The Daltons Volume II Part 15

Let the social policy of a government fail in its great object,----the happiness of a people; let a whole nation gradually cease to enjoy the advantages for the sake of which they a.s.sumed the responsibilities and ties of family; let them day-by-day fall lower in the scale of civilization and comfort, and after surrendering this privilege to-day, and that to-morrow, at last take their stand on the very verge of the precipice, with nothing but abject slavery beneath,--what would you say of the order to charge them with the bayonet, even though the formality of a recruiting oath should seem to warrant the obedience?"

"I 'd do it; if I was ordered," said Frank, sternly.

"I don't think you would," said D'Esmonde, smiling. "I read your nature differently. I can trace, even in the flas.h.i.+ng of your eye this instant, the ambition of a bold and energetic spirit, and that when the moment came you would embrace the losing cause, with all its perils, rather than stand by tyranny, in all its strength. Besides, remember, this is not the compact under which you entered the service, although it might, under certain peculiar circ.u.mstances, appeal to your sense of duty. An army is not--at least it ought not to be--a 'gendarmerie.' Go forth to battle against the enemies of your country, carry the flag of your Vaterland into the plains of France, plant the double eagle once more in the Place da Carrousel,--even aggressive war has its glorious compensations in deeds of chivalry and heroism----But here is the Princesse," said the Abbe, rising, and advancing courteously towards her.

"The Abbe D'Esmonde!" cried Kate, with an expression of delight, as she held ont her hand, which the priest pressed to his lips with all the gallantry of a courtier. "How pleasant to see the face of a friend in this strange land!" said she. "Abbe, this is my brother Frank, of whom you have heard me talk so often."

"We are acquaintances already," said D'Esmonde, pa.s.sing his arm within the soldier's; "and albeit our coats are not of the same color, I think many of our principles are."

A few moments saw him seated between the brother and sister on the sofa, recounting the circ.u.mstances of his journey, and detailing, for Kate's amus.e.m.e.nt, the latest news of Florence.

"Lady Hester is much better in health and spirits, too," said the Abbe; "the disastrous circ.u.mstances of fortune would seem to have taken a better turn; at least, it is probable that Sir Stafford's losses will be comparatively slight. I believe her satisfaction on this head arises entirely from feeling that no imputation of altered position can now be alleged as the reason for her change of religion."

"And has she done this?" asked Kate, with a degree of anxiety; for she well knew on what feeble grounds Lady Hester's convictions were usually built..

"Not publicly; she waits for her arrival at Rome, to make her confession at the shrine of St. John of Lateran. Her doubts, however, have all been solved,--her reconciliation is perfect."

"Is she happy? Has she found peace of mind at last?" asked Kate, timidly.

"On this point I can speak with confidence," said D'Esmonde, warmly; and at once entered into a description of the pleasurable impulse a new train of thoughts and impressions had given to the exhausted energies of a "fine lady's" life. It was so far true, indeed, that for some days back she had never known a moment of _ennui_. Surrounded by sacred emblems and a hundred devices of religious a.s.sociation, she appeared to herself as if acting a little poem of life, wherein a ma.s.s of amiable qualities, of which she knew nothing before, were all developing themselves before her. And what between meritorious charities, saintly intercessions, visits to shrines, and decorations of altars, she had not an instant unoccupied; it was one unceasing round of employment; and with prayers, bouquets, lamps, confessions, candles, and penances, the day was even too short for its duties.

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 pa.s.s 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing up his cap, he bounded from the room at once.

"A severe service,--at least, one of rigid discipline," said D'Esmonde, with a compa.s.sionating 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 pa.s.sions of youth."

"True," said Kate, pointedly; "there would seem something of priestcraft in their _regime_. 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,--n.o.ble-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 partic.i.p.ation 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion, 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 Abbe 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 flas.h.i.+ng of her dark eyes it was plain to mark the consciousness that some secret was withheld from her. The _soubrette_ cla.s.s 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.