The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume II

The little villa of La Rocca was now a holy edifice. The drawing-room had become an oratory; a hollow-cheeked “Seminariste,” from Como, had taken the place of the Maestro di Casa. The pages wore a robe like acolytes, and even Albert Jekyl began to fear that a costume was in preparation for himself, from certain measurements that he had observed taken with regard to his figure.

“My time is up,” said Frank, hastily, as he arose to go away.

“You are not about to leave me, Frank?” said Kate.

“Yes, I must; my leave was only till four o’clock, as the Field-Marshal’s note might have shown you; but I believe you threw it into the fire before you finished it.”

“Did I, really? I remember nothing of that. But, stay, and I will write to him. I ‘ll say that I have detained you.”

“But the service, Kate dearest! My sergeant – my over-lieutenant – my captain – what will they say? I may have to pass three days in irons for the disobedience.”

“Modern chivalry has a dash of the treadmill through it,” said D’Esmonde, sarcastically; and the boy’s cheek flushed as he heard it. The priest, however, had already turned away, and, walking into the recess of a window, left the brother and sister free to talk unmolested.

“I scarcely like him, Kate,” whispered Frank.

“You scarcely know him yet,” she said, with a smile. “But when can you come again to me, – to-morrow^ early?”

“I fear not We have a parade and a field-inspection, and then ‘rapport’ at noon.”

“Leave it to me, then, dear Frank,” said she, kissing him; “I must try if I cannot succeed with the ‘Field’ better than you have done.”

“There’s the recall-bugle,” cried the boy, in terror; and, snatching up his cap, he bounded from the room at once.

“A severe service, – at least, one of rigid discipline,” said D’Esmonde, with a compassionating expression of voice. “It is hard to say whether it works for good or evil, repressing the development of every generous impulse, as certainly as it restrains the impetuous passions of youth.”

“True,” said Kate, pointedly; “there would seem something of priestcraft in their régime. The individual is nothing, the service everything.”

“Your simile lacks the great element, – force of resemblance, Madame,” said D’Esmonde, with a half smile. “The soldier has not, like the priest, a grand sustaining hope, a glorious object before him. He knows little or nothing of the cause in which his sword is drawn; his sympathies may even be against his duty. The very boy who has just left us, – noble-hearted fellow that he is, – what strange wild notions of liberty has he imbibed! how opposite are all his speculations to the stern calls of the duty he has sworn to discharge!”

“And does he dare – ”

“Nay, Madame, there was no indiscretion on his part; my humble walk in life has taught me that if I am excluded from all participation in the emotions which sway my fellow-men, I may at least study them as they arise, watch them in their infancy, and trace them to their fruit of good or evil. Do not fancy, dear lady, that it is behind the grating of the confessional only that we read men’s secrets. As the physician gains his knowledge of anatomy from the lifeless body, so do we learn the complex structure of the human heart in the deathlike stillness of the cell, with the penitent before us. But yet all the knowledge thus gained is but a step to something further. It is while reading the tangled story of the heart, – its struggles, its efforts, the striving after good here, the inevitable fall back to evil there, the poor, weak attempt at virtue, the vigorous energy of vice, – it is hearing this sad tale from day to day, learning, in what are called the purest natures, how deep the well of corruption lies, and that not one generous thought, one noble aspiration, or one holy desire rises unalloyed by some base admixture of worldly motive. It is thus armed we go forth into the world, to fight against the wiles and seductions of life. How can we be deceived by the blandishments that seduce others? What avail to us those pretentious displays of self-devotion, those sacrifices of wealth, those proud acts of munificence which astonish the world, but of whose secret springs we are conversant? What wonder, then, if I have read the artless nature of a boy like that, or see in him the springs of an ambition he knows not of himself? Nay, it would be no rash boast to say that I have deciphered more complicated inscriptions than those upon his heart I have traced some upon his sister’s!” The last three words he uttered with a slow and deep enunciation, leaving a pause between each, and bending on her a look of intense meaning.

Kate’s cheek became scarlet, then pale, and a second time she flushed, till neck and shoulders grew crimson together.

“You have no confidences to make me, my dear, dear child,” said D’Esmonde, as, taking her hand, he pressed her down on a sofa beside him. “Your faltering lips have nothing to articulate, – no self-repinings, no sorrows to utter; for I know them all!” He paused for a few seconds, and then resumed: “Nor have you to fear me as a stern or a merciless judge. Where there is a sacrifice, there is a blessing!”

Kate held down her head, but her bosom heaved, and her frame trembled with emotion.

“Your motives,” resumed he, “would dignify even a rasher course. I know the price at which you have bartered happiness, – not your own only, but another’s with it!”

She sobbed violently, and pressed her hands over her face.

“Poor, poor fellow!” cried he, as if borne away by an impulse of candor that would brook no concealment, “how I grieved to see him, separated, as we were, by the wide and yawning gulf between us, giving himself up to the very recklessness of despair, now cursing the heartless dissipation in which his life was lost, now accusing himself of golden opportunities neglected, bright moments squandered, petty misunderstandings exaggerated into dislikes, the passing coldness of the moment exalted into a studied disdain! We were almost strangers to each other before, – nay, I half fancied that he kept aloof from me. Probably,” – here D’Esmonde smiled with a bland dignity, – “probably he called me a ‘Jesuit,’ – that name so full of terror to good Protestant ears; but, on his sick-bed, as he lay suffering and in solitude, his faculties threw off the deceptive influences of prejudice; he read me then more justly; he saw that I was his friend. Hours upon hours have we passed talking of you; the theme seemed to give a spring to an existence from which, till then, all zest of life had been withdrawn. I never before saw as much of passion, with a temper so just and so forgiving. He needed no aid of mine to read your motives truly. ‘It is not for herself that she has done this,’ were words that he never ceased to utter. He knew well the claims that family would make on you, the heartrending appeals from those you could not but listen to! ‘Oh! if I could but think that she will not forget me; that some memory of me will still linger in her mind!’ – this was his burning prayer, syllabled by lips parched by the heat of fever; and when I told him to write to you – ”

“To write to me!” cried she, catching his arm, while her cheeks trembled with intense agony; “You did not give such counsel?”

“Not alone that,” said D’Esmonde, calmly, “but promised that I would myself deliver the letter into your hands. Is martyrdom less glorious that a cry of agony escapes the victim, or that his limbs writhe as the flame wraps round them? Is self-sacrifice to be denied the sorrowful satisfaction to tell its woes? I bade him write because it would be good for him and for you alike.”

She stared eagerly, as if to ask his meaning.

“Good for both,” repeated he, slowly. “Love will be, to him, a guide-star through life, leading him by paths of high and honorable ambition; to you it will be the consolation of hours that even splendor will not enliven. Believe me,” – here he raised his voice to a tone of command and authority, – “believe me that negation is the lot of all. Happiest they who only suffer in their affections! And what is the purest of all love? Is it not that the devotee feels for his protecting saint, – that sense of ever-present care, that consciousness of a watching, unceasing affection, that neither slumbers nor wearies, following us in our joy, beside us in our afflictions? Some humble effigy, some frail representation, is enough to embody this conception; but its essence lies in the heart of hearts! Such a love as this – pure, truthful, and enduring – may elevate the humblest life into heroism, and throw a sun-gleam over the dreariest path of destiny. The holy bond that unites the grovelling nature below with glory above, has its humble type on earth in those who, separated by fate, are together in affection. I bade him write to you a few lines; he was too weak for more; indeed, his emotion almost made the last impossible. I pressed him, however, to do it, and pledged myself to place them in your hands; my journey hither had no other object.” As he spoke, he took forth a small sealed packet, and gave it to Kate, whose hands trembled as she took it.

“I shall spend some days in Vienna,” said he, rising to take leave; “pray let me have a part of each of them with you. I have much to say to you, and of other matters than those we have now spoken.” And kissing her hand with a respectful devotion, the Abbé withdrew, without ever once raising his eyes towards her.

Sick with sorrow and humiliation, – for such she acutely felt, – Kate Dalton rose and retired to her room. “Tell Madame de Heidendorf, Nina,” said she, “that I feel tired to-day, and beg she will excuse my not appearing at dinner.”

Nina courtesied her obedience, but it was easy to see that the explanation by no means satisfied her, and that she was determined to know something more of the origin of her young mistress’s indisposition.

“Madame knows that the Archduke is to dine here.”

“I know it,” said Kate, peevishly, and as if desirous of being left in quiet.

Nina again courtesied, but in the brilliant flashing of her dark eyes it was plain to mark the consciousness that some secret was withheld from her. The soubrette class are instinctive readers of motives; “their only books are ‘ladies’ looks,” but they con them to perfection. It was, then, with a studied pertinacity that Nina proceeded to arrange drawers and fold dresses, and fifty other similar duties, the discharge of which she saw was torturing her mistress.

“I should wish to be alone, Nina, and undisturbed,” said Kate, at last, her patience being entirely exhausted.

Nina made her very deepest reverence, and withdrew.

Kate waited for a few seconds, till all sound of her retiring steps had died away, then arose, and locked the door.

She was alone; the packet which the Abbé had delivered lay on the table before her; she bent down over it, and wept. The utter misery of sorrow is only felt where self-reproach mingles with our regrets. All the pangs of other misfortunes are light in comparison with this. The irrevocable past was her own work; she knew it, and cried till her very heart seemed bursting.

CHAPTER IX. SECRETS OF HEAD AND HEART

I must ask of my reader to leave this chamber, where, overwhelmed by her sorrows, poor Kate poured out her grief in tears, and follow me to a small but brilliantly lighted apartment, in which a little party of four persons was seated, discussing their wine, and enjoying the luxury of their cigars. Be not surprised when we say that one of the number was a lady. Madame de Heidendorf, however, puffed her weed with all the zest of a smoker; the others were the Archduke Ernest, a plain, easy-tempered looking man, in the gray undress of an Austrian General, the Foreign Minister, Count Nõrinberg, and our old acquaintance, the Abbé D’Esmonde.

The table, besides the usual ornaments of a handsome dessert, was covered with letters, journals, and pamphlets, with here and there a colored print in caricature of some well-known political personage. Nothing could be more easy and unconstrained than the air and bearing of the guests. The Archduke sat with his uniform coat unbuttoned, and resting one leg upon a chair before him. The Minister tossed over the books, and brushed off the ashes of his cigar against the richly damasked table-cloth; while even the Abbé seemed to have relaxed the smooth urbanity of his face into a look of easy enjoyment Up to this moment the conversation had been general, the principal topics being the incidents of the world of fashion, the flaws and frivolities, the mishaps and misadventures of those whose names were familiar to his Imperial Highness, and in whose vicissitudes he took the most lively interest. These, and a stray anecdote of the turf in England, were the only subjects he cared for, hating politics and State affairs with a most cordial detestation. His presence, however, was a compliment that the Court always paid “the Countess,” and he submitted to his torn of duty manfully.

Deeply involved in the clouds of his cigar-smoke, and even more enveloped in the misty regions of his own reveries, he sipped his wine in silence, and heard nothing of the conversation about him. The Minister was then perfectly free to discuss the themes most interesting to him, and learn whatever he could of the state of public opinion in Italy.

“You are quite right, Abbé,” said he, with a sage shake of the head. “Small concessions, petty glimpses of liberty, only give a zest for more enlarged privileges. There is nothing like a good flood of popular anarchy for creating a wholesome disgust to freedom. There must be excesses!”

“Precisely so, sir,” said the Abbé. “There can be no question of an antidote if there has been no poisoning.”

“Ay; but may not this system be pushed too far? Is not his Holiness already doing so?”

“Some are disposed to think so, but I am not of the number,” said D’Esmonde. “It is necessary that he should himself be convinced that the system is a bad one; and there is no mode of conviction so palpable as by a personal experience. Now, this he will soon have. As yet, he does not see that every step in political freedom is an advance towards the fatal heresy that never ceases its persecutions of the Church. Not that our Revolutionists care for Protestantism or the Bible either; but, by making common cause with those who do, see what a large party in England becomes interested for their success. The right of judgment conceded in religious matters, how can you withhold it in political ones? The men who brave the Church will not tremble before a cabinet. Now the Pope sees nothing of this; he even mistakes the flatteries offered to himself for testimonies of attachment to the Faith, and all those kneeling hypocrites who implore his blessing he fancies are faithful children of Rome. He must be awakened from this delusion; but yet none save himself can dispel it He is obstinate and honest.”

“If the penalty were to be his own alone, it were not so much matter,” said the Minister; “but it will cost a revolution.”

“Of course it will; but there is time enough to prepare for it.”

“The state of the Milanais is far from satisfactory,” said the Minister, gravely.

“I know that; but a revolt of a prison always excuses double irons,” said D’Esmonde, sarcastically.

“Tell him of Sardinia, Abbé,” said Madame de Heidendorf.