Farewell to Taverney.
NICOLE, before entering her mistress’s apartment, stopped on the staircase to subdue some gathering emotions of resentment rising in her bosom. The baron encountered her as she stood motionless, thoughtful, her brows contracted and leaning on her hand, and, seeing her so pretty, he kissed her, as the Duke de Richelieu would have done at thirty years of age. Roused from her reverie by this piece of gallantry, Nicole hurried up to Andree’s room, and found her just closing her trunk.
“Well,” said Mademoiselle de Taverney, “have your reflections ended?”
“Yes, madame,” replied Nicole, very decidedly.
“You will marry?”
“No, madame.”
“What! after all your first love?”
“My love will never do for me what the kindness of mademoiselle has done for me. I belong to you, mademoiselle, and wish always to belong to you. I know the mistress I have; I do not know the master I might have.”
Andree was touched with this unlooked-for exhibition of affectionate feeling in the giddy Nicole, and was far from suspecting that this choice had been a forced one. She smiled, pleased to find one human being better than she had expected.
“You do well, Nicole,” she replied, “to attach yourself to me. I shall not forget this trust to me; and if any good fortune befall me, you shall share it.”
“Oh, mademoiselle, I have quite decided I will go with you!”
“Without regret?”
“Blindly.”
“I do not like that answer, Nicole. I should not wish you at some future day to reproach yourself with having blindly trusted me and followed me.”
“I shall never have to reproach anyone but myself, mademoiselle.”
“Then you have had an explanation with your lover? I saw you talking with him.”
Nicole blushed, then bit her lip. She forgot that Andree’s window was opposite that at which she had spoken to Gilbert.
“It is true, mademoiselle,” replied Nicole.
“And you told him all?”
Nicole thought Andree had some particular reason for this question, and, all her former suspicions returning, she answered, “I told him I would have nothing more to do with him.”
It was plain that the two women would never understand each other — the one pure as the diamond, the other without any fixed principle of conduct, though having occasional impulses of goodness.
In the meantime, the baron had completed all his arrangements. An old sword, which he had worn at Fontenoy, some parchments establishing his right to travel in his majesty’s carriages, and a litter of old papers, formed the most bulky part of his baggage. La Brie followed, tottering under the weight of an almost empty trunk. In the avenue they found the gentleman of the king’s bodyguard, who, while waiting, had drained to the last drop his bottle of wine. The gallant had remarked the fine waist and pretty ankle of Nicole, who was going back and forward with messages, and he had kept peeping about in the hope of exchanging a word with her. He was roused, however, to more active occupation by the “baron’s request that he would order the carriage to the door; he started, bowed, and in a sonorous voice summoned the coachman.
The carriage drew up. La Brie put the trunk on behind with an indescribable mixture of joy and pride in his looks. “I am really,” murmured he, carried away by his enthusiasm, and thinking he was alone, “going to get into the king’s carriage!”
“Behind it, behind it, my worthy friend!” replied Beausire, with a patronizing smile.
“What, sir, are you going to take La Brie with you?” said Andree. “Who will take care of Taverney?”
“Why, pardieu! the good-for-nothing philosopher.”
“Gilbert?”
“Yes; has he not a gun?”
“But how will he live?”
“By his gun, to be sure! Don’t be uneasy — he will have excellent fare; blackbirds and thrushes are not scarce at Taverney.”
Andree looked at Nicole; the latter began to laugh. “And is that all the compassion you show for him, ungrateful girl?”
“Oh, mademoiselle,” replied Nicole, “he is very clever with his gun — he will not die of hunger!”
“But, sir,” continued Andree, “we must leave him two or three louis-d’ors.”
“To spoil him? Very fine indeed! He is vicious enough as he is!”
“He must have something to live on,” persisted Andree.
“The neighbors will help him if he is in want.”
“Don’t be uneasy, madame,” said Nicole; “he will have no cause to ask their assistance.”
“At all events,” replied Andree, “leave him two or three crowns.”
“He would not accept them.”
“He would not accept them? Then he is proud, this M. Gilbert of yours.”
“Oh, mademoiselle, he is not mine, Heaven be praised!”
“Come, come!” said the baron, “let Gilbert go to the devil! The carriage is waiting; get in, my love.”
Andree did not reply. She cast a farewell look on the old chateau, and then got into the heavy and ponderous carriage. The baron seated himself beside her. La Brie, still wearing his splendid livery, and Nicole, who seemed never to have known such a person as Gilbert, mounted on the box. The coachman rode one of the horses as postilion.
“But Monsieur l’Exempt, where shall he sit?” exclaimed the baron.
“On my horse, sir, on my horse,” replied Beausire, still eying Nicole, who colored with delight at having so soon replaced a rude peasant admirer by an elegant gentleman.
The carriage, drawn by four strong horses, started into rapid motion. The trees of the avenue glided away on each side, and disappeared one by one, sadly bending before the east wind, as if to bid farewell to their owners who abandoned them. The carriage reached the gate. Gilbert stood there, upright, immovable, his hat in his hand. He did not seem to see Andree, yet he watched her least movement; her eyes were fixed on the dear home she was leaving, so as to keep it in view as long as possible.
“Stop an instant!” cried the baron to the postilion.
The carriage stopped.
“So, Monsieur Good-for-nothing, you are going to be happy — quite alone, like a real philosopher! Nothing to do — nobody to scold you. Don’t let the house take fire; and, hark ye, take care of Mahon!”
Gilbert bowed, but did not reply. He felt as if Nicole’s looks were a weight too great to be borne — he feared to meet her triumphant ironical smile, as he would the touch of red-hot iron.
“Go on, postilion!” cried the baron.
Nicole did not smile — it even required more than her habitual power over herself to prevent her expressing aloud her pity for the poor young man thus heartlessly abandoned. She was obliged to keep her eye on Monsieur de Beausire, who looked so well on his prancing horse.
Now, as Nicole kept her eyes fixed on M, de Beausire, she did not see that Gilbert was gazing, his soul in his eyes, on Andree. Andree saw nothing but the house in which she was born — in which her mother died. The carriage disappeared. Gilbert, a moment before of so little importance in the eyes of the travelers — was now nothing to them.
The baron, Andree, Nicole, and La Brie having passed through the gates of the avenue, entered a new world. Each had a peculiar subject for reflection. The baron thought that at Bar-le-Duc he could easily raise five or six thousand crowns on Balsamo’s plate. Andree repeated a prayer her mother had taught her, to keep away the demon of pride and ambition. Nicole covered her neck more closely with her handkerchief, to the great chagrin of M, de Beausire. La Brie, with his hand in his pocket, counted over the ten louis-d’ors of the dauphiness, and the two of Balsamo. II, de Beausire galloped at the side of the carriage.
Gilbert closed the gates of Taverney, whose hinges, as usual, creaked with a melancholy sound. Then he ran to his little room, pulled out his oaken chest of drawers, behind which he found a bundle ready tied up in a napkin, and slung it on his stick. After this, pushing his hands into his hay-stuffed mattress, he drew out something wrapped in a bit of paper — it was a shining crown-piece — his savings for three or four years. He opened the paper — looked at his crown to assure himself that it had not been changed, and then put it in his pocket, still wrapped in its paper.
Mahon, on seeing Gilbert, began to howl loudly, making furious leaps the whole length of his chain. Seeing one by one his friends leave him, his fine instinct told him that Gilbert was also about to abandon him, and he howled louder and louder.
“Hush!” cried Gilbert, “hush, Mahon!”
Then smiling bitterly at the parallel which occurred to his mind, he muttered, “Have they not abandoned me like a dog? Why should not I abandon thee like a man?” But, after a minute’s reflection, he added, “They abandoned me free, at least — free to seek for food. Well, then, Mahon, I will do for thee what they did for me, neither more nor less;” and going to the hook to which the dog’s chain was fastened, he slipped it off. “You are free!” said he; “provide for yourself as you like!”
The dog bounded toward the house; but, finding the doors all closed, he sprang toward the ruins and disappeared.
“And now,” said Gilbert, “we shall see which has most instinct — the dog or the man!”
So saying, he went out by the small gate — closed it — double-locked it, and threw the key over the wall.
But nature speaks with the same voice in almost all hearts. Gilbert felt something like what Andree experienced in leaving Taverney, only with her sentiments mingled regret for the quiet past, with his hopes for a more stirring future.
“Farewell!” said he, turning to look for the last time at the chateau, whose pointed roof appeared peeping over the sycamores and laburnums, “farewell! abode in which I have suffered so much, where every one hated me and threw me food grudgingly, as if I had been a hungry hound. Be cursed! — my heart bounds with joy at my freedom, for thy walls inclose me no more! Farewell! prison! — hell! — den of tyrants! Farewell forever!”
And after this imprecation, Gilbert sprang forward on the road which the carriage had taken, fancying that he yet heard the roll of its distant wheels.