in later days, after Mrs. Major MacWhirter's decease, it was found that she had
promised these treasures in writing to several members of her husband's family,
and that much heart-burning arose in consequence. But our story has nothing to
do with these painful disputes.] And with many blessings this enthusiastic old
lady took leave of her future nephew-in-law when he returned to Paris and duty.
Crack your whip and scream your hi! and be off quick, postilion and diligence! I
am glad we have taken Mr. Firmin out of that dangerous, lazy, love-making place.
Nothing is to me so sweet as sentimental writing. I could have written hundreds
of pages describing Philip and Charlotte, Charlotte and Philip. But a stern
sense of duty intervenes. My modest Muse puts a finger on her lip, and says,
"Hush about that business!" Ah, my worthy friends, you little know what
soft-hearted people those cynics are! If you could have come on Diogenes by
surprise, I daresay you might have found him reading sentimental novels and
whimpering in his tub. Philip shall leave his sweetheart and go back to his
business, and we will not have one word about tears, promises, raptures,
parting. Never mind about these sentimentalities, but please, rather, to depict
to yourself our young fellow so poor that when the coach stops for dinner at
Orleans he can only afford to purchase a penny loaf and a sausage for his own
hungry cheek. When he reached the H�tel Poussin, with his meagre carpet-bag,
they served him a supper which he ate to the admiration of all beholders in the
little coffee-room. He was in great spirits and gaiety. He did not care to make
any secret of his poverty, and how he had been unable to afford to pay for
dinner. Most of the guests at H�tel Poussin knew what it was to be poor. Often
and often they had dined on credit when they put back their napkins into their
respective pigeon-holes. But my landlord knew his guests. They were poor men��
honest men. They paid him in the end, and each could help his neighbour in a
strait.
After Mr. Firmin's return to Paris he did not care for a while to go to the
Elysian Fields. They were not Elysian for him, except in Miss Charlotte's
company. He resumed his newspaper correspondence, which occupied but a day in
each week, and he had the other six�� nay, he scribbled on the seventh day
likewise, and covered immense sheets of letter-paper with remarks upon all
manner of subjects, addressed to a certain Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle Baynes,
chez M. le Major Mac, On these sheets of paper Mr. Firmin could talk so long, so
loudly, so fervently, so eloquently to Miss Baynes, that she was never tired of
hearing, or he of holding forth. He began imparting his dreams and his earliest
sensations to his beloved before breakfast. At noon-day he gave her his opinion
of the contents of the morning papers. His packet was ordinarily full and
brimming over by post-time, so that his expressions of love and fidelity leaped
from under the cover, or were squeezed into the queerest corners, where, no
doubt, it was a delightful task for Miss Baynes to trace out and detect those
little cupids which a faithful lover despatched to her. It would be, "I have
found this little corner unoccupied. Do you know what I have to say in it? Oh,
Charlotte, I," My sweet young lady, you can guess, or will one day guess, the
rest; and will receive such dear, delightful, nonsensical double letters, and
will answer them with that elegant propriety which I have no doubt Miss Baynes
showed in her replies. Ah! if all who are writing and receiving such letters, or
who have written and received such, or who remember writing and receiving such,
would order a copy of this novel from the publishers, what reams, and piles, and
pyramids of paper our ink would have to blacken! Since Charlotte and Philip had
been engaged to each other, he had scarcely, except in those dreadful, ghastly
days of quarrel, enjoyed the luxury of absence from his soul's blessing��the
exquisite delight of writing to her. He could do few things in moderation, this
man��and of this delightful privilege of writing to Charlotte he now enjoyed his
heart's fill.
After brief enjoyment of the weeks of this rapture, when winter was come on
Paris, and icicles hung on the bough, how did it happen that one day, two days,
three days passed, and the postman brought no little letter in the well-known
little handwriting for Monsieur, Monsieur Philip Firmin, � Paris? Three days,
four days, and no letter. Oh, torture, could she be ill? Could her aunt and
uncle have turned against her, and forbidden her to write, as her father and
mother had done before? Oh, grief, and sorrow, and rage! As for jealousy, our
leonine friend never knew such a passion. It never entered into his lordly heart
to doubt of his little maiden's love. But still four, five days have passed, and
not one word has come from Tours. The little H�tel Poussin was in a commotion. I
have said that when our friend felt any passion very strongly he was sure to
speak of it. Did Don Quixote lose any opportunity of declaring to the world that
Dulcinea del Toboso was peerless among women? Did not Antar bawl out in battle,
"I am the lover of Ibla?" Our knight had taken all the people of the hotel into
his confidence somehow. They all knew of his condition��all, the painter, the
poet, the half-pay Polish officer, the landlord, the hostess, down to the little
knife-boy who used to come in with, "The factor comes of to pass�� no letter
this morning."
No doubt Philip's political letters became, under this outward pressure, very
desponding and gloomy. One day, as he sate gnawing his mustachios at his desk,
the little Anatole enters his apartment and cries, "Tenez, M. Philippe. That
lady again!" And the faithful, the watchful, the active Madame Smolensk once
more made her appearance in his chamber.
Philip blushed and hung his head for shame. "Ungrateful brute that I am," he
thought; "I have been back more than a week, and never thought a bit about that
good, kind soul who came to my succour. I am an awful egotist. Love is always
so."
As he rose up to greet his friend, she looked so grave, and pale, and sad, that
he could not but note her demeanour. "Bon Dieu! had anything happened?"
"Ce pauvre g�n�ral is ill, very ill Philip," Smolensk said, in her grave voice.
He was so gravely ill, madame said, that his daughter had been sent for.
"Had she come?" asked Philip, with a start.
"You think but of her��you care not for the poor old man. You are all the same,
you men. All egotists��all. Go! I know you! I never knew one that was not," said
madame.
Philip has his little faults: perhaps egotism is one of his defects. Perhaps it
is yours, or even mine.
"You have been here a week since Thursday last, and you have never written or
sent to a woman who loves you well. Go! It was not well, Monsieur Philippe."
As soon as he saw her, Philip felt that he had been neglectful and ungrateful.
We have owned so much already. But how should madame know that he had returned
on Thursday week? When they looked
up after her reproof, his eager eyes seemed
to ask this question.
"Could she not write to me and tell me that you were come back? Perhaps she knew
that you would not do so yourself. A woman's heart teaches her these experiences
early," continued the lady, sadly; then she added: "I tell you, you are
good-for-nothings, all of you! And I repent me, see you, of having had the
b�tise to pity you!"
"I shall have my quarter's pay on Saturday, I was coming to you then," said
Philip.
"Was it that I was speaking of? What! you are all cowards, men, all! Oh, that I
have been beast, beast, to think at last I had found a man of heart!"
How much or how often this poor Ariadne had trusted and been forsaken, I have no
means of knowing, or desire of inquiring. Perhaps it is as well for the polite
reader, who is taken into my entire confidence, that we should not know Madame
de Smolensk's history from the first page to the last. Granted that Ariadne was
deceived by Theseus: but then she consoled herself, as we may all read in
Smith's Dictionary; and then she must have deceived her father in order to run
away with Theseus. I suspect��I suspect, I say�� that these women who are so
very much betrayed, are ��but we are speculating on this French lady's
antecedents, when Charlotte, her lover, and her family are the persons with whom
we have mainly to do.
These two, I suppose, forgot self, about which each for a moment had been busy,
and madame resumed:�� "Yes, you have reason; Miss is here. It was time. Hold!
Here is a note from her." And Philip's kind messenger once more put a paper into
his hands.��
"My dearest father is very, very ill. Oh, Philip! I am so unhappy; and he is so
good, and gentle, and kind, and loves me so!"
"It is true," madame resumed. "Before Charlotte came, he thought only of her.
that lady, that is true. But to see her now, it is navrant. He will take no
medicine from her. He pushed her away. Before Charlotte came, he sent for me,
and spoke as well as his poor throat would let him, this poor general! His
daughter's arrival seemed to comfort him. But he says, 'Not my wife! not my
wife!' And the poor thing has to go away and cry in the chamber at the side. He
says��in his French, you know��he has never been well since Charlotte went away.
He has often been out. He has dined but rarely at our table, and there has
always been a silence between him and Madame la G�n�rale. Last week he had a
great inflammation of the chest. Then he took to bed, and Monsieur the Doctor
came��the little doctor whom you know. Then a quinsy has declared itself and he
now is scarce able to speak. His condition is most grave. He lies suffering,
dying, perhaps��yes, dying, do you hear? And you are thinking of your little
school-girl! Men are all the same. Monsters! Go!"
Philip, who, I have said, is very fond of talking about Philip, surveys his own
faults with great magnanimity and good humour, and acknowledges them without the
least intention to correct them. "How selfish we are!" I can hear him say,
looking at himself in the glass. "By George! sir, when I heard simultaneously
the news of that poor old man's illness, and of Charlotte's return, I felt that
I wanted to see her that instant. I must go to her, and speak to her. The old
man and his suffering did not seem to affect me. It is humiliating to have to
own that we are selfish beasts. But we are, sir��we are brutes, by George! and
nothing else,"��And he gives a finishing twist to the ends of his flaming
mustachois as he surveys them in the glass.
Poor little Charlotte was in such affliction that of course she must have Philip
to console her at once. No time was to be lost. Quick! a cab this moment: and,
coachman, you shall have an extra for drink if you go quick to the Avenue de
Marli! Madame puts herself into the carriage, and as they go along tells Philip
more at length of the gloomy occurrences of the last few days. Four days since,
the poor general was so bad with his quinsy that he thought he should not
recover, and Charlotte was sent for. He was a little better on the day of her
arrival; but yesterday the inflammation had increased; he could not swallow; he
could not speak audibly; he was in very great suffering and danger. He turned
away from his wife. The unhappy generaless had been to Madame Bunch in her tears
and grief, complaining that after twenty years' fidelity and attachment her
husband had withdrawn his regard from her. Baynes attributed even his illness to
his wife; and at other times said it was a just punishment for his wicked
conduct in breaking his word to Philip and Charlotte. If he did not see his dear
child again, he must beg her forgiveness for having made her suffer so. He had
acted wickedly and ungratefully, and his wife had forced him to do what he did.
He prayed that heaven might pardon him. And he had behaved with wicked injustice
towards Philip, who had acted most generously towards his family. And he had
been a scoundrel��he knew he had��and Bunch, and MacWhirter, and the doctor all
said so��and it was that woman's doing. And he pointed to the scared wife as he
painfully hissed out these words of anger and contrition:�� "When I saw that
child ill, and almost made mad, because I broke my word, I felt I was a
scoundrel, Martin; and I was; and that woman made me so; and I deserve to be
shot; and I shan't recover; I tell you I shan't." Dr. Martin, who attended the
general, thus described his patient's last talk and behaviour to Philip.
It was the doctor who sent madame in quest of the young man. He found poor Mrs.
Baynes with hot, tearless eyes and livid face, a wretched sentinel outside the
sick chamber. "You will find General Baynes very ill, sir," she said to Philip,
with a ghastly calmness, and a gaze he could scarcely face. "My daughter is in
the room with him. It appears I have offended him, and he refuses to see me."
And she squeezed a dry handkerchief which she held, and put on her spectacles
again, and tried again to read the Bible in her lap.
Philip hardly knew the meaning of Mrs. Baynes' words as yet. He was agitated by
the thought of the general's illness, perhaps by the notion that the beloved was
so near. Her hand was in his a moment afterwards: and, even in that sad chamber,
each could give the other a soft pressure, a fond, silent signal of mutual love
and faith.
The poor man laid the hands of the young people together, and his own upon them.
specially affected him. He thanked heaven he was able to see he was wrong. He
whispered to his little maid a prayer for pardon in one or two words, which
caused poor Charlotte to sink on her knees and cover his fevered hand with tears
and kisses. Out of all her heart she forgave him. She had felt that the parent
she loved and was accustomed to honour had been mercenary and cruel. It had
wounded her pure heart to be obliged to think that her father could be other
than ge
nerous, and just, and good. That he should humble himself before her,
smote her with the keenest pang of tender commiseration. I do not care to pursue
this last scene. Let us close the door as the children kneel by the sufferer's
bedside, and to the old man's petition for forgiveness, and to the young girl's
sobbing vows of love and fondness, say a reverent Amen.
By the following letter, which he wrote a few days before the fatal termination
of his illness, the worthy general, it would appear, had already despaired of
his recovery:��"My dear Mac,��I speak and breathe with such difficulty as I
write this from my bed, that I doubt whether I shall ever leave it. I do not
wish to vex poor Eliza, and in my state cannot enter into disputes which I know
would ensue regarding settlement of property. When I left England there was a
claim hanging over me (young Firmin's) at which I was needlessly frightened, as
having to satisfy it would swallow up much more than everything I possessed in
the world. Hence made arrangements for leaving everything in Eliza's name and
the children after. Will with Smith and Thompson, Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn.
Think Char won't be happy for a long time with her mother. To break from F., who
has been most generous to us, will break her heart. Will you and Emily keep her
for a little? I gave F. my promise. As you told me, I have acted ill by him,
which I own and deeply lament. If Char marries, she ought to have her share. May
God bless her, her father prays, in case he should not see her again. And with
best love to Emily, am yours, dear Mac, sincerely,��Charles Baynes."
On the receipt of this letter, Charlotte disobeyed her father's wish, and set
forth from Tours instantly, under her worthy uncle's guardianship. The old
soldier was in his comrade's room when the general put the hands of Charlotte
and her lover together. He confessed his fault, though it is hard for those who
expect love and reverence to have to own to wrong and to ask pardon. Old knees
are stiff to bend. Brother reader, young or old, when our last hour comes, may
ours have grace to do so!
VOL. III.
CHAPTER I. RETURNS TO OLD FRIENDS.
The three old comrades and Philip formed the little mourning procession which
followed the general to his place of rest at Montmartre. When the service has
been read, and the last volley has been fired over the buried soldier, the
troops march to quarters with a quick step, and to a lively tune. Our veteran
has been laid in the grave with brief ceremonies. We do not even prolong his
obsequies with a sermon. His place knows him no longer. There are a few who
remember him: a very, very few who grieve for him��so few that to think of them
is a humiliation almost. The sun sets on the earth, and our dear brother has
departed off its face. Stars twinkle; dews fall; children go to sleep in awe,
and maybe tears; the sun rises on a new day, which he has never seen, and
children wake hungry. They are interested about their new black clothes,
perhaps. They are presently at their work, plays, quarrels. They are looking
forward to the day when the holidays will be over, and the eyes which shone here
yesterday so kindly are gone, gone, gone. A drive to the cemetery, followed by a
coach with four acquaintances dressed in decorous black, who separate and go to
their homes or clubs, and wear your crape for a few days after��can most of us
expect much more? The thought is not ennobling or exhilarating, worthy sir. And,
pray, why should we be proud of ourselves? Is it because we have been so good,
or are so wise and great, that we expect to be beloved, lamented, remembered?
Why, great Xerxes or blustering Bobadil must know in that last hour and
resting-place how abject, how small, how low, how lonely they are, and what a
little dust will cover them. Quick, drums and fifes, a lively tune! Whip the