A VOICE FROM THE LOST ONE.
A few days after the departure of Maurice for Dresden, the Duke de
Montauban made a formal proposal for the hand of Mademoiselle de
Merrivale. French etiquette not allowing a suitor the privilege of
addressing the lady of his love, except through some kindred or friendly
medium, his pretensions were of course made known to Bertha by her
uncle. She received the communication with a fretful tapping of her
little foot, and a toss of her gamboling, golden ringlets, which bore
witness to her undisguised vexation and saucy disdain. The
uncompromising manner in which she declined the proposed honor, threw
her guardian, who had strengthened himself to enact the part of Cupid's
messenger, by a somewhat liberal repast, into a state of astonishment
which threatened alarming disturbance to his laboring digestive
functions.
"Really, my dear, you speak so abruptly that you make me feel quite
dyspeptic. What possible objection can you have to the young duke?"
"A very slight one, according to the creed which governs matrimonial
alliances in our enlightened land," returned Bertha, pouting through her
sarcasm. "My objection is simply that he is not an object of the
slightest interest to me."
"But the match is such a suitable one that interest will come after it
is consummated," answered her uncle.
"I do not intend to marry upon _faith_," retorted Bertha; then she broke
out petulantly, "In a word, uncle, I do not intend to marry a man who is
so insipid that I could not even quarrel with him; whom I could not
think of seriously enough to take the trouble to dislike; to whom I am
so thoroughly indifferent that for me he has no existence out of my
immediate sight."
"There, there; keep cool, my dear. Nobody intends to force you to marry
him. I did not know that it was necessary to be able to dislike a man,
and to have a capacity for quarrelling with him, to fit him for the
position of a husband. A very unwholesome doctrine. Emotion is
particularly prejudicial to the animal economy. I thought the cultivated
taste which the de Fleurys so evidently possess might have some weight
with you. That dinner they gave us was unsurpassable, and"--
"If I am to marry to secure myself superlatively good dinners, I had
better unite myself to an accomplished cook at once," replied Bertha,
demurely.
"That's very tart, my dear. All acids disagree with me, and your
acidulated observations are giving me unpleasant premonitory symptoms."
Bertha noticed that the _bon vivant_ had in reality began to puff and
pant as though he were suffering from an incipient nightmare. Being so
thoroughly habituated to his idiosyncrasy that she had learned to regard
it leniently, she made an effort to recover her good humor, and
answered,--
"I know my kind uncle will not render me uncomfortable by pressing this
subject; but, in the most courteous manner, will let the Duke de
Montauban understand that I do not intend to marry at present."
"Make you uncomfortable," rejoined the marquis, struggling for breath;
"of course, I would not for the world! Do you take me for an old brute?
And I have just made arrangements to drive you to the _Bois de Boulogne_
and dine at Madrid's this evening. A pretty state you would be in to do
justice to a dinner which promises to place in jeopardy the laurels even
of M. de Fleury's cook."
"We will strike a bargain," returned Bertha, with her wonted gayety. "If
you will agree not to mention the Duke de Montauban, I will agree to do
justice to the dinner at Madrid's."
"I am content; we will drop the duke and discuss the dinner."
The attentions of Madame de Fleury's brother to the heiress had been too
marked and open for his suit and its rejection to remain a secret.
Gaston de Bois heard Bertha's refusal commented upon, and there was a
buzz in his ears of idle speculations concerning the origin of her
caprice. Was it some blissful, internal suggestion, which diffused such
a glow of happiness over his expressive countenance when he next saw
Bertha? Was it some hitherto uncertain ground of encouragement made sure
beneath his feet, which so wondrously loosened his tongue from its dire
bondage? Was it some aerial hope, taking tangible shape, which imparted
such an air of ease and elation to his demeanor? Gaston stammered less
every day,--his impediment disappearing as his self-possession
increased. On this occasion he was only conscious of a slight difficulty
in utterance to rejoice at its existence, for it rendered delightfully
apparent Bertha's thoughtfulness in catching up words upon which he
hesitated, and concluding sentences he commenced, as though she read
their meaning in his eyes. Gaston had not seen her in so buoyant a mood
since they parted at the Château de Gramont. But the tide of her
exuberant gayety suddenly ebbed when she noticed the look of pain with
which he involuntarily responded to one of her chance questions. She had
asked if he thought it probable Maurice would find Madeleine in Dresden.
Again that singular expression on his countenance; again that sudden
change of color at Madeleine's name; again that involuntary starting
from his seat, with a return of the olden habit which placed fragile
furniture in danger! Was it the remembrance that Madeleine was lost to
them which occasioned M. de Bois's sudden depression? Was it an
overwhelming sense of doubt concerning the result of Maurice's mission,
which made his response to Bertha's inquiry so vague, his sentences so
disjointed? Once more Bertha asked herself whether he were not, after
all, the lover Madeleine had refused to mention. Yet, if this were the
case, how could Gaston have appeared so much less anxious and less
concerned at her flight than Maurice, who loved her with unquestionable
ardor? Why had M. de Bois aided so little in the search for her present
habitation? The young girl could not reconcile such apparent
contradictions, and while she sat perplexing herself by futile efforts
to unravel these mysteries, M. de Bois was equally puzzled to rightly
interpret her silence and abstraction.
The interview which, at its opening, had been as bright as a spring
morning, closed with sudden April shadows; and there was an April
mingling of smiles and tears upon Bertha's countenance when she retired
to her chamber, after M. de Bois's departure, and pondered over his
strange expression when her cousin was mentioned. Why, if Madeleine was
his choice, was his manner toward herself so full of tenderness? Why was
it that she never glanced at him without finding his eyes fastened upon
her face? Why had he so much power to draw her irresistibly towards him?
Why did his step set her heart throbbing so tumultuously? Why did his
coming cause her such a thrill of delight, and his departure leave such
a sense of solitude?--a void that no one else filled, a pain that no
other presence soothed.
Meantime Maurice had reached Dresden and was searching for Madeleine,
almost in the same vague, unreasonable manner that he had sought her in
Paris. But the mad course upon which he had again started, and which
might have once more unbalanced his mind, met with a sudden check. The
day after his arrival in Dresden he received a note, which ran thus:--
"Madeleine is not in Dresden. She entreats Maurice to
discontinue a search which must prove fruitless. Should the
day ever come, as she prays it may, when her place of refuge
can become known to him, no effort of his will be required
for its discovery. Will not Maurice accept the pains of the
inevitable present and wait for the consolations the future
may bring forth with the hope and patience which must
sustain her until that blessed period shall arrive?"
Maurice was almost stupefied as he read these lines. He crushed the
paper in his nervous fingers to be certain that it was tangible; he
compared the writing with the one upon the envelope which he had taken
from Bertha. If that were Madeleine's hand, so was this. He looked for a
postmark; there was none; the letter had been brought by a private
messenger, and yet Madeleine was not in Dresden! How could this be?
That, in some mysterious manner, she became acquainted with his
movements was unquestionable. Her thoughts then were turned to him,--her
invisible presence followed him. It was some joy, at least, to know that
he lived in her memory.
Maurice, without a moment's hesitation, without letting his own personal
suffering weigh in the balance of decision, without allowing his mind to
dwell upon the probabilities of tracing Madeleine through this new clew,
resolved to comply with her request.
When he returned to Paris and placed her letter in Bertha's hands, and
told her his determination, she impetuously urged him not to be guided
by their cousin's wishes. She pleaded that Madeleine was sacrificing
herself from a mistaking sense of duty; that, if her place of abode
could only be revealed, Bertha's own supplications might influence her
to abandon her present project, and to accept the home which Bertha,
with the full consent of her uncle, could offer.
Maurice listened not unmoved, but unshaken, in his selected course. He
felt that a woman of Madeleine's dignity of character,--a woman of her
calm judgment,--a woman who could look with such steady, tearless eyes
upon life's realities,--a woman who would not have trodden in flowery
ways though every pressure of her foot crushed out some delicious aroma
to perfume her life, if the "stern lawgiver, duty," summoned her to a
flinty road, and pointed to a glorious goal beyond,--such a woman,
having deliberately chosen her path, having tested her strength to walk
therein, having pronounced that strength all-sufficient, deserved the
tribute of confidence, and an even blind respect to her mandates.
Besides, compliance with her wishes was a species of voiceless, wordless
communication with her; it was sending her a message through some
unknown and mysterious channel.
Maurice presented this in its most vivid colors before Bertha's eyes;
but in vain. She was too wayward, too unreasonable, too full of
passionate yearning for the presence of Madeleine, too sensible of an
innate weakness that longed to lean upon Madeleine's strength, to see
the justice and wisdom of the conclusion to which Maurice had arrived.
As soon as their painful interview was closed by the entrance of the
marquis, Maurice sought the old Jew and ordered him to prosecute his
search no further. Henriques, who had already extracted a considerable
sum from the young nobleman, and looked upon the transaction as a safe
investment calculated to yield a certain profit for some months to come,
was very unwilling to relinquish his promised gain. He assured the
viscount that he had lately received information of the greatest
importance; the party to whom the jewels had originally belonged had at
last been tracked; the undertaking was on the very eve of success. To
abandon it was a refusal to grasp the prize almost within their clutch.
Whether the cunning Jew spoke the truth, or fiction, mattered little;
for Maurice, in spite of these alluring representations, did not allow
himself to be tempted to violate Madeleine's express command. He had, as
it were, accepted his fate, and cast away the arms with which men war
with so-called "destiny;" struggle and rebellion were over. To "_wait_"
in patience was all that remained.
But what was to be done with his existence? In the plenitude of youthful
health and strength, was his life to ebb away, like an unreplenished
stream, flowing into nothingness? His days became more and more
wearisome; the hours hung more and more heavily upon his hands; the feet
of time sounded with iron tramp in his ears, yet never appeared to move
onward.
"In his eyes a cloud and burthen lay;" a shadowy sorrow dropped its pall
of darkness over his mind and obscured his perception of all awakening,
quickening inspirations; a smouldering fire within him withered up every
vernal shoot of impulse and turned all the spring-time foliage of
thought and fancy sere. His voice, his look, his mien, betrayed that an
ever-living woe encompassed him with gloom.
Ronald fruitlessly strove to rouse him from this state of supine
despondency. The active employment, the all-engrossing interest which
would have medicined his unslumbering sorrow, were remedial agents
denied by his father's unwise decree. As a substitute, though of less
potency, Ronald strove to inspire him with his own strong love for
literature. The young American had a passion for books which were the
reflex of great minds. His quick hearkening to the voices breathing from
their pages, and made prophetic by some sudden experience; the ready
plummet with which he sounded their depths of reasoning; the sentient
hand with which he plucked out their truths and planted them in his own
rich memory, to grow like trees filled with singing-birds: these had
rendered his communings with master-spirits one of the noblest and most
strengthening influences of his life. What wonder, when literature was
so bounteously distributed over his native land that it made itself
vocal beneath every hedge,--enriched the humblest cottage with a
library,--found its way, in the inexpensive guise of magazines, a
welcome visitant at every fireside,--poured out its treasures at the
feet of rich and poor, liberally as the liberal sunshine, freely as the
free air?
Maurice, educated in a different atmosphere, at the same age as Ronald,
was a stranger to the companionship of written minds, save those to
which his college studies had formally presented him; and his dark
unrest rendered it difficult for him to follow his friend into the
teeming Golconda of literature, and to gather the gems spread to his
hands. And when, at last, Ronald's enthusiasm proved contagious and
kindled Maurice to seek out some great author's charm, it too often
chanced that he stumbled upon passages that irritated him, and increased
his moody discontent. We instance one of these occasions as illustrative
of many others.
Ronald, whose busy brush had been brought to a stand-still by an
unusually dark day, when he returned to his apartments, found his friend
reading Bulwer's "Caxtons." Maurice was leaning with both elbows upon
the table, his fingers plunged through his disordered hair, his brows
almost fiercely contracted, and his wan face bent over the volume before
him.
"I found some grand pictures in that book," remarked the young artist.
"Which are you contemplating?"
"No pictures. I have not your eye for pictures," answered Maurice, with
something more than a touch of impatience. "I am moved, haunted,
tormented by truths which have more power than all the ideal pictures
pen ever drew, or brush ever painted. You place me here before your
library, you lure me to read, and every book I open utters words that
make my compulsory mode of existence a reproach, a disgrace, a misery to
me. Read this, for instance: 'Life is a drama, not a monologue. A drama
is derived from a Greek word which signifies _to do_. Every actor in the
drama has something to do which helps on the progress of the
whole,--that is the object for which the author created him. _Do your
part_ and let the _Great Play_ go on!' _Do? do?_" continued Maurice, in
an excited tone as he finished the quotation; "it is a torment worthy of
a place in Dante's Inferno to know that there is nothing one is
permitted to _do_! I too am an actor in the Great Drama; but I have no
part to play save that of lay figure, motionless and voiceless; yet,
unhappy, not being deprived of sensibility, I am goaded to desperation
by inward taunting because I can do nothing."
"The play is not ended yet," answered Ronald, with as much cheerfulness
as he could command, for his friend's depression affected his
sympathetic nature. "We may not comprehend our _rôles_ in the beginning;
we may have to study long before we can thoroughly conceive, then
idealize, then act them."
"I could bear that mine should be a sad, if it were only an active one,"
returned Maurice, again fixing his eyes upon the book.
Ronald could make no reply to a sentiment so thoroughly in accordance
with his own views. He constantly pondered upon the possibilities
through which his friend might be freed from the shackles that bound him
to the effeminate serfdom of idleness; but the magic that could unrivet
those fetters had not yet been revealed. Still he was sometimes stirred
by a mysterious prescience that they would be loosened, and through his
instrumentality.
Ronald's nature was essentially practical without being prosaic. The
rich ore of poetry, inseparable from all exquisitely fine organizations,
lay beneath the daily current of his life, like golden veins in the bed
of a stream, shining through the crystal waters that bore the most
commonplace objects on their tide. He thoroughly accepted that
interpretation of the Ideal which calls it a "divine halo with which the
Creator had encircled the world of reality;" but while he instinctively
lifted all he loved into supernal regions and contemplated them in the
glorious spirit-light that heightens all beauty, he lost sight of none
of the stern actualities of their existence. His imagination had
fashioned a hero out of Maurice, and he had thrown his person in heroic
guise upon canvas; yet he clearly beheld and mourned over the morbid
tendency that was weakening his mind and threatened to render his
character and his life equally unheroic.
Only a few days after the conversation we have just narrated, when
Maurice entered Ronald's sitting-room he found the student with an open
letter in his hand. As he lifted his eloquent, brown eyes from the paper
a glittering moisture beaded their darkly fringed lashes, and an
expression of ineffable tenderness looked out from their lustrous
depths. The letter was from his mother,--one of those messengers of deep
affection which transported him into her presence, placed him, as he had
so often sat in his petted boyhood, at her feet, to listen to her holy
teachings, and be thrilled to the very centre of his being by her words
of love. During his three years of separation, at a period when the
expanding mind is most impressible, these letters, weekly received, had
surrounded him with a heavenly aura which seemed breathed out through a
mother's ceaseless prayers, and had kept his life pure, his spirit
strong, his heart uplifted; had preserved him from being hurried by the
wild, ungoverned impulses of youth, rendered more infectuous by the
volcanic fires of genius, into actions for which he might blush
hereafter.
It was one of the undefined, unspoken sources of sympathy between Ronald
and Maurice, that the guarding hand of _woman_, influencing them from a
distance, preserved the bloom, the freshness, the pristine purity of
both their souls, even in the polluted atmosphere of a city where
immorality is an accepted evil. Maurice, who had never known a mother's
hallowing affection, gained his strength through his early attachment to
a maiden whom no man could love without being ennobled thereby; and
Ronald, whose heart had never yet awakened to the first pulse of
tenderness which drew him towards one he would have claimed as a bride,
owed his powers of resistance to as strong, as passionate devotion to a
mother who united in her person all the most glorious attributes of
womanhood, and whose idolizing love for her child was tempered by wisdom
which placed his spiritual progress above all other gain. While he was
struggling to win laurels in art's arena, she strove to bind upon his
brow a crown whose gems were heavenly truths,--a crown the pure in
spirit alone could wear.
Blessed the son who has such a mother! Safe and blessed! His foot shall
tread upon the serpent that lies hidden beneath the tempting flowers in
his path, ere the reptile can sting him; his hand shall resolutely put
away the cup of pleasure from his lips when there is poison in the
chalice; he shall walk through the fire of evil lusts unscathed! No
laurel that wreaths his brow shall render it too feverish, or too proud,
to lie upon that mother's bosom with the glad, all-confiding, satisfied
sense which made its joy when it lay there in guileless boyhood. That
mother's love shall smooth for him the rough ways of earth, and place in
his hand the golden key that opens heaven.
As Maurice took his seat beside Ronald, the latter, hastily sweeping his
handkerchief across his eyes, said with a vehement intonation,--
"I have come to a sudden determination! I am going back to America. The
trip is nothing,--ten days over and ten back,--a mere trifle! I can
spend a couple of months with my parents and be back in time for autumn
work. Instead of sending my picture, which is nearly completed, I will
present it in person."
Maurice sighed as he answered, "They will be proud of your work! Happy
are they who have work to do, and who do it faithfully!"
"That is a sentiment worthy of an American," rejoined Ronald; "indeed,
you have unconsciously stolen it from one of our most distinguished
American writers, who says, 'To have something to do and _to do it_ is
the best appointment for us all.'[Footnote: Hillard's "Italy."] The
extent to which I have insensibly Americanized you is very evident. A
thought has just struck me: you are weary and melancholy, and seem to
grow much paler and thinner every day. It will revive and strengthen you
to accompany me. Come, let us go together!"
"Let us fly to the moon!" answered Maurice, half scornfully. "Ronald,
_why_ do you always forget that although we have lived precisely the
same number of years, and I may be said to have lived so much longer
than you, if we count time by sorrows that make long the days,--though
we have both passed our twenty-first anniversary, you, as an American,
have obtained your majority, and are a free agent, while the law of
France renders me still a minor for four years? You know I cannot stir
without my father's consent; and, of course, that is unattainable."
"Unattainable if you choose to imagine that it is, and will not seek for
it," answered Ronald, rebukingly. "The wisest poet that ever penned his
inspiration, says,--
'Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt!'
Do not let your traitorous doubts frighten you from the trial."
Maurice smiled away his rising irritability, and replied, "I think,
Ronald, your mind is so full of poetic arrows that one could not take a
step, or lift a finger, or draw a breath, without your being able to hit
him with a verse."
"A verse may hit him who a sermon flies!" retorted Ronald, laughingly.
"And a man is easy to hit who sits down with folded hands, like him of
whom my rhythmic shaft has just made a target. But, to speak seriously,
do you wonder that true thoughts, beautiful thoughts, which have been
thrown into the music of verse, keep their haunting echoes in some
stronghold of memory, and surge up to the lips when a stirring incident
causes the gates of the mind to vibrate? Why, the very proof of the
poet's genuine inspiration, his chiefest triumph lies in this, that he
speaks a familiar truth, a common word of hope, a little word of
comfort, a simple word of warning, with such potency that it strikes
deeper into the soul than any other adjuration can reach; it defies us
to forget; it takes the sound of a prophecy, and thrills our hearts and
governs our actions in spite of ourselves. So much in defence of my
poetic memories. Now be generous enough to admit that poetry is usually
mingled with a large proportion of prosaic common sense which resolves
itself into action. My scoffed-at poetry interprets itself into this
matter-of-fact prose: unless you have the courage, the energy to ask
your father's consent to your accompanying me to America, you will not
get it; and if you ask you _may_ get it; and if you accompany me it may
profit you. Come,--what say you? I shall be ready to start next week."
"So soon?" ejaculated Maurice, who, often as he had witnessed the
promptitude with which the young American moved, could not yet
familiarize himself with his national rapidity of action and decision.
"You call it _soon_? Why, if I had said day after to-morrow it might
have been termed _soon_; but it seems to me a week is time enough to
prepare for a journey around the world. Come, you have half an hour
before the post closes,--dash off your letter and let it go at once."
As he spoke, he cleared his writing-table of the books and papers by
which it was encumbered, and placed a chair for Maurice. The latter, who
was always carried onward by the rushing current of his friend's strong
will, wrote, on the spur of the moment, a letter more calculated to
impress his father than any deliberately studied epistle. The restless
and gloomy state of mind under which Maurice labored, revealed itself in
this impulsive effusion with a force which might not have found its way
into a calmer communication.
The frequent applications for money which Maurice had been compelled to
make, that he might meet the demands of the old Jew, were not without
their influence in preparing Count Tristan to look favorably upon his
son's solicitation. The count imagined that the sums so constantly
demanded were squandered in the manner habitual to gay young men in
Paris. He had experienced much difficulty in complying with his son's
last request, and became painfully aware that it would not much longer
be in his power to supply him at the same extravagant rate. As a natural
consequence, he hailed the proposition to travel, which might break off
any unfortunate connections, or _liaisons_, he might have formed in
Paris, and without their aid, divert his troubled mind. Then, the
present would be a favorable opportunity for Maurice to visit his estate
in Maryland, and to learn something further of that railway company
which seemed of late to have suspended its operations.
Maurice was not less astounded than overjoyed upon receiving his
father's prompt and unconditional consent to his proposed trip. He at
once carried the letter to Bertha. She was too generous to oppose a step
which promised to be advantageous to her cousin, yet she could not
contemplate their inevitable separation without sincere sorrow.
"I wish I were going with you!" she sighed. "It seems to me everybody is
going to America. Have you not heard that the Marquis de Fleury has just
received the appointment of ambassador to the United States? I wish my
uncle would let me travel to some foreign country. I am weary of this
Parisian, ball-going life."
"Has Monsieur de Fleury received his appointment at last? I had not
heard of it. Who told you?" inquired Maurice.
"M. de Bois, this very morning."
"Gaston goes with him, I presume?"
"Yes, he said so."
"That is an unexpected pleasure,--that is really delightful!" exclaimed
Maurice, enthusiastically.
Bertha did not reply; but she certainly looked inclined to pout, and as
though she had no very distinct perception of the delight in question.
In a few days Maurice and Ronald were on the great ocean.
A fortnight later the Marquis and Marchioness de Fleury, and the
secretary of the former, M. de Bois, were also on their way to the New
World.
Bertha worried her uncle by her sad face, listless manner, and low
spirits, to say nothing of her loss of appetite (to his thinking the
most important feature of her _malaise_), until he was convinced that
she had lost all interest in Paris, and that her sadness would be
increased by a longer sojourn in the gay capital. When she admitted
this, he kindly inquired if she desired to travel.
"Yes, _very much_," was her reply.
Whither would she go? To Italy? To England? To Russia?
"No,--to America!"
_America!_--land of savages!--land of Pawnees and Choctaws!--land where
cooking must be in its crude infancy! Her uncle would not listen to such
a barbarous proposition; and, finding that he could obtain no other
answer from his wilful and incomprehensible ward, he carried her back to
Bordeaux, consoling himself with the reflection that although the visit
to Paris had not been permanently advantageous to his niece, the
culinary knowledge acquired by Lucien was a full compensation.