Gaston Sauverand

“ Our own good fellows are awaiting us there. I trow not all the hireling knaves within this Castle wall should wrest thee from us now."
"I fear naught now that thou art by my side, Gaston," answered Raymond, in low tones. "If thou art not in peril thyself, I could wish nothing better than to die with thine arm about mine."
"Nay, but thou shalt live!" cried Gaston, with energy, scarce understanding that after the long strain of such a captivity as Raymond's had been it was small wonder that he had grown to think death well-nigh better and sweeter than life. ”

“ Francezka’s grievance appeared to me to be a strange one though not wholly unreasoning. But I saw what gave me the sharpest pain. It flashed upon me that she no longer loved Gaston Cheverny. As if she had the clairvoyance that she complained of Gaston’s lacking, she continued:
“Yes; outwardly, all is the same; inwardly, all is changed. I have a growing sense of strangeness with my husband. At first I felt the same intimate friendship I had felt during our short married life, but by insensible degrees I have come to feel that I do not know Gaston, nor does Gaston know me. ”

“ Nay, to linger is certain death; it must not be thought of. In Bordeaux, and there alone, wilt thou be safe. It is thither that thou must fly, for thither alone will the Sieur de Navailles fear to follow you. For me, I must remain here, as I have done these many years. It will not be worse than it hath ever been."
"And thinkest thou that I will leave thee thus to languish after thou hast restored to me my brother?" asked Gaston hotly. "Nay, lady, think not that of thine own true knight! I will come again. I vow it! ”

“ Gaston sighed. The gayety of those around him weighed heavily on his heart. It was a new torture which they had invented, in forbidding him to confide his fate to any one; it seemed to him that he should have found consolation in the tears of his two neighbors. He had not the courage to read the letter to Dumesnil, so he passed it on to him, and a moment after heard shouts of laughter.
At this moment Gaston was saying adieu to Helene.
After passing a part of the night in writing, he slept; at five-and-twenty one must sleep, even if it be just before death. ”

“ I saw the real Gaston Cheverny enter. I saw Francezka turn toward the opening door. I saw the man I had supposed for nearly two years to be Gaston Cheverny rise from his chair—and he was, in truth, Regnard Cheverny. It was impossible to mistake one for the other, standing together, face to face. It became a miracle how Regnard had ever managed to deceive his whole world into thinking him Gaston Cheverny. All the differences between them came out and seemed to clamor for recognition. The expression of the eye was different; the whole of the actual man in each was dissimilar ”

“ You know, Babache, I am not the woman to swerve a man from his duty. I love Gaston’s honor even more than I love him. And so, hard as the separation is, I thank God that he is the man to choose his duty first. I felt that at our parting—which, like our meeting, was in this Italian garden. I love this spot more than ever now, because from here I can see the highroad, along which Gaston will return to me. Here, Bold and I come once every day, generally at sunset, to watch for the coming of the master of both of us. ”

“ Gaston walked into the hall and met Sallie as she emerged from the library door opposite. He tried to say something, but his throat was dry and his tongue paralysed with the wonder of her presence! Besides, the General stood grimly by like a guard over a life prisoner.
He looked searchingly into her eyes as he held her hand for a moment and felt its warm impulsive pressure. Oh! the eyes of the woman we love! What are words to their language of melting tenderness, of faith and longing. Gaston felt like shouting in the General’s face his triumph. ”

“ For once they were free from all fear of treachery. Gaston's own picked band of stalwart veterans was guarantee enough that might as well as right was on the side of the De Brocas. The sight of those well-equipped men-at-arms, all loyal and full of affectionate enthusiasm for their youthful lord, showed these rude retainers how greatly to their advantage would be this change of masters; and before Gaston had dismounted and walked across the courtyard towards the portal of the Castle, he felt, with a swelling of the heart that Raymond well understood, that Saut was indeed his own. ”

“ He left everything to Helene de Chaverny; begged her, if he died, not to renounce the world, but to accept the career opening to her youth and beauty; but, as he was the last of his family, he begged her, in memeory of him, to call her first son Gaston.
He next went to see each of his friends, and once more told them that he believed the enterprise would be successful. Pontcalec gave him half a piece of gold and a letter, which he was to present to a certain Captain la Jonquiere, their correspondent at Paris, who would put Gaston in communication with the important persons he went to seek. ”

“ Gaston's hand was upon his. He could hear Gaston's voice: "Jean, do you love Marie-Louise?" And then Gaston was repeating the question, and repeating it again: "Jean, do you love Marie-Louise?" And the old rugged strength seemed back again in Gaston Bernier, as he, rose up in bed, and his voice in a strange, stern note rang through the room: "Swear it, Jean ... to a dying man and in God's presence ... swear that you will..." ”

“ Then she turned to Gaston, who embraced me warmly.
“Francezka has told me all, Babache,” he cried. “How can I thank you enough!”
In that brief moment I noticed that Gaston had changed much, as one might expect in those seven years of exile and misery, but not for the worse. On the contrary, I thought him a comelier man than he had ever been before. And strange, for a man who had spent seven years of hardship and labor among a half-civilized people, he bore no trace whatever of awkwardness or boorishness amid his splendid surroundings. ”

“ These simple reflections of Gaston showed me how absurd had been my susceptibilities. If I had only met him the night before and he had spoken to me like that, I should certainly not have written the foolish letter which I had written. ”

“ Have we not others to think of in this thing? Are there not those living beneath the shelter of Basildene who must be suffering under the curse that wicked man is like to bring upon it? For their sakes, Gaston, ought we not to do all in our power to make good our rights? Are they to be left to the mercy of one whose soul is sold to Satan?"
Gaston looked quickly into his brother's flushed face, and wondered at the sudden enthusiasm beaming out of his eyes. But he had already recognized that a change was passing over Raymond, even as a change of a different kind was coming upon himself. ”

“ Though not quite so tall nor so broad-shouldered and muscular as Gaston, who was in truth a very prince amongst men, he was in his own way quite as striking, being very tall, and as upright as a dart, slight and graceful, though no longer attenuated, and above all retaining that peculiar depth and purity of expression which had long seemed to mark him out somewhat from his fellow men, and which had only intensified during the year that had banished him from the stirring life of the camp. ”

“ Gaston Cheverny’s misery was extreme. He passed at once from the high heaven of delight to the lowest deeps of wretchedness, because, forsooth, Mademoiselle Capello did not show him the exclusive consideration she had bestowed on him in Brabant. He called her many of the hardest names in the lexicon; one would have thought to hear him rail at her, that she was under a strict obligation not to speak to another man than himself. Count Saxe and I rallied him often, but he grew so savage about it that presently we desisted. ”

“ Gaston has no affectations, he moves with an instinctive and unstudied grace. When we walk alone together in the woods, his arm round my waist, mine resting on his shoulder, body fitting to body, and head touching head, our step is so even, uniform, and gentle, that those who see us pass by night take the vision for a single figure gliding over the graveled walks, like one of Homer's immortals. A like harmony exists in our desires, our thoughts, our words. ”

“ Unless Gaston came back . . . some day. He might—he might! Stranger things had happened. Only it was certain that he would never come back under any conditions that involved a pact with the spoilers. No exile, no hardships, nothing that she could imagine would have changed that trait in him. . . .
A step, a heavy, hasty step, broke into her reverie—a step that had not been her way of late. It could only be one person’s. She turned, and saw M. Georges Camain advancing along the line of pillars towards her, wearing a face of thunder.
Valentine’s heart sank. ”

“ Gaston did not. What he found strong was the originality of his passenger—and the way that cognac failed, in spite of its friendly warmth, to cheer him. For he kept thinking of that absurd Bakhtiari, and of the telegraph operator, and of M'sieu Guy, and the others, as he sped northward on the silent moonlit river.
"This is very well, eh, Gaston?" uttered the Brazilian at last. "We march better without our objects of virtue." Gaston felt that he smiled as he lay smoking on his rug in the bottom of the boat. ”

“ As they entered the hall, Brillon with the saddle-bags was being taken in charge, and Gaston saw what a strange figure he looked beside the other servants and in these fine surroundings. He could not think that himself was so bizarre. Nor was he. But he looked unusual; as one of high civilisation might, through long absence in primitive countries, return in uncommon clothing, and with a manner of distinguished strangeness: the barbaric to protect the refined, as one has seen a bush of firs set to shelter a wheat-field from a seawind, or a wind-mill water cunningly- begotten flowers. ”

“ I am going to Paris.”
“To Paris?”
“To Paris, to deliver myself up to M. de Montrésor, who gave me leave to go to Reaux some seven weeks ago.”
“But it is madness, Gaston!” he ejaculated.
“All virtue is madness in a world so sinful; nevertheless I go. In a measure I am glad that things have fallen out with you as they have done, for when the news goes abroad that you have married Geneviève de Canaples and left the heiress free, your enemies will vanish, and you will have no further need of me. ”

“ How quickly had the new-comer conquered himself! And yet he had a slight strangeness of accent—not American, but something which seemed unusual. He did not reckon with a voice which, under cover of easy deliberation, had a convincing quality; with a manner of old-fashioned courtesy and stateliness. As Mrs. Gasgoyne had said to the rector, whose eyes had followed Gaston everywhere in the drawing-room:
"My dear archdeacon, where did he get it? Why, he has lived most of his life with savages!" ”

“ But he was no longer the high-minded, pure-hearted Gaston, who had so devotedly loved and perilled his life for the little fairy of La Verberie.
It is useless to deny that evil examples are pernicious to morals. The most upright characters are unconsciously influenced by bad surroundings. As the exposure to rain, sun, and sea-air first darkened and then hardened his skin, so did wicked associates first shock and then destroy the refinement and purity of Gaston’s mind. His heart had become as hard and coarse as his sailor hands. He still remembered Valentine, and sighed for her presence ”

“ We shall never again see Gaston in his forest costume—he was Gaston with all the world, in affection, not in disrespect—nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the woodland horn. Never again shall his kind smile put peace among all races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in France. Never more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his industrious pencil. ”

“ We had exactly three horses champing quietly in the courtyard, and nineteen men, not counting Gaston Cheverny, needing to ride to save their skins.
And before we could draw breath, the open place in front of the drawbridge grew black with men; the restless, serpentine shadows were, in truth, Bibikoff’s Russians.
In half a minute our men were tugging at the chains of the drawbridge. They had raised it about a foot when out of the gloomy night rode a horseman, straight upon the drawbridge. The weight of man and horse slowly brought the bridge down again. It was Gaston Cheverny. ”

“ I shouldn't have the heart to turn a wolf outdoors. I believe I have seen the young man's face before, and the old one's, too, if I could only think where. Let us drink! Your health, Gaston!"
I had gone over to the window, and as the Baron Zimmer and his servant climbed into their saddles in the middle of the courtyard, I saw, in spite of the snow that filled the air, a curtain slightly raised in the tower opposite, and the pale face of the Countess appear, glancing long and furtively at the young man.
"Ha, Gaston, what are you doing?" cried Sperver. ”

“ He demanded every note. Why did not Gaston remember it all? But if the barkentine would arrive and bring the whole music, then they would have it right! And he made Gaston teach him what words he knew. "'Non ti scorder,'" he sang—"'non ti scordar di me.' That is genius. But one sees how the world moves when one is out of it. 'A nostri monti ritorneremo'; home to our mountains. Ah, yes, there is genius again." And the exile sighed and his spirit voyaged to distant places, while Gaston continued brilliantly with the music of the final scene.
Then the host remembered his guest. ”