They told me so long ago, though I did not believe them. Will you
consider an old friend impertinent for asking if that from which you
derive your solace now is the same from which you derived it then? and if
so, why I still find you unsettled in life?’
‘You are speaking in riddles,’ I replied. ‘I do not understand you.’
‘Your present engagement—is it the same which separated us? Do not be
afraid to tell me the truth, Lizzie. I have borne a good deal in my
lifetime, and am proof against suffering.’
His voice was so tender and kind, so much like the voice which I
remembered in the old days of our love, that it won me to listen to him
quietly.
‘My engagement!’ I echoed in surprise. ‘What are you talking of? I have
never been engaged—never since’—and then I halted, fearing what my
revelation might suggest to him.
‘What do you tell me?’ he exclaimed. ‘What object have you in deceiving
me? Were you not engaged, even before your parents’ death, to young
Hassell, of Fairmead, and was it not by his father’s means that your
present situation was procured for you? I little thought to meet you
here,’ he added bitterly. ‘I imagined you were married long ago, or I
should have been more careful of my own feelings. And now you are engaged
for the third time! How easily life runs for some people!’
‘Who could have told you such a falsehood?’ I said, turning to him. ‘It
is true that old Mr Hassell stood my friend when I had not one in the
world, and that he found my present situation for me; but as to being
engaged to his son, why, he is a married man—he married my own cousin.’
‘Could the mistake have arisen so?’ said Bruce Armytage, as he seized my
hand. ‘Oh, Lizzie, do not be angry; think what I have gone through! When
I returned home from that wretched foreign tour, during which I was not
allowed to correspond with you, the first news which I heard from my own
family was, that your father and mother had died some eighteen months
before, and that you were engaged to Robert Hassell, and living with some
old lady (no one could tell me where) until the time for your marriage
arrived. I would not believe them; I rushed down to Fairmead myself to
make inquiries, and reached there on the very day of young Hassell’s
wedding with Miss Lacy. Do you think I was a coward not to stop and see
the bride, believing her to be yourself? Perhaps I was; but I flew from
the spot as though I had been haunted; and I suffered—ah, Lizzie, I
cannot tell how much! It is so fearful, so awful a thing to teach one’s
self to believe the heart in which we have trusted to be faithless and
unworthy.’
‘I know it,’ I said in a low voice, which was nearly choked by my tears.
‘How I have lived since that time I can hardly tell you,’ he continued
as he pressed my hand. (I knew it ought not to remain in his, but it was
so sweet to feel it there.) ‘I have had very little hope, or peace,
or happiness, though I have struggled on through it all, and made
myself a name in my profession. And then to meet you again to-night so
unexpectedly, still free, but promised to another, myself and my love
so evidently forgotten, and to feel that it has been but a chance that
separated us! Oh! Lizzie, it is almost harder than it was at first!’
‘I am not engaged,’ I answered, sobbing; ‘you choose to take my words at
the piano as meaning so, but it was your mistake, not mine. I have lived
much in the manner you describe yourself to have done—not very happily,
perhaps, and finding my best relief in work. But I am glad to have met
you, Bruce—glad to have heard from your own lips what parted us; and I
thank you for this explanation, though it comes too late.’
‘But why too late, my dearest?’ he exclaimed joyfully. ‘Why, if you are
free to accept my hand, and can forgive all that has made us so unhappy
in the past, should we not bury our mutual trouble in mutual love? Oh,
Lizzie, say that you’ll be mine—say that you’ll be my own wife, and help
me to wipe out the remembrance of this miserable mistake!’
I thought of Amy. I looked at him with astonishment; I recoiled from him
almost with disgust. Was I to accept happiness at the expense of that of
my dear friends, of the only creatures who had shown me any affection
during my long years of exile from him? Oh no. I would rather perish in
my solitude. The very fact that he could propose it to me made him sink
lower in my estimation.
‘Bruce,’ I exclaimed, ‘you must be mad, or I am mad so to tempt you
from your duty. Think of all your offer involves—of the distress,
the disappointment, the shame it would entail on those who have been
more than friends to me; and consider if it is likely I could be so
dishonourable to them as to take advantage of it.’
‘I don’t understand you, my darling,’ he said, with a puzzled look.
‘Not understand?’ I reiterated, in surprise, ‘when your engagement to Amy
Rodwell was only settled this morning, and the preliminaries for your
marriage are already being talked of! Would you break her heart in the
attempt to heal mine? Bruce, we must never see each other again after
this evening.’
‘Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘we are playing at
dreadful cross-purposes. Did it never enter into your wise little pate to
inquire _which_ Mr Armytage was going to marry Amy Rodwell? I can assure
you I have no desire or intention to risk getting a pistol-shot through
my heart for stepping into my cousin Frederick’s shoes.’
‘And is it really—is it really, then, _Frederick_ whom she is going to
marry?’ I exclaimed, breathless with the shock of this new intelligence.
‘Oh, how can she?’
‘It is indeed,’ he answered, laughing. ‘Lizzie, did you seriously think
that it was I? Why, what a taste you must give me credit for, to choose
that pretty little piece of white-and-pink china, after having had the
chance of such a woman as yourself! And now, what is my answer?’
What it was I leave for my readers to guess. Let those who have thirsted
until life’s blood lay as dry dust in their veins, thrust the chalice of
sparkling wine from their parched lips if they will: I am not made of
such stern stuff as that.
THE END.
[Illustration]
LEOPOLD-FERDINAND, DUC DE BRABANT.
The death of a child is at all times a subject of mournful interest:
it is so sad to see the hereditary curse falling on the innocent heads
of those who in themselves have done nothing to merit the punishment
of sin. But when the lost child is an only child, or an only son, our
sympathies with the bereavement are increased tenfold; so proud do we
know each other to be, of perpetuating the frailties of which we are
but too conscious, and leaving behind us an inheritor of the misery we
have endured. And if ordinary children (of which a few hundreds more
or less in the world make little difference) are to be thus bewailed,
what words can paint strongly enough the condolence with which we
should approach the subject of that royal parent who so lately lost
at one stroke his only son, and (in the direct line) the sole heir to
his throne! The interest felt by all Englishmen in the royal family
of Belgium lies deeper than in the mere fact of their near connection
with our own Sovereign and her lamented consort. From the time that the
first Leopold came over, a gallant bridegroom, to our shores, to wed
the Princess Charlotte (that darling of the nation), and left them so
shortly afterwards widowed and childless, we have taken almost as keen
an interest in all that concerned him and his children as though death
had never stepped in to sever the link between us. And this feeling has
been warmly kept up as much by the condescension with which Leopold II.
has followed in the footsteps of his father, by taking an interest in all
things British, and showing the utmost courtesy to, and consideration
for, the foreigners of that nation residing in his dominions, as by the
intimate relations maintained between the royal families of England and
Belgium.
It may be said, then, and without exaggeration, that when the sad news
that the young Duc de Brabant had at last succumbed to the cruel malady
which had kept him in constant suffering, and the nation’s hopes in a
state of fluctuation for nine months past, was disseminated throughout
Brussels, his royal parents received as much sympathy in their sorrow
from the English residents in that capital as from their own people.
The Belgians mourned their future king; but we wept with the father and
mother over the cradle of their only son.
The loss was not an ordinary one, for the child was not an ordinary
child; and this assertion is made, not from newspaper gleanings, but
the report of those who knew him intimately. His photograph confirms
this fact; for the calm, sensible face depicted there has none of the
careless, laughter-loving expression which characterises his age;
although when in health the Duc de Brabant is said to have been as
playful and merry as other little children. But sickness came too soon
to rob his features of all but the serene patience which became habitual
to them, and before any change could arrive to restore their original
expression he has passed away from amongst us, and nothing remains to
recall his memory but the few words which can be written of so innocent
and uneventful a life.
Leopold-Ferdinand-Elie-Victor-Albert-Marie, Duc de Brabant, Comte de
Hainaut, and Duc de Saxe, was born at the palace of Laeken, on the 12th
of June 1859. He was the second child of his parents, after ten years
of wedded life, consequently his birth was hailed with all the greater
acclamation for fulfilling hope deferred to the hearts of his people.
When born, he had every appearance of possessing a robust constitution,
being plump and well made, with broad shoulders and an open chest; with a
formation, in fact, containing the promise of so much muscular strength,
that the obstinate ravages of the fatal disease which has taken him from
us have been a matter of surprise to all who knew the child as he once
was.
The method of his bringing up, also, and the careful manner in which his
studies and employments were regulated, should have tended to increase,
rather than detract from, the bodily health which he bid fair to enjoy.
His education, entrusted to M. le Comte Vanderstraeten-Ponthoz, and to
Monsieur le Lieutenant Donny, was skilfully directed in such a way as to
maintain a wholesome equilibrium between the development of his physical
force and that of the brilliant mental faculties with which the young
prince was gifted. The employment of his time was carved out with the
greatest minuteness, and out-door exercises alternated with mental labour
so as to procure for both mind and body the repose they needed. The
prince invariably left his bed at six in summer, and seven in winter,
and breakfasted an hour after he rose; when he worked with his tutor
till ten o’clock. A run in the park or a ride on his pony served him for
recreation; and at one he joined his father and mother at luncheon—a
meal which the king and queen always took _en famille_. Before resuming
his studies, the little prince went out again with his tutor, dined at
six, and was then at liberty to amuse himself until his bed-time, which
was fixed for eight o’clock. Such a life could hurt no one: no enforced
studies were exacted from his tender brain, nor was the heir of Belgium
sacrificed to the desire to see him turn out a prodigy; he lived as other
happy and well-cared-for children live, making his short life one long
holiday; and, until within ten months of his decease, showed no symptoms
whatever of ill-health.
Then the first signs of sickness, said to be consequent on the
suppression of some childish disorder, became apparent, and increased
until they culminated in pericarditis, or inflammation of the membranes
of the heart, the affection which ultimately destroyed him. At its
commencement, this complaint had all the appearance of a heavy cold,
accompanied by a dry, violent cough, which was soon followed by a pallid
face and wasted figure, the sure signs of impoverished blood.
When the first grave consultation had confirmed the diagnostic of the
attendant physicians, that the pericardium or membrane of the heart was
affected, all the efforts of science were immediately put in requisition
to arrest the progress of the evil; but without avail, for they proved
powerless to stay the rapid decline of his natural powers, by dropsy,
the usual effect of heart disease. The swelling of the stomach and chest
of the poor little invalid now became enormous; the respiratory organs
no longer performed their office, and the cough redoubled in intensity.
It became most distressing, scarcely ceasing day or night; and the
gravest fears began to be entertained for his lungs. The apartments of
the prince, though large and airy, and situated on the ground floor of
the right wing of the palace of Laeken, and opening on the park, did
not contain sufficient vital air for his need. When it was necessary
to close the windows of the chamber, which was only done at night (for
the suffering child found no relief except in a free current of air),
servants placed on either side his bed kept up a continual fanning, and
by that means occasionally gained him a few moments of repose. Every
morning, under the guardianship of his tutor, Monsieur Donny, the prince
was taken into the park in a little pony-carriage led by a groom, and
made the tour of the domain four or five times. Towards the middle of the
journey the pony and servant were changed, for the promenade was long,
and often occupied several hours; and, occasionally, the poor father and
mother, so soon to be bereaved, might be seen following on horseback, and
wistfully regarding the little carriage which held the object of their
dearest hopes. It was a _triste_ and melancholy procession, and resembled
a funeral _cortége_ more than anything else.
Towards one o’clock the prince would stop, generally near the aviary
of pheasants, and lunch with his preceptor; for, strange to say, his
appetite, though feeble, never abandoned him until the very last. Soon
the carriage was again in motion and making the circuit of the park,
for it was only by a continual change of air that the poor child was
enabled to breathe with any ease. The affection of the prince for
Monsieur Donny was incredible. Throughout his illness he insisted upon
his being continually at his side, would not take his meals without him,
and obliged him to sleep in his apartments; and Monsieur Donny (although
he had been married but a few weeks when the first serious symptoms of
illness appeared) never quitted the royal child for a moment until he
was carried out of the palace of Laeken for the last time. About the
month of October there appeared to be some amelioration in the prince’s
condition, and hopes were almost confidently entertained of his ultimate
restoration to health. But these hopes were of short duration, although
the bulletins, issued daily, fluctuated so much in their statements
that it was difficult to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. The king
is said to have had no hope from the commencement of the disorder, and
his despair was proportionately great. His grief was so profound that he
became a mere shadow of himself; and yet, with that manly fortitude which
resists an open expression of what it feels, might be seen at all times,
pacing the palace and gardens of Laeken with calm dry eyes, but a fixed,
mournful look, which seemed as though he had always before him a vision
of the pitiless death which was about to strike him in his tenderest
affections.
At night he would constantly rise from his own bed to go with bare
feet and noiseless step, and hang over the couch where his child, with
angelic patience, was awaiting his doom. This patience, so calm as to
appear almost unnatural, and which excites surprise in those who have
not nursed little children through mortal illnesses, seems to have been
a characteristic of this little child. Numberless anecdotes have, of
course, been related of him during the last months, many of which are
totally without foundation, but one in particular was so widely spread
that it gained general credence. It was the fact of his feigning sleep
when suffering great pain if he heard the approach of his father’s
footstep, lest he should be questioned relative to his state, and read
the disappointment his answer must have caused. ‘If I pretend to sleep,’
he used to say to his attendants, ‘my father will think that I am better.’
But during the daytime his father was seldom absent from his side, and
was never weary of trying to extract some slight support on which to
hang hope by questioning the child as to his feelings and symptoms. One
day, when the little tragedy was drawing very near its close, and the
prince was suffering from one of those attacks which so often threatened
to be fatal, the king approached the bed to learn some news of his
condition, and receiving, for the first time, no reply save such as was
conveyed by the languid, half-raised eyes.
‘Je vous ennuie, n’est ce pas, mon enfant!’ he exclaimed; and unable to
control his feelings, rushed away into the park in order to conceal them.
On Christmas-day the king, in an attempt, if possible, to distract the
child’s mind, had a large Christmas-tree set up in the midst of his
apartment, made brilliant with wax tapers, and hung with numbers of
beautiful playthings and other ornaments calculated to attract one of his
age.
The Duc de Brabant, after having duly admired the tree and its
belongings, and appearing to take pleasure in examining and handling
the playthings with which it was laden, asked his attendants to bring a
large box to his bedside; and having seen all his presents packed away
in it, gave it to Doctor Henriette (one of his attendant physicians),
and begged him to distribute its contents amongst the little invalids in
the hospital. This is but one trait amongst a thousand from which might
have been predicated what sort of king this child, if spared, would
eventually have made. He was positively adored by the people of the royal
household—those servants who were under his control; and by seeing him
play at sovereign with whom one read the natural nobility of his yet
undeveloped character. When any of his servants had committed a fault
and deserved a reprimand from the officer on duty, the Duc de Brabant
would accuse himself of the negligence in order to save the real offender
from punishment. He was nursed throughout his illness by two Sœurs
de Charité, who paid him the utmost attention, and of whom he became
proportionately fond. It was said that on the first of January the Duc de
Brabant asked his father for the sum of six thousand francs: ‘Pour ces
deux anges qui me veillaient.’ This anecdote was afterwards contradicted;
but it possesses at least the merit of giving the general idea of the
disposition of Leopold-Ferdinand. His was the most generous little heart
possible, and he would have despoiled himself of everything to make one
creature happy.
On Thursday evening, the twenty-first of January, when it became known
in Laeken that the prince was really dying, the whole community was in
commotion; and when towards nine o’clock the report was spread that all
was over, nothing was to be seen but mournful and downcast countenances,
and the commissioner of police was forced to reassure the people by
telling them that the child still lived. These sentiments were but
natural, for the progress of the disease had been suspended during
so many months that the dangerous state of the royal invalid was but
thoroughly realised. The public had begun to think that the doctors
must be mistaken in their diagnostics; and thus, when the bulletins
from the palace intimated that there was a fatal aggravation of the
symptoms, the news could not fail to throw the whole country into a
state of consternation. The last agony of the unfortunate child (whose
sufferings had been greatly accelerated ever since the fourteenth of
January) commenced at five in the evening of the twenty-first, and did
not terminate till forty minutes past twelve, at which time he drew
his last breath in a long sigh of relief. MM. Henriette and Wimmer, who
had so assiduously tended the royal child since the appearance of the
disease to which he succumbed, were summoned to the palace of Laeken by
a despatch from M. le Comte Vanderstraeten-Ponthoz a few minutes after
the last crisis had commenced, and did not again quit the bedside of the
invalid, though they had the grief of seeing all their science powerless
to do more than assist at the last moments of him whose life but a few
months before they had hoped to save.
From the time the crisis set in, Prince Leopold-Ferdinand recognised no
one, although his intelligence was not completely obscured; for when the
king or queen spoke to him, he appeared to understand what they said,
although it was impossible for him to respond, even by a gesture, to
the loving words which were lavished upon him. He died, as so beloved a
child should die, between his father and mother, who, during the last
hours, never quitted his side. In his chamber at this time were Madame la
Duchesse d’Ursel, mistress of the queen’s household; Monsieur le Comte
Vanderstraeten-Ponthoz, maréchal of the palace; Monsieur Donny, the
prince’s preceptor; MM. Henriette and Wimmer, the two Sœurs de Charité
who had nursed him through his illness, and the two _valets-de-chambre_
of the Duc de Brabant. All were silent, as, awe-stricken, they waited,
in the midst of that calm night, to hear the rustling wings of the Angel
of Death; and the peaceful solemnity of the last hour was undisturbed,
save by the voice of the chaplain who recited the prayers for the
dying. Monseigneur le Comte de Flandre, brother to the king, who had
been summoned to the palace by the same despatch which had brought MM.
Henriette and Wimmer, arrived there at half-past ten, and quitted Laeken
again at midnight; he was not, therefore, present at the last moments of
his nephew. It was the same with Monsieur Devaux, the king’s secretary,
who retired at half-past nine to his own apartments.
When all was over, and life had finally quitted the poor little body
which had suffered so much, the father and mother, one after another,
strained the corpse in their arms, and covered it with kisses, until the
king, desirous of sparing the queen so mournful a spectacle, led her by
force from the couch where rested the inanimate remains of the sole
heir to their crown. On the morning following his decease the body of
the little prince was completely robed in white, and placed on the bed
in the chamber where he had died, and which is next to that in which
his grandfather, Leopold I., drew his last breath. A crown of white
roses, fresh and pure as his own brief life, was placed on the pillar
immediately above his head, and a little virgin, with several playthings
with which he had essayed to wile away some of the weary hours of pain,
were placed at the foot of his couch. An altar was improvised on a large
chest of drawers, placed between two windows of his bedroom, where a
crucifix hung in the midst of lighted candles, converting the chamber of
death into a temporary chapel. Here the Sœurs de Charité watched the dead
child through the night, as they had watched him for so many previous
months.
The body of the little prince was not embalmed, as the queen steadfastly
set her face against such a proceeding, but was interred in the same
condition in which he had died. The corpse was not at all decomposed, but
it was terribly thin. The face wore the pallor of marble, and was not at
all swollen or otherwise disfigured. The child appeared to sleep, and so
he did, although the sleep will be eternal. On the same day the following
proclamation was placed on the walls of the capital:—
‘AUX HABITANTS DE BRUXELLES.
‘CONCITOYENS,—Le pays vient d’éprouver une perte immense. Le
Prince Royal a succombé cette nuit au mal cruel qui menaçait
depuis longtemps une existence si précieuse à tous les Belges.
La population de Bruxelles, fidèle aux sentiments inaltérables
qu’elle a voués à une dynastie bien-aimée pleurera longtemps le
jeune Prince dont elle avait entouré le berçeau de tant d’amour
et de si chères espérances.
‘Fait à l’Hôtel de Ville, le 22 Janvier, 1869.
‘Par le Collége, le Secrétaire, ‘Le Collége,
‘A. LACOMBLE. JULES ANSPACH.’