The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858. Various
fell,—a person whose dignity and grace held at a distance even those whom they attracted. Nothing short of reverence could have dictated the movement of any noble mind that had to do with her. She was the Sister of Mercy, whom the whole country round about knew for the most righteous Desperiers of them all. The noble line was ending nobly in her pure and lofty and most gracious womanhood. She was the star of society, if the "sweet influences" might only be bound,—no comet, no fiery splendor of intellect or passion, but a pure light that would still shine through all paling, and enter with its own distinct ray into the last absorption.
She approached to meet her guest with a kind and frank expression of regret that she should have been kept waiting so long.
Beholding her, remembering him, strong even through her sense of impotence, Elizabeth unrolled the pencilling of Foray. The moment during which she was thus occupied passed in silence; then she looked up and spoke, with the coldness in which her embarrassment and emotion sought disguise.
"I came here with a message,—on an errand," said she; "and I have come so far, that, finding myself really in this house, I did not like to leave it again till I had seen the lady I sought. I knew that it would give you pain, if you could know the whole."
"Tell me the whole," was the reply, spoken with evident and encouraging approval of the stranger's mode of address; and the lady sat down in the great chair on one side of the table. "Be seated; tell me your wish."
"It is to serve you," said Elizabeth, a little proudly. "I have not come to ask favor for myself or mine. I came across the sea for you and him."
She spoke now with vehemence, and as she spoke glanced at the portrait in the alcove. Quickly the eyes of Madeline Desperiers followed hers. How had this stranger managed to discover what was so securely hidden from the observation of ordinary eyes? She did not even suspect the light which had illumined that dim recess, and made it brighter to the gazer than the bright garden even.
"This is Foray," said Elizabeth, exposing now the token that would instantly make all plain and equal between them. "I should have sent it to you, Madam, when I wrote; but there was more to be done,—and so I came. I am Elizabeth Montier. I am a soldier's daughter; so, he said, are you."
The lady's answer was not at first by speech. She arose, swiftly as light moves she moved, and brought her guest up to the window of the shadowy room. Well she scanned the face of Elizabeth.
"Truth," she murmured. "It was you that wrote. You are Truth. You speak it. Blessings on you! Blessings descend upon you from all the saints and heroes who have moved and suffered here! Do you come from him,—Stephen Cordier?"
How proudly and how tenderly she spoke that name! To hear her soothed the heart of Elizabeth Montier,—soothed her, and made her strong.
"Is that his name?" she asked, pointing to the portrait. "We call him Manuel." She paused a moment, but not for an answer. Before Madeline could speak, she went on,—
"If you can hear me, I will tell you of him, and why I am here."
"Tell me all. I can bear to hear anything that you can endure to tell.
You are his friend. I claim you for mine, too. You came to find me.
Speak."
This was the utterance of a calm self-knowledge. By what she had endured, the woman knew what she could yet endure.
Without pause Elizabeth now spoke. Without interruption the lady listened,—listened while this young stranger told the life of the past months, in which he was concerned,—of the garden where she worked and he walked,—of her father, the musician,—of their old home near the barracks, and the new home in the prison,—of the day when he first told her of his country and his love,—how for him she had written the letter, repeating oftentimes in the narration the very words he had used,—of his gestures, his looks;—she was thoughtful of all.
How strangely intelligent in all her communication! Ah, if it was eager love that hearkened, it was thoughtful love that spoke!
The story, as she told it, was brief; but the voice never faltered in telling the tale, and the eyes of Elizabeth, with constant scrutiny, were upon her listener. She was satisfied, when, having said all, she paused, and had now no further fear for her own heart's integrity or of the listener's constancy.
A long silence followed her speech. At length said Mlle. Desperiers,—
"I see it all. You are God's messenger from that other world. I have believed too little. You are truer and wiser than I. Lead me, dear child! Shall we go to Foray? I will sail with you tomorrow, if you say so. Better a prison, with him, than all this freedom, so alone."
"He must be set free, first," said Elizabeth. The manner of her speaking, her look as well as her tone, might almost have been taken for a rebuke. Madeline might pardon that.
"I have said so," she answered, mildly. "I have tried to move heaven and earth. I was but a feeble woman. Still it is a consolation to know that I have done everything my wit or my love could devise, and not stopped at what looked like extravagance or indelicacy. What further, Elizabeth? The man who is now in power, and through whom alone the king can be reached, will grant him liberty"—
"He will?"
"At a price that would take away its value from him."
"What is that price?"
"My life. He wants me for his wife,—a purchase, you perceive."
Elizabeth Montier did not heed the scorn and bitterness of these words, as Mlle. Desperiers spoke them. The blood in her veins seemed turning to fire,—it swept through her body and brain like the flood of a volcano,—and she thought, she who knew the prisoner's life, and all that captivity was to him,—
"Coward and selfish, that will not instantly give up her life for his!"
A very dismal satisfaction, that the woman he loved best should so prove unworthy of him! The horror of that satisfaction, its humiliation and its pain, sufficiently attested to the poor girl who endured it that her soul's integrity remained secure. As if for a personal conflict with an enemy, she started to her feet.
"It must not be!" she exclaimed.
And, far from suspecting to whom the words were addressed, to what the speaker closed her eyes, rebuking her pure heart, the lady answered,—
"Then, unless he outlives this tyranny of power, he will die a prisoner, Elizabeth. I will go with you to him. I can die with him. God, certainly, does not require me to stay here longer, for He has sent you to me."
"He has sent me for him!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "I am here to make him free." She did not add, "If I were you, my life for his!" but again, in spite of her, she thought it, and a terrible strength of pride possessed her at that moment.
"Speak on," was the eager, tremulous response. "You are here to set him free, God knows; but at least I believe wholly in you. What will you do, Elizabeth?"
"Go to the officer tomorrow. Tell him everything that is to be told.
If he is human"—
"That is what I doubt. He knows what petitions I presented and caused to be presented to his predecessor."
"You?"
"I?—who but I? Do you think I have been idle, or that I have left anything undone that I could think to do? Child, the sun has never risen on me since I saw him last! They say I am dead to the world. But they who say it know not how terribly true their words are. Shall I tell you how many times, when the weary days have come to an end, I have said, in the morning I would make that loathsome bargain with General Saterges, and in the morning God's grace, as I believe, has alone prevented me? Do you think that it is because I love myself better than him, that I have not bought his freedom at this price? It is because I know him,—because I am sure that liberty at such price would be worthless to him. I cannot torture him with the belief that I am unfaithful, nor suffer him to look on me as a sacrifice. We can endure what God allows. Trust me. You have done so bravely, you are yourself so true, believe in me. I am really no coward. I am not a selfish woman."
"Forgive me," said Elizabeth, most humbly.