PRESENTIMENTS.
As the hour of noon was sounding from the Trianon clock, Nicole ran in
to tell Andrea that Captain Philip was at the door.
Surprised but glad, Andrea ran to meet the chevalier, who dismounted
from his horse and was asking if his sister could be seen.
She opened the door herself to him, embraced him, and the pair went up
into her rooms. It was only there that she perceived that he was sadder
than usual, with sorrow in his smile. He was dressed in his stylish
uniform with the utmost exactness and he had his horseman’s cloak rolled
up under his left arm.
“What is the matter, Philip?” she asked, with the instinct of
affectionate souls for which a glance is sufficient revelation.
“Sister, I am under orders to go and join my regiment at Rheims.”
“Oh, dear!” and Andrea exhaled in the exclamation part of her courage
and her strength.
Natural as it was to hear of his departure, she felt so upset that she
had to cling to his arm.
“Gracious, why are you afflicted to this decree?” he asked, as to shed.
“It is a common thing in a soldier’s life. And the journey is nothing to
speak of. They do say the regiment is to be sent back to Strasburg in
all probability.”
“So you have come to bid me farewell?”
“That is it. Have you something particular to say?” he questioned, made
uneasy by her grief, too exaggerated not to be founded.
Nicole was looking on at the scene with surprise for the leave-taking of
an officer going to his garrison was not a catastrophe to be received by
tears. Andrea understood this emotion, and she put on her lace mantilla
to accompany her brother through the grounds to the outer gate.
“My only dear one,” said she, deadly pale and sobbing, “you are going to
leave me all alone and you ask why I weep? You will say the Dauphiness
is kind to me? so she is, perfect in my eyes, and I regard her as a
divinity? but it is because she dwells in a superior sphere that I feel
for her respect, not affection. Affection is so needful to my heart that
the want of it makes it collapse. Father? Oh, heaven, I am telling you
nothing new when I say that our father is not a friend or guardian to
me. Sometimes he looks at me so that I am frightened. I am more afraid
than ever of him since you go away. I cannot tell, but the birds know
that a storm is coming when they take to flight while still it is calm?”
“What storm are you to be on your guard against? I admit that misfortune
may await us. Have you some forewarning of it? Do you know whether you
ought to run to meet it or flee to avoid it?”
“I do not, Philip, only that my life hangs on a thread. It seems to me
that in my sleep I am rolled to the brink of a chasm, where I am
awakened, too late for me to withstand the attraction which will drag me
over. With you absent, and none to help me, I shall be crushed at the
bottom of the chasm.”
“Dear sister, my good Andrea,” said the captain, moved despite himself
by this genuine fright, “you make too much of affection for which I
thank you. You lose a defender, it is true, but only for the time. I
shall not be so far that I am not within call. Besides, apart from
fancies, nothing threatens you.”
“Then, Philip, how is it that you, a man, feel as mournful as I do at
this parting? explain this, brother?”
“It is easy, dear,” returned Philip. “We are not only brother and
sister, but had a lonely life which kept us together. It is our habit to
dwell in close communion and it is sad to break the chain. I am sad, but
only temporarily. I do not believe in any misfortune, save our not
seeing each other for some months, or it may be a year. I resign myself
and say Good-bye till we meet again.”
“You are right,” she said, staying her tears, “and I am mad. See, I am
smiling again. We shall meet soon again.”
She tenderly embraced him, while he regarded her with an affection which
had some parental tenderness in it.
“Besides,” he said, “you will have a comfort, in our father coming here
to live with you. He loves you, believe me, but it is in his own
peculiar way.”
“You seem embarrassed, Philip--what is wrong?”
“Nothing, except that my horse is chafing at the gates because I ought
to have been gone an hour ago.”
Andrea assumed a calm face and said in a tone too firm not to be
affectation:
“God save you, brother!”
She watched him mount his horse and ride off, waving his hand to the
last. She remained motionless as long as he was in sight.
Then she turned and ran at hazard in the wood like a wounded fawn, until
she dropped on a bench under the trees where she let a sob burst from
her bosom.
“Oh, Father of the motherless,” she exclaimed, “why am I left all alone
upon earth?”
A slight sound in the thicket--a sigh, she took it to be, made her turn.
She was startled to see a sad face rise before her. It was Gilbert’s, as
pale and cast-down as her own.
At sight of a man, though he was not a stranger, Andrea hastened to dry
her eyes, too proud to show her grief to another. She composed her
features and smoothed her cheeks which had been quivering with despair.
Gilbert was longer than she in regaining his calm, and his countenance
was still mournful when she looked on it.
“Ah, Master Gilbert again,” she said, with the light tone she always
assumed when chance brought her and the young man together. “But what
ails you that you should gaze on me with that dolorous air? Something
must have saddened you--pray, what has saddened you?”
“If you really want to know,” he answered with the more sorrow as he
perceived the irony in her words, “it is the sadness of seeing you in
misery.”
“What tells you so? I am not in any grief,” replied Andrea, brushing her
eyes for the second time with her handkerchief.
Feeling that the gale was rising, the lover thought to lull it with his
humility.
“I beg pardon, but I heard you sobbing---- ”
“What, listening? you had better---- ”
“It was chance,” stammered the young man, who found it hard to tell her
a lie.
“Chance? I am sorry that chance should help you to overhear my sobs, but
I prithee tell me how does my distress concern you?”
“I cannot bear to hear a woman weep,” rejoined Gilbert in a tone
sovereignly displeasing the patrician.
“Am I but a woman to you, Master Gilbert?” replied the haughty girl. “I
do not crave the sympathy of any one, and least of all of Master
Gilbert.”
“You are wrong to treat me to rudely,” persisted the ex-dependent of the
Taverneys, “I saw you sad in affliction. I heard you say that you would
be all alone in the world by the departure of Master Philip. But no, my
young lady, for I am by you, and never did a heart beat more devoted to
you. I repeat that never will you be alone while my brain can think, my
heart throb, or my arm be stretched out.”
He was handsome with vigor, nobility and devotion while he uttered these
words, although he put into them all the simplicity which the truest
respect commands.
But it was decreed that everything he should say and do was to
displease, offend and drive Andrea to make insulting retorts, as though
each of his offers were an outrage and his supplications provocation.
She meant to rise to suit an action most harsh to words most stern; but
a nervous shiver kept her in her seat. She thought, besides, that she
would be more likely to be seen if erect, and she did not wish to be
remarked talking with a Gilbert! She kept her seat, but she determined
once for all to crush this tormenting little insect under foot.
“I thought I had already told you that you dreadfully displease me; your
voice irritates me, and your Philosophical nonsense is repugnant to me.
Why then, as I told you this much, are you obstinate in speaking to me?”
“Lady, no woman should be irritated by sympathy being expressed for
her.” He was pale but constrained. “An honest man is the peer of any
human creature, and perchance I, whom you so persistently ill-treat,
deserve the sympathy which I regret you do not show for me.”
“Sympathy,” repeated Andrea at this reiteration of the word, fastening
her eyes widely open with impertinence on him, “sympathy from me towards
you? In truth, I have made a mistake about you. I took you for a pert
fellow and you are a mad one.”
“I am neither pert nor mad,” returned the low-born lover, with an
apparent calm which was costly to the pride we know he felt. “No, for
nature made me your equal and chance made you my debtor.”
“Chance again, eh?” sneered the baron’s daughter.
“I ought to say, Providence. I should never have mentioned it but your
insults bring it up in my mind.”
“Your debtor, I think you say--why do you say that?”
“I should be ashamed if you had ingratitude in your composition, for God
only knows what other defects have been implanted in you to
counterbalance your beauty.”
Andrea leaped to her feet at this.
“Forgive me,” said he, “but you gall me too much at times and I forget
the interest you inspire.”
Andrea burst out into such hearty laughter that the lover ought to have
been lifted to the height of wrath; but to her great astonishment,
Gilbert did not kindle. He folded his arms on his breast, retaining his
hostile expression and fiery look, and patiently waited for the end of
her outraging merriment.
“Deign, young lady,” said he coldly, “to reply to one question. Do you
respect your father?”
“It looks, sirrah, as if you took the liberty of putting questions to
me,” she replied with the greatest haughtiness.
“Yes, you respect your father,” he went on, “not on account of any parts
of his or virtues: but simply because he gave you life. For this same
boon, you are bound to love the benefactor. This laid down as a
principle,” said the loving philosopher, “why do you insult me--why
repulse me and hate me--who have not given you life, but I prevented
you losing it.”
“You--you saved my life?” cried Andrea.
“You have not thought of it--rather, you have forgotten it; it is quite
natural, for it was a year ago. Therefore I must remind or inform you.
Yes, I saved your life at the risk of losing my own.”
“I should like to learn where and when?” said Andrea.
“On that day when a hundred thousand people, crushing one another as
they fled from masterless horses and flashing swords, strewed Louis XV.
Place with dying and the dead.”
“The last day of May?”
Andrea lost and regained her ironical smile.
“Oh, you are Baron Balsamo, are you? I cry you pardon for I did not know
this either, before!”
“No, I am not the baron,” replied Gilbert, with flaming eyes and
tremulous lip; “I am the poor boy, offspring of the dregs of the
Kingdom, whose folly, stupidity, and misfortune it is to be in love with
you. It was because of this I followed you into that multitude. I am
Gilbert who, separated from you by the crush, recognized you by the
dreadful scream you raised. Gilbert, who fell near you but encompassed
you with his arms so that twenty thousand hands tearing at them could
not have relaxed the clasp. Gilbert, who placed himself between the
stone post on which you would be smashed, to make a buffer of his
breast. Gilbert, who seeing in the throng the strange man who seemed to
command the other men, called out your name to the Baron Balsamo, so
that he and his allied friends should come to your rescue. He yielded
you up to a happier saver, did Gilbert, retaining of his prize only the
flag--the scrap of your dress torn in the struggle with the thousands; I
pressed that to my lips, in time to stop the blood which flew up from my
shattered bosom. The rolling sea of the terrified and brutal overwhelmed
me but you ascended, like the Angel of the Resurrection, to the abode of
the blessed.”
Gilbert exhibited himself wholly in this outburst, wild, simple and
sublime, the same in his determination as in his love. In spits of her
contempt, Andrea could not view him without astonishment. He believed
for an instant that his story had the irresistibility of love and truth.
But the poor lad reckoned without unbelief, the want of faith which hate
has. Hating Gilbert, Andrea let none of the arguments capture in this
disdained lover.
“I see,” she said, “that the author Rousseau has taught you how to weave
romances.”
“My love a romance?” he exclaimed, indignant.
“And one which you forced me to listen to.”
“Is this all your answer?” faltered he, with dulled eyes and his heart
aching as in a vice.
“I do not honor with any answer at all,” responded Andrea, pushing him
aside as she went by to meet Nicole who was seeking her.
On recognizing her former sweetheart, Nicole regretted that she had not
gone round so as to approach unseen and listen. She came also to
announce that the baron and the Duke of Richelieu were wishful to see
her young lady.
Andrea departed, with Nicole following, who glanced behind ironically at
Gilbert, who, rather livid than merely pale, mad than agitated, and
frenzied than angered, shook his fists after the enemies, muttering
between his grinding teeth:
“Oh, thou creature without a heart and body with no soul, I saved thy
life and concentrated my love upon thee and silenced all sentiment which
might offend what I deemed thy candor; for in my delirium I believed
thee a virgin holy as the Madonna. Now that I closely see you, I behold
but a woman, and I am a man who will be revenged some day on you, Andrea
Taverney! Twice have you been under my hand and I spared you. Beware of
the third time, Andrea--and we shall meet again!”
He bounded into the underwood like a wounded wolf-cub, turning round as
it flies to show its tusks and bloodshot eyes.