Captain Paul

CHAPTER V. – DEVOTED LOVE

 
                                Woman's love
     Once given, may break the heart that holds – but never
     Melts into air save with her latest sigh.
 

Bulwer. – The Sea Captain,

The name, as well as the appearance of the person thus announced, awakened in their turn in the mind of Emanuel a confused recollection of which he could not affix either date or event. The person, preceded by the servant, entered the room by a door opposite the one through which the marchioness had retired. Although the moment was ill-timed for a visit, and though the young count, pre-occupied by his projects for the future, would have preferred meditating upon and ripening them, he was compelled, by the rules of etiquette, so severe in those days between well-bred people, to receive the visitor with courtesy and politeness. The deportment of the latter bespoke the man of distinction. After the usual salutations, Emanuel, by a gesture, invited the stranger to be seated, who bowed and took a chair, and then the conversation commenced with some common-place polite observation.

"I am delighted to meet you, count," said the stranger.

"Chance has favored me, sir," replied Emanuel; "an hour sooner you would not have found me here: I have just arrived from Paris."

"I am aware of that, count, for we have been travelling the same road. I set out an hour after you, and all along the road I heard of you, by means of the postillions who had the honor of driving you."

"May I be bold enough to ask," said Emanuel, in a tone which began to evince a certain degree of dissatisfaction, "to what circumstance I owe the interest you appear to evince concerning me."

"This interest is perfectly natural between old acquaintance, and perhaps. I might have reason to complain that it does not appear to be reciprocal."

"In fact, sir, it does appear to me," replied Emanuel, "that I have met you somewhere; but my recollection serves me but confusedly; will you be kind enough to assist it?"

"If what you say be the case, count, your memory must indeed be rather fugitive, for within the last six months, on three separate occasions, I have the honor of exchanging compliments with you."

"Even should I expose myself to further reproach, I am compelled to say that I still remain in the same state of uncertainty with regard to your person. Pray, therefore, have the goodness to fix my memory, by aid of more precise dates, on some event, and remind me under what circumstances I had the honor of meeting you for the first time."

"The first time, count? it was on the jetty of Port Louis. You desired to obtain some information with regard to a certain frigate, which I was so fortunate as to be able to furnish you. I believe, even, that I accompanied you on board. Upon that occasion I wore the uniform of a lieutenant in the royal navy, and you that of a mousquetaire."

"I now well recollect it, sir, and I was obliged to leave the vessel without offering the thanks I owed you."

"You are mistaken, count; I received those thanks during our second interview."

"And where did that take place?"

"On board the very vessel to which I had conducted you – in the cabin. I then wore the uniform of the captain of the ship: blue coat, red waistcoat and breeches, with grey stockings, a three-cornered hat, and curled hair. Only the captain appeared to you some thirty years older than the lieutenant, and it was not without motive that I had made myself appear so much older, for you would perhaps, not have chosen to confide to a young man a secret of such importance as you then communicated to me."

"What you now say is incredible, sir; and yet something tells me that it was really so. Yes, yes; I now remember that in the shade in which you remained half concealed, I saw eyes sparkling similar to yours. I have not forgotten them; but this was only the time before the last, you say, that I had the honor of seeing you. Continue, sir, I beg, to assist my memory, for I cannot recollect our third interview."

"The last, count, was only a week since, at Paris – at a fencing match, at Saint-George's, in the rue Chanterecin. You remember, do you not, an English gentleman, with his hair so red that his powder could scarcely conceal its brilliant color – a scarlet coat, and tightly fitting pantaloons. I even had the honor of trying a bout with you, and I was fortunate enough to hit you three times, while, on the contrary, you were not lucky enough to touch me once. On that occasion I called myself Jones."

"It is most singular – it was certainly the same look, but it could not be the same man."

"The will of God has directed that the look should be the only thing which cannot be disguised, and this is why he has thrown into the look a spark of his own light. Well, then, the lieutenant, the captain, the Englishman, were one and the same person."

"At the present moment, sir, what are you if you please? For, with a man who can so perfectly disguise himself, that question you must admit, is not altogether unnecessary."

"At the present moment, count, as you see, I have no motive for concealment, and, therefore, I have come to you in the simple costume of the young nobility, when they visit each other as neighbors in the country. I am whatever you may please to consider me; French, English, Spanish, or even an American. In which of these languages would you wish our conversation to be continued?"

"Although some of these languages may be as familiar to me as they are to you, sir, I prefer the French language; it is that of a plain and concise explanations."

"Be it so," replied Paul, with an expression of profound melancholy; "the French is also the language I prefer; I first saw the day upon French ground, for the sun of France was that which gladdened my eyes; and although I have often seen more fertile climes, and a more brilliant sun, there has never been for me but one country and one sun, the sun and the country of Franco!"

"Your national enthusiasm," said Emanuel, interrupting him ironically, "causes you to forget the motive to which I am indebted for the honor of this visit."

"You are right, sir, and I will return to it. It was, then, about six months ago, while walking on the jetty of Port Louis, you saw in the outer roads a fine sharp frigate, with tall masts and square yards, and you said to yourself: 'the captain of that ship must have some motive known only to himself, for carrying so much canvas, on masts so slight,' – and from that sprung to your mind that he must be some buccaneer, a pirate, a corsair" —

"And was I mistaken?"

"I thought I had already expressed to you, count," replied Paul, with a slight tone of irony, "my admiration of the perspicacity with which, at the first glance, you sound the depths of men and circumstances" —

"A truce to compliments, if you please, sir, and let us to facts."

"It was under this persuasion that you caused yourself to be conducted on board the frigate, by a certain lieutenant, and that you found a certain captain in the cabin. You were the bearer of a letter from the Minister of Marine, ordering any officer, upon your requisition, and whose ship was under the French flag and bound for the Gulf of Mexico, to conduct to Cayenne a person named Lusignan, guilty of a crime against the state."

"That is true."

"I obeyed that order, for I was then ignorant that this great culprit, thus transported, had committed no other crime than that of being the lover of your sister."

"Sir," cried Emanuel, starting up.

"These are very fine pistols, count," carelessly continued Paul, playing with the weapons which the Count d'Auray had placed upon the table, on alighting from his carriage.

"And they are ready loaded," said Emanuel, in a tone which was not to be mistaken.

"Are they so?" returned Paul, with affected indifference.

"That is a matter of which you can assure yourself, if you will take a turn in the park with me."

"There is no necessity for going out to do that," replied Paul, without pretending to understand Emanuel's proposal in the sense which he meant to give to it; "here is a mark which is well placed, and at a proper distance."

Saying these words, the captain cocked the pistol, and pointed it through the open window towards the top of a small tree. A goldfinch was rocking himself on the highest branch, singing forth his shrill and joyful notes. Paul fired, and the poor bird, cut in two, fell at the foot of the tree. Paul coolly replaced the pistol on the table.

"You were perfectly right, count," said he, "they are excellent weapons, and I advise you not to part with them."

"You have just given me an extraordinary proof of it," replied Emanuel; "and I feel bound to acknowledge that you have a steady hand."

"There is nothing extraordinary in that," rejoined Paul, in that melancholy tone which was peculiar to him. "During those long days, when not a breath passes over that mirror of the Supreme Being, which is called the ocean, we seamen are compelled to seek for amusements to which you landsmen are daily accustomed. Then we try our skill upon the sea-gulls, which hover over the crest of a wave; or the fish-hawks, which dart down upon the imprudent tenant of the deep that rise to its surface; or, again, upon the swallows which, fatigued with a long flight, alight upon the royal mast-head or on the yards or rigging. It is thus, count, that we acquire some dexterity in exercises which may appear so incompatible with our profession."

"Go on, sir; and if it be possible, let us return to the subject of our conversation."

"He was a handsome, brave young man, this Lusignan; he related his whole history to me. That being the son of an old friend of your father's, who had died poor, he had been adopted by him some two years before the unknown accident occurred which deprived him of his reason. That having been brought up with you, he had inspired you with hatred – your sister with affection. He told me that, during the long years they passed together in the same solitude, they never perceived the isolation from the world in which they lived, excepting when they were absent from each other. He recounted to me all the details of their youthful love, and how Marguerite had one day said to him, in the words of the tender maiden of Verona —

 
     "'I will be thine, or else I'll be the tomb's.'"
 

"She has but too truly kept her word."

"Yes – has she not? And you virtuous people call that shame and dishonour, when a poor child, lost through her own innocence, is carried away by love. Your mother, whose duties estranged her from her daughter, and perpetually confined her to your father's room – (for I know the virtues of your mother, sir, as well as I know your sister's weakness: she is an austere woman, more severe than one of God's creatures ought to be, whose only advantage over others is, that of never having fallen) – your mother, I say, one night heard some stifled cries; she entered your sister's chamber, walked pale and silently up to her bed, and coldly snatched from her arms a child which had just been born, and left the room without addressing even a reproach to her daughter, but only paler and more silent than when she entered it. As to poor Marguerite, she did not utter even a cry – she made no complaint. She had fainted away immediately on perceiving her mother. Was it so, sir? Have I been rightly informed, and is the whole of this dreadful story true?"

"You seem to be acquainted with every detail of it!" exclaimed Emanuel, with amazement.

"It is because the whole of these details are given in these letters signed by your sister," replied Paul, opening a pocket-book, "and which Lusignan, at the time he was about to be thrown amid robbers and assassins, through your instrumentality, confided to me, that I might restore them to her who had written them."

"Give them to me, then," said Emanuel, stretching forth his hand towards the pocket-book, "and they shall be faithfully delivered to her who has had the imprudence" —

"To complain to the only person who loved her in this world – is it not so?" said Paul, withdrawing the letters and the pocket-book. "Imprudent daughter, whose own mother snatched the child from her heart, and who poured her bitter tears into the bosom of the father of her child! Imprudent sister, who, not finding any protection from this tyranny in her brother, has compromised his noble name by signing with the name he bears, letters, which, in the stupid and prejudiced eye of the world, may – how is it you term this in your noble class – dishonour her family, is it not?"

"Then," cried Emanuel, reddening with impatience, "since you are aware of the terrible tendency of these papers, fulfil the mission which you have been charged, by delivering them either to me, to my mother, or my sister."

"This was my intention when I landed at Lorient; but about ten or twelve days ago, on entering a church – "

"A church!"

"Yes, sir."

"And for what purpose?"

"To pray there."

"Ah! Captain Paul believes in God, then!"

"Did I not believe in him, whom should I invoke during the raging of the tempest?"

"And in this church, then?"

"In that church, sir, I heard a priest announce the approaching marriage of the noble Marguerite d'Auray with the very high and very potent Baron de Lectoure. I immediately inquired for you, and was informed you were at Paris, where I was myself compelled to go, to give an account of my mission to the king."

"To the king!"

"Yes, sir, to the king – Louis XVI.; to his majesty, in person. I immediately set out, intending to return here as soon as you did. I met you in Saint George's rooms, and was informed of your approaching departure. I arranged mine in consequence, in order that we might arrive here at about the same time, and here I am, sir, with a very different resolution to that I had formed before landing in Brittany."

"And what is this new determination? Let me hear it, for we must come to some conclusion."

"Well, then, I think that as all the world, and even his mother, seem to have forgotten the poor orphan, it is highly necessary that I should remember it. In the position in which you are placed, sir, and with the disposition you have evinced of becoming allied to the Baron de Lectoure (who in your view, is the only person who can assist the realization of your ambitious projects), these letters are well worth a hundred thousand francs, are they not? and will make but a very trifling breach in the income of two hundred thousand francs which your estates afford you."

"But who will prove to me that this hundred thousand francs – "

"You are right, sir, and therefore it will be in exchange for a contract for an annuity upon the young Hector de Lusignan, that I will deliver up these letters."

"Is that all, sir?"

"I will also ask, that the child be confided to me, and I will have him brought up, thanks to his little fortune, far from the mother who has forgotten him, and far from his father whom you caused to be banished."

"'Tis well, sir; had I known that it was for so small a sum, and so trifling an interest that you had come, I should not have experienced so much anxiety. You will, however, permit me to speak to my mother on the subject."

"Monsieur le Comte," said a servant, opening the door.

"I am not at home to any one. Leave the room." replied Emanuel, impatiently.

"It is your sister, sir, who wishes to see you."

"Tell her to come by and by."

"She desires to speak to you this instant."

"Do not put yourself out of the way on my account," said Paul.

"But my sister must not see you, sir, – you comprehend it is important that she should not see you."

"As you please; but as it is important, also, that I should not leave the castle before concluding the affair which brought me here, permit me to go into this side room."

"That will do," said Emanuel, himself opening the door; "but be quick, I beg of you."

Paul went into the small room, and Emanuel hastily closed the door upon him, which was hardly done when Marguerite appeared.

CHAPTER VI. BROTHER AND SISTER

 
     Look kindly on them; I cannot bear Severity;
     My heart's so tender, should you charge me rough,
     I should but weep and answer you with sobbing;
     But use me gently, like a loving brother,
     And search through all the secrets of my soul. – Otway.
 

Marguerite d'Auray, whose history the reader has become aquainted with, from the conversation between Captain Paul and Emanuel, was one of those delicate, pale beauties, who bear impressed upon their features the characteristic stamp of high birth. At the first glance, from the soft flexibility of her form, the whiteness of her skin, the shape of her hands and tapering fingers, with their thin, rosy and transparent nails, could be discerned that she was descended from an ancient race. It was evident that her feet, so small that both of them could have been placed in the foot-mark of most women, had never walked excepting on carpeted saloons or on the flowery turf of a park. There was in her movements, graceful as they were, a certain degree of haughtiness and pride, the attribute of all her family; in fine, she conveyed the impression that her soul, capable of making any sacrifice she had resolved upon, was very likely to rebel against tyranny; that devotedness was an instinctive virtue of her heart, while obedience, in her view, was only an educational duty, so that the tempest wind which blew upon her, might make her bend down before it as a lily, but not as a reed.

And yet, when she appeared at the door, her features depicted such complete discouragement, her eyes had retained the traces of such burning tears, her whole frame seemed weighed down by such an overwhelming despair, that Emanuel saw at once, that she must have summoned all her strength to assume an appearance of calmness. On seeing him, she made a violent effort, and it was with a certain degree of nervous firmness that she approached the arm chair on which he was sitting. And then, seeing that the features of her brother retained the expression of impatience, which they had assumed on being interrupted, she paused, and these two children of the same mother, looked at each other as strangers, the one with the eyes of ambition, the other with those of fear. By degrees, Marguerite resumed her courage.

"You have come at last, Emanuel! I was awaiting your return as the blind await the light, and yet from the manner in which you look upon your sister, it is easy to perceive that she was wrong in placing her hopes in you."

"If my sifter has become, as she always ought to have been," replied Emanuel, "that is to say, a submissive and respectful daughter, she will have understood what her rank and her position demand of her; she will have forgotten past events as things which never should have happened, and which consequently she ought not to remember, and she will have prepared herself for the new destiny which awaits her. If it is in this disposition that she now comes before me, my arms are open to receive her, and my sister is still my sister."

"Listen attentively to what I am about to say," said Marguerite, "and above all, consider it as a justification of myself, and not intended as a reproach to others. If my mother – and God forbid that I should accuse her, for a holy duty keeps her apart from us – if my mother had been, I was about to say, toward me as other mothers are towards their daughters, I should constantly have opened my heart to her as a book; at the first word traced upon it by any stranger hand, she would have warned me of my danger and I should have avoided it. Had I been educated in the world instead of being brought up like a poor wild flower beneath the shade of this old castle, I should have learned from infancy the value of the rank and position which you speak of to-day, and I should, perhaps, not have infringed the decorum they prescribe, or the duties they impose. In short, had I been tutored amidst women of the world, with their sparkling wit and frivolous hearts, whom I have so often heard you praise, but whom I never knew, had I been guilty of some faults from levity, which love has caused me to commit – yes, I can well understand, I might then have forgotten the past, have sown upon the surface new recollections as flowers are planted upon tombs; and then, forgetting the place where they had grown, have formed of them a bouquet for a ball, or a bridal wreath. But unfortunately it is not so, Emanuel. I was told to beware, when it was too late to avoid the danger. They spoke to me of my rank and position in society, when I had already forfeited them, and I am now called upon to look forward to joy in the future, when my heart is drowned in the tears and misery of the past."

"And the conclusion of all this," bitterly rejoined Emanuel.

"The conclusion depends on you alone, Emanuel; it is in your power to render it, if not happy, at all events becoming. I cannot have recourse to my father. Alas! I know not even if he could recognise his daughter. I have no hope in my mother; her glance freezes me, her words are death to me. You alone, Emanuel, were left to me, to whom I could say, brother: you are now the head of the family; it is to you alone that we are answerable for our honor. I have fallen from ignorance, and I have been punished for my fault as if it had been a wilful crime."

"Well! well!", murmured Emanuel impatiently, "what is it that you ask?"

"Brother, I demand, since a union with the only being I could have loved, is said to be impossible, I demand that my punishment be regulated according to my strength to bear it. My mother – may heaven pardon her! – tore my child from me as if she had never herself been a mother, and my child will be brought up far from me, neglected, and in obscurity. You, Emanuel, removed the father, as my mother did the child, and you were more cruel to him than the case required; I will not say as man to man, but even as a judge towards a guilty person. As to myself, you have both united to impose upon me a martyrdom more painful still. Well, then, Emanuel, I demand in the name of our childhood spent in the same cradle, of our youth passed under the same roof, in the name of the tender appellations of brother and sister, which nature bestowed upon us – I demand that a convent be opened to me, and that its gates should close upon me for ever. And in that convent, I swear to you, Emanuel, that every day upon my knees, before God, my forehead bent down to the stone-pavement, weighed down by my fault, I will entreat the Lord as a recompense for all my sufferings, to restore my father to reason, my mother to happiness, and to pour on you, Emanuel, honor, and glory and fortune. I swear to you, I will do this."

"Yes; and the world will say that I had a sister whom I sacrificed to my fortune, whose property I inherited while she still lived! Why this is sheer madness!"

"Listen to me, Emanuel," rejoined Marguerite, supporting herself on the back of a chair, near which she was standing.

"Well?" replied Emanuel.

"When you have pledged your word, you keep it, do you not?"

"I am a gentleman."

"Well, then! look at this bracelet."

"I see it – perfectly – what then?"

"It is fastened by a key – the key which opens it is attached to a ring, and with that ring, I pledged my word that I would not be released from a promise I had made, until the ring should be brought back and returned to me."

"And he who has the key of it?"

"Thanks to you, and to my mother, Emanuel, he is too far from us to ask it of him. He is at Cayenne."

"Before you are married two months," replied Emanuel, with an ironical smile, "that bracelet will be so irksome to you, that you will be the first to get rid of it."

"I thought that I had told you it is locked upon my arm."

"You know what people do when they have lost the key and cannot get into their house – they send for a locksmith."

"Well! in my case, Emanuel," replied Marguerite, rasing her voice, and extending her arm with a solemn gesture, "they must send for the executioner then, for this hand shall be cut off before I give it to another."

"Silence! silence!" cried Emanuel, rising hastily, and looking anxiously towards the door of the inner room.

"And now I have said all I had to say," rejoined Marguerite: "my only hope was in you, Emanuel; for although you cannot comprehend any deep-seated feeling, you are not cruel. I came to you in tears, look at me and you will see that it is true – I came to you to say, 'Brother, this marriage is the misfortune, is the misery of my life – I would prefer a convent – I would prefer death to it – and you have not listened to me, or if you have listened, you have not understood me. Well, then, I will address myself to this man – I will appeal to his honor, to his delicacy; if that should not be sufficient, I will tell him all; my love for another, my weakness, my fault, my crime! I will tell him that I have a child; that although he was torn from me, although I have never since seen him, although I am ignorant of his abode, still my child exists. A child cannot die, without his death striking some chord within its mother's heart. In short I will tell him, should it be necessary, that I still love another, that I cannot love him, and that I never will."

"Well! tell him all this," cried Emanuel, irritated by her persistence, "and that evening we will sign the contract, and the next day you will be Baroness de Lectoure."

"And then," replied Marguerite, "then, I shall be truly the most miserable woman in existence, for I should then have a brother whom I should no longer love, and a husband for whom I should have no esteem. Farewell, Emanuel; believe me this contract is not yet signed."

And after saying these words, Marguerite withdrew with that deep and settled despair upon her features, which could not for a moment be mistaken. And Emanuel, convinced that he had not, as he had anticipated, obtained a victory, but that the struggle was still to be continued, gazed after her with an anxiety which was not devoid of tenderness.

After a few moments of silence, in which he sat pensive and motionless, he turned round and saw Captain Paul, whom he had completely forgotten, standing at the door of the study, and then considering the vital importance it was to him to get possession of the papers, which the captain had offered him, he hurriedly sat down at the table, took a pen and paper, and turning towards him, said —

"And now, sir, we are again alone, and there is nothing to prevent our at once concluding this affair. In what terms do you wish the promise to be drawn up? Dictate them, I am ready to write them down."

"It is now useless," coldly replied the captain.

"And why so?"

"I have changed my mind."

"How is that?" said Emanuel, rising, alarmed at the consequences which he perceived might arise from words which he was far from expecting.

"I will give," replied Paul, with the calmness of a fixed determination, "the hundred thousand livres to the child, and I will find a husband for your sister."

"Who are you, then," said Emanuel, advancing a step towards him, "who are you, sir, who thus disposes of a young girl who is my sister, who has never seen you, and who does not even know that you exist?"

"Who am I!" replied Paul, smiling; "upon my honor, I know no more upon that subject than you do, for my birth is a secret which is only to be revealed to me when I have attained my twenty-fifth year."

"And you will attain that age?" —

"This evening, sir. I place myself at your disposal from to-morrow morning, to give you all the information you may require of me," and saying these words, Paul bowed.

"I allow you to depart, sir, but you will understand it is upon the condition that we meet again."

"I was about to propose that condition, count, and I thank you for having anticipated me."

He then bowed to Emanuel a second time, and left the room. At the castle gate, Paul found his horse and servant, and resumed the route to Port Louis. When he had got out of sight of the castle, he alighted from his horse, and directed his steps towards a fisherman's hut, built upon the beach. At the door of this house, seated upon a bench, and in a sailor's' dress, was a young man so deeply absorbed in thought, that he did not observe Paul's approach. The captain placed his hand upon the young man's shoulder, the other started, looked at him, and became frightfully pale, although the open and joyful countenance of Paul, indicated that he was far from being the bearer of bad news.

"Well!" said Paul to him, "I have seen her."

"Who?" demanded the young man.

"Marguerite, by heaven!"

"And – "

"She is charming."

"I did not ask you that."

"She loves you still."

"Gracious heaven!" exclaimed the young man, throwing himself into Paul's arms, and bursting into tears.