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“Quick, – quick, my Lady,” said Kate. “They must close up the passage at once. They are expecting an attack.” And so saying, she motioned rapidly to Martin to move on.

“The woman is a fiend,” said Lady Dorothea; “see how her eyes sparkle, and mark the wild exultation of her features.”

“Adieu, sir, – adieu!” said Kate, waving her hand to one who seemed the chief of the party. “All my wishes are with you. Were I a man, my hand should guarantee my heart.”

“Come – come back!” cried the officer. “You are too late. There comes the head of the column.”

“No, never – never!” exclamed Lady Dorothea, haughtily; “protection from such as these is worse than any death.”

“Give me the flag, then,” cried Kate, snatching it from Massingbred’s hand, and hastening on before the others. And now the heavy wagon had fallen back to its place, and a serried file of muskets peeped over it.

“Where’s Massingbred?” asked the Captain, eagerly.

“Yonder, – where he ought to be!” exclaimed Kate, proudly, pointing to the barricade, upon which, now, Jack was standing conspicuously, a musket on his arm.

The troops in front were not the head of a column, but the advanced guard of a force evidently at some distance off, and instead of advancing on the barricade, they drew up and halted in triple file across the street. Their attitude of silent, stern defiance – for it was such – evoked a wild burst of popular fury, and epithets of abuse and insult were heaped upon them from windows and parapets.

“They are the famous Twenty-Second of the Line,” said the Captain, “who forced the Pont-Neuf yesterday and drove the mob before them.”

“It is fortunate for us that we fall into such hands,” said Lady Dorothea, waving her handkerchief as she advanced. But Kate had already approached the line, and now halted at a command from the officer. While she endeavored to explain how and why they were there, the cries and menaces of the populace grew louder and wilder. The officer, a very young subaltern, seemed confused and flurried; his eyes turned constantly towards the street from which they had advanced, and he seemed anxiously expecting the arrival of the regiment.

“I cannot give you a convoy, Mademoiselle,” he said; “I. scarcely know if I have the right to let you pass. We may be attacked at any moment; for aught I can tell, you may be in the interests of the insurgents – ”

“We are cut off, Lieutenant,” cried a sergeant, running up at the moment. “They have thrown up a barrier behind us, and it is armed already.”

“Lay down your arms, then,” said Kate, “and do not sacrifice your brave fellows in a hopeless straggle.”

“Listen not to her, young man, but give heed to your honor and your loyalty,” cried Lady Dorothea. “Is it against such an enemy as this French soldiers fear to advance?”

“Forward!” cried the officer, waving his sword above his head. “Let us carry the barricade!” And a wild yell of defiance from the windows repeated the speech in derision.

“You are going to certain death!” cried Kate, throwing herself before him. “Let me make terms for you, and they shall not bring dishonor on you.”

“Here comes the regiment!” called out the sergeant. “They have forced the barricade.” And the quick tramp of a column, as they came at a run, now shook the street.

“Remember your cause and your King, sir,” cried Lady Dorothea to the officer.

“Bethink you of your country, – of France, – and of Liberty!” said Kate, as she grasped his arm.

“Stand back! – back to the houses!” said he, waving his sword. “Voltigeurs, to the front!”

The command was scarcely issued, when a hail of balls rattled through the air. The defenders of the barricade had opened their fire, and with a deadly precision, too, for several fell at the very first discharge.

“Back to the houses!” exclaimed Martin, dragging Lady Dorothea along, who, in her eagerness, now forgot all personal danger, and only thought of the contest before her.

“Get under cover of the troops, – to the rear!” cried the Captain, as he endeavored to bear her away.

“Back – back – beneath the archway!” cried Kate, as, throwing her arms around Lady Dorothea, she lifted her fairly from the ground, and carried her within the deep recess of a porte cochère. Scarcely, however, had she deposited her in safety, than she fell tottering backwards and sank to the ground.

“Good Heavens! she is struck,” exclaimed Martin, bending over her.

“It is nothing, – a spent shot, and no more,” said Kate, as she showed the bullet which had perforated her dress beneath the arm.

“A good soldier, by Jove!” said the Captain, gazing with real admiration on the beautiful features before him; the faint smile she wore heightening their loveliness, and contrasting happily with their pallor.

“There they go! They are up the barricade already; they are over it, – through it!” cried the Captain. “Gallantly done! – gloriously done! No, by Jove! they are falling back; the fire is murderous. See how they bayonet them. The troops must win. They move together; they are like a wall! In vain, in vain; they cannot do it! They are beaten, – they are lost!”

“Who are lost?” said Kate, in a half-fainting voice.

“The soldiers. And there ‘s Massingbred on the top of the barricade, in the midst of it all. I see his hat They are driven back – beaten – beaten!”

“Come in quickly,” cried a voice from behind; and a small portion of the door was opened to admit them. “The soldiers are retiring, and will kill all before them.”

“Let me aid you; it is my turn now,” said Lady Dorothea, assisting Kate to rise. “Good Heavens! her arm is broken, – it is smashed in two.” And she caught the fainting girl in her arms.

Gathering around, they bore her within the gate, and had but time to bar and bolt it when the hurried tramp without, and the wild yell of popular triumph, told that the soldiers were retreating, beaten and defeated.

“And this to save me!” said Lady Dorothea, as she stooped over her. And the scalding tears dropped one by one on Kate’s cheek.

“Tear this handkerchief, and bind it around my arm,” said Kate, calmly; “the pain is not very great, and there will be no bleeding, the doctors say, from a gun-shot wound.”

“I’ll be the surgeon,” said the Captain, addressing himself to the task with more of skill than might be expected. “I ‘ve seen many a fellow struck down who did n’t bear it as calmly,” muttered he, as he bent over her. “Am I giving you any pain?”

“Not in the least; and if I were in torture, that glorious cheer outside would rally me. Hear! – listen! – the soldiers are in full retreat; the people, the noble-hearted people, are the conquerors!”

“Be calm, and think of yourself,” said Lady Dorothea, mildly, to her; “such excitement may peril your very life.”

“And it is worth a thousand lives to taste of it,” said she, while her cheek flushed, and her dark eyes gleamed with added lustre.

“The street is clear now,” said one of the servants to Martin, “and we might reach the Boulevard with ease.”

“Let us go, then,” said Lady Dorothea. “Let us look to her and think of nothing till she be cared for.”

CHAPTER IX. SOME CONFESSIONS OF JACK MASSINGBRED

Upon two several occasions have we committed to Jack Massingbred the task of conducting this truthful history; for the third time do we now purpose to make his correspondence the link between the past and what is to follow. We are not quite sure that the course we thus adopt is free from its share of inconvenience, but we take it to avoid the evils of reiteration inseparable from following out the same events from merely different points of view. There is also another advantage to be gained. Jack is before our readers; we are not. Jack is an acquaintance; we cannot aspire to that honor. Jack’s opinions, right or wrong as they may be, are part and parcel of a character already awaiting their verdict. What he thought and felt, hoped, feared, or wished, are the materials by which he is to be judged; and so we leave his cause in his own hands.

His letter is addressed to the same correspondent to whom he wrote before. It is written, too, at different intervals, and in different moods of mind. Like the letters of many men who practise concealment with the world at large, it is remarkable for great frankness and sincerity. He throws away his mask with such evident signs of enjoyment that we only wonder if he can ever resume it; but crafty men like to relax into candor, as royalty is said to indulge with pleasure in the chance moments of pretended equality. It is, at all events, a novel sensation; and even that much, in this routine life of ours, is something!

He writes from Spa, and after some replies to matters with which we have no concern, proceeds thus: —

“Of the Revolution, then, and the Three Glorious Days as they are called, I can tell you next to nothing, and for this simple reason, that I was there fighting, shouting, throwing up barricades, singing the ‘Marseillaise,’ smashing furniture, and shooting my ‘Swiss,’ like the rest. As to who beat the troops, forced the Tuileries, and drove Marmont back, you must consult the newspapers. Personal adventures I could give you to satiety, hairbreadth ‘scapes and acts of heroism by the dozen; but these narratives are never new, and always tiresome. The serious reflectiveness sounds like humbug, and, if one treats them lightly, the flippancy is an offence. Jocular heroism is ever an insult to the reader.

“You say, ‘Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?’ and I answer, it was all her doing. Yes, Harry, she was there. I was thinking of nothing less in the world than a great ‘blow for freedom,’ as the ‘Globe’ has it. I had troubled my head wonderfully little about the whole affair. Any little interest I took was in the notion that if our ‘natural enemies,’ the French, were to fall to and kill each other, there would be so much the fewer left to fight against us; but as to who was to get the upper hand, or what they were to do when they had it, I gave myself no imaginable concern. I had a vague, shadowy kind of impression that the government was a bad one, but I had a much stronger conviction that the people deserved no better. My leanings – my instincts, if you prefer it – were with the Crown. The mob and its sentiments are always repulsive. Popular enthusiasm is a great ocean, but it is an ocean of dirty water, and you cannot come out clean from the contact; and so I should have wished well to royalty, but for an accident, – a mere trifle in its way, but one quite sufficient, even on historic grounds, to account for a man’s change of opinions. The troops shot my cab-horse, sent a bullet through poor ‘Beverley,’ and seriously damaged a new hat which I wore at the time, accompanying these acts with expressions the reverse of compliment or civility. I was pitched out into the gutter, and, most appropriately you will say, I got up a Radical, a Democrat, a Fourierist, – anything, in short, that shouts ‘Down with Kings, and up with the Sovereign People!’

“My principles – don’t smile at the word – led me into a stupid altercation with a very pleasant acquaintance, and we parted to meet the next morning in hostility, – at least, such was our understanding; but by the time that our difference should have been settled, I was carried away on a stretcher to the Hôtel Dieu, wounded, and he was flung, a corpse, into the Seine. I intended to have been a most accurate narrator of events, journalizing for you, hour by hour, with all the stirring excitement of the present tense, but I cannot; the crash and the hubbub are still in my brain, and the infernal chaos of the streets is yet over me. Not to speak of my wound, – a very ugly sabre-cut in the neck, – severing I don’t know what amount of nerves, arteries, and such-like ‘small deer,’ every one of which, however, has its own peculiar perils in the shape of aneurisms, tetanus, and so forth, in case I am not a miracle of patience, calmness, and composure.

“The Martins are nursing and comforting and chicken-brothing me to my heart’s content, and La Henderson, herself an invalid, with a terrible broken arm, comes and reads to me from time to time. What a girl it is! Wounded in a street encounter, she actually carried Lady Dorothea into a porte-cochère, and when they had lost their heads in terror, could neither issue an order to the servants nor know what way to turn, she took the guidance of the whole party, obtained horses and carriages and an escort, escaped from Paris, and reached Versailles in the midst of flying courtiers and dismayed ministers, and actually was the very first to bring the tidings that the game of monarchy was up, – that the king had nothing left for it but an inglorious flight. To the Duchesse de Mire-court she made this communication, which it seems none of the court-followers had the courage or honesty to do before. The Duchess, in her terror, actually dragged her into the presence of the king, and made her repeat what she had said. The scene, as told me, was quite dramatic; the king took her hand to lead her to a seat, but it was unfortunately of the wounded arm, and she fainted. The sight of the wounded limb so affected the nerves of monarchy that he gave immediate orders to depart, and was off within an hour.

“How they found me out a patient in a ward of the Hôtel Dieu, rescued and carried me away with them, I have heard full half a dozen times, but I ‘m far from being clear enough to repeat the story; and, indeed, when I try to recall the period, the only images which rise up before me are long ranges of white coverlids, pale faces, and groans and cries of suffering, with the dark curly head of a great master of torture peeping at me, and whom, I am told, is the Baron Dupuytren, the Surgeon-in-Chief. After these comes a vision of litters and charrettes, – sore joltings and stoppages to drink water – But I shall rave if I go on. Better I should tell you of my pleasant little bedroom here, opening on a small garden, with a tiny fountain trying to sprinkle the wild myrtle and blush-roses around it, and sportively sending its little plash over me, as the wind wafts it into my chamber. My luxurious chair and easy-cushioned sofa, and my table littered with everything, from flowers to French romances; not to speak of the small rustic seat beside the window, where she has been sitting the last hour, and has only quitted to give me time to write this to you. I know it – I see it – all you can say, all that you are saying at this moment, is fifty times more forcibly echoing within my own heart, and repeating in fitful sentences: ‘A ruined man – a broken fortune – a mad attachment – a life of struggle, difficulty, and failure!’ But why should it be failure? Such a girl for a wife ought in itself to be an earnest of success. Are not her qualities exactly those that do battle with the difficulties of fortune? Self-denial – ambition – courage – an intense, an intuitive knowledge of the world – and then, a purpose-like devotion to whatever she undertakes, that throws an air of heroism over all her actions.

“Birth – blood – family connections – what have they done for me, except it be to entail upon me the necessity of selecting a career amidst the two or three that are supposed to suit the well-born? I may be a Life Guardsman, or an unpaid attaché, but I must not be a physician or a merchant. Nor is it alone that certain careers are closed against us, but certain opinions too. I must not think ill of the governing class, – I must never think well of the governed.

“Well, Harry, the colonies are the remedy for all this. There, at least, a man can fashion existence as arbitrarily as he can the shape and size of his house. None shall dictate his etiquette, no more than his architecture; and I am well weary of the slavery of this old-world life, with our worship of old notions and old china, both because they are cracked, damaged, and useless. I ‘ll marry her. I have made up my mind on ‘t. Spare me all your remonstrances, all your mock compassion. Nor is it like a fellow who has not seen the world in its best gala suit, affecting to despise rank, splendor, and high station. I have seen the thing. I have cantered my thoroughbred along Rotten Row, eaten my truffled dinners in Belgravia, whispered my nonsense over the white shoulders of the fairest and best-born of England’s daughters. I know to a decimal fraction the value of all these; and, what ‘s more, I know what one pays for them, – the miserable vassalage, the poor slavery of mind, soul, and body they cost!

“It is the terror of exclusion here, the dread of coldness there – the possibility of offence to ‘his Grace’ on this side, or misconception by ‘her Ladyship’ on that – sway and rule a man so that he may neither eat, drink, nor sleep without a ‘Court Guide’ in his pocket. I ‘ve done with it! now and forever, – I tell you frankly, – I return no more to this bondage.

“I have written a farewell address to my worthy constituents of Oughterard. I have told them that, ‘feeling an instinct of independence within me, I can no longer remain their representative; that, as a man of honor, I shrink from the jobbery of the little borough politicians, and, as a gentleman, I beg to decline their intimacy.’ They took me for want of a better – I leave them for the same reason.

“To my father I have said: ‘Let us make a compromise. As your son I have a claim on the House. Now, what will you give for my share? I ‘ll neither importune you for place, nor embarrass you with solicitations for employment. Help me to stock my knapsack, and I ‘ll find my road myself.’ She knows nothing of these steps on my part; nor shall she, till they have become irrevocable. She is too proud ever to consent to what would cost me thus heavily; but the expense once incurred, – the outlay made, – she cannot object to what has become the law of my future life.

“I send off these two documents to-night; this done, I shall write to her an offer of marriage. What a fever I ‘m in! and all because I feel the necessity of defending myself to you, – to you of all men the most headstrong, reckless, and self-indulgent, – a fellow who never curbed a caprice nor restrained a passing fancy; and yet you are just the man to light your cigar, and while you puff away your blue cloud, mutter on about rashness, folly, insanity, and the rest of it, as if the state of your bank account should make that wisdom in you, which with me is but mere madness! But I tell you, Harry, it is your very thousands per annum that preclude you from doing what I can. It is your house in town, your stud at Tattersall’s, your yacht at Cowes, your grouse-lodge in the Highlands, that tie and fetter you to live like some scores of others, with whom you have n’t one solitary sympathy, save in income! You are bound up in all the recognizances of your wealth to dine stupidly, sup languidly, and sink down at last into a marriage of convenience, – to make a wife of her whom ‘her Grace’ has chosen for you without a single speculation in the contract save the thought of the earl you will be allied to, and the four noble families you ‘ll have the right to go in mourning for.

“And what worse than cant it is to talk of what they call an indiscreet match! What does – what can the world know as to the reasons that impel you, or me, or anybody else, to form a certain attachment? Are they acquainted with our secret and most hidden emotions? Do they understand the project of life we have planned to ourselves? Have they read our utter weariness and contempt for forms that they venerate, and social distinctions that they worship? I am aware that in some cases it requires courage to do this; and in doing it a man virtually throws down the glove to the whole world, and says, ‘This woman’s love is to me more than all of you’ – and so say I at this moment. I must cry halt, I see, Harry. I have set these nerves at work in my wound, and the pain is agony. Tomorrow – to-night, if I ‘m able – I shall continue.

“Midnight.” They have just wished me good-night, after having spent the evening here reading out the newspapers for me, commenting upon them, and exerting themselves to amuse me in a hundred good-natured ways. You would like this same stately old Lady Dorothea. She is really ‘Grande Dame’ in every respect, – dress, air, carriage, gesture, even her slow and measured speech is imposing, and her prejudices, uttered as they are in such perfect sincerity of heart, have something touching about them, and her sorrowful pity for the mob sounded more gracefully than Kate’s enthusiastic estimate of their high deservings. It does go terribly against the grain to fancy an alliance between coarse natures and noble sentiments, and to believe in the native nobility of those who never touch soap! I have had a kind of skirmish with La Henderson upon this theme to-night. She was cross and out of temper, and bore my bantering badly. The fact is, she is utterly disgusted at the turn things have taken in France; and not altogether without reason, since, after all their bluster and bloodshed and barricades, they have gone back to a monarchy again. They barred out the master to make ‘the head usher’ top of the school. Let us see if he won’t be as fond of the birch as his predecessor. Like all mutineers, they found they could n’t steer the ship when they had murdered the captain! How hopeless it makes one of humanity to see such a spectacle as this, Harry, and how low is one’s estimate of the species after such experience! You meet some half-dozen semi-bald, spectacled old gentlemen in society, somewhat more reserved than the rest of the company, fond of talking to each other, and rather distrustful of strangers; you find them slow conversers at dinner, sorry whist-players in the drawing-room; you are told, however, that one is a President of the Council, another the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and a third something equally important. You venerate them accordingly, while you mutter the old Swede’s apothegm about the ‘small intelligences’ that rule mankind. Wait awhile! There is a row in the streets: a pickpocket has appealed to the public to rescue him from the ignoble hands of the police; an escaped felon has fired at the judge who sentenced him, in the name of Liberty and Fraternity. No matter what the cause, there is a row. The troops are called out; some are beaten, some join the insurgents. The government grows frightened – temporizes – offers terms – and sends for more soldiers. The people – I never clearly knew what the word meant – the people make extravagant demands, and will not even give time to have them granted, – in a word, the whole state is subverted, the king, if there be one, in flight, the royal family missing, the ministers nowhere! No great loss you ‘ll say, if the four or five smooth-faced imbecilities we have spoken of are not to the fore! But there is your error, Harry, – your great error. These men, used to conduct and carry on the government, cannot be replaced. The new capacities do nothing but blunder, and maybe issue contradictory orders and impede each other’s actions. To improvise a Secretary of State is about as wise a proceeding as to take at hazard a third-class passenger and set him to guide the engine of a train. The only difference is that the machinery of state is ten thousand times more complex than that of a steam-engine, and the powers for mischief and misfortune in due proportion.

“But why talk of these things? I have had enough and too much of them already this evening; women, too, are unpleasant disputants in politics. They attach their faith to persons, not parties. Miss Henderson is, besides, a little spoiled by the notice of those maxim-mongers who write leaders in the ‘Débats, and articles for the ‘Deux Mondes.’ They have, or affect to have, a kind of pitying estimate for our English constitutional forms, which is rather offensive. At least, she provoked me, and I am relapsing into bad temper, just by thinking of it.

“You tell me that you once served with Captain Martin, and I see you understand him; not that it requires much study to do so. You say he was reckoned a good officer; what a sneer is that on the art military!

“There are, however, many suitable qualities about him, and he certainly possesses the true and distinctive element of a gentleman, – he knows how to be idle. Ay, Harry, that is a privilege that your retired banker or enriched cotton-spinner never attains to. They must be up and doing, – where there is nothing to do. They carry the spirit of the counting-house and the loom into society with them, and having found a pleasure in business, they want to make a business of pleasure. Now, Martin understands idling to perfection. His tea and toast, his mutton cutlet, and his mustachios are abundant occupation for him. With luncheon about two o’clock, he saunters through the stables, sucking a lighted cigar, filing his nails, and admiring his boots, till it ‘s time to ride out. He comes to me about nine of an evening, and we play piquet till I get sleepy; after which he goes to ‘the rooms,’ and, I believe, plays high; at least, I suspect so; for he has, at times, the forced calm – that semi-jocular resignation – one sees in a heavy loser. He has been occasionally, too, probing me about Merl, – you remember the fellow who had the rooms near Knightsbridge, – so that I opine he has been dabbling in loans. What a sorry spectacle such a creature as this in the toils of the Israelite, for he is the ‘softest of the soft.’ I see it from the effect La Henderson has produced upon him. He is in love with her, – actually in love. He even wanted to make me his confidant – and I narrowly escaped the confession – only yesterday evening. Of course, he has no suspicion of my attachment in the same quarter, so that it would be downright treachery in me to listen to his avowal. Another feeling, too, sways me, Harry, – I don’t think I could hear a man profess admiration for the woman that I mean to marry, without the self-same sense of resentment I should experience were I already her husband. I ‘m certain I ‘d shoot him for it.

“La belle Kate and I parted coldly – dryly, I should call it – this evening. I had fancied she was above coquetry, but she is not. Is any woman? She certainly gave the Captain what the world would call encouragement all the night; listened attentively to tiresome tiger-huntings and stories of the new country; questioned him about his Mahratta campaigns, and even hinted at how much she would like an Indian life. Perhaps the torment she was inflicting on Lady Dorothea amused her; perhaps it was the irritation she witnessed in me gave the zest to this pastime. It is seldom that she condescends to be either amused or amusing; and I own it is a part does not suit her. She is a thousand times more attractive sitting over her embroidery-frame, raising her head at times to say a few words, – ever apposite and well chosen, – always simple, too, and to the purpose; or even by a slight gesture bearing agreement with what is said around her; till, with a sudden impulse, she pours forth fast, rapidly, and fluently some glowing sentiment of praise or censure, some glorious eulogy of the good, or some withering depreciation of the wrong. Then it is that you see how dark those eyes can be, how deep-toned that voice, and with what delicacy of expression she can mould and fashion every mood of mind, and give utterance to sentiments that till then none have ever known how to embody.

“It is such a descent to her to play coquette! Cleopatra cannot – should not be an Abigail. I am low and depressed to-night; I scarcely know why: indeed, I have less reason than usual for heavy-heartedness. These people are singularly kind and attentive to me, and seem to have totally forgotten how ungratefully once before I repaid their civilities. What a stupid mistake do we commit in not separating our public life from our social one, so as to show that our opinions upon measures of state are disconnected with all the sentiments we maintain for our private friendships. I detect a hundred sympathies, inconceivable points of contact, between these people and myself. We pass hours praising the same things, and abusing the same people; and how could it possibly sever our relations that I would endow Maynooth when they would pull it down, or that I liked forty-shilling freeholders better than ten-pound householders? You ‘ll say that a certain earnestness accompanies strong convictions, and that when a man is deeply impressed with some supposed truths, he ‘ll not measure his reprobation of those who assail them. But a lawyer does all this, and forfeits nothing of the esteem of ‘his learned brother on the opposite side.’ Nay, they exchange very-ugly knocks at times, and inflict very unseemly marks even with the gloves on; still they go homeward, arm-in-arm, after, and laugh heartily at both plaintiff and defendant. By Jove! Harry, it may sound ill, but somehow it seems as though to secure even a moderate share of enjoyment in this life one must throne Expediency in the seat of Principle. I ‘ll add the conclusion to-morrow, and now say good-night.

“Three days have passed over since I wrote the last time to you, and it would require as many weeks were I to chronicle all that has passed through my mind in the interval. Events there have been few; but sensations – emotions, enough for a lifetime. Nor dare I recall them! Faintly endeavoring to trace a few broken memories, my pains of mind and body come back again, so that you must bear with me if I be incoherent, almost unintelligible.

“The day after I wrote to you, I never saw her. My Lady, who came as usual to visit me in the day, said something about Miss Henderson having a headache. Unpleasant letters from her family – obliged to give up the day to answering them; but all so confused and with such evident constraint as to show me that something disagreeable loomed in view.