JOYFUL NEWS.
“Mamma! Mamma! I have come! He is saved!”
A woman started up, still and white as a ghost, from the dim shadows
that had settled around her. She would not believe the joyful news. The
very sound of a voice cheerful, and ringing as that which startled the
silence of the room had a thrill of mockery for her. She had been so
long used to disappointment that joy fell away from her heart
unrecognized.
“Mamma! dear mamma! do you understand? I have spoken to the queen, the
beautiful queen, and the king; so kind, so gentle! Oh, mamma! his
goodness is unspeakable! To-morrow, one more night, and you will see my
father!”
The woman gave a deep gasp, flung out her arms, and fell to the floor
insensible—the whitest living thing that joy ever prostrated.
“Oh! it has killed her! What can I do? What can I do?” cried the poor
girl, appealing piteously to Jacques.
“Give her air! Give her water! We broke up the pain of her suspense too
suddenly,” answered Jacques, lifting the lady in his arms, and laying
her on the bed. “She was strong to battle against sorrow, but this good
news has almost taken her life.”
Marguerite flung open the windows, and brought water, with which Jacques
bathed that white face; but it was very long before a faint breath
proclaimed that the locked heart had commenced to beat again.
“Mamma! Mamma! Can you hear me?”
The woman turned her great eyes wistfully upon that eager face.
“Let me tell you slowly, mamma. Do not try to take it in all at once,
but word by word.”
Madame Gosner sat upright, but she seemed like a person coming out of a
dream. She swept the hair back from her temples, threading it through
her fingers, and whispered,
“There is white in it. He would not know me.”
Then she turned slowly toward Marguerite, and questioned her. “You were
saying something about _him_?—or is it that I have dreamed?”
She said this mournfully and in doubt, not yet having come out of her
bewilderment; but as her heavy eyes were uplifted to the girl’s face,
they kindled under the glow of happiness which met them in every
beautiful feature.
“Is it true? Did they give us hope?”
“Mamma, I have an order for his release.”
“No! Tell it me again. I do not believe it—of course I do not believe
it, such words have mocked me so often; but you look as if it might
be—and this man. Ah! it is Monsieur Jacques; tell me, monsieur, and I
will believe you. Is there really a hope?”
“Dear lady, have a little patience, try and compose yourself. To-morrow
your husband will be here!”
“And you say this? To-morrow! Oh, mother of God! how I have prayed,
worked, suffered, and now my heart refuses to receive this great joy. It
is so used to sorrow—oh, my friend! it is so used to sorrow.”
“But a brighter day is coming,” said Monsieur Jacques.
“I cannot believe it. God help me, I cannot believe it.”
The poor woman lifted both hands to her face, and, all at once, burst
into a storm of tears. Thus she sat, rocking to and fro, while the ice
in her heart broke up and let the sunshine of a mighty joy shine in.
When the woman lifted her face again it was wet, but radiant. Marguerite
threw herself upon her knees before the transfigured woman.
“You are beginning to believe, I see it in your face, I can feel it in
the heaving of your bosom, in the trembling of your hands. Mamma, mamma!
it is true.”
“I know; but to-morrow seems so far off. Could we not go at once? After
so many years, they might cut off an hour or two.”
She appealed to Monsieur Jacques, who shook his head.
“I should feel sure then?” she said, piteously.
“Be sure, as it is; no one would deceive you.”
“He might—I mean the king.”
“Not so. Louis is a kind man, lacking somewhat in courage to act
promptly; but there is neither treachery or falsehood in him.”
Madame Gosner drew a deep breath, and a look of forced resignation came
to her face.
“It seems but a little time,” she said, “and I have waited so long; but
these few hours seem harder to bear than all the lost years.”
“But they will soon pass.”
“Yes; and he will be here. You have seen him, monsieur? Tell me, has
imprisonment made him old as sorrow has left me?”
“It was an old man that I saw in the dungeon.”
“Yet my husband should have been in the prime of life; and I, when he
went away, monsieur, I was not much older than Marguerite, and so like
her.”
Monsieur Jacques glanced at the lined and anxious face of the
middle-aged woman, from which perpetual grief had swept away all the
bloom, and hardened the beauty into a sad expression of endurance. Then
his eyes turned upon Marguerite, more lovely a thousand times than he
had ever seen her before; for the happiness had left bloom upon her
cheeks, and lay like sunshine in the violet softness of her eyes. The
contrast struck him painfully. Was grief then so much more powerful than
time? How many women in France even then suffered as she had done? Was
this to be a universal result? Would oppression in the end destroy all
the sweets of womanhood, by forcing a sex, naturally kind and gentle,
into resistance wilder and fiercer, because more unreasoning, than men
ever waged on each other?
These thoughts disturbed the man. In admitting the unnatural influence
of women into their revolutionary clubs, had they not already begun to
uproot all that was holy in social life? In order to gain liberty, were
they not giving up religion, and trampling down all the beautiful
influences of home life? He looked at Marguerite where she stood, in all
the gentle purity of young maidenhood, wondering if she could ever be
drawn into the vortex of those revolutionary clubs in which he was a
leading spirit. Why not? Others as young, as lovely, and as good, had
followed the cry of liberty and equality into places quite as dangerous
and unnatural. Might not the time arrive when in the turmoil and
disorganization of a government which France was beginning to hate, even
he might seize on any help, to carry out the wild idea of liberty which
was driving the people of France mad. Might not he urge her, and
creatures innocent and enthusiastic like her, into the surrender of
everything that makes a woman’s life beautiful, in order to obtain that
political liberty which France never knew how to use or keep.
Monsieur Jacques sat moodily in a corner of the room, and thought these
things over as Marguerite knelt by her mother, and told her in detail
all that had happened during her sojourn at Versailles. He saw that the
narrative did more to convince the mother that her husband’s release was
a reality than all his reasoning could have done. Once or twice he
observed a faint smile quiver across that firm mouth, while Marguerite
caught the infection as flowers meet the sunshine, and laughed while
telling Dame Tillery’s mishap.
Jacques felt the influence of this low, rippling laugh, a sound he had
never heard in that gloomy place before, and thought to himself how
naturally happiness brought back all the soft, sweet traits of womanhood
in these two persons.
“No, no!” he said, “from the strongest to the weakest, women should be
the creatures of our care and protection. It is unnatural that they
should struggle and fight for us—more unnatural that we should assail
them. Thank God this great happiness will rescue a noble woman from the
vortex toward which she was drifting! The moment her husband is free, I
will myself take them across the frontier. In their old home they shall
find rest while the storm bursts over France.”