CHAPTER XXXV.
THE GARDEN HOUSE.
From coming home so late, and dropping off to sleep so soon andheavily, Gilbert forgot to hang up the linen cloth which served ascurtain to the garret window. The unintercepted sunbeam struck his eyesat five and speedily woke him. He rose, vexed at having overslept.
Brought up in the country, he could exactly tell the time by the sun'sinclination and the amount of heat it emitted. He hastened to consultthis clock. The pallor of the dawn, scarcely clearing the high trees,set him at ease; he was rising too early, not too late.
He made his ablutions at the skylight, thinking over what had happenedover night, and gladly baring his burning and burdened forehead to thefresh morning breeze. Then it came to his mind that Andrea was housednext door to Armenonville House, in an adjoining street. He wanted todistinguish this residence.
The sight of shade-trees reminded him of her question to herbrother,--Was there a garden where they were going?
"Why may it not be just such a house in the back garden as we haveyonder?" he asked himself.
By a strange coincidence with his thought, a sound and a movementquite unusual drew his attention where it was turning; one of the longfastened up windows of a house built at the rear of the one on theother street shook under a rough or clumsy hand. The frame gave way atthe top; but it stuck probably with damp swelling it at the bottom. Astill rougher push started the two folds of the sash, which opened likea door, and the gap showed a girl, red with the exertion she had tomake and shaking her dusty hands.
Gilbert uttered an outcry in astonishment and quickly drew back, forthis sleepy and yawning girl was Nicole.
He could harbor no doubt now. Philip Taverney had told his father thathe had sent on Labrie and their maid servant to get a lodging ready inParis. Hence this was the one. The house in Coq-Heron Street, where thetravelers had disappeared--was this with the extra building in the rear.
Gilbert's withdrawal had been so marked that Nicole must have noticedit only for her being absorbed in that idle fit seizing one justarisen. But he had retired swiftly, not to be caught by her whilelooking out of a garret window. Perhaps if he had lived on the firstfloor, and his window had given a view within of a richly furnishedapartment, he would have called her attention on it. But the fifth flatstill classed him among social inferiors, so that he wanted to keep inthe background.
Besides, it is always an advantage to see without being seen.
Again, if Andrea saw him, might she not consider that enough to induceher to move away, or at least not to stroll about the garden?
Alas, for Gilbert's conceit! it enlarged him in his own eyes; but whatmattered Gilbert to the patrician, and what would make her move a stepnearer or further from him? Was she not of the class of women who wouldcome out from a bath with a peasant or a footman by, and not regardthem as men?
But Nicole was not of this degree, and she had to be avoided.
But Gilbert did not keep away from the window. He returned to peep outat the corner.
A second window, exactly beneath the other, opened also, and thewhite figure appearing there was Andrea's. In a morning gown, she wasstooping to look after her slipper fallen under a chair.
In vain did Gilbert, every time he saw his beloved, make a vow toresist his passion within a rampart of hate; the same effect followedthe cause. He was obliged to lean on the wall, with his heart throbbingas if to burst and the blood boiling all over his body.
As the arteries cooled gradually, he reflected. The main point was tospy without being seen. He took one of Madame Rousseau's old dressesoff the clothesline, and fastened it with a pin on a string across hiswindow so that he might watch Andrea under the improvised screen.
Andrea imitated Nicole in stretching her lovely arms, which, by thisextension, parted the gown an instant; then she leaned out to examinethe neighboring grounds at her leisure. Her face expressed raresatisfaction, for while she seldom smiled on men, she made up for it byoften smiling on things.
On all sides the rear house was shaded by fine trees.
Rousseau's house attracted her gaze like all the other buildings, butno more. From her point, the upper part alone could be espied, but whatconcern had she in the servants' quarters in a house?
Andrea therefore came to the conclusion that she was unseen and alone,with no curious or joking face of Parisians on the edge of thistranquil retreat, so dreaded by country ladies.
Leaving her window wide open for the sunshine to flush the remotestcorners, the young lady went to pull the bellrope at the fire-placeside and began to dress in the twilight. Nicole ran in and opening thestraps of a shagreen dressing-case dating from a previous reign, took atortoise-shell comb and disentangled her mistress' tresses.
Gilbert smothered a sigh. He could hardly be said to recognize thehair, for Andrea followed the fashion in powdering it, but he knew hera hundred times fairer without the frippery than in the most pompousdecorations. His mouth dried up, his fingers scorched with fever, andhis eye ceased to see from his staring too hard.
Chance ruled that Andrea's gaze, idle as it was from her sitting stillto have her hair brushed, fell on Rousseau's attic.
"Yes, yes, keep on staring," uttered the youth, "but you will seenothing and I shall see all."
But he was wrong, for she descried the novel screen of the old dresswhich floated round the man's head as a kind of turban. She pointed outthis odd curtain to her maid. Nicole stopped and pointed with the combto the object to ask whether that were the reason for her mistress'amusement.
Without his suspecting it, this had a fourth spectator.
He suddenly felt a hasty hand snatch Madame Rousseau's dress from hisbrow, and he fell back thunderstricken at recognizing the master.
"What the deuse are you up to?" queried the philosopher, with afrowning brow and a sour grin as he examined the gown.
"Nothing," stammered the other, trying to divert the intruder's sightfrom the window.
"Then why hide up in this dress?"
"The sun was too bright for me."
"The sun is at the back of us, and I think it is you who are too brightfor me. You have very weak eyes, young man."
Rousseau walked straight up to the window. By a very natural feeling tobe a veil to his beauty, Gilbert, who had shrunk away, now rushed inbetween.
"Bless me, the rear house is lived in now!" The tone froze the blood inGilbert's veins, and he could not get out a word. "And by people whoknow my house, for they are pointing up to it," added the suspiciousauthor.
Gilbert, fearful now that he was too forward, retreated. Neither themovement nor its cause escaped Rousseau, who saw that his employeetrembled to be seen.
"No, you don't, young man!" he said, grasping him by the wrist; "thereis some plot afoot, for they are pointing out your garret. Stand here,pray."
He placed him before the window, in the uncovered glare.
Gilbert would have had to struggle with his idol, and respectrestrained him from thus being free.
"You know those women, and they know you," continued Rosseau, "or, whydo you shrink from showing yourself?"
"Monsieur Rousseau, you have had secrets in your life. Pity for mine!"
"Traitor!" cried the writer; "I know your sort of secret. You are thetool of my enemies, the Grimms and Holbachs. They taught you a partto captivate my benevolence, and, sneaking into my house, you arebetraying me. Threefold fool that I am, stupid lover of nature, tothink I was helping one of my kind, and to nourish a spy!"
"A spy?" repeated the other in revolt.
"When are you to deliver me to my murderers, O Judas?" demandedRousseau, draping himself in Therese's dress, which he had mechanicallykept in hand, and looking droll when he fancied he was sublime withsorrow.
"You calumniate me, sir," said Gilbert.
"Calumniate this little viper!" said the philosopher, "when I catch youcorresponding in dumb show with my enemies--I daresay acquainting themin signs with my latest work."
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nbsp; "Had I come to steal your story, sir, I should better have made a copyof the manuscript, lying on your desk, than to convey it in signs."
This was true, and Rousseau felt that he had made one of those blunderswhich escaped him in his moments of fear, and he became angry.
"I am sorry for you, but experience makes me stern," he said. "My lifehas passed amid deceit. I have been betrayed by everybody, denied, soldand martyrized. You know I am one of those illustrious unfortunateswhom governments outlaw. Under such circumstances, I may be allowedto be suspicious. As you are a suspicious character, you must takeyourself out of this house."
Gilbert had not expected this conclusion. He was to be driven forth!He clenched his fists, and a flash in his eyes made Rousseau start.Gilbert reflected that in going he would lose the mild pleasure ofseeing his loved one during the day, and lose Rousseau's affection--itwas shame as well as misfortune.
Dropping from his fierce pride, he clasped his hands and implored:
"Listen to me, if only one word!"
"I am merciless," replied the author: "man's injustice has made memore ferocious than a tiger. Go and join my enemies with whom youcorrespond. League yourself with them, which I do not hinder, but doall this beyond my domicile."
"Those young women are no enemies of yours--they are MademoiselleAndrea of Taverney, the young lady I told you of, on whose estate I wasborn, and her maid Nicole. Excuse me troubling you with such matters,but you drive me to it. This is the lady whom I love more than you everloved all your flames. It is she whom I followed afoot, penniless andwanting bread, until I fell exhausted on the highway and racked withpain. It is she whom I saw once more yesterday at St. Denis, and behindwhose coach I came till I housed her in the place yonder. In short, itis she for whom I wish one of these days to be a great man--a Rousseau!"
His hearer knew the human heart, and the gamut of its exclamations. Thebest actor could hardly have Gilbert's tearful voice and the feverishgesture accompanying the effusion.
"So this is your lady love?"
"My foster-sister, yes."
"Then you lied a while ago when you said you knew her not, and you area liar, if not a traitor."
"You are racking my heart and you would hurt me less were you to slayme on the spot."
"Pooh! that is a mere piece of fustian out of the Diderot or Marmontelbooks. You are a liar, sir."
"Have it so, and the worse for you that you do not understand suchwhite lies!" retorted Gilbert. "I shall go, heartbroken, and you willhave my despair on your conscience."
Rousseau smoothed his chin and regarded the youth whose case had somuch analogy with his own.
"He is either a great rogue or a lad with a big heart," he mused; "butafter all, if he is in a plot against me, it will be best to have thewires of the puppets in my hand."
Gilbert strode to the door, but he paused with his hand on the knob,waiting for the last word to recall or banish him.
"Enough on this head, my son," said the man of letters. "It is hardenough for you to be in love, to this degree. But it is getting on, andwe have thirty pages of music to copy this day. Look alive, Gilbert,look alive!"
Gilbert grasped the speaker's hand and pressed it to his lips as hewould not a king's. While Gilbert leaned up against the doorjamb withemotion, Rousseau took a last peep out of the window. This was themoment when Andrea stood up to put on her dress, but seeing a person upat the attic window, she darted back and bade Nicole shut the sashes.
"My old head frightened her," mumbled the philosopher; "his youthfulone would not have done that. Oh, youth, lovely youth!" he broke forth,sighing, "'Spring is the love-time of the year! love is the springtimeof life!'"
Hanging up the dress, he melancholically descended the stairs at theheels of Gilbert, for whose youth he would at that time have barteredhis reputation, at that juncture counterbalancing Voltaire's and withit sharing the admiration of the entire world.
Balsamo, the Magician; or, The Memoirs of a Physician Page 35