Chapter 42

PAUL DARCANTEL.

"From the strong will, and the endeavor, That forever Wrestles with the tide of fate; From the wrecks of hope far scattered, Tempest shattered, Floating waste and desolate."

"Well, Piron, as I have told you, after the peace was made in 1815, I had command of a brig, and took a cruise on the coast of Brazil. After that I was appointed to a thirty-six gun frigate--the old 'Blazer'--and went, for three years, to the East Indies, and round home by the Pacific. When we were paid off I made a tour in Europe with that boy's father, Dr. Darcantel, and--"

"But you promised to tell me, Cleveland, something about him."

"Nothing easier; and, if we have half an hour before we get to Escondido, I will give you all I know, in a general way, of his history. Yes? Well, then, Darcantel is descended from one of the oldest and best Creole families in our State of Louisiana, and the plantations of my family and his father were contiguous to each other on the Mississippi, some leagues up the coast above New Orleans. We had the same tutor when we were children, and we grew up from infancy to boyhood together. He was passionate and ungovernable even as a child; but as he was the heir to a large estate, and his father dead, his weak mother humored and allowed no one to curb him. I myself, one of a numerous family, was put in the navy, and I went away on cruise after cruise, and did not get home again to the old plantation for full seven years. I was a man then, had seen some active service, and I held a commission as a lieutenant in the navy.

"In the mean while, Paul Darcantel, who had taken, at the time I left, a strong fancy for medicine and surgery, had been sent to France to begin his studies. How he applied himself we do not know; but with a large letter of credit he spent a great deal of money; and we heard that, with great talents and wonderful skill in his profession, he was yet unfitted for close application, and plunged madly into the vortex of dissipation around him. I heard, too--or at least my brothers told me--that his extravagances had seriously impaired his fortune, and that his duels had been so numerous and desperate as to make his name dreaded even in Paris. On one occasion, at a café, he had cut a bullying hussar's head clean off with his own sabre for knocking a woman down; and in another duel, where he had detected a French count cheating him at cards, he shot his nose off for a bet. With this unenviable reputation, and at the urgent solicitations of his agent, after years of absence he returned to his ancestral home. We met as of old--it was Paul and Henry--and though still the same restive, hot-headed spirit as he had ever been, he yet always listened patiently to what I said, and I could, in a manner, control him. He paid very little attention to his property, however, and when he did go to the city to consult with his factor or trustee, he got into some wild frolic, duel, and scrape, and came back worn out with fatigue and dissipation. He was a fine, stern-looking youth in those days, with great muscular power, which, even with the endurance put upon it by gaming and drinking, seemed not to be lessened.

"After one of these visits to New Orleans, where his long-forbearing agents had at last awakened him to a bitter sense of his delinquencies, and when mortgage upon mortgage were laid with all their shocking truth before him, he returned and came to me. With all his vices and faults, he was truthful and generous. He told me all, and how he would try to do better, and soothe the declining years of his too indulgent mother.

"I always had great faith in the companion almost of my cradle, and I loved him, I think, better than my own brothers. Well, he spread all his affairs before me, and in my little den of an outhouse on the plantation we both went systematically over the papers. We were two days and nights at the business; and when, at last, I showed him that he would still, with a little prudent economy, have a fair income, and eventually, perhaps, redeem his hereditary property, he burst out in a wild yell of delight, and hugged me in his arms. When he had put away the papers, I said,

"'Paul, you know I am engaged to be married, and I have not seen my sweetheart for two whole days; she has a sister, too, prettier than my Fifine, whom you have never seen since we were boys together. Come, will you go with me? We can pull ourselves across the river.'

"He hesitated; and it would have been, perhaps, better had he refused to accompany me, for dreadful misery came of it."

The commodore gave a deep sigh, and touched his horse with the spur.

"I don't know, though, Piron; there is a fate marked out for us all, and we should not exclaim against the decrees of Providence. Paul went with me across the river. There, on the bank, was a little bower of an old French-built stone house, where dwelt the last of a line of French nobility who dated back to the days of Charlemagne. It was an impoverished family, consisting of a reckless brother and two sisters, who, with a few acres of sugar-cane and some old faithful servants, managed to make both ends meet, and to support the establishment in a certain air of elegance and comfort to which they had been accustomed. They were of a proud and haughty race--the brother a disdainful and imperious gentleman, smarting and brooding over the reverses of his family, and rarely visiting his neighbors. His sisters--and they were twins--were trustful, happy girls, and Josephine had been my childish love."

Here Cleveland bent over his saddle-bow, and if the quiet old horse he bestrode believed the large drops which fell upon his sleek neck came from the clouds, or the drooping foliage of the forest, that animal was never more deceived in his quadruped life. We know that fact, for it stands upon the angelic record.

"Well, my dear Piron, as we entered the little saloon where Fifine was seated at the piano, playing the sweet airs she had sung to me when a little bit of a girl, and her beautiful sister bending over a table near, absorbed in a book, while the candles under the glass shades lighted up her dark passionate eyes and brunette complexion, Paul approached her. It was not love at first sight, because they had played together when children; but it was such a love as only begins and dies with man or woman. The brother came in soon afterward, but there was no love exchanged between him and Paul, and they met in a manner which seemed to revive the early dislike they had entertained one toward the other in boyhood.

"So the time passed, and in the course of a few months Josephine and I were married, and our home was made on my own old place. Still, night by night, in storm, calm, or freshet, Paul pulled himself in a skiff across that mighty river, and we could see the lights shining to a late hour in the little bower. He had changed a great deal, for he loved with the whole force of his fiery and impetuous nature. Pauline loved too, though still she feared him. The brother, however, bitterly opposed their union, and stormy scenes arose. Josephine and I did all we could to put matters on a happy footing, but Jacques, the brother, grew more determined as his sister refused to cast off her lover, till at last his feeling against him broke out into open scornful insult; and though Paul still persisted in seeing Pauline, yet we feared that the impetuous spirits of the two men would, at any moment, burst out into open violence.

"Darcantel, however, controlled himself, avoided as much as possible any altercations with Jacques, applied himself to the duties of his plantation, and always promised me that he would wait and see if time would not induce the brother to give his consent to the marriage. Meanwhile Paul's mother died. A year passed. Fifine gave me a little boy, who was called after me, and then I went again to sea. Nearly three years later I returned, and the very night before I reached the plantation a dreadful tragedy had occurred. I might, perhaps, have prevented it had I been there, but it was ordered otherwise.

"It seems that two days previously Jacques wrote to Paul--I saw the letter--and it was something painful to read; for he not only recapitulated his vices and follies, but he taxed him with being a ruined gambler, who had brought his mother in sorrow to the grave, and ended by swearing, in the most solemn manner, that if he dared again to speak to his sister or darken their doors, he would shoot him like a dog!

"That evening, as usual, the skiff pursued its way across the river, and late at night when it returned there was a fluttering white dress in the stern. Scarcely, however, had the skiff left the bank than a boat shoved out from the other side manned by four negroes, and came swiftly over in pursuit. What afterward transpired I heard from an old married couple of servants who had passed their lives with the family. It appears that Paul, with Pauline in his arms, had barely reached the hall of the great house, and was giving orders to close the doors, when Jacques rushed in with a naked rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. Paul adjured him, by all he held sacred, not to attack him, as his blood was up, and, unarmed as he was, he would do him a mischief. Pauline, too, implored him by a sister's love to desist; but seeing him still advance, as she partially shielded Paul, she told him that the man she loved was her husband.

"Blinded with haughty rage, this last admission rendered him ungovernable, and he lunged with all his force at Darcantel. Paul parried his rapid passes, though receiving some sharp thrusts in his arm and shoulder, and still supporting his drooping, terrified wife on his left arm till, by a quick spring, he got within Jacques's guard, and, seizing him by the wrist, wrenched the weapon from his grasp. This was enough to make the brother totally insane by passion from baffled revenge, when he leveled his pistol and fired. There was a faint cry with the report, and a groan from Jacques as the sword went through his body and heart, till the hilt struck hard against his ribs as he fell, a dead man, on the marble pavement. But the bullet from his pistol had pierced the fair forehead of his sister, and she lay a bridal corpse in her husband's arms. It was horrible.

"I spare you all the afflicting details, Piron, and will only add that Paul left the plantation that night, and when I got home I found an envelope post-marked 'New Orleans,' inclosing a paper, which constituted me his sole executor, and leaving our little boy his heir. I had but a short leave of a month, and duty called me again away. It was on the anniversary of the day the tragedy occurred, after another long interval of four years in the 'Scourge,' that I again returned, and then there was wailing and moaning in my own dwelling. My poor Josephine had never recovered from the shock; she drooped away like a lily, her little boy by her side, and both died during my absence."

What makes the strong man's eyelids quiver and voice tremble--those eyes that have looked calmly on death and carnage in every shape, with his deep, calm voice cheering on the men to battle at his side? Ah!

"It was midnight, and I walked out to the little grave-yard where my fathers had been buried, and bending my steps to a cluster of magnolias on a little mound by itself, I--I--a--kneeled down beside the sod where reposed all I had loved on earth! I do not know how long I remained there, but presently I heard a groan near by, and a tall man rose up from where he had been stretched, face downward, on the ground, and I beheld Paul Darcantel! I could hardly recognize him at first, for he seemed fifty years older than when we had last parted.

"'Cleveland,' he said, in a hollow, choking voice, 'forgive me! I am a changed, and, I trust, a better man. I have been drawn to this holy spot by the same errand which brought you hither, and though I did not expect to meet you, yet I am glad of it now. Speak, and say you forgive me, and you will shed a ray of hope and salvation into the heart of one who will suffer unto the end! Speak!'

"Old memories crowded around me, and I saw before me the child in the cradle, and with our arms round each other's necks as we played together. I forgot, for the moment, the sisters lying there--bride, mother, and baby-boy. The magnolias bowed their white flowers in the light of the waning moon, and we fell again into each other's arms.

"After a time he said, 'My only friend, I have brought home with me a little helpless boy; he is named Henry, after you, and will take the place of the lost little one lying here. Whoever of us survives shall inherit that estate. Come with me and look at him!'

"He led me to the other mound, and there, beside the tree, a beautiful child lay calmly sleeping, wrapped in a sailor's jacket, with his curls escaping from a straw hat, and the head resting on one arm on the grave beneath him.

"'Be good to him,' Paul went on, 'for the sake of those we have lost ourselves! His mother's name was Rosalie.'

"He stooped down as he said this, and, raising the boy in his arms, he kissed him passionately, and then put him gently in mine. 'Let him kneel sometimes at this grave, my friend, and pray for me.'

"In another moment Paul Darcantel had gone. The little fellow partly woke, and put his arms affectionately around my neck, and whispered 'Mamma! mamma!' That dashing, brave young fellow ahead there was once that boy.

"Well, I took the child to the house, where my good mother and sisters went wild over him, and there he passed a happy boyhood. Years went by, and he grew apace, the pride and delight of us all; and as he evinced the greatest fondness for me and the accounts I gave him of my life at sea, I had him appointed a reefer in the navy. Since that he has seen a great deal of service; been distinguished in action; and, on shipboard as well as on shore, liked and respected by all who know him.

"In the mean while his father went away, nobody knew whither, for years and years. He wrote to me, however, and to his son, from all parts of the world; and when I made the tour in Europe I spoke about, Darcantel was my companion. But while there he passed a retired life, never went into society, but visited every hospital in every sea-port from the Mediterranean to Aberdeen in Scotland; for he is not only a surgeon, as I have reason to know, of wonderful skill, but a thorough-bred seaman too; and when he has been with me on board ship there is no one whose opinion of the weather, or other nautical matters, do I place greater reliance on. I could tell you of half a dozen times when his advice to me has saved serious damage. And during all these years Darcantel's estates, under the careful supervision of my eldest brother, have been redeemed from their load of debt, and now he enjoys a noble income--or, rather, he spends nothing on himself, but devotes it to widows and orphans, and sick or worn-out sailors.

"In the seventeen years which have gone by since he brought his child to me he has made several visits of a month or two's duration to the plantations, but only when Henry was on leave from duty. Then it was a pleasant sight to see them both together, and the touching air of affection which bound the youth to his father. Henry, from a child, often went and prayed beside the grave under the magnolias, and to this day he believes that his own mother lies buried there. Perhaps it is as well that he should cherish this early belief; for I may tell you in confidence, Piron, that we believe there at home that he is the illegitimate offspring of some erring passion of Darcantel, though none of us have ever learned it positively from his father's lips. He is not a person to be questioned by any one, not even by me; and as he seems anxious to throw a thick veil over the past, we never venture to draw it aside.

"When, however, I was appointed to my present command, Darcantel desired to sail with me, and see the West India Islands, which he had not visited for an age. I was only too happy to have him, especially as Harry there--whom I love like a father--was named to the little schooner he had cut out in Africa on his last cruise, and ordered to join my squadron. But whenever we get into port his father goes quietly on shore; passes his time, I think, among the sailors of the foreign shipping, spending money freely among the deserving, and again coming back in his calm, stern way. He told me, however, Piron, yesterday, that perhaps he might accept your kind invitation to come up here, though not for some days. By George!" said the commodore, "that must be Escondido!"

Piron sighed as if a pleasant dream had vanished.