Five years of youth

It was not till Mr. Byerley had returned to his friend’s house, and was placed in the midst of its quietness and comforts, that he became aware how his health and spirits had been shaken by the events of the last fortnight. He felt weary and feverish, and the excitement of his nerves was evident to every one near him. Mr. Fletcher was anxious that his departure should be delayed till he should be better able to bear the fatigue of travelling; but Mr. Byerley would not allow any mention of the subject to be made to M. Béranger, or to any of the authorities. He would ask no favour where he knew himself to be treated with injustice; and besides, he was impatient to leave a place where he had suffered so much. Mary also advocated his departure, knowing that his health was always benefited by a voyage. She intended, of course, to accompany him. The most difficult question was, what should be done with Anna? There was no hope of her being of any use, and her presence was now agitating to her father. Her return would also preclude all hope of the benefit to be derived from change of scene and society, and would put an end at once to Madame Mesnil’s influence over her. The Fletchers urged her remaining with them; declaring that the late events had disgusted them with their present abode, and that they should soon proceed to Paris, and in a few months afterwards, to England. It was determined that, if Anna would consent, she should be left behind, under the care of her kind friends, and attended by Susan.

The mere proposal of any plan was now certain to rouse Anna’s opposition; but, though she wept over the hardship of being separated from her father, she was, in reality, glad to be relieved from the responsibilities of her filial duty, and to remain, for a time, near Madame Mesnil. Saying, therefore, that she would submit if she could, and really mistaking her selfishness for resignation, she showed her filial affection by making her father miserable with her inexhaustible tears. Mary, mean while, having established her father on a sofa, was packing up, and settling all their little affairs, while Mr. Fletcher procured passports, and his wife made every provision for the comfort of the voyage which the shortness of the time allowed.

A letter arrived this day from Signor Elvi, who had heard with consternation of the arrest of his friend. His purpose in writing was to cheer the prisoner with hopes of release and of a return to his own free and happy country, whose institutions were praised as they deserved to be by one who had suffered so cruelly from the despotism which desolated his own land. Though Mr. Byerley was no longer a prisoner when this letter reached him, he was not the less in need of being cheered; and he was cheered, except by one passage, which it afflicted him to read, while he reproached himself for his selfish regret.

“I have earnestly desired, my friend, to aid you; I have mourned that I could not aid you, by hastening to fling wide your prison doors. There is but one way in which such exiles as I, stripped of all we possessed, can aid those who suffer injustice. It is by struggling for liberty, wherever a struggle can be maintained. Such assistance I am hastening to give. I cannot release the victims of tyranny from their chains, or recall the spirits of the martyrs to liberty; but I can defend those principles by whose prevalence the captivity of the innocent shall, at length, cease, and the heads of the noble shall be crowned with honour instead of being rolled in the dust. I go to defend these principles in another land, in a distant continent of the globe. Should you set your foot in safety once more on your native strand, as I trust you will, I shall not be there to welcome you, as your friendly hand once welcomed me. It may be that you will hear of me no more, though I will not willingly relinquish the privilege of your correspondence. If you should hear of my fall, mourn not for me; for you know that I look for better things beyond the grave than rest for the weary, and a release from the troublings of the wicked: yes—for perfect love and perfect peace. What would our life below become without the love of the virtuous, and the peace which it instils! So deeply am I conscious of this, that I cannot feel myself wholly unhappy while I bear with me the remembrance of your friendship and of the sympathy of your daughters. Confiding that it will be mine while I live, it is with mingled pleasure and regret that I dwell on the hours that I have spent with you and them; and bid you all a present—it may be a long—farewell.”

“He will fall, like hundreds of his companions, obscurely, and perhaps uselessly,” cried Mr. Byerley. “Oh! what an insatiable Moloch is war!”

“So,” thought Mary, “pass away the pleasures of this world. We shall see Elvi no more; but, thank God! we have known him, and may recognize him hereafter, when it may be our delight to sympathize more warmly in his joys than hitherto in his griefs.”

Towards evening, Mr. Byerley’s indisposition appeared to increase, so that it was determined that he should not pass the night unwatched. As this was Anna’s last opportunity of ministering to him, and as Mary had the fatigues of an anxious journey in prospect, it was agreed that Mr. Byerley should be given into Anna’s charge. Mary retired to rest early, and her sister stationed herself with Susan in a dressing-room which opened on one side to her father’s apartment, and on the other to the stairs. About midnight, her charge appeared, at length, to sleep quietly; and when one and two o’clock struck, the watchers still heard, through the open door, that his breathing was that of deep repose. Anna was reading, or seeming to read, and her attendant at work; and neither of them spoke or made the slightest noise. After a while, it seemed that Mr. Byerley was stirring; and in a moment, before Anna could rise from her seat, he stood in the doorway, looking wildly about him, and making confused attempts to speak.

Anna fell back in her chair, and her shriek rang through the house. Susan scarcely knew which to attend to first, the nurse or the patient; but Mary was on the spot instantly to assist. Mr. Byerley had risen in his sleep, as his children knew he occasionally did when under nervous indisposition. Anna’s shriek awoke him effectually, and shook him much more than his sudden appearance had disturbed her. Mary reproached herself with having left him, and sat by his bedside till Mrs. Fletcher came at six o’clock to insist on her taking a few hours’ rest before her departure.

Mr. Fletcher, a more welcome companion than the two gens d’arme, accompanied the travellers to Rochelle, and having seen them safe on board, and out of the surveillance of the government, carried home better tidings of Mr. Byerley than were expected. He had appeared to breathe more freely, and to recover composure, as soon as they left the city of Tours behind them, and entered on the vine-covered hills and fertile plains which surround it; and had uttered an exclamation of delight at the first view of the blue expanse which was stretched before them as they descended to the coast. An English vessel was on the point of sailing when they arrived; and from the first heights which their friend reached on his return, he could just discern its white sails disappearing on the far horizon. Mr. Fletcher, unused as he was to testify emotion of any kind, could scarcely restrain his indignation and grief that such a man as his friend should be thus thrust out of a country where he had committed no offence, and where none was charged upon him but that of associating with the choicest of her citizens. The ladies, however, merged their political in their private feelings.

“How did Mary look at the last?”

“Look! like what she is—a heroine.”

“Do you use that word in irony or in respect, papa?” said Rose, being sure of a gratifying answer, though he was not wont to speak respectfully of heroines.

“My dear, I speak in irony of would-be heroines—of women who are heroic when opportunity is wanting, and who, when opportunity comes, want heroism. But a real heroine, a woman who not being above small occasions is equal to the greatest, is the noblest spectacle that human life affords.”

“This from our father!” thought Rose and Selina, as they looked at each other with delight.

Meanwhile Mary was totally unconscious of the feelings she inspired, desiring nothing more than to love and be beloved. This desire she felt to be amply gratified, this golden evening, while her father continued to revive under her cherishing care. He was lying on deck, where she had persuaded him to repose himself on the couch she had spread. The melting sunlight bathed the receding shores of France, and rendered visible the spires of her towns and villages, and the verdure of the heights beyond. The breeze fanned the still feverish brow of the invalid, and the gentle motion of the vessel lulled him to a repose more refreshing than sleep.

“Shall I sing to you, papa?”

For the first time in her life, her father said “No,” to her offer. She had sung to him last in prison, and he wished to banish all jail-associations till he should be stronger. He smiled while he confessed his reasons. They directed Mary’s conversation to widely different subjects. She told him of her wish to proceed immediately on their landing, to A——, which she knew he would prefer to remaining in town; and the images she called up of home and its quiet pleasures—of the study, and the farm, and their evening rambles—were delightful to her home-loving father, who went abroad unwillingly, and would gladly have vowed to seclude himself for the rest of his days, except on the occasion of public meetings.

“My only regret is for your disappointment, my love. When I interested myself first in politics, I made up my mind to all the inconveniences which might ensue, and therefore ought not to complain of what has happened. But it is hard upon you. You have shared all my fears and fatigues, and have had none of the pleasures I intended for you. No Paris, no Switzerland, no brilliant society:—it is a sad disappointment.”

“No, indeed, papa. I have not gained what I expected; but I have gained something much better—something,” she continued, smiling, “which it is your boast cannot be had in England.”

“What good thing cannot be found in England, my dear?”

“I do not know that you will call it a good thing, though I have found it so; I mean, the experience of such gross injustice as has been done to you. I have often wondered how we could endure—how we could preserve our composure—whether we could keep our charity entire, and our peace unbroken under grievous wrong.”

“And what is the answer you have found?”

“Father! I would not exchange the experience of the last fortnight, with all its suffering, all its humiliation, for the best advantages of Paris, and the divinest delights of Switzerland. Do not think me proud; for, God knows, it has humbled me not a little to discover how feeble one may be in action, how cowardly in suffering, when one means the best; but yet—what we have felt together and apart will make us happier as long as we live: will it not? And could any thing at Paris have done more?”

“My child,” said her father, “my only child!”

Mary saw that tears trickled through his fingers as his hand covered his eyes. She could not allow him to suppose that she assented to the expression which a moment of strong feeling had wrung from him. Hers was a soul to hope against hope, and she yet trusted that Anna’s restoration was probable. She had never flattered her sister, or striven to deceive herself; but, clear-sighted as she was to the difficulties of the case, it was one of which she never despaired. She now reasoned with her father upon it, and ended by inspiring him with something of her own cheerful faith, and thus disposing him to join the names of his children in his thanksgivings as well as in his prayers.

When the evening star had risen high, Mary returned from receiving her father’s nightly blessing, to watch yet awhile for the influences which came to the wakeful spirit from the sky and from the deep. To such as she, these influences impart fervour without enthusiasm, and a confidence in which presumption has no part; and her steadfast soul looked abroad on the temporary agitations of human life, as calmly as her eye surveyed the rise and fall of the billowy expanse before her. If it be true that “to the pure all things are pure,” it is equally true that to the peaceful all things breathe peace.