Thaddeus of Warsaw Part 45

"Then you do not leave town for some time, Miss Beaufort?" inquired he; "I may yet antic.i.p.ate the honor of seeing--" he hesitated a moment, then added in a depressed tone--"your aunt, when I next wait on the Misses Dundas."

"Our stay depends entirely on her health" returned she, striving to rally herself; "and I am sure she will be happy to find you better; for I am sorry to say I cannot agree with Euphemia in thinking you look well."

"Merely a slight indisposition," replied he, "the effect of an anxiety which I fear will too soon cease in the death of its cause. I came out now for a little air, whilst the physician remains with my revered friend."

"Poor old gentleman!" sighed Mary; "how venerable was his appearance the morning in which we saw him in the Park! What a benign countenance!"

"His countenance," replied Thaddeus, his eyes turning mournfully towards the lovely speaker, "is the emblem of his character. He was the most amiable of men."

"And you are likely to lose so interesting a friend; dear Mr.

Constantine, how I pity you!" While Euphemia uttered these words, she put the corner of her glove to her eye.

The count looked at her, and perceiving that her commiseration was affectation, he turned to Miss Beaufort, who was walking pensively by his side, and made further inquiries respecting Miss Dorothy. Anxious to be again with his invalid, he was preparing to quit them, when Mary, as with a full heart she curtseyed her adieu, in a hurried and confused manner, said--"Pray, Mr. Constantine, take care of yourself.

You have other friends besides the one you are going to lose. I know Lady Tinemouth, I know my aunt--" She stopped short, and, covered with blushes, stood panting for another word to close the sentence; when Thaddeus, forgetting all presence but her own, with delighted precipitancy caught hold of the hand which, in her confusion, was a little extended towards him, and pressing it with fervor, relinquished it immediately; then, overcome by confusion at the presumption of the action, he bowed with agitation to both ladies, and hastened through the Friary pa.s.sage into St. James's Street.

"Miss Beaufort!" cried Euphemia, reddening with vexation, and returning a perfumed handkerchief to her pocket, "I did not understand that you and Mr. Constantine were on such intimate terms!"

"What do you mean, Euphemia?"

"That you have betrayed the confidence I reposed in you," cried the angry beauty, wiping away the really starting tears with her white lace cloak. "I told you the elegant Constantine was the lord of my heart; and you have seduced him from me! Till you came, he was so respectful, so tender, so devoted! Bat I am rightly used! I ought to have carried my secret to the grave."

In vain Miss Beaufort protested; in vain she declared herself ignorant of possessing any power over even one wish of Constantine's.

Euphemia thought it monstrous pretty to be the injured friend and forsaken mistress; and all along the Park, and up Const.i.tution-hill, until they arrived at Lady Dundas's carriage, which was waiting opposite Devonshire wall, she affected to weep. When seated, she continued her invectives. She called Miss Beaufort ungenerous, perfidious, traitor to friendship, and every romantic and disloyal name which her inflamed fancy could devise; till the sight of Harley Street checked her transports, and relieved her patient hearer from a load of impertinence and reproach.

During this short interview, Thaddeus had received an impulse to his affections which hurried them forward with a force that neither time nor succeeding sorrows could stop nor stem.

Mary's heavenly-beaming eyes seemed to have encircled his head with love's purest halo. The command, "Preserve yourself for others besides your dying friend," yet throbbed at his heart; and with ten thousand rapturous visions flitting before his sight, he trod in air, until the humble door of his melancholy home presenting itself, at once wrecked the illusion, and offered sad reality in the person of his emaciated friend.

On the count's entrance to the sick chamber, Doctor Cavendish gave him a few directions to pursue when the general should awake from the sleep into which he had been sunk for so many hours. With a heart the more depressed from its late unusual exaltation, Thaddeus sat down at the side of the invalid's bed for the remainder of the day.

At five in the afternoon, General Butzou awoke. Seeing the count, he stretched out his withered hand, and as the doctor predicted, accosted him rationally.

"Come, dear Sobieski! Come nearer, my dear master."

Thaddeus rose, and throwing himself on his knees, took the offered hand with apparent composure. It was a hard struggle to restrain the emotions which were roused by this awful contemplation the return of reason to the soul on the instant she was summoned into the presence of her Maker!

"My kind, my beloved lord!" added Butzou, "to me you have indeed performed a Christian's part; you have clothed, sheltered and preserved me in your bosom. Blessed son of my most honored master!"

The good old man put the hand of Thaddeus to his lips. Thaddeus could not speak.

"I am going, dear Sobieski," continued the general, in a lower voice, "where I shall meet your n.o.ble grandfather, your mother, and my brave countrymen; and if Heaven grants me power, I will tell them by whose labor I have lived, on whose breast I have expired."

Thaddeus could no longer restrain his tears.

"Dear, dear general!" exclaimed he, grasping his hand; "my grandfather, my mother, my country! I lose them all again in thee! O!

would that the same summons took me hence!"

"Hush!" returned the dying man; "Heaven reserves you, my honored lord, for wise purposes. Youth and health are the marks of commission: [Footnote: I cannot but pause here, in revising the volume, to publicly express the emotion (grateful to Heaven) I experienced on receiving a letter quoting these words, many, many years ago. It was from the excellent Joseph Fox, the well-known Christian philanthropist of our country, who spent both his fortune and his life in establishing and sustaining several of our best charitable and otherwise patriotic inst.i.tutions. And once, when some of his anxious friends would gladly have persuaded him to grant himself more personal indulgences, and to labor less in the then recently-begun plans for national education, he wrote "to the author of Thaddeus of Warsaw," and, quoting to her those words from the work, declared "they were on his heart! and he would, with the blessing of G.o.d, perform what he believed to be his commission to the last powers of his youth and health."

This admirable man has now been long removed to his heavenly country-- to the everlasting dwelling-place of the just made perfect. And such recollections cannot but make an historical novel-writer at least feel answerable for more, in his or her pages, than the purposes of mere amus.e.m.e.nt. They guide by examples. Plutarch, in his lives of Grecian and Roman Worthies taught more effectually the heroic and virtuous science of life than did all his philosophical works put together.] _you_ possess them, with virtues which will bear you through the contest. _I_ have done; and my merciful Judge has evinced his pardon of my errors by sparing me in my old age, and leading me to die with you."

Thaddeus pressed his friend's hand to his streaming eyes, and promised to be resigned. Butzou smiled his satisfaction; then closing his eyelids, he composed himself to a rest that was neither sleep nor stupor, but a balmy serenity, which seemed to be tempering his lately recovered soul for its immediate entrance on a world of eternal peace.

At nine o'clock his breath became broken with quick sighs. The count's heart trembled, and he drew closer to the pillow. Butzou felt him; and opening his eyes languidly, articulated, "Raise my head."

Thaddeus put his arm under his neck, and lifting him up, reclined him against his bosom. Butzou grasped his hands, and looking gratefully in his face, said, "The arms of a soldier should be a soldier's death-bed. I am content."

He lay for a moment on the breast of the almost fainting Thaddeus; then suddenly quitting his hold, he cried, "I lose you, Sobieski! But there is----" and he gazed fixedly forward.

"I am here," exclaimed the count, catching his motionless hand. The dying general murmured a few words more, and turning his face inward, breathed his last sigh on the bosom of his last friend.

For a minute Sobieski continued incapable of thought or action. When he recovered recollection, he withdrew from his melancholy station.

Laying the venerable remains back on the bed, he did not trust his rallied faculties with a second trial, but hastening down stairs, was met by Mrs. Robson.

"My dear madam," said he, "all is over with my poor friend. Will you do me the kindness to perform those duties to his sacred relics which I cannot?"

Thaddeus would not allow any person to watch by his friend's coffin besides himself. The meditations of this solitary night presented to his sound and sensible mind every argument rather to induce rejoicing than regret that the eventful life of the brave Butzou was terminated.

"Yes, ill.u.s.trious old man!" cried he, gazing on his marble features; "if valor and virtue be the true sources of n.o.bility, thou surely wast n.o.ble! Inestimable defender of Stanislaus and thy country! thou hast run a long and bright career; and though thou art fated to rest in the humble grave of poverty, it will be embalmed by the tears of Heaven--it will be engraven on my heart."

Thaddeus did not weep whilst he spoke. Nor did he weep when he beheld the mold of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, close from his view the last remains of his friend. It began to rain. The uncovered head of the officiating minister was wet; and so was that of a little delicate boy, in a black cloak, who stood near, holding the aged rector's hat during the service. As the shower descended faster, Dr. Cavendish put his arm through the count's to draw him away, but he lingered an instant, looking on the mold while the s.e.xton piled it up. "Wretched Poland!" sighed he; "how far from thee lies one of thy bravest sons!"

The words were breathed in so low a murmur, that none heard them except the ear of Heaven! and that little boy, whose gaze had been some time fixed on Thaddeus, and whose gentle heart never forgot them.

Dr. Cavendish, regarding with redoubled pity the now doubly desolated exile in this last resignation of his parental friend to a foreign grave, attempted to persuade him to return with him to dinner. He refused the kind invitation, alleging, with a faint smile, that under every misfortune he found his best comforter in solitude.

Respecting the resignation and manliness of this answer, Doctor Cavendish urged him no further; but expressing his regret that he could not see him again until the end of the week, as he was obliged to go to Stanford next day on a medical consultation, he shook hands with him at the door of Mrs. Robson and bade him farewell.

Thaddeus entered his lonely room, and fell on his knees before the "ark of his strength,"--the Holy Book, that had been the gift of his mother. The first page he opened presented to him the very words which had poured consolation onto his sad heart, from the lips of the venerable clergyman when he met him on his entrance into the church- porch before the coffin of his friend!

"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die."

After reading this, how truly did the young mourner feel that "Death had lost its sting--the grave its victory."

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

DEEP ARE THE PURPOSES OF ADVERSITY.

Next morning, when the Count Sobieski unfolded the several packets of papers which were put into his hands by little Nanny, he laid them one after the other on the table, and sighing heavily, said to himself, "Now comes the bitterness of poverty! Heaven only knows by what means I shall pay these heavy charges."

Mere personal privations, induced by his fallen fortunes, excited little uneasiness in the mind of Thaddeus. As he never had derived peculiar gratification from the enjoyment of a magnificent house, splendid table, and numerous attendants, he was contented in the field, where he slept on the bare ground, and s.n.a.t.c.hed his hasty meals at uncertain intervals. Watching, rough fare, and other hardships were dust in the path of honor; he had dashed through them with light and buoyant spirits; and he repined as little at the actual wants of his forlorn state in exile, until, compelled by friendship to contract demands which he could not defray, he was plunged at once into the full horrors of poverty and debt.

He looked at the amount of the bills. The apothecary was twelve pounds; the funeral fifteen. Thaddeus turned pale. The value of all that he possessed would not produce one half of the sum; besides, he owed five guineas to his good landlady for numerous little comforts procured for his deceased friend.