The Maid of Maiden Lane
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Now it is very noticeable that when unusual events begin to happen in any life, there is a succession of such events, and not unfrequently they arrive in similar ways. At any rate about ten days after the receipt of Annie's letter, Cornelia was almost equally amazed by the receipt of another letter. It came one day about noon, and a slave of Van Ariens brought it—a piece of paper twisted carelessly but containing these few pregnant words:
Cornelia, dear, come to me. Bring me something to wear. I have just arrived, saved by the skin of my teeth, and I have not a decent garment of any kind to put on. ARENTA.
A thunderbolt from a clear sky could hardly have caused such surprise, but Cornelia did not wait to talk about the wonder. She loaded a maid with clothing of every description, and ran across the street to her friend. Arerita saw her coming, and met her with a cry of joy, and as Van Ariens was sick and trembling with the sight of his daughter, and the tale of her sufferings, Cornelia persuaded him to go to sleep, and leave Arenta to her care. Poor Arenta, she was ill with the privations she had suffered, she was half-starved, and nearly without clothing, but she did not complain much until she had been fed, and bathed, and "dressed" as she said "like a New York woman ought to be."
"You know what trunks and trunks full of beautiful things I took away with me, Cornelia," she complained; "Well I have not a rag left. I have nothing left at all."
"Your husband, Arenta?"
"He was guillotined."
"Oh, my dear Arenta!"
"Guillotined. I told him to be quiet. I begged him to go over to Marat, but no! his nobility obliged him to stand by his order and his king. So for them, he died. Poor Athanase! He expected me to follow him, but I could not make up my mind to the knife. Oh how terrible it was!" Then she began to sob bitterly, and Cornelia let her talk of her sufferings until she fell into a sleep—a sleep easy to see, still haunted by the furies and terrors through which she had passed.
For a week Cornelia remained with her friend, and Madame Jacobus joined them as often as possible, and gradually the half-distraught woman recovered something of her natural spirits and resolution. In this week she talked out all her frightful experiences in the great prison of La Force, and was completely overwhelmed at their remembrance. But the trouble which has been removed, soon grows far off; and Arenta quickly took her place in her home, and resumed her old life. Of course with many differences. She could not be the same Arenta, she had outlived many of her illusions. She took but little interest for a while in the life around her; her thoughts and conversation were still in Paris, and this was evident from the fact, that during the whole week of Cornelia's stay with her, she never once named Cornelia's love, or life, or prospects. Rem she did talk about, but chiefly because he was going to marry an English girl, an intention she angrily deplored.
"I am sure," she said, "Rem might have learned a lesson from my sad fortune. What does he want to marry a foreigner for? He ought to have prevented me from doing so, instead of following my foolish example."
"No one could have prevented you, Arenta. You would not listen even to your father."
"Oh indeed, it was my fate. We must all submit to fate. Why did you refuse Rem?"
"He was not my fate, Arenta."
"Well then, neither is George Hyde your fate. Aunt Jacobus has told me some things about him. She says he is to marry his cousin. You ought to marry Rem."
As she said these words Van Ariens, accompanied by Joris Van Heemskirk entered the room, and Cornelia was glad to escape. She knew that Arenta would again relate all her experiences, and she disliked to mingle them with her renewed dreams of love and her lover.
"She will talk and talk," said Cornelia to her mother, "and then there will be tea and chocolate and more talk, and I have heard all I wish to hear about that dreadful city, and the demons who walk in blood."
"Arenta has made a great sensation, Cornelia," answered Mrs. Moran. "She has received half the town. Gertrude Kippon stole quietly home and has hardly been seen, or heard tell of."
"But mother, Arenta has far more genius than Gertrude. She has made of her misfortunes a great drama, and wherever you go, it is of the Marquise de Tounnerre people are talking. Senator Van Heemskirk came in with her father as I left."
"I hope he treated you more civilly than madame did."
"He was delightful. I courtesied to him, and he lifted my hand and kissed it, and said, 'I grew lovelier every day,' and I kissed his cheek and said, 'I wished always to be lovely in his sight.' Then I came home, because I would not, just yet, speak of George to him."
"Arenta would hardly have given you any opportunity. I wonder at what hour she will release Joris Van Heemskirk!"
"It will be later than it ought to be."
Indeed it was so late that Madame Van Heemskirk had locked up her house for the night, and was troubled at her husband's delay—even a little cross:
"An old man like you, Joris," she said in a tone of vexation—"sitting till nine o'clock with the last runaway from Paris; a cold you have already, and all for a girl that threw her senses behind her, to marry a Frenchman."
"Much she has suffered, Lysbet."
"Much she ought to suffer. And I believe not in Arenta Van Ariens' suffering. In some way, by hook or crook, by word or deed, she would out of any trouble work her way."
"I will sit a little by the fire, Lysbet. Sit down by me. My mind is full of her story."
"That is it. And sleep you will not, and tomorrow sick you will be; and anxious and tired I shall be; and who for? The Marquise de Tounnerre! Well then, Joris, in thy old age it is late for thee to bow down to the Marquise de Tounnerre!"
"To God Almighty only I bow down, Lysbet, and as for titles what care of them has Jons Van Heemskirk? Think you, when God calls me He will say 'Councillor' or 'Senator'? No, He will say 'Jons Van Heemskirk!' and I shall answer to that name. But you know well, Lysbet, this bloody trial of liberty in Paris touches all the world beside."
"Forgive me, Joris! A shame it is to be cross with thee, nor am I cross even with that poor Arenta. A child, a very child she is."
"But bitter fears and suffering she has come through. Her husband was guillotined last May, and from her home she was taken—no time to write to a friend—no time to save anything she had, except a string of pearls, which round her waist for many weeks, she had worn. From prison to prison she was sent, until at last she was ordered before the Revolutionary Tribunal. From that tribunal to the guillotine is only a step, and she would surely have taken it but for—"
"Minister Morris?"
"No. Twenty miles outside the city, Minister Morris now lives; and no time was there to send him word of her strait. Hungry and sick upon the floor of her prison she was sitting, when her name was called, for bead after bead of her pearl necklace had gone to her jailor, only for a little black bread and a cup of milk twice a day; and this morning for twenty-four hours she had been without food or milk."
"The poor little one! What did she do?"
"This is what she did, and blame her I will not. When in that terrible iron armchair before those bloody judges, she says she forgot then to be afraid. She looked at Fouquier-Tinville the public prosecutor, and at the fifteen jurymen, and flinched not. She had no dress to help her beauty, but she declares she never felt more beautiful, and well I can believe it. They asked her name, and my Lysbet, think of this child's answer! 'I am called Arenta JEFFERSON de Tounnerre,' she said; and at the name of 'Jefferson' there were exclamations, and one of the jurymen rose to his feet and asked excitedly, 'What is it you mean? Jefferson! The great Jefferson! The great Thomas Jefferson! The great American who loves France and Liberty?' 'It is the same,' she answered, and then she sat silent, asking no favour, so wise was she, and Fouquier-Tinville looked at the President and said—'among my friends I count this great American!' and a juryman added, 'when I was very poor and hungry he fed and helped me,' and he bowed to Arenta as he spoke. And after that Fouquier-Tinville asked who would certify to her claim, and she answered boldly, 'Minister Morris.' When questioned further she answered, 'I adore Liberty, I believe in France, I married a Frenchman, for Thomas Jefferson told me I was coming to a great nation and might trust both its government and its generosity.' They asked her then if she had been used kindly in prison, and she told them her jailor had been to her very unkind, and that he had taken from her the pearl necklace which was her wedding gift, and if you can believe Arenta, they were all extremely polite to her, and gave her at once the papers which permitted her to leave France. The next day a little money she got from Minister Morris, but a very hard passage she had home. And listen now, her jailor was guillotined before she left, and she declares it was the necklace—very unfortunate beads they were, and Madame Jacobus said when she heard of their fate, 'let them go! With blood and death they came, it is fit they should go as they came!' Arenta thinks as soon as Fouquier-Tinville heard of them, he doomed the man, for she saw in his eyes that he meant to have them for himself. Well, then, she is also sure that they will take Fouquier-Tinville to the guillotine."
"After all, it was a lie she told, Joris."
"That is so, but I think her life was worth a few words. And Thomas Jefferson says she was ten thousand times welcome to the protection his name gave her. I thank my God I have never had such temptation. I will say one thing though, Lysbet, that if coming home some night, a thief should say to me 'your money I must have' and if in my pocket I had some false money, as well as true money, the false money I would give the thief and think no shame to do it. Overly righteous we must not be, Lysbet."
"I am astonished also. I thought Arenta would cry out and that only."
"What a man or a woman will do and suffer, and how they will do and suffer, no one knows till comes some great occasion. When the water is ice, who could believe that it would boil, unless they had seen ice become boiling water? All the human heart wants, is the chance."
"As men and women have in Paris to live, I wonder me, that they can wish to live at all! Welcome to them must be death."
"So wrong are you, Lysbet. Trouble and hardship make us love life. A zest they give to it. It is when we have too much money, too much good food and wine, too much pleasure of all kinds, that we grow melancholy and sad, and say all is vanity and vexation. You may see that it is always so, if you look in the Holy Scriptures. It was not from the Jews in exile and captivity, but from the Jews of Solomon's glory came the only dissatisfied, hopeless words in the Bible. Yes, indeed! it is the souls that have too much, who cry out vanity, vanity, all is vanity! For myself, I like not the petty prudencies of Solomon. There is better reading in Isaiah, and in the Psalms, and in the blessed Gospels."
"To-morrow, Joris, I will go and see Arenta. She is fair, and she knows it; witty, and she knows it; of good courage, and she knows it; the fashion, and she knows it; and when she speaks, she speaks oracles that one must believe, even though one does not understand them. To Aurelia Van Zandt she said, my heart will ache forever for my beloved Athanase, and Aurelia says, that her old lover Willie Nicholls is at her feet sitting all the day long—yet for all these things, she is a brave woman and I will go and see her."
"Willie Nicholls is a good young man, and he is rich also; but of him I saw nothing at all. Cornelia Moran was there and no flower of Paradise is so sweet, so fair!"
"A very proud girl! I am glad she said 'no' to my Joris."
"Come, my Lysbet, we will now pray and sleep. There is so much NOT to say."
CHAPTER XIII
THE NEW DAYS COME
One afternoon in the late autumn Annie was sitting watching Hyde playing with his dog, a big mastiff of noble birth and character. The creature sat erect with his head leaning against Hyde, and Hyde's arm was thrown around his neck as he talked to him of their adventures on the Broad that day. Annie's small face, though delicate and fragile looking was full of peace, and her eyes, soft, deep and heavenly, held thoughts that linked her with heaven.
Outside there was in the air that November feeling which chills like the passing breath of death, the deserted garden looked sad and closed-in, and everywhere there was a sense of the languishing end of the year, of the fading and dropping of all living things. But in the house Annie and Hyde and the dog sat within the circle of warmth and light made by the blazing ash logs, and in that circle there was at least an atmosphere of sweet content. Suddenly George looked up and his eyes caught those of Annie watching him. "What have you been reading, Annie?" he asked, as he stooped forward and took a thin volume from her lap. "Why!" he cried, "'tis Paul and Virginia. Do you indeed read love stories?"
"Yes. The mystery of a love affair pleases every one; and I think we shall not tire of love stories till we tire of the mystery of spring, or of primroses and daffodils. Every one I know takes their tale of love to be quite a new tale."
"Love has been cruel to me. It has made a cloud on my life that will help to cover me in my grave."
"You still love Cornelia?"
"I cannot cure myself of a passion so hopeless. However, as I see no end to my unhappiness, I try to submit to what I cannot avoid. What is the use of longing for that which I have no hope to get?"
"My uncle grows anxious for you to marry. He would be glad to see the succession of Hyde assured."
"Oh, indeed, I have no mind to take a wife. I hear every day that some of my acquaintance have married, I hear of none that have done worse."
"You believe nothing of what you say. My uncle was much pleased with Sarah Capel. What did you think of the beauty?"
"Cornelia has made all other women so indifferent to me, that if I cannot marry her, my father may dispose of me as he chooses."
"Cannot you forget Cornelia?"
"It is impossible. Every day I resolve to think of her no more, and then I continue thinking; and every day I am more and more in love with her. Her very name moves me beyond words."
"There is no name, George, however sweet and dear, however lovingly spoken, whose echo does not at last grow faint."
"Cornelia will echo in my heart as long as my heart beats."
Then they were silent, and Hyde drew his dog closer and watched the blaze among some lighter branches, which a servant had just brought in. At his entrance he had also given Annie a letter, which she was eagerly reading. Hyde had no speculation about it; and even when he found Annie regarding him with her whole soul in her face, he failed to understand, as he always had done, the noble love which had been so long and so faithfully his—a love holding itself above endearments; self-repressed, self-sacrificing, kept down in the inmost heart-chamber a dignified prisoner behind very real bars. Yet he was conscious that the letter was of more than usual interest, and when the servant had closed the door behind him, he asked, "Whom is your letter from, Annie? It seems to please you very much."
She leaned forward to him with the paper in her little trembling hand, and said,—
"It is from Cornelia."
"My God!" he ejaculated; and the words were fraught with such feeling, as could have found no other vehicle of expression.
"She has sent you, dear George, a copy of the letter you ought to have received more than two years ago. Read it."
His eyes ran rapidly over the sweet words, his face flamed, his hands trembled, he cried out impetuously—
"But what does it mean? Am I quite in my senses? How has this letter been delayed? Why do I get only a copy?"
"Because Mr. Van Ariens has the original."
"It is all incredible. What do you mean, Annie? Do not keep me in such torturing suspense."
"It means that Mr. Van Ariens asked Cornelia to marry him on the same day that you wrote to her about your marriage. She answered both letters in the same hour, and misdirected them."
"GOD'S DEATH! How can I punish so mean a scoundrel? I will have my letter from him, if I follow him round the world for it."
"You have your letter now. I asked Cornelia to write it again for you; and you see she has done it gladly."
"Angel of goodness! But I will have my first letter."
"It has been in that man's keeping for more than two years. I would not touch it. 'Twould infect a gentleman, and make of him a rascal just as base."
"He shall write me then an apology in his own blood. I will make him do it, at the point of my sword."
"If I were you, I would scorn to wet my sword in blood so base."
"Remember, Annie, what this darling girl suffered. For his treachery she nearly died. I speak not of my own wrong—it is as nothing to hers."
"However, she might have been more careful."
"Annie, she was in the happy hurry of love. Your calm soul knows not what a confusing thing that is—she made a mistake, and that sneaking villain turned her mistake into a crime. By a God's mercy, it is found out—but how? Annie! Annie, how much I owe you! What can I say? What can I do?"
"Be reasonable. Mary Damer really found it out. His guilty restless conscience forced him to tell her the story, though to be sure he put the wrong on people he did not name. But I knew so much of the mystery of your love sorrow, as to put the two stories together, and find them fit. Then I wrote to Cornelia."
"How long ago?"
"About two months."
"Why then did you not give me hope ere this?"
"I would not give you hope, till hope was certain. Two years is a long time in a girl's life. It was a possible thing for Cornelia to have forgotten—to have changed."
"Impossible! Quite impossible! She could not forget. She could not change. Why did you not tell me? I should have known her heart by mine own."
"I wished to be sure," repeated Annie, a little sadly.
"Forgive me, dear Annie. But this news throws me into an unspeakable condition. You see that I must leave for America at once."
"No. I do not see that, George."
"But if you consider—"
"I have been considering for two months. Let me decide for you now, for you are not able to do so wisely. Write at once to Cornelia, that is your duty as well as your pleasure. But before you go to her, there are things indispensable to be done. Will you ask Doctor Moran for his child, and not be able to show him that you can care for her as she deserves to be cared for? Lawyers will not be hurried, there will be consultations, and engrossings, and signings, and love—in your case—will have to wait upon law."
"'Tis hard for love, and harder perhaps for anger to wait. For I am in a passion of wrath at Van Ariens. I long to be near him. Oh what suffering his envy and hatred have caused others!"
"And himself also. Be sure of that, or he had not tried to find some ease in a kind of confession. Doctor Roslyn will tell you that it is an eternal law, that wherever sin is, sorrow will answer it."
"The man is hateful to me."
"He has done a thing that makes him hateful; but perhaps for all that, he has been so miserable about it, as to have the pity of the Uncondemning One. I hear your father coming. I am sure you will have his sympathy in all things."
She left the room as the Earl entered it. He was in unusually high spirits. Some political news had delighted him, and without noticing his son's excitement he said—
"The Commons have taken things in their own hands, George. I said they would. They listen to the King and the Lords very respectfully, and then obey themselves. Most of the men in the Lower House are unfit to enter it."
"Well, sir, the Lords as a rule send them there—you have sent three of them yourself—and unfit men in public places, suppose prior unfitness in those who have the places to dispose of. But the government is not interesting. I have something else, father, to think about."
"Indeed, I think the government is extremely interesting. It is very like three horses arranged in tandem fashion—first, you know, the King, a little out of the reach of the whip; then the Lords follow the King, and the Commons are in the shafts, a more ignoble position, but yet—as we see to-day, possessing a special power of upsetting the coach."
"Father, I have very important news from America. Will you listen to it?"
"Yes, if you will tell it to me straight, and not blunder about your meaning." "Sir, I have just discovered that a letter sent to me more than two years ago, has been knowingly and purposely detained from me."
"By whom?"
"A man into whose hands it fell by misdirection."
"Did the letter contain means of identifying it, as belonging to you?"
"Ample means."
"Then the man is outside your recognition. You might as well go to the Bridewell, and seek a second among its riff-raff of scoundrels. Tell me shortly whom it concerns."
"Miss Moran."
"Oh indeed! Are we to have that subject opened again?"
His face darkened, and George, with an impetuosity that permitted no interruption, told the whole story. As he proceeded the Earl became interested, then sympathetic. He looked with moist eyes at the youth so dear to him, and saw that his heart was filled with the energy and tenderness of his love. His handsome face, his piercingly bright eyes, his courteous, but obstinately masterful manner, his almost boyish passion of anger and impatience, his tall, serious figure, erect, as if ready for opposition; even that sentiment of deadly steel, of being impatient to toss his sheath from his sword, pleased very much the elder man; and won both his respect and his admiration. He felt that his son had rights all his own, and that he must cheerfully and generously allow them.
"George," he answered, "you have won my approval. You have shown me that you can suffer and be faithful, and the girl able to inspire such an affection, must be worthy of it. What do you wish to do?"
"I am going to America by the next packet."
"Sit down, then we can talk without feeling that every word is a last word, and full of hurry and therefore of unreason. You desire to see Miss Moran without delay, that is very natural."
"Yes, sir. I am impatient also to get my letter."
"I think that of no importance."
"What would you have done in my case, and at my age, father?"
"Something extremely foolish. I should have killed the man, or been killed by him. I hope that you have more sense. Society does not now compel you to answer insult with murder. The noble not caring of the spirit, is beyond the mere passion of the animal. What does Annie say?"
"Annie is an angel. I walk far below her—and I hate the man who has so wronged—Cornelia. I think, sir, you must also hate him."
"I hate nobody. God send, that I may be treated the same. George, you have flashed your sword only in a noble quarrel, will you now stain it with the blood of a man below your anger or consideration? You have had your follies, and I have smiled at them; knowing well, that a man who has no follies in his youth, will have in his maturity no power. But now you have come of age, not only in years but in suffering cheerfully endured and well outlived; so I may talk to you as a man, and not command you as a father."
"What do you wish me to do, sir?"
"I advise you to write to Miss Moran at once. Tell her you are more anxious now to redeem your promise, than ever you were before. Say to her that I already look upon her as a dear daughter, and am taking immediate steps to settle upon you the American Manor, and also such New York property as will provide for the maintenance of your family in the state becoming your order and your expectations. Tell her that my lawyers will go to this business to-morrow, and that as soon as the deeds are in your hand, you will come and ask for the interview with Doctor Moran, so long and cruelly delayed."
"My dear father! How wise and kind you are!"
"It is my desire to be so, George. You cannot, after this unfortunate delay, go to Doctor Moran without the proofs of your ability to take care of his daughter's future."