"As for you, my daughter--as for you, my son-in-law--I shall denounce your execrable complot to my friends of the mad-men"s party, to Hebert, to James Roux the disfrocked priest, to Varlet. Get you hence--I drive you from my house." Then seizing his wife by the arm, Desmarais added, "But not you. You stay!"
"You will please to allow my mother full control over her own actions, Citizen Desmarais," said Lebrenn calmly, and mastering his indignation.
"Unhand her!"
"Get out of here, scoundrel!" retorted the attorney, still holding his wife by the wrist. "Get out of here, at once!"
"For the last time, Citizen Desmarais," quoth John Lebrenn. "Allow Madam Desmarais to follow her daughter, as is her desire. My patience is at an end, and I can not much longer tolerate the brutality I see here."
"Would you have the boldness to raise your hand against me, wretch!"
replied the advocate, foaming with rage, and roughly wrenching his wife"s arm. "Malediction on you both."
"Aye, I shall succor your wife from your wretched treatment," John answered; and seizing the lawyer"s wrist with his iron hand as if in a vise, he forced the attorney to release his almost fainting spouse. She, on her part, made all haste to leave the now intolerable presence of her husband, and, supported by Charlotte, disappeared into the next room.
As John left the parlor to rejoin his bride and his second mother, advocate Desmarais, hiding his face in his hands, sank into an arm-chair, crying:
"Abandoned by wife, abandoned by daughter! Henceforth I am condemned to live alone!"
CHAPTER XXI.
A LOVE FROM THE GRAVE.
His marriage with Charlotte achieved, John Lebrenn, his sister, his wife and Madam Desmarais took up their abode in the modest dwelling on Anjou Street. Here also was Lebrenn"s smithy, now for two months transformed into an armorer"s shop, for he had received an order for guns for the volunteers, and, with his companions, set about the work with a will.
On the evening of May the 30th, in the year of his marriage, Lebrenn was looking over the newspapers while he rested from the heavy labors of the day, when his wife, sad and engrossed, came to him, saying to herself:
"No--painful though the confidence be, my last talk with the poor child, and my tender attachment for Victoria, will not permit me to postpone it--" Then, aloud to her husband, she began:
"I have for long hesitated, my friend, over the communication I am about to make to you. But the interest I feel in Victoria compels me to-day to speak. Closer knowledge of your sister"s character has shown me, my friend, that you do not over-state when you say that, despite the youthful degradation she perforce underwent, her heart has remained pure. And yet I very wrongly harbored an evil thought against her. Now I have the proof of my mistake. I attributed to jealousy the change we noticed coming over her. I thought to myself that Victoria, used to concentrate upon you all her tenderness, to share your life, might feel toward me that sort of sisterly jealousy which the best and bravest of sisters feel in spite of themselves toward the wife of an idolized brother. I blush for my error, my friend, but still it was pardonable.
Do you recall that shortly after our wedding we began to remark in your sister a growing sadness and taciturnity? Did she not seem by turns happy and saddened at our intimacy? Has she not appeared almost continuously under the empire of some secret brooding?"
"True; for long I have noticed in Victoria a sort of capricious changefulness of spirit which contrasted strongly with her ordinary equability. Thus, after having taken upon herself the task of evening lessons for our three apprentice boys and little Oliver, the orphan lad whom we took in, who, in spite of his eighteen years, knows no more than the younger boys, my sister suddenly declared she was going to stop the lessons and leave Paris; and without a word of explanation, at that."
"You remember, John, how bitter were her farewells at leaving us?"
"Happily, at the end of barely a week, Victoria returned, and--strange contradiction--insisted upon resuming her functions as school mistress."
"But her sadness, her sighs, the decline of her health proved only too well the persistence of her secret anguish. I said to myself, "The courageous woman is fighting with all her might against her sisterly jealousy. In vain she tried to flee. Drawn again to us by her tenderness for John, she prefers to live with us and suffer." But no, my friend, I was in error. I am now positive of it."
"To what cause, then, do you attribute Victoria"s deep dejection and chagrin?"
"I shall surprise you, my friend, in revealing the burden--it is love!"
Mute with astonishment, John looked at his wife at first without answering her. Then, sadly smiling, and shaking his head incredulously, he said:
"Charlotte, you mistake. Victoria has had but one love in her life. He whom she loved to distraction is dead. She will be faithful to that flame to the tomb."
"You related to me the sad story of Victoria and Maurice, the young sergeant in the French Guards, killed by his disgraceful punishment.
But, recall to mind that two or three days after our marriage, when you presented Oliver and the three apprentices, whom she wished to teach to read, to her, she suddenly shuddered, and cried as in great bewilderment--"Good G.o.d! Is it a vision, or is it a specter? "Tis he, "tis Maurice I see again!""
"I remember the circ.u.mstance. And instantly coming to herself, Victoria told us she had had a spell of dizziness; but said no more on the subject."
"So, noticing her embarra.s.sment, her downheartedness, we did not insist on knowing from her the real cause of so strange an incident; but a few days after this first meeting with Oliver, a remarkable change began to manifest itself in your sister"s manner."
"That is all true; but what do you conclude from it?"
"I conclude, my friend, that it was in amazement at something in Oliver"s appearance that your sister uttered the wandering words which startled us. I now believe the words expressed the surprise, mingled with affright, into which she was thrown by the striking resemblance between Oliver and Sergeant Maurice. And finally, the resemblance is explained by what I have discovered;--Oliver is Maurice"s brother!"
"Strange, strange indeed!" muttered John. "But tell me, how did you come by the discovery?"
"As you know, we had to bring Oliver into the house, so as to have him close by us, as he is suffering from some languorous malady which renders him unable, despite his courage and willingness, to work in the shop. The unhappy boy, undermined by a slow fever, is in a deplorable state of weakness."
"The physician attributes it to his rapid growth. Oliver is, in fact, hardly eighteen. He has grown fast lately; this would explain his temporary la.s.situde."
"The physician, it seems to me, is deceived there. I shall tell you why, my friend. Just now, in coming from the shop, I crossed the garden. I saw Oliver seated under the yoke-elm bower, apparently sunk in mournful revery. His eye was fixed, his face bathed in tears. On seeing me he furtively tried to wipe his eyes. His features revealed mental suffering; it was easy to see that all was not physical in his malady.
"Oliver," I said, seating myself close beside him, "the cause of your illness is not the one the doctor gives. You feel some great disappointment, you hide it from us--that is wrong. My husband cares for you like a father, why do you not confide your trouble to him?" He seemed as much pained as surprised at my penetration; the embarra.s.sed answers he gave were not sincere. He attributed his sorrow to the loneliness he felt in being left an orphan, without any relatives."
"Such a reply from Oliver surprises me. Has he not often shown by his manner the most touching recognition of our kindnesses toward him? We make him forget, he says, the unhappiness of his orphanhood; we surround him with a family"s attention."
"No doubt he was hiding the truth from me, my friend. Then I spoke to him of the family he mourned. He eagerly seized upon the topic, as if glad of an avenue of escape from the new questions he feared I would put to him. He gave me many details of his parents. I learned that his furthest memories went back only ten or twelve years, when he was a boy of six or seven. He remembered that his brother Maurice wore the uniform of the French Guards, and came often to see their mother, a poor lace-weaver."
"There can no longer be any doubt!" cried Lebrenn, greatly amazed. "And indeed, by dint of much turning about of my early memories, which are greatly confused as I was then only a child, meseems that Sergeant Maurice, whom I saw often at the house as my sister"s betrothed, did, in fact, resemble Oliver."
"So, my friend, what is there astonishing in the fact that Victoria, finding again, so to speak, Maurice in his younger brother, should yield despite herself to the reawakening of a sentiment which always ruled her so strongly? A strange sentiment, against which Victoria rebels, although in vain, for a thousand reasons, among them the difference in years between herself and Oliver. Victoria, although still young and in the ripeness of her beauty, might be his mother. The slow malady which is gnawing at Oliver"s heart has no other cause than a secret and mad love for our sister Victoria."
These last words of Charlotte"s, recalling to him many circ.u.mstances previously insignificant, forced conviction upon Lebrenn. He felt as one crushed, under the weight of the revelation, and presaging its sad consequences, cried, "Charlotte, Charlotte, what sorrows I foresee--if your suspicions are well founded! And what is worse, I believe you speak sooth."
"My friend, my suspicions are but too well founded. They explain the sadness of our poor sister; they explain her heart"s anguish, the cause of which has eluded us. Alas, her grief arises from the conflict between her reason and this strange pa.s.sion, so incomprehensible at first glance. And still, one can see how her love for Maurice, lasting beyond the grave, would predispose her toward a similar sentiment for his brother, who reflects so perfect an image of the departed. On the other hand, no more is it really strange that Oliver, drawn to your sister by her many proofs of interest in him, by her beauty, by the loftiness of her spirit and the n.o.bility of her character, should end in becoming seriously enamored of her. His love, which seeks to hide itself from all eyes, and which hardly dares acknowledge itself, thinking it could never be returned, will consume him, and perhaps carry him to the grave."
John was silent for some moments. "The affair is so delicate," he said at length, "that I would not venture upon taking it up with Victoria, confident though I am of her attachment to me. We must, then, see to Oliver, and seek to s.n.a.t.c.h him from his wild pa.s.sion. I shall have to hasten into execution a project I had already formed for his future.
Everything about the boy seems to indicate military inclinations. A long time before his illness I observed during the Section drills not only his apt.i.tude in the handling of arms, but with what insight he seemed to antic.i.p.ate, as it were, the manoeuvres, and with what precision he executed them."
"Indeed, you have often told me of it, my friend. There are in Oliver, you say, the makings of an officer."
"I wished to wait, before proposing to him to enrol, until his health was completely restored. But, although his convalescence must, indeed, be allowed time for, I think I shall now push forward his engagement in whatever corps of the army is most to his liking. The distractions of the trip to join his regiment, the change of scene, the soldier"s life, will, I doubt not, by awakening in Oliver his martial talents, exercise a salutary influence over his health. He will feel his mind grow gradually calmer in the measure that he finds himself further and further removed from Victoria. And lastly, she, no longer having Oliver daily before her, will succeed, I hope, in mastering this fatal love.
"Twould be a happy solution."
The conversation of John and his wife was broken in upon by the entrance of Madam Desmarais. The lady seemed quite uneasy, and said to her son-in-law in alarm:
"My G.o.d! What is going on in Paris to-night? They are beating the a.s.sembly! The streets are all excitement and hubbub. I was hardly able to get back home, for the crowds. Have we another _day_ to fear?"
"According to what you say, dear mother, there probably will be a _day_ to-morrow," replied John, smiling. "But it will be as peaceful as it will be imposing, and will, I hope, insure the safety of the Republic."
"May G.o.d hear you, my dear John. I know what faith one can place in your words. Nevertheless, I can not help but tremble when I think of your being engaged in these struggles, which may at any time end in ma.s.sacre."
Gertrude, the old servant of the family, who had followed Madam Desmarais and her daughter to their new dwelling, just then entered and said to John: "Monsieur, your foreman Castillon is in the entry. He wishes me to tell you he would like to speak with you."