"The man is dead! But he did not fall in a duel. He lived to meet his end during the Prusso-Austrian War. He had left Paris en route for Berlin when my representative called at the Prussian Embassy. Strive as I would, I could gain no answer from him. Nor might the utmost influence I could command obtain a response to my cartel. This being so, the disgrace is his—not mine!"
He grew quite tall in saying this, so dignified was the little tubby man, so noble in his soldierly simplicity. His daughter looked up at him, wondering at him, loving him, sorrowing over him; yet yearning to hear more of that beloved, faithless one who had dealt those bleeding wounds he now bared in the sight of the child she had deserted, and plowed such deep lines in his wrung and suffering face. The words would break out, though she nipped her lips to stop them:
"And my mother ... did she repent and ask your pardon? Did you not forgive her before she died?"
"She did not die!"
The little Colonel had a great voice. His "Garde à vous!" roared down the files like a spherical mortar-shell, his "Chargez!" might have set dead men and horses up and galloping. Indeed, his nickname among the troopers of his regiment was, I believe, nothing less than "Bouche à feu!" When he thundered the answer to Juliette's question, not only did Mademoiselle Bayard leap to her feet, vibrating in every fiber of her slender, rigid body, but the crystal drops of the mantelshelf chandeliers left by the previous tenant danced and tinkled, and the panes of the windows rattled in their frames. What more the Colonel might have said was drowned, as the customary fanfare of trumpets sounded from the Mess, heralding the loyal toast. Then the "Vive l'Empereur!" rang out, and the regimental band crashed into "Partant Pour La Syrie," and very soon afterward, from the uncurtained window commanding the barrack-square, lights could be seen moving across the shadowy space as the dispersing officers returned to their quarters or went about their duty, attended by orderlies carrying stable-lanterns of the smoky, smelly, tallow-burning kind. The Colonel's own duty called him elsewhere, and he was glad of it. He muttered an inaudible word, his eyes averted from his daughter; took his cap, gloves, and riding-whip, and strode jingling from the room.
Ah, it would need a great artist in words to depict the swift and changing emotions that swelled and wrung the heart of the poor girl he left behind him, and give some adequate idea of the storm that swept over her in that lonely hour. Joy at the discovery that the adored mother of her childish memories yet lived was drowned in anguish at the piercing thought, "She lives, but not for me!" Shame burned her cheeks to crimson, grief washed them white again; her heart bounded in her bosom, or sank, heavy as lead. Except Madame Suchard, the soldier's wife who had been engaged to wait upon Mademoiselle de Bayard, and who now might be heard washing up the dinner-plates and dishes in the little kitchen, there was no earthly woman near to whom she might turn for comfort in this her hour of need.
But as she wept, not the freely-flowing tears of girlhood, but with the dry sobbings and painful convulsions that tortured women know, there chimed from the great cathedral Church of St. Louis close by, the first long triple of the Angelus, echoed by the thinner-sounding bells from the Convent of the Augustinian Sisters, from the Priory of the Bernardine Fathers, from the House of the Sœurs de l'Esperance, from the House of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Mechanically Juliette's hand went to her bosom, her pale lips moved, shaping the sacred words. And then she went to her room and knelt at the little straw-bottomed prie-Dieu that stood before her Crucifix, and prayed with passionate earnestness that He, Who when hanging upon His Cross of Agony gave His Mother to be our Mother, would hear Her pure prayer of intercession for that mother who had deserted her child. Wherever she might be, however low she might have fallen, whatever the sins, vices, follies that yet environed her, held her back or dragged her down, the ray of Divine Grace had power to reach her, raise her up, and lead her back by the path of Penance into the Way of Peace.
And pending the miracle, toward which end Masses should be offered and Communions given; obedience to that father so cruelly betrayed, so bitterly wronged, must, more than ever, be the watchword of Juliette. For the conviction began to dawn in her that belief in the innate purity and truth of her sex having been destroyed in him by the unfaith of that most beloved, most unhappy one; he sought to safeguard her daughter's virtue by means of a husband, who, being the only son of a widow, and therefore exempt from the obligations of military service, must always be on the spot. Sorrowfully she sought her bed, to remember, the moment her head touched the pillow, that although she had mustered courage to plead against the Colonel's sentence of marriage, provoking him thereby to reveal the long-hidden secret of his betrayal, she had never mentioned Charles except by inference.
What was he like, this young man, pious, virtuous, devoted to his mother, energetic, frugal, a manufacturer of, and merchant in, the commodity of woolen cloth? Could one build a husband out of such materials? Was it possible?
She tried once more. The effort led to tossing and turning. Conscience is most active in the night-watches. Juliette's bosom-monitor reproached her with having boasted to dear Monica's untidy brother of the faceless Charles's mastery of the art of fence. Other lapses from the strict line of veracity had preceded and followed. She had told one curious girl that Charles owned the form of an athlete, and hair of ruddy chestnut; another had reaped the information that he possessed a profile resembling that of Edgar Ravenswood, with dark, melancholy eyes, and a jet-black mustache of the kind that is silky and sweeps. Yet another eager inquirer had elicited the information that Charles was quite a duodecimo edition of a lover, slender, brilliantly fair, and not much taller than the bride-elect. Should it occur to these girls to compare notes in some hour of recess or exercise, what would be the impression conveyed to the Great Class?