Molly Bramblewas, and had always been, within the pale of her social limitations, a perfectly good girl, sweet, modest and wholesome. Child of a class rather prone, in its maternal admonitions, to awaken a precocious curiosity as to the signs and indications which distinguish the bad male fruit from the good, to put its virgins on their guard against suggestion by suggesting, she was even a little remarkable for her artless pudency. As maid and milkmaid she had invited no offence, guarded her bosom from so little as a sun-ray’s wanton kissing, cherished her sweet honour, jealously but simply, within the bounds her state prescribed.
But she had had no arts to negotiate it beyond these, and, when the ordeal came, and she heard it called a lovely superstition by lips adorable in seduction, her innocence must yield it, for the archaism it was pronounced, to that bright masterful intelligence.
It had all dated, alas! from a village wedding—or alas or not alas—she had never thought to giveita sigh till now. Zephyr the god, coming over the hill, had taken Chloris unawares amongst her flowers; and the way of a god was not woman’s guilt, but joy. Shame could not come to blossom from that divine condescension. For its sake, she had even stiffened to something of a precisian in questions of maidenly decorum.
And now? The sigh, wafted from that distant scene, had overtaken her at last. Those weddings, those weddings! Chaste procurers to the unchaste. How men took advantage—of their feasts and dancings, of beating pulses and warm proximities, of the sense of neighbouring consummations—to plead the dispensations of the hour! Recalling that plea, her god seemed all at once to reveal himself a mortal thing, and subject to the mortal laws of change. She felt no longer secure in him through her own unchanging faith. Her faith was shaken.
The glory of the morning fields; blown blue skies and the squirt of milk into pails; the cosy sweetness of ricks; pigeons, and the click of pattens on dewy tiles; a voice singing, far away in the sunny window of a dairy,
“All the tears Saint Swithin can cry,Saint Bartlemey’s mantle shall wipe ’em dry”—
“All the tears Saint Swithin can cry,Saint Bartlemey’s mantle shall wipe ’em dry”—
“All the tears Saint Swithin can cry,
Saint Bartlemey’s mantle shall wipe ’em dry”—
such memories had but figured hitherto for the dim background, sweet and a little pathetic, to a more poignant pastoral. Now, all of a sudden, they were the commanding poignancy, infinitely haunting, infinitely remote, and for ever and ever, as realities, irrecoverable. Was all St Bartlemey’s mantle equal to drying the well of tears which she felt gathering in her soul? The darkness of a great apprehension was on her—a spectre, formless but menacing, in the thrall of whose shadow she saw herself separated by a lifeless dumb abyss from her living past. How had she crossed it unknowing, that deadly gulf? There had seemed to her no break in the continuity of past and present; until, lo! in an instant her eyes had been opened, and she knew herself for a derelict in a desert, crying to a fading mirage.
What had happened, so to blind her eyes, obliterate space, cancel all time? A consciousness of guilt, the very first, stole in to answer. Love, whom she had scorned, had betrayed her—had led her on, revenging that slight, to the very threshold of a brothel, and there abandoned her.
And hisprotégé, for whom he had done this thing? A chawbacon gallant, the very antipodes of the other—but then Love was born in Arcady, and favours a rustic wooer. Poor Reuben’s homely image rose before her—heroic hobnails, sentiment in a smock, but honest and clear-seeing within the limits of his vision. Reuben hadseen, and dared to expostulate—and been smartly caned by Cartouche for his presumption. And Reuben had blubbered—that was fatal. A crying man is always contemptible. Yet in what other way, their relative ranks considered, could he have answered to those flips of Fate? Privilege, in these days, kept the stocks and gallows up its sleeve for the correcting of any such ebullitions on the part of a mutinous commonalty. The odds were disproportionate, and Reuben could only express his sense of that in tears.
Poor Reuben! what had become of him? Cured his harrowed heart, belike, with dressing of Joan or Betty. She wished she knew—could reclaim herself to the past with even that much of certain knowledge, and comfort. How he must hate her memory! She felt very deserted and forlorn.
And all about what? Ask love, when in its nerves it feels the first faint false harmonic jar within a perfect song; forehears the strife of notes which that one cracked seed of discord must come to germinate. Sure ear; sure prophecy; sure sorrow. The sound of M. Saint-Péray’s first footfall on her threshold had been that fatal dissonance to Molly. Somehow, by some sad and mystic intuition, she had felt her hymn of happy days a broken sequence from that moment.
Now, left alone with him, the unconscious ruiner of her peace, she felt she could have endured better to nurse a declared enemy than this nerveless, ballastless ally and patient, whose very infirmity of purpose was her bane. Realising the poor emotional thing he was, how weak in self-control, she could have loathed her task enough without this sudden embargo laid on her prescribed methods. No longer to reassure his indecision—rather to confirm it? Why, that very task of comforting his faint spirit, bidding it on to hope, had been her own one reassurance in a world of doubts! And now—?
O, heart! O, heart! What did this change of policy portend? What had happened to make it so imperative all at once? She could think of no answer but one; and that way madness lay.
Ah! her lord, her gentleman! She knew him well enough to know she knew him not at all. His passions were—had been—for her: his confidences were always for himself alone. Blind obedience was what he had exacted of her, and with blinded eyes she had let him lead her, even across that abyss. She would never learn from him. He loved in parables.
O! Why had this stranger ever come between them, with his sighs and moans and irresolution? It was that same irresolution which was the crux of all. What woman could tolerate a diffident lover—and in the face of a masterful one! She, for her part, would grant how alluring by contrast must appear this puissant rival, Cartouche, her own pretty gentleman—if rival he were. Her whole soul rose aghast to combat the thought; yet, if he were not so indeed, what was his interest in ousting this other from the lists?
“The end we designed has become impossible. They cannot ever marry now.She’s not for him.They must be kept apart at any price.”
These positive admonitions scorched her brain: day and night, sleeping and waking they beat fiercely through it. What had M. Saint-Péray done to forfeit his right? Wassheto serve as catspaw to those others’ loves, and lay a troublesome rival? A treachery beyond conceiving. “If he’s weak, be strong for him. He’ll thank you some day.” Thank her?herthe reward, perhaps, to irresolution for a claim foregone! Had Gaston heard of that scene between them, and chosen, for his own ends, to construe it into infidelity to himself? She could not believe him so credulous or so base, nor fortune so inhuman.
But her poor mad mind dwelt upon the monstrous thought—wrought itself into a frenzy over it—piled fuel on its fuel, in and out of reason. What if it were justified? No disobedience could be too great to counter such a crime! She had been good, good, good—good, and faithful, and self-obliterating—how utterly she herself had never realised, until these visions of her past had risen to renounce her. What had she not sacrificed for him—home—honour—that dear untroubled land of innocence! had made herself an outcast for his sake. And so to be dealt the fate of the heartless, self-qualified wanton! “O, mammy! mammy!” she wept again, rocking and moaning.
But a fiercer thought rose to dry her tears. This other—this woman—this white witch who had come between her love and her! She had not forgotten a word of his description—no, nor the unspoken words, that eloquence of silence which fills the gaps of speech. Eyes will betray what tongue conceals. She’d seen his look beyond her at some vision; she—
O, how she hated her, hated her! A lily? Well, there were lilies and lilies. The scent of some grew rank at close quarters. Sweet and pure of heart? Sweet candour, indeed, to own oneself an apostate from the faith one’s heart had sworn to—and for a fortune’s sake! Scruples, forsooth? They were the opportunity of the unscrupulous. She’d betrayed her love once: why not a second time?
Love’s an elemental passion in poor Mollindas—nofinesse, no pose, no self-consciousness about it. They come from near the soil, and follow Nature’s instincts. A mate’s a mate to them; their season is a lifetime. There’s no cuckold in Nature, nor any room for one. Once pledged, the dear doe animal but knows her lord, and holds herself meekly at his pleasure. He may be polygamous; she is never polyandrous: to conceive his condoning, even encouraging, such an offence in her would be monstrous.
Cartouche was no Joseph to his poor Thais. She did not expect him to be. She expected only his recognition of her eternal bond to him. The thought, justified or not, that he was seeking to repudiate his sole title to her, smote her like a madness. The thing was abnormal, horrible, beyond reason. Yet it struck and bit into her brain. Out of it, its torture and its haunting, this meek and pretty song-bird threatened to grow a harpy.
Louis-Marie, lying exhausted on his bed, like one lately released from some rending possession by devils—accepting with shamefaced gratitude the gentle ministrations of his nurse—never guessed how mechanic had grown the touch which soothed his pillows; what bitter scorn of him was expressed in the averted glances of those Saxon blue eyes. For indeed Molly could hardly look at him with safety to her patient reason.Thisthe thing destined to her love’s succession! She felt like one, fairy-struck, who has gone to sleep under a hay-cock, and wakes to find herself in a strange place, the sport of goblin company. Where had her lines fallen! she thought amazed, the sleep, as it were, yet in her eyes—among what poor counterfeits of manhood? Her lines? She had no lines. There was the woeful thing—the lack of the talisman, wilfully foregone, which would have rendered these wiles innocuous.
Reuben had howled when whipped, like a too-forward hound lashed to heel—a natural cry of pain. But his boldness it was that had brought him his chastisement. He would have been at the throat of his mistress’s enemy; and his grief had been that his mistress disowned him. Had she once given his stubborn constancy (a pathetic quality she was now for the first time appreciating at its value) the right to protect her, she believed fully he would have answered, hard and ugly, in confidence of the law, the outrage tohishonour. His tears? Tears shed by an honest lad, helpless and writhing under the heel of tyranny triumphant. What pure water they had been compared with the hysteric weepings of this saintly milksop—of these amateur heroics—of this tragedy, to her protestant mind, of a deposed churchwarden!
And so her thoughts recoiled as if from a sudden adder. What was Reuben to her, any more than was this other—a dull, thick-witted clown? To resent his just whipping? Strike back? Hurt her dear lord? “O, Cherry, Cherry! I never meant it!Himto presume and dare! You were merciful not to kill him.”
Ah! her own love—her dark young tyrant. “Come back to me, Cherry! Give up the bad white witch! My heart is bursting in its wild great longing!”
Yet, while she hated to look on Louis-Marie, one aspect of him could not but hold her curious observation. “He’s better: I think he will recover.” Those had been her master’s words. Recover? from this death-blow to his hopes? Take on new lease of life from the withdrawal of what had served for that life’s one frail support? Yet, it appeared, Cartouche had judged aright. The invalid grew better from that day—more calm, more self-possessed; had ceased to chafe and writhe. What did it mean, if not again that she was offered, the potential salve to a damaged conscience?
A hectic convalescence only, could she but have known it. The wound was there, and angry; only the festering fragment, which had made its intolerable fret, had been withdrawn. Ease had come with confession, and hope from the strong scornful self-assurance of the confessor. It was the interval marking the sevenfold rally of the exorcised demon; but, while it obtained, Louis-Marie knew almost the exaltation of a saint uplifted by a consciousness of heroic self-sacrifice.
Yet pallid throes would take him in the night. Gaston was fearless, Gaston was bold-seeing; but was Gaston quite the man to resolve nice ethical problems? Would Yolande (lost to him: he told himself so, lingering on guilty dreams of her) accept the ruling of such a spiritual director?
The thought was father of many—a week-knee’d generation. He would never dare to put her to that test—not for his own sake; not for hers. For her sake, indeed, to keep sacred her mind’s peace, he would be content for ever to bear his burden solitary. An idle resolve, since she was lost to him. Lost, of course—but what if God should hold that self-conscious burden atonement enough? Superfluous macerations were not holy, but distasteful to heaven. Was it not his duty, rather, to give himself to restore her faith in heaven’s dispensations? Likely enough she had come to think herself unworthy of him—of him, Louis, who had stood for her belief in Providence. Did he not owe it to her, to God, at the cost of whatever self-renunciation, to reassure her in the ways of faith? Her faith might decline on heterodoxy otherwise.
He had so relieved his own conscience, with the shifting of its burden into that stronger grasp, as almost to have lured himself into the belief that not he, but Gaston, was the one responsible to its past. It needed however but the rematerialising of a certain spectre, grown hazy for a little in that charmed atmosphere of casuistry, to bring about in him a sharp and instant relapse.
One day he was sitting in his room, listening, with shut eyes and drowsy relish, to the voice of one of the two littlecameristaswho comprised the signorina’sménage, and who would delight to come and read to him when invited. These were quite excellent little abigails, decorous as Molly could wish; with a taste for the lives of the Saints (male, if possible), and a devotion, of course, for Louis-Marie. He was always a lovely sentiment to such, with his angelic colouring, his piety, his gentle courtesy of manner towards the least of his inferiors. Each of these (pinks of morality within the recognised Italian conventions) adored him, and was never so happy as when bidden up to amuse her paragon with passages from his favourite anecdotes of the Saints.
And thus read Fiorentina, in her shrewd small chaunt:—
“St Pol de Leon took a fancy to travel, and walked over the sea one fine morning to the Isle of Batz. The governor of which, one de Guythure, greatly coveting a silver Mass bell belonging to the King of England, St Pol commandeth a fish of the sea to swallow and bring it thence to him. Which the fish hasting to accomplish, the bell itself on its arrival is found gifted with a miraculous power to heal, even in some cases more potent than the Saint’s own. Whereby St Pol is shown to be of less account than a little silver bell. And thereat he boweth himself to God’s rebuke, witnessing how that sanctity, no less than worldliness, shall be caused by Him to over-reach itself in any unjust employment of its privileges.”
She stopped—the book dropped into her lap—“Monsignore!” she whispered, appalled.
The invalid was leaning forward, his face livid, his hands grasping the arms of his chair. In the silence which ensued, a voice, a step in the room below, made themselves distinctly audible.
“Bonito!” he gasped; and fell back as if dying.
She flew to him, raised his head, petted and consoled him, feeling the ecstasy of her opportunity.
“There, weep with me, sweet saint!” she said; and indeed, in a little, his tears were mingling themselves with hers. Even this homely heart could compel his soft response. She thought the story was to blame.
“There, there!” she said, as if to a child; “if it has made a mistake in anything, God will forgive it.”
But he could hear nothing else than the voice beneath his feet. Inarticulate as it reached him, its tones, slow whispering on his brain, seemed measuring out its madness tap by tap.
Bon—ito!—It—was—Bon—ito—come—at—last!
Bon—ito!—It—was—Bon—ito—come—at—last!
Bon—ito!—It—was—Bon—ito—come—at—last!
It was Bonito, true enough; yet, for all the purposes of intrigue, not quite the crude diplomatist a guilty conscience pictured him. He had come, in fact, to condole the English signorina on her threatened estate—come, it seemed, like a suitor, with an offer in his hand, and a flower in his rusty buttonhole. His shoes were tied; his looks commiserating and sympathetic as he could transform them. He was to play a deep part, this old ape of mystics; and Molly was his destined catspaw. Descending from that scene above, we find him already well launched upon his course.
He sits, watchful and guarded. She stands before him, one hand to her storming breast, the other leaned for support upon a chair-back.
“Say it again,” she whispered. “Perhaps I didn’t hear aright.”
Bonito licked his lips.
“He’s a suitor for her hand.”
She started, as if stung.
“But not an accepted one?”
He rubbed his gritty chin thoughtfully.
“They say he was rebuffed. What then? You women will claim that privilege—once or twice. Persistence, by report, will always carry ye. Perhaps you know. He’s a forceful suitor. You’d do well, by my advice, to forestall the inevitable—drop the old shadow for the new substance.”
She did not answer. He affected to draw encouragement from her silence.
“Think what it may mean to you, if you refuse. A second lease of protection is not like the first. Disillusioned faith’s a half-hearted mistress. Your term will be short—and again will be shorter—until—”
“You damned old dog!”
She made as if to strike him. He sat quite unmoved.
“A prophet in one’s own country,” he said coolly: “I daresay you’ve heard the adage. You’d reject the unpalatable—keep respectable in spite of me. Try it, that’s all—cast upon the mercies of Turin, good Lord! And what do I offer you in place? To be my confederate in divination—chaste Sybilline—sacred through your calling—we’d make a fortune between us in a year.”
She hardly seemed to hear, muttering:—
“Can it be true she’s so heartless—so forgetful—and him sickening to the death for her!”
He pricked alert.
“Him? Who?” he asked low, as if responding to a confidence.
“Who?” she repeated, staring before her—“why, him upstairs—Saint-Péray.”
He rose to his feet suddenly; seized her wrist. Her eyes fastened on him; but he knew his mastery.
“You fool!” he said. “Why don’t you go and tell her so—tell her that he lies here, in the house of Cartouche’s mistress, dying for love of her? Why, if I’d known—the man who lent me money in a crisis—I’d die to serve him. And that other—a dog to treat you so! I’ve no love for him—I own it—and here’s a score paid off. Go at once—while the old glamour lasts—before he’s time to return and urge his suit. You’ll find her in her house in the Zecca—Di Rocco’s. I’ll—”
She threw him off violently. He pretended a furious anger—snatched up his hat—made for the door.
“Rot in your folly!” he roared. “I’ve said my last to you!” and so raged away—confident of the fruit the seed he’d sown should come to bear.
The dusk was falling. In the shadowy room the girl lay flung, face downwards on a chair. To her, palpitating, sobbing, wringing her plump hands, entered Fiorentina.
“O, mistress! What have happened? What have he done to ye? And him upstairs, ever since he heard his voice, crying on ‘Yolande! Yolande!’ to come and save him from a great spider that have got him in its web.”
The other came to her feet, gasping, driving back the tumbled hair from her temples.
“Tell him,” she said, “that if she’s human, he shall have her. Tell him that I’m going this moment to fetch her to him.”
She broke off, catching her breath into a whisper:—
“No, tell him nothing. I’ll bring my own message.”
Ifthe Chevalier de France was destined a second time to suffer humiliation through his daughter’s perversity, that daughter herself was spared the social ostracism which would surely have overtaken one less admired in the shadow of the King’s displeasure. The out-of-favour minister, despoiled of his official nimbus, had to borrow what satisfaction he could from the collateral distinction conferred upon him through his relationship with so exquisite andpreciousa creature. That was a very bitter mortification to so arrogant a man; though, to be sure, his exaltation in the first instance had hardly owed itself to his personal merits—a fact which he had no excuse but an impenetrable vanity for overlooking. For the bestowal of the portfolio, it had been plainly intimated to him, was conditional on his leaving his majesty a perfectly free hand to dispose of that of the Marchesa; nor had he been ignorant, even at the first, of the name and reputation of the royal nominee.
But his pride was the haughtiest of casuists in all matters touching itself. The end it sought—that is to say the re-investiture of de France, the ancient house, in its former power and possessions—must be held not only to justify, but to glorify, the meanest means to it. Any step, if in that direction, was a step sanctified of its purpose to him, though to take it, he must tread on the mouth of human nature. “Evil, be thou my good!” might have stood for his motto.
And now, to owe what respect it remained to him to command to the affluent graces of the child whose mutinous conduct had deposed him from the leading position! It was intolerable—it was monstrous. His sense of personal wrong stung him to a protest, which, if he could but have comprehended, was the very worst he could have made in his own interests. But vanity is blind.
And that same rebellious child—child, indeed, in her young body’s immaturity, in her tragic innocence, in the sweet flower of her face, whose blossoming conveyed such dreams of fruitage—woman, only, in the independence which her heart had wrung from sorrow—what had been her sin? Why, that she had persisted in holding honour something higher than its vestments.
And so de France was tolerated, his fall condoned, for Yolande’s sake. She was the hallowed toast of Turin in these days—its nymph-angel—passe-rose—its Dorothea, symbolising paradise in her cheeks. Who would not be a recusant advocate to win one flower from that nosegay of pinks? The story was about. She had refused to sacrifice to the heathen gods, and the King had decreed therefore her social racking. The King! A King of powder and patches. Perish his decrees! Perish also our dear Cartouche, to a babble of lampoons and pasquinades! The pretty mongrel had done sensibly to put his tail between his legs and run away.
Then were withers wrung, heads broken, duels fought about Golden Danae in these weeks of her brief reign. She knew nothing of it all, thanks to her sad self-absorption as much as to her innocence. Torn by women’s tongues, wounded by gallants’ swords, her reputation gave her no concern save for the wounds herself had caused it. She had no faith, could never have, but one. And she had abused it. Her state, her wealth, her very fairness, poor trappings of her shame—she wore them all as a sinner wears the outward garb of penitence. Sheet and candle they were to her, for token of her public penance. To her the whispering inquisition of the crowds she moved amidst were articulate in nothing but rebuke. Its notes of admiration and of compliment were addressed to deaf ears. She looked kind looks from inward-dreaming eyes; spoke gentle mechanic words of kindness out of a constant instinct; but her sweet body was always like a lonely haunted tenement, shut to the world. Its spirit dwelt for ever away, in a place of solemn crags and shadows.
Waiting, waiting—and for what? That was the tragedy of it all—the hopeless hungering for the fruition of a thing unfructified. When she died, surely this poor ghost of her would become a tradition of the Montverd—a shadow on a rock, a darkness that no sun could dissipate, listening, listening always for the footfall that never came.
“How beautiful are the feet of the peace-givers!” O, Louis, Louis! if thou couldst only be heard coming up the hill to comfort this torn heart with a word of forgiveness! His face rose for ever before her, holy, righteous, denunciatory. Too pure and pious a thing he to presume on God’s prerogatives, or not to hold himself from contact with this sin by whom his faith had been contaminated. A dreadful thought—of all wild thoughts the most despairing; that maybe she had darkened this same faith in him; driven him to take the name of God in vain. If only he would deign one word to reassure her as to that! She could be content thereafter, she thought, to go down into loveless oblivion. Unworthy of him; thrice unworthy in that her mutinous heart had once conceived a dream of him grown masterful out of wrong. That would not have been her Louis, whose ways were always strong in meekness. So waiting—always fruitlessly waiting in spirit on the Montverd, her eyes would seek the unconquered peaks, her ears address themselves to the eternal silence of the valleys—listening for the footstep. It could never, never sound—and yet she listened. That was to be her punishment—endless listening; until, perhaps, she faded into the ghost of dead love’s echo.
Yet moments of passion, when the human nature in her rebelled against the intolerable cruelty of it all, were not unknown to her. Then she would dare to think of him as something other than a saint—her chosen, her dear heart’s lord, whom wicked sophistries had cast from his right part of fulfilling the woman in her. Then she would cry to herself that she was virgin still—in all but her desecration by a foul convention; was even a thing could be held worshipful by scruples less exacting. It was in these moods, by some moral process (obliquity she thought it, when they had passed), that the figure of Cartouche would rise before her as she had encountered it on the hillside.
Why should it intrude itself upon that thought of a less exacting worship? Answer, her heart’s alarum, answering to a look, a breath, the first shadow of a truth. Or answer, truth itself. She knew she had conquered where she loathed to conquer.
Such things must be, and be endured, because they cannot be cured, even in the tiny wound of self-consciousness they inflict, and which will continue to irritate, occasionally, when analogies are in the air. Thus, during these moods, the thought would come—and be hated, duly, for its persecution—that there might even be certain qualities in wickedness worth virtue’s acquiring—independence, resolution, force of character, to wit. Not that, for that, she held herself the less insulted in a base regard. But the thought would recur.
And then there came the day when, pale, suffering, reproachful as she fancied it, the face of her love stood out between her and a tumultuous crowd; and in that sorrowful vision all other visions were instantly absorbed and lost.
The shock of it, patent in her stunned manner, had affected anyone less self-centred than the Chevalier. He thought she was frightened by the surge of things, and lent his high arrogance to reassure her. She hardly heard or saw him.Hewas in Turin.
From that moment the desire for the footsteps grew intense. She had hoped, or had told herself she hoped, that he had forgotten her; and, lo! in every line printed on that lonely face she recognised the indelible scoring of her sin. He loved her still, and by every token of his love, stood forth a conscious shame.
She was in deep waters then, and cried to heaven to save her.
It answered with the offer of Cartouche’s hand.
We know how that suit sped. But it bore some fruit of tenderness towards a hopeless passion—as how could Yolande be woman and not feel it? And it brought more—a recrudescence in her of those thoughts which touched on the comparative qualities of good and evil. This man—he must have the seed of virtue in him, so to have promised self-redemption by way of a bitter loss. That was strength. Perhaps he had had his excuses, after all. She prayed for him—prayed heaven, moreover, to accredit her with her share in his reformation. He was her Louis’s friend—had spoken probably in ignorance of his friend’s presence in the city. And he had promised her—
What had he promised? O, love! thou crown and symbol to all time of specious egotism! He had promised, on the virtue of that very suffering she had caused in him, that it should all come right. His strength was in the phrase—the strength of ungodliness; and—she built upon it. While she abhorred his character—had not scrupled to insult and misread it to the vilest conclusions—she built upon its characteristic qualities. Built? What? No consciousness of any building in her, she would have declared. But—“It will all come right!” Nay, had it not been, “Itshallall come right”? O! how she sighed over her own impotence to stem the masterfulness of these sinful wills! Was she for ever to be their helpless shuttlecock? No hope for her but the cloister.
So, she and Louis-Marie, saintly casuists turning to face one another across a tragic interval, pictured Cartouche, the friend, the lover, for the scapegoat of their love’s reparations. Some menwouldmake burnt-offerings of themselves. It was not for them, ingenuous in the ways of worldliness, to question the methods of their atonement.
One night she, this dear casuist, had driven home (ah! the bitter irony of the word!) to the Via della Zecca with her father. Great clouds sagged from the sky, bellied over the house-roofs, swelling to their delivery of fire. Moans of their enormous labour shook the air, jarring on one’s teeth like glass—a night of heavy omen. Its spirit drove with them, menacing and oppressive. The Chevalier himself was a thunder-cloud, swollen with sense of injury. He scowled silent in his corner.
They had been at the Italian Comedy (to seeThe Representation of a Damned[female]Soul, and the audience pull off their hats, literally, to St John for his handsome conduct of her case), and thence had driven to a Conversazione at the house of the British envoy to the Court of Turin—whence these tears.
The Casa di Rocco reached, the Chevalier alighted, as was his custom, first; but, seeming to remember himself, bowed apart while the mistress of the house descended, and entered the portal. She flushed, but made no comment; and he followed in her footsteps, furious now to vent his chagrin on the least menial slight to his importance. He was very handsomely dressed, and appeared to assume, by every pomp of circumstance, the right of the mastership of the household.
The two were ushered into thesalon, a room ablaze with tapers, and there left to their august disputations. The tempest threatened very near—vibrated in the windows like the pedal-stops of a vast organ.
There was wine on a table. The Chevalier, offering to pour himself out a glass with a white, not very steady hand, refrained, and looked towards his daughter.
“Have I your permission, madam?” he said. “My natural fatigue must not let me forget that I am a pensioner on your bounty.”
She fanned herself quietly. There was a light in her patient eyes, but he was blind to the warning sign.
“What have I done to deserve this?” she asked softly.
His self-control was a bubble. He dashed the decanter down on the table, and advanced a little towards her, quivering with mortified anger.
“You ask me that?” he said. “Whence have we come this moment? From what circumstances of slight and humiliation to the parent, whose devotion to his child has procured him a return which should make her blush for her ingratitude.”
She was still very quiet. I think she was at length awakening to the irreclaimable selfishness of the man before her; but her disillusionment fought against the last bitter concession to itself. For pity and poor heart’s sake she must struggle still to temporise—not to let go her final hold on duty. She forced a little painful smile; but her honesty would allow nothing to subterfuge.
“If you allude,” she said, “to his Excellency the envoy’s attentions to myself, I beg you to bear in mind, father, that I was taught a little English by mygouvernante, and that doubtless the poor man courted the sound of his native language, though on such imperfect lips.”
He smote fist into palm.
“Am I a child to be quieted with equivoque? I speak not of his attentions to you, but of the contempt for myself which they were designed to emphasise.”
“O, no, father! Indeed I am sure you are mistaken.”
Then the storm broke. Its pressure within him had rushed to relief by any outlet, even a pin-prick.
“And which you tacitly condoned,” he screamed. “Have I carried my honour, sensitive to a breath, a hint, a thing high and exclusive, untarnished through all these cursed years of adversity, and not to know when it is impugned? But you will be blind because you desire it—because your personal scruples—sha! are against a paltry sacrifice which would help to reinstate your father in the position which is his by right, and from which he could rise to recover something at least of the ancient influence of his house. No daughter of that or of mine—I say it before God. I am in the mood, I think, to curse you.”
She had risen to her feet, ghastly white, but with something born, and in a flash, into her expression which had never been there before.
“I think, if you did,” she said, “the curse would be let recoil on a shameful head.”
He uttered a terrible exclamation; but she silenced him.
“You talk of your honour. What is man’s honour to a maid’s? Yet, for your honour’s sake, you could sell mine—a father sell his child’s! Once you did it, and I was obedient, though it broke my heart.”
“I will not listen,” he raged.
“You shall listen,” she answered. “I could have borne to suffer and be silent—that first irremediable wrong. I believed your honour pledged, and I gave myself to redeem it—you know under what persuasion. But now—having once sold me—me, your child—to dishonour for your honour’s sake—to think to trade upon my forfeited self-respect, as if myself, not you, were answerable for it!—to build yourself a name on mine so fallen!—O, shame, shame, my father!”
She quite overawed him. He had evoked the spirit of his house in her to startling effect. He had no answer but oaths and hysteria.
“Woman!” he shrieked.
“I am sixteen,” she said. “You call me as you have made me—is it to my reproach or to yours? But, if I am woman, in her sad name I claim her saddest rights—freedom through martyrdom. I will be independent; I will be mistress of my soul; I will not hold myself a convicted wanton at your honour’s bidding. This man you offer me—this man whom you would bid to cast down my body for a stepping-stone to your own ambition—do you know what he is, has been—his life, his reputation?”
He was silent, but only because his rage grew inarticulate.
“I am not so hardened,” she went on, “but that I can shrink and shudder in the shadow of such a name.Heto be worthy of me—me!—O, father!” (She wavered for one instant.) “Have I not been willing, eager, that you should take everything of mine—everything, everything—only not this one poor possession that I cannot part with, and remain your worthy daughter?”
Her eyes were moist, she held out piteous hands to him. But his passion by now was swelled to a monstrous thing, deaf, blind, suicidal.
“Stand off!” he shrieked, backing from her as if he loathed her contact. “You are worthy of nothing but a father’s curse.”
She shuddered, and stood rigid. In that moment they fell apart, never to be reconciled again.
“I warn you not to speak it,” she said—“not till you know the thing you’ve done, the lives you’ve ruined, the broken faiths for which you made yourself answerable to God when you threatened me with that coward’s act. Before you pledged me I was already pledged—my heart, my soul. You did not know it—I have accepted this heavy punishment for heaven’s retribution on me for that sin of silence. I accept it no longer. Love’s honour and love’s vows would, I know, have counted for nothing with my father. But they still hold me to the past for all my faith is worth. We had met by accident—we had no thought, O! no thought to deceive you—only we delayed, forgetting in our happiness. He was a Monsieur Saint-Péray—a name as noble as the man himself—too good and true for such as we to honour. And I broke my faith to him, and you were the cause.”
He raised his hand, gasping. She went on, before he could speak:—
“I tell you now there is no man, shall never be to me in all the world a man with claims like his. If he would have me, the stained and humbled thing I am, I would give myself, in tears and gratitude, to redeem his broken past. But I am unworthy of him; and you have made me so.”
Then he spoke—a babble of raging words. But his lips forbore the curse—perhaps from real apprehension, perhaps from policy. He was not one to burn his boats, even in a fit of madness. In the end, he fell, quite suddenly, upon self-control, and stood like a shaking spectre of himself.
“Very well,” he said—“it is very well. You are your own mistress. You will wed this man, this saintly paramour of yours,ifhe will consent to make an honest woman of you. I have no more to say.”
“No,” she answered: “you have said the last.”
He stood a moment uncertain, turned, and left the room.
She remained motionless as he had left her—a minute, two minutes: then suddenly was looking about her with a curious quick action of the head.
Hunted! alone! quite desolate! Where could she turn for help, support? O, God! the wickedness—the wickedness! Save her someone!—she could hear the hideous panting of the chase—quite close! she—!
The entrance of a servant restored her to some self-command. The man, after one inquisitive furtive look, dropped his eyes and abased himself.
He deprecated Madonna’s resentment; he had hesitated before intruding himself; but these young women! they were so persistent, so full of self-assurance, so convinced that their missions were imperative. He had done his best to get rid of her, but in vain.
“Of her? of whom?” demands Madonna, quieting her lips with her handkerchief.
He shrugs his shoulders and his eyebrows. The young woman would give no name. She had been waiting for hours. But now, vouchsafed the assurance of Madonna’s refusal, he will go and dismiss her at once and finally.
“Show her in to me here,” says the Marchesa, and the man bows and withdraws.
The little interval, the necessity of self-control in it, brought her to herself. When the visitor was ushered in, she was seated—to all appearance a lovely waxen image of serenity. She lifted her eyes and saw a fair young girl, cloaked and hooded, standing before her. The servant closed the door and shut them in together.
“Well, my child,” she said, affectedly incurious: and indeed it was a child, like herself, whom she addressed. “What do you want with me?”
The glow and splendour of her surroundings must have their foremost influence on Molly, petted loveling as she was. Her senses must gape a little, before the woe and despair in her could find their way to utterance. Then, all in a moment, the shock of an unforeseen difficulty had overwhelmed her on the threshold of her mission. She uttered an exclamation—“Alack-a-day! she can’t speak English!” and fell a little away, in consternation.
“English!” Yolande frowned. The word was curiously ill-timed. She looked intently at her visitor. “English?” she repeated: “Are you an English girl? So? Well, you see I understand you. What is it you want of me?”
“My man.”
It came in an irresistible cry, fierce, emotional, from the girl’s heart. She gasped after it, actually as if a spasm had rent it forth. Then she bent, and looked, with tumultuous irony, into the other’s face.
“Ay,” she said, “it’s beautiful enough—like a wax doll’s—as smooth and as hard, I warrant.” But neither the wit nor the passion in her could keep that mood. She stood up again. “I want my man,” she cried. “Give him back to me! I was the first with him!”
Yolande, pale and indignant, rose to her feet.
“What is the meaning of this?” she said. “I know nothing of you, nor of whom you are speaking.”
“I’m speaking,” cried the girl, “of him they call Cartouche. Ay, you may start. It’s a name should make you blush for love forsworn!”
Yolande made a swift movement, as if to summon aid. The girl intercepted her, fell at her feet, clung to her skirts.
“No, no. Don’t call. Let me speak. I’ll be good and quiet, I will, if you’ll only listen. I didn’t mean no impudence—not to such as you. O, lady!—for dear pity’s sake—hear me out!”
“Who are you?”
“I’ll tell you, though he kills me for it. I’m his woman—his kept woman. There, you’ll not think the worse of him for that. We count for little with the quality, when they come to marry—like a man’s brooch, or the buckles in his shoes. We were right enough as a fashion for yesterday; but to-day, when our turn’s over, ’tis bad taste even to speak of us. But there’s something different here, there is. O, my lady! you did ought to consider it before you rob me of him.”
Some terrible emotion, between loathing and pity, was struggling in Yolande’s heart as she looked down on the imploring figure. An instinctive horror in her fought against its own understanding—would not believe—temporised with the truth, speaking in a voice of shuddering pity,—
“A woman!—you, poor child!”
The other misconstrued her.
“Why not? We can’t pick and choose in our class. But we’re no more blind and deaf than you to what’s the best. Only, ifwewant it, we must pay. I was just a village girl, and him a gentleman. Don’t you blame him for it. I gave myself to him, and with my eyes open. We know the odds we take. They must marry some day. But to throw me over for you—you whose true love I’ve took and cared for at his bidding, and tried to nurse back into faith and hope of you that jilted him, while all the time you’ve been undermining me with my own! O, lady! haven’t you a heart? To hear him, that other, calling on your name! to know him dying there, and all for love of you, while you dally with this that’s mine!”
She broke down, and buried her face in her hands, weeping. And her listener! Through all that distorted outcry some passion of the truth must penetrate her. Cartouche! At first, only a sense of utter outrage in that name predominated. A libertine! unredeemed and irredeemable! a practisingintriguant, even in the moment of his suit to her! That at least was clear. She hated herself for that one impulsive thrill of kindness towards him. This ruined life at his door! And he had dared to approach her with such a lie in his heart—to affect repentance—to—Ah! what was that—this thing which was worse than all?
She withdrew her skirts a little. Her hand was ice. Her words fell like snow-flakes, soft and cold.
“You are mistaken, girl. There is nothing—never has been, never could be, between myself and—and the gentleman you named.”
Molly looked up, amazement and incredulity in her eyes.
“Doesn’t he love you?” she said.
The little Marchesa swept her skirts away.
“Don’t touch me!” she whispered terribly. “I am soiled in seeing you, hearing you. The word is fouled upon your lips. O, my God! these vermin in Thine image! Am I like them? Have they the right to claim me to themselves?”
She stamped in fury.
“Leave me! Go to your own! Don’t dare to link my name with his again.”
The girl had risen to her feet. Quite cowed as she was for the moment, a joy was in her heart to hear herself so repudiated in that company. Her worst fears were laid: her venom was turned to honey. She whimpered a little, in a panic half feigned, half felt,—
“There, I don’t want to. I’m going, for sure.” Then a spit of courage came to her—“and I’ll tell the other he may just die for all you care”—and she turned.
But, before she could reach the door, a swift step followed, and a soft white hand, ringed and scented, was placed upon her shoulder. She hesitated an instant, faced round, and the next moment the two, high saint and lowly sinner, were clasped together weeping.
Poor Molly knew her place. She sunk at the other’s feet again, till Yolande knelt beside her, and put her arms about the shameful head.
“Poor child! poor sinful woman,” she said, to a flurry of sighs and sobs. “O, what was I to hold you so apart! But you don’t understand—you can’t, God pity you. The worse for him that killed your innocence.”
“He—”
“I’ll not hear his name.”
“He was my only one; and—and, for your sake, he’s been wanting to make me good.”
“Has he? There’s a way.”
“Maybe. But not the way you mean. That’s closed to such as us.”
“Alas! What way, then?”
“Make yourself impossible to him.”
“I? Sweet saints, give me patience with this poor ignorance! How can I make her comprehend that I could never be more impossible to him than I am.”
“O, yes! you could.”
“There, there, child! How?”
“O, mistress! don’t you know?”
“Know what? Why am I letting you talk to me like this? I’m all groping in a maze. O! haven’t you a father?”
“Yes, for sure.”
“Give up your sin. Go back to him and ask his pardon.”
“You don’t know him. His pride’s above his station. He’d ne’er suffer me again to come anigh him.”
“Wouldn’t he? What a thing’s this pride in men!—a vengeance, not a judge! Fatherless, then! O, O! that’s to be lost and helpless—crying to a void—sinking, sinking; and not a straw to hold by!”
“Ah, hush ye, pretty one—hush ye!”
The Magdalen, with winking wondering eyes, was become the comforter. She clasped the cold hands within her own warm palms, and mumbled them, and loved their softness. Yolande, her head bowed, sat grieving still a little.
“To look all round, and not to know where to turn—no guide, no help out of this maze!”
She snuffled, and mopped her eyes; then struggled to regain her estate. “There, child! my heart bleeds for you! What is your name? O! I forgot; you haven’t one”—for, indeed, to this sweet orthodoxy, an unchurched passion was a nameless thing—a maiden title forfeited to anonymity.
“I’m Molly Bramble, please my lady.”
She hung her head. The other pursed her lips a moment.
“Well, well, child—we’ll call you as we call our dog or parrot—terms for distinguishment.”
Then the moth plunged for the light, about which she had been desperately fluttering this nervous while.
“You mentioned of your nursing someone? or perhaps I confused your meaning?”
“Ay, did I. You know him. Saint-Péray.”
The other put her away and got hurriedly to her feet.
“You’renursing him!You?”
“He brought him to me—told me to; told me to help him back to be a man, and win you yet.”
“Who brought him? Who told you?”
“There: I wasn’t to speak his name.”
“Nursing him? Where?”
“Why, in the little villa that he keeps for me.”
“That he keeps? O, my love, my Louis!”
“Ah, ah! you love him still. You make my heart sing, you do!”
“O, Louis!O, mon bien aimé! que les artifices des méchants t’ont environné!You must not be left: you must not stay there: you do not know. The villain! the false friend!”
“O, O, my lady!”
“Is he not? He dared to ask my hand.”
“O! it’s true then!”
“Two nights ago.”
“Ah, me! that explains it.”
“What?”
“Why, what he told me before he left next morning. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ says he. ‘She’s not for him no more. What you’ve said you’ve to unsay. They must be kept apart at any price.’ They were his last words before he went.”
“Were they?—those?”
“His very words.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“O, my child! give up this wicked man, to save your soul!”
“No, I’ll stick to him.”
“Poor prodigal, enamoured of the husks.”
“He said he would be good for your sake. You owe him that.”
“For my sake?”
“Ay, even for true love’s sake, maybe—though it wounds my heart to speak it. There’s a way you could show him.”
“A way? I? to what?”
“To mend a wrong. O, dear good lady, I’ve seen your eyes confess!—never deny it. One marriage brings another—it might, it might even lead to that—O, mistress, mistress!”
“You are mad. You don’t know what you say—you know nothing.”
“I know your love is dying there for love of you.”
“Dying? No, no!”
“Come to him, and see.”
“I cannot.”
“He must die then. He’ll not last till morning else. ’Twas for that I dared this all.”
“O, what am I to do?”
“No one need know: a great lady like you.”
“You say he’d marry you?”
“I say one marriage brings another.”
“O! Sweet saints, direct me! Lead my distracted mind! I cannot come with you, I say!—Wait while I fetch my cloak!”
* * * * * * * *
Fiorentina, bidden to hold her tongue to Louis-Marie, told him everything—under promise of secrecy: how that one was coming in a little to break his brain’s web and kill the wicked spider—a physician, maybe: maybe a wise woman; for indeed physicians were not “her,” and the signorina had stated distinctly, in answer to his cries, that she was going that moment to fetchherto cure him.
Fortunately or not, he heard her without comprehending. He was lying apathetic by then, quit of the “fellow in the cellarage.” That thundering whisper silenced, all commoner voices served him but as opiates. By-and-by he fell into a doze; and the littlecameristadrew his curtains, and lit his candles, and went below to gossip with her house-mate.
The storm laboured up and over, mingling with the sick man’s dreams. The rush of tempest smote on ice. He was alone in a surging darkness. It cracked, with a roar of thunder, and spilled a dead body at his feet. Madly he strove to spurn the thing—into monstrous-seeming abysses—for all their blackness they were shallow troughs. Or else the glacier rolled like water, and threw it up. He trampled it in fury—it writhed away, reshaping. Then it took to laughing; and the laugh was echoed from hard by—and there was Bonito hiding in a drift. He woke with a scream.
But he was sleeping again, when the littlecameristahurried up, and looked into his pale exhausted face, and touched some pillows into comfort before leaving him.
Sweet dreams this time, but still of weeping rains. Only they fell softly on a Chapel roof. She was not there beside him, and he wondered why she lingered. Till, glancing at the coloured statue of the virgin, he saw it stir and smile, and stretch out wistful arms to him, and heard it breathe his name—“Louis, Louis!” And it was she herself, descending and coming to him; but, before they could reach and touch, she had vanished.
“Louis, Louis!” Her voice wept far remote, an infinite yearning, faint and always fainter; till suddenly, with a crash, the roof was rent, and a flood of fire rushed in, revealing her—quite close to him—a breathing apparition—all love and sorrow paining her sweet eyes.
He lay and did not stir. “Yolande!” he whispered.
She sighed, and clasped her hands; she answered with the plaint, if not in the words, of love-lorn Madeline:—