“Give me but one hour of Scotland,
Let me see it ere I die.”
MADAME BAIRDON, née Goudin, marchande de dentelle, Rue Béthizy, was a person of note and power in the Paris of those days. She could show many a scented billet from ladies of the Haute Noblesse, in which she was addressed in terms of the most familiar affection, and pressed to accept favors and attentions without number. But if you enjoyed her confidence, she would laugh and rub her hands, and tell you with an air of engaging frankness, “They are all in my debt, ces grandes dames; voilà tout, ma chère!” She might have had state secrets in her keeping, and have trafficked for them with ministers and royal favorites; but she was a prudent woman, she knew the paths of intrigue were perilous, and she had a wholesome fear that they might lead her, as they had led a celebrated modiste of her acquaintance, to the gloomy dungeons of the Bastile.
Reserved towards the great ladies, she was kind and sympathizing to her numerous dependents. Had Madame Suard’s fate been hers, she too might have found among her apprentices some gentle girl of seventeen bold enough to assure “Messieurs de la police,” though with many blushes, that she would gladly endure a lifelong imprisonment if only allowed to wait upon and serve her dear madame.
Griselle, or rather, Grizel, Bairdon was of no use in her stepmother’s establishment. The Scottish maiden―reserved and shy, and always mindful of her gentle birth―was equally afraid of the cold and stately “grandes dames,” and of the laughing, chattering girls who made the lace and attended the shop. But she was well fitted for the task that fell to her lot that night, of keeping watch beside her suffering brother, bathing his aching head and putting eau sucrée or iced lemonade to his burning lips.
Gustave had borne severe pain bravely: it was an enemy to be fought with and conquered; but for weariness and feverish unrest he had no patience, and he sorely triad the patience of his nurse.
Towards midnight, to her great relief, he fell asleep. As she sat motionless, fearing to disturb him, faint sweet sounds reached her ear through the silence of the night. She knew whence they came, and they soothed her and brought her rest, not for the first time. By-and-by there were words; she could not accurately distinguish them, but she thought the musician must be dreaming of his childhood’s home, for his song brought her back to hers. Wild mountains rose before her, dark tracts of moorland stretched away, far as the eye could reach, till they were lost in the purple distance.
Presently Gustave awakened with a moan of pain, and asked for lemonade. Griselle gave it; and grateful to her for sitting up with him, he condescended to acknowledge her services in his own way. “You are not so bad, Sister Griselle,” he said. “And now I shall tell you something that will please you.”
Glad to divert his thoughts, she asked, with interest, “What is it, Gustave?”
“Stoop down and listen. M. Gerard is to be asked to dine with us on Sunday.”
“Is that all?” said Griselle.
“All?” returned Gustave with a shrewd smile. “But of course you don’t care to see him. Though you should have heard my father and mother discuss the affair. ‘Madame,’ says my father, ‘our lodger has done us a great service; we must show our gratitude. Let us ask him to dine with us next Sunday; and you, with your French savoir-faire, can then devise the best way of thanking him.’ ‘But,’ my mother argued, ‘he will be too proud to dine with us, of the bourgeoisie.’ ‘In my own land,’ said my father, with the grand air we hardly see once in a year, ‘I held my head high enough, Valérie. Besides,’ he added, ‘M. Gerard himself is not noble.’ ‘Well,’ my mother answered, ‘do as you like. Indeed, you always do: I was about to offer a suggestion on the subject of dessert, when she cried out suddenly, But, my friend, it will never do― never!’ ‘Why not?’ asked my father. ‘There’s my uncle,―poor, good man! Stay though. I shall write to him, and with all the regrets possible beg him to postpone his weekly visit, as poor Gustave is so ill.’ Griselle, you should have seen my father’s face as he answered, ‘In that case, you may entertain M. Gerard alone, for I shall go and dine with your uncle in his attic.’ ‘Oh,’ said my mother, ‘since you take it all grand sérieux, I suppose the poor man may eat his soup with us as usual. But I shall intimate that he had better keep silence about his miracles and marvels.’ Which I hope she will, and in my hearing. I shall add a hint of my own.”
“Hush, Gustave! He is your godfather.”
“He is an old fool! Why, Griselle, he believes in the miracles of St. Médard; and in the convulsionnaires, with their crucifixions, their ‘secours meurtrières,’ and all the rest of their cheats and absurdities.”
“Did you ever hear him speak of these things, Gustave?”
“Not I, indeed!”
“I did―once only.”
“And what did he say?” Gustave asked eagerly.
“I shall not tell you. At least, not now. For you would mock and laugh, because he is a Jansenist, and you a scholar of the Jesuits. Yet, Gustave, I sometimes think he is the best and wisest of us all.”
“Wisest! Best!―When he has to thank my mother’s charity for his Sunday dinner, I suppose the only dinner he ever eats! What has he got by his sixty years of hard drudgery, but his threadbare soutane and his worn out Breviary? Call me ass and idiot, if I manage no better! If I, by the time I am five-and-twenty, have not made myself―” He fell back suddenly with a groan of pain, having raised himself in his eagerness, and moved the injured limb. “How hot it is!” he said impatiently. “Give me some wine, Griselle.”
“We have talked too much, dear,” Griselle said gently, giving him a tempting draft of iced wine and water. “You must try to sleep now.”
Gustave closed his eyes obediently enough, while Griselle sat still listening to the music. But he did not sleep.
During the long half hour that followed, many were the scenes and pictures that rose before him. The most distinct and vivid was that of a crowded court where some “cause célèbre” was being pleaded, and all were hanging with breathless attention upon the lips of the eloquent orator, and distinguished advocate, Gustave Adolphe Bairdon.
He knew his cause had reference to the Jesuits, but he did not know on which side he was pleading,― on theirs, or on that of their adversaries. Which side was likely to win? He debated the question with an earnestness that put to flight all hopes of slumber. “Griselle,” he said at last, “I can’t sleep. Make a tale for me. Not a moral tale though, about good children who get bon-bons and broidered frocks; and wicked ones who eat dry bread and are mocked by their playfellows.”
For Griselle often made tales for the amusement of her little brother and sister, Henri and Valérie. They were generally of the kind to which Gustave alluded with such contempt; but sometimes the Highland maiden aimed rather at pleasing herself than at edifying her auditors; and then weird stories of second sight, of pixies and brownies, ―or wild legends of heroic fidelity and terrible revenge, would astonish her youthful hearers. These stories had a wonderful attraction for Gustave. They taught nothing; but they awakened much within him: like stones cast into deep water, they revealed depths hitherto unsuspected there. It was good for the hard, irreverent, worldly-minded lad to have his imagination thus stimulated.
He was rather disappointed when Griselle answered, “Yes, you shall have a tale; but I need not make it, for it is true. That music has awakened me, and brought back things that were long forgotten. I am a little child again; in my home among the mountains, in dear old Scotland.”
“I never saw a mountain,” said the city boy, “I see mountains always when M. Gerard plays his harpsichord. Now they are bare and brown, now purple with heather, and green with groves of waving birch; and there are streams like threads of silver, falling from the heights and murmuring through the valleys. How cool, and fresh, and free it was on those mountain moorlands far away! How pleasant, in the early summer mornings when the dew was on heath and hairbell and all the world asleep, to look from my little window and see the misty purple light steal over the distant hills, and to hear the shrill cry of the plover and the scream of the curlew Then, later, the tinkle of sheep bells, or the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer, the sounds of life and labor coming from the village built for protection close to the castle.”
“The castle where my father lived?” interrupted Gustave. “Yes; the home of his fathers, and his fathers’ fathers, for I knew not how many generations. A narrow gloomy keep tower I should think it now perhaps, then it was ‘home’ to me.” (Griselle used the dear familiar English word, for which the French tongue has no equivalent.) “I do not remember seeing my father there, nor can I even recall that day of which he has often told us, when he rode away to join the standard of Prince Charles. My first memories are of walks on the moorland with my mother, rides on a shaggy mountain pony, and lessons and games in the hall shared with a fair-haired foster sister. I remember too the quiet Sundays, and the little chapel where no one went but my father’s family and servants, and where the priest read prayers in English, not in Latin, for we belonged to the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Then I remember sorrowful days when my mother wept much, because of tidings which came to her from my father. She made me kneel beside her, and taught me to pray with clasped hands that God would take care of him on the sea, and in the land of his exile amongst strangers. After that I played, and rambled over the moorlands as usual, but always without my mother. And then there came a solemn hush and stillness everywhere, which it seemed wrong to break by a laugh or a word spoken loudly, though I knew not why. One morning my nurse took me by the hand and led me to my mother’s room. I had not seen her for days; and I felt at first a thrill of joy, then surprise and sudden fear. That white worn face on the pillow was not, yet was, my mother’s. There were only a few words spoken, a kiss given, and they took me away. After that, everything grows misty. I seem to lose myself―until at last I find myself again, playing on the deck of a ship, and looking down with wonder on the white waves; beyond which, they tell me, my father is waiting to welcome me. Here my dream ends. When I grew older, I learned how my father, after the battle of Culloden, escaped to France, and reached Paris destitute and forlorn. How he lodged in this house with your grandparents, the Goudins―had a dangerous illness―was nursed by them and treated with generous kindness. And then― you know the rest, Gustave.” Griselle cared not to say more. She was fully aware that her father owed his life to her prosperous bourgeoise stepmother; yet undeniably she felt the alliance a degradation.
But Gustave was by this time asleep. The watcher was left to her own thoughts, which were of varied coloring, neither very cheerful, nor yet altogether sad.