Duffels

by Edward Eggleston

And the marquis bowed his knees upon the hard floor.

He could not understand much that was said, but he knew that they were praying for him; that this white-haired class leader, and the old ladies in the corner, and Priscilla, were interceding with the Father of all for him. He felt more confidence in the efficacy of their prayers than he had ever had in all the intercessions of the saints of which he was told when a boy. For surely God would hear such as Priscilla!

It happened not long after this that D'Entremont was drawn even nearer to this simple Methodist life, which had already made such an impression on his imagination, by an incident which would make a chapter if this story were intended for the New York Weekly Dexter. Indeed, the story of his peril in a storm and freshet on Indian Creek, and of his deliverance by the courage of Henry Stevens, is so well suited to that periodical and others of its class, that I am almost sorry that Mrs. Eden, or Cobb, Jr., is not the author of this story. Either of them could make a chapter which would bear the title of "A Thrilling Incident." But with an unconquerable aversion to anything and everything "thrilling," the present writer can only say in plainest prose that this incident made the young marquis the grateful friend of his deliverer, Henry Stevens, who happened to be a zealous Methodist, and about his own age.

The effort of the two friends to hold intercourse was a curious spectacle. Not only did they speak different languages, but they lived in different worlds. Not only did D'Entremont speak a very limited English, while Stevens spoke no French, but D'Entremont's life and thought had nothing in common with the life of Stevens, except the one thing that made a friendship possible. They were both generous, manly men, and each felt a strong drawing to the other. So it came about that when they tired of the marquis's English and of the gulf between their ideas, they used to call on Priscilla at her home with her mother in the outskirts of the village. She was an interpreter indeed! For with the keenest sympathy she entered into the world in which the marquis lived, which had always been a sort of intellectual paradise to her. It was strange indeed to meet a living denizen of a world that seemed to her impossible except in books. And as for the sphere in which Stevens moved, it was her own. He and she had been schoolmates from childhood, had looked on the same green hills, known the same people, been molded of the same strong religious feeling. Nothing was more delightful to D'Entremont than to be able to talk to Stevens, unless it was to have so good an excuse for conversation with Priscilla; and nothing was so pleasant to Henry Stevens as to be able to understand the marquis, unless it was to talk with Priscilla; while to Priscilla those were golden moments, in which she passed like a quick-winged messenger between her own native world and the world that she knew only in books, between the soul of one friend and that of another. And thus grew up a triple friendship, a friendship afterward sorely tried. For how strange it is that what brings together at one time may be a wall of division at another.

I can not pretend to explain just how it came about. Doubtless Henry Stevens's influence had something to do with it, though I feel sure Priscilla's had more. Doubtless the marquis was naturally susceptible to religions influences. Certain it is that the socialistic opinions, never very deeply rooted, and at most but a reaction, disappeared, and there came a religious sentiment like that of his friends. He was drawn to the little class meeting, which seemed to him so simple a confessional that all his former notions of "liberty, fraternity, and equality" were satisfied by it. I believe he became a "probationer," but his creed was never quite settled enough for him to accept "full membership."

Some of the old folks could not refrain from expressions of triumph that "the Lord had got a hold of that French infidel": and old Sister Goodenough seized his hand, and, with many sighs and much upturning of the eyes, exhorted him: "Brother Markus, give up everything! give up everything, and come out from the world and be separated!" Which led D'Entremont to remark to Stevens, as they walked away, that "Madame Goodenough was vare curus indeed!" And Brother Boreas, the exhorter, who had the misfortune not to have a business reputation without blemish, but who made up for it by rigid scruples in regard to a melodeon in the church, and by a vicarious conscience which was kindly kept at everybody's service but his own—old Brother Boreas always remarked in regard to the marquis, that "as for his part he liked a deeper repentance and a sounder conversion." But the gray-haired old Scotch class leader, whose piety was at a premium everywhere, would take D'Entremont's hand and talk of indifferent subjects while he beamed on him his affection and Christian fellowship.

To the marquis Priscilla was a perpetual marvel. More brilliant women he had known in Paris, more devout women he had seen there, but a woman so gifted and so devout, and, above all, a woman so true, so modest, and of such perfect delicacy of feeling he had never known. And how poorly these words describe her! For she was Priscilla; and all who knew her will understand how much more that means than any adjectives of mine. Certainly Henry Stevens did, for he had known her always, and would have loved her always had he dared. It was only now, as she interpreted him to the marquis and the marquis to him, idealizing and elevating the thoughts of both, that he surrendered himself to hope. And so, toward the close of the summer, affairs came to this awkward posture that these two sworn friends loved the same woman.

D'Entremont discovered this first. More a man of the world than Henry Stevens, he read the other's face and voice. He was perturbed. Had it occurred two years before, he might have settled the matter easily by a duel, for instance. And even now his passion got the better for a while of all his good feelings and Christian resolutions. When he got back to the Le Vert House with his unpleasant discovery he was burning like a furnace. In spite of a rain storm just beginning and a dark night, he strode out and walked he knew not whither. He found himself, he knew not how, on the bank of the Ohio. He untied a skiff and pushed out into the river. How to advance himself over his rival was his first thought. But this darkness and this beating rain and this fierce loneliness reminded him of that night when he had clung desperately to the abutment of the bridge that spanned Indian Creek, and when the courage and self-possession of Henry Stevens had rescued him. Could he be the rival of a man who had gone down into the flood that he might save the exhausted marquis?

Then he hated himself. Why had he not drowned that night? And with this feeling of self-disgust added to his general mental misery and the physical misery that the rain brought to him, there came the great temptation to write "Fin," in French fashion, by jumping into the water. But something in the influence of Priscilla and that class meeting caused him to take a better resolution, and he returned to the hotel.

The next day he sent for Henry Stevens to come to his room.