The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

He recalled the profound emotion this sight had given him and half plunged in dreams anew, he murmured:

“My mother?”

At this juncture, a door in the wall over against him opened. A woman appeared. This appearance was so much in harmony with what happened in his fancy, that he started to see his ghost take substance. In this woman was the vision and the reality – the lady seen at Satory.

He sprang up as though a spring had acted under his feet.

His lips tightened on one another, his eyes expanded, and the pupils dilated. His heaving breast in vain endeavored to form a sound.

Majestic, haughty and disdainful, the lady passed him without any heed. Calm as she was externally, yet her pale countenance, frowning brow and whistling respiration, betrayed that she was in great nervous irritation.

She crossed the room diagonally, opened another door, and walked into a corridor.

Sebastian comprehended that she was escaping him, if he did not hasten. He still looked as if apprehensive that it was a ghost, but then darted after her, before the skirt of her silken robe had disappeared round the turning of the lobby.

Hearing steps behind her, she walked more briskly as if fearing pursuit.

He quickened his gait as much as he could, fearing as the corridor was dark that he might miss her. This caused her to accelerate her pace also, but she looked round.

He uttered a cry of joy for it was clearly the vision.

Seeing but a boy with extended arms and understanding nothing why she should be chased, the lady hurried down a flight of stairs. But she had barely descended to one landing than Sebastian arrived at the end of the passage where he called out:

“Lady, oh, lady!”

This voice produced a strange sensation throughout the hearer; she seemed struck in the heart by a pain which was half delight, and from the heart a shudder sent by the blood through all her veins.

Nevertheless, as all was a puzzle to her; she doubled her speed, and the course resembled a flight.

They reached the foot of the stairs at the same time.

It was the courtyard into which the lady sped. A carriage was waiting for her, for a servant was holding the door open. She stepped in swiftly and took her seat.

Before the door could be closed, Sebastian glided in between it and the footman, and seizing the hem of her dress, kissed with frenzy and cried:

“Oh, lady!”

Looking at the pretty boy who had frightened her at first, she said in a sweeter voice than she usually spoke, though it was yet shaken with fear and emotion:

“Well, my little friend, why are you running after me? why do you call me? what do you want?”

“I want to see you, and kiss you,” replied the child. “I want to call you ‘Mother,'” he added in so low a voice that only she could hear him.

She uttered a scream, embraced him, and approaching him as by a sudden revelation, fastened her ardent lips on his brow. Then, as though she dreaded someone coming to snatch away this child whom she had found, she drew him entirely into the vehicle, pushed him to its other side, shut the door with her own hand, and lowering the glass to order: “Drive to No. 9 Coq-Heron Street, the first carriage-doorway from Plastriere Street,” she shut the window instantly.

Turning to the boy she asked his name.

“Sebastian? come, Sebastian, come here, on my heart.”

She threw herself back as if going to swoon, muttering: “What new sensation is this? can it be what is called happiness?”

The journey was one long kiss of mother and son.

She had found this son by a miracle, whom the father had torn from her in a terrible night of anguish and dishonor; he had disappeared with no trace but the abductor’s tracks in the snow; this child had been detested until she heard its first wail, whereupon she had loved him; this child had been prayed for, called for, begged for. Her brother had uselessly hunted for him over land and ocean. For fifteen years she had yearned for him, and despaired to behold him again; she had begun to think no more of him but as a cherished spirit. Here he was, running and crying after her, seeking her, in his turn, calling her “Mother!”

He was pillowed on her heart, pressing on her bosom, loving her filially although he had never seen her, as she loved him with maternal affection. Her pure lips recovered all the joys of a lost life in this first kiss given her son.

Above the head of mankind is Something else than the void in which the spheres revolve: in life there is Another Thing than chance and fatality.

After fourteen years she was taken back to the house where he was born, this offspring of the union of the mesmerist Gilbert and the daughter of the House of Taverney, his victim. There he had drawn the first breath of life and thence his father had stolen him.

This little residence, bought by the late Baron Taverney, served as lodging for his son when he came to town, which was rarely, and for Andrea, when she slept in town.

After her conflict with the Queen, unable to bear meeting the woman who loved her husband, Andrea had made up her mind to go away from the rival, who visited on her retaliation for all her griefs, and whom the woes of the Queen, great though they were, always remained beneath the sufferings of the loving woman.

All concurred then in making this evening a happy one for the ex-Queen’s maid of honor. Nothing should trouble her. Instead of a room in a palace where the walls are all ears and eyes, she was harboring her child in her own little, secluded house.

As soon as she was closeted with Sebastian in her boudoir, she drew him to a lounge, on which were concentrated the lights from both candles and fire.

“Oh, my boy, is it really you?” she exclaimed with a joy which still quivered with lingering doubt.

“Mother!” ejaculated Sebastian with an outburst of the heart, flowing like refreshing dews on Andrea’s burning heart and enfevered veins.

“And the meeting to be here,” said she, looking round with terror towards the room whence he had been stolen.

“What do you mean by ‘Here?'”

“Fifteen years ago, my boy, you were born in this room, and I bless the mercy of the Almighty that you are miraculously restored to me.”

“Yes, miraculously indeed,” said the youth, “for if I had not feared for my father – “

Andrea closed her eyes and leaned back, so sharp was the pang shooting through her.

“If I had not set out alone in the night, I should not have been perplexed about the road: and then I should not have been recognized by Lord Isidore Charny, who offered his help and conducted me to the Tuileries – “

Her eyes re-opened, her heart expanded and her glance thanked heaven: for it increased the miracle that Sebastian should be led to her by her husband’s brother.

“I should not have seen you passing through the palace and not following you might never have called you ‘Mother!’ the word so sweet and tender to utter.”

Recalled to her bliss, she hugged him again and said:

“Yes, you are right, my boy; it is most sweet: but there is perchance another one more sweet and tender; ‘My son!’ which I say to you as I press you to my heart. But in short,” she suddenly said, “it is impossible that all should remain mysterious around us. You have explained how you come here, but not how you recognized me and ran after me, calling me your mother.”

“How can I tell? I do not myself know,” replied Sebastian, looking at her with love unspeakable. “You speak of mysteries? all is mysterious about you and me. List to me, and I will tell you what seems a prodigy.”

Andrea bent nearer.

“It is ten years since I knew you. You do not understand. I have dreams which my father calls hallucinations.”

At the reminder of Gilbert, passing like a steel point from the boyish lips, Andrea started.

“I have seen you twenty times, mother. In the village, while playing with the other schoolboys, I have followed you as you flitted through the woods and pursued you with useless calls till you faded away. Crushed by fatigue I would drop on the spot, as if your presence alone had sustained me.”

This kind of second existence, this living dream, too much resembled what the medium herself experienced for her not to understand him.

“Poor darling,” she said as she pressed him more closely, “it was vainly that hate strove to part us. Heaven was bringing us together without my suspecting it. Less happy than you, I saw my dear child neither in dream nor reality. Still, when I passed through that Green Saloon I felt a shiver; when I heard your footsteps behind mine, giddiness thrilled my heart and brain; when you called me ‘Lady’ I all but stopped; when you called me ‘Mother!’ I nearly swooned; when I embraced you, I believed.”

“My mother,” repeated Sebastian, as if to console her for not having heard the welcome title for so long.

“Yes, your mother,” said the countess, with a transport of love impossible to describe.

“Now that we have found each other,” said the youth, “and as you are contented and happy at our union, we are not going to part any more, tell me?”

She shuddered: she was enjoying the present to the exclusion of the past and totally closing her eyes on the future.

“How I should bless you, my poor boy, if you could accomplish this miracle!” she sighingly murmured.

“Let me manage it; I will do it. I do not know the causes separating you from my father,” – Andrea turned pale – “but they will be effaced by my tears and entreaties, however serious they may be.”

“Never,” returned the countess, shaking her head.

“I tell you that my father adores you,” said Sebastian, who believed that the woman was in the wrong from the way his father had forbidden him ever to mention her name.

Her hands holding the speaker’s relaxed but he did not notice this, as he continued:

“I will prepare him to greet you; I will tell him all the happiness you give me; one of these days, I will take you by the hand and lead you to him, saying: ‘Here she is, father – look, how handsome she is!'”

Repulsing Sebastian, she sprang up.

“Never,” repeated she, while he stared with astounded eyes for she was so white as to alarm him. This time her accent expressed a threat rather than fright.

She recoiled on the lounge; in that face he had seen the hard lines which Raphael gives to irritated angels.

“Why do you refuse to receive my father?” he demanded, in a sullen voice.

At these words, the lightning burst as at the contact of two clouds.

“Why? do you ask me why? well, never shall you know.”

“Still, I ask why,” said Sebastian, with firmness.

“Because, then,” said Andrea, incapable of self-restraint under the sting of the serpent gnawing at her heart, “because your father is an infamous villain!”

He bounded up from the divan and stood before her.

“Do you say that of my father,” he cried, “of Dr. Gilbert, who brought me up and educated me, the only friend I ever knew? I am making a mistake – you are no mother of mine!”

She stopped him darting towards the door.

“Stay,” she said, “you cannot know, ought not understand, may not judge.”

“No; but I can feel, and I feel that I love you no more.”

She screamed with pain.

Simultaneously, a diversion was given to the emotion overwhelming her by the sound of a carriage coming up to the street doorway. Such a shudder ran over her that he thrilled in sympathy.

“Wait, and be silent,” she said so that he was subjugated.

“Who am I to announce?” she heard the old footman demand in the ante-room.

“The Count of Charny; and inquire if my lady will do me the honor to receive me?”

“Into this room, child,” said Andrea, “he must not see you – he must not know that you exist!”

She pushed the frightened youth into the adjoining apartment.

“Remain here till he shall have gone, when I will relate to – No, nothing of that can be said? I will so love you that you will not doubt that I am your own loving mother.”

His only reply was a moan.

At this moment the door opened and the servant, cap in hand, acquitted himself of the errand entrusted to him.

“Show in the Count of Charny,” she said in the firmest voice she could find.

As the old man retired, the nobleman appeared on the sill.

CHAPTER XIII

HUSBAND AND WIFE

COUNT CHARNY was clad in black, mourning for his brother slain two days before.

This mourning was not solely in his habit, but in the recesses of his heart, and his pallid cheeks attested what grief he had undergone. Never are handsome faces finer than after sorrow, and the rapid glance of his wife perceived that he had never looked more superb.

She closed her eyes an instant, slightly held back her head to draw a full breath and laid her hand on her heart which seemed about to break.

When she opened them, after a second, Charny was in the same place.

“Is the carriage to wait?” inquired the servant, urged by the footman at the door.

An unspeakable look shot from the yearning eyes of the visitor upon his wife, who was dazed into closing her own again, while she stood breathless as though she had not noticed the glance or heard the question. Both had penetrated to her heart.

Charny sought in this lovely living statue for some token to indicate what answer he should make. As her shiver might be read both ways, he said: “Bid the coachman wait.”

The door closed and perhaps for the first time since their wedding the lord and his lady were alone together.

“Pardon me,” said the count, breaking the silence, “but is my unexpected call intrusion? I have not seated myself and the carriage waits so that I can depart as I came.”

“No, my lord, quite the contrary,” quickly said Andrea. “I knew you were well and safe, but I am not the less happy to see you after recent events.”

“You have been good enough then to ask after me?”

“Of course; yesterday, and this morning, when I was answered that you were at Versailles; and this evening, when I learnt that you were in attendance on the Queen.”

Were those last words spoken simply or did they contain a reproach? Not knowing what to make of them, the count was evidently set thinking by them. But probably leaving to the outcome of the dialogue the lifting of the veil lowered on his mind for the time, he replied almost instantly:

“My lady, a pious duty retained me at Versailles yesterday and this day; one as sacred in my eyes brought me instantly on my arrival in town beside her Majesty.”

Andrea tried in her turn to discover the true intent of the words. Thinking that she ought to respond, she said:

“Yes, I know of the terrible loss which —you have experienced.” She had been on the point of saying “we,” but she dared not, and continued: “You have had the misfortune to lose your brother Valence de Charny.”

The count seemed to be waiting for the clue, for he had started on hearing the pronoun “Your.”

“Yes, my lady. As you say, a terrible loss for me, but you cannot appreciate the young man, as you little knew poor Valence, happily.”

In the last word was a mild and melancholy reproach, which his auditor comprehended, though no outward sign was manifested that she gave it heed.

“Still, one thing consoles me, if anything can console me; poor Valence died doing his duty, as probably his brother Isidore will die, and I myself.”

This deeply affected Andrea.

“Alas, my lord,” she asked, “do you believe matters so desperate that fresh sacrifices of blood are necessary to appease the wrath of heaven?”

“I believe that the hour comes when the knell of kings is to peal; that an evil genius pushes monarchy unto the abysm. In short I think, if it is to fall, it will be accompanied, and should be so, by all those who took part in its splendor.”

“True, but when comes that day, believe that it will find me ready like yourself for the utmost devotion,” said Andrea.

“Your ladyship has given too many proofs of that devotion in the past, for any one to doubt it for the future – I least of all – the less as I have for the first time flinched about an order from the Queen. On arriving from Versailles, I found the order to present myself to her Majesty instantly.”

“Oh,” said Andrea, sadly smiling; “it is plain,” she added, after a pause, “like you, the Queen sees the future is sombre and mysterious and wishes to gather round her all those she can depend on.”

“You are wrong, my lady,” returned Charny, “for the Queen summoned me, not to bid me stand by her, but to send me afar.”

“Send you away?” quickly exclaimed the countess, taking a step towards the speaker. “But I am keeping you standing,” she said, pointing to a chair.

So saying, she herself sank, as though unable to remain on foot any longer, on the sofa where she had been sitting with Sebastian shortly before.

“Send you away? in what end?” she said with emotion not devoid of joy at the thought that the suspected lovers were parting.

“To have me go to Turin to confer with Count Artois and the Duke of Bourbon, who have quitted the country.”

“And you accepted?”

“No, my lady,” responded Charny, watching her fixedly.

She lost color so badly that he moved as if to assist her, but this revived her strength and she recovered.

“No? you have answered No to an order of the Queen’s, my lord?” she faltered, with an indescribable accent of doubt and astonishment.

“I answered that I believed my presence here at present more necessary than in Italy. Anybody could bear the message with which I was to be honored; I had a second brother, just arrived from the country, to place at the orders of the King, and he was ready to start in my stead.”

“Of course the Queen was happy to see the substitute,” exclaimed Andrea, with bitterness she could not contain, and not appearing to escape Charny.

“It was just the other way, for she seemed to be deeply wounded by the refusal. I should have been forced to go had not the King chanced in and I made him the arbiter.”

“The King held you to be right?” sneered the lady with an ironical smile: “he like you advised your staying in the Tuileries? Oh, how good his Majesty is!”

“So he is,” went on the count, without wincing: “he said that my brother Isidore would be well fitted for the mission and the more so as it was his first visit to court, so that his absence would not be remarked. He added that it would be cruel for the Queen to require my being sent away from you at present.”

“The King said, from me?” exclaimed Andrea.

“I repeat his own words, my lady. Looking round and addressing me, he wanted to know where the Countess of Charny was. ‘I have not seen her this evening,’ said he. As this was specially directed to me, I made bold to reply. ‘Sire,’ I said, ‘I have so seldom the pleasure of seeing the countess that I am in the state of impossibility to tell where she is; but if your Majesty wishes to know, he might inquire of the Queen who, knowing, will reply!’ I insisted as I judged from the Queen looking black, that some difference had arisen between you.”

Andrea was so enwrapt in the listening that she did not think of saying anything.

“The Queen made answer that the Countess of Charny had gone away from the palace with no intention to return. ‘Why, what motive can your best friend have in quitting the palace at this juncture?’ inquired the King. ‘Because she is uncomfortable here,’ replied the Queen who had started at the title you were given. ‘Well, that may be so; but we will find accommodation for her and the count beside our own rooms,’ went on the King. ‘You will not be very particular, eh, my lord?’ I told him that I should be satisfied with any post as long as I could serve him in it. ‘I know it well: so that we only want the lady called back from – ’ the Queen did not know whither you had departed. ‘Not know where your friend has gone?’ exclaimed the King. ‘When my friends leave me I do not inquire after them.’ ‘Good, some woman’s quarrel,’ said Louis; ‘my Lord Charny, I have to speak a while with the Queen. Kindly wait for me and present your brother who shall start for Turin this evening. I am of your opinion that I shall require you and I mean to keep you by me.’ So I sent for my brother who was awaiting me in the Green Saloon, I was told.”

At the mention, Andrea, who had nearly forgotten Sebastian in her interest in her husband’s story, was made to think of all that had passed between mother and son, and she threw her eyes with anguish on the bedroom door where she had placed him.

“But you must excuse me for talking of matters but slightly interesting you while you are no doubt wishful to know why I have come here.”

“No, my lord, what you say does engage me,” replied the countess; “your presence can only be agreeable on account of the fears I have felt on your account. I pray you to continue. The King asked you to wait for him and to bring your brother.”

“We went to the royal apartments, where he joined us in ten minutes. As the mission for the princes was urgent he began by that. Their Highnesses were to be instructed about what had happened. A quarter of an hour after the King came, my brother was on the road, and the King and I were left alone. He stopped suddenly in pacing the room and said: ‘My lord, do you know what has passed between the Queen and the countess?’ I was ignorant. ‘Something must have happened,’ he went on, ‘for the Queen is in a temper fit to massacre everybody, and it appears to me unjust to the countess – which is odd, as the Queen usually defends her friends through thick and thin, even when they are wrong.’ ‘I repeat I know nothing, but I venture to assert that the countess has done no wrong – even if we cannot admit that a queen ever does so.'”

“I thank your lordship for having so good an opinion of me,” said Andrea.

“'I suppose as the countess has a house in town that she has retired there,’ I suggested. ‘Of course! I will give you leave of absence till to-morrow on condition that you bring back the countess,’ said the King.”

Charny looked at his wife so fixedly that she was unable to bear the glance and had to close her eyes.

“Then, seeing that I was in mourning, he stayed me to say that my loss was one of those which monarchs could not repair; but that if my brother left a widow or a child he would help them, and would like them presented to him, at any rate; the Queen should take care of the widow and he would of the children.”

Charny spoke with tears in his voice.

“I daresay the King was only repeating what the Queen had said,” remarked the lady.

“The Queen did not honor me with a word on the subject,” returned Charny, “and that is why the King’s speech affected me most deeply. He ended by bidding me ‘Go to our dear Andrea; for though those we love cannot console us they can mourn with us, and that is a relief!’ Thus it is that I come by the King’s order, which may be my excuse, my lady,” concluded the count.

“Did you doubt your welcome?” cried the lady, quickly rising and holding out both hands to him.

He grasped them and kissed them; she uttered a scream as though they were redhot iron, and sank back on the divan. But her hands were clinging to his and he was drawn down so as to be placed sitting beside her.

But it was then that she thought she heard a noise in the next room, and she started from him so abruptly that he rose and stood off a little, not knowing to what to attribute the outcry and the repulsion so suddenly made.

Leaning on the sofa back, he sighed. The sigh touched her deeply.

At the very time when the bereaved mother found her child, something like the dawn of love beamed on her previously dismal and sorrowful horizon. But by a strange coincidence, proven that she was not born to happiness, the two events were so combined that one annulled the other: the return of the husband thrust aside the son’s love as the latter’s presence destroyed the budding passion.

Charny could not divine this in the exclamation and the starting aloof, the silence full of sadness following, although the cry was of love and the retreat from fear, not repulsion.

He gazed upon her with an expression which she could not have mistaken if she had been looking up.

“What answer am I to carry to the King?” he inquired emitting a sigh.

“My lord,” she replied, starting at the sound and raising her clear and limpid eyes to him, “I suffered so much while in the court that I accepted the leave to go when accorded by the Queen, with thankfulness. I am not fitted to live in society, and in solitude I have found repose if not happiness. My happiest days were those spent as a girl at Taverney and in the convent of St. Denis with the noble princess of the House of France, the Lady Louise. But, with your lordship’s permission, I will dwell in this summerhouse, full of recollections which are not without some sweetness spite of their sadness.”