Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by in which he could count the cost.

  “Let me go back, M. Lenoble,” the Englishwoman said presently. The faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. “Let me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no, no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me.”

  “That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte directly; but you must first promise to be my wife.”

  “Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible.”

  “Because you do not love me,” said Gustave, with mournful gravity.

  “Because I am not worthy of you.”

  Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few words.

  “You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you,” said the student passionately. “You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is true as the heaven above us — true as life or death — death that was so near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me from that moment. I was subjugated — possessed — yours at once and for ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?”

  “You love me,” the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were almost beyond her comprehension,—”you love me, a creature so lost, so friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!”

  “I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question — will you be my wife?”

  “You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me.”

  “Yes, I am mad — madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer you — a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God gives them strength. It is better than the river.”

  All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort, almost hope.

  “Will you be my friend?” she said gently. “Your words seem to bring me back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I have friends in England — friends who were once all that is dear and kind; but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give. And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only words of friendship I have heard for a long time.”

  “And you will give me the right to work for you — to protect you? You will be my wife?”

  “I would rather be your servant,” she answered, with sad humility. “What right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish as your love for me — if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of to-night!”

  “It is a fancy that will last my life.”

  “Ah, you do not know how such fancies change.”

  “I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is

  growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder.

  You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old

  Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?”

  “No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking — I—”

  She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the suicide’s madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were still lingering.

  They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman’s wasted hand rested for the first time on M. Lenoble’s arm. She was his — his by the intervention and by the decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man’s mind. He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night.

  “You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning, dearest,” he said. “I have so much to say — so much. Until then, adieu!”

  He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and then went to his own humble bachelor’s chamber, singing a little drinking song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure.

  They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband. It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute — penniless, helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter.

  “Let me tell you my wretched story,” she pleaded, as she walked under the chestnut-trees by her lover’s side. “Let me tell you everything. And if, when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand — you can never know what you seem to me.”

  And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told him her story.

  “My father was a tradesman in the city of London,” she said. “We were very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to me — my mother’s anxiety, my father’s steady, unpretending kindness — I feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since then.”

  She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story of his future wife’s youth. That there could be any passage in that history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame involved in the story, as Madame Meynell’s manner led him to suppose there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be his, as she was his.

  “When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to me — my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father, and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister’s house. We met by accident in a field on my brother-in-law’s farm, where the gentleman was shooting; and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with my sister’s knowledge and consent. She loved me so d
early, and was so proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of, was a younger son, and by no means a rich man.”

  Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave express his sympathy.

  “I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days — so bright, so brief. I cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville’s, and an imprudent marriage on his brother’s part might have prevented the performance of it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon’s visits to the farm. He came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved Montague Kingdon as you say you love me — foolishly, recklessly. I could not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull. From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with debt and difficulty. We lived abroad — not for our pleasure, but because Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years, when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me.”

  “My dear love, my heart is all pity for you,” said Gustave. “Do not tell me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which neglect gave place to desertion.”

  “Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step. He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back! — as if he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you first met me here, I had not long received that letter.”

  This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked of Providence.

  To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel.

  The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the rescue of offended pride, of outraged love — tortured to think that she, so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the dust by another — came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to love her so much the more dearly.

  “My darling,” he said softly, “it is a very sad story, and you and I will never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will begin a new life together.”

  This was the end of M. Lenoble’s wooing. He could not speak of his love any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon’s name had but lately died away on Susan Meynell’s lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or sentimental rapture.

  M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of their union?

  “Why should you take so much trouble about me?” said Susan, in her low sad voice. “You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care and thought from you.”

  “Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?”

  “I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the rest of mankind — with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my heart but love for you, and faith in you.”

  After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a fortnight’s sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the bonds of matrimony.

  Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the Pantheon — a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two.

  CHAPTER IV.

  A DECREE OF BANISHMENT.

  After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice of Wisdom, unheard while Passion’s tempest was raging, whispers grave counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud, sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face in the clear, common light of day.

  Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought cou
ld reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity — the necessity of going to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had been shattered by this deed of his.

  The letters from Cydalise — nay, indeed, more than one letter from his mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business — had of late expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would be made ready for his signature. Every hour’s delay was a new dishonour. He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like the ministration of an angel.

  “My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought me!” he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about the room, busy with the preparations for his journey.

  And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter — commonplace, stiff, and unimpressionable — the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face, in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his sister’s praises.

  He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he thought of Madelon’s dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate — as maidens were rescued from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles.

  “Madelon is not unlike a whale,” he thought. “They tell us that whales are of a sagacious and amiable temper, — and Cydalise was always talking of Madelon’s good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled virtues of Madelon Frehlter.”

  His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days, when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine, cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M. Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make his way to the paternal mansion as best he might.