“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
IT was early morning in the soft, bright midsummer, when evening and morning almost touch each other’s hands. In Madame Bairdon’s house everyone was awake, except the children; for M. Bairdon was leaving his home on some mysterious adventurous mission, far better understood by his daughter than by his wife, yet dimly comprehended even by her. Griselle surmised that the Scotch and English adherents of the Chevalier de St. George were taking advantage of the war with England to set on foot some scheme for his benefit; and that they had engaged her father to open a communication with friends of the cause in Italy, and to secure their co-operation. And she knew that whatever else this commission might be, it could not fail to be hazardous.
Yet she was glad that he was going. With vivid apprehensions for his safety mingled a secret thrill of pride and exultation at the “large excitement” of the scenes in which he was about to take part. For an unacknowledged sense that he drooped and pined amidst the comforts and luxuries of his aimless, inactive life, and carried a chafed and restless heart to the Boulevards and the cafés, had long haunted and troubled her. Her love for him was intense; but it was the love that rejoices in the joy of its object, even in spite of its own pain and loss.
On Gustave’s account also Griselle was glad that her father would be absent for a time. The distance between the son and father widened every day. Gustave, in very waywardness, often threw out in his father’s presence some of the paradoxes of his favorite philosophers; and Bairdon, who would have listened to the same things from the lips of Gerard with indulgence and courtesy, though not without remonstrance, treated them as willful blasphemies when propounded by Gustave, and replied by threats of condign punishment. These Gustave did not fail to repay with polite sarcasm and covered insolence; while Madame Bairdon’s unwise interference only exasperated both parties.
But the morning of his father’s departure found Gustave apparently in one of his better moods. He waited dutifully upon M. Bairdon, and accompanied him to the diligence through the forlorn and silent streets, where the dismal lanterns flared unheeded in the summer morning light. As he returned alone, however, he made a long detour that he might visit the Place de Louis le Grand, where was the stately mansion of M. Pelletier.
To his surprise and disappointment he found it unoccupied. The millionaire had gone to his magnificent country house on the banks of the Seine, and had taken M. Gerard with him. Gustave might have known this, had not his too frequent custom of absenting himself from home during the evenings caused him to miss Gerard’s late farewell visit to the Rue Béthizy.
He walked slowly home, thinking of Gerard, and communing with himself much more earnestly than was his wont. “What would he say if I could tell him all? Would he blame me? I think not. He too wants to be rich, that he may marry Griselle. While I want―oh, a hundred, a thousand things! life, joy, power; all that is bright to the eye, sweet to the taste, soft to the touch, all that M. Pelletier has in his gilded halls. Money buys all. I know how to get money because I have esprit,―I think. Fools bid high for what they fancy; wise men bring it to them, and reap the profit. Why not Gustave Adolphe Bairdon, as well as any one else? The Jesuit fathers say the end sanctifies the mean. But would M. Gerard say so? Would my mother?”
Here the boy’s heart thrilled with a sharp unaccustomed pang. For him right and wrong had absolutely no existence. The old question of sin―old as the first dawn of intelligent life on the globe,―he flung aside contemptuously. What was sin, if not committed against someone? What were right and wrong if no standard existed? No law to which he owned allegiance hindered his putting forth his hand and taking the thing that was not his.
Only human praise and blame remained, as powers that might control his actions. Suppose his mother blamed him, and with tears of bitter anguish? Could he bear that? He remembered her indignant sorrow years ago, when an apprentice, an orphan whom she had befriended, appropriated some lace entrusted to her. He recalled her words, as if spoken yesterday. “It is not the loss, mon ami, but the thought that Alexandrine could deceive me thus.”
Very leisurely he pursued his way; noticing nothing that he saw; and forgetting to exchange a jest with the watchman who came to extinguish the useless lanterns, or to ask him when M. de Sartines was going to afford them the new reverbères of which they heard so much. And few things could have marked his pre-occupation more strongly; for seldom did he, or those like him, lose an opportunity of assailing, with taunt and sarcasm, even the humblest servant of the officious and unpopular lieutenant of police.
But, just as he was about to tum from the Rue des Arbres Secs into the Rue Béthizy, a sudden light flashed over his clouded face, giving it the look Griselle loved to see there. “I have it,” he said aloud, and walked home more briskly.
Gustave’s misfortune now was not so much that he was old beyond his years as that he was so very young. His nature, which on one side had grown out of all proportion, remained on the other unformed and childish. He saw far, but only in a direct line. He expected the problems of life to be as simple in their elements as the problems of Euclid. He could not take in contingencies, or make allowance for possible, even probable accidents. He looked before him, but not around―still less above.
A fortnight passed by uneventfully. Then one day Gustave was missing. His mother and sister had him sought for in all his haunts as far as they knew them; but they were sorrowfully aware that he had haunts and companions they could not reach. So they waited; their alarm at first not great, and ready any moment to change into righteous anger at the reappearance of the culprit. “He cannot go far, or do much harm,” Griselle pleaded, “with only a five-franc piece in his pocket, and I know he has no more.”
“True enough; want of money will bring him back,” said Madame Bairdon, reasoning down her own apprehensions as she would have done those of another. “Perhaps he has only gone by the water coach to see M. Gerard. Just like him, to slip away thus, and give us all a fright.”
Two days more, and Gustave did not return. On the morning of the third day, Madame Bairdon came up from the shop to the parlor, where Griselle sat teaching the children; her face was white as marble, and a drawer half filled with lace was in her hand.
“You may run and play now, my little ones,” said Griselle. “What is it, maman?”
Madame Bairdon stood silent, trembling from head to foot. At length she glanced at the half-open door; Griselle rose and shut it. “Look,” said Madame Bairdon in a frightened whisper. “Last Saturday I filled this drawer with the choicest. I never touched or opened it till now, when M. le Marquis de Bertine sends his valet in haste for new ruffles to match his jabot; and see, it is half empty!” Madame Bairdon sank into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and groaned aloud.
The utter distress of her brave, brisk, self-possessed stepmother touched Griselle’s heart. “It is a heavy loss,” she began; “but―” she stopped and hesitated; the effect upon Madame Bairdon seemed so disproportionate to the cause, as she understood it.
“It is―ruin!” Madame Bairdon murmured. “We shall never lift our heads again. And―it will kill thy father.”
“Dear mother, of what are you thinking? My father would not care though all the lace in France were stolen.”
“And his son the thief!” cried Madame Bairdon, removing the hand that shaded her white face. “Why do I live to say it?”
It was Griselle’s turn to grow pale now. “Mother, what can you mean!” she cried in the sharp tones of fear and pain.
“Hush, child―speak low! See this; I found it in the drawer.” She handed a piece of paper to Griselle, who took it and looked at it eagerly. The words were Latin, but the writing was Gustave’s―there was no doubt of that. She tried to speak, but bitter shame and anguish choked her voice.
“I wish he was in his grave,” wailed Madame Bairdon, rocking herself to and fro, and wringing her hands― “I wish he had died an innocent babe, like my little Jules and Marie, that are blessed angels in Paradise now I wish I had died myself―before I saw this day!” Then, with a sudden and surprising change of manner, “Griselle, someone knocks at the door. If it is to tell me that Madame la Comtesse de Servignan is here about her daughter’s trousseau, say I will have the honor of waiting upon her immediately.” Madame Bairdon was a brave woman, and this sorrow must be hidden from the world at any cost.
A pretty little apprentice stood at the door. “Pardon, ma’amselle,” she said. “M. Goudin is here, inquiring, as usual, after the health of the family. He says the sickness is gone now, and he would be glad to kiss the hand of madame. But he requests me to say that if madame is occupied it does not signify.”
Griselle hesitated, and looked at Madame Bairdon. To her surprise she said at once, “Ask him to come in.”
A few moments afterward the priest entered, looking older, grayer, more worn than when they had seen him last. His apparel too, though arranged with scrupulous care and neatness, showed still more evident signs of poverty. Yet even the giddy shop girls, so unsparing in their ridicule of the trim abbés, who spent large sums on their costly lace, hushed their pert chatter in M. Goudin’s presence, and spoke to him and of him with studied respect.
Madame Bairdon rose and came to meet him, stretching out both her hands.
The old priest stood silent, and a quiver passed across his face, as if he repressed some sudden emotion. Had Valérie missed him, then? Was she indeed glad to see him once more? Only One could tell how that lonely heart, during those months of separation, had yearned after the sole kindred ties life had left; but he had not dared to think that they too were caring for him.
There are men and women to whom everyone in sorrow turns instinctively, attracted by a subtle yet potent influence. Perhaps the secret of this magnetic power may be the close contact and near abiding of its possessors with Him who is the true lodestone.
Valérie, prosperous and happy, cared little for her poor and unsuccessful kinsman; but Valérie, perplexed and sorrowful, received him gladly, and poured forth to him all her anguish.
“And we gave him the very best education in our power,” she concluded. “He has attended the Jesuit College ever since he was vine years old. Plenty of fine prizes, and crowns, and honors, he got, too―for rhetoric, philosophy, everything. I wish, instead, he had learned the Catechism and the Ten Commandments.”
Goudin listened in silence. At length he said, “Show me that paper, Valérie.”
“It seems to be one of his exercises,” said Madame Bairdon, handing it to him. “The miserable boy must have dropped it in his haste, as he rifled the drawer. It makes his shame and ours too certain.”
“This is a Latin poem,” Goudin said, after looking at the paper. “Very short, and evidently transcribed with care. I cannot imagine what use the poor child intended to make of it.”
Madame Bairdon loved him for the tone of pity, the absence of reproach, above all for that word “poor child.” But she only said rather sharply, “And what good would it do if you could?”
“Not much; but it might have guided. The first thing we have to do is to find out whither he has gone.”
Madame Bairdon looked up in surprise. “To what end, uncle?” she asked in a hopeless tone.
“‘To seek and to save that which is lost.’”
She threw up her hands with a quick gesture of despair. “Impossible―a thousand times impossible!” she exclaimed. “His father, the only one who could have attempted it, is gone from us, God only knows whither, or for how long. For me to leave the shop would ruin all, even if I knew where to look for the poor child, or what to do with him if I found him.”
“One step at a time,” said Goudin. “Had he any patron or literary friend to whom he would be likely to send a Latin poem?”
Griselle looked up quickly, thinking of Bernis; but she did not speak. Madame Bairdon said, “There is M. Gerard, whom you met here last summer. He is in the country with M. Pelletier, the farmer-general.”
“These fines were never intended for the eye of M. Gerard,” said Goudin with decision. “They are a clever, impudent travesty, under guise of a translation, of a part of some sentimental poem upon the devotion of. D’Assas, treating all sacrifice of self for others as mi impossible absurdity, in which no one even believes.”
“Can they be a college theme, written for the Jesuits?” Madame Bairdon suggested helplessly.
“No, my dear niece. Such sentiments as these would not be acceptable to the community which has given us St. Francis Xavier,” said the generous Jansenist. “This throws no light upon our path; but other things may. His late fellow-students, his friends, the houses he frequents.”
“We have already sought him everywhere we know of,” Madame Bairdon answered. “He was always silent and reserved, making few intimates, so far as we could tell.”
“Has he taken any of his books and clothes with him?”
“Only a change of linen. His books and papers are here.”
“I should like to examine them. We may find something to guide us.”
Griselle left the room, and soon returned with a pile of books, which she laid on the table. “I can find no papers,” she said.
The priest looked hastily through the books. The well-known manuals used in all the Jesuit colleges, with a few secondhand plays, and a stray volume of Rabelais, made up Gustave’s library. He had never been rich enough to buy any of the writings of his favorite philosophers.
“Shakespeare’s Richard III.!” said Goudin at last, in a tone of surprise. “But I forgot―of course Gustave reads English.”
“Oh, yes; and speaks it quite as well as French. You know he is half English, or Scotch rather,” said Griselle. Suddenly there recurred to her thoughts the morning she and Gustave had discussed Adam Smith and Helvetius together; that bright, happy morning of her fête, when Désiré gave her the flowers, and the ring worn ever since! What vague hint was it that Gustave dropped then about the value of French lace in England? Could it mean anything?―Should she speak of it now, or be silent? At last she spoke, hurriedly, and as if afraid of the sound of her own voice.
“The value of that lace would be untold in England, and Gustave knows it.”
There was an ominous pause; then Madame Bairdon burst into tears. “My boy is dead,” she sobbed― “Dead, or worse! In the hands of the police, of the douane. He will be imprisoned, racked, hanged perhaps. Holy Virgin, have mercy on me!”
“Dear Valérie,” said Goudin, “trust in God and be calm. Remember we know nothing yet. With the war raging fiercely between us and England, Gustave is little likely to brave all the risks of― But we will make inquiry. My first step must be to find out whether he left Paris by any of the public conveyances. If he did, my next will be” he paused― “to follow him.”
“You cannot mean that,” Madame Bairdon exclaimed.
“Did I not answer for him to God in his infancy? How should I hold up my head before Him, if I might have saved him, and forbore?”
“Mother! ―uncle!” Griselle said eagerly, “Gustave loves me, talks to me more freely than to anyone. I could not have gone alone to seek him, though it was in my heart to do it; but, father, if you will go, then take me with you. I will help to find him, and to bring him back.”
“My child,” Goudin said tenderly, “you know not what you ask.”
“Only one thing I know,” Griselle pleaded: “Gustave will listen to me―will come with me. Mother, dear mother, speak―tell M. I may go.”
Madame Bairdon’s trembling lips unclosed, but no words came. At last a fresh burst of tears relieved her heart, not so much at the moment aching for her lost son, as surprised and softened by the tender sympathy given her. “Dear uncle! ―dear child!” ―she faltered, “I can but say, God go with and reward you.”
“God stay with thee, Valérie, and comfort thee,” Goudin answered. “Now I go to my work. If I can, I shall return tonight with tidings.”
It was Madame Bairdon’s turn now to kiss the hand of the old priest; a slight action truly, but indicating a great change.
Late in the evening Goudin returned, not unsuccessful. Long years of unwearied labor amongst the struggling and suffering poor of the great city had given him the means of tracing the fugitive. He knew the drivers and conductors of public vehicles, their families, their helpers, and through some of these he obtained the information he sought.
At early dawn next morning a chaise á poste containing an old ecclesiastic and a young lady drove rapidly through the Porte Saint-Denis and took the road leading to Pontoise.