After Dark, Wilkie Collins [best short novels .txt] 📗

of chemistry. Lomaque, now you have begun reading the newspaper, try if you can’t find something interesting to read about. What are the last accounts from Paris? Any more symptoms of a general revolt?”

Lomaque turned to another part of the paper. “Bad, very bad prospects for the restoration of tranquillity,” he said. “Necker, the people’s Minister, is dismissed. Placards against popular gatherings are posted all over Paris. The Swiss Guards have been ordered to the Champs Elysees, with four pieces of artillery. No more is yet known, but the worst is dreaded. The breach between the aristocracy and the people is widening fatally almost hour by hour.”

Here he stopped and laid down the newspaper. Trudaine took it from him, and shook his head forebodingly as he looked over the paragraph which had just been read.

“Bah!” cried Madame Danville. “The People, indeed! Let those four pieces of artillery be properly loaded, let the Swiss Guards do their duty, and we shall hear no more of the People!”

“I advise you not to be sure of that,” said her son, carelessly; “there are rather too many people in Paris for the Swiss Guards to shoot conveniently. Don’t hold your head too aristocratically high, mother, till we are quite certain which way the wind really does blow. Who knows if I may not have to bow just as low one of these days to King Mob as ever you courtesied in your youth to King Louis the Fifteenth?”

He laughed complacently as he ended, and opened his snuff-box. His mother rose from her chair, her face crimson with indignation.

“I won’t hear you talk so—it shocks, it horrifies me!” she exclaimed, with vehement gesticulation. “No, no! I decline to hear another word. I decline to sit by patiently while my son, whom I love, jests at the most sacred principles, and sneers at the memory of an anointed king. This is my reward, is it, for having yielded and having come here, against all the laws of etiquette, the night before the marriage? I comply no longer; I resume my own will and my own way. I order you, my son, to accompany me back to Rouen. We are the bridegroom’s party, and we have no business overnight at the house of the bride. You meet no more till you meet at the church. Justin, my coach! Lomaque, pick up my hood. Monsieur Trudaine, thanks for your hospitality; I shall hope to return it with interest the first time you are in our neighborhood. Mademoiselle, put on your best looks to-morrow, along with your wedding finery; remember that my son’s bride must do honor to my son’s taste. Justin! my coach—drone, vagabond, idiot, where is my coach?”

“My mother looks handsome when she is in a passion, does she not, Rose?” said Danville, quietly putting up his snuff-box as the old lady sailed out of the room. “Why, you seem quite frightened, love,” he added, taking her hand with his easy, graceful air; “frightened, let me assure you, without the least cause. My mother has but that one prejudice, and that one weak point, Rose. You will find her a very dove for gentleness, as long as you do not wound her pride of caste. Come, come, on this night, of all others, you must not send me away with such a face as that.”

He bent down and whispered to her a bridegroom’s compliment, which brought the blood back to her cheek in an instant.

“Ah, how she loves him—how dearly she loves him!” thought her brother, watching her from his solitary corner of the room, and seeing the smile that brightened her blushing face when Danville kissed her hand at parting.

Lomaque, who had remained imperturbably cool during the outbreak of the old lady’s anger—Lomaque, whose observant eyes had watched sarcastically the effect of the scene between mother and son on Trudaine and his sister, was the last to take leave. After he had bowed to Rose with a certain gentleness in his manner, which contrasted strangely with his wrinkled, haggard face, he held out his hand to her brother “I did not take your hand when we sat together on the bench,” he said; “may I take it now?”

Trudaine met his advance courteously, but in silence. “You may alter your opinion of me one of these days.” Adding those words in a whisper, Monsieur Lomaque bowed once more to the bride and went out.

For a few minutes after the door had closed the brother and sister kept silence. “Our last night together at home!” That was the thought which now filled the heart of each. Rose was the first to speak. Hesitating a little as she approached her brother, she said to him, anxiously:

“I am sorry for what happened with Madame Danville, Louis. Does it make you think the worse of Charles?”

“I can make allowance for Madame Danville’s anger,” returned Trudaine, evasively, “because she spoke from honest conviction.”

“Honest?” echoed Rose, sadly, “honest?—ah, Louis! I know you are thinking disparagingly of Charles’s convictions, when you speak so of his mother’s.”

Trudaine smiled and shook his head; but she took no notice of the gesture of denial—only stood looking earnestly and wistfully into his face. Her eyes began to fill; she suddenly threw her arms round his neck, and whispered to him: “Oh, Louis, Louis! how I wish I could teach you to see Charles with my eyes!”

He felt her tears on his cheek as she spoke, and tried to reassure her.

“You shall teach me, Rose—you shall, indeed. Come, come, we must keep up our spirits, or how are you to look your best to-morrow?”

He unclasped her arms, and led her gently to a chair. At the same moment there was a knock at the door, and Rose’s maid appeared, anxious to consult her mistress on some of the preparations for the wedding ceremony. No interruption could have been more welcome just at that time. It obliged Rose to think of present trifles, and it gave her brother an excuse for retiring to his study.

He sat down by his desk, doubting and heavy-hearted, and placed the letter from the Academy of Sciences open before him.

Passing over all the complimentary expressions which it contained, his eye rested only on these lines at the end: “During the first three years of your professorship, you will be required to reside in or near Paris nine months out of the year, for the purpose of delivering lectures and superintending experiments from time to time in the laboratories.” The letter in which these lines occurred offered him such a position as in his modest self-distrust he had never dreamed of before; the lines themselves contained the promise of such vast facilities for carrying on his favorite experiments as he could never hope to command in his own little study, with his own limited means; and yet, there he now sat doubting whether he should accept or reject the tempting honors and advantages that were offered to him—doubting for his sister’s sake!

“Nine months of the year in Paris,” he said to himself, sadly; “and Rose is to pass her married life at Lyons. Oh, if I could clear my heart of its dread on her account—if I could free my mind of its forebodings for her future—how gladly I would answer this letter by accepting the trust it offers me!”

He paused for a few minutes, and reflected. The thoughts that were in him marked their ominous course in the growing paleness of his cheek, in the dimness that stole over his eyes. “If this cleaving distrust from which I cannot free myself should be in very truth the mute prophecy of evil to come—to come, I know not when—if it be so (which God forbid!), how soon she may want a friend, a protector near at hand, a ready refuge in the time of her trouble! Where shall she then find protection or refuge? With that passionate woman? With her husband’s kindred and friends?”

He shuddered as the thought crossed his mind, and opening a blank sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the ink. “Be all to her, Louis, that I have been,” he murmured to himself, repeating his mother’s last words, and beginning the letter while he uttered them. It was soon completed. It expressed in the most respectful terms his gratitude for the offer made to him, and his inability to accept it, in consequence of domestic circumstances which it was needless to explain. The letter was directed, sealed; it only remained for him to place it in the post-bag, lying near at hand. At this last decisive act he hesitated. He had told Lomaque, and he had firmly believed himself, that he had conquered all ambitions for his sister’s sake. He knew now, for the first time, that he had only lulled them to rest—he knew that the letter from Paris had aroused them. His answer was written, his hand was on the post-bag, and at that moment the whole struggle had to be risked over again—risked when he was most unfit for it! He was not a man under any ordinary circumstances to procrastinate, but he procrastinated now.

“Night brings counsel; I will wait till to-morrow,” he said to himself, and put the letter of refusal in his pocket, and hastily quitted the laboratory.

CHAPTER II.

Inexorably the important morrow came: irretrievably, for good or for evil, the momentous marriage-vow was pronounced. Charles Danville and Rose Trudaine were now man and wife. The prophecy of the magnificent sunset overnight had not proved false. It was a cloudless day on the marriage morning. The nuptial ceremonies had proceeded smoothly throughout, and had even satisfied Madame Danville. She returned with the wedding-party to Trudaine’s house, all smiles and serenity. To the bride she was graciousness itself. “Good girl,” said the old lady, following Rose into a corner, and patting her approvingly on the cheek with her fan; “good girl, you have looked well this morning—you have done credit to my son’s taste. Indeed, you have pleased me, child! Now go upstairs, and get on your traveling-dress, and count on my maternal affection as long as you make Charles happy.”

It had been arranged that the bride and bridegroom should pass their honeymoon in Brittany, and then return to Danville’s estate near Lyons. The parting was hurried over, as all such partings should be. The carriage had driven off; Trudaine, after lingering long to look after it, had returned hastily to the house; the very dust of the whirling wheels had all dispersed; there was absolutely nothing to see; and yet there stood Monsieur Lomaque at the outer gate; idly, as if he was an independent man—calmly, as if no such responsibilities as the calling of Madame Danville’s coach, and the escorting of Madame Danville back to Lyons, could possibly rest on his shoulders.

Idly and calmly, slowly rubbing his hands one over the other, slowly nodding his head in the direction by which the bride and bridegroom had departed, stood the eccentric land-steward at the outer gate. On a sudden the sound of footsteps approaching from the house seemed to arouse him. Once more he looked out into the road, as if he expected still to see the carriage of the newly-married couple. “Poor girl! ah, poor girl!” said Monsieur Lomaque softly to himself, turning round to ascertain who was coming from the house.

It was only the postman with a letter in his hand, and the post-bag crumpled up under his arm.

“Any fresh news from Paris, friend?” asked Lomaque.

“Very bad, monsieur,” answered the postman. “Camille Desmoulins has appealed to the people in the Palais Royal; there are fears of a riot.”

“Only a riot!” repeated Lomaque, sarcastically. “Oh, what a brave Government not to be afraid of anything worse! Any letters?” he added, hastily dropping the subject.