"Your brother has different notions from other young men," said Mme. de
Beaudrillart, speaking, as her younger daughter detected, with an
effort. "You are correct in supposing that he has an idea of marriage,
and I am sure he is right. Good-morning, Martine. I did not see your
eldest son at mass."
"No, madame," said the old woman, sadly; "he has come back from his
soldiering saying things which would have made his father's hair stand
on end; and though I tell him that, even if matters are as his clever
friends tell him, there's always a chance that he will find Monsieur
Abbe right after all, and then he will wish he had taken the precaution
of going to mass, he won't listen."
"That is very bad," said Mme. de Beaudrillart, gravely. "You should not
have him at home with the others, Martine."
"Ah, madame, he is my son, and the good God gave him to me!"
"That is true; but I am afraid you are weak with him. Well, I will
speak to Monsieur Nisard, and he will talk to Jacques."
She moved on, and Claire cried, eagerly: "Mamma, I am dying of
impatience! Of whom is Leon thinking?"
"The young lady is Mademoiselle Bourget."
"Mademoiselle Bourget!" exclaimed Claire, stupefied. "But--you do not
mean the daughter of Monsieur Bourget, at Tours?"
"Precisely."
"Leon! A Beaudrillart marry a Tours bourgeoise!"
"Is the idea so new to you?" demanded her mother, coldly. "For myself,
I am satisfied. Poor Leon's misfortunes have brought him many trials.
With this marriage he will be able to pay off debts which otherwise
would have hung round his neck for years, and be relieved from some of
the privations which he has borne so nobly. Reflect whether it is not
so." Mlle. Claire marched towards the bridge, upright and frowning.
It was Felicie who broke into gasping protestations.
"But you do not mean that terrible radical of a man who opposes all that
is good and holy in the neighbourhood! Mamma, impossible! Say that it
is impossible!"
"I believe that he is a radical."
"An enemy of the Church."
"That is not inconceivable. Hush, Felicie, and submit yourself to the
inevitable. If Leon has resolved to marry the girl, he will do it."
"Oh," moaned her daughter, "why was any one so cruel as to mention her
to him?"
Mme. de Beaudrillart was silent. To have told Felicie that Nathalie was
Leon's own choice would have shocked her further; and while detesting
the proposed marriage more than either of her daughters, the task of
reconciling them to it caused her sharp impatience. Nor were her
prejudices without excuse.
M. Bourget was a retired builder, who, by dint of extreme sagacity and
small economies, had contrived to amass a large fortune. It should be
said at once that no suspicion of dishonesty had touched his name. It
was popularly believed that he had never been known to forego an
advantage or to condone a debt; but this reputation did him no harm in
the eyes of those who had not felt his grasp, and the town was inclined
to be proud of its shrewd citizen, the more so as he was never so happy
as when he was in the thick of battle, where it is but doing him bare
justice to allow that he seldom permitted himself to be beaten. He
fought municipal authorities, he fought the arrondissement, he fought
deputies and bishops, with equal delight and success, until his name had
become in certain quarters a thing of terror. Radical and republican,
it was considered extremely probable that he would put himself forward
as a candidate for the Conseil-General, and if he did, it was owned with
a shudder that he would certainly carry his election. Perhaps, had Leon
known from the first that the girl he one day noticed on her way from
the cathedral was the daughter of old Bourget, he would have shut his
heart to her image; but by the time he made the discovery it was
installed.
The incident of their meeting was of the slightest. A little child had
fallen down, and Nathalie, walking swiftly and firmly across the open
space in front of the great church, an old woman for her companion, ran
to pick him up. Struck by something frank and noble in her bearing,
Leon pleased himself by stopping to assist her. At first Nathalie,
whose thoughts were concentrated upon the child, scarcely glanced at
him, but when the small victim was found to be practically unhurt, she
looked full in his face with a smile and a frank directness which
delighted him. He was not a bad judge of expression, and in hers he
read certain qualities which he might not have been expected to
appreciate, but which attracted him as much as if he had been a better
man. He did not rest until he had found out all about her, and
contriving more than once to get sight of her, commissioned a friend to
make the necessary advances.
His suit was not so certain to be successful as he and Mme. de
Beaudrillart supposed. But for one point in the old builder's
character, it might even have been violently rejected. The point was
one which he shared with a large number of mercantile Frenchmen,
republican or not, and it consisted in an inordinate craving to see his
family become noble. He would not follow the example of many of his
neighbours: adopt the _de_, and trust to time and custom riveting the
distinction; but he desired it for his child with an intensity which
became all the stronger because he was ashamed to admit it openly. When
overtures reached him from Leon de Beaudrillart, he hesitated, knowing
that rumour had been unpleasantly busy with his name. But--a De
Beaudrillart! The temptation was irresistible. His affection for his
daughter had woven itself into the strongest resolution of his life--a
determination that she should be received into an aristocracy which he
ran down in word and worshipped in heart. It was the strongest and the
most difficult; the more reason for his stubborn will to carry it.
For many years it had been a bitter disappointment to him that he had no
son, but by the time his wife died all his affections and all his
ambitions had become centred in Nathalie, and he felt that if he could
but see her married as he desired, the struggles and privations of his
life would be amply repaid. For this end, as for his other ends, he
worked shrewdly. From the first, and while still pinching himself in
many ways, he had given her an excellent education at a convent.
Nothing so much irritated him as extravagance, but he was almost
displeased with Nathalie when she showed a shrinking from expenditure.
He himself marched about Tours in the rustiest of coats, yet the girl's
dress must be as dainty as the best milliner could produce. His
neighbours were amazed at such inconsistencies; they did not understand
that they were part of a carefully-thought-out, well-organised
intention. In his treatment of his daughter he was influenced not so
much, perhaps not at all, by the impulse to indulge her with which they
credited him--for her tastes were, in truth, provokingly simple--as by a
clearly-formed design to fit her for another class than that in which
she was born.
Perhaps, however, his ambitions and his methods would have been equally
in vain had it not been for the fact that Nathalie was charmingly
pretty. She was tall, slender, with hazel eyes, and as unlike as
possible to M. Bourget himself. Moreover, she had the grace of
simplicity, and appeared to be indifferent to her own beauty. This
simplicity it was which, joined to a certain sweet dignity, first
attracted Leon.
And then began M. Bourget's struggle. He required no enlightenment.
M. de Beaudrillart's extravagances, M. de Beaudrillart's follies, were
well known in Tours and its neighbourhood. Over against them in the
scale had to be placed Poissy and M. Bourget's ambition. He knew very
well that he would have to give, not only his daughter, but a great deal
of money, and, to do him justice, he thought more of his daughter than
of his money. But Poissy, Poissy! Poissy for years had been the
safety-valve of his imagination, a quality the stronger for being
unsuspected. It appeared to him that nothing which could befall
Nathalie could quench the glory of becoming merged in that ancient
family. When, therefore, the question arose of her being mistress, it
will be perceived what a strong advocate was presented for Leon.
Moreover, sops for his better judgment were not wanting. If Leon's
conduct had exposed him to criticism, there always remained the strange
change in his life, in his disposition, apparently in his fortunes. At
a time when rumour had been most busy, and when misfortune appeared to
hang most threateningly over the heads of the De Beaudrillarts, rumour
had been checkmated. Money had been forthcoming, debts had been paid,
and Leon, wrenching himself from life in Paris, had come back to work in
a way which M. Bourget could appreciate and respect, and had saved
Poissy. It is true that, during the time when talk had declared its
fate to be imminent, M. Bourget had a hundred times turned over the
possibility of stepping in himself and buying up the mortgages, but it
is doubtful whether he would ever have been able to make up his mind to
such an act; for while to his little world he delighted in breathing out
all manner of ferociously republican sentiments, in heart he was an
abject adorer of the ancien regime--at all events, so far as Poissy was
concerned. It would have given him no real pleasure to become its
owner; it is doubtful whether he would not have been the first to
consider himself a sacrilegious dispossessor of the old family. It was
not the bare possession which he coveted; for the De Beaudrillarts to go
out and the Bourgets to come in was as unsuitable, as horrible in his
eyes, as it could have been in their own. But for his family to become
merged in theirs, his child to be actually one of them, that--that was
indeed to satisfy the deeper subtleties of his ambition.
As he marched with short, determined steps through the streets of Tours,
M. Bourget flung back his head, advanced an aggressive chest, swelled,
and assumed what he felt to be the grand air. Passing in front of a
photographer's shop, it seemed like a response to behold Poissy in all
its delicate beauty looking serenely at him from out of a collection of
Touraine chateaux.
"Aha, see there!" he cried, rubbing his hands in delighted apostrophe.
"And to think that the day is come when Nathalie may, if I but say the
word, step into its walls, and hold up her head with the proudest of
them. She shall be painted, too, and by the best painter in France, so
as to hang with the others in the picture-gallery--Nathalie de
Beaudrillart, nee Bourget, _my_ child."
The man's whole figure was transformed, his round red face, garnished
with thick iron-grey eyebrows, gleamed with pride and exultation, and at
this moment, although it pleased him to profess that the overture he had
received was still under consideration, worse sins than any which he had
heard laid to the charge of Leon de Beaudrillart would assuredly have
been condoned.
The matter, therefore, went on apace. To the elder people the
preliminaries were the most important part, and Mme. de Beaudrillart,
although she found it a bitter draught to swallow, had long desired that
her son's romantic notions should give way to what she called reason.
Here was reason, plain, bourgeois, moneyed reason, and there was no
excuse for falling foul of it. Such a dowry as Nathalie would bring was
sufficient to wipe off the debt to M. de Cadanet, and to replace the
owner of Poissy in his old position. And, after all, when a man marries
a woman, Mme. de Beaudrillart argued, it is she who is raised, not he
who is dragged down. King Cophetua's beggar-girl became a queen, and
the Bourget would be merged in the De Beaudrillarts.
She said this to her son, and he smiled.
"With all my heart, though you may find it difficult to efface my future
father-in-law."
Mme. de Beaudrillart shuddered.
"I imagine that he can be made to understand the situation."
"He would tell you that he understood it perfectly. If you could look
into his ledger, I am convinced that you would find on one page an entry
of value received, title, position, what you like, and on the opposite
the purchase-money, so many hundred thousand francs. But he will see
that he gets what he pays for."
"You mean he will expect to come here!"
"Is that unreasonable?"
Mme. de Beaudrillart flung back her head.
"I think so. If he regards the matter in the light of a bargain, I do
not see where he comes in."
"I imagine his daughter will think otherwise," said Leon, caressing a
kitten which had sprung on his knee.
Mme. de Beaudrillart replied, with perhaps unintentional bitterness:
"She, at any rate, may be satisfied with what she has got."
"As to that," returned her son, a little less lazily than he had
hitherto spoken, "she has not yet consented."
His mother folded her hands on the table before her, and looked steadily
at him.
"Do me the favour, Leon, to explain."
"It is perfectly simple. I do not think that I am repugnant to her; but
she says that she must know me better, and judge for herself before
deciding."
Mme. de Beaudrillart shut her thin lips and remained silent. When she
spoke at last, it was to say, in a hushed voice:
"Do not repeat this to your sisters, Leon, unless you wish to degrade
your future wife in their eyes. It is all unspeakably bourgeoise."
"It is charming, whatever it is," he replied, good-humouredly. "The
world goes on, mother, even at Poissy. My great-great-grandfather
stormed a castle and killed half a dozen gentlemen to gain a bride; I,
his descendant, am--"
"Bidden to a builder's back parlour to see whether you are approved of!
The first was infinitely the more respectable. The world goes fast, as
you say, because it is easy enough to go downhill. Even the crimes of
the present day are petty and sordid. In old times men smote and slew;
now they cheat and steal."
With a sudden movement Leon turned on his chair and dislodged the
kitten, which sprang to the ground and mewed protestingly. The change
which every now and then altered his face, and robbed it of its youth,
was there now, and it startled his mother.
"My Leon, what is it? You are ill!" she exclaimed, anxiously.
"It is past," he said, with an effort.
"But what was it!"
"A spasm."
"My poor boy! I know how it is. You work too hard, and fret yourself
over that debt. As if Monsieur de Cadanet would not be happy enough to
wait your convenience! Well, there is this to be said for Mademoiselle
Bourget: although I know you are indifferent to her dowry, it will free
you from worry on that score." While she spoke she went to a small
cupboard, unlocked it, took out a glass and bottle, each of rare design
and workmanship, and came back. "There," she said, pouring a few drops
into a glass, and putting it to his lips, "drink. It is an old cordial,
which agrees with the Beaudrillart blood. You are better!"
"Well," said Leon, smiling again. "I know that stuff of old. It is
magical."
"For your family, yes."
"You think it would not cure Monsieur Bourget!"
"It will not have the chance," said Mme. de Beaudrillart, quietly. She
was replacing the glass and bottle in the cupboard when a thought struck
her. "By-the-way, Leon--"
"Yes."
"You have never given me Monsieur de Cadanet's acknowledgment of the
five hundred francs you forwarded; and as I keep all the receipts
together, I should be glad to have it." There was a short silence.
Then Leon stretched himself, got up, and went to the window, the kitten
in his arms.
"Ah," he said, "he has not sent any."
"Not sent any! But why?"
"Who can tell? Monsieur de Cadanet appeared to me to be an eccentric.
Perhaps he thinks the sum too trifling. Perhaps he is conveniently
forgetful--perhaps--oh, we need not worry. He has received it, without
doubt."
"I do not like it," said Mme. de Beaudrillart, frowning.
"No, it is unbusinesslike, is it not? Console yourself, mother. When
you pay anything to Monsieur Bourget, you will have your acknowledgment
executed with every formality and the most scrupulous exactitude."
If he hoped by this counter-irritation to turn her thoughts, he
apparently succeeded. The idea of M. Bourget's tradesmanlike qualities
produced its desired effect as a foil to M. de Cadanet's carelessness.
But that she was not absolutely satisfied was evident from her calling
after Leon, as he left the room:
"All the same, would it not be well for me to write and ascertain
whether the money has reached him safely? The post is not absolutely
safe, and it would be extremely annoying to find there had been any
failure in delivery."
Leon came back hurriedly.
"Mother, I must entreat you, leave the matter with me. Do not on any
account, now or at a future time, interfere between me and Monsieur de
Cadanet. You might do me incalculable harm."
He spoke with sharp excitement, altogether unlike himself, and Mme. de
Beaudrillart stared amazedly. If either of her other children had
addressed her in such a tone, the offence would have been grievous; as
it was, it was Leon, and Leon, as she immediately reflected, not quite
himself, so that she contented herself with saying, stiffly:
"Calm yourself, Leon; you should be well aware that I am not likely to
act in a manner to endanger either your interests or your honour with
Monsieur de Cadanet or any other person."
He turned from her, came back, and kissed her impulsively. But what he
said had apparently nothing to do with what had passed.
"Poor mother! You are glad that we kept Poissy?"
"If we had lost it, I think it would have killed me."
She had never admitted so much.
"Come, courage, then!" he exclaimed; "it appears now as if it would be
tolerably safe; and with you and Nathalie--if I can win her--by my side,
one may defy even--"
"Who!" demanded his mother, anxiously.
"Oh, Monsieur Bourget, to be sure!" he cried, with a laugh, as he shut
the door.
It was true, although Mme. de Beaudrillart would not believe it, and
although M. de Bourget growled at the girl's whims, that Nathalie
hesitated whether or not she should accept M. de Beaudrillart. For her
neither Poissy nor alliance with an ancient family offered attractions;
on the contrary, she thought of both with dread and shrinking,
foreseeing trials which might prove almost unendurable. If the course
of wooing had been such as Mme. de Beaudrillart's etiquette exacted, and
all the advances had been made by deputy, it is very certain that
Nathalie would have rejected her honours, in spite of her terrible
father's displeasure. But a nameless something had attracted her to
Leon on the day when they first met before the cathedral, and each of
the two interviews which followed deepened the attraction. There was an
open, easy charm about the young man difficult to resist. She knew that
he had been extravagant, and the knowledge caused her some disquiet, but
would not have shaken her determination; indeed, disgraceful as it would
have seemed to Mme. de Beaudrillart, when they had seen each other but
three times, she was hopelessly and irretrievably in love.
Then, one day, in an old carriage, as old as the hills, drawn by two
borrowed horses, and driven by Jean Charpentier's brother, Mme. de
Beaudrillart rolled into Tours, and solemnly demanded the hand of Mlle.
Nathalie Bourget for her son, M. Leon de Beaudrillart.
To her son, even, his mother never related the details of that
interview. M. Bourget, not so reticent, repeated over and over again
with glee the speeches he had made, the answers he had received. While
he took care to preserve to himself the honours of the encounter, he
delighted in accentuating Mme. de Beaudrillart's pride, that those who
listened to him might not fail to understand what sort of family this
was into which Nathalie was about to marry. It was true that some of
her fine sarcasms, her scarcely-veiled contempt, were as little felt by
him as the sting of a gnat upon the hide of a rhinoceros; but he was
acute enough to understand that she wished to humiliate him as a revenge
for the humiliation she was enduring herself, and appreciated the desire
as fitting on the part of the owners of Poissy. She had said to him:
"I cannot attempt to conceal from you, Monsieur Bourget, that my son's
choice has caused me profound astonishment. With his person and his
position, he might have married into any of the great families of
France, and I am certain you are too sensible a man to take offence when
I say that such a marriage would have appeared to me far more
appropriate."
"Perhaps Monsieur de Beaudrillart reflects that when one marries one
must live," remarked M. Bourget, dryly.
But so far was he from taking offence that he repeated the speech with
real enjoyment to a small lawyer of his acquaintance, a red republican
like himself.
"And you endured such insolence!" cried M. Leroux, bounding on his
chair.
"Endured? I can tell you that I admired it. I did not let her see it,
it is true, for one must keep such people in their places; but, after
all, she is right, for a De Beaudrillart may marry where he pleases."
And M. Bourget, radiant with delight, brought his hand heavily down on
the table, and leaned forward to give his words more effect: "He marries
my daughter."
It was the crowning point of his life. No other moment in his career--
and he had had his triumphs--had caused him such unmitigated
satisfaction. Tours rang with the news, the very walls seemed to
whisper it in his ears as he walked along the narrow streets, and he
never failed to pass by the photographer's, and to fling a glance of
recognition at Poissy--Poissy, with its delicate grace, its exquisite
lines--as who should say, "Tiens, ma belle, thou and I are no longer
strangers; we belong to each other."
With M. Bourget in this amiable mood, all went smoothly.
Leon, who was well aware of the accepted opinion of his father-in-law
and his rigid economies, was amazed by the liberality of his proposals.
He had expected carpings, opposition, cutting down, and he found, to his
astonishment, that M. Bourget's principal care was that the estate
should pass unencumbered to Nathalie's children. One day he said,
frankly:
"See here, Monsieur de Beaudrillart,"--he never called his future
son-in-law by any other name--"I am perfectly aware that you have
committed innumerable follies, and that it has even been touch and go
whether you could keep Poissy. At one time, unless rumour lies even
more than is usual with her, I might have got possession of it myself.
But that, I at once admit, would not have suited me. Poissy without the
De Beaudrillarts would be like a body without a soul; you two have to
keep together, if you are to hold your position in the world; and now
that Nathalie is to become one of you, it is my business to see that you
_do_ keep together. You comprehend! For what is past I care nothing; I
put no inquiries, it is over. It is what is to come which is my affair.
There must be no more follies, no more extravagances. My part of the
bargain is to see that when you start you stand on your legs. Well and
good. I accept it. I will give my daughter a sum which should be
sufficient to set you free from every entanglement--for hampered you
must be, and heavily--and enable you with care to regain your proper
position; and I tell you, without hesitation, that I do this because I
have always resolved that Nathalie should marry above her station. What
will you? It is perhaps a folly, a weakness, but--it pleases me. I
wish to see her where I have no inclination to be myself, and, like
other things in this world, what we want we must pay for. There,
Monsieur de Beaudrillart, you have the situation, and my motive."
Leon had listened to this harangue with an inscrutable face. When M.
Bourget paused--rather scant of breath--he looked up and said,
pleasantly:
"Mine is simpler. I love Nathalie."