_ BOOK X CHAPTER VII
All the earlier part of that next day, Graham Vane remained in-doors--a lovely day at Paris that 8th of July, and with that summer day all hearts at Paris were in unison. Discontent was charmed into enthusiasm--Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism and Socialism and other "isms" not to be realised except in some undiscovered Atlantis!
The Emperor was the idol of the day--the names of Jules Favre and Gambetta were by-words of scorn. Even Armand Monnier, still out of work, beginning to feel the pinch of want, and fierce for any revolution that might turn topsy-turvy the conditions of labour,--even Armand Monnier was found among groups that were laying immortelles at the foot of the column in the Place Vendome, and heard to say to a fellow malcontent, with eyes uplifted to the statue of the First Napoleon, "Do you not feel at this moment that no Frenchman can be long angry with the Little Corporal? He denied La Liberte, but he gave La Gloire."
Heeding not the stir of the world without, Graham was compelling into one resolve the doubts and scruples which had so long warred against the heart which they ravaged, but could not wholly subdue.
The conversations with Mrs. Morley and Rochebriant had placed in a light in which he had not before regarded it, the image of Isaura.
He had reasoned from the starting-point of his love for her, and had sought to convince himself that against that love it was his duty to strive.
But now a new question was addressed to his conscience as well as to his heart. What though he had never formally declared to her his affection--never, in open words, wooed her as his own--never even hinted to her the hopes of a union which at one time he had fondly entertained,--still was it true that his love had been too transparent not to be detected by her, and not to have led her on to return it?
Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he was not indifferent to her: at Enghien, a year ago, that he had gained her esteem, and perhaps interested her fancy.
We know also how he had tried to persuade himself that the artistic temperament, especially when developed in women, is too elastic to suffer the things of real life to have lasting influence over happiness or sorrow,--that in the pursuits in which her thought and imagination found employ, in the excitement they sustained, and the fame to which they conduced, Isaura would be readily consoled for a momentary pang of disappointed affection. And that a man so alien as himself, both by nature and by habit, from the artistic world, was the very last person who could maintain deep and permanent impression on her actual life or her ideal dreams. But what if, as he gathered from the words of the fair American--what if, in all these assumptions, she was wholly mistaken? What if, in previously revealing his own heart, he had decoyed hers--what if, by a desertion she had no right to anticipate, he had blighted her future? What if this brilliant child of genius could love as warmly, as deeply, as enduringly as any simple village girl to whom there is no poetry except love? If this were so--what became the first claim on his honour, his conscience, his duty?
The force which but a few days ago his reasonings had given to the arguments that forbade him to think of Isaura, became weaker and weaker, as now in an altered mood of reflection he resummoned and reweighed them.
All those prejudices--which had seemed to him such rational common-sense truths, when translated from his own mind into the words of Lady Janet's letter,--was not Mrs. Morley right in denouncing them as the crotchets of an insolent egotism? Was it not rather to the favour than to the disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in the man's narrow-minded view of woman's dignity, that this orphan girl could, with character so unscathed, pass through the trying ordeal of the public babble, the public gaze-command alike the esteem of a woman so pure as Mrs. Morley, the reverence of a man so chivalrously sensitive to honour as Alain de Rochebriant?
Musing thus, Graham's countenance at last brightened--a glorious joy entered into and possessed him. He felt as a man who had burst asunder the swathes and trammels which had kept him galled and miserable with the sense of captivity, and from which some wizard spell that took strength from his own superstition had forbidden to struggle.
He was free!--and that freedom was rapture!--yes, his resolve was taken.
The day was now far advanced. He should have just time before the dinner with Duplessis to drive to A------, where he still supposed Isaura resided. How, as his fiacre rolled along the well-remembered road--how completely he lived in that world of romance of which he denied himself to be a denizen.
Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied only by workmen--it was under repair. No one could tell him to what residence the ladies who occupied it the last year had removed.
"I shall learn from Mrs. Morley," thought Graham, and at her house he called in going back, but Mrs. Morley was not at home; he had only just time, after regaining his apartment, to change his dress for the dinner to which he was invited. As it was, he arrived late, and while apologising to his host for his want of punctuality, his tongue faltered. At the farther end of the room he saw a face, paler and thinner than when he had seen it last--a face across which a something of grief had gone.
The servant announced that dinner was served.
"Mr. Vane," said Duplessis, "will you take into dinner Mademoiselle Cicogna?" _