CHAPTER IV.

Eight days after this interview, and exactly an hour before the time named by Madame de Guéran for her second interview with MM. de Morin, Périères and Desrioux, she was informed that the last named individual wished to speak to her. Accordingly she joined him in the drawing-room.

"If you are before your time," she cried, as she went quickly towards him, "it is because you bring me bad news. You have decided, I suppose, upon not accompanying me?"

"No," was the reply, "I have not yet come to any decision on the subject. My object in coming to you is to lay my position frankly before you, and then ask your advice."

"I know your position," said she. "You are a doctor, and, as I feared, you are loth to give up your practice."

"But I have no practice to give up, so to speak, seeing that my private income enables me to devote my whole time to the poor. They do not come to me; I go in search of them."

"Surely the charitable organisations of Paris cannot be suffering from any lack of doctors," was the reply of Madame de Guéran, "and they may very well dispense with your services."

"I have no connection with any establishment whatever," answered M. Desrioux, "and I have nothing to do with what are called the 'official' poor. But just as there are proud paupers, so are there in Paris many sick persons who shrink from soliciting medical attendance, and would rather die than apply to the district establishments for relief. These are the unfortunates I seek, and when I find them I do my best to cure them."

"Do sickness and disease, then, exist only in Paris?" exclaimed Madame de Guéran. "Shall we not find them in those regions which I ask you to traverse with me? I looked upon you as the most useful of my travelling companions, not merely for the attention you would have lavished upon us in those territories where the strongest have to succumb to fever, but more especially for the numerous cures you would have wrought amongst those tribes abandoned or disowned by science. They whom you succour here are worthy of your interest, I admit, but are they not also, to a certain extent, the victims of false pride and their own improvidence? When a sick child belonging to them, for instance, is day by day wasting away, they take no notice of it—they wait for you to come to them. You are right to go, undoubtedly, but in the countries which I purpose visiting there are both suffering and death, and if the doctor is not called in, it is simply because medicine is unknown. Have you not, therefore, a mission to fulfil in the midst of these ignorant tribes, as well as by the bedsides of your poor?"

"It is not alone a question of my poor," said M. Desrioux, sadly.

Too astonished to speak, she was regarding him with a questioning air when, suddenly, he went to her side, and, seizing her hands before she could prevent him, exclaimed—

"Do not let anything I am about to say wound you. If I do love you, my respect for you is as thorough as my love. Eight days ago, after having listened to you almost with veneration, I left this house enraptured, carried away by enthusiasm. And was it to be wondered at? You summoned me to live your life for months, perhaps for years; you desired that I should share your joys and your sorrows, should protect you, defend you, minister to you! You gave me permission to adore you every hour of my life—and that—that to me was light, and warmth, and happiness, aye, life itself! Ah! if you but knew how I love you! For pity's sake let me speak, I beseech you, for I may, perhaps, never see you more! I have not lived the life of those about me—I have always worked and struggled—study and science have been my only love. I met you, and science 'paled her ineffectual fire.' From that moment I had but one single thought—to see you again, to be close to you, to be something in your life. The dismal garrets visited by me each morning looked bright and cheerful from the hope that I might see you ere night. And then, the ecstasy of the thought that, by your own free will, I was not to leave you! Nay, more than that, you held before my eyes the gleaming hope that one day, perhaps—Ah, that was more than hope, it was certainty! Yes, yes! I know it, I feel it—I should have triumphed—I should have deserved you, in that I love you best!"

The first impulse of Madame de Guéran, when these impassioned words fell upon her ears, was to stem the torrent, but she had not the courage to interrupt the speaker, and, besides, to astonishment succeeded a conflict of emotions. What! was it this man, so calm, apparently, and so reserved, who spoke thus eloquently, and with such fervour expressed his ardent love? Had she, then, succeeded in imbuing with so burning a passion this man, held by all to be old before his time? Was she so wildly loved by this staid being, who was supposed to hold the very name of love in contempt?

Suddenly she raised her eyes, till now lowered beneath his impassioned gaze, and, looking him full in the face, she said—

"If, indeed, you feel all you say, why cannot you accompany me?"

"I cannot go with you," was the reply, "because I have a mother, aged and feeble, who has no one but me in this world, and who will die if I leave her. Ah! but for her, nothing would have kept me back. You would then have had no need to tell me that those who suffer here could well do without my care; that other men, as disinterested as I, as devoted, as skilful, would care for them, cure them, save them. In the regions whither you asked me to go with you, there are the halt, the maimed, and the sick, lacking the blessings of science. I would have unfolded to them her secrets, I would have attempted cures to them impossible. With you at my side, I feel that I should have accomplished great deeds—Ah! how truly you divined, the other day, with subtle flattery, my tastes, my instincts, my aspirations! The life of a missionary has ever had a charm for me. To make civilisation, charity, the good, and the beautiful, a reality in those countries which do not even know them by name, to drive out before me barbarism, to bind up the wounded, to heal the sick, to cheer the broken-hearted, to open all hearts to the influence of love—that would indeed be a mission of glory!"

He was no longer the same man; his voice was impassioned and full of feeling, his every gesture eloquent. His eye glistened, his very countenance seemed illumined. The metamorphosis we noticed in Madame de Guéran at the former interview, when she was carried away by her subject, was reproduced in him.

He stopped for a moment, and then, in a calmer tone, resumed—

"But side by side with these ennobling tasks, these holy missions, there are others, less prominent, which cannot, ought not to be overlooked. By her only child, her sole support, her one hope, a mother must always be the most fondly-loved of all created beings. I was all the world to mine, as she was to me, in the time when I yet knew you not. She would let me go were I to say that I was going with you and for you—a mother is ever ready for any sacrifice. She knows you, for I have poured out my heart, so full of you, to her. She might even push her self-denial to the extreme of urging upon me this long voyage. But, away from her, I should always have her before my eyes, weeping, anxious, despairing, growing weaker and weaker, and, perhaps, dying. I could not bear the thought of her dying when I was far away from her, unable to close her eyes, to hear her latest wish, to receive her parting sigh, to wrap her in her shroud, and scatter flowers on her resting-place! The agony of a mother in such a case would indeed be terrible; I have no right to leave her, I must remain. It is the duty, perhaps the first, of a son to be beside the death-bed of her who has given him life."

He stopped, and as she took his hand in hers she said—

"You are right. You ought not to leave her, and I would not have you go."

"I knew full well that you would tell me so," said he, with tears in his eyes, "but, you will leave me, and with them! Ah," he exclaimed, quickly, "if you could only give up the idea of this journey!"

"I have no more right to give it up than you have to leave your mother," was the reply. "You would be present during the last moments of your mother. Recollect that I was not present at those of my husband. I know from strangers that he is dead, but I do not even know the spot where he died, the victim of a dastardly outrage. I shrank, the other evening, from dwelling upon this subject. To you alone I will confess that, before I can think of putting off these widow's weeds, before I can dream of beginning a new life, I must see with my own eyes the spot which witnessed the dying agony of M. de Guéran. I want to learn the details of his last moments, to recover his papers, to publish his studies, his works, and before surrendering his name, if, indeed, I do surrender it, to make it famous. You see, my friend," she continued, softly, "that if you have a duty to perform here, I have one equally binding there beyond. Every one has his work in this world. I respect that which has fallen to your lot, and I ask you to respect mine."

He bowed his assent at once, but, after a moment's pause, he could not help saying—

"Are you not setting before yourself a task beyond your strength? A woman of your age, brought up as you have been, and accustomed to luxury, to venture into such countries in the midst of such inhabitants?"

"I should not be the first woman who has visited them—Mrs. Livingstone, for instance—"

"Do not speak of her. In three days she succumbed to fever on the banks of the Zambesi."

"I do not dispute it. But Lady Baker never left her husband, and Ida Pfeiffer twice travelled round the world. And have you no recollection of that charming young girl, the Countess Alexina Tinne, who, though scarcely twenty-three, had traversed the whole of Eastern Africa?"

"Ah!" said he, "do not cite her example. She is dead, as you know, a victim to Arabian butchery."

"Well," she replied, without a tremor in her voice, "if God so wills it, I will die as she did. I have often thought of her glorious death, and it has no terrors for me."

Hopeless of convincing her, he asked at last—

"When do you set out?"

"That I shall decide this very evening."

"With these other gentlemen?"

"Yes," she replied, casting down her eyes.

He moved impatiently, with a gesture of repugnance. But, with an effort he recovered himself, and said calmly—

"I leave you with them, but shall I not see you again?"

"Every day, if you wish, until my departure. It cannot take place at once, as I have many preparations to make."

"And will you let me have news of you when you are away?"

"Certainly. But you know that the opportunities of sending letters are few and far between."

"Unfortunately, that is so," said he. "May I write to you?" he added.

"I beg you will. Your letters will seem to me fragrant of home."

The bell rang.

"Here are they whom you await," said M. Desrioux. "Happier than I, they come, doubtless, to say that they will accompany you. I prefer not meeting them, so pray let me escape by this other door."

"Go, then," she said, sadly, as she held out her hand in token of farewell.