The Mesmerist's Victim

“Bring me my child,” said the young mother with an outbreak which nearly burst her heart.

Out of her eyes, which had remained dry despite her pangs, gushed tears on which must have smiled the guardian angels of little children.

“Mistress,” replied the servant, returning. “I tell you that the child is not there. Somebody must have come in – ”

“Yes, I heard it; the nurse has come and – where is my brother?”

“Here he is, mistress; with the nurse.”

Captain Philip returned, followed by a peasant woman in a striped shawl who wore the smirk customary in the mercenary to her employer.

“My good brother,” said Andrea: “I have to thank you for having so earnestly pleaded with me to see the baby once more before you took it away. Well, let me have it. Rest easy, I shall love it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Philip.

“Please, your honor, the babe is neither here nor there.”

“Hush, let us save the mother,” whispered Philip: then aloud: “What a bother about nothing! do you not know that the doctor took the child away with him?”

“The doctor?” repeated Andrea, with the suffering of doubt but also the joy of hope.

“Why, yes: you must be all lunatics here. Why, what do you think – that the young rogue walked off himself?” and he affected a merry laugh which the nurse and servant caught up.

“But if the doctor took it away, why am I here?” objected the nurse.

“Just so, because – why, he took it to your house. Run along back. This Marguerite sleeps so soundly she did not hear the doctor coming for it and taking it away.”

Andrea fell back, calm after the terrible shock.

Philip dismissed the nurse and sent home the servant. Taking a lantern he examined the next passage door which he found ajar, and on the snow of the garden he saw footprints of a man which went to the garden door.

“A man’s steps,” he cried, “the child has been stolen. Woe, woe!”

He passed a dreadful night. He knew his father so thoroughly that he believed he had committed the abduction, thinking the child was of royal origin. He might well attach great importance to the living proof of the King’s infidelity to Lady Dubarry. The baron would believe that Andrea would sooner or later enter again into favor, and be the principal means of his fortune.

When he saw the doctor he imparted to him this idea, in which he did not share. He was rather inclined to the opinion that in this deed was the hand of the true father.

“However,” said the young gentleman, “I mean to leave the country. Andrea is going into St. Denis Nunnery, and then I shall go and have it out with my father. I will overcome his resistance by threatening the intervention of the Dauphiness or a public exposure.”

“And the child recovered, as the mother will be in the convent?”

“I will put it out to nurse and afterwards send it to college. If it grows up it shall be my companion.”

But the baron, who was regaining strength after a fit of fever was ready to swear that he was innocent of abduction, and the captain had to return baffled.

The same fate awaited him in another quarter, the least expected. Andrea avowed her resolution to live for her son and not to be immured in a convent.

Philip and the doctor joined in a pious lie. They asserted that the child was dead, that the cries she heard on the night of its disappearance were its last.

They were congratulating themselves on the success of their fiction when a letter came by the post. It was addressed to:

“Mdlle. Andrea de Taverney, Paris; Coq-Heron Street, the first coachhouse door from Plastriere Street.”

“Who can write to her?” wondered Philip. “Nobody but our father knew our address and it is not his hand.”

Thoughtlessly he gave it to his sister, who took it as coolly. Without reflecting, or feeling astonishment, she broke open the envelope, but had scarcely read the few lines before she gave a loud scream, rose like a mad woman, and fell with her arms stiffening, as heavily as a statue, into the arms of the servant who ran up.

Philip picked up the letter and read:

    At Sea., 15th Dec., 17 – .

“Driven by you, I go, and you will never see me again. But I bear with me my child, who will never call you mother.

    “GILBERT.”

“Oh,” said Philip, crushing up the paper in his wrath, “I had almost pardoned the crime by chance; but this deliberate one must be punished. By thy insensible, head, Andrea, I swear to kill the villain at sight. Doctor, see the poor girl into the Convent while I pursue this scoundrel. Besides, I must have this child. I will be at Havre in thirty-six hours.”

CHAPTER XLII

A STRANGE ENCOUNTER

PHILIP left his sister in the nunnery and rode straight to the post-house where he began his journey to the sea.

At Havre, he found the first ship for America to be the Brig Adonis, to set sail that day for New York and Boston. He sent his effects on board and followed with the tide.

Having written a farewell letter to the Dauphiness, Philip had no concerns with the land.

It might pass as a prayer to his Creator as well as a letter to his fellow countrymen.

“Your Highness (He had written); a hopeless man severed from worldly ties, goes far from you with the regret of having done so little for his future Queen. He goes amid the storms of ocean while you remain amid the whirls and tempests of government.

“Young and fair, adored, surrounded by respectful friends and idolising servants, you will no doubt forget one whom your royal hand deigned to lift from the herd. But I shall never forget it. I go into the New World to study how I may most efficaciously assist you on your throne.

“I bequeathe to you my sister, poor blighted flower, who will have no sunshine but your looks. Deign sometimes to stoop as low as her, and in the bosom of your joy, and power, and in the concert of unanimous good wishes, rely, I entreat you, on the blessing of an exile whom you will hear and perhaps see no more.”

On the voyage Philip read a great deal; he took his meals in his room, save the dinner with the captain, and spent much of the time on deck, wrapped in his cloak.

The other passengers did not like the sea and he saw little of them.

In the night, sometimes, Philip heard on the planks above him the step of the captain, a pale, nervous young man, with a quick, restless eye, with another’s, probably the officer of the watch. If it were a passenger, it was a good reason not to go up as he did not wish to be intrusive.

Once, however, as he heard neither voices nor tread, he ventured up.

The sky was cloudy, the weather warm, and the myriad of phosphorescent atoms sparkled in the wake.

It seemed too threatening for most passengers, for none of them were about.

At the heel of the bowsprit, however, leaning out over the bow, he dimly descried a figure – some poor passenger of the second class, or “deck” sort, an exile who was looking forward for an American port as ardently as Philip had regretted that of France.