Calvert of Strathore

by Abbe Carter Goodloe

IN WHICH AN UNLOOKED-FOR EVENT TAKES PLACE

That great and desolating change which had swept over France in the two years and more of Calvert's absence was reflected in every heart, in every life left in that wrecked land. On the most insensible, the most frivolous, the most indifferent alike fell the shadow of those terrible times. The sadness and the horror fell on Adrienne de St. André as it fell on so many others, but besides the terror of those days she had to bear a still heavier sorrow. There is no pang which the heart can suffer like the realization, too late, that we have lost what we most prize; that we have missed some great opportunity for happiness which can never come to us again; that we have rejected and passed by what we would now sell our souls to possess. This conviction, slowly borne in upon Adrienne, caused her more anguish than she had supposed, in her ignorance, anything in the world could make her feel. The man whose name she bore was scarcely a memory to her. For the first time she knew what love was and realized that she had cared for Calvert with all the repressed tenderness and unsounded depths of her heart. Her very helplessness, the impossibility to recall him, made him more dear to her by far. A man can stretch out his hand and seize his happiness, but a woman must wait for hers. And if it passes her by she must bear her hurt in silence and as best she can. It was with a sort of blind despair that Adrienne thought of Calvert and all that she had wilfully thrown away. Had he been at her beck and call, fetched and carried for her, she would never have loved him. But the consciousness that he was as proud as she, that, though he was near her for so long, she could not lure him back, that he could master his love and defy her beauty and charm, exercised a fascination over her. And when he left her entirely and was gone away without even seeing her, she suddenly realized how deeply she loved him. We have all had such experiences—we live along, thinking of things after a certain fashion, and suddenly there comes a day when everything seems changed. It was so with Adrienne. All things seemed changed to her, and in that bitter necromancy her pride was humbled. Wherever she went there was but one dear face she longed to see—one dear face with the quiet eyes she loved. There were days when she so longed to see him, when the sound of his voice or the touch of his hand would have been so inexpressibly dear to her, that it seemed as if the very force of her passion must surely draw him back to her. But he never came. During those two long years something went from her forever. She was not conscious of it at the time—only of the dull ache, and feverish longing, and utter apathy that seized her by turns. There was a subtle difference in all things. 'Twas as if some fine spring in the delicate mechanism of her being had broken. It might run on for years, but never again with the perfectness and buoyancy with which it had once moved.

As her life altered so terribly, as all that she had known and valued perished miserably before her eyes day by day, the thought of Calvert and of his calm steadiness and sincerity became constant with her. She heard of him from time to time from Mr. Morris after his frequent visits to London and through letters to her brother and Lafayette, to whom Calvert wrote periodically, but she had no hope of ever seeing him again, and she suffered in the knowledge. Though he seemed cruel to her in his hardness, she was just enough to confess to herself that she so deserved to suffer. But she had learned so much through suffering that a sick distaste for life's lessons grew upon her, and she felt that she wanted no more of them unless knowledge should come to her through love. In her changed life there was little to relieve her suffering, but she devoted herself to the old Duchess, who failed visibly day by day, and in that service she could sometimes forget her own unhappiness. She went with the intrepid old lady (who continued to ignore the revolution as much as possible) wherever they could find distraction—to the play and to the houses of their friends still left in Paris, where a little dinner or a game of quinze or whist could still be enjoyed.

'Twas on one of these occasions that, accompanied by Beaufort, as they were returning along the Champs Elysées from Madame de Montmorin's, where they had spent the evening, they suddenly heard the report of pistols proceeding from an allée by the road-side.

"A duel!" said Beaufort. "'Twas near here that poor Castries was killed. Perhaps it is another friend in trouble, and I had best see," and, calling to the coachman to stop the horses, he jumped out. Almost at the same instant a man stumbled out of the allée and ran down the boulevard. Beaufort would have followed him, but, as he started to do so, he heard his name called and, looking back, saw another man emerge from the allée and gaze down the almost deserted street. By the dim light of the lantern swung from its great iron post the man recognized Monsieur de Beaufort and ran forward.

"Will you come?" he said, hurriedly. "Monsieur Calvert is here—wounded by that villain."

"Calvert—impossible! He is not in Paris."

"But he is!—here," said Bertrand, drawing Beaufort toward the allée.

Adrienne's pale face appeared at the coach-door.

"Did I hear someone speak of Monsieur Calvert?"