XIII. Husband and Wife.
COUNT CHARNY was clad in black, mourning for his brother slain two days before.
This mourning was not solely in his habit, but in the recesses of his heart, and his pallid cheeks attested what grief he had undergone. Never are handsome faces finer than after sorrow, and the rapid glance of his wife perceived that he had never looked more superb.
She closed her eyes an instant, slightly held back her head to draw a full breath and laid her hand on her heart which seemed about to break.
When she opened them, after a second, Charny was in the same place.
“Is the carriage to wait?” inquired the servant, urged by the footman at the door.
An unspeakable look shot from the yearning eyes of the visitor upon his wife, who was dazed into closing her own again, while she stood breathless as though she had not noticed the glance or heard the question. Both had penetrated to her heart.
Charny sought in this lovely living statue for some token to indicate what answer he should make. As her shiver might be read both ways, he said: “Bid the coachman wait.”
The door closed and perhaps for the first time since their wedding the lord and his lady were alone together.
“Pardon me,” said the count, breaking the silence, “but is my unexpected call intrusion? I have not seated myself and the carriage waits so that I can depart as I came.”
“No, my lord, quite the contrary,” quickly said Andrea. “I knew you were well and safe, but I am not the less happy to see you after recent events.”
“You have been good enough then to ask after me?”
“Of course; yesterday, and this morning, when I was answered that you were at Versailles; and this evening, when I learnt that you were in attendance on the Queen.”
Were those last words spoken simply or did they contain a reproach? Not knowing what to make of them, the count was evidently set thinking by them. But probably leaving to the outcome of the dialogue the lifting of the veil lowered on his mind for the time, he replied almost instantly:
“My lady, a pious duty retained me at Versailles yesterday and this day; one as sacred in my eyes brought me instantly on my arrival in town beside her Majesty.”
Andrea tried in her turn to discover the true intent of the words. Thinking that she ought to respond, she said:
“Yes, I know of the terrible loss which—you have experienced.” She had been on the point of saying “we,” but she dared not, and continued: “You have had the misfortune to lose your brother Valence de Charny.”
The count seemed to be waiting for the clue, for he had started on hearing the pronoun “Your.”
“Yes, my lady. As you say, a terrible loss for me, but you cannot appreciate the young man, as you little knew poor Valence, happily.”
In the last word was a mild and melancholy reproach, which his auditor comprehended, though no outward sign was manifested that she gave it heed.
“Still, one thing consoles me, if anything can console me; poor Valence died doing his duty, as probably his brother Isidore will die, and I myself.”
This deeply affected Andrea.
“Alas, my lord,” she asked, “do you believe matters so desperate that fresh sacrifices of blood are necessary to appease the wrath of heaven?”
“I believe that the hour comes when the knell of kings is to peal; that an evil genius pushes monarchy unto the abysm. In short I think, if it is to fall, it will be accompanied, and should be so, by all those who took part in its splendor.”
“True, but when comes that day, believe that it will find me ready like yourself for the utmost devotion,” said Andrea.
“Your ladyship has given too many proofs of that devotion in the past, for any one to doubt it for the future—I least of all—the less as I have for the first time flinched about an order from the Queen. On arriving from Versailles, I found the order to present myself to her Majesty instantly.”
“Oh,” said Andrea, sadly smiling; “it is plain,” she added, after a pause, “like you, the Queen sees the future is sombre and mysterious and wishes to gather round her all those she can depend on.”
“You are wrong, my lady,” returned Charny, “for the Queen summoned me, not to bid me stand by her, but to send me afar.”
“Send you away?” quickly exclaimed the countess, taking a step towards the speaker. “But I am keeping you standing,” she said, pointing to a chair.
So saying, she herself sank, as though unable to remain on foot any longer, on the sofa where she had been sitting with Sebastian shortly before.
“Send you away? in what end?” she said with emotion not devoid of joy at the thought that the suspected lovers were parting.
“To have me go to Turin to confer with Count Artois and the Duke of Bourbon, who have quitted the country.”
“And you accepted?”
“No, my lady,” responded Charny, watching her fixedly.
She lost color so badly that he moved as if to assist her, but this revived her strength and she recovered.
“No? you have answered No to an order of the Queen’s, my lord?” she faltered, with an indescribable accent of doubt and astonishment.
“I answered that I believed my presence here at present more necessary than in Italy. Anybody could bear the message with which I was to be honored; I had a second brother, just arrived from the country, to place at the orders of the King, and he was ready to start in my stead.”
“Of course the Queen was happy to see the substitute,” exclaimed Andrea, with bitterness she could not contain, and not appearing to escape Charny.
“It was just the other way, for she seemed to be deeply wounded by the refusal. I should have been forced to go had not the King chanced in and I made him the arbiter.”
“The King held you to be right?” sneered the lady with an ironical smile: “he like you advised your staying in the Tuileries? Oh, how good his Majesty is!”
“So he is,” went on the count, without wincing: “he said that my brother Isidore would be well fitted for the mission and the more so as it was his first visit to court, so that his absence would not be remarked. He added that it would be cruel for the Queen to require my being sent away from you at present.”
“The King said, from me?” exclaimed Andrea.
“I repeat his own words, my lady. Looking round and addressing me, he wanted to know where the Countess of Charny was. ‘I have not seen her this evening,’ said he. As this was specially directed to me, I made bold to reply. ‘Sire,’ I said, ‘I have so seldom the pleasure of seeing the countess that I am in the state of impossibility to tell where she is; but if your Majesty wishes to know, he might inquire of the Queen who, knowing, will reply!’ I insisted as I judged from the Queen looking black, that some difference had arisen between you.”
Andrea was so enwrapt in the listening that she did not think of saying anything.
“The Queen made answer that the Countess of Charny had gone away from the palace with no intention to return. ‘Why, what motive can your best friend have in quitting the palace at this juncture?’ inquired the King. ‘Because she is uncomfortable here,’ replied the Queen who had started at the title you were given. ‘Well, that may be so; but we will find accommodation for her and the count beside our own rooms,’ went on the King. ‘You will not be very particular, eh, my lord?’ I told him that I should be satisfied with any post as long as I could serve him in it. ‘I know it well: so that we only want the lady called back from—’ the Queen did not know whither you had departed. ‘Not know where your friend has gone?’ exclaimed the King. ‘When my friends leave me I do not inquire after them.’ ‘Good, some woman’s quarrel,’ said Louis; ‘my Lord Charny, I have to speak a while with the Queen. Kindly wait for me and present your brother who shall start for Turin this evening. I am of your opinion that I shall require you and I mean to keep you by me.’ So I sent for my brother who was awaiting me in the Green Saloon, I was told.”
At the mention, Andrea, who had nearly forgotten Sebastian in her interest in her husband’s story, was made to think of all that had passed between mother and son, and she threw her eyes with anguish on the bedroom door where she had placed him.
“But you must excuse me for talking of matters but slightly interesting you while you are no doubt wishful to know why I have come here.”
“No, my lord, what you say does engage me,” replied the countess; “your presence can only be agreeable on account of the fears I have felt on your account. I pray you to continue. The King asked you to wait for him and to bring your brother.”
“We went to the royal apartments, where he joined us in ten minutes. As the mission for the princes was urgent he began by that. Their Highnesses were to be instructed about what had happened. A quarter of an hour after the King came, my brother was on the road, and the King and I were left alone. He stopped suddenly in pacing the room and said: ‘My lord, do you know what has passed between the Queen and the countess?’ I was ignorant. ‘Something must have happened,’ he went on, ‘for the Queen is in a temper fit to massacre everybody, and it appears to me unjust to the countess—which is odd, as the Queen usually defends her friends through thick and thin, even when they are wrong.’ ‘I repeat I know nothing, but I venture to assert that the countess has done no wrong—even if we cannot admit that a queen ever does so.'”
“I thank your lordship for having so good an opinion of me,” said Andrea.
“'I suppose as the countess has a house in town that she has retired there,’ I suggested. ‘Of course! I will give you leave of absence till to-morrow on condition that you bring back the countess,’ said the King.”
Charny looked at his wife so fixedly that she was unable to bear the glance and had to close her eyes.
“Then, seeing that I was in mourning, he stayed me to say that my loss was one of those which monarchs could not repair; but that if my brother left a widow or a child he would help them, and would like them presented to him, at any rate; the Queen should take care of the widow and he would of the children.”
Charny spoke with tears in his voice.
“I daresay the King was only repeating what the Queen had said,” remarked the lady.
“The Queen did not honor me with a word on the subject,” returned Charny, “and that is why the King’s speech affected me most deeply. He ended by bidding me ‘Go to our dear Andrea; for though those we love cannot console us they can mourn with us, and that is a relief!’ Thus it is that I come by the King’s order, which may be my excuse, my lady,” concluded the count.
“Did you doubt your welcome?” cried the lady, quickly rising and holding out both hands to him.
He grasped them and kissed them; she uttered a scream as though they were redhot iron, and sank back on the divan. But her hands were clinging to his and he was drawn down so as to be placed sitting beside her.
But it was then that she thought she heard a noise in the next room, and she started from him so abruptly that he rose and stood off a little, not knowing to what to attribute the outcry and the repulsion so suddenly made.
Leaning on the sofa back, he sighed. The sigh touched her deeply.
At the very time when the bereaved mother found her child, something like the dawn of love beamed on her previously dismal and sorrowful horizon. But by a strange coincidence, proven that she was not born to happiness, the two events were so combined that one annulled the other: the return of the husband thrust aside the son’s love as the latter’s presence destroyed the budding passion.
Charny could not divine this in the exclamation and the starting aloof, the silence full of sadness following, although the cry was of love and the retreat from fear, not repulsion.
He gazed upon her with an expression which she could not have mistaken if she had been looking up.
“What answer am I to carry to the King?” he inquired emitting a sigh.
“My lord,” she replied, starting at the sound and raising her clear and limpid eyes to him, “I suffered so much while in the court that I accepted the leave to go when accorded by the Queen, with thankfulness. I am not fitted to live in society, and in solitude I have found repose if not happiness. My happiest days were those spent as a girl at Taverney and in the convent of St. Denis with the noble princess of the House of France, the Lady Louise. But, with your lordship’s permission, I will dwell in this summerhouse, full of recollections which are not without some sweetness spite of their sadness.”
Charny bowed at this suggestion of his permission being sought, like a man who was obeying an order, far more than granting a request.
“As this is a fixed resolve,” he said, marking how steady she was with all her meekness, “am I to be allowed to call on you here?”
She fastened her eyes on him, usually clear but now full of astonishment and blandness.
“Of course, my lord,” was her response, “and as I shall have no company, you can come any time that your duties at the palace allow you to set aside a little while to me.”
Never had Charny seen so much charm in her gaze, or such tenderness in her voice. Something ran through his veins, like the shudder from a lover’s first kiss. He glanced at the place whence he had risen when Andrea got up; he would have given a year of life to take his seat there again if she would not once more repel him. But the soldier was timid, and he dared not allow himself the liberty.