Night and Morning, Complete

CHAPTER XII

 
GUIOMAR.
“Those devotions I am to pay
Are written in my heart, not in this book.”
 
 
Enter RUTILIO.
“I am pursued—all the ports are stopped too,
Not any hope to escape—behind, before me,
On either side, I am beset.”
 

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, The Custom of the Country

The party were just gone—it was already the peep of day—the wheels of the last carriage had died in the distance.

Madame de Merville had dismissed her woman, and was seated in her own room, leaning her head musingly on her hand.

Beside her was the table that held her MSS. and a few books, amidst which were scattered vases of flowers. On a pedestal beneath the window was placed a marble bust of Dante. Through the open door were seen in perspective two rooms just deserted by her guests; the lights still burned in the chandeliers and girandoles, contending with the daylight that came through the half-closed curtains. The person of the inmate was in harmony with the apartment. It was characterised by a certain grace which, for want of a better epithet, writers are prone to call classical or antique. Her complexion, seeming paler than usual by that light, was yet soft and delicate—the features well cut, but small and womanly. About the face there was that rarest of all charms, the combination of intellect with sweetness; the eyes, of a dark blue, were thoughtful, perhaps melancholy, in their expression; but the long dark lashes, and the shape of the eyes, themselves more long than full, gave to their intelligence a softness approaching to languor, increased, perhaps, by that slight shadow round and below the orbs which is common with those who have tasked too much either the mind or the heart. The contour of the face, without being sharp or angular, had yet lost a little of the roundness of earlier youth; and the hand on which she leaned was, perhaps, even too white, too delicate, for the beauty which belongs to health; but the throat and bust were of exquisite symmetry.

“I am not happy,” murmured Eugenie to herself; “yet I scarce know why. Is it really, as we women of romance have said till the saying is worn threadbare, that the destiny of women is not fame but love. Strange, then, that while I have so often pictured what love should be, I have never felt it. And now,—and now,” she continued, half rising, and with a natural pang—“now I am no longer in my first youth. If I loved, should I be loved again? How happy the young pair seemed—they are never alone!”

At this moment, at a distance, was heard the report of fire-arms—again! Eugenie started, and called to her servant, who, with one of the waiters hired for the night, was engaged in removing, and nibbling as he removed, the remains of the feast. “What is that, at this hour?—open the window and look out!”

“I can see nothing, madame.”

“Again—that is the third time. Go into the street and look—some one must be in danger.”

The servant and the waiter, both curious, and not willing to part company, ran down the stairs, and thence into the street.

Meanwhile, Morton, after vainly attempting Birnie’s window, which the traitor had previously locked and barred against the escape of his intended victim, crept rapidly along the roof, screened by the parapet not only from the shot but the sight of the foe. But just as he gained the point at which the lane made an angle with the broad street it adjoined, he cast his eyes over the parapet, and perceived that one of the officers had ventured himself to the fearful bridge; he was pursued—detection and capture seemed inevitable. He paused, and breathed hard. He, once the heir to such fortunes, the darling of such affections!—he, the hunted accomplice of a gang of miscreants! That was the thought that paralysed—the disgrace, not the danger. But he was in advance of the pursuer—he hastened on—he turned the angle—he heard a shout behind from the opposite side—the officer had passed the bridge: “it is but one man as yet,” thought he, and his nostrils dilated and his hands clenched as he glided on, glancing at each casement as he passed.

Now as youth and vigour thus struggled against Law for life, near at hand Death was busy with toil and disease. In a miserable grabat, or garret, a mechanic, yet young, and stricken by a lingering malady contracted by the labour of his occupation, was slowly passing from that world which had frowned on his cradle, and relaxed not the gloom of its aspect to comfort his bed of Death. Now this man had married for love, and his wife had loved him; and it was the cares of that early marriage which had consumed him to the bone. But extreme want, if long continued, eats up love when it has nothing else to eat. And when people are very long dying, the people they fret and trouble begin to think of that too often hypocritical prettiness of phrase called “a happy release.” So the worn-out and half-famished wife did not care three straws for the dying husband, whom a year or two ago she had vowed to love and cherish in sickness and in health. But still she seemed to care, for she moaned, and pined, and wept, as the man’s breath grew fainter and fainter.

“Ah, Jean!” said she, sobbing, “what will become of me, a poor lone widow, with nobody to work for my bread?” And with that thought she took on worse than before.

“I am stifling,” said the dying man, rolling round his ghastly eyes. “How hot it is! Open the window; I should like to see the light—daylight once again.”

“Mon Dieu! what whims he has, poor man!” muttered the woman, without stirring.

The poor wretch put out his skeleton hand and clutched his wife’s arm.

“I sha’n’t trouble you long, Marie! Air—air!”

“Jean, you will make yourself worse—besides, I shall catch my death of cold. I have scarce a rag on, but I will just open the door.”

“Pardon me,” groaned the sufferer; “leave me, then.” Poor fellow! perhaps at that moment the thought of unkindness was sharper than the sharp cough which brought blood at every paroxysm. He did not like her so near him, but he did not blame her. Again, I say,—poor fellow! The woman opened the door, went to the other side of the room, and sat down on an old box and began darning an old neck-handkerchief. The silence was soon broken by the moans of the fast-dying man, and again he muttered, as he tossed to and fro, with baked white lips:

“Je m’etoufee!—Air!”

There was no resisting that prayer, it seemed so like the last. The wife laid down the needle, put the handkerchief round her throat, and opened the window.

“Do you feel easier now?”

“Bless you, Marie—yes; that’s good—good. It puts me in mind of old days, that breath of air, before we came to Paris. I wish I could work for you now, Marie.”

“Jean! my poor Jean!” said the woman, and the words and the voice took back her hardening heart to the fresh fields and tender thoughts of the past time. And she walked up to the bed, and he leaned his temples, damp with livid dews, upon her breast.

“I have been a sad burden to you, Marie; we should not have married so soon; but I thought I was stronger. Don’t cry; we have no little ones, thank God. It will be much better for you when I am gone.”

And so, word after word gasped out—he stopped suddenly, and seemed to fall asleep.

The wife then attempted gently to lay him once more on his pillow—the head fell back heavily—the jaw had dropped—the teeth were set—the eyes were open and like the stone—the truth broke on her!

“Jean—Jean! My God, he is dead! and I was unkind to him at the last!” With these words she fell upon the corpse, happily herself insensible.

Just at that moment a human face peered in at the window. Through that aperture, after a moment’s pause, a young man leaped lightly into the room. He looked round with a hurried glance, but scarcely noticed the forms stretched on the pallet. It was enough for him that they seemed to sleep, and saw him not. He stole across the room, the door of which Marie had left open, and descended the stairs. He had almost gained the courtyard into which the stairs had conducted, when he heard voices below by the porter’s lodge.

“The police have discovered a gang of coiners!”

“Coiners!”

“Yes, one has been shot dead! I have seen his body in the kennel; another has fled along the roofs—a desperate fellow! We were to watch for him. Let us go up-stairs and get on the roof and look out.”

By the hum of approval that followed this proposition, Morton judged rightly that it had been addressed to several persons whom curiosity and the explosion of the pistols had drawn from their beds, and who were grouped round the porter’s lodge. What was to be done?—to advance was impossible: and was there yet time to retreat?—it was at least the only course left him; he sprang back up the stairs; he had just gained the first flight when he heard steps descending; then, suddenly, it flashed across him that he had left open the window above—that, doubtless, by that imprudent oversight the officer in pursuit had detected a clue to the path he had taken. What was to be done?—die as Gawtrey had done!—death rather than the galleys. As he thus resolved, he saw to the right the open door of an apartment in which lights still glimmered in their sockets. It seemed deserted—he entered boldly and at once, closing the door after him. Wines and viands still left on the table; gilded mirrors, reflecting the stern face of the solitary intruder; here and there an artificial flower, a knot of riband on the floor, all betokening the gaieties and graces of luxurious life—the dance, the revel, the feast—all this in one apartment!—above, in the same house, the pallet—the corpse—the widow—famine and woe! Such is a great city! such, above all, is Paris! where, under the same roof, are gathered such antagonist varieties of the social state! Nothing strange in this; it is strange and sad that so little do people thus neighbours know of each other, that the owner of those rooms had a heart soft to every distress, but she did not know the distress so close at hand. The music that had charmed her guests had mounted gaily to the vexed ears of agony and hunger. Morton passed the first room—a second—he came to a third, and Eugenie de Merville, looking up at that instant, saw before her an apparition that might well have alarmed the boldest. His head was uncovered—his dark hair shadowed in wild and disorderly profusion the pale face and features, beautiful indeed, but at that moment of the beauty which an artist would impart to a young gladiator—stamped with defiance, menace, and despair. The disordered garb—the fierce aspect—the dark eyes, that literally shone through the shadows of the room—all conspired to increase the terror of so abrupt a presence.

“What are you?—What do you seek here?” said she, falteringly, placing her hand on the bell as she spoke. Upon that soft hand Morton laid his own.

“I seek my life! I am pursued! I am at your mercy! I am innocent! Can you save me?”

As he spoke, the door of the outer room beyond was heard to open, and steps and voices were at hand.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, recoiling as he recognised her face. “And is it to you that I have fled?”

Eugenie also recognised the stranger; and there was something in their relative positions—the suppliant, the protectress—that excited both her imagination and her pity. A slight colour mantled to her cheeks—her look was gentle and compassionate.

“Poor boy! so young!” she said. “Hush!”

She withdrew her hand from his, retired a few steps, lifted a curtain drawn across a recess—and pointing to an alcove that contained one of those sofa-beds common in French houses, added in a whisper,—

“Enter—you are saved.”

Morton obeyed, and Eugenie replaced the curtain.

CHAPTER XIII

 
GUIOMAR.
“Speak! What are you?”
 
 
RUTILIO.
“Gracious woman, hear me. I am a stranger:
And in that I answer all your demands.”
Custom of the Country.
 

Eugenie replaced the curtain. And scarcely had she done so ere the steps in the outer room entered the chamber where she stood. Her servant was accompanied by two officers of the police.

“Pardon, madame,” said one of the latter; “but we are in pursuit of a criminal. We think he must have entered this house through a window above while your servant was in the street. Permit us to search?”

“Without doubt,” answered Eugenie, seating herself. “If he has entered, look in the other apartments. I have not quitted this room.”

“You are right. Accept our apologies.”

And the officers turned back to examine every corner where the fugitive was not. For in that, the scouts of Justice resembled their mistress: when does man’s justice look to the right place?

The servant lingered to repeat the tale he had heard—the sight he had seen. When, at that instant, he saw the curtain of the alcove slightly stirred. He uttered an exclamation—sprung to the bed—his hand touched the curtain—Eugenie seized his arm. She did not speak; but as he turned his eyes to her, astonished, he saw that she trembled, and that her cheek was as white as marble.

“Madame,” he said, hesitating, “there is some one hid in the recess.”

“There is! Be silent!”

A suspicion flashed across the servant’s mind. The pure, the proud, the immaculate Eugenie!

“There is!—and in madame’s chamber!” he faltered unconsciously.

Eugenie’s quick apprehensions seized the foul thought. Her eyes flashed—her cheek crimsoned. But her lofty and generous nature conquered even the indignant and scornful burst that rushed to her lips. The truth!—could she trust the man? A doubt—and the charge of the human life rendered to her might be betrayed. Her colour fell—tears gushed to her eyes.

“I have been kind to you, Francois. Not a word.”

“Madame confides in me—it is enough,” said the Frenchman, bowing, with a slight smile on his lips; and he drew back respectfully.

One of the police officers re-entered.

“We have done, madame; he is not here. Aha! that curtain!”

“It is madame’s bed,” said Francois. “But I have looked behind.”

“I am most sorry to have disarranged you,” said the policeman, satisfied with the answer; “but we shall have him yet.” And he retired.

The last footsteps died away, the last door of the apartments closed behind the officers, and Eugenie and her servant stood alone gazing on each other.

“You may retire,” said she at last; and taking her purse from the table, she placed it in his hands.

The man took it, with a significant look. “Madame may depend on my discretion.”

Eugenie was alone again. Those words rang in her ear,—Eugenie de Merville dependent on the discretion of her lackey! She sunk into her chair, and, her excitement succeeded by exhaustion, leaned her face on her hands, and burst into tears. She was aroused by a low voice; she looked up, and the young man was kneeling at her feet.

“Go—go!” she said: “I have done for you all I can.”

“You heard—you heard—my own hireling, too! At the hazard of my own good name you are saved. Go!”

“Of your good name!”—for Eugenie forgot that it was looks, not words, that had so wrung her pride—“Your good name,” he repeated: and glancing round the room—the toilette, the curtain, the recess he had quitted—all that bespoke that chastest sanctuary of a chaste woman, which for a stranger to enter is, as it were, to profane—her meaning broke on him. “Your good name—your hireling! No, madame,—no!” And as he spoke, he rose to his feet. “Not for me, that sacrifice! Your humanity shall not cost you so dear. Ho, there! I am the man you seek.” And he strode to the door.

Eugenie was penetrated with the answer. She sprung to him—she grasped his garments.

“Hush! hush!—for mercy’s sake! What would you do? Think you I could ever be happy again, if the confidence you placed in me were betrayed? Be calm—be still. I knew not what I said. It will be easy to undeceive the man—later—when you are saved. And you are innocent,—are you not?”

“Oh, madame,” said Morton, “from my soul I say it, I am innocent—not of poverty—wretchedness—error—shame; I am innocent of crime. May Heaven bless you!”

And as he reverently kissed the hand laid on his arm, there was something in his voice so touching, in his manner something so above his fortunes, that Eugenie was lost in her feelings of compassion, surprise, and something, it might be, of admiration in her wonder.

“And, oh!” he said, passionately, gazing on her with his dark, brilliant eyes, liquid with emotion, “you have made my life sweet in saving it. You—you—of whom, ever since the first time, almost the sole time, I beheld you—I have so often mused and dreamed. Henceforth, whatever befall me, there will be some recollections that will—that—”

He stopped short, for his heart was too full for words; and the silence said more to Eugenie than if all the eloquence of Rousseau had glowed upon his tongue.

“And who, and what are you?” she asked, after a pause.

“An exile—an orphan—an outcast! I have no name! Farewell!”

“No—stay yet—the danger is not past. Wait till my servant is gone to rest; I hear him yet. Sit down—sit down. And whither would you go?”

“I know not.”

“Have you no friends?”

“Gone.”

“No home?”

“None.”

“And the police of Paris so vigilant!” cried Eugenie, wringing her hands. “What is to be done? I shall have saved you in vain—you will be discovered! Of what do they charge you? Not robbery—not—”

And she, too, stopped short, for she did not dare to breathe the black word, “Murder!”

“I know not,” said Morton, putting his hand to his forehead, “except of being friends with the only man who befriended me—and they have killed him!”

“Another time you shall tell me all.”

“Another time!” he exclaimed, eagerly—“shall I see you again?”

Eugenie blushed beneath the gaze and the voice of joy. “Yes,” she said; “yes. But I must reflect. Be calm be silent. Ah!—a happy thought!”

She sat down, wrote a hasty line, sealed, and gave it to Morton.

“Take this note, as addressed, to Madame Dufour; it will provide you with a safe lodging. She is a person I can depend on—an old servant who lived with my mother, and to whom I have given a small pension. She has a lodging—it is lately vacant—I promised to procure her a tenant—go—say nothing of what has passed. I will see her, and arrange all. Wait!—hark!—all is still. I will go first, and see that no one watches you. Stop,” (and she threw open the window, and looked into the court.) “The porter’s door is open—that is fortunate! Hurry on, and God be with you!”

In a few minutes Morton was in the streets. It was still early—the thoroughfares deserted-none of the shops yet open. The address on the note was to a street at some distance, on the other side of the Seine. He passed along the same Quai which he had trodden but a few hours since—he passed the same splendid bridge on which he had stood despairing, to quit it revived—he gained the Rue Faubourg St. Honore. A young man in a cabriolet, on whose fair cheek burned the hectic of late vigils and lavish dissipation, was rolling leisurely home from the gaming-house, at which he had been more than usually fortunate—his pockets were laden with notes and gold. He bent forwards as Morton passed him. Philip, absorbed in his reverie, perceived him not, and continued his way. The gentleman turned down one of the streets to the left, stopped, and called to the servant dozing behind his cabriolet.

“Follow that passenger! quietly—see where he lodges; be sure to find out and let me know. I shall go home without you.” With that he drove on.

Philip, unconscious of the espionage, arrived at a small house in a quiet but respectable street, and rang the bell several times before at last he was admitted by Madame Dufour herself, in her nightcap. The old woman looked askant and alarmed at the unexpected apparition. But the note seemed at once to satisfy her. She conducted him to an apartment on the first floor, small, but neatly and even elegantly furnished, consisting of a sitting-room and a bedchamber, and said, quietly,—

“Will they suit monsieur?”

To monsieur they seemed a palace. Morton nodded assent.

“And will monsieur sleep for a short time?”

“Yes.”

“The bed is well aired. The rooms have only been vacant three days since. Can I get you anything till your luggage arrives?”

“No.”

The woman left him. He threw off his clothes—flung himself on the bed—and did not wake till noon.

When his eyes unclosed—when they rested on that calm chamber, with its air of health, and cleanliness, and comfort, it was long before he could convince himself that he was yet awake. He missed the loud, deep voice of Gawtrey—the smoke of the dead man’s meerschaum—the gloomy garret—the distained walls—the stealthy whisper of the loathed Birnie; slowly the life led and the life gone within the last twelve hours grew upon his struggling memory. He groaned, and turned uneasily round, when the door slightly opened, and he sprung up fiercely,—

“Who is there?”

“It is only I, sir,” answered Madame Dufour. “I have been in three times to see if you were stirring. There is a letter I believe for you, sir; though there is no name to it,” and she laid the letter on the chair beside him. Did it come from her—the saving angel? He seized it. The cover was blank; it was sealed with a small device, as of a ring seal. He tore it open, and found four billets de banque for 1,000 francs each,—a sum equivalent in our money to about L160.

“Who sent this, the—the lady from whom I brought the note?”

“Madame de Merville? certainly not, sir,” said Madame Dufour, who, with the privilege of age, was now unscrupulously filling the water-jugs and settling the toilette-table. “A young man called about two hours after you had gone to bed; and, describing you, inquired if you lodged here, and what your name was. I said you had just arrived, and that I did not yet know your name. So he went away, and came again half an hour afterwards with this letter, which he charged me to deliver to you safely.”

“A young man—a gentleman?”

“No, sir; he seemed a smart but common sort of lad.” For the unsophisticated Madame Dufour did not discover in the plain black frock and drab gaiters of the bearer of that letter the simple livery of an English gentleman’s groom.

Whom could it come from, if not from Madame de Merville? Perhaps one of Gawtrey’s late friends. A suspicion of Arthur Beaufort crossed him, but he indignantly dismissed it. Men are seldom credulous of what they are unwilling to believe. What kindness had the Beauforts hitherto shown him?—Left his mother to perish broken-hearted—stolen from him his brother, and steeled, in that brother, the only heart wherein he had a right to look for gratitude and love! No, it must be Madame de Merville. He dismissed Madame Dufour for pen and paper—rose—wrote a letter to Eugenie—grateful, but proud, and inclosed the notes. He then summoned Madame Dufour, and sent her with his despatch.

“Ah, madame,” said the ci-devant bonne, when she found herself in Eugenie’s presence. “The poor lad! how handsome he is, and how shameful in the Vicomte to let him wear such clothes!”

“The Vicomte!”

“Oh, my dear mistress, you must not deny it. You told me, in your note, to ask him no questions, but I guessed at once. The Vicomte told me himself that he should have the young gentleman over in a few days. You need not be ashamed of him. You will see what a difference clothes will make in his appearance; and I have taken it on myself to order a tailor to go to him. The Vicomte—must pay me.”

“Not a word to the Vicomte as yet. We will surprise him,” said Eugenie, laughing.

Madame de Merville had been all that morning trying to invent some story to account for her interest in the lodger, and now how Fortune favoured her!

“But is that a letter for me?”

“And I had almost forgot it,” said Madame Dufour, as she extended the letter.

Whatever there had hitherto been in the circumstances connected with Morton, that had roused the interest and excited the romance of Eugenie de Merville, her fancy was yet more attracted by the tone of the letter she now read. For though Morton, more accustomed to speak than to write French, expressed himself with less precision, and a less euphuistic selection of phrase, than the authors and elegans who formed her usual correspondents; there was an innate and rough nobleness—a strong and profound feeling in every line of his letter, which increased her surprise and admiration.

“All that surrounds him—all that belongs to him, is strangeness and mystery!” murmured she; and she sat down to reply.

When Madame Dufour departed with that letter, Eugenie remained silent and thoughtful for more than an hour, Morton’s letter before her; and sweet, in their indistinctness, were the recollections and the images that crowded on her mind.

Morton, satisfied by the earnest and solemn assurances of Eugenie that she was not the unknown donor of the sum she reinclosed, after puzzling himself in vain to form any new conjectures as to the quarter whence it came, felt that under his present circumstances it would be an absurd Quixotism to refuse to apply what the very Providence to whom he had anew consigned himself seemed to have sent to his aid. And it placed him, too, beyond the offer of all pecuniary assistance from one from whom he could least have brooked to receive it. He consented, therefore, to all that the loquacious tailor proposed to him. And it would have been difficult to have recognised the wild and frenzied fugitive in the stately form, with its young beauty and air of well-born pride, which the next day sat by the side of Eugenie. And that day he told his sad and troubled story, and Eugenie wept: and from that day he came daily; and two weeks—happy, dreamlike, intoxicating to both—passed by; and as their last sun set, he was kneeling at her feet, and breathing to one to whom the homage of wit, and genius, and complacent wealth had hitherto been vainly proffered, the impetuous, agitated, delicious secrets of the First Love. He spoke, and rose to depart for ever—when the look and sigh detained him.

The next day, after a sleepless night, Eugenie de Merville sent for the Vicomte de Vaudemont.