Lucie had only four days more to remain in Bienville, but, except for
the approaching parting from Sophie and Ravenel, they were indeed very
happy days to her. The child's active and aggressive little mind, which
was part of her American inheritance, dwelt on that charming vision
which Harper, with the usual indiscretion of servants and nursery
governesses, had shown her--that vision of all the money she wished to
spend, which would be hers at eighteen, with no one, not even Madame
Bernard, to interfere.
Lucie enjoyed another stolen interview with Paul Verney, for this young
lady, at ten years of age, was a well-developed flirt and romanticist.
Not all her French training had been able to get the American out of
her, and she had with it all the generous impulses and the happy daring
with which the American child seems to be dowered.
Paul Verney, in his afternoon walks, had the pleasure of bowing twice
to Captain and Madame Ravenel, but neither time was Lucie with them.
On the afternoon before Lucie left Bienville, she was walking with the
Ravenels, Harper, as usual, in the distance. Lucie, with the ingenuity
peculiar to her age and sex, determined to go on a search for Paul
Verney, and so arranged her plans with much art.
She asked Sophie if Harper could take her to the fountain in the park
to see the little fishes swim in the basin. This reasonable proposal
being agreed to, Harper took Lucie by the hand, and off they went. Once
at the fountain, around which there were benches, Harper was sure to
find some of her colleagues, and Lucie, providing she reported at the
end of every ten minutes, was certain of an hour of liberty.
Lucie utilized her first ten minutes by finding Paul Verney. There he
was, sitting on the same bench and reading the same English book as
on the first afternoon that she had spoken to him. When Paul saw his
lady-love approach he rose and blushed and smiled, and Lucie bowed and
smiled, without blushing, however. Seating herself on the bench, and
settling her fluffy white skirts around her, she said to Paul with a
queenly air:
"You may sit down." Then she added, quite seriously, "I am going away
to-morrow."
Paul's boyish heart gave a jump. He was secretly very much afraid of
Lucie, and disapproved of her--but she was so fascinating, and life at
Bienville would seem so different after she went away. He stammered:
"I am sorry, Mademoiselle."
"But I shall come back," said Lucie in a sprightly tone. "You see, it
is so very easy to frighten grandmama. All I have to do is to stop
eating for two days, and it really isn't so bad at all."
Paul Verney, although not a greedy youngster like Toni, thought that to
go without eating for two days was a very severe test of affection, but
it was like everything else about Lucie, dashing and daring, and quite
out of the common. He replied timidly:
"I hope, Mademoiselle, you won't make yourself ill. It always makes me
ill to go without my dinner even."
"I suppose," said Lucie, "that is when your mama punishes you--isn't
it?"
Paul blushed more deeply than ever. He wished to appear a man, and here
was Lucie reminding him that he was, after all, only a little boy.
Then Lucie asked him:
"What do you mean to be when you grow up?"
"A soldier, Mademoiselle," said Paul, straightening himself up
involuntarily. "I am going to the cavalry school at St. Cyr. I shall
ride a fine horse like the officers here in Bienville. I told papa and
mama my last birthday, and they are quite willing."
"But it will be a long time yet," said Lucie, "won't it?"
"Not so very long," said Paul. "In four years I shall go to the cavalry
school, and then in four years more I shall be graduated, and then
I shall be a lieutenant, and have a sword, and wear a helmet with a
horse-hair plume in it."
The picture which Paul unconsciously drew of himself was very
attractive to the imaginative Lucie. She looked at him meditatively,
and wondered how he would look when he was grown up, with his sword and
horse-hair plume. Paul was not particularly handsome, but his somewhat
stocky figure was well-knit, and he looked unqualifiedly clean and
honest--two great recommendations in any man or boy.
"By the time you are a lieutenant with a sword," she continued, "I
shall be a young lady with a long train and I shall be very rich.
Harper told me so, and then I am coming to Bienville, and I will buy
the commandant's house, and have the finest carriage in Bienville, and
have a ball every night."
Paul listened to this with a sudden sinking of the heart. The
realization came to him, as much as if he had been twenty instead of
twelve years old, that this splendid picture which Lucie drew of her
future did not accord with his, the son of a Bienville advocate, who
lived in a modest house and whose mother made most of her own gowns.
And besides that, he did not like, and did not understand Lucie's
innocent bragging. He was a sweet, sensible boy, with a practical
French mind, who never bragged about anything in his life, and who did
heroic, boyish things in the most matter-of-fact manner in the world,
and never thought they were heroic. But Lucie was so charming! Like
many a grown up man his judgment and his heart went different ways.
Lucie had his heart--there was no question about it.
Lucie would have liked to stay a long time with Paul, and Paul would
have enjoyed staying with Lucie, but, looking up, he saw his father
and mother approaching, on their way to the terrace, where, like all
the other inhabitants of Bienville, they spent their summer afternoons
having ices or drinking tea and listening to the music. The Verneys
were a comfortable-looking couple, fond of each other and adoring Paul.
They smiled when they saw Paul seated on the bench and the charming
little girl talking to him. They knew it was none of Paul's doing, for
he was afraid of girls and always ran away from them.
As his father and mother drew nearer, Paul's impulse to rush away, in
order to avoid being seen with Lucie, almost overpowered him, but he
was at heart a courageous boy, and a chivalrous one, and he thought it
would be cowardly to run off; so he stood, or rather sat his ground
with apparent boldness, but his face was reddening and his heart
thumping as his father and mother approached. Lucie, however, was not
at all timid, and when she saw Monsieur and Madame Verney coming so
close, asked Paul who they were.
"It is my father and mother," said Paul in a shaky voice, opening his
book with much embarrassment and turning over its pages.
"I think they look very nice," said Lucie, "and see, they are smiling
at you. I think they are smiling at you because you are talking to me."
Paul's head went down still lower on his book, and his face burned
crimson. Lucie, with great self-possession, got up from the bench, and,
making a pretty little bow to Monsieur and Madame Verney, skipped off
back to Harper.
Monsieur Verney, a pleasant-faced man of fifty, prodded Paul with his
cane.
"What charming young lady was that, my son, with whom you were
speaking?"
"Mademoiselle Lucie Bernard," Paul managed to articulate.
"And a very pretty little thing she is!" said Madame Verney, who was,
herself, pretty and pleasant-looking, sitting down on the bench, and
putting Paul's blushing face upon her shoulder. "For shame, Charles, to
tease the boy so!"
Paul hid his face on his mother's shoulder, meanwhile screwing up his
courage to its ultimate point. Then, raising his head, and looking his
father directly in the eye, Paul said:
"When I grow up, I mean to marry Mademoiselle Lucie."
The boy's clear blue eyes looked directly into his father's, which
were also clear and blue, and between the boy and the man a look of
sympathy, of understanding, passed. His father might laugh at him, but
Paul knew that it was only a joke, after all, and as long as he behaved
himself, no unkind word would be spoken to him by that excellent father.
"Oho!" said Monsieur Verney to Madame Verney, "so we are promised a
daughter-in-law already!"
"That pleases me very much," said Madame Verney, smiling. "I hope that
Mademoiselle Lucie will grow up as good as she is pretty, and then I
shall be very glad to have her for a daughter-in-law."
Then his mother kissed him, and Paul got up and walked on with his
father and mother, holding a hand of each and wondering if any boy ever
had such a kind father and mother. They joked him about Lucie, but
Paul did not mind that. He rather liked it, now that the murder was
out. Presently, when Paul had gone off to play and the Verneys were
sitting at a little table by themselves on the terrace, Monsieur Verney
suddenly fell into a brown study, and, after a few minutes, bringing
his fist down on the table and making the glasses ring, said to Madame
Verney:
"I know who that little girl is now--I could not place her at first.
She is the half-sister of Madame Ravenel. The child is allowed to visit
her once a year--what can the family be thinking of to permit it?"
Madame Verney knew Sophie Ravenel's history perfectly well, as did
everybody in Bienville, and she knew more than most people; for she
said to Monsieur Verney:
"At the time when Madame Delorme left her husband for Ravenel, this
child, whom she had brought up from her birth, was taken away from her
by her grandmother, their father's mother, who is also the grandmother
of Madame Ravenel. This little girl's mother was an American, I am
told. The child, I know, has been permitted to visit Madame Ravenel
before, but this will scarcely be allowed after she is two or three
years older. I have also heard that she has a large fortune through her
mother, in her own right."
At this the great maternal instinct welled up in Madame Verney's heart.
Why should not her Paul, the best of boys, marry a girl with a large
fortune and a position like Lucie's, which was far above Paul's? She
began to dream about Paul's matrimonial prospects--dreams which had
begun when he was a little pink baby lying in his cradle. The Verneys
were not rich, nor distinguished, nor was there anything except love
which would be likely to provide Paul with a wife suitable to his
merits. Madame Verney, following up this dream concerning Paul, began
secretly to pity Madame Ravenel, and argued that, after all, nothing
about that unfortunate lady could reflect on Lucie.
Meanwhile Lucie, kneeling down on the edge of the basin of the
fountain, looked into it and saw there a church brilliantly lighted,
with palms and flowers all about, and full of gaily-dressed ladies
and officers in uniform. And then the organ sounded and up the aisle
came marching herself, in a white satin gown and lace veil; and she
leaned on the arm of a young officer with a sword and a helmet with a
horse-hair plume in it, and he had the honest eyes of Paul Verney.
At the end of the week Lucie vanished from Paul's sight, but not from
his memory. According to all the laws of fitness, Paul, the most
honest, straightforward, matter-of-fact, obedient little fellow in the
world, should have found his counterpart in the shape of another Denise
Duval of his own class; for little Denise was as honest, as correct,
as matter-of-fact and as obedient as Paul Verney. But, behold how it
works! Paul fell in love with the vivacious, sprightly, charming Lucie,
while Toni had determined to link his fate with the irreproachable and
demure Denise.