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Page 90
"But what shall I tell him?" asked Erik, pale with joy.
"Tell him that to-morrow you will set out by express, to go and embrace
him and your mother!"
The young captain only took time to press the hands of this excellent
man, and he ran and jumped into a cab to hasten to the telegraph office.
He left Stockholm that same day, took the railroad to Malmo on the
north-west coast of Sweden, crossed the strait in twenty minutes,
reached Copenhagen, took the express train through to Holland and
Belgium, and at Brussels the train for Paris.
On Saturday, at seven o'clock in the evening, exactly six days after Mr.
Durrien had posted his letter, he had the joy of waiting for his
grandson at the depot.
As soon as the train stopped they fell into each other's arms. They had
thought so much about each other during these last few days that they
both felt already well acquainted.
"My mother?" asked Erik.
"I have not dared to tell her, much as I was tempted to do so!" answered
Mr. Durrien.
"And she knows nothing yet?"
"She suspects something, she fears, she hopes. Since your dispatch I
have done my best to prepare her for the unheard-of joy that awaits her.
I told her of a track upon which I had been placed by a young Swedish
officer, the one whom I had met at Brest, and of whom I had often spoken
to her. She does not know, she hesitates to hope for any good news, but
this morning at breakfast I could see her watching me, and two or three
times I felt afraid that she was going to question me. One can not tell,
something might have happened to you, some other misfortune, some sudden
mischance. So I did not dine with her to-night, I made an excuse to
escape from a situation intolerable to me."
Without waiting for his baggage, they departed in the _coup_ that Mr.
Durrien had brought.
Mme. Durrien, alone in the parlor in Varennes Street, awaited
impatiently the return of her father. She had had her suspicions
aroused, and was only waiting until the dinner hour arrived to ask for
an explanation.
For several days she had been disturbed by his strange behavior, by the
dispatches which were continually arriving, and by the double meaning
which she thought she detected beneath all he said. Accustomed to talk
with him about his lightest thoughts and impressions, she could not
understand why he should seek to conceal anything from her. Several
times she had been on the point of demanding a solution of the enigma,
but she had kept silence, out of respect for the evident wishes of her
father.
"He is trying to prepare me for some surprise, doubtless," she said to
herself. "He is sure to tell me if anything pleasant has occurred."
But for the last two or three days, especially that morning, she had
been impressed with a sort of eagerness which Mr. Durrien displayed in
all his manner, as well as the happy air with which he regarded her,
insisting in hearing over and over again from her lips, all the details
of the disaster of the "Cynthia," which he had avoided speaking of for a
long time. As she mused over his strange behavior a sort of revelation
came to her. She felt sure that her father must have received some
favorable intelligence which had revived the hope of finding her child.
But without the least idea that he had already done so, she determined
not to retire that night until she had questioned him closely.
Mme. Durrien had never definitely renounced the idea that her son was
living. She had never seen him dead before her eyes, and she clung
mother-like to the hope that he was not altogether lost to her. She said
that the proofs were insufficient, and she nourished the possibility of
his sudden return. She might be said to pass her days waiting for him.
Thousands of women, mothers of soldiers and sailors, pass their lives
under this touching delusion. Mrs. Durrien had a greater right than they
had to preserve her faith in his existence. In truth the tragical scene
enacted twenty-two years ago was always before her eyes. She beheld the
"Cynthia" filling with water and ready to sink. She saw herself tying
her infant to a large buoy while the passengers and sailors were rushing
for the boats. They left her behind, she saw herself imploring,
beseeching that they would at least take her baby. A man took her
precious burden, and threw it into one of the boats, a heavy sea dashed
over it, and to her horror she saw the buoy floating away on the crest
of the waves. She gave a dispairing cry and tried to jump after him,
then came unconsciousness. When she awoke she was a prey to despair, to
fever, to delirium. To this succeeded increasing grief. Yes, the poor
woman recalled all this. Her whole being had in fact received a shock
from which she had never recovered. It was now nearly a quarter of a
century since this had happened, and Mrs. Durrien still wept for her son
as on the first day. Her maternal heart so full of grief was slowly
consuming her life. She sometimes pictured to herself her son passing
through the successive phases of infancy, youth, and manhood. From year
to year she represented to herself how he would have looked, how he was
looking, for she obstinately clung to her belief of the possibility of
his return.
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