and feature. His broad chest, his erect air, his lithe and symmetrical length of limb, united, happily, the attributes of activity and strength; and though there was no delicacy of youthful bloom upon his dark cheek, and though lines which should have come later marred its smoothness with the signs of care and thought, yet an expression of intelligence and daring, equally beyond his years, and the evidence of hardy, abstemious, vigorous health, served to show to the full advantage the outline of features which, noble and regular, though stern and masculine, the artist might have borrowed for his ideal of a young Spartan arming for his first battle. Arthur, slight to feebleness, and with the paleness, partly of constitution, partly of gay excess, on his fair and clear complexion, had features far less symmetrical and impressive than his cousin: but what then? All that are bestowed by elegance of dress, the refinements of luxurious habit, the nameless grace that comes from a mind and a manner polished, the one by literary culture, the other by social intercourse, invested the person of the heir with a fascination that rude Nature alone ever fails to give. And about him there was a gaiety, an airiness of spirit, an atmosphere of enjoyment which bespoke one who is in love with life.
“Why, this is lucky! I’m so glad to see you all!” said Arthur Beaufort, with that silver-ringing tone and charming smile which are to the happy spring of man what its music and its sunshine are to the spring of earth. “You must dine with me at Verey’s. I want something to rouse me to-day; for I did not get home from the _Salon_* till four this morning.”
*[The most celebrated gaming-house in Paris in the day before gaming-houses were suppressed by the well-directed energy of the government.]
“But you won?”
“Yes, Marsden. Hang it! I always win: I who could so well afford to lose: I’m quite ashamed of my luck!”
“It is easy to spend what one wins,” observed Mr. Marsden, sententiously; “and I see you have been at the jeweller’s! A present for Cecile? Well, don’t blush, my dear fellow. What is life without women?”
“And wine?” said a second. “And play?” said a third. “And wealth?” said a fourth.
“And you enjoy them all! Happy fellow!” said a fifth. The Outcast pulled his hat over his brows, and walked away.
“This dear Paris,” said Beaufort, as his eye carelessly and unconsciously followed the dark form retreating through the arches;–“this dear Paris! I must make the most of it while I stay! I have only been here a few weeks, and next week I must go.”
“Pooh–your health is better: you don’t look like the same man.”
“You think so really? Still I don’t know: the doctors say that I must either go to the German waters–the season is begun–or–“
“Or what?”
“Live less with such pleasant companions, my dear fellow! But as you say, what is life without–“
“Women!”
“Wine!”
“Play!”
“Wealth!”
“Ha! ha. ‘Throw physic to the dogs: I’ll none of it!'”
And Arthur leaped lightly on his saddle, and as he rode gaily on, humming the favourite air of the last opera, the hoofs of his horse splashed the mud over a foot-passenger halting at the crossing. Morton checked the fiery exclamation rising to his lips; and gazing after the brilliant form that hurried on towards the Champs Elysees, his eye caught the statues on the bridge, and a voice, as of a cheering angel, whispered again to his heart, “TIME, FAITH, ENERGY!”
The expression of his countenance grew calm at once, and as he continued his rambles it was with a mind that, casting off the burdens of the past, looked serenely and steadily on the obstacles and hardships of the future. We have seen that a scruple of conscience or of pride, not without its nobleness, had made him refuse the importunities of Gawtrey for less sordid raiment; the same feeling made it his custom to avoid sharing the luxurious and dainty food with which Gawtrey was wont to regale himself. For that strange man, whose wonderful felicity of temperament and constitution rendered him, in all circumstances, keenly alive to the hearty and animal enjoyments of life, would still emerge, as the day declined, from their wretched apartment, and, trusting to his disguises, in which indeed he possessed a masterly art, repair to one of the better description of restaurants, and feast away his cares for the moment. William Gawtrey would not have cared three straws for the curse of Damocles. The sword over his head would never have spoiled his appetite! He had lately, too, taken to drinking much more deeply than he had been used to do–the fine intellect of the man was growing thickened and dulled; and this was a spectacle that Morton could not bear to contemplate. Yet so great was Gawtrey’s vigour of health, that, after draining wine and spirits enough to have despatched a company of fox- hunters, and after betraying, sometimes in uproarious glee, sometimes in maudlin self-bewailings, that he himself was not quite invulnerable to the thyrsus of the god, he would–on any call on his energies, or especially before departing on those mysterious expeditions which kept him from home half, and sometimes all, the night–plunge his head into cold water–drink as much of the lymph as a groom would have shuddered to bestow on a horse–close his eyes in a doze for half an hour, and wake, cool, sober, and collected, as if he had lived according to the precepts of Socrates or Cornaro!
But to return to Morton. It was his habit to avoid as much as possible sharing the good cheer of his companion; and now, as he entered the, Champs Elysees, he saw a little family, consisting of a young mechanic, his wife, and two children, who, with that love of harmless recreation which yet characterises the French, had taken advantage of a holiday in the craft, and were enjoying their simple meal under the shadow of the trees. Whether in hunger or in envy, Morton paused and contemplated the happy group. Along the road rolled the equipages and trampled the steeds of those to whom all life is a holiday. There, was Pleasure–under those trees was Happiness. One of the children, a little boy of about six years old, observing the attitude and gaze of the pausing wayfarer, ran to him, and holding up a fragment of a coarse kind of cake, said to him, willingly, “Take it–I have had enough!” The child reminded Morton of his brother–his heart melted within him–he lifted the young Samaritan in his arms, and as he kissed him, wept.
The mother observed and rose also. She laid her hand on his own: “Poor boy! why do you weep?–can we relieve you?”
Now that bright gleam of human nature, suddenly darting across the sombre recollections and associations of his past life, seemed to Morton as if it came from Heaven, in approval and in blessing of this attempt at reconciliation to his fate.
“I thank you,” said he, placing the child on the ground, and passing his hand over his eyes,–“I thank you–yes! Let me sit down amongst you.” And he sat down, the child by his side, and partook of their fare, and was merry with them,–the proud Philip!–had he not begun to discover the “precious jewel” in the “ugly and venomous” Adversity?
The mechanic, though a gay fellow on the whole, was not without some of that discontent of his station which is common with his class; he vented it, however, not in murmurs, but in jests. He was satirical on the carriages and the horsemen that passed; and, lolling on the grass, ridiculed his betters at his ease.
“Hush!” said his wife, suddenly; “here comes Madame de Merville;” and rising as she spoke, she made a respectful inclination of her head towards an open carriage that was passing very slowly towards the town.
“Madame de Merville!” repeated the husband, rising also, and lifting his cap from his head. “Ah! I have nothing to say against her!”
Morton looked instinctively towards the carriage, and saw a fair countenance turned graciously to answer the silent salutations of the mechanic and his wife–a countenance that had long haunted his dreams, though of late it had faded away beneath harsher thoughts–the countenance of the stranger whom he had seen at the bureau of Gawtrey, when that worthy personage had borne a more mellifluous name. He started and changed colour: the lady herself now seemed suddenly to recognise him; for their eyes met, and she bent forward eagerly. She pulled the check-string–the carriage halted–she beckoned to the mechanic’s wife, who went up to the roadside.
“I worked once for that lady,” said the man with a tone of feeling; “and when my wife fell ill last winter she paid the doctors. Ah, she is an angel of charity and kindness!”
Morton scarcely heard this eulogium, for he observed, by something eager and inquisitive in the face of Madame de Merville, and by the sudden manner in which the mechanic’s helpmate turned her head to the spot in which he stood, that he was the object of their conversation. Once more he became suddenly aware of his ragged dress, and with a natural shame–a fear that charity might be extended to him from her–he muttered an abrupt farewell to the operative, and without another glance at the carriage, walked away.
Before he had got many paces, the wife however came up to him, breathless. “Madame de Merville would speak to you, sir!” she said, with more respect than she had hitherto thrown into her manner. Philip paused an instant, and again strode on–
“It must be some mistake,” he said, hurriedly: “I have no right to expect such an honour.”
He struck across the road, gained the opposite side, and had vanished from Madame de Merville’s eyes, before the woman regained the carriage. But still that calm, pale, and somewhat melancholy face, presented itself before him; and as he walked again through the town, sweet and gentle fancies crowded confusedly on his heart. On that soft summer day, memorable for so many silent but mighty events in that inner life which prepares the catastrophes of the outer one; as in the region, of which Virgil has sung, the images of men to be born hereafter repose or glide– on that soft summer day, he felt he had reached the age when Youth begins to clothe in some human shape its first vague ideal of desire and love.
In such thoughts, and still wandering, the day wore away, till he found himself in one of the lanes that surround that glittering Microcosm of the vices, the frivolities, the hollow show, and the real beggary of the gay City–the gardens and the galleries of the Palais Royal. Surprised at the lateness of the hour, it was then on the stroke of seven, he was about to return homewards, when the loud voice of Gawtrey sounded behind, and that personage, tapping him on the back, said,–
“Hollo, my young friend, well met! This will be a night of trial to you. Empty stomachs produce weak nerves. Come along! you must dine with me. A good dinner and a bottle of old wine–come! nonsense, I say you shall come! _Vive la joie_!”
While speaking, he had linked his arm in Morton’s, and hurried him on several paces in spite of his struggles; but just as the words _Vive la joie_ left his lips, he stood still and mute, as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet; and Morton felt that heavy arm shiver and tremble like a leaf. He looked up, and just at the entrance of that part of the Palais Royal in which are situated the restaurants of Verey and Vefour, he saw two men standing but a few paces before them, and gazing full on Gawtrey and himself.
“It is my evil genius,” muttered Gawtrey, grinding his teeth.
“And mine!” said Morton.
The younger of the two men thus apostrophised made a step towards Philip, when his companion drew him back and whispered,–“What are you about–do you know that young man?”
“He is my cousin; Philip Beaufort’s natural son!”
“Is he? then discard him for ever. He is with the most dangerous knave in Europe!”
As Lord Lilburne–for it was he–thus whispered his nephew, Gawtrey strode up to him; and, glaring full in his face, said in a deep and hollow tone,–“There is a hell, my lord,–I go to drink to our meeting!” Thus saying, he took off his hat with a ceremonious mockery, and disappeared within the adjoining restaurant, kept by Vefour.
“A hell!” said Lilburne, with his frigid smile; “the rogue’s head runs upon gambling-houses!”
“And I have suffered Philip again to escape me,” said Arthur, in self-reproach: for while Gawtrey had addressed Lord Lilburne, Morton had plunged back amidst the labyrinth of alleys. “How have I kept my oath?”
“Come! your guests must have arrived by this time. As for that wretched young man, depend upon it that he is corrupted body and soul.”
“But he is my own cousin.”
“Pooh! there is no relationship in natural children: besides, he will find you out fast enough. Ragged claimants are not long too proud to beg.”
“You speak in earnest?” said Arthur, irresolutely. “Ay! trust my experience of the world–Allons!”
And in a _cabinet_ of the very _restaurant_, adjoining that in which the solitary Gawtrey gorged his conscience, Lilburne, Arthur, and their gay friends, soon forgetful of all but the roses of the moment, bathed their airy spirits in the dews of the mirthful wine. Oh, extremes of life! Oh, Night! Oh, Morning!
CHAPTER IX.
“Meantime a moving scene was open laid, That lazar house.”–THOMSON’S _Castle of Indolence_.
It was near midnight. At the mouth of the lane in which Gawtrey resided there stood four men. Not far distant, in the broad street at angles with the lane, were heard the wheels of carriages and the sound of music. A lady, fair in form, tender of heart, stainless in repute, was receiving her friends!
“Monsieur Favart,” said one of the men to the smallest of the four; “you understand the conditions–20,000 francs and a free pardon?”
“Nothing more reasonable–it is understood. Still I confess that I should like to have my men close at hand. I am not given to fear; but this is a dangerous experiment.”
“You knew the danger beforehand and subscribed to it: you must enter alone with me, or not at all. Mark you, the men are sworn to murder him who betrays them. Not for twenty times 20,000 francs would I have them know me as the informer. My life were not worth a day’s purchase. Now, if you feel secure in your disguise, all is safe. You will have seen them at their work–you will recognise their persons–you can depose against them at the trial–I shall have time to quit France.”
“Well, well! as you please.”
“Mind, you must wait in the vault with them till they separate. We have so planted your men that whatever street each of the gang takes in going home, he can be seized quietly and at once. The bravest and craftiest of all, who, though he has but just joined, is already their captain;–him, the man I told you of, who lives in the house, you must take after his return, in his bed. It is the sixth story to the right, remember: here is the key to his door. He is a giant in strength; and will never be taken alive if up and armed.”
“Ah, I comprehend!–Gilbert” (and Favart turned to one of his companions who had not yet spoken) “take three men besides yourself, according to the directions I gave you,–the porter will admit you, that’s arranged. Make no noise. If I don’t return by four o’clock, don’t wait for me, but proceed at once. Look well to your primings. Take him alive, if possible–at the worst, dead. And now–anon ami–lead on!”
The traitor nodded, and walked slowly down the street. Favart, pausing, whispered hastily to the man whom he had called Gilbert,–
“Follow me close–get to the door of the cellar-place eight men within hearing of my whistle–recollect the picklocks, the axes. If you hear the whistle, break in; if not, I’m safe, and the first orders to seize the captain in his room stand good.”
So saying, Favart strode after his guide. The door of a large, but ill- favoured-looking house stood ajar–they entered-passed unmolested through a court-yard–descended some stairs; the guide unlocked the door of a cellar, and took a dark lantern from under his cloak. As he drew up the slide, the dim light gleamed on barrels and wine-casks, which appeared to fill up the space. Rolling aside one of these, the guide lifted a trap- door, and lowered his lantern. “Enter,” said he; and the two men disappeared.
. . . . . . . .
The coiners were at their work. A man, seated on a stool before a desk, was entering accounts in a large book. That man was William Gawtrey. While, with the rapid precision of honest mechanics, the machinery of the Dark Trade went on in its several departments. Apart–alone–at the foot of a long table, sat Philip Morton. The truth had exceeded his darkest suspicions. He had consented to take the oath not to divulge what was to be given to his survey; and when, led into that vault, the bandage was taken from his eyes, it was some minutes before he could fully comprehend the desperate and criminal occupations of the wild forms amidst which towered the burly stature of his benefactor. As the truth slowly grew upon him, he shrank from the side of Gawtrey; but, deep compassion for his friend’s degradation swallowing up the horror of the trade, he flung himself on one of the rude seats, and felt that the bond between them was indeed broken, and that the next morning he should be again alone in the world. Still, as the obscene jests, the fearful oaths, that from time to time rang through the vault, came on his ear, he cast his haughty eye in such disdain over the groups, that Gawtrey, observing him, trembled for his safety; and nothing but Philip’s sense of his own impotence, and the brave, not timorous, desire not to perish by such hands, kept silent the fiery denunciations of a nature still proud and honest, that quivered on his lips. All present were armed with pistols and cutlasses except Morton, who suffered the weapons presented to him to lie unheeded on the table.
“_Courage, mes amis_!” said Gawtrey, closing his book,–“_Courage_!”–a few months more, and we shall have made enough to retire upon, and enjoy ourselves for the rest of the days. Where is Birnie?”
“Did he not tell you?” said one of the artisans, looking up. “He has found out the cleverest hand in France, the very fellow who helped Bouchard in all his five-franc pieces. He has promised to bring him to-night.”
“Ay, I remember,” returned Gawtrey, “he told me this morning,–he is a famous decoy!”
“I think so, indeed!” quoth a coiner; “for he caught you, the best head to our hands that ever _les industriels_ were blessed with–_sacre fichtre_!”
“Flatterer!” said Gawtrey, coming from the desk to the table, and pouring out wine from one of the bottles into a huge flagon–“To your healths!”
Here the door slided back, and Birnie glided in.
“Where is your booty, _mon brave_?” said Gawtrey. “We only coin money; you coin men, stamp with your own seal, and send them current to the devil!”
The coiners, who liked Birnie’s ability (for the ci-devant engraver was of admirable skill in their craft), but who hated his joyless manners, laughed at this taunt, which Birnie did not seem to heed, except by a malignant gleam of his dead eye.
“If you mean the celebrated coiner, Jacques Giraumont, he waits without. You know our rules. I cannot admit him without leave.”
“_Bon_! we give it,–eh, messieurs?” said Gawtrey. “Ay-ay,” cried several voices. “He knows the oath, and will hear the penalty.”
“Yes, he knows the oath,” replied Birnie, and glided back.
In a moment more he returned with a small man in a mechanic’s blouse. The new comer wore the republican beard and moustache–of a sandy grey– his hair was the same colour; and a black patch over one eye increased the ill-favoured appearance of his features.
“_Diable_! Monsieur Giraumont! but you are more like Vulcan than Adonis!” said Gawtrey.
“I don’t know anything about Vulcan, but I know how to make five-franc pieces,” said Monsieur Giraumont, doggedly.
“Are you poor?”
“As a church mouse! The only thing belonging to a church, since the Bourbons came back, that is poor!”
At this sally, the coiners, who had gathered round the table, uttered the shout with which, in all circumstances, Frenchmen receive a _bon mot_.
“Humph!” said Gawtrey. “Who responds with his own life for your fidelity?”
“I,” said Birnie.
“Administer the oath to him.”
Suddenly four men advanced, seized the visitor, and bore him from the vault into another one within. After a few moments they returned.
“He has taken the oath and heard the penalty.”
“Death to yourself, your wife, your son, and your grandson, if you betray us!”
“I have neither son nor grandson; as for my wife, Monsieur le Capitaine, you offer a bribe instead of a threat when you talk of her death.”
“Sacre! but you will be an addition to our circle, _mon brave_!” said Gawtrey, laughing; while again the grim circle shouted applause.
“But I suppose you care for your own life.”
“Otherwise I should have preferred starving to coming here,” answered the laconic neophyte.
“I have done with you. Your health!”
On this the coiners gathered round Monsieur Giraumont, shook him by the hand, and commenced many questions with a view to ascertain his skill.
“Show me your coinage first; I see you use both the die and the furnace. Hem! this piece is not bad–you have struck it from an iron die?–right –it makes the impression sharper than plaster of Paris. But you take the poorest and the most dangerous part of the trade in taking the home market. I can put you in a way to make ten times as much–and with safety. Look at this!”–and Monsieur Giraumont took a forged Spanish dollar from his pocket, so skilfully manufactured that the connoisseurs were lost in admiration–“you may pass thousands of these all over Europe, except France, and who is ever to detect you? But it will require better machinery than you have here.”
Thus conversing, Monsieur Giraumont did not perceive that Mr. Gawtrey had been examining him very curiously and minutely. But Birnie had noted their chief’s attention, and once attempted to join his new ally, when Gawtrey laid his hand on his shoulder, and stopped him.
“Do not speak to your friend till I bid you, or–” lie stopped short, and touched his pistols.
Birnie grew a shade more pale, but replied with his usual sneer:
“Suspicious!–well, so much the better!” and seating himself carelessly at the table, lighted his pipe.
“And now, Monsieur Giraumont,” said Gawtrey, as he took the head of the table, “come to my right hand. A half-holiday in your honour. Clear these infernal instruments; and more wine, mes amis!”
The party arranged themselves at the table. Among the desperate there is almost invariably a tendency to mirth. A solitary ruffian, indeed, is moody, but a gang of ruffians are jovial. The coiners talked and laughed loud. Mr. Birnie, from his dogged silence, seemed apart from the rest, though in the centre. For in a noisy circle a silent tongue builds a wall round its owner. But that respectable personage kept his furtive watch upon Giraumont and Gawtrey, who appeared talking together, very amicably. The younger novice of that night, equally silent, seated towards the bottom of the table, was not less watchful than Birnie. An uneasy, undefinable foreboding had come over him since the entrance of Monsieur Giraumont; this had been increased by the manner of Mr. Gawtrey. His faculty of observation, which was very acute, had detected something false in the chief’s blandness to their guest–something dangerous in the glittering eye that Gawtrey ever, as he spoke to Giraumont, bent on that person’s lips as he listened to his reply. For, whenever William Gawtrey suspected a man, he watched not his eyes, but his lips.
Waked from his scornful reverie, a strange spell chained Morton’s attention to the chief and the guest, and he bent forward, with parted mouth and straining ear, to catch their conversation.
“It seems to me a little strange,” said Mr. Gawtrey, raising his voice so as to be heard by the party, “that a coiner so dexterous as Monsieur Giraumont should not be known to any of us except our friend Birnie.”
“Not at all,” replied Giraumont; “I worked only with Bouchard and two others since sent to the galleys. We were but a small fraternity– everything has its commencement.”
“_C’est juste: buvez, donc, cher ami_!”
The wine circulated. Gawtrey began again:
“You have had a bad accident, seemingly, Monsieur Giraumont. How did you lose your eye?”
“In a scuffle with the _gens d’ armes_ the night Bouchard was taken and I escaped. Such misfortunes are on the cards.”
“C’est juste: buvez, donc, Monsieur Giraumont!”
Again there was a pause, and again Gawtrey’s deep voice was heard.
“You wear a wig, I think, Monsieur Giraumont? To judge by your eyelashes your own hair has been a handsomer colour.”
“We seek disguise, not beauty, my host; and the police have sharp eyes.”
“_C’est juste: buvez, donc-vieux Renard_! When did we two meet last?”
“Never, that I know of.”
“_Ce n’est pas vrai! buvez, donc, MONSIEUR FAVART_!”
At the sound of that name the company started in dismay and confusion, and the police officer, forgetting himself for the moment, sprang from his seat, and put his right hand into his blouse.
“Ho, there!–treason!” cried Gawtrey, in a voice of thunder; and he caught the unhappy man by the throat. It was the work of a moment. Morton, where he sat, beheld a struggle–he heard a death-cry. He saw the huge form of the master-coiner rising above all the rest, as cutlasses gleamed and eyes sparkled round. He saw the quivering and powerless frame of the unhappy guest raised aloft in those mighty arms, and presently it was hurled along the table-bottles crashing–the board shaking beneath its weight–and lay before the very eyes of Morton, a distorted and lifeless mass. At the same instant Gawtrey sprang upon the table, his black frown singling out from the group the ashen, cadaverous face of the shrinking traitor. Birnie had darted from the table–he was half-way towards the sliding door–his face, turned over his shoulder, met the eyes of the chief.
“Devil!” shouted Gawtrey, in his terrible voice, which the echoes of the vault gave back from side to side. “Did I not give thee up my soul that thou mightest not compass my death? Hark ye! thus die my slavery and all our secrets!” The explosion of his pistol half swallowed up the last word, and with a single groan the traitor fell on the floor, pierced through the brain–then there was a dead and grim hush as the smoke rolled slowly along the roof of the dreary vault.
Morton sank back on his seat, and covered his face with his hands. The last seal on the fate of THE MAN OF CRIME was set; the last wave in the terrible and mysterious tide of his destiny had dashed on his soul to the shore whence there is no return. Vain, now and henceforth, the humour, the sentiment, the kindly impulse, the social instincts which had invested that stalwart shape with dangerous fascination, which had implied the hope of ultimate repentance, of redemption even in this world. The HOUR and the CIRCUMSTANCE had seized their prey; and the self-defence, which a lawless career rendered a necessity, left the eternal die of blood upon his doom!
“Friends, I have saved you,” said Gawtrey, slowly gazing on the corpse of his second victim, while he turned the pistol to his belt. “I have not quailed before this man’s eye” (and he spurned the clay of the officer as he spoke with a revengeful scorn) “without treasuring up its aspect in my heart of hearts. I knew him when he entered–knew him through his disguise–yet, faith, it was a clever one! Turn up his face and gaze on him now; he will never terrify us again, unless there be truth in ghosts!”
Murmuring and tremulous the coiners scrambled on the table and examined the dead man. From this task Gawtrey interrupted them, for his quick eye detected, with the pistols under the policeman’s blouse, a whistle of metal of curious construction, and he conjectured at once that danger was at hand.
“I have saved you, I say, but only for the hour. This deed cannot sleep. See, he had help within call! The police knew where to look for their comrade–we are dispersed. Each for himself. Quick, divide the spoils! _Sauve qui peat_!”
Then Morton heard where he sat, his hands still clasped before his face, a confused hubbub of voices, the jingle of money, the scrambling of feet, the creaking of doors. All was silent!
A strong grasp drew his hands from his eyes.
“Your first scene of life against life,” said Gawtrey’s voice, which seemed fearfully changed to the ear that beard it. “Bah! what would you think of a battle? Come to our eyrie: the carcasses are gone.”
Morton looked fearfully round the vault. He and Gawtrey were alone. His eyes sought the places where the dead had lain–they were removed–no vestige of the deeds, not even a drop of blood.
“Come, take up your cutlass, come!” repeated the voice of the chief, as with his dim lantern–now the sole light of the vault–he stood in the shadow of the doorway.
Morton rose, took up the weapon mechanically, and followed that terrible guide, mute and unconscious, as a Soul follows a Dream through the House of Sleep!
CHAPTER X.
“Sleep no more!”–_Macbeth_
After winding through gloomy and labyrinthine passages, which conducted to a different range of cellars from those entered by the unfortunate Favart, Gawtrey emerged at the foot of a flight of stairs, which, dark, narrow, and in many places broken, had been probably appropriated to servants of the house in its days of palmier glory. By these steps the pair regained their attic. Gawtrey placed the lantern on the table and seated himself in silence. Morton, who had recovered his self-possession and formed his resolution, gazed on him for some moments, equally taciturn. At length he spoke:
“Gawtrey!”
“I bade you not call me by that name,” said the coiner; for we need scarcely say that in his new trade he had assumed a new appellation.
“It is the least guilty one by which I have known you,” returned Morton, firmly. “It is for the last time I call you by it! I demanded to see by what means one to whom I had entrusted my fate supported himself. I have seen,” continued the young man, still firmly, but with a livid cheek and lip, “and the tie between us is rent for ever. Interrupt me not! it is not for me to blame you. I have eaten of your bread and drunk of your cup. Confiding in you too blindly, and believing that you were at least free from those dark and terrible crimes for which there is no expiation –at least in this life–my conscience seared by distress, my very soul made dormant by despair, I surrendered myself to one leading a career equivocal, suspicious, dishonourable perhaps, but still not, as I believed, of atrocity and bloodshed. I wake at the brink of the abyss– my mother’s hand beckons to me from the grave; I think I hear her voice while I address you–I recede while it is yet time–we part, and for ever!”
Gawtrey, whose stormy passion was still deep upon his soul, had listened hitherto in sullen and dogged silence, with a gloomy frown on his knitted brow; he now rose with an oath–
“Part! that I may let loose on the world a new traitor! Part! when you have seen me fresh from an act that, once whispered, gives me to the guillotine! Part–never! at least alive!”
“I have said it,” said Morton, folding his arms calmly; I say it to your face, though I might part from you in secret. Frown not on me, man of blood! I am fearless as yourself! In another minute I am gone.”
“Ah! is it so?” said Gawtrey; and glancing round the room, which contained two doors, the one concealed by the draperies of a bed, communicating with the stairs by which they had entered, the other with the landing of the principal and common flight: he turned to the former, within his reach, which he locked, and put the key into his pocket, and then, throwing across the latter a heavy swing bar, which fell into its socket with a harsh noise,–before the threshold he placed his vast bulk, and burst into his loud, fierce laugh: “Ho! ho! Slave and fool, once mine, you were mine body and soul for ever!”
“Tempter, I defy you! stand back!” And, firm and dauntless, Morton laid his hand on the giant’s vest.
Gawtrey seemed more astonished than enraged. He looked hard at his daring associate, on whose lip the down was yet scarcely dark.
“Boy,” said he, “off! do not rouse the devil in me again! I could crush you with a hug.”
“My soul supports my body, and I am armed,” said Morton, laying hand on his cutlass. “But you dare not harm me, nor I you; bloodstained as you are, you gave me shelter and bread; but accuse me not that I will save my soul while it is yet time!–Shall my mother have blessed me in vain upon her death-bed?”
Gawtrey drew back, and Morton, by a sudden impulse, grasped his hand.
“Oh! hear me-hear me!” he cried, with great emotion. “Abandon this horrible career; you have been decoyed and betrayed to it by one who can deceive or terrify you no more! Abandon it, and I will never desert you. For her sake–for your Fanny’s sake–pause, like me, before the gulf swallow us. Let us fly!–far to the New World–to any land where our thews and sinews, our stout hands and hearts, can find an honest mart. Men, desperate as we are, have yet risen by honest means. Take her, your orphan, with us. We will work for her, both of us. Gawtrey! hear me. It is not my voice that speaks to you–it is your good angel’s!”
Gawtrey fell back against the wall, and his chest heaved.
“Morton,” he said, with choked and tremulous accent, “go now; leave me to my fate! I have sinned against you–shamefully sinned. It seemed to me so sweet to have a friend; in your youth and character of mind there was so much about which the tough strings of my heart wound themselves, that I could not bear to lose you–to suffer you to know me for what I was. I blinded–I deceived you as to my past deeds; that was base in me: but I swore to my own heart to keep you unexposed to every danger, and free from every vice that darkened my own path. I kept that oath till this night, when, seeing that you began to recoil from me, and dreading that you should desert me, I thought to bind you to me for ever by implicating you in this fellowship of crime. I am punished, and justly. Go, I repeat–leave me to the fate that strides nearer and nearer to me day by day. You are a boy still–I am no longer young. Habit is a second nature. Still–still I could repent–I could begin life again. But repose!–to look back–to remember–to be haunted night and day with deeds that shall meet me bodily and face to face on the last day–“
“Add not to the spectres! Come–fly this night–this hour!”
Gawtrey paused, irresolute and wavering, when at that moment he heard steps on the stairs below. He started–as starts the boar caught in his lair–and listened, pale and breathless.
“Hush!–they are on us!–they come!” as he whispered, the key from without turned in the wards–the door shook. “Soft! the bar preserves us both–this way.” And the coiner crept to the door of the private stairs. He unlocked and opened it cautiously. A man sprang through the aperture:
“Yield!–you are my prisoner!”
“Never!” cried Gawtrey, hurling back the intruder, and clapping to the door, though other and stout men were pressing against it with all their power.
“Ho! ho! Who shall open the tiger’s cage?”
At both doors now were heard the sound of voices. “Open in the king’s name, or expect no mercy!”
“Hist!” said Gawtrey. “One way yet–the window–the rope.”
Morton opened the casement–Gawtrey uncoiled the rope. The dawn was breaking; it was light in the streets, but all seemed quiet without. The doors reeled and shook beneath the pressure of the pursuers. Gawtrey flung the rope across the street to the opposite parapet; after two or three efforts, the grappling-hook caught firm hold–the perilous path was made.
“On!–quick!–loiter not!” whispered Gawtrey; “you are active–it seems more dangerous than it is–cling with both hands-shut your eyes. When on the other side–you see the window of Birnie’s room,–enter it–descend the stairs–let yourself out, and you are safe.”
“Go first,” said Morton, in the same tone: “I will not leave you now: you will be longer getting across than I shall. I will keep guard till you are over.”
“Hark! hark!–are you mad? You keep guard! what is your strength to mine? Twenty men shall not move that door, while my weight is against it. Quick, or you destroy us both! Besides, you will hold the rope for me, it may not be strong enough for my bulk in itself. Stay!–stay one moment. If you escape, and I fall–Fanny–my father, he will take care of her,–you remember–thanks! Forgive me all! Go; that’s right!”
With a firm impulse, Morton threw himself on the dreadful bridge; it swung and crackled at his weight. Shifting his grasp rapidly–holding his breath–with set teeth-with closed eyes–he moved on–he gained the parapet–he stood safe on the opposite side. And now, straining his eyes across, he saw through the open casement into the chamber he had just quitted. Gawtrey was still standing against the door to the principal staircase, for that of the two was the weaker and the more assailed. Presently the explosion of a fire-arm was heard; they had shot through the panel. Gawtrey seemed wounded, for he staggered forward, and uttered a fierce cry; a moment more, and he gained the window–he seized the rope–he hung over the tremendous depth! Morton knelt by the parapet, holding the grappling-hook in its place, with convulsive grasp, and fixing his eyes, bloodshot with fear and suspense, on the huge bulk that clung for life to that slender cord!
“Le voiles! Le voiles!” cried a voice from the opposite side. Morton raised his gaze from Gawtrey; the casement was darkened by the forms of his pursuers–they had burst into the room–an officer sprang upon the parapet, and Gawtrey, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, and as he moved on, glared upon the foe. The policeman deliberately raised his pistol–Gawtrey arrested himself–from a wound in his side the blood trickled slowly and darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below; even the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him–his hair bristling –his cheek white–his lips drawn convulsively from his teeth, and his eyes glaring from beneath the frown of agony and menace in which yet spoke the indomitable power and fierceness of the man. His look, so fixed–so intense–so stern, awed the policeman; his hand trembled as he fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below the spot where Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling sound-half-laugh, half-yell of scorn and glee, broke from Gawtrey’s lips. He swung himself on–near –near–nearer–a yard from the parapet.
“You are saved!” cried Morton; when at the moment a volley burst from the fatal casement–the smoke rolled over both the fugitives–a groan, or rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardest on whose ear it came. Morton sprang to his feet and looked below. He saw on the rugged stones far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass–the strong man of passion and levity–the giant who had played with life and soul, as an infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks–was what the Caesar and the leper alike are, when the clay is without God’s breath–what glory, genius, power, and beauty, would be for ever and for ever, if there were no God!
“There is another!” cried the voice of one of the pursuers. “Fire!”
“Poor Gawtrey!” muttered Philip. “I will fulfil your last wish;” and scarcely conscious of the bullet that whistled by him, he disappeared behind the parapet.
CHAPTER XI.
“Gently moved
By the soft wind of whispering silks.”–DECKER.
The reader may remember that while Monsieur Favart and Mr. Birnie were holding commune in the lane, the sounds of festivity were heard from a house in the adjoining street. To that house we are now summoned.
At Paris, the gaieties of balls, or soirees, are, I believe, very rare in that period of the year in which they are most frequent in London. The entertainment now given was in honour of a christening; the lady who gave it, a relation of the new-born.
Madame de Merville was a young widow; even before her marriage she had been distinguished in literature; she had written poems of more than common excellence; and being handsome, of good family, and large fortune, her talents made her an object of more interest than they might otherwise have done. Her poetry showed great sensibility and tenderness. If poetry be any index to the heart, you would have thought her one to love truly and deeply. Nevertheless, since she married–as girls in France do–not to please herself, but her parents, she made a _mariage de convenance_. Monsieur de Merville was a sober, sensible man, past middle age. Not being fond of poetry, and by no means coveting a professional author for his wife, he had during their union, which lasted four years, discouraged his wife’s liaison with Apollo. But her mind, active and ardent, did not the less prey upon itself. At the age of four-and-twenty she became a widow, with an income large even in England for a single woman, and at Paris constituting no ordinary fortune. Madame de Merville, however, though a person of elegant taste, was neither ostentatious nor selfish; she had no children, and she lived quietly in apartments, handsome, indeed, but not more than adequate to the small establishment which–where, as on the Continent, the costly convenience of an entire house is not usually incurred–sufficed for her retinue. She devoted at least half her income, which was entirely at her own disposal, partly to the aid of her own relations, who were not rich, and partly to the encouragement of the literature she cultivated. Although she shrank from the ordeal of publication, her poems and sketches of romance were read to her own friends, and possessed an eloquence seldom accompanied with so much modesty. Thus, her reputation, though not blown about the winds, was high in her own circle, and her position in fashion and in fortune made her looked up to by her relations as the head of her family; they regarded her as _femme superieure_, and her advice with them was equivalent to a command. Eugenie de Merville was a strange mixture of qualities at once feminine and masculine. On the one hand, she had a strong will, independent views, some contempt for the world, and followed her own inclinations without servility to the opinion of others; on the other hand, she was susceptible, romantic, of a sweet, affectionate, kind disposition. Her visit to M. Love, however indiscreet, was not less in accordance with her character than her charity to the mechanic’s wife; masculine and careless where an eccentric thing was to be done–curiosity satisfied, or some object in female diplomacy achieved–womanly, delicate, and gentle, the instant her benevolence was appealed to or her heart touched. She had now been three years a widow, and was consequently at the age of twenty-seven. Despite the tenderness of her poetry and her character, her reputation was unblemished. She had never been in love. People who are much occupied do not fall in love easily; besides, Madame de Merville was refining, exacting, and wished to find heroes where she only met handsome dandies or ugly authors. Moreover, Eugenie was both a vain and a proud person–vain of her celebrity and proud of her birth. She was one whose goodness of heart made her always active in promoting the happiness of others. She was not only generous and charitable, but willing to serve people by good offices as well as money. Everybody loved her. The new-born infant, to whose addition to the Christian community the fete of this night was dedicated, was the pledge of a union which Madame de Merville had managed to effect between two young persons, first cousins to each other, and related to herself. There had been scruples of parents to remove–money matters to adjust– Eugenie had smoothed all. The husband and wife, still lovers, looked up to her as the author, under Heaven, of their happiness.
The gala of that night had been, therefore, of a nature more than usually pleasurable, and the mirth did not sound hollow, but wrung from the heart. Yet, as Eugenie from time to time contemplated the young people, whose eyes ever sought each other–so fair, so tender, and so joyous as they seemed–a melancholy shadow darkened her brow, and she sighed involuntarily. Once the young wife, Madame d’Anville, approaching her timidly, said:
“Ah! my sweet cousin, when shall we see you as happy as ourselves? There is such happiness,” she added, innocently, and with a blush, “in being a mother!–that little life all one’s own–it is something to think of every hour!”
“Perhaps,” said Eugenie, smiling, and seeking to turn the conversation from a subject that touched too nearly upon feelings and thoughts her pride did not wish to reveal–“perhaps it is you, then, who have made our cousin, poor Monsieur de Vaudemont, so determined to marry? Pray, be more cautious with him. How difficult I have found it to prevent his bringing into our family some one to make us all ridiculous!”
“True,” said Madame d’Anville, laughing. “But then, the Vicomte is so poor, and in debt. He would fall in love, not with the demoiselle, but the dower. _A propos_ of that, how cleverly you took advantage of his boastful confession to break off his liaisons with that _bureau de mariage_.”
“Yes; I congratulate myself on that manoeuvre. Unpleasant as it was to go to such a place (for, of course, I could not send for Monsieur Love here), it would have been still more unpleasant to have received such a Madame de Vaudemont as our cousin would have presented to us. Only think–he was the rival of an _epicier_! I heard that there was some curious _denouement_ to the farce of that establishment; but I could never get from Vaudemont the particulars. He was ashamed of them, I fancy.”
“What droll professions there are in Paris!” said Madame d’Anville. “As if people could not marry without going to an office for a spouse as we go for a servant! And so the establishment is broken up? And you never again saw that dark, wild-looking boy who so struck your fancy that you have taken him as the original for the Murillo sketch of the youth in that charming tale you read to us the other evening? Ah! cousin, I think you were a little taken with him. The _bureau de mariage_ had its allurements for you as well as for our poor cousin!” The young mother said this laughingly and carelessly.
“Pooh!” returned Madame de Merville, laughing also; but a slight blush broke over her natural paleness. “But a propos of the Vicomte. You know how cruelly he has behaved to that poor boy of his by his English wife– never seen him since he was an infant–kept him at some school in England; and all because his vanity does not like the world to know that he has a son of nineteen! Well, I have induced him to recall this poor youth.”
“Indeed! and how?”
“Why,” said Eugenie, with a smile, “he wanted a loan, poor man, and I could therefore impose conditions by way of interest. But I also managed to conciliate him to the proposition, by representing that, if the young man were good-looking, he might, himself, with our connections, &c., form an advantageous marriage; and that in such a case, if the father treated him now justly and kindly, he would naturally partake with the father whatever benefits the marriage might confer.”
“Ah! you are an excellent diplomatist, Eugenie; and you turn people’s heads by always acting from your heart. Hush! here comes the Vicomte”
“A delightful ball,” said Monsieur de Vaudemont, approaching the hostess. “Pray, has that young lady yonder, in the pink dress, any fortune? She is pretty–eh? You observe she is looking at me–I mean at us!”
“My dear cousin, what a compliment you pay to marriage! You have had two wives, and you are ever on the _qui vive_ for a third!”
“What would you have me do?–we cannot resist the overtures of your bewitching sex. Hum–what fortune has she?”
“Not a _sou_; besides, she is engaged.”
“Oh! now I look at her, she is not pretty–not at all. I made a mistake. I did not mean her; I meant the young lady in blue.”
“Worse and worse–she is married already. Shall I present you?”
“Ah, Monsieur de Vaudemont,” said Madame d’Anville; “have you found out a new bureau de mariage?”
The Vicomte pretended not to hear that question. But, turning to Eugenie, took her aside, and said, with an air in which he endeavoured to throw a great deal of sorrow, “You know, my dear cousin, that, to oblige you, I consented to send for my son, though, as I always said, it is very unpleasant for a man like me, in the prime of life, to hawk about a great boy of nineteen or twenty. People soon say, ‘Old Vaudemont and younq Vaudemont.’ However, a father’s feelings are never appealed to in vain.” (Here the Vicomte put his handkerchief to his eyes, and after a pause, continued,)–“I sent for him–I even went to your old _bonne_, Madame Dufour, to make a bargain for her lodgings, and this day–guess my grief –I received a letter sealed with black. My son is dead!–a sudden fever–it is shocking!”
“Horrible! dead!–your own son, whom you hardly ever saw–never since he was an Infant!”
“Yes, that softens the blow very much. And now you see I must marry. If the boy had been good-looking, and like me, and so forth, why, as you observed, he might have made a good match, and allowed me a certain sum, or we could have all lived together.”
“And your son is dead, and you come to a ball!”
“_Je suis philosophe_,” said the Vicomte, shrugging his shoulders. “And, as you say, I never saw him. It saves me seven hundred francs a-year. Don’t say a word to any one–I sha’n’t give out that he is dead, poor fellow! Pray be discreet: you see there are some ill-natured people who might think it odd I do not shut myself up. I can wait till Paris is quite empty. It would be a pity to lose any opportunity at present, for now, you see, I must marry!” And the philosophe sauntered away.
CHAPTER XII.
GUIOMAR.
“Those devotions I am to pay
Are written in my heart, not in this book.”
Enter RUTILIO.
“I am pursued–all the ports are stopped too, Not any hope to escape–behind, before me, On either side, I am beset.”
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, _The Custom of the Country_
The party were just gone–it was already the peep of day–the wheels of the last carriage had died in the distance.
Madame de Merville had dismissed her woman, and was seated in her own room, leaning her head musingly on her hand.
Beside her was the table that held her MSS. and a few books, amidst which were scattered vases of flowers. On a pedestal beneath the window was placed a marble bust of Dante. Through the open door were seen in perspective two rooms just deserted by her guests; the lights still burned in the chandeliers and girandoles, contending with the daylight that came through the half-closed curtains. The person of the inmate was in harmony with the apartment. It was characterised by a certain grace which, for want of a better epithet, writers are prone to call classical or antique. Her complexion, seeming paler than usual by that light, was yet soft and delicate–the features well cut, but small and womanly. About the face there was that rarest of all charms, the combination of intellect with sweetness; the eyes, of a dark blue, were thoughtful, perhaps melancholy, in their expression; but the long dark lashes, and the shape of the eyes, themselves more long than full, gave to their intelligence a softness approaching to languor, increased, perhaps, by that slight shadow round and below the orbs which is common with those who have tasked too much either the mind or the heart. The contour of the face, without being sharp or angular, had yet lost a little of the roundness of earlier youth; and the hand on which she leaned was, perhaps, even too white, too delicate, for the beauty which belongs to health; but the throat and bust were of exquisite symmetry.
“I am not happy,” murmured Eugenie to herself; “yet I scarce know why. Is it really, as we women of romance have said till the saying is worn threadbare, that the destiny of women is not fame but love. Strange, then, that while I have so often pictured what love should be, I have never felt it. And now,–and now,” she continued, half rising, and with a natural pang–“now I am no longer in my first youth. If I loved, should I be loved again? How happy the young pair seemed–they are never alone!”
At this moment, at a distance, was heard the report of fire-arms–again! Eugenie started, and called to her servant, who, with one of the waiters hired for the night, was engaged in removing, and nibbling as he removed, the re mains of the feast. “What is that, at this hour?–open the window and look out!”
“I can see nothing, madame.”
“Again–that is the third time. Go into the street and look–some one must be in danger.”
The servant and the waiter, both curious, and not willing to part company, ran down the stairs, and thence into the street.
Meanwhile, Morton, after vainly attempting Birnie’s window, which the traitor had previously locked and barred against the escape of his intended victim, crept rapidly along the roof, screened by the parapet not only from the shot but the sight of the foe. But just as he gained the point at which the lane made an angle with the broad street it adjoined, he cast his eyes over the parapet, and perceived that one of the officers had ventured himself to the fearful bridge; he was pursued– detection and capture seemed inevitable. He paused, and breathed hard. He, once the heir to such fortunes, the darling of such affections!–he, the hunted accomplice of a gang of miscreants! That was the thought that paralysed–the disgrace, not the danger. But he was in advance of the pursuer–he hastened on–he turned the angle–he heard a shout behind from the opposite side–the officer had passed the bridge: “it is but one man as yet,” thought he, and his nostrils dilated and his hands clenched as he glided on, glancing at each casement as he passed.
Now as youth and vigour thus struggled against Law for life, near at hand Death was busy with toil and disease. In a miserable _grabat_, or garret, a mechanic, yet young, and stricken by a lingering malady contracted by the labour of his occupation, was slowly passing from that world which had frowned on his cradle, and relaxed not the gloom of its aspect to comfort his bed of Death. Now this man had married for love, and his wife had loved him; and it was the cares of that early marriage which had consumed him to the bone. But extreme want, if long continued, eats up love when it has nothing else to eat. And when people are very long dying, the people they fret and trouble begin to think of that too often hypocritical prettiness of phrase called “a happy release.” So the worn-out and half-famished wife did not care three straws for the dying husband, whom a year or two ago she had vowed to love and cherish in sickness and in health. But still she seemed to care, for she moaned, and pined, and wept, as the man’s breath grew fainter and fainter.
“Ah, Jean!” said she, sobbing, “what will become of me, a poor lone widow, with nobody to work for my bread?” And with that thought she took on worse than before.
“I am stifling,” said the dying man, rolling round his ghastly eyes. “How hot it is! Open the window; I should like to see the light-daylight once again.”
“Mon Dieu! what whims he has, poor man!” muttered the woman, without stirring.
The poor wretch put out his skeleton hand and clutched his wife’s arm.
“I sha’n’t trouble you long, Marie! Air–air!”
“Jean, you will make yourself worse–besides, I shall catch my death of cold. I have scarce a rag on, but I will just open the door.”
“Pardon me,” groaned the sufferer; “leave me, then.” Poor fellow! perhaps at that moment the thought of unkindness was sharper than the sharp cough which brought blood at every paroxysm. He did not like her so near him, but he did not blame her. Again, I say,–poor fellow! The woman opened the door, went to the other side of the room, and sat down on an old box and began darning an old neck-handkerchief. The silence was soon broken by the moans of the fast-dying man, and again he muttered, as he tossed to and fro, with baked white lips:
“_Je m’etoufee_!–Air!”
There was no resisting that prayer, it seemed so like the last. The wife laid down the needle, put the handkerchief round her throat, and opened the window.
“Do you feel easier now?”
“Bless you, Marie–yes; that’s good–good. It puts me in mind of old days, that breath of air, before we came to Paris. I wish I could work for you now, Marie.”
“Jean! my poor Jean!” said the woman, and the words and the voice took back her hardening heart to the fresh fields and tender thoughts of the past time. And she walked up to the bed, and he leaned his temples, damp with livid dews, upon her breast.
“I have been a sad burden to you, Marie; we should not have married so soon; but I thought I was stronger. Don’t cry; we have no little ones, thank God. It will be much better for you when I am gone.”
And so, word after word gasped out–he stopped suddenly, and seemed to fall asleep.
The wife then attempted gently to lay him once more on his pillow–the head fell back heavily–the jaw had dropped–the teeth were set–the eyes were open and like the stone–the truth broke on her!
“Jean–Jean! My God, he is dead! and I was unkind to him at the last!” With these words she fell upon the corpse, happily herself insensible.
Just at that moment a human face peered in at the window. Through that aperture, after a moment’s pause, a young man leaped lightly into the room. He looked round with a hurried glance, but scarcely noticed the forms stretched on the pallet. It was enough for him that they seemed to sleep, and saw him not. He stole across the room, the door of which Marie had left open, and descended the stairs. He had almost gained the courtyard into which the stairs had conducted, when he heard voices below by the porter’s lodge.
“The police have discovered a gang of coiners!”
“Coiners!”
“Yes, one has been shot dead! I have seen his body in the kennel; another has fled along the roofs–a desperate fellow! We were to watch for him. Let us go up-stairs and get on the roof and look out.”
By the hum of approval that followed this proposition, Morton judged rightly that it had been addressed to several persons whom curiosity and the explosion of the pistols had drawn from their beds, and who were grouped round the porter’s lodge. What was to be done?–to advance was impossible: and was there yet time to retreat?–it was at least the only course left him; he sprang back up the stairs; he had just gained the first flight when he heard steps descending; then, suddenly, it flashed across him that he had left open the window above–that, doubtless, by that imprudent oversight the officer in pursuit had detected a clue to the path he had taken. What was to be done?–die as Gawtrey had done!– death rather than the galleys. As he thus resolved, he saw to the right the open door of an apartment in which lights still glimmered in their sockets. It seemed deserted–he entered boldly and at once, closing the door after him. Wines and viands still left on the table; gilded mirrors, reflecting the stern face of the solitary intruder; here and there an artificial flower, a knot of riband on the floor, all betokening the gaieties and graces of luxurious life–the dance, the revel, the feast–all this in one apartment!–above, in the same house, the pallet– the corpse–the widow–famine and woe! Such is a great city! such, above all, is Paris! where, under the same roof, are gathered such antagonist varieties of the social state! Nothing strange in this; it is strange and sad that so little do people thus neighbours know of each other, that the owner of those rooms had a heart soft to every distress, but she did not know the distress so close at hand. The music that had charmed her guests had mounted gaily to the vexed ears of agony and hunger. Morton passed the first room–a second–he came to a third, and Eugenie de Merville, looking up at that instant, saw before her an apparition that might well have alarmed the boldest. His head was uncovered–his dark hair shadowed in wild and disorderly profusion the pale face and features, beautiful indeed, but at that moment of the beauty which an artist would impart to a young gladiator–stamped with defiance, menace, and despair. The disordered garb–the fierce aspect–the dark eyes, that literally shone through the shadows of the room-all conspired to increase the terror of so abrupt a presence.
“What are you?–What do you seek here?” said she, falteringly, placing her hand on the bell as she spoke. Upon that soft hand Morton laid his own.
“I seek my life! I am pursued! I am at your mercy! I am innocent! Can you save me?”
As he spoke, the door of the outer room beyond was heard to open, and steps and voices were at hand.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, recoiling as he recognised her face. “And is it to you that I have fled?”
Eugenie also recognised the stranger; and there was something in their relative positions–the suppliant, the protectress–that excited both her imagination and her pity. A slight colour mantled to her cheeks–her look was gentle and compassionate.
“Poor boy! so young!” she said. “Hush!”
She withdrew her hand from his, retired a few steps, lifted a curtain drawn across a recess–and pointing to an alcove that contained one of those sofa-beds common in French houses, added in a whisper,–
“Enter–you are saved.”
Morton obeyed, and Eugenie replaced the curtain.
CHAPTER XIII.
GUIOMAR.
“Speak! What are you?”
RUTILIO.
“Gracious woman, hear me. I am a stranger: And in that I answer all your demands.” _Custom of the Country_.
Eugenie replaced the curtain. And scarcely had she done so ere the steps in the outer room entered the chamber where she stood. Her servant was accompanied by two officers of the police.
“Pardon, madame,” said one of the latter; “but we are in pursuit of a criminal. We think he must have entered this house through a window above while your servant was in the street. Permit us to search?”
“Without doubt,” answered Eugenie, seating herself. “If he has entered, look in the other apartments. I have not quitted this room.”
“You are right. Accept our apologies.”
And the officers turned back to examine every corner where the fugitive was not. For in that, the scouts of Justice resembled their mistress: when does man’s justice look to the right place?
The servant lingered to repeat the tale he had heard–the sight he had seen. When, at that instant, he saw the curtain of the alcove slightly stirred. He uttered an exclamation-sprung to the bed–his hand touched the curtain–Eugenie seized his arm. She did not speak; but as he turned his eyes to her, astonished, he saw that she trembled, and that her cheek was as white as marble.
“Madame,” he said, hesitating, “there is some one hid in the recess.”
“There is! Be silent!”
A suspicion flashed across the servant’s mind. The pure, the proud, the immaculate Eugenie!
“There is!–and in madame’s chamber!” he faltered unconsciously.
Eugenie’s quick apprehensions seized the foul thought. Her eyes flashed –her cheek crimsoned. But her lofty and generous nature conquered even the indignant and scornful burst that rushed to her lips. The truth!– could she trust the man? A doubt–and the charge of the human life rendered to her might be betrayed. Her colour fell–tears gushed to her eyes.
“I have been kind to you, Francois. Not a word.” “Madame confides in me–it is enough,” said the Frenchman, bowing, with a slight smile on his lips; and he drew back respectfully.
One of the police officers re-entered.
“We have done, madame; he is not here. Aha! that curtain!”
“It is madame’s bed,” said Francois. “But I have looked behind.”
“I am most sorry to have disarranged you,” said the policeman, satisfied with the answer; “but we shall have him yet.” And he retired.
The last footsteps died away, the last door of the apartments closed behind the officers, and Eugenie and her servant stood alone gazing on each other.
“You may retire,” said she at last; and taking her purse from the table, she placed it in his hands.
The man took it, with a significant look. “Madame may depend on my discretion.”
Eugenie was alone again. Those words rang in her ear,–Eugenie de Merville dependent on the discretion of her lackey! She sunk into her chair, and, her excitement succeeded by exhaustion, leaned her face on her hands, and burst into tears. She was aroused by a low voice; she looked up, and the young man was kneeling at her feet.
“Go–go!” she said: “I have done for you all I can.”
“You heard–you heard–my own hireling, too! At the hazard of my own good name you are saved. Go!”
“Of your good name!”–for Eugenie forgot that it was looks, not words, that had so wrung her pride–“Your good name,” he repeated: and glancing round the room–the toilette, the curtain, the recess he had quitted–all that bespoke that chastest sanctuary of a chaste woman, which for a stranger to enter is, as it were, to profane–her meaning broke on him. “Your good name–your hireling! No, madame,–no!” And as he spoke, he rose to his feet. “Not for me, that sacrifice! Your humanity shall not cost you so dear. Ho, there! I am the man you seek.” And he strode to the door.
Eugenie was penetrated with the answer. She sprung to him–she grasped his garments.
“Hush! hush!–for mercy’s sake! What would you do? Think you I could ever be happy again, if the confidence you placed in me were betrayed? Be calm–be still. I knew not what I said. It will be easy to undeceive the man–later–when you are saved. And you are innocent,–are you not?”
“Oh, madame,” said Morton, “from my soul I say it, I am innocent–not of poverty–wretchedness–error–shame; I am innocent of crime. May Heaven bless you!”
And as he reverently kissed the hand laid on his arm, there was something in his voice so touching, in his manner something so above his fortunes, that Eugenie was lost in her feelings of compassion, surprise, and something, it might be, of admiration in her wonder.
“And, oh!” he said, passionately, gazing on her with his dark, brilliant eyes, liquid with emotion, “you have made my life sweet in saving it. You–you–of whom, ever since the first time, almost the sole time, I beheld you–I have so often mused and dreamed. Henceforth, whatever befall me, there will be some recollections that will–that–“
He stopped short, for his heart was too full for words; and the silence said more to Eugenie than if all the eloquence of Rousseau had glowed upon his tongue.
“And who, and what are you?” she asked, after a pause.
“An exile–an orphan–an outcast! I have no name! Farewell!”
“No–stay yet–the danger is not past. Wait till my servant is gone to rest; I hear him yet. Sit down–sit down. And whither would you go?”
“I know not.”
“Have you no friends?”
“Gone.”
“No home?”
“None.”
“And the police of Paris so vigilant!” cried Eugenie, wringing her hands. “What is to be done? I shall have saved you in vain–you will be discovered! Of what do they charge you? Not robbery–not–“
And she, too, stopped short, for she did not dare to breathe the black word, “Murder!”
“I know not,” said Morton, putting his hand to his forehead, “except of being friends with the only man who befriended me–and they have killed him!”
“Another time you shall tell me all.”
“Another time!” he exclaimed, eagerly–“shall I see you again?”
Eugenie blushed beneath the gaze and the voice of joy. “Yes,” she said; “yes. But I must reflect. Be calm be silent. Ah!–a happy thought!”
She sat down, wrote a hasty line, sealed, and gave it to Morton.
“Take this note, as addressed, to Madame Dufour; it will provide you with a safe lodging. She is a person I can depend on–an old servant who lived with my mother, and to whom I have given a small pension. She has a lodging–it is lately vacant–I promised to procure her a tenant–go– say nothing of what has passed. I will see her, and arrange all. Wait! –hark!–all is still. I will go first, and see that no one watches you. Stop,” (and she threw open the window, and looked into the court.) “The porter’s door is open–that is fortunate! Hurry on, and God be with you!”
In a few minutes Morton was in the streets. It was still early–the thoroughfares deserted-none of the shops yet open. The address on the note was to a street at some distance, on the other side of the Seine. He passed along the same Quai which he had trodden but a few hours since –he passed the same splendid bridge on which he had stood despairing, to quit it revived–he gained the Rue Faubourg St. Honore. A young man in a cabriolet, on whose fair cheek burned the hectic of late vigils and lavish dissipation, was rolling leisurely home from the gaming-house, at which he had been more than usually fortunate–his pockets were laden with notes and gold. He bent forwards as Morton passed him. Philip, absorbed in his reverie, perceived him not, and continued his way. The gentleman turned down one of the streets to the left, stopped, and called to the servant dozing behind his cabriolet.
“Follow that passenger! quietly–see where he lodges; be sure to find out and let me know. I shall go home with out you.” With that he drove on.
Philip, unconscious of the espionage, arrived at a small house in a quiet but respectable street, and rang the bell several times before at last he was admitted by Madame Dufour herself, in her nightcap. The old woman looked askant and alarmed at the unexpected apparition. But the note seemed at once to satisfy her. She conducted him to an apartment on the first floor, small, but neatly and even elegantly furnished, consisting of a sitting-room and a bedchamber, and said, quietly,–
“Will they suit monsieur?”
To monsieur they seemed a palace. Morton nodded assent.
“And will monsieur sleep for a short time?”
“Yes.”
“The bed is well aired. The rooms have only been vacant three days since. Can I get you anything till your luggage arrives?”
“No.”
The woman left him. He threw off his clothes–flung himself on the bed– and did not wake till noon.
When his eyes unclosed–when they rested on that calm chamber, with its air of health, and cleanliness, and comfort, it was long before he could convince himself that he was yet awake. He missed the loud, deep voice of Gawtrey–the smoke of the dead man’s meerschaum–the gloomy garret– the distained walls–the stealthy whisper of the loathed Birnie; slowly the life led and the life gone within the last twelve hours grew upon his struggling memory. He groaned, and turned uneasily round, when the door slightly opened, and he sprung up fiercely,–
“Who is there?”
“It is only I, sir,” answered Madame Dufour. “I have been in three times to see if you were stirring. There is a letter I believe for you, sir; though there is no name to it,” and she laid the letter on the chair beside him. Did it come from her–the saving angel? He seized it. The cover was blank; it was sealed with a small device, as of a ring seal. He tore it open, and found four billets de banque for 1,000 francs each, –a sum equivalent in our money to about L160.
“Who sent this, the–the lady from whom I brought the note?”
“Madame de Merville? certainly not, sir,” said Madame Dufour, who, with the privilege of age, was now unscrupulously filling the water-jugs and settling the toilette-table. “A young man called about two hours after you had gone to bed; and, describing you, inquired if you lodged here, and what your name was. I said you had just arrived, and that I did not yet know your name. So he went away, and came again half an hour afterwards with this letter, which he charged me to deliver to you safely.”
A young man–a gentleman?”
“No, sir; he seemed a smart but common sort of lad.” For the unsophisticated Madame Dufour did not discover in the plain black frock and drab gaiters of the bearer of that letter the simple livery of an English gentleman’s groom.
Whom could it come from, if not from Madame de Merville? Perhaps one of Gawtrey’s late friends. A suspicion of Arthur Beaufort crossed him, but he indignantly dismissed it. Men are seldom credulous of what they are unwilling to believe. What kindness had the Beauforts hitherto shown him?–Left his mother to perish broken-hearted–stolen from him his brother, and steeled, in that brother, the only heart wherein he had a right to look for gratitude and love! No, it must be Madame de Merville. He dismissed Madame Dufour for pen and paper–rose–wrote a letter to Eugenie–grateful, but proud, and inclosed the notes. He then summoned Madame Dufour, and sent her with his despatch.
“Ah, madame,” said the _ci-devant bonne_, when she found herself in Eugenie’s presence. “The poor lad! how handsome he is, and how shameful in the Vicomte to let him wear such clothes!”
“The Vicomte!”
“Oh, my dear mistress, you must not deny it. You told me, in your note, to ask him no questions, but I guessed at once. The Vicomte told me himself that he should have the young gentleman over in a few days. You need not be ashamed of him. You will see what a difference clothes will make in his appearance; and I have taken it on myself to order a tailor to go to him. The Vicomte–must pay me.”
“Not a word to the Vicomte as yet. We will surprise him,” said Eugenie, laughing.
Madame de Merville had been all that morning trying to invent some story to account for her interest in the lodger, and now how Fortune favoured her!
“But is that a letter for me?”
“And I had almost forgot it,” said Madame Dufour, as she extended the letter.
Whatever there had hitherto been in the circumstances connected with Morton, that had roused the interest and excited the romance of Eugenie de Merville, her fancy was yet more attracted by the tone of the letter she now read. For though Morton, more accustomed to speak than to write French, expressed himself with less precision, and a less euphuistic selection of phrase, than the authors and _elegans_ who formed her usual correspondents; there was an innate and rough nobleness–a strong and profound feeling in every line of his letter, which increased her surprise and admiration.
“All that surrounds him–all that belongs to him, is strangeness and mystery!” murmured she; and she sat down to reply.
When Madame Dufour departed with that letter, Eugenie remained silent and thoughtful for more than an hour, Morton’s letter before her; and sweet, in their indistinctness, were the recollections and the images that crowded on her mind.
Morton, satisfied by the earnest and solemn assurances of Eugenie that she was not the unknown donor of the sum she reinclosed, after puzzling himself in vain to form any new conjectures as to the quarter whence it came, felt that under his present circumstances it would be an absurd Quixotism to refuse to apply what the very Providence to whom he had anew consigned himself seemed to have sent to his aid. And it placed him, too, beyond the offer of all pecuniary assistance from one from whom he could least have brooked to receive it. He consented, therefore, to all that the loquacious tailor proposed to him. And it would have been difficult to have recognised the wild and frenzied fugitive in the stately form, with its young beauty and air of well-born pride, which the next day sat by the side of Eugenie. And that day he told his sad and troubled story, and Eugenie wept: and from that day he came daily; and two weeks–happy, dreamlike, intoxicating to both–passed by; and as their last sun set, he was kneeling at her feet, and breathing to one to whom the homage of wit, and genius, and complacent wealth had hitherto been vainly proffered, the impetuous, agitated, delicious secrets of the First Love. He spoke, and rose to depart for ever–when the look and sigh detained him.
The next day, after a sleepless night, Eugenie de Merville sent for the Vicomte de Vaudemont.
CHAPTER XIV.
“A silver river small
In sweet accents
Its music vents;
The warbling virginal
To which the merry birds do sing, Timed with stops of gold the silver string.” _Sir Richard Fanshawe_.
One evening, several weeks after the events just commemorated, a stranger, leading in his hand, a young child, entered the churchyard of H—-. The sun had not long set, and the short twilight of deepening summer reigned in the tranquil skies; you might still hear from the trees above the graves the chirp of some joyous bird;–what cared he, the denizen of the skies, for the dead that slept below?–what did he value save the greenness and repose of the spot,–to him alike the garden or the grave! As the man and the child passed, the robin, scarcely scared by their tread from the long grass beside one of the mounds, looked at them with its bright, blithe eye. It was a famous plot for the robin– the old churchyard! That domestic bird–“the friend of man,” as it has been called by the poets–found a jolly supper among the worms!
The stranger, on reaching the middle of the sacred ground, paused and looked round him wistfully. He then approached, slowly and hesitatingly, an oblong tablet, on which were graven, in letters yet fresh and new, these words:–
TO THE
MEMORY OF ONE CALUMNIATED AND WRONGED THIS BURIAL-STONE IS DEDICATED BY HER SON.
Such, with the addition of the dates of birth and death, was the tablet which Philip Morton had directed to be placed over his mother’s bones; and around it was set a simple palisade, which defended it from the tread of the children, who sometimes, in defiance of the beadle, played over the dust of the former race.
“Thy son!” muttered the stranger, while the child stood quietly by his side, pleased by the trees, the grass, the song of the birds, and reeking not of grief or death,–“thy son!–but not thy favoured son–thy darling –thy youngest born; on what spot of earth do thine eyes look down on him? Surely in heaven thy love has preserved the one whom on earth thou didst most cherish, from the sufferings and the trials that have visited the less-favoured outcast. Oh, mother–mother!–it was not his crime– not Philip’s–that he did not fulfil to the last the trust bequeathed to him! Happier, perhaps, as it is! And, oh, if thy memory be graven as deeply in my brother’s heart as my own, how often will it warn and save him! That memory!–it has been to me the angel of my life! To thee–to thee, even in death, I owe it, if, though erring, I am not criminal,–if I have lived with the lepers, and am still undefiled!” His lips then were silent–not his heart!
After a few minutes thus consumed he turned to the child, and said, gently and in a tremulous voice, “Fanny, you have been taught to pray– you will live near this spot,–will you come sometimes here and pray that you may grow up good and innocent, and become a blessing to those who love you?”
“Will papa ever come to hear me pray?”
That sad and unconscious question went to the heart of Morton. The child could not comprehend death. He had sought to explain it, but she had been accustomed to consider her protector dead when he was absent from her, and she still insisted that he must come again to life. And that man of turbulence and crime, who had passed unrepentant, unabsolved, from sin to judgment: it was an awful question, “If he should hear her pray?”
“Yes!” said he, after a pause,–“yes, Fanny, there is a Father who will hear you pray; and pray to Him to be merciful to those who have been kind to you. Fanny, you and I may never meet again!”
“Are you going to die too? _Mechant_, every one dies to Fanny!” and, clinging to him endearingly, she put up her lips to kiss him. He took her in his arms: and, as a tear fell upon her rosy cheek, she said, “Don’t cry, brother, for I love you.”
“Do you, dear Fanny? Then, for my sake, when you come to this place, if any one will give you a few flowers, scatter them on that stone. And now we will go to one whom you must love also, and to whom, as I have told you, _he_ sends you; he who–Come!”
As he thus spoke, and placed Fanny again on the ground, he was startled to see: precisely on the spot where he had seen before the like apparition–on the same spot where the father had cursed the son, the motionless form of an old man. Morton recognised, as if by an instinct rather than by an effort of the memory, the person to whom he was bound.
He walked slowly towards him; but Fanny abruptly left his side, lured by a moth that flitted duskily over the graves.
“Your name, sir, I think, is Simon Gawtrey?” said Morton. “I have came to England in quest of you.”
“Of me?” said the old man, half rising, and his eyes, now completely blind, rolled vacantly over Morton’s person–“Of me?–for what?–Who are you?–I don’t know your voice!”
“I come to you from your son!”
“My son!” exclaimed the old man, with great vehemence,–“the reprobate!– the dishonoured!–the infamous!–the accursed–“
“Hush! you revile the dead!”
“Dead!” muttered the wretched father, tottering back to the seat he had quitted,–“dead!” and the sound of his voice was so full of anguish, that the dog at his feet, which Morton had not hitherto perceived, echoed it with a dismal cry, that recalled to Philip the awful day in which he had seen the son quit the father for the last time on earth.
The sound brought Fanny to the spot; and, with a laugh of delight, which made to it a strange contrast, she threw herself on the grass beside the dog and sought to entice it to play. So there, in that place of death, were knit together the four links in the Great Chain;–lusty and blooming life–desolate and doting age–infancy, yet scarce conscious of a soul– and the dumb brute, that has no warrant of a Hereafter!
“Dead!–dead!” repeated the old man, covering his sightless balls with his withered hands. “Poor William!”
“He remembered you to the last. He bade me seek you out–he bade me replace the guilty son with a thing pure and innocent, as he had been had he died in his cradle–a child to comfort your old age! Kneel, Fanny, I have found you a father who will cherish you–(oh! you will, sir, will you not?)–as he whom you may see no more!”
There was something in Morton’s voice so solemn, that it awed and touched both the old man and the infant; and Fanny, creeping to the protector thus assigned to her, and putting her little hands confidingly on his knees, said–
“Fanny will love you if papa wished it. Kiss Fanny.”
“Is it his child–his?” said the blind man, sobbing. “Come to my heart; here–here! O God, forgive me!” Morton did not think it right at that moment to undeceive him with regard to the poor child’s true connexion with the deceased: and he waited in silence till Simon, after a burst of passionate grief and tenderness, rose, and still clasping the child to his breast, said–
“Sir, forgive me!–I am a very weak old man–I have many thanks to give– I have much, too, to learn. My poor son! he did not die in want,–did he?”
The particulars of Gawtrey’s fate, with his real name and the various aliases he had assumed, had appeared in the French journals, had been partially copied into the English; and Morton had expected to have been saved the painful narrative of that fearful death; but the utter seclusion of the old man, his infirmity, and his estranged habits, had shut him out from the intelligence that it now devolved on Philip to communicate. Morton hesitated a little before he answered:
“It is late now; you are not yet prepared to receive this poor infant at your home, nor to hear the details I have to state. I arrived in England but to-day. I shall lodge in the neighbourhood, for it is dear to me. If I may feel sure, then, that you will receive and treasure this sacred and last deposit bequeathed to you by your unhappy son, I will bring my charge to you to-morrow, and we will then, more calmly than we can now, talk over the past.”
“You do not answer my question,” said Simon, passionately; “answer that, and I will wait for the rest. They call me a miser! Did I send out my only child to starve? Answer that!”
“Be comforted. He did not die in want; and he has even left some little fortune for Fanny, which I was to place in your hands.”
“And he thought to bribe the old miser to be human! Well–well–well–I will go home.”
“Lean on me!”
The dog leapt playfully on his master as the latter rose, and Fanny slid from Simon’s arms to caress and talk to the animal in her own way. As they slowly passed through the churchyard Simon muttered incoherently to himself for several paces, and Morton would not disturb, since he could not comfort, him.
At last he said abruptly, “Did my son repent?”
“I hoped,” answered Morton, evasively, “that, had his life been spared, he would have amended!”
“Tush, sir!–I am past seventy; we repent!–we never amend!” And Simon again sunk into his own dim and disconnected reveries.
At length they arrived at the blind man’s house. The door was opened to them by an old woman of disagreeable and sinister aspect, dressed out much too gaily for the station of a servant, though such was her reputed capacity; but the miser’s affliction saved her from the chance of his comment on her extravagance. As she stood in the doorway with a candle in her hand, she scanned curiously, and with no welcoming eye, her master’s companions.
“Mrs. Boxer, my son is dead!” said Simon, in a hollow voice.
“And a good thing it is, then, sir!”
“For shame, woman!” said Morton, indignantly. “Hey-dey! sir! whom have we got here?”
“One,” said Simon, sternly, “whom you will treat with respect. He brings me a blessing to lighten my loss. One harsh word to this child, and you quit my house!”
The woman looked perfectly thunderstruck; but, recovering herself, she said, whiningly–
“I! a harsh word to anything my dear, kind master cares for. And, Lord, what a sweet pretty creature it is! Come here, my dear!”
But Fanny shrunk back, and would not let go Philip’s hand.
“To-morrow, then,” said Morton; and he was turning away, when a sudden thought seemed to cross the old man,–
“Stay, sir–stay! I–I–did my son say I was rich? I am very, very poor–nothing in the house, or I should have been robbed long ago!”
“Your son told me to bring money, not to ask for it!”
“Ask for it! No; but,” added the old man, and a gleam of cunning intelligence shot over his face,–“but he had got into a bad set. Ask!– No!–Put up the door-chain, Mrs. Boxer!”
It was with doubt and misgivings that Morton, the next day, consigned the child, who had already nestled herself into the warmest core of his heart, to the care of Simon. Nothing short of that superstitious respect, which all men owe to the wishes of the dead, would have made him select for her that asylum; for Fate had now, in brightening his own prospects, given him an alternative in the benevolence of Madame de Merville. But Gawtrey had been so earnest on the subject, that he felt as if he had no right to hesitate. And was it not a sort of atonement to any faults the son might have committed against the parent, to place by the old man’s hearth so sweet a charge?
The strange and peculiar mind and character of Fanny made him, however, yet more anxious than otherwise he might have been. She certainly deserved not the harsh name of imbecile or idiot, but she was different from all other children; she felt more acutely than most of her age, but she could not be taught to reason. There was something either oblique or deficient in her intellect, which justified the most melancholy apprehensions; yet often, when some disordered, incoherent, inexplicable train of ideas most saddened the listener, it would be followed by fancies so exquisite in their strangeness, or feelings so endearing in their tenderness, that suddenly she seemed as much above, as before she seemed below, the ordinary measure of infant comprehension. She was like a creature to which Nature, in some cruel but bright caprice, has given all that belongs to poetry, but denied all that belongs to the common understanding necessary to mankind; or, as a fairy changeling, not, indeed, according to the vulgar superstition, malignant and deformed, but lovelier than the children of men, and haunted by dim and struggling associations of a gentler and fairer being, yet wholly incapable to learn the dry and hard elements which make up the knowledge of actual life.
Morton, as well as he could, sought to explain to Simon the peculiarities in Fanny’s mental constitution. He urged on him the necessity of providing for her careful instruction, and Simon promised to send her to the best school the neighbourhood could afford; but, as the old man spoke, he dwelt so much on the supposed fact that Fanny was William’s daughter, and with his remorse, or affection, there ran so interwoven a thread of selfishness and avarice, that Morton thought it would be dangerous to his interest in the child to undeceive his error. He, therefore,–perhaps excusably enough–remained silent on that subject.
Gawtrey had placed with the superior of the convent, together with an order to give up the child to any one who should demand her in his true name, which he confided to the superior, a sum of nearly L300., which he solemnly swore had been honestly obtained, and which, in all his shifts and adversities, he had never allowed himself to touch. This sum, with the trifling deduction made for arrears due to the convent, Morton now placed in Simon’s hands. The old man clutched the money, which was for the most in French gold, with a convulsive gripe: and then, as if ashamed of the impulse, said–
“But you, sir–will any sum–that is, any reasonable sum–be of use to you?”
“No! and if it were, it is neither yours nor mine–it is hers. Save it for her, and add to it what you can.”
While this conversation took place, Fanny had been consigned to the care of Mrs. Boxer, and Philip now rose to see and bid her farewell before he departed.
“I may come again to visit you, Mr. Gawtrey; and I pray Heaven to find that you and Fanny have been a mutual blessing to each other. Oh, remember how your son loved her!”
“He had a good heart, in spite of all his sins. Poor William!” said Simon.
Philip Morton heard, and his lip curled with a sad and a just disdain.
If when, at the age of nineteen, William Gawtrey had quitted his father’s roof, the father had then remembered that the son’s heart was good,–the son had been alive still, an honest and a happy man. Do ye not laugh, O ye all-listening Fiends! when men praise those dead whose virtues they discovered not when alive? It takes much marble to build the sepulchre– how little of lath and plaster would have repaired the garret!
On turning into a small room adjoining the parlour in which Gawtrey sat, Morton found Fanny standing gloomily by a dull, soot-grimed window, which looked out on the dead walls of a small yard. Mrs. Boxer, seated by a table, was employed in trimming a cap, and putting questions to Fanny in that falsetto voice of endearment in which people not used to children are apt to address them.
“And so, my dear, they’ve never taught you to read or write? You’ve been sadly neglected, poor thing!”
“We must do our best to supply the deficiency,” said Morton, as he entered.
“Bless me, sir, is that you?” and the gouvernante bustled up and dropped a low courtesy; for Morton, dressed then in the garb of a gentleman, was of a mien and person calculated to strike the gaze of the vulgar.
“Ah, brother!” cried Fanny, for by that name he had taught her to call him; and she flew to his side. “Come away–it’s ugly there–it makes me cold.”
“My child, I told you you must stay; but I shall hope to see you again some day. Will you not be kind to this poor creature, ma’am? Forgive me, if I offended you last night, and favour me by accepting this, to show that we are friends.” As he spoke, he slid his purse into the woman’s hand. “I shall feel ever grateful for whatever you can do for Fanny.”
“Fanny wants nothing from any one else; Fanny wants her brother.”
“Sweet child! I fear she don’t take to me. Will you like me, Miss Fanny?”
“No! get along!”
“Fie, Fanny–you remember you did not take to me at first. But she is so affectionate, ma’am; she never forgets a kindness.”
“I will do all I can to please her, sir. And so she is really master’s grandchild?” The woman fixed her eyes, as she spoke, so intently on Morton, that he felt embarrassed, and busied himself, without answering, in caressing and soothing Fanny, who now seemed to awake to the affliction about to visit her; for though she did not weep–she very rarely wept–her slight frame trembled–her eyes closed–her cheeks, even her lips, were white–and her delicate hands were clasped tightly round the neck of the one about to abandon her to strange breasts.
Morton was greatly moved. “One kiss, Fanny! and do not forget me when we meet again.”
The child pressed her lips to his cheek, but the lips were cold. He put her down gently; she stood mute and passive.
“Remember that he wished me to leave you here,” whispered Morton, using an argument that never failed. “We must obey him; and so-God bless you, Fanny!”
He rose and retreated to the door; the child unclosed her eyes, and gazed at him with a strained, painful, imploring gaze; her lips moved, but she did not speak. Morton could not bear that silent woe. He sought to smile on her consolingly; but the smile would not come. He closed the door, and hurried from the house.
From that day Fanny settled into a kind of dreary, inanimate stupor, which resembled that of the somnambulist whom the magnetiser forgets to waken. Hitherto, with all the eccentricities or deficiencies of her mind, had mingled a wild and airy gaiety. That was vanished. She spoke little–she never played–no toys could lure her–even the poor dog failed to win her notice. If she was told to do anything she stared vacantly and stirred not. She evinced, however, a kind of dumb regard to the old blind man; she would creep to his knees and sit there for hours, seldom answering when he addressed her, but uneasy, anxious, and restless, if he left her.
“Will you die too?” she asked once; the old man understood her not, and she did not try to explain. Early one morning, some days after Morton was gone, they missed her: she was not in the house, nor the dull yard where she was sometimes dismissed and told to play–told in vain. In great alarm the old man accused Mrs. Boxer of having spirited her away, and threatened and stormed so loudly that the woman, against her will, went forth to the search. At last she found the child in the churchyard, standing wistfully beside a tomb.
“What do you here, you little plague?” said Mrs. Boxer, rudely seizing her by the arm.
“This is the way they will both come back some day! I dreamt so!”
“If ever I catch you here again!” said the housekeeper, and, wiping her brow with one hand, she struck the child with the other. Fanny had never been struck before. She recoiled in terror and amazement, and, for the first time since her arrival, burst into tears.
“Come–come, no crying! and if you tell master I’ll beat you within an inch of your life!” So saying, she caught Fanny in her arms, and, walking about, scolding and menacing, till she had frightened back the child’s tears, she returned triumphantly to the house, and bursting into the parlour, exclaimed, “Here’s the little darling, sir!”
When old Simon learned where the child had been found he was glad; for it was his constant habit, whenever the evening was fine, to glide out to that churchyard–his dog his guide–and sit on his one favourite spot opposite the setting sun. This, not so much for the sanctity of the place, or the meditations it might inspire, as because it was the nearest, the safest, and the loneliest spot in the neighbourhood of his home, where the blind man could inhale the air and bask in the light of heaven. Hitherto, thinking it sad for the child, he had never taken her with him; indeed, at the hour of his monotonous excursion she had generally been banished to bed. Now she was permitted to accompany him; and the old man and the infant would sit there side by side, as Age and Infancy rested side by side in the graves below. The first symptom of childlike interest and curiosity that Fanny betrayed was awakened by the affliction of her protector. One evening, as they thus sat, she made him explain what the desolation of blindness is. She seemed to comprehend him, though he did not seek to adapt his complaints to her understanding.
“Fanny knows,” said she, touchingly; “for she, too, is blind here;” and she pressed her hands to her temples. Notwithstanding her silence and strange ways, and although he could not see the exquisite loveliness which Nature, as in remorseful pity, had lavished on her outward form, Simon soon learned to love her better than he had ever loved yet: for they most cold to the child are often dotards to the grandchild. For her even his avarice slept. Dainties, never before known at his sparing board, were ordered to tempt her appetite, toy-shops ransacked to amuse her indolence. He was long, however, before he could prevail on himself to fulfil his promise to Morton, and rob himself of her presence. At length, however, wearied with Mrs. Boxer’s lamentations at her ignorance, and alarmed himself at some evidences of helplessness, which made him dread to think what her future might be when left alone in life, he placed her at a day-school in the suburb. Here Fanny, for a considerable time, justified the harshest assertions of her stupidity. She could not even keep her eyes two minutes together on the page from which she was to learn the mysteries of reading; months passed before she mastered the alphabet, and, a month after, she had again forgot it, and the labour was renewed. The only thing in which she showed ability, if so it might be called, was in the use of the needle. The sisters of the convent had already taught her many pretty devices in this art; and when she found that at the school they were admired–that she was praised instead of