Fairy Fingers Part 44

"He may come," answered Madeleine, in a tone of suppressed emotion.

"I will tell him that he may be here in an hour?" said Gaston interrogatively, for he saw the mighty struggle Madeleine was making to control herself, and thoughtfully desired to give her some little time for preparation.

Madeleine bowed her head in acquiescence.

Gaston had too much delicacy to prolong the conversation. He bade her adieu and at once sought Maurice.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MEETING OF LOVERS.

M. de Bois lost no time in communicating to Maurice the result of his visit. He found the young viscount awaiting him with torturing impatience. Gaston had scarcely said that Madeleine would receive her cousin in an hour, when Maurice, without heeding the last words, caught up his hat, convulsively grasped his friend's hand, and, without uttering a syllable, hurried forth.

He was acquainted with Madeleine's residence,--he had sought it out the night previous,--and thither he now hastened. He bounded up the street door-steps, but paused a moment as his hand touched the bell. Was he again about to look upon that face which he had sought with such fruitless, but frenzied ardor? He thought of those days when all creation became a blank because that heaven-lit countenance no longer shone upon him. His brain and heart throbbed and beat at those tumultuous recollections until both seemed mingled in one wild motion.

He comprehended Madeleine's character so well that he knew he should find her tranquil and self-possessed; and was he about to enter her presence as voiceless and unmanned as during their brief rencontre the day previous?

He turned to descend the steps in the hope of collecting his scattered faculties, by walking awhile, but the very thought of delaying, even for a few moments, an interview for which he had so long pined caused him too sharp anguish for endurance; he seized the bell, and rang with as sudden an impulse as though he feared the mansion before which he stood would vanish away, and he would awake from one of the old dreams by which he had been haunted.

The door opened and he was at once conducted to Madeleine's boudoir.

Madeleine was still sitting before the little table where Gaston de Bois had left her. The sketch she had commenced lay before her, and the pencil beside it; but though she had not moved from her seat, the drawing had not received an additional touch.

As Maurice entered she rose, and advanced toward him, stretching out both her hands. Closely clasping those extended hands, he gazed upon her with an expression of rapture. For a moment, the large, clear windows of her soul opened as naturally and frankly as ever; but his look was so full of unutterable tenderness that over her betraying eyes the lids dropped suddenly, and her face crimsoned, it might be with happiness which she felt bound to conceal.

Madeleine was the first to speak; but the only words she murmured were, "Maurice!--my dear cousin!"

How her accents thrilled him! How they brought back the time when that voice, which made all the music of his existence, was suddenly hushed, and awful silence took its place, leaving the memory of departed tones ever sounding in his aching, longing ears!

"Madeleine!--have I found you at last? Oh, how long we have been lost to each other!"

"_You_ have never been lost to _me_," answered Madeleine involuntarily; but the words were hardly spoken when she repented them.

"I know it; M. de Bois kept you informed of my movements. But, ah, Madeleine, how could you be aware of my anguish, and so cruelly refuse a sign by which I might learn that you were near me?"

"I had no alternative. I could not have carried out the project I had formed, and which"--Madeleine paused, and looked around her somewhat proudly, then added, "and which you now see crowned with success, if I had run the risk of your tracing me. You would have opposed my undertaking,--do you not feel that you would? Answer that question, before you reproach me."

"Yes, you are right, Madeleine; I fear I should have opposed your enterprise. And yet, believe me, I honor it,--I honor you all the more on account of that very undertaking. Thank Heaven, I have lived long enough in this land, where men (and women too) have sufficient courage to use their lives, and senseless idlers are the exceptions; to realize that man's work and woman's work are alike glorious; that labor is dignified by the hand that toils; and that you, Madeleine, the daughter of a duke,--you, the d.u.c.h.ess-mantua-maker, have reached a higher alt.i.tude through that very labor than your birth could ever command."

"Maurice,--my cousin, my dear, dear cousin!--these words compensate me for all my trials and struggles. I hardly dared to dream that I should hear them for your lips. Ah, to-day,--to-day when I am about to accomplish one of the ends for which I have most earnestly toiled,--to-day when I shall become full possessor of this mansion, henceforth a home of my own,--this day will ever be full of precious memories to me; it will be written upon my book of life moistened with the sweetest tears I ever shed,--tears of grat.i.tude and joy."

"You are to purchase this magnificent mansion? Is it possible?" asked Maurice, for the first time looking around him. "How can you have achieved this, Madeleine? You have had some friend who aided you, and"--he paused abruptly.

"I _have_ had friends, Maurice, warm and devoted friends," answered Madeleine, simply.

"But," he resumed, and hesitated, "how--how has all this been brought about? Ah, Madeleine, I have not forgotten, I cannot forget the sad revelation you made to me in Brittany. He whom you love,--it is _he_,--_he_ who has protected you, who has enjoyed the exquisite happiness of aiding you by his advice, and by his own means perhaps"--

Maurice uttered these words excitedly and almost in a tone of reproach.

"No, Maurice," returned Madeleine, growing ghastly pale, and speaking with an effort which gave her voice a hollow, unnatural sound. "He whom I love has never aided me,--I have received no a.s.sistance from him,--I have given him no right to offer any."

"He whom you love!" repeated Maurice with culminating anguish. "Then you love him,--you _do_ love him still? Answer me, Madeleine. Do not torture me by suspense! Answer me,--you love him still?"

"_As ever!_" replied Madeleine, and an irrepressible blush chased the ashy whiteness of her cheeks.

"And he is _here_,--here in America,--here in Washington?" asked Maurice.

"Yes."

"And you see him? You have seen him perhaps this very day?"

"Yes."

"And he loves you,--loves you as much as ever?"

Madeleine silently bowed her head, but the radiant light that overspread her countenance answered more unmistakably than the affirmative action.

"Ah, Madeleine, can you think, can you believe that his love equals mine? You do not answer; speak, I implore you! _Do_ you believe that _he_ has loved you as _I_ love you?"

Madeleine felt impelled to reply because she deemed it best for Maurice to be confirmed in his error. In a low, tremulous tone, and with her eyes swimming in the soft l.u.s.tre of a half-formed tear, she murmured, "Yes."

"No! no! It cannot be!" burst forth Maurice. "No woman was ever loved _twice_ with such absorbing devotion. You cannot be to him what you are to me! You cannot have saved him from all the perils from which you have saved me! Ah, Madeleine, since you have been selected to fill the place of a guardian angel to me, why, why was my love rejected? Why did another rob me of your heart? Why were you willing to unite your fate to his and not to mine?"

"Maurice," said Madeleine, regaining some degree of composure, "I shall never forget the n.o.ble offer you made me when I was a desolate outcast; I shall never forget the joy it gave me,--the grat.i.tude it caused me,--the good it did me, at the very moment when I was forced, _ay forced_ to reject that offer. But had there been no other barrier could I have consented to become a burden to you? I,--poor and friendless,--_could_ I have consented to draw down the anger of your family upon you? _Could_ I have consented to separate you from them?--to make a lasting feud between you? Say, Maurice, would you have had me do this?"

"I would have had you leave me still a hope upon which I could have existed, until I had fitted myself to enter an honorable profession; until I had a prospect of earning an independence through that profession; until I had the right to say to you (as I now might, were you but mine in heart), Madeleine, I have waited patiently, and toiled earnestly,--will you share my narrow means, my almost poverty? Will you be my wife? We might have been exiles, so to speak, for we should perhaps have been cast off by our own kindred, and might never have returned to our native land; but your presence would have made this new country,--this young Hercules of lands,--this land full of sinews, bones and muscle, not yet clothed with rounded symmetry of outward form, but fresh and strong and teeming with promise, a true home to us. Its vast, ever-growing mind would have given new expansion to our own mental faculties. We should have grown spiritually, and reached n.o.bler heights together. If we had griefs to endure, grief itself would have been sweet to me if we drank it from the same cup. All this might have been, Madeleine, if you had loved me as I love you."

Madeleine pa.s.sed her hand over her eyes as if to shut out some picture of blinding brightness conjured before them by his words; and, looking up with forced serenity, said,--

"Maurice, though I cannot be your wife, do you refuse to let me take the place of a sister?--a sister who loves you with the most tender affection,--who will rejoice in your joy and share your sorrow, and look upon her own life as brighter if she brightens yours? Since it has been the will of Heaven that we should meet again before the time I proposed arrived, there is no need that we should become strangers to each other.

Because I cannot be _all_ that you desire, you will not reject such affection as I _can_ offer you?"

"Reject it? No, _rejection_ has only emanated from your side," he continued bitterly. "I was and am unworthy of your affection, your confidence; but what you will grant I will thankfully receive, too poor not to feel enriched even by your coldest regard."

"Will you prove that to me, Maurice?"

"Yes; how can I do so?"

"By promising that you will never have a sorrow which you do not confide to me; by promising that you will never doubt my ready sympathy; more yet,--by giving me an invaluable privilege,--one which will make me proud indeed. Do not be offended, Maurice; but--but--should you ever need means to carry out any enterprise (and you know, in this land, how many offer themselves), I would claim the privilege of being your banker, and joining in your undertaking as freely as if I were indeed your sister."

"You, Madeleine? Can you imagine that I could force myself to consent to this? You are already rich then?"

"I am becoming rich,--I have laid the foundation of wealth. But tell me that you do not reject my sisterly regard, my devotion"--

"Would he whom you love permit this devotion?"