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1One Night Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when
2the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great
3London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its
4leaves. Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under
5the plane-tree. "You are happy, my dear father?" "Quite, my child." They had said little, though they had been there a
6long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she
7read to him. She had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this time was
8not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so. "And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in
9the love that Heaven has so blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But, if my life were not to be
10still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of
11these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is--" Even as it was,
12she could not command her voice. In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast.
13In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its
14coming and its going. "Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections
15of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? I know it well, but do you know it? In your own
16heart, do you feel quite certain?" Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have
17assumed, "Quite sure, my darling! More than that," he added, as he tenderly kissed her: "my future is far brighter,
18Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay, than it ever was--without it." "If I could hope that,
19my father!--" "Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be
20so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted--" She
21moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word. "--wasted, my child--should not be
22wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how
23much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?"
24"If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you." He smiled at her unconscious
25admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him; and replied: "My child, you did see him,
26and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have
27been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on
28you." It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave
29her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards. "See!" said the
30Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. "I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not
31bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost,
32that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have
33thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of
34perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the
35moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in." The strange thrill with
36which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the
37manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that
38was over. "I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether
39it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would
40some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether
41it was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father's
42having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman." She drew closer to
43him, and kissed his cheek and his hand. "I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me--rather,
44altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her
45married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the
46next generation my place was a blank." "My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never
47existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child." "You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you
48have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.--What did I say
49just now?" "She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you." "So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness
50and the silence have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace,
51as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me
52out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I
53never held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not
54the child I am speaking of?" "The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?" "No. That was another thing. It stood
55before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real
56child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too--as
57you have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary
58prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions." His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from
59running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition. "In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the
60moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving
61remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful,
62useful; but my poor history pervaded it all." "I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that
63was I." "And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, "and they had heard of me, and had been taught to
64pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and
65spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things.
66But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her." "I am that child, I hope, my father.
67O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?"
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