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CHAPTER XXIX
WHOM THE GODS LOVE DIE YOUNG
IT was nearly ten o’clock, – Tristan’s bedtime; but yet Tristan had not thought about going to bed to-night. He was sitting in his studio at the feet of his Mentor, Baldassare the Italian – Baldassare who that evening had arrived from Rome the bearer of a precious packet for my Lady.
You know Baldassare with his fine apostolic features, his white flowing beard and quaint mediæval garb; he has not changed a whit in appearance since we saw him last at the Eternal city.
Tristan and he are talking – let us listen to the dialogue.
“And how did you light on them, my dearest guardian?”
“I found them, my child, in a little ebony box, stowed away at the back of a small closet in the room your father used to occupy.”
“And they had been there more than twenty years! Ah, how my mother will value them!”
“And l fancy too, my Tristan, that they may contain some really important matter, – may serve to throw some light on the history of your father’s life. The ink in which the words are traced has faded with age, and I am not master enough of the English language to decipher them, so that to me they are little better than hieroglyphs. But I make no doubt they will be easy enough to her.”
“How, my dearest Baldassare? – they are then written in English – these letters?”
“Most certainly they are, my child.”
“And are they addressed to my father?”
“Yes, but the form of his name is altered, – he is called John, – the English for Jean. It is the same name you know. And sometimes another is applied to him – I cannot quite pronounce that, – I suppose it
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must have been a pet sobriquet, a diminutive of some sort. The signature to all these letters is the same, – ‘Mona.’ ”
“Strange! Suppose my father should not have been a Frenchman after all?”
Baldassare smiled.
“Would that seem strange to you, my child?”
“Nothing seems strange to a philosopher like you,” says the boy, answering the smile. “And you must have seen so much – so much, – Baldassare!”
“It does not follow, my child,” answers the old man, looking gravely at his young disciple. “God works in moments. Every day is Doomsday, – every day is the Day of Judgment. I have heard you call yourself old, my Tristan, – has Paris pushed you back into youth?”
“I have grown childish indeed, dear guardian,” says the boy, blushing hotly, “since I have been parted from you! Ah, would that we could be always together! You remember the words which Glauco once used to the Grecian Master of philosophy, – ‘The measure of life, O Socrates, is with the wise, the speaking and hearing such discourses as yours!’ You are my Socrates, Baldassare!”
“Then let me hope, Tristan, that you will become a Plato! But beware, my child of too much enthusiasm, – beware of too much love! Be at least old enough in your youth to avoid these fatal snares!”
“Ah, my guardian, it is not possible for me to exist without some object!”
“Preserve then Tristan, in all your aspirations, – a wholesome temperance, a healthful scepticism. It is through their affections only that the souls of men are mortally wounded, – through their over-much trustfulness of themselves and of each other. Accustom yourself therefore to think. Thought is the educator of the soul. A single hour passed in solitary meditation and communion with the great powers of Nature is better than a whole week occupied in reading the meditations of other
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people. And remember, my Tristan, that the very beginning of philosophy is to feel absolutely that you yourself are of yourself – nothing.”
“But at least Art is something, Baldassare, – your Art and mine?” He glanced as he spoke towards his easel, upon which rested the almost completed picture of Hypatia. The old man laid his hand tenderly upon the young painter's.
“My child, your Art is only worthy inasmuch as it approaches and resembles Nature, – that is God. The best you can ever do will be infinitely little beside the smallest work of the great Artist Who makes the Universe. You will do well Tristan, so long only as you aim at interpreting the Words of God. That is the highest end you can have in view. Humility, my child, is the beginning of all the virtues; the immaculate mother of divine Wisdom, – personified, and adored in the Christian Churches under the form of the Madonna. She bears is her arms the Man-god, she nurses him at her virgin bosom, she educates, reproves and admonishes him, she vanquishes the enemy of salvation, she rises from earth surrounded by angels, she is clothed with the sun, crowned with stars, and acknowledged Queen of Heaven. It is through her only that we can claim kinship with the Almighty; the Light of the World is her gift to men!”
“Ah Baldassare!” sighed Tristan, looking up at his Nestor with beaming eyes, “when I hear you speak thus, my heart burns with the desire that all the world might also hear your voice! You have been too humble, my dearest master, – you have hidden your light beneath a bushel. And you might become so great a leader, so mighty a reformer!"
Again the old man smiled.
“My child, think you that I could change the unchangeable, that I could achieve the Impossible? When such leaders, such reformers as Confucius, and Buddha, and Zoroaster, and Pythagoras, and the Christ of Nazareth, have failed?”
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“You are wise, Baldassare,” answered Tristan, but with a disappointed air. “It is thus I argue myself when l myself only am concerned. But for you, – I long to set you upon a pedestal above the crowd of common men that I might say to them, – 'This great Teacher whom you reverence is my master! I love him and am dearest to him of all the world!’ It is intolerable to me who know your nobility, that others should despise you! Do you never have your hours of discontent, my Baldassare? – do you never contemn the indolent herd who know you not; are you never indignant with them, – never sad, never wounded by their indifference?”
“Once I was, Tristan, before l learned to think and to stand alone. But now I am not of them. And I know that all my life long I have received from every person precisely what I deserved to receive at that person’s hands. It could not be otherwise, for every man must see as he sees, every man must give just exactly what he has to give, – no more – no less. Therefore how can I be angry, how can I be wounded? Nay, my child, I am satisfied.”
“My guardian!” cried Tristan with tears in his eyes, “your face is grand and calm, – you are at peace – you feel the truths you utter in your inmost soul! But I, – I only say them! For I also disclaim ambition, I also refuse to run the general race for Fame, but even while I vaunt my indifference I am aware in my heart of a secret desire that my vaunting should be heard, I am sensible of a lurking greed for at least the wonder of men, even though I care not for their praise. I would have the world turn to gaze upon me, and hear it say as I pass it by in my mantled pride, ‘There he goes alone – he disdains our applause – he walks with angels!’ But if you, my master, were always with me, I should not have such thoughts as these! Ah, what shall I do when you are gone from me to some other world! Come back to me if the gods permit, O come back to me and lead me on to follow you!”
“The gods love you Tristan! – the great powers of Nature are yours!
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The sea is yours, with all its solemn noise; the heavens with their cloudy flocks, their gold and crimson banners in East and West; the silent absorbed eternal Stars; the divine nymphs of fountain and river and forest, daughters of Hertha with eyes of dew and voices of air, – you may woo them, – they are yours, – deathless, changeless, eternally faithful!”
“Alas,” murmured the boy with a weird melancholy, “if the gods indeed loved me, Baldassare, should I not die young?”
Scarcely had he uttered the last words, than the door of the studio opened, and Lord Cairnsmuir stood upon its threshold.
“LE RODEUR!” he cried, in a voice of terrible passion.
Tristan sprang to his feet, aghast.
“It is the Earl;” he exclaimed, seizing Baldassare’s hand. “Oh what can have happened? – it is the Earl himself.”
“You know why I am come,” pursued the terrible voice. ”I will have no word spoken here, nor will I move a step to lessen the distance between us now. But here is a message I will send you.”
He drew out the silver mounted pistol, cocked it and took aim. . .
Ah!!
There was a momentary flash, the shrill hiss of a bullet, a shriek, a confused tumult, – someone coming suddenly on the Earl from behind had jerked the hand which held the pistol sideways, and a voice that sounded hollow and indistinct, had cried “Stop!” in tones of horror, – and then had died away into a low agonized moan. No – it was Tristan who had moaned. Tristan, lying here at the feet of the painted Hypatia, Tristan with the white upturned face and parted lips, and upon the breast of his loose coloured shirt, that single spot of oozing red that looked like a daub of crimson paint. And here was Templar, pushing past the Earl, running across the room, and kneeling down to raise the white face upon his knee; and there was an old man like a patriarch, in strange
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attire, kneeling too and chafing the lifeless hands and crying – “My Tristan! my darling child!”
Like a fever dream the whole terrible spectacle surged and floated round Lord Hubert; his senses became suddenly merged and quickened to a fearful intensity, sound and sight commingled, and seemed alike to strike and pierce his brain. Mechanically he closed the door and staggered to a chair.
“He lives!” cried Sir Godfrey, – "thank God the bullet glanced, – an instant more, and I should have been too late! Some cordial, my friend some brandy, anything you have! O Cairnsmuir, Cairnsmuir, madman that you are, – hear me tell you what you have done. This boy is the son of your own wife! the brother of your child!”
“What!” cried the Earl, wildly, “his mother – Dolores!”
He rushed towards the group.
“E véro!” said the old Italian, weeping, and shaking his long white beard. “O inscrutable Destiny! O Tristan, child of dolour!”
“Look!” cried Templar, “he will revive, the brandy has restored him, – give him air – loosen his clothes!”
He tore open the young man’s vest. Within it, upon the heaving, bloodstained bosom, lay a miniature, suspended from Tristan’s throat by a silken thread – a miniature encircled by a single border of pearls; the picture of a handsome, reckless face, with glowing eyes and brown luxuriant curls.
Lord Hubert’s glance fell upon it instantaneously. With the fury of a maniac he sprang forward and clutched it, but the rude touch aroused the energy of the fainting boy; he lifted his head, and nervously sought to withhold the discovered treasure.
“My father,” he gasped, in broken; anxious tones, “don’t let them take it, – it is his picture, – my mother gave it me when I was a child, – so long ago. Oh let it be, – I have never parted with it yet!”
Ah, what awful cry is this that pierces the watchful hush of suspense,
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and thrills so appallingly through the dim, echoing studio? What miserable wretch is this that leaps to his feet, and tosses his arms above his head, and wrings his palsied hands?
“O Rep, Rep! my lost brother! my only brother Rep!”
It is the voice of the boy at Kelpies twenty years ago, and the face and the eyes that are lifted thus in their agony of vain remorse, are the face and the eyes of Roy!
Twenty years ago he had a jealous heart, – behold its harvest now!
A hand is laid gently upon his shoulder, the words of a strange voice are murmured in his ear:
“Signor,” says the venerable artist, in his broken tongue, “I pray you be calm, be compose – the poor child –”
“Who are you?” retorts the Earl in Italian, turning fiercely upon the old man?” You are not his father!”
“Monsignor, if Jean Le Rodeur was your brother, I was his dearest friend. I, who speak to you, – I knew the man whose face you recognize here – knew him as friends know – soul to soul. Two and twenty years ago I stood by his side in the chapel of Our Lady of Mercy in Rome, when Dolores of Arisaig was made his wife. I heard their vows of eternal faith and love, I saw them kneel together for the blessing of the Catholic Church. And before that year was out, I stood beside his death-bed in the same city, and that young wife became a widow.”
Lord Cairnsmuir covered his eyes with his hands. Like that ghastly writing of flame that arrested Belshazzar’s festival, there burst suddenly out upon the Earl’s remembrance certain words, which not long since my Lady had addressed to him; “Rome has ever been a fatal place to me.” And now the Daniel had come to judgment – now the dark saying was interpreted!
“His wife?” he repeated, in a voice that seemed as though it issued from the lips of a marble figure – “Rep’s wife – Dolores of Arisaig? God! how marvellous are Thy designs! They told us he had gone down
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at sea, – they said he had fled to America! He was my elder brother; his son is the rightful heir! Ah! – and but for me – the line of Cairnsmuir would not have perished! My own hand has slain the last hope of my failing House!”
“No, no – not slain!” cried Templar, greatly agitated. “He lives, Cairnsmuir. With the aid of a surgeon, he shall yet come to his own. But first, I have some work to do.” And here, with evident anxiety, he turned and addressed himself to Baldassare.
“My friend, can you tell me if in these rooms I shall anywhere find ammunition for a pistol?”
The Italian met his glance intelligently.
“I never journey unarmed,” he answered, drawing a revolver from his girdle and placing it with powder-horn and bullet-case in Sir Godfrey’s outstretched hand.
“Thank God for the lucky chance!” ejaculated Templar, fervently; “now all is easy! Continue to give him the cordial for a minute or two, while I take some necessary precautions.”
Parallel with Tristan’s atelier, ran a long narrow passage, termimated by a blank white-washed wall. Templar opened a door which gave upon this corridor, and having placed at one end of it a small table bearing a lighted candle, he took from Tristan’s easel a piece of charcoal and hastily drew upon the smooth white wall already mentioned, the circles of a target, such as is used in shooting galleries. Then he loaded Baldassare’s revolver and aimed at his rough mark, one or two shots, sufficient to impress any new comer with the idea (which he intended to propagate) that a tire de pistolet had been the amusement of the evening, and Tristan’s misfortune, the result of a casualty. Then he laid the revolver and ammunition-horn upon the table, and ran downstairs to summon attendants and to despatch a message for the nearest surgeon.
Meanwhile, the Earl assisted Baldassare to carry his nephew into the adjoining bed-chamber, where they laid him on a couch, and removed
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his outer dress. Owing to Templar’s interference, the bullet which had wrought this evil work must plainly have glanced, for instead of piercing the heart as the Earl had intended, it had torn the right breast, and slightly lacerated the lung. There was little outward bleeding; the hemorrhage was internal.
“Ah, my dear boy!” sobbed the wretched peer, thoroughly broken down with emotion. And with the shock which his terrible blunder had occasioned, “if only you had addressed the Countess as your mother in that note. It would have saved all.”
Tristan painfully lifted his eyes. “She forbade me,” answered he in a low tone, “I dared not use the name. She was so afraid her secret might get known.”
Baldassare sighed.
“Tristan,” said my Lord, again, kneeling beside the couch; “can you forgive me? I was blind in my anger, I never had a glimpse of the truth.” And as Tristan silently extended his hand towards him, the poor man added in an altered voice:
“Tell me, my boy, do you know who you are? Your father was Earl of Cairnsmuir; the miniature you wear on your neck was painted by your grandmother, the Countess Mona. I knew it instantly, it was the only jewel poor Rep took with him. Tristan – he sacrificed himself for me, – he became a vagabond that I might be a peer; and to-day I have repaid him by murdering his son! O vile reward of so much generosity!”
Faintly the eyes of Tristan turned upon his.
“Have no regrets, dear uncle,” he whispered, “all deeds are the deeds of Fate. My time had come; my career –”
“With passionate haste the Earl broke through his words.
“Oh no,” he cried, “may God forbid it; live, live, and take my place! Templar says you will recover; – Templar is sure the wound can be healed. Kelpies will be yours, dear nephew, when you come of age!”
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“Signor, he comes of age to-night,” said the voice of Baldassare. “It was at Arisaig Towers he was born, in the first watch of the year forty-nine. While the church-bells were ringing for the Feast of the Circumcision.”
“This night then,” resumed my Lord, with a touch of his wonted stateliness, “my nephew legally enters his father’s inheritance.”
“Yes, yes,” said Tristan, catching the words, and repeating, them solemnly, “I shall come of age tonight. I shall enter my Father’s inheritance!”
And Baldassare, bending over him, heard him whisper to himself more faintly,
‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.”
“Monsignor,” said the old artist, taking a small ebony box from a console by the window, “if you are Jean’s brother, these letters will have some interest for you. It was in order to place them myself in my Lady’s hands that I travelled to Paris. They relate, no doubt, to the early life of my dear friend.”
With shaking hands the Earl opened the casket and unfastened the packet it contained.
Alas, alas; what further confirmation was needed to the sorrowful story now? He looked upon the letters of the Countess Mona, addressed to her darling boy at school; letters full of pathetic references to incidents of old days, full of anecdotes and stories of the home at Kelpies, of domestic trifles, long forgotten; familiar records of gardens, and dogs, and pigeons, and a score of dumb beloved favourites. Here she rebuked him for some childish freak, there she praised his goodness or his industry; now she dwelt with trustful pride upon the brilliant future before him. Every faded page was replete with bygone joys or sorrows, every phrase revived some perished memory of the irrecoverable Past; – those years of youth and hope and happy fellowship that could return no more for ever.
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No more! – No more!
Earl Hubert hid his miserable face, and wept aloud; as Roy had never wept in these old vanished days!
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