The Headsman - James Fenimore Cooper
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"This is getting to be intelligible!" she murmured; "there is still
gratitude and creditable feeling in the world. I can understand why we
are not revolting to this fair being: she has a sense of justice that is
stronger than her prejudices. We have done her service, and she is not
ashamed of the source whence it has come!"
The heart of Adelheid throbbed quick and violently; and, for a moment, she
doubted her ability to command her feelings. But the pleasing conviction
that Sigismund had been honorable and delicate, even in his most sacred
and confidential communications with his own mother, came to relieve her,
and to make her momentarily happy; since nothing is so painful to the pure
mind, as to think those they love have acted unworthily; or nothing so
grateful, as the assurance that they merit the esteem we have been induced
liberally and confidingly to bestow.
"You do me no more than justice," returned the pleased listener of this
flattering and seemingly involuntary opinion--"we are indeed--indeed we
are truly grateful; but had we not reason for the sacred obligations of
gratitude, I think we could still be just. Will you not now consent that
my people should aid you?"
"This is not necessary, lady. Send away thy followers, for their presence
will draw unpleasant observations on our movements. The town is now
occupied with feasts, and, as we have not blindly overlooked the necessity
of a retreat for the hunted and persecuted, we will take the opportunity
to withdraw unseen. As for thyself--"
"I would be near this innocent at a moment so trying,"--added Adelheid
earnestly, and with that visible sympathy which rarely fails to meet an
echo.
"Heaven bless thee! Heaven bless thee, sweet girl! And Heaven will bless
thee, for few wrongs go unrequited in this life, and little good without
its reward. Send thy followers away, or if thy habits require their
watchfulness, let them be near unseen, whilst thou wateriest our
movements; and when the eyes of all are turned on their own pleasures,
thou canst follow. Heaven bless thee--ay, and Heaven will!"
Marguerite then led her daughter towards one of the least frequented
streets. She was accompanied by the silent Balthazar, and closely watched
by one of the menials of Adelheid. When fairly housed, the domestic
returned to show the spot to his mistress, who had appeared to occupy
herself with the hundred silly devices that were invented to amuse the
multitude. Dismissing her attendants, with an order to remain at hand,
however, the heiress of Willading soon found means to enter the humble
abode in which the proscribed family had taken refuge, and, as she was
expected, she was soon introduced into the chamber where Christine and her
mother had taken refuge.
The sympathy of the young and tender Adelheid was precious to one of the
character of Christine. They wept together, for the weakness of her sex
prevailed over the pride of the former, when she found herself
unrestrained by the observation of the world, and she gave way to the
torrent of feeling that broke through its bounds, in spite of her
endeavors to control it. Marguerite was the only spectator of this silent
but intelligible communion between these two young and pure spirits, and
her soul was shaken by the unlooked-for commiseration of one so honored,
and who was usually esteemed so happy.
"Thou hast the consciousness of our wrongs," she said, when the first
burst of emotion had a little subsided. "Thou canst then believe that a
headsman's child is like the offspring of another and is not to be hunted
of men like the young of a wolf."
"Mother, this is the Baron de Willading's heiress," said Christine: "would
she come here, did she not pity us?"
"Yes, she can pity us--and yet I find it hard even to be pitied! Sigismund
has told us of her goodness, and she may, in truth, feel for the
wretched!"
The allusion to her son caused the temples of Adelheid to burn like fire,
while there was a chill, resembling that of death, at her heart. The first
arose from the quick and uncontrollable alarm of female sensitiveness; the
last was owing to the shock inseparable from being presented with this
vivid, palpable picture of Sigismund's close affinity with the family of
an executioner. She could have better borne it, had Marguerite spoken of
her son less familiarly, or with more of that feigned ignorance of each
other, which, without stopping to scan its fitness, she had been led to
think existed between the young man and his family.
"Mother!" exclaimed Christine reproachfully, and in surprise, as if a
great indiscretion had been thoughtlessly committed.
"It matters not, child; it matters not. I saw by the kindling eye of
Sigismund to-day, that our secret will not much longer be kept. The noble
boy must show more energy than those who have gone before him; he must
quit for ever a country in which he was condemned, even before he was
born."
"I shall not deny that your connexion with Monsieur Sigismund is known to
me," said Adelheid, summoning all her resolution to make an avowal which
put her at once into the confidence of Balthazar's family. "You are
acquainted with the heavy debt of gratitude we owe your son, and it will
explain the nature of the interest I now feel in your wrongs."
The keen eye of Marguerite studied the crimsoned features of Adelheid till
forgetfulness got the better of discretion. The search was anxious, rather
than triumphant, the feeling most dreaded by its subject; and, when her
eyes were withdrawn, the mother of the youth became thoughtful and
pensive. This expressive communion produced a deep and embarrassing
silence, which each would gladly have broken, had they not both been
irresistibly tongue-tied by the rapidity and intensity of their thoughts.
"We know that Sigismund hath been of service to thee," observed
Marguerite, who always addressed her gay companion with the familiarity
that belonged to her greater age, rather than with the respect which
Adelheid had been accustomed to receive from those who were of a rank
inferior to her own. "The brave boy hath spoken of it, though he hath
spoken of it modestly."
"He had every right to do himself justice in his communications with those
of his own family. Without his aid, my father would have been childless;
and without his brave support, the child fatherless. Twice has he stood
between us and death."
"I have heard of this," returned Marguerite, again fastening her
penetrating eye on the tell-tale features of Adelheid, which never failed
to brighten and glow, whenever there was allusion to the courage and
self-devotion of him she secretly loved, "As to what thou say'st of the
intimacy of our poor boy with those of his blood, cruel circumstances
stand between us and our wishes. If Sigismund has told thee of whom he
comes he has also most probably told thee of the manner in which he
passes, in the world, for that which he is not."
"I believe he has not withheld any thing that he knew, and which it was
proper to communicate to me;" answered Adelheid, dropping her eyes before
the attentive, expectant look of Marguerite. "He has spoken freely, and--"
"Thou wouldst have said--"
"Honorably, and as became a soldier;" continued Adelheid, firmly.
"He has done well! This lightens my heart of one burthen at least. No; God
has destined us to this fate, and it would have grieved me that a son of
mine should have failed of principle in an affair, of all others, in which
it is most wanted. You look amazed, lady!"
"These sentiments, in one so situated, surprise as much as they delight
me! If any thing could excuse some looseness in the manner of regarding
the usual ties of life, it would surely be to find oneself so placed, by
no misconduct of our own, as to be a but to the world's dislike and
injustice; and yet here, where there was reason to expect some resentment
against fortune, I meet with sentiments that would honor a throne!"
"Thou thinkest as one more accustomed to consider thy fellow-creatures
through the means of what men fancy, than through things as they are. This
is the picture of youth, and inexperience, and innocence; but it is not
the picture of life. 'Tis misfortune, and not prosperity that chasteneth,
by proving our insufficiency for true happiness, and by leading the soul
to depend on a power greater than any that is to be found on earth. We
fall before the temptation of happiness, when we rise in adversity. If
thou thinkest, innocent one, that noble and just sentiments belong to the
fortunate, thou trustest to a false guide. There are evils which flesh
cannot endure, it is true; but, removed from these overwhelming wants, we
are strongest in the right, when least tempted by vanity and ambition.
More starving beggars abstain from stealing the crust they crave, than
pampered gluttons deny themselves the luxury that kills them. They that
live under the rod, see and dread the hand that holds it; they who riot in
earth's glories, come at last to think they deserve the short-lived
distinctions they enjoy. When thou goest down into the depths of misery,
thou hast naught to fear except the anger of God! It is when raised above
others, that thou shouldst tremble most for thine own safety."
"This is not the manner in which the world is used to reason."
"Because the world is governed by those whose interest it is to pervert
truth to their own objects, and not by those whose duties run hand-in-hand
with the right. But we will say no more of this, lady; here is one that
feels too acutely just now to admit truth to be too freely spoken."
"Dost, feel thyself better, and more able to listen to thy friends, dear
Christine?" asked Adelheid, taking the hand of the repudiated and deserted
girl with the tenderness of an affectionate sister.
Until now the sufferer had only spoken the few words related, in mild
reproof of her mother's indiscretion. That little had been uttered with
parched lips and a choked voice, while the hue of her features was deadly
pale, and her whole countenance betrayed intense mental anguish. But this
display of interest in one of her own years and sex, of whose excellencies
she had been accustomed to hear such fervid descriptions from the
warm-hearted Sigismund, and of whose sincerity she was assured by the
subtle and quick instinct that unites the innocent and young, caused a
quick and extreme change in her sensibilities. The grief which had been
struggling and condensed, now flowed more freely from her eyes, and she
threw herself, sobbing and weeping, in a paroxysm of gentle, but
overwhelming, feeling, on the bosom of this new found friend. The
experienced Marguerite smiled at this manifestation of kindness on the
part of Adelheid, though even this expression of satisfaction was austere
and regulated in one who had so long stood at bay with the world. And,
after a short pause, she left the room, under the belief that such a
communion with a spirit, pure and inexperienced as her own, a communion so
unusual to her daughter, would be more likely to produce a happy effect,
if left to themselves, than when restrained by her presence.
The two girls wept in common, for a long time after Marguerite had
disappeared. This intercourse, chastened as it was by sorrow, and rendered
endearing on the one side by a confiding ingenuousness, and on the other
by generous pity, caused both to live in that short period, as it were,
months together in a near and dear intimacy. Confidence is not always the
growth of time. There are minds that meet each other with a species of
affinity that resembles the cohesive property of matter, and with a
promptitude and faith that only belongs to the purer essence of which they
are composed. But when this attraction of the ethereal part of the being
is aided by the feelings that have been warmed by an interest so tender as
that which the hearts of both the maidens felt in a common object, its
power is not only stronger, but quicker, in making itself felt. So much
was already known by each of the other's character, fortunes, and hopes
(always with the exception of Adelheid's most sacred secret, which
Sigismund cherished as a deposit by far too sacred to be shared even with
his sister) that the meeting under no circumstances could have been that
of strangers, and their mutual knowledge came as an assistant to break
down the barriers of those forms which were so irksome to their longings
for a freer interchange of feeling and thought. Adelheid possessed too
much intellectual tact to have recourse to the every-day language of
consolation. When she did speak, which, as became her superior rank and
less embarrassed situation, she was the first to do, it in general but
friendly allusions.
"Thou wilt go with us to Italy, in the morning," she said, drying her
eyes; "my father quits Blonay, in company with the Signor Grimaldi, with
to-morrow's sun, and thou wilt be of our company?"
"Where thou wilt--anywhere with thee--anywhere to hide my shame!"
The blood mounted to the temples of Adelheid; her air even appeared
imposing to the eyes of the artless and unpractised Christine, as she
answered--
"Shame is a word that applies to the mean and mercenary, to the vile and
unfaithful," she said, with womanly and virtuous indignation; "but not to
thee, love."
"O! do not, do not condemn him;" whispered Christine, covering her face
with her hands. "He has found himself unequal to bearing the burthen of
our degradation, and he should be spoken of in pity rather than with
hatred."
Adelheid was silent; but she regarded the poor trembling girl, whose head
now nestled in her bosom, with melancholy concern.
"Didst thou know him well?" she asked in a low tone, following rather the
chain of her own thoughts, than reflecting on the nature of the question
she put. "I had hoped that this refusal would bring no other pain than the
unavoidable mortification which I fear belongs to the weakness of our sex
and our habits."
"Thou knowest not how dear preference is to the despised!--how cherished
the thought of being loved becomes to those, who, out of their own narrow
limits of natural friends, have been accustomed to meet only with contempt
and aversion! Thou hast always been known, and courted, and happy! Thou
canst not know how dear it is to the despised to seem even to be
preferred!"
"Nay, say not this, I pray thee!" answered Adelheid, hurriedly, and with a
throb of anguish at her heart; "there is little in this life that speaks
fairly for itself. We are not always what we seem; and if we were, and far
more miserable than anything but vice can make us, there is another state
of being, in which justice--pure, unalloyed justice--will be done."
"I will go with thee to Italy," answered Christine, looking calm and
resolved, while a glow of holy hope bloomed on each cheek; "when all is
over, we will go together to a happier world!"
Adelheid folded the stricken and sensitive plant to her bosom. Again they
wept together, but it was with a milder and sweeter sorrow than before.
Chapter XX.
I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries.
_Tempest._
The day dawned clear and cloudless on the Leman, the morning that
succeeded the Abbaye des Vignerons. Hundreds among the frugal and
time-saving Swiss had left the town before the appearance of the light,
and many strangers were crowding into the barks, as the sun came bright
and cheerfully over the rounded and smiling summits of the neighboring
cotes. At this early hour, all in and around the rock-seated castle of
Blonay were astir, and in motion. Menials were running, with hurried air,
from room to room, from court to terrace and from lawn to tower. The
peasants in the adjoining fields rested on their utensils of husbandry, in
gaping, admiring attention to the preparations of their superiors. For
though we are not writing of a strictly feudal age, the events it is our
business to record took place long before the occurrence of those great
political events, which have since so materially changed the social state
of Europe. Switzerland was then a sealed country to most of those who
dwelt even in the adjoining nations, and the present advanced condition of
roads and inns was quite unknown, not only to these mountaineers, but
throughout the rest of what was then much more properly called the
exclusively civilized portion of the globe, than it is to-day. Even horses
were not often used in the passage of the Alps, but recourse was had to
the surer-footed mule by the traveller, and, not unfrequently, by the more
practised carrier and smuggler of those rude paths. Roads existed, it is
true, as in other parts of Europe, in the countries of the plain, if any
portion of the great undulating surface of that region deserve the name;
but once within the mountains, with the exception of very inartificial
wheel-tracks in the straitened and glen-like valleys, the hoof alone was
to be trusted or indeed used.
The long train of travellers, then, that left the gates of Blonay just as
the fog began to stir on the wide alluvial meadows of the Rhone, were all
in the saddle. A courier, accompanied by a sumpter-mule, had departed
over-night to prepare the way for those who were to follow, and active
young mountaineers had succeeded, from time to time, charged with
different orders, issued in behalf of their comforts.
As the cavalcade passed beneath the arch of the great gate, the lively,
spirit-stirring horn sounded a fare well air, to which custom had attached
the signification of good wishes. It took the way towards the level of the
Leman by means of a winding and picturesque bridle-path that led, among
alpine meadows, groves, rocks, and hamlets, fairly to the water-side.
Roger de Blonay and his two principal guests rode in front, the former
seated on a war-horse that he had ridden years before as a soldier, and
the two latter well mounted on beasts prepared for, and accustomed to, the
mountains. Adelheid and Christine came next, riding by themselves, in the
modest reserve of their maiden condition. Their discourse was low,
confidential, and renewed at intervals. A few menials followed, and then
came Sigismund at the side of the Signor Grimald's friend, and one of the
family of Blonay, the latter of whom was destined to return with the
baron, after doing honor to their guests by seeing them as far as
Villeneuve The rear was brought up by muleteers, domestics, and those who
led the beasts that bore the baggage. All of the former who intended to
cross the Alps carried the fire-arms of the period at their saddle-bows,
and each had his rapier, his _couteau de chasse_, or his weapon of more
military fashion, so disposed about his person as to denote it was
considered an arm for whose use some occasion might possibly occur.
As the departure from Blonay was unaccompanied by any of those
leave-takings which usually impress a touch of melancholy on the
traveller, most of the cavalcade, as they issued into the pure and
exhilarating air of the morning, were sufficiently disposed to enjoy the
loveliness of the landscape, and to indulge in the cheerfulness and
delight that a scene so glorious is apt to awaken, in all who are alive to
the beauties of nature.
Adelheid gladly pointed out to her companion the various objects of the
view, as a means of recalling the thoughts of Christine from her own
particular griefs, which were heightened by regret for the loss of her
mother, from whom she was now seriously separated for the first time in
her life, since their communications, though secret, had been constant
during the years she had dwelt under another roof. The latter gratefully
lent herself to the kind intentions of her new friend, and endeavored to
be pleased with all she beheld, though it was such pleasure as the sad
and mourning admit with a jealous reservation of their own secret causes
of woe.
"Yonder tower, towards which we advance, is Chatelard," said the heiress
of Willading to the daughter of Balthazar, in the pursuit of her kind
intention; "a hold, nearly as ancient and honorable as this we have just
quitted, though not so constantly the dwelling of the same family; for
these of Blonay have been a thousand years dwellers on the same rock,
always favorably known for their faith and courage."
"Surely, if there is anything in life that can compensate for its
every-day evils," observed Christine, in a manner of mild regret and
perhaps with the perversity of grief, "it must be to have come from those
who have always been known and honored among the great and happy! Even
virtue and goodness, and great deeds, scarce give a respect like that we
feel for the Sire de Blonay, whose family has been seated, as thou hast
just said, a thousand years on that rock above us!"
Adelheid was mute. She appreciated the feeling which had so naturally led
her companion to a reflection like this, and she felt the difficulty of
applying balm to a wound as deep as that which had been inflicted on her
companion.
"We are not always to suppose those the most happy that the world most
honors," she at length answered; "the respect to which we are accustomed
comes in time to be necessary, without being a source of pleasure; and the
hazard of incurring its loss is more than equal to the satisfaction of its
possession."
"Thou wilt at least admit that to be despised and shunned is a curse to
which nothing can reconcile us."
"We will speak now of other things, dear. It may be long ere either of us
again sees this grand display of rock and water, of brown mountain and
shining glacier; we will not prove ourselves ungrateful for the happiness
we have, by repining for that which is impossible."
Christine quietly yielded to the kind intention of her new friend, and
they rode on in silence, picking their way along the winding path, until
the whole party, after a long but pleasant descent, reached the road,
which is nearly washed by the waters of the lake. There has already been
allusion, in the earlier pages of our work, to the extraordinary beauties
of the route near this extremity of the Leman. After climbing to the heigh
of the mild and healthful Montreux, the cavalcade again descended, under a
canopy of nut-trees, to the gate of Chillon, and, sweeping around the
margin of the sheet, it reached Villeneuve by the hour that had been named
for an early morning repast. Here all dismounted, and refreshed themselves
awhile, when Roger de Blonay and his attendants, after many exchanges of
warm and sincere good wishes, took their final leave.
The sun was scarcely yet visible in the deep glens, when those who were
destined for St. Bernard were again in the saddle. The road now
necessarily left the lake, traversing those broad alluvial bottoms which
have been deposited during thirty centuries by the washings of the Rhone,
aided, if faith is to be given to geological symptoms and to ancient
traditions, by certain violent convulsions of nature. For several hours
our travellers rode amid such a deep fertility, and such a luxuriance of
vegetation, that their path bore more analogy to an excursion on the wide
plains of Lombardy, than to one amid the usual Swiss scenery; although,
unlike the boundless expanse of the Italian garden, the view was limited
on each side by perpendicular barriers of rock, that were piled for
thousands of feet into the heavens, and which were merely separated from
each other by a league or two, a distance that dwindled to miles in its
effect on the eye, a consequence of the grandeur of the scale on which
nature has reared these vast piles.
It was high-noon when Melchior de Willading and his venerable friend led
the way across the foaming Rhone, at the celebrated bridge of St Maurice.
Here the country of the Valais, then like Geneva, an ally, and not a
confederate of the Swiss cantons, was entered, and all objects, both
animate and inanimate, began to assume that mixture of the grand, the
sterile, the luxuriant, and the revolting, for which this region is so
generally known. Adelheid gave an involuntary shudder, her imagination
having been prepared by rumor for even more than the truth would have
given reason to expect, when the gate of St. Maurice swung back upon its
hinges, literally inclosing the party in this wild, desolate, and yet
romantic region. As they proceeded along the Rhone, however, she and
those of her companions to whom the scene was new, were constantly
wondering at some unlooked-for discrepancy, that drove them from
admiration to disgust--from the exclamations of delight to the chill of
disappointment. The mountains on every side were dreary, and without the
rich relief of the pastured eminences, but most of the valley was rich and
generous. In one spot a sac d'eau, one of those reservoirs of water which
form among the glaciers on the summits of the rocks, had broken, and,
descending like a water-spout, it had swept before it every vestige of
cultivation, covering wide breadths of the meadows with a debris that
resembled chaos. A frightful barrenness, and the most smiling fertility,
were in absolute contact: patches of green, that had been accidentally
favored by some lucky formation of the ground, sometimes appearing like
oases of the desert, in the very centre of a sterility that would put the
labor and the art of man at defiance for a century. In the midst of this
terrific picture of want sat a cretin, with his semi-human attributes, the
lolling tongue, the blunted faculties, and the degraded appetites, to
complete the desolation. Issuing from this belt of annihilated vegetation,
the scene became again as pleasant as the fancy could desire, or the eye
crave. Fountains leaped from rock to rock in the sun's rays; the valley
was green and gentle; the mountains began to show varied and pleasing
forms; and happy smiling faces appeared, whose freshness and regularity
were perhaps of a cast superior to that of most of the Swiss. In short,
the Valais was then; as now, a country of opposite extremes, but in which,
perhaps, there is a predominance of the repulsive and inhospitable.