Charlotte's Inheritance - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (best e book reader for android .TXT) 📗

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 could 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.

He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in nowise elevated by the walk.

Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation, as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one gave him courage.

"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a sordid barter of my heart and my honour."

In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir.

"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions. And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee? Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!"

And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him, he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a sharper pain than death.

"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou art ill! Look then, François, thy son is ill!"

"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the farewell kiss of her son.

"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave.

The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines.

When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Côtenoir.

"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her future sister-in-law.

The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious.

"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money."

It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door closed heavily.

M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it was not his habit to perform this office.

"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice.

"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed.

"He is gone."

"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?"

"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."



Book the Second.


DOWNHILL.

CHAPTER I.


THE FATE OP SUSAN LENOBLE.

Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only for her husband and her child.

The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to plead for pardon, which he did not.

"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _làbas_," he said, on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter."

He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to bear than the dreary prosperity of Côtenoir and a wife he could not have loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as ocean's deepest cavern.

In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He worked for her, he endured for her, he