The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume II. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ 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talking of you; the theme seemed to give a spring to an existence from which, till then, all zest of life had been withdrawn.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 determined to know something more of the origin of her young mistress’s indisposition.

      “Madame knows that the Archduke is to dine here.”

      “I know it,” said Kate, peevishly, and as if desirous of being left in quiet.

      Nina again courtesied, but in the brilliant flashing of her dark eyes it was plain to mark the consciousness that some secret was withheld from her. The soubrette class are instinctive readers of motives; “their only books are ‘ladies’ looks,” but they con them to perfection. It was, then, with a studied pertinacity that Nina proceeded to arrange drawers and fold dresses, and fifty other similar duties, the discharge of which she saw was torturing her mistress.

      “I should wish to be alone, Nina, and undisturbed,” said Kate, at last, her patience being entirely exhausted.

      Nina made her very deepest reverence, and withdrew.

      Kate waited for a few seconds, till all sound of her retiring steps had died away, then arose, and locked the door.

      She was alone; the packet which the Abbé had delivered lay on the table before her; she bent down over it, and wept. The utter misery of sorrow is only felt where self-reproach mingles with our regrets. All the pangs of other misfortunes are light in comparison with this. The irrevocable past was her own work; she knew it, and cried till her very heart seemed bursting.

      CHAPTER IX. SECRETS OF HEAD AND HEART

      I must ask of my reader to leave this chamber, where, overwhelmed by her sorrows, poor Kate poured out her grief in tears, and follow me to a small but brilliantly lighted apartment, in which a little party of four persons was seated, discussing their wine, and enjoying the luxury of their cigars. Be not surprised when we say that one of the number was a lady. Madame de Heidendorf, however, puffed her weed with all the zest of a smoker; the others were the Archduke Ernest, a plain, easy-tempered looking man, in the gray undress of an Austrian General, the Foreign Minister, Count Nõrinberg, and our old acquaintance, the Abbé D’Esmonde.

      The table, besides the usual ornaments of a handsome dessert, was covered with letters, journals, and pamphlets, with here and there a colored print in caricature of some well-known political personage. Nothing could be more easy and unconstrained than the air and bearing of the guests. The Archduke sat with his uniform coat unbuttoned, and resting one leg upon a chair before him. The Minister tossed over the books, and brushed off the ashes of his cigar against the richly damasked table-cloth; while even the Abbé seemed to have relaxed the smooth urbanity of his face into a look of easy enjoyment Up to this moment the conversation had been general, the principal topics being the incidents of the world of fashion, the flaws and frivolities, the mishaps and misadventures of those whose names were familiar to his Imperial Highness, and in whose vicissitudes he took the most lively interest. These, and a stray anecdote of the turf in England, were the only subjects he cared for, hating politics СКАЧАТЬ