Dark Rosaleen (7 page)
Authors: Marjorie Bowen
But that evening, when in the pale drawing-room at Madame de Sillery’s house he told Pamela of his intention, she begged him not to attend, although the banquet was being given to celebrate a victory largely gained by her adopted brother, M. de Chartres.
He was surprised and overwhelmed at her warm appeal, for she had not asked him any favour before, and he forgot the banquet, his friends, and all their schemes and intrigues in the joy of her tenderness, her concern for him; this admission that their futures were involved.
The young girl looked passionately into his face. There was often something at once wild and wistful in her manner, as if she snatched herself desperately from a great melancholy.
‘Do not go. Will you never understand how dangerous it all is? Will you always close your eyes to what is happening daily? You have your head in the air, I think.’
‘Does my safety matter so much to you?’ he asked, caring for nothing but to receive that assurance again and again.
‘Were you not vowed to my service from the first moment that we met?’
‘Indeed I was, dear, and I would not let anything in the world come between us.’
‘This will come between us. You will be ruined and perhaps arrested, and how would I endure it?’
‘Then I will not go, Pamela, if it will cause you the least uneasiness; and, dear, when will you marry me?’
Her smile trembled into tears as she gave him both her hands.
‘Is this the moment to think of our happiness? Oh, when you want — you know!’
‘Then as soon as we can, Pamela. I know not what the formalities are here, but I will ascertain them to-day, this hour.’
‘Would you be more careful of your safety if you were my husband?’
‘If I were your husband, Pamela, I should think of nothing but you, of how to make you happy. As for my own happiness I should not need to consider that, for it would be assured.’
‘Then marry me. Take me away quite soon, whether Adelaide and Madame de Sillery will leave Paris or not.’
‘I intended to return to England soon, Pamela; next week, so I promised my mother. I hope to put in for my majority, too, and what could be of a more greater delight than to take you with me as my wife? My mother will love you!’
‘Will she? I wonder! I am rather different from other young women. I have noticed English ladies, they are cold, proud.’
‘My mother is not, nor my sisters, nor dear Henry. They will all love you, Pamela, nearly as much as I do. They will adore you, and my uncle Richmond, he will be your devoted servant, and my dear aunt Louise Connelly, and Lady Sarah Napier.’
‘You do not even know who I am. Though I have been brought up with princes I am nothing and have nothing.’
‘Pamela, do not you know that I have loved you since you were a tiny child and I gave you some nectarines? Why, I can smell the balm and laurels on that warm, sunny afternoon…when I built the fort — I believed I never went back to put the flag on it…’
She smiled and shook her head, not understanding.
‘And I want you to wear a little patch by your mouth, Pamela.’
Overwhelmed by the pain of his happiness, he dropped his face on her hands which rested on the arm of the yellow silk sofa.
‘Oh, my darling, that this should happen to me.’
‘Have you never loved before?’
‘Never. I have always been in love with you. I thought I had found you twice, once your name was Kate, but no…’
‘You said Louise.’
‘Kate, Louise, Pamela. What does it matter, it was always you. When will you marry me?’
‘When you will, if it will keep you from your dangerous friends and lure you home again; and I’ll leave them, all of them, and go with you anywhere.’
On taking the last letters of his mother and sisters from his pocket, Fitzgerald pulled out also the packet of papers that Mr. Wolfe Tone had given him. He opened and began to read them. When his eye had passed over a few sentences, even Pamela for a while went out of his mind. Here were facts carefully noted down, accounts of events, signed, dated, witnessed; yet, for all that, almost incredible. It was true, as Mr. Tone had surmised, that he, so long absent from Ireland and enclosed within the circle of the upper classes, had known little of this. How England ruled in Ireland; the scourging, branding, burning, the torturing; the Roman Catholics forcibly expelled from their homes, the Protestants put in their place, the systematic outrages of the Peep o’ Day Boys, of the Orange men, of Protestant societies protected by the Government, the endless corruption of Parliament; the measure of injustice dealt out not merely to a wretched peasantry but to an intelligent, enlightened, peaceful gentry. Did it not all reveal an implacable desire to exterminate the Irish race and all traces of one of the most ancient cultures in Europe?
Fitzgerald, after an absorbed perusal of the papers, put them down and leant back in his chair. He thought, ‘Does Grattan know of all this, and Stewart, or Leinster, or Henry? Then what ought I to do? Why, what Tone, the Sheares, and Reynolds do, of course.’
The papers dropped to the floor. Only a coward would hesitate…then, he remembered Pamela.
‘No, I can’t. I almost promised her. It would not be fair.’
Then there was his mother, his sisters, his good-natured brother Robert, the greatest man in Dublin, his beloved Henry, too. All these would be hurt, feel themselves disgraced, be brought perhaps near ruin.
‘I can’t do it. I ought not to do it.’
Tony came into the room and found his master sitting in front of the desk and thought he seemed ill, but Fitzgerald turned quickly, on the servant’s timid question.
‘No, Tony, I am very well. Ask them to give you a little brandy, if you please, and, Tony, put out my clothes for to-night, for I shall go down to the banquet they give.’
He thought: ‘Did I promise that I would not do that? I can’t help it, I must go. I should be the only Irishman in Paris not present. Besides, what harm could there be in it? They are all moderate men, and if they were not I ought not to hold back.’
As the Negro, with an anxious look, brought him the brandy, Fitzgerald said, ‘Pick up those papers, Tony, and put them carefully together.’ He rested his elbow on the desk and took his hot forehead in his hands. Those other men, they were risking all they had…they had not as much as he to risk, but what they had they were staking on this cause. Wolfe Tone had spoken of an adored family. What more could a man stake than that? But Pamela. Would it be possible to jeopardise the happiness of Pamela?
He slowly unfolded and read for the first time with only half his attention the letters from his family. They were tender with solicitude and affection; they begged him to be careful and return home at once; the English newspapers were full of a thousand disquieting reports from Paris; there were many Irish there, men of noble sentiments, no doubt, but rash, wild, some of them even open rebels…would he, for the sake of his mother and sisters, be careful? Not be concerned with rebels?
Fitzgerald put away the letters, locking them in his desk while his mind dwelt on that last word — rebels. To a foreign government, to a foreign tyranny? ‘They are loyal to their own country, but I, what am I?’
He wrote hurriedly to Pamela.
‘I must go to this banquet. I cannot stay away. Do not be uneasy. No harm will come of it, and in a few days we shall be in England.’ He scratched out that word and wrote in ‘Ireland.’
Tony was lighting candles in the inner room which served as a dressing closet. Fitzgerald continued to sit at his desk. Never in all his wanderings had he felt so far from home, so much an exile. It was not the place but his destiny that had become strange and unfamiliar.
The British dinner held at White’s to celebrate Jemappes was an affair at once sober and brilliant. There was no fanatic talk, no boasting, no violent invective, but when dinner was over there were these toasts:
‘
The
Armies
of
France
. May the example of its citizen soldiers be followed by all enslaved countries till tyrants and tyrannies be extinct.’
Then proposed by General Dillon:
‘
The
People
of
Ireland
. May government profit by the example of France and reform prevent revolution.’
Sir Robert Smith then drank to:
‘
Speedy
abolition
of
all
hereditary
titles
and
feudal
distinctions
,’ and if this last toast had a slightly fantastic air, there was nothing to be said against the sobriety and good taste of the other sentiments so publicly proclaimed.
Edward Fitzgerald, when he returned to his chambers, could not feel that he had been guilty of any vast indiscretion. To publicly renounce his courtesy title was at the utmost a rather childish act which he was slightly ashamed of, but for the rest his mind was eased and his spirit relieved by this act of public adherence to his countrymen’s cause.
*
The following morning he was out early, searching the florists’ shops for flowers for Pamela. They were difficult to find in mid-winter and very costly, and he had not much money with him. He had sent Tony to Madame de Sillery’s with his letter pleading for forgiveness for his attendance at the banquet, and he followed this himself almost immediately, taking with him to the pale room faint winter violets and primroses, cold beneath moss and leaves in a basket of gilt straw.
He found Pamela upon her knees beside the sofa on which Mademoiselle d’Orléans lay, her face hidden in a cushion. M. d’Orléans had been arrested, and his friends had warned his family that it would be wise for them to leave Paris immediately.
‘Pamela, we will go at once, as soon as we are married.’
‘I cannot wait for that. Madame de Sillery leaves tomorrow.’ She gazed at him with an intense earnestness. ‘Do you care enough for me to come with us?’
‘Pamela! I will come with you this instant. I have no affairs that I cannot settle in a few hours, and we will be married in Switzerland, in Belgium, where you will, at the first place where we halt long enough.’
‘That is the answer I hoped for,’ said Pamela. Through her distress a wild joy flashed in her blue eyes. ‘I believe we shall be very happy, you and I.’
‘Are you surprised, Pamela? Did you expect me to hesitate on niceties?’
‘No, but I am expecting a great deal of you. Adelaide, look up.’
The young princess sat up.
‘Monsieur must excuse me,’ she sighed. ‘I regret this disorder.’ Her handkerchief, already damp with tears, went again to her eyes. ‘What have I to live for that I should fly? — but my father wishes me to go.’
‘But surely the National Assembly would not touch M. d’Orléans?’ cried Fitzgerald. He again had that curious sense of bewilderment which had come to him so forcibly when he had noticed the unpopularity of the young hero of Jemappes. He thought of those Frenchmen whom he had met at the dinner last night. All appeared intelligent, moderate, enlightened men. Was it possible that there might be other influences at work and that an era of anarchy, chaos, was really at hand?
‘Is it really true that M. de Chartres cannot obtain the release of his father?’ he asked, frowning.
‘It is indeed true,’ said Mademoiselle Adelaide, wearily. ‘He and M. Dumouriez are at Tournai — we mean to go there, to consult with them — one would think, after Valmy and Jemappes he might have some claim on France!’
Madame de Sillery entered the pale room. Her face looked old and haggard, and her usual elegant energy had changed into what seemed a useless impatience of words and movements. Fitzgerald, looking at her with compassion, remembered the story that she had long been not only the intimate friend but the lover of the unfortunate prince just arrested. She had with her the other adopted child, Hermine Compton.
‘Ah, well, Mr. Fitzgerald, what do you think of our fortunes now?’ she asked. ‘I have at length been able to persuade Mademoiselle Adelaide to leave Paris. Do you accompany us?’
‘Without any doubt,’ answered Fitzgerald, and drew Pamela’s hand through his arm.
The weather suddenly changed. A mighty storm broke over Paris, bending the bare trees in the gardens of the Tuileries, along the banks of the Seine and in the Bois de Boulogne, sending broken branches whirling with straw, placards and dirty newspapers down the long, grey streets.
The packets were delayed. Fitzgerald received no letters from England, and his sense of being cut off from his home and his usual life increased strongly. It seemed to him that he had snatched Pamela to him amid a violent tempest which disturbed the earth and heavens and altered all the lives of men. Public affairs began to take a sinister turn, even his sanguine temperament could not deny that the National Assembly was losing ground. It seemed to have no authority to stop riots, massacres, murders; terrible tales came in from the provinces; a low, steady murmur demanded the head of Philippe Egalité; might soon demand the head of M. de Chartres and his young brothers and sisters. With all the haste possible, Fitzgerald made preparation for these people, who a few weeks before had been to him strangers, but who now were his dearest concern on earth, to escape from what was becoming a city where anarchy was let loose.
*
‘Mr. Tone,’ — Fitzgerald, on a chance meeting, paused and spoke impulsively — ‘you see where affairs are leading. You would not wish this for Ireland?’
‘I am afraid, sir,’ replied the other, smiling and unmoved, ‘that what is happening in Ireland is worse than this. Have you read those papers I left with you?’
‘Yes. They were horrible, but even so —’
‘But I would not concern you, sir, with these affairs,’ interrupted Mr. Tone. ‘I hear of your approaching marriage.’
‘Yes. That pledges me deeply and away from you, I fear. It is difficult, but I do feel myself bound.’
‘I know. I understand. Perhaps if we were fortunate —’
Fitzgerald flushed. ‘I should not like to appear a fair weather friend.’
‘Nay, but if we were fortunate,’ persisted Mr. Tone, ‘you might further help us.’
‘If in any way I could — without jeopardising the happiness of one who has suffered already! I do not disguise from you, Mr. Tone, that she and her family are flying for their lives, and I am busy on the preparation for this desperate journey.’
‘Good luck to you, sir, and every happiness. Since you are not remaining in Paris I will not tell you any of my secrets. Keep clear of me and all my affairs, Lord Edward.’
But Fitzgerald could not bear to leave the man whom he so liked and admired, with this ease. He pressed Mr. Tone’s hand and asked: ‘But all goes as you would wish?’
‘No, I have an impatient mind. If all went as I wish I should be landing with fifty French frigates behind me in Bantry Bay to-morrow, but…well…one must curb one’s desires. Some of the progressives, Lazare Hoche, M. Carnot and others are good fellows…but forget their names, my Lord, forget you saw Wolfe Tone, John Sheares and Thomas Addis Emmett.’
‘I shall forget nothing,’ cried Fitzgerald, warmly. ‘But I shall not need to mention these matters.’
Twenty-four hours later, hired carriages took Madame de Sillery, Hermine Compton, Pamela, Edward Fitzgerald, Mademoiselle Adelaide d’Orléans, and a few servants across the frontier. The Irishman had in his pocket a letter which announced his dismissal from the English army on account of his attendance at the banquet at White’s Hotel. He did not mention this to Pamela, though he had at once told Madame de Sillery of the difference in his prospects.
‘Oh, heavens!’ that lady replied impatiently. ‘What does any of that matter if we can but save our necks?’
*
The journey, begun furtively, soon took on the character of open flight. The friends of liberty fled from the land of liberty and the ardent disciples of Jean Jacques Rousseau escaped in terror from the city where it was intended to transport his remains with all honour to the Pantheon.
Madame de Sillery, who had from the early days of ’89 boldly entertained all the Republican leaders, all the deputies of the National Assembly at Belle Chase, whose encouragement had induced a royal prince to espouse the popular cause, now fled from her native country in open terror, leaving that Liberal friend of the people, Philippe Egalité, who had voted for the death of his cousin the King, himself in prison, and in terror of that same guillotine Louis XVI had mounted not so many months before, whilst the young sister of the hero of Valmy and Jemappes, whose victory had been toasted at that enthusiastic banquet at White’s, wore a veil to disguise her Bourbon features from hostile eyes. Madame de Sillery’s bitterness was beyond expression, and the three young girls were nervous with fatigue and fear.
Mademoiselle d’Orléans left a father and two young brothers in the power of that spreading anarchy from which she had just fled, and continually broke into self-reproaches and would, but for Madame de Sillery’s firmness, have insisted on turning back to Paris to share the fate of her family.
Fitzgerald alone was at ease, even happy. He was glad that Pamela was ruined, that she had nothing; he was glad that she was in peril, that he had been able to snatch her from it, he was infinitely pleased that she came to him thus forlorn, adorned only with the power of his dreams. The cold was intense; as they passed the frontiers the snow began to fall, but Madame de Sillery’s relief at not having her passport questioned, nor any delay enforced on her, helped her to endure the discomforts of the weather.
The travelling carriages, changing horses at every post-house, proceeded as swiftly as the bad weather allowed across the muddy Flanders roads.
At one posthouse he could get no fresh saddle horse and so Fitzgerald had to take his place in the carriage beside Pamela.
It was the end of the short winter day and the cold seemed to increase with every hour. A heavy fall of sleet drifted down and was lost in the stiff furrows of mud that edged the roadside.
A few poor farms broke the dark monotony of the fields, and a faint blur of murky red showed where the sun was breaking the western clouds briefly before the final dark.
Pamela was huddled in one corner of the carriage, Hermine Compton leaning against her. Both the girls were half asleep, their coats turned up to their chins, folded shawls making pillows for their heads, and fatigue and cold seemed to emphasise the essential fragility of their youth.
Fitzgerald sat down opposite them, and taking off his greatcoat, placed it gently across their knees.
Pamela roused herself, pulled her hand out from her muff and gave it to him. He held it, leaning forward in his seat.
They would stop at Tournai, where they would be met by M. de Chartres and M. Dumouriez, and there they would be married. A strange marriage for people of their quality, but the times were strange.
The horses were fresh, and though the roads were uneven the carriage proceeded swiftly. The leathers at the window were not up and the young man could see the darkening fields on either side, and the red streak in the west growing fainter. It was a prospect of indescribable melancholy. The only sounds were the hoofs of the horses, an occasional crack of the whip from the coachman, and the heavy breathing of Hermine, as, broken by fatigue, she sank more and more heavily against Pamela.
Pamela left her hand in her lover’s. To please him she had put a small patch at the corner of her mouth. She was now completely the realisation of his early vision, Louise of the nectarines, of the sunny late afternoon, of the walled fruit garden.
Tony was on the box, staunch but miserable, shuddering in heavy woollen overcoat and shawl, his face blanched to a blue tint by the freezing weather.
So Fitzgerald carried with him into this forlorn and alien night all the figments of that summer day long ago, the crouching black in the tapestry, the little girl on the terrace, and all the dreams they brought.
He tried to shake himself free of these remembrances which were touched with a faint horror. He tried not to remember the lofty green bedroom in the hotel in the rue de Richepanse, nor the water-colour sketch Tom Reynolds had shown him, nor the white feminine garments which Tony had brought from the press in the wall…
None of these things mattered now. He was happy. He had resolved to devote all his life to Pamela. Already the doctrines and the company of Tom Paine, the ideals and schemes of men like Mr. Tone, like Tom Reynolds, and the other Irish whom he had met in Paris, seemed far away. To his present mood that banquet at White’s was just a piece of bravado.
That was all over now; whether these men were right or wrong, whether their plans would bring good or evil for Ireland, he could not be among them; it was Pamela and a peaceful life for him. Though he had been dismissed from the army he had some means, and many dear and well-placed relatives… Pamela might have many pleasant days…
She was looking at him steadily, her blue eyes smiling and tranquil; her expression was one of infinite trust. In an excess of love and gratitude he dropped his face on to her cold hand and pressed his warm lips to her chilled fingers.
‘We are pledged now, Pamela. There is nothing but happiness ahead for us.’ But while he spoke some mockery whispered in his soul: ‘How dare one human being ever say that to another?’
‘I do not expect very much,’ replied Pamela. ‘Just your company and a little quiet in which to enjoy it.’ She spoke in a whisper for fear of disturbing Hermine.
Darkness rushed by the window, fitfully broken by the light of the coach lamps which showed nothing but barren glimpses of mud and bare trees, with now and then a gleam in some dark wayside water or the slash of the sleet across a milestone, or the dim glow of a candle in a cottage door or window.
The travellers shuddered, for the cold was penetrating. The young man could not shake off the intense melancholy of the moment, of the place; it seemed as if the very pulse of the world had stopped and they were riding aimlessly into nothingness. To raise his own spirits he said aloud:
‘At Tournai we shall be married, and in a few days we shall be in Ireland and all this will be forgotten.’
The jolting of the carriage over a hole in the road woke Hermine. She gazed round her, startled, and clung to Pamela.
‘This is a long stage!’ she cried. ‘Why do we ride in the dusk? Are we pursued? Ah, they have sent some one after us!’
‘No, no,’ cried Fitzgerald earnestly. ‘You are safe now, Hermine! We are across the frontiers, in Flanders. There is nothing to be feared.’
But Hermine was not completely reassured. She was a soft, timid creature, whose small courage this hurried journey had completely overthrown. She moved to the other end of the carriage and pressed her face close to the cold glass, watching the scattered rays of the carriage lamps moving over the road in a wavering blur.
The lovers faced each other alone. Pamela had withdrawn her hand on which she wore his gold ring, set with a cornelian engraved with a satyr; it was a jewel which had been in his possession in Paris and one that he had long loved. She was almost lost to him in obscurity. He felt his senses bewildered by these interchanged shadows, and again dreams, and the memories of the past that were more powerful than dreams, had great power over him.
He should have been completely happy, and so, he told himself valiantly, he was. Yet this happiness was overshadowed by a sense that he was not master of his own destiny, and that neither he nor Pamela were intended for happiness.
The sleet changed to snow, the flakes lay in a white rim round the carriage windows. They gazed at each other through an increasing cold in which their warm breaths showed scattered lights; they were entering the suburbs of Tournai.