"_P.S._--Please throw away the slippers; do. I am making you a surprise, and madame says it is going to be a much better piece of work this time. I should so much like to tell you what it is, but then, to be sure, it would not be a surprise.
"How nice you have Monsieur Felix staying with you; he is good.
"I am glad your cough is better, but do take care of yourself."
Ah, yes! we all wished he would take care of himself; but, alas! that is just the thing he could not be induced to do. One would think that to be in love with one woman, and just out of love with another, would be fairly enough to occupy one man's mind; but it was not so with Claude.
He was working in his studio, in museums and libraries, all day long, and of an evening he would study anatomy, as if he bad been qualifying for a doctor. Pictures seemed constantly coming to him, like so many mocking Will-o'-the-wisps, flitting before his eyes when they were open, and twitting his worried brain when they were closed.
Madeleine's letters were always particularly quieting and soothing to him, and he used to say that, when he wanted a rest, he liked to sit down and write to her.
Not long after Claude's momentous visit to his uncle I had again to leave Paris. It was a wrench to part with him just when he needed a friend to help him through his joys and troubles, but duties of various kinds called me back to Munich, so there was nothing for it but to say good-bye. We felt it doubly, for we knew we were not to meet for some time. Write we should, to be sure, we were always good correspondents; and this time there was no need to assure one another that we should do so often.
I started from the Gare du Nord.
"Good-bye then, old fellow! _Au revoir--adieu!_"--lightly said, deeply felt.
I rolled on, thinking of Claude and Jeanne, the widow and Madeleine, till I got to my destination, my queer little studio in that ramshackle old house, Schutzenstrause No. 5/3 links. The address is no use now, for that abode of mine is pulled down, as are its dear decrepit brothers and sisters, and the primitive old station opposite. All to make room for new buildings more suitable to tenants with sensitive noses and rectilinear tastes.
The first letter that reached me from Paris was not, as I expected, in Claude's handwriting, but in his father's. It told me that Claude was too ill to write. He was to have gone down to his uncle's on the Saturday (I had left on the Tuesday), and he was looking forward to what only a short time previously he had called a trap, a guet-apens, with the greatest impatience, for amongst other guests would be Olga Rabachot. But before the day came he caught a severe chill, and was peremptorily ordered to bed.
The fascinating widow he was never to see again. Not only the old cough had returned, but with it symptoms sufficiently grave to make it desirable he should winter abroad.
I had foreseen, and so has doubtless any one who has cared so far to follow Dupont on the love-path, that it was not he who would marry, the fascinating widow, but the uncle, and so I may as well state that such was the case. How it came about I either never knew or have forgotten, and as I should only be getting out of my depth if I attempted to fill the gap with scraps of fiction, I will confine myself to the simple narrative based on my recollections, and will merely add that I trust the uncle and the aunt lived happily ever after, and that the workmen at the dyer's works got as much ventilation as was procurable at that time and in that particular part of the world.
Claude soon left for Mentone. Then came my turn; was it sympathy or was it coincidence? About the same time I too was taken ill, and that seriously. The cause was not far to seek: a component part in the great scheme of creation is a certain vicious north-east wind that seems to live and thrive on annihilation. This Boreas is a kind of ogre who feeds not only on fat babies, but on any mortal thing that he can turn into dust. Not satisfied with his legitimate prey, the autumn leaves, he explores every nook and corner seeking whom he may devour. He found me out one evening after a day of unusual heat, as soon after sunset he suddenly came sweeping across the mountains that lie to the north-east of Munich. For months to come he laid me low, very low, and thus all the fine plans that Claude and I had made for a regular correspondence, that would keep us linked together at least mentally, came to naught. Letters dictated to the kind and anxious watchers by our respective bedsides were but poor substitutes for the minutely detailed accounts of our doings that we usually exchanged, or for the heartfelt effusions that our friendship prompted.
But to talk of one's illnesses is really a most unpardonable offence.
For all the purposes of description one can find quite enough of weakness in man when he is strong and hearty, without going out of one's way to ransack the sick-room for further evidence of his frailty.
So I will merely mention that I was and remained an invalid throughout the greater part of the ensuing winter.
The truth concerning Claude's health was kept from me. I since knew that he had passed through an alarming crisis; when the fever was at its height, his mind had been wandering, and in his disconnected talk he had alternately appealed to Olga in the tenderest language, and had shrunk from her imaginary presence with aversion and terror. When calm returned and comparative health, he would not speak of her. Something of the shrinking remained.
"With you I could talk about her," he said in the first letter he could write from Mentone, "but I must wait till I am stronger, and particularly till I hear better accounts of you. It was an unpleasant dream that--well--that Erlkonig dream. Again and again I cried out: 'Mein Vater, mein Vater!'--no help came--_her_ voice pursued me--On we dashed fever-spurred, till I lay dead in _her_ arms.
"But, to be sure that is all 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' To you, my dear fellow, I should only send pleasant visions, like those I am revelling in here. A new world is every day unfolded before me, a world vibrating with light and glowing with colour. I have seen the woods and the hills and the waters before, but never in their gala uniform, and I am simply dazzled. Where are my beloved outlines? They seem merged in harmonies and swamped in colours so glorious, that even I lose sight of them. Do you know, my dear Felix, since I am here I feel there is in me the making of a colourist, a germ somewhere hidden away so far down, that perhaps it may never thrive and reach the surface, but a source of happiness it is to me all the same. When I get strong enough I am going to nurse the little stranger, and see whether I can coax him on to the canvas; but I shall do nothing till I have made careful drawings of a couple of hundred olive trees. Why, every trunk is a weird fantastic subject in itself, and every branch as it twists and writhes in titanic agonies. It is as if all the lines of the universe had taken the olive groves for their place of rendezvous.
"Literally so; for there as I sat wool-gathering the other day, I descried approaching me the unmistakable lines of Gobelot's hat, a direct descendant of the one we punished in the glorious old Gleyre days; and under the hat was the man himself, walking through life as placidly as ever. He has evidently not yet learnt to draw a foot, so he has not fitted himself for a bootmaker. Nor need he, for his father, who died not long ago, left him quite a little fortune, _rien que cela_! Amongst other properties he inherits a villa in the best part of Mentone, with a beautiful view on to the sea, and so many acres of land; the very olive tree I was sitting under belongs to him. He has come down here to take possession, and was glad to find in me some one whom he could talk to. The fact is, he wanted to unburden himself of a secret. He is in love. He is engaged; you will never guess to whom. Wait; don't look to the end. She was a young girl whom you knew before she was beautiful, as he assures me she is now. She always loved the theatre, and one day, it appears, she was irresistibly attracted by the bills that announced the performance of that lovely opera of Cherubini's, 'The Water-Carrier.' That she must see. So she treated herself to a very good seat, and went off all by herself to witness for the first time in her life the performance of an opera. Then and there she was stage-struck, and swore by her illustrious godmother that she could and would be a singer. She asked some one to teach her, and wouldn't take 'No' for an answer. She next asked some one to bring her out, and made him do so, and got the public to applaud into the bargain. I'm not sure she didn't ask Gobelot to marry her; but so much is certain--he's going to, and we shall soon hear of Madame Gobelot, _nee_ Rosa Bonheur Sinel. Qu'en dis tu? L'oncle Auguste was right. Didn't we one day have to mark his words, 'When she gets a comb to keep that mop of hers in order, she'll find a carriage and pair too.' Now she'll have it, and a good deal besides; and you can be sure she will be the Queen of the Regatta, and win all the prizes.
"I wish I had you here to tell you more, but I must break off, I am so tired.
CLAUDE."
The generally cheerful tone of Claude's letters, as of some I received from his father about this time, was, as I know now, only adopted because I was considered far too unwell to be told the truth. In reality, Claude's condition gave cause for grave anxiety.
I was not a little surprised to learn that Madeleine was installed as Claude's nurse in Mentone. It was all the uncle's doing. He who had always resented the mention of her name--and it was often on Claude's lips--had been instrumental in bringing her to his side. The invalid was told that Madame Chevillard and Madeleine were on their way to Genoa, where the former had been appointed to superintend the formation of a school of embroidery. There was no truth in the story; it had only been concocted to explain their presence to Claude.
His uncle had himself gone to Lyons, and had induced Mademoiselle Chevillard to bring her ward to Mentone. How matters stood there he told them with tears in his eyes. They must come at once, and---- stop to the last.
A month had elapsed, and every day had brought Madeleine nearer to the friend she tended. Her long enforced stay in a hospital had naturally qualified her to nurse the sick; but it was not her experience alone, but her devotion to Claude, deep-rooted and untiring, that came to wrestle with the messenger of death. And the invalid who had been so restless, even so querulous, before her arrival, was now soothed by the mere sound of her voice, and as he looked into her amethyst eyes, an unknown happiness dawned upon him.
Thus I found him and her when I arrived. I had set out for Mentone as soon as I was strong enough to travel. It was in April; God's Nature was bright, but sad was the journey, sadder the meeting.
I was fully prepared to find my friend much changed, but when we met I had difficulty to conceal from him how shocked and distressed I was by his appearance. I could not but see that he was rapidly wasting away, a prey to that terrible disease, consumption. The matted hair clinging to the moist forehead, the pulses on the temples beneath marking life's ebb; the sunken cheek and the hollow soundless voice, all foreshadowed the approaching end. As I sat by his side and held his emaciated hand, I felt I had come none too soon.
Yet he sought to appear cheerful.
"Where are my birds, _ma petite_?" he asked Madeleine. "Give me the 'surprise.' Look here, Felix, isn't she an artist?" he said, holding up the surprise; the same his _petite_ had announced as being in preparation. It had taken the shape of an embroidered mat to put under his lamp.
Yes, she was an artist. Her subject was simple enough. Four birds representing the four seasons filled the corners of a grey silk square.
There was the crow, the swallow, the nightingale--the fourth I forget; each beautifully modelled with many-shaded threads of silk, and linked together by a cleverly-contrived garland of flowers, appropriate to the seasons they were to illustrate. In the centre, entertwined with a bunch of evergreen, a ribbon, on which were embroidered the words--
"Les saisons qui changent L'amitie ne derangent."
Yes, she was right. True friendship will not change with the seasons that come and go. But had she thought, as she plied the needle, of the friendship that ripens and grows, expanding till it is merged in affection of a deeper nature?
"Stop with me another ten minutes, then let me rest," Claude said, as we sat by the window, waiting for the moon to rise. "Perhaps I shall see it; or if not, I shall know it has risen."
"Where must I look for it?" I asked.
"Over those hills. It will hide behind the mists. Wait, to-morrow perhaps; Thursday--Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Wait."
He was exhausted; I would not let him speak more, but left him to rest, watched by the pale girl that was ever by his side.
The next day he seemed so much better that he surprised us all. Could it be possible that a crisis was passed, that the illness had taken a favourable turn? One dared not think so, but yet the balmy air of Mentone had ere this worked wonders.
"O Felix," he said, "I feel happier than I have ever been. Every day brings me new life and light. The world is more beautiful than I thought; not all drawing; colour too, such colour!" After a pause, he continued--
"I must tell you all, Felix. I was blind, and she--slowly, gradually--led me out of the darkness. I thought I knew what love was--Paris--you know--all passion, pain; love is peace, happiness. It is she who taught me. I have peered into the deepest of all mysteries, too great to be solved in this world." And he fell back on his cushions, and gazed as if in a trance, murmuring "Ma petite."
High winds had been blowing for the last few days, whipping up the waves of the blue sea and chasing the clouds across the path of the moon, but now nature was returning to its pleasanter mood, and the clouds were gradually dropping into line, and taking up positions just above the horizon.
Saturday had come.
"Good-night, father; good-night, uncle. I feel much better."
Madeleine and I remained. Vigils and anxiety had told upon her. The bloom had left her cheeks, and her eyes were heavy. We wheeled his chair to the window and propped him up with pillows.
"Over that hill," he said, "at 11.59;--curious--just a minute before midnight--I watched it grow ever since it was a tender crescent."
The full moon rose, a red disc, blood red, emerging from this world of strife; it ascended, taking its hues from man's yellow gold; then on--freed from terrestrial mists, excelsior to purer skies.
"See," he said, "a true circle; no beginning and no end. The emblem of eternity!"
Madeleine was resting her weary head on her arms as they lay folded on the window-sill. Silvery rays fell through the window and played around her hair.