The servant announced that dinner was served.
"Mr. Vane," said Duplessis, "will you take into dinner Mademoiselle Cicogna?"
BOOK XI.
CHAPTER I.
Amoung the frets and checks to the course that "never did run smooth,"
there is one which is sufficiently frequent, for many a reader will remember the irritation it caused him. You have counted on a meeting with the beloved one unwitnessed by others, an interchange of confessions and vows which others may not hear. You have arranged almost the words in which your innermost heart is to be expressed; pictured to yourself the very looks by which those words will have their sweetest reply. The scene you have thus imagined appears to you vivid and distinct, as if foreshown in a magic gla.s.s. And suddenly, after long absence, the meeting takes place in the midst of a common companionship: nothing that you wished to say can be said. The scene you pictured is painted out by the irony of Chance; and groups and backgrounds of which you had never dreamed start forth from the disappointing canvas. Happy if that be all! But sometimes, by a strange, subtle intuition, you feel that the person herself is changed; and sympathetic with that change, a terrible chill comes over your own heart.
Before Graham had taken his seat at the table beside Isaura, he felt that she was changed to him. He felt it by her very touch as their hands met at the first greeting,--by the tone of her voice in the few words that pa.s.sed between them,--by the absence of all glow in the smile which had once lit up her face, as a burst of sunshine lights up a day in spring, and gives a richer gladness of colour to all its blooms. Once seated side by side they remained for some moments silent. Indeed, it would have been rather difficult for anything less than the wonderful intelligence of lovers between whom no wall can prevent the stolen interchange of tokens, to have ventured private talk of their own amid the excited converse which seemed all eyes, all tongues, all ears, admitting no one present to abstract himself from the common emotion.
Englishmen do not recognise the old cla.s.sic law which limited the number of guests, where banquets are meant to be pleasant, to that of the Nine-Muses. They invite guests so numerous, and so shy of launching talk across the table, that you may talk to the person next to you not less secure from listeners than you would be in talking with the stranger whom you met at a well in the Sahara. It is not so, except on state occasions, at Paris. Difficult there to retire into solitude with your next neighbour. The guests collected by Duplessis completed with himself the number of the Sacred Nine--the host, Valerie, Rochebriant, Graham, Isaura, Signora Venosta, La d.u.c.h.esse de Tarascon, the wealthy and high-born Imperialist, Prince --------, and last and least, one who shall be nameless.
I have read somewhere, perhaps in one of the books which American superst.i.tion dedicates to the mysteries of Spiritualism, how a gifted seer, technically styled medium, sees at the opera a box which to other eyes appears untenanted and empty, but to him is full of ghosts, well dressed in costume de-regle, gazing on the boards and listening to the music. Like such ghosts are certain beings whom I call Lookers-on.
Though still living, they have no share in the life they survey, they come as from another world to hear and to see what is pa.s.sing in ours.
In ours they lived once, but that troubled sort of life they have survived. Still we amuse them as stage-players and puppets amuse ourselves. One of these Lookers-on completed the party at the house of Duplessis.
How lively, how animated the talk was at the financier"s pleasant table that day, the 8th of July! The excitement of the coming war made itself loud in every Gallic voice, and kindled in every Gallic eye. Appeals at every second minute were made, sometimes courteous, sometimes sarcastic, to the Englishman--promising son of an eminent statesman, and native of a country in which France is always coveting an ally, and always suspecting an enemy. Certainly Graham could not have found a less propitious moment for asking Isaura if she really were changed. And certainly the honour of Great Britain was never less ably represented (that is saying a great deal) than it was on this occasion by the young man reared to diplomacy and aspiring to Parliamentary distinction.
He answered all questions with a constrained voice and an insipid smile,--all questions pointedly addressed to him as to what demonstrations of admiring sympathy with the gallantry of France might be expected from the English Government and people; what his acquaintance with the German races led him to suppose would be the effect on the Southern States of the first defeat of the Prussians; whether the man called Moltke was not a mere strategist on paper, a crotchety pedant; whether, if Belgium became so enamoured of the glories of France as to solicit fusion with her people, England would have a right to offer any objection,&c., &c. I do not think that during that festival Graham once thought one-millionth so much about the fates of Prussia and France as he did think, "Why is that girl so changed to me?
Merciful heaven! is she lost to my life?"
By training, by habit, even by pa.s.sion, the man was a genuine politician, cosmopolitan as well as patriotic, accustomed to consider what effect every vibration in that balance of European power, which no deep thinker can despise, must have on the destinies of civilised humanity, and on those of the nation to which he belongs. But are there not moments in life when the human heart suddenly narrows the circ.u.mference to which its emotions are extended? As the ebb of a tide, it retreats from the sh.o.r.es it had covered on its flow, drawing on with contracted waves the treasure-trove it has selected to h.o.a.rd amid its deeps.
CHAPTER II.
On quitting the dining-room, the d.u.c.h.esse de Tarascon said to her host, on whose arm she was leaning, "Of course you and I must go with the stream. But is not all the fine talk that has pa.s.sed to-day at your table, and in which we too have joined, a sort of hypocrisy? I may say this to you; I would say it to no other."
"And I say to you, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, that which I would say to no other. Thinking over it as I sit alone, I find myself making a "terrible hazard;" but when I go abroad and become infected by the general enthusiasm, I pluck up gaiety of spirit, and whisper to myself, "True, but it may be an enormous gain." To get the left bank of the Rhine is a trifle; but to check in our next neighbour a growth which a few years hence would overtop us,--that is no trifle. And, be the gain worth the hazard or not, could the Emperor, could any Government likely to hold its own for a week, have declined to take the chance of the die?"
The d.u.c.h.esse mused a moment, and meanwhile the two seated themselves on a divan in the corner of the salon. Then she said very slowly--
"No Government that held its tenure on popular suffrage could have done so. But if the Emperor had retained the personal authority which once allowed the intellect of one man to control and direct the pa.s.sions of many, I think the war would have been averted. I have reason to know that the Emperor gave his emphatic support to the least bellicose members of the Council, and that Gramont"s speech did not contain the pa.s.sage that precipitates hostilities when the Council in which it was framed broke up. These fatal Ministers found the Chamber, and the reports of the popular excitement which could not be resisted without imminent danger of revolution. It is Paris that has forced the war on the Emperor. But enough of this subject. What must be, must, and, as you say, the gain may be greater than the hazard. I come to something else you whispered to me before we went in to dinner,--a sort of complaint which wounds me sensibly. You say I had a.s.sisted to a choice of danger and possibly of death a very distant connection of mine, who might have been a very near connection of yours. You mean Alain de Rochebriant?"
"Yes; I accept him as a suitor for the hand of my only daughter."
"I am so glad, not for your sake so much as for his. No one can know him well without appreciating in him the finest qualities of the finest order of the French n.o.ble; but having known your pretty Valerie so long, my congratulations are for the man who can win her. Meanwhile, hear my explanation: when I promised Alain any interest I can command for the grade of officer in a regiment of Mobiles, I knew not that he had formed, or was likely to form, ties or duties to keep him at home. I withdraw my promise."
"No, d.u.c.h.esse, fulfil it. I should be disloyal indeed if I robbed a sovereign under whose tranquil and prosperous reign I have acquired, with no dishonour, the fortune which Order proffers to Commerce, of one gallant defender in the hour of need. And, speaking frankly, if Alain were really my son, I think I am Frenchman enough to remember that France is my mother."
"Say no more, my friend--say no more," cried the d.u.c.h.esse, with the warm blood of the heart rushing through all the delicate coatings of pearl-powder. "If every Frenchman felt as you do; if in this Paris of ours all hostilities of cla.s.s may merge in the one thought of the common country; if in French hearts there yet thrills the same sentiment as that which, in the terrible days when all other ties were rent asunder, revered France as mother, and rallied her sons to her aid against the confederacy of Europe,--why, then, we need not grow pale with dismay at the sight of a Prussian needle-gun. Hist! look yonder: is not that a tableau of Youth in Arcady? Worlds rage around, and Love, unconcerned, whispers to Love!" The d.u.c.h.esse here pointed to a corner of the adjoining room in which Alain and Valerie sat apart, he whispering into her ear; her cheek downcast, and, even seen at that distance, brightened by the delicate tenderness of its blushes.
CHAPTER III.
But in that small a.s.sembly there were two who did not attract the notice of Duplessis or of the lady of the Imperial Court. While the Prince ---- and the placid Looker-on were engaged at a contest of ecarte, with the lively Venosta, for the gallery, interposing criticisms and admonitions, Isaura was listlessly turning over a collection of photographs, strewed on a table that stood near to an open window in the remoter angle of the room, communicating with a long and wide balcony filled partially with flowers and overlooking the Champs Elysees, softly lit up by the innumerable summer stars. Suddenly a whisper, the command of which she could not resist, thrilled through her ear, and sent the blood rushing back to her heart.
"Do you remember that evening at Enghien? how I said that our imagination could not carry us beyond the question whether we two should be gazing together that night twelve months on that star which each of us had singled out from the hosts of heaven? That was the 8th of July. It is the 8th of July once more. Come and seek for our chosen star--come. I have something to say, which say I must. Come."
Mechanically, as it were,--mechanically, as they tell us the Somnambulist obeys the Mesmeriser,--Isaura obeyed that summons. In a kind of dreamy submission she followed his steps, and found herself on the balcony, flowers around her and stars above, by the side of the man who had been to her that being ever surrounded by flowers and lighted by stars,--the ideal of Romance to the heart of virgin Woman.
"Isaura," said the Englishman, softly. At the sound of her own name for the first time heard from those lips, every nerve in her frame quivered.
"Isaura, I have tried to live without you. I cannot. You are all in all to me: without you it seems to me as if earth had no flowers, and even heaven had withdrawn its stars. Are there differences between us, differences of taste, of sentiments, of habits, of thought? Only let me hope that you can love me a tenth part so much as I love you, and such differences cease to be discord. Love harmonises all sounds, blends all colours into its own divine oneness of heart and soul. Look up! is not the star which this time last year invited our gaze above, is it not still there? Does it not still invite our gaze? Isaura, speak!"
"Hush, hush, hush,"--the girl could say no more, but she recoiled from his side.
The recoil did not wound him: there was no hate in it. He advanced, he caught her hand, and continued, in one of those voices which become so musical in summer nights under starry skies:
"Isaura, there is one name which I can never utter without a reverence due to the religion which binds earth to heaven--a name which to man should be the symbol of life cheered and beautified, exalted, hallowed.
That name is "wife." Will you take that name from me?"
And still Isaura made no reply. She stood mute, and cold, and rigid as a statue of marble. At length, as if consciousness had been arrested and was struggling back, she sighed heavily, and pa.s.sed her hands slowly over her forehead.
"Mockery, mockery," she said then, with a smile half bitter, half plaintive, on her colourless lips. "Did you wait to ask me that question till you knew what my answer must be? I have pledged the name of wife to another."
"No, no; you say that to rebuke, to punish me! Unsay it! unsay it!"
Isaura beheld the anguish of his face with bewildered eyes. "How can my words pain you?" she said, drearily. "Did you not write that I had unfitted myself to be wife to you?"
"I?"
"That I had left behind me the peaceful immunities of private life? I felt you were so right! Yes! I am affianced to one who thinks that in spite of that misfortune--"
"Stop, I command you--stop! You saw my letter to Mrs. Morley. I have not had one moment free from torture and remorse since I wrote it. But whatever in that letter you might justly resent--"
"I did not resent--"
Graham heard not the interruption, but hurried on. "You would forgive could you read my heart. No matter. Every sentiment in that letter, except those which conveyed admiration, I retract. Be mine, and instead of presuming to check in you the irresistible impulse of genius to the first place in the head or the heart of the world, I teach myself to encourage, to share, to exult in it. Do you know what a difference there is between the absent one and the present one--between the distant image against whom our doubts, our fears, our suspicions, raise up hosts of imaginary giants, barriers of visionary walls, and the beloved face before the sight of which the hosts are fled, the walls are vanished?
Isaura, we meet again. You know now from my own lips that I love you.
I think your lips will not deny that you love me. You say that you are affianced to another. Tell the man frankly, honestly, that you mistook your heart. It is not yours to give. Save yourself, save him, from a union in which there can be no happiness."
"It is too late," said Isaura, with hollow tones, but with no trace of vacillating weakness on her brow and lips. "Did I say now to that other one, "I break the faith that I pledged to you," I should kill him, body and soul. Slight thing though I be, to him I am all in all; to you, Mr.
Vane, to you a memory--the memory of one whom a year, perhaps a month, hence, you will rejoice to think you have escaped."
She pa.s.sed from him--pa.s.sed away from the flowers and the starlight; and when Graham,--recovering from the stun of her crushing words, and with the haughty mien and stop of the man who goes forth from the ruin of his hopes, leaning for support upon his pride,--when Graham re-entered the room, all the guests had departed save only Alain, who was still exchanging whispered words with Valerie.