by Ellen Wood
“How d’ye do, Sir Karl? Charming day for the holiday, is it not!”
Sir Karl made some answering assent, raised his hat, bowed, and passed on. The remark had come from an Englishman with whom he had a slight acquaintance, who had come out shop-gazing with his flock of daughters.
He went straight home then to his hotel — Hotel Montaigne, Rue Montaigne. As he crossed the courtyard, the landlord — a ponderous gentleman with a ponderous watch-chain — came out and gave him some letters. From some cause the English delivery had been late that morning.
One of the letters was from Captain Lamprey, the other from Plunkett and Plunkett. Neither contained any interest; neither thought to wish him happiness for the New Year. It was all the same to Karl Andinnian: the New Year could not have much happiness in store for him.
He strolled out again, turning his steps towards the Champs Elysées. It was but one o’clock yet, and the brightest part of the day. At one of the windows of the palace he fancied he caught a transient glimpse of the Empress. Shortly afterwards, the peculiar clatter of the Prince Imperial’s escort was heard advancing, surrounding the little prince in his carriage.
The Champs Elysées were bright to-day. Children attired in silks and satins were playing in the sun, their bonnes sitting by in their holiday costume. New Year’s Day and All Saints’ Day are the two most dressy epochs in the year in France — as everybody knows. Invalids sat in the warmth: ladies flitted hither and thither like gay butterflies. By a mere chance, Karl always thought it so, his eyes fell on two ladies seated alone on a distant bench. Involuntarily his steps halted; his heart leaped up with a joyous bound. They were Mrs and Miss Cleeve.
But, ah! how ill she looked — Lucy. The bounding heart fell again as though some dead weight were pressing it. Thin, worn, white; with dark circles round the eyes, and lips that seemed to have no life in them. For a moment Karl wondered whether he might not approach and question her: but he remembered his bargain with Colonel Cleeve.
They did not see him: they were looking at some children in front of them, playing at “Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre.” Karl pursued the path he was on, which would carry him away from their bench at right angles. He resolved that if they saw him he would go up and speak: if they did not, he must continue his way.
And he had to continue it. Mrs. Cleeve, who did not look to be in strong health either, seemed absorbed by the play and the childish voices chanting the chanson; Lucy had now bent her forehead upon her hand, as though some ache were there. Karl went on, out of sight, his brow aching too, “Bon jour, monsieur.”
The salutation, which had a touch of surprised pleasure in its tone, came from a natty-looking little Frenchwoman, with a thin red face and shrewd grey eyes. She might have been given five-and-thirty years: but in the register of her native Mairie she would have been found hard upon forty. Sir Karl stopped. She was Lucy’s maid: formerly Lucy’s nurse.
“C’est vous, Aglaé!”
“Mais oui, monsieur.”
“I thought I saw Mrs and Miss Cleeve sitting on a bench just now,” continued Karl, changing his language. “Are you staying in Paris?”
“Oh, very long since,” replied Aglaé, to whom both languages were nearly alike. “Our apartment is close by, sir — a small house in the Avenue d’Antin. The delight to find myself in my proper land again, where I can go about without one of those vilain bonnets and hear no street gamins hoot at me for it, is untellable.”
“I understood that Colonel Cleeve and his family had gone to Egypt for the winter,” observed Karl.
“To Egypt, or to some other place of barbarisme: so it was projected, sir. But my young lady, Miss Lucy, is not strong enough to be taken.”
“What is the matter with her?” asked Karl, with assumed quietness.
“The matter? Oh! The matter is, that she has got no happiness left in her heart, sir,” cried Aglaé, explosively, as if in deep resentment against things in general. “It’s dried up. And if they don’t mind, she will just go unwarningly out of life. That’s my opinion: and, mind, sir, I do not go to say it without reason.”
A slight blush mantled in Karl’s face. He seemed to be watching a red paper kite, that was sailing beneath the blue sky.
“They see it now, both of them; the Colonel and Madame; they see that she’s just slipping away from them, and they are ill. Ah but! the senseless — what you call it? — distinctions — that the English set up!”
“But what is the cause?” asked Karl. Though it seemed to him that he could discern quite well without being answered.
Aglaé threw her shrewd eyes into his.
“I think, sir, you might tell it for yourself, that She has not been well since that fever. She was not well before the fever, since — since about the month of May.”
He drew in his lips. Aglaé, with native independence, continued to stare at him.
“Why don’t you call and see her, sir?”
“Because — well, I suppose you know, Aglaé. I should not be welcome to Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve.”
“And the poor young lady, who never did harm to living soul, is to be let shrink down into her grave for the sake of English prejudice! I can see. I’ve got my wits about me, and have seen it all along. My service to you, sir. Bon jour.”
The maid went on in a rage, her dainty cap nodding, her smart boots going down rather more noisily than was needful. Sir Karl passed on his way, thinking deeply. He walked about until the daylight was fading, and then strode back rapidly to his hotel, with the air of a man who is about to carry out some resolution that will not wait. He was. A resolution that had been floating in his mind before he saw Lucy or encountered her maid.
Colonel Cleeve was seated alone that evening in his dining-room in the Avenue d’Antin, when a letter was delivered to him. For a few minutes he let it lie unheeded. The thoughts he was buried in were very sad ones — they ran on the decaying strength of his only daughter. It seemed to him and Mrs. Cleeve that unless some wonderful change — say a miracle, for instance — interposed, Lucy’s life was not worth many weeks’ purchase. They knew now — he and his wife — that the parting with Karl Andinnian had been too cruel for her.
Arousing himself from his gloomy visions, the Colonel opened the note — which had been left by hand. Why here was a strange thing! — he started in surprise. Started when he saw the contents of the letter and the signature appended. Had the miracle come?
It was one of the plain, candid, straightforward letters, so characteristic of Karl Andinnian. He said that he had chanced to see Miss Cleeve that day, that he had been shocked by her appearance; that he had happened to hear from Aglaé subsequently how very alarmingly she was failing. He went on to add with shrinking deprecation, every word of which told of the most sensitive refinement, that he feared the trouble of last May might have had something to do with it, and be still telling upon her. He then put a statement of his affairs, as to possessions and income, before Colonel Cleeve, and asked whether he might presume again to address Lucy now that he could offer a good settlement and make her Lady Andinnian.
Three times over Colonel Cleeve read the note, pausing well to reflect between each time. Then he sent for his wife.
“He is of no family — and there’s that dreadful slur upon it besides,” remarked the Colonel, talking it over. “But it may be the saving of Lucy’s life.”
“It is a good letter,” said Mrs. Cleeve, reading it through her eye-glass.
“It’s as good and proper a letter as any young man could write. All his instincts are honourable. Some men might have written to Lucy herself. Putting aside his lack of family and the other disrepute, we could not wish a better son-in-law than Sir Karl Andinnian.”
“Yes,” deliberated Mrs. Cleeve, after a pause. “True. The disadvantages are great: but they seem little when balanced against the chance of restoring Lucy’s life. She will be a baronet’s wife; she will be sufficiently rich; and — I think — she will be intensely happy.�
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“Then I’ll send for him,” said Colonel Cleeve.
The interview took place on the following morning. It was a peculiar one. Just as plainly open as Karl had been in his letter, so was the Colonel now.
“I think it may be the one chance for saving my child’s life,” he said; “for there is no denying that she was very much attached to you, Sir Karl. Sitting alone after dinner last evening, I was telling myself that nothing short of a miracle could help her: the doctors say they can do nothing, the malady is on her mind — though for my part I think the chief ill is the weakness left by that ague-fever. Your letter came to interrupt my thoughts; and when I read it I wondered whether that was the miracle.”
“If you will only give me Lucy, my whole life shall be devoted to her best comfort, sir,” he said in a low tone. “My happiness was wrecked equally with hers: but I am a man and therefore stronger to bear.”
“Nothing would have induced me to give her to you had your brother lived,” resumed the Colonel. “If I am too plain in what I say I must beg you to excuse it: but it is well that we should understand each other thoroughly. Yourself I like; I always have liked you; but the disgrace reflected upon you was so great while your brother was living, a convict, that to see Lucy your wife then would I think have killed both me and Mrs. Cleeve. Take it at the best, it would have embittered our lives for ever.”
“Had my unfortunate brother lived, I should never have attempted to ask for her, Colonel Cleeve.”
“Right I have observed that on most subjects your ideas coincide with my own. Rather than that — the disgrace to her and to us; and grievous though the affliction it would have brought to me and her mother — we would rather have laid our child to rest.” The deep emotion with which Colonel Cleeve spoke — the generally self-contained man whose calmness almost bordered upon apathy — proved how true the words were, and how terribly the sense of disgrace would have told upon him.
“But your unhappy brother has paid the forfeit of his crimes by death,” he continued, “and it is to be hoped and expected that in time the remembrance of him and of what he did will die out of people’s minds Therefore we have resolved to trust to this hope, and give you Lucy. It will be better than to let her die.”
Sir Karl Andinnian drew in his slender lips. But that he had passed through a course of most bitter humiliation — and that, wherever it falls, seems for the time to wash out pride — he might have shown resentment at the last words. The Colonel saw he felt the sting: and he wished it had not been his province to indict it “It was best to explain this, Sir Karl. Pardon me for its sound of harshness. And now that it is over and done with, let me say that never for a moment have I or Mrs. Cleeve blamed you. It was not your fault that your brother lost himself; neither could you have helped it: and we have both felt almost as sorry for you as though you had been a relative of our own. I beg that henceforth his name may never be mentioned between you and us: the past, so far as regards him, must be as though it had never been. You will observe this reticence?”
“Unquestionably.”
“The affair is settled then, Andinnian. Will you see Lucy?”
“If I may,” replied Karl, a bright smile succeeding to the sadness on his face. “Does she know I am here?”
“She knows nothing. Her mother thought it might be better that I should speak to you first You can tell her all yourself. But mind you do it quietly, for she is very weak.”
Lucy happened to be alone in the salon. She sat in a red velvet arm-chair as big as a canopy, looking at the pretty étrenne her mother had given her the previous day — a bracelet of links studded with turquoise and a drooping turquoise heart. A smile of gratitude parted her lips; though tears stood in her eyes, for she believed she should not live to wear it long.
“Lucy,” said her father, looking in as he opened the door. “I have brought you a visitor who has called — Sir Karl Andinnian.”
Lucy rose in trembling astonishment; the morocco case, which had been on her lap, failing to the ground. She wore a dress of violet silk, and Aglaé had folded about her a white shawl — for chillness was present with her still. Karl advanced, and the Colonel shut them in together.
He took both her hands in his, slipping the bracelet on to her attenuated wrist, — and quietly held them. The poor wan face and the hectic colour his presence had called up, had all his attention just then.
“I saw you in the Champs Elysées yesterday, Lucy. It pained me very much to see you so much changed.”
“Did you see me? I was there with mamma. It is the fever I had in the summer that hangs about me and does not let me yet get strong.”
“Is it nothing else, Lucy?”
The hectic deepened to crimson. The soft brown eyes drooped beneath the gaze of his.
“I fancied there might be another cause for it, Lucy, and I have ventured to say so to Colonel Cleeve. He agrees with me.”
“You — you were not afraid to call here!” she exclaimed, as if the fact were a subject of wonder.
“What I had to say to Colonel Cleeve I wrote by letter. After that, he invited me to call.”
Karl sat down on the red sofa opposite the chair, and put Lucy by him, his arm entwining her waist “I want you,” he said, “to tell me exactly what it is that keeps you from getting strong, Lucy.”
“But I cannot tell you, for I don’t know,” she answered with a little sob. “I wish I could get well, Karl — for poor papa and mamma’s sake.”
“Do you think I could do anything towards the restoration, Lucy?” he continued, drawing her closer to his side.
“What could you do?”
“Watch you, and tend you, and love you. And — and make you my wife.”
“Don’t jest, Karl,” she said, whispering and trembling. “You know it may not be.”
“But if Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve say that it may be?” —
The tone of his voice was redolent of anything but jesting: it was one of deep truthful emotion. Lucy looked questioningly up at him.
“Oh Karl, don’t play with me! What do you mean?”
He caught the sweet face, and held it to his. His own hands were trembling, his face was pale as hers. But she could not mistake his grave earnestness.
“It means, my darling, that you are to be mine for ever. My wife. They are going to give you to me: your father brought me here that I might myself break it to you.”
A minute’s doubting look; a slight shiver as if the joy were too great; and then with a sigh she let her head fall on his breast — its future resting-place.
“And what’s this that you were looking at, Lucy?” he asked after a while, turning the pretty bracelet round and round her wrist.
“Mamma bought it me yesterday for my New Year’s étrenne. I was thinking — before you came — that I might not live to wear it.”
“I was thinking yesterday, Lucy, as I walked along the Boulevards, that I would give a great deal to have some one to buy étrennes for. It is not too late, is it? Meanwhile—”
Breaking off his sentence, he took a very rare ring from his finger, one of the most brilliant of opals encompassed by diamonds. She had never seen him wear it before.
“Oh, how very beautiful!” she exclaimed, as it flashed in a gleam of reflected sunlight.
“I do not give it you, Lucy,” he said, putting it upon her finger. “I lend it you until I can find another fit to replace it. That may be in a day, or so. This ring was my father’s: made a present of to him by an Eastern Sultan, to whom he was able to render an essential service. At my father’s death it came to my brother: and — later — to me.”
Karl’s voice dropped as he was concluding. Lucy Cleeve felt for him; she knew what he must feel at the allusion. She glided her hand into his, unsought.
“So until then this ring shall be the earnest of our betrothal, Lucy. You will take care of it: and of my love.”
The ring was the same that had been seen on Sir Adam’s finger at the trial.
On that same day, after his condemnation, he had taken it off, and caused it to be conveyed to Karl — his, from henceforth. But Karl had never put it on his own finger until after his brother’s death.
CHAPTER IX.
Down at Foxwood.
As Sir Karl Andinnian was leaving the house, he saw Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve in the dining-room. The latter held out her hand to Karl. He clasped it warmly.
“I am glad it is settled,” she said, in a low, impressive tone. “You will take good care of her, I know, and make her happy.”
“With the best energies of my heart and life,” was his earnest answer. “Dear Mrs. Cleeve, I can never sufficiently thank you.”
The voices penetrated to a dressing-chamber at the end of the short passage, the door of which was ajar. A lady in travelling attire peeped out. It was Miss Blake, who had just arrived from England somewhat unexpectedly. Karl passed out at the front door. Miss Blake’s eyes, wide open with astonishment, followed him.
“Surely that was Captain Andinnian!” she exclaimed, advancing towards the dining-room.
“Captain Andinnian that used to be, Theresa,” replied Colonel Cleeve. “He is Sir Karl Andinnian now.”
“Yes, yes; but one is apt to forget new titles,” was her impatient rejoinder. “I heard he was staying in Paris. What should bring him in this house? Is he allowed to call at it?” —
“For the future he will be. He is to have Lucy. Mrs. Cleeve will tell you about it,” concluded the Colonel. “I must write my letters.”
Mrs. Cleeve was smiling meaningly. Theresa Blake, utterly puzzled, looked from one to the other. “Have Lucy!” she cried. “Have her for what?”
“Why, to be his wife,” said Mrs. Cleeve. “Could you not have guessed, Theresa?”
“To — be — his — Wife!” echoed Miss Blake. “Karl Andinnian’s wife! No, no; it cannot be.”
“But it is, Theresa. It has been settled to-day. Sir Karl has now gone out from his first interview With her. Why, thy dear, I quite believe that if we had not brought it about, Lucy would have died. They are all the World to each other.”