CHAPTER XXXI.
Luckily, the window from which I was thrown was on the first floor, and not above sixteen feet raised from the ground. My fall, therefore, was so instantaneous, that I had no time to indulge in any of the pleasing anticipations of which a journey head-foremost from a high window to the ground is susceptible. The fall, however, was sufficient to stun and bewilder me; and before I had well recovered my recollection, I found myself surrounded by a good number of lackeys with torches, who had seen my sudden ejaculation from the gaming-house while they were accompanying some carriage through the streets, and had come to my assistance, with many inquiries as to whether I was hurt.
I had fallen upon my left shoulder and hip, and my head had fortunately escaped without the same sudden contact with the stones; so that, though somewhat confused, I could reply that I believed I was not much injured, but that I could not rise without assistance.
"Help him to rise," cried a voice, which very much resembled that of the Chevalier de Montenero, "and give him what assistance you can."
The person who spoke I could not see; but the servants, who had been hitherto gazing at me without lending me any very substantial aid, now hurried to raise me, one taking me by each arm. This proceeding, however, gave me such exquisite pain in my left shoulder, that after a groan or two, and an ineffectual effort to make them comprehend that they were inflicting on me the tortures of the damned, I lost all recollection with the excess of agony.
When I recovered my perception of what was passing around me, I found that the servants had procured a kind of brancard, or litter, and having laid me upon it, were carrying me on, I conjectured, to the house of some surgeon.
They stopped, however, a moment after, at the entrance of what was evidently a very handsome private hotel, and passing through the porte cochère and the court, they bore me into an immense salle-à-manger, and thence into a small chamber beyond, where I was carefully laid on a bed, and bade to compose myself, as a surgeon had been sent for, and would arrive, they expected, immediately.
He was not indeed long; and on examining my side, he found that my shoulder was dislocated, but that I had sustained no other injury of consequence. After a painful operation, the process of which I need not detail, I was put to bed, and the surgeon having given me a draught to procure sleep and allay the pain I suffered, recommended me to be kept as quiet as possible, and left me. I did not, however, suffer all the servants to quit the room without inquiring whether I had not heard the voice of the Chevalier de Montenero.
The valet replied, that he thought I must have been mistaken, for he never heard of such a name in all his life; but as there had been a good many persons round about when I was taken up, it was possible one of these might have spoken in the manner I mentioned.
I was now left alone, and I endeavoured to forget as fast as possible, in the arms of sleep, all the unpleasant circumstances round which memory would fain have lingered. It was in vain, however, that I did so; the feverish aching of my bones kept slumber far away. Every noise that stirred in the house I heard; every step that moved along its various halls and passages seemed beating upon the drum of my ear: I could hear my own blood rush along my veins and throb in my head, as if Vulcan and all the Cyclops of Etna had transferred their anvils to my brain.
While in this state, a light suddenly shone through the keyhole and under the door, and I heard several persons enter the dining-hall through which I had been borne thither. Everything that was said reached my ears as distinctly as if I had been present, and I soon found that the principal person who entered was the nephew of the proprietor of the house. He had just returned, it seemed, from some spectacle, and bringing a friend with him, demanded supper with the tone of a spoiled boy, who knew that his lightest word was law to all who surrounded him. The supper was brought, with apparently all the delicacies he demanded, for he made no complaint; and having sent for all the most excellent wines in his uncle's cellar, he dismissed the servants, and remained alone with his friend.
Tossing about, restless and irritable, I was nearly frantic with their mirth and their gaiety, and could have willingly murdered them both to make them silent; but soon their conversation began to take a turn which interested even me. The youth, who was evidently the entertainer, and whom his companion named Charles, had for several minutes been expatiating with all the hyperbolical enthusiasm of youthful passion on some beautiful girl whom he had determined, he said, to marry, let who would oppose it. Her name was mentioned by neither of the speakers, their conversation referring to something that had passed before. With the very natural pleasure which most people experience in finding all sorts of obstacles to whatever another person proposes, the friend seemed bent upon suggesting difficulties in opposition to his companion's passion. "Consider, my dear Charles," said he, "this girl may be as beautiful as the day, but, from her father's situation, her education must have been very much neglected."
"Not at all! not at all!" replied the lover. "Her education, as far as learning and accomplishments go, will shame the whole court, and her manners are those of a princess of Eldorado. Why, I told you, she has been brought up all her life by the Countess de Bigorre."
It may easily be supposed that such words did not tend to calm the beating of my heart; and in the agitation caused by thus suddenly discovering that Helen was the subject of their conversation, I lost what passed next. In a moment after, however, the lover replied to some question of his companion. "I do not very well know why her father took her away from the Countess and brought her to Paris; I should have supposed that it would have been much more convenient to him in every respect to have left her where she was. However, I am his most humble and very obedient servant, for I should never have seen her otherwise; and marry her I will, if I should carry her off for it."
"But her birth, Charles, her birth!" said his companion. "What will your uncle think of that?--he who is so proud of his own."
"Oh!" replied the hot-brained youth, "you know I can do anything with my uncle; and besides, this father of hers has been quietly accumulating a large fortune, it seems, one way or another; and so that must cover the sin of her birth in my uncle's eyes. But say what you will, or what he will, or what any one will, I will marry her if I live to be a year older."
"What! and discharge the little Epingliere, Jeannette?" asked his companion, with a laugh.
"Oh, that does not follow," answered the other; "'tis always well to have two strings to one's bow; and Jeannette is too charming to be parted with for these three years at least: but madame ma femme will know nothing of mademoiselle ma bonne amie, and I shall find her proud beauty the more delightful by contrasting it with the more modest charms of Jeannette."
"The more simple charms, you mean, not the more modest," replied his companion; "I never heard that Jeannette was famous for her modesty!"
The opium draught which I had taken, counteracted in its effects by the pain of my body, and the irritation of my mind, began to make me somewhat delirious. Strange shapes seemed flitting about my bed--I saw faces looking at me out of the darkness, and insulting me with fiendish grins. At the same time, the light way in which the weak young man in the next chamber spoke of Helen--of my sweet, my beautiful Helen--worked me up to a pitch of frantic rage, which, mingling with the delirium of opium, made me resolve to get up and avenge her upon the spot. I accordingly raised myself in bed, and after sitting upright for a moment or two, with my brain seeming to whirl like the eddy of a stream, I got out with infinite difficulty, when the cold air, and the chill of the stones to my feet, in some degree recalled me to my senses, and instead of groping for my sword, as I intended, I returned towards my bed; but coming upon it sooner than I had expected, I struck it with my knee, fell over upon it, and, with the sort of despairing heedlessness of fever and wretchedness, lay still where I had fallen, till the opium overpowering me, I lost all recollection of my misery in a deep and deathlike slumber.
It was late ere I woke, and when I did so, it was with one of those dreadful headachs, which seem to benumb every faculty of the mind and body; while at the same time, the bruises all over my left side were even more sensitively painful than the night before.
The first thing I heard was a woman's voice, inquiring how I found myself; and looking round, I perceived a good-looking, fattish nun, of one of the charitable sisterhoods, sitting in a chair by my bedside. She seemed one of those good dames who attach themselves to great families, and act as an inferior sort of almoner, performing the part of charitable go-betweens; attending the sick servants with somewhat more skill than an apothecary, and more attention than a physician; serving as head nurse to the lady of the mansion, and acquiring much consequence with the poor, by dispensing the bounty of the rich.
In answer to her question, I replied that I was in very great pain, both from a violent headach, and the bruises I had received; whereupon she immediately produced the phial, from which the surgeon had the night before administered his sleeping draught, intimating that I must take another portion to relieve me from what I suffered; and informing me, at the same time, in a very oracular tone, that it was not at all wonderful that my bones ached, after sleeping all night naked on the outside of the bed.
As I attributed the excessive aching of my head entirely to the contents of the bottle she held in her hand, I resisted magnanimously all her persuasions to take more of its contents for some time; but at length her offended authority instigated her to such an outcry, that I would have drunk Phlegethon red-hot to have quieted her. I took, accordingly, what she gave, and was about to have asked some questions in regard to my situation, when she stopped me, with a profoundly patronising air, and told me, that if I would promise to keep myself quite quiet, and not agitate myself, I should be favoured with a visit from a young lady who took an interest in me.
"Who, who? in the name of Heaven!" cried I, the idea of Helen instantly flashing across my mind. "Tell me, tell me who!"
"Use not Heaven's name for such vanities, young gentleman," said the nun. "Who the young lady is, you will see directly; and I have only to tell you, that her father has granted her five minutes to converse with you, for old friendship's sake, and she has promised that it shall be no more; therefore you must not seek to stay her." So saying, she left me, and in a moment after the door again opened, and Helen herself, my own beautiful Helen, came forward towards me, with a look of eager gladness, that, while it surprised me, took a heavy load from off my heart.
She glided forward to my bedside, laid her dear soft hand in mine: after gazing for a moment on my worn and haggard features, burst into a flood of tears.
"Dear, dear Helen!" said I, "then yon love me still?"
"And ever will, Louis!" answered she, speaking through her tears. "Whatever they may say, whatever they may think, I will love you still, Louis, and none but you.--Only tell me that you love me also, and not another, as they would have me believe, and nothing shall shake the affection that I have ever borne towards you."
"Love another!" cried I. "Helen, you have never believed them for a moment. For Heaven's sake tell me, that such a base suspicion never for an instant made any impression on your heart."
"I never believed it, Louis," answered she; "for I never believed that anything base could for a moment harbour in your bosom; and yet it gave me pain, I knew not why.--But let me tell you what has happened to me personally during your absence. I cannot tell you my father's motives, for I do not know them, but I can tell you----"
"Oh no, no, Ellen!" cried I, shrinking from the detail of what must have followed the discovery of her brother's death, and beginning to doubt that she attributed it to me. "Oh no, no, dear Helen! spare me all that unhappy detail. I chanced to overhear last night, from some persons speaking in that chamber, that your father had come and taken you from the protection of my mother. I easily conceived his reasons--I heard all--I heard everything, by that conversation last night; and all that now needs explanation is, how any one could dare to tell you that I loved another."
"Indeed, Louis, many believed it--everyone, I may say, but myself," Helen replied; "but the time I am allowed to remain grows short. Before anything else, let me communicate to you what my father bade me say for him. If you wish to see him, he says, he will see you; but you must be prepared, if he does so, to explain to him every part of your conduct; and to show him that the blood which he cannot help attributing to you rests not on your head. Forgive me, Louis! oh, forgive!" she continued, seeing me turn deadly pale: "I pain you, I see I pain you; but it was only on condition that I would deliver this cruel message, that they would permit me to see you. It is not I that ask you, Louis, to do anything that is painful to you. I am sure--I am certain, you are not guilty. I cannot--I will not believe it. But my father will not see you without you can explain it all. Can you then, dear Louis--will you see him?"
"Helen, I cannot," replied I.
She gazed at me for a moment in silence.
"Hark! they call me," said she at length. "Oh, Louis, before I go, say something to comfort me; say something to sustain in my breast that confidence of your innocence which has been my consolation and my hope."
"All I can say, dear Helen," replied I, "is, that in wish, and intention, I was as innocent as you are; but that accident has made me appear culpable, and that I have nothing but my own word to prove that I was not purposely guilty."
"But your own word is enough for me," answered Helen, catching, I believe gladly, at any assurance that could maintain her belief in my innocence; "I will believe it myself, and I will try and make others believe it. But I must leave you, Louis; they are calling me again. Adieu, adieu!"
"But, Helen, dear Helen, you will see me again?" cried I, struggling to raise myself. "Promise me that."
"Most assuredly," answered Helen, "if they will allow me;" and obedient to a sign from the nun, who had returned to the room while I was speaking, she glided away and left me. A thousand questions did I now ask the good sister, but with a curious felicity of evasion she parried them all; now with an affectation of mistaking me, now with an ambiguous reply; now with a refusal to answer, like a skilful fencer, who, whether his adversary lunges straightforward or feints, still finds some parade to guard his own breast, and repel the attack in all its forms. Not a word could I extract from her on any subject whereupon I wished information, and gradually the drowsiness of the opium began to take away the power of questioning her any farther.
From what I have learned since, I am led to believe that the good lady, in administering the sleeping potion, which she had deafened me into taking, had poured out at least double what was ordered by the surgeon. At all events, its effect was much more rapid and powerful than the night before; for, with all the busy thoughts which my interview with Helen might well suggest, with all the bitter remembrances it called up, with all the painful anticipations to which it gave rise, slumber came rapidly upon me; and before half an hour had passed after her departure, I fell into a deep sleep, which a little more of the same sedative would probably have converted into the sleep of death.