ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER X.
Alarming Symptoms.
November had come, and was gathering up the last tints and blossoms of autumn. One by one the garden lights were being put out; the tall archangel lilies drooped their snow and gold cups languidly; the jasmine, that only the other day twinkled its silver stars amidst the purple bells of the clematis, now trailed wearily down the trellis of the porch; the hardy geraniums made a stand for it yet, but their petals dropped off at every puff of wind, and powdered the gravel with a scarlet ring round their six big red pots that flanked the walk from the gate to the cottage door; the red roses held out like a forlorn hope, defying the approach of the conqueror, and staying to say a last good-by to sweet Mother Summer, ere she passed away.
It was too chilly to sit out of doors late of afternoons now, and night fell quickly. M. de la Bourbonais had collapsed into his brown den; but the window stood open, and let the faint incense of the garden steal in to him, as he bent over his desk with his shaded lamp beside him.
Franceline had found it cold, and had slipt away, without saying why, to her own room upstairs. She was sitting on the floor with her hands in her lap, and her head pressed against the latticed window, watching the scarlet geraniums as they shivered in the evening breeze and dropped into their moist autumn tomb. A large crystal moon was rising above the woods beyond the river, and a few stars were coming out. She counted them, and listened to the wood-pigeon cooing in the park, and to the solitary note of an owl that answered from some distant grove. But the voices of wood and field were not to her now what they once had been. There was something in her that responded to them still, but not in the old way; she had drifted somewhere beyond their reach; she was hearkening for other voices, since one had touched her with a power these had never possessed, and whose echoing sweetness had converted the sounds that had till then been her only music into a blank and aching silence. Other pulses had been stirred, other chords struck within her, so strong and deep, and unlike the old childish ones, that these had become to her what the memory of the joys of childhood are to the full-grown man—a sweet shadow that lingers when the substance has fled; part of a life that has been lived, that can never be quickened again, but is enshrined in memory.
She was very pale, almost like a shadow herself, as she sat there in the silver gloom. Mothers who met her in her walks about the neighborhood looked wistfully after the gentle young face, and said with a sigh: “What a pity! And so young too!” Yet Franceline was not ill; not even ailing; she never complained even of fatigue, and when her father tapped the pale cheek and asked how his Clair-de-lune was, she would answer brightly that she had never been better in her life, and as she had no cough, he believed her. A cough was Raymond’s single diagnosis of disease and death; he had a vague but deep-seated belief that nobody, no young person certainly, ever died a natural death without this fatal premonitory symptom. And yet he could not help following Franceline with an anxious eye as he saw her walking listlessly about the garden, or sitting with a book in her hand that she let drop every now and then to look dreamily out of the window, and only resumed with an evident effort. Sometimes she would go and lean her arms on the rail at the end of the garden, and stand there for an hour together gazing at the familiar landscape as if she were discovering some new feature in it, or straining her eyes to see some distant object. He could not lay his finger on any particular symptom that justified anxiety, and still he was anxious; a change of some sort had come over the child; she grew more and more like her mother, and it was not until Armengarde was several years older than Franceline that the disease which had been germinating in her system from childhood developed itself and proved fatal.
M. de la Bourbonais never alluded to Franceline’s refusal of Sir Ponsonby Anwyll, but he had not forgotten it. In his dreamy mind he cogitated on the possibility of the offer being renewed, and her accepting it. As to Clide de Winton, he had quite ceased to think of him, and never for an instant coupled him in his thoughts with Franceline. It did not strike him as significant that Sir Simon had avoided mentioning the young man since his return. After the conversation that Clide had once been the subject of between them, this reticence was natural enough. The failure of his wild, affectionate scheme placed him in a somewhat ridiculous position towards Raymond, and it was no wonder that he shrank from alluding to it.
Sir Ponsonby had left Rydal immediately after the eventful ride we know of. He could not remain in Franceline’s neighborhood without seeing her, and he had sense enough to feel that he would injure rather than serve his cause by forcing his society on her after what had passed. This is as good as admitting that he did not look upon his cause as lost. What man in love for the first time would give up after one refusal, if his love was worth the name? Ponsonby was not one of the faint-hearted tribe. He combined real modesty as to his own worth and pretensions with unbounded faith in the power of his love and its ultimate success. The infallibility of hope and perseverance was an essential part of his lover’s creed. He did not apply the tenet with any special sense of its fitness to Franceline in particular. He was no analyzer of character; he did not discriminate nicely between the wants and attributes of one woman and another; he blended them all in a theoretical worship, and included all womankind in his notions as to how they were individually to be wooed and won. He would let them have their own way, allow them unlimited pin-money, cover them with trinkets, and gratify all their little whims. If a girl were ever so beautiful and ever so good, no man could do more for her than this; and any man who was able and willing to do it, ought to be able to win her. Ponsonby took heart, and trusted to his uniform good luck not to miss the prize he had set his heart on. He would rejoin his regiment for the present, and see what a month’s absence would do for him. He had one certain ground of hope: Franceline did not dislike him, and, as far as he could learn or guess, she cared for no one else. Sir Simon was his ally, and would keep a sharp lookout for him, and keep the little spark alive—if spark there were—by singing his praises judiciously in the ear of the cruel fair one.
She, meanwhile, went on in her usual quiet routine, tending the sick, teaching some little children, and working with her father, who grew daily more enamored of her tender and intelligent co-operation. Lady Anwyll called soon after Ponsonby’s departure, and was just as kind and unconstrained as if nothing had happened. She did not press Franceline to go and stay at Rydal, but hoped she would ride over there occasionally with Sir Simon to lunch. Her duties as secretary to Raymond made the sacrifice of a whole afternoon repugnant to her; but she did go once, just to show the old lady that she retained the same kind feeling towards her as before anything had occurred to make a break in their intimacy. It was delightful when she came home to find that her father had been utterly at sea without her, mooning about in a helpless way amongst the notes and papers that under her management had passed from confusion and chaos into order and sequence. While everything was in confusion he could find his way through the maze, but he had no key to this new order of things. Franceline declared she must never leave him so long again; he had put everything topsy-turvy, he was not to be trusted. The discovery of his dependence on her in a sphere where she had till lately been as useless to him as Angélique or Miss Merrywig was a source of infinite enjoyment to her, and she threw herself into her daily task with an energy that lightened the labor immensely to her father, without, as far as Franceline could say, fatiguing herself. But fatigue for being unconscious is sometimes none the less real. It may be that this sustained application was straining a system already severely tried by mental pressure. She was one day writing away as usual, while Raymond, with a bookful of notes in his hand, stood on the hearth-rug dictating. Suddenly she was seized with a fit of coughing, and, putting her handkerchief quickly to her mouth, she drew it away stained with crimson. She stifled a cry of terror that rose to her lips, and hurried out of the room. Her father had seen nothing, but her abrupt departure startled him; he hastened after her, and found her in the kitchen holding the handkerchief up to Angélique, who was looking at the fatal stain with a face rather stupefied than terrified.
“My God, have pity upon me! My child! My child!” he cried, clasping his hands and abandoning himself to his distress with the impassioned demonstrativeness of a Frenchman.
Woman, it is said truly, is more courageous at bearing physical pain than man; it is true also that she has more self-command in controlling the expression of mental pain. Her instinct is surer too in guiding her how to save others from suffering; let her be ever so untutored, she will prove herself shrewder than the cleverest man on occasions like the present. Angélique’s womanly instinct told her at once that it was essential not to frighten Franceline: that the nervous shock would infallibly aggravate the evil, wherever the cause lay, and that the best thing to do now was to soothe and allay her fears.
“Bless me! what is there to make a row about?” she cried with an angry chuckle, crushing the handkerchief in her fingers and darting a look on her master which, if eyes could knock down, must have laid him prostrate on the spot; “the child has an indigestion and has thrown up a mouthful of bread from her stomach. Hein!”
“How do you know it is from the stomach and not from the lungs?” he asked, already reassured by her confidence, and still more by her incivility.
“How do I know? Am I a fool? Would it be that color if it was from the lungs? I say it is from the stomach, and it is a good business. But we must not have too much of it. It would weaken the child; we must stop it.”
“I will run for the doctor at once!” exclaimed M. de la Bourbonais, still trembling and excited. “Or stay!—no!—I will fly to the Court and they will despatch a man on horseback!” He was hurrying away when Angélique literally shouted at him:
“Wilt thou be quiet with thy doctor and thy man on horseback! I tell thee it is from the stomach; I know what I am about. I want neither man nor horse. It is from the stomach! Dost thou take me for a fool at this time of my life?”
Raymond stood still like a chidden child while the old servant poured this volley at him. Franceline stared at her aghast. In her angry excitement the grenadier had broken through not only all barriers of rank, but all the common rules of civility—she who was such a strict observer of both that they seemed a very part of herself. This ought to have opened their eyes, if nothing else did; but Franceline was only bewildered, Raymond was cowed and perplexed.
“If thou art indeed quite sure,” he said, falling into the familiar “thee and thou” by which she addressed him, and which on her deferential lips sounded so outrageous and unnatural—“if thou art indeed certain I will be satisfied; but, my good Angélique, would it not be a wise precaution to have a medical man?—only just, as thou sayest well, to prevent its going too far.”
“Well, well, if Monsieur le Comte wishes, let it be; let the doctor come; for me, I care not for him; they are an ignorant lot, pulling long faces to make long bills; but if it pleases Monsieur le Comte, let him have one to see the child.” She nodded her flaps at him, as if to say, “Be off then at once and leave us in peace!”
He was leaving the room, when, turning round suddenly, he came close up to Franceline. “Dost thou feel a pain, my child?” he said, peering anxiously into her face.
“No, father, not the least pain. I am sure Angélique is right; I feel nothing here,” putting her hand to her chest.
“God is good! God is good!” muttered the father half audibly, and, stroking her cheek gently, he went.
“Let not Monsieur le Comte go rushing off himself; let him send one of those thirty-six lackeys at the Court!” cried Angélique, calling after him through the kitchen window.
In her heart and soul Angélique was terrified. She had thrown out quite at random, with the instinct of desperation, that confident assurance as to the color of the stain. Her first impulse was to save Franceline from the shock, but it had fallen full upon herself. This accident sounded like the first stroke of the death-knell. No one would have supposed it to look at her. She set her arms akimbo and laughed till she shook at her own impudence to M. le Comte, and how meekly M. le Comte had borne it, and how scared his face was, and what a joke the business was altogether. To see him stand there wringing his hands, and making such a wailing about nothing! But when Franceline was going to answer and reproach her old bonne with this inopportune mirth, she laid her hand on the young girl’s mouth and bade her peremptorily be silent.
“If you go talking and scolding, child, there is no knowing what mischief you may do. Come and lie down, and keep perfectly quiet.”
Franceline obeyed willingly enough. She was weak and tired, and glad to be alone awhile.
Angélique placed a cold, wet cloth on her chest, and made her some cold lemonade to drink. It was making a fuss about nothing, to be sure; but it would please M. le Comte. He was never happier than when people were making a fuss over his Clair-de-lune.
It was not long before the count returned, accompanied by Sir Simon. Angélique saw at a glance that the baronet understood how things were. He talked very big about his confidence that Angélique was right; that it was an accident of no serious import whatever; but he exchanged a furtive glance with the old woman that sufficiently belied all this confident talk. He was for going up to see Franceline with M. de la Bourbonais, but Angélique would not allow this. M. le Comte might go, if he liked, provided he did not make her speak; but nobody else must go; the room was too small, and it would excite the child to see people about her. So Raymond went up alone. As soon as his back was turned, Angélique threw up her hands with a gesture too significant for any words. Sir Simon closed the door gently.
“I am not duped any more than you,” he said. “It is sure to be very serious, even if it is not fatal. Tell me what you really think.”
“I saw her mother go through it all. It began like this. Only Madame la Comtesse had a cough; the petite has never had one. That is the only thing that gives me a bit of hope; the petite has never coughed. O Monsieur Simon! it is terrible. It will kill us all three; I know it will.”
“Tut, tut! don’t give up in this way, Angélique,” said the baronet kindly, and turning aside; “that will mend nothing; it is the very worst thing you could do. I agree with you that it is very serious; not so much the accident itself, perhaps—we know nothing about that yet—but on account of the hereditary taint in the constitution. However, there has been no cough undermining it so far, and with care—I promise you she shall have the best—there is every reason to hope the child will weather it. At her age one weathers everything,” he added, cheerfully. “Come now, don’t despond; a great deal depends on your keeping a cheerful countenance.”
“I know it, monsieur, and I will do my best. But I hear steps! Could it be the doctor already? For goodness’ sake run out and meet him, and tell him, as he hopes to save us all, not to let Monsieur le Comte know there is any danger! It is all up with us if he does. Monsieur le Comte could no more hide it than a baby could hide a pin in its clothes.”
She opened the door and almost pushed Sir Simon out, in her terror lest the doctor should walk in without being warned.
Sir Simon met him at the back of the cottage. A few words were exchanged, and they came in together. Raymond met them on the stairs. The medical man preferred seeing his patient alone; the nurse might be present, but he could have no one else. In a very few minutes he came down, and a glance at his face set the father’s heart almost completely at rest.
“Dear me, Sir Simon, you would never do for a sick nurse. You prepared me for a very dangerous case by your message; it is a mere trifle; hardly worth the hard ride I’ve had to perform in twenty minutes.”
“Then there is nothing amiss with the lungs?”
“Would you like to sound them yourself, count? Pray do! It will be more satisfactory to you.” And he handed his stethoscope to M. de la Bourbonais—not mockingly, but quite gravely and kindly.
That provincial doctor missed his vocation. He ought to have been a diplomatist.
Instead of the proffered stethoscope, M. de la Bourbonais grasped his hand. His heart was too full for speech. The reaction of security after the brief interval of agony and suspense unnerved him. He sat down without speaking, and wiped the great drops from his forehead. The medical man addressed himself to Sir Simon and Angélique. There was nothing whatever to be alarmed at; but there was occasion for care and certain preventive measures. The young lady must have perfect rest and quiet; there must be no talking for some time; no excitement of any sort. He gave sundry directions about diet, etc., and wrote a prescription which was to be sent to the chemist at once. M. de la Bourbonais accompanied him to the door with a lightened heart, and bade him au revoir with a warm pressure of the hand.
“Now, let me hear the truth,” said Sir Simon, as soon as they entered the park.
“You have heard the truth—though only in a negative form. If you noticed, we did not commit ourselves to any opinion of the case; we only prescribed for it. This was the only way in which we could honestly follow your instructions,” observed the doctor, who always used the royal “we” of authorship when speaking professionally.
“You showed great tact and prudence; but there is no need for either now. Tell me exactly what you think.”
“It will be more to the purpose to tell you what we know,” rejoined the medical man. “There is a blood-vessel broken; not a large one, happily, and if the hemorrhage does not increase and continue, it may prove of no really serious consequence. But then we must remember the question of inheritance. That is what makes a symptom in itself trifling assume a grave—we refrain from saying fatal—character.”
“You are convinced that this is but the beginning of the end—am I to understand that?” asked Sir Simon. He was used to the doctor’s pompous way, and knew him to be both clever and conscientious, at least towards his patients.
“It would be precipitating an opinion to say so much. We are on the whole inclined to take a more sanguine view. We consider the hitherto unimpaired health of the patient, and her extreme youth, fair grounds for hope. But great care must be taken; all excitement must be avoided.”
“You may count on your orders being strictly carried out,” said Sir Simon.
They walked on a few yards without further speech. Sir Simon was busy with anxious and affectionate thoughts.
“I should fancy a warm climate would be the best cure for a case of this kind,” he observed, answering his own reflections, rather than speaking to his companion.
“No doubt, no doubt,” assented Dr. Blink, “if the patient was in a position to authorize her medical attendant in ordering such a measure.”
“Monsieur de la Bourbonais is in that position,” replied Sir Simon, quietly.
“Ah! I am glad to know it. I may act on the information one of these days. The young lady could not bear the fatigue of a journey to the south just now; the general health is a good deal below par; the nervous system wants toning; it is unstrung.”
Sir Simon made no comment—not at least in words—but it set his mind on painful conjecture. Perhaps the electric chain passed from him to his companion, for the latter said irrelevantly but with a significant expression, as he turned his glance full upon Sir Simon:
“We medical men are trusted with many secrets—secrets of the heart as well as of the body. We ask you frankly, as a friend of our patient, is there any moral cause at work—any disappointed affection that may have preyed on the mind and fostered the inherited germs of disease?”
“I cannot answer that question,” replied the baronet after a moment’s hesitation.
“You cannot, or you will not? Excuse my pertinacity; it is professional and necessary.”
Sir Simon hesitated again before he answered.
“I cannot even give a decided answer to that. I had some time ago feared there existed something of the sort, but of late those apprehensions had entirely disappeared. If you had put the question to me yesterday, I should have said emphatically there is nothing to fear on that score; the child is perfectly happy and quite heart-whole.”
“And to-day you are not prepared to say as much,” persisted Dr. Blink. “Something has occurred to modify this change of opinion?”
“Nothing, except the accident that you know of and your question now. These suggest to me that I may have been right in the first instance.”
“Is it in your power or within the power of circumstances to set the wrong right—to remove the cause of anxiety—assuming that it actually exists?”
“No, it is not; nothing can remove it.”
“And she is aware of this?”
“I fear not.”
“Say rather that you hope not. In such cases hope is the best physician; let nothing be done, as far as you can prevent it, to destroy this hope in the patient’s mind; I would even venture to urge that you should do anything in your power to feed and stimulate it.”
“That is impossible; quite impossible,” said Sir Simon emphatically. The doctor’s words fell on him like a sting, and this very feeling increased to conviction what had, at the beginning of the conversation, been only a vague misgiving.
Franceline rallied quickly, and with her returning strength Sir Simon’s fears were allayed. He had not been able to follow the doctor’s advice as to keeping alive any soothing delusions that might exist in her mind, but he succeeded, by dint of continually dinning it into his ears that there was no danger, in convincing her father that there was not; and the cheerfulness and security that radiated from him acted beneficially on her, and proved of great help to the medical treatment. And was Dr. Blink right in his surmise that a moral cause had been at work and contributed to the bursting of the blood-vessel? If Franceline had been asked she would have denied it; if any one had said to her that the accident had been brought on by mental suffering, or insinuated that she was still at heart pining for a lost love, she would have answered with proud sincerity: “It is false; I am not pining. I have ceased to think of Clide de Winton; I have ceased to love him.”
But which of us can answer truly for our own hearts? We do not want to idealize Franceline. We wish to describe her as she was, the good with the evil; the struggle and the victory as they alternated in her life; her heart fluctuating, but never consciously disloyal. There must be flaws in every picture taken from life. Perfection is not to be found in nature, except when seen through a poet’s eyes. Perhaps it was true that Franceline had ceased to love Clide. When our will is firmly set upon self-conquest we are apt to fancy it achieved. But conquest does not of necessity bring joy, or even peace. Nothing is so terrible as a victory, except a defeat, was a great captain’s cry on surveying the bloody field of yesterday’s battle. The frantic effort, the bleeding trophies may inflict a death-wound on the conqueror as fatal, in one sense, as defeat. We see the “good fight” every day leading to such issues. Brave souls fight and carry the day, and then go to reap their laurels where “beyond these voices there is peace.” Franceline had gained a victory, but there was no rejoicing in the triumph. Her heart plained still of its wounds; if she did not hear it, it was because she would not; it still bemoaned its hard fate, its broken cup of happiness.
She rose up from this illness, however, happier than she had been for months. It was difficult to believe that the period which had worked such changes to her inward life counted only a few months; it seemed like years, like a lifetime, since she had first met Clide de Winton. She resumed her calmly busy little life as before the break had come that suspended its active routine. By Dr. Blink’s desire the teaching class was suppressed, and the necessity of guarding against cold prevented her doing much amongst the sick; but this extra leisure in one way enabled her to increase her work in another; she devoted it to writing with her father; this never tired her, she affirmed—it only interested and amused her.
The advisability of a trip to some southern spot in France or Italy had been suggested by Dr. Blink; but the proposal was rejected by his patient in such a strenuous and excited manner that he forebore to press it. He noticed also an expression of sudden pain on M. de la Bourbonais’ countenance, accompanied by an involuntary deep-drawn sigh, that led him to believe there must be pecuniary impediments in the way of the scheme, notwithstanding Sir Simon’s assurance to the contrary. The émigré was universally looked upon as a poor man. Who else would live as he did? Still Sir Simon must have known what he was saying. However, as it happened, the cold weather, which was now setting in pretty sharp, was by no means favorable to travelling, so the doctor consented willingly enough to abide by the patient’s circumstances and wishes. A long journey in winter is always a high price for an invalid to pay for the benefit of a warm climate.
In the first days of December, Sir Simon took flight from Dullerton to Nice. Lady Rebecca was spending the winter at Cannes, and as Mr. Simpson reported that “her ladyship’s health had declined visibly within the last month,” it was natural that her dutiful step-son should desire to be within call in case of any painful eventuality. If the climate of the sunny Mediterranean town happened to be a very congenial winter residence to him, so much the better. It is only fair that a man should have some compensation for doing his duty.
The day before he started Sir Simon came down to The Lilies.
“Raymond,” he said, “you have sustained a loss lately; you must be in want of money; now is the time to prove yourself a Christian, and let others do unto you as you would do unto them. You offered me money once when I did not want it; I offer it to you now that you do.” And he pressed a bundle of notes into the count’s hands.
But Raymond crushed them back into his. “Mon cher Simon! I do not thank you. That would be ungrateful; it would look as if I were surprised, whereas I have long since come to take brotherly kindness as a matter of course from you. But in truth I do not want this money; I give you my word I don’t!”
“If you pledge your word, I must believe you, I suppose,” returned the baronet; “but promise me one thing—if you should want it, you will let me know?”
“I promise you I will.”
Sir Simon with a sigh, which Raymond took for reluctance, but which was really one of relief, replaced the notes in his waistcoat pocket. “I had better leave you a blank check all the same,” he said; “you might happen to want it, and not be able to get a letter to me at once. There is no knowing where the vagabond spirit may lead me, once I am on the move. Give me a pen.” And he seated himself at the desk.
Raymond protested; but it was no use, Sir Simon would have his own way; he wrote the blank check and saw it locked up in the count’s private drawer. M. de la Bourbonais argued from this reckless committal of his signature that the baronet’s finances were in a flourishing condition, and was greatly rejoiced. Alas! if the truth were known, they had never been in a sorrier plight. He had offered the bank-notes in all sincerity, but if Raymond had accepted it, Sir Simon would have been at his wit’s end to find the ready money for his journey. But he kept this dark, and rather led his friend to suppose him flush of money; it was the only chance of getting him to accept his generosity.
“Mind you keep me constantly informed how Franceline gets on,” were his parting words; and M. de la Bourbonais promised.
She got on in pretty much the same way for some time. Languid and pale, but not suffering; and she had no cough, and no return of the symptoms that had alarmed them all so much. Angélique watched her as a cat watches a mouse, but even her practised eye could detect no definite cause for anxiety.
One morning, about a fortnight after Sir Simon’s departure, Franceline was alone in the little sitting-room—her father had gone to do some shopping for her in the town, as it was too cold for her to venture out—when Sir Ponsonby Anwyll called. The moment she saw him she flushed up, partly with surprise, partly with pleasure. A casual observer would have concluded this to be a good sign for the visitor; a male friend would have unhesitatingly pronounced him a lucky dog. Ponsonby himself felt slightly elated.
“I heard you were ill,” he said, “and as I am at home on leave for a few days, I could not resist coming to inquire for you. You are not displeased with me for coming?”
“No, indeed; it is very kind of you. I am glad to see you,” Franceline replied with bright, grateful eyes.
Hope bounded up high in Ponsonby.
“They told me you had been very ill. I hope it is not true. You don’t look it,” he said anxiously.
“I have been frightening them a little more than it was worth; but I am quite well now. How is Lady Anwyll?”
“Thank you, she’s just as usual; in very good health and a tremendous bustle. You know I always put the house topsy-turvy when I come down. Not that I mean to do it; it seems to come of itself as a natural consequence of my being there,” he explained, laughing. “Is M. de la Bourbonais quite well?”
“Quite well. He will be in presently; he is only gone to make a few purchases for me.”
“How anxious he must have been while you were ill!”
“Dear papa! yes he was.”
“Do you ride much now?”
“Not at all. I am forbidden to take any violent exercise for the present.”
All obvious subjects being now exhausted, there ensued a pause. Ponsonby was the first to break it.
“Have you forgiven me, Franceline?” he said, looking at her tenderly, and with a sort of sheepish timidity.
“Indeed I have; forgiven and forgotten,” she replied; and then blushing very red, and correcting herself quickly: “I mean there was nothing to forgive.”
“That’s not the sort of forgiveness I want,” said Ponsonby, growing courageous in proportion as she grew embarrassed. “Franceline, why can you not like me a little? I love you so much; no one will ever love you better, or as well!”
She shook her head, but said nothing, only rose and went to the window. He followed her.
“You are angry with me again!” he exclaimed, and was going to break out in entreaties to be forgiven; when stooping forward he caught sight of her face. It was streaming with tears!
“There, the very mention of it sets you crying! Why do you hate me so?”
“I do not hate you. I never hated you! I wish with all my heart I could love you! But I cannot, I cannot! And you would not have me marry you if I did not love you? It would be false and selfish to accept your love, with all it would bring me, and give so little in return?” She turned her dark eyes on him, still full of tears, but unabashed and innocent, as if he had been a brother asking her to do something unreasonable.
“So little!” he cried, and seizing her hand he pressed it to his lips; “if you knew how thankful I would be for that little! What am I but an awkward lout at best! But I will make you happy, Franceline; I swear to you I will! And your father too. I will be as good as a son to him.”
She made no answer but the same negative movement of her head. She looked out over the winter fields with a dreamy expression, as if she only half heard him, while her hand lay passively in his.
“Say you will be my wife! Accept me, Franceline!” pleaded the young man, and he passed his arm around her.
The action roused her; she snatched away her hand and started from him. It was not aversion or antipathy, it was terror that dictated the movement. Something within her cried out and forbade her to listen. She could no more control the sudden recoil than she could control the tears that gushed out afresh, this time with loud sobs that shook her from head to foot.
“Good heavens! what have I done?” exclaimed Ponsonby, helpless and dismayed. “Shall I go away? shall I leave you?”
“Oh! it is nothing. It is over now,” said Franceline, her agitation quieted instantaneously by the sight of his. She dashed the tears from her cheeks impatiently; she was vexed with herself for giving way so before him. “Sit down; you are trembling all over,” said the young man; and he gently forced her into a chair. “I am sorry I said anything; I will never mention the subject again without your permission. Shall I go away?”
“It would be very ungracious to say ‘yes,’” she replied, trying to smile through the tears that hung like raindrops on her long lashes; “but you see how weak and foolish I am.”
“My poor darling! I will go and leave you. I have been too much for you. Only tell me, may I come soon again—just to ask how you are?”
She hesitated. To say yes would be tacitly to accept him; yet it was odious to turn him off like this without a word of kindly explanation to soften the pang. Ponsonby could not read these thoughts, so he construed her hesitation according to the immemorial logic of lovers.
“Well, never mind answering now,” he said; “I won’t bother you any more to-day. You will present my respects to the count, and say how sorry I was not to see him.”
He held out his hand for good-by.
“You will meet him on the road, I dare say,” said Franceline, extending hers. “You will not tell him how I have misbehaved to you?”
The shy smile that accompanied the request emboldened Ponsonby to raise the soft, white hand to his lips. Then turning away he overturned a little wicker flower-stand, happily with no injury to the sturdy green plant, but with considerable damage to the dignity of his exit.
Perhaps you will say that Mlle. de la Bourbonais behaved like a flirt in parting with a discarded lover in this fashion. It is easy for you to say so. It is not so easy for a woman with a heart to inflict unmitigated pain on a man who loves her, and whose love she at least requites with gratitude, esteem, and sisterly regard.
Sir Ponsonby met the count on the road; he made sure of the encounter by walking his horse up and down the green lane which commanded the road from Dullerton to The Lilies. What passed between them remained the secret of themselves and the winter thrush that perched on the brown hedge close by and sang out lustily to the trees and fields while they conversed.
M. de la Bourbonais made no comment on his daughter’s tear-stained cheeks when he came home; but taking her face between his hands, as he was fond of doing, he gave one wistful look, kissed it, and let it go.
“How long you have been away, petit père! Shall we go to our writing now?” she inquired cheerfully.
“Art thou not tired, my child?”
“Tired! What have I done to tire me?”
She sat down at his desk, and nothing was said of Sir Ponsonby Anwyll’s visit.
The excitement of that day’s interview told, nevertheless, on Franceline. It left her nervous, and weaker than she had been since her recovery. These symptoms escaped her father’s notice, and they would have escaped Angélique’s, owing to Franceline’s strenuous efforts to conceal them, if a slight cough had not come to put her on the qui vive more than ever. It was very slight indeed, only attacking her in the morning when she awoke, and quite ceasing by the time she was dressed and down-stairs. Franceline’s room was at one end of the cottage; Angélique slept next to her; and at the other end, with the stairs intervening, was the count’s room. He was thus out of ear-shot of the sound, which, however rare and seemingly unimportant, would have filled him with alarm. Franceline treated it as a trifle not worth mentioning; but when her old bonne insisted on taking her discreetly to Dr. Blink and having his opinion about it, she gave in to humor her. The doctor once more applied his stethoscope, and then, smiling that grim, satisfied smile of his that was so reassuring to patients till they had seen it practised on others and found out it was a fallacy, remarked:
“We are glad to be able to assure you again that there is nothing to be frightened at; no mischief that cannot be forestalled by care, and docility to our instructions,” he added emphatically. “We must order you some tonics, and you must take them regularly. How is the appetite?” turning to Angélique, who stood by devouring the oracle’s words and watching every line of his features with a shrewd, almost vicious expression of mistrust on her brown face.
“Ah! the appetite. She will not be eating many; she will be wanting dainty plates which I cannot make,” explained the Frenchwoman, sticking pertinaciously to the future tense, as usual when she spoke English.
“Invalids are liable to those caprices of the palate,” remarked Dr. Blink blandly; “but Miss Franceline will be brave and overcome them. Dainty dishes are not always the most nourishing, and nourishment is necessary for her; it is essential.”
“That is what I will be telling mamselle,” assented Angélique; “but she will not be believing me. I will be telling her every day the strength is in the bouillon; but she will be making a grimace and saying ‘Pshaw!’”
The last word was uttered with a grimace so expressive that Franceline burst out laughing, and the pompous little doctor joined in it in spite of his dignity. She promised to do her best to obey him and overcome her dislike to the bouillon, Angélique’s native panacea, and to other substantial food.
But she found it very hard to keep the promise. It required something savory to tempt her weak appetite. Angélique saw she was doing her best, and never pressed the poor child needlessly; but she would groan over the plate as she removed it, sometimes untouched. “I used to think myself a ‘blue ribbon’ until now,” she said once to Franceline, with an impatient sigh; “but I am at the end of my talent; I can do nothing to please mamselle.” And then she would long for Sir Simon to come home. It happened unluckily that the professed artist who presided over the kitchen at the Court was taking a holiday during his master’s absence. Angélique would have scorned to invoke the skill of the subaltern who replaced him, but she had a profound admiration for the chef himself, and, though an Englishman, she bowed unreservedly to his superior talents. The belief was current that Sir Simon would spend the Christmas at Dullerton; he always did when not at too great a distance at that time. It was the right thing for an English gentleman to do, and his bitterest foe would not accuse the baronet of failing to act up to that standard.
This year, however, it was not possible. The weather was glorious at Nice and it was anything but that at Dullerton, and the long journey in the cold was not attractive. He wrote home desiring the usual festivities to be arranged according to the old custom of the place; coals and clothing were to be distributed ad libitum; the fatted calf was to be killed for the tenantry, and everybody was enjoined to eat, drink, and be merry in spite of the host’s absence. They conscientiously followed these hospitable injunctions, but it was a grievous disappointment that Sir Simon was not in their midst to stimulate the conviviality by his kindly and genial presence. Pretty presents came to The Lilies, but they did not bring strength to Franceline. She grew more transparent, more fragile-looking, as the days went on. Angélique held private conferences with Miss Merrywig, and that lady suggested that any of the large houses in the neighborhood would be only too delighted to be of any use in sending jellies flavored with good strong wine. There was nothing so nourishing for an invalid; Miss Merrywig would speak to one where there was a capital cook. But Angélique would not hear of it. No, no! Much as she longed for the jelly she dared not get it in this way. M. le Comte would never forgive her. “He will be so proud, M. le Comte! He will be a Scotchman! He will not be confessing even to me that he wants nothing. But Monsieur Simon will be coming; he will be coming soon, and then he will be making little plates for mamselle every day.” Meantime she and Franceline did their best to hide from Raymond this particular reason for desiring their friend’s return. But he noticed that she ate next to nothing, and that she often signed to Angélique to remove her plate on which the food remained untasted. Once he could not forbear exclaiming: “Ah! if we were in Paris I could get some friandise to tempt thee!”
In the middle of January one morning a letter came from Sir Simon, bearing the London postmark.
He had been obliged to come to England on pressing business of a harassing nature.
“Is Sir Simon coming home, petit père?” inquired Franceline eagerly, as her father opened the letter.
“Yes; but only for a day. He will be here after to-morrow, and fly away to Nice the next day.”
“How tiresome of him! But it is better to see him for a day than not at all. Does he say what hour he arrives? We will go and meet him.”
“It will be too late for thee to be out, my child. He comes by the late afternoon train, just in time to dress for dinner and receive us all. He has invited several friends in the neighborhood to dine.”
“What a funny idea! And he is only coming for the day?”
“Only for the day.”
Raymond’s eyebrows closed like a horseshoe over his meditative eyes as he folded the baronet’s letter and laid it aside. There was more in it than he communicated to Franceline. It was the old story; money tight, bills falling due, and no means of meeting them. Lady Rebecca had taken a fresh start, thanks to an Italian quack who had been up from Naples and worked wonders with some diabolical elixir—diabolical beyond a doubt, for nothing but the black-art could explain the sudden and extraordinary rally; she was all but dead when the quack arrived—so Mr. Simpson heard from one of her ladyship’s attendants. Simpson himself was terribly put out by the news; it overturned all his immediate plans; he saw no possibility of any longer avoiding extremities. Extremities meant that the principal creditor, a Jew who had lent a sum of thirty thousand pounds on Sir Simon’s life-interest in Dullerton, at the rate of twenty per cent, was now determined to wait no longer for his arrears of twenty per cent, but turn the baronet out of possession and sell his life-interest in the estate. This sword of Damocles had been hanging over his debtor’s head for the last ten years. It was to meet this usurious interest periodically that Sir Simon was driven to such close quarters. He had up to this time contrived to answer the demand—Heaven and Mr. Simpson alone knew at what sacrifices. But now he had come to a point beyond which even he declared he could not possibly carry his client. He had tried to negotiate post-obit bills on Lady Rebecca’s fifty thousand pounds, but the Jews were too sharp for that. Lady Rebecca was sole master of her fifty thousand pounds, and might leave it to whom she liked. She had made her will bequeathing it to her step-son, and he was morally as certain of ultimately possessing the money as if it were entailed; but moral security is no security at all to a money-lender. The money was not entailed; Lady Rebecca might take it into her head to alter her will; she might leave it to a quack doctor, or to some clever sycophant of an attendant. There is no saying what an old lady of seventy-five may not do with fifty thousand pounds. Sir Simon pshawed and pooh-poohed contemptuously when Simpson enumerated these arguments against the negotiation of the much-needed P. O. bills; but it was no use. Israel was inexorable. And now one particular member of the tribe called Moses to witness that if he were not paid his “twenty per shent” on the first of February, he would seize upon the life-interest of Dullerton Court and make its present owner a bankrupt. He could sell nothing, either in the house or on the estate; the plate and pictures and furniture were entailed. If this were not the case, things need not have come to this with Sir Simon. Two of those Raphaels in the great gallery would have paid the Jew principal and interest together; but not a spoon or a hearth-brush in the Court could be touched; everything belonged to the heir. No mention has hitherto been made of that important person, because he in no way concerns this story, except by the fact of his existence. He was a distant kinsman of the present baronet, who had never seen him. He was in diplomacy, and so lived always abroad. People are said to dislike their heirs.
If Sir Simon disliked any human being, it was his. He did not dislike Lady Rebecca; he was only out of patience with her; she certainly was an aggravating old woman—living on to no purpose, that he could see, except to frustrate and harass him. Yet he had kindly thoughts of her; he had only cold aversion towards the man who was waiting for his own death to come and rule in his stead. He had never spoken of him to M. de la Bourbonais except to inform him that he existed, and that he stood in his way on many occasions. In the letter of this morning he spoke of him once more. The letter was a long one, and calmer than any previous effusion of the kind that Raymond remembered. There was very little vituperation of the duns, or even of the chief scoundrel who was about to tear away the veil that had hitherto concealed the sores and flaws in the popular landlord’s life. This was what he felt most deeply in it all; the disgrace of being shown up as a sham—a man who had lived like a prince while he had been in reality a beggar, in debt up to his ears, and who was now about to be made a bankrupt. Raymond had never before understood the real nature of his friend’s embarrassment; he was shocked and distressed more than he could express. It was not the moment to judge him; to remember the reckless extravagance, the criminal want of prudence, of conscience, that had brought him to this pass. He only thought of the friend of his youth, the kind, faithful, delightful companion who had never failed in friendship, whatever his other sins may have been. And now he was ruined, disgraced before the world, going to be driven forth from his ancestral home branded as a life-long sham. Raymond could have wept for pity. Then it occurred to him with a strange pang that he was to dine with Sir Simon the next day; the head cook had been telegraphed for to prepare the dinner; there was to be a jovial gathering of friends to “cheer him up.” What a mystery it was, this craving for being cheered up, as if the process were a substantial remedy that in some way helped to pay debts, or postpone payment! The count was too sad at heart to smile. He rose from the breakfast-table with a sigh, and was leaving the room when Franceline linked her hands on his arm, and said, looking up with an anxious face:
“It is a long letter, petit père; is there any bad news?”
“There is hardly any news at all,” he replied evasively. In truth there was not.
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“Why dost thou look so pale?” was the reply. And he smiled tenderly and sighed again as he kissed her forehead.
TO BE CONTINUED.