The Mesmerist's Victim

“What storm are you to be on your guard against? I admit that misfortune may await us. Have you some forewarning of it? Do you know whether you ought to run to meet it or flee to avoid it?”

“I do not, Philip, only that my life hangs on a thread. It seems to me that in my sleep I am rolled to the brink of a chasm, where I am awakened, too late for me to withstand the attraction which will drag me over. With you absent, and none to help me, I shall be crushed at the bottom of the chasm.”

“Dear sister, my good Andrea,” said the captain, moved despite himself by this genuine fright, “you make too much of affection for which I thank you. You lose a defender, it is true, but only for the time. I shall not be so far that I am not within call. Besides, apart from fancies, nothing threatens you.”

“Then, Philip, how is it that you, a man, feel as mournful as I do at this parting? explain this, brother?”

“It is easy, dear,” returned Philip. “We are not only brother and sister, but had a lonely life which kept us together. It is our habit to dwell in close communion and it is sad to break the chain. I am sad, but only temporarily. I do not believe in any misfortune, save our not seeing each other for some months, or it may be a year. I resign myself and say Good-bye till we meet again.”

“You are right,” she said, staying her tears, “and I am mad. See, I am smiling again. We shall meet soon again.”

She tenderly embraced him, while he regarded her with an affection which had some parental tenderness in it.

“Besides,” he said, “you will have a comfort, in our father coming here to live with you. He loves you, believe me, but it is in his own peculiar way.”

“You seem embarrassed, Philip – what is wrong?”

“Nothing, except that my horse is chafing at the gates because I ought to have been gone an hour ago.”

Andrea assumed a calm face and said in a tone too firm not to be affectation:

“God save you, brother!”

She watched him mount his horse and ride off, waving his hand to the last. She remained motionless as long as he was in sight.

Then she turned and ran at hazard in the wood like a wounded fawn, until she dropped on a bench under the trees where she let a sob burst from her bosom.

“Oh, Father of the motherless,” she exclaimed, “why am I left all alone upon earth?”

A slight sound in the thicket – a sigh, she took it to be, made her turn. She was startled to see a sad face rise before her. It was Gilbert’s, as pale and cast-down as her own.

At sight of a man, though he was not a stranger, Andrea hastened to dry her eyes, too proud to show her grief to another. She composed her features and smoothed her cheeks which had been quivering with despair.

Gilbert was longer than she in regaining his calm, and his countenance was still mournful when she looked on it.

“Ah, Master Gilbert again,” she said, with the light tone she always assumed when chance brought her and the young man together. “But what ails you that you should gaze on me with that dolorous air? Something must have saddened you – pray, what has saddened you?”

“If you really want to know,” he answered with the more sorrow as he perceived the irony in her words, “it is the sadness of seeing you in misery.”

“What tells you so? I am not in any grief,” replied Andrea, brushing her eyes for the second time with her handkerchief.

Feeling that the gale was rising, the lover thought to lull it with his humility.

“I beg pardon, but I heard you sobbing – ”

“What, listening? you had better – ”

“It was chance,” stammered the young man, who found it hard to tell her a lie.

“Chance? I am sorry that chance should help you to overhear my sobs, but I prithee tell me how does my distress concern you?”

“I cannot bear to hear a woman weep,” rejoined Gilbert in a tone sovereignly displeasing the patrician.

“Am I but a woman to you, Master Gilbert?” replied the haughty girl. “I do not crave the sympathy of any one, and least of all of Master Gilbert.”

“You are wrong to treat me to rudely,” persisted the ex-dependent of the Taverneys, “I saw you sad in affliction. I heard you say that you would be all alone in the world by the departure of Master Philip. But no, my young lady, for I am by you, and never did a heart beat more devoted to you. I repeat that never will you be alone while my brain can think, my heart throb, or my arm be stretched out.”

He was handsome with vigor, nobility and devotion while he uttered these words, although he put into them all the simplicity which the truest respect commands.

But it was decreed that everything he should say and do was to displease, offend and drive Andrea to make insulting retorts, as though each of his offers were an outrage and his supplications provocation.

She meant to rise to suit an action most harsh to words most stern; but a nervous shiver kept her in her seat. She thought, besides, that she would be more likely to be seen if erect, and she did not wish to be remarked talking with a Gilbert! She kept her seat, but she determined once for all to crush this tormenting little insect under foot.

“I thought I had already told you that you dreadfully displease me; your voice irritates me, and your Philosophical nonsense is repugnant to me. Why then, as I told you this much, are you obstinate in speaking to me?”

“Lady, no woman should be irritated by sympathy being expressed for her.” He was pale but constrained. “An honest man is the peer of any human creature, and perchance I, whom you so persistently ill-treat, deserve the sympathy which I regret you do not show for me.”

“Sympathy,” repeated Andrea at this reiteration of the word, fastening her eyes widely open with impertinence on him, “sympathy from me towards you? In truth, I have made a mistake about you. I took you for a pert fellow and you are a mad one.”

“I am neither pert nor mad,” returned the low-born lover, with an apparent calm which was costly to the pride we know he felt. “No, for nature made me your equal and chance made you my debtor.”

“Chance again, eh?” sneered the baron’s daughter.

“I ought to say, Providence. I should never have mentioned it but your insults bring it up in my mind.”

“Your debtor, I think you say – why do you say that?”

“I should be ashamed if you had ingratitude in your composition, for God only knows what other defects have been implanted in you to counterbalance your beauty.”

Andrea leaped to her feet at this.

“Forgive me,” said he, “but you gall me too much at times and I forget the interest you inspire.”

Andrea burst out into such hearty laughter that the lover ought to have been lifted to the height of wrath; but to her great astonishment, Gilbert did not kindle. He folded his arms on his breast, retaining his hostile expression and fiery look, and patiently waited for the end of her outraging merriment.

“Deign, young lady,” said he coldly, “to reply to one question. Do you respect your father?”

“It looks, sirrah, as if you took the liberty of putting questions to me,” she replied with the greatest haughtiness.

“Yes, you respect your father,” he went on, “not on account of any parts of his or virtues: but simply because he gave you life. For this same boon, you are bound to love the benefactor. This laid down as a principle,” said the loving philosopher, “why do you insult me – why repulse me and hate me – who have not given you life, but I prevented you losing it.”

“You – you saved my life?” cried Andrea.

“You have not thought of it – rather, you have forgotten it; it is quite natural, for it was a year ago. Therefore I must remind or inform you. Yes, I saved your life at the risk of losing my own.”

“I should like to learn where and when?” said Andrea.

“On that day when a hundred thousand people, crushing one another as they fled from masterless horses and flashing swords, strewed Louis XV. Place with dying and the dead.”