A VOICE FROM THE LOST ONE.
A few days after the departure of Maurice for Dresden, the Duke de Montauban made a formal proposal for the hand of Mademoiselle de Merrivale. French etiquette not allowing a suitor the privilege of addressing the lady of his love, except through some kindred or friendly medium, his pretensions were of course made known to Bertha by her uncle. She received the communication with a fretful tapping of her little foot, and a toss of her gamboling, golden ringlets, which bore witness to her undisguised vexation and saucy disdain. The uncompromising manner in which she declined the proposed honor, threw her guardian, who had strengthened himself to enact the part of Cupid's messenger, by a somewhat liberal repast, into a state of astonishment which threatened alarming disturbance to his laboring digestive functions.
"Really, my dear, you speak so abruptly that you make me feel quite dyspeptic. What possible objection can you have to the young duke?"
"A very slight one, according to the creed which governs matrimonial alliances in our enlightened land," returned Bertha, pouting through her sarcasm. "My objection is simply that he is not an object of the slightest interest to me."
"But the match is such a suitable one that interest will come after it is consummated," answered her uncle.
"I do not intend to marry upon faith," retorted Bertha; then she broke out petulantly, "In a word, uncle, I do not intend to marry a man who is so insipid that I could not even quarrel with him; whom I could not think of seriously enough to take the trouble to dislike; to whom I am so thoroughly indifferent that for me he has no existence out of my immediate sight."
"There, there; keep cool, my dear. Nobody intends to force you to marry him. I did not know that it was necessary to be able to dislike a man, and to have a capacity for quarrelling with him, to fit him for the position of a husband. A very unwholesome doctrine. Emotion is particularly prejudicial to the animal economy. I thought the cultivated taste which the de Fleurys so evidently possess might have some weight with you. That dinner they gave us was unsurpassable, and"—
"If I am to marry to secure myself superlatively good dinners, I had better unite myself to an accomplished cook at once," replied Bertha, demurely.
"That's very tart, my dear. All acids disagree with me, and your acidulated observations are giving me unpleasant premonitory symptoms."
Bertha noticed that the bon vivant had in reality began to puff and pant as though he were suffering from an incipient nightmare. Being so thoroughly habituated to his idiosyncrasy that she had learned to regard it leniently, she made an effort to recover her good humor, and answered,—
"I know my kind uncle will not render me uncomfortable by pressing this subject; but, in the most courteous manner, will let the Duke de Montauban understand that I do not intend to marry at present."
"Make you uncomfortable," rejoined the marquis, struggling for breath; "of course, I would not for the world! Do you take me for an old brute? And I have just made arrangements to drive you to the Bois de Boulogne and dine at Madrid's this evening. A pretty state you would be in to do justice to a dinner which promises to place in jeopardy the laurels even of M. de Fleury's cook."
"We will strike a bargain," returned Bertha, with her wonted gayety. "If you will agree not to mention the Duke de Montauban, I will agree to do justice to the dinner at Madrid's."
"I am content; we will drop the duke and discuss the dinner."
The attentions of Madame de Fleury's brother to the heiress had been too marked and open for his suit and its rejection to remain a secret. Gaston de Bois heard Bertha's refusal commented upon, and there was a buzz in his ears of idle speculations concerning the origin of her caprice. Was it some blissful, internal suggestion, which diffused such a glow of happiness over his expressive countenance when he next saw Bertha? Was it some hitherto uncertain ground of encouragement made sure beneath his feet, which so wondrously loosened his tongue from its dire bondage? Was it some aerial hope, taking tangible shape, which imparted such an air of ease and elation to his demeanor? Gaston stammered less every day,—his impediment disappearing as his self-possession increased. On this occasion he was only conscious of a slight difficulty in utterance to rejoice at its existence, for it rendered delightfully apparent Bertha's thoughtfulness in catching up words upon which he hesitated, and concluding sentences he commenced, as though she read their meaning in his eyes. Gaston had not seen her in so buoyant a mood since they parted at the Château de Gramont. But the tide of her exuberant gayety suddenly ebbed when she noticed the look of pain with which he involuntarily responded to one of her chance questions. She had asked if he thought it probable Maurice would find Madeleine in Dresden. Again that singular expression on his countenance; again that sudden change of color at Madeleine's name; again that involuntary starting from his seat, with a return of the olden habit which placed fragile furniture in danger! Was it the remembrance that Madeleine was lost to them which occasioned M. de Bois's sudden depression? Was it an overwhelming sense of doubt concerning the result of Maurice's mission, which made his response to Bertha's inquiry so vague, his sentences so disjointed? Once more Bertha asked herself whether he were not, after all, the lover Madeleine had refused to mention. Yet, if this were the case, how could Gaston have appeared so much less anxious and less concerned at her flight than Maurice, who loved her with unquestionable ardor? Why had M. de Bois aided so little in the search for her present habitation? The young girl could not reconcile such apparent contradictions, and while she sat perplexing herself by futile efforts to unravel these mysteries, M. de Bois was equally puzzled to rightly interpret her silence and abstraction.
The interview which, at its opening, had been as bright as a spring morning, closed with sudden April shadows; and there was an April mingling of smiles and tears upon Bertha's countenance when she retired to her chamber, after M. de Bois's departure, and pondered over his strange expression when her cousin was mentioned. Why, if Madeleine was his choice, was his manner toward herself so full of tenderness? Why was it that she never glanced at him without finding his eyes fastened upon her face? Why had he so much power to draw her irresistibly towards him? Why did his step set her heart throbbing so tumultuously? Why did his coming cause her such a thrill of delight, and his departure leave such a sense of solitude?—a void that no one else filled, a pain that no other presence soothed.
Meantime Maurice had reached Dresden and was searching for Madeleine, almost in the same vague, unreasonable manner that he had sought her in Paris. But the mad course upon which he had again started, and which might have once more unbalanced his mind, met with a sudden check. The day after his arrival in Dresden he received a note, which ran thus:—
"Madeleine is not in Dresden. She entreats Maurice to discontinue a search which must prove fruitless. Should the day ever come, as she prays it may, when her place of refuge can become known to him, no effort of his will be required for its discovery. Will not Maurice accept the pains of the inevitable present and wait for the consolations the future may bring forth with the hope and patience which must sustain her until that blessed period shall arrive?"
Maurice was almost stupefied as he read these lines. He crushed the paper in his nervous fingers to be certain that it was tangible; he compared the writing with the one upon the envelope which he had taken from Bertha. If that were Madeleine's hand, so was this. He looked for a postmark; there was none; the letter had been brought by a private messenger, and yet Madeleine was not in Dresden! How could this be? That, in some mysterious manner, she became acquainted with his movements was unquestionable. Her thoughts then were turned to him,—her invisible presence followed him. It was some joy, at least, to know that he lived in her memory.
Maurice, without a moment's hesitation, without letting his own personal suffering weigh in the balance of decision, without allowing his mind to dwell upon the probabilities of tracing Madeleine through this new clew, resolved to comply with her request.
When he returned to Paris and placed her letter in Bertha's hands, and told her his determination, she impetuously urged him not to be guided by their cousin's wishes. She pleaded that Madeleine was sacrificing herself from a mistaking sense of duty; that, if her place of abode could only be revealed, Bertha's own supplications might influence her to abandon her present project, and to accept the home which Bertha, with the full consent of her uncle, could offer.
Maurice listened not unmoved, but unshaken, in his selected course. He felt that a woman of Madeleine's dignity of character,—a woman of her calm judgment,—a woman who could look with such steady, tearless eyes upon life's realities,—a woman who would not have trodden in flowery ways though every pressure of her foot crushed out some delicious aroma to perfume her life, if the "stern lawgiver, duty," summoned her to a flinty road, and pointed to a glorious goal beyond,—such a woman, having deliberately chosen her path, having tested her strength to walk therein, having pronounced that strength all-sufficient, deserved the tribute of confidence, and an even blind respect to her mandates. Besides, compliance with her wishes was a species of voiceless, wordless communication with her; it was sending her a message through some unknown and mysterious channel.
Maurice presented this in its most vivid colors before Bertha's eyes; but in vain. She was too wayward, too unreasonable, too full of passionate yearning for the presence of Madeleine, too sensible of an innate weakness that longed to lean upon Madeleine's strength, to see the justice and wisdom of the conclusion to which Maurice had arrived.
As soon as their painful interview was closed by the entrance of the marquis, Maurice sought the old Jew and ordered him to prosecute his search no further. Henriques, who had already extracted a considerable sum from the young nobleman, and looked upon the transaction as a safe investment calculated to yield a certain profit for some months to come, was very unwilling to relinquish his promised gain. He assured the viscount that he had lately received information of the greatest importance; the party to whom the jewels had originally belonged had at last been tracked; the undertaking was on the very eve of success. To abandon it was a refusal to grasp the prize almost within their clutch. Whether the cunning Jew spoke the truth, or fiction, mattered little; for Maurice, in spite of these alluring representations, did not allow himself to be tempted to violate Madeleine's express command. He had, as it were, accepted his fate, and cast away the arms with which men war with so-called "destiny;" struggle and rebellion were over. To "wait" in patience was all that remained.
But what was to be done with his existence? In the plenitude of youthful health and strength, was his life to ebb away, like an unreplenished stream, flowing into nothingness? His days became more and more wearisome; the hours hung more and more heavily upon his hands; the feet of time sounded with iron tramp in his ears, yet never appeared to move onward.
"In his eyes a cloud and burthen lay;" a shadowy sorrow dropped its pall of darkness over his mind and obscured his perception of all awakening, quickening inspirations; a smouldering fire within him withered up every vernal shoot of impulse and turned all the spring-time foliage of thought and fancy sere. His voice, his look, his mien, betrayed that an ever-living woe encompassed him with gloom.
Ronald fruitlessly strove to rouse him from this state of supine despondency. The active employment, the all-engrossing interest which would have medicined his unslumbering sorrow, were remedial agents denied by his father's unwise decree. As a substitute, though of less potency, Ronald strove to inspire him with his own strong love for literature. The young American had a passion for books which were the reflex of great minds. His quick hearkening to the voices breathing from their pages, and made prophetic by some sudden experience; the ready plummet with which he sounded their depths of reasoning; the sentient hand with which he plucked out their truths and planted them in his own rich memory, to grow like trees filled with singing-birds: these had rendered his communings with master-spirits one of the noblest and most strengthening influences of his life. What wonder, when literature was so bounteously distributed over his native land that it made itself vocal beneath every hedge,—enriched the humblest cottage with a library,—found its way, in the inexpensive guise of magazines, a welcome visitant at every fireside,—poured out its treasures at the feet of rich and poor, liberally as the liberal sunshine, freely as the free air?
Maurice, educated in a different atmosphere, at the same age as Ronald, was a stranger to the companionship of written minds, save those to which his college studies had formally presented him; and his dark unrest rendered it difficult for him to follow his friend into the teeming Golconda of literature, and to gather the gems spread to his hands. And when, at last, Ronald's enthusiasm proved contagious and kindled Maurice to seek out some great author's charm, it too often chanced that he stumbled upon passages that irritated him, and increased his moody discontent. We instance one of these occasions as illustrative of many others.
Ronald, whose busy brush had been brought to a stand-still by an unusually dark day, when he returned to his apartments, found his friend reading Bulwer's "Caxtons." Maurice was leaning with both elbows upon the table, his fingers plunged through his disordered hair, his brows almost fiercely contracted, and his wan face bent over the volume before him.
"I found some grand pictures in that book," remarked the young artist. "Which are you contemplating?"
"No pictures. I have not your eye for pictures," answered Maurice, with something more than a touch of impatience. "I am moved, haunted, tormented by truths which have more power than all the ideal pictures pen ever drew, or brush ever painted. You place me here before your library, you lure me to read, and every book I open utters words that make my compulsory mode of existence a reproach, a disgrace, a misery to me. Read this, for instance: 'Life is a drama, not a monologue. A drama is derived from a Greek word which signifies to do. Every actor in the drama has something to do which helps on the progress of the whole,—that is the object for which the author created him. Do your part and let the Great Play go on!' Do? do?" continued Maurice, in an excited tone as he finished the quotation; "it is a torment worthy of a place in Dante's Inferno to know that there is nothing one is permitted to do! I too am an actor in the Great Drama; but I have no part to play save that of lay figure, motionless and voiceless; yet, unhappy, not being deprived of sensibility, I am goaded to desperation by inward taunting because I can do nothing."
"The play is not ended yet," answered Ronald, with as much cheerfulness as he could command, for his friend's depression affected his sympathetic nature. "We may not comprehend our rôles in the beginning; we may have to study long before we can thoroughly conceive, then idealize, then act them."
"I could bear that mine should be a sad, if it were only an active one," returned Maurice, again fixing his eyes upon the book.
Ronald could make no reply to a sentiment so thoroughly in accordance with his own views. He constantly pondered upon the possibilities through which his friend might be freed from the shackles that bound him to the effeminate serfdom of idleness; but the magic that could unrivet those fetters had not yet been revealed. Still he was sometimes stirred by a mysterious prescience that they would be loosened, and through his instrumentality.
Ronald's nature was essentially practical without being prosaic. The rich ore of poetry, inseparable from all exquisitely fine organizations, lay beneath the daily current of his life, like golden veins in the bed of a stream, shining through the crystal waters that bore the most commonplace objects on their tide. He thoroughly accepted that interpretation of the Ideal which calls it a "divine halo with which the Creator had encircled the world of reality;" but while he instinctively lifted all he loved into supernal regions and contemplated them in the glorious spirit-light that heightens all beauty, he lost sight of none of the stern actualities of their existence. His imagination had fashioned a hero out of Maurice, and he had thrown his person in heroic guise upon canvas; yet he clearly beheld and mourned over the morbid tendency that was weakening his mind and threatened to render his character and his life equally unheroic.
Only a few days after the conversation we have just narrated, when Maurice entered Ronald's sitting-room he found the student with an open letter in his hand. As he lifted his eloquent, brown eyes from the paper a glittering moisture beaded their darkly fringed lashes, and an expression of ineffable tenderness looked out from their lustrous depths. The letter was from his mother,—one of those messengers of deep affection which transported him into her presence, placed him, as he had so often sat in his petted boyhood, at her feet, to listen to her holy teachings, and be thrilled to the very centre of his being by her words of love. During his three years of separation, at a period when the expanding mind is most impressible, these letters, weekly received, had surrounded him with a heavenly aura which seemed breathed out through a mother's ceaseless prayers, and had kept his life pure, his spirit strong, his heart uplifted; had preserved him from being hurried by the wild, ungoverned impulses of youth, rendered more infectuous by the volcanic fires of genius, into actions for which he might blush hereafter.
It was one of the undefined, unspoken sources of sympathy between Ronald and Maurice, that the guarding hand of woman, influencing them from a distance, preserved the bloom, the freshness, the pristine purity of both their souls, even in the polluted atmosphere of a city where immorality is an accepted evil. Maurice, who had never known a mother's hallowing affection, gained his strength through his early attachment to a maiden whom no man could love without being ennobled thereby; and Ronald, whose heart had never yet awakened to the first pulse of tenderness which drew him towards one he would have claimed as a bride, owed his powers of resistance to as strong, as passionate devotion to a mother who united in her person all the most glorious attributes of womanhood, and whose idolizing love for her child was tempered by wisdom which placed his spiritual progress above all other gain. While he was struggling to win laurels in art's arena, she strove to bind upon his brow a crown whose gems were heavenly truths,—a crown the pure in spirit alone could wear.
Blessed the son who has such a mother! Safe and blessed! His foot shall tread upon the serpent that lies hidden beneath the tempting flowers in his path, ere the reptile can sting him; his hand shall resolutely put away the cup of pleasure from his lips when there is poison in the chalice; he shall walk through the fire of evil lusts unscathed! No laurel that wreaths his brow shall render it too feverish, or too proud, to lie upon that mother's bosom with the glad, all-confiding, satisfied sense which made its joy when it lay there in guileless boyhood. That mother's love shall smooth for him the rough ways of earth, and place in his hand the golden key that opens heaven.
As Maurice took his seat beside Ronald, the latter, hastily sweeping his handkerchief across his eyes, said with a vehement intonation,—
"I have come to a sudden determination! I am going back to America. The trip is nothing,—ten days over and ten back,—a mere trifle! I can spend a couple of months with my parents and be back in time for autumn work. Instead of sending my picture, which is nearly completed, I will present it in person."
Maurice sighed as he answered, "They will be proud of your work! Happy are they who have work to do, and who do it faithfully!"
"That is a sentiment worthy of an American," rejoined Ronald; "indeed, you have unconsciously stolen it from one of our most distinguished American writers, who says, 'To have something to do and to do it is the best appointment for us all.'[A] The extent to which I have insensibly Americanized you is very evident. A thought has just struck me: you are weary and melancholy, and seem to grow much paler and thinner every day. It will revive and strengthen you to accompany me. Come, let us go together!"
"Let us fly to the moon!" answered Maurice, half scornfully. "Ronald, why do you always forget that although we have lived precisely the same number of years, and I may be said to have lived so much longer than you, if we count time by sorrows that make long the days,—though we have both passed our twenty-first anniversary, you, as an American, have obtained your majority, and are a free agent, while the law of France renders me still a minor for four years? You know I cannot stir without my father's consent; and, of course, that is unattainable."
"Unattainable if you choose to imagine that it is, and will not seek for it," answered Ronald, rebukingly. "The wisest poet that ever penned his inspiration, says,—
'Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt!'
Do not let your traitorous doubts frighten you from the trial."
Maurice smiled away his rising irritability, and replied, "I think, Ronald, your mind is so full of poetic arrows that one could not take a step, or lift a finger, or draw a breath, without your being able to hit him with a verse."
"A verse may hit him who a sermon flies!" retorted Ronald, laughingly. "And a man is easy to hit who sits down with folded hands, like him of whom my rhythmic shaft has just made a target. But, to speak seriously, do you wonder that true thoughts, beautiful thoughts, which have been thrown into the music of verse, keep their haunting echoes in some stronghold of memory, and surge up to the lips when a stirring incident causes the gates of the mind to vibrate? Why, the very proof of the poet's genuine inspiration, his chiefest triumph lies in this, that he speaks a familiar truth, a common word of hope, a little word of comfort, a simple word of warning, with such potency that it strikes deeper into the soul than any other adjuration can reach; it defies us to forget; it takes the sound of a prophecy, and thrills our hearts and governs our actions in spite of ourselves. So much in defence of my poetic memories. Now be generous enough to admit that poetry is usually mingled with a large proportion of prosaic common sense which resolves itself into action. My scoffed-at poetry interprets itself into this matter-of-fact prose: unless you have the courage, the energy to ask your father's consent to your accompanying me to America, you will not get it; and if you ask you may get it; and if you accompany me it may profit you. Come,—what say you? I shall be ready to start next week."
"So soon?" ejaculated Maurice, who, often as he had witnessed the promptitude with which the young American moved, could not yet familiarize himself with his national rapidity of action and decision.
"You call it soon? Why, if I had said day after to-morrow it might have been termed soon; but it seems to me a week is time enough to prepare for a journey around the world. Come, you have half an hour before the post closes,—dash off your letter and let it go at once."
As he spoke, he cleared his writing-table of the books and papers by which it was encumbered, and placed a chair for Maurice. The latter, who was always carried onward by the rushing current of his friend's strong will, wrote, on the spur of the moment, a letter more calculated to impress his father than any deliberately studied epistle. The restless and gloomy state of mind under which Maurice labored, revealed itself in this impulsive effusion with a force which might not have found its way into a calmer communication.
The frequent applications for money which Maurice had been compelled to make, that he might meet the demands of the old Jew, were not without their influence in preparing Count Tristan to look favorably upon his son's solicitation. The count imagined that the sums so constantly demanded were squandered in the manner habitual to gay young men in Paris. He had experienced much difficulty in complying with his son's last request, and became painfully aware that it would not much longer be in his power to supply him at the same extravagant rate. As a natural consequence, he hailed the proposition to travel, which might break off any unfortunate connections, or liaisons, he might have formed in Paris, and without their aid, divert his troubled mind. Then, the present would be a favorable opportunity for Maurice to visit his estate in Maryland, and to learn something further of that railway company which seemed of late to have suspended its operations.
Maurice was not less astounded than overjoyed upon receiving his father's prompt and unconditional consent to his proposed trip. He at once carried the letter to Bertha. She was too generous to oppose a step which promised to be advantageous to her cousin, yet she could not contemplate their inevitable separation without sincere sorrow.
"I wish I were going with you!" she sighed. "It seems to me everybody is going to America. Have you not heard that the Marquis de Fleury has just received the appointment of ambassador to the United States? I wish my uncle would let me travel to some foreign country. I am weary of this Parisian, ball-going life."
"Has Monsieur de Fleury received his appointment at last? I had not heard of it. Who told you?" inquired Maurice.
"M. de Bois, this very morning."
"Gaston goes with him, I presume?"
"Yes, he said so."
"That is an unexpected pleasure,—that is really delightful!" exclaimed Maurice, enthusiastically.
Bertha did not reply; but she certainly looked inclined to pout, and as though she had no very distinct perception of the delight in question.
In a few days Maurice and Ronald were on the great ocean.
A fortnight later the Marquis and Marchioness de Fleury, and the secretary of the former, M. de Bois, were also on their way to the New World.
Bertha worried her uncle by her sad face, listless manner, and low spirits, to say nothing of her loss of appetite (to his thinking the most important feature of her malaise), until he was convinced that she had lost all interest in Paris, and that her sadness would be increased by a longer sojourn in the gay capital. When she admitted this, he kindly inquired if she desired to travel.
"Yes, very much," was her reply.
Whither would she go? To Italy? To England? To Russia?
"No,—to America!"
America!—land of savages!—land of Pawnees and Choctaws!—land where cooking must be in its crude infancy! Her uncle would not listen to such a barbarous proposition; and, finding that he could obtain no other answer from his wilful and incomprehensible ward, he carried her back to Bordeaux, consoling himself with the reflection that although the visit to Paris had not been permanently advantageous to his niece, the culinary knowledge acquired by Lucien was a full compensation.
[A] Hillard's "Italy."