The Headsman, James Fenimore Cooper [top 100 books to read TXT] 📗

of the character of Christine. They wept together, for the weakness of her sex prevailed over the pride of the former, when she found herself unrestrained by the observation of the world, and she gave way to the torrent of feeling that broke through its bounds, in spite of her endeavors to control it. Marguerite was the only spectator of this silent but intelligible communion between these two young and pure spirits, and her soul was shaken by the unlooked-for commiseration of one so honored, and who was usually esteemed so happy.

"Thou hast the consciousness of our wrongs," she said, when the first burst of emotion had a little subsided. "Thou canst then believe that a headsman's child is like the offspring of another and is not to be hunted of men like the young of a wolf."

"Mother, this is the Baron de Willading's heiress," said Christine: "would she come here, did she not pity us?"

"Yes, she can pity us--and yet I find it hard even to be pitied! Sigismund has told us of her goodness, and she may, in truth, feel for the wretched!"

The allusion to her son caused the temples of Adelheid to burn like fire, while there was a chill, resembling that of death, at her heart. The first arose from the quick and uncontrollable alarm of female sensitiveness; the last was owing to the shock inseparable from being presented with this vivid, palpable picture of Sigismund's close affinity with the family of an executioner. She could have better borne it, had Marguerite spoken of her son less familiarly, or with more of that feigned ignorance of each other, which, without stopping to scan its fitness, she had been led to think existed between the young man and his family.

"Mother!" exclaimed Christine reproachfully, and in surprise, as if a great indiscretion had been thoughtlessly committed.

"It matters not, child; it matters not. I saw by the kindling eye of Sigismund to-day, that our secret will not much longer be kept. The noble boy must show more energy than those who have gone before him; he must quit for ever a country in which he was condemned, even before he was born."

"I shall not deny that your connexion with Monsieur Sigismund is known to me," said Adelheid, summoning all her resolution to make an avowal which put her at once into the confidence of Balthazar's family. "You are acquainted with the heavy debt of gratitude we owe your son, and it will explain the nature of the interest I now feel in your wrongs."

The keen eye of Marguerite studied the crimsoned features of Adelheid till forgetfulness got the better of discretion. The search was anxious, rather than triumphant, the feeling most dreaded by its subject; and, when her eyes were withdrawn, the mother of the youth became thoughtful and pensive. This expressive communion produced a deep and embarrassing silence, which each would gladly have broken, had they not both been irresistibly tongue-tied by the rapidity and intensity of their thoughts.

"We know that Sigismund hath been of service to thee," observed Marguerite, who always addressed her gay companion with the familiarity that belonged to her greater age, rather than with the respect which Adelheid had been accustomed to receive from those who were of a rank inferior to her own. "The brave boy hath spoken of it, though he hath spoken of it modestly."

"He had every right to do himself justice in his communications with those of his own family. Without his aid, my father would have been childless; and without his brave support, the child fatherless. Twice has he stood between us and death."

"I have heard of this," returned Marguerite, again fastening her penetrating eye on the tell-tale features of Adelheid, which never failed to brighten and glow, whenever there was allusion to the courage and self-devotion of him she secretly loved, "As to what thou say'st of the intimacy of our poor boy with those of his blood, cruel circumstances stand between us and our wishes. If Sigismund has told thee of whom he comes he has also most probably told thee of the manner in which he passes, in the world, for that which he is not."

"I believe he has not withheld any thing that he knew, and which it was proper to communicate to me;" answered Adelheid, dropping her eyes before the attentive, expectant look of Marguerite. "He has spoken freely, and--"

"Thou wouldst have said--"

"Honorably, and as became a soldier;" continued Adelheid, firmly.

"He has done well! This lightens my heart of one burthen at least. No; God has destined us to this fate, and it would have grieved me that a son of mine should have failed of principle in an affair, of all others, in which it is most wanted. You look amazed, lady!"

"These sentiments, in one so situated, surprise as much as they delight me! If any thing could excuse some looseness in the manner of regarding the usual ties of life, it would surely be to find oneself so placed, by no misconduct of our own, as to be a but to the world's dislike and injustice; and yet here, where there was reason to expect some resentment against fortune, I meet with sentiments that would honor a throne!"

"Thou thinkest as one more accustomed to consider thy fellow-creatures through the means of what men fancy, than through things as they are. This is the picture of youth, and inexperience, and innocence; but it is not the picture of life. 'Tis misfortune, and not prosperity that chasteneth, by proving our insufficiency for true happiness, and by leading the soul to depend on a power greater than any that is to be found on earth. We fall before the temptation of happiness, when we rise in adversity. If thou thinkest, innocent one, that noble and just sentiments belong to the fortunate, thou trustest to a false guide. There are evils which flesh cannot endure, it is true; but, removed from these overwhelming wants, we are strongest in the right, when least tempted by vanity and ambition. More starving beggars abstain from stealing the crust they crave, than pampered gluttons deny themselves the luxury that kills them. They that live under the rod, see and dread the hand that holds it; they who riot in earth's glories, come at last to think they deserve the short-lived distinctions they enjoy. When thou goest down into the depths of misery, thou hast naught to fear except the anger of God! It is when raised above others, that thou shouldst tremble most for thine own safety."

"This is not the manner in which the world is used to reason."

"Because the world is governed by those whose interest it is to pervert truth to their own objects, and not by those whose duties run hand-in-hand with the right. But we will say no more of this, lady; here is one that feels too acutely just now to admit truth to be too freely spoken."

"Dost, feel thyself better, and more able to listen to thy friends, dear Christine?" asked Adelheid, taking the hand of the repudiated and deserted girl with the tenderness of an affectionate sister.

Until now the sufferer had only spoken the few words related, in mild reproof of her mother's indiscretion. That little had been uttered with parched lips and a choked voice, while the hue of her features was deadly pale, and her whole countenance betrayed intense mental anguish. But this display of interest in one of her own years and sex, of whose excellencies she had been accustomed to hear such fervid descriptions from the warm-hearted Sigismund, and of whose sincerity she was assured by the subtle and quick instinct that unites the innocent and young, caused a quick and extreme change in her sensibilities. The grief which had been struggling and condensed, now flowed more freely from her eyes, and she threw herself, sobbing and weeping, in a paroxysm of gentle, but overwhelming, feeling, on the bosom of this new found friend. The experienced Marguerite smiled at this manifestation of kindness on the part of Adelheid, though even this expression of satisfaction was austere and regulated in one who had so long stood at bay with the world. And, after a short pause, she left the room, under the belief that such a communion with a spirit, pure and inexperienced as her own, a communion so unusual to her daughter, would be more likely to produce a happy effect, if left to themselves, than when restrained by her presence.

The two girls wept in common, for a long time after Marguerite had disappeared. This intercourse, chastened as it was by sorrow, and rendered endearing on the one side by a confiding ingenuousness, and on the other by generous pity, caused both to live in that short period, as it were, months together in a near and dear intimacy. Confidence is not always the growth of time. There are minds that meet each other with a species of affinity that resembles the cohesive property of matter, and with a promptitude and faith that only belongs to the purer essence of which they are composed. But when this attraction of the ethereal part of the being is aided by the feelings that have been warmed by an interest so tender as that which the hearts of both the maidens felt in a common object, its power is not only stronger, but quicker, in making itself felt. So much was already known by each of the other's character, fortunes, and hopes (always with the exception of Adelheid's most sacred secret, which Sigismund cherished as a deposit by far too sacred to be shared even with his sister) that the meeting under no circumstances could have been that of strangers, and their mutual knowledge came as an assistant to break down the barriers of those forms which were so irksome to their longings for a freer interchange of feeling and thought. Adelheid possessed too much intellectual tact to have recourse to the every-day language of consolation. When she did speak, which, as became her superior rank and less embarrassed situation, she was the first to do, it in general but friendly allusions.

"Thou wilt go with us to Italy, in the morning," she said, drying her eyes; "my father quits Blonay, in company with the Signor Grimaldi, with to-morrow's sun, and thou wilt be of our company?"

"Where thou wilt--anywhere with thee--anywhere to hide my shame!"

The blood mounted to the temples of Adelheid; her air even appeared imposing to the eyes of the artless and unpractised Christine, as she answered--

"Shame is a word that applies to the mean and mercenary, to the vile and unfaithful," she said, with womanly and virtuous indignation; "but not to thee, love."

"O! do not, do not condemn him;" whispered Christine, covering her face with her hands. "He has found himself unequal to bearing the burthen of our degradation, and he should be spoken of in pity rather than with hatred."

Adelheid was silent; but she regarded the poor trembling girl, whose head now nestled in her bosom, with melancholy concern.

"Didst thou know him well?" she asked in a low tone, following rather the chain of her own thoughts, than reflecting on the nature of the question she put. "I had hoped that this refusal would bring no other pain than the unavoidable mortification which I fear belongs to the weakness of our sex and our habits."

"Thou knowest not how dear preference is to the despised!--how cherished the thought of being loved becomes to those, who, out of their own narrow limits of natural friends, have been accustomed to meet only