L'Arrabiata and Other Tales Part 8

"'What step?' I cried; 'What are you going to do? You are ready dressed for a journey; you don't mean to go and leave the house in this way, in the dark and cold? Your brother has not come back to fetch you.'"

"'I am going to him,' she said; 'I am going to beg him to take me away with him--to the very end of the world, rather than leave me here. Oh!

that I had only had the courage to do so sooner! Miserable I might have been, for I should have left my heart behind me, but I should not have been sinful; and I could have looked you bravely in the face and said good-bye to you, my dear kind friend, who have been a mother to me. I know you will forgive me for all I have done, you are so good and pitiful. But now you will shiver when you hear my name, and when you think of one who has been the cause of all this misery, and made your darling feel the greatest pain a man can feel. Dear Mamsell Flor, only yesterday he told me that he loved me,--and I ... for many months I have been his father's--'

"She stopped, as if in horror at the sound of her own words; and I who but yesterday had been so full of rage and hate, Sir, a daughter of my own could hardly have melted me so soon. She stood before me the very picture of wretchedness, her bosom heaving, her eyes drooping, as though she could not bear one ray of light to fall upon her and her miserable lost life. I sat like one struck dumb, and at last, only to say something:

"'Won't you take a seat?' I said, 'You have a long way to go;' and then immediately I blushed at my own silliness--such foolish words, you know. Sir,--so out of place. But she did not seem to hear me. After a pause, she said:

"'I did what I could to save myself in time; you know that. I plainly saw my danger--plainly--I am not naturally careless. I am not a giddy girl, dear Flor. I walked into this with open eyes--that is, I thought I knew the path I had chosen; I little dreamed that it could lead to this. Did I say with open eyes? Yet I think they might be blinded by my tears. I cried so terribly when I saw his wound, and knew it was for me. He had often tried to make me love him, and I had told him more than once that I never would be his, except as his wedded wife--_that_ I could never be, he told me; he had a son who was not to be defrauded of his inheritance, and who would be shocked if he gave him a young stepmother. 'As it is, we never can agree,' he said; 'and this would bring us to an open rupture.' He took some trouble to make this very plain to me, but he never succeeded in altering my resolution. I had never heard of what he called a conscience-marriage, and all my principles rose up against it--not to speak of my pride, that revolted at the secresy. If two persons are worthy of each other, I thought, and their consciences worthy of being called to witness what they do, why should there be secret?

"'I was in sore trouble day and night, and G.o.d knows how I struggled, Flor! To hear that proud man--naturally so violent and so imperious--to hear him beg and beseech, and to see him suffer, and to go on living here in this solitary wilderness beside him, without a soul to help me, or any counsel, save my own weak heart--it was hard to bear, it was terrible! and it was worse when he never spoke to me at all for months, nor even looked at me; and all the while I could see how his dumb pa.s.sion was wearing him out; and then at last the blood from that wound!--then I did feel my courage spent, and I gave myself up. Dear Flor, if there really be a woman's pride, that could have taken her through all this unmoved--ordeals, I may say, by fire and water--if there be such courage, I hardly think I could covet it!

"'We took an oath,' she went on; 'we pledged ourselves to eternal constancy and to secresy. My mind was at peace--happy I was not. Not that I ever doubted him, whatever he may have done--and indeed he never tried to make me think better of him than others. This I know--never will he love another woman now, nor I another man. But there was always a heavy presentiment of evil that was to come--and now it has come, and my life is at an end.

"'It is not possible for me to remain where I am,' she continued; 'between father and son. If Count Ernest had come back, and found me as his father's lawful wife, he would have smothered his boyish flame at once, and all would have been plain and open. But now this wretched secresy has borne its bitter fruits! I have prayed to G.o.d to guide me, and I am resolved to take it all upon myself, and by leaving the house at once, to save what there is yet to save. If I were to die, it would be the best thing I could do for all of us, and so I must antic.i.p.ate death, and take myself away, never to be heard of more. I will tell my brother all, and that shall be my penance. I do not mean to spare myself, for henceforth I shall have to live all my days alone. But it will be a comfort to me, dear Flor, to think that you remember me and have a kindly feeling for me!'

"I held her hand and stroked her cheek; 'I will never forget you, dear,' I said: 'Wherever you go, my heart will follow you;' and it quite moved me to see a faint rose return to her pale cheeks, with pleasure at hearing me speak so. She drew a deep breath, as if a load had been taken off her mind; and then she begged me to keep her flight a secret. Afterwards, when it was no longer to be concealed, I was to say that she had gone to her brother to persuade him to go back to England quietly, and that perhaps she would not come back that night.

"'When I am safe across the channel, I will write to the count; she said; 'and as for you, my best and dearest friend, I shall always think of your love and goodness for me to my dying day.'

"And she fell upon my neck, and cried so bitterly that I cried myself while I was trying to comfort her--saying the most stupid things--for my poor old head was all astray. I could hardly get out the words for sobbing, and only kept repeating: 'G.o.d bless you, poor dear!--bless you I--don't forget your own old Flor, who wronged you so!--you are far too good to be so wretched!'

"As if, in this world, the good people were the best off! As if my blessed mistress had not been an angel even before she died!

"As soon as we heard the first birds singing in the woods, the pretty creature rose and dried her eyes, and gave me her hand to say good-bye; and when at the door she turned round to nod to me again, she looked so lovely that I looked after her, as if I had been her lover myself, and ran to the window to see her pa.s.s through the little gate, and walk towards the wood to wave my hand to her again. The day was dawning gradually over the trees, that all stood still, as if asleep, till the dew fell, and then they began to stir in the morning air. To this moment I can remember how I felt, as I put out my hot head to cool the fever in it, and let the fresh breeze blow over my hair. 'G.o.d be praised! who gave that poor girl the sense and courage to go at once, and make an end of it!' I thought one moment, and the next--'But has she a right to go? If that be true about the oath she took, and the conscience-marriage, can she--can any woman--go and leave her husband as though her life were still her own to dispose of?' Yet at every step she was taking farther out into the wide world and farther from the castle, I felt the weight on my heart loosening, and I imagined that if only my poor dear boy were safe never to set eyes on her again, all might yet be well, and we might leave the rest to Providence.

"She must have got a good start by the time our people began to be stirring about the stables and the farm-buildings, and my master never got up till several hours later. I always was the earliest in the house, and had more than enough to do and to look after, but that morning I could think of nothing at all; my head was dazed, everything seemed running in it at once--I took a whole hour to plait up my poor wisps of hair before I could make up my mind to leave the room. For I thought I should meet the count, and if he were to ask for Mamsell Gabrielle, I was sure to stammer and hesitate, and very likely to confess the whole. However, I could not hold out any longer, I wanted so much to go and see what my poor Count Ernest was about. I went along on tiptoe, and slowly up the stairs. My legs shook as though I had grown to eighty in a single night.

"I listened at the door of his room, and hearing nothing, I softly opened it and went in. The room was empty, and the bed untouched; but he must have spent the night here, for the candles were burned down to their sockets. It all looked so sad, it made me begin to cry again, as I went about setting things to rights, and opening the windows. I looked out far over the tree-tops, and fell a-thinking. I can remember that I almost went into a pa.s.sion with that faded dog-boy there on the tapestry, who grins and looks so happy, shewing all his teeth.

'Whatever happens, that fool must grin,' I said; sorrow had made me that distracted, that even a picture on the wall could provoke me, Sir."

"All at once I heard the piano in the room below me, long before the time when my master was used to rise. 'The whole world is topsy-turvy;'

I thought, as I went downstairs. Now that I was sure not to meet the count, I wanted to go and look for my dear boy all over the castle and about the grounds."

"When I came to the door of my lady's room, where we had put Mamsell Gabrielle, I could not pa.s.s it. I felt drawn in against my will, as it were--it was like those places where dreadful murders have been committed. I stood staring at the gla.s.s, and talking to myself like a mad woman. We women are a weak and a curious race, you know. Sir, and have a right to be, as our mother Eve was before us; and I could not help fumbling about till I had found the mechanism; and then, I thought, I would take one peep at the hidden pa.s.sage--just one peep, I thought--but when the mirror turned upon its hinges, I had one foot over without intending it, and then the other--and I found myself walking on, hardly venturing to breathe, and the door had closed behind me of itself. I was not frightened. If I really never did get out, or saw the light of day again, what would it matter? What is there in the world to please me, where all is temptation and disappointment, and where one man plays the part of Lucifer to the other?

"I saw a faint streak of light falling through a crack, and so I went on till I came to the steps; I went up cautiously; I heard the piano getting louder and louder as I went up. While I live, I shall not forget that strange feeling; the dark dank air, like a prison, and the beautiful music pealing above my head.

"I felt as if I were in my grave, and thousands of birds were singing over the sod, and I could hear them and understand them all. At the last step I stood still--'Where does this lead to?' I thought, 'and shall I be able to get out?' and I turned cold all aver, when I saw that this pa.s.sage could only lead into Count Henry's morning-room, just where the piano stood. If I were to walk in suddenly, what would he think of me?

"Then I saw the light shining through a hole in the wall, and that made me go on again. The mirror had been injured at one place, which looked like a spot or blemish, and it had often vexed me while I was cleaning it; and now I saw that it had been done on purpose, to enable one to look into the room and see that all was safe, before putting the springs in motion and opening the door.

"I crept close up and peeped in. Count Henry was sitting at the piano, in his short velvet morning-dress, with his back turned to the mirror, and all the windows were standing wide open. I was going to steal away again, but the music bewitched me, as it were; I never could get enough of it. It was easy enough for it to steal away the heart of a poor young lonely creature like Gabrielle, when it could so bewilder an old thing like me! It all came of itself while he was playing, out of his own head. It was as if he were talking with the spirits within him, and soothing them when he felt his fits of pa.s.sion coming on; and at those times the music sounded like two distinct and separate voices discoursing--angry first, and quarrelling, and then at peace.

"What storm was raging in him that morning I do not know. He could not be thinking of Gabrielle's brother,--he was not uneasy about that,--for he was fully persuaded that she herself would never leave him--neither of Count Ernest; for what did he know of what he was feeling? But he must have a kind of presentiment that some great event was impending, for the music was like the sound of a coming storm, and one could hear the first roll of the distant thunder. It made me feel so frightened and uncomfortable--partly because of the confined air in that little pa.s.sage--that I stood up, and was just going away, when the door of the ante-chamber opened, and my dear Count Ernest came in.

"His father looked round, but he made a sign to beg him not to let himself be disturbed, but to go on playing, and he sat down in an arm-chair to wait; he sat so that I could see his face straight before me. There was something so grave and grand about it, and yet so subdued and peaceful,--he looked handsomer than I ever saw him. He did not raise his eyes to the secret door; it was pain and grief to him to know that it was there. He was very pale, and he looked down as if he were studying the pattern of the inlaid floor, with a look of forced cheerfulness that made my heart ache. And though he never moved an eyelid, I saw his eyes getting wet, and then two large tears glittering beneath his eyelashes, while his mouth remained as quiet and sweet as ever. I saw that the music was too much for him, and almost overcame him. His father did not seem to notice it; he went on playing for some time longer, until at last, closing with a magnificent unison of all the voices, he shut down the piano, got up, and took a few hasty turns about the room. He never looked at his son, (in general he seldom did); but still he appeared to be in a good humour, and took up a new fowling-piece that was lying on the table to shew it him."

"'You are just come when I wanted you,' he said. 'I was going to send over Pierre to ask whether you would like to take a ride with me through the forest. Pierre tried this gun yesterday, and says he thinks it is even better than my English one; did he speak to you about it?'"

"'No, he did not;' and the young count rose also; 'and I rather fear I shall not be able to accompany you, my dear father. I have come to a sudden decision about Stockholm, and I mean to go at once. You say very justly, that it would be far too soon for me to stay here and bury myself among these woods, without at least one trial of what I may be fit for in this world. And I am come to say good-bye--that is, if you still approve of my decision as much as I hoped you would, concluding from the wishes you have so frequently expressed.'

"He spoke calmly and cheerfully; but oh! it was woe to me to hear him!

I could hear every word through the slight part.i.tion, and I held my breath, for I even fancied they must hear how my heart was beating. I did not dare to move, and so I stayed, and heard all they said. I found I was to lose him again; and when to see him, who could tell?--never perhaps. I knew what made him go. He was resolved never to see the girl again. But she was gone, and what would they do when they found _that_ out? When I tried to think of this, my five senses failed me, and so I rather listened to what they were saying. I cannot repeat every word, but it was beautiful to hear my young count explaining to his father how the post at Stockholm had just then acquired a great importance, in consequence of our commercial relations, and what not; and how clearly he saw it all, and knew what he had to do.

"Meanwhile the elder count was walking up and down, and never spoke a word till he had done. Then he stopped short before his son, and held out his hand to him; 'You are perfectly right in all you say, and I entirely approve of the step you are about to take,' he said. 'I know it is a sacrifice to my wishes on your part, for in fact, you are not a man of action, you have far more of the German scholar in you, but in your new position you will soon have shaken off the last vestige of school-dust; and by-and-by you will agree with me, that my wishes were entirely for your own good. When do you start?'

"'This very day, if you approve, Sir; I would take Fatme as far as the station, and Pierre could take the horses back in the evening. My things can be sent after me.'"

"His father nodded, and again they remained silent for a time. My Ernest had still something weighing heavy on his mind--that I saw by his face."

"At last he said: 'And you, my dear father, what have you decided upon doing? What are your plans for the present? Do you mean to spend the winter here?'"

"'I rather think so. I fancy I have had enough of being tossed about. A quiet time in port to rest, would do no harm for a change.'

"'This is a solitary place,' returned his son, 'and our neighbours are not much resource. Will you laugh at me if I ask you a strange question? Did it never occur to you to think of marrying again?'

"The count gave a loud laugh. 'Well, I must say, you do ask searching questions,' he said. 'You would like to do a good action before you go, and see that your father is well provided for. Give it up, my son, give it up! A second marriage is but a second folly; and if age cannot save us from folly, youth at least, should not tempt us to it.'

"'You are not speaking seriously, Sir;' returned Count Ernest; 'I have found you younger this time than when I left you five years ago. If you really should decide on settling here, only consider how a young mistress would improve the place--one who would prevent your growing old before your time; and when that time does come in good earnest, would make those quiet years pleasant to you. I know that I leave you in the best of hands,' he went on; 'our Flor is fidelity itself, but you require more than she can do for you, and as I cannot tell when I may come back, I--'

"He stopped short, and I saw that he had some trouble to hide his emotion. His father turned a searching look on him, and after a pause he drily answered: 'Enough of this; I am very well as I am; and though I may find other ways than you would, of combating dulness, I shall not run to seed as you suppose. There are foxes enough to be shot, while my hand can hold a gun; and when the end of all ends comes, I shall sit down and write my memoirs, as a pattern to this generation of propriety--that is, a pattern to be avoided.'

"He now evidently expected his son to take his leave, but Count Ernest stood still, with his eyes fixed on his father's face. Count Henry did not seem to feel quite easy under them; he looked annoyed, and added, as if in jest: 'Well, and don't these prospects please you? I do believe you have a match all ready made for me, and intend to show me that your talents in the diplomatic line are greater than I should have supposed. May I ask who the lady is? I confess I am getting curious. Is it young F., with her Madonna eyes, and her liberal portion of freckles? or Comtesse C., with her shortened leg, and her never-ending giggle, who would persuade herself and the world, (though the world knows better), that she has not seen sixteen summers?' And so he went on, through the list of all the young ladies in the neighbourhood, caricaturing them with a few sharp strokes, but without succeeding in moving a muscle of his son's countenance."

"When he came to the end: 'You are on the wrong track, dear father,' he said; 'It is no fine lady I am thinking of, nor should I like to see any of these in this house, as its mistress. But there is a prize much nearer home, that I should be glad to see you win. Have you really never noticed the young lady who helps our Flor to rule the house? She is fond of you, I know. Her pa.s.sionate attachment to you has grown too strong for her to conceal it even from herself.'

"The count stood rooted to the ground, and I saw a dark frown gather on his brow. But he always knew how to command himself. With a laugh that did not come from his heart: 'Mort de ma vie!' he cried--'Mamsell Gabrielle? Why, that would indeed be a triumph of the new school over the old, if you have managed to discover more in these three weeks, than I in the last two years!'

"'To be candid with you. Sir,' said Count Ernest, 'I must honestly confess that I did not discover this until last night--not, at least, with any certainty. I was witness to the poor girl's struggle when her brother wanted her to go with him, and I saw that it would be the death of her to part from you.'

"'Part from me!--stuff and nonsense!' cried his father. 'That brother of hers startled her--he is a hard-headed fool. It was his coming here so fast and furious, as if it were a matter of life and death, that frightened the girl out of her senses. I tell you, you are mistaken.

And besides, who says she is to go? She is of age, and can do as she likes; I mean to take care that she does--her free will shall be protected.'

"Another pause, and then the son: 'Are you sure she may not have to suffer for being so protected? Let me own to you that I went over to X.

last night, to speak to this brother of hers. He told me how chivalrous you had been, in defending his sister on one occasion, and also what had been said about it at the time. If you do not intend to sacrifice your protege's good name for ever, it is indeed high time to dismiss her, or to give her a name that will effectually protect her. Dearest father,' he continued while my master sat silent, angrily gnawing his lip; 'Do not be angry with me for venturing to interfere with any of your decisions. I have set my heart on seeing you in possession of this good fortune, which has been so long within your reach, though you would not see it. Of course, I do not know how you may feel towards this young lady; whether you would care to see her go out alone into an uncertain world--alone with her secret, her grief, and her love for you. But if you really have one spark of feeling for her, why not take a creature so fair and good, and make her your own for ever? If you do decide in haste, I am certain that you will not repent at leisure.'"

"All this time I had never taken my eyes off my darling's face, and I saw it glowing and reddening, till his eyes were all glittering with tears.

"He was standing before his father, and had taken one of his hands in his. 'Strange boy!' his father said; 'I do believe you mean it--you would like to make me leap into this adventure blindfold, as my own folly has often made me do in others. What is there about this girl to make you plead her cause so pa.s.sionately? And, when I come to think of it, your proposal is not so utterly to be despised. I have only to think of our highborn neighbours, and of their indignation when they hear that Count ---- has married his housekeeper, to feel ready for the wedding at once. It would be a satisfaction, but I am afraid it is a satisfaction of which I must deprive myself. Not that there is anything in your taste to be objected to--she comes of a respectable family, and has manners that many a countess might envy her. Yet, it won't do, Ernest, give it up--yes, I will talk to her brother; we will do all that is right to be done, only do you go away now, and leave me to myself for half an hour. Why,' he went on, as his son still kept hold of his hand; 'are you not satisfied that I should have done this proposal of yours the honor of thinking it worth a moment's consideration? Enough of this! I say again. I acknowledge the kindness of your heart, that would be glad to see me happy; but hearts are giddy things, and are apt to come to their senses after it is too late.'"

"And he talked on in this style, without ever once looking at his son.

Then he got up, went to the piano, struck a chord or two, went to the window, and shut it hastily.

"'There is something in this you will not tell me,' said his son. 'You are disturbed. You have a reason you will not give me for not doing as I request. I know your way of looking on these disparities of position; therefore it is not that--and what else can it be? For I see by your agitation that the young lady is not indifferent to you.'

"He waited for an answer, in vain. 'I know,' at length he said, very sadly, in a tone of deep dejection; 'I have never been so fortunate as to find my way to your confidence, though, G.o.d knows, I have sought it with all my heart; and I never regretted this so much as I do now, but I have been forgetting myself--this conversation has lasted too long already. You think it absurd that a son should take his father's happiness to heart. I have only now to beg your pardon, and to say good-bye.'

"The count turned from the window to look at his son from head to foot, as if he would read through him.