Authors: Elizabeth Gaskell
"'Dear Madame de Crequy,' said I, 'he will return safely to us; every
precaution shall be taken, that either he or you, or my lord, or
Monkshaven can think of; but he cannot leave a girl—his nearest relation
save you—his betrothed, is she not?'
"'His betrothed!' cried she, now at the utmost pitch of her excitement.
'Virginie betrothed to Clement?—no! thank heaven, not so bad as that!
Yet it might have been. But mademoiselle scorned my son! She would have
nothing to do with him. Now is the time for him to have nothing to do
with her!"
"Clement had entered at the door behind his mother as she thus spoke. His
face was set and pale, till it looked as gray and immovable as if it had
been carved in stone. He came forward and stood before his mother. She
stopped her walk, threw back her haughty head, and the two looked each
other steadily in the face. After a minute or two in this attitude, her
proud and resolute gaze never flinching or wavering, he went down upon
one knee, and, taking her hand—her hard, stony hand, which never closed
on his, but remained straight and stiff:
"'Mother,' he pleaded, 'withdraw your prohibition. Let me go!'
"'What were her words?' Madame de Crequy replied, slowly, as if forcing
her memory to the extreme of accuracy. 'My cousin,' she said, 'when I
marry, I marry a man, not a petit-maitre. I marry a man who, whatever
his rank may be will add dignity to the human race by his virtues, and
not be content to live in an effeminate court on the traditions of past
grandeur.' She borrowed her words from the infamous Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, the friend of her scarce less infamous father—nay! I will say
it,—if not her words, she borrowed her principles. And my son to
request her to marry him!'
"'It was my father's written wish,' said Clement.
"'But did you not love her? You plead your father's words,—words
written twelve years before,—and as if that were your reason for being
indifferent to my dislike to the alliance. But you requested her to
marry you,—and she refused you with insolent contempt; and now you are
ready to leave me,—leave me desolate in a foreign land—'
"'Desolate! my mother! and the Countess Ludlow stands there!'
"'Pardon, madame! But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts,
is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is
absent. And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,—this
degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes!
She is only reaping some of the fruit of the harvest whereof her friends
have sown the seed. Let her alone! Doubtless she has friends—it may be
lovers—among these demons, who, under the cry of liberty, commit every
licence. Let her alone, Clement! She refused you with scorn: be too
proud to notice her now.'
"'Mother, I cannot think of myself; only of her.'
"'Think of me, then! I, your mother, forbid you to go.'
"Clement bowed low, and went out of the room instantly, as one blinded.
She saw his groping movement, and, for an instant, I think her heart was
touched. But she turned to me, and tried to exculpate her past violence
by dilating upon her wrongs, and they certainly were many. The Count,
her husband's younger brother, had invariably tried to make mischief
between husband and wife. He had been the cleverer man of the two, and
had possessed extraordinary influence over her husband. She suspected
him of having instigated that clause in her husband's will, by which the
Marquis expressed his wish for the marriage of the cousins. The Count
had had some interest in the management of the De Crequy property during
her son's minority. Indeed, I remembered then, that it was through Count
de Crequy that Lord Ludlow had first heard of the apartment which we
afterwards took in the Hotel de Crequy; and then the recollection of a
past feeling came distinctly out of the mist, as it were; and I called to
mind how, when we first took up our abode in the Hotel de Crequy, both
Lord Ludlow and I imagined that the arrangement was displeasing to our
hostess; and how it had taken us a considerable time before we had been
able to establish relations of friendship with her. Years after our
visit, she began to suspect that Clement (whom she could not forbid to
visit at his uncle's house, considering the terms on which his father had
been with his brother; though she herself never set foot over the Count
de Crequy's threshold) was attaching himself to mademoiselle, his cousin;
and she made cautious inquiries as to the appearance, character, and
disposition of the young lady. Mademoiselle was not handsome, they said;
but of a fine figure, and generally considered as having a very noble and
attractive presence. In character she was daring and wilful (said one
set); original and independent (said another). She was much indulged by
her father, who had given her something of a man's education, and
selected for her intimate friend a young lady below her in rank, one of
the Bureaucracie, a Mademoiselle Necker, daughter of the Minister of
Finance. Mademoiselle de Crequy was thus introduced into all the free-
thinking salons of Paris; among people who were always full of plans for
subverting society. 'And did Clement affect such people?' Madame de
Crequy had asked with some anxiety. No! Monsieur de Crequy had neither
eyes nor ears, nor thought for anything but his cousin, while she was by.
And she? She hardly took notice of his devotion, so evident to every one
else. The proud creature! But perhaps that was her haughty way of
concealing what she felt. And so Madame de Crequy listened, and
questioned, and learnt nothing decided, until one day she surprised
Clement with the note in his hand, of which she remembered the stinging
words so well, in which Virginie had said, in reply to a proposal Clement
had sent her through her father, that 'When she married she married a
man, not a petit-maitre.'
"Clement was justly indignant at the insulting nature of the answer
Virginie had sent to a proposal, respectful in its tone, and which was,
after all, but the cool, hardened lava over a burning heart. He
acquiesced in his mother's desire, that he should not again present
himself in his uncle's salons; but he did not forget Virginie, though he
never mentioned her name.
"Madame de Crequy and her son were among the earliest proscrits, as they
were of the strongest possible royalists, and aristocrats, as it was the
custom of the horrid Sansculottes to term those who adhered to the habits
of expression and action in which it was their pride to have been
educated. They had left Paris some weeks before they had arrived in
England, and Clement's belief at the time of quitting the Hotel de Crequy
had certainly been, that his uncle was not merely safe, but rather a
popular man with the party in power. And, as all communication having
relation to private individuals of a reliable kind was intercepted,
Monsieur de Crequy had felt but little anxiety for his uncle and cousin,
in comparison with what he did for many other friends of very different
opinions in politics, until the day when he was stunned by the fatal
information that even his progressive uncle was guillotined, and learnt
that his cousin was imprisoned by the licence of the mob, whose rights
(as she called them) she was always advocating.
"When I had heard all this story, I confess I lost in sympathy for
Clement what I gained for his mother. Virginie's life did not seem to me
worth the risk that Clement's would run. But when I saw him—sad,
depressed, nay, hopeless—going about like one oppressed by a heavy dream
which he cannot shake off; caring neither to eat, drink, nor sleep, yet
bearing all with silent dignity, and even trying to force a poor, faint
smile when he caught my anxious eyes; I turned round again, and wondered
how Madame de Crequy could resist this mute pleading of her son's altered
appearance. As for my Lord Ludlow and Monkshaven, as soon as they
understood the case, they were indignant that any mother should attempt
to keep a son out of honourable danger; and it was honourable, and a
clear duty (according to them) to try to save the life of a helpless
orphan girl, his next of kin. None but a Frenchman, said my lord, would
hold himself bound by an old woman's whimsies and fears, even though she
were his mother. As it was, he was chafing himself to death under the
restraint. If he went, to be sure, the wretches might make an end of
him, as they had done of many a fine fellow: but my lord would take heavy
odds, that, instead of being guillotined, he would save the girl, and
bring her safe to England, just desperately in love with her preserver,
and then we would have a jolly wedding down at Monkshaven. My lord
repeated his opinion so often that it became a certain prophecy in his
mind of what was to take place; and, one day seeing Clement look even
paler and thinner than he had ever done before, he sent a message to
Madame de Crequy, requesting permission to speak to her in private.
"'For, by George!' said he, 'she shall hear my opinion, and not let that
lad of hers kill himself by fretting. He's too good for that, if he had
been an English lad, he would have been off to his sweetheart long before
this, without saying with your leave or by your leave; but being a
Frenchman, he is all for AEneas and filial piety,—filial fiddle-sticks!'
(My lord had run away to sea, when a boy, against his father's consent, I
am sorry to say; and, as all had ended well, and he had come back to find
both his parents alive, I do not think he was ever as much aware of his
fault as he might have been under other circumstances.) 'No, my lady,'
he went on, 'don't come with me. A woman can manage a man best when he
has a fit of obstinacy, and a man can persuade a woman out of her
tantrums, when all her own sex, the whole army of them, would fail. Allow
me to go alone to my tete-a-tete with madame."
"What he said, what passed, he never could repeat; but he came back
graver than he went. However, the point was gained; Madame de Crequy
withdrew her prohibition, and had given him leave to tell Clement as
much.
"'But she is an old Cassandra,' said he. 'Don't let the lad be much with
her; her talk would destroy the courage of the bravest man; she is so
given over to superstition.' Something that she had said had touched a
chord in my lord's nature which he inherited from his Scotch ancestors.
Long afterwards, I heard what this was. Medlicott told me.
"However, my lord shook off all fancies that told against the fulfilment
of Clement's wishes. All that afternoon we three sat together, planning;
and Monkshaven passed in and out, executing our commissions, and
preparing everything. Towards nightfall all was ready for Clement's
start on his journey towards the coast.
"Madame had declined seeing any of us since my lord's stormy interview
with her. She sent word that she was fatigued, and desired repose. But,
of course, before Clement set off, he was bound to wish her farewell, and
to ask for her blessing. In order to avoid an agitating conversation
between mother and son, my lord and I resolved to be present at the
interview. Clement was already in his travelling-dress, that of a Norman
fisherman, which Monkshaven had, with infinite trouble, discovered in the
possession of one of the emigres who thronged London, and who had made
his escape from the shores of France in this disguise. Clement's plan
was, to go down to the coast of Sussex, and get some of the fishing or
smuggling boats to take him across to the French coast near Dieppe. There
again he would have to change his dress. Oh, it was so well planned! His
mother was startled by his disguise (of which we had not thought to
forewarn her) as he entered her apartment. And either that, or the being
suddenly roused from the heavy slumber into which she was apt to fall
when she was left alone, gave her manner an air of wildness that was
almost like insanity.
"'Go, go!' she said to him, almost pushing him away as he knelt to kiss
her hand. 'Virginie is beckoning to you, but you don't see what kind of
a bed it is—'
"'Clement, make haste!' said my lord, in a hurried manner, as if to
interrupt madame. 'The time is later than I thought, and you must not
miss the morning's tide. Bid your mother good-bye at once, and let us be
off.' For my lord and Monkshaven were to ride with him to an inn near
the shore, from whence he was to walk to his destination. My lord almost
took him by the arm to pull him away; and they were gone, and I was left
alone with Madame de Crequy. When she heard the horses' feet, she seemed
to find out the truth, as if for the first time. She set her teeth
together. 'He has left me for her!' she almost screamed. 'Left me for
her!' she kept muttering; and then, as the wild look came back into her
eyes, she said, almost with exultation, 'But I did not give him my
blessing!'"
"All night Madame de Crequy raved in delirium. If I could I would have
sent for Clement back again. I did send off one man, but I suppose my
directions were confused, or they were wrong, for he came back after my
lord's return, on the following afternoon. By this time Madame de Crequy
was quieter: she was, indeed, asleep from exhaustion when Lord Ludlow and
Monkshaven came in. They were in high spirits, and their hopefulness
brought me round to a less dispirited state. All had gone well: they had
accompanied Clement on foot along the shore, until they had met with a
lugger, which my lord had hailed in good nautical language. The captain
had responded to these freemason terms by sending a boat to pick up his
passenger, and by an invitation to breakfast sent through a
speaking-trumpet. Monkshaven did not approve of either the meal or the
company, and had returned to the inn, but my lord had gone with Clement
and breakfasted on board, upon grog, biscuit, fresh-caught fish—'the
best breakfast he ever ate,' he said, but that was probably owing to the
appetite his night's ride had given him. However, his good fellowship
had evidently won the captain's heart, and Clement had set sail under the
best auspices. It was agreed that I should tell all this to Madame de
Crequy, if she inquired; otherwise, it would be wiser not to renew her
agitation by alluding to her son's journey.