“It is my lady: oh, it is my love!”
“It is my lady: oh, it is my love!”
“It is my lady: oh, it is my love!”
Romeo and Juliet.
The agitation of the morning at Stillyside had subsided as the day wore, but the mind of Amanda Macdonald (for such was the name of the younger and fairer denizen of that sequestered abode) remained pensive and preoccupied; and when at her usual hour she had ascended to her chamber, instead of retiring to rest, she took up a tale of the troubadours, and read; nor did she lay down the volume till the sudden flickering of the candle in the socket and the simultaneous tolling from the distant belfry of the church of the village of Saint Laurent warned her that it was midnight. Then, feeling oppressed, alike with the heaviness of the atmosphere of her room, and a strange weight at her heart, analogous to the lassitude that is sometimes felt in the beginning of sickness, she arose, drew aside the curtains, and throwing open the folding window, stepped on to the verandah. A clear Canadian night, appearing a new and chaster version of the day, greeted her. The moon, at night's meridian, hung high in the fulness of its autumnal splendor, tranquil in the solitude of the sky, a solitude unbroken, save by a few small stars that were twinkling in the azure, and a fleet of low, dappled clouds that were coasting the horizon. Awhile her eyes dwelt abstractedly on the sight, then, falling, they wandered listlessly over the broad and shining expanse of landscape before her; where Nature, unrobed, seemed as in a bath; for in front, the grass, steeped in descending dews, glittered as a lake. Woods confined the view in one direction, and the gleamy wave of the Ottawa, amidst filmy obscurity, bounded it, yet further off, in another. Unseen but felt, like the unperceived Genius of the landscape, towered close behind her the sombre-sided mountain; and, touched by the solemn scene, she advanced, and, leaning upon the balustrade, heaved a deep sigh; then lapsed into a reverie so profound, that she failed to hear the tramp of a horse now rapidly approaching, and to note the change to sudden silence, caused by its stopping at the postern. But there, transfixed with wonder and admiration, and looking like a bronze equestrian statue at the gate, now, mounted, sat gazing the lately flying horseman of the road, the champion of the morning on those grounds, and contemplated the figure on the verandah; then, dismounting, tied his steed, and vaulting over the fence, swiftly approached across the lawn; till, as if suddenly aware of being on holy ground, he paused, and stood with reverential aspect and clasped hands, eagerly bending towards her as if in adoration. Thus engaged, as stands in ecstasy some newly arrived pilgrim before a shrine, he stood enrapt; whilst she remained as moveless as a carved angel leaning over a cathedral aisle, and, with her eyes fixed on vacancy, at length mournfully exclaimed: “Sad, sad, so sad!—yet why am I so sad? No denser grows the mystery around my birth; and if knight errants yet live, rescuing maids, or he is a wandering god, and here is Arcadia, why should that make me grieve? It is true that he is handsome—and yet what of that?—most men are handsome in the eyes of maids. But he appears the paragon of men. Is he indeed not all a man should be? Where were the blemish, the exception; who shall challenge nature, saying, in his form, that here she has given too little, there too much?—Ah, me! I am not happy, yet I should be so.”
“Can I have heard aright, or do I dream?” gasped out the stranger.
“A knight, a god;” she continued, yet musing; “oh, he came hither like a knight of old, or as an angry angel sent to scatter fiends;—or, rather, like the lightning he arrived, out of the storm cloud of I know not where. Where is he now? whence was he? who is he? what? Alas, I know nothing of where, nor who, nor what, nor whence he is; all that I know is, I am strangely sad; and that such perfection was not made for me.”
“Is this not Stillyside?” enquired the listener, “or do I wander in some spirit-land; lost, lost;—oh, so luxuriously lost! She, too, seems lost—lost in a reverie, and all forlorn. I'll speak to her;—and yet I fear to speak, I fear to breathe, lest the undulating air should burst this, and prove it to be but a bubble. Yet she breathes, she spoke, and oh, such words! Words, be at my command; I will address her, for this is not fancy: could fancy shew a moving soul of sorrow? See how the passion plays upon that face, as she thus stands with sad-eyed earnestness, maintaining converse with the hollow sky. Looked ever aught so fair yet so forlorn? Methinks there is a tear upon her cheek. Why comes it from the Eden of her eye? I must speak to her;” and with mixed fear and fervour he exclaimed: “May Heaven keep you from grave cause of sorrow, lady! Forgive me, oh, forgive me, lady, or vision, for, by these dazzled eyes, and, as I fear, by your offended form, I Scarcely can divine whether you are of earth or air; pardon me if I have appeared here by night, as unpremeditatedly as I came by day. Bid me begone, —and yet permit me to remain, for, by my life, and the deep admiration with which you have inspired me, I cannot leave you till I learn your grief, and with it, peradventure, my own doom. Whom did you speak of even now, fair form?”
“Who asks of me that question; who is it that thus listens when I thought myself alone?” she demanded haughtily, looking downwards from the verandah. “Sir, just now I spoke, and said—I know not what. What you have overheard me say I fear was foolish; do not, then, regard it. I know you now. You are the stranger who, this morning, drove those violent intruders from these grounds. Ah, who would have thought you would return by night, and thus, sir, play the eaves-dropper! Oh, for shame! Nay, you are not the one I took you for. Sir, it is mean to overlisten; mean, very mean; nay, it is base, unmanly, to listen to a maid, when she commits her vagaries to the moon.”
“Scourge me, for I deserve it, with your tongue;” rejoined the stranger—“but, lady, you were not alone, though I were absent; no; you cannot be alone. Such excellence must draw hither elves and midnight troops of fairies; by day, by night, each moment must array around you the good wishes of the world. No, not alone; the very sky is filled with watchers and the ground covered with invisible feet, that have come here to do you homage; then why not I found here to pay you mine? Are you still angry?”
“You have offended me,” she answered;—“and yet perhaps I am too severe with you. I fear I am ungrateful. 'Mean,' did I say? It was mean in me to say so, and most forgetful of the favor conferred here by you this morning. No, I vow it was not mean—at least inyou. And yet it was mean, it was very mean in you, sir, thus to overstep the golden mean of manners. Scourge you? Ah, I fear you well deserve it;—and yet if I could, I would put to scourging that word, 'mean,' that has just escaped from out of my petulent lips, as sometimes a froward, disobedient child runs into danger; breaking away from out of the nurse's arms. But you should not have played the bold intruder, and joined in these vain vigils;—nay, begone, or I must, myself, withdraw. I do entreat you, stay no longer; come some other time,—but go to-night; make no excuse for staying, or you may yet compel me to be angry with you. Indeed, I fear that I am too forgiving. Go, I pardon you,—but go at once, or I may yet repent to have condoned what it, in truth, were hard to justify.”
“Heaven pardons heavier sins,” observed the stranger.
“Yes, when its pardon is sought for;” was rejoined; “but I pardon you without your craving it; and, remember, Heaven's pardon is not granted to us simply for the asking; neither do we receive it because our hearts are penitent; but for the sake of Him who died for us upon the cross; hence you are now forgiven by me, not for your prayers' sake, nor for your regret, but rather because beforehand, the night's offence has been cancelled by the morning's favor. For the rest, retire, sir: what you have heard, you have heard. You have heard my words, yet give no heed to them. If I to-night have walked forth in my sleep, and dreamed on this verandah;—why, then, it was but a dream. Let it be thus esteemed, and so we part. Good night.”
“Stay!” exclaimed the stranger, as, smiling with ineffable sweetness, and deeply curtsying, she drew backwards towards the window: “Stay; how can those part whom destiny hath joined; how be divided whom their fates make one? Stay, lady, and let love, young love, plead his own cause. Oh, I would yet charm you with my tongue, even as your own detected tongue has just declared that this morning I charmed you with my deed. Stay. If, in truth, you did admire, what, at the moment of its execution, I thought nothing of, and value now only as it has relation to yourself, hear my appeal.”
“What does this mean?” she asked, startled at his earnestness: “I do not know you; go, oh, go; I say again, I do not know you, sir.”
“I never knew myself till now,” he cried with bitter pathos.
“I say, I do not know you; you do not knowme;” she reiterated.
“Know me to be irrevocably yours;” rejoined the stranger, “for you have bound my heart in such fast thraldom, that even yourself could not deliver it.”
“And, perhaps, I would not, if I could,—unless you asked it:” she answered: “and yet, sir, possibly you jest. Oh, sir, forbear; begone, nor longer fool here a surprised, lone girl. What is your purpose? who, and whence, are you? On your honor, answer me truly.”
“I am the seigneur Montigny's only son: my purpose and my thoughts towards you are all honorable:” he replied. And she rejoined: “Oh, if your intentions are dishonorable, and you have not the spirit, as you have the aspect, of a gentleman, yet keep this secret, as you are a man.”
“What shall be said to reassure you?” demanded Montigny. “Witness, Heaven, if I assume to act, or intend anything injurious towards you. Believe me. I am the heir to a proud seigniory: you are,—I know not what; enough for me to know, you are the fairest figure that has yet filled mine eyes, and surely as good as fair. Will you be mine, as I am yours for ever? Speak, why are you silent?”
“Hist,” she said, listening.
“What is the matter?” he enquired.
“Nothing, perhaps nothing:” she continued, whilst her voice faltered:—“but go, oh, go, and come again to-morrow, or next week, or when you will. I'll think on what you have said; but go; I tremble so; stay here no longer; think, should we be observed. I am ashamed to think of it. I am ashamed to look the moon in the face, ashamed to look into yours. Oh, sir, what have I done? What have you said? How have I answered? for I am perplexed. Away, yet come again; come fifty times; but stay no longer now; begone;—return though when you choose; do not wait for an invitation.—Listen, I hear it again; begone, begone; did you not hear something?—it was nothing, perhaps, but yet begone.”
“Never without your love pledge will I leave you,” replied Montigny firmly.
“And would you force me to avow myself?” she asked. “May Heaven absolve me if I err herein! No, give me leisure to reflect: this were too sudden. These passion-hurried vows were too much like those vapors, that, igniting, rush like to unorbed stars across the night, then, vanished, leave it blacker. Do not tempt me. To act in haste is to repent at leisure; and quickliest lighted coals grow soonest cool. Even now I feel my cheek aglow with shame, that burns its passage to my rooted hair. Away: if you should not forget me, why, you are as though you were still present; for your thought, which is your truest self, remains with me. If you should grow oblivious—why, it is I that shall suffer, and not you.”
“Oh, waste of words on what can never be!” Exclaimed Montigny: “cease to doubt me. Forget you! Love's memories are immortal. Love writes the lineaments of the beloved in rock, not sand.”
“Yet rocks may lose their effigies, the pyramids their inscriptions, the strong-clamped monument may tumble, and the marble bust, by time, may let the salient features fall into one indistinguishable round,” she answered doubtingly.
“They may;” rejoined Montigny: “but neither flowing time nor chafing circumstance can erase affection from the constant mind. Mind is more obdurate than steel; and love, the tenderest of the train of passions, is, in its memory, as indestructible as gold;—gold that resists the all-corroding fire. No; the fire may melt the impress from the seal, the sun the angles from the stony ice; the jagged rocks may from encounter with the wind and rain grow smooth; this hilly globe may grow at length to be as level as is the sea, and every jutting headland of the shore may crumble and disappear; but your bright image must to the eventide of life's cogitation, stay, like a sacred peak whose lofty brow stands ever gilded in the setting sun. Forget you! little hazard: he whose heart is impressed with the absent's form, needs wear no miniature upon the breast; the scholar who knows his task by rote, needs not retain his eye upon the book.”
“Hearts may prove false,” she answered solemnly, “and tasks to treacherous memory committed may be forgotten; but will you forget these weighty words: will you be constant, oh, will you prove true; for did I give you all I have, my love, what were there left me should you throw it away?”
“Injurious and incredulous one,” returned Montigny, “save Lucifer, who ever threw from him heaven?”
“Forgive me,” she replied, “it is but a timid girl that speaks. She did not doubt you, though she sought to prove you. Yet are you sure you love her? Ask your heart, then render me its reply, as one might do, who having listened for me to the murmuring shell, should bring me tidings of the storm-vexed sea. Vow not, but listen.”
Montigny seemed for awhile to listen to his heart; then, looking at her, replied:
“Surer than is assurance itself I am yours. Say that you are mine, and every further word shall seem only to be redundant and apochryphal; for when love's lips have made their revelation, what more is wanting to complete the canon.”
“Believe that I have said it,” she half whispered; then, starting, and changing color, “hist, hist,” she added, “once more I hear it: heardyounothing?”
“I nothing heard but you,” replied Montigny: “Proceed; for your voice is sweeter to me than plashing fountain's, or than Saint Laurent's chimes, or than would be—could we hear it—the fabulous music of those night-hung spheres, coming harmonious to our listening ears, borne on the shoulders of the cherub winds. Why are you silent?”
“Listen,” she said, looking still more alarmed.
“I do,” he answered.
“Yet heard you nothing?”
“Nothing but ourselves.”
“Nothing besides?”
“What further should I hear?” he asked.
“And yet it seemed as if I heard another,” she continued. “Are we watched? speak, tell me,” she demanded,—“I hear it again; listen.”
Montigny listened a moment, then replied soothingly:
“Dismiss these pale-cheeked panics, for you hear nothing; or if you do it is but the common voices of the night. It is merely the hoarse bullfrog croaking in the swamp; and the green grasshopper a chirrupping in the meadow; for, saving these, all nature with myself is listening to you. Be reassured: there is nothing, but what your own excited fancy has conjured: even the wind has ceased to sigh amongst the leaves; the moon stands still, and her arrested beam no longer draws the shadow on the dreamy dial. Then, proceed, my love, for when you speak you fill my ears with heaven, but when you pause then opens the abyss.”
“Yet listen; I hear it again:” she said; “it was not fancy; no.”
“What else? what can befall you, love, whilst I am here?” he murmured.
“Nothing, I hope,” she answered, falteringly.
“Then nothing dread.”
“I dread to say it, yet I must: Good night.”
“Already?” he demanded.
“All too long!” cried an imperious voice; and the advocate stood before them.
“Amanda, ah, Amanda, Miss Macdonald,” he continued, “is it thus you fool us? Go, bird, into your cage. Nurse, take my lady in.” And Amanda beheld behind her the melancholy Mona, half shrouded in a cloak covering her night attire.
Amanda, oh! Amanda, is it thus you fool us?
Silently they both of them withdrew, and the stranger was left alone with the advocate, who, laying his hand detectingly on the other's shoulder, thus addressed him:
“Claude Montigny, I do not ask of you what brings you here, for I have something overheard, and in that something, all. Given the arc, the eye completes the perfect circle; furnished the angle and the object's distance, and we can tell the dizzy altitude. Mark me, sir. We climb with risk, but there is greater danger in descending. Young sir seigneur, you have ascended to a height you may not safely stoop from. As sportive and adventurous schoolboys sometimes ascend a scaffolding in the absence of the builders, and continue to scale from tier to tier, until they pause for breath; so, I fear, that you this night, in her protector's absence, have soared in the affections of my ward. Beware, beware: I would not threaten you—a gentleman neither needs nor brooks a threat—but, by my life and the strength that yet is left me, woe to the man that shall fool me in yonder girl! Seek not to trifle with me, Claude Montigny. Tell me your purpose; inform me how your acquaintance with my ward began; how it was fostered; how it has been concealed; and how it thus has ripened into this secret, midnight interview. Speak; what do you say, sir, in arrest of judgment? Be seated, and recount to me the story of your love, if you do love my ward—as you have told her that you do—and to that love be attached a story, long or brief; or if this passion—which you have propounded most passionately to her—be of a mere mushroom growth, born of to-night, sown by the hand of moonlight in a girl's dark eyes; or in her heart, perhaps, by the fairies that you spoke of, and producing some form of feeling or forced fruit of fancy; coeval with, and meant to be as transient, as is the present fungi of these fields. Sit down by me, and let your tongue a true deliverance make between yourself, me, and my foster-daughter.” And seating himself heavily on a garden bench, and leaning with both hands clasped over the top of his gold-headed cane, he looked enquiringly up into the face of the young man, and added: “Come, plead before me to this charge of heart-stealing, as touching which you have been taken in the act.”
“Sir,” then said the stranger with dignity, whilst he slowly seated himself; “sir, you are justified in thus misdoubting me; for though a gentleman should, like the wife of Caesar, be above suspicion, never yet knew chivalry a time but there were recreant knights. Moreover, I can perceive that circumstances now must shadow, and, as with refracting influence, distort me, so that I may well stand here seeming to be deformed, although my soul, if you could see it, would show wanting no part of honour's fair proportions. Hear me, then, patiently, for I plead less for my own defence than for her vindication who has just retired beneath your frown.”
And the ingenuous but compromised Montigny sketched the brief history of his passion, and when he had done, the advocate, looking into his countenance keenly, but confidingly, rejoined:
“You speak the truth, I know it by your eye, wherein no falsehood might harbour for a moment; yet, young seigneur, you have entered on a perilous path; dare you walk in it? It is the way of honor, and will prove to be the way of safety; but, beshrew me, if I do not fear that it may prove to you a way of pain. Whatever may be the ways of wisdom, the ways of honour are not always ways of pleasantness, nor is the path of duty always one of peace. If you would wear the rose you must grasp it as it grows amidst the thorns. And now, farewell—yet, hold. I hold you to your bond. The forfeit were the forfeit of your word, which you have pledged to me and mine. Remember, not only have you offered love unto my ward, but you have been accepted.”
“Even so:” exclaimed Montigny; “and may—”
“Call nothing down that might become your harm,” said the advocate admonishingly: “Rain has before now become transformed to hailstones, and done much damage; and dews descending so benignly, have once, it is said, in form of rain, swelled to a deluge that has drowned the world. May the skies be still propitious to you, Claude Montigny. Although temptation burn as fiercely as dogdays, do not fall beneath it, for less hurtful were a hundred sunstrokes to the body, than to the soul is one temptation that hath overcome it. Again farewell.” And he pressed Claude's hand convulsively, then tossed it from him half disdainfully, and both departed from the grounds.
“Think no more of this night's accidents.”
“Think no more of this night's accidents.”
“Think no more of this night's accidents.”
Midsummer Night's Dream.
From Stillyside Claude Montigny rode towards the western extremity of the island; his thoughts steeped in bliss, and the country, as it slumbered in the moonlight, seeming to him the land of Elysium. At the ferry of Pointe Saint Claire he engaged a bateau in which he was rowed over the confluence of the rivers Ottawa and Saint Lawrence by four boatmen who, from time to time, in a low tone, as if afraid of awakening the dawn, chaunted, now an old song of Normandy, and now a ballad upon the fate of some lost voyageur. The moon was yet shining, and he was in the mood to enjoy such minstrelsy; but when they neared the opposite shore, a feeling of sadness and apprehension stole over him, as he thought of meeting his father, to whom he knew he must either communicate distasteful tidings, or what was worse to his ingenuous mind, practice a culpable concealment. Thus musing, as day broke he leaped on shore, and again mounting his horse rode thoughtful through forest and farm; now reburied in the darkness of night, which yet lingered amidst the foliage, and now emerging into the light of the clearing; until, as the sun was rising over the opposite bank of the St. Lawrence, he entered the manorial gates of Mainville, and passing through the park-like grounds, was once more in the proud home of the Montignys.
Meantime, Amanda Macdonald had not slept. Shame, joy, fear, hope possessed her; but fear chiefly, for she dreaded the coming morrow, when she must meet her foster-mother, and—what to her was yet more terrible—her, as she supposed, deeply offended guardian; and it was not till the birds began to chirp and flit about her window, that she fell into a deep, refreshing slumber that lasted long into the day, and was at length broken by the voice of Mona bidding her arise.
The advocate, on the other hand, who had at once returned to town, arose at his usual hour, and repairing to his office, began the business of the day; whilst at a later period, the dissipated Narcisse again found his boon companions, and with them renewed the debauch of yesterday.
During the day the anxious Mona did not fail to question her charge touching the interrupted interview; and the latter at length related how it had befallen, confessed to her sudden passion for the gallant Montigny, revealed his plighted vows, and confiding herself to the bosom where she had always found advice and comfort, deprecated the displeasure of her guardian. But the betrayed Mona could give her only slight encouragement, in what was now yet nearer to her than even her guardian's favor, her lover's truth.
“Child,” said Mona to her emphatically and in a warning tone, after musing, “Child, hope not too much; fear everything, for man is naturally false towards woman. Ah, you have yet learned but little of man, and may you never learn too much. Beware, beware, beware, Amanda. Happy the ignorant, happy is the woman whom no false man has taught to distrust his sex! Man's love to woman is as evanescent as is the presence of the summer-morning mist, that, for an hour or so, hugs lovingly the lea, then vanishes for ever. What are his vows but vapour? Poor, rash girl, why, without warning me, have you opened the horn-book of love, and spelled at such a speed, that, in a day's time, you have read as far as warier maids dare con in years?” And Amanda looked both abashed and amazed; but at length enquired in wonder:
“What may you mean by these strange utterances? Nay, nay, dear Mona: you slander your own father by this language.”
“Thou canst not say, child, that I slander thine,” responded Mona, tartly; and her countenance darkened with an equivocal expression new to Amanda, who, catching at the inuendo, earnestly demanded,
“Who was my father? tell me, for you know; I myself know, I feel, (and not untrustworthy is this intuition) that I am not here a mere fortuitous foundling. Who was my mother? I charge you to inform me.”
“Girl, had not man been false, you had not needed to have so often asked of me that question,” Mona replied with a cynical expression, and hoarse, sepulchral voice, that, whilst it seemed to vindicate herself, reproved her fellow, on whose face an air of horror now mantled, as she excitedly exclaimed:
“Say more, or else unsay what you have already uttered. What must be understood from this alarming language? Although there hangs a mystery over my birth, surely there rests upon it no dishonor. Acquaint me, then, once more I charge you, and now by the love and kindness that you have always shewn to me, declare, for you know—I say I feel you know; whose child am I, where was I born, how have I been committed to your care, adopted, cherished; I, who have no filial claims upon you; adjudged to be an orphan, perhaps the child of charity; how have I been divided between you and my guardian, or held as if I were your mutual bond? Inform me, Mona, my good Mona, foster-mother, nurse, you who have been to me as a true mother might be, say whose I am; whether, and where, my parents live; and, if they live, why they have thus abandoned me,” and she burst into a flood of tears.
“Quiet yourself, my fond one,” answered Mona, moved also to tears by this appeal; “your birth on one side is as high as any that this country boasts, therefore is as high as Claude Montigny's. Your mother is descended from a warlike Scottish line, your father's father was an English peer. Your parents are yet living; but their union, which was in many points unequal, was, alas! rendered the more unequal by a gulf-like disproportion in the passion that provoked it;—a gulf, too, that was undiscovered, till, too late, your mother saw it. Thence, their lives, their loves, so call it, their mutual progress (save on the course of fondness towards yourself, their child, whereon they journey equal side by side) has for years kept, and yet keeps, a still disparting pace; and, oh, Amanda, excuse these tears, for well I know your mother, and pity her, having many a time listened to her fruitless complaints; but until your father, who is the laggard one of this most misappointed pair, shall, either underneath the whip of a castigating conscience, or prompted by the spur of your poor mother's sharp appeals, come up abreast, and fill a certain chasm of omission by an indemnifying deed, which has been by him most selfishly left undone, but whose performance is essential to the full fruition by you of your fortune, you must remain, as you have hitherto done, my foster-child, and your grim guardian's ward; a waif we hold waiting for its claimants; and until they arrive, let me beseech you, as though I were the mother I have spoken of, to think no further of young Claude Montigny.”
“Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him; and whatsoever comes athwart his affection, ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?”
“Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him; and whatsoever comes athwart his affection, ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?”
“Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him; and whatsoever comes athwart his affection, ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?”
Much ado about nothing.
A few days after the conversation detailed in the preceding chapter, there was ushered into the office of the advocate at Montreal a gentleman, who announced himself as Montigny, Seigneur of Mainville. He was tall, and of a distinguished aspect, and had scarcely accepted of the advocate's invitation to be seated, when, like a man impatient to be done with a disagreeable business, he began:
“I have a son, sir, and you, as I believe, a ward, an orphan girl;” pronouncing with a mixture of pity and contempt the last two words.
The advocate observed this depreciatory intonation, and throwing himself backwards in his large easy chair, repeated: “An orphan girl,” at the same time putting a half angry, half comical expression into his countenance, and perpetrating a pun in what followed: “Yes, many of your Canadian noblesse would bless themselves to have been her father. The poor fellow, it is well he is not here to have overheard you. An orphan girl: true, as you say, I have an orphan girl,—or one that passes for such; a girl I love, a ward, a charming child, yonder at Stillyside. Were I disposed to praise her I might say she is the Mountain's maid; the Dryad of its woods, a grace, a goddess, fairer than Diana, and far purer, for one may guess the fool Diana made of that poor boy, Endymion. But what concerning my ward, sir, my most immaculate lady?”
“Would you forbid my son access to her?” enquired the seigneur.
“Ah! you wish for an injunction;” said the advocate; “show me cause. I have, sir—as you seem aware—a ward dwelling yonder at my seat at Stillyside;—a place I sometimes visit; a sort of shrine, a kind of hermitage or chapel, wherein two devotees, two nun-like, holy women consume the hours; leading there, pious, penitential lives, making each day a sort of hallowed tide, and every eve a vigil.”
“You are humorous,” replied the seigneur. “Excuse me, I am sorry, but it were best that I should speak plainly. I would not wish to see your ward dishonored.”
“Dishonored! not a seigneur, nor a seigneur's son dare dream of such a consummation, nor, daring so to dream, could compass it,” cried the advocate, growing crimson. “Yet this is kind of you;” he added, bowing as if deeply grateful;—“and yet,” he continued, “there can be no fear of an offence: is not your son a clergyman? for, if he be, and they confess to him anything worse than to have admitted him to their confidence—why, sir, he shall be allowed to enter, and shrive them when he chooses;” and after a momentary silence, “Fie! fie!” he resumed, rolling in his chair; “'the fool hath said in his heart there is no God,' and the wise man of Mainville, who has been all his life looking for purity in a petticoat, says 'there is no virtue in woman.' But I say, both these oracles are in the wrong; there is not only a Divinity, but there are women too who are virtuous. This is a clumsy jest, sir. My ward be dishonored by your son? Yes, when the diamond can be cut with a feather. Monsieur Montigny, a tempest is as harmless as a breath, when that tempest is being hurled against the rock; a breath is even as effectual as is a tempest, when that breath is puffed against the dust. So buzzing blandishments of sighing fops, may blow the frail flowerets from weak, wanton natures; whilst vehement vows of otherwise most honorable men, though urged as strongly as the northern blast, are in vain against the marble front of virtue. I am marble to your wishes.”
“You weigh your danger as little as you do your language,” observed the seigneur. “Will you permit a trespasser, a tempter within your grounds; a wolf, a fox, a bear within your fold?”
The advocate shrugged his shoulders and replied: “No, heaven forbid;—and Stillyside is to me as an outer court of heaven, wherein my ward dwells as a sort of semi-solitary angel.”
“Yet angels fell, and so may she fall,” interjected the seigneur quickly.
“They did, and without a tempter, too, Monsieur Montigny,” returned the advocate, quietly; then added: “the height of heaven turned the heads of the angels giddy.”
“Girls are giddy,” remarked the seigneur gravely.
“Boys are more frequently foolish,” drily retorted the advocate: “and often coming to girls for kisses, go away with cuffs. I hope your son has neither sought for the one nor yet received the other. But what is this son, Monsieur Montigny, that you would have me believe to be so formidable? Is he another Lucifer, couched at my Ward's ear, as his dark prototype once squatted at that of Eve? Or is he Lothario alive again? Is he Leander, and are the Ottawa's jaws a western Hellespont, with my ward and Stillyside, for Hero and her tower?”
“Your verandah,” remarked the seigneur, “is not higher than was Hero's tower, although, I trust, your ward's virtue may be more exalted than was Hero's. But are you aware, sir, that already my son has had her company, alone, at midnight, on your grounds; all others retired; she alone watching, with Claude Montigny and the broad, full moon?”
“An actionable moon,” exclaimed the lawyer, “and a decided case of lunacy against the lovers. But, alas, sir, in this respect we have all been sinners in our youth, and all grown wondrous righteous with our years. Have we not ourselves, when we were young,—ay, and upon inclement winter nights too, courted brown peasant girls beneath both stars and moon? What if the nights were cold, the blood was warm; and now with these volcanic veins of ours grown cool, why, we may walk on the quenched crater of concupiscence, and who dares challenge us, and say, ha, ha! smut clings to you, gentlemen; you have the smell of fire upon you. No, sir, no; we are fumigated, ventilated, scented, powdered, purged as with hyssop. Pish! he must be truly an Ethiop, whom time cannot whiten; a very leopard, who will not part with his spots, since the sun himself shall losehissome day, purged in his own fires.”
“I repeat, sir, your ward is in danger,” said the seigneur doggedly.
“Not at all. Is the diamond in danger when it is put into the crucible; is the gold deteriorated when it is being deterged from dross?” was responded.
“Infatuated man, would you open the door to the seducer?” asked the seigneur, growing angry with the contumelious lawyer.
“Seducer!” said the advocate, affecting to be shocked: “that is a huge stone to throw at your own son: and remember; is not every man's frame a glass house, whereat the soul that inhabits it should invite no stone throwing from the little red catapult of a neighbour's tongue? Beware, beware; have mercy, Monsieur Montigny. 'All flesh is grass,' the Prophet proclaims; but I assert, 'All flesh is glass.'”
“A woman's reputation is as brittle,” was the seigneur's ready repartee; “therefore warn off my son from Stillyside.”
“But should he not regard me, sir, what then?”
“Brandish the law over him, your chosen weapon,” answered the seigneur.
The lawyer suddenly looked grave, and, affecting to be offended, demanded sternly: “Monsieur Montigny, am I a mere mechanic to do your bidding? Brandish the law indeed! Is, then, the law but an ordinary cudgel, to thwack the shoulders with or beat the brains out? The law, sir, is a sacred weapon, not to be lightly taken up, neither to be profanely applied to paltry uses, any more than we would take the tempered razor to pick a bone, or pare our cheese with. Brandish the law! The man that can talk of brandishing the law would brandish a piece of the true cross, sir, if he had it; he would drink, sir, from his mother's skull, and with his father's thigh-bones play at shinty. What is the law? What less is it than the will and force of all employed for one; the savage sense of justice, disciplined and drilled till it can move in regular array, invincibly, to conquer wrong; surely too vast an engine to be employed on trifles. Who wants a wheel to break a butterfly upon; or, to crush a worm who calls for a pavior's rammer? Monsieur Montigny, listen. Mercy is Heaven's first attribute, and the executioner is the State's meanest, as well as last, servant; shall I, then, stoop to this, who may aspire to that? Shall I wield a whip of legal scorpions before your son, should he seek to re-enter Stillyside? Would you have me, as once Heaven's cherubim stood at the gates of Paradise, with fiery swords turning all ways, to hinder its ejected tenants from breaking back into the garden,—would you have me, I say, stand at my gates at Stillyside, and, meeting young Montigny, flourish in his face a fist full of fasces, in the form of threatened pains and penalties? No; your suit, sir, is denied: you take nothing by your motion.”
“Dare you deny,” retorted the seigneur, loudly, and with a look of coming triumph; “dare you deny that you are privy to their intimacy; will you assert that you—yourself unseen—have not witnessed my son in secret, midnight conversation with your ward at Stillyside; there overheard them interchanging vows of endless love, and dealing declarations of devotedness unto each other;—I ask you; did you not hear and see these doings, and, even when you did at length surprise the pair, did you not by failing to condemn their folly, give it your silent sanction?”
“Something of this I did,” said the advocate coolly, “for I remembered some rather liberal breathings of my own when I was young,—and youth will have its fling,—nay, do not bite your lip, but listen. Monsieur Montigny, thus far we have met guile with guile. Just like two wily fencers, both of us, waiting to spy our advantage, have still witheld the lunge, until, at last, you, having grown desperate, have rushed into the close. Yet, do not let your anger overbear discretion. The heated iron hisses when it is plunged into the trough, but shall we hiss at each other like geese or serpents? Shall we quarrel, deny the undeniable, try to undo the accomplished deed? What is done is done, and not Omnipotence itself, sir, could undo it.”
“But we may hinder further evil,” observed the seigneur.
“Ay? Would you keep out the lightning by high builded walls?” demanded the advocate, “for you are as likely to accomplish that, as to keep lovers from each other. No, let them alone, for they are as climbing Titans towards their wishes' skies; despising guardians' gates and fathers' fences, just as much as did Briareus and his crew disdain its rugged sides, and risk their necks up steep Olympus, when they were making war on Jove. You cannot bar them. The sun may be debarred from attics, and frost may be kept out of cellars, but, Monsieur Montigny, the mutually enamoured can never be permanently parted. Sir, no more.”
“Enamoured he, and she at length dishonoured,” cried the seigneur, disregarding the injunction.
“Her honour is its own sufficient guardian,” was responded.
“Have regard, sir, to your future peace,” was urged.
“Peace, sir, like silence, never comes for calling for,” rejoined the advocate.
“Impracticable man, have you no fear?” demanded the foiled Montigny upbraidingly.
“None for my ward; I hope you have as little for your son,” said the lawyer sarcastically.
“Your ward invites my son, by sitting upon the verandah at midnight, to attract him when he passes by, as the Hebrew woman, Tamar, once sat to decoy the foolish Judah. Do you deny this? I have learned all, all,” outburst the indignant seigneur.
“Do I deny it?” cried the advocate, the blood, in anger, rushing to his face. “Dare you affirm it? Monsieur, if you mean seriously to asperse my ward, I say, prepare;—not for the action of the law,—no, no, I hate the law, when it is cited for myself,—but for the action of an old man's arm. Sir, I have been a swordsman in my youth, and though the lank skeleton of my skill at fence is buried in disuse, it moves now in the grave of this right hand, that so long has wielded only the quiet quill. I do not bid you quail; not I,—but, by the angry devil of the duel, you answer me, either sword point to sword point; or from the pointing pistol, that shall speak both sharp and decisive, and the dotting bullet, perhaps, put a period to your proud life's scrawl. But no; I am grown too old to have recourse to violence. Away, go, go; but, mind you, do not breathe this calumny into a human ear,—no, not into the air. Shame, shame! you are no noble minded man, to villify my ward and your own son; whom, if I accounted to be as strangely base as you have shown yourself to be, and have depicted him, I would forbid to tread within my gates, and hound him from my door at Stillyside.”
“Words only anger you,” said the astonished and half daunted seigneur.
“Such words as yours have been:” was replied. “What! do you expect to strike upon a bank where bees have settled, yet not be stung; or dream to be allowed to draw the bare hand, clasping down a sword, but not be wounded?”
“What shall I say, yet not offend you?” soothingly enquired Montigny.
“Say what you will,” the advocate continued: “what can be worse than what you have said already?”
“Hear me,” said the seigneur, in the manner of one who is going to make a confidential proposal: “Either remove your ward, and receive a compensation for her absence, or quickly marry her, and I will provide her with a dower.”
“Now you are indeed a generous gentleman,” said the advocate, smiling; “You must have built churches, surely, or founded hospitals, and always have dealt out dollars liberally to the deserving. But you are wealthy, and can do these things without being impoverished. It is fortunate that you are wealthy, for I shall accept of no paltry sum. Only imagine, to have to banish her; to quench, or to remove, the very beam that fills my life with light. You must be liberal, if you would have me exile her Come, sign me a bond for what I shall demand.”
“You are in haste,” observed the seigneur, somewhat startled at the advocate catching so readily at the bait; but the latter was ready with his reply:
“Because your son may now be at Stillyside, and, whilst we are haggling, may carry off my ward,—or I might change my mind,” he answered.
“And I, too, may change mine,” was the rejoinder.
“Why, then, we are quits;” observed the advocate carelessly, and as if all parley were at an end; “we are as we were, and, for the young ones, they are as they were; but if I know the force of youthful blood, you, with all your endeavours, will not be able long to keep them apart.”
“What is your price for her expatriation?” demanded the seigneur sullenly, as if coming to terms; and the advocate replied:
“No, marry her, marry her; we will have her married. We either marry her or do nothing in this business, sir, which, after all, were, perhaps, best left to those who have most interest in it;—but if you think differently, be it yours to find the money, I will find the match:—and let it be understood, that you find her a dowry which would be fitting for a seigneur's daughter; or else, without a dowry, I shall not scruple to give her to a seigneur's son. Why are you silent?”
The proud, perplexed parent made no answer, but secretly groaned in his dilemma, and at length exclaimed: “Insatiate old man, have you no son, the thought of which may teach you to be just towards me and mine? What do I ask of you? Little,—or what would cost you little, yet you ask a fortune of me; and to enrich, too, one, whom, as a punishment, I have reason rather to desire should always be poor. Do not deny it; she has ensnared my son. It is impossible, that he who has roamed over half the world, and has yet come home uncaptivated, though in his travels he has met the fairest and the richest, can have been caught at the mere passing by your farm of Stillyside, can at a glance have been so smitten as to meditate this marriage. No, he has been decoyed, seduced. You might as well declare that a young eagle would not return to its nest, but plunge into some casually discovered coop, and roost there, as aver that, without some irregular influence, Claude Montigny would seek your ward in marriage. If she marry him, she will marry a beggar: not an acre of mine shall he inherit, not a dollar of mine will he receive. Give her a dowry? Give her a dukedom. No, sir; I will not buy brass from you at the price of gold; I will not subsidize you to avoid your ward.” And, with the words, he bowed himself out of the room, and the advocate, casting himself backwards in his easy chair, laughing, exclaimed: “Was ever such a proposition started?—started! yes; and shall eventually be carried. It is not what we do, but it is the motive that induced the deed, that gives the color to it. She shall be Madam Montigny, in spite of old Montigny's self; and for her dowry, (which I asked Montigny to provide, only that it might be returned to him through his son), I'll mortgage my old brains to procure it for her.”