My Lady Ludlow Part 9

"'Will you not try him, my cherished one?' he said. 'Towards you he may mean well' (which makes me think that Virginie had never repeated to Clement the conversation which she had overheard that last night at Madame Babette's); 'you would be in no worse a situation than you were before!'

"'No worse, Clement! and I should have known what you were, and have lost you. My Clement!' said she, reproachfully.

"'Ask him,' said she, turning to Jacques, suddenly, 'if he can save Monsieur de Crequy as well,--if he can?--O Clement, we might escape to England; we are but young.' And she hid her face on his shoulder.

"Jacques returned to the stranger, and asked him Virginie's question. His eyes were fixed on the cousins; he was very pale, and the twitchings or contortions, which must have been involuntary whenever he was agitated, convulsed his whole body.

"He made a long pause. 'I will save mademoiselle and monsieur, if she will go straight from prison to the mairie, and be my wife.'

"'Your wife!' Jacques could not help exclaiming, 'That she will never be--never!'

"'Ask her!' said Morin, hoa.r.s.ely.

"But almost before Jacques thought he could have fairly uttered the words, Clement caught their meaning.

"'Begone!' said he; 'not one word more.' Virginie touched the old man as he was moving away. 'Tell him he does not know how he makes me welcome death.' And smiling, as if triumphant, she turned again to Clement.

"The stranger did not speak as Jacques gave him the meaning, not the words, of their replies. He was going away, but stopped. A minute or two afterwards, he beckoned to Jacques. The old gardener seems to have thought it undesirable to throw away even the chance of a.s.sistance from such a man as this, for he went forward to speak to him.

"'Listen! I have influence with the gaoler. He shall let thee pa.s.s out with the victims to-morrow. No one will notice it, or miss thee--. They will be led to trial,--even at the last moment, I will save her, if she sends me word she relents. Speak to her, as the time draws on. Life is very sweet,--tell her how sweet. Speak to him; he will do more with her than thou canst. Let him urge her to live. Even at the last, I will be at the Palais de Justice,--at the Greve. I have followers,--I have interest. Come among the crowd that follow the victims,--I shall see thee. It will be no worse for him, if she escapes'--

"'Save my master, and I will do all,' said Jacques.

"'Only on my one condition,' said Morin, doggedly; and Jacques was hopeless of that condition ever being fulfilled. But he did not see why his own life might not be saved. By remaining in prison until the next day, he should have rendered every service in his power to his master and the young lady. He, poor fellow, shrank from death; and he agreed with Morin to escape, if he could, by the means Morin had suggested, and to bring him word if Mademoiselle de Crequy relented. (Jacques had no expectation that she would; but I fancy he did not think it necessary to tell Morin of this conviction of his.) This bargaining with so base a man for so slight a thing as life, was the only flaw that I heard of in the old gardener's behaviour. Of course, the mere reopening of the subject was enough to stir Virginie to displeasure. Clement urged her, it is true; but the light he had gained upon Morin's motions, made him rather try to set the case before her in as fair a manner as possible than use any persuasive arguments. And, even as it was, what he said on the subject made Virginie shed tears--the first that had fallen from her since she entered the prison. So, they were summoned and went together, at the fatal call of the muster-roll of victims the next morning. He, feeble from his wounds and his injured health; she, calm and serene, only pet.i.tioning to be allowed to walk next to him, in order that she might hold him up when he turned faint and giddy from his extreme suffering.

"Together they stood at the bar; together they were condemned. As the words of judgment were p.r.o.nounced, Virginie tuned to Clement, and embraced him with pa.s.sionate fondness. Then, making him lean on her, they marched out towards the Place de la Greve.

"Jacques was free now. He had told Morin how fruitless his efforts at persuasion had been; and scarcely caring to note the effect of his information upon the man, he had devoted himself to watching Monsieur and Mademoiselle de Crequy. And now he followed them to the Place de la Greve. He saw them mount the platform; saw them kneel down together till plucked up by the impatient officials; could see that she was urging some request to the executioner; the end of which seemed to be, that Clement advanced first to the guillotine, was executed (and just at this moment there was a stir among the crowd, as of a man pressing forward towards the scaffold). Then she, standing with her face to the guillotine, slowly made the sign of the cross, and knelt down.

"Jacques covered his eyes, blinded with tears. The report of a pistol made him look up. She was gone--another victim in her place--and where there had been a little stir in the crowd not five minutes before, some men were carrying off a dead body. A man had shot himself, they said.

Pierre told me who that man was."

CHAPTER IX.

After a pause, I ventured to ask what became of Madame de Crequy, Clement's mother.

"She never made any inquiry about him," said my lady. "She must have known that he was dead; though how, we never could tell. Medlicott remembered afterwards that it was about, if not on--Medlicott to this day declares that it was on the very Monday, June the nineteenth, when her son was executed, that Madame de Crequy left off her rouge and took to her bed, as one bereaved and hopeless. It certainly was about that time; and Medlicott--who was deeply impressed by that dream of Madame de Crequy's (the relation of which I told you had had such an effect on my lord), in which she had seen the figure of Virginie--as the only light object amid much surrounding darkness as of night, smiling and beckoning Clement on--on--till at length the bright phantom stopped, motionless, and Madame de Crequy's eyes began to penetrate the murky darkness, and to see closing around her the gloomy dripping walls which she had once seen and never forgotten--the walls of the vault of the chapel of the De Crequys in Saint Germain l'Auxerrois; and there the two last of the Crequys laid them down among their forefathers, and Madame de Crequy had wakened to the sound of the great door, which led to the open air, being locked upon her--I say Medlicott, who was predisposed by this dream to look out for the supernatural, always declared that Madame de Crequy was made conscious in some mysterious way, of her son's death, on the very day and hour when it occurred, and that after that she had no more anxiety, but was only conscious of a kind of stupefying despair."

"And what became of her, my lady?" I again asked.

"What could become of her?" replied Lady Ludlow. "She never could be induced to rise again, though she lived more than a year after her son's departure. She kept her bed; her room darkened, her face turned towards the wall, whenever any one besides Medlicott was in the room. She hardly ever spoke, and would have died of starvation but for Medlicott's tender care, in putting a morsel to her lips every now and then, feeding her, in fact, just as an old bird feeds her young ones. In the height of summer my lord and I left London. We would fain have taken her with us into Scotland, but the doctor (we had the old doctor from Leicester Square) forbade her removal; and this time he gave such good reasons against it that I acquiesced. Medlicott and a maid were left with her. Every care was taken of her. She survived till our return. Indeed, I thought she was in much the same state as I had left her in, when I came back to London. But Medlicott spoke of her as much weaker; and one morning on awakening, they told me she was dead. I sent for Medlicott, who was in sad distress, she had become so fond of her charge. She said that, about two o'clock, she had been awakened by unusual restlessness on Madame de Crequy's part; that she had gone to her bedside, and found the poor lady feebly but perpetually moving her wasted arm up and down--and saying to herself in a wailing voice: 'I did not bless him when he left me--I did not bless him when he left me!' Medlicott gave her a spoonful or two of jelly, and sat by her, stroking her hand, and soothing her till she seemed to fall asleep. But in the morning she was dead."

"It is a sad story, your ladyship," said I, after a while.

"Yes it is. People seldom arrive at my age without having watched the beginning, middle, and end of many lives and many fortunes. We do not talk about them, perhaps; for they are often so sacred to us, from having touched into the very quick of our own hearts, as it were, or into those of others who are dead and gone, and veiled over from human sight, that we cannot tell the tale as if it was a mere story. But young people should remember that we have had this solemn experience of life, on which to base our opinions and form our judgments, so that they are not mere untried theories. I am not alluding to Mr. Horner just now, for he is nearly as old as I am--within ten years, I dare say--but I am thinking of Mr. Gray, with his endless plans for some new thing--schools, education, Sabbaths, and what not. Now he has not seen what all this leads to."

"It is a pity he has not heard your ladyship tell the story of poor Monsieur de Crequy."

"Not at all a pity, my dear. A young man like him, who, both by position and age, must have had his experience confined to a very narrow circle, ought not to set up his opinion against mine; he ought not to require reasons from me, nor to need such explanation of my arguments (if I condescend to argue), as going into relation of the circ.u.mstances on which my arguments are based in my own mind, would be."

"But, my lady, it might convince him," I said, with perhaps injudicious perseverance.

"And why should he be convinced?" she asked, with gentle inquiry in her tone. "He has only to acquiesce. Though he is appointed by Mr. Croxton, I am the lady of the manor, as he must know. But it is with Mr. Horner that I must have to do about this unfortunate lad Gregson. I am afraid there will be no method of making him forget his unlucky knowledge. His poor brains will be intoxicated with the sense of his powers, without any counterbalancing principles to guide him. Poor fellow! I am quite afraid it will end in his being hanged!"

The next day Mr. Horner came to apologize and explain. He was evidently--as I could tell from his voice, as he spoke to my lady in the next room--extremely annoyed at her ladyship's discovery of the education he had been giving to this boy. My lady spoke with great authority, and with reasonable grounds of complaint. Mr. Horner was well acquainted with her thoughts on the subject, and had acted in defiance of her wishes. He acknowledged as much, and should on no account have done it, in any other instance, without her leave.

"Which I could never have granted you," said my lady.

But this boy had extraordinary capabilities; would, in fact, have taught himself much that was bad, if he had not been rescued, and another direction given to his powers. And in all Mr. Horner had done, he had had her ladyship's service in view. The business was getting almost beyond his power, so many letters and so much account-keeping was required by the complicated state in which things were.

Lady Ludlow felt what was coming--a reference to the mortgage for the benefit of my lord's Scottish estates, which, she was perfectly aware, Mr. Horner considered as having been a most unwise proceeding--and she hastened to observe--"All this may be very true, Mr. Horner, and I am sure I should be the last person to wish you to overwork or distress yourself; but of that we will talk another time. What I am now anxious to remedy is, if possible, the state of this poor little Gregson's mind.

Would not hard work in the fields be a wholesome and excellent way of enabling him to forget?"

"I was in hopes, my lady, that you would have permitted me to bring him up to act as a kind of clerk," said Mr. Horner, jerking out his project abruptly.

"A what?" asked my lady, in infinite surprise.

"A kind of--of a.s.sistant, in the way of copying letters and doing up accounts. He is already an excellent penman and very quick at figures."

"Mr. Horner," said my lady, with dignity, "the son of a poacher and vagabond ought never to have been able to copy letters relating to the Hanbury estates; and, at any rate, he shall not. I wonder how it is that, knowing the use he has made of his power of reading a letter, you should venture to propose such an employment for him as would require his being in your confidence, and you the trusted agent of this family. Why, every secret (and every ancient and honourable family has its secrets, as you know, Mr. Horner) would be learnt off by heart, and repeated to the first comer!"

"I should have hoped to have trained him, my lady, to understand the rules of discretion."

"Trained! Train a barn-door fowl to be a pheasant, Mr. Horner! That would be the easier task. But you did right to speak of discretion rather than honour. Discretion looks to the consequences of actions--honour looks to the action itself, and is an instinct rather than a virtue. After all, it is possible you might have trained him to be discreet."

Mr. Horner was silent. My lady was softened by his not replying, and began as she always did in such cases, to fear lest she had been too harsh. I could tell that by her voice and by her next speech, as well as if I had seen her face.

"But I am sorry you are feeling the pressure of the affairs: I am quite aware that I have entailed much additional trouble upon you by some of my measures: I must try and provide you with some suitable a.s.sistance.

Copying letters and doing up accounts, I think you said?"

Mr. Horner had certainly had a distant idea of turning the little boy, in process of time, into a clerk; but he had rather urged this possibility of future usefulness beyond what he had at first intended, in speaking of it to my lady as a palliation of his offence, and he certainly was very much inclined to retract his statement that the letter-writing, or any other business, had increased, or that he was in the slightest want of help of any kind, when my lady after a pause of consideration, suddenly said--

"I have it. Miss Galindo will, I am sure, be glad to a.s.sist you. I will speak to her myself. The payment we should make to a clerk would be of real service to her!"

I could hardly help echoing Mr. Horner's tone of surprise as he said--

"Miss Galindo!"

For, you must be told who Miss Galindo was; at least, told as much as I know. Miss Galindo had lived in the village for many years, keeping house on the smallest possible means, yet always managing to maintain a servant. And this servant was invariably chosen because she had some infirmity that made her undesirable to every one else. I believe Miss Galindo had had lame and blind and hump-backed maids. She had even at one time taken in a girl hopelessly gone in consumption, because if not she would have had to go to the workhouse, and not have had enough to eat. Of course the poor creature could not perform a single duty usually required of a servant, and Miss Galindo herself was both servant and nurse.

Her present maid was scarcely four feet high, and bore a terrible character for ill-temper. n.o.body but Miss Galindo would have kept her; but, as it was, mistress and servant squabbled perpetually, and were, at heart, the best of friends. For it was one of Miss Galindo's peculiarities to do all manner of kind and self-denying actions, and to say all manner of provoking things. Lame, blind, deformed, and dwarf, all came in for scoldings without number: it was only the consumptive girl that never had heard a sharp word. I don't think any of her servants liked her the worse for her peppery temper, and pa.s.sionate odd ways, for they knew her real and beautiful kindness of heart: and, besides, she had so great a turn for humour that very often her speeches amused as much or more than they irritated; and on the other side, a piece of witty impudence from her servant would occasionally tickle her so much and so suddenly, that she would burst out laughing in the middle of her pa.s.sion.

But the talk about Miss Galindo's choice and management of her servants was confined to village gossip, and had never reached my Lady Ludlow's ears, though doubtless Mr. Horner was well acquainted with it. What my lady knew of her amounted to this. It was the custom in those days for the wealthy ladies of the county to set on foot a repository, as it was called, in the a.s.size-town. The ostensible manager of this repository was generally a decayed gentlewoman, a clergyman's widow, or so forth.

She was, however, controlled by a committee of ladies; and paid by them in proportion to the amount of goods she sold; and these goods were the small manufactures of ladies of little or no fortune, whose names, if they chose it, were only signified by initials.