Lucretia Part 18

"What does my father do," resumed Gabriel, "in that room at the top of the house? Does he tell you that secret?"

"He makes experiments in chemistry. You know that that was always his favourite study. You smile again! Gabriel, do not smile so; it appalls me. Do you think there is some mystery in that chamber?"

"It matters not what we think, belle-mere; it matters much what we know.

If I were you, I would know what is in that chamber. I repeat, to be safe, you must have all his secrets, or none. Hush, that is his step!"

The door-handle turned noiselessly, and Olivier entered. His look fell on his son's face, which betrayed only apparent surprise at his unexpected return. He then glanced at Lucretia's, which was, as usual, cold and impenetrable.

"Gabriel," said Dalibard, gently, "I have come in for you. I have promised to take you to spend the day at M. Bellanger's; you are a great favourite with Madame. Come, my boy. I shall be back soon, Lucretia. I shall but drop in to leave Gabriel at my cousin's."

Gabriel rose cheerfully, as if only alive to the expectation of the bon-bons and compliments he received habitually from Madame Bellanger.

"And you can take your drawing implements with you," continued Dalibard.

"This good M. Bellanger has given you permission to copy his Poussin."

"His Poussin! Ah, that is placed in his bedroom [It is scarcely necessary to observe that bedchambers in Paris, when forming part of the suite of reception-rooms, are often decorated no less elaborately than the other apartments], is it not?"

"Yes," answered Dalibard, briefly.

Gabriel lifted his sharp, bright eyes to his father's face. Dalibard turned away.

"Come!" he said with some impatience; and the boy took up his hat.

In another minute Lucretia was alone.

"Alone," in an English home, is a word implying no dreary solitude to an accomplished woman; but alone in that foreign land, alone in those half-furnished, desolate apartments,--few books, no musical instruments, no companions during the day to drop in,--that loneliness was wearying.

And that mind so morbidly active! In the old Scottish legend, the spirit that serves the wizard must be kept constantly employed; suspend its work for a moment, and it rends the enchanter. It is so with minds that crave for excitement, and live, without relief of heart and affection, on the hard tasks of the intellect.

Lucretia mused over Gabriel's words and warning: "To be safe, you must know all his secrets, or none." What was the secret which Dalibard had not communicated to her?

She rose, stole up the cold, cheerless stairs, and ascended to the attic which Dalibard had lately hired. It was locked; and she observed that the lock was small,--so small that the key might be worn in a ring. She descended, and entered her husband's usual cabinet, which adjoined the sitting-room. All the books which the house contained were there,--a few works on metaphysics, Spinoza in especial, the great Italian histories, some volumes of statistics, many on physical and mechanical philosophy, and one or two works of biography and memoirs. No light literature,--that grace and flower of human culture, that best philosophy of all, humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through the humours, elevated through the pa.s.sions, tender in the affections of our kind. She took out one of the volumes that seemed less arid than the rest, for she was weary of her own thoughts, and began to read. To her surprise, the first pa.s.sage she opened was singularly interesting, though the t.i.tle was nothing more seductive than the "Life of a Physician of Padua in the Sixteenth Century." It related to that singular epoch of terror in Italy when some mysterious disease, varying in a thousand symptoms, baffled all remedy, and long defied all conjecture,--a disease attacking chiefly the heads of families, father and husband; rarely women. In one city, seven hundred husbands perished, but not one wife! The disease was poison. The hero of the memoir was one of the earlier discoverers of the true cause of this household epidemic.

He had been a chief authority in a commission of inquiry. Startling were the details given in the work,--the anecdotes, the histories, the astonis.h.i.+ng craft brought daily to bear on the victim, the wondrous perfidy of the subtle means, the variation of the certain murder,--here swift as epilepsy, there slow and wasting as long decline. The lecture was absorbing; and absorbed in the book Lucretia still was, when she heard Dalibard's voice behind: he was looking over her shoulder.

"A strange selection for so fair a student! En fant, play not with such weapons."

"But is this all true?"

"True, though scarce a fragment of the truth. The physician was a sorry chemist and a worse philosopher. He blundered in his a.n.a.lysis of the means; and if I remember rightly, he whines like a priest at the motives,--for see you not what was really the cause of this spreading pestilence? It was the Saturnalia of the Weak,--a burst of mocking license against the Strong; it was more,--it was the innate force of the individual waging war against the many."

"I do not understand you."

"No? In that age, husbands were indeed lords of the household; they married mere children for their lands; they neglected and betrayed them; they were inexorable if the wife committed the faults set before her for example. Suddenly the wife found herself armed against her tyrant. His life was in her hands. So the weak had no mercy on the strong. But man, too, was then, even more than now, a lonely wrestler in a crowded arena.

Brute force alone gave him distinction in courts; wealth alone brought him justice in the halls, or gave him safety in his home. Suddenly the frail puny lean saw that he could reach the mortal part of his giant foe. The noiseless sling was in his hand,--it smote Goliath from afar.

Suddenly the poor man, ground to the dust, spat upon by contempt, saw through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned and bade him rot; saw those whose death made him heir to lords.h.i.+p and gold and palaces and power and esteem. As a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through velvet and ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way. No.

A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account for the crime. It is a mighty thing to feel in one's self that one is an army,--more than an army! What thousands and millions of men, with trumpet and banner, and under the sanction of glory, strive to do,--destroy a foe,--that, with little more than an effort of the will,--with a drop, a grain, for all his a.r.s.enal,--one man can do!"

There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That animation which a n.o.ble thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist for the darkest and basest of human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; but her gloomy imagination was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her terror.

"Hus.h.!.+ you appall me," she said at last, timidly. "But, happily, this fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?"

"As a more philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to a chemist to learn exactly what were the compounds of those ancient poisons," said Dalibard, not directly answering the implied question. "Portions of the art are indeed lost, unless, as I suspect, there is much credulous exaggeration in the accounts transmitted to us. To kill by a flower, a pair of gloves, a soap-ball,--kill by means which elude all possible suspicion,--is it credible? What say you? An amusing research, indeed, if one had leisure! But enough of this now; it grows late. We dine with M. de----; he wishes to let his hotel. Why, Lucretia, if we knew a little of this old art, par Dieu! we could soon hire the hotel! Well, well; perhaps we may survive my cousin Jean Bellanger!"

Three days afterwards, Lucretia stood by her husband's side in the secret chamber. From the hour when she left it, a change was perceptible in her countenance, which gradually removed from it the character of youth. Paler the cheek could scarce become, nor more cold the discontented, restless eye. But it was as if some great care had settled on her brow, and contracted yet more the stern outline of the lips.

Gabriel noted the alteration, but he did not attempt to win her confidence. He was occupied rather in considering, first, if it were well for him to sound deeper into the mystery he suspected; and, secondly, to what extent, and on what terms, it became his interest to aid the designs in which, by Dalibard's hints and kindly treatment, he foresaw that he was meant to partic.i.p.ate.

A word now on the rich kinsman of the Dalibards. Jean Bellanger had been one of those prudent Republicans who had put the Revolution to profit.

By birth a Ma.r.s.eillais, he had settled in Paris, as an epicier, about the year 1785, and had distinguished himself by the adaptability and finesse which become those who fish in such troubled waters. He had sided with Mirabeau, next with Vergniaud and the Girondins. These he forsook in time for Danton, whose facile corruptibility made him a seductive patron. He was a large purchaser in the sale of the emigrant property; he obtained a contract for the supply of the army in the Netherlands; he abandoned Danton as he had abandoned the Girondins, but without taking any active part in the after-proceedings of the Jacobins.

His next connection was with Tallien and Barras, and he enriched himself yet more under the Directory than he had done in the earlier stages of the Revolution. Under cover of an appearance of bonhomie and good humour, a frank laugh and an open countenance, Jean Bellanger had always retained general popularity and good-will, and was one of those whom the policy of the First Consul led him to conciliate. He had long since retired from the more vulgar departments of trade, but continued to flourish as an army contractor. He had a large hotel and a splendid establishment; he was one of the great capitalists of Paris. The relations.h.i.+p between Dalibard and Bellanger was not very close,--it was that of cousins twice removed; and during Dalibard's previous residence at Paris, each embracing different parties, and each eager in his career, the blood-tie between them had not been much thought of, though they were good friends, and each respected the other for the discretion with which he had kept aloof from the more sanguinary excesses of the time. As Bellanger was not many years older than Dalibard; as the former had but just married in the year 1791, and had naturally before him the prospect of a family; as his fortunes at that time, though rising, were unconfirmed; and as some nearer relations stood between them, in the shape of two promising, st.u.r.dy nephews,--Dalibard had not then calculated on any inheritance from his cousin. On his return, circ.u.mstances were widely altered: Bellanger had been married some years, and no issue had blessed his nuptials. His nephews, draughted into the conscription, had perished in Egypt. Dalibard apparently became his nearest relative.

To avarice or to worldly ambition there was undoubtedly something very dazzling in the prospect thus opened to the eyes of Olivier Dalibard.

The contractor's splendid mode of living, vying with that of the fermier-general of old, the colossal ma.s.ses of capital by which he backed and supported speculations that varied with an ingenuity rendered practical and profound by experience, inflamed into fever the morbid restlessness of fancy and intellect which characterized the evil scholar; for that restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not const.i.tutional to it. Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either to a miser or a spendthrift. In his youth, his books and the simple desires of an abstract student sufficed to his wants, and a habit of method and order, a mechanical calculation which accompanied all his acts, from the least to the greatest, preserved him, even when most poor, from neediness and want. Nor was he by nature vain and ostentatious,--those infirmities accompany a larger and more luxurious nature. His philosophy rather despised, than inclined to, show. Yet since to plot and to scheme made his sole amus.e.m.e.nt, his absorbing excitement, so a man wrapped in himself, and with no generous ends in view, has little to plot or to scheme for but objects of worldly aggrandizement. In this Dalibard resembled one whom the intoxication of gambling has mastered, who neither wants nor greatly prizes the stake, but who has grown wedded to the venture for it. It was a madness like that of a certain rich n.o.bleman in our own country who, with more money than he could spend, and with a skill in all games where skill enters that would have secured him success of itself, having learned the art of cheating, could not resist its indulgence. No hazard, no warning, could restrain him,--cheat he must; the propensity became iron-strong as a Greek destiny.

That the possible chance of an inheritance so magnificent should dazzle Lucretia and Gabriel, was yet more natural; for in them it appealed to more direct and eloquent, though not more powerful, propensities.

Gabriel had every vice which the greed of gain most irritates and excites. Intense covetousness lay at the core of his heart; he had the sensual temperament, which yearns for every enjoyment, and takes pleasure in every pomp and show of life. Lucretia, with a hardness of mind that disdained luxury, and a certain grandeur (if such a word may be applied to one so perverted) that was incompatible with the sordid infirmities of the miser, had a determined and insatiable ambition, to which gold was a necessary instrument. Wedded to one she loved, like Mainwaring, the ambition, as we have said in a former chapter, could have lived in another, and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in the n.o.bler desire for power based on fame and genius. But now she had the gloomy cravings of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore herself to a lost position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to bitterness of all beings and all things around her. She was gnawed by that false fever which riots in those who seek by outward seemings and distinctions to console themselves for the want of their own self-esteem, or who, despising the world with which they are brought in contact, sigh for those worldly advantages which alone justify to the world itself their contempt.

To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether exhibited in Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without apparent effort, not only by his conversation, but his habits of life. He mixed with those much wealthier than himself, but not better born; those who, in the hot and fierce ferment of that new society, were rising fast into new aristocracy,--the fortunate soldiers, daring speculators, plunderers of many an argosy that had been wrecked in the Great Storm. Every one about them was actuated by the keen desire "to make a fortune;" the desire was contagious. They were not absolutely poor in the proper sense of the word "poverty," with Dalibard's annuity and the interest of Lucretia's fortune; but they were poor compared to those with whom they a.s.sociated,--poor enough for discontent. Thus, the image of the mighty wealth from which, perhaps, but a single life divided them, became horribly haunting. To Gabriel's sensual vision the image presented itself in the shape of unlimited pleasure and prodigal riot; to Lucretia it wore the solemn majesty of power; to Dalibard himself it was but the Eureka of a calculation,--the palpable reward of wile and scheme and dexterous combinations. The devil had temptations suited to each.

Meanwhile, the Dalibards were more and more with the Bellangers. Olivier glided in to talk of the chances and changes of the State and the market. Lucretia sat for hours listening mutely to the contractor's boasts of past frauds, or submitting to the martyrdom of his victorious games at tric-trac. Gabriel, a spoiled darling, copied the pictures on the walls, complimented Madame, flattered Monsieur, and fawned on both for trinkets and crowns. Like three birds of night and omen, these three evil natures settled on the rich man's roof.

Was the rich man himself blind to the motives which budded forth into such attentive affection? His penetration was too acute, his ill opinion of mankind too strong, perhaps, for such amiable self-delusions. But he took all in good part; availed himself of Dalibard's hints and suggestions as to the employment of his capital; was polite to Lucretia, and readily condemned her to be beaten at tric-trac; while he accepted with bonhomie Gabriel's spirited copies of his pictures. But at times there was a gleam of satire and malice in his round gray eyes, and an inward chuckle at the caresses and flatteries he received, which perplexed Dalibard and humbled Lucretia. Had his wealth been wholly at his own disposal, these signs would have been inauspicious; but the new law was strict, and the bulk of Bellanger's property could not be alienated from his nearest kin. Was not Dalibard the nearest?

These hopes and speculations did not, as we have seen, absorb the restless and rank energies of Dalibard's crooked, but capacious and grasping intellect. Patiently and ingeniously he pursued his main political object,--the detection of that audacious and complicated conspiracy against the First Consul, which ended in the tragic deaths of Pichegru, the Duc d'Enghien, and the erring but ill.u.s.trious hero of La Vendee, George Cadoudal. In the midst of these dark plots for personal aggrandizement and political fortune, we leave, for the moment, the sombre, sullen soul of Olivier Dalibard.

Time has pa.s.sed on, and spring is over the world. The seeds buried in the earth burst to flower; but man's breast knoweth not the sweet division of the seasons. In winter or summer, autumn or spring alike, his thoughts sow the germs of his actions, and day after day his destiny gathers in her harvests.

The joy-bells ring clear through the groves of Laughton,--an heir is born to the old name and fair lands of St. John. And, as usual, the present race welcomes merrily in that which shall succeed and replace it,--that which shall thrust the enjoyers down into the black graves, and wrest from them the pleasant goods of the world. The joy-bell of birth is a note of warning to the knell for the dead; it wakes the worms beneath the mould: the new-born, every year that it grows and flourishes, speeds the parent to their feast. Yet who can predict that the infant shall become the heir? Who can tell that Death sits not side by side with the nurse at the cradle? Can the mother's hand measure out the woof of the Parcae, or the father's eye detect through the darkness of the morrow the gleam of the fatal shears?

It is market-day at a town in the midland districts of England. There Trade takes its healthiest and most animated form. You see not the stunted form and hollow eye of the mechanic,--poor slave of the capitalist, poor agent and victim of the arch disequalizer, Civilization. There strides the burly form of the farmer; there waits the ruddy hind with his flock; there, patient, sits the miller with his samples of corn; there, in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form the luxuries of cottage and farm. The thronging of men, and the clacking of whips, and the dull sound of wagon or dray, that parts the crowd as it pa.s.ses, and the lowing of herds and the bleating of sheep,--all are sounds of movement and bustle, yet blend with the pastoral a.s.sociations of the primitive commerce, when the link between market and farm was visible and direct.

Towards one large house in the centre of the brisk life ebbing on, you might see stream after stream pour its way. The large doors swinging light on their hinges, the gilt letters that s.h.i.+ne above the threshold, the windows, with their shutters outside cased in iron and studded with nails, announce that that house is the bank of the town. Come in with that yeoman whose broad face tells its tale, sheepish and down-eyed,--he has come, not to invest, but to borrow. What matters? War is breaking out anew, to bring the time of high prices and paper money and credit.

Honest yeoman, you will not be refused. He scratches his rough head, pulls a leg, as he calls it, when the clerk leans over the counter, and asks to see "Muster Mawnering hisself." The clerk points to the little office-room of the new junior partner, who has brought 10,000 pounds and a clear head to the firm. And the yeoman's great boots creak heavily in.

I told you so, honest yeoman; you come out with a smile on your brown face, and your hand, that might fell an ox, b.u.t.tons up your huge breeches pocket. You will ride home with a light heart; go and dine, and be merry.

The yeoman tramps to the ordinary; plates clatter, tongues wag, and the borrower's full heart finds vent in a good word for that kind "Muster Mawnering." For a wonder, all join in the praise. "He's an honour to the town; he's a pride to the country. Thof he's such a friend at a pinch, he's a rale mon of business. He'll make the baunk worth a million! And how well he spoke at the great county meeting about the war, and the laund, and them bloodthirsty Mounseers! If their members were loike him, Muster Fox would look small!"

The day declines; the town empties; whiskeys, horses, and carts are giving life to the roads and the lanes; and the market is deserted, and the bank is shut up, and William Mainwaring walks back to his home at the skirts of the town. Not villa nor cottage, that plain English house, with its cheerful face of red brick, and its solid squareness of shape,--a symbol of substance in the fortunes of the owner! Yet as he pa.s.ses, he sees through the distant trees the hall of the member for the town. He pauses a moment, and sighs unquietly. That pause and that sigh betray the germ of ambition and discontent. Why should not he, who can speak so well, be member for the town, instead of that stammering squire? But his reason has soon silenced the querulous murmur. He hastens his step,--he is at home! And there, in the neat-furnished drawing-room, which looks on the garden behind, hisses the welcoming tea-urn; and the piano is open, and there is a packet of new books on the table; and, best of all, there is the glad face of the sweet English wife. The happy scene was characteristic of the time, just when the simpler and more innocent luxuries of the higher cla.s.s spread, not to spoil, but refine the middle. The dress, air, mien, movements of the young couple; the una.s.suming, suppressed, sober elegance of the house; the flower-garden, the books, and the music, evidences of cultivated taste, not signals of display,--all bespoke the gentle fusion of ranks before rude and uneducated wealth, made in looms and lucky hits, rushed in to separate forever the gentleman from the parvenu.

Spring smiles over Paris, over the spires of Notre Dame and the crowded alleys of the Tuileries, over thousands and thousands eager, joyous, aspiring, reckless,--the New Race of France, bound to one man's destiny, children of glory and of carnage, whose blood the wolf and the vulture scent, hungry, from afar!

The conspiracy against the life of the First Consul has been detected and defeated. Pichegru is in prison, George Cadoudal awaits his trial, the Duc d'Enghien sleeps in his b.l.o.o.d.y grave; the imperial crown is prepared for the great soldier, and the great soldier's creatures bask in the noonday sun. Olivier Dalibard is in high and lucrative employment; his rise is ascribed to his talents, his opinions. No service connected with the detection of the conspiracy is traced or traceable by the public eye. If such exist, it is known but to those who have no desire to reveal it. The old apartments are retained, but they are no longer dreary and comfortless and deserted. They are gay with draperies and ormolu and mirrors; and Madame Dalibard has her nights of reception, and Monsieur Dalibard has already his troops of clients. In that gigantic concentration of egotism which under Napoleon is called the State, Dalibard has found his place. He has served to swell the power of the unit, and the cipher gains importance by its position in the sum.

Jean Bellanger is no more. He died, not suddenly, and yet of some quick disease,--nervous exhaustion; his schemes, they said, had worn him out.

But the state of Dalibard, though prosperous, is not that of the heir to the dead millionnaire. What mistake is this? The bulk of that wealth must go to the nearest kin,--so runs the law. But the will is read; and, for the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had a son,--a son by a former marriage,--the marriage undeclared, unknown, amidst the riot of the Revolution; for the wife was the daughter of a proscrit. The son had been reared at a distance, put to school at Lyons, and unavowed to the second wife, who had brought an ample dower, and whom that discovery might have deterred from the altar. Unacknowledged through life, in death at least the son's rights are proclaimed; and Olivier Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died in vain! For days has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there is no hope in litigation. The proofs of the marriage, the birth, the ident.i.ty, come out clear and clearer; and the beardless schoolboy at Lyons reaps all the profit of those nameless schemes and that mysterious death. Olivier Dalibard desires the friends.h.i.+p, the intimacy of the heir; but the heir is consigned to the guardians.h.i.+p of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin to his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Olivier's letters.

Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled to his loss. The widow Bellanger has her own separate fortune, and it is large beyond expectation. In addition to the wealth she brought the deceased, his affection had led him to invest vast sums in her name. The widow then is rich,--rich as the heir himself. She is still fair. Poor woman, she needs consolation! But, meanwhile, the nights of Olivier Dalibard are disturbed and broken. His eye in the daytime is haggard and anxious; he is seldom seen on foot in the streets. Fear is his companion by day, and sits at night on his pillow. The Chouan, Pierre Guillot, who looked to George Cadoudal as a G.o.d, knows that George Cadoudal has been betrayed, and suspects Olivier Dalibard; and the Chouan has an arm of iron, and a heart steeled against all mercy. Oh, how the pale scholar thirsted for that Chouan's blood! With what relentless pertinacity, with what ingenious research, he had set all the hounds of the police upon the track of that single man! How notably he had failed! An avenger lived; and Olivier Dalibard started at his own shadow on the wall. But he did not the less continue to plot and to intrigue--nay, such occupation became more necessary, as an escape from himself.

And in the mean while, Olivier Dalibard sought to take courage from the recollection that the Chouan had taken an oath (and he knew that oaths are held sacred with the Bretons) that he would keep his hand from his knife unless he had clear evidence of treachery; such evidence existed, but only in Dalibard's desk or the archives of Fouche. Tush, he was safe! And so, when from dreams of fear he started at the depth of night, so his bolder wife would whisper to him with firm, uncaressing lips: "Olivier Dalibard, thou fearest the living: dost thou never fear the dead? Thy dreams are haunted with a spectre. Why takes it not the accusing shape of thy mouldering kinsman?" and Dalibard would answer, for he was a philosopher in his cowardice: "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas."

It is the notable convenience of us narrators to represent, by what is called "soliloquy," the thoughts, the interior of the personages we describe. And this is almost the master-work of the tale-teller,--that is, if the soliloquy be really in words, what self-commune is in the dim and tangled recesses of the human heart! But to this privilege we are rarely admitted in the case of Olivier Dalibard, for he rarely communed with himself. A sort of mental calculation, it is true, eternally went on within him, like the wheels of a destiny; but it had become a mechanical operation, seldom disturbed by that consciousness of thought, with its struggles of fear and doubt, conscience and crime, which gives its appalling interest to the soliloquy of tragedy. Amidst the tremendous secrecy of that profound intellect, as at the bottom of a sea, only monstrous images of terror, things of prey, stirred in cold-blooded and devouring life; but into these deeps Olivier himself did not dive. He did not face his own soul; his outer life and his inner life seemed separate individualities, just as, in some complicated State, the social machine goes on through all its numberless cycles of vice and dread, whatever the acts of the government, which is the representative of the State, and stands for the State in the shallow judgment of history.