The Sword of Honor Part 57

Dreaming of his martial career, the young soldier gazed long and silently into the golden picture it held up before him. Victoria observed him closely. An inscrutable smile overspread her lips, when suddenly, recalled from his revery by the recollections of love, Oliver blushed and added: "If I am made an officer, perhaps you will at last think me worthy of you, Victoria! Oh! what happiness! To merit the supreme gifts of your tenderness, or to die before your eyes!"

"You yield yourself too readily to the intoxication of glory," said Victoria, gravely reproaching him.

"Is not the glory of arms the most sublime of all?"

"Oliver, woe to those who, loving arms merely as arms, glory as glory, give way to such enticements. Their reason becomes clouded, their spirit becomes unsteeled, their patriotism falters. They grow ready to sacrifice right, liberty, dignity for that glory whose brilliancy oft conceals so much of mere low ambition, of abject servility, of shameful appet.i.tes, and vain and childish selfishness. Military chiefs are nearly all contemptible men, even under the republican regime."

"Victoria, how severe you are!" replied Oliver, sorrowfully. "Have I really merited this reproach?"

"When St. Just and Lebas came here to hold council with the Generals over to-morrow's battle, I noticed your hesitancy in giving, as customary, the military salute."

"Yes, I felt extreme repugnance toward saluting a commissioner of the Convention to the armies, because these people are in no way military.

If some day I become a general, I shall never consent to submit my plans of campaign to a Representative of the people. No authority should precede that of a general in his army. That authority should be single, absolute, obeyed without discussion; he should be responsible to none for his acts. His soldiers should hear but one voice: his; know but one power: his."

"That is the language held by Dumouriez the eve of the day on which he betrayed the Republic," answered Victoria bitterly. Just then John Lebrenn and d.u.c.h.emin entered, bringing in their prisoners.

John did not see his sister sitting with Oliver beside the door. But the young woman, doubly surprised by meeting at once both her brother and the Jesuit Morlet, whom she immediately recognized through his rustic disguise, made at first a move to rush after John. But fearing lest he, unable to master his surprise, might compromise the secret of a transformation which she desired to guard, she checked herself, and whispered to Oliver, who was no less stupefied than she at the sight of his former master: "My brother has gone with that country fellow and the little boy into the room of the aides-de-camp. Go tell the cannonier d.u.c.h.emin to meet me in the courtyard." Tossing her sword under her left arm with military ease, the young woman started for the door; and designating by a glance the other soldiers, she added, "I do not wish my first interview with my brother to take place before our comrades; his emotion would betray me."

"I obey, Victoria," sadly replied Oliver. "My surprise at meeting your brother in the army prevents me from asking you in what I deserve the cruel words you have but just addressed to me."

"My attachment for you, Oliver, compels me never to conceal the truth, harsh as it may be. That is the only means of forestalling results of which you perhaps have no premonition. We shall resume the conversation later," she added, as she left the vestibule, the pavement of which rang under her spurred boots.

The courtyard in front of the Commune Hall was a s.p.a.cious one. On either side were ranged the horses of the couriers. The fog had lifted; the stars shone overhead. In the clear air of the crisp, cold night, Victoria soon beheld the artilleryman coming towards her. She advanced to meet him, saying: "I desired to speak to you, citizen, for the purpose of giving you some information upon that man and the young child whom you and a volunteer have just brought in as prisoners."

"They are two spies of Pitt and Coburg, who fell among our pickets and were arrested, only an hour ago, by one of our sentries, a Parisian."

"Is that Parisian named John Lebrenn?"

"What, do you know him, my brave hussar!" asked d.u.c.h.emin.

"That I do. We are old friends. But here is my information: The man under arrest is a French priest, a Jesuit, an enemy of the Republic."

"A Jesuit! Ah, double brigand and black-cap! The gallows-bird!"

"His name is Abbot Morlet. It it urgent that you go at once and inform John Lebrenn of this circ.u.mstance; he no doubt will be a witness at the reverend's examination, which may even now be under way. The spy should be unmasked."

"The examiner will give the black-cap's tongue to the dogs if he answers in the gibberish he treated us to just now, in order to throw us off the scent."

"When he finds himself recognized, he will not be likely to persist in that ruse. Go, then, comrade, acquaint John Lebrenn with the fact that his prisoner is the Jesuit Morlet, whom he already knows by reputation.

Then say to him that a trooper of the Third Hussars wishes to speak with him a moment, and awaits him here in the court."

"'Tis well. The two commissions will be fulfilled, as you request."

While awaiting her brother, Victoria paced thoughtfully up and down the courtyard. "Dear brother," she thought, "he has kept his promise. He would pay his debt of blood to the Republic, and here he is, a soldier.

I can now unveil to him my mystery, and the object of my conduct in regard to Oliver."

Informed by d.u.c.h.emin that a hussar of the Third wished to see him, John soon stepped out of the Commune Hall, and descrying a cavalryman of the designated regiment at some paces from the door, walked towards him, saying:

"Is it you, comrade, who sent me word by an under-officer of the artillery that you had something to say to me?"

"It is I," answered Victoria, taking two steps toward her brother. The latter, at first taken aback by surprise at hearing a voice which he believed he knew, now approached rapidly. Incapable of leaving him any longer in suspense, Victoria threw herself on the volunteer's neck, saying in a broken voice:

"Brother! Dear and tender brother! Pardon me the pain I have caused you!"

"All is forgotten now," murmured John, weeping with joy, and straining his sister to his breast. "At last I recover you, darling sister!"

"And soon, I hope, we shall be separated no more. My task draws to its close. And your worthy wife?"

"I heard from her only day before yesterday. She is well, and sustains my absence courageously. Ah, Charlotte is doubly dear to me now--for she is about to be a mother."

"How happy she must be!"

"In the midst of all her happiness, she still thinks of you. There is not one of her letters in which she does not mention you, and wonder at the mystery which has enveloped you for so many months. Good heaven, to find you here in the army, in uniform. I know not whether I am awake or dreaming. I can hardly collect my thoughts." And then after a moment's silence, John resumed: "Your pardon, sister. I am now calmer. I now believe I can divine the cause which led you to emulate those many heroines who are enlisted against the enemies of the Republic.

Oliver--doubtless--serves in the same regiment with you? You were anxious to continue directing him, watching over him?"

"Yes, brother mine; and already, by his bravery and apt.i.tude in war he has scaled the lower rounds of the ladder. A brilliant future is unrolled before him."

"Sister--" began John with some hesitancy, "the result is beyond what we hoped--but--"

"At what price have I obtained it? is it not, John? I can read your thoughts. I have no cause to blush for the means I have employed. The day of his attempted suicide, Oliver pledged me, as you know, that he would not make a second attempt within twenty-four hours. Before daybreak I rapped at his door. He had not retired. His face was as ominous as the evening before. 'Oliver,' I said to him, 'let us go at once.' 'Where are we going?' 'You shall know. You have promised me to renounce till night-fall your projects of suicide. It matters little to you where you pa.s.s your last day, here or elsewhere. Come.' Oliver followed me. We went to Sceaux, where I had once before spent some time, hoping to find relief in solitude from my griefs. Perhaps you have forgotten that when the chateau of Sceaux became national property, our good old patriot porter in St. Honore Street became, by your recommendation to Cambon, one of the guardians of the domain. The fine old man occupies with his wife the ground floor of a pavilion situated near one of the gates of the estate. The second floor is vacant, and it was there I dwelt during my former sojourn in the place. To this abode I conducted Oliver. I presented him to the keeper and his wife as one of our relatives who had been ordered to the country for his health; I was to stay to take care of him. The good people received us with joy. They fitted up, from the relics in the furniture repository of the old mansion, a room for Oliver, and took upon themselves the task of preparing our meals. I had in the neighborhood of six hundred livres, which I had saved. That sum would suffice for all our needs for quite a while.

"My arrangements with the keeper concluded," continued Victoria, "I led Oliver out into the park. We had left Paris before dawn. By the time we arrived at Sceaux, nature had donned all the fragrant beauty of new-born day. The May morning sun cast his first radiant beams over those enchanted vistas. We walked in silence over the velvety lawns, whose richness was reflected in the little ponds that dotted them. Here were vases and statues of marble niched in the green of the hedges; yonder spouting fountains surrounded by immense rose-bushes then in full bloom.

Their scent filled the air. These details may seem childish, brother, but they were all important."

"I can well see it; you hoped to reattach the poor boy to life by displaying to him, in that fine spring morning, nature in her most smiling aspect."

"Such indeed was my purpose. I observed Oliver closely. His looks, at first lorn and somber, brightened little by little. He breathed in with wide nostrils the morning ambrosia of the woods, the fields and the flowers. He rapturously bent his ear to catch the chirping of the birds nested in the foliage. His glance lost its heaviness, and again glowed with youthful buoyancy. He took new hold of life while abandoning himself to the sweet sensations awakened in him by the contemplation of nature. I sought to stir the most sensitive and delicate chords of the boy's being. My friendliness tempered what had up till then been stern and parental in my relations with him; I spoke to him now more as sister than as mother.

"'It would be paradise upon earth to live here,' he said.

"'Then let us settle in the village, Oliver.'

"'What! You consent to share this solitude with me?'

"'Most a.s.suredly. Indeed, it was even with that hope that I brought you here.'

"He beamed with happiness. But suddenly, his face clouding again, he asked me sadly 'what I would be to him.' 'Your sister,' I told him. But seeing him continue to lose the brightness he had just regained, I added gaily:

"'Yesterday, my friend, I would consent to be nothing more than mother to you. To-day I am willing to rejuvenate myself sufficiently to become your sister. Is not that great progress?'

"'So,' he cried in a transport, 'you give me leave to hope?'

"'I give you permission to hope for what I hope myself, Oliver: that one day I may feel for you a sentiment more tender than that of fraternity.

But it depends upon you still more than on me.'

"'What must I do?'

"'Become a man, Oliver; a man of whom I can be proud.'