"I see."
"Tell her I remember"There he faltered; he could say no more.
"Yes," said Elizabeth, "I will,I will tell her everything, Mr. Manuel,everything that it would comfort her to hear."
She had written letters now and then. Great pride Montier and Pauline took in their daughter's skilful use of pen and ink, and pencil,for Elizabeth could sketch as well as write. There was nothing new or strange, therefore, in her addressing this conversation to a spirit. But, also, there was nothing easy in this task, though she had the mighty theme of faithful love to dwell upon, and love's wondrous inspiration to enlighten her labor.
The description to be given of island scenery was such as she had given more than once, in writing to her distant, unknown relatives. She need vary only slightly from what she had written before, when she gave report of her own daily life. She was always eloquent when talking about the flowers or her father's music.
But this she had undertaken was not a repetition of what she had done before. With painful anxiety she scrutinized her words, her thoughts, her feelings. The work was a labor of love; the loving best know what anguish their labor sometimes costs them. The pain of this letter was not fairly understood by her who endured it,it could not be shared.
Why was she so cautious? why in her caution lurked so much of fear? Perhaps she might have answered, if questioned by one she trusted, that further intrusion of herself than should serve as a veil for the really important information she had to convey would be cruel intrusion. But there was a very different reason; it had to do with the sudden revelation made to herself when her father wept at the prisoner's hard fate,a revelation that terrified her, and influenced every succeeding movement; it had to do with the illumination that came when Manuel told her the sad secret of his heart,with that moment when she stood up stronger in love than in fear, stronger in devotion than in pride, strong for self-sacrifice, like one who bears a charmed life pierced to the heart, and never so capable as then.
More than once did Elizabeth rewrite that letter. More than once in the progress to its completion did she break away from the strange task, that had evidence of strangeness or of labor, to seek in the garden, or with her needle, or in the society of father or mother, deliverance from the trouble that disturbed her. In the toils of many an argument with her heart and conscience was she caught; but even through her doubting of the work she had engaged to perform, she persevered in its continuance, till the letter was ready for address.
It was surely right to aid, and comfort by such aid, one so unfortunate as this prisoner; yet her parents must not be implicated by such transaction. Therefore they must be kept in ignorance, that, if blame fell anywhere, it might not fall on them. So she satisfied her conscience;love will not calculate coldly. But it was less easy to satisfy her heart.
She had lived but sixteen years; she looked to her youth as to a protector, while it rebuked her. She leaned upon it, while daily she took to herself the part of womanhood, its duties and its dignity. He had called her a child; she called herself a child. She was careful to let this estimate of herself appear in that letter; and in what she undertook she was entirely successful; Madeline Desperiers would be sure to read it as the letter of a child.
When all was done Elizabeth repeated to Manuel the substance of this letter. He praised it. Jealous scrutiny would find it difficult to lay its finger on a passage, and condemn the writer for evading the law concerning the prisoner. When she signed and sealed the letter, addressed it, and carried it away with her to mail, he was satisfied; his praise was sweet to the girl who had earned it.
No sooner was this work off her hands than another engaged her. With a purpose prompted may-be by her angel, certainly by no human word, and unshared by any human intelligence, Elizabeth began to make a sketch of the island as seen from Manuel's prison-window. She made the sketch from memory, correcting it by observation when occasion called her to the prisoner's room.
At length she brought the sheet of paper, on which this sketch was drawn, to Manuel, and laid it before him. She did this without any accompanying word of explanation. In the foreground was the garden, stretching up the slope of the hill towards the top, where the fort-wall began; beyond, fort, barracks, settlement,and still beyond, the sea. The island of Foray, as thus represented, appeared like many other views on paper, very pleasing and attractive. Nature is not responsible for sin and suffering, that she should veil her glory wherever these may choose to pitch their tent.
The prisoner took the drawing from the table where she had laid it, and scanned it closely.
"You have left out my house," said he.
"There was no room for it," she answered.
"True!" He understood her. "Do you know whom this is for, Mr. Manuel?
"Whom is it for, Elizabeth?"
"For Madeline; is it a pretty view?"
"Really for her, Elizabeth?"
"Surely. Her eyes shall look on the same view as yours."
"The fort, flag, sea-wall, burial-ground, ocean, barracks, garden; it is well done.Now I will tell you of the place where it will find her."
He paused a moment ere he began that description. He looked at the quiet figure of the child for whom he dared recall the past. She stood with folded hands, so fair, so young, the sight was a refreshment, and a strange assurance always, to his weary eyes and weary heart. Never did she look so lovely to him as now when he was about to speak again to her of his life's love for another.
"It was once a magnificent estate," he began.
"Oh, is she a grand lady?" broke from Elizabeth.
"Yes, a grand lady. You speak well," replied Manuel, with a smile. "The estate was once ten times as large as this island. Towns and villages are built over the land now, but the old house stands as it has stood through ten generations. There she lives. If she stands by the library-window today, she can see the church built by her great-grandfather, and the little town of Desperiers, which had in his day a population of tenantry. She can see the ponds and the park, and a garden where there are hothouses, and graperies, and conservatories, and winding walks where you might walk all day and find something new to surprise and delight you at every turn. There is a tower that commands a view of fifty miles in one direction. The old house is full of treasure. She is mistress of all,the only representative of a long line of noble men and beautiful women who have dispensed magnificent hospitality there. The last time I saw her, Elizabeth, she was standing in the library, a woman so beautiful and so strong you would not have thought that trouble could approach her. It came through me. I opened those ancient gates for the black train, I, who loved no mortal as I loved her! But I lost her in my fight for Truth. Shall I complain? Her heart was with mine in that struggle. Cannot Truth comfort her?"
"She is not lost to you. Sir,you are not lost to her," cried Elizabeth, in a voice as strong as breaks sometimes through dying agony.
"I know," said he, more gently. His thought was not the same as hers; he was taking refuge in that future which remains to the loving when this life wholly fails in hope.
"You shall go back to that old place, Sir! You shallyou twoshall forget all this!"
The prisoner smiled to hear her,a sad smile, yet a sweet smile too. He did not despise the comfort she would give him, nor resent her presumptuous speech.
"As when I dream sometimes," said he, gently,"or in some pleasant vision. Yes, that is true, Elizabeth. I have been back, and I shall go again."
"You shall go back to that old place, Sir! You shallyou twoshall forget all this!"
The prisoner smiled to hear her,a sad smile, yet a sweet smile too. He did not despise the comfort she would give him, nor resent her presumptuous speech.
"As when I dream sometimes," said he, gently,"or in some pleasant vision. Yes, that is true, Elizabeth. I have been back, and I shall go again."
Vehemently now she broke forth. It was love defying the whole universe, if the whole universe opposed itself to the sovereign rights of love, the divine strength and the divine courage of love. "You shall go on board some vessel, a passenger; you shall see with your own eyes; your hands shall be free to gather the sweetest rose thatever blossomed in the world for you. Mr. Manuel, do not look so doubting,do not smile so! Am I not in earnest? Do you not hear me? As God lives, and as I live, I will do what I promise. Why, what do you think I am here for?"
Wondering, doubting if he heard aright, Manuel looked at Elizabeth. The painful, kindly smile, the incredulity, had disappeared from his face; the power and confidence of her words seemed to persuade him that at least she purposed seriously and was not uttering mere wishes. It might be the enthusiasm and generosity of a child that inspired her speech, but its determination and gravity of utterance demanded at least a respectful hearing.
"What do you mean, Elizabeth?" he asked.
"I mean that I will go home and explain, and you shall be set free."
He shook his head. "There is nothing to be explained," said he. "I am not here by mistake. I am very clearly guilty, if there is guilt in doing what I am accused of. The hearts of those who condemned me must be changed, and their eyes opened, or I shall never be set free."
"God chooses humble agents," she said, humbly. "David slew Goliath, and he was but a lad. He will open the way for me, and by me change the hearts of those who condemned, and by me open their eyes. Therefore I shall go,I shall surely go. Ah, Mr. Manuel, give me the picture! It is all that you shall have of the island of Foray, please Almighty God, when these doors are all open for you, and your hands are free, Sir, and we tell you to come, for the vessel is waiting!"
She went out from the room while these words took solemn possession of the place. She locked the door behind her;no requirement of law was to be neglected or withstood; she made him a prisoner whom she would set free;and from this interview she went away, not to solitude, and the formation of secret plans, but, as became the daughter of Adolphus and Pauline Montier, she went quietly, with that repose of manner which distinguished her through almost every event, back to her mother's chamber.
There stood Adolphus Montier, drummer to the regiment, jailer to the prisoner, father of Elizabeth,loving man, whichever way you looked at him. He had his French horn in his hands, and was about to raise it to his lips; in a moment more a blast would have rung through the house, for Adolphus was in one of his tempestuously happy moods.
But his daughter's entrance arrested his purpose. Say, rather, the expression of her face performed that feat. He saw, likewise, the paper which she carried, the pencilled sketch,and he followed her with his eyes when she crossed the room and placed it on the mantel under the engraving of the city of Fatherland. This act took the parents to the fireplace, for discussion and criticism of their daughter's work, and of the two homes now brought into contrasted connection.
"But you have left out the prison," was the comment of Adolphus.
"I am glad of that," said Pauline.
"But it is part of the island."
"It ought to be left out, though," maintained his wife.
"Where would you keep him, then?" asked Adolphus, a broad smile spreading over his face. He knew well enough what the answer would be.
"I'd set him adrift," was Pauline's reply, spoken without the least pretence of caution.
"Hush!" said her husband; but that was because he was the jailer. He laughed outright close on this admonition, and asked Elizabeth if she expected him to make a frame for this picture to hang opposite Chalons.
"No," she answered, "I am going to take it with me."
"Where now?" asked the parents in one breath.
"Oh, home,Chalons."
This reply seemed to merit some consideration, by the way the eyes of Adolphus and Pauline regarded their child. They did not understand her;her meaning was deeper than her utterance.
"To Chalons?" repeated Adolphus, quietly.
"Home?" said Pauline;it was almost the sweetest word she knew, almost the easiest of utterance.
"You have promised me a hundred times that I should go. Did you mean it? May I go? You wish me to see the old place and the old people. But the old place is changing, and the old people are dying. Soon, if I go to Chalons, it will not be your Chalons I shall see."
Dumb with wonder, Adolphus and Pauline looked at one another. To be sure, they had done their best in order to excite in the breast of Elizabeth such love of country as was worthy of their child, and such curiosity about locality as would constrain her to cherish some reverent regard for the place of their birth, the home of their youthful love; but never had they imagined the possibility of her projecting a pilgrimage in that direction, except under their guidance. They could hardly imagine it now. Often they had talked over every step of that journey they would one day make together; the progress was as familiar to Elizabeth as it could be made by the description of another; but that they had succeeded in so awaking the feeling of their child, that she should seriously propose making the pilgrimage alone, passed their comprehension.
"You know," said Adolphus, with a shrug, "your father is an officer, and he cannot now leave his post. Are you going to take your mother along with you?"
He said these words at a venture, not certain of his ground. He was not kept in suspense long.
"My mother must not leave you," answered Elizabeth, greatly agitated, and yet speaking strongly, as one whose will exceeded her emotion.
"Then you go alone?" asked Adolphus, shortly. He could not understand her, and was thoroughly vexed that he could not; mysteries were not for him. "What is the matter? is it the prison? Wife!" he turned to Pauline, but, as he looked at her, his perplexity seemed to increase, as did his impatience also.
Wife and daughter evidently were not in league against him; she, the mother of his child, shared his anxiety and doubt. Tears were in her eyes, and he had only been impatient!she had passed so quickly to an apprehension that was grievous, Adolphus stood the image of dismay. Those three, so entirely one, seemed to have been thrust apart by a resistless evil Fate who had some malignant purpose to serve.
Not now for the first time did Pauline see that the young face before her was pale, and grave with a gravity once unknown to it. It might be, that, for the first time, she was asking herself outright if this prison-life was to serve Elizabeth as it had served the wife of Laval,but not for the first time was she now visited by a foreboding that pointed to this fear.
"It is the prison," said she.
"Elizabeth, is it so? Is this house going to be the death of you?" asked Montier, abruptly,referring the point with stern authority, to the last person who would be likely to acknowledge the danger of which he spoke.
"If you think so, papa and mamma, I must give up the voyage, just to prove that you are mistaken," answered she.
"Look at her, Adolphus!" said Pauline; "remember what she was a year ago! She's not the same now. I can see it. Strange if I could not! Young people are different from old. I thought this place would never seem like home to me, but I found out my mistake."