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

“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.

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 and State affairs with a most cordial detestation. His presence, however, was a compliment that the Court always paid “the Countess,” and he submitted to his torn of duty manfully.

Deeply involved in the clouds of his cigar-smoke, and even more enveloped in the misty regions of his own reveries, he sipped his wine in silence, and heard nothing of the conversation about him. The Minister was then perfectly free to discuss the themes most interesting to him, and learn whatever he could of the state of public opinion in Italy.

“You are quite right, Abbé,” said he, with a sage shake of the head. “Small concessions, petty glimpses of liberty, only give a zest for more enlarged privileges. There is nothing like a good flood of popular anarchy for creating a wholesome disgust to freedom. There must be excesses!”

“Precisely so, sir,” said the Abbé. “There can be no question of an antidote if there has been no poisoning.”

“Ay; but may not this system be pushed too far? Is not his Holiness already doing so?”

“Some are disposed to think so, but I am not of the number,” said D’Esmonde. “It is necessary that he should himself be convinced that the system is a bad one; and there is no mode of conviction so palpable as by a personal experience. Now, this he will soon have. As yet, he does not see that every step in political freedom is an advance towards the fatal heresy that never ceases its persecutions of the Church. Not that our Revolutionists care for Protestantism or the Bible either; but, by making common cause with those who do, see what a large party in England becomes interested for their success. The right of judgment conceded in religious matters, how can you withhold it in political ones? The men who brave the Church will not tremble before a cabinet. Now the Pope sees nothing of this; he even mistakes the flatteries offered to himself for testimonies of attachment to the Faith, and all those kneeling hypocrites who implore his blessing he fancies are faithful children of Rome. He must be awakened from this delusion; but yet none save himself can dispel it He is obstinate and honest.”