Lord Montagu's Page Part 53

Edward did not well know what to reply, and he answered at random:--"Let me beseech you, at all events, madam, to lay aside your mask now. Your complexion runs no risk here."

"No," said the lady, shaking her head; "not till you tell me you love me and will marry me."

"Are you not married already?" exclaimed Edward.

"Yes," she answered, "I am; but that makes no difference. Do you love me?"

"I have told you, dear lady," said Edward, in as calm a tone as he could a.s.sume, "that it is impossible. If you are the lady whom I saw at the Hotel de Bourgogne, doubtless I could have loved you if my whole heart and soul had not been given to another; for I have seldom seen anybody more lovely."

"But who is this you love so well?" said the lady. "Give me her name,--her full name."

"Lucette Marie de Mirepoix du Valais," said Edward, impatiently.

The mask was off in a moment. "Am I so changed, Edward?" said Lucette, throwing her arm round his neck. "I know I am taller,--much taller; but I did not think you would ever forget me."

"Forget you! Oh, no, no, Lucette!" cried Edward, circling her in his arms and covering her with kisses. "Have I ever forgotten you? have I ever ceased to think of you? But I saw you but for a moment across the dull and misty air of a theatre; and you are changed,--more charming, more beautiful than ever. But even Lucette unknown could not rob Lucette long known of the love that has been hers always. When for a moment I saw your face I did not hear your voice, and when I heard your voice I did not see your face. But now I see all these loved features distinctly, and wonder how I could be deceived."

"We shall both change still more, Edward," she said, almost sadly. "And will you love me still?"

"Better,--still better," said Edward, clasping her to his heart. "If, Lucette, I loved you still after long absence, when you yourself tried to make me love another, do you suppose that affection will wane when the change comes over us together and you yourself engage me to love you still? Oh, yes, Lucette; I will not deny it; you are more beautiful than you used to be; but it was my young Lucette I loved; and how could I love any other?"

"Well, I own that it was wrong," said Lucette, "to play with you and tease you as I did; but it was not to try you, for I was sure I knew your heart right well. It was the cardinal's command, however, and I feared to disobey him. He brought us all from Paris,--some for one reason, some for another: one that she might not intrigue against him at the court of the queen-mother; another, to remove her from poor Anne of Austria; others, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the king and court, and perhaps to a.s.sist him in his own views. Why he brought me I know not,--perhaps to tease you on the road. No, no: I do him injustice. I sincerely believe it was to unite us in the end. But do you forgive me, Edward? Do you forgive me for acting a part that is not in my nature? A hundred times the mask was nearly taken from my face. My joy to find that you loved me still, and that you were faithful to your poor Lucette, pa.s.sed all bounds, and made me almost faint with happiness. It is nearly eighteen months since I saw you at Aix; and since then how much I have suffered!

And I have heard that you have suffered too,--that you have been apprehended and kept in prison, wounded again----"

"Oh, that is nothing!" answered Edward. "All has been followed by joy and success. I never valued wealth, Lucette, till I met with you; but now I have beyond doubt recovered one-half of my patrimonial property,--all that belongs to me; but enough, and more than enough, to secure my Lucette against all those grinding cares and petty annoyances which, though less sharp than the fierce blows of misfortune, are more wearing to the spirit and the heart. But tell me, my Lucette: how came you here? I had feared, from what they said at Venice, that you had fallen into the hands of Madame de Chevreuse."

"Oh, no," she answered: "that was a mistake. The council notified Madame de la Cour that I was demanded by those who had a right to demand me in France; but, with their usual secrecy, gave no further information. At first I resolved to fly; but whither could I go? To Madame de Rohan I could not apply; for her life in Venice has been one of great scandal and disgrace. Madame de la Cour could not or would not help me. But in the end I found that it was the amba.s.sador from France who claimed me; and, when a.s.sured that I was to be under the guardianship of the cardinal himself, I went joyfully. He forbade me to write to you, saying you promised soon to rejoin him; and on the night I saw you at the theatre he told me to look at his _loge_, but to take no notice whatever I might see. The only thing I now fear is the opposition of my high relations. The Duc de Rohan is the head of the house; and, though he was kind to me--very kind--while I was with him, I know him to be the proudest man on earth, and as obdurate in his determinations as a rock."

"You are my wife," said Edward, pressing her to his heart,--"my wife by every tie, human and divine. Soubise may oppose, Madame de Chevreuse may oppose; but their opposition is nothing. Look here what authority the cardinal gave me when I was setting out for Venice." Lucette looked at the paper which he gave her.

"It was unkind of him to let you go," she said, "when he knew that I was within two days' journey of Suza; but that was to punish you for leaving that little Morini on the road."

"Do you know why I left him?" said Edward, kissing her rosy lips. "It was because a very beautiful lady said she would make me love her before our journey was ended; and I was resolved to love n.o.body but Lucette.

No, my Lucette: our journey together has never ended, and through life never must end. You are mine, as I have said, by every tie. The Duc de Rohan, the only one who had any real authority, I saw last night. His opposition was entirely withdrawn, and his formal approval of our marriage at Nantes was given in writing."

Lucette was silent for a moment or two, and turned a little pale; and Edward asked, in a low tone, "What ladies are there here in the castle?"

"None," said Lucette. "Except my maid, we are all alone. Now I understand: I think I see why the cardinal took every one else away and insisted on my staying."

"a.s.suredly," replied Edward, "because you are my wife, Lucette, and he did not wish that we should be separated any more."

Her face was now as rosy as the dawn, and her breath came thick with agitation.

"You are mine, Lucette! are you not mine?" said Edward,--"my own, my wife, my beloved?"

"Oh, yes, yes!" sobbed Lucette, casting herself upon his bosom,--"my husband, my own dear husband!" And they parted no more.

CHAPTER LI.

The famous peace of Alais, which terminated, during the reign of Louis XIII., the struggles of the Protestants of France for a distinct organization and left them nothing but an insecure toleration, was concluded on the 27th of June, 1629, a few days after the reunion of Edward and Lucette. None can doubt that Richelieu was politically right in a.s.serting and enforcing the sovereign authority over a body of men who had made religious differences a pretext for rebellion and a continual source of exaction and menace. Nor can any one accuse him of having violated his word in any degree to the Huguenots. They were suffered to follow the forms of their religion in peace; their peculiar tenets formed no obstacle to their admission into the highest offices in France; and the Duc de Rohan himself was employed in high and delicate negotiations, and ultimately fell in the military service of the monarch against whom he had so often fought.

A few days after the period to which we have carried our story in the last chapter, the hundred thousand crowns in gold, which were necessary for him, as well to provide for his troops as to repair his own shattered fortunes, were paid to the duke, according to Richelieu's promise; and the Protestant army was immediately disbanded,--glad to escape from the inevitable ruin and disaster which hung over their heads.

The peace concluded at Suza restored those friendly relations with England which had so long been broken off. Spain and Savoy were, at least for the time, cowed by the power of France; and all men, both friends and enemies, saw in the well-directed operations of the French armies and the success of French diplomacy the great military and political genius of Armand du Plessis.

In the mean time, the cardinal kindly left Edward and Lucette to the enjoyment of each other's society; and it was not till some six or seven days after the union which he himself had aided so much to bring about that he visited them at the castle of Bourillaut. Great success, if in the end it makes men haughty and overbearing, seems at first to soften and expand the heart; and Richelieu, at the culminating-point of his fortunes, sat down and conversed with the two young people as their friend. He amused himself somewhat with their love, and expressed, and probably felt, some gratification at their happiness.

"Monsieur Langdale," he said, "a foolish prediction has been made to me, that as you and I were born on the same hour of the same day of the same month, though a number of years apart,--how many I do not remember,--my fate and yours should run together; and, though of course I put no faith in it, that prophecy has as yet proved remarkably true. I am therefore very desirous to attach you to me, now that peace is signed between France and England; and you must tell me, according to a promise which you once made, what post I can give you at the court of France."

Edward and Lucette looked at each other; and then, with his usual frankness, Edward answered, "No post your Eminence can give me can attach me more strongly to you than that which you have already given me,--the husband of this dear lady. Two days ago we had a long consultation with our good friend Clement Tournon, and laid out our plans for life. He is resolved, with the sum he has ama.s.sed, to purchase a small and beautiful estate and chateau which he has seen not far from Paris; and Lucette and myself intend to live there a great part of each year as his son and daughter. We shall of course visit England from time to time; but our wish is to avoid courts and cities as much as may be."

"Young people's dreams," said Richelieu, gravely.

"That may be," said Edward, "but I trust it will not prove so. However, if your Eminence were to give me some high post, you would make many of the French n.o.bility dissatisfied, and you might find me ungrateful; but, as it is, I shall be near you the greater part of my days; and, whether I may be in England or in France, if at any time I can serve you with my hand, or my head, or my heart, believe me, I will not forget these happy days are all owing to your great goodness."

"I wish I could dream," said the cardinal, looking down thoughtfully.

"It must be a very happy thing to be so confident of the world and of fate and of oneself. But be it so, Monsieur Langdale. Only remember!"

"My lord, have I ever forgotten?" asked Edward.

"No, no," said Richelieu; "and it is for that I have esteemed you. Come and see me when you are near Paris; for when I have a leisure hour I shall love your conversation. We will talk of art, and literature, and science; and I shall banish for that hour the thought of politics, and intrigue, and cabal: oh, how I hate them! And if you have a son," he continued, laying his hand kindly upon that of Lucette as he rose to depart, "you shall call his name Armand."

"And you shall bless him," cried Lucette, warmly, kissing his hand; "and I will tell him that you made his father and myself happy."

Perhaps, in all his career of splendid misery, that was one of the happiest hours that Richelieu had ever experienced.

The Prince de Soubise, as is well known, did not return to France and make his full submission to his king till Edward and Lucette had been married some time. To Edward, whom he met at the court not long after the final fall of Marie de Medici, he was polite and even friendly; but, whether it was that he was naturally of a more haughty disposition than his brother the Duc de Rohan, or that he was never placed under the same pressure of circ.u.mstances, he refused to acknowledge, by any authentic act, the legality of the marriage between his young cousin and the son of one of his earliest friends. It made no difference to them, however, nor troubled their peace in the least; and in the end, after witnessing their mutual felicity for many years, both he and his brother the duke, by their own wretched experience, were forced to acknowledge that a marriage of affection has more chance for happiness than a marriage of convenience. Still, however, with the same peculiar obduracy which had characterized his resistance to the crown in the hopeless war of the Protestants against Louis XIII., he refused to sign, on several occasions, the papers which were necessary to enable Lucette to enter fully into possession of her father's estates, saying that he would not recognise her marriage with the second son of a simple English gentleman. But his consent was pa.s.sed over by certain forms of the Parliament; and as for Madame de Chevreuse, with her usual gay lightness, she signed her approbation of the marriage without a word of opposition,--when she found that opposition would be vain. She was even inclined to be exceedingly kind and intimate with the young pair; but Edward gave no encouragement to her advances, and she satisfied herself by declaring that, like many of his countrymen, he was a handsome man, but somewhat brutal.

In regard to Edward's claim to the estate of Buckley, there was no opposition; and he kept quiet possession during the whole of his life of that fine part of his inheritance. The estates of Langley were suffered to go greatly to decay for several years, the rents acc.u.mulating in the hands of the agent without ever being called for or paid over to any one.

How this property reverted to Edward himself, and how the objections of the Prince de Soubise to the marriage of his young cousin with Edward Langdale were at last done away,--what was the ultimate fate of Sir Richard Langdale,--and how an old proverb was verified,--would be too long of telling in the pages which yet remain.

Perhaps, if G.o.d spares the life, the health, and the senses of the author of this work, these particulars may all be related in another. At all events, the history of Lord Montagu's Page is completed; for it would be folly to pursue that history in the calm, continued, uninterrupted happiness of his married life. Every one has been unsuccessful in painting happiness with the pen. Dante failed in his Paradiso, Milton in his Paradise Regained; and the writer of these pages is not sufficiently presumptuous to suppose that he could succeed in representing a state as near as this world permits to that which they attempted to picture in vain.

THE END.