Fairy Fingers Part 75

The obsequiousness of Mademoiselle Victorine was perfectly overwhelming, yet she experienced no little disappointment. She had made up her mind that since Mademoiselle Melanie was known to be Mademoiselle de Gramont, she would never again be able to appear among her workwomen, even to superintend their labors, and a large portion of the resigned power must be delegated to the accomplished forewoman. Ruth Thornton, Madeleine's favorite, as Victorine considered her, was in the way; but what were a French woman's wits worth if they could not devise some method of removing a dangerous rival?

Madeleine lingered long enough to be _au courant_ to the present state of affairs, and she found that the business of the establishment had so much increased during her seclusion, that every day, a host of orders had to be declined. This overwhelming influx of patronage was partially attributable to the reports circulated concerning Mademoiselle Melanie's romantic history, and also to the strong desire of the public (a democratic public) to secure the honor of procuring habiliments from the establishment of a dress-maker whose father was a duke.

Madeleine had taken a seat near Ruth, and was listening to Mademoiselle Victorine's _histories_ and suggestions, when Robert made known that Monsieur Maurice de Gramont begged to see Mademoiselle Melanie.

Maurice had left his father as soon as he slept; he was impatient to return to Madeleine. He was tortured by the remembrance of her burst of grief, and her bitter words. The forced composure by which they were succeeded could not hide from him the deep wound she had received.

Though the period which had elapsed since his father was conducted from Madeleine's house was so brief, the rooms, grown familiar to Maurice, already wore a different aspect; he actually felt hurt that Madeleine could have made the change thus rapidly. Men are so unreasonable!

Maurice resembled his s.e.x in that particular. Then, too, he found his trunk packed, and he knew by whose hand that duty had been performed.

Doubtless, he was grateful? Not in the least! It seemed to him that Madeleine was in too much haste to remove the last vestige of his sojourn near her. When she entered the drawing-room he was standing contemplating the neatly filled trunk, and was cruel enough to say,--

"You used your _old magic_ to make ready for us, Madeleine, and you have used it again to efface all our footprints here. I can hardly persuade myself that I occupied this room."

Madeleine felt the implied reproach; but without answering the unmerited rebuke, she asked, "Is your father doing well?"

"He is sleeping at this moment; but it is very evident that he is going to have a sorrowful time; he will miss you so much; and my grandmother is as cold and hard as though her illness had petrified her more completely than ever."

That was another observation to which Madeleine could find no reply.

Without essaying to make an appropriate answer, she said, "It will never do to let the whole burden of nursing your father devolve on you, Maurice; you will be broken down. May I plan for you? You need an experienced _garde malade_. It would be difficult, at short notice, to procure any so reliable, and so well versed in the duties of a nurse as Mrs. Lawkins. Then, too, your father is accustomed to see her near him; and a familiar face will be more welcome than a stranger's. Do you think it would be wrong to engage her without your grandmother's knowing that she had been in my employment?"

"I have no scruples on that head," returned Maurice; "but there are others which I cannot readily get over. She is your house-keeper, and I have heard you say she was very valuable to you. I know that it is exceedingly difficult to obtain good domestics in this country; you cannot replace her at once. How can you spare her?"

"Easily,--easily; do not talk of that. I will speak to her and she will go to you to-morrow morning. Meantime, I advise you to inform the countess that a nurse is coming. One charge more: your father is so much better that instead of wearing yourself out by sitting up with him, it would be wiser to have a sofa, upon which you could take rest, placed beside his bed. M. de Bois will gladly take his turn in watching, but after a few nights, I think Count Tristan will need no one but Mrs.

Lawkins."

"Ah, Madeleine"--

Madeleine interrupted him. "One word about the delicacies which you cannot readily procure in a hotel, and which it would deprive me of a great happiness if I could not send. As the countess is now up, and might see and recognize Robert, I will order him to deliver the salver to the waiter who attends upon your rooms. Would it not be advisable to say a few words to this man to prevent any inadvertent remark in the presence of your grandmother?"

"Well thought of. How do you keep your wits so thoroughly about you, Madeleine? How do you manage to remember everything that should be remembered, and at the right moment?"

"If I do,--though I am not disposed to admit that such is the case,--it is simply through the habit of taking the trouble to _think at all_, to reflect quietly upon what would be best, what is most needed,--a very simple process."

"And, like a great many other simple but important processes, rare just because it _is so simple_," remarked Maurice, with great justice.

During this conversation Maurice and Madeleine had been standing where she found him on entering the room; but he had not resolution to tear himself quickly away, and said,--

"Let me sit a little while in your boudoir, and talk to you, Madeleine.

_I_ have not been able to reconcile myself so quickly to my own change of abode as you seem to have done to our departure from yours."

Was it not surprising that such a n.o.ble-minded man as Maurice could make an observation so ungracious, so ungenerous, and one which in his heart he knew was so unjust, to the woman he loved? Yet it would be difficult to find a lover who is incapable of doing the same. Why is it that men, even the best, are at times stirred by an irresistible prompting, themselves, to wound the being whom they would shield from all harm dealt by others with chivalric devotion? Let a woman commit the slightest action that can, by ingenious torturing, be interpreted into a moment's want of consideration for the feelings of her lover, and all his admiration, his tenderness, his reverence, will not prevent his being cruel enough to stab her with some pa.s.sing word that strikes as sharply as a dagger.

"You think me a true philosopher, then?" replied Madeleine, gravely. But she added, in a lower and less firm tone, while a soft humility filled her mild eyes, "Do you think _I am reconciled_, Maurice?"

"Do you not think I am a heartless, senseless brute to have grieved you?

Do not look so sorrowful! You make me hate myself! Ah, you did well not to trust your happiness to my keeping; I was not a fit guardian."

It was far harder for Madeleine to hear him say _that_ than to listen to an undeserved reproach; but she led the way to her boudoir without replying, and for the next hour Maurice sat beside her, and they conversed without any jarring note breaking the harmony of their communion.

CHAPTER XLV.

REPARATION.

Maurice, with as much _nonchalance_ as he could a.s.sume, informed his grandmother that he had engaged a _garde malade_ to a.s.sist in the care of his father. When good Mrs. Lawkins made her appearance the next morning, looking as plump, rosy and "comfortable" as English nurses (and house-keepers) are wont to look, the countess merely bestowed upon her a pa.s.sing glance and then took no further notice of her presence. It never occurred to Madame de Gramont to inquire into the fitness of this person for her position and duties. Besides, the countess seldom addressed a "hireling," except to utter a command or a rebuke. Maurice was greatly relieved when he perceived his grandmother's perfect indifference to the individual whom he had selected. Mrs. Lawkins had been thrown "into a flutter" by Madeleine's cautions and the prospect of being obliged to parry a series of cross-questions; but the reception she received quickly restored her equanimity. Count Tristan was sitting near his mother; the worthy house-keeper made her obeisance to both in silence, then turned to Maurice for directions.

"You have brought your trunk with you?" inquired the latter.

"I left it in the entry, sir."

The count looked up at the sound of that voice. Immediately recognizing one whose a.s.sociation in his mind with Madeleine struck the chord which vibrated most readily, he exclaimed, in a piteous tone, "Madeleine!

Madeleine! Why don't she come? Wont Madeleine come soon?"

Maurice, Bertha, and Mrs. Lawkins were filled with consternation at these words, which they imagined must arouse the suspicions of the countess; but she had not condescended to waste sufficient attention upon the domestic her son had hired to perceive that Count Tristan's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns had any connection with her presence. The disdainful lady's eyes sparkled with anger at the unexpected mention of one whose name she desired never more to hear. She drew her chair close to Count Tristan's and said in harsh accents,--

"I trust, my son, that you have no wish ungratified? When your _mother_ is by your side, _whom_ else _can_ you desire?"

Count Tristan was too easily cowed by her manner to venture a reply, even if his disordered intellect could have suggested any appropriate answer.

"I rejoice at your restoration to me," continued his mother; "and the filial duty I have the right to expect prompts me to believe that you also rejoice at our reunion."

The invalid looked very far from rejoicing; but the countess solaced herself by interpreting his silence into an affirmative.

From that time he never breathed Madeleine's name in his mother's presence; but those who watched beside him, often heard it murmured when he slept, or just as he wakened, before full consciousness was restored.

From the day that he returned to the hotel, he sank into a state of deep dejection. He would sit or lie for hours with his eyes wide open, without apparently seeing or hearing what pa.s.sed around him, while an expression of despair overshadowed his deeply furrowed countenance.

The manifest weakness of his brain was a severer trial to Madame de Gramont than his enfeebled bodily condition; but she dealt with it as with her other trials; she would not acknowledge to herself the existence of his mental malady; she refused to admit that he lacked power to reason, at the very moment when she was exerting the species of authority she would have employed to keep an unreasoning child in check.

The idea that it would be well to divert his mind, and render the hours less tedious, never occurred to her, or, if it did, she was totally at a loss to suggest any means of pleasantly whiling away the time. Her own health had not wholly recovered from its recent shock; the slow fever still lingered in her veins, but the daily routine of her life was as unchanged as though her strength had been unimpaired.

Dr. Bayard had ordered his patient to drive out every day, and the countess considered it her duty to accompany him. The pillows which Mrs.

Lawkins carefully placed for the support of the invalid were almost as much needed by his mother; but she sat erect, and drew herself away from them, as though the merest approach to a reclining posture would have been a lapse from dignity. The count no longer gazed out of the window with that calm look of enjoyment which Maurice and Madeleine had remarked; he usually closed his eyes, or fixed them on his son, sitting opposite, with a mournfully appealing look, which seemed to ask,--

"Can no help come to me? Will it _always_ be thus?"

Week after week pa.s.sed on. Maurice, in spite of his unremitting attention to his father, found time to pay daily visits to Madeleine.

She no longer made her appearance in the exhibition-rooms, or saw the ladies who came to her establishment, upon business; but when Count Tristan was removed she had no gracious plea for excusing herself to those who called as visitors. She received them with graceful ease and dignified composure. Not one of them had courage or inclination to make the faintest allusion to the past, or to their acquaintance with her as "Mademoiselle Melanie." It was Mademoiselle de Gramont in whose presence they sat. Even Madame de Fleury had too much perception to venture to ask her advice upon questions of the deepest interest,--namely, the most becoming shapes for new attire, the selection of colors, the choice of appropriate tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, or some equally important matter which engrossed that troubled lady's thoughts, and caused her many wakeful nights.

After Count Tristan and Maurice returned to the hotel, Bertha escaped from imprisonment. When she informed her aunt that she was suffering from want of fresh air, the countess requested her to accompany Count Tristan and herself upon their daily drive; but Bertha maintained that driving would do her no good; she detested a close carriage; she wanted more active exercise,--she would take a brisk walk with her maid. Madame de Gramont would a.s.suredly have mounted guard over her niece in person, were it not that the fatigue experienced even after a couple of hours'

driving, admonished her that she lacked the strength for pedestrianism.

Bertha was allowed to go forth attended only by Adolphine. Her walk always lay in one direction, and that was toward the residence of Madeleine; and, strange to say, she never failed to encounter M. de Bois, who was always going the same way! These invigorating promenades had a marvellous effect in restoring Bertha's faded color and vanished spirits; and in the small, sad circle of which the stern-visaged Countess de Gramont formed the centre, there was, at least, one radiant face.

About this time the quiet monotony of Maurice's life was broken by a letter from his partner, Mr. Lorrillard. This gentleman had only recently learned from Mr. Emerson the painful circ.u.mstances which had taken place in connection with the loan made to the Viscount de Gramont at Mr. Lorrillard's suggestion. Mr. Lorrillard prided himself upon being too good a judge of character and upon having studied that of Maurice too thoroughly, not to feel confident that some satisfactory explanation could be given to occurrences which wore a very dubious aspect. He wrote kindly, yet frankly, to Maurice, requesting to know whether the account of the transaction which he had received was thoroughly correct, and more than hinting his certainty that all the facts had not been brought to light. Maurice was sorely perplexed; but, in spite of his strong desire to shield his father, he finally decided that Mr. Lorrillard was ent.i.tled to a full explanation, and that his own position would never be endurable while a suspicion shadowed his name.

He despatched Mr. Lorrillard the following letter.

"_My dear Sir_:--