Fairy Fingers / A Novel

by Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie

The distressed marquis came to the conclusion that his disturbed animal economy could only be restored by an amicable separation from his niece. But in vain he bestowed his smiles, and his dinners, upon the multitudinous suitors by whom the young heiress was besieged; her autocratic decree condemned him to the cruel duty of closing the sumptuous repasts by the dessert of a dismissal to each lover in turn, without extending to any the faintest hope that his sentence might be reversed. Finally the marquis became a confirmed dyspeptic; the joy of his life was quenched when his appetite failed, beyond the resuscitating influence of absenthe and other fashionable stimulants; the glory of his festive board had departed, and he was haunted by the conviction that the unnatural conduct of his niece would bring his whitening hairs, through sorrow and indigestion, to the grave.

A small but dearly prized respite from his trials was granted him when Bertha paid her yearly visit, of four months, to her relatives in Brittany. Her stay, however, was never extended beyond the wonted period, for she found her sojourn at the Château de Gramont unmitigatedly dull. The reception of letters from Maurice, addressed to his father, alone relieved the tediousness of the hours; but these welcome messengers were infrequent, brief, and somewhat cold. They left Bertha so unsatisfied that before the close of the first year of her cousin's absence she opened a correspondence with him herself. The initiative letter was suggested by pleasant tidings, which she hastened to send. It was written immediately after the eighteenth anniversary of her birthday, and communicated the agreeable intelligence that upon that day she had again received a token of remembrance from their beloved Madeleine.

A yearly gift, bearing the impress of those "fairy fingers," was the only sign Madeleine gave that she lived and remembered.

Three years passed on, and upon each birthday, wherever Bertha chanced to be, in Bordeaux, in Paris, in Brittany, a small parcel was mysteriously left with the concierge of the house where she was residing. The package was always addressed in Madeleine's handwriting, and contained some exquisite piece of needle-work, but no letter, and it bore no mark of post or express. It was invariably delivered by private hand. At least, it rendered certain the consolatory facts, not only that Bertha was unforgotten, but that Madeleine was cognizant of all her movements.

No sooner had the heiress reached her majority than she prepared to carry into execution a plan which for a long period had been silently forming itself in her mind. Her earnest desire to visit America had been secretly, but systematically, strengthened by Count Tristan. He well knew that the Marquis de Merrivale would never be induced to become her escort; and, what was more likely than that she should seek the countenance and protection of her other relatives?

He played his cards so adroitly that Bertha, without once suspecting his machinations, wrote to him, on the very day that closed her twenty-first year, and invited the countess and himself to accompany her upon an American tour. She took care delicately to make a stipulation that the expenses of the projected trip should devolve upon her. The count concealed his exultation under an air of well-acted reluctance, and required much persuasion before he could be taught to look with favor upon this unexpected and sudden proposition.

There was no simulation in the dismay, the horror with which Bertha's proposal was greeted by the countess. How was she to breathe in a land where hereditary claims to rank were unknown?—where distinctions of brains not blood were alone recognized?—where a man might rise to the highest position, as ruler of the realm, though his father chanced to be a mechanic, and his grandfather's existence was untraceable? For a time, Bertha's entreaties and the count's representations were equally impotent; the countess was inexorable. But her son was not to be baffled; he found an avenue through which her heart could be reached, and her resolution undermined. It lay in the suggestion that Bertha's strong inclination to visit America sprang from a desire again to behold Maurice, and that the result of their meeting, after so long a separation, might be in the highest degree felicitous. Bertha, he urged, during the absence of Maurice, had probably learned that he was dearer to her than she imagined; and, if Maurice had reason to believe that she crossed the ocean for the sake of rejoining him, could he remain insensible to such a proof of devotion? The countess bowed her haughty head to a sacrifice which vitally compromised her dignity.

One of the objects of the count's visit to America was to learn something further of the railroad company with which he was connected. For a time its operations had been suspended, owing to a financial crisis,—a sort of periodical American epidemic that, like cholera, sweeps over the land at intervals, making frightful ravage for a season, and departing as mysteriously as it came. The elastic nation, never long prostrate, had risen out of temporary difficulties and depression with a sudden bound, and prosperity walked in the very footprints of the late destroyer.

Mr. Hilson had lately announced to Count Tristan that the railway association was again in full activity, and that the mooted question of the direction which the road ought to take would, ere long, be decided. He added that, according to his judgment, the left road was indubitably the more desirable. Should that road be chosen, it would pass through the property owned by the Viscount de Gramont. We have already alluded to the immense difference in the value of the estate which the advent of the railroad would insure.

Bertha had no difficulty in obtaining the Marquis de Merrivale's approval of the contemplated trip.