Read Complete Works of Wilkie Collins Online
Authors: Wilkie Collins
He bent down and whispered to her a bridegroom’s compliment, which brought the blood back to her cheek in an instant.
“Ah, how she loves him — how dearly she loves him!” thought her brother, watching her from his solitary corner of the room, and seeing the smile that brightened her blushing face when Danville kissed her hand at parting.
Lomaque, who had remained imperturbably cool during the outbreak of the old lady’s anger — Lomaque, whose observant eyes had watched sarcastically the effect of the scene between mother and son on Trudaine and his sister, was the last to take leave. After he had bowed to Rose with a certain gentleness in his manner, which contrasted strangely with his wrinkled, haggard face, he held out his hand to her brother “I did not take your hand when we sat together on the bench,” he said; “may I take it now?”
Trudaine met his advance courteously, but in silence. “You may alter your opinion of me one of these days.” Adding those words in a whisper, Monsieur Lomaque bowed once more to the bride and went out.
For a few minutes after the door had closed the brother and sister kept silence. “Our last night together at home!” That was the thought which now filled the heart of each. Rose was the first to speak. Hesitating a little as she approached her brother, she said to him, anxiously:
“I am sorry for what happened with Madame Danville, Louis. Does it make you think the worse of Charles?”
“I can make allowance for Madame Danville’s anger,” returned Trudaine, evasively, “because she spoke from honest conviction.”
“Honest?” echoed Rose, sadly, “honest? — ah, Louis! I know you are thinking disparagingly of Charles’s convictions, when you speak so of his mother’s.”
Trudaine smiled and shook his head; but she took no notice of the gesture of denial — only stood looking earnestly and wistfully into his face. Her eyes began to fill; she suddenly threw her arms round his neck, and whispered to him: “Oh, Louis, Louis! how I wish I could teach you to see Charles with my eyes!”
He felt her tears on his cheek as she spoke, and tried to reassure her.
“You shall teach me, Rose — you shall, indeed. Come, come, we must keep up our spirits, or how are you to look your best to-morrow?”
He unclasped her arms, and led her gently to a chair. At the same moment there was a knock at the door, and Rose’s maid appeared, anxious to consult her mistress on some of the preparations for the wedding ceremony. No interruption could have been more welcome just at that time. It obliged Rose to think of present trifles, and it gave her brother an excuse for retiring to his study.
He sat down by his desk, doubting and heavy-hearted, and placed the letter from the Academy of Sciences open before him.
Passing over all the complimentary expressions which it contained, his eye rested only on these lines at the end: “During the first three years of your professorship, you will be required to reside in or near Paris nine months out of the year, for the purpose of delivering lectures and superintending experiments from time to time in the labouratories.” The letter in which these lines occurred offered him such a position as in his modest self-distrust he had never dreamed of before; the lines themselves contained the promise of such vast facilities for carrying on his favorite experiments as he could never hope to command in his own little study, with his own limited means; and yet, there he now sat doubting whether he should accept or reject the tempting honours and advantages that were offered to him — doubting for his sister’s sake!
“Nine months of the year in Paris,” he said to himself, sadly; “and Rose is to pass her married life at Lyons. Oh, if I could clear my heart of its dread on her account — if I could free my mind of its forebodings for her future — how gladly I would answer this letter by accepting the trust it offers me!”
He paused for a few minutes, and reflected. The thoughts that were in him marked their ominous course in the growing paleness of his cheek, in the dimness that stole over his eyes. “If this cleaving distrust from which I cannot free myself should be in very truth the mute prophecy of evil to come — to come, I know not when — if it be so (which God forbid!), how soon she may want a friend, a protector near at hand, a ready refuge in the time of her trouble! Where shall she then find protection or refuge? With that passionate woman? With her husband’s kindred and friends?”
He shuddered as the thought crossed his mind, and opening a blank sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the ink. “Be all to her, Louis, that I have been,” he murmured to himself, repeating his mother’s last words, and beginning the letter while he uttered them. It was soon completed. It expressed in the most respectful terms his gratitude for the offer made to him, and his inability to accept it, in consequence of domestic circumstances which it was needless to explain. The letter was directed, sealed; it only remained for him to place it in the post-bag, lying near at hand. At this last decisive act he hesitated. He had told Lomaque, and he had firmly believed himself, that he had conquered all ambitions for his sister’s sake. He knew now, for the first time, that he had only lulled them to rest — he knew that the letter from Paris had aroused them. His answer was written, his hand was on the post-bag, and at that moment the whole struggle had to be risked over again — risked when he was most unfit for it! He was not a man under any ordinary circumstances to procrastinate, but he procrastinated now.
“Night brings counsel; I will wait till to-morrow,” he said to himself, and put the letter of refusal in his pocket, and hastily quitted the labouratory.
Inexorably the important morrow came: irretrievably, for good or for evil, the momentous marriage-vow was pronounced. Charles Danville and Rose Trudaine were now man and wife. The prophecy of the magnificent sunset overnight had not proved false. It was a cloudless day on the marriage morning. The nuptial ceremonies had proceeded smoothly throughout, and had even satisfied Madame Danville. She returned with the wedding-party to Trudaine’s house, all smiles and serenity. To the bride she was graciousness itself. “Good girl,” said the old lady, following Rose into a corner, and patting her approvingly on the cheek with her fan; “good girl, you have looked well this morning — you have done credit to my son’s taste. Indeed, you have pleased me, child! Now go upstairs, and get on your traveling-dress, and count on my maternal affection as long as you make Charles happy.”
It had been arranged that the bride and bridegroom should pass their honeymoon in Brittany, and then return to Danville’s estate near Lyons. The parting was hurried over, as all such partings should be. The carriage had driven off; Trudaine, after lingering long to look after it, had returned hastily to the house; the very dust of the whirling wheels had all dispersed; there was absolutely nothing to see; and yet there stood Monsieur Lomaque at the outer gate; idly, as if he was an independent man — calmly, as if no such responsibilities as the calling of Madame Danville’s coach, and the escorting of Madame Danville back to Lyons, could possibly rest on his shoulders.
Idly and calmly, slowly rubbing his hands one over the other, slowly nodding his head in the direction by which the bride and bridegroom had departed, stood the eccentric land-steward at the outer gate. On a sudden the sound of footsteps approaching from the house seemed to arouse him. Once more he looked out into the road, as if he expected still to see the carriage of the newly-married couple. “Poor girl! ah, poor girl!” said Monsieur Lomaque softly to himself, turning round to ascertain who was coming from the house.
It was only the postman with a letter in his hand, and the post-bag crumpled up under his arm.
“Any fresh news from Paris, friend?” asked Lomaque.
“Very bad, monsieur,” answered the postman. “Camille Desmoulins has appealed to the people in the Palais Royal; there are fears of a riot.”
“Only a riot!” repeated Lomaque, sarcastically. “Oh, what a brave Government not to be afraid of anything worse! Any letters?” he added, hastily dropping the subject.
“None
to
the house,” said the postman, “only one
from
it, given me by Monsieur Trudaine. Hardly worth while,” he added, twirling the letter in his hand, “to put it into the bag, is it?”
Lomaque looked over his shoulder as he spoke, and saw that the letter was directed to the President of the Academy of Sciences, Paris.
“I wonder whether he accepts the place or refuses it?” thought the land-steward, nodding to the postman, and continuing on his way back to the house.
At the door he met Trudaine, who said to him, rather hastily, “You are going back to Lyons with Madame Danville, I suppose?”
“This very day,” answered Lomaque.
“If you should hear of a convenient bachelor lodging, at Lyons, or near it,” continued the other, dropping his voice and speaking more rapidly than before, “you would be doing me a favor if you would let me know about it.”
Lomaque assented; but before he could add a question which was on the tip of his tongue, Trudaine had vanished in the interior of the house.
“A bachelor lodging!” repeated the land-steward, standing alone on the doorstep. “At or near Lyons! Aha! Monsieur Trudaine, I put your bachelor lodging and your talk to me last night together, and I make out a sum total which is, I think, pretty near the mark. You have refused that Paris appointment, my friend; and I fancy I can guess why.”
He paused thoughtfully, and shook his head with ominous frowns and bitings of his lips.
“All clear enough in that sky,” he continued, after a while, looking up at the lustrous midday heaven. “All clear enough there; but I think I see a little cloud rising in a certain household firmament already — a little cloud which hides much, and which I for one shall watch carefully.”
Five years have elapsed since Monsieur Lomaque stood thoughtfully at the gate of Trudaine’s house, looking after the carriage of the bride and bridegroom, and seriously reflecting on the events of the future. Great changes have passed over that domestic firmament in which he prophetically discerned the little warning cloud. Greater changes have passed over the firmament of France.
What was revolt five years ago is Revolution now — revolution which has ingulfed thrones, and principalities, and powers; which has set up crownless, inhereditary kings and counselors of its own, and has bloodily torn them down again by dozens; which has raged and raged on unrestrainedly in fierce earnest, until but one king can still govern and control it for a little while. That king is named Terror, and seventeen hundred and ninety-four is the year of his reign.
Monsieur Lomaque, land-steward no longer, sits alone in an official-looking room in one of the official buildings of Paris. It is another July evening, as fine as that evening when he and Trudaine sat talking together on the bench overlooking the Seine. The window of the room is wide open, and a faint, pleasant breeze is beginning to flow through it. But Lomaque breathes uneasily, as if still oppressed by the sultry midday heat; and there are signs of perplexity and trouble in his face as he looks down absently now and then into the street.
The times he lives in are enough of themselves to sadden any man’s face. In the Reign of Terror no living being in all the city of Paris can rise in the morning and be certain of escaping the spy, the denunciation, the arrest, or the guillotine, before night. Such times are trying enough to oppress any man’s spirits; but Lomaque is not thinking of them or caring for them now. Out of a mass of papers which lie before him on his old writing-table, he has just taken up and read one, which has carried his thoughts back to the past, and to the changes which have taken place since he stood alone on the doorstep of Trudaine’s house, pondering on what might happen.
More rapidly even than he had foreboded those changes had occurred. In less time even than he had anticipated, the sad emergency for which Rose’s brother had prepared, as for a barely possible calamity, overtook Trudaine, and called for all the patience, the courage, the self-sacrifice which he had to give for his sister’s sake. By slow gradations downward, from bad to worse, her husband’s character manifested itself less and less disguisedly almost day by day. Occasional slights, ending in habitual neglect; careless estrangement, turning to cool enmity; small insults, which ripened evilly to great injuries — these were the pitiless signs which showed her that she had risked all and lost all while still a young woman — these were the unmerited afflictions which found her helpless, and would have left her helpless, but for the ever-present comfort and support of her brother’s self-denying love. From the first, Trudaine had devoted himself to meet such trials as now assailed him; and like a man he met them, in defiance alike of persecution from the mother and of insult from the son.