arm.

“Any fresh news from Paris, friend?” asked Lomaque.

“Very bad, monsieur,” answered the postman. “Camille Desmoulins has

appealed to the people in the Palais Royal; there are fears of a riot.”

“Only a riot!” repeated Lomaque, sarcastically. “Oh, what a brave

Government not to be afraid of anything worse! Any letters?” he added,

hastily dropping the subject.

“None _to_ the house,” said the postman, “only one _from_ it, given me

by Monsieur Trudaine. Hardly worth while,” he added, twirling the letter

in his hand, “to put it into the bag, is it?”

Lomaque looked over his shoulder as he spoke, and saw that the letter

was directed to the President of the Academy of Sciences, Paris.

“I wonder whether he accepts the place or refuses it?” thought the

land-steward, nodding to the postman, and continuing on his way back to

the house.

At the door he met Trudaine, who said to him, rather hastily, “You are

going back to Lyons with Madame Danville, I suppose?”

“This very day,” answered Lomaque.

“If you should hear of a convenient bachelor lodging, at Lyons, or near

it,” continued the other, dropping his voice and speaking more rapidly

than before, “you would be doing me a favor if you would let me know

about it.”

Lomaque assented; but before he could add a question which was on the

tip of his tongue, Trudaine had vanished in the interior of the house.

“A bachelor lodging!” repeated the land-steward, standing alone on the

doorstep. “At or near Lyons! Aha! Monsieur Trudaine, I put your bachelor

lodging and your talk to me last night together, and I make out a sum

total which is, I think, pretty near the mark. You have refused that

Paris appointment, my friend; and I fancy I can guess why.”

He paused thoughtfully, and shook his head with ominous frowns and

bitings of his lips.

“All clear enough in that sky,” he continued, after a while, looking up

at the lustrous midday heaven. “All clear enough there; but I think I

see a little cloud rising in a certain household firmament already--a

little cloud which hides much, and which I for one shall watch

carefully.”

PART SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

Five years have elapsed since Monsieur Lomaque stood thoughtfully at the

gate of Trudaine’s house, looking after the carriage of the bride and

bridegroom, and seriously reflecting on the events of the future.

Great changes have passed over that domestic firmament in which he

prophetically discerned the little warning cloud. Greater changes have

passed over the firmament of France.

What was revolt five years ago is Revolution now--revolution which

has ingulfed thrones, and principalities, and powers; which has set

up crownless, inhereditary kings and counselors of its own, and has

bloodily torn them down again by dozens; which has raged and raged on

unrestrainedly in fierce earnest, until but one king can still govern

and control it for a little while. That king is named Terror, and

seventeen hundred and ninety-four is the year of his reign.

Monsieur Lomaque, land-steward no longer, sits alone in an

official-looking room in one of the official buildings of Paris. It is

another July evening, as fine as that evening when he and Trudaine sat

talking together on the bench overlooking the Seine. The window of the

room is wide open, and a faint, pleasant breeze is beginning to flow

through it. But Lomaque breathes uneasily, as if still oppressed by the

sultry midday heat; and there are signs of perplexity and trouble in his

face as he looks down absently now and then into the street.

The times he lives in are enough of themselves to sadden any man’s face.

In the Reign of Terror no living being in all the city of Paris can rise

in the morning and be certain of escaping the spy, the denunciation, the

arrest, or the guillotine, before night. Such times are trying enough to

oppress any man’s spirits; but Lomaque is not thinking of them or caring

for them now. Out of a mass of papers which lie before him on his old

writing-table, he has just taken up and read one, which has carried his

thoughts back to the past, and to the changes which have taken place

since he stood alone on the doorstep of Trudaine’s house, pondering on

what might happen.

More rapidly even than he had foreboded those changes had occurred.

In less time even than he had anticipated, the sad emergency for which

Rose’s brother had prepared, as for a barely possible calamity,

overtook Trudaine, and called for all the patience, the courage, the

self-sacrifice which he had to give for his sister’s sake. By slow

gradations downward, from bad to worse, her husband’s character

manifested itself less and less disguisedly almost day by day.

Occasional slights, ending in habitual neglect; careless estrangement,

turning to cool enmity; small insults, which ripened evilly to great

injuries--these were the pitiless signs which showed her that she

had risked all and lost all while still a young woman--these were the

unmerited afflictions which found her helpless, and would have left her

helpless, but for the ever-present comfort and support of her brother’s

self-denying love. From the first, Trudaine had devoted himself to meet

such trials as now assailed him; and like a man he met them, in defiance

alike of persecution from the mother and of insult from the son.

The hard task was only lightened when, as time advanced, public trouble

began to mingle itself with private grief. Then absorbing political

necessities came as a relief to domestic misery. Then it grew to be the

one purpose and pursuit of Danville’s life cunningly to shape his course

so that he might move safely onward with the advancing revolutionary

tide--he cared not whither, as long as he kept his possessions safe and

his life out of danger. His mother, inflexibly true to her Old-World

convictions through all peril, might entreat and upbraid, might talk of

honor, and courage, and sincerity--he heeded her not, or heeded only to

laugh. As he had taken the false way with his wife, so he was now bent

on taking it with the world.

The years passed on; destroying changes swept hurricane-like over the

old governing system of France; and still Danville shifted successfully

with the shifting times. The first days of the Terror approached; in

public and in private--in high places and in low--each man now suspected

his brother. Crafty as Danville was, even he fell under suspicion at

last, at headquarters in Paris, principally on his mother’s account.

This was his first political failure; and, in a moment of thoughtless

rage and disappointment, he wreaked the irritation caused by it on

Lomaque. Suspected himself, he in turn suspected the land-steward. His

mother fomented the suspicion--Lomaque was dismissed.

In the old times the victim would have been ruined, in the new times he

was simply rendered eligible for a political vocation in life. Lomaque

was poor, quick-witted, secret, not scrupulous. He was a good patriot;

he had good patriot friends, plenty of ambition, a subtle, cat-like

courage, nothing to dread--and he went to Paris. There were plenty of

small chances there for men of his caliber. He waited for one of them.

It came; he made the most of it; attracted favorably the notice of the

terrible Fouquier-Tinville; and won his way to a place in the office of

the Secret Police.

Meanwhile, Danville’s anger cooled down; he recovered the use of that

cunning sense which had hitherto served him well, and sent to recall the

discarded servant. It was too late. Lomaque was already in a position to

set him at defiance--nay, to put his neck, perhaps, under the blade of

the guillotine. Worse than this, anonymous letters reached him, warning

him to lose no time in proving his patriotism by some indisputable

sacrifice, and in silencing his mother, whose imprudent sincerity was

likely ere long to cost her her life. Danville knew her well enough

to know that there was but one way of saving her, and thereby saving

himself. She had always refused to emigrate; but he now insisted that

she should seize the first opportunity he could procure for her of

quitting France until calmer times arrived.

Probably she would have risked her own life ten times over rather than

have obeyed him; but she had not the courage to risk her son’s too;

and she yielded for his sake. Partly by secret influence, partly by

unblushing fraud, Danville procured for her such papers and permits as

would enable her to leave France by way of Marseilles. Even then she

refused to depart, until she knew what her son’s plans were for the

future. He showed her a letter which he was about to dispatch to

Robespierre himself, vindicating his suspected patriotism, and

indignantly demanding to be allowed to prove it by filling some office,

no matter how small, under the redoubtable triumvirate which then

governed, or more properly terrified, France. The sight of this document

reassured Madame Danville. She bade her son farewell, and departed at

last, with one trusty servant, for Marseilles.

Danville’s intention, in sending his letter to Paris, had been simply to

save himself by patriotic bluster. He was thunderstruck at receiving

a reply, taking him at his word, and summoning him to the capital to

accept employment there under the then existing Government. There was no

choice but to obey. So to Paris he journeyed, taking his wife with him

into the very jaws of danger. He was then at open enmity with Trudaine;

and the more anxious and alarmed he could make the brother feel on the

sister’s account, the better he was pleased. True to his trust and his

love, through all dangers as through all persecutions, Trudaine followed

them; and the street of their sojourn at Paris, in the perilous days of

the Terror, was the street of his sojourn too.

Danville had been astonished at the acceptance of his proffered

services; he was still more amazed when he found that the post selected

for him was one of the superintendent’s places in that very office of

Secret Police in which Lomaque was employed as agent. Robespierre and

his colleagues had taken the measure of their man--he had money enough,

and local importance enough to be worth studying. They knew where he was

to be distrusted, and how he might be made useful. The affairs of the

Secret Police were the sort of affairs which an unscrupulously cunning

man was fitted to help on; and the faithful exercise of that cunning in

the service of the State was insured by the presence of Lomaque in the

office. The discarded servant was just the right sort of spy to watch

the suspected master. Thus it happened that, in the office of the Secret

Police at Paris, and under the Reign of Terror, Lomaque’s old master

was, nominally, his master still--the superintendent to whom he was

ceremonially accountable, in public--the suspected man, whose slightest

words and deeds he was officially set to watch, in private.

Ever sadder and darker grew the face of Lomaque as he now pondered alone

over the changes and misfortunes of the past five years. A neighboring

church-clock striking the hour of seven aroused him from his

meditations. He arranged the confused mass of papers before him--looked

toward the door, as if expecting some one to enter--then, finding

himself still alone, recurred to the one special paper which had first

suggested his long train of gloomy thoughts. The few lines it contained

were signed in cipher, and ran thus:

“You are aware that your superintendent, Danville, obtained leave of

absence last week to attend to some affairs of his at Lyons, and that he

is not expected back just yet for a day or two. While he is away, push

on the affair of Trudaine. Collect all the evidence, and hold yourself

in readiness to act on it at a moment’s notice. Don’t leave the office

till you have heard from me again. If you have a copy of the Private

Instructions respecting Danville, which you wrote for me, send it to my

house. I wish to refresh my memory. Your original letter is burned.”

Here the note abruptly terminated. As he folded it up and put it in his

pocket, Lomaque sighed. This was a very rare expression of feeling with

him. He leaned back in his chair, and beat his nails impatiently on the

table. Suddenly there was a faint little tap at the room door, and eight

or ten men--evidently familiars of the new French Inquisition--quietly

entered, and ranged themselves against the wall.

Lomaque nodded to two of them. “Picard and Magloire, go and sit down

at that desk. I shall want you after the rest are gone.” Saying this,

Lomaque handed certain sealed and docketed papers to the other men

waiting in the room, who received them in silence, bowed, and went

out. Innocent spectators might have thought them clerks taking bills

of lading from a merchant. Who could have imagined that the giving

and receiving of Denunciations, Arrest-orders, and Death-warrants--the

providing of its doomed human meal for the all-devouring

guillotine--could have been managed so coolly and quietly, with such

unruffled calmness of official routine?

“Now,” said Lomaque, turning to the two men at the desk, as the door

closed, “have you got those notes about you?” (They answered in the

affirmative.) “Picard, you have the first particulars of this affair of

Trudaine; so you must begin reading. I have sent in the reports; but we

may as well go over the evidence again from the commencement, to make

sure that nothing has been left out. If any corrections are to be made,

now is the time to make them. Read, Picard, and lose as little time as

you possibly can.”

Thus admonished, Picard drew some long slips of paper from his pocket,

and began reading from them as follows:

“Minutes of evidence collected concerning Louis Trudaine, suspected, on

the denunciation of Citizen Superintendent Danville, of hostility to the

sacred cause of liberty, and of disaffection to the sovereignty of the

people. (1.) The suspected person is placed under secret observation,

and these facts are elicited: He is twice seen passing at night from his

own house to a house in the Rue de Clery. On the first night he carries

with him money--on the second, papers. He returns without either.

These particulars have been obtained through a citizen engaged to help

Trudaine in housekeeping (one of the sort called Servants in the days

of the Tyrants). This man is a good patriot, who can be trusted to watch

Trudaine’s actions. (2.) The inmates of the house in the Rue de Clery

are numerous, and in some cases not so well known to the Government as

could be wished. It is found difficult to gain certain information about

the person or persons visited by Trudaine without having recourse to an

arrest. (3.) An arrest is thought premature at this preliminary stage of

the proceedings, being likely to stop the development of conspiracy, and

give warning to the guilty to fly. Order thereupon given to watch and

wait for the present. (4.) Citizen Superintendent Danville quits Paris

for a short time. The office of watching Trudaine is then taken out

of the hands of the undersigned, and is confided to his comrade,

Magloire.--Signed, PICARD. Countersigned, LOMAQUE.”

Having read so far, the police agent placed his papers on the

writing-table, waited a moment for orders, and, receiving none, went

out. No change came over the sadness and perplexity of Lomaque’s face.

He still beat his nails anxiously on the writing-table, and did not

even look at the second agent as he ordered the man to read his report.

Magloire produced some slips of paper precisely similar to Picard’s and

read from them in the same rapid, business-like, unmodulated tones:

“Affair of Trudaine. Minutes continued. Citizen Agent Magloire having

been appointed to continue the surveillance of Trudaine, reports the

discovery of additional facts of importance. (1.) Appearances make it

probable that Trudaine meditates a third secret visit to the house

in the Rue de Clery. The proper measures are taken for observing him

closely, and the result is the implication of another person discovered

to be connected with the supposed conspiracy. This person is the sister

of Trudaine, and the wife of Citizen Superintendent Danville.”

“Poor, lost creature! ah, poor, lost creature!” muttered Lomaque to

himself, sighing again, and shifting uneasily from side to side, in his

mangy old leathern armchair. Apparently, Magloire was not accustomed

to sighs, interruptions, and expressions of regret from the usually

imperturbable chief agent. He looked up from his papers with a stare

of wonder. “Go on, Magloire!” cried Lomaque, with a sudden outburst of

irritability. “Why the devil don’t you go on?”--“All ready, citizen,”

returned Magloire, submissively, and proceeded:

“(2.) It is at Trudaine’s house that the woman Danville’s connection

with her brother’s secret designs is ascertained, through the vigilance

of the before-mentioned patriot citizen. The interview of the two

suspected persons is private; their conversation is carried on in

whispers. Little can be overheard; but that little suffices to prove

that Trudaine’s sister is perfectly aware of his intention to proceed

for the third time to the house in the Rue de Clery. It is further

discovered that she awaits his return, and that she then goes back

privately to her own house. (3.) Meanwhile, the strictest measures are

taken for watching the house in the Rue de Clery. It is discovered that

Trudaine’s visits are paid to a man and woman known to the landlord

and lodgers by the name of Dubois. They live on the fourth floor. It is

impossible, at the time of the discovery, to enter this room, or to

see the citizen and citoyenne Dubois, without producing an undesirable

disturbance in the house and neighborhood. A police agent is left to

watch the place, while search and arrest orders are applied for. The

granting of these is accidentally delayed. When they are ultimately

obtained, it is discovered that the man and the woman are both missing.

They have not hitherto been traced. (4.) The landlord of the house is

immediately arrested, as well as the police agent appointed to watch the

premises. The landlord protests that he knows nothing of his tenants.

It is suspected, however, that he has been tampered with, as also that

Trudaine’s papers, delivered to the citizen and citoyenne Dubois, are

forged passports. With these and with money, it may not be impossible

that they have already succeeded in escaping from France. The proper

measures have been taken for stopping them, if they have not yet passed

the frontiers. No further report in relation to them has yet been

received (5.) Trudaine and his sister are under perpetual surveillance,

and the undersigned holds himself ready for further orders.--Signed,

MAGLOIRE. Countersigned, LOMAQUE.”

Having finished reading his notes, Magloire placed them on the

writing-table. He was evidently a favored man in the office, and he

presumed upon his position; for he ventured to make a remark, instead of

leaving the room in silence, like his predecessor Picard.

“When Citizen Danville returns to Paris,” he began, “he will be rather

astonished to find that in denouncing his wife’s brother he had also

unconsciously denounced his wife.”

Lomaque looked up quickly, with that old weakness in his eyes which

affected them in such a strangely irregular manner on certain occasions.

Magloire knew what this symptom meant, and would have become confused if

he had not been a police agent. As it was, he quietly backed a step or

two from the table, and held his tongue.

“Friend Magloire,” said Lomaque, winking mildly, “your last remark looks

to me like a question in disguise. I put questions constantly to others;

I never answer questions myself. You want to know, citizen, what our

superintendent’s secret motive is for denouncing his wife’s brother?

Suppose you try and find that out for yourself. It will be famous

practice for you, friend Magloire--famous practice after office hours.”

“Any further orders?” inquired Magloire, sulkily.

“None in relation to the reports,” returned Lomaque. “I find nothing to

alter or add on a revised hearing. But I shall have a little note ready

for you immediately. Sit down at the other desk, friend Magloire; I am

very fond of you when you are not inquisitive; pray sit down.”

While addressing this polite invitation to the agent in his softest

voice, Lomaque produced his pocketbook, and drew from it a little note,

which he opened and read through attentively. It was headed: “Private

Instructions relative to Superintendent Danville,” and proceeded thus:

“The undersigned can confidently assert, from long domestic experience

in Danville’s household that his motive for denouncing his wife’s

brother is purely a personal one, and is not in the most remote degree

connected with politics. Briefly, the facts are these: Louis Trudaine,

from the first, opposed his sister’s marriage with Danville, distrusting

the latter’s temper and disposition. The marriage, however, took place,

and the brother resigned himself to await results--taking the precaution

of living in the same neighborhood as his sister, to interpose, if need

be, between the crimes which the husband might commit and the sufferings

which the wife might endure. The results soon exceeded his worst

anticipations, and called for the interposition for which he had

prepared himself. He is a man of inflexible firmness, patience, and

integrity, and he makes the protection and consolation of his sister the

business of his life. He gives his brother-in-law no pretext for openly

quarreling with him. He is neither to be deceived, irritated, nor tired

out, and he is Danville’s superior every way--in conduct, temper, and

capacity. Under these circumstances, it is unnecessary to say that his

brother-in-law’s enmity toward him is of the most implacable kind,

and equally unnecessary to hint at the perfectly plain motive of the

denunciation.

“As to the suspicious circumstances affecting not Trudaine only, but

his sister as well, the undersigned regrets his inability, thus far, to

offer either explanation or suggestion. At this preliminary stage, the

affair seems involved in impenetrable mystery.”

Lomaque read these lines through, down to his own signature at the end.

They were the duplicate Secret Instructions demanded from him in the

paper which he had been looking over before the entrance of the two

police agents. Slowly, and, as it seemed, unwillingly, he folded the

note up in a fresh sheet of paper, and was preparing to seal it when a

tap at the door stopped him. “Come in,” he cried, irritably; and a man

in traveling costume, covered with dust, entered, quietly whispered

a word or two in his ear, and then went out. Lomaque started at the

whisper, and, opening his note again, hastily wrote under his signature:

“I have just heard that Danville has hastened his return to Paris, and

may be expected back to-night.” Having traced these lines, he closed,

sealed, and directed the letter, and gave it to Magloire. The police

agent looked at the address as he left the room; it was “To Citizen

Robespierre, Rue Saint-Honore.”

Left alone again, Lomaque rose, and walked restlessly backward and

forward, biting his nails.

“Danville comes back to-night,” he said to himself, “and the crisis

comes with him. Trudaine a conspirator! Bah! conspiracy can hardly be

the answer to the riddle this time. What is?”

He took a turn or two in silence--then stopped at the open window,

looking out on what little glimpse the street afforded him of the sunset

sky. “This time five years,” he said, “Trudaine was talking to me on

that bench overlooking the river; and Sister Rose was keeping poor

hatchet-faced old Lomaque’s cup of coffee hot for him! Now I am

officially bound to suspect them both; perhaps to arrest them;

perhaps--I wish this job had fallen into other hands. I don’t want it--I

don’t want it at any price!”

He returned to the writing-table and sat down to his papers, with the

dogged air of a man determined to drive away vexing thoughts by dint

of sheer hard work. For more than an hour he labored on resolutely,

munching a bit of dry bread from time to time. Then he paused a little,

and began to think again. Gradually the summer twilight faded, and the

room grew dark.

“Perhaps we shall tide over to-night, after all--who knows?” said

Lomaque, ringing his handbell for lights. They were brought in, and with

them ominously returned the police agent Magloire with a small sealed

packet. It contained an arrest-order and a tiny three-cornered note,

looking more like a love-letter, or a lady’s invitation to a party,

than anything else. Lomaque opened the note eagerly and read these lines

neatly written, and signed with Robespierre’s initials--M. R.--formed

elegantly in cipher:

“Arrest Trudaine and his sister to-night. On second thoughts, I am not

sure, if Danville comes back in time to be present, that it may not

be all the better. He is unprepared for his wife’s arrest. Watch him

closely when it takes place, and report privately to me. I am afraid he

is a vicious man; and of all things I abhor Vice.”

“Any more work for me to-night?” asked Magloire, with a yawn.

“Only an arrest,” replied Lomaque. “Collect our men; and when you’re

ready get a coach at the door.”

“We were just going to supper,” grumbled Magloire to himself, as he went

out. “The devil seize the Aristocrats! They’re all in such a hurry to

get to the guillotine that they won’t even give a man time to eat his

victuals in peace!”

“There’s no choice now,” muttered Lomaque, angrily thrusting the

arrest-order and the three-cornered note into his pocket. “His father

was the saving of me; he himself welcomed me like an equal; his sister

treated me like a gentleman, as the phrase went in those days; and

now--”

He stopped and wiped his forehead--then unlocked his desk, produced a

bottle of brandy, and poured himself out a glass of the liquor, which he

drank by sips, slowly.

“I wonder whether other men get softer-hearted as they grow older!” he

said. “I seem to do so, at any rate. Courage! courage! what must be,

must. If I risked my head to do it, I couldn’t stop this arrest. Not a

man in the office but would be ready to execute it, if I wasn’t.”

Here the rumble of carriage-wheels sounded outside.

“There’s the coach!” exclaimed Lomaque, locking up the brandy-bottle,

and taking his hat. “After all, as this arrest is to be made, it’s as

well for them that I should make it.”

Consoling himself as he best could with this reflection, Chief Police

Agent Lomaque blew out the candles, and quitted the room.

CHAPTER II.

Ignorant of the change in her husband’s plans, which was to bring him

back to Paris a day before the time that had been fixed for his return,

Sister Rose had left her solitary home to spend the evening with her

brother. They had sat talking together long after sunset, and had let

the darkness steal on them insensibly, as people will who are only

occupied with quiet, familiar conversation. Thus it happened, by a

curious coincidence, that just as Lomaque was blowing out his candles at

the office Rose was lighting the reading-lamp at her brother’s lodgings.

Five years of disappointment and sorrow had sadly changed her to outward

view. Her face looked thinner and longer; the once delicate red and

white of her complexion was gone; her figure had wasted under the

influence of some weakness, which had already made her stoop a little

when she walked. Her manner had lost its maiden shyness, only to become

unnaturally quiet and subdued. Of all the charms which had so fatally,

yet so innocently, allured her heartless husband, but one remained--the

winning gentleness of her voice. It might be touched now and then with a

note of sadness, but the soft attraction of its even, natural tone still

remained. In the marring of all other harmonies, this one harmony had

been preserved unchanged. Her brother, though his face was careworn, and

his manner sadder than of old, looked less altered from his former

self. It is the most fragile material which soonest shows the flaw. The

world’s idol, Beauty, holds its frailest tenure of existence in the one

Temple where we most love to worship it.

“And so you think, Louis, that our perilous undertaking has really ended

well by this time?” said Rose, anxiously, as she lighted the lamp and

placed the glass shade over it. “What a relief it is only to hear you

say you think we have succeeded at last!”

“I said I hope, Rose,” replied her brother.

“Well, even hoped is a great word from you, Louis--a great word from any

one in this fearful city, and in these days of Terror.”

She stopped suddenly, seeing her brother raise his hand in warning. They

looked at each other in silence and listened. The sound of footsteps

going slowly past the house--ceasing for a moment just beyond it--then

going on again--came through the open window. There was nothing else,

out-of-doors or in, to disturb the silence of the night--the deadly

silence of Terror which, for months past, had hung over Paris. It was a

significant sign of the times, that even a passing footstep, sounding

a little strangely at night, was subject for suspicion, both to brother

and sister--so common a subject, that they suspended their conversation

as a matter of course, without exchanging a word of explanation, until

the tramp of the strange footsteps had died away.

“Louis,” continued Rose, dropping her voice to a whisper, after nothing

more was audible, “when may I trust our secret to my husband?”

“Not yet!” rejoined Trudaine, earnestly. “Not a word, not a hint of it,

till I give you leave. Remember, Rose, you promised silence from the

first. Everything depends on your holding that promise sacred till I

release you from it.”

“I will hold it sacred; I will indeed, at all hazards, under all

provocations,” she answered.

“That is quite enough to reassure me--and now, love, let us change the

subject. Even these walls may have ears, and the closed door yonder

may be no protection.” He looked toward it uneasily while he spoke.

“By-the-by, I have come round to your way of thinking, Rose, about that

new servant of mine--there is something false in his face. I wish I had

been as quick to detect it as you were.”

Rose glanced at him affrightedly. “Has he done anything suspicious? Have

you caught him watching you? Tell me the worst, Louis.”

“Hush! hush! my dear, not so loud. Don’t alarm yourself; he has done

nothing suspicious.”

“Turn him off--pray, pray turn him off, before it is too late!”

“And be denounced by him, in revenge, the first night he goes to his

Section. You forget that servants and masters are equal now. I am not

supposed to keep a servant at all. I have a citizen living with me

who lays me under domestic obligations, for which I make a pecuniary

acknowledgment. No! no! if I do anything, I must try if I can’t entrap

him into giving me warning. But we have got to another unpleasant

subject already--suppose I change the topic again? You will find a

little book on that table there, in the corner--tell me what you think

of it.”

The book was a copy of Corneille’s “Cid,” prettily bound in blue

morocco. Rose was enthusiastic in her praises. “I found it in a

bookseller’s shop, yesterday,” said her brother, “and bought it as a

present for you. Corneille is not an author to compromise any one, even

in these times. Don’t you remember saying the other day that you

felt ashamed of knowing but little of our greatest dramatist?” Rose

remembered well, and smiled almost as happily as in the old times over

her present. “There are some good engravings at the beginning of each

act,” continued Trudaine, directing her attention rather earnestly to

the illustrations, and then suddenly leaving her side when he saw that

she became interested in looking at them.

He went to the window--listened--then drew aside the curtain, and looked

up and down the street. No living soul was in sight. “I must have been

mistaken,” he thought, returning hastily to his sister; “but I certainly

fancied I was followed in my walk to-day by a spy.”

“I wonder,” asked Rose, still busy over her book, “I wonder, Louis,

whether my husband would let me go with you to see ‘Le Cid’ the next

time it is acted.”

“No!” cried a voice at the door; “not if you went on your knees to ask

him.”

Rose turned round with a scream. There stood her husband on the

threshold, scowling at her, with his hat on, and his hands thrust

doggedly into his pockets. Trudaine’s servant announced him, with an

insolent smile, during the pause that followed the discovery. “Citizen

Superintendent Danville, to visit the citoyenne, his wife,” said the

fellow, making a mock bow to his master.

Rose looked at her brother, then advanced a few paces toward the door.

“This is a surprise,” she said, faintly; “has anything happened?

We--we didn’t expect you.” Her voice failed her as she saw her husband

advancing, pale to his very lips with suppressed anger.

“How dare you come here, after what I told you?” he asked, in quick, low

tones.

She shrank at his voice almost as if he had struck her. The blood flew

into her brother’s face as he noticed the action; but he controlled

himself, and, taking her hand, led her in silence to a chair.

“I forbid you to sit down in his house,” said Danville, advancing still;

“I order you to come back with me! Do you hear? I order you.”

He was approaching nearer to her, when he caught Trudaine’s eye fixed on

him, and stopped. Rose started up, and placed herself between them.

“Oh, Charles, Charles!” she said to her husband, “be friends with Louis

to-night, and be kind again to me. I have a claim to ask that much of

you, though you may not think it!”

He turned away from her, and laughed contemptuously. She tried to speak

again, but Trudaine touched her on the arm, and gave her a warning look.

“Signals!” exclaimed Danville; “secret signals between you!”

His eye, as he glanced suspiciously at his wife, fell on Trudaine’s

gift-book, which she still held unconsciously.

“What book is that?” he asked.

“Only a play of Corneille’s,” answered Rose; “Louis has just made me a

present of it.”

At this avowal Danville’s suppressed anger burst beyond all control.

“Give it him back!” he cried, in a voice of fury. “You shall take no

presents from him; the venom of the household spy soils everything he

touches. Give it him back!” She hesitated. “You won’t?” He tore the book

from her with an oath, threw it on the floor, and set his foot on it.

“Oh, Louis! Louis! for God’s sake, remember.”

Trudaine was stepping forward as the book fell to the floor. At the same

moment his sister threw her arms round him. He stopped, turning from

fiery red to ghastly pale.

“No, no, Louis!” she said, clasping him closer; “not after five years’

patience. No--no!”

He gently detached her arms.

“You are right, love. Don’t be afraid; it is all over now.”

Saying that, he put her from him, and in silence took up the book from

the floor.

“Won’t _that_ offend you even?” said Danville, with an insolent smile.

“You have a wonderful temper--any other man would have called me out!”

Trudaine looked back at him steadily; and taking out his handkerchief,

passed it over the soiled cover of the book.

“If I could wipe the stain of your blood off my conscience as easily as

I can wipe the stain of your boot off this book,” he said quietly, “you

should not live another hour. Don’t cry, Rose,” he continued, turning

again to his sister: “I will take care of your book for you until you

can keep it yourself.”

“You will do this! you will do that!” cried Danville, growing more

and more exasperated, and letting his anger get the better even of his

cunning now. “Talk less confidently of the future--you don’t know what

it has in store for you. Govern your tongue when you are in my presence;

a day may come when you will want my help--my help; do you hear that?”

Trudaine turned his face from his sister, as if he feared to let her see

it when those words were spoken.

“The man who followed me to-day was a spy--Danville’s spy!” That thought

flashed across his mind, but he gave it no utterance. There was an

instant’s pause of silence; and through it there came heavily on the

still night air the rumbling of distant wheels. The sound advanced

nearer and nearer--advanced and ceased under the window.

Danville hurried to it, and looked out eagerly. “I have not hastened my

return without reason. I wouldn’t have missed this arrest for anything!”

thought he, peering into the night.

The stars were out, but there was no moon. He could not recognize either

the coach or the persons who got out of it, and he turned again into the

interior of the room. His wife had sunk into a chair, her brother was

locking up in a cabinet the book which he had promised to take care of

for her. The dead silence made the noise of slowly ascending footsteps

on the stairs painfully audible. At last the door opened softly.

“Citizen Danville, health and fraternity!” said Lomaque, appearing

in the doorway, followed by his agents. “Citizen Louis Trudaine?” he

continued, beginning with the usual form.

Rose started out of her chair; but her brother’s hand was on her lips

before she could speak.

“My name is Louis Trudaine,” he answered.

“Charles!” cried his sister, breaking from him and appealing to her

husband, “who are these men? What are they here for?”

He gave her no answer.

“Louis Trudaine,” said Lomaque, slowly, drawing the order from his

pocket, “in the name of the Republic, I arrest you.”

“Rose, come back,” cried Trudaine.

It was too late; she had broken from him, and in the recklessness of

terror, had seized her husband by the arm.

“Save him!” she cried. “Save him, by all you hold dearest in the world!

You are that man’s superior, Charles--order him from the room!”

Danville roughly shook her hand off his arm.

“Lomaque is doing his duty. Yes,” he added, with a glance of

malicious triumph at Trudaine, “yes, doing his duty. Look at me as you

please--your looks won’t move me. I denounced you! I admit it--I glory

in it! I have rid myself of an enemy, and the State of a bad citizen.

Remember your secret visits to the house in the Rue de Clery!”

His wife uttered a cry of horror. She seized his arm again with both

hands--frail, trembling hands--that seemed suddenly nerved with all the

strength of a man’s.

“Come here--come here! I must and will speak to you!”

She dragged him by main force a few paces back, toward an unoccupied

corner of the room. With deathly cheeks and wild eyes she raised herself

on tiptoe, and put her lips to her husband’s ear. At that instant

Trudaine called to her:

“Rose, if you speak I am lost!”

She stopped at the sound of his voice, dropped her hold on her husband’s

arm, and faced her brother, shuddering.

“Rose,” he continued, “you have promised, and your promise is sacred.

If you prize your honor, if you love me, come here--come here, and be

silent.”

He held out his hand. She ran to him; and, laying her head on his bosom,

burst into a passion of tears.

Danville turned uneasily toward the police agents. “Remove your

prisoner,” he said. “You have done your duty here.”

“Only half of it,” retorted Lomaque, eying him attentively. “Rose

Danville--”

“My wife!” exclaimed the other. “What about my wife?”

“Rose Danville,” continued Lomaque, impassibly, “you are included in the

arrest of Louis Trudaine.”

Rose raised her head quickly from her brother’s breast. His firmness

had deserted him--he was trembling. She heard him whispering to himself,

“Rose, too! Oh, my God! I was not prepared for that.” She heard these

words, and dashed the tears from her eyes, and kissed him, saying:

“I am glad of it, Louis. We risked all together--we shall now suffer

together. I am glad of it!”

Danville looked incredulously at Lomaque, after the first shock of

astonishment was over.

“Impossible!” he exclaimed. “I never denounced my wife. There is some

mistake; you have exceeded your orders.”

“Silence!” retorted Lomaque, imperiously. “Silence, citizen, and respect

to a decree of the Republic!”

“You blackguard! show me the arrest-order!” said Danville. “Who has

dared to denounce my wife?”

“You have!” said Lomaque, turning on him with a grin of contempt.

“You--and ‘blackguard’ back in your teeth! You, in denouncing her

brother! Aha! we work hard in our office; we don’t waste time in

calling names--we make discoveries. If Trudaine is guilty, your wife is

implicated in his guilt. We know it; and we arrest her.”

“I resist the arrest,” cried Danville. “I am the authority here. Who

opposes me?”

The impassible chief agent made no answer. Some new noise in the street

struck his quick ear. He ran to the window and looked out eagerly.

“Who opposes me?” reiterated Danville.

“Hark!” exclaimed Lomaque, raising his hand. “Silence, and listen!”

The heavy, dull tramp of men marching together became audible as he

spoke. Voices humming low and in unison the Marseillaise hymn,

joined solemnly with the heavy, regular footfalls. Soon the flare of

torch-light began to glimmer redder and redder under the dim, starlight

sky.

“Do you hear that? Do you see the advancing torch-light?” cried Lomaque,

pointing exultingly into the street. “Respect to the national hymn,

and to the man who holds in the hollow of his hand the destinies of all

France! Hat off, Citizen Danville! Robespierre is in the street. His

bodyguard, the Hard-hitters, are lighting him on his way to the Jacobin

Club! Who shall oppose you, did you say? Your master and mine; the

man whose signature is at the bottom of this order--the man who with

a scratch of his pen can send both our heads rolling together into the

sack of the guillotine! Shall I call to him as he passes the house?

Shall I tell him that Superintendent Danville resists me in making an

arrest? Shall I? Shall I?” And in the immensity of his contempt, Lomaque

seemed absolutely to rise in stature, as he thrust the arrest order

under Danville’s eyes and pointed to the signature with the head of his

stick.

Rose looked round in terror, as Lomaque spoke his last words--looked

round, and saw her husband recoil before the signature on the arrest

order, as if the guillotine itself had suddenly arisen before him.

Her brother felt her shrinking back in his arms, and trembled for the

preservation of her self-control if the terror and suspense of the

arrest lasted any longer.

“Courage, Rose, courage!” he said. “You have behaved nobly; you must not

fail now. No, no! Not a word more. Not a word till I am able to think

clearly again, and to decide what is best. Courage, love; our lives

depend on it. Citizen,” he continued, addressing himself to Lomaque,

“proceed with your duty--we are ready.”

The heavy marching footsteps outside were striking louder and louder on

the ground; the chanting voices were every moment swelling in volume;

the dark street was flaming again with the brightening torch-light, as

Lomaque, under pretext of giving Trudaine his hat, came close to him,

and, turning his back toward Danville, whispered: “I have not forgotten

the eve of the wedding and the bench on the river bank.”

Before Trudaine could answer, he had taken Rose’s cloak and hood from

one of his assistants, and was helping her on with it. Danville, still

pale and trembling, advanced a step when he saw these preparations for

departure, and addressed a word or two to his wife; but he spoke in

low tones, and the fast-advancing march of feet and sullen low roar of

singing outside drowned his voice. An oath burst from his lips, and he

struck his fist, in impotent fury, on a table near him.

“The seals are set on everything in this room and in the bedroom,” said

Magloire, approaching Lomaque, who nodded and signed to him to bring up

the other police agents at the door.

“Ready,” cried Magloire, coming forward immediately with his men, and

raising his voice to make himself heard. “Where to?”

Robespierre and his Hard-hitters were passing the house. The smoke of

the torch-light was rolling in at the window; the tramping footsteps

struck heavier and heavier on the ground; the low sullen roar of the

Marseillaise was swelling to its loudest, as Lomaque referred for a

moment to his arrest-order, and then answered:

“To the prison of St. Lazare!”

CHAPTER III.

The head jailer of St. Lazare stood in the outer hall of the prison, two

days after the arrest at Trudaine’s lodgings, smoking his morning pipe.

Looking toward the courtyard gate, he saw the wicket opened, and a

privileged man let in, whom he soon recognized as the chief agent of

the second section of Secret Police. “Why, friend Lomaque,” cried the

jailer, advancing toward the courtyard, “what brings you here this

morning, business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure, this time, citizen. I have an idle hour or two to spare for a

walk. I find myself passing the prison, and I can’t resist calling in

to see how my friend the head jailer is getting on.” Lomaque spoke in

a surprisingly brisk and airy manner. His eyes were suffering under a

violent fit of weakness and winking; but he smiled, notwithstanding,

with an air of the most inveterate cheerfulness. Those old enemies of

his, who always distrusted him most when his eyes were most affected,

would have certainly disbelieved every word of the friendly speech he

had just made, and would have assumed it as a matter of fact that his

visit to the head jailer had some specially underhand business at the

bottom of it.

“How am I getting on?” said the jailer, shaking his head. “Overworked,

friend--overworked. No idle hours in our department. Even the guillotine

is getting too slow for us!”

“Sent off your batch of prisoners for trial this morning?” asked

Lomaque, with an appearance of perfect unconcern.

“No; they’re just going,” answered the other. “Come and have a look at

them.” He spoke as if the prisoners were a collection of pictures on

view, or a set of dresses just made up. Lomaque nodded his head, still

with his air of happy, holiday carelessness. The jailer led the way

to an inner hall; and, pointing lazily with his pipe-stem, said: “Our

morning batch, citizen, just ready for the baking.”

In one corner of the hall were huddled together more than thirty men and

women of all ranks and ages; some staring round them with looks of blank

despair; some laughing and gossiping recklessly. Near them lounged

a guard of “Patriots,” smoking, spitting, and swearing. Between the

patriots and the prisoners sat, on a rickety stool, the second jailer--a

humpbacked man, with an immense red mustache--finishing his breakfast of

broad beans, which he scooped out of a basin with his knife, and washed

down with copious draughts of wine from a bottle. Carelessly as Lomaque

looked at the shocking scene before him, his quick eyes contrived to

take note of every prisoner’s face, and to descry in a few minutes

Trudaine and his sister standing together at the back of the group.

“Now then, Apollo!” cried the head jailer, addressing his subordinate

by a facetious prison nickname, “don’t be all day starting that

trumpery batch of yours. And harkye, friend, I have leave of absence, on

business, at my Section this afternoon. So it will be your duty to read

the list for the guillotine, and chalk the prisoners’ doors before the

cart comes to-morrow morning. ‘Ware the bottle, Apollo, to-day; ‘ware

the bottle, for fear of accidents with the death-list to-morrow.”

“Thirsty July weather, this--eh, citizen?” said Lomaque, leaving the

head jailer, and patting the hunchback in the friendliest manner on the

shoulder. “Why, how you have got your batch huddled up together this

morning! Shall I help you to shove them into marching order? My time is

quite at your disposal. This is a holiday morning with me!”

“Ha, ha, ha! what a jolly dog he is on his holiday morning!” exclaimed

the head jailer, as Lomaque--apparently taking leave of his natural

character altogether in the exhilaration of an hour’s unexpected

leisure--began pushing and pulling the prisoners into rank, with

humorous mock apologies, at which not the officials only, but many of

the victims themselves--reckless victims of a reckless tyranny--laughed

heartily. Persevering to the last in his practical jest, Lomaque

contrived to get close to Trudaine for a minute, and to give him one

significant look before he seized him by the shoulders, like the rest.

“Now, then, rear-guard,” cried Lomaque, pushing Trudaine on, “close the

line of march, and mind you keep step with your young woman there. Pluck

up your spirits, citoyenne! one gets used to everything in this world,

even to the guillotine!”

While he was speaking and pushing at the same time, Trudaine felt a

piece of paper slip quickly between his neck and his cravat. “Courage!”

he whispered, pressing his sister’s hand, as he saw her shuddering under

the assumed brutality of Lomaque’s joke.

Surrounded by the guard of “Patriots,” the procession of prisoners

moved slowly into the outer courtyard, on its way to the revolutionary

tribunal, the humpbacked jailer bringing up the rear. Lomaque was

about to follow at some little distance, but the head jailer hospitably

expostulated. “What a hurry you’re in!” said he. “Now that incorrigible

drinker, my second in command, has gone off with his batch, I don’t mind

asking you to step in and have a drop of wine.”

“Thank you,” answered Lomaque; “but I have rather a fancy for hearing

the trial this morning. Suppose I come back afterward? What time do you

go to your Section? At two o’clock, eh? Good! I shall try if I can’t

get here soon after one.” With these words he nodded and went out. The

brilliant sunlight in the courtyard made him wink faster than ever. Had

any of his old enemies been with him, they would have whispered within

themselves, “If you mean to come back at all, Citizen Lomaque, it will

not be soon after one!”

On his way through the streets, the chief agent met one or two police

office friends, who delayed his progress; so that when he arrived at the

revolutionary tribunal the trials of the day were just about to begin.

The principal article of furniture in the Hall of Justice was a long,

clumsy, deal table, covered with green baize. At the head of this

table sat the president and his court, with their hats on, backed by

a heterogeneous collection of patriots officially connected in various

ways with the proceedings that were to take place. Below the front of

the table, a railed-off space, with a gallery beyond, was appropriated

to the general public--mostly represented, as to the gallery, on

this occasion, by women, all sitting together on forms, knitting,

shirt-mending, and baby-linen-making, as coolly as if they were at home.

Parallel with the side of the table furthest from the great door

of entrance was a low platform railed off, on which the prisoners,

surrounded by their guard, were now assembled to await their trial. The

sun shone in brightly from a high window, and a hum of ceaseless talking

pervaded the hall cheerfully as Lomaque entered it. He was a privileged

man here, as at the prison; and he made his way in by a private door, so

as to pass to the prisoners’ platform, and to walk round it, before he

got to a place behind the president’s chair. Trudaine, standing with

his sister on the outermost limits of the group, nodded significantly as

Lomaque looked up at him for an instant. He had contrived, on his way to

the tribunal, to get an opportunity of reading the paper which the chief

agent had slipped into his cravat. It contained these lines:

“I have just discovered who the citizen and citoyenne Dubois are. There

is no chance for you but to confess everything. By that means you may

inculpate a certain citizen holding authority, and may make it his

interest, if he loves his own life, to save yours and your sister’s.”

Arrived at the back of the president’s chair, Lomaque recognized his two

trusty subordinates, Magloire and Picard, waiting among the assembled

patriot officials, to give their evidence. Beyond them, leaning against

the wall, addressed by no one, and speaking to no one, stood the

superintendent, Danville. Doubt and suspense were written in every line

of his face; the fretfulness of an uneasy mind expressed itself in his

slightest gesture--even in his manner of passing a handkerchief from

time to time over his face, on which the perspiration was gathering

thick and fast already.

“Silence!” cried the usher of the court for the time being--a

hoarse-voiced man in top-boots with a huge saber buckled to his side,

and a bludgeon in his hand. “Silence for the Citizen President!” he

reiterated, striking his bludgeon on the table.

The president rose and proclaimed that the sitting for the day had

begun; then sat down again.

The momentary silence which followed was interrupted by a sudden

confusion among the prisoners on the platform. Two of the guards sprang

in among them. There was the thump of a heavy fall--a scream of terror

from some of the female prisoners--then another dead silence, broken by

one of the guards, who walked across the hall with a bloody knife in his

hand, and laid it on the table. “Citizen President,” he said, “I have to

report that one of the prisoners has just stabbed himself.” There was

a murmuring exclamation, “Is that all?” among the women spectators, as

they resumed their work. Suicide at the bar of justice was no uncommon

occurrence, under the Reign of Terror.

“Name?” asked the president, quietly taking up his pen and opening a

book.

“Martigne,” answered the humpbacked jailer, coming forward to the table.

“Description?”

“Ex-royalist coach-maker to the tyrant Capet.”

“Accusation?”

“Conspiracy in prison.”

The president nodded, and entered in the book: “Martigne, coachmaker.

Accused of conspiring in prison. Anticipated course of law by suicide.

Action accepted as sufficient confession of guilt. Goods confiscated.

1st Thermidor, year two of the Republic.”

“Silence!” cried the man with the bludgeon, as the president dropped a

little sand on the entry, and signing to the jailer that he might remove

the dead body, closed the book.

“Any special cases this morning?” resumed the president, looking round

at the group behind him.

“There is one,” said Lomaque, making his way to the back of the official

chair. “Will it be convenient to you, citizen, to take the case of Louis

Trudaine and Rose Danville first? Two of my men are detained here as

witnesses, and their time is valuable to the Republic.”

The president marked a list of names before him, and handed it to the

crier or usher, placing the figures one and two against Louis Trudaine

and Rose Danville.

While Lomaque was backing again to his former place behind the chair,

Danville approached and whispered to him, “There is a rumor that secret

information has reached you about the citizen and citoyenne Dubois. Is

it true? Do you know who they are?”

“Yes,” answered Lomaque; “but I have superior orders to keep the

information to myself just at present.”

The eagerness with which Danville put his question, and the

disappointment he showed on getting no satisfactory answer to it, were

of a nature to satisfy the observant chief agent that his superintendent

was really as ignorant as he appeared to be on the subject of the man

and woman Dubois. That one mystery, at any rate was still, for Danville,

a mystery unrevealed.

“Louis Trudaine! Rose Danville!” shouted the crier, with another rap of

his bludgeon.

The two came forward, at the appeal, to the front railing of the

platform. The first sight of her judges, the first shock on confronting

the pitiless curiosity of the audience, seemed to overwhelm Rose. She

turned from deadly pale to crimson, then to pale again, and hid her face

on her brother’s shoulder. How fast she heard his heart throbbing! How

the tears filled her eyes as she felt that his fear was all for her!

“Now,” said the president, writing down their names. “Denounced by

whom?”

Magloire and Picard stepped forward to the table. The first

answered--“By Citizen Superintendent Danville.”

The reply made a great stir and sensation among both prisoners and

audience.

“Accused of what?” pursued the president.

“The male prisoner, of conspiracy against the Republic; the female

prisoner, of criminal knowledge of the same.”

“Produce your proofs in answer to this order.”

Picard and Magloire opened their minutes of evidence, and read to the

president the same particulars which they had formerly read to Lomaque

in the secret police office.

“Good,” said the president, when they had done, “we need trouble

ourselves with nothing more than the identifying of the citizen and

citoyenne Dubois, which, of course, you are prepared for. Have you heard

the evidence?” he continued, turning to the prisoners; while Picard and

Magloire consulted together in whispers, looking perplexedly toward the

chief agent, who stood silent behind them. “Have you heard the evidence,

prisoners? Do you wish to say anything? If you do, remember that the

time of this tribunal is precious, and that you will not be suffered to

waste it.”

“I demand permission to speak for myself and for my sister,” answered

Trudaine. “My object is to save the time of the tribunal by making a

confession.”

The faint whispering, audible among the women spectators a moment

before, ceased instantaneously as he pronounced the word confession. In

the breathless silence, his low, quiet tones penetrated to the remotest

corners of the hall; while, suppressing externally all evidences of the

death-agony of hope within him, he continued his address in these words:

“I confess my secret visits to the house in the Rue de Clery. I confess

that the persons whom I went to see are the persons pointed at in the

evidence. And, lastly, I confess that my object in communicating with

them as I did was to supply them with the means of leaving France. If

I had acted from political motives to the political prejudice of the

existing government, I admit that I should be guilty of that conspiracy

against the Republic with which I am charged. But no political purpose

animated, no political necessity urged me, in performing the action

which has brought me to the bar of this tribunal. The persons whom I

aided in leaving France were without political influence or political

connections. I acted solely from private motives of humanity toward them

and toward others--motives which a good republican may feel, and yet not

turn traitor to the welfare of his country.”

“Are you ready to inform the court, next, who the man and woman Dubois

really are?” inquired the president, impatiently.

“I am ready,” answered Trudaine. “But first I desire to say one word in

reference to my sister, charged here at the bar with me.” His voice grew

less steady, and, for the first time, his color began to change, as

Rose lifted her face from his shoulder and looked up at him eagerly.

“I implore the tribunal to consider my sister as innocent of all active

participation in what is charged against me as a crime--” He went

on. “Having spoken with candor about myself, I have some claim to be

believed when I speak of her; when I assert that she neither did help me

nor could help me. If there be blame, it is mine only; if punishment, it

is I alone who should suffer.”

He stopped suddenly, and grew confused. It was easy to guard himself

from the peril of looking at Rose, but he could not escape the hard

trial to his self-possession of hearing her, if she spoke. Just as

he pronounced the last sentence, she raised her face again from his

shoulder, and eagerly whispered to him:

“No, no, Louis! Not that sacrifice, after all the others--not that,

though you should force me into speaking to them myself!”

She abruptly quitted her hold of him, and fronted the whole court in

an instant. The railing in front of her shook with the quivering of

her arms and hands as she held by it to support herself! Her hair lay

tangled on her shoulders; her face had assumed a strange fixedness; her

gentle blue eyes, so soft and tender at all other times, were lit up

wildly. A low hum of murmured curiosity and admiration broke from the

women of the audience. Some rose eagerly from the benches; others cried:

“Listen, listen! she is going to speak!”

She did speak. Silvery and pure the sweet voice, sweeter than ever in

sadness, stole its way through the gross sounds--through the coarse

humming and the hissing whispers.

“My lord the president,” began the poor girl firmly. Her next words were

drowned in a volley of hisses from the women.

“Ah! aristocrat, aristocrat! None of your accursed titles here!” was

their shrill cry at her. She fronted that cry, she fronted the fierce

gestures which accompanied it, with the steady light still in her eyes,

with the strange rigidity still fastened on her face. She would have

spoken again through the uproar and execration, but her brother’s voice

overpowered her.

“Citizen president,” he cried, “I have not concluded. I demand leave to

complete my confession. I implore the tribunal to attach no importance

to what my sister says. The trouble and terror of this day have shaken

her intellects. She is not responsible for her words--I assert it

solemnly, in the face of the whole court!”

The blood flew up into his white face as he made the asseveration. Even

at that supreme moment the great heart of the man reproached him for

yielding himself to a deception, though the motive of it was to save his

sister’s life.

“Let her speak! let her speak!” exclaimed the women, as Rose, without

moving, without looking at her brother, without seeming even to have

heard what he said, made a second attempt to address her judges, in

spite of Trudaine’s interposition.

“Silence!” shouted the man with the bludgeon. “Silence, you women! the

citizen president is going to speak.”

“The prisoner Trudaine has the ear of the court,” said the president,

“and may continue his confession. If the female prisoner wishes to

speak, she may be heard afterward. I enjoin both the accused persons

to make short work of it with their addresses to me, or they will

make their case worse instead of better. I command silence among the

audience, and if I am not obeyed, I will clear the hall. Now, prisoner

Trudaine, I invite you to proceed. No more about your sister; let her

speak for herself. Your business and ours is with the man and woman

Dubois. Are you, or are you not, ready to tell the court who they are?”

“I repeat that I am ready,” answered Trudaine. “The citizen Dubois is

a servant. The woman Dubois is the mother of the man who denounces

me--Superintendent Danville.”

A low, murmuring, rushing sound of hundreds of exclaiming voices, all

speaking, half-suppressedly, at the same moment, followed the delivery

of the answer. No officer of the court attempted to control the outburst

of astonishment. The infection of it spread to the persons on the

platform, to the crier himself, to the judges of the tribunal, lounging,

but the moment before, so carelessly silent in their chairs. When the

noise was at length quelled, it was subdued in the most instantaneous

manner by one man, who shouted from the throng behind the president’s

chair:

“Clear the way there! Superintendent Danville is taken ill!”

A vehement whispering and contending of many voices interrupting each

other, followed; then a swaying among the assembly of official people;

then a great stillness; then the sudden appearance of Danville, alone,

at the table.

The look of him, as he turned his ghastly face toward the audience,

silenced and steadied them in an instant, just as they were on the point

of falling into fresh confusion. Every one stretched forward eagerly to

hear what he would say. His lips moved; but the few words that fell from

them were inaudible, except to the persons who happened to be close by

him. Having spoken, he left the table supported by a police agent,

who was seen to lead him toward the private door of the court, and,

consequently, also toward the prisoners’ platform. He stopped, however,

halfway, quickly turned his face from the prisoners, and pointing toward

the public door at the opposite side of the hall, caused himself to be

led out into the air by that direction. When he had gone the president,

addressing himself partly to Trudaine and partly to the audience, said:

“The Citizen Superintendent Danville has been overcome by the heat

in the court. He has retired by my desire, under the care of a police

agent, to recover in the open air; pledging himself to me to come back

and throw a new light on the extraordinary and suspicious statement

which the prisoner has just made. Until the return of Citizen Danville,

I order the accused, Trudaine, to suspend any further acknowledgment

of complicity which he may have to address to me. This matter must be

cleared up before other matters are entered on. Meanwhile, in order

that the time of the tribunal may not be wasted, I authorize the female

prisoner to take this opportunity of making any statement concerning

herself which she may wish to address to the judges.”

“Silence him!” “Remove him out of court!” “Gag him!” “Guillotine him!”

These cries rose from the audience the moment the president had done

speaking. They were all directed at Trudaine, who had made a last

desperate effort to persuade his sister to keep silence, and had been

detected in the attempt by the spectators.

“If the prisoner speaks another word to his sister, remove him,” said

the president, addressing the guard round the platform.

“Good! we shall hear her at last. Silence! silence!” exclaimed the

women, settling themselves comfortably on their benches, and preparing

to resume their work.

“Rose Danville, the court is waiting to hear you,” said the president,

crossing his legs and leaning back luxuriously in his large armchair.

Amid all the noise and confusion of the last few minutes, Rose had stood

ever in the same attitude, with that strangely fixed expression never

altering on her face but once. When her husband made his way to the

side of the table and stood there prominently alone, her lips trembled a

little, and a faint shade of color passed swiftly over her cheeks. Even

that slight change had vanished now--she was paler, stiller, more widely

altered from her former self than ever, as she faced the president and

said these words:

“I wish to follow my brother’s example and make my confession, as he has

made his. I would rather he had spoken for me; but he is too generous

to say any words except such as he thinks may save me from sharing his

punishment. I refuse to be saved, unless he is saved with me. Where

he goes when he leaves this place, I will go; what he suffers, I will

suffer; if he is to die, I believe God will grant me the strength to die

resignedly with him!”

She paused for a moment, and half turned toward Trudaine--then checked

herself instantly and went on: “This is what I now wish to say, as to my

share in the offense charged against my brother. Some time ago, he told

me one day that he had seen my husband’s mother in Paris, disguised as

a poor woman; that he had spoken to her, and forced her to acknowledge

herself. Up to this time we had all felt certain that she had left

France, because she held old-fashioned opinions which it is dangerous

for people to hold now--had left France before we came to Paris. She

told my brother that she had indeed gone (with an old, tried servant

of the family to help and protect her) as far as Marseilles; and that,

finding unforeseen difficulty there in getting further, she had taken it

as a warning from Providence not to desert her son, of whom she was very

passionately fond, and from whom she had been most unwilling to depart.

Instead of waiting in exile for quieter times, she determined to go and

hide herself in Paris, knowing her son was going there too. She assumed

the name of her old and faithful servant, who declined to the last to

leave her unprotected; and she proposed to live in the strictest secrecy

and retirement, watching, unknown, the career of her son, and ready at

a moment’s notice to disclose herself to him, when the settlement of

public affairs might reunite her safely to her beloved child. My brother

thought this plan full of danger, both for herself, for her son, and for

the honest old man who was risking his head for his mistress’s sake. I

thought so too; and in an evil hour I said to Louis: ‘Will you try

in secret to get my husband’s mother away, and see that her faithful

servant makes her really leave France this time?’ I wrongly asked my

brother to do this for a selfish reason of my own--a reason connected

with my married life, which has not been a happy one. I had not

succeeded in gaining my husband’s affection, and was not treated kindly

by him. My brother--who has always loved me far more dearly, I am

afraid, than I have ever deserved--my brother increased his kindness

to me, seeing me treated unkindly by my husband. This made ill-blood

between them. My thought, when I asked my brother to do for me what

I have said, was, that if we two in secret saved my husband’s mother,

without danger to him, from imperiling herself and her son, we should,

when the time came for speaking of what we had done, appear to my

husband in a new and better light. I should have shown how well I

deserved his love, and Louis would have shown how well he deserved his

brother-in-law’s gratitude; and so we should have made home happy at

last, and all three have lived together affectionately. This was my

thought; and when I told it to my brother, and asked him if there would

be much risk, out of his kindness and indulgence toward me, he said

‘No.’ He had so used me to accept sacrifices for my happiness that I let

him endanger himself to help me in my little household plan. I repent

this bitterly now; I ask his pardon with my whole heart. If he is

acquitted, I will try to show myself worthier of his love. If he is

found guilty, I, too, will go to the scaffold, and die with my brother,

who risked his life for my sake.”

She ceased as quietly as she had begun, and turned once more to her

brother.

As she looked away from the court and looked at him, a few tears came

into her eyes, and something of the old softness of form and gentleness

of expression seemed to return to her face. He let her take his hand,

but he seemed purposely to avoid meeting the anxious gaze she fixed

on him. His head sunk on his breast; he drew his breath heavily, his

countenance darkened and grew distorted, as if he were suffering some

sharp pang of physical pain. He bent down a little, and, leaning his

elbow on the rail before him, covered his face with his hand; and so

quelled the rising agony, so forced back the scalding tears to his

heart. The audience had heard Rose in silence, and they preserved

the same tranquillity when she had done. This was a rare tribute to a

prisoner from the people of the Reign of Terror.

The president looked round at his colleagues, and shook his head

suspiciously.

“This statement of the female prisoner’s complicates the matter very

seriously,” said he. “Is there anybody in court,” he added, looking

at the persons behind his chair, “who knows where the mother of

Superintendent Danville and the servant are now?”

Lomaque came forward at the appeal, and placed himself by the table.

“Why, citizen agent!” continued the president, looking hard at him, “are

you overcome by the heat, too?”

“The fit seemed to take him, citizen president, when the female prisoner

had made an end of her statement,” exclaimed Magloire, pressing forward

officiously.

Lomaque gave his subordinate a look which sent the man back directly to

the shelter of the official group; then said, in lower tones than were

customary with him:

“I have received information relative to the mother of Superintendent

Danville and the servant, and am ready to answer any questions that may

be put to me.”

“Where are they now?” asked the president.

“She and the servant are known to have crossed the frontier, and are

supposed to be on their way to Cologne. But, since they have entered

Germany, their whereabouts is necessarily a matter of uncertainty to the

republican authorities.”

“Have you any information relative to the conduct of the old servant

while he was in Paris?”

“I have information enough to prove that he was not an object for

political suspicion. He seems to have been simply animated by servile

zeal for the woman’s interests; to have performed for her all the menial

offices of a servant in private; and to have misled the neighbors by

affected equality with her in public.”

“Have you any reason to believe that Superintendent Danville was privy

to his mother’s first attempt at escaping from France?”

“I infer it from what the female prisoner has said, and for other

reasons which it would be irregular to detail before the tribunal. The

proofs can no doubt be obtained if I am allowed time to communicate with

the authorities at Lyons and Marseilles.”

At this moment Danville re-entered the court; and, advancing to the

table, placed himself close by the chief agent’s side. They looked each

other steadily in the face for an instant.

“He has recovered from the shock of Trudaine’s answer,” thought Lomaque,

retiring. “His hand trembles, his face is pale, but I can see regained

self-possession in his eye, and I dread the consequences already.”

“Citizen president,” began Danville, “I demand to know if anything has

transpired affecting my honor and patriotism in my absence?”

He spoke apparently with the most perfect calmness, but he looked nobody

in the face. His eyes were fixed steadily on the green baize of the

table beneath him.

“The female prisoner has made a statement, referring principally to

herself and her brother,” answered the president, “but incidentally

mentioning a previous attempt on your mother’s part to break existing

laws by emigrating from France. This portion of the confession contains

in it some elements of suspicion which seriously affect you--”

“They shall be suspicions no longer--at my own peril I will change them

to certainties!” exclaimed Danville, extending his arm theatrically, and

looking up for the first time. “Citizen president, I avow it with the

fearless frankness of a good patriot; I was privy to my mother’s first

attempt at escaping from France.”

Hisses and cries of execration followed this confession. He winced under

them at first; but recovered his self-possession before silence was

restored.

“Citizens, you have heard the confession of my fault,” he resumed,

turning with desperate assurance toward the audience; “now hear the

atonement I have made for it at the altar of my country.”

He waited at the end of that sentence, until the secretary to the

tribunal had done writing it down in the report book of the court.

“Transcribe faithfully to the letter!” cried Danville, pointing solemnly

to the open page of the volume. “Life and death hang on my words.”

The secretary took a fresh dip of ink, and nodded to show that he was

ready. Danville went on:

“In these times of glory and trial for France,” he proceeded, pitching

his voice to a tone of deep emotion, “what are all good citizens most

sacredly bound to do? To immolate their dearest private affections and

interests before their public duties! On the first attempt of my mother

to violate the laws against emigration, by escaping from France, I

failed in making the heroic sacrifice which inexorable patriotism

demanded of me. My situation was more terrible than the situation

of Brutus sitting in judgment on his own sons. I had not the Roman

fortitude to rise equal to it. I erred, citizens--erred as Coriolanus

did, when his august mother pleaded with him for the safety of Rome! For

that error I deserved to be purged out of the republican community;

but I escaped my merited punishment--nay, I even rose to the honor of

holding an office under the Government. Time passed; and again my mother

attempted an escape from France. Again, inevitable fate brought my civic

virtue to the test. How did I meet this second supremest trial? By an

atonement for past weakness, terrible as the trial itself. Citizens, you

will shudder; but you will applaud while you tremble. Citizens, look!

and while you look, remember well the evidence given at the opening of

this case. Yonder stands the enemy of his country, who intrigued to help

my mother to escape; here stands the patriot son, whose voice was the

first, the only voice, to denounce him for the crime!” As he spoke, he

pointed to Trudaine, then struck himself on the breast, then folded his

arms, and looked sternly at the benches occupied by the spectators.

“Do you assert,” exclaimed the president, “that at the time when you

denounced Trudaine, you knew him to be intriguing to aid your mother’s

escape?”

“I assert it,” answered Danville.

The pen which the president held dropped from his hand at that reply;

his colleagues started, and looked at each other in blank silence.

A murmur of “Monster! monster!” began with the prisoners on the

platform, and spread instantly to the audience, who echoed and echoed it

again; the fiercest woman-republican on the benches joined cause at

last with the haughtiest woman-aristocrat on the platform. Even in that

sphere of direst discords, in that age of sharpest enmities, the

one touch of Nature preserved its old eternal virtue, and roused the

mother-instinct which makes the whole world kin.

Of the few persons in the court who at once foresaw the effect of

Danville’s answer on the proceedings of the tribunal, Lomaque was one.

His sallow face whitened as he looked toward the prisoners’ platform.

“They are lost,” he murmured to himself, moving out of the group

in which he had hitherto stood. “Lost! The lie which has saved that

villain’s head leaves them without the shadow of a hope. No need to stop

for the sentence--Danville’s infamous presence of mind has given them up

to the guillotine!” Pronouncing these words, he went out hurriedly by a

door near the platform, which led to the prisoners’ waiting-room.

Rose’s head sank again on her brother’s shoulder. She shuddered, and

leaned back faintly on the arm which he extended to support her. One of

the female prisoners tried to help Trudaine in speaking consolingly

to her; but the consummation of her husband’s perfidy seemed to have

paralyzed her at heart. She murmured once in her brother’s ear, “Louis!

I am resigned to die--nothing but death is left for me after the

degradation of having loved that man.” She said those words and closed

her eyes wearily, and spoke no more.

“One other question, and you may retire,” resumed the president,

addressing Danville. “Were you cognizant of your wife’s connection with

her brother’s conspiracy?”

Danville reflected for a moment, remembered that there were witnesses in

court who could speak to his language and behavior on the evening of his

wife’s arrest, and resolved this time to tell the truth.

“I was not aware of it,” he answered. “Testimony in my favor can be

called which will prove that when my wife’s complicity was discovered I

was absent from Paris.”

Heartlessly self-possessed as he was, the public reception of his last

reply had shaken his nerve. He now spoke in low tones, turning his back

on the spectators, and fixing his eyes again on the green baize of the

table at which he stood.

“Prisoners, have you any objection to make, any evidence to call,

invalidating the statement by which Citizen Danville has cleared himself

of suspicion?” inquired the president.

“He has cleared himself by the most execrable of all falsehoods,”

answered Trudaine. “If his mother could be traced and brought here, her

testimony would prove it.”

“Can you produce any other evidence in support of your allegation?”

asked the president.

“I cannot.”

“Citizen Superintendent Danville, you are at liberty to retire. Your

statement will be laid before the authority to whom you are officially

responsible. Either you merit a civic crown for more than Roman virtue,

or--” Having got thus far, the president stopped abruptly, as if

unwilling to commit himself too soon to an opinion, and merely repeated,

“You may retire.”

Danville left the court immediately, going out again by the public door.

He was followed by murmurs from the women’s benches, which soon ceased,

however, when the president was observed to close his note-book, and

turn round toward his colleagues. “The sentence!” was the general

whisper now. “Hush, hush--the sentence!”

After a consultation of a few minutes with the persons behind him, the

president rose, and spoke the momentous words:

“Louis Trudaine and Rose Danville, the revolutionary tribunal, having

heard the charge against you, and having weighed the value of what

you have said in answer to it, decides that you are both guilty, and

condemns you to the penalty of death.”

Having delivered the sentence in those terms, he sat down again, and

placed a mark against the two first condemned names on the list of

prisoners. Immediately afterward the next case was called on, and the

curiosity of the audience was stimulated by a new trial.

CHAPTER IV.

The waiting-room of the revolutionary tribunal was a grim, bare place,

with a dirty stone floor, and benches running round the walls. The

windows were high and barred; and at the outer door, leading into the

street, two sentinels kept watch. On entering this comfortless retreat

from the court, Lomaque found it perfectly empty. Solitude was just then

welcome to him. He remained in the waiting-room, walking slowly from

end to end over the filthy pavement, talking eagerly and incessantly to

himself.

After a while, the door communicating with the tribunal opened, and the

humpbacked jailer made his appearance, leading in Trudaine and Rose.

“You will have to wait here,” said the little man, “till the rest of

them have been tried and sentenced; and then you will all go back to

prison in a lump. Ha, citizen,” he continued, observing Lomaque at the

other end of the hall, and bustling up to him. “Here still, eh? If you

were going to stop much longer, I should ask a favor of you.”

“I am in no hurry,” said Lomaque, with a glance at the two prisoners.

“Good!” cried the humpback, drawing his hand across his mouth; “I am

parched with thirst, and dying to moisten my throat at the wine-shop

over the way. Just mind that man and woman while I’m gone, will you?

It’s the merest form--there’s a guard outside, the windows are barred,

the tribunal is within hail. Do you mind obliging me?”

“On the contrary, I am glad of the opportunity.”

“That’s a good fellow--and, remember, if I am asked for, you must say

I was obliged to quit the court for a few minutes, and left you in

charge.”

With these words, the humpbacked jailer ran off to the wine-shop.

He had scarcely disappeared before Trudaine crossed the room, and caught

Lomaque by the arm.

“Save her,” he whispered; “there is an opportunity--save her!” His face

was flushed--his eyes wandered--his breath on the chief agent’s cheek,

while he spoke, felt scorching hot. “Save her!” he repeated, shaking

Lomaque by the arm, and dragging him toward the door. “Remember all you

owe to my father--remember our talk on that bench by the river--remember

what you said to me yourself on the night of the arrest--don’t wait to

think--save her, and leave me without a word! If I die alone, I can die

as a man should; if she goes to the scaffold by my side, my heart

will fail me--I shall die the death of a coward! I have lived for her

life--let me die for it, and I die happy!”

He tried to say more, but the violence of his agitation forbade it. He

could only shake the arm he held again and again, and point to the

bench on which Rose sat--her head sunk on her bosom, her hands crossed

listlessly on her lap.

“There are two armed sentinels outside--the windows are barred--you are

without weapons--and even if you had them, there is a guard-house within

hail on one side of you, and the tribunal on the other. Escape from this

room is impossible,” answered Lomaque.

“Impossible!” repeated the other, furiously. “You traitor! you coward!

can you look at her sitting there helpless, her very life ebbing away

already with every minute that passes, and tell me coolly that escape is

impossible?”

In the frenzy of his grief and despair, he lifted his disengaged hand

threateningly while he spoke. Lomaque caught him by the wrist, and drew

him toward a window open at the top.

“You are not in your right senses,” said the chief agent, firmly;

“anxiety and apprehension on your sister’s account have shaken your

mind. Try to compose yourself, and listen to me. I have something

important to say--” (Trudaine looked at him incredulously.) “Important,”

continued Lomaque, “as affecting your sister’s interests at this

terrible crisis.”

That last appeal had an instantaneous effect. Trudaine’s outstretched

hand dropped to his side, and a sudden change passed over his

expression.

“Give me a moment,” he said, faintly; and turning away, leaned against

the wall and pressed his burning forehead on the chill, damp stone. He

did not raise his head again till he had mastered himself, and could say

quietly, “Speak; I am fit to hear you, and sufficiently in my senses to

ask your forgiveness for what I said just now.”

“When I left the tribunal and entered this room,” Lomaque began in a

whisper, “there was no thought in my mind that could be turned to good

account, either for your sister or for you. I was fit for nothing but

to deplore the failure of the confession which I came to St. Lazare to

suggest to you as your best plan of defense. Since then, an idea

has struck me, which may be useful--an idea so desperate, so

uncertain--involving a proposal so absolutely dependent, as to its

successful execution, on the merest chance, that I refuse to confide it

to you except on one condition.”

“Mention the condition! I submit to it before hand.”

“Give me your word of honor that you will not mention what I am about

to say to your sister until I grant you permission to speak. Promise me

that when you see her shrinking before the terrors of death to-night,

you will have self-restraint enough to abstain from breathing a word of

hope to her. I ask this, because there are ten--twenty--fifty chances to

one that there _is_ no hope.”

“I have no choice but to promise,” answered Trudaine.

Lomaque produced his pocket-book and pencil before he spoke again.

“I will enter into particulars as soon as I have asked a strange

question of you,” he said. “You have been a great experimenter in

chemistry in your time--is your mind calm enough, at such a trying

moment as this, to answer a question which is connected with chemistry

in a very humble way? You seem astonished. Let me put the question at

once. Is there any liquid or powder, or combination of more than one

ingredient known, which will remove writing from paper, and leave no

stain behind?”

“Certainly! But is that all the question? Is there no greater

difficulty?”

“None. Write the prescription, whatever it may be, on that leaf,”

said the other, giving him the pocket-book. “Write it down, with

plain directions for use.” Trudaine obeyed. “This is the first

step,” continued Lomaque, putting the book in his pocket, “toward the

accomplishment of my purpose--my uncertain purpose, remember! Now,

listen; I am going to put my own head in danger for the chance of

saving yours and your sister’s by tampering with the death-list. Don’t

interrupt me! If I can save one, I can save the other. Not a word about

gratitude! Wait till you know the extent of your obligation. I tell

you plainly, at the outset, there is a motive of despair, as well as a

motive of pity, at the bottom of the action in which I am now about

to engage. Silence! I insist on it. Our time is short; it is for me to

speak, and for you to listen. The president of the tribunal has put the

deathmark against your names on the prison list of to-day. That list,

when the trials are over and it is marked to the end, will be called in

this room before you are taken to St. Lazare. It will then be sent to

Robespierre, who will keep it, having a copy made of it the moment it is

delivered, for circulation among his colleagues--St. Just, and the

rest. It is my business to make a duplicate of this copy in the first

instance. The duplicate will be compared with the original, and possibly

with the copy, too, either by Robespierre himself, or by some one in

whom he can place implicit trust, and will then be sent to St. Lazare

without passing through my hands again. It will be read in public the

moment it is received, at the grating of the prison, and will afterward

be kept by the jailer, who will refer to it, as he goes round in the

evening with a piece of chalk, to mark the cell doors of the prisoners

destined for the guillotine to-morrow. That duty happens, to-day, to

fall to the hunchback whom you saw speaking to me. He is a confirmed

drinker, and I mean to tempt him with such wine as he rarely tastes.

If--after the reading of the list in public, and before the marking of

the cell doors--I can get him to sit down to the bottle, I will answer

for making him drunk, for getting the list out of his pocket, and for

wiping your names out of it with the prescription you have just written

for me. I shall write all the names, one under another, just irregularly

enough in my duplicate to prevent the interval left by the erasure

from being easily observed. If I succeed in this, your door will not

be marked, and your names will not be called to-morrow morning when the

tumbrils come for the guillotine. In the present confusion of prisoners

pouring in every day for trial, and prisoners pouring out every day for

execution, you will have the best possible chance of security against

awkward inquiries, if you play your cards properly, for a good fortnight

or ten days at least. In that time--”

“Well! well!” cried Trudaine, eagerly.

Lomaque looked toward the tribunal door, and lowered his voice to a

fainter whisper before he continued, “In that time Robespierre’s own

head may fall into the sack! France is beginning to sicken under the

Reign of Terror. Frenchmen of the Moderate faction, who have lain

hidden for months in cellars and lofts, are beginning to steal out

and deliberate by twos and threes together, under cover of the night.

Robespierre has not ventured for weeks past to face the Convention

Committee. He only speaks among his own friends at the Jacobins. There

are rumors of a terrible discovery made by Carnot, of a desperate

resolution taken by Tallien. Men watching behind the scenes see that

the last days of the Terror are at hand. If Robespierre is beaten in the

approaching struggle, you are saved--for the new reign must be a Reign

of Mercy. If he conquers, I have only put off the date of your death and

your sister’s, and have laid my own neck under the axe. Those are your

chances--this is all I can do.”

He paused, and Trudaine again endeavored to speak such words as might

show that he was not unworthy of the deadly risk which Lomaque was

prepared to encounter. But once more the chief agent peremptorily and

irritably interposed:

“I tell you, for the third time,” he said, “I will listen to no

expressions of gratitude from you till I know when I deserve them. It is

true that I recollect your father’s timely kindness to me--true that I

have not forgotten what passed, five years since at your house by the

river-side. I remember everything, down to what you would consider the

veriest trifle--that cup of coffee, for instance, which your sister kept

hot for me. I told you then that you would think better of me some day.

I know that you do now. But this is not all. You want to glorify me to

my face for risking my life for you. I won’t hear you, because my risk

is of the paltriest kind. I am weary of my life. I can’t look back to it

with pleasure. I am too old to look forward to what is left of it

with hope. There was something in that night at your house before the

wedding--something in what you said, in what your sister did--which

altered me. I have had my days of gloom and self-reproach, from time

to time, since then. I have sickened at my slavery, and subjection, and

duplicity, and cringing, first under one master then under another. I

have longed to look back at my life, and comfort myself with the sight

of some good action, just as a frugal man comforts himself with the

sight of his little savings laid by in an old drawer. I can’t do

this, and I want to do it. The want takes me like a fit, at uncertain

intervals--suddenly, under the most incomprehensible influences. A

glance up at the blue sky--starlight over the houses of this great city,

when I look out at the night from my garret window--a child’s voice

coming suddenly, I don’t know where from--the piping of my neighbor’s

linnet in his little cage--now one trifling thing, now another--wakes up

that want in me in a moment. Rascal as I am, those few simple words

your sister spoke to the judge went through and through me like a knife.

Strange, in a man like me, isn’t it? I am amazed at it myself. _My_

life? Bah! I’ve let it out for hire to be kicked about by rascals from

one dirty place to another, like a football! It’s my whim to give it

a last kick myself, and throw it away decently before it lodges on the

dunghill forever. Your sister kept a good cup of coffee hot for me, and

I give her a bad life in return for the compliment. You want to thank

me for it? What folly! Thank me when I have done something useful. Don’t

thank me for that!”

He snapped his fingers contemptuously as he spoke, and walked away to

the outer door to receive the jailer, who returned at that moment.

“Well,” inquired the hunchback, “has anybody asked for me?”

“No,” answered Lomaque; “not a soul has entered the room. What sort of

wine did you get?”

“So-so! Good at a pinch, friend--good at a pinch.”

“Ah! you should go to my shop and try a certain cask, filled with a

particular vintage.”

“What shop? Which vintage?”

“I can’t stop to tell you now; but we shall most likely meet again

to-day. I expect to be at the prison this afternoon. Shall I ask for

you? Good! I won’t forget!” With those farewell words he went out, and

never so much as looked back at the prisoners before he closed the door.

Trudaine returned to his sister, fearful lest his face should betray

what had passed during the extraordinary interview between Lomaque and

himself. But, whatever change there might be in his expression, Rose

did not seem to notice it. She was still strangely inattentive to all

outward things. That spirit of resignation, which is the courage of

women in all great emergencies, seemed now to be the one animating

spirit that fed the flame of life within her.

When her brother sat down by her, she only took his hand gently and

said: “Let us stop together like this, Louis, till the time comes. I am

not afraid of it, for I have nothing but you to make me love life, and

you, too, are going to die. Do you remember the time when I used to

grieve that I had never had a child to be some comfort to me? I was

thinking, a moment ago, how terrible it would have been now, if my wish

had been granted. It is a blessing for me, in this great misery, that I

am childless. Let us talk of old days, Louis, as long as we can--not of

my husband; or my marriage--only of the old times, before I was a burden

and a trouble to you.”

CHAPTER V.

The day wore on. By ones and twos and threes at a time, the condemned

prisoners came from the tribunal, and collected in the waiting-room. At

two o’clock all was ready for the calling over of the death-list. It was

read and verified by an officer of the court; and then the jailer took

his prisoners back to St. Lazare.

Evening came. The prisoners’ meal had been served; the duplicate of the

death-list had been read in public at the grate; the cell doors were

all locked. From the day of their arrest, Rose and her brother, partly

through the influence of a bribe, partly through Lomaque’s intercession,

had been confined together in one cell; and together they now awaited

the dread event of the morrow.

To Rose that event was death--death, to the thought of which, at least,

she was now resigned. To Trudaine the fast-nearing future was darkening

hour by hour, with the uncertainty which is worse than death; with the

faint, fearful, unpartaken suspense, which keeps the mind ever on the

rack, and wears away the heart slowly. Through the long unsolaced agony

of that dreadful night, but one relief came to him. The tension of every

nerve, the crushing weight of the one fatal oppression that clung to

every thought, relaxed a little when Rose’s bodily powers began to sink

under her mental exhaustion--when her sad, dying talk of the happy times

that were passed ceased softly, and she laid her head on his shoulder,

and let the angel of slumber take her yet for a little while, even

though she lay already under the shadow of the angel of death.

The morning came, and the hot summer sunrise. What life was left in the

terror-struck city awoke for the day faintly; and still the suspense of

the long night remained unlightened. It was drawing near the hour when

the tumbrils were to come for the victims doomed on the day before.

Trudaine’s ear could detect even the faintest sound in the echoing

prison region outside his cell. Soon, listening near the door, he heard

voices disputing on the other side of it. Suddenly, the bolts were drawn

back, the key turned in the lock, and he found himself standing face

to face with the hunchback and one of the subordinate attendants on the

prisoners.

“Look!” muttered this last man sulkily, “there they are, safe in their

cell, just as I said; but I tell you again they are not down in the

list. What do you mean by bullying me about not chalking their door,

last night, along with the rest? Catch me doing your work for you again,

when you’re too drunk to do it yourself!”

“Hold your tongue, and let me have another look at the list!” returned

the hunchback, turning away from the cell door, and snatching a slip of

paper from the other’s hand. “The devil take me if I can make head

or tail of it!” he exclaimed, scratching his head, after a careful

examination of the list. “I could swear that I read over their names at

the grate yesterday afternoon with my own lips; and yet, look as long as

I may, I certainly can’t find them written down here. Give us a pinch,

friend. Am I awake, or dreaming? drunk or sober this morning?”

“Sober, I hope,” said a quiet voice at his elbow. “I have just looked in

to see how you are after yesterday.”

“How I am, Citizen Lomaque? Petrified with astonishment. You yourself

took charge of that man and woman for me, in the waiting-room, yesterday

morning; and as for myself, I could swear to having read their names at

the grate yesterday afternoon. Yet this morning here are no such things

as these said names to be found in the list! What do you think of that?”

“And what do you think,” interrupted the aggrieved subordinate, “of

his having the impudence to bully me for being careless in chalking the

doors, when he was too drunk to do it himself? too drunk to know his

right hand from his left! If I wasn’t the best-natured man in the world,

I should report him to the head jailer.”

“Quite right of you to excuse him, and quite wrong of him to bully

you,” said Lomaque, persuasively. “Take my advice,” he continued,

confidentially, to the hunchback, “and don’t trust too implicitly to

that slippery memory of yours, after our little drinking bout yesterday.

You could not really have read their names at the grate, you know, or

of course they would be down on the list. As for the waiting-room at

the tribunal, a word in your ear: chief agents of police know strange

secrets. The president of the court condemns and pardons in public; but

there is somebody else, with the power of ten thousand presidents, who

now and then condemns and pardons in private. You can guess who. I

say no more, except that I recommend you to keep your head on your

shoulders, by troubling it about nothing but the list there in your

hand. Stick to that literally, and nobody can blame you. Make a fuss

about mysteries that don’t concern you, and--”

Lomaque stopped, and holding his hand edgewise, let it drop

significantly over the hunchback’s head. That action and the hints which

preceded it seemed to bewilder the little man more than ever. He stared

perplexedly at Lomaque; uttered a word or two of rough apology to his

subordinate, and rolling his misshapen head portentously, walked away

with the death-list crumpled up nervously in his hand.

“I should like to have a sight of them, and see if they really are

the same man and woman whom I looked after yesterday morning in the

waiting-room,” said Lomaque, putting his hand on the cell door, just as

the deputy-jailer was about to close it again.

“Look in, by all means,” said the man. “No doubt you will find that

drunken booby as wrong in what he told you about them as he is about

everything else.”

Lomaque made use of the privilege granted to him immediately. He saw

Trudaine sitting with his sister in the corner of the cell furthest from

the door, evidently for the purpose of preventing her from overhearing

the conversation outside. There was an unsettled look, however, in her

eyes, a slowly-heightening color in her cheeks, which showed her to be

at least vaguely aware that something unusual had been taking place in

the corridor.

Lomaque beckoned to Trudaine to leave her, and whispered to him: “The

prescription has worked well. You are safe for to-day. Break the news

to your sister as gently as you can. Danville--” He stopped and

listened till he satisfied himself, by the sound of the deputy-jailer’s

footsteps, that the man was lounging toward the further end of the

corridor. “Danville,” he resumed, “after having mixed with the people

outside the grate yesterday, and having heard your names read, was

arrested in the evening by secret order from Robespierre, and sent to

the Temple. What charge will be laid to him, or when he will be brought

to trial, it is impossible to say. I only know that he is arrested.

Hush! don’t talk now; my friend outside is coming back. Keep quiet--hope

everything from the chances and changes of public affairs; and comfort

yourself with the thought that you are both safe for to-day.”

“And to-morrow?” whispered Trudaine.

“Don’t think of to-morrow,” returned Lomaque, turning away hurriedly to

the door “Let to-morrow take care of itself.”

PART THIRD.

CHAPTER 1.

On a spring morning, in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-eight, the

public conveyance then running between Chalons-sur-Marne and Paris sat

down one of its outside passengers at the first post-station beyond

Meaux. The traveler, an old man, after looking about him hesitatingly

for a moment or two, betook himself to a little inn opposite the

post-house, known by the sign of the Piebald Horse, and kept by the

Widow Duval--a woman who enjoyed and deserved the reputation of being

the fastest talker and the best maker of _gibelotte_ in the whole

locality.

Although the traveler was carelessly noticed by the village idlers,

and received without ceremony by the Widow Duval, he was by no means so

ordinary and uninteresting a stranger as the rustics of the place were

pleased to consider him. The time had been when this quiet, elderly,

unobtrusive applicant for refreshment at the Piebald House was trusted

with the darkest secrets of the Reign of Terror, and was admitted at

all times and seasons to speak face to face with Maximilian Robespierre

himself. The Widow Duval and the hangers-on in front of the post-house

would have been all astonished indeed if any well-informed personage

from the metropolis had been present to tell them that the modest old

traveler with the shabby little carpet-bag was an ex-chief agent of the

secret police of Paris!

Between three and four years had elapsed since Lomaque had exercised,

for the last time, his official functions under the Reign of Terror.

His shoulders had contracted an extra stoop, and his hair had all fallen

off, except at the sides and back of his head. In some other respects,

however, advancing age seemed to have improved rather than deteriorated

him in personal appearance. His complexion looked healthier, his

expression cheerfuller, his eyes brighter than they had ever been of

late years. He walked, too, with a brisker step than the step of old

times in the police office; and his dress, although it certainly did not

look like the costume of a man in affluent circumstances, was cleaner

and far more nearly worn than ever it had been in the past days of his

political employment at Paris.

He sat down alone in the inn parlor, and occupied the time, while his

hostess had gone to fetch the half-bottle of wine that he ordered, in

examining a dirty old card which he extricated from a mass of papers in

his pocket-book, and which bore, written on it, these lines:

“When the troubles are over, do not forget those who remember you with

eternal gratitude. Stop at the first post-station beyond Meaux, on the

high-road to Paris, and ask at the inn for Citizen Maurice, whenever you

wish to see us or to hear of us again.”

“Pray,” inquired Lomaque, putting the card in his pocket when the Widow

Duval brought in the wine, “can you inform me whether a person named

Maurice lives anywhere in this neighborhood?”

“Can I inform you?” repeated the voluble widow. “Of course I can!

Citizen Maurice, and the citoyenne, his amiable sister--who is not to be

passed over because you don’t mention her, my honest man--lives within

ten minutes’ walk of my house. A charming cottage, in a charming

situation, inhabited by two charming people--so quiet, so retiring,

such excellent pay. I supply them with everything--fowls, eggs, bread,

butter, vegetables (not that they eat much of anything), wine (which

they don’t drink half enough of to do them good); in short, I victual

the dear little hermitage, and love the two amiable recluses with all

my heart. Ah! they have had their troubles, poor people, the sister

especially, though they never talk about them. When they first came to

live in our neighborhood--”

“I beg pardon, citoyenne, but if you would only be so kind as to direct

me--”

“Which is three--no, four--no, three years and a half ago--in short,

just after the time when that Satan of a man, Robespierre, had his head

cut off (and serve him right!), I said to my husband (who was on his

last legs then, poor man!) ‘She’ll die’--meaning the lady. She didn’t

though. My fowls, eggs, bread, butter, vegetables, and wine carried her

through--always in combination with the anxious care of Citizen Maurice.

Yes, yes! let us be tenderly conscientious in giving credit where

credit is due; let us never forget that the citizen Maurice contributed

something to the cure of the interesting invalid, as well as the

victuals and drink from the Piebald Horse. There she is now, the

prettiest little woman in the prettiest little cottage--”

“Where? Will you be so obliging as to tell me where?”

“And in excellent health, except that she is subject now and then to

nervous attacks; having evidently, as I believe, been struck with some

dreadful fright--most likely during that accursed time of the Terror;

for they came from Paris--you don’t drink, honest man! Why don’t you

drink? Very, very pretty in a pale way; figure perhaps too thin--let me

pour it out for you--but an angel of gentleness, and attached in such a

touching way to the citizen Maurice--”

“Citizen hostess, will you, or will you not, tell me where they live?”

“You droll little man, why did you not ask me that before, if you wanted

to know? Finish your wine, and come to the door. There’s your change,

and thank you for your custom, though it isn’t much. Come to the door, I

say, and don’t interrupt me! You’re an old man--can you see forty yards

before you? Yes, you can! Don’t be peevish--that never did anybody any

good yet. Now look back, along the road where I am pointing. You see

a large heap of stones? Good. On the other side of the heap of stones

there is a little path; you can’t see that, but you can remember what I

tell you? Good. You go down the path till you get to a stream; down

the stream till you get to a bridge; down the other bank of the stream

(after crossing the bridge) till you get to an old water-mill--a jewel

of a water-mill, famous for miles round; artists from the four quarters

of the globe are always coming to sketch it. Ah! what, you are getting

peevish again? You won’t wait? Impatient old man, what a life your wife

must lead, if you have got one! Remember the bridge. Ah! your poor wife

and children, I pity them; your daughters especially! Pst! pst! Remember

the bridge--peevish old man, remember the bridge!”

Walking as fast as he could out of hearing of the Widow Duval’s tongue,

Lomaque took the path by the heap of stones which led out of the

high-road, crossed the stream, and arrived at the old water-mill. Close

by it stood a cottage--a rough, simple building, with a strip of garden

in front. Lomaque’s observant eyes marked the graceful arrangement of

the flower-beds, and the delicate whiteness of the curtains that hung

behind the badly-glazed narrow windows. “This must be the place,” he

said to himself, as he knocked at the door with his stick. “I can see

the traces of her hand before I cross the threshold.”

The door was opened. “Pray, does the citizen Maurice--” Lomaque began,

not seeing clearly, for the first moment, in the dark little passage.

Before he could say any more his hand was grasped, his carpet-bag was

taken from him, and a well-known voice cried, “Welcome! a thousand

thousand times welcome, at last! Citizen Maurice is not at home; but

Louis Trudaine takes his place, and is overjoyed to see once more the

best and dearest of his friends!”

“I hardly know you again. How you are altered for the better!” exclaimed

Lomaque, as they entered the parlor of the cottage.

“Remember that you see me after a long freedom from anxiety. Since I

have lived here, I have gone to rest at night, and have not been afraid

of the morning,” replied Trudaine. He went out into the passage while

he spoke, and called at the foot of the one flight of stairs which the

cottage possessed, “Rose! Rose! come down! The friend whom you most

wished to see has arrived at last.”

She answered the summons immediately. The frank, friendly warmth of her

greeting; her resolute determination, after the first inquiries were

over, to help the guest to take off his upper coat with her own hands,

so confused and delighted Lomaque, that he hardly knew which way to

turn, or what to say.

“This is even more trying, in a pleasant way, to a lonely old fellow

like me,” he was about to add, “than the unexpected civility of the hot

cup of coffee years ago”; but remembering what recollections even that

trifling circumstance might recall, he checked himself.

“More trying than what?” asked Rose, leading him to a chair.

“Ah! I forget. I am in my dotage already!” he answered, confusedly.

“I have not got used just yet to the pleasure of seeing your kind

face again.” It was indeed a pleasure to look at that face now, after

Lomaque’s last experience of it. Three years of repose, though they

had not restored to Rose those youthful attractions which she had lost

forever in the days of the Terror, had not passed without leaving kindly

outward traces of their healing progress. Though the girlish roundness

had not returned to her cheeks, or the girlish delicacy of color to her

complexion, her eyes had recovered much of their old softness, and her

expression all of its old winning charm. What was left of latent sadness

in her face, and of significant quietness in her manner, remained gently

and harmlessly--remained rather to show what had been once than what was

now.

When they were all seated, there was, however, something like a

momentary return to the suspense and anxiety of past days in their

faces, as Trudaine, looking earnestly at Lomaque, asked, “Do you bring

any news from Paris?”

“None,” he replied; “but excellent news, instead, from Rouen. I have

heard, accidentally, through the employer whom I have been serving since

we parted, that your old house by the river-side is to let again.”

Rose started from her chair. “Oh, Louis, if we could only live there

once more! My flower-garden?” she continued to Lomaque.

“Cultivated throughout,” he answered, “by the late proprietor.”

“And the laboratory?” added her brother.

“Left standing,” said Lomaque. “Here is a letter with all the

particulars. You may depend upon them, for the writer is the person

charged with the letting of the house.”

Trudaine looked over the letter eagerly.

“The price is not beyond our means,” he said. “After our three years’

economy here, we can afford to give something for a great pleasure.”

“Oh, what a day of happiness it will be when we go home again!” cried

Rose. “Pray write to your friend at once,” she added, addressing

Lomaque, “and say we take the house, before any one else is beforehand

with us!”

He nodded, and folding up the letter mechanically in the old official

form, made a note on it in the old official manner. Trudaine observed

the action, and felt its association with past times of trouble and

terror. His face grew grave again as he said to Lomaque, “And is this

good news really all the news of importance you have to tell us?”

Lomaque hesitated, and fidgeted in his chair. “What other news I have

will bear keeping,” he replied. “There are many questions I should like

to ask first, about your sister and yourself. Do you mind allowing me to

refer for a moment to the time when we last met?”

He addressed this inquiry to Rose, who answered in the negative; but her

voice seemed to falter, even in saying the one word “No.” She turned her

head away when she spoke; and Lomaque noticed that her hands trembled

as she took up some work lying on a table near, and hurriedly occupied

herself with it.

“We speak as little about that time as possible,” said Trudaine, looking

significantly toward his sister; “but we have some questions to ask you

in our turn; so the allusion, for this once, is inevitable. Your sudden

disappearance at the very crisis of that time of danger has not yet

been fully explained to us. The one short note which you left behind you

helped us to guess at what had happened rather than to understand it.”

“I can easily explain it now,” answered Lomaque. “The sudden overthrow

of the Reign of Terror, which was salvation to you, was destruction to

me. The new republican reign was a reign of mercy, except for the tail

of Robespierre, as the phrase ran then. Every man who had been so wicked

or so unfortunate as to be involved, even in the meanest capacity, with

the machinery of the government of Terror, was threatened, and justly,

with the fate of Robespierre. I, among others, fell under this menace

of death. I deserved to die, and should have resigned myself to the

guillotine but for you. From the course taken by public events, I

knew you would be saved; and although your safety was the work of

circumstances, still I had a hand in rendering it possible at the

outset; and a yearning came over me to behold you both free again with

my own eyes--a selfish yearning to see in you a living, breathing, real

result of the one good impulse of my heart, which I could look back

on with satisfaction. This desire gave me a new interest in life. I

resolved to escape death if it were possible. For ten days I lay hidden

in Paris. After that--thanks to certain scraps of useful knowledge which

my experience in the office of secret police had given me--I succeeded

in getting clear of Paris and in making my way safely to Switzerland.

The rest of my story is so short and so soon told that I may as well get

it over at once. The only relation I knew of in the world to apply to

was a cousin of mine (whom I had never seen before), established as a

silk-mercer at Berne. I threw myself on this man’s mercy. He discovered

that I was likely, with my business habits, to be of some use to him,

and he took me into his house. I worked for what he pleased to give me,

traveled about for him in Switzerland, deserved his confidence, and won

it. Till within the last few months I remained with him; and only left

my employment to enter, by my master’s own desire, the house of his

brother, established also as a silk-mercer, at Chalons-sur-Marne. In the

counting-house of this merchant I am corresponding clerk, and am only

able to come and see you now by offering to undertake a special business

mission for my employer at Paris. It is drudgery, at my time of life,

after all I have gone through--but my hard work is innocent work. I

am not obliged to cringe for every crown-piece I put in my pocket--not

bound to denounce, deceive, and dog to death other men, before I can

earn my bread, and scrape together money enough to bury me. I am ending

a bad, base life harmlessly at last. It is a poor thing to do, but it is

something done--and even that contents a man at my age. In short, I am

happier than I used to be, or at least less ashamed when I look people

like you in the face.”

“Hush! hush!” interrupted Rose, laying her hand on his arm. “I cannot

allow you to talk of yourself in that way, even in jest.”

“I was speaking in earnest,” answered Lomaque, quietly; “but I won’t

weary you with any more words about myself. My story is told.”

“All?” asked Trudaine. He looked searchingly, almost suspiciously, at

Lomaque, as he put the question. “All?” he repeated. “Yours is a short

story, indeed, my good friend! Perhaps you have forgotten some of it?”

Again Lomaque fidgeted and hesitated.

“Is it not a little hard on an old man to be always asking questions

of him, and never answering one of his inquiries in return?” he said to

Rose, very gayly as to manner, but rather uneasily as to look.

“He will not speak out till we two are alone,” thought Trudaine. “It is

best to risk nothing, and to humor him.”

“Come, come,” he said aloud; “no grumbling. I admit that it is your turn

to hear our story now; and I will do my best to gratify you. But before

I begin,” he added, turning to his sister, “let me suggest, Rose, that

if you have any household matters to settle upstairs--”

“I know what you mean,” she interrupted, hurriedly, taking up the work

which, during the last few minutes, she had allowed to drop into her

lap; “but I am stronger than you think; I can face the worst of our

recollections composedly. Go on, Louis; pray go on--I am quite fit to

stop and hear you.”

“You know what we suffered in the first days of our suspense, after the

success of your stratagem,” said Trudaine, turning to Lomaque. “I think

it was on the evening after we had seen you for the last time at St.

Lazare that strange, confused rumors of an impending convulsion in Paris

first penetrated within our prison walls. During the next few days the

faces of our jailers were enough to show us that those rumors were true,

and that the Reign of Terror was actually threatened with overthrow at

the hands of the Moderate Party. We had hardly time to hope everything

from this blessed change before the tremendous news of Robespierre’s

attempted suicide, then of his condemnation and execution, reached us.

The confusion produced in the prison was beyond all description. The

accused who had been tried and the accused who had not been tried got

mingled together. From the day of Robespierre’s arrest, no orders came

to the authorities, no death-lists reached the prison. The jailers,

terrified by rumors that the lowest accomplices of the tyrant would be

held responsible, and be condemned with him, made no attempt to maintain

order. Some of them--that hunchback man among the rest--deserted their

duties altogether. The disorganization was so complete, that when the

commissioners from the new Government came to St. Lazare, some of us

were actually half starving from want of the bare necessities of

life. To inquire separately into our cases was found to be impossible.

Sometimes the necessary papers were lost; sometimes what documents

remained were incomprehensible to the new commissioners. They were

obliged, at last, to make short work of it by calling us up before them

in dozens. Tried or not tried, we had all been arrested by the tyrant,

had all been accused of conspiracy against him, and were all ready to

hail the new Government as the salvation of France. In nine cases out

of ten, our best claim to be discharged was derived from these

circumstances. We were trusted by Tallien and the men of the Ninth

Thermidor, because we had been suspected by Robespierre, Couthon, and

St. Just. Arrested informally, we were now liberated informally. When

it came to my sister’s turn and mine, we were not under examination

five minutes. No such thing as a searching question was asked of us; I

believe we might even have given our own names with perfect impunity.

But I had previously instructed Rose that we were to assume our mother’s

maiden name--Maurice. As the citizen and citoyenne Maurice, accordingly,

we passed out of prison--under the same name we have lived ever since

in hiding here. Our past repose has depended, our future happiness will

depend, on our escape from death being kept the profoundest secret among

us three. For one all sufficient reason, which you can easily guess at,

the brother and sister Maurice must still know nothing of Louis Trudaine

and Rose Danville, except that they were two among the hundreds of

victims guillotined during the Reign of Terror.”

He spoke the last sentence with a faint smile, and with the air of a man

trying, in spite of himself, to treat a grave subject lightly. His face

clouded again, however, in a moment, when he looked toward his sister,

as he ceased. Her work had once more dropped on her lap, her face was

turned away so that he could not see it; but he knew by the trembling

of her clasped hands, as they rested on her knee, and by the slight

swelling of the veins on her neck which she could not hide from him,

that her boasted strength of nerve had deserted her. Three years of

repose had not yet enabled her to hear her marriage name uttered, or to

be present when past times of deathly suffering and terror were referred

to, without betraying the shock in her face and manner. Trudaine looked

saddened, but in no way surprised by what he saw. Making a sign to

Lomaque to say nothing, he rose and took up his sister’s hood, which lay

on a window-seat near him.

“Come, Rose,” he said, “the sun is shining, the sweet spring air is

inviting us out. Let us have a quiet stroll along the banks of the

stream. Why should we keep our good friend here cooped up in this narrow

little room, when we have miles and miles of beautiful landscape to

show him on the other side of the threshold? Come, it is high treason to

Queen Nature to remain indoors on such a morning as this.”

Without waiting for her to reply, he put on her hood, drew her arm

through his, and led the way out. Lomaque’s face grew grave as he

followed them.

“I am glad I only showed the bright side of my budget of news in her

presence,” thought he. “She is not well at heart yet. I might have hurt

her, poor thing! I might have hurt her again sadly, if I had not held my

tongue!”

They walked for a little while down the banks of the stream, talking of

indifferent matters; then returned to the cottage. By that time Rose had

recovered her spirits, and could listen with interest and amusement

to Lomaque’s dryly-humorous description of his life as a clerk at

Chalons-sur-Marne. They parted for a little while at the cottage door.

Rose retired to the upstairs room from which she had been summoned by

her brother. Trudaine and Lomaque returned to wander again along the

banks of the stream.

With one accord, and without a word passing between them, they left the

neighborhood of the cottage hurriedly; then stopped on a sudden, and

attentively looked each other in the face--looked in silence for an

instant. Trudaine spoke first.

“I thank you for having spared her,” he began, abruptly. “She is not

strong enough yet to bear hearing of a new misfortune, unless I break

the tidings to her first.”

“You suspect me, then, of bringing bad news?” said Lomaque.

“I know you do. When I saw your first look at her, after we were all

seated in the cottage parlor, I knew it. Speak without fear, without

caution, without one useless word of preface. After three years of

repose, if it pleases God to afflict us again, I can bear the trial

calmly; and, if need be, can strengthen her to bear it calmly, too. I

say again, Lomaque, speak at once, and speak out! I know your news is

bad, for I know beforehand that it is news of Danville.”

“You are right; my bad news is news of him.”

“He has discovered the secret of our escape from the guillotine?”

“No--he has not a suspicion of it. He believes--as his mother, as every

one does--that you were both executed the day after the Revolutionary

Tribunal sentenced you to death.”

“Lomaque, you speak positively of that belief of his--but you cannot be

certain of it.”

“I can, on the most indisputable, the most startling evidence--on the

authority of Danville’s own act. You have asked me to speak out--”

“I ask you again--I insist on it! Your news, Lomaque--your news, without

another word of preface!”

“You shall have it without another word of preface. Danville is on the

point of being married.”

As the answer was given they both stopped by the bank of the stream, and

again looked each other in the face. There was a minute of dead silence

between them. During that minute, the water bubbling by happily over its

bed of pebbles seemed strangely loud, the singing of birds in a little

wood by the stream-side strangely near and shrill, in both their ears.

The light breeze, for all its midday warmth, touched their cheeks

coldly; and the spring sunlight pouring on their faces felt as if it

were glimmering on them through winter clouds.

“Let us walk on,” said Trudaine, in a low voice. “I was prepared for bad

news, yet not for that. Are you certain of what you have just told me?”

“As certain as that the stream here is flowing by our side. Hear how

I made the discovery, and you will doubt no longer. Before last week

I knew nothing of Danville, except that his arrest on suspicion by

Robespierre’s order was, as events turned out, the saving of his life.

He was imprisoned, as I told you, on the evening after he had heard

your names read from the death-list at the prison grate. He remained

in confinement at the Temple, unnoticed in the political confusion

out-of-doors, just as you remained unnoticed at St. Lazare, and he

profited precisely in the same manner that you profited by the timely

insurrection which overthrew the Reign of Terror. I knew this, and

I knew that he walked out of prison in the character of a persecuted

victim of Robespierre’s--and, for better than three years past, I knew

no more. Now listen. Last week I happened to be waiting in the shop

of my employer, Citizen Clairfait, for some papers to take into the

counting-house, when an old man enters with a sealed parcel, which he

hands to one of the shopmen, saying:

“‘Give that to Citizen Clairfait.’

“‘Any name?’ says the shopman.

“‘The name is of no consequence,’ answers the old man; ‘but if you

please, you can give mine. Say the parcel came from Citizen Dubois;’ and

then he goes out. His name, in connection with his elderly look, strikes

me directly.

“‘Does that old fellow live at Chalons?’ I ask.

“‘No,’ says the shopman. ‘He is here in attendance on a customer of

ours--an old ex-aristocrat named Danville. She is on a visit in our

town.’

“I leave you to imagine how that reply startles and amazes me. The

shopman can answer none of the other questions I put to him; but the

next day I am asked to dinner by my employer (who, for his brother’s

sake, shows me the utmost civility). On entering the room, I find his

daughter just putting away a lavender-colored silk scarf, on which she

has been embroidering in silver what looks to me very like a crest and

coat-of-arms.

“‘I don’t mind your seeing what I am about, Citizen Lomaque,’ says she;

‘for I know my father can trust you. That scarf is sent back to us by

the purchaser, an ex-emigrant lady of the old aristocratic school, to

have her family coat-of-arms embroidered on it.’

“‘Rather a dangerous commission even in these mercifully democratic

times, is it not?’ says I.

“‘The old lady, you must know,’ says she, ‘is as proud as Lucifer;

and having got back safely to France in these days of moderate

republicanism, thinks she may now indulge with impunity in all her

old-fashioned notions. She has been an excellent customer of ours, so

my father thought it best to humor her, without, however, trusting her

commission to any of the workroom women to execute. We are not living

under the Reign of Terror now, certainly; still there is nothing like

being on the safe side.’

“‘Nothing,’ I answer. ‘Pray what is this ex-emigrant’s name?’

“‘Danville,’ replies the citoyenne Clairfait. ‘She is going to appear

in that fine scarf at her son’s marriage.’

“‘Marriage!’ I exclaim, perfectly thunderstruck.

“‘Yes,’ says she. ‘What is there so amazing in that? By all accounts,

the son, poor man, deserves to make a lucky marriage this time. His

first wife was taken away from him in the Reign of Terror by the

guillotine.’

“‘Who is he going to marry?’ I inquire, still breathless.

“‘The daughter of General Berthelin--an ex-aristocrat by family, like

the old lady; but by principle as good a republican as ever lived--a

hard-drinking, loud-swearing, big-whiskered old soldier, who snaps his

fingers at his ancestors and says we are all descended from Adam, the

first genuine sans-culotte in the world.’

“In this way the citoyenne Clairfait gossips on all dinner-time, but

says nothing more of any importance. I, with my old police-office

habits, set to the next day, and try to make some discoveries for

myself. The sum of what I find out is this: Danville’s mother is staying

with General Berthelin’s sister and daughter at Chalons, and Danville

himself is expected to arrive every day to escort them all three to

Paris, where the marriage-contract is to be signed at the general’s

house. Discovering this, and seeing that prompt action is now of

the most vital importance, I undertake, as I told you, my employer’s

commission for Paris, depart with all speed, and stop here on my way.

Wait! I have not done yet. All the haste I can make is not haste enough

to give me a good start of the wedding party. On my road here, the

diligence by which I travel is passed by a carriage, posting along

at full speed. I cannot see inside that carriage; but I look at the

box-seat, and recognize on it the old man Dubois. He whirls by in a

cloud of dust, but I am certain of him; and I say to myself what I now

say again to you, no time is to be lost!”

“No time _shall_ be lost,” answers, Trudaine, firmly. “Three years have

passed,” he continued, in a lower voice, speaking to himself rather than

to Lomaque; “three years since the day when I led my sister out of the

gates of the prison--three years since I said in my heart, ‘I will be

patient, and will not seek to avenge myself. Our wrongs cry from earth

to heaven; from man who inflicts to God who redresses. When the day of

reckoning comes, let it be the day of his vengeance, not of mine.’ In my

heart I said those words--I have been true to them--I have waited. The

day has come, and the duty it demands of me shall be fulfilled.”

There was a moment’s silence before Lomaque spoke again. “Your sister?”

he began, hesitatingly.

“It is there only that my purpose falters,” said the other, earnestly.

“If it were but possible to spare her all knowledge of this last trial,

and to leave the accomplishment of the terrible task to me alone?”

“I think it is possible,” interposed Lomaque. “Listen to what I advise.

We must depart for Paris by the diligence to-morrow morning, and we must

take your sister with us--to-morrow will be time enough; people don’t

sign marriage-contracts on the evening after a long day’s journey. We

must go then, and we must take your sister. Leave the care of her in

Paris, and the responsibility of keeping her in ignorance of what you

are doing, to me. Go to this General Berthelin’s house at a time when

you know Danville is there (we can get that knowledge through the

servants); confront him without a moment’s previous warning; confront

him as a man risen from the dead; confront him before every soul in the

room though the room should be full of people--and leave the rest to

the self-betrayal of a panic-stricken man. Say but three words, and your

duty will be done; you may return to your sister, and may depart with

her in safety to your old retreat at Rouen, or where else you please, on

the very day when you have put it out of her infamous husband’s power to

add another to the list of his crimes.”

“You forget the suddenness of the journey to Paris,” said Trudaine.

“How are we to account for it without the risk of awakening my sister’s

suspicions?”

“Trust that to me,” answered Lomaque. “Let us return to the cottage at

once. No, not you,” he added, suddenly, as they turned to retrace their

steps. “There is that in your face which would betray us. Leave me to

go back alone--I will say that you have gone to give some orders at

the inn. Let us separate immediately. You will recover your

self-possession--you will get to look yourself again sooner--if you are

left alone. I know enough of you to know that. We will not waste another

minute in explanations; even minutes are precious to us on such a day

as this. By the time you are fit to meet your sister again, I shall have

had time to say all I wish to her, and shall be waiting at the cottage

to tell you the result.”

He looked at Trudaine, and his eyes seemed to brighten again with

something of the old energy and sudden decision of the days when he was

a man in office under the Reign of Terror. “Leave it to me,” he said;

and, waving his hand, turned away quickly in the direction of the

cottage.

Nearly an hour passed before Trudaine ventured to follow him. When he at

length entered the path which led to the garden gate, he saw his sister

waiting at the cottage door. Her face looked unusually animated; and she

ran forward a step or two to meet him.

“Oh, Louis!” she said, “I have a confession to make, and I must beg you

to hear it patiently to the end. You must know that our good Lomaque,

though he came in tired from his walk, occupied himself the first thing,

at my request, in writing the letter which is to secure to us our dear

old home by the banks of the Seine. When he had done, he looked at me,

and said, ‘I should like to be present at your happy return to the house

where I first saw you.’ ‘Oh, come, come with us!’ I said directly. ‘I am

not an independent man,’ he answered; ‘I have a margin of time allowed

me at Paris, certainly, but it is not long--if I were only my own

master--’ and then he stopped. Louis, I remembered all we owed to him;

I remembered that there was no sacrifice we ought not to be too glad to

make for his sake; I felt the kindness of the wish he had expressed; and

perhaps I was a little influenced by my own impatience to see once more

my flower-garden and the rooms where we used to be so happy. So I said

to him, ‘I am sure Louis will agree with me that our time is yours, and

that we shall be only too glad to advance our departure so as to make

traveling leisure enough for you to come with us to Rouen. We should be

worse than ungrateful--’ He stopped me. ‘You have always been good to

me,’ he said. ‘I must not impose on your kindness now. No, no, you have

formalities to settle before you can leave this place.’ ‘Not one,’ I

said--for we have not, as you know, Louis? ‘Why, here is your furniture

to begin with,’ he said. ‘A few chairs and tables hired from the inn,’ I

answered; ‘we have only to give the landlady our key, to leave a letter

for the owner of the cottage, and then--’ He laughed. ‘Why, to hear you

talk, one would think you were as ready to travel as I am!’ ‘So we are,’

I said, ‘quite as ready, living in the way we do here.’ He shook his

head; but you will not shake yours, Louis, I am sure, now you have heard

all my long story? You can’t blame me can you?”

Before Trudaine could answer, Lomaque looked out of the cottage window.

“I have just been telling my brother every thing,” said Rose, turning

round toward him.

“And what does he say?” asked Lomaque.

“He says what I say,” replied Rose, answering for her brother; “that our

time is your time--the time of our best and dearest friend.”

“Shall it be done, then?” asked Lomaque, with a meaning look at

Trudaine.

Rose glanced anxiously at her brother; his face was much graver than she

had expected to see it, but his answer relieved her from all suspense.

“You are quite right, love, to speak as you did,” he said, gently. Then,

turning to Lomaque, he added, in a firmer voice, “It shall be done!”

CHAPTER II.

Two days after the traveling-carriage described by Lomaque had

passed the diligence on the road to Paris, Madame Danville sat in the

drawing-room of an apartment in the Rue de Grenelle, handsomely dressed

for driving out. After consulting a large gold watch that hung at

her side, and finding that it wanted a quarter of an hour only to

two o’clock, she rang her hand-bell, and said to the maid-servant who

answered the summons, “I have five minutes to spare. Send Dubois here

with my chocolate.”

The old man made his appearance with great alacrity. After handing the

cup of chocolate to his mistress, he ventured to use the privilege of

talking, to which his long and faithful services entitled him, and paid

the old lady a compliment. “I am rejoiced to see madame looking so young

and in such good spirits this morning,” he said, with a low bow and a

mild, deferential smile.

“I think I have some reason for being in good spirits on the day when my

son’s marriage-contract is to be signed,” said Madame Danville, with a

gracious nod of the head. “Ha, Dubois, I shall live yet to see him with

a patent of nobility in his hand. The mob has done its worst; the end

of this infamous revolution is not far off; our order will have its turn

again soon, and then who will have such a chance at court as my son? He

is noble already through his mother, he will then be noble also

through his wife. Yes, yes; let that coarse-mannered, passionate, old

soldier-father of hers be as unnaturally republican as he pleases, he

has inherited a name which will help my son to a peerage! The Vicomte

D’Anville (D with an apostrophe, Dubois, you understand?), the Vicomte

D’Anville--how prettily it sounds!”

“Charmingly, madame--charmingly. Ah! this second marriage of my young

master’s begins under much better auspices than the first.”

The remark was an unfortunate one. Madame Danville frowned portentously,

and rose in a great hurry from her chair.

“Are your wits failing you, you old fool?” she exclaimed, indignantly.

“What do you mean by referring to such a subject as that, on this day,

of all others? You are always harping on those two wretched people who

were guillotined, as if you thought I could have saved their lives. Were

you not present when my son and I met, after the time of the Terror? Did

you not hear my first words to him, when he told me of the catastrophe?

Were they not ‘Charles, I love you; but if I thought you had let those

two unfortunates, who risked themselves to save me, die without risking

your life in return to save them, I would break my heart rather than

ever look at you or speak to you again!’ Did I not say that? And did he

not answer, ‘Mother, my life was risked for them. I proved my devotion

by exposing myself to arrest--I was imprisoned for my exertions--and

then I could do no more!’ Did you not stand by and hear him give that

answer, overwhelmed while he spoke by generous emotion? Do you not know

that he really was imprisoned in the Temple? Do you dare to think that

we are to blame after that? I owe you much, Dubois, but if you are to

take liberties with me--”

“Oh, madame! I beg pardon a thousand times. I was thoughtless--only

thoughtless--”

“Silence! Is my coach at the door? Very well. Get ready to accompany me.

Your master will not have time to return here. He will meet me, for the

signing of the contract, at General Berthelin’s house at two precisely.

Stop! Are there many people in the street? I can’t be stared at by the

mob as I go to my carriage.”

Dubois hobbled penitently to the window and looked out, while his

mistress walked to the door.

“The street is almost empty, madame,” he said. “Only a man with a woman

on his arm, stopping and admiring your carriage. They seem like decent

people, as well as I can tell without my spectacles. Not mob, I should

say, madame; certainly not mob!”

“Very well. Attend me downstairs; and bring some loose silver with you,

in case those two decent people should be fit objects for charity.

No orders for the coachman, except that he is to go straight to the

general’s house.”

The party assembled at General Berthelin’s to witness the signature

of the marriage-contract, comprised, besides the persons immediately

interested in the ceremony of the day, some young ladies, friends of the

bride, and a few officers, who had been comrades of her father’s in past

years. The guests were distributed, rather unequally, in two handsome

apartments opening into each other--one called in the house the

drawing-room, and the other the library. In the drawing-room were

assembled the notary, with the contract ready, the bride, the young

ladies, and the majority of General Berthelin’s friends. In the library,

the remainder of the military guests were amusing themselves at a

billiard-table until the signing of the contract should take place,

while Danville and his future father-in-law walked up and down the room

together, the first listening absently, the last talking with all

his accustomed energy, and with more than his accustomed allowance

of barrack-room expletives. The general had taken it into his head to

explain some of the clauses in the marriage-contract to the bridegroom,

who, though far better acquainted with their full scope and meaning than

his father-in-law, was obliged to listen for civility’s sake. While the

old soldier was still in the midst of his long and confused harangue, a

clock struck on the library mantel-piece.

“Two o’clock!” exclaimed Danville, glad of any pretext for interrupting

the talk about the contract. “Two o’clock; and my mother not here yet!

What can be delaying her?”

“Nothing,” cried the general. “When did you ever know a woman punctual,

my lad? If we wait for your mother--and she’s such a rabid aristocrat

that she would never forgive us for not waiting--we shan’t sign the

contract yet this half-hour. Never mind! let’s go on with what we were

talking about. Where the devil was I when that cursed clock struck and

interrupted us? Now then, Black Eyes, what’s the matter?”

This last question was addressed to Mademoiselle Berthelin, who at that

moment hastily entered the library from the drawing-room. She was a tall

and rather masculine-looking girl, with superb black eyes, dark hair

growing low on her forehead, and something of her father’s decision and

bluntness in her manner of speaking.

“A stranger in the other room, papa, who wants to see you. I suppose the

servants showed him upstairs, thinking he was one of the guests. Ought I

to have had him shown down again?”

“A nice question! How should I know? Wait till I have seen him, miss,

and then I’ll tell you!” With these words the general turned on his

heel, and went into the drawing-room.

His daughter would have followed him, but Danville caught her by the

hand.

“Can you be hard-hearted enough to leave me here alone?” he asked.

“What is to become of all my bosom friends in the next room, you selfish

man, if I stop here with you?” retorted mademoiselle, struggling to free

herself.

“Call them in here,” said Danville gayly, making himself master of her

other hand.

She laughed, and drew him away toward the drawing-room.

“Come,” she cried, “and let all the ladies see what a tyrant I am

going to marry. Come, and show them what an obstinate, unreasonable,

wearisome--”

Her voice suddenly failed her; she shuddered, and turned faint.

Danville’s hand had in one instant grown cold as death in hers; the

momentary touch of his fingers, as she felt their grasp loosen, struck

some mysterious chill through her from head to foot. She glanced

round at him affrightedly, and saw his eyes looking straight into the

drawing-room. They were fixed in a strange, unwavering, awful stare,

while, from the rest of his face, all expression, all character, all

recognizable play and movement of feature, had utterly gone. It was

a breathless, lifeless mask--a white blank. With a cry of terror, she

looked where he seemed to be looking; and could see nothing but the

stranger standing in the middle of the drawing-room. Before she could

ask a question--before she could speak even a single word--her father

came to her, caught Danville by the arm, and pushed her roughly back

into the library.

“Go there, and take the women with you,” he said, in a quick, fierce

whisper. “Into the library!” he continued, turning to the ladies,

and raising his voice. “Into the library, all of you, along with my

daughter.”

The women, terrified by his manner, obeyed him in the greatest

confusion. As they hurried past him into the library, he signed to the

notary to follow; and then closed the door of communication between the

two rooms.

“Stop where you are!” he cried, addressing the old officers, who had

risen from their chairs. “Stay, I insist on it! Whatever happens,

Jacques Berthelin has done nothing to be ashamed of in the presence of

his old friends and companions. You have seen the beginning, now stay

and see the end.”

While he spoke, he walked into the middle of the room. He had never

quitted his hold of Danville’s arm; step by step they advanced together

to the place where Trudaine was standing.

“You have come into my house, and asked me for my daughter in

marriage--and I have given her to you,” said the general, addressing

Danville, quietly. “You told me that your first wife and her brother

were guillotined three years ago in the time of the Terror--and I

believed you. Now look at that man--look him straight in the face. He

has announced himself to me as the brother of your wife, and he asserts

that his sister is alive at this moment. One of you two has deceived me.

Which is it?”

Danville tried to speak, but no sound passed his lips; tried to wrench

his arm from the grasp that was on it, but could not stir the old

soldier’s steady hand.

“Are you afraid? are you a coward? Can’t you look him in the face?”

asked the general, tightening his hold sternly.

“Stop! stop!” interposed one of the old officers, coming forward. “Give

him time. This may be a case of strange accidental resemblance, which

would be enough, under the circumstances, to discompose any man. You

will excuse me, citizen,” he continued, turning to Trudaine; “but you

are a stranger. You have given us no proof of your identity.”

“There is the proof,” said Trudaine, pointing to Danville’s face.

“Yes, yes,” pursued the other; “he looks pale and startled enough,

certainly. But I say again, let us not be too hasty; there are strange

cases on record of accidental resemblances, and this may be one of

them!”

As he repeated those words, Danville looked at him with a faint,

cringing gratitude, stealing slowly over the blank terror of his face.

He bowed his head, murmured something, and gesticulated confusedly with

the hand that he was free to use.

“Look!” cried the old officer; “look, Berthelin; he denies the man’s

identity.”

“Do you hear that?” said the general, appealing to Trudaine. “Have you

proofs to confute him? If you have, produce them instantly.”

Before the answer could be given the door leading into the drawing-room

from the staircase was violently flung open, and Madame Danville--her

hair in disorder, her face in its colorless terror looking like the very

counterpart of her son’s--appeared on the threshold, with the old man

Dubois and a group of amazed and startled servants behind her.

“For God’s sake, don’t sign! for God’s sake, come away!” she cried.

“I have seen your wife--in the spirit, or in the flesh, I know not

which--but I have seen her. Charles! Charles! as true as Heaven is above

us, I have seen your wife!”

“You have seen her in the flesh, living and breathing as you see her

brother yonder,” said a firm, quiet voice, from among the servants on

the landing outside.

“Let that man enter, whoever he is!” cried the general.

Lomaque passed Madame Danville on the threshold. She trembled as he

brushed by her; then, supporting herself by the wall, followed him a

few paces into the room. She looked first at her son--after that, at

Trudaine--after that back again at her son. Something in her presence

silenced every one. There fell a sudden stillness over all the

assembly--a stillness so deep that the eager, frightened whispering, and

sharp rustling of dresses among the women in the library, became audible

from the other side of the closed door.

“Charles,” she said, slowly advancing; “why do you look--” She stopped,

and fixed her eyes again on her son more earnestly than before; then

turned them suddenly on Trudaine. “You are looking at my son, sir,” she

said, “and I see contempt in your face. By what right do you insult a

man whose grateful sense of his mother’s obligations to you made him

risk his life for the saving of yours and your sister’s? By what

right have you kept the escape of my son’s wife from death by the

guillotine--an escape which, for all I know to the contrary, his

generous exertions were instrumental in effecting--a secret from my son?

By what right, I demand to know, has your treacherous secrecy placed us

in such a position as we now stand in before the master of this house?”

An expression of sorrow and pity passed over Trudaine’s face while

she spoke. He retired a few steps, and gave her no answer. The general

looked at him with eager curiosity, and, dropping his hold of Danville’s

arm, seemed about to speak; but Lomaque stepped forward at the same

time, and held up his hand to claim attention.

“I think I shall express the wishes of Citizen Trudaine,” he said,

addressing Madame Danville, “if I recommend this lady not to press for

too public an answer to her questions.”

“Pray who are you, sir, who take it on yourself to advise me?” she

retorted, haughtily. “I have nothing to say to you, except that I repeat

those questions, and that I insist on their being answered.”

“Who is this man?” asked the general, addressing Trudaine, and pointing

to Lomaque.

“A man unworthy of credit,” cried Danville, speaking audibly for the

first time, and darting a look of deadly hatred at Lomaque. “An agent of

police under Robespierre.”

“And in that capacity capable of answering questions which refer to the

transactions of Robespierre’s tribunals,” remarked the ex-chief agent,

with his old official self-possession.

“True!” exclaimed the general; “the man is right--let him be heard.”

“There is no help for it,” said Lomaque, looking at Trudaine; “leave it

to me--it is fittest that I should speak. I was present,” he continued,

in a louder voice, “at the trial of Citizen Trudaine and his sister.

They were brought to the bar through the denunciation of Citizen

Danville. Till the confession of the male prisoner exposed the fact,

I can answer for Danville’s not being aware of the real nature of the

offenses charged against Trudaine and his sister. When it became known

that they had been secretly helping this lady to escape from France, and

when Danville’s own head was consequently in danger, I myself heard

him save it by a false assertion that he had been aware of Trudaine’s

conspiracy from the first--”

“Do you mean to say,” interrupted the general, “that he proclaimed

himself in open court as having knowingly denounced the man who was on

trial for saving his mother?”

“I do,” answered Lomaque. (A murmur of horror and indignation rose from

all the strangers present at that reply.) “The reports of the Tribunal

are existing to prove the truth of what I say,” he went on. “As to the

escape of Citizen Trudaine and the wife of Danville from the guillotine,

it was the work of political circumstances, which there are persons

living to speak to if necessary; and of a little stratagem of mine,

which need not be referred to now. And, last, with reference to the

concealment which followed the escape, I beg to inform you that it was

abandoned the moment we knew of what was going on here; and that it was

only persevered in up to this time, as a natural measure of precaution

on the part of Citizen Trudaine. From a similar motive we now abstain

from exposing his sister to the shock and the peril of being present

here. What man with an atom of feeling would risk letting her even look

again on such a husband as that?”

He glanced round him, and pointed to Danville, as he put the question.

Before a word could be spoken by any one else in the room, a low wailing

cry of “My mistress! my dear, dear mistress!” directed all eyes first on

the old man Dubois, then on Madame Danville.

She had been leaning against the wall, before Lomaque began to speak;

but she stood perfectly upright now. She neither spoke nor moved. Not

one of the light gaudy ribbons flaunting on her disordered head-dress

so much as trembled. The old servant Dubois was crouched on his knees

at her side, kissing her cold right hand, chafing it in his, reiterating

his faint, mournful cry, “Oh! my mistress! my dear, dear mistress!” but

she did not appear to know that he was near her. It was only when her

son advanced a step or two toward her that she seemed to awaken suddenly

from that death-trance of mental pain. Then she slowly raised the hand

that was free, and waved him back from her. He stopped in obedience to

the gesture, and endeavored to speak. She waved her hand again, and the

deathly stillness of her face began to grow troubled. Her lips moved a

little--she spoke.

“Oblige me, sir, for the last time, by keeping silence. You and I have

henceforth nothing to say to each other. I am the daughter of a race of

nobles, and the widow of a man of honor. You are a traitor and a false

witness--a thing from which all true men and true women turn with

contempt. I renounce you! Publicly, in the presence of these gentlemen,

I say it--I have no son.”

She turned her back on him; and, bowing to the other persons in the

room with the old formal courtesy of by-gone times, walked slowly and

steadily to the door. Stopping there, she looked back; and then the

artificial courage of the moment failed her. With a faint, suppressed

cry she clutched at the hand of the old servant, who still kept

faithfully at her side; he caught her in his arms, and her head sank on

his shoulder.

“Help him!” cried the general to the servants near the door. “Help him

to take her into the next room!”

The old man looked up suspiciously from his mistress to the persons who

were assisting him to support her. With a strange, sudden jealousy he

shook his hand at them. “Home,” he cried; “she shall go home, and I will

take care of her. Away! you there--nobody holds her head but Dubois.

Downstairs! downstairs to her carriage! She has nobody but me now, and I

say that she shall be taken home.”

As the door closed, General Berthelin approached Trudaine, who had

stood silent and apart, from the time when Lomaque first appeared in the

drawing-room.

“I wish to ask your pardon,” said the old soldier, “because I have

wronged you by a moment of unjust suspicion. For my daughter’s sake,

I bitterly regret that we did not see each other long ago; but I thank

you, nevertheless, for coming here, even at the eleventh hour.”

While he was speaking, one of his friends came up, and touching him on

the shoulder, said: “Berthelin, is that scoundrel to be allowed to go?”

The general turned on his heel directly, and beckoned contemptuously to

Danville to follow him to the door. When they were well out of ear-shot,

he spoke these words:

“You have been exposed as a villain by your brother-in-law, and

renounced as a liar by your mother. They have done their duty by you,

and now it only remains for me to do mine. When a man enters the house

of another under false pretenses, and compromises the reputation of

his daughter, we old army men have a very expeditious way of making him

answer for it. It is just three o’clock now; at five you will find me

and one of my friends--”

He stopped, and looked round cautiously--then whispered the rest in

Danville’s ear--threw open the door, and pointed downstairs.

“Our work here is done,” said Lomaque, laying his hand on Trudaine’s

arm. “Let us give Danville time to get clear of the house, and then

leave it too.”

“My sister! where is she?” asked Trudaine, eagerly.

“Make your mind easy about her. I will tell you more when we get out.”

“You will excuse me, I know,” said General Berthelin, speaking to all

the persons present, with his hand on the library door, “if I leave you.

I have bad news to break to my daughter, and private business after that

to settle with a friend.”

He saluted the company, with his usual bluff nod of the head, and

entered the library. A few minutes afterward, Trudaine and Lomaque left

the house.

“You will find your sister waiting for you in our apartment at the

hotel,” said the latter. “She knows nothing, absolutely nothing, of what

has passed.”

“But the recognition?” asked Trudaine, amazedly. “His mother saw her.

Surely she--”

“I managed it so that she should be seen, and should not see. Our former

experience of Danville suggested to me the propriety of making the

experiment, and my old police-office practice came in useful in carrying

it out. I saw the carriage standing at the door, and waited till the old

lady came down. I walked your sister away as she got in, and walked her

back again past the window as the carriage drove off. A moment did it,

and it turned out as useful as I thought it would. Enough of that! Go

back now to your sister. Keep indoors till the night mail starts for

Rouen. I have had two places taken for you on speculation. Go! resume

possession of your house, and leave me here to transact the business

which my employer has intrusted to me, and to see how matters end with

Danville and his mother. I will make time somehow to come and bid you

good-by at Rouen, though it should be only for a single day. Bah! no

thanks. Give us your hand. I was ashamed to take it eight years ago--I

can give it a hearty shake now! There is your way; here is mine. Leave

me to my business in silks and satins, and go you back to your sister,

and help her to pack up for the night mail.”

CHAPTER III.

Three more days have passed. It is evening. Rose, Trudaine and Lomaque

are seated together on the bench that overlooks the windings of

the Seine. The old familiar scene spreads before them, beautiful as

ever--unchanged, as if it was but yesterday since they had all looked on

it for the last time.

They talk together seriously and in low voices. The same recollections

fill their hearts--recollections which they refrain from acknowledging,

but the influence of which each knows by instinct that the other

partakes. Sometimes one leads the conversation, sometimes another; but

whoever speaks, the topic chosen is always, as if by common consent, a

topic connected with the future.

The evening darkens in, and Rose is the first to rise from the bench. A

secret look of intelligence passes between her and her brother, and then

she speaks to Lomaque.

“Will you follow me into the house,” she asks, “with as little delay as

possible? I have something that I very much wish to show you.”

Her brother waits till she is out of hearing, then inquires anxiously

what has happened at Paris since the night when he and Rose left it.

“Your sister is free,” Lomaque answers.

“The duel took place, then?”

“The same day. They were both to fire together. The second of his

adversary asserts that he was paralyzed with terror; his own second

declares that he was resolved, however he might have lived, to confront

death courageously by offering his life at the first fire to the man

whom he had injured. Which account is true, I know not. It is only

certain that he did not discharge his pistol, that he fell by his

antagonist’s first bullet, and that he never spoke afterward.”

“And his mother?”

“It is hard to gain information. Her doors are closed; the old servant

guards her with jealous care. A medical man is in constant attendance,

and there are reports in the house that the illness from which she is

suffering affects her mind more than her body. I could ascertain no

more.”

After that answer they both remain silent for a little while, then rise

from the bench and walk toward the house.

“Have you thought yet about preparing your sister to hear of all that

has happened?” Lomaque asks, as he sees the lamp-light glimmering in the

parlor window.

“I shall wait to prepare her till we are settled again here--till

the first holiday pleasure of our return has worn off, and the quiet

realities of our every-day life of old have resumed their way,” answers

Trudaine.

They enter the house. Rose beckons to Lomaque to sit down near her, and

places pen and ink and an open letter before him.

“I have a last favor to ask of you,” she says, smiling.

“I hope it will not take long to grant,” he rejoins; “for I have only

to-night to be with you. To-morrow morning, before you are up, I must be

on my way back to Chalons.”

“Will you sign that letter?” she continues, still smiling, “and then

give it to me to send to the post? It was dictated by Louis, and written

by me, and it will be quite complete, if you will put your name at the

end of it.”

“I suppose I may read it?”

She nods, and Lomaque reads these lines:

“CITIZEN--I beg respectfully to apprise you that the commission you

intrusted to me at Paris has been performed.

“I have also to beg that you will accept my resignation of the place

I hold in your counting-house. The kindness shown me by you and your

brother before you, emboldens me to hope that you will learn with

pleasure the motive of my withdrawal. Two friends of mine, who consider

that they are under some obligations to me, are anxious that I should

pass the rest of my days in the quiet and protection of their home.

Troubles of former years have knit us together as closely as if we were

all three members of one family. I need the repose of a happy fireside

as much as any man, after the life I have led; and my friends assure

me so earnestly that their whole hearts are set on establishing the old

man’s easy-chair by their hearth, that I cannot summon resolution enough

to turn my back on them and their offer.

“Accept, then, I beg of you, the resignation which this letter contains,

and with it the assurance of my sincere gratitude and respect.

“To Citizen Clairfait, Silk-mercer,

“Chalons-sur-Marne.”

After reading these lines, Lomaque turned round to Trudaine and

attempted to speak; but the words would not come at command. He looked

up at Rose, and tried to smile; but his lip only trembled. She dipped

the pen in the ink, and placed it in his hand. He bent his head down

quickly over the paper, so that she could not see his face; but still

he did not write his name. She put her hand caressingly on his shoulder,

and whispered to him:

“Come, come, humor ‘Sister Rose.’ She must have her own way now she is

back again at home.”

He did not answer--his head sank lower--he hesitated for an

instant--then signed his name in faint, trembling characters, at the end

of the letter.

She drew it away from him gently. A few tear-drops lay on the paper. As

she dried them with her handkerchief she looked at her brother.

“They are the last he shall ever shed, Louis; you and I will take care

of that!”

EPILOGUE TO THE THIRD STORY.

I have now related all that is eventful in the history of SISTER ROSE.

To the last the three friends dwelt together happily in the cottage

on the river bank. Mademoiselle Clairfait was fortunate enough to know

them, before Death entered the little household and took away, in the

fullness of time, the eldest of its members. She describes Lomaque,

in her quaint foreign English, as “a brave, big heart”; generous,

affectionate, and admirably free from the small obstinacies and

prejudices of old age, except on one point: he could never be induced

to take his coffee, of an evening, from any other hand than the hand of

Sister Rose.

I linger over these final particulars with a strange unwillingness to

separate myself from them, and give my mind to other thoughts. Perhaps

the persons and events that have occupied my attention for so many

nights past have some peculiar interest for me that I cannot analyze.

Perhaps the labor and time which this story has cost me have especially

endeared it to my sympathies, now that I have succeeded in completing

it. However that may be, I have need of some resolution to part at last

with Sister Rose, and return, in the interests of my next and Fourth

Story, to English ground.

I have experienced so much difficulty, let me add, in deciding on the

choice of a new narrative out of my collection, that my wife has lost

all patience, and has undertaken, on her own responsibility, to relieve

me of my unreasonable perplexities. By her advice--given, as usual,

without a moment’s hesitation--I cannot do better than tell the story of

THE LADY OF GLENWITH GRANGE.

PROLOGUE TO THE FOURTH STORY.

My practice in the art of portrait-painting, if it has done nothing

else, has at least fitted me to turn my talents (such as they are) to

a great variety of uses. I have not only taken the likenesses of men,

women, and children, but have also extended the range of my brush, under

stress of circumstances, to horses, dogs, houses, and in one case even

to a bull--the terror and glory of his parish, and the most truculent

sitter I ever had. The beast was appropriately named “Thunder and

Lightning,” and was the property of a gentleman-farmer named Garthwaite,

a distant connection of my wife’s family.

How it was that I escaped being gored to death before I had finished my

picture is more than I can explain to this day. “Thunder and Lightning”

resented the very sight of me and my color-box, as if he viewed the

taking of his likeness in the light of a personal insult. It required

two men to coax him, while a third held him by a ring in his nostrils,

before I could venture on beginning to work. Even then he always lashed

his tail, and jerked his huge head, and rolled his fiery eyes with a

devouring anxiety to have me on his horns for daring to sit down quietly

and look at him. Never, I can honestly say, did I feel more heartily

grateful for the blessings of soundness of limb and wholeness of skin,

than when I had completed the picture of the bull!

One morning, when I had but little more than half done my unwelcome

task, my friend and I were met on our way to the bull’s stable by the

farm bailiff, who informed us gravely that “Thunder and Lightning” was

just then in such an especially surly state of temper as to render it

quite unsafe for me to think of painting him. I looked inquiringly at

Mr. Garthwaite, who smiled with an air of comic resignation, and said,

“Very well, then, we have nothing for it but to wait till to-morrow.

What do you say to a morning’s fishing, Mr. Kerby, now that my bull’s

bad temper has given us a holiday?”

I replied, with perfect truth, that I knew nothing about fishing. But

Mr. Garthwaite, who was as ardent an angler in his way as Izaak Walton

himself, was not to be appeased even by the best of excuses. “It is

never too late to learn,” cried he. “I will make a fisherman of you in

no time, if you will only attend to my directions.” It was impossible

for me to make any more apologies, without the risk of appearing

discourteous. So I thanked my host for his friendly intentions, and,

with some secret misgivings, accepted the first fishing-rod that he put

into my hands.

“We shall soon get there,” said Mr. Garthwaite. “I am taking you to the

best mill-stream in the neighborhood.” It was all one to me whether we

got there soon or late and whether the stream was good or bad. However,

I did my best to conceal my unsportsman-like apathy; and tried to look

quite happy and very impatient to begin, as we drew near to the mill,

and heard louder and louder the gushing of many waters all round it.

Leading the way immediately to a place beneath the falling stream, where

there was a deep, eddying pool, Mr. Garthwaite baited and threw in

his line before I had fixed the joints of my fishing-rod. This first

difficulty overcome, I involuntarily plunged into some excellent, but

rather embarrassing, sport with my line and hook. I caught every one

of my garments, from head to foot; I angled for my own clothes with

the dexterity and success of Izaak Walton himself. I caught my hat, my

jacket, my waistcoat, my trousers, my fingers, and my thumbs--some devil

possessed my hook; some more than eel-like vitality twirled and twisted

in every inch of my line. By the time my host arrived to assist me,

I had attached myself to my fishing-rod, apparently for life. All

difficulties yielded, however, to his patience and skill; my hook was

baited for me, and thrown in; my rod was put into my hand; my friend

went back to his place; and we began at last to angle in earnest.

We certainly caught a few fish (in _my_ case, I mean, of course, that

the fish caught themselves); but they were scanty in number and light

in weight. Whether it was the presence of the miller’s foreman--a

gloomy personage, who stood staring disastrously upon us from a little

flower-garden on the opposite bank--that cast adverse influence over our

sport; or whether my want of faith and earnestness as an angler acted

retributively on my companion as well as myself, I know not; but it is

certain that he got almost as little reward for his skill as I got for

my patience. After nearly two hours of intense expectation on my part,

and intense angling on his, Mr. Garthwaite jerked his line out of the

water in a rage, and bade me follow him to another place, declaring that

the stream must have been netted by poachers in the night, who had taken

all the large fish away with them, and had thrown in the small ones

to grow until their next visit. We moved away, further down the bank,

leaving the imperturbable foreman still in the flower-garden, staring at

us speechlessly on our departure, exactly as he had already stared at us

on our approach.

“Stop a minute,” said Mr. Garthwaite suddenly, after we had walked some

distance in silence by the side of the stream, “I have an idea. Now we

are out for a day’s angling, we won’t be balked. Instead of trying

the water here again, we will go where I know, by experience, that the

fishing is excellent. And what is more, you shall be introduced to a

lady whose appearance is sure to interest you, and whose history, I can

tell you beforehand, is a very remarkable one.”

“Indeed,” I said. “May I ask in what way?”

“She is connected,” answered Mr. Garthwaite, “with an extraordinary

story, which relates to a family once settled in an old house in this

neighborhood. Her name is Miss Welwyn; but she is less formally known

an among the poor people about here, who love her dearly, and honor her

almost superstitiously, as the Lady of Glenwith Grange. Wait till you

have seen her before you ask me to say anything more. She lives in the

strictest retirement; I am almost the only visitor who is admitted.

Don’t say you had rather not go in. Any friend of mine will be welcome

at the Grange (the scene of the story, remember), for my sake--the more

especially because I have never abused my privilege of introduction. The

place is not above two miles from here, and the stream (which we call,

in our county dialect, Glenwith Beck) runs through the ground.”

As we walked on, Mr. Garthwaite’s manner altered. He became unusually

silent and thoughtful. The mention of Miss Welwyn’s name had evidently

called up some recollections which were not in harmony with his

every-day mood. Feeling that to talk to him on any indifferent subject

would be only to interrupt his thoughts to no purpose, I walked by his

side in perfect silence, looking out already with some curiosity and

impatience for a first view of Glenwith Grange. We stopped at last close

by an old church, standing on the outskirts of a pretty village. The low

wall of the churchyard was bounded on one side by a plantation, and was

joined by a park paling, in which I noticed a small wicket-gate. Mr.

Garthwaite opened it, and led me along a shrubbery path, which conducted

us circuitously to the dwelling-house.

We had evidently entered by a private way, for we approached the

building by the back. I looked up at it curiously, and saw standing at

one of the windows on the lower floor a little girl watching us as we

advanced. She seemed to be about nine or ten years old. I could not help

stopping a moment to look up at her, her clear complexion and her

long dark hair were so beautiful. And yet there was something in her

expression--a dimness and vacancy in her large eyes--a changeless,

unmeaning smile on her parted lips--which seemed to jar with all that

was naturally attractive in her face; which perplexed, disappointed, and

even shocked me, though I hardy knew why. Mr. Garthwaite, who had been

walking along thoughtfully, with his eyes on the ground, turned back

when he found me lingering behind him; looked up where I was looking;

started a little, I thought; then took my arm, whispered rather

impatiently, “Don’t say anything about having seen that poor child when

you are introduced to Miss Welwyn; I’ll tell you why afterward,” and led

me round hastily to the front of the building.

It was a very dreary old house, with a lawn in front thickly sprinkled

with flower-beds, and creepers of all sorts climbing in profusion about

the heavy stone porch and the mullions of the lower windows. In spite

of these prettiest of all ornaments clustering brightly round the

building--in spite of the perfect repair in which it was kept from top

to bottom--there was something repellent to me in the aspect of the

whole place: a deathly stillness hung over it, which fell oppressively

on my spirits. When my companion rang the loud, deep-toned bell, the

sound startled me as if we had been committing a crime in disturbing the

silence. And when the door was opened by an old female servant (while

the hollow echo of the bell was still vibrating in the air), I could

hardly imagine it possible that we should be let in. We were admitted,

however, without the slightest demur. I remarked that there was the

same atmosphere of dreary repose inside the house which I had already

observed, or rather felt, outside it. No dogs barked at our approach--no

doors banged in the servants’ offices--no heads peeped over the

banisters--not one of the ordinary domestic consequences of an

unexpected visit in the country met either eye or ear. The large

shadowy apartment, half library, half breakfast-room, into which we were

ushered, was as solitary as the hall of entrance; unless I except such

drowsy evidences of life as were here presented to us in the shape of

an Angola cat and a gray parrot--the first lying asleep in a chair, the

second sitting ancient, solemn, and voiceless, in a large cage.

Mr. Garthwaite walked to the window when we entered, without saying a

word. Determining to let his taciturn humor have its way, I asked him no

questions, but looked around the room to see what information it would

give me (and rooms often do give such information) about the character

and habits of the owner of the house.

Two tables covered with books were the first objects that attracted me.

On approaching them, I was surprised to find that the all-influencing

periodical literature of the present day--whose sphere is already almost

without limit; whose readers, even in our time, may be numbered by

millions--was entirely unrepresented on Miss Welwyn’s table. Nothing

modern, nothing contemporary, in the world of books, presented itself.

Of all the volumes beneath my hand, not one bore the badge of the

circulating library, or wore the flaring modern livery of gilt cloth.

Every work that I took up had been written at least fifteen or twenty

years since. The prints hanging round the walls (toward which I next

looked) were all engraved from devotional subjects by the old masters;

the music-stand contained no music of later date than the compositions

of Haydn and Mozart. Whatever I examined besides, told me, with the same

consistency, the same strange tale. The owner of these possessions

lived in the by-gone time; lived among old recollections and old

associations--a voluntary recluse from all that was connected with the

passing day. In Miss Welwyn’s house, the stir, the tumult, the “idle

business” of the world evidently appealed in vain to sympathies which

grew no longer with the growing hour.

As these thoughts were passing through my mind, the door opened and the

lady herself appeared.

She looked certainly past the prime of life; longer past it, as I

afterward discovered, than she really was. But I never remember, in any

other face, to have seen so much of the better part of the beauty of

early womanhood still remaining, as I saw in hers. Sorrow had evidently

passed over the fair, calm countenance before me, but had left

resignation there as its only trace. Her expression was still

youthful--youthful in its kindness and its candor especially. It was

only when I looked at her hair, that was now growing gray--at her

wan, thin hands--at the faint lines marked round her mouth--at the sad

serenity of her eyes, that I fairly detected the mark of age; and, more

than that, the token of some great grief, which had been conquered, but

not banished. Even from her voice alone--from the peculiar uncertainty

of its low, calm tones when she spoke--it was easy to conjecture that

she must have passed through sufferings, at some time of her life, which

had tried to the quick the noble nature that they could not subdue.

Mr. Garthwaite and she met each other almost like brother and sister; it

was plain that the friendly intimacy between them had been of very long

duration. Our visit was a short one. The conversation never advanced

beyond the commonplace topics suited to the occasion. It was, therefore,

from what I saw, and not from what I heard, that I was enabled to form

my judgment of Miss Welwyn. Deeply as she had interested me--far more

deeply than I at all know how to explain in fitting words--I cannot

say that I was unwilling to depart when we rose to take leave. Though

nothing could be more courteous and more kind than her manner toward me

during the whole interview, I could still perceive that it cost her some

effort to repress in my presence the shades of sadness and reserve which

seemed often ready to steal over her. And I must confess that when I

once or twice heard the half-sigh stifled, and saw the momentary

relapse into thoughtfulness suddenly restrained, I felt an indefinable

awkwardness in my position which made me ill at ease; which set me

doubting whether, as a perfect stranger, I had done right in suffering

myself to be introduced where no new faces could awaken either interest

or curiosity; where no new sympathies could ever be felt, no new

friendships ever be formed.

As soon as we had taken leave of Miss Welwyn, and were on our way to

the stream in her grounds, I more than satisfied Mr. Garthwaite that

the impression the lady had produced on me was of no transitory kind,

by overwhelming him with questions about her--not omitting one or two

incidental inquiries on the subject of the little girl whom I had seen

at the back window. He only rejoined that his story would answer all my

questions; and that he would begin to tell it as soon as we had arrived

at Glenwith Beck, and were comfortably settled to fishing.

Five minutes more of walking brought us to the bank of the stream, and

showed us the water running smoothly and slowly, tinged with the softest

green luster from the reflections of trees which almost entirely arched

it over. Leaving me to admire the view at my ease, Mr. Garthwaite

occupied himself with the necessary preparations for angling, baiting my

hook as well as his own. Then, desiring me to sit near him on the bank,

he at last satisfied my curiosity by beginning his story. I shall relate

it in his own manner, and, as nearly as possible, in his own words.

THE ANGLER’S STORY of THE LADY OF GLENWITH GRANGE.

I have known Miss Welwyn long enough to be able to bear personal

testimony to the truth of many of the particulars which I am now about

to relate. I knew her father, and her younger sister Rosamond; and I was

acquainted with the Frenchman who became Rosamond’s husband. These are

the persons of whom it will be principally necessary for me to speak.

They are the only prominent characters in my story.

Miss Welwyn’s father died some years since. I remember him very

well--though he never excited in me, or in any one else that I ever

heard of, the slightest feeling of interest. When I have said that he

inherited a very large fortune, amassed during his father’s time, by

speculations of a very daring, very fortunate, but not always very

honorable kind, and that he bought this old house with the notion of

raising his social position, by making himself a member of our landed

aristocracy in these parts, I have told you as much about him, I

suspect, as you would care to hear. He was a thoroughly commonplace man,

with no great virtues and no great vices in him. He had a little heart,

a feeble mind, an amiable temper, a tall figure, and a handsome face.

More than this need not, and cannot, be said on the subject of Mr.

Welwyn’s character.

I must have seen the late Mrs. Welwyn very often as a child; but I

cannot say that I remember anything more of her than that she was tall

and handsome, and very generous and sweet-tempered toward me when I

was in her company. She was her husband’s superior in birth, as in

everything else; was a great reader of books in all languages; and

possessed such admirable talents as a musician, that her wonderful

playing on the organ is remembered and talked of to this day among the

old people in our country houses about here. All her friends, as I have

heard, were disappointed when she married Mr. Welwyn, rich as he was;

and were afterward astonished to find her preserving the appearance, at

least, of being perfectly happy with a husband who, neither in mind nor

heart, was worthy of her.

It was generally supposed (and I have no doubt correctly) that she

found her great happiness and her great consolation in her little girl

Ida--now the lady from whom we have just parted. The child took after

her mother from the first--inheriting her mother’s fondness for books,

her mother’s love of music, her mother’s quick sensibilities, and, more

than all, her mother’s quiet firmness, patience, and loving kindness of

disposition. From Ida’s earliest years, Mrs. Welwyn undertook the whole

superintendence of her education. The two were hardly ever apart, within

doors or without. Neighbors and friends said that the little girl

was being brought up too fancifully, and was not enough among other

children, was sadly neglected as to all reasonable and practical

teaching, and was perilously encouraged in those dreamy and imaginative

tendencies of which she had naturally more than her due share. There

was, perhaps, some truth in this; and there might have been still more,

if Ida had possessed an ordinary character, or had been reserved for

an ordinary destiny. But she was a strange child from the first, and a

strange future was in store for her.

Little Ida reached her eleventh year without either brother or sister to

be her playfellow and companion at home. Immediately after that period,

however, her sister Rosamond was born. Though Mr. Welwyn’s own desire

was to have had a son, there were, nevertheless, great rejoicings yonder

in the old house on the birth of this second daughter. But they were all

turned, only a few months afterward, to the bitterest grief and despair:

the Grange lost its mistress. While Rosamond was still an infant in

arms, her mother died.

Mrs. Welwyn had been afflicted with some disorder after the birth of

her second child, the name of which I am not learned enough in medical

science to be able to remember. I only know that she recovered from it,

to all appearance, in an unexpectedly short time; that she suffered a

fatal relapse, and that she died a lingering and a painful death. Mr.

Welwyn (who, in after years, had a habit of vaingloriously describing

his marriage as “a love-match on both sides”) was really fond of his

wife in his own frivolous, feeble way, and suffered as acutely as such

a man could suffer, during the latter days of her illness, and at the

terrible time when the doctors, one and all, confessed that her life

was a thing to be despaired of. He burst into irrepressible passions

of tears, and was always obliged to leave the sick-room whenever Mrs.

Welwyn spoke of her approaching end. The last solemn words of the dying

woman, the tenderest messages that she could give, the dearest parting

wishes that she could express, the most earnest commands that she could

leave behind her, the gentlest reasons for consolation that she could

suggest to the survivors among those who loved her, were not poured into

her husband’s ear, but into her child’s. From the first period of

her illness, Ida had persisted in remaining in the sick-room, rarely

speaking, never showing outwardly any signs of terror or grief, except

when she was removed from it; and then bursting into hysterical passions

of weeping, which no expostulations, no arguments, no commands--nothing,

in short, but bringing her back to the bedside--ever availed to calm.

Her mother had been her playfellow, her companion her dearest and most

familiar friend; and there seemed something in the remembrance of this

which, instead of overwhelming the child with despair, strengthened her

to watch faithfully and bravely by her dying parent to the very last.

When the parting moment was over, and when Mr. Welwyn, unable to bear

the shock of being present in the house of death at the time of his

wife’s funeral, left home and went to stay with one of his relations in

a distant part of England, Ida, whom it had been his wish to take away

with him, petitioned earnestly to be left behind. “I promised mamma

before she died that I would be as good to my little sister Rosamond as

she had been to me,” said the child, simply; “and she told me in return

that I might wait here and see her laid in her grave.” There happened

to be an aunt of Mrs. Welwyn, and an old servant of the family, in the

house at this time, who understood Ida much better than her father did,

and they persuaded him not to take her away. I have heard my mother say

that the effect of the child’s appearance at the funeral on her, and

on all who went to see it, was something that she could never think of

without the tears coming into her eyes, and could never forget to the

last day of her life.

It must have been very shortly after this period that I saw Ida for the

first time.

I remember accompanying my mother on a visit to the old house we have

just left, in the summer, when I was at home for the holidays. It was

a lovely, sunshiny morning. There was nobody indoors, and we walked out

into the garden. As we approached that lawn yonder, on the other side

of the shrubbery, I saw, first, a young woman in mourning (apparently

a servant) sitting reading; then a little girl, dressed all in black,

moving toward us slowly over the bright turf, and holding up before her

a baby, whom she was trying to teach to walk. She looked, to my ideas,

so very young to be engaged in such an occupation as this, and her

gloomy black frock appeared to be such an unnaturally grave garment for

a mere child of her age, and looked so doubly dismal by contrast with

the brilliant sunny lawn on which she stood, that I quite started when

I first saw her, and eagerly asked my mother who she was. The answer

informed me of the sad family story, which I have been just relating to

you. Mrs. Welwyn had then been buried about three months; and Ida,

in her childish way, was trying, as she had promised, to supply her

mother’s place to her infant sister Rosamond.

I only mention this simple incident, because it is necessary, before

I proceed to the eventful part of my narrative, that you should know

exactly in what relation the sisters stood toward one another from the

first. Of all the last parting words that Mrs. Welwyn had spoken to her

child, none had been oftener repeated, none more solemnly urged, than

those which had commended the little Rosamond to Ida’s love and care.

To other persons, the full, the all-trusting dependence which the dying

mother was known to have placed in a child hardly eleven years old,

seemed merely a proof of that helpless desire to cling even to the

feeblest consolations, which the approach of death so often brings with

it. But the event showed that the trust so strangely placed had not been

ventured vainly when it was committed to young and tender hands. The

whole future existence of the child was one noble proof that she had

been worthy of her mother’s dying confidence, when it was first reposed

in her. In that simple incident which I have just mentioned the new life

of the two motherless sisters was all foreshadowed.

Time passed. I left school--went to college--traveled in Germany, and

stayed there some time to learn the language. At every interval when I

came home, and asked about the Welwyns, the answer was, in substance,

almost always the same. Mr. Welwyn was giving his regular dinners,

performing his regular duties as a county magistrate, enjoying his

regular recreations as an a amateur farmer and an eager sportsman. His

two daughters were never separate. Ida was the same strange, quiet,

retiring girl, that she had always been; and was still (as the phrase

went) “spoiling” Rosamond in every way in which it was possible for an

elder sister to spoil a younger by too much kindness.

I myself went to the Grange occasionally, when I was in this

neighborhood, in holiday and vacation time; and was able to test the

correctness of the picture of life there which had been drawn for me. I

remember the two sisters, when Rosamond was four or five years old; and

when Ida seemed to me, even then, to be more like the child’s mother

than her sister. She bore with her little caprices as sisters do not

bear with one another. She was so patient at lesson-time, so anxious to

conceal any weariness that might overcome her in play hours, so proud

when Rosamond’s beauty was noticed, so grateful for Rosamond’s kisses

when the child thought of bestowing them, so quick to notice all

that Rosamond did, and to attend to all that Rosamond said, even when

visitors were in the room, that she seemed, to my boyish observation,

altogether different from other elder sisters in other family circles

into which I was then received.

I remember then, again, when Rosamond was just growing to womanhood, and

was in high spirits at the prospect of spending a season in London,

and being presented at court. She was very beautiful at that time--much

handsomer than Ida. Her “accomplishments” were talked of far and near in

our country circles. Few, if any, of the people, however, who applauded

her playing and singing, who admired her water-color drawings, who were

delighted at her fluency when she spoke French, and amazed at her ready

comprehension when she read German, knew how little of all this elegant

mental cultivation and nimble manual dexterity she owed to her governess

and masters, and how much to her elder sister. It was Ida who really

found out the means of stimulating her when she was idle; Ida who helped

her through all her worst difficulties; Ida who gently conquered her

defects of memory over her books, her inaccuracies of ear at the piano,

her errors of taste when she took the brush and pencil in hand. It was

Ida alone who worked these marvels, and whose all-sufficient reward for

her hardest exertions was a chance word of kindness from her sister’s

lips. Rosamond was not unaffectionate, and not ungrateful; but she

inherited much of her father’s commonness and frivolity of character.

She became so accustomed to owe everything to her sister--to resign all

her most trifling difficulties to Ida’s ever-ready care--to have all

her tastes consulted by Ida’s ever-watchful kindness--that she never

appreciated, as it deserved, the deep, devoted love of which she was the

object. When Ida refused two good offers of marriage, Rosamond was as

much astonished as the veriest strangers, who wondered why the elder

Miss Welwyn seemed bent on remaining single all her life.

When the journey to London, to which I have already alluded, took place,

Ida accompanied her father and sister. If she had consulted her own

tastes, she would have remained in the country; but Rosamond declared

that she should feel quite lost and helpless twenty times a day, in

town, without her sister. It was in the nature of Ida to sacrifice

herself to any one whom she loved, on the smallest occasions as well

as the greatest. Her affection was as intuitively ready to sanctify

Rosamond’s slightest caprices as to excuse Rosamond’s most thoughtless

faults. So she went to London cheerfully, to witness with pride all the

little triumphs won by her sister’s beauty; to hear, and never tire of

hearing, all that admiring friends could say in her sister’s praise.

At the end of the season Mr. Welwyn and his daughters returned for a

short time to the country; then left home again to spend the latter part

of the autumn and the beginning of the winter in Paris.

They took with them excellent letters of introduction, and saw a great

deal of the best society in Paris, foreign as well as English. At one of

the first of the evening parties which they attended, the general topic

of conversation was the conduct of a certain French nobleman, the Baron

Franval, who had returned to his native country after a long absence,

and who was spoken of in terms of high eulogy by the majority of the

guests present. The history of who Franval was, and of what he had

done, was readily communicated to Mr. Welwyn and his daughters, and was

briefly this:

The baron inherited little from his ancestors besides his high rank

and his ancient pedigree. On the death of his parents, he and his

two unmarried sisters (their only surviving children) found the small

territorial property of the Franvals, in Normandy, barely productive

enough to afford a comfortable subsistence for the three. The baron,

then a young man of three-and-twenty endeavored to obtain such military

or civil employment as might become his rank; but, although the Bourbons

were at that time restored to the throne of France, his efforts were

ineffectual. Either his interest at court was bad, or secret enemies

were at work to oppose his advancement. He failed to obtain even the

slightest favor; and, irritated by undeserved neglect, resolved to leave

France, and seek occupation for his energies in foreign countries, where

his rank would be no bar to his bettering his fortunes, if he pleased,

by engaging in commercial pursuits.

An opportunity of the kind that he wanted unexpectedly offered itself.

He left his sisters in care of an old male relative of the family at

the chateau in Normandy, and sailed, in the first instance, to the West

Indies; afterward extending his wanderings to the continent of South

America, and there engaging in mining transactions on a very large

scale. After fifteen years of absence (during the latter part of which

time false reports of his death had reached Normandy), he had just

returned to France, having realized a handsome independence, with which

he proposed to widen the limits of his ancestral property, and to give

his sisters (who were still, like himself, unmarried) all the luxuries

and advantages that affluence could bestow. The baron’s independent

spirit and generous devotion to the honor of his family and the

happiness of his surviving relatives were themes of general admiration

in most of the social circles of Paris. He was expected to arrive in

the capital every day; and it was naturally enough predicted that his

reception in society there could not fail to be of the most flattering

and most brilliant kind.

The Welwyns listened to this story with some little interest; Rosamond,

who was very romantic, being especially attracted by it, and openly

avowing to her father and sister, when they got back to their hotel,

that she felt as ardent a curiosity as anybody to see the adventurous

and generous baron. The desire was soon gratified. Franval came to

Paris, as had been anticipated--was introduced to the Welwyns--met them

constantly in society--made no favorable impression on Ida, but won the

good opinion of Rosamond from the first; and was regarded with such

high approval by their father, that when he mentioned his intentions of

visiting England in the spring of the new year, he was cordially invited

to spend the hunting season at Glenwith Grange.

I came back from Germany about the same time that the Welwyns returned

from Paris, and at once set myself to improve my neighborly intimacy

with the family. I was very fond of Ida; more fond, perhaps, than my

vanity will now allow me to--; but that is of no consequence. It is much

more to the purpose to tell you that I heard the whole of the baron’s

story enthusiastically related by Mr. Welwyn and Rosamond; that he came

to the Grange at the appointed time; that I was introduced to him; and

that he produced as unfavorable an impression upon me as he had already

produced upon Ida.

It was whimsical enough; but I really could not tell why I disliked him,

though I could account very easily, according to my own notions, for

his winning the favor and approval of Rosamond and her father. He was

certainly a handsome man as far as features went; he had a winning

gentleness and graceful respect in his manner when he spoke to women;

and he sang remarkably well, with one of the sweetest tenor voices I

ever heard. These qualities alone were quite sufficient to attract any

girl of Rosamond’s disposition; and I certainly never wondered why he

was a favorite of hers.

Then, as to her father, the baron was not only fitted to win his

sympathy and regard in the field, by proving himself an ardent sportsman

and an excellent rider; but was also, in virtue of some of his minor

personal peculiarities, just the man to gain the friendship of his host.

Mr. Welwyn was as ridiculously prejudiced as most weak-headed Englishmen

are, on the subject of foreigners in general. In spite of his visit to

Paris, the vulgar notion of a Frenchman continued to be _his_ notion,

both while he was in France and when he returned from it. Now, the baron

was as unlike the traditional “Mounseer” of English songs, plays, and

satires, as a man could well be; and it was on account of this very

dissimilarity that Mr. Welwyn first took a violent fancy to him, and

then invited him to his house. Franval spoke English remarkably well;

wore neither beard, mustache, nor whiskers; kept his hair cut almost

unbecomingly short; dressed in the extreme of plainness and modest good

taste; talked little in general society; uttered his words, when he did

speak, with singular calmness and deliberation; and, to crown all,

had the greater part of his acquired property invested in English

securities. In Mr. Welwyn’s estimation, such a man as this was a perfect

miracle of a Frenchman, and he admired and encouraged him accordingly.

I have said that I disliked him, yet could not assign a reason for my

dislike; and I can only repeat it now. He was remarkably polite to me;

we often rode together in hunting, and sat near each other at the Grange

table; but I could never become familiar with him. He always gave me

the idea of a man who had some mental reservation in saying the most

trifling thing. There was a constant restraint, hardly perceptible to

most people, but plainly visible, nevertheless, to me, which seemed

to accompany his lightest words, and to hang about his most familiar

manner. This, however, was no just reason for my secretly disliking and

distrusting him as I did. Ida said as much to me, I remember, when

I confessed to her what my feelings toward him were, and tried (but

vainly) to induce her to be equally candid with me in return. She seemed

to shrink from the tacit condemnation of Rosamond’s opinion which such

a confidence on her part would have implied. And yet she watched the

growth of that opinion--or, in other words, the growth of her sister’s

liking for the baron--with an apprehension and sorrow which she tried

fruitlessly to conceal. Even her father began to notice that her spirits

were not so good as usual, and to suspect the cause of her melancholy.

I remember he jested, with all the dense insensibility of a stupid man,

about Ida having invariably been jealous, from a child, if Rosamond

looked kindly upon anybody except her elder sister.

The spring began to get far advanced toward summer. Franval paid a visit

to London; came back in the middle of the season to Glenwith Grange;

wrote to put off his departure for France; and at last (not at all to

the surprise of anybody who was intimate with the Welwyns) proposed to

Rosamond, and was accepted. He was candor and generosity itself when the

preliminaries of the marriage-settlement were under discussion. He quite

overpowered Mr. Welwyn and the lawyers with references, papers, and

statements of the distribution and extent of his property, which were

found to be perfectly correct. His sisters were written to, and returned

the most cordial answers; saying that the state of their health would

not allow them to come to England for the marriage; but adding a warm

invitation to Normandy for the bride and her family. Nothing, in

short, could be more straightforward and satisfactory than the baron’s

behavior, and the testimonies to his worth and integrity which the news

of the approaching marriage produced from his relatives and his friends.

The only joyless face at the Grange now was Ida’s. At any time it would

have been a hard trial to her to resign that first and foremost place

which she had held since childhood in her sister’s heart, as she knew

she must resign it when Rosamond married. But, secretly disliking and

distrusting Franval as she did, the thought that he was soon to become

the husband of her beloved sister filled her with a vague sense of

terror which she could not explain to herself; which it was imperatively

necessary that she should conceal; and which, on those very accounts,

became a daily and hourly torment to her that was almost more than she

could bear.

One consolation alone supported her: Rosamond and she were not to be

separated. She knew that the baron secretly disliked her as much as she

disliked him; she knew that she must bid farewell to the brighter and

happier part of her life on the day when she went to live under the same

roof with her sister’s husband; but, true to the promise made years and

years ago by her dying mother’s bed--true to the affection which was the

ruling and beautiful feeling of her whole existence--she never

hesitated about indulging Rosamond’s wish, when the girl, in her bright,

light-hearted way, said that she could never get on comfortably in the

marriage state unless she had Ida to live with her and help her just the

same as ever. The baron was too polite a man even to _look_ dissatisfied

when he heard of the proposed arrangement; and it was therefore settled

from the beginning that Ida was always to live with her sister.

The marriage took place in the summer, and the bride and bridegroom

went to spend their honeymoon in Cumberland. On their return to Glenwith

Grange, a visit to the baron’s sisters, in Normandy, was talked of; but

the execution of this project was suddenly and disastrously suspended by

the death of Mr. Welwyn, from an attack of pleurisy.

In consequence of this calamity, the projected journey was of course

deferred; and when autumn and the shooting season came, the baron was

unwilling to leave the well-stocked preserves of the Grange. He seemed,

indeed, to grow less and less inclined, as time advanced, for the trip

to Normandy; and wrote excuse after excuse to his sisters, when

letters arrived from them urging him to pay the promised visit. In the

winter-time, he said he would not allow his wife to risk a long journey.

In the spring, his health was pronounced to be delicate. In the

genial summer-time, the accomplishment of the proposed visit would be

impossible, for at that period the baroness expected to become a mother.

Such were the apologies which Franval seemed almost glad to be able to

send to his sisters in France.

The marriage was, in the strictest sense of the term, a happy one. The

baron, though he never altogether lost the strange restraint and reserve

of his manner, was, in his quiet, peculiar way, the fondest and kindest

of husbands. He went to town occasionally on business, but always seemed

glad to return to the baroness; he never varied in the politeness of

his bearing toward his wife’s sister; he behaved with the most courteous

hospitality toward all the friends of the Welwyns; in short, he

thoroughly justified the good opinion which Rosamond and her father had

formed of him when they first met at Paris. And yet no experience of

his character thoroughly re-assured Ida. Months passed on quietly

and pleasantly; and still that secret sadness, that indefinable,

unreasonable apprehension on Rosamond’s account, hung heavily on her

sister’s heart.

At the beginning of the first summer months, a little domestic

inconvenience happened, which showed the baroness, for the first time,

that her husband’s temper could be seriously ruffled--and that by the

veriest trifle. He was in the habit of taking in two French provincial

newspapers--one published at Bordeaux and the other at Havre. He always

opened these journals the moment they came, looked at one particular

column of each with the deepest attention, for a few minutes, then

carelessly threw them aside into his waste-paper basket. His wife and

her sister were at first rather surprised at the manner in which he read

his two papers; but they thought no more of it when he explained that he

only took them in to consult them about French commercial intelligence,

which might be, occasionally, of importance to him.

These papers were published weekly. On the occasion to which I have just

referred, the Bordeaux paper came on the proper day, as usual; but the

Havre paper never made its appearance. This trifling circumstance seemed

to make the baron seriously uneasy. He wrote off directly to the country

post-office and to the newspaper agent in London. His wife, astonished

to see his tranquillity so completely overthrown by so slight a cause,

tried to restore his good humor by jesting with him about the missing

newspaper. He replied by the first angry and unfeeling words that she

had heard issue from his lips. She was then within about six weeks

of her confinement, and very unfit to bear harsh answers from

anybody--least of all from her husband.

On the second day no answer came. On the afternoon of the third, the

baron rode off to the post town to make inquiries. About an hour after

he had gone, a strange gentleman came to the Grange and asked to see

the baroness. On being informed that she was not well enough to receive

visitors, he sent up a message that his business was of great importance

and that he would wait downstairs for a second answer.

On receiving this message, Rosamond turned, as usual, to her elder

sister for advice. Ida went downstairs immediately to see the stranger.

What I am now about to tell you of the extraordinary interview which

took place between them, and of the shocking events that followed it, I

have heard from Miss Welwyn’s own lips.

She felt unaccountably nervous when she entered the room. The stranger

bowed very politely, and asked, in a foreign accent, if she were the

Baroness Franval. She set him right on this point, and told him she

attended to all matters of business for the baroness; adding that, if

his errand at all concerned her sister’s husband, the baron was not then

at home.

The stranger answered that he was aware of it when he called, and that

the unpleasant business on which he came could not be confided to the

baron--at least, in the first instance.

She asked why. He said he was there to explain; and expressed himself as

feeling greatly relieved at having to open his business to her, because

she would, doubtless, be best able to prepare her sister for the bad

news that he was, unfortunately, obliged to bring. The sudden faintness

which overcame her, as he spoke those words, prevented her from

addressing him in return. He poured out some water for her from a bottle

which happened to be standing on the table, and asked if he might depend

on her fortitude. She tried to say “Yes”; but the violent throbbing

of her heart seemed to choke her. He took a foreign newspaper from his

pocket, saying that he was a secret agent of the French police--that the

paper was the Havre _Journal_, for the past week, and that it had been

expressly kept from reaching the baron, as usual, through his (the

agent’s) interference. He then opened the newspaper, and begged that she

would nerve herself sufficiently (for her sister’s sake) to read certain

lines, which would give her some hint of the business that brought him

there. He pointed to the passage as he spoke. It was among the “Shipping

Entries,” and was thus expressed:

“Arrived, the _Berenice_, from San Francisco, with a valuable cargo of

hides. She brings one passenger, the Baron Franval, of Chateau Franval,

in Normandy.”

As Miss Welwyn read the entry, her heart, which had been throbbing

violently but the moment before, seemed suddenly to cease from all

action, and she began to shiver, though it was a warm June evening. The

agent held the tumbler to her lips, and made her drink a little of the

water, entreating her very earnestly to take courage and listen to him.

He then sat down, and referred again to the entry, every word he uttered

seeming to burn itself in forever (as she expressed it) on her memory

and her heart.

He said: “It has been ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt that

there is no mistake about the name in the lines you have just read. And

it is as certain as that we are here, that there is only _one_ Baron

Franval now alive. The question, therefore, is, whether the passenger by

the _Berenice_ is the true baron, or--I beg you most earnestly to bear

with me and to compose yourself--or the husband of your sister. The

person who arrived last week at Havre was scouted as an impostor by

the ladies at the chateau, the moment he presented himself there as

the brother, returning to them after sixteen years of absence. The

authorities were communicated with, and I and my assistants were

instantly sent for from Paris.

“We wasted no time in questioning the supposed impostor. He either was,

or affected to be, in a perfect frenzy of grief and indignation. We just

ascertained, from competent witnesses, that he bore an extraordinary

resemblance to the real baron, and that he was perfectly familiar with

places and persons in and about the chateau; we just ascertained that,

and then proceeded to confer with the local authorities, and to examine

their private entries of suspected persons in their jurisdiction,

ranging back over a past period of twenty years or more. One of the

entries thus consulted contained these particulars: ‘Hector Auguste

Monbrun, son of a respectable proprietor in Normandy. Well educated;

gentleman-like manners. On bad terms with his family. Character: bold,

cunning, unscrupulous, self-possessed. Is a clever mimic. May be easily

recognized by his striking likeness to the Baron Franval. Imprisoned at

twenty for theft and assault.’”

Miss Welwyn saw the agent look up at her after he had read this extract

from the police-book, to ascertain if she was still able to listen to

him. He asked, with some appearance of alarm, as their eyes met, if

she would like some more water. She was just able to make a sign in the

negative. He took a second extract from his pocket-book, and went on.

He said: “The next entry under the same name was dated four years later,

and ran thus, ‘H. A. Monbrun, condemned to the galleys for life, for

assassination, and other crimes not officially necessary to be

here specified. Escaped from custody at Toulon. Is known, since the

expiration of his first term of imprisonment, to have allowed his beard

to grow, and to have worn his hair long, with the intention of rendering

it impossible for those acquainted with him in his native province to

recognize him, as heretofore, by his likeness to the Baron Franval.’

There were more particulars added, not important enough for extract. We

immediately examined the supposed impostor; for, if he was Monbrun, we

knew that we should find on his shoulder the two letters of the convict

brand, ‘T. F.,’ standing for _Travaux Forces_. After the minutest

examination with the mechanical and chemical tests used on such

occasions, not the slightest trace of the brand was to be found. The

moment this astounding discovery was made, I started to lay an embargo

on the forthcoming numbers of the Havre _Journal_ for that week, which

were about to be sent to the English agent in London. I arrived at Havre

on Saturday (the morning of publication), in time to execute my design.

I waited there long enough to communicate by telegraph with my superiors

in Paris, then hastened to this place. What my errand here is, you

may--”

He might have gone on speaking for some moments longer; but Miss Welwyn

heard no more.

Her first sensation of returning consciousness was the feeling that

water was being sprinkled on her face. Then she saw that all the windows

in the room had been set wide open, to give her air; and that she and

the agent were still alone. At first she felt bewildered, and hardly

knew who he was; but he soon recalled to her mind the horrible realities

that had brought him there, by apologizing for not having summoned

assistance when she fainted. He said it was of the last importance, in

Franval’s absence, that no one in the house should imagine that anything

unusual was taking place in it. Then, after giving her an interval of

a minute or two to collect what little strength she had left, he added

that he would not increase her sufferings by saying anything more, just

then, on the shocking subject of the investigation which it was his duty

to make--that he would leave her to recover herself, and to consider

what was the best course to be taken with the baroness in the present

terrible emergency--and that he would privately return to the house

between eight and nine o’clock that evening, ready to act as Miss Welwyn

wished, and to afford her and her sister any aid and protection of which

they might stand in need. With these words he bowed, and noiselessly

quitted the room.

For the first few awful minutes after she was left alone, Miss Welwyn

sat helpless and speechless; utterly numbed in heart, and mind, and

body--then a sort of instinct (she was incapable of thinking) seemed

to urge her to conceal the fearful news from her sister as long as

possible. She ran upstairs to Rosamond’s sitting-room, and called

through the door (for she dared not trust herself in her sister’s

presence) that the visitor had come on some troublesome business from

their late father’s lawyers, and that she was going to shut herself up,

and write some long letters in connection with that business. After

she had got into her own room, she was never sensible of how time was

passing--never conscious of any feeling within her, except a baseless,

helpless hope that the French police might yet be proved to have made

some terrible mistake--until she heard a violent shower of rain come

on a little after sunset. The noise of the rain, and the freshness it

brought with it in the air, seemed to awaken her as if from a painful

and a fearful sleep. The power of reflection returned to her; her

heart heaved and bounded with an overwhelming terror, as the thought of

Rosamond came back vividly to it; her memory recurred despairingly to

the long-past day of her mother’s death, and to the farewell promise she

had made by her mother’s bedside. She burst into an hysterical passion

of weeping that seemed to be tearing her to pieces. In the midst of it

she heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs in the courtyard, and knew that

Rosamond’s husband had come back.

Dipping her handkerchief in cold water, and passing it over her eyes as

she left the room, she instantly hastened to her sister.

Fortunately the daylight was fading in the old-fashioned chamber that

Rosamond occupied. Before they could say two words to each other,

Franval was in the room. He seemed violently irritated; said that he had

waited for the arrival of the mail--that the missing newspaper had not

come by it--that he had got wet through--that he felt a shivering fit

coming on--and that he believed he had caught a violent cold. His wife

anxiously suggested some simple remedies. He roughly interrupted her,

saying there was but one remedy, the remedy of going to bed; and so left

them without another word. She just put her handkerchief to her eyes,

and said softly to her sister, “How he is changed!” then spoke no more.

They sat silent for half an hour or longer. After that, Rosamond went

affectionately and forgivingly to see how her husband was. She returned,

saying that he was in bed, and in a deep, heavy sleep; and predicting

hopefully that he would wake up quite well the next morning. In a few

minutes more the clock stuck nine; and Ida heard the servant’s step

ascending the stairs. She suspected what his errand was, and went out

to meet him. Her presentiment had not deceived her; the police agent had

arrived, and was waiting for her downstairs.

He asked her if she had said anything to her sister, or had thought of

any plan of action, the moment she entered the room; and, on receiving

a reply in the negative, inquired, further, if “the baron” had come home

yet. She answered that he had; that he was ill and tired, and vexed, and

that he had gone to bed. The agent asked in an eager whisper if she knew

that he was asleep, and alone in bed? and, when he received her reply,

said that he must go up into the bedroom directly.

She began to feel the faintness coming over her again, and with it

sensations of loathing and terror that she could neither express to

others nor define to herself. He said that if she hesitated to let him

avail himself of this unexpected opportunity, her scruples might lead

to fatal results. He reminded her that if “the baron” were really the

convict Monbrun, the claims of society and of justice demanded that he

should be discovered by the first available means; and that if he were

not--if some inconceivable mistake had really been committed--then such

a plan for getting immediately at the truth as was now proposed would

insure the delivery of an innocent man from suspicion; and at the same

time spare him the knowledge that he had ever been suspected. This last

argument had its effect on Miss Welwyn. The baseless, helpless hope that

the French authorities might yet be proved to be in error, which she

had already felt in her own room, returned to her now. She suffered the

agent to lead her upstairs.

He took the candle from her hand when she pointed to the door; opened it

softly; and, leaving it ajar, went into the room.

She looked through the gap with a feverish, horror-struck curiosity.

Franval was lying on his side in a profound sleep, with his back

turned toward the door. The agent softly placed the candle upon a small

reading-table between the door and the bedside, softly drew down the

bed-clothes a little away from the sleeper’s back, then took a pair of

scissors from the toilet-table, and very gently and slowly began to cut

away, first the loose folds, then the intervening strips of linen, from

the part of Franval’s night-gown that was over his shoulders. When the

upper part of his back had been bared in this way, the agent took the

candle and held it near the flesh. Miss Welwyn heard him ejaculate

some word under his breath, then saw him looking round to where she was

standing, and beckoning to her to come in.

Mechanically she obeyed; mechanically she looked down where his finger

was pointing. It was the convict Monbrun--there, just visible under the

bright light of the candle, were the fatal letters “T. F.” branded on

the villain’s shoulder!

Though she could neither move nor speak, the horror of this discovery

did not deprive her of her consciousness. She saw the agent softly

draw up the bed-clothes again into their proper position, replace

the scissors on the toilet-table, and take from it a bottle of

smelling-salts. She felt him removing her from the bedroom, and helping

her quickly downstairs, giving her the salts to smell to by the way.

When they were alone again, he said, with the first appearance of

agitation that he had yet exhibited, “Now, madam, for God’s sake,

collect all your courage, and be guided by me. You and your sister

had better leave the house immediately. Have you any relatives in the

neighborhood with whom you could take refuge?” They had none. “What is

the name of the nearest town where you could get good accommodation for

the night?” Harleybrook (he wrote the name down on his tablets). “How

far off is it?” Twelve miles. “You had better have the carriage out at

once, to go there with as little delay as possible, leaving me to pass

the night here. I will communicate with you to-morrow at the principal

hotel. Can you compose yourself sufficiently to be able to tell the head

servant, if I ring for him, that he is to obey my orders till further

notice?” The servant was summoned, and received his instructions, the

agent going out with him to see that the carriage was got ready quietly

and quickly. Miss Welwyn went upstairs to her sister.

How the fearful news was first broken to Rosamond, I cannot relate

to you. Miss Welwyn has never confided to me, has never confided to

anybody, what happened at the interview between her sister and herself

that night. I can tell you nothing of the shock they both suffered,

except that the younger and the weaker died under it; that the elder and

the stronger has never recovered from it, and never will.

They went away the same night, with one attendant, to Harleybrook, as

the agent had advised. Before daybreak Rosamond was seized with the

pains of premature labor. She died three days after, unconscious of the

horror of her situation, wandering in her mind about past times, and

singing old tunes that Ida had taught her as she lay in her sister’s

arms.

The child was born alive, and lives still. You saw her at the window as

we came in at the back way to the Grange. I surprised you, I dare say,

by asking you not to speak of her to Miss Welwyn. Perhaps you noticed

something vacant in the little girl’s expression. I am sorry to say that

her mind is more vacant still. If “idiot” did not sound like a mocking

word, however tenderly and pityingly one may wish to utter it, I should

tell you that the poor thing had been an idiot from her birth.

You will, doubtless, want to hear now what happened at Glenwith Grange

after Miss Welwyn and her sister had left it. I have seen the letter

which the police agent sent the next morning to Harleybrook; and,

speaking from my recollection of that, I shall be able to relate all you

can desire to know.

First, as to the past history of the scoundrel Monbrun, I need only tell

you that he was identical with an escaped convict, who, for a long term

of years, had successfully eluded the vigilance of the authorities

all over Europe, and in America as well. In conjunction with two

accomplices, he had succeeded in possessing himself of large sums of

money by the most criminal means. He also acted secretly as the “banker”

of his convict brethren, whose dishonest gains were all confided to

his hands for safe-keeping. He would have been certainly captured, on

venturing back to France, along with his two associates, but for the

daring imposture in which he took refuge; and which, if the true

Baron Franval had really died abroad, as was reported, would, in all

probability, never have been found out.

Besides his extraordinary likeness to the baron, he had every other

requisite for carrying on his deception successfully. Though his parents

were not wealthy, he had received a good education. He was so notorious

for his gentleman-like manners among the villainous associates of his

crimes and excesses, that they nicknamed him “the Prince.” All his early

life had been passed in the neighborhood of the Chateau Franval. He knew

what were the circumstances which had induced the baron to leave it. He

had been in the country to which the baron had emigrated. He was able

to refer familiarly to persons and localities, at home and abroad,

with which the baron was sure to be acquainted. And, lastly, he had an

expatriation of fifteen years to plead for him as his all-sufficient

excuse, if he made any slight mistakes before the baron’s sisters,

in his assumed character of their long-absent brother. It will be, of

course, hardly necessary for me to tell you, in relation to this part

of the subject, that the true Franval was immediately and honorably

reinstated in the family rights of which the impostor had succeeded for

a time in depriving him.

According to Monbrun’s own account, he had married poor Rosamond purely

for love; and the probabilities certainly are, that the pretty, innocent

English girl had really struck the villain’s fancy for the time; and

that the easy, quiet life he was leading at the Grange pleased him, by

contrast with his perilous and vagabond existence of former days. What

might have happened if he had had time enough to grow wearied of his

ill-fated wife and his English home, it is now useless to inquire. What

really did happen on the morning when he awoke after the flight of Ida

and her sister can be briefly told.

As soon as his eyes opened they rested on the police agent, sitting

quietly by the bedside, with a loaded pistol in his hand. Monbrun knew

immediately that he was discovered; but he never for an instant lost the

self-possession for which he was famous. He said he wished to have five

minutes allowed him to deliberate quietly in bed, whether he should

resist the French authorities on English ground, and so gain time by

obliging the one Government to apply specially to have him delivered up

by the other--or whether he should accept the terms officially offered

to him by the agent, if he quietly allowed himself to be captured.

He chose the latter course--it was suspected, because he wished to

communicate personally with some of his convict associates in France,

whose fraudulent gains were in his keeping, and because he felt

boastfully confident of being able to escape again, whenever he pleased.

Be his secret motives, however, what they might, he allowed the agent to

conduct him peaceably from the Grange; first writing a farewell

letter to poor Rosamond, full of heartless French sentiment and glib

sophistries about Fate and Society. His own fate was not long in

overtaking him. He attempted to escape again, as it had been expected

he would, and was shot by the sentinel on duty at the time. I remember

hearing that the bullet entered his head and killed him on the spot.

My story is done. It is ten years now since Rosamond was buried in the

churchyard yonder; and it is ten years also since Miss Welwyn returned

to be the lonely inhabitant of Glenwith Grange. She now lives but in

the remembrances that it calls up before her of her happier existence of

former days. There is hardly an object in the old house which does not

tenderly and solemnly remind her of the mother, whose last wishes she

lived to obey; of the sister, whose happiness was once her dearest

earthly care. Those prints that you noticed on the library walls

Rosamond used to copy in the past time, when her pencil was often guided

by Ida’s hand. Those music-books that you were looking over, she and her

mother have played from together through many a long and quiet summer’s

evening. She has no ties now to bind her to the present but the poor

child whose affliction it is her constant effort to lighten, and the

little peasant population around her, whose humble cares and wants

and sorrows she is always ready to relieve. Far and near her modest

charities have penetrated among us; and far and near she is heartily

beloved and blessed in many a laborer’s household. There is no poor

man’s hearth, not in this village only, but for miles away from it as

well, at which you would not be received with the welcome given to an

old friend, if you only told the cottagers that you knew the Lady of

Glenwith Grange!

PROLOGUE TO THE FIFTH STORY.

The next piece of work which occupied my attention after taking leave

of Mr. Garthwaite, offered the strongest possible contrast to the task

which had last engaged me. Fresh from painting a bull at a farmhouse,

I set forth to copy a Holy Family, by Correggio, at a convent of nuns.

People who go to the Royal Academy Exhibition, and see pictures by

famous artists, painted year after year in the same marked style which

first made them celebrated, would be amazed indeed if they knew what

a Jack-of-all-trades a poor painter must become before he can gain his

daily bread.

The picture by Correggio which I was now commissioned to copy had been

lent to the nuns by a Catholic gentleman of fortune, who prized it as

the gem of his collection, and who had never before trusted it out of

his own hands. My copy, when completed, was to be placed over the high

altar of the convent chapel; and my work throughout its progress was

to be pursued entirely in the parlor of the nunnery, and always in the

watchful presence of one or other of the inmates of the house. It was

only on such conditions that the owner of the Correggio was willing to

trust his treasure out of his own hands, and to suffer it to be copied

by a stranger. The restrictions he imposed, which I thought sufficiently

absurd, and perhaps offensively suspicious as well, were communicated

to me politely enough before I was allowed to undertake the commission.

Unless I was inclined to submit to precautionary regulations which would

affect any other artist exactly as they affected me, I was told not

to think of offering to make the copy; and the nuns would then address

themselves to some other person in my profession. After a day’s

consideration, I submitted to the restrictions, by my wife’s advice,

and saved the nuns the trouble of making application for a copier of

Correggio in any other quarter.

I found the convent was charmingly situated in a quiet little valley

in the West of England. The parlor in which I was to paint was a large,

well-lighted apartment; and the village inn, about half a mile off,

afforded me cheap and excellent quarters for the night. Thus far,

therefore, there was nothing to complain of. As for the picture, which

was the next object of interest to me, I was surprised to find that

the copying of it would be by no means so difficult a task as I had

anticipated. I am rather of a revolutionary spirit in matters of art,

and am bold enough to think that the old masters have their faults

as well as their beauties. I can give my opinion, therefore, on the

Correggio at the convent independently at least. Looked at technically,

the picture was a fine specimen of coloring and execution; but looked

at for the higher merits of delicacy, elevation, and feeling for the

subject, it deserved copying as little as the most commonplace work that

any unlucky modern artist ever produced. The faces of the Holy

Family not only failed to display the right purity and tenderness of

expression, but absolutely failed to present any expression at all. It

is flat heresy to say so, but the valuable Correggio was nevertheless

emphatically, and, in so many words, a very uninteresting picture.

So much for the convent and the work that I was to do in it. My next

anxiety was to see how the restrictions imposed on me were to be carried

out. The first day, the Mother Superior herself mounted guard in the

parlor--a stern, silent, fanatical-looking woman, who seemed determined

to awe me and make me uncomfortable, and who succeeded thoroughly in

the execution of her purpose. The second day she was relieved by the

officiating priest of the convent--a mild, melancholy, gentleman-like

man, with whom I got on tolerably well. The third day, I had for

overlooker the portress of the house--a dirty, dismal, deaf, old woman,

who did nothing but knit stockings and chew orris-root. The fourth day,

a middle-aged nun, whom I heard addressed as Mother Martha, occupied the

post of guardian to the precious Correggio; and with her the number of

my overlookers terminated. She, and the portress, and the priest, and

the Mother Superior, relieved each other with military regularity, until

I had put the last touch to my copy. I found them ready for me every

morning on entering the parlor, and I left them in the chair of

observation every evening on quitting it. As for any young and beautiful

nuns who might have been in the building, I never so much as set eyes

on the ends of their veils. From the door to the parlor, and from the

parlor to the door, comprised the whole of my experience of the inside

of the convent.

The only one of my superintending companions with whom I established

anything like a familiar acquaintance was Mother Martha. She had no

outward attractions to recommend her; but she was simple, good-humored,

ready to gossip, and inquisitive to a perfectly incredible degree. Her

whole life had been passed in the nunnery; she was thoroughly accustomed

to her seclusion, thoroughly content with the monotonous round of her

occupations; not at all anxious to see the world for herself; but, on

the other hand, insatiably curious to know all about it from others.

There was no question connected with myself, my wife, my children, my

friends, my profession, my income, my travels, my favorite amusements,

and even my favorite sins, which a woman could ask a man, that Mother

Martha did not, in the smallest and softest of voices, ask of me. Though

an intelligent, well-informed person in all that related to her

own special vocation, she was a perfect child in everything else. I

constantly caught myself talking to her, just as I should have talked at

home to one of my own little girls.

I hope no one will think that, in expressing myself thus, I am writing

disparagingly of the poor nun. On two accounts, I shall always feel

compassionately and gratefully toward Mother Martha. She was the only

person in the convent who seemed sincerely anxious to make her presence

in the parlor as agreeable to me as possible; and she good-humoredly

told me the story which it is my object in these pages to introduce to

the reader. In both ways I am deeply indebted to her; and I hope always

to remember the obligation.

The circumstances under which the story came to be related to me may be

told in very few words.

The interior of a convent parlor being a complete novelty to me, I

looked around with some interest on first entering my painting-room at

the nunnery. There was but little in it to excite the curiosity of any

one. The floor was covered with common matting, and the ceiling with

plain whitewash. The furniture was of the simplest kind; a low

chair with a praying-desk fixed to the back, and a finely carved oak

book-case, studded all over with brass crosses, being the only useful

objects that I could discern which had any conventional character about

them. As for the ornaments of the room, they were entirely beyond my

appreciation. I could feel no interest in the colored prints of saints,

with gold platters at the backs of their heads, that hung on the wall;

and I could see nothing particularly impressive in the two plain little

alabaster pots for holy water, fastened, one near the door, the other

over the chimney-piece. The only object, indeed, in the whole room which

in the slightest degree attracted my curiosity was an old worm-eaten

wooden cross, made in the rudest manner, hanging by itself on a slip

of wall between two windows. It was so strangely rough and misshapen

a thing to exhibit prominently in a neat room, that I suspected some

history must be attached to it, and resolved to speak to my friend the

nun about it at the earliest opportunity.

“Mother Martha,” said I, taking advantage of the first pause in the

succession of quaintly innocent questions which she was as usual

addressing to me, “I have been looking at that rough old cross

hanging between the windows, and fancying that it must surely be some

curiosity--”

“Hush! hush!” exclaimed the nun, “you must not speak of that as a

‘curiosity’; the Mother Superior calls it a Relic.”

“I beg your pardon,” said I; “I ought to have chosen my expressions more

carefully--”

“Not,” interposed Mother Martha, nodding to show me that my apology need

not be finished--“not that it is exactly a relic in the strict Catholic

sense of the word; but there were circumstances in the life of the

person who made it--” Here she stopped, and looked at me doubtfully.

“Circumstances, perhaps, which it is not considered advisable to

communicate to strangers,” I suggested.

“Oh, no!” answered the nun, “I never heard that they were to be kept a

secret. They were not told as a secret to me.”

“Then you know all about them?” I asked.

“Certainly. I could tell you the whole history of the wooden cross; but

it is all about Catholics, and you are a Protestant.”

“That, Mother Martha, does not make it at all less interesting to me.”

“Does it not, indeed?” exclaimed the nun, innocently. “What a strange

man you are! and what a remarkable religion yours must be! What do your

priests say about ours? Are they learned men, your priests?”

I felt that my chance of hearing Mother Martha’s story would be a poor

one indeed, if I allowed her to begin a fresh string of questions.

Accordingly, I dismissed the inquiries about the clergy of the

Established Church with the most irreverent briefness, and recalled her

attention forthwith to the subject of the wooden cross.

“Yes, yes,” said the good-natured nun; “surely you shall hear all I can

tell you about it; but--” she hesitated timidly, “but I must ask the

Mother Superior’s leave first.”

Saying these words, she summoned the portress, to my great amusement, to

keep guard over the inestimable Correggio in her absence, and left the

room. In less than five minutes she came back, looking quite happy and

important in her innocent way.

“The Mother Superior,” she said, “has given me leave to tell all I know

about the wooden cross. She says it may do you good, and improve your

Protestant opinion of us Catholics.”

I expressed myself as being both willing and anxious to profit by what I

heard; and the nun began her narrative immediately.

She related it in her own simple, earnest, minute way; dwelling as

long on small particulars as on important incidents; and making moral

reflections for my benefit at every place where it was possible to

introduce them. In spite, however, of these drawbacks in the telling of

it, the story interested and impressed me in no ordinary degree; and

I now purpose putting the events of it together as skillfully and

strikingly as I can, in the hope that this written version of the

narrative may appeal as strongly to the reader’s sympathies as the

spoken version did to mine.

THE NUN’S STORY OF GABRIEL’S MARRIAGE

CHAPTER I.

One night, during the period of the first French Revolution, the family

of Francois Sarzeau, a fisherman of Brittany, were all waking and

watching at a late hour in their cottage on the peninsula of Quiberon.

Francois had gone out in his boat that evening, as usual, to fish.

Shortly after his departure, the wind had risen, the clouds had

gathered; and the storm, which had been threatening at intervals

throughout the whole day, burst forth furiously about nine o’clock.

It was now eleven; and the raging of the wind over the barren, heathy

peninsula still seemed to increase with each fresh blast that tore its

way out upon the open sea; the crashing of the waves on the beach was

awful to hear; the dreary blackness of the sky terrible to behold. The

longer they listened to the storm, the oftener they looked out at it,

the fainter grew the hopes which the fisherman’s family still strove to

cherish for the safety of Francois Sarzeau and of his younger son who

had gone with him in the boat.

There was something impressive in the simplicity of the scene that was

now passing within the cottage.

On one side of the great, rugged, black fire-place crouched two little

girls; the younger half asleep, with her head in her sister’s lap. These

were the daughters of the fisherman; and opposite to them sat their

eldest brother, Gabriel. His right arm had been badly wounded in a

recent encounter at the national game of the _Soule_, a sport resembling

our English foot-ball; but played on both sides in such savage earnest

by the people of Brittany as to end always in bloodshed, often in

mutilation, sometimes even in loss of life. On the same bench with

Gabriel sat his betrothed wife--a girl of eighteen--clothed in the

plain, almost monastic black-and-white costume of her native district.

She was the daughter of a small farmer living at some little distance

from the coast. Between the groups formed on either side of the

fire-place, the vacant space was occupied by the foot of a truckle-bed.

In this bed lay a very old man, the father of Francois Sarzeau. His

haggard face was covered with deep wrinkles; his long white hair flowed

over the coarse lump of sacking which served him for a pillow, and

his light gray eyes wandered incessantly, with a strange expression of

terror and suspicion, from person to person, and from object to object,

in all parts of the room. Whenever the wind and sea whistled and roared

at their loudest, he muttered to himself and tossed his hands fretfully

on his wretched coverlet. On these occasions his eyes always fixed

themselves intently on a little delf image of the Virgin placed in

a niche over the fire-place. Every time they saw him look in this

direction Gabriel and the young girls shuddered and crossed themselves;

and even the child, who still kept awake, imitated their example.

There was one bond of feeling at least between the old man and his

grandchildren, which connected his age and their youth unnaturally and

closely together. This feeling was reverence for the superstitions

which had been handed down to them by their ancestors from centuries

and centuries back, as far even as the age of the Druids. The spirit

warnings of disaster and death which the old man heard in the wailing

of the wind, in the crashing of the waves, in the dreary, monotonous

rattling of the casement, the young man and his affianced wife and the

little child who cowered by the fireside heard too. All differences in

sex, in temperament, in years, superstition was strong enough to strike

down to its own dread level, in the fisherman’s cottage, on that stormy

night.

Besides the benches by the fireside and the bed, the only piece of

furniture in the room was a coarse wooden table, with a loaf of black

bread, a knife, and a pitcher of cider placed on it. Old nets, coils

of rope, tattered sails, hung, about the walls and over the wooden

partition which separated the room into two compartments. Wisps of straw

and ears of barley drooped down through the rotten rafters and gaping

boards that made the floor of the granary above.

These different objects, and the persons in the cottage, who composed

the only surviving members of the fisherman’s family, were strangely and

wildly lit up by the blaze of the fire and by the still brighter glare

of a resin torch stuck into a block of wood in the chimney-corner. The

red and yellow light played full on the weird face of the old man as

he lay opposite to it, and glanced fitfully on the figures of the young

girl, Gabriel, and the two children; the great, gloomy shadows rose

and fell, and grew and lessened in bulk about the walls like visions

of darkness, animated by a supernatural specter-life, while the dense

obscurity outside spreading before the curtainless window seemed as a

wall of solid darkness that had closed in forever around the fisherman’s

house. The night scene within the cottage was almost as wild and as

dreary to look upon as the night scene without.

For a long time the different persons in the room sat together without

speaking, even without looking at each other. At last the girl turned

and whispered something into Gabriel’s ear:

“Perrine, what were you saying to Gabriel?” asked the child opposite,

seizing the first opportunity of breaking the desolate silence--doubly

desolate at her age--which was preserved by all around her.

“I was telling him,” answered Perrine, simply, “that it was time to

change the bandages on his arm; and I also said to him, what I have

often said before, that he must never play at that terrible game of the

_Soule_ again.”

The old man had been looking intently at Perrine and his grandchild as

they spoke. His harsh, hollow voice mingled with the last soft tones of

the young girl, repeating over and over again the same terrible words,

“Drowned! drowned! Son and grandson, both drowned! both drowned!”

“Hush, grandfather,” said Gabriel, “we must not lose all hope for them

yet. God and the Blessed Virgin protect them!” He looked at the little

delf image, and crossed himself; the others imitated him, except the old

man. He still tossed his hands over the coverlet, and still repeated,

“Drowned! drowned!”

“Oh, that accursed _Soule!_” groaned the young man. “But for this wound

I should have been with my father. The poor boy’s life might at least

have been saved; for we should then have left him here.”

“Silence!” exclaimed the harsh voice from the bed. “The wail of dying

men rises louder than the loud sea; the devil’s psalm-singing roars

higher than the roaring wind! Be silent, and listen! Francois drowned!

Pierre drowned! Hark! Hark!”

A terrific blast of wind burst over the house as he spoke, shaking it to

its center, overpowering all other sounds, even to the deafening crash

of the waves. The slumbering child awoke, and uttered a scream of

fear. Perrine, who had been kneeling before her lover binding the fresh

bandages on his wounded arm, paused in her occupation, trembling from

head to foot. Gabriel looked toward the window; his experience told him

what must be the hurricane fury of that blast of wind out at sea, and

he sighed bitterly as he murmured to himself, “God help them both--man’s

help will be as nothing to them now!”

“Gabriel!” cried the voice from the bed in altered tones--very faint and

trembling.

He did not hear or did not attend to the old man. He was trying to

soothe and encourage the young girl at his feet.

“Don’t be frightened, love,” he said, kissing her very gently and

tenderly on the forehead. “You are as safe here as anywhere. Was I not

right in saying that it would be madness to attempt taking you back to

the farmhouse this evening? You can sleep in that room, Perrine, when

you are tired--you can sleep with the two girls.”

“Gabriel! brother Gabriel!” cried one of the children. “Oh, look at

grandfather!”

Gabriel ran to the bedside. The old man had raised himself into a

sitting position; his eyes were dilated, his whole face was rigid with

terror, his hands were stretched out convulsively toward his grandson.

“The White Women!” he screamed. “The White Women; the grave-diggers of

the drowned are out on the sea!”

The children, with cries of terror, flung themselves into Perrine’s

arms; even Gabriel uttered an exclamation of horror, and started back

from the bedside.

Still the old man reiterated, “The White Women! The White Women! Open

the door, Gabriel! look-out westward, where the ebb-tide has left the

sand dry. You’ll see them bright as lightning in the darkness, mighty

as the angels in stature, sweeping like the wind over the sea, in their

long white garments, with their white hair trailing far behind them!

Open the door, Gabriel! You’ll see them stop and hover over the place

where your father and your brother have been drowned; you’ll see them

come on till they reach the sand, you’ll see them dig in it with their

naked feet and beckon awfully to the raging sea to give up its dead.

Open the door, Gabriel--or, though it should be the death of me, I will

get up and open it myself!”

Gabriel’s face whitened even to his lips, but he made a sign that he

would obey. It required the exertion of his whole strength to keep the

door open against the wind while he looked out.

“Do you see them, grandson Gabriel? Speak the truth, and tell me if you

see them,” cried the old man.

“I see nothing but darkness--pitch darkness,” answered Gabriel, letting

the door close again.

“Ah! woe! woe!” groaned his grandfather, sinking back exhausted on the

pillow. “Darkness to _you;_ but bright as lightning to the eyes that

are allowed to see them. Drowned! drowned! Pray for their souls,

Gabriel--_I_ see the White Women even where I lie, and dare not pray for

them. Son and grandson drowned! both drowned!”

The young man went back to Perrine and the children.

“Grandfather is very ill to-night,” he whispered. “You had better all go

into the bedroom, and leave me alone to watch by him.”

They rose as he spoke, crossed themselves before the image of the

Virgin, kissed him one by one, and, without uttering a word, softly

entered the little room on the other side of the partition. Gabriel

looked at his grandfather, and saw that he lay quiet now, with his eyes

closed as if he were already dropping asleep. The young man then heaped

some fresh logs on the fire, and sat down by it to watch till morning.

Very dreary was the moaning of the night storm; but it was not

more dreary than the thoughts which now occupied him in his

solitude--thoughts darkened and distorted by the terrible superstitions

of his country and his race. Ever since the period of his mother’s death

he had been oppressed by the conviction that some curse hung over the

family. At first they had been prosperous, they had got money, a little

legacy had been left them. But this good fortune had availed only for

a time; disaster on disaster strangely and suddenly succeeded. Losses,

misfortunes, poverty, want itself had overwhelmed them; his father’s

temper had become so soured, that the oldest friends of Francois Sarzeau

declared he was changed beyond recognition. And now, all this past

misfortune--the steady, withering, household blight of many years--had

ended in the last, worst misery of all--in death. The fate of his

father and his brother admitted no longer of a doubt; he knew it, as he

listened to the storm, as he reflected on his grandfather’s words, as

he called to mind his own experience of the perils of the sea. And this

double bereavement had fallen on him just as the time was approaching

for his marriage with Perrine; just when misfortune was most ominous of

evil, just when it was hardest to bear! Forebodings, which he dared not

realize, began now to mingle with the bitterness of his grief, whenever

his thoughts wandered from the present to the future; and as he sat by

the lonely fireside, murmuring from time to time the Church prayer for

the repose of the dead, he almost involuntarily mingled with it another

prayer, expressed only in his own simple words, for the safety of the

living--for the young girl whose love was his sole earthly treasure; for

the motherless children who must now look for protection to him alone.

He had sat by the hearth a long, long time, absorbed in his thoughts,

not once looking round toward the bed, when he was startled by hearing

the sound of his grandfather’s voice once more.

“Gabriel,” whispered the old man, trembling and shrinking as he spoke,

“Gabriel, do you hear a dripping of water--now slow, now quick again--on

the floor at the foot of my bed?”

“I hear nothing, grandfather, but the crackling of the fire, and the

roaring of the storm outside.”

“Drip, drip, drip! Faster and faster; plainer and plainer. Take the

torch, Gabriel; look down on the floor--look with all your eyes. Is the

place wet there? Is it the rain from heaven that is dropping through the

roof?”

Gabriel took the torch with trembling fingers and knelt down on the

floor to examine it closely. He started back from the place, as he saw

that it was quite dry--the torch dropped upon the hearth--he fell on his

knees before the statue of the Virgin and hid his face.

“Is the floor wet? Answer me, I command you--is the floor wet?” asked

the old man, quickly and breathlessly.

Gabriel rose, went back to the bedside, and whispered to him that no

drop of rain had fallen inside the cottage. As he spoke the words, he

saw a change pass over his grandfather’s face--the sharp features

seemed to wither up on a sudden; the eager expression to grow vacant

and death-like in an instant. The voice, too, altered; it was harsh and

querulous no more; its tones became strangely soft, slow, and solemn,

when the old man spoke again.

“I hear it still,” he said, “drip! drip! faster and plainer than ever.

That ghostly dropping of water is the last and the surest of the

fatal signs which have told of your father’s and your brother’s deaths

to-night, and I know from the place where I hear it--the foot of the

bed I lie on--that it is a warning to me of my own approaching end. I am

called where my son and my grandson have gone before me; my weary time

in this world is over at last. Don’t let Perrine and the children come

in here, if they should awake--they are too young to look at death.”

Gabriel’s blood curdled when he heard these words--when he touched his

grandfather’s hand, and felt the chill that it struck to his own--when

he listened to the raging wind, and knew that all help was miles and

miles away from the cottage. Still, in spite of the storm, the darkness,

and the distance, he thought not for a moment of neglecting the duty

that had been taught him from his childhood--the duty of summoning the

priest to the bedside of the dying. “I must call Perrine,” he said, “to

watch by you while I am away.”

“Stop!” cried the old man. “Stop, Gabriel; I implore, I command you not

to leave me!”

“The priest, grandfather--your confession--”

“It must be made to you. In this darkness and this hurricane no man can

keep the path across the heath. Gabriel, I am dying--I should be dead

before you got back. Gabriel, for the love of the Blessed Virgin, stop

here with me till I die--my time is short--I have a terrible secret that

I must tell to somebody before I draw my last breath! Your ear to my

mouth--quick! quick!”

As he spoke the last words, a slight noise was audible on the other

side of the partition, the door half opened, and Perrine appeared at

it, looking affrightedly into the room. The vigilant eyes of the old

man--suspicious even in death--caught sight of her directly.

“Go back!” he exclaimed faintly, before she could utter a word; “go

back--push her back, Gabriel, and nail down the latch in the door, if

she won’t shut it of herself!”

“Dear Perrine! go in again,” implored Gabriel. “Go in, and keep the

children from disturbing us. You will only make him worse--you can be of

no use here!”

She obeyed without speaking, and shut the door again.

While the old man clutched him by the arm, and repeated, “Quick! quick!

your ear close to my mouth,” Gabriel heard her say to the children (who

were both awake), “Let us pray for grandfather.” And as he knelt down

by the bedside, there stole on his ear the sweet, childish tones of his

little sisters, and the soft, subdued voice of the young girl who was

teaching them the prayer, mingling divinely with the solemn wailing

of wind and sea, rising in a still and awful purity over the hoarse,

gasping whispers of the dying man.

“I took an oath not to tell it, Gabriel--lean down closer! I’m weak, and

they mustn’t hear a word in that room--I took an oath not to tell it;

but death is a warrant to all men for breaking such an oath as that.

Listen; don’t lose a word I’m saying! Don’t look away into the room: the

stain of blood-guilt has defiled it forever! Hush! hush! hush! Let me

speak. Now your father’s dead, I can’t carry the horrid secret with me

into the grave. Just remember, Gabriel--try if you can’t remember the

time before I was bedridden, ten years ago and more--it was about six

weeks, you know, before your mother’s death; you can remember it by

that. You and all the children were in that room with your mother; you

were asleep, I think; it was night, not very late--only nine o’clock.

Your father and I were standing at the door, looking out at the heath in

the moonlight. He was so poor at that time, he had been obliged to sell

his own boat, and none of the neighbors would take him out fishing with

them--your father wasn’t liked by any of the neighbors. Well; we saw

a stranger coming toward us; a very young man, with a knapsack on his

back. He looked like a gentleman, though he was but poorly dressed. He

came up, and told us he was dead tired, and didn’t think he could reach

the town that night and asked if we would give him shelter till morning.

And your father said yes, if he would make no noise, because the wife

was ill, and the children were asleep. So he said all he wanted was

to go to sleep himself before the fire. We had nothing to give him

but black bread. He had better food with him than that, and undid his

knapsack to get at it, and--and--Gabriel! I’m sinking--drink! something

to drink--I’m parched with thirst.”

Silent and deadly pale, Gabriel poured some of the cider from the

pitcher on the table into a drinking-cup, and gave it to the old man.

Slight as the stimulant was, its effect on him was almost instantaneous.

His dull eyes brightened a little, and he went on in the same whispering

tones as before:

“He pulled the food out of his knapsack rather in a hurry, so that some

of the other small things in it fell on the floor. Among these was a

pocketbook, which your father picked up and gave him back; and he put

it in his coat-pocket--there was a tear in one of the sides of the book,

and through the hole some bank-notes bulged out. I saw them, and so did

your father (don’t move away, Gabriel; keep close, there’s nothing in me

to shrink from). Well, he shared his food, like an honest fellow,

with us; and then put his hand in his pocket, and gave me four or five

livres, and then lay down before the fire to go to sleep. As he shut

his eyes, your father looked at me in a way I didn’t like. He’d been

behaving very bitterly and desperately toward us for some time past,

being soured about poverty, and your mother’s illness, and the constant

crying out of you children for more to eat. So when he told me to go and

buy some wood, some bread, and some wine with money I had got, I

didn’t like, somehow, to leave him alone with the stranger; and so made

excuses, saying (which was true) that it was too late to buy things in

the village that night. But he told me in a rage to go and do as he bid

me, and knock the people up if the shop was shut. So I went out,

being dreadfully afraid of your father--as indeed we all were at that

time--but I couldn’t make up my mind to go far from the house; I was

afraid of something happening, though I didn’t dare to think what. I

don’t know how it was, but I stole back in about ten minutes on tiptoe

to the cottage; I looked in at the window, and saw--O God! forgive him!

O God! forgive me!--I saw--I--more to drink, Gabriel! I can’t speak

again--more to drink!”

The voices in the next room had ceased; but in the minute of silence

which now ensued, Gabriel heard his sisters kissing Perrine, and wishing

her good-night. They were all three trying to go asleep again.

“Gabriel, pray yourself, and teach your children after you to pray,

that your father may find forgiveness where he is now gone. I saw him as

plainly as I now see you, kneeling with his knife in one hand over the

sleeping man. He was taking the little book with the notes in it out of

the stranger’s pocket. He got the book into his possession, and held it

quite still in his hand for an instant, thinking. I believe--oh no! no!

I’m sure--he was repenting; I’m sure he was going to put the book back;

but just at that moment the stranger moved, and raised one of his arms,

as if he was waking up. Then the temptation of the devil grew too strong

for your father--I saw him lift the hand with the knife in it--but saw

nothing more. I couldn’t look in at the window--I couldn’t move

away--I couldn’t cry out; I stood with my back turned toward the house,

shivering all over, though it was a warm summer-time, and hearing no

cries, no noises at all, from the room behind me. I was too frightened

to know how long it was before the opening of the cottage door made me

turn round; but when I did, I saw your father standing before me in the

yellow moonlight, carrying in his arms the bleeding body of the poor

lad who had shared his food with us and slept on our hearth. Hush! hush!

Don’t groan and sob in that way! Stifle it with the bedclothes. Hush!

you’ll wake them in the next room!”

“Gabriel--Gabriel!” exclaimed a voice from behind the partition. “What

has happened? Gabriel! let me come out and be with you!”

“No! no!” cried the old man, collecting the last remains of his strength

in the attempt to speak above the wind, which was just then howling at

the loudest; “stay where you are--don’t speak, don’t come out--I command

you! Gabriel” (his voice dropped to a faint whisper), “raise me up in

bed--you must hear the whole of it now; raise me; I’m choking so that

I can hardly speak. Keep close and listen--I can’t say much more. Where

was I?--Ah, your father! He threatened to kill me if I didn’t swear to

keep it secret; and in terror of my life I swore. He made me help him to

carry the body--we took it all across the heath--oh! horrible, horrible,

under the bright moon--(lift me higher, Gabriel). You know the great

stones yonder, set up by the heathens; you know the hollow place under

the stones they call ‘The Merchant’s Table’; we had plenty of room to

lay him in that, and hide him so; and then we ran back to the cottage. I

never dared to go near the place afterward; no, nor your father either!

(Higher, Gabriel! I’m choking again.) We burned the pocket-book and the

knapsack--never knew his name--we kept the money to spend. (You’re not

lifting me; you’re not listening close enough!) Your father said it was

a legacy, when you and your mother asked about the money. (You hurt me,

you shake me to pieces, Gabriel, when you sob like that.) It brought

a curse on us, the money; the curse has drowned your father and your

brother; the curse is killing me; but I’ve confessed--tell the priest I

confessed before I died. Stop her; stop Perrine! I hear her getting up.

Take his bones away from the Merchant’s Table, and bury them for the

love of God! and tell the priest (lift me higher, lift me till I am

on my knees)--if your father was alive, he’d murder me; but tell the

priest--because of my guilty soul--to pray, and--remember the Merchant’s

Table--to bury, and to pray--to pray always for--”

As long as Perrine heard faintly the whispering of the old man, though

no word that he said reached her ear, she shrank from opening the door

in the partition. But, when the whispering sounds, which terrified her

she knew not how or why, first faltered, then ceased altogether; when

she heard the sobs that followed them; and when her heart told her who

was weeping in the next room--then, she began to be influenced by a new

feeling which was stronger than the strongest fear, and she opened the

door without hesitation, almost without trembling.

The coverlet was drawn up over the old man; Gabriel was kneeling by

the bedside, with his face hidden. When she spoke to him, he neither

answered nor looked at her. After a while the sobs that shook him

ceased; but still he never moved, except once when she touched him, and

then he shuddered--shuddered under _her_ hand! She called in his little

sisters, and they spoke to him, and still he uttered no word in reply.

They wept. One by one, often and often, they entreated him with loving

words; but the stupor of grief which held him speechless and motionless

was beyond the power of human tears, stronger even than the strength of

human love.

It was near daybreak, and the storm was lulling, but still no change

occurred at the bedside. Once or twice, as Perrine knelt near Gabriel,

still vainly endeavoring to arouse him to a sense of her presence, she

thought she heard the old man breathing feebly, and stretched out her

hand toward the coverlet; but she could not summon courage to touch him

or to look at him. This was the first time she had ever been present at

a death-bed; the stillness in the room, the stupor of despair that had

seized on Gabriel, so horrified her, that she was almost as helpless as

the two children by her side. It was not till the dawn looked in at the

cottage window--so coldly, so drearily, and yet so re-assuringly--that

she began to recover her self-possession at all. Then she knew that her

best resource would be to summon assistance immediately from the nearest

house. While she was trying to persuade the two children to remain

alone in the cottage with Gabriel during her temporary absence, she was

startled by the sound of footsteps outside the door. It opened, and a

man appeared on the threshold, standing still there for a moment in the

dim, uncertain light.

She looked closer--looked intently at him. It was Francois Sarzeau

himself.

CHAPTER II.

The fisherman was dripping with wet; but his face, always pale and

inflexible, seemed to be but little altered in expression by the perils

through which he must have passed during the night. Young Pierre lay

almost insensible in his arms. In the astonishment and fright of the

first moment, Perrine screamed as she recognized him.

“There, there, there!” he said, peevishly, advancing straight to the

hearth with his burden; “don’t make a noise. You never expected to

see us alive again, I dare say. We gave ourselves up as lost, and only

escaped after all by a miracle.”

He laid the boy down where he could get the full warmth of the fire; and

then, turning round, took a wicker-covered bottle from his pocket,

and said, “If it hadn’t been for the brandy--” He stopped

suddenly--started--put down the bottle on the bench near him--and

advanced quickly to the bedside.

Perrine looked after him as he went; and saw Gabriel, who had risen when

the door was opened, moving back from the bed as Francois approached.

The young man’s face seemed to have been suddenly struck to stone--its

blank, ghastly whiteness was awful to look at. He moved slowly backward

and backward till he came to the cottage wall--then stood quite still,

staring on his father with wild, vacant eyes, moving his hands to and

fro before him, muttering, but never pronouncing one audible word.

Francois did not appear to notice his son; he had the coverlet of the

bed in his hand.

“Anything the matter here?” he asked, as he drew it down.

Still Gabriel could not speak. Perrine saw it, and answered for him.

“Gabriel is afraid that his poor grandfather is dead,” she whispered,

nervously.

“Dead!” There was no sorrow in the tone as he echoed the word. “Was he

very bad in the night before his death happened? Did he wander in his

mind? He has been rather light-headed lately.”

“He was very restless, and spoke of the ghostly warnings that we all

know of; he said he saw and heard many things which told him from

the other world that you and Pierre--Gabriel!” she screamed, suddenly

interrupting herself, “look at him! Look at his face! Your grandfather

is not dead!”

At this moment, Francois was raising his father’s head to look closely

at him. A faint spasm had indeed passed over the deathly face; the lips

quivered, the jaw dropped. Francois shuddered as he looked, and moved

away hastily from the bed. At the same instant Gabriel started from the

wall; his expression altered, his pale cheeks flushed suddenly, as he

snatched up the wicker-cased bottle, and poured all the little brandy

that was left in it down his grandfather’s throat.

The effect was nearly instantaneous; the sinking vital forces rallied

desperately. The old man’s eyes opened again, wandered round the room,

then fixed themselves intently on Francois as he stood near the fire.

Trying and terrible as his position was at that moment, Gabriel still

retained self-possession enough to whisper a few words in Perrine’s ear.

“Go back again into the bedroom, and take the children with you,” he

said. “We may have something to speak about which you had better not

hear.”

“Son Gabriel, your grandfather is trembling all over,” said Francois.

“If he is dying at all, he is dying of cold; help me to lift him, bed

and all, to the hearth.”

“No, no! don’t let him touch me!” gasped the old man. “Don’t let him

look at me in that way! Don’t let him come near me, Gabriel! Is it his

ghost? or is it himself?”

As Gabriel answered he heard a knocking at the door. His father opened

it, and disclosed to view some people from the neighboring fishing

village, who had come--more out of curiosity than sympathy--to inquire

whether Francois and the boy Pierre had survived the night. Without

asking any one to enter, the fisherman surlily and shortly answered the

various questions addressed to him, standing in his own doorway. While

he was thus engaged, Gabriel heard his grandfather muttering vacantly to

himself, “Last night--how about last night, grandson? What was I talking

about last night? Did I say your father was drowned? Very foolish to say

he was drowned, and then see him come back alive again! But it wasn’t

that--I’m so weak in my head, I can’t remember. What was it, Gabriel?

Something too horrible to speak of? Is that what you’re whispering and

trembling about? I said nothing horrible. A crime! Bloodshed! I know

nothing of any crime or bloodshed here--I must have been frightened out

of my wits to talk in that way! The Merchant’s Table? Only a big heap

of old stones! What with the storm, and thinking I was going to die,

and being afraid about your father, I must have been light-headed. Don’t

give another thought to that nonsense, Gabriel! I’m better now. We shall

all live to laugh at poor grandfather for talking nonsense about

crime and bloodshed in his sleep. Ah, poor old man--last

night--light-headed--fancies and nonsense of an old man--why don’t you

laugh at it? I’m laughing--so light-headed, so light--”

He stopped suddenly. A low cry, partly of terror and partly of pain,

escaped him; the look of pining anxiety and imbecile cunning which had

distorted his face while he had been speaking, faded from it forever.

He shivered a little, breathed heavily once or twice, then became quite

still.

Had he died with a falsehood on his lips?

Gabriel looked round and saw that the cottage door was closed, and

that his father was standing against it. How long he had occupied that

position, how many of the old man’s last words he had heard, it was

impossible to conjecture, but there was a lowering suspicion in his

harsh face as he now looked away from the corpse to his son, which made

Gabriel shudder; and the first question that he asked, on once more

approaching the bedside, was expressed in tones which, quiet as they

were, had a fearful meaning in them.

“What did your grandfather talk about last night?” he asked.

Gabriel did not answer. All that he had heard, all that he had seen, all

the misery and horror that might yet be to come, had stunned his mind.

The unspeakable dangers of his present position were too tremendous to

be realized. He could only feel them vaguely in the weary torpor that

oppressed his heart; while in every other direction the use of his

faculties, physical and mental, seemed to have suddenly and totally

abandoned him.

“Is your tongue wounded, son Gabriel, as well as your arm?” his father

went on, with a bitter laugh. “I come back to you, saved by a miracle;

and you never speak to me. Would you rather I had died than the old man

there? He can’t hear you now--why shouldn’t you tell me what nonsense

he was talking last night? You won’t? I say you shall!” (He crossed

the room and put his back to the door.) “Before either of us leave this

place, you shall confess it! You know that my duty to the Church bids

me to go at once and tell the priest of your grandfather’s death. If I

leave that duty unfulfilled, remember it is through your fault! _You_

keep me here--for here I stop till I’m obeyed. Do you hear that, idiot?

Speak! Speak instantly, or you shall repent it to the day of your death!

I ask again--what did your grandfather say to you when he was wandering

in his mind last night?”

“He spoke of a crime committed by another, and guiltily kept secret by

him,” answered Gabriel, slowly and sternly. “And this morning he denied

his own words with his last living breath. But last night, if he spoke

the truth--”

“The truth!” echoed Francois. “What truth?”

He stopped, his eyes fell, then turned toward the corpse. For a few

minutes he stood steadily contemplating it; breathing quickly, and

drawing his hand several times across his forehead. Then he faced

his son once more. In that short interval he had become in outward

appearance a changed man; expression, voice, and manner, all were

altered.

“Heaven forgive me!” he went on, “but I could almost laugh at myself, at

this solemn moment, for having spoken and acted just now so much like a

fool! Denied his words, did he? Poor old man! they say sense often comes

back to light-headed people just before death; and he is a proof of it.

The fact is, Gabriel, my own wits must have been a little shaken--and no

wonder--by what I went through last night, and what I have come home

to this morning. As if you, or anybody, could ever really give serious

credit to the wandering speeches of a dying old man! (Where is Perrine?

Why did you send her away?) I don’t wonder at your still looking a

little startled, and feeling low in your mind, and all that--for you’ve

had a trying night of it, trying in every way. He must have been a good

deal shaken in his wits last night, between fears about himself and

fears about me. (To think of my being angry with you, Gabriel, for being

a little alarmed--very naturally--by an old man’s queer fancies!) Come

out, Perrine--come out of the bedroom whenever you are tired of it:

you must learn sooner or later to look at death calmly. Shake hands,

Gabriel; and let us make it up, and say no more about what has passed.

You won’t? Still angry with me for what I said to you just now? Ah!

you’ll think better about it by the time I return. Come out, Perrine;

we’ve no secrets here.”

“Where are you going to?” asked Gabriel, as he saw his father hastily

open the door.

“To tell the priest that one of his congregation is dead, and to have

the death registered,” answered Francois. “These are _my_ duties, and

must be performed before I take any rest.”

He went out hurriedly as he said these words. Gabriel almost trembled

at himself when he found that he breathed more freely, that he felt less

horribly oppressed both in mind and body, the moment his father’s back

was turned. Fearful as thought was now, it was still a change for the

better to be capable of thinking at all. Was the behavior of his father

compatible with innocence? Could the old man’s confused denial of his

own words in the morning, and in the presence of his son, be set for one

instant against the circumstantial confession that he had made during

the night alone with his grandson? These were the terrible questions

which Gabriel now asked himself, and which he shrank involuntarily from

answering. And yet that doubt, the solution of which would, one way or

the other, irrevocably affect the whole future of his life, must sooner

or later be solved at any hazard!

Was there any way of setting it at rest? Yes, one way--to go instantly,

while his father was absent, and examine the hollow place under the

Merchant’s Table. If his grandfather’s confession had really been made

while he was in possession of his senses, this place (which Gabriel knew

to be covered in from wind and weather) had never been visited since

the commission of the crime by the perpetrator, or by his unwilling

accomplice; though time had destroyed all besides, the hair and the

bones of the victim would still be left to bear witness to the truth--if

truth had indeed been spoken. As this conviction grew on him, the young

man’s cheek paled; and he stopped irresolute half-way between the hearth

and the door. Then he looked down doubtfully at the corpse on the bed;

and then there came upon him suddenly a revulsion of feeling. A wild,

feverish impatience to know the worst without another instant of delay

possessed him. Only telling Perrine that he should be back soon, and

that she must watch by the dead in his absence, he left the cottage at

once, without waiting to hear her reply, even without looking back as he

closed the door behind him.

There were two tracks to the Merchant’s Table. One, the longer of the

two, by the coast cliffs; the other across the heath. But this latter

path was also, for some little distance, the path which led to the

village and the church. He was afraid of attracting his father’s

attention here, so he took the direction of the coast. At one spot the

track trended inland, winding round some of the many Druid monuments

scattered over the country. This place was on high ground, and commanded

a view, at no great distance, of the path leading to the village, just

where it branched off from the heathy ridge which ran in the direction

of the Merchant’s Table. Here Gabriel descried the figure of a man

standing with his back toward the coast.

This figure was too far off to be identified with absolute certainty,

but it looked like, and might well be, Francois Sarzeau. Whoever he was,

the man was evidently uncertain which way he should proceed. When

he moved forward, it was first to advance several paces toward the

Merchant’s Table; then he went back again toward the distant cottages

and the church. Twice he hesitated thus; the second time pausing long

before he appeared finally to take the way that led to the village.

Leaving the post of observation among the stones, at which he had

instinctively halted for some minutes past, Gabriel now proceeded on his

own path. Could this man really be his father? And if it were so, why

did Francois Sarzeau only determine to go to the village where his

business lay, after having twice vainly attempted to persevere in taking

the exactly opposite direction of the Merchant’s Table? Did he really

desire to go there? Had he heard the name mentioned, when the old man

referred to it in his dying words? And had he failed to summon courage

enough to make all safe by removing--This last question was too horrible

to be pursued; Gabriel stifled it affrightedly in his own heart as he

went on.

He reached the great Druid monument without meeting a living soul on his

way. The sun was rising, and the mighty storm-clouds of the night were

parting asunder wildly over the whole eastward horizon. The waves still

leaped and foamed gloriously: but the gale had sunk to a keen, fresh

breeze. As Gabriel looked up, and saw how brightly the promise of a

lovely day was written in the heavens, he trembled as he thought of

the search which he was now about to make. The sight of the fair, fresh

sunrise jarred horribly with the suspicions of committed murder that

were rankling foully in his heart. But he knew that his errand must be

performed, and he nerved himself to go through with it; for he dared not

return to the cottage until the mystery had been cleared up at once and

forever.

The Merchant’s Table was formed by two huge stones resting horizontally

on three others. In the troubled times of more than half a century ago,

regular tourists were unknown among the Druid monuments of Brittany; and

the entrance to the hollow place under the stones--since often visited

by strangers--was at this time nearly choked up by brambles and weeds.

Gabriel’s first look at this tangled nook of briers convinced him that

the place had not been entered perhaps for years, by any living being.

Without allowing himself to hesitate (for he felt that the slightest

delay might be fatal to his resolution), he passed as gently as possible

through the brambles, and knelt down at the low, dusky, irregular

entrance of the hollow place under the stones.

His heart throbbed violently, his breath almost failed him; but he

forced himself to crawl a few feet into the cavity, and then groped with

his hand on the ground about him.

He touched something! Something which it made his flesh creep to handle;

something which he would fain have dropped, but which he grasped tight

in spite of himself. He drew back into the outer air and sunshine. Was

it a human bone? No! he had been the dupe of his own morbid terror--he

had only taken up a fragment of dried wood!

Feeling shame at such self-deception as this, he was about to throw the

wood from him before he re-entered the place, when another idea occurred

to him.

Though it was dimly lighted through one or two chinks in the stones, the

far part of the interior of the cavity was still too dusky to admit

of perfect examination by the eye, even on a bright sunshiny morning.

Observing this, he took out the tinder-box and matches, which, like the

other inhabitants of the district, he always carried about with him for

the purpose of lighting his pipe, determining to use the piece of wood

as a torch which might illuminate the darkest corner of the place when

he next entered it. Fortunately the wood had remained so long and had

been preserved so dry in its sheltered position, that it caught fire

almost as easily as a piece of paper. The moment it was fairly aflame

Gabriel went into the cavity, penetrating at once--this time--to its

furthest extremity.

He remained among the stones long enough for the wood to burn down

nearly to his hand. When he came out, and flung the burning fragment

from him, his face was flushed deeply, his eyes sparkled. He leaped

carelessly on to the heath, over the bushes through which he had

threaded his way so warily but a few minutes before, exclaiming, “I may

marry Perrine with a clear conscience now; I am the son of as honest a

man as there is in Brittany!”

He had closely examined the cavity in every corner, and not the

slightest sign that any dead body had ever been laid there was visible

in the hollow place under the Merchant’s Table.

CHAPTER III.

“I may marry Perrine with a clear conscience now!”

There are some parts of the world where it would be drawing no natural

picture of human nature to represent a son as believing conscientiously

that an offense against life and the laws of hospitality, secretly

committed by his father, rendered him, though innocent of all

participation in it, unworthy to fulfill his engagement with his

affianced wife. Among the simple inhabitants of Gabriel’s province,

however, such acuteness of conscientious sensibility as this was no

extraordinary exception to all general rules. Ignorant and superstitious

as they might be, the people of Brittany practiced the duties of

hospitality as devoutly as they practiced the duties of the national

religion. The presence of the stranger-guest, rich or poor, was a sacred

presence at their hearths. His safety was their especial charge, his

property their especial responsibility. They might be half starved, but

they were ready to share the last crust with him, nevertheless, as they

would share it with their own children.

Any outrage on the virtue of hospitality, thus born and bred in the

people, was viewed by them with universal disgust, and punished with

universal execration. This ignominy was uppermost in Gabriel’s thoughts

by the side of his grandfather’s bed; the dread of this worst dishonor,

which there was no wiping out, held him speechless before Perrine,

shamed and horrified him so that he felt unworthy to look her in the

face; and when the result of his search at the Merchant’s Table proved

the absence there of all evidence of the crime spoken of by the old

man, the blessed relief, the absorbing triumph of that discovery, was

expressed entirely in the one thought which had prompted his first

joyful words: He could marry Perrine with a clear conscience, for he was

the son of an honest man!

When he returned to the cottage, Francois had not come back. Perrine

was astonished at the change in Gabriel’s manner; even Pierre and the

children remarked it. Rest and warmth had by this time so far recovered

the younger brother, that he was able to give some account of the

perilous adventures of the night at sea. They were still listening to

the boy’s narrative when Francois at last returned. It was now

Gabriel who held out his hand, and made the first advances toward

reconciliation.

To his utter amazement, his father recoiled from him. The variable

temper of Francois had evidently changed completely during his absence

at the village. A settled scowl of distrust darkened his face as he

looked at his son.

“I never shake hands with people who have once doubted me,” he

exclaimed, loudly and irritably; “for I always doubt them forever after.

You are a bad son! You have suspected your father of some infamy that

you dare not openly charge him with, on no other testimony than the

rambling nonsense of a half-witted, dying old man. Don’t speak to me!

I won’t hear you! An innocent man and a spy are bad company. Go and

denounce me, you Judas in disguise! I don’t care for your secret or for

you. What’s that girl Perrine doing here still? Why hasn’t she gone home

long ago? The priest’s coming; we don’t want strangers in the house of

death. Take her back to the farmhouse, and stop there with her, if you

like; nobody wants you here!”

There was something in the manner and look of the speaker as he uttered

these words, so strange, so sinister, so indescribably suggestive of his

meaning much more than he said, that Gabriel felt his heart sink within

him instantly; and almost at the same moment this fearful question

forced itself irresistibly on his mind: might not his father have

followed him to the Merchant’s Table?

Even if he had been desired to speak, he could not have spoken now,

while that question and the suspicion that it brought with it were

utterly destroying all the re-assuring hopes and convictions of the

morning. The mental suffering produced by the sudden change from

pleasure to pain in all his thoughts, reacted on him physically. He felt

as if he were stifling in the air of the cottage, in the presence of his

father; and when Perrine hurried on her walking attire, and with a face

which alternately flushed and turned pale with every moment, approached

the door, he went out with her as hastily as if he had been flying

from his home. Never had the fresh air and the free daylight felt like

heavenly and guardian influences to him until now!

He could comfort Perrine under his father’s harshness, he could assure

her of his own affection, which no earthly influence could change, while

they walked together toward the farmhouse; but he could do no more. He

durst not confide to her the subject that was uppermost in his mind; of

all human beings she was the last to whom he could reveal the terrible

secret that was festering at his heart. As soon as they got within sight

of the farmhouse, Gabriel stopped; and, promising to see her again soon,

took leave of Perrine with assumed ease in his manner and with real

despair in his heart. Whatever the poor girl might think of it, he felt,

at that moment, that he had not courage to face her father, and hear him

talk happily and pleasantly, as his custom was, of Perrine’s approaching

marriage.

Left to himself, Gabriel wandered hither and thither over the open

heath, neither knowing nor caring in what direction he turned his steps.

The doubts about his father’s innocence which had been dissipated by his

visit to the Merchant’s Table, that father’s own language and manner had

now revived--had even confirmed, though he dared not yet acknowledge so

much to himself. It was terrible enough to be obliged to admit that the

result of his morning’s search was, after all, not conclusive--that

the mystery was, in very truth, not yet cleared up. The violence of his

father’s last words of distrust; the extraordinary and indescribable

changes in his father’s manner while uttering them--what did these

things mean? Guilt or innocence? Again, was it any longer reasonable to

doubt the death-bed confession made by his grandfather? Was it not, on

the contrary, far more probable that the old man’s denial in the morning

of his own words at night had been made under the influence of a

panic terror, when his moral consciousness was bewildered, and his

intellectual faculties were sinking? The longer Gabriel thought of these

questions, the less competent--possibly also the less willing--he felt

to answer them. Should he seek advice from others wiser than he? No;

not while the thousandth part of a chance remained that his father was

innocent.

This thought was still in his mind, when he found himself once more in

sight of his home. He was still hesitating near the door, when he saw it

opened cautiously. His brother Pierre looked out, and then came running

toward him. “Come in, Gabriel; oh, do come in!” said the boy, earnestly.

“We are afraid to be alone with father. He’s been beating us for talking

of you.”

Gabriel went in. His father looked up from the hearth where he was

sitting, muttered the word “Spy!” and made a gesture of contempt but did

not address a word directly to his son. The hours passed on in silence;

afternoon waned into evening, and evening into night; and still he never

spoke to any of his children. Soon after it was dark, he went out, and

took his net with him, saying that it was better to be alone on the sea

than in the house with a spy.

When he returned the next morning there was no change in him. Days

passed--weeks, months, even elapsed, and still, though his manner

insensibly became what it used to be toward his other children, it never

altered toward his eldest son. At the rare periods when they now met,

except when absolutely obliged to speak, he preserved total silence in

his intercourse with Gabriel. He would never take Gabriel out with him

in the boat; he would never sit alone with Gabriel in the house; he

would never eat a meal with Gabriel; he would never let the other

children talk to him about Gabriel; and he would never hear a word in

expostulation, a word in reference to anything his dead father had said

or done on the night of the storm, from Gabriel himself.

The young man pined and changed, so that even Perrine hardly knew him

again, under this cruel system of domestic excommunication; under the

wearing influence of the one unchanging doubt which never left him; and,

more than all, under the incessant reproaches of his own conscience,

aroused by the sense that he was evading a responsibility which it was

his solemn, his immediate duty to undertake. But no sting of conscience,

no ill treatment at home, and no self-reproaches for failing in his

duty of confession as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in their

influence over Gabriel to make him disclose the secret, under the

oppression of which his very life was wasting away. He knew that if he

once revealed it, whether his father was ultimately proved to be guilty

or innocent, there would remain a slur and a suspicion on the family,

and on Perrine besides, from her approaching connection with it, which

in their time and in their generation could never be removed. The

reproach of the world is terrible even in the crowded city, where many

of the dwellers in our abiding-place are strangers to us--but it is far

more terrible in the country, where none near us are strangers, where

all talk of us and know of us, where nothing intervenes between us and

the tyranny of the evil tongue. Gabriel had not courage to face this,

and dare the fearful chance of life-long ignominy--no, not even to serve

the sacred interests of justice, of atonement, and of truth.

CHAPTER IV.

While Gabriel still remained prostrated under the affliction that was

wasting his energies of body and mind, Brittany was visited by a great

public calamity, in which all private misfortunes were overwhelmed for a

while.

It was now the time when the ever-gathering storm of the French

Revolution had risen to its hurricane climax. Those chiefs of the new

republic were in power whose last, worst madness it was to decree the

extinction of religion and the overthrow of everything that outwardly

symbolized it throughout the whole of the country that they governed.

Already this decree had been executed to the letter in and around Paris;

and now the soldiers of the Republic were on their way to Brittany,

headed by commanders whose commission was to root out the Christian

religion in the last and the surest of the strongholds still left to it

in France.

These men began their work in a spirit worthy of the worst of their

superiors who had sent them to do it. They gutted churches, they

demolished chapels, they overthrew road-side crosses wherever they found

them. The terrible guillotine devoured human lives in the villages of

Brittany as it had devoured them in the streets of Paris; the musket and

the sword, in highway and byway, wreaked havoc on the people--even

on women and children kneeling in the act of prayer; the priests were

tracked night and day from one hiding-place, where they still offered

up worship, to another, and were killed as soon as overtaken--every

atrocity was committed in every district; but the Christian religion

still spread wider than the widest bloodshed; still sprang up with

ever-renewed vitality from under the very feet of the men whose vain

fury was powerless to trample it down. Everywhere the people remained

true to their Faith; everywhere the priests stood firm by them in their

sorest need. The executioners of the Republic had been sent to make

Brittany a country of apostates; they did their worst, and left it a

country of martyrs.

One evening, while this frightful persecution was still raging, Gabriel

happened to be detained unusually late at the cottage of Perrine’s

father. He had lately spent much of his time at the farm house; it was

his only refuge now from that place of suffering, of silence, and of

secret shame, which he had once called home! Just as he had taken leave

of Perrine for the night, and was about to open the farmhouse door, her

father stopped him, and pointed to a chair in the chimney-corner.

“Leave us alone, my dear,” said the old man to his daughter; “I want to

speak to Gabriel. You can go to your mother in the next room.”

The words which Pere Bonan--as he was called by the neighbors--had now

to say in private were destined to lead to very unexpected events. After

referring to the alteration which had appeared of late in Gabriel’s

manner, the old man began by asking him, sorrowfully but not

suspiciously, whether he still preserved his old affection for Perrine.

On receiving an eager answer in the affirmative, Pere Bonan then

referred to the persecution still raging through the country, and to the

consequent possibility that he, like others of his countrymen, might yet

be called to suffer, and perhaps to die, for the cause of his religion.

If this last act of self-sacrifice were required of him, Perrine would

be left unprotected, unless her affianced husband performed his promise

to her, and assumed, without delay, the position of her lawful guardian.

“Let me know that you will do this,” concluded the old man; “I shall be

resigned to all that may be required of me, if I can only know that

I shall not die leaving Perrine unprotected.” Gabriel gave the

promise--gave it with his whole heart. As he took leave of Pere Bonan,

the old man said to him:

“Come here to-morrow; I shall know more then than I know now--I shall

be able to fix with certainty the day for the fulfillment of your

engagement with Perrine.”

Why did Gabriel hesitate at the farmhouse door, looking back on Pere

Bonan as though he would fain say something, and yet not speaking a

word? Why, after he had gone out and had walked onward several paces,

did he suddenly stop, return quickly to the farmhouse, stand irresolute

before the gate, and then retrace his steps, sighing heavily as he went,

but never pausing again on his homeward way? Because the torment of his

horrible secret had grown harder to bear than ever, since he had given

the promise that had been required of him. Because, while a strong

impulse moved him frankly to lay bare his hidden dread and doubt to the

father whose beloved daughter was soon to be his wife, there was a yet

stronger passive influence which paralyzed on his lips the terrible

confession that he knew not whether he was the son of an honest man, or

the son of an assassin, and a robber. Made desperate by his situation,

he determined, while he hastened homeward, to risk the worst, and ask

that fatal question of his father in plain words. But this supreme

trial for parent and child was not to be. When he entered the cottage,

Francois was absent. He had told the younger children that he should not

be home again before noon on the next day.

Early in the morning Gabriel repaired to the farmhouse, as he had been

bidden. Influenced, by his love for Perrine, blindly confiding in the

faint hope (which, in despite of heart and conscience, he still forced

himself to cherish) that his father might be innocent, he now preserved

the appearance at least of perfect calmness. “If I tell my secret to

Perrine’s father, I risk disturbing in him that confidence in the

future safety of his child for which I am his present and only warrant.”

Something like this thought was in Gabriel’s mind, as he took the hand

of Pere Bonan, and waited anxiously to hear what was required of him on

that day.

“We have a short respite from danger, Gabriel,” said the old man. “News

has come to me that the spoilers of our churches and the murderers of

our congregations have been stopped on their way hitherward by tidings

which have reached them from another district. This interval of peace

and safety will be a short one--we must take advantage of it while it

is yet ours. My name is among the names on the list of the denounced. If

the soldiers of the Republic find me here--but we will say nothing more

of this; it is of Perrine and of you that I must now speak. On this very

evening your marriage may be solemnized with all the wonted rites of our

holy religion, and the blessing may be pronounced over you by the lips

of a priest. This evening, therefore, Gabriel, you must become the

husband and the protector of Perrine. Listen to me attentively, and I

will tell you how.”

This was the substance of what Gabriel now heard from Pere Bonan:

Not very long before the persecutions broke out in Brittany, a priest,

known generally by the name of Father Paul, was appointed to a curacy

in one of the northern districts of the province. He fulfilled all the

duties of his station in such a manner as to win the confidence and

affection of every member of his congregation, and was often spoken of

with respect, even in parts of the country distant from the scene of

his labors. It was not, however, until the troubles broke out, and the

destruction and bloodshed began, that he became renowned far and wide,

from one end of Brittany to another. From the date of the very first

persecutions the name of Father Paul was a rallying-cry of the hunted

peasantry; he was their great encouragement under oppression, their

example in danger, their last and only consoler in the hour of death.

Wherever havoc and ruin raged most fiercely, wherever the pursuit was

hottest and the slaughter most cruel, there the intrepid priest was sure

to be seen pursuing his sacred duties in defiance of every peril. His

hair-breadth escapes from death; his extraordinary re-appearances in

parts of the country where no one ever expected to see him again, were

regarded by the poorer classes with superstitious awe. Wherever Father

Paul appeared, with his black dress, his calm face, and the ivory

crucifix which he always carried in his hand, the people reverenced him

as more than mortal; and grew at last to believe, that, single-handed,

he would successfully defend his religion against the armies of the

Republic. But their simple confidence in his powers of resistance was

soon destined to be shaken. Fresh re-enforcements arrived in Brittany,

and overran the whole province from one end to the other. One morning,

after celebrating service in a dismantled church, and after narrowly

escaping with his life from those who pursued him, the priest

disappeared. Secret inquiries were made after him in all directions; but

he was heard of no more.

Many weary days had passed, and the dispirited peasantry had already

mourned him as dead, when some fishermen on the northern coast observed

a ship of light burden in the offing, making signals to the shore. They

put off to her in their boats; and on reaching the deck saw standing

before them the well-remembered figure of Father Paul.

The priest had returned to his congregations, and had founded the new

altar that they were to worship at on the deck of the ship! Razed from

the face of the earth, their church had not been destroyed--for Father

Paul and the priests who acted with him had given that church a refuge

on the sea. Henceforth, their children could still be baptized, their

sons and daughters could still be married, the burial of their dead

could still be solemnized, under the sanction of the old religion for

which, not vainly, they had suffered so patiently and so long.

Throughout the remaining time of trouble the services were uninterrupted

on board the ship. A code of signals was established by which those on

shore were always enabled to direct their brethren at sea toward such

parts of the coast as happened to be uninfested by the enemies of

their worship. On the morning of Gabriel’s visit to the farmhouse these

signals had shaped the course of the ship toward the extremity of the

peninsula of Quiberon. The people of the district were all prepared to

expect the appearance of the vessel some time in the evening, and

had their boats ready at a moment’s notice to put off, and attend the

service. At the conclusion of this service Pere Bonan had arranged that

the marriage of his daughter and Gabriel was to take place.

They waited for evening at the farmhouse. A little before sunset

the ship was signaled as in sight; and then Pere Bonan and his wife,

followed by Gabriel and Perrine, set forth over the heath to the beach.

With the solitary exception of Francois Sarzeau, the whole population

of the neighborhood was already assembled there, Gabriel’s brother and

sisters being among the number.

It was the calmest evening that had been known for months. There was not

a cloud in the lustrous sky--not a ripple on the still surface of the

sea. The smallest children were suffered by their mothers to stray down

on the beach as they pleased; for the waves of the great ocean slept as

tenderly and noiselessly on their sandy bed as if they had been changed

into the waters of an inland lake. Slow, almost imperceptible, was the

approach of the ship--there was hardly a breath of wind to carry her

on--she was just drifting gently with the landward set of the tide at

that hour, while her sails hung idly against the masts. Long after the

sun had gone down, the congregation still waited and watched on the

beach. The moon and stars were arrayed in their glory of the night

before the ship dropped anchor. Then the muffled tolling of a bell came

solemnly across the quiet waters; and then, from every creek along the

shore, as far as the eye could reach, the black forms of the fishermen’s

boats shot out swift and stealthy into the shining sea.

By the time the boats had arrived alongside of the ship, the lamp had

been kindled before the altar, and its flame was gleaming red and dull

in the radiant moonlight. Two of the priests on board were clothed in

their robes of office, and were waiting in their appointed places to

begin the service. But there was a third, dressed only in the ordinary

attire of his calling, who mingled with the congregation, and spoke

a few words to each of the persons composing it, as, one by one, they

mounted the sides of the ship. Those who had never seen him before knew

by the famous ivory crucifix in his hand that the priest who received

them was Father Paul. Gabriel looked at this man, whom he now beheld for

the first time, with a mixture of astonishment and awe; for he saw that

the renowned chief of the Christians of Brittany was, to all appearance,

but little older than himself.

The expression on the pale, calm face of the priest was so gentle and

kind, that children just able to walk tottered up to him, and held

familiarly by the skirts of his black gown, whenever his clear blue eyes

rested on theirs, while he beckoned them to his side. No one would ever

have guessed from the countenance of Father Paul what deadly perils he

had confronted, but for the scar of a saber-wound, as yet hardly healed,

which ran across his forehead. That wound had been dealt while he was

kneeling before the altar in the last church in Brittany which had

escaped spoliation. He would have died where he knelt, but for the

peasants who were praying with him, and who, unarmed as they were, threw

themselves like tigers on the soldiery, and at awful sacrifice of their

own lives saved the life of their priest. There was not a man now on

board the ship who would have hesitated, had the occasion called for it

again, to have rescued him in the same way.

The service began. Since the days when the primitive Christians

worshiped amid the caverns of the earth, can any service be imagined

nobler in itself, or sublimer in the circumstances surrounding it, than

that which was now offered up? Here was no artificial pomp, no gaudy

profusion of ornament, no attendant grandeur of man’s creation. All

around this church spread the hushed and awful majesty of the tranquil

sea. The roof of this cathedral was the immeasurable heaven, the pure

moon its one great light, the countless glories of the stars its only

adornment. Here were no hired singers or rich priest-princes; no curious

sight-seers, or careless lovers of sweet sounds. This congregation and

they who had gathered it together, were all poor alike, all persecuted

alike, all worshiping alike, to the overthrow of their worldly

interests, and at the imminent peril of their lives. How brightly and

tenderly the moonlight shone upon the altar and the people before

it! how solemnly and divinely the deep harmonies, as they chanted the

penitential Psalms, mingled with the hoarse singing of the freshening

night breeze in the rigging of the ship! how sweetly the still rushing

murmur of many voices, as they uttered the responses together, now died

away, and now rose again softly into the mysterious night!

Of all the members of the congregation--young or old--there was but one

over whom that impressive service exercised no influence of consolation

or of peace; that one was Gabriel. Often, throughout the day, his

reproaching conscience had spoken within him again and again. Often when

he joined the little assembly on the beach, he turned away his face in

secret shame and apprehension from Perrine and her father. Vainly, after

gaining the deck of the ship, did he try to meet the eye of Father Paul

as frankly, as readily, and as affectionately as others met it. The

burden of concealment seemed too heavy to be borne in the presence of

the priest--and yet, torment as it was, he still bore it! But when he

knelt with the rest of the congregation and saw Perrine kneeling by his

side--when he felt the calmness of the solemn night and the still sea

filling his heart--when the sounds of the first prayers spoke with a

dread spiritual language of their own to his soul--then the remembrance

of the confession which he had neglected, and the terror of receiving

unprepared the sacrament which he knew would be offered to him--grew too

vivid to be endured; the sense that he merited no longer, though once

worthy of it, the confidence in his perfect truth and candor placed

in him by the woman with whom he was soon to stand before the altar,

overwhelmed him with shame: the mere act of kneeling among that

congregation, the passive accomplice by his silence and secrecy, for

aught he knew to the contrary, of a crime which it was his bounden duty

to denounce, appalled him as if he had already committed sacrilege that

could never be forgiven. Tears flowed down his cheeks, though he strove

to repress them: sobs burst from him, though he tried to stifle them. He

knew that others besides Perrine were looking at him in astonishment

and alarm; but he could neither control himself, nor move to leave his

place, nor raise his eyes even--until suddenly he felt a hand laid on

his shoulder. That touch, slight as it was, ran through him instantly. He

looked up, and saw Father Paul standing by his side.

Beckoning him to follow, and signing to the congregation not to suspend

their devotions, he led Gabriel out of the assembly--then paused for a

moment, reflecting--then beckoning him again, took him into the cabin of

the ship, and closed the door carefully.

“You have something on your mind,” he said, simply and quietly, taking

the young man by the hand. “I may be able to relieve you, if you tell me

what it is.”

As Gabriel heard these gentle words, and saw, by the light of a lamp

which burned before a cross fixed against the wall, the sad kindness of

expression with which the priest was regarding him, the oppression that

had lain so long on his heart seemed to leave it in an instant. The

haunting fear of ever divulging his fatal suspicions and his fatal

secret had vanished, as it were, at the touch of Father Paul’s hand. For

the first time he now repeated to another ear--the sounds of prayer

and praise rising grandly the while from the congregation above--his

grandfather’s death-bed confession, word for word almost, as he had

heard it in the cottage on the night of the storm.

Once, and once only, did Father Paul interrupt the narrative, which in

whispers was addressed to him. Gabriel had hardly repeated the first two

or three sentences of his grandfather’s confession, when the priest, in

quick, altered tones, abruptly asked him his name and place of abode.

As the question was answered, Father Paul’s calm face became suddenly

agitated; but the next moment, resolutely resuming his self-possession,

he bowed his head as a sign that Gabriel was to continue; clasped his

trembling hands, and raising them as if in silent prayer, fixed his eyes

intently on the cross. He never looked away from it while the terrible

narrative proceeded. But when Gabriel described his search at the

Merchant’s Table; and, referring to his father’s behavior since that

time, appealed to the priest to know whether he might even yet, in

defiance of appearances, be still filially justified in doubting whether

the crime had been really perpetrated--then Father Paul moved near to

him once more, and spoke again.

“Compose yourself, and look at me,” he said, with his former sad

kindness of voice and manner. “I can end your doubts forever. Gabriel,

your father was guilty in intention and in act; but the victim of his

crime still lives. I can prove it.”

Gabriel’s heart beat wildly; a deadly coldness crept over him as he saw

Father Paul loosen the fastening of his cassock round the throat.

At that instant the chanting of the congregation above ceased; and then

the sudden and awful stillness was deepened rather than interrupted by

the faint sound of one voice praying. Slowly and with trembling fingers

the priest removed the band round his neck--paused a little--sighed

heavily--and pointed to a scar which was now plainly visible on one side

of his throat. He said something at the same time; but the bell above

tolled while he spoke. It was the signal of the elevation of the Host.

Gabriel felt an arm passed round him, guiding him to his knees, and

sustaining him from sinking to the floor. For one moment longer he was

conscious that the bell had stopped, that there was dead silence, that

Father Paul was kneeling by him beneath the cross, with bowed head--then

all objects around vanished; and he saw and knew nothing more.

When he recovered his senses, he was still in the cabin; the man whose

life his father had attempted was bending over him, and sprinkling

water on his face; and the clear voices of the women and children of the

congregation were joining the voices of the men in singing the _Agnus

Dei._

“Look up at me without fear, Gabriel,” said the priest. “I desire not to

avenge injuries: I visit not the sins of the father on the child. Look

up, and listen! I have strange things to speak of; and I have a sacred

mission to fulfill before the morning, in which you must be my guide.”

Gabriel attempted to kneel and kiss his hand but Father Paul stopped

him, and said, pointing to the cross: “Kneel to that--not to me; not to

your fellow-mortal, and your friend--for I will be your friend, Gabriel;

believing that God’s mercy has ordered it so. And now listen to me,”

he proceeded, with a brotherly tenderness in his manner which went to

Gabriel’s heart. “The service is nearly ended. What I have to tell you

must be told at once; the errand on which you will guide me must be

performed before to-morrow dawns. Sit here near me, and attend to what I

now say!”

Gabriel obeyed; Father Paul then proceeded thus:

“I believe the confession made to you by your grandfather to have been

true in every particular. On the evening to which he referred you, I

approached your cottage, as he said, for the purpose of asking shelter

for the night. At that period I had been studying hard to qualify myself

for the holy calling which I now pursue; and, on the completion of

my studies, had indulged in the recreation of a tour on foot through

Brittany, by way of innocently and agreeably occupying the leisure time

then at my disposal, before I entered the priesthood. When I accosted

your father I had lost my way, had been walking for many hours, and was

glad of any rest that I could get for the night. It is unnecessary to

pain you now, by reference to the events which followed my entrance

under your father’s roof. I remember nothing that happened from the

time when I lay down to sleep before the fire, until the time when I

recovered my senses at the place which you call the Merchant’s Table. My

first sensation was that of being moved into the cold air; when I opened

my eyes I saw the great Druid stones rising close above me, and two men

on either side of me rifling my pockets. They found nothing valuable

there, and were about to leave me where I lay, when I gathered strength

enough to appeal to their mercy through their cupidity. Money was not

scarce with me then, and I was able to offer them a rich reward (which

they ultimately received as I had promised) if they would take me to

any place where I could get shelter and medical help. I supposed they

inferred by my language and accent--perhaps also by the linen I wore,

which they examined closely--that I belonged to the higher ranks of the

community, in spite of the plainness of my outer garments; and might,

therefore, be in a position to make good my promise to them. I heard one

say to the other, ‘Let us risk it’; and then they took me in their arms,

carried me down to a boat on the beach, and rowed to a vessel in the

offing. The next day they disembarked me at Paimboeuf, where I got the

assistance which I so much needed. I learned, through the confidence

they were obliged to place in me in order to give me the means of

sending them their promised reward, that these men were smugglers, and

that they were in the habit of using the cavity in which I had been laid

as a place of concealment for goods, and for letters of advice to their

accomplices. This accounted for their finding me. As to my wound, I

was informed by the surgeon who attended me that it had missed being

inflicted in a mortal part by less than a quarter of an inch, and that,

as it was, nothing but the action of the night air in coagulating the

blood over the place, had, in the first instance, saved my life. To

be brief, I recovered after a long illness, returned to Paris, and was

called to the priesthood. The will of my superiors obliged me to perform

the first duties of my vocation in the great city; but my own wish was

to be appointed to a cure of souls in your province, Gabriel. Can you

imagine why?”

The answer to this question was in Gabriel’s heart; but he was still too

deeply awed and affected by what he had heard to give it utterance.

“I must tell you, then, what my motive was,” said Father Paul. “You must

know first that I uniformly abstained from disclosing to any one where

and by whom my life had been attempted. I kept this a secret from the

men who rescued me--from the surgeon--from my own friends even. My

reason for such a proceeding was, I would fain believe, a Christian

reason. I hope I had always felt a sincere and humble desire to prove

myself, by the help of God, worthy of the sacred vocation to which I was

destined. But my miraculous escape from death made an impression on

my mind, which gave me another and an infinitely higher view of this

vocation--the view which I have since striven, and shall always strive

for the future, to maintain. As I lay, during the first days of my

recovery, examining my own heart, and considering in what manner it

would be my duty to act toward your father when I was restored to

health, a thought came into my mind which calmed, comforted, and

resolved all my doubts. I said within myself, ‘In a few months more I

shall be called to be one of the chosen ministers of God. If I am worthy

of my vocation, my first desire toward this man who has attempted to

take my life should be, not to know that human justice has overtaken

him, but to know that he has truly and religiously repented and made

atonement for his guilt. To such repentance and atonement let it be my

duty to call him; if he reject that appeal, and be hardened only the

more against me because I have forgiven him my injuries, then it will be

time enough to denounce him for his crimes to his fellow-men. Surely

it must be well for me, here and hereafter, if I begin my career in the

holy priesthood by helping to save from hell the soul of the man who,

of all others, has most cruelly wronged me.’ It was for this reason,

Gabriel--it was because I desired to go straightway to your father’s

cottage, and reclaim him after he had believed me to be dead--that I

kept the secret and entreated of my superiors that I might be sent to

Brittany. But this, as I have said, was not to be at first, and when

my desire was granted, my place was assigned me in a far district. The

persecution under which we still suffer broke out; the designs of my