Fairy Fingers Part 14

"I have not forgotten that I have not reached my majority, and that your consent is necessary to render Madeleine my wife."

(Our readers are doubtless aware that the law in France fixes the majority of a young man at twenty-five, and that he has no power to contract marriage or to control property until that period.)

"But, believe me, my father, even if this were not the case, I should not desire to act without your approval, and I know I could never induce Madeleine to forego your consent to our union. But what valid objections can you have? You desired that Bertha should become my wife. Is not Madeleine precisely the same kin to me as Bertha? Is she not as good, as beautiful?"

"Oh, a thousand times better and lovelier!" exclaimed Bertha, with affectionate enthusiasm.

"There is but one difference: she is poor and Bertha is rich. Think you Bertha's fortune could have one feather's weight in deciding my choice?

I thank Heaven for teaching me to account it more n.o.ble, more honorable, to ask what the woman I would marry _is_, than to inquire what she _has_."

His father made a vain attempt to speak. Maurice went on without noticing the futile effort.

"But this is not all: I dare to hope that Madeleine's heart is mine, while Bertha's is not. My father, you requested that Bertha and I should have an understanding with each other; and we have had one. Bertha has told me that she does not love me. Is it not so, Bertha?"

"I told you that I loved you with all my heart, as the dearest, most delightful cousin in the world!" answered Bertha, navely.

"Just as I love you!" replied Maurice, smiling upon her tenderly. "But, as a lover, you definitely rejected me,--did you not?"

"Oh, yes; just as you refused me. We are perfectly agreed upon that point," she rejoined, with childlike frankness and simplicity.

"For shame, Maurice!" said the countess, in a tone of angry rebuke.

"Grandmother, hear me out. For once my heart must speak, even though it may be silent forever after. I feel that my whole future destiny hangs upon the events of this moment. You love me as a de Gramont should love; you love me with an ambition to see me worthy of my name,--to see that name rendered more l.u.s.trous in my person. How far that is possible, my father's decision and yours this hour will determine. I am ardent, impetuous, fond of excitement, reckless at times,--as p.r.o.ne, I fear, to be tempted to vice as to be inspired by virtue. If you withhold your consent to my union with the only woman I can love,--if you drive me to despair,--I am lost! Every pure and lofty aspiration within my nature will be crushed out, and in its place the opposite inclination will spring. I warned you before, when you thwarted the n.o.blest resolution I ever formed. There is yet time to save me from the evil effects of that disappointment, and to spare me the worst results of _this_. If you grant me Madeleine"--

"Maurice, for pity's sake!" supplicated Madeleine, extending her clasped hands toward him.

Maurice caught the outstretched hands in his, and bent over her with an expression of ineffable love irradiating his countenance.

"Do not speak yet, Madeleine; do not answer until you have heard me,--until you have well comprehended my meaning. You do not know the thousand perils by which a young man is beset in Paris,--the siren lures that are thrown in his way to ensnare his feet, be they disposed to walk ever so warily. You do not know that your holy image, rising up before me, shining upon the path I trod, and beckoning me into the right road when I swerved aside, has alone saved me from falling into that vortex of follies and vices by which men are daily swallowed up, and from which they emerge sullied and debased. You do not know that, while I am here beside you, listening to the sound of your voice, holding your hand, gazing upon your face, I feel like one inspired, who has power to make his life glorious and keep it pure! Madeleine, would you have me great, distinguished? I shall become so if it be your will. Would you have me lift up our n.o.ble name? It shall be exalted at your bidding.

Would you reign over my soul and keep it stainless? It is under your angel guardianship. Madeleine, best beloved, will you not save me?"

Madeleine only answered with a look which besought Maurice to forbear.

"Is your rhapsody finished at last?" asked Count Tristan, scornfully.

"Is any one else to be permitted to speak?"

"It seems there is but one person whose voice is of any importance to your son," sneered the countess, "and that is Madeleine. It is for _her_ to speak; it is for her to accomplish her work of base ingrat.i.tude; it is for her to give the last finishing stroke to the fabric she has secretly been laboring to build up for the last three years."

Madeleine--who, when the voice of Maurice was sounding in her ears, had been unable to control the agitation which caused her breast to heave, and her frame to quiver from head to foot, while confusion flung its crimson mantle over her face--grew suddenly calm when she heard these taunts. The same icy, pallid quietude with which, but a few moments before, she entered the library, returned. She withdrew the hands Maurice had clasped in his, lifted her bowed head, and stood erect, preparing to reply.

"Speak!" commanded the count, furiously. "Speak! since _we_ are nothing and n.o.body here, and _you are everything_. Since you are sole arbiter in this family, speak!"

Madeleine could not at once command her voice.

The countess, arguing the worst from her silence, cried, with culminating wrath, "Speak, viper! Dart your fangs into the bosom that has sheltered you: it is bared to receive the deadly stroke; it is ready to die of your venom! Nothing remains but for you to strike!"

"Take courage, dearest Madeleine," whispered Bertha. "They will not be angry long. Speak and tell them that you love Maurice as he loves you, and that you will be the happiest of women if you become his wife."

"Well, your answer, Mademoiselle de Gramont?" urged the countess.

"It will be an answer for which I have only the pardon of Maurice to ask," said Madeleine, speaking slowly, but firmly. "Maurice, my cousin, I shall never be able to tell you,--you can never know,--what emotions of thankfulness you have awakened in my soul, nor how unutterably precious your words are to me. Thus much I may say; for the rest, _I can never become your wife!_"

"You refuse me because my father and my grandmother have _compelled_ you to do so by their reproaches,--their _menaces_, I might say!" cried Maurice, wholly forgetting his wonted respect in the rush of tumultuous feelings. "This and this only is your reason for consigning me to misery."

The fear that she had awakened unfilial emotions in the bosom of Maurice infused fresh fort.i.tude into Madeleine's spirit.

"No, Maurice, you are wrong. If my aunt and Count Tristan had not uttered one word on the subject, my answer to you would have been the same."

"How can that be possible? How can I have been so deceived? There is only _one_ obstacle which _can_ discourage me, only one which can force me to yield you up, and that is an admission, from your own lips, that your affections are already bestowed,--that your heart is no longer free."

Madeleine, without hesitation, replied in a clear, steady, deliberate tone, looking her cousin full in the face, and not by the faintest sign betraying the poniard which she heroically plunged into her own devoted breast,--

"My affections are bestowed; my heart is _no longer free!_"

"Madeleine, Madeleine! you do not love Maurice,--you love some one else?" questioned Bertha, in sorrowful astonishment.

Maurice spoke no word. He stood one moment looking at Madeleine as a drowning man might have looked at the ship that could have saved him disappearing in the distance. Then he murmured, hardly conscious of his own words,--

"And I felt sure her heart was mine! O Madeleine! may you never know what you have done!"

"Forgive me if you can, Maurice. Be generous enough to pardon one who has made you suffer. A bright future is before you. The darkness of this hour will gradually fade out of your memory."

"Say, rather, that you have taken from me my future,--withdrawn its guiding star, and left me a rayless and eternal night. But why should I reproach you? What right had I to deem myself worthy of you? You love _another_. All is spoken in those words: there is nothing more for me to say, except to thank you for not discarding me without making a confession which annihilates all hope."

There was a dignity in his grief more touching than the most pa.s.sionate outburst would have been. Even his grandmother, in spite of her joy at Madeleine's declaration, was not wholly unmoved as she contemplated him.

Count Tristan's exultation broke through all polite disguise,--

"Madeleine has atoned for much of the past by her present conduct; it has restored her in a measure to"--

Madeleine, as far as her gentle nature permitted, experienced an antipathy toward Count Tristan only surpa.s.sed by that which he entertained for her. The sound of his voice grated on her ears; his commendation made her doubt the wisdom and purity of her own act; his approval irritated her as no rebuke could have done. Without waiting for him to conclude his sentence, she grasped Bertha's hand, whispering, "I cannot stay here; I am stifling; come with me."

They left the room together, and took their way in silence to Madeleine's chamber. Bertha carefully closed the door, and, drawing her cousin down into a seat, placed herself beside her, and strove to read her countenance.

"Madeleine, is it possible? How mistaken I have been! You do not love our cousin Maurice. Poor Maurice! It is a dreadful blow to him. And you love some one else. But whom? I know of no gentleman who comes here often,--who is on an intimate footing at the chateau,--except"--

A painful suspicion for the first time shot through her mind, and made her pause. Could it be Gaston de Bois whom Madeleine preferred? She always treated him with such marked courtesy. There was no one else,--it must be he! Bertha could not frame the question that hovered about her lips, though to have heard it answered in the negative would have made her heart leap for joy.

Madeleine was too much absorbed by her own reflections to divine those of her cousin.

"At all events," said Bertha, trying to rally and talk cheerfully, though she could not chase that haunting fear from her thoughts, "my aunt is no longer angry with you, and cousin Tristan was well pleased.

They will treat you better after this, and your home will be happier."

"_My home?_" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Madeleine, in a tone that made Bertha start.

"Yes, yours, until you exchange it for that of the favored lover, of whose name you make such a mystery."

"_That will never be!_"