Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

CHAPTER II. A DEATH-BED

It was at the close of a sultry day that a sick man, wan, pale, and almost voiceless, sat propped up by pillows, and seeming to drink in with a sort of effort the faint breeze that entered by an open window. A large bouquet of fresh flowers stood in a vase beside him, and on the bed itself moss-roses and carnations were scattered, their gorgeous tints terribly in contrast to the sickly pallor of that visage on which death had already placed its stamp. It would have puzzled the wiliest physiognomist to have read that strange and strongly-marked face; for while the massive head and strong brow, the yet brilliant eye and contracted eyebrow, denoted energy and daring, there was a faint smile, inexpressibly sad and weary-looking, on the mouth, that seemed to bespeak a heart that had experienced many an emotion, and ended by finding ‘all barren.’

A long, low sigh escaped him as he lay, and in his utter weariness his hands dropped listlessly, one falling over the side of the bed. The watchful nurse, who, in the dress of her order as a Sister of Charity, sat nigh, arose and leaned over to regard him.

‘No, Constance, not yet,’ said he, smiling faintly, and answering the unspoken thought that was passing in her mind; ‘not yet; but very near – very near indeed. What hour is it?’

‘St. Roch has just chimed half-past seven,’ replied she calmly.

‘Open the window wider; there is a little air stirring.’

‘No; the evening is very still, but it will be fresher by and by.’

‘I shall not need it,’ said he, more faintly, though with perfect calm. ‘Before midnight, Constance – before midnight it will be the same to me if it breathed a zephyr or blew a gale: where I am going it will do neither.’

‘Oh, Citizen, can I not persuade you to see the Père Dulaque or the Curé of St. Roch? Your minutes are few here now, and I implore you not to waste them.’

‘’Tis so that I intend, my worthy friend,’ said he calmly. ‘Had either of these excellent men you mention made the voyage I am now going, I would speak to them willingly; but remember, Constance, it is a sea without a chart.’

‘Say not so in the face of that blessed Book – ’

‘Nay, nay, do not disturb my few moments of calm. How sweet those flowers are! How balmy that little air that now stirs the leaves! Oh, what a fair world it is, or rather it might be! Do not sigh so heavily, Constance; remember what I told you yesterday; our belief is like our loyalty – it is independent of us.’

‘Let some holy man at least speak to you.’

‘Why should I shock his honest faith? Why should he disturb my peace. Know, woman,’ added he, more energetically, ‘that I have striven harder to attain this same faith than ever you have done to resist a heresy. I needed it a thousand times more than you; I ‘d have done more to gain it – clung closer to it when won too.’

‘What did you do?’ asked she boldly.

‘I read, reflected, pondered years long – disputed, discussed, read more – inquired wherever I hoped to meet enlightenment.’

‘You never prayed,’ said she meekly.

‘Prayed! How should I – not knowing for what, or to whom?’

An exclamation – almost a cry – escaped the woman, and her lips were seen to move rapidly, as if in prayer. The sick man seemed to respect the sentiment of devotion that he could not bring himself to feel, and was silent. At last he said, in a voice of much sweetness, ‘Your patient care and kindness are not the less dear to me that I ascribe them to a source your humility would reject. I believe in human nature, my good Constance, though of a verity it has given me strong lessons not to be over-sanguine.’

‘Who has had more friends?’ began she; but he stopped her short at once by a contemptuous gesture with his hand, while he said —

‘Men are your friends in life as they are your companions on a journey – so long as your road lies in the same direction they will travel with you. To bear with your infirmities, to take count of your trials, and make allowance for your hardships; to find out what of good there is in you, and teach you to fertilise it for yourself; to discern the soil of your nature, expel its weeds, and still to be hopeful – this is friendship. But it never comes from a brother man; it is a woman alone can render it. Who is it that knocks there?’ asked he quickly.

She went to the door and speedily returned with the answer —

‘It is the same youth who was here yesterday, and refused to give his name. He is still most urgent in his demand to see you.’

‘Does he know what he asks – that I am on the eve of a long journey, and must needs have my thoughts engaged about the road before me?’

‘I told him you were very ill – very ill indeed; that even your dearest friends only saw you for a few minutes at a time; but he persisted in asserting that if you knew he was there, you would surely see him.’

‘Let his perseverance have its reward. Tell him to come in.’

The sister returned to the door, and after a whispered word to the stranger, enforcing caution in his interview, admitted him, and pointing to the bed where the sick man lay, she retired.

If the features and gestures of the stranger, as he moved silently across the room, denoted the delicacy of a certain refinement, his dress bespoke great poverty; his clothes were ragged, his shoes in tatters, and even the red woollen cap which he had just removed from his head was patched in several places.

The sick man motioned to him to stand where the light would fall upon him strongly; and then, having stared steadfastly at him for several minutes, he sighed drearily, and said, ‘What have you with me?’

‘Don’t you remember me, then, Signor Gabriel?’ asked the young man, in a tone of deep agitation. ‘Don’t you remember Fitzgerald?’

‘The boy of the Maremma – the Garde du Corps – the favourite of the Queen – the postilion on the flight to Va-rennes – the secret letter-carrier to the Temple – ’

‘Speak lower, Monsieur! speak lower, I beseech you,’ interposed the other. ‘If I were betrayed, my life is not worth an hour’s purchase.’

‘And is it worth preserving in such a garb as that? I thought you had been an apter scholar, Gerald, and that ere this you had found your way to fortune. The Prince de Condé wrote me that you were his trustiest agent.’

‘And it is on a mission from him that I am here this day. I have been waiting for weeks long to see and speak with you. I knew that you were ill, and could find no means to approach you.’

‘You come too late, my friend – too late,’ said Mirabeau, sighing: ‘Royalist, Girondin, Bourbon, or the Mountain, they are all illusions now!’

‘The great principles of justice are not an illusion, sir; the idea of Right is immutable and immortal!’

‘I know of nothing that does not change and die,’ said Mirabeau gravely; then added, ‘But what would you with me?’

‘I have not courage to disturb your suffering sick-bed with cares you can no longer feel. I had not imagined I should have found you so ill as this.’

‘Sick unto death – if you can tell me what death means,’ said the other with a strange smile.

‘They who sent me,’ resumed Gerald, not heeding his last remark, ‘believed you in all the vigour of health as of intellect. They have watched with almost breathless interest the glorious conflict you have long maintained against the men of anarchy and the guillotine; they have recognised in you the one sole man, of all the nation, who can save France – ’

The sick man smiled sadly, and laying his wasted fingers on Gerald’s arm, said, ‘It is not to be done!’

‘Do you mean, sir, that it is the will of the great Providence who rules us that this mighty people should sink under the tyranny of a few bloodthirsty wretches?’

‘I spoke not of France; I spoke of the Monarchy, said Mirabeau. ‘Look at those flowers there: in a few hours hence they will have lost their odour and their colour. Now, all your memory – be it ever so good – will not replace these to your senses. Go tell your master that his hour has struck. Monarchy was once a Faith; it will henceforth be but a Superstition.’

‘And is a just right like this to be abandoned?’

‘No. The stranger may place them on the throne they have lost; and if they be wise enough to repay the service with ingratitude, a few more years of this mock rule may be eked out.’

‘Would that I had power to tell you all our plans, and you the strength to listen to me!’ cried Gerald: ‘you would see that what they purpose is no puny enterprise; nor what they aim at, a selfish conquest.’

‘You came to me once before – I remember the incident well; I was living in the Avenue aux Abois when you summoned me to a meeting at St. Cloud. The Monarchy might have been saved even then. It was late, but not too late. I advised a ministry of such materials as the people might trust and the court corrupt – men of low origin, violent, exacting, but venal. Six months of such rule would have sent France back to all her ancient traditions, and the king been more popular than ever. But they would not hear me: they talked of walking in the high path of duty; and it has led some to the scaffold, and the rest to exile! But what concern have I with these things? Do you know, young man, that all your king could promise, all the mighty people themselves could bestow upon me as I lie here, could not equal the pleasure that moss-rose yields me, nor the ecstasy of delight I feel when a gentle wind blows fresh upon my cheek. Say it out, sir; say out what that supercilious smile implies,’ cried he, his eyes lighting up with all their ancient fire. ‘Tell me at once it was Mirabeau the voluptuary that spoke there! Ay, and I ‘ll not gainsay you! If to exult in the perfection of the senses nature has given me; to drink in with ecstasy what others imbibe in apathy; to feel a godlike enjoyment where less keenly gifted temperaments had scarcely known a pleasure – if this is to be a voluptuary, I am one.’

‘But why, with powers like yours, limit your enjoyment to mere sensual pleasures? Why not taste the higher and purer delight of succouring misfortune and defending the powerless?’

‘I did try it,’ said the sick man, sighing. ‘I essayed to discover the pleasures of what you would call morality. I was generous; I forgave injuries; I pardoned ingratitude; I aided struggling misery; but the reward was not forthcoming; – these things gave me no happiness.’

‘No happiness!’

‘None. I tried to forget I was a dupe; I did my best to believe myself a benefactor of my species; I stopped my ear against any praises from those I had befriended; but nothing in my heart responded to their joy. I was not happier. Remember, boy,’ cried he, ‘that even your own moralists only promise the recompense for virtue in another world. I looked for smaller profits and prompter payment. The mockery of his smile, as he spoke, seemed to wound Gerald; for, as he turned away his head, a deep flush covered his face. ‘Forgive me,’ said the sick man; ‘I ought to have remembered that your early training was derived from those worthy men, the Jesuit Fathers; and if I cannot participate in your consolations, I would not insult your convictions, Then, raising himself on one arm, he added, with a stronger effort: ‘Your mission to me is a failure, Fitzgerald. I cannot aid your cause: he whose trembling hand cannot carry the glass of water to his lips can scarce replace a fallen dynasty. I will not even deceive you by saying what, if health and strength were mine, I might do – perhaps I do not know it myself. Go back and tell your Prince that he and his must wait – wait like wise physicians – till nature bring the crisis of the malady; that all they could do now would but hurt the cause they mean to serve. When France needs her princes, she will seek them even out of exile. Let them beware how they destroy the prestige of their high estate by accepting equality meanwhile. They are the priests of a religion, and can never descend to the charges of the laity. As for you, yourself, it is well that I have seen you; I have long desired to speak to you of your own fortunes. I had written to Alfieri about you, and his answer – to you an important document – is in that box. You will find the key yonder on the ring.’

As Gerald rose to obey this direction, Mirabeau fell back exhausted on the bed, a clammy sweat breaking out over his cheeks and forehead. The cry which unconsciously escaped the youth, quickly summoned the ‘sister’ to the bedside.

‘This is death,’ said she, in the calm, solemn voice of one long inured to such scenes. She tried to make him swallow a teaspoonful of some restorative, but the liquid dropped over his lips, and fell upon his chin. ‘Death – and what a death!’ muttered the sister, half to herself.

‘See – see – he is coming back to himself,’ whispered Gerald; ‘his eyes are opening, and his lips move,’ while a faint effort of the muscles around the mouth seemed to essay a smile.

Again she moistened his lips with the cordial, and this time he was able to swallow some drops of it. He made a slight attempt to speak, and as the sister bent her ear to his lips, he whispered faintly, ‘Tell him to come back – tomorrow – to-morrow!’

She repeated the words to Gerald, who, feeling that his presence any longer there might be hurtful, slowly and silently stepped from the room, and descended to the street.

Late as it was, a considerable crowd was assembled before the door in front of the house; their attitude of silent and respectful anxiety showed the deep interest felt in the sick man’s state; and although no name was spoken, the frequent recurrence of the words ‘he’ and ‘his’ evinced how absorbingly all thoughts were concentrated upon one individual. Nor was it only of one class in society the crowd was composed. Mirabeau’s admirers and followers were of every rank and every section of politicians; and, strangely enough, men whose public animosities had set them widely apart from each other were here seen exchanging their last tidings of the sick-room, and alternating and balancing their hopes and fears of his condition.