University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXIX.

It was several days after the preceding events, and
at the first sign of daybreak on a cloudless morning
towards the latter part of the autumn, that a wretched,
half-broken carriage, with two spavined horses and a
ragged postillion, drew up at a small auberge near the
old chateau St. Marie. A rough but strong horse, saddled,
was attached to a post at the door; and Claude,
in the Jacobin costume of that period, at the sound of
the wheels, appeared at the door and had some moments'
consultation with the postillion. They both looked
with many signs of impatience towards Paris, when
the sound of another vehicle was heard with such

lively tokens of satisfaction that it was easy to discover
how much interest they had in its approach. They
then retired within the house, of which the window-shutters
and curtains were carefully closed. The second
carriage also drew up at the little inn, and three
figures stepped out. One was St. Marie, the other
Carolan, the third the tall and gaunt figure of Danton
—his rough and burly visage expanded with good-humour,
and his deep voice every instant making itself
heard in half-uttered exclamations of pleasure and self-satisfaction.

“Ah! ca! voyons!” said he, patting Carolan; “go
in—par Dieu!—ha! ha! Attendez, mon ami, attendez
—you will see in the house--ah! ha! ha!”

Of these three persons, the most strikingly changed
in dress, appearance, and manner was Carolan. He
was pale, emaciated, ragged, and stained with filth.
His manner was subdued into a wretchedness and despair
which strongly contrasted with his usual self-complacency
and arrogance; and he looked with such
a bewildered and terrified air upon his facetious conductor,
and watched so eagerly for the person who
should answer the tap on the door, that it was clear he
had not yet been let into the secret of what he was to
behold. Indeed, he had been now, for the first time,
taken out of his miserable prison, where he had been
many months confined, and where he had witnessed
scenes enough to break the spirit of a bolder man; and
he expected little more in the present morning than
to be conducted to the guillotine, or to be massacred
in some less open way. Half dead with terror and
exhaustion, he was led hastily in through the opened
door, and found himself in the presence of Claude, who,
completely dressed for travelling, seized his hand and
led him into a room, where Ida, in the plain dress of
a maid-servant, which she had procured from Annette
(and in which, by-the-way, she looked extremely pretty),
threw herself into his arms with a flood of tears.

“What is this? where are we? St. Marie! Wyndham!”

“Stay not to inquire, my dearest father,” said Ida,
clinging to his bosom with streaming eyes.

“But—”

“Be satisfied,” said Claude. “Dearest sir, all is
right; we have no time to lose. This moment we
take our flight out of France.”

“Ah, Dieu! out of France? By what means? How
have I escaped my dungeon? where? what friend?
Danton drew off dozens for the guillotine—it is but
by the chance of a lot that I was not beheaded yesterday.”

“Come, come,” said the huge and good-humoured
stranger, a cloud passing a moment over his broad,
rough countenance, “nothing against Danton this
morning, if you please. I am Danton! and it is to
me, under that honest person yonder, that you owe
your freedom. What! do you think me a monster,
because you do not see the wisdom of the plans which
a dire necessity makes me follow for poor oppressed
France? Believe me, sir, although I am the reluctant
cause of much unhappiness and bloodshed, it is
for France and for mankind that I am so. But do not
carry away with you, to the happy country where I
learn you are going, the idea that I am insensible to
kind emotions. No! I sympathize with the distress I
am compelled to occasion, and often I relieve it. Be
yourselves at once the witnesses and the proof of my
mercy. To free Carolan and St. Marie I have been
obliged to make great exertions, and to run even some
danger; but I am not the man to be easily discouraged.
Go—you are free. Your course to Nymeguen shall
not be interrupted. I send with you an officer, with
such a passport as will carry you past the frontier
without a single stoppage. Go, friends, to a happy
land—to a happier fate; leave France to woes unutterable,
and me, perhaps, to the scaffold!”

He passed out without other adieu, and the carriage
which brought him was heard rattling away back to
Paris.

“What magic! what guardian angel!” muttered
Carolan; “who has done all this?”

Ida pointed to Claude, and strove to speak, but
could not.

“Allons, messieurs, en route,” said a strange voice,
startling all from their mutual congratulations. It was
the gen d'armes provided by Danton.

“I am desired to see you safe to the frontier,” said
the soldier; “we have no time to lose.”

It need not be added that but little time was wasted
in getting ready. The count and Ida, with Annette
and St. Marie, entered the carriage. Claude mounted
his horse. He was thoroughly armed, and it would
have been ill with any one who had interrupted their
path.

The old horses accomplished the journey better than
could have been expected from their appearance; and
at length, all dangers past, they reached Rotterdam,
and sought in a good hotel the repose of mind and
body of which they all stood in need.

History, which records the extraordinary manner in
which a crowd of ladies belonging to the court of the
unfortunate Marie Antoinette were rescued from the
mob by one or two of the leaders of the memorable
attack on the royal chateau on the tenth of August, and
escorted in safety from the scene of action, has also
left several authentic evidences of intervals of the kind-heartedness
and bonhomie of Danton, and his readiness
to sympathize with individual instances of distress,
even at the time when he was calculating how
many hundred thousand heads were to fall before
France could be depopulated to the necessary point.

We cannot think of entering too much into details
respecting the few days passed by our party of fugitives
at Rotterdam, to recover from the exhaustion
consequent upon their visit to France, and to wait also
the sailing of the vessel which was to bear them to
London, for there it had been determined they should
go. Count Carolan's broken health and St. Marie's

age and feebleness nearly monopolized the society of
Ida; and Claude, with a delicacy peculiar to his character,
avoided pressing himself too much into their
presence. After a separation so long and events so
agitating, he preferred leaving them together; besides
which, he had many arrangements to make, letters to
write, and affairs to attend to, of which they little suspected
the import. It was impossible, however, to
avoid many moments of solitary meeting, which were
full of enchantment to Claude, as they fully confirmed
those tokens of tender confidence which had escaped
from his charge while flying through the wood from
the chateau St. Marie. Their mutual demeanour,
without any formal avowal of their attachment, had insensibly
assumed a character more and more indicative
of the sentiments they entertained for each other
—far different from what it had ever been before, and,
perhaps, from what either intended. Long before the
ship-captain who had agreed to take them to London
was ready to sail, Claude had learned to regard Ida
as his own, with a feeling of deep happiness which
more than compensated for all that he had suffered;
and she also, by no means a dull scholar, had learned
to listen to his words—to lean on his arm—to gaze
into his face, as the fondest wife receives the regards
of the happiest husband.

The rescue of St. Marie had been all but miraculous.
When on the point of massacring him, it was discovered
that he had a large sum of money in the hands of
an English banker. It was the policy of certain
among the rulers of that period to spare those who
could purchase their lives with a sufficient ransom.
St. Marie had been saved, and secretly sent to Paris,
and thrust into the same prison which contained Carolan,
until he should complete the transfer necessary
to his release. He had shared the benefit of Claude's
negotiations, but both he and Carolan were impoverished.
Their whole fortune had been sacrificed.

Carolan had strangely altered during his several

months' experience of a prison and the few hours when
he thought they were leading him to death. All his
pomposity of manner had disappeared. He was simple,
grateful, and perfectly natural. He did not even
appear half so much an — (the word Claude had
used himself in former times, but wondered that he
should have done so) as he was generally considered;
but, on the contrary, he discovered himself to be a man
of mind, sense, and feeling, which valuable attributes
had been miraculously restored by a wholesome period
of adversity. How many are there who would be improved
by the same means! There were moments when
Claude even respected and liked him; and our manuscript
goes on to assert, that the favourable opinion
thus produced of his good taste and discrimination
was by no means diminished when, one day, just as
Claude and Ida were proposing to go out to walk—
probably for the last time before the little vessel which
was to bear them to London, and which was to start
with the first fair wind, should sail—he came out with,

“Wyndham, you are the very finest fellow that ever
lived. Your conduct to me has been entirely noble.
I have been reflecting on it a great deal, and, I am
ashamed to add, mine to you has been unworthy of
me. You have acted like a man, and I like a fool. I
am sadly impoverished by the demand of Danton, but
I hope I am not ruined. I have enough for us all to
live upon, and—”

Here Claude turned very red, and Ida equally pale;
but, in a moment, as if they were exchanging cheeks
as well as hearts, Ida turned crimson, and the blood
ebbed from the face of Claude.

“You have saved Ida's life and—”

“I think the wind is freshening,” said Ida, rising,
“and we shall sail to-night.”

“But not,” said the count, drawing her towards him,
and suffering her to hide her face in his bosom, “till I
have consigned you, Ida, to a master abler to protect
and worthier to possess you than I or any other human
being.”

“I cannot,” said Claude, “at present enter into any
such contract.”

“Cannot!” echoed Carolan, the colour now in turn
spreading over his face.

Ida only clung to him the more closely, with a faint
exclamation, which was instantly suppressed.

“I deem it proper,” said Carolan, a touch of his
old manner crossing him for the first time since his
imprisonment, “to say, that I have no authority for my
remark but your own apparent desire; and that an imperative
sense of duty will demand, that instantly—”

“Suspend your displeasure for a while, my dear
count,” said Claude. “There is another—a lady, who
has a prior right over me.”

Ida sprang back and gazed with astonishment.

“Why, confound it, sir!” thundered the count, “are
you already married?”

“At London I will tell all,” said Claude, with a
quiet smile. “You have kept me some time waiting;
do not complain if, for a few hours—”

“Complain!” said Carolan, with his chin again in
the air.

Ida looked at Claude; his eyes were not averted,
and he even took her hand, and pressed it respectfully
and tenderly to his lips.

They were interrupted by the captain, a fine old
English sailor, with a face the colour of a mahogany
table.

“Come, shipmates,” said he, “all ready! we're off
in an hour, and, with this wind, we shall see the Tower
in less than no time.”

“That will be an extremely short passage!” said
Claude, who seemed blessed with an uncommon flow
of spirits, which no one had ever seen in him before;
“but you cannot be too quick for us, my old heart of
oak!”

“Come aboard, then, sir, and we'll show you what
the little Sally Darly can do. She'll make eleven

knot before ten. Take care of that plank, miss.
Hadn't you better let me hand the young lady, sir?”

“No, captain,” said Claude; “if the Sally Darly is
such an interesting creature, you must devote yourself
to her, and I shall relieve you of the young lady, who
has her good points too.”

Ida lifted her eyes half tearfully, half laughingly to
his, and, if wonder was mixed with their tenderness,
he saw at once there was no doubt. As they crossed
the plank over which it was necessary to pass to the
Sally Darly from the wharf, Ida shrunk a moment
from the narrow board; but Claude drew her arm in
his, and, as he supported her on her way, it was quite
surprising to see the effect of mere timidity upon her
cheeks; for it was not proved that the single word
which Claude murmured in her ear as he passed his
arm around her waist and partly carried her on board,
could have had any connexion with their heightened
colour, nor with the downcast glance of quiet happiness
which was scarcely shaded by her glittering
lashes.

The Sally Darly, unlike belles in general, more
than equalled the praises of her admirer. She sped
over the water with all the impatience felt by some of
her passengers; and at last the sweet shores of old
England—land of peace and virtue—that “emerald
gem set in the silver sea”—rose on either side of them.
The now nearer shores revealed their soft beauties to
the eyes of the enchanted travellers, whose joy was
only clouded by a reflection of the frightful wo which
devoured the unhappy land they had left behind. The
Sally Darly, faithful to her captain's promise, was soon
anchored off the Tower, and the party was speedily
landed and committed to the mercies of the custom-house
officers, who were then, as they are now, very
civil fellows to those who deserve it.

While waiting for the examination of their luggage,
St. Marie and Carolan held a long consultation in a
distant corner of the room, which, by their gloomy

faces, was probably concerning the total ruin of their
fortunes.

Ida and Claude sat together upon a bench, waiting,
whether with impatience or not we shall not say, for
the termination of this their second, but less serious
captivity. While engaged in conversing, in a low voice,
in a shadowy embrasure of the room, Ida's veil drawn
close over her bonnet, so that no one except her companion
could distinguish her features, a boy entered
and handed to Claude a note. It was addressed to
Mademoiselle Ida Carolan, and it was her mother's
handwriting.

She opened it with trembling eagerness. It ran
thus:

“My mother in London?” said Ida. “Oh, you
have done this!”

“I wrote her from Paris to meet us there.”

“And ruined—and—and—well,” said Ida, the momentary
shadow of her face passing away in the joyful
news of her mother's recovered health and presence
in London.

“Yes, dearest Ida, she tells you the truth; your father's
fortune, as well as your uncle's, is entirely gone.
Can you be happy without the splendour to which you
have been accustomed? Without palaces—and equipages—and
serving-men? Can you be happy beneath a

lowly roof—without society—without grandeur—leading
a simple, a lonely life, even—despised by the unfeeling—pitied
by the compassionate—neglected, and
at length forgotten by all? Can you be happy thus,
dear Ida?”

He held out his hand; she laid her own in it with a
blush that gave new charm to her beauty.

“With you — in the loneliest spot — beneath the
humblest roof—far away from grandeur and the grand
—I ask no more. Oh, if you could know how often
and often I have wished my father was poor—that he
would lose all his fortune, that there might be no obstacle
to our union. You think I shall regret my
grandeur? Oh, no—never! It has made my unhappiness.
It separated me from you.”

“Where shall we go, then? What shall we do?
You know I am but just out of prison for a paltry debt.
How shall we get our living in England?”

“Oh, a thousand ways. I will become a governess.
I will teach languages, as you did. Little did you
know how I admired your conduct—how I—I loved
you—when I used to see you, so meanly dressed—so
pale—so melancholy—so neglected—going through
the streets to give your lessons. Your common clothes
were a thousand times more beautiful to me than all
the handsomest court uniforms; and when I used to
be at the king's suppers, how much rather I should
have been with you in your poor jail. Oh”—the tears
filled her eyes—“never will you know what I suffered
till I succeeded in making Lavalle relieve you!”

“Well, then, you shall become a governess, and I
will also teach languages. We will open a little school
together—”

“Oh, we shall be too—too happy!”

“In the mean time, I have a mother—”

“You a mother? you! How extremely strange! I
thought—they told me—”

“Yes, I have a mother. We are going to her house.
Prepare yourself to be pained at the meanness, the

poverty of my abode; a miserable contrast to your father's
gorgeous palace at Berlin. Then my mother—
I hope you will like her!”

“Oh, I am sure I shall,” said Ida, but with a timid
and hesitating air, and pale at the gloomy picture he
had presented.

They were now released by the custom-house officers,
and passed into the street, free to go whithersoever
they would.

“But where shall we go?” said the count. “Have
you thought of this, Mr. Wyndham?”

“Oh yes,” said Ida, timidly.

“I really cannot tell the way myself,” said Claude,
“but yonder is a person who perhaps will assist us.”

A stout, good-looking, and very neatly-dressed man,
in a plain but handsome livery, approached as he spoke.

“Welcome, my lord!” said he. “Welcome back
to England!”

Ida looked inclined to laugh, and Carolan stared in
silent surprise.

“Is he crazy?” asked Ida of Claude, in a whisper.

“The carriage is in this direction,” said the man,
respectfully. “The servants will take your lordship's
things, if you'll please to say which they are.”

Claude did so, and followed James.

They found a large and elegant carriage waiting for
them. Claude aided in Ida, and St. Marie, and the
count, and then entered himself. Annette, all astonished,
found herself on the box with a coachman so large
and dignified looking, so curiously and elegantly dressed,
that she knew not whether he was not a great English
lord.

“Grosvenor Square!” said James. “Drive fast!”

And off they dashed, at a velocity which might have
taxed the powers even of the “Sally Darly” to equal.

They stopped before a magnificent mansion. A
crowd of domestics were at the door and ranged along
the hall. All was lofty—grand—magnificent.

“Where are we going?” said the count. “Permit
me—really—to observe, Mr. Wyndham, that—”

“Where—where are we?” said Ida, as they entered
a suite of splendid drawing-rooms.

“At home! my sweet, sweet girl,” said a well-known
voice; and she was folded in the arms of her
mother, and then of Madame Wharton.

“And my hero—my son!” said Madame Wharton,
pale as death, and her face bathed in tears.

Pale—paler than all the dangers through which he
had passed could make him, Claude entered the last.
It seemed as if he had paused to gather strength and
firmness to meet the flood of joy which now over-whelmed
him.

“My mother! my beloved mother!” was all his
quivering lips could utter; and they were folded in each
other's arms, with emotions which we shall be easily
excused for not attempting to depict.

How all the discoveries were communicated to each
other—how Ida and the count were made to comprehend—how
Claude learned what he had still to learn
—how the servants gazed at their new master—how
comfortable and elegant every one of the worn and exhausted
travellers found the apartments separately allotted
to them—how all were refreshed by the bath,
the toilet, and the most delightful restoratives—how
Annette's head almost turned giddy with joy when she
found in what way her disinterested affection for her
young mistress was to be rewarded—how transformed
they all were in a few hours, by aid of new costume,
and the care of maids and valets—how—in short, it
would be an endless, if not a hopeless task to describe
the scenes which followed. Suffice it to say, that
everything went just as it should; everything fell out
as fortunately as if it had been a play, or a piece of
enchantment, or one of the mere fictions which those
good-for-nothing varlets the novel writers invent according
to their own idle imagination.

Some days entirely restored the whole party to
health and spirits; for, when the mind is free from
care and the heart at ease, the body is easily cured.