Charlotte's Inheritance Part 5

She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were still lingering.

They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first time on M. Len.o.ble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind.

He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night.

"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning, dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!"

He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure.

They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband.

It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly dest.i.tute--penniless, helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter.

"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if, when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not speak to you of grat.i.tude. If you could understand how debased an outcast I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can never know what you seem to me."

And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told him her story.

"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since then."

She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story of his future wife's youth. That there could be any pa.s.sage in that history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be his, as she was his.

"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorks.h.i.+re to live with my married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father, and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorks.h.i.+re than I had been in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a n.o.bleman who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting; and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of, was a younger son, and by no means a rich man."

Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave express his sympathy.

"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a background of darkness, with some strange vivid light s.h.i.+ning upon it. It was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull.

From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years, when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me."

"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which neglect gave place to desertion."

"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step.

He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorks.h.i.+re. To go back!--as if he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you first met me here, I had not long received that letter."

This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked of Providence.

To Gustave Len.o.ble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel.

The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Len.o.ble that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she, so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to love her so much the more dearly.

"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will begin a new life together."

This was the end of M. Len.o.ble's wooing. He could not speak of his love any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he s.n.a.t.c.hed her from death; and between these two there was no need of pa.s.sionate protestations or sentimental rapture.

M. Len.o.ble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the thirty witnesses required to establish her ident.i.ty. A very little consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of their union?

"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care and thought from you."

"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?"

"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my heart but love for you, and faith in you."

After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the bonds of matrimony.

Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Len.o.ble took a very modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Len.o.ble had provided for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two.

CHAPTER IV.

A DECREE OF BANISHMENT.

After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice of Wisdom, unheard while Pa.s.sion's tempest was raging, whispers grave counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud, sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face in the clear, common light of day.

Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Len.o.ble time and reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a pa.s.sion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had been shattered by this deed of his.

The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour.

He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like the ministration of an angel.

"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about the room, busy with the preparations for his journey.

And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face, in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his sister's praises.

He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles.

"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled virtues of Madelon Frehlter."

His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days, when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine, cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M.

Len.o.ble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make his way to the paternal mansion as best he might.

He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Len.o.ble, and his spirits were in nowise elevated by the walk.

Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation, as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one gave him courage.

"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a sordid barter of my heart and my honour."

In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir.

"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions.

And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee?

Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!"

And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him, he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a sharper pain than death.

"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou art ill! Look then, Francois, thy son is ill!"

"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the farewell kiss of her son.

"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave.

The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some dusty editions of the French cla.s.sics, and where the master of Beaubocage kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines.