CHAPTER XLII.
When Jean Charost awoke, it was one of those pleasant, drowsy summer mornings when the whole of nature seems still inclined to sleep, when there is a softness in the air, a misty haze in the atmosphere, streaky white clouds are half veiling the sky, and even the birds of the bush, and the beasts of the field, seem inclined to prolong the sweet morning slumber in the midst of the bounteous softness of all around. A breath of air, it is true, stirred the trees; but it was very gentle and very soft, and though the lark rose up from his fallow to sing his early matins at heaven's gate, yet the sounds were so softened by the distance, that one seemed to feel the melody rather than to hear it. It was very early, and from the window no moving object was to be seen except the mute herds winding on toward their pasturage, a rook wending its straight flight overhead, and an early laborer taking his way toward the fields. The general world was all asleep; but, nevertheless, the young Lord De Brecy was soon equipped in walking guise and wandering on toward the hermitage. He found its tenants up, and ready for the mornings' labors; but one of them welcomed him as an old acquaintance, and, leading him into their cell, remained with him in conversation for more than an hour.
De Brecy came forth more grave than he had gone in, though that was grave enough, and immediately on his return to the castle messengers were dispatched to several public functionaries in Bourges. It was done quietly, however, and even those who bore the short letters of their lord had no idea that his impulse was a sudden one, supposing merely that he acted on orders received before he had set out from Poictiers.
Ere he joined his mother and Agnes too, De Brecy passed some time in examining a packet of old papers, a few trinkets, and a ring, and then walked up and down thoughtfully in his room for several minutes. Then casting away care, he mingled with his household again, and an hour went by in cheerful conversation. Perhaps Jean Charost was gayer than usual, less thoughtful, yet his mother observed that once or twice his eyes fixed upon the face of Agnes for a very few moments with a look of intense earnestness and consideration. Nor was Agnes herself unconscious of it; and once, for a single instant, as she caught his look directed toward her, a fluttering blush spread over her cheek, and some slight agitation betrayed itself in her manner.
Shortly after she left the hall; and Madame De Brecy said, in a quiet tone, but not without a definite purpose, "I doubt not we shall have an early visit, my son, from a young neighbor of ours who lives between this place and De Brecy: Monsieur De Brives, whose château, and the village of that name you can see from the top of the tower. He has frequently been to see us both here and at De Brecy--I believe I might say to see our dear Agnes. You see, my dear son, how beautiful she has become; and, to say the truth, I am very glad you have arrived before this young gentleman has come to any explanation of his wishes; for I could not venture to tell him even the little that I know of Agnes's history, and yet he might desire some information regarding her family."
She watched her son's countenance quietly while she spoke, but she could discover no trace of emotion thereon. Jean Charost was silent, indeed, and did not reply for two or three minutes; but he remained quite calm, and merely thoughtful. At length he asked, "Do you know, my dearest mother, any thing of this young gentleman's character?"
"It is very fair, I believe, as the world goes," replied Madame De Brecy. "He seems amiable and kind, and distinguished himself in the attack of Cone some years ago, I am told. He is wealthy, too, and altogether his own master."
"How does Agnes receive him?" asked Jean Charost, thoughtfully.
"Friendly and courteously," replied his mother; "but I have remarked nothing more. Indeed, I have given no great encouragement to his visits, thinking that perhaps the dear girl might meet with a sad disappointment if her affections became entangled, and her obscure history were to prove an insurmountable obstacle in the eyes of the man she had chosen."
"Did it do so, he would be unworthy of her," answered Jean Charost, rising, and walking slowly to and fro in the room. Then stopping opposite to his mother, he added, "I have been thinking all this morning, my dear mother, of telling Agnes every thing I can tell of her history. It is a somewhat difficult and somewhat painful task, but yet it must be done."
"I think the sooner the better," replied Madame De Brecy. "I have long thought so; but trusting entirely to your judgment, I did not like to interfere."
"Does she know that she is in no degree allied to us?" asked Jean Charost.
"Yes, yes," answered his mother; "that her own questions elicited one day. I could see she would have fain known more; but I merely told her she was an orphan committed to your care and guardianship. That seemed to satisfy her, and she asked no more. But I think it is right that she should know all."
"She shall," answered Jean Charost. "I will tell her; but it must be at some moment when we are alone together."
"If you will give me any sign, I will quit the room," answered Madame De Brecy.
"No," replied her son, thoughtfully; "no: that will not be needful. I could not tell it in a formal way. It must be told gently, easily, my dear mother, in order not to alarm and agitate her. Some day when we are riding or walking forth in the woods around, or on the castle walls, I will say something which will naturally lead her to inquire. Then, piece by piece, I will dole it out, as if it were a matter of not much moment. There sounds the horn at the gates. Perhaps it is this Monsieur De Brives."
"What will you do if he speaks at once?" asked Madame De Brecy quickly, adding, "I doubt not that he will do so."
"I will refer him to Agnes herself," answered Jean Charost. "She must decide. First, however, I will let him know as much of her history as I may, and, as some counterpoise, will assure him that all which I have gained by my labors or my sword shall be hers."
"But you will some day marry, yourself, deal Jean--I hope, I trust so," said his mother, earnestly.
"Never!" answered her son; and the next moment Monsieur De Brives was in the room.
He was a tall, handsome young man, of some five or six-and-twenty, polished and courteous in his manners, with a tone of that warm sincerity in his whole address which is usually very winning upon woman's heart. Why, it is hardly possible to say, Jean Charost received him with somewhat stately coldness; and the first few words of ceremony had hardly passed, when Agnes herself re-entered the room and welcomed their visitor with friendly ease. De Brecy's eyes were turned upon her eagerly. At the end of a few minutes, Monsieur De Brives turned to Jean Charost, saying, "I am glad you have returned at last, Monsieur De Brecy; for I have a few words to say to you in private, if your leisure serves to give me audience."
"Assuredly," replied De Brecy, rising; and whispering a word to his mother as he passed, he led the way to a cabinet near, giving one glance to the face of Agnes. It was perfectly calm.
His conversation with Monsieur De Brives lasted half an hour, and some time before it was over, Madame De Brecy quietly left the hall, while Agnes remained embroidering a coat of arms. At length the two gentlemen issued from the cabinet, and Monsieur De Brives took his way at once to the room where Agnes was seated. Jean Charost, for his part, went down to the lower hall, which had been left vacant while his followers sported in the castle court. There, with a grave, stern air, and his arms crossed upon his chest, Jean Charost paced up and down the pavement, pausing once to look out into the court upon the gay games going on; but he turned away without even a smile, bending his eyes thoughtfully upon the old stones as if he would have counted their number or spied out their flaws. The time seemed very long to him, and yet he would not interrupt the lover in his suit. At length, however, he heard a rapid step coming, and the next instant Monsieur De Brives entered the hall, as if to pass through it to the court. His face was deadly pale, and traces of strong emotion were in every line.
"Well," cried De Brecy, advancing to meet him; "she has accepted you--of course, she has accepted you."
De Brives only grasped his hand, and shook his head.
"Did you tell her you knew all?" asked De Brecy. "Did you tell her of your generous--"
"In vain--all in vain," said the young man; and, wringing De Brecy's hand hard in his, he broke away from him, and left the castle.
Jean Charost stood for an instant in the midst of the hall buried in deep thought, and then mounted the stairs to the room where he had left Agnes. He found her weeping bitterly; and going gently up to her, he seated himself beside her and took her hand. "Dear Agnes," he said, "you are weeping. You regret what you have done. It is not yet too late. Let me send after him. He has hardly yet left the castle."
"No, no--no!" cried Agnes, eagerly. "I do not regret what I have said, though I regret having given him pain--I regret to give pain to any thing. But I told him the truth."
"What did you tell him?" asked Jean Charost, perhaps indiscreetly.
Agnes's face glowed warmly, but she answered at once, "I told him I could not love him as a woman should love her husband."
"Bitter truth enough from such lips as those," said Jean Charost in a low tone.
"Indeed, indeed," cried Agnes, who seemed to feel some reproach in his words, "I did not intend to grieve him more than I could help in telling him the truth. But how could I love him?" she asked, with a bewildered look; and then shaking her head sadly, she added, "no--no!"
"Not a word more, dear Agnes," answered Jean Charost. "You did right to tell him the truth; and I am quite sure you did it as gently as might be. Now let us forget this painful incident as soon as we can, and all be as we were before."
"Oh gladly," cried Agnes, with a bright smile. "I hope for nothing, I desire nothing but that."
He soothed her with kindly tenderness, and soon whiled her away from all painful thoughts, gradually and with more skill than might have been expected, leading the conversation by imperceptible degrees to other subjects and to distant scenes. The return of Madame De Brecy to the room renewed for a time the beautiful girl's agitation; and Jean Charost left her with his mother, with a promise to take a long ramble with her that evening, and make her show him every fair spot in the woods around the castle.
Woman's heart, it is generally supposed, is more easily opened to a fellow-woman than to a man; and sometimes it is so, but sometimes not. If we have watched closely, most of us must have seen the secret within more carefully guarded from a woman's eyes than from any other--perhaps from a knowledge of their acuteness. Such, indeed, might not--probably was not.--the case with Agnes. Nevertheless, it was in vain that Madame De Brecy questioned her. She told all that had occurred frankly and simply, every word that had been uttered, as far as she could recollect them. But there was something that Agnes did not tell--the cause of all that had occurred. True, she could not tell it; for it was intangible to herself--misty, indefinite--a something which she could feel, but not explain. Gladly she heard the trumpet sound to dinner; for she had set Madame De Brecy musing; and Agnes did not like that she should muse too long over her conduct of that day.
Noon proved very sultry, and Jean Charost had plenty of occupation for several hours after the meal. Horsemen came and went: he saw several persons from Bourges, and several of the tenants of St. Florent. He sent off a large body of the men who had accompanied him from Poictiers to the neighboring city, and the castle resumed an air of silence and loneliness.
Toward evening, however, he called upon Agnes to prepare for her walk; and as he paced up and down the hall waiting for her, Madame De Brecy judged from his look and manner that he meditated speaking to his fair charge, that very evening, on the delicate subject of her own history.
"Be gentle with the dear girl, my son," she said, "and if you see that a subject agitates her, change it. There is something on Agnes's mind that we do not comprehend fully; and one may touch a tender point without knowing it."
"Do you suspect any other attachment?" asked Jean Charost, turning so suddenly, and speaking so gravely, that his mother was surprised.
"None whatever," she answered. "Indeed, I can not believe such a thing possible. To my knowledge she has seen no one at all likely to gain her affections but this Monsieur De Brives. The stiff old soldiers left to guard this castle and De Brecy, good Martin Grille, and Henriot, the groom, upon my word, are the only men we have seen."
The return of Agnes stopped further conversation; and she and De Brecy took their way out by one of the posterns on the hill. Agnes was now as gay as a lark; the shower had passed away and left all clear; not a trace of agitation lingered behind. De Brecy was thoughtful, but strove to be cheerful likewise, paused and gazed wherever she told him the scene was beautiful, talked with no ignorant or tasteless lips of the loveliness of nature, and of the marvels of art which he had seen since he was last in Berri; but there was something more in his conversation. There was a depth of feeling, a warmth of fancy, a richness of association which made Agnes thoughtful also. He seemed to lead her mind which way he would; to have the complete mastery over it; and exercising his power gently and tenderly, it was a pleasant and a new sensation to feel that he possessed it.
There was one very beautiful scene that came up just when the sun was a couple of hands' breadth from the horizon. It was a small secluded nook in the wood, of some ten or fifteen yards across, surrounded and overshadowed by the tall old trees, but only covered, itself, with short green grass. It was as flat and even, too, as the pavement of the hall; but just beyond, to the southwest, was a short and sharp descent, from the foot of which some lesser trees shot up their branches, letting in between them, as through a window, a prospect of the valley of the Cher, and the glowing sky beyond.
"This is a place for Dryads, Agnes," said Jean Charost, making her sit down by him on a large fragment of stone which had rolled to the foot of an old oak. "Nymphs of the woods, dear girl, might well hold commune here with spirits of the air."
"I was thinking but the day before yesterday," said Agnes, "what a beautiful spot this would be for a cottage in the wood, with that lovely sky before us, and the world below."
"It is always better," said Jean Charost, with a smile, "to keep the world below us--or, rather, to keep ourselves above the world; but I fear me, Agnes, it is not the inhabitants of cottages who have the most skill in doing so. I have little faith either in cottages or hermitages."
"Do not destroy my dreams, dear Jean," said Agnes, almost sadly.
"Oh, no," he answered, "I would not destroy, but only read them."
Agnes paused, with her eyes bent down for a moment or two, and then looked earnestly in his face: "They are very simple," she said, "and easily read. The brightest dream of my whole life, the one I cherish the most fondly, is but to remain forever with dear Madame De Brecy and you, without any change--except," she added, eagerly, "to have you always remain with us--to coax you to throw away swords and lances, and never make our hearts beat with the thought that you are in battle and in danger."
Jean Charost's own heart beat now; and he was silent for a moment or two. "That can not be, Agnes," he said, "and you would not wish it, my dear girl. Every one must sacrifice something for his country--very much in perilous times--men their repose, their ease, often their happiness, their life itself, should it be necessary; women, the society of those they love--brothers, fathers, husbands. Now, dear Agnes, I am neither of these to you, and therefore your sacrifice is not so much as that of many others."
"I know you are not my father," answered Agnes. "That our dear mother told me long ago; but do you know, dear Jean, I often wish you were my brother."
Jean Charost smiled, and seemed for a moment to hesitate what he should reply. He pursued his purpose steadily, however, and at length answered, "That is a relationship which, wish as we may, we can not bring about. But, indeed, we are none to each other, Agnes. You are only my adopted child."
"No, not your child," she said; "you are too young for that. Why not your adopted sister?"
"I never heard of such an adoption," replied De Brecy; "but you are like a child to me, Agnes. I have carried you more than one mile in my arms, when you were an infant."
"And an orphan," she added, in a sad tone. "How much--how very much do I owe you, kindest and best of friends."
"Not so much, perhaps, as you imagine, Agnes," replied Jean Charost. "To save my own life in a moment of great danger, I made a solemn promise to protect, cherish, and educate you, as if you were my own. I had incautiously suffered myself to fall into the hands of a party of ruthless marauders, who, imagining that I had come to espy their actions, and perhaps to betray them, threatened to put me to death. There was no possibility of escape or resistance; but a gentleman who was with them, and who, though not of them, possessed apparently, from old associations, great influence over them, induced them to spare me on the condition I have mentioned. You were then an infant lying under the greenwood-tree, and I, it is true, hardly more than a boy; but I took a solemn promise, dear Agnes, and I have striven to perform it well. Yet I deserve no credit even for that dear Agnes; for what I did at first from a sense of duty, I afterward did from affection. Well did you win and did you repay my love; and, as I told Monsieur De Brives this morning, although at my death the small estate of De Brecy must pass away to another and very distant branch of my own family, all that I have won by my own exertions will be yours."
"Do you think I could enjoy it, and you dead?" asked Agnes, in a sad and almost reproachful tone. "Oh, no--no! All I should then want would be enough to find me place in a nunnery, there to pray that it might not be long till we met again. You have been all and every thing to me through life, dear Jean. What matters it what happens when you are gone?"
Jean Charost laid his hand gently upon hers and she might have felt that strong hand tremble; but her thoughts seemed busy with other things. She knew not the emotions she excited--doubtless she knew not even those which lay at the source of her own words and thoughts.
"It is sad," she continued, after a brief pause, "never to have seen a father's face or known a mother's blessing. To have no brother, no sister; and though the place of all has been supplied, and well supplied, by a friend, I sometimes long to know who were my parents, what was my family. I know you would tell me, if it were right for me to know, and therefore I have never asked--nor do I ask now, though the thought sometimes troubles me."
"I am ready to tell you all I know this moment," answered Jean Charost; "but that is not much, and it is a sad tale. Are you prepared to hear it, Agnes?"
"No--not if it is sad," she answered. "I have been looking forward to the time of your return, dear friend, as if every day of your stay were to be a day of joy, and not a shadow to come over me during the whole time. Yet you have been but one day here, and that has been more checkered with sadness than many I have known for years. I have shed tears, which I have not done before since you went away. I would have no more sad things to-day. Some other time--some other time you shall tell me all about myself."
"All that I know," answered Jean Charost; "and I will give you, too, some papers which, perhaps, may tell you more. There are some jewels, too, which belong to you--"
"See," said Agnes, interrupting him, as if her mind had been absent, "the sun is half way down behind the edge of the earth. Had we not better go back to the castle? How gloriously he lights up the edges of the clouds, changing the dark gray into crimson and gold. I have often thought that love does the like; and when you and our dear mother are with me, I feel that it is so; for things that would be otherwise dark and sad seem then to become bright and sparkle. Even that which made me weep this morning has lost its heaviness, and as it was to be, I am glad that it is over."
"Will you never repent, my Agnes?" asked Jean Charost, with a voice not altogether free from emotion. "Of this Monsieur De Brives I know nothing but by report, yet he seemed to me one well calculated to win favor--and perhaps to deserve it."
"What is he to me?" asked Agnes, almost impatiently. "A mere stranger. Shall I ever repent? oh, never--never!"
"But you must marry some one nearly as much a stranger to you as he is," replied Jean Charost.
She only shook her head sadly, again answering, "Never!"
Jean Charost was silent for a moment; and then rising, they returned to the castle with nothing said of all that might have been said.