Cranford (46 page)

"'What is it, Clement?' I asked.

"He clasped his hands, and looked as though he tried to speak, but could not bring out the words.

"'They have guillotined my uncle!' said he at last. Now, I knew that there was a Count de Crequy; but I had always understood that the elder branch held very little communication with him; in fact, that he was a vaurien of some kind, and rather a disgrace than otherwise to the family. So, perhaps, I was hard-hearted but I was a little surprised at this excess of emotion, till I saw that peculiar look in his eyes that many people have when there is more terror in their hearts than they dare put into words. He wanted me to understand something without his saying it; but how could I? I had never heard of a Mademoiselle de Crequy.

"'Virginie!' at last he uttered. In an instant I understood it all, and remembered that, if Urian had lived, he too might have been in love.

"'Your uncle's daughter?' I inquired.

"'My cousin,' he replied.

"I did not say, 'your betrothed,' but I had no doubt of it. I was mistaken, however.

"'O madame!' he continued, 'her mother died long ago—her father now—and she is in daily fear,—alone, deserted—'

"'Is she in the Abbaye?' asked I.

"'No! she is in hiding with the widow of her father's old concierge. Any day they may search the house for aristocrats. They are seeking them everywhere. Then, not her life alone, but that of the old woman, her hostess, is sacrificed. The old woman knows this, and trembles with fear. Even if she is brave enough to be faithful, her fears would betray her, should the house be searched. Yet, there is no one to help Virginie to escape. She is alone in Paris.'

"I saw what was in his mind. He was fretting and chafing to go to his cousin's assistance; but the thought of his mother restrained him. I would not have kept back Urian from such on errand at such a time. How should I restrain him? And yet, perhaps, I did wrong in not urging the chances of danger more. Still, if it was danger to him, was it not the same or even greater danger to her?—for the French spared neither age nor sex in those wicked days of terror. So I rather fell in with his wish, and encouraged him to think how best and most prudently it might be fulfilled; never doubting, as I have said, that he and his cousin were troth-plighted.

"But when I went to Madame de Crequy—after he had imparted his, or rather our plan to her—I found out my mistake. She, who was in general too feeble to walk across the room save slowly, and with a stick, was going from end to end with quick, tottering steps; and, if now and then she sank upon a chair, it seemed as if she could not rest, for she was up again in a moment, pacing along, wringing her hands, and speaking rapidly to herself. When she saw me, she stopped: 'Madame,' she said, 'you have lost your own boy. You might have left me mine.'

"I was so astonished—I hardly knew what to say. I had spoken to Clement as if his mother's consent were secure (as I had felt my own would have been if Urian had been alive to ask it). Of coarse, both he and I knew that his mother's consent must be asked and obtained, before he could leave her to go on such an undertaking; but, somehow, my blood always rose at the sight or sound of danger; perhaps, because my life had been so peaceful. Poor Madame de Crequy! it was otherwise with her; she despaired while I hoped, and Clement trusted.

"'Dear Madame de Crequy,' said I, 'he will return safely to us; every precaution shall be taken, that either he or you, or my lord, or Monkshaven can think of; but he cannot leave a girl—his nearest relation save you—his betrothed, is she not?'

"'His betrothed!' cried she, now at the utmost pitch of her excitement. 'Virginie betrothed to Clement?—no! thank heaven, not so bad as that! Yet it might have been. But mademoiselle scorned my son! She would have nothing to do with him. Now is the time for him to have nothing to do with her!"

"Clement had entered at the door behind his mother as she thus spoke. His face was set and pale, till it looked as gray and immovable as if it had been carved in stone. He came forward and stood before his mother. She stopped her walk, threw back her haughty head, and the two looked each other steadily in the face. After a minute or two in this attitude, her proud and resolute gaze never flinching or wavering, he went down upon one knee, and, taking her hand—her hard, stony hand, which never closed on his, but remained straight and stiff:

"'Mother,' he pleaded, 'withdraw your prohibition. Let me go!'

"'What were her words?' Madame de Crequy replied, slowly, as if forcing her memory to the extreme of accuracy. 'My cousin,' she said, 'when I marry, I marry a man, not a petit-maitre. I marry a man who, whatever his rank may be will add dignity to the human race by his virtues, and not be content to live in an effeminate court on the traditions of past grandeur.' She borrowed her words from the infamous Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the friend of her scarce less infamous father—nay! I will say it,—if not her words, she borrowed her principles. And my son to request her to marry him!'

"'It was my father's written wish,' said Clement.

"'But did you not love her? You plead your father's words,—words written twelve years before,—and as if that were your reason for being indifferent to my dislike to the alliance. But you requested her to marry you,—and she refused you with insolent contempt; and now you are ready to leave me,—leave me desolate in a foreign land—'

"'Desolate! my mother! and the Countess Ludlow stands there!'

"'Pardon, madame! But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is absent. And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,—this degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes! She is only reaping some of the fruit of the harvest whereof her friends have sown the seed. Let her alone! Doubtless she has friends—it may be lovers—among these demons, who, under the cry of liberty, commit every licence. Let her alone, Clement! She refused you with scorn: be too proud to notice her new.'

"'Mother, I cannot think of myself; only of her.'

"'Think of me, then! I, your mother, forbid you to go.'

"Clement bowed low, and went out of the room instantly, as one blinded. She saw his groping movement, and, for an instant, I think her heart was touched. But she turned to me, and tried to exculpate her past violence by dilating upon her wrongs, and they certainly were many. The Count, her husband's younger brother, had invariably tried to make mischief between husband and wife. He had been the cleverer man of the two, and had possessed extraordinary influence over her husband. She suspected him of having instigated that clause in her husband's will, by which the Marquis expressed his wish for the marriage of the cousins. The Count had had some interest in the management of the De Crequy property during her son's minority. Indeed, I remembered then, that it was through Count de Crequy that Lord Ludlow had first heard of the apartment which we afterwards took in the Hotel de Crequy; and then the recollection of a past feeling came distinctly out of the mist, as it were; and I called to mind how, when we first took up our abode in the Hotel de Crequy, both Lord Ludlow and I imagined that the arrangement was displeasing to our hostess; and how it had taken us a considerable time before we had been able to establish relations of friendship with her. Years after our visit, she began to suspect that Clement (whom she could not forbid to visit at his uncle's house, considering the terms on which his father had been with his brother; though she herself never set foot over the Count de Crequy's threshold) was attaching himself to mademoiselle, his cousin; and she made cautious inquiries as to the appearance, character, and disposition of the young lady. Mademoiselle was not handsome, they said; but of a fine figure, and generally considered as having a very noble and attractive presence. In character she was daring and wilful (said one set); original and independent (said another). She was much indulged by her father, who had given her something of a man's education, and selected for her intimate friend a young lady below her in rank, one of the Bureaucracie, a Mademoiselle Necker, daughter of the Minister of Finance. Mademoiselle de Crequy was thus introduced into all the free-thinking salons of Paris; among people who were always full of plans for subverting society. 'And did Clement affect such people?' Madame de Crequy had asked with some anxiety. No! Monsieur de Crequy had neither eyes nor ears, nor thought for anything but his cousin, while she was by. And she? She hardly took notice of his devotion, so evident to every one else. The proud creature! But perhaps that was her haughty way of concealing what she felt. And so Madame de Crequy listened, and questioned, and learnt nothing decided, until one day she surprised Clement with the note in his hand, of which she remembered the stinging words so well, in which Virginie had said, in reply to a proposal Clement had sent her through her father, that 'When she married she married a man, not a petit-maitre.'

"Clement was justly indignant at the insulting nature of the answer Virginie had sent to a proposal, respectful in its tone, and which was, after all, but the cool, hardened lava over a burning heart. He acquiesced in his mother's desire, that he should not again present himself in his uncle's salons; but he did not forget Virginie, though he never mentioned her name.

"Madame de Crequy and her son were among the earliest proscrits, as they were of the strongest possible royalists, and aristocrats, as it was the custom of the horrid Sansculottes to term those who adhered to the habits of expression and action in which it was their pride to have been educated. They had left Paris some weeks before they had arrived in England, and Clement's belief at the time of quitting the Hotel de Crequy had certainly been, that his uncle was not merely safe, but rather a popular man with the party in power. And, as all communication having relation to private individuals of a reliable kind was intercepted, Monsieur de Crequy had felt but little anxiety for his uncle and cousin, in comparison with what he did for many other friends of very different opinions in politics, until the day when he was stunned by the fatal information that even his progressive uncle was guillotined, and learnt that his cousin was imprisoned by the licence of the mob, whose rights (as she called them) she was always advocating.

"When I had heard all this story, I confess I lost in sympathy for Clement what I gained for his mother. Virginie's life did not seem to me worth the risk that Clement's would run. But when I saw him—sad, depressed, nay, hopeless—going about like one oppressed by a heavy dream which he cannot shake off; caring neither to eat, drink, nor sleep, yet bearing all with silent dignity, and even trying to force a poor, faint smile when he caught my anxious eyes; I turned round again, and wondered how Madame de Crequy could resist this mute pleading of her son's altered appearance. As for my Lord Ludlow and Monkshaven, as soon as they understood the case, they were indignant that any mother should attempt to keep a son out of honourable danger; and it was honourable, and a clear duty (according to them) to try to save the life of a helpless orphan girl, his next of kin. None but a Frenchman, said my lord, would hold himself bound by an old woman's whimsies and fears, even though she were his mother. As it was, he was chafing himself to death under the restraint. If he went, to be sure, the wretches might make an end of him, as they had done of many a fine fellow: but my lord would take heavy odds, that, instead of being guillotined, he would save the girl, and bring her safe to England, just desperately in love with her preserver, and then we would have a jolly wedding down at Monkshaven. My lord repeated his opinion so often that it became a certain prophecy in his mind of what was to take place; and, one day seeing Clement look even paler and thinner than he had ever done before, he sent a message to Madame de Crequy, requesting permission to speak to her in private.

"'For, by George!' said he, 'she shall hear my opinion, and not let that lad of hers kill himself by fretting. He's too good for that, if he had been an English lad, he would have been off to his sweetheart long before this, without saying with your leave or by your leave; but being a Frenchman, he is all for AEneas and filial piety,—filial fiddle-sticks!' (My lord had run away to sea, when a boy, against his father's consent, I am sorry to say; and, as all had ended well, and he had come back to find both his parents alive, I do not think he was ever as much aware of his fault as he might have been under other circumstances.) 'No, my lady,' he went on, 'don't come with me. A woman can manage a man best when he has a fit of obstinacy, and a man can persuade a woman out of her tantrums, when all her own sex, the whole army of them, would fail. Allow me to go alone to my tete-a-tete with madame."

"What he said, what passed, he never could repeat; but he came back graver than he went. However, the point was gained; Madame de Crequy withdrew her prohibition, and had given him leave to tell Clement as much.

"'But she is an old Cassandra,' said he. 'Don't let the lad be much with her; her talk would destroy the courage of the bravest man; she is so given over to superstition.' Something that she had said had touched a chord in my lord's nature which he inherited from his Scotch ancestors. Long afterwards, I heard what this was. Medlicott told me.

"However, my lord shook off all fancies that told against the fulfilment of Clement's wishes. All that afternoon we three sat together, planning; and Monkshaven passed in and out, executing our commissions, and preparing everything. Towards nightfall all was ready for Clement's start on his journey towards the coast.

"Madame had declined seeing any of us since my lord's stormy interview with her. She sent word that she was fatigued, and desired repose. But, of course, before Clement set off, he was bound to wish her farewell, and to ask for her blessing. In order to avoid an agitating conversation between mother and son, my lord and I resolved to be present at the interview. Clement was already in his travelling-dress, that of a Norman fisherman, which Monkshaven had, with infinite trouble, discovered in the possession of one of the emigres who thronged London, and who had made his escape from the shores of France in this disguise. Clement's plan was, to go down to the coast of Sussex, and get some of the fishing or smuggling boats to take him across to the French coast near Dieppe. There again he would have to change his dress. Oh, it was so well planned! His mother was startled by his disguise (of which we had not thought to forewarn her) as he entered her apartment. And either that, or the being suddenly roused from the heavy slumber into which she was apt to fall when she was left alone, gave her manner an air of wildness that was almost like insanity.