One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre

by G. P. R. James

"Lady!" replied the dwarf vehemently, "so help me Heaven, as I would sooner die than do ought that you do not wish, except for your own good!"

"Ay, there may we bitterly fall out, good Bartholo, if we speak farther!" replied Beatrice. "What I require is service, and not judgment of my actions; and henceforth let me but see that you even waver in obeying, or fulfil not my behest, whatever it may be, to the very letter, and I will send you from me never to return again. However, I somewhat doubted thee, and therefore have not trusted thee in matters where I required uninquiring promptitude and exact obedience. Those matters now are over, and a smoother trodden path lies out before me."

Bartholo started, for he had heard and marked much that had passed; and yet she spoke so calmly, that he deemed it impossible one of her passionate nature could bear the blight of all her hopes so meekly. "It has wrung my heart, lady," he said, in a tone of deep despondency, that touched Beatrice more at this moment than it might have done at any other, because grief is credulous of grief. "It has wrung my heart, lady, to have been distrusted by you for an hour, though the wound would have gone deeper had I deserved it. But you know not, lady, what it is, when one has been brought up from boyhood near so bright and good a person as yourself; has been habituated to watch your every word, to obey you, and to hasten before your wishes to please you; has become keen of wit and daring of execution for the sole service of your behests; and has watched you expand from loveliness to loveliness, like a flower in the spring tide--you know not what it is to be looked coldly on, even for a moment; to be distrusted by her whom one would give the inmost heart's best blood to serve."

The tone touched Beatrice, for it was unlike the dwarf's ordinary cynicism: but there was something in the words, though they were respectfully spoken, which did not please her; and she might have replied more coldly than the kindness of her heart approved, had not the dwarf gone on rapidly:--"At your birth, lady, I was little more than twelve years old; and from that hour to this, I have followed your fortunes and obeyed you in every word, even to quitting you when you bade me quit you, and taking apparent service, once with a man I hated, and once with a man I despised; and now I find that you have distrusted me, you have looked cold upon me, you have kept me from your presence! Lady, I beseech you, do not so again; rather as you say, send me from you for ever. Call me to you, and say, 'Bartholo, thou pleasest me no longer, get thee gone, and take thy stinted and misshapen form from before my eyes; let me see no more thy apish countenance! Despised of all the world, thou art despised of me also; and though the dwarf has been my sport and mockery, has stood in the place of parrot, or lapdog, or marmoset, I am now tired of the goblin; so get thee hence!' Say this! say a thousand things more biting and bitter still, but never, oh never, lady, distrust me again."

"Nay, Bartholo, nay!" replied Beatrice, better pleased with his last words than those that preceded them. "Thou goest too far, in the bitterness of thine anger. I have never contemned, I have never despised thee! and have felt pity for thy fate, less because it truly deserved pity, than because it grieved thee. As to the past, thou ownest thyself, that if thou hadst deemed my interest required it, thou wouldest have betrayed my confidence; I was just, therefore, in mistrusting thee; but it was thy vanity I doubted--vanity that must judge of my happiness better than I can myself--and not thy love, Bartholo, which I do verily believe would seek that happiness for me at the risk of life."

"Oh! never, never doubt that, lady!" cried the dwarf, casting himself at her feet, and kissing her hand; "never, never doubt that; for your utmost trust therein can only do me scanty justice."

Beatrice withdrew her hand. "Enough, enough!" she said. "We understand each other for the future. You always remember, that I am the best judge of my own happiness; and I----" He shook his head with a mournful look, and clasping his hands together, cast his eyes upon the ground. "What mean you, knave?" cried Beatrice, for his action interrupted her more than words could have done. "What would you by that gesture?"

"I would ask, lady," said the dwarf, in a firm but melancholy tone,--"If you have lately proved yourself so good a judge of your own happiness? Pardon me, my noble lady! Pardon me! but did I not long since predict all that has happened? Did I not tell you, when first you fixed your love on one whose name I will not pronounce, so deeply do I hate him for his conduct towards you----"

"Hate him not, Bartholo!" interrupted Beatrice, fixing her bright dark eyes upon the dwarf as she spoke--"hate him not, Bartholo; for I love him still! and he loves me!"

A bright flush played over the pale cheek of the dwarf, like a gleam of summer lightning upon the twilight sky, and his nether lip quivered; but for some moments he made no reply, except by again clasping his hands together, and gazing down upon the ground, as if in deep meditation. "Lady!" he said at length, "you love him still! I doubt it not; for yours is one of those firm hearts, on which a line once engraved can never be effaced. But alas, alas! he loves not you; and all your sad experience will not convince you, solely because you still love him."