“One morning, on my awakening, my maid told me that Madame de Créquy had passed a wretched night, and had bidden Medlicott (whom, as understanding French, and speaking it pretty well, though with that horrid German accent, I had put about her) request that I would go to madame’s room as soon as I was dressed.
“I knew what was coming, and I trembled all the time they were doing my hair, and otherwise arranging me. I was not encouraged by my lord’s speeches. He had heard the message, and kept declaring that he would rather be shot than have to tell her that there was no news of her son; and yet he said, every now and then, when I was at the lowest pitch of uneasiness, that he never expected to hear again: that some day soon we should see him walking in and introducing Mademoiselle de Créquy to us.
“However at last I was ready, and go I must.
“Her eyes were fixed on the door by which I entered. I went up to the bedside. She was not rouged, – she had left it off now for several days, – she no longer attempted to keep up the vain show of not feeling, and loving, and fearing.
“For a moment or two she did not speak, and I was glad of the respite.
“‘Clément?’ she said at length, covering her mouth with a handkerchief the minute she had spoken, that I might not see it quiver.
“‘There has been no news since the first letter, saying how well the voyage was performed, and how safely he had landed – near Dieppe, you know,’ I replied as cheerfully as possible. ‘My lord does not expect that we shall have another letter; he thinks that we shall see him soon.’
“There was no answer. As I looked, uncertain whether to do or say more, she slowly turned herself in bed, and lay with her face to the wall; and, as if that did not shut out the light of day and the busy, happy world enough, she put out her trembling hands, and covered her face with her handkerchief. There was no violence: hardly any sound.
“I told her what my lord had said about Clément’s coming in some day, and taking us all by surprise. I did not believe it myself, but it was just possible, – and I had nothing else to say. Pity, to one who was striving so hard to conceal her feelings, would have been impertinent. She let me talk; but she did not reply. She knew that my words were vain and idle, and had no root in my belief; as well as I did myself.
“I was very thankful when Medlicott came in with Madame’s breakfast, and gave me an excuse for leaving.
“But I think that conversation made me feel more anxious and impatient than ever. I felt almost pledged to Madame de Créquy for the fulfilment of the vision I had held out. She had taken entirely to her bed by this time: not from illness, but because she had no hope within her to stir her up to the effort of dressing. In the same way she hardly cared for food. She had no appetite, – why eat to prolong a life of despair? But she let Medlicott feed her, sooner than take the trouble of resisting.
“And so it went on, – for weeks, months – I could hardly count the time, it seemed so long. Medlicott told me she noticed a preternatural sensitiveness of ear in Madame de Créquy, induced by the habit of listening silently for the slightest unusual sound in the house. Medlicott was always a minute watcher of any one whom she cared about; and, one day, she made me notice by a sign madame’s acuteness of hearing, although the quick expectation was but evinced for a moment in the turn of the eye, the hushed breath – and then, when the unusual footstep turned into my lord’s apartments, the soft quivering sigh, and the closed eyelids.
“At length the intendant of the De Créquy estates – the old man, you will remember, whose information respecting Virginie de Créquy first gave Clément the desire to return to Paris, – came to St.James’s Square, and begged to speak to me. I made haste to go down to him in the housekeeper’s room, sooner than that he should be ushered into mine, for fear of madame hearing any sound.
“The old man stood – I see him now – with his hat held before him in both his hands; he slowly bowed till his face touched it when I came in. Such long excess of courtesy augured ill. He waited for me to speak.
“‘Have you any intelligence?’ I inquired. He had been often to the house before, to ask if we had received any news; and once or twice I had seen him, but this was the first time he had begged to see me.
“‘Yes, madame,’ he replied, still standing with his head bent down, like a child in disgrace.
“‘And it is bad!’ I exclaimed.
“‘It is bad.’ For a moment I was angry at the cold tone in which my words were echoed; but directly afterwards I saw the large, slow, heavy tears of age falling down the old man’s cheeks, and on to the sleeves of his poor, threadbare coat.
“I asked him how he had heard it: it seemed as though I could not all at once bear to hear what it was. He told me that the night before, in crossing Long Acre, he had stumbled upon an old acquaintance of his; one who, like himself had been a dependent upon the De Créquy family, but had managed their Paris affairs, while Fléchier had taken charge of their estates in the country. Both were now emigrants, and living on the proceeds of such small available talents as they possessed. Fléchier, as I knew, earned a very fair livelihood by going about to dress salads for dinner parties. His compatriot, Le Fèbvre, had begun to give a few lessons as a dancing master. One of them took the other home to his lodgings; and there, when their most immediate personal adventures had been hastily talked over, came the inquiry from Fléchier as to Monsieur de Créquy
“‘Clément was dead – guillotined. Virginie was dead – guillotined.’
“When Fléchier had told me thus much, he could not speak for sobbing; and I, myself, could hardly tell how to restrain my tears sufficiently, until I could go to my own room and be at liberty to give way. He asked my leave to bring in his friend Le Fèbvre, who was walking in the square, awaiting a possible summons to tell his story. I heard afterwards a good many details, which filled up the account, and made me feel – which brings me back to the point I started from – how unfit the lower orders are for being trusted indiscriminately with the dangerous powers of education. I have made a long preamble, but now I am coming to the moral of my story.”
My lady was trying to shake off the emotion which she evidently felt in recurring to this sad history of Monsieur de Créquy’s death. She came behind me, and arranged my pillows, and then, seeing I had been crying – for, indeed, I was weak spirited at the time, and a little served to unloose my tears – she stooped down, and kissed my forehead, and said “Poor child!” almost as if she thanked me for feeling that old grief of hers.
“Being once in France, it was no difficult thing for Clément to get into Paris. The difficulty in those days was to leave, not to enter. He came in dressed as a Norman peasant, in charge of a load of fruit and vegetables, with which one of the Seine barges was freighted. He worked hard with his companions in landing and arranging their produce on the quays; and then, when they dispersed to get their breakfasts at some of the estaminets near the old Marché aux Fleurs, he sauntered up a street which conducted him, by many an odd turn, through the Quartier Latin to a horrid back alley, leading out of the Rue l’Ecole de Médécine; some atrocious place, as I have heard, not far from the shadow of that terrible Abbaye, where so many of the best blood of France awaited their deaths. But here some old man lived, on whose fidelity Clément thought that he might rely. I am not sure if he had not been gardener in those very gardens behind the Hôtel Créquy where Clément and Urian used to play together years before. But whatever the old man’s dwelling might be, Clément was only too glad to reach it, you may be sure, he had been kept in Normandy, in all sorts of disguises, for many days after landing