Hector got leave from the School, and went with the poor troubled Smithwick to the office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Boulevard des Capucines, where for ten of her scanty store of francs she got her passport signed. Stout Auguste drove them in the shiny barouche with the high-steppers in silver-mounted harness, to meet the red Calais coach at the Public Posting-Office in the Rue Nôtre Dame des Victoires, whither one of the stablelads had wheeled Miss Smithwick’s aged, piebald hair-trunk, her carpet-bag, and her three band-boxes on a hand-truck. And, judging by the coldness of the poor soul’s nose when, a very Niobe for tears, she kissed the son of her lost mistress and her adored patron good-by, the heart beneath Smithwick’s faded green velvet mantle must have been a very furnace of maternal love and tenderness.
“Never neglect the necessity of daily ablution of the entire person, my dearest boy!” entreated the poor gentlewoman, “or omit the exercises of your religion at morning and night. Instruct the domestics to see that your beloved papa’s linen is properly aired. I fear they will be only too prone to neglect these necessary precautions when my surveillance is withdrawn! And—though but a humble individual offers this counsel, remember, my Hector, that there are higher aims in life than the mere attainment of great wealth or lofty station. Self-respect, beloved child, is worth far more!” She was extraordinarily earnest in saying this, shaking her thin gray curls with emphatic nods, holding up a lean admonitory forefinger. “Persons with gifts and capacities as great, natures as noble and generous as your distinguished father’s, may be blinded by the sparkling luster of a jeweled scepter, allured by the prospect of dominion, power, influence, rule....” What could good Smithwick possibly be driving at? “But an unstained honor, my beloved boy, is worth more than these, and a clean conscience smooths the—way we must all of us travel!” She blinked the tears from her scanty, ginger-hued eyelashes, and added: “I have forfeited a confidence and regard I deeply appreciated, by perhaps unnecessarily believing it my duty to reiterate this.” She coughed and dabbed her poor red eyes with the damp white handkerchief held in the thin, shaking hand in the shabby glove; and continued: “But a day will come when the brief joys and bitter disillusions of this life will be at an end. The bitterest that I have ever known come late, very late indeed!” Had Smithwick met it in the library that morning when the Marshal bade her adieu? “When I lay my head upon my pillow to die, it will be with the conviction that I did my duty. It has borne me fruit of sorrow. But I hope and pray that this chastening may be for my good. And oh! my dearest child, may God for ever bless and keep you!”
The mail-bags were stowed. The three inside passengers’ seats being taken, poor weeping Smithwick perforce was compelled to negotiate the ladder, must climb into the cabriolet in company with the guard. With her thin elderly ankles upon her mind, it may be judged that no more intelligible speech came from her. She peered round the tarred canvas hood as the bugle flourished; she waved her wet handkerchief as the long, stinging whip-lash cracked over the bony backs of the four high-rumped, long-necked grays.... She was gone. Something had gone out of Hector’s life along with her; he had not loved her, yet she left a gap behind. His heart was cold and heavy as he brought his eyes back from the dwindling red patch made by the mail amongst the vari-colored Paris street-traffic, but the hardening change that had begun in him from the very hour of de Moulny’s revelation stiffened the muscles of his face, and drove back the tears he might have shed.
“Holy blue!” gulped stout Auguste, who was sitting on his box blubbering and mopping his eyes with a red cotton handkerchief, sadly out of keeping with his superb mauve and yellow livery, blazing with gold lace and buttons, and the huge cocked hat that crowned his well-powdered wig. “There are gayer employments than seeing people off, my faith there are! Who would have dreamed I should ever pipe my eye for the old girl! It is a pity she is gone? She was an honest creature!” He added huskily, tucking away the red cotton handkerchief: “One could do uncommonly well now with two fingers of wine?”
He cocked his thirsty eye at penniless Hector, who pretended not to hear him, and turned away abruptly; saying that he would walk back to the School.
“That is not a chip of the old block, see you, when it comes to a cart-wheel for drink-money,” said Auguste over his shoulder, as the silver-harnessed blacks with much champing and high action, prepared to return to the stables in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, and the silkstockinged footman mounted his perch behind.
“It is a learned prig,” pronounced the footman, authoritatively, adding: “They turn them out all of one pattern at that shop of his.”
“Yet he fought a duel,” said Auguste, deftly twirling the prancing steeds into a by-street and pulling up outside a little, low-browed wine-shop much frequented by gold-laced liveries and cocked-hats. “And came off the victor,” he added, with a touch of pride.
“By a trick got up beforehand,” said the footman pithily, as he dived under the striped awning, in at the wineshop door.
“Nothing of the sort!” denied Auguste.