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 | The complete works of N.P. Willis |  |
THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED.
The following story was told to the writer by a lady
in France — told during supper at a ball, and of course
only partially. The interstices have been supplied in
writing it, and the main thread of the narrative may
be relied on as fact. The names are fictitious: —
A beautiful girl of seventeen, in the convent-parlor
of Saint Agatha. She is dressed as a novice, and the
light breaks off from the curve of the raven hair put
away under the close-fitting cap — breaks off almost in
sparkles. For so it may — as an artist knows. Her
eyes are like hounds in the leash — fiery and eager.
And if, in those ever-parted and forward-pressing lips
there is a possibility of languid repose, the proof of it
lies in the future. They are sleepless and dreamless,
as yet, with a thirst unnamed and irrepressible, for the
passions of life. Her name is Zelie.
But we can not make the past into the present.
Change the tense — for Zelie is dead now, or we could
not record her strange story.
There was a ring at the convent door, and presently
entered Colonel Count Montalembert, true to his appointment.
He had written to the lady-abbess to
request an interview with the daughter of his comrade,
dead on the frozen track of the retreat from
Moscow, Flahault was to him, as his right hand to
his left, and as he covered up the stiffened body with
snow, he had sworn to devote his life to that child
whose name was last on the lips closed for ever. The
Count Montalembert was past fifty, and a constant
sufferer from his wounds; and his physicians had
warned him that death was not far off. His bearing
was still noble and soldierly, however, and his frank
and clear eye had lost little of its lustre.
“I wrote to you the particulars of your father's
death, my child,” said the colonel, after the abbess
had left them alone, at his request. “I could not
dwell on it again without more emotion than is well
for me. I must be brief even with what I have to say
to his daughter — for that, too, will move me overmuch.
You are very lovely, Zelie.”
“You are very kind!” answered the novice, blushing,
and dropping her long lashes upon her cheek.
“Very lovely, I say, and must love and be beloved.
It is a woman's destiny, and your destiny more than
most women's.”
The count gazed into the deep eyes of his eager
listener, and seemed embarrassed to know how to proceed.
“Hear me through,” he said, “before you form an
opinion of my motives. And first answer me a bold
question. Have you any attachment — have you ever
seen a man you could love and marry?”
“No!” murmured the blushing novice, after a moment's
hesitation.
“But you are likely to love, soon and rashly, once
free in the world — and that is one evil against which
I will make myself your shield. And there is another
— which I am only sorry that I need your permission
and aid in averting.”
Zelie looked up inquiringly.
“Poverty — the grave of love — the palsy of the
heart — the oblivion of beauty and grace! To avert
this from you, I have a sacrifice to demand at your
hands.”
Again the count stopped in embarrassment almost
painful, and Mademoiselle Montalembert with difficulty
suppressed her impatience.
“My physicians tell me,” he resumed, in a tone
lower and calmer, “that my lease of life is wearing
rapidly to a close. A year hence lies its utmost and
inevitable limit. Could you live in the world, without
love, for one year, Zelie?”
“Monsieur!” was her surprised exclamation.
“Then listen to my proposal. I have a fortune
while I live, large enough for your most ambitious
desires. But it is left to me with conditions which
forbid my conveying it through any link save marriage,
and to my widow only for life. To give it
you, I regret deeply for your sake to say, I must wed
you. You start — do not answer me now. I leave you
to revolve this in your mind till to-morrow. Remember
that I shall not trouble you long, and that the
name of Montalembert is as noble as your own, and
that you require a year, perhaps more than a year, to
recover from your first dizzy gaze upon the world. I
to fulfil my duty to my dead comrade in arms, and to
die, knowing that you will well bestow your heart
when I am gone. Adieu!”
The count disappeared, and, with her clasped hands
pressed to her forehead, the novice paced the convent-parlor
until the refectory bell rang for dinner.
It was an evening of June, in the gardens of Versailles.
It was an evening of June, also, in the pest-house
of St. Lazarus, and in the cell of the condemned
felon in St. Pelagie. Time, even in his holyday dress,
visits indiscriminately — the levelling caitiff! Have the
unhappy any business with June?
But the gardens of Versailles were beginning to
illuminate, and the sky faded, with a glory more festal
than sunlight, with the radiance of a myriad of
glittering lamps, embellishing even the trees and flowers
beyond the meaning of nature. The work of the
architect and the statuary at once stood idealized, and
draped in an atmosphere of fairy-land, and the most
beautiful woman of the imperial court became more
beautiful as she stepped into the glare of the alley of
fountains. And who should that be — the fairest flower
of French nobility — but the young Countess Montalembert,
just blooming through the close of her first
year of wedlock!
The Count Montalembert stepped with her from the
shade of the orange-grove, and, without her arm, fell
behind scarce perceptibly, that he might keep his eye
filled with the grace of her motion, without seeming
to worship her before the world. With every salient
flow of that cloud-like drapery onward — with every
twinkling step of those feet of airy lightness — the dark
eyelashes beneath the soldier's brow lifted and drooped
again, as if his pulse of life and vision were alone
governed by her swan-like motion. The count had
forgotten that he was to die. The year allotted to
him by his physicians had passed, and, far from falling
gradually to his doom, his figure had straightened, and
his step grown firm, and his cheek and lip and eye had
brightened with returning health. He had drank life
from love. The superb Zelie had proved grateful and
devoted, and at the chateau of Montalembert, in
southern France, she had seemed content to live with
him, and him only, the most assiduous of nurses in
all her glorious beauty. But though this was Paradise
to the count, his reason, not his heart, told him
it was imprisonment to her, and he had now been a
month at the sumptuous court of Napoleon, an attendant
upon a wife who was the star of the time — the
beloved of all the court's gay beholders.
As the Montalemberts strolled toward the chateau,
which was now emitting floods of light from its many
windows, a young soldier, with a slight mustache just
shading his Grecian lip, joined them from a side-path,
and claimed the hand of the countess for a waltz.
The mercurial music at the same instant fled through
the air, and under an exclamation at its thrilling
sweetness, the countess concealed from her husband
an emotion which the trembling of her slight hand
betrayed instantly to her partner. With a bow of affected
gayety to the count, she quickened her pace,
and in another moment stood blushing in the dazzling
ring of waltzers, the focus herself of all eyes open to
novelty and beauty.
De Mornay, the countess's partner, was but an ensign
in the imperial guard. He had but his sword.
Not likely to be called handsome, or to be looked
upon as attractive or dangerous by any but the most
penetrating of his own sex, he had that philtre, that
inexplicable something, which at once commended
him to woman. His air was all earnest. The suppressed
devotion of life and honor breathed in his
voice. He seemed ever hiding his heart with pain —
shamed with betrayed adoration — calm by the force of
a respect that rebuked passion. He professed no gal
lantries. He professed nothing. His eyes alone, large,
steadfast, imploring, conveyed language of love. An
hour of that absorbing regard — an apparently calm,
unimpassioned hour of the intercourse common to
those newly met — sufficed to awaken in the bosom of
the countess an interest alarming to himself, and dangerous
to her content as the wife of another. Strange
she thought it, that, as the low and deferential tones
of De Mornay fell on her ear, they seemed to expel
from her heart all she had hitherto treasured — ambition
for the splendors of the court, passion for admiration,
and even her gratitude for her husband. A
hut in the forest, with De Mornay only, was the Paradise
now most present to the dreams and fancy of the
proud wife of Montalembert.
As his wife left him, the count thrust his hand into
his breast with a gesture of controlled emotion, and
turned aside, as if to seek once more the retired covert
he had left. But his steps were faltering. At the
entrance of the alley he turned again, and walking
rapidly to the chateau, entered the saloon trembling
to the measured motion of the dancers.
Waiting for an opportunity to float into the giddy
ring, De Mornay stood with his arm around the waist
of the countess. Montalembert's face flushed, but he
stepped to a column which supported the orchestra,
and looked on unobserved. Her transparent cheek
was so near to the lips of her partner, that his breath
must warm it. Her hand was pressed — ay, by the
bend of her gloved wrist, pressed hard — upon the
shoulder of De Mornay. Her bosom throbbed perceptibly
in its jewelled vest. She leaned toward him
with a slight sway of her symmetrical waist, and
away, like two smoke wreaths uniting, away in voluptuous
harmony of movement, gazing into each other's
eyes, murmuring inaudibly to the crowd — lips, cheeks,
and eyes, in passionate neighborhood — away floated
the wife and friend of Montalembert in the authorized
commerce of the gay world. Their feet chased each
other, advancing, retreating, amid the velvet folds of
her dress. Her waist was drawn close to his side in
the more exciting passages of the music. Her luxuriant
tresses floated from her temples to his. She
curved her swan-like neck backward, and, with a look
of pleasure, which was not a smile, gave herself up to
the thrilling wedlock of music and motion, her eyes
half-dropped and bathed in the eager gaze of De
Mornay's. Montalembert's face was pallid and his
eye on fire. The cold sweat stood on his forehead.
He felt wronged, though the world saw all. With his
concealed hand he clenched his breast till he drew
blood. There was a pause in the music, and with a
sudden agony at the thought of receiving his wife
again from the hands of De Mornay, Montalembert
fled on to the open air.
An hour elapsed.
“I ask a Heaven for myself, it is true, but not much
for you to give!” said a voice approaching through
the shadowy alley of the garden.
The count lay on the ground with his forehead
pressed to the marble pedestal of a statue, and he
heard, with the voice, the rustling of a female dress,
and the rattling of a sabre-chain and spurs.
“But one ringlet, sacred to me,” continued the
voice, in a tone almost feminine with its pleading earnestness;
“not given to me, no, no! — that were a
child's desire! — but mine, though still playing on this
ivory shoulder, and still lying neatly beneath that veined
temple — mine with your knowledge only, and
caressed and cared for, morn and night, with the
thought that it is mine! Oh, Zelie! there is no
wrong to Montalembert in this! Keep it from his
touch! Let him not breathe upon it! Let not the
wind blow that one ringlet toward him! And when it
kisses your cheek, and plays with the envied breeze
upon your bosom — think — think of the soul of De
capable of love like this!”
There was no reply, and long ere Montalembert
had recovered from his amazement at these daring
words, the sound of their footsteps had died away.
Pass two years. It is enough to wait on Time in
the Present. In the Past and Future, the graybeard,
like other ministers out of place, must do without
usher and secretary.
It was a summer's noon on the Quai D'Orsay, of
Paris. The liveried lacqueys of the princely hotels
were lounging by the heavy gateways of stone, or
leaning over the massy parapet of the river. And,
true to his wont, the old soldier came with the noon,
creeping from the “Invalides,” to take his seat under
the carved lion of the Montalemberts. He had served
under the late count, and the memory of his house
was dear to the old veteran. The sabre-cut which had
disfigured his face, was received, he said, while fighting
between Montalembert and Flahault, and to see
the daughter of the one, and the gay heir of the
other's wife and fortune, he made a daily pilgrimage
to the Quai, and sat in the sun till the countess drove
out in her chariot.
By the will of the first husband of Zelie de Flahault,
the young De Mornay, to become her husband
and share her fortune, was compelled to take the
name and title of Count Montalembert, subject to the
imperial accord. Napoleon had given the rank unwillingly,
and as a mark of respect to the last will of
a brave man who had embellished the title — for the
eagle-eye of the Corsican read the soul of De Mornay
like an illuminated book, and knew the use he
would make of fortune and power.
In the quadrangle of the hotel Montalembert, there
were two carriage-landings, or two persons, and the
apartments were separated into two entirely distinct
establishments. In one suite the young count chose
to live at his pleasure, en garcon, and in the other the
mixed hospitalities of the house were given, and the
countess was there, and there only, at home. At this
moment the court was ringing with the merry laughter
of the count's convives, for he had a bachelor party
to breakfast, and the wine seemed, even at that early
hour of the lay, to have taken the ascendant. The
carriages of the bacchanalians lined one side of the
court, and the modest chariot of the countess stood
alone at the door on the other; for it was near the
hour for promenade in the Champs Elysees.
It was an hour after noon when the countess descended.
She came slowly, drawing on her glove,
and the old soldier at the gate rose quickly to his feet,
and leaned forward to gaze on her. She had changed
since the death of her father's friend — the brave Montalembert,
to whom she owed her fortune. But she
was still eminently beautiful. Thought, perhaps sadness,
had dimmed to a sweet melancholy the bright
sparkle of her glance, and her mouth, no longer
fiercely spirited, was firm but gentle. Her curtains
of sable lashes moved languidly over her drooping
eye. She looked like one who was subdued in her
hopes, not in her courage, and like one who had shut
the door of her heart upon its unextinguishable fires
to let them burn on, but in secret. She was dressed
more proudly than gayly, and she wore upon her
breast one memorial of her first husband — his own
black cross that he had worn in battle, and in the few
happy days of his wedlock, and which he had sent her
from his death-bed.
At the moment the countess stepped from her
threshold, the door on the opposite side of the quadrangle
was thrown open, and, with a boisterous laugh,
the count sprang into his phaeton, calling to one of
his party to follow him. His companion shrank back
on seeing the countess, and in that moment's delay
the door of the carriage was closed and the coachman
ordered to drive on. The count's whip had waved
over his spirited horses, however, and as they stood
rearing and threatening to escape from their excited
master, his friend sprang to his side, the reins were
suddenly loosed, and with a plunge which threatened
to tear the harness from their backs, they leaped forward.
In the next moment, the horses of both vehicles
were drawn upon their haunches, half locked together
in the narrow gateway, and with a blow from the crutch
of the old veteran who rushed from the porter's lodge,
the phaeton was driven back against the wall, the pole
broken, and the count and his friend precipitated upon
the pavement. The liberated horses flew wildly
through the gate, and then followed a stillness like
that of midnight in the court — for on the pavement,
betrayed by her profusion of fair locks, loosened by
the fall, lay a woman in man's attire, the dissolute
companion of the count, in his daylight revel. Uninjured
himself, the count stood a moment, abashed
and motionless, but the old soldier, with folded arms
and the remnant of his broken crutch in his hand,
looked sternly on the scene, and as the servants started
from their stupor to raise the insensible woman,
the countess, reading her husband's impulse in his
looks, sprang from the open door of the chariot, and
interposed between him and his intended victim.
With the high-born grace of noble, the soldierly invalid
accepted her protection, and followed her to her
chariot; and, ordered to drive to the Hospital of the
Invalides, the coachman once more turned slowly to
the gateway.
The night following, at the opera. Paris was on
the qui vive of expectation, for a new prima donna
was to make her debut before the emperor.
Paris was also on the qui vive for the upshot of a
certain matter of scandal. The eclaircissement at the
hotel Montalembert had been followed, it is said, by
open war between the count and countess; and, determined
to carry out his defiance, the dissolute husband
had declared to his associates that he would
produce at the opera, in a box opposite to his wife,
the same person whose appearance she had resented,
and in the same attire. It was presumed, by the
graver courtiers who had heard this, that the actors in
this brutal scene, if it should be carried out, would be
immediately arrested by the imperial guard.
The overture commenced to a crowded house, and
before it was half played, the presence of the count
and his companion, in a conspicuous box on the left
of the circle, drew the attention of every eye. The
Montalemberts were the one subject of conversation.
The sudden disappearance of the old count, his death
in a distant province, his will relative to his widow and
De Mornay — all the particulars of that curious inheritance
of wife and fortune, by written testament — were
passed from lip to lip.
There was a pause at the close of the overture.
The house was silent, occupied partly in looking at
the audacious count and his companion, partly in
watching for the entrance of the injured countess.
A sudden light illuminated the empty box, shed
from the lobby lamps upon the curtains at the opening
of the door, and the Countess Montalembert entered,
with every eye in that vast assembly bent
anxiously upon her. But how radiantly beautiful,
and how strangely dressed! Her toilet was that of
a bride. Orange-flowers were woven into her long
raven tresses, and her robe of spotless white was folded
across her bust with the simplicity of girlhood. A
white rose-bud breathed on her bosom, and bracelets
of pearls encircled her wrists of alabaster. And her
smile, as she took her seat and looked around upon
her friends — oh! that was bridal too! — unlike any
look known lately upon her face — joyous, radiant
blissful, as the first hour of acknowledged love. Never
had Zelie de Flahault looked so triumphantly
house remained fixed upon her. A murmur arose
gradualiy, a murmur of admiration succeeding the
silent wonder of her first entrance; and but for the
sudden burst of music from the orchestra, heralding
the approach of the emperor, it would have risen into
a shout of spontaneous homage.
The emperor came in.
But who is there! — at the right hand of Napoleon
— smiled upon by the emperor, as the emperor seldom
smiled, decorated with the noblest orders of France —
a star on his breast? — Montalembert!
“Montalembert! Montalembert!” resounded from
a thousand voices.
Was he risen from the dead? Was this an apparition
— the indignant apparition of the first husband —
risen to rebuke the unmanly brutality of the second?
Would the countess start at the sight of him?
Look! she turns to the illuminated box of the emperor!
She smiles — with a radiant blush of joy and
happiness she smiles — she lifts that ungloved and
unjewelled hand, decorated only with a plain gold
ring, and waves it to the waved hand of Montalembert!
— the brave, true, romantic Montalembert. For,
with the quickness of French divination, the whole
story is understood by the audience. And there is
not a brain so dull as not to know, that the audacious
invalid veteran was the disguised count, watching over
the happiness of her whose destiny of love he had too
rashly undertaken to make cloudless — make cloudless
at the expense of a crushed heart, and a usurped hearth,
and a secret death and burial, if so much were necessary.
But he is a happy bridegroom now. And Adolphe
de Mornay is once more an untitled ensign — plucked
for ever from the chaste heart and bosom of the devoted
wife of Montalembert.
And Montalembert himself — whose springs of life
were fed only by love — died when that fountain of love
was broken; for his wife died in childbed one year
after his return to her, and he followed her in one day.
Never man was more loved than he. Surely never
man more deserved it.
| The complete works of N.P. Willis | |