THE RESTORATION.
While the thousand casualties were precipitated upon each other, Baron
Taverney escaped all the dangers by some miracle.
An old rake, and hardened in cynicism, he seemed the least likely to be
so favored, but he maintained himself in the thick of a cluster by his
skill and coolness, while incapable of exerting force against the
devouring panic. His group, bruised against the Royal Storehouse, and
brushed along the square railings, left a long trail of dead and dying
on both flanks but, though decimated, its centre was kept out of peril.
As soon as these lucky men and women scattered upon the boulevard, they
yelled with glee. Like them, Taverney found himself out of harm’s reach.
During all the journey, the baron had thought of nobody but his noble
self. Though not emotional, he was a man of action, and in great crises
such characters put Caesar’s adage into practice--Act for yourself. We
will not say he was selfish but that his attention was limited.
But soon as he was free on the main street, escaped from death and
re-entering life, the old baron uttered a cry of delight, followed by
another of pain.
“My daughter,” he said, in sorrow, though it was not so loud as the
other.
“Poor dear old man,” said some old women, flocking round ready to
condole with him, but still more to question.
He had no popular inclinations. Ill at ease among the gossips he made an
effort to break the ring, and to his credit got off a few steps towards
the square. But they were but the impulse of parental love, never wholly
dead in a man; reason came to his aid, and stopped him short.
He cheered himself with the reasoning that if he, a feeble old man had
struggled through, Andrea, on the strong arm of her brave and powerful
brother, must have likewise succeeded. He concluded that the two had
gone home, and he proceeded to their Paris lodging, in Coq-Heron street.
But he was scarcely within twenty paces of the house, on the street
leading to a summerhouse in the gardens, where Philip had induced a
friend to let them dwell, when he was hailed by a girl on the threshold.
This was a pretty servant maid, who was jabbering with some women.
“Have you not brought Master Philip and Mistress Andrea?” was her
greeting.
“Good heavens, Nicole, have they not come home?” cried the baron, a
little startled, while the others were quivering with the thrill which
permeated all the city from the exaggerated story of the first fugitives
spreading.
“Why, no, my lord, no one has seen them.”
“They could not come home by the shortest road,” faltered the baron,
trembling with spite at his pitiful line of reasoning falling to pieces.
There he stood, in the street, with Nicole whimpering, and an old valet,
who had accompanied the Taverneys to town, lifting his hands to the sky.
“Oh, here comes Master Philip,” ejaculated Nicole, with inexpressible
terror, for the young man was alone.
He ran up through the shades of evening, desperate, calling out as soon
as he saw the gathering at the house door:
“Is my sister here?”
“We have not seen her--she is not here,” said Nicole. “Oh, heavens, my
poor young mistress!” she sobbed.
“The idea of your coming back without her!” said the baron with anger
the more unfair as we have shown how he quitted the scene of the
disaster.
By way of answer he showed his bleeding face and his arm broken and
hanging like a dead limb by his side.
“Alas, my poor Andrea,” sighed the baron, falling, seated on a stone
bench by the door.
“But I shall find her, dead or alive,” replied the young man gloomily.
And he returned to the place with feverish agitation. He would have
lopped off his useless arm, if he had an axe, but as it was, he tucked
the hand into his waistcoat for an improvised sling.
It was thus we saw him on the square, where he wandered part of the
night. As the first streaks of dawn whitened the sky, he turned
homeward, though ready to drop. From a distance he saw the same familiar
group which had met his eyes on the eve. He understood that Andrea had
not returned, and he halted.
“Well?” called out the baron, spying him.
“Has she not returned? no news--no clew?” and he fell, exhausted, on the
stone bench, while the older noble swore.
At this juncture, a hack appeared at the end of the street, lumbered up,
and stopped in front of the house. As a female head appeared at the
window, thrown back as if in a faint, Philip, recognizing it, leaped
that way. The door opened, and a man stepped out who carried Andrea de
Taverney in his arms.
“Dead--they bring her home dead,” gasped Philip, falling on his knees.
“I do not think so, gentlemen,” said the man who bore Andrea, “I trust
that Mdlle. de Taverney is only fainted.”
“Oh, the magician,” said the baron, while Philip uttered the name of
“the Baron of Balsamo.”
“I, my lord, who was happy enough to spy Mdlle. de Taverney in the riot,
near the Royal wardrobe storehouse.”
But Philip passed at once from joy to doubt and said:
“You are bringing her home very late, my lord.”
“You will understand my plight,” replied Balsamo without astonishment.
“I was unaware of the address of your sister, though your father calls
me a magician, kindly remembering some little incidents occurring at
your country-seat. So I had her carried by my servants to the residence
of the Marchioness of Savigny, a friend who lives near the Royal
Stables. Then this honest fellow--Comtois,” he said, waving a footman in
the royal livery to come forward, “being in the King’s household and
recognizing the young lady from her being attendant of the Dauphiness,
gave me this address. Her wonderful beauty had made him remark her one
night when the royal coach left her at this door. I bade him get upon
the box, and I have the honor to bring to you, with all the respect she
merits--the young lady, less ill than she may appear.”
He finished by placing the lady with the utmost respect in the hands of
Nicole and her father. For the first time the latter felt a tear on his
eyelid, and he was astonished as he let it openly run down his wrinkled
cheek.
“My lord,” said Philip, presenting the only hand he could use to
Balsamo, “You know me and my address. Give me a chance to repay the
services you have done me.”
“I have merely accomplished duty,” was the reply. “I owed you for the
hospitality you once favored me at Taverney.” He took a few paces to
depart, but retracing them, he added: “I ask pardon; but I was
forgetting to leave the precise address of Marchioness Savigny; she
lives in Saint Honore Street, near the Feuillant’s Monastery. This is
said in case Mdlle. de Taverney should like to pay her a visit.”
In this explanation, exactness of details and accumulation of proofs,
the delicacy touched the young lord and even the old one.
“My daughter owes her life to your lordship,” said the latter.
“I am proud and happy in that belief,” responded Balsamo.
Followed by Comtois, who refused the purse Philip offered, he went to
the carriage and was gone.
Simultaneously, as if the departure made the swooning of Andrea cease,
she opened her eyes. For a while she was dumb, and stunned, and her look
was frightened.
“Heavens, have we but had her half restored--with her reason gone?” said
Philip.
Seeming to comprehend the words, Andrea shook her head. But she remained
mute, as if in ecstasy. Standing, one of her arms was levelled in the
direction in which Balsamo had disappeared.
“Come, come, it is high time our worry was over,” said the baron. “Help
your sister indoors my son.”
Between the young gentleman and Nicole, Andrea reached the rear house,
but walked like a somnambulist.
“Philip--father!” she uttered as speech returned to her at last.
“She knows us,” exclaimed the young knight.
“To be sure I know you; but what has taken place?”
Her eyes closed in a blessed sleep this time, and Nicole carried her
into her bedroom.
On going to his own room, Captain Philip found a doctor whom the valet
Labrie had sent for. He examined the injured arm, not broken but
dislocated, and set the bone. Still uneasy about his sister, he took the
medical man to her bedside. He felt her pulse, listened to her breathing
and smiled.
“Her slumber is calm and peaceful as a child’s,” he said. “Let her sleep
on, young sir, there is nothing more to do.”
The baron was sound asleep already assured about his children on whom
were built the ambitious schemes which had lured him to the capital.