The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume II. Lever Charles James
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, snatching up his cap, he bounded from the room at once.
“A severe service, – at least, one of rigid discipline,” said D’Esmonde, with a compassionating 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 passions of youth.”
“True,” said Kate, pointedly; “there would seem something of priestcraft in their régime. 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, – noble-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 participation 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 noble 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 passing 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 passed 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 passion, 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 Abbé 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