Fortunately for Mlle. Fouchette, Jean's astonishment and temporary
confusion at the unexpected apparition of the angel of his dreams
extinguished every other consideration.
Mlle. Remy stood before him--in his appartement--smiling, gracious, a
picture of feminine youth and loveliness,--her earnest blue eyes
looking straight into his lustrous brown ones, searching, pénétrante!
He forgot Fouchette; he forgot his friend Henri; he forgot even the
presence of an angry father.
"Hello, Jean!"
"Henri, mon ami!"
Recalled partially to his senses, Jean embraced his old friend after
the effusive, dramatic French fashion. They kissed each other's
cheeks, as if they were brothers who had been long parted.
"We will begin again, Henri," said Jean,--"from this moment we will
begin again. Forgive me----"
"There!" cried Henri, "let us not go into that. We have both of us
need of forgiveness,--I most of all. As you say, let us begin again.
And in making a good start, permit me to present you to my sister
Andrée, whom you have met before, and, I have reason to believe, wish
to meet again. I have brought her along without consulting you, first
because she insists on going where I go, next as an evidence of good
faith and a pledge of our future good-will. Mademoiselle Remy, mon
cher ami."
"No apology is necessary for bringing in the sunshine with you, mon
ami," said Jean, bending over the small hand.
"Monsieur Marot is complimentary," said Mlle. Remy.
For a moment her eyes drooped beneath his ardent gaze.
"But, then, I know him so well," she quickly added, recovering her
well-bred self-possession,--"yes, brother Henri has often talked about
you, and I have seen you----"
There was a faint self-consciousness apparent here. And he knew that
she was thinking of his lonely watches in front of her place of
residence.
They rapidly exchanged the usual courtesies of the day, in the usual
elaborate and ornate Parisian fashion.
Mlle. Fouchette saw every minute detail of this meeting with an
expression of intense concern. She weighed every look and word and
gesture in the delicate, tremulous balance of love's understanding.
And she realized that Jean's way was clear at last, and at the same
time saw the consequences to herself.
Well, was not this precisely what she had schemed and labored to bring
about?
Yet she stole away unobserved to the little kitchen, and there turned
her face to the wall and covered her ears with her hands, as if to
shut it all out. Her eyes were dry, but her heart was drenched with
tears.
Meanwhile, the elder Marot, who had risen politely upon the entrance
of Lerouge and his sister, stood apparently transfixed by the scene.
At the sight of Andrée his face assumed a curious mixture of eagerness
and uncertainty. Upon the mention of her name the uncertainty
disappeared. A flood of light seemed to burst upon him with the
encomiums showered upon his son.
When Jean turned towards his father--being reminded by a plucking of
the sleeve--he was confounded to behold a face of smiles instead of
the one recently clouded with parental wrath.
"This is m-my father, Monsieur Lerouge,--Mademoiselle----"
"What? Monsieur Marot? Why, this is a double pleasure!" exclaimed
Lerouge, briskly seizing the outstretched hand. "The father of a noble
son must perforce be a noble father. So Andrée says, and Andrée has
good intuitions.--Here, Andrée; Jean's father! Just to think of
meeting him on an occasion like this!"
Neither Lerouge nor his sister knew of the estrangement between Jean
and his home. They had puzzled their heads in vain as to the reasons
for Jean's retirement to the Rue St. Jacques, but were inclined to
attribute it to politics or business reverses.
"Ah! so this is Monsieur Lerouge,--of Nantes," remarked the old
gentleman when he got an opening.
"Of Nantes," repeated Lerouge.
"And this is Andrée,--bless your sweet face!--and--and,"--turning a
quizzical look on the wondering Jean,--"and 'the woman'!"
It was now Lerouge's turn to be astonished. Jean and the girl
attempted to conceal their rising color by casting their eyes upon the
floor. Marot père was master of the situation.
"Your father was a noted surgeon," he continued, still holding the
girl's hand.
"One of the best of his time," said Henri, proudly.
"And your mother----"
"Is dead, monsieur."
"Ah!"
The look of pain that passed swiftly over M. Marot's face was
reflected in an audible sigh.
"One of the best of women," he went on, musingly,--"and you are the
living image of your mother when I last saw her. Her name, too----"
"Oh, monsieur!" interrupted Andrée, excitedly, "you knew my mother,
then?"
"So well, my dear girl, that I asked her to be my wife."
"Ah!"
"Oh, monsieur!"
"Father!"
"That is the truth. It is the additional truth that my cousin, the
doctor, got her."
"My father was your cousin?" asked Lerouge. "Why, I come right by the
family resemblance, Jean!"
"Yes," laughingly retorted the latter, "and the family temper."
"I was not aware that your mother again married," observed M. Marot.
"Yes,--Monsieur Frédéric Remy, the father of Andrée, here," said
Henri. "Alas! neither he nor my mother long survived the loss of their
younger daughter."
"Then there is yet another child?"
"Was," replied the young man, sadly. "For Louise, who was two years
younger than Andrée, disappeared one day----"
"Disappeared!"
"Yes; and has never been heard of to this date. She was scarcely three
years old. Whether she wandered away or was stolen, is dead or living,
we do not know. She was never seen again."
"What a terrible blow! What a terrible blow!" murmured the elder
Marot, thinking of the unhappy mother.
Mlle. Fouchette had reappeared a few moments before,--just in time to
hear this family history. But she immediately returned to the kitchen,
where she sank upon a low stool and bowed her face in her hands.
"Fouchette! Here, Fouchette!"
It was Jean's peremptory voice.
She hastily roused herself. She re-entered the little salon, and upon
a sign from Jean conducted Henri Lerouge and his sister to Jean's
bedroom, where she assisted Mlle. Remy to remove her hat. For up to
this time the party had been grouped in running conversation without
having settled down.
"How you tremble, child!" exclaimed Andrée,--"and you look so scared
and pale. Is it, then, so bad as all that? What is the matter? Have
they been quarrelling? I don't understand."
"Andrée!" whispered her brother, warningly. "Remember the salt woman!"
Mlle. Fouchette raised one little nervous finger to her lips and
gently closed the door.
"Pray do not seem to notice," she whispered. "But you did not know,
then, that Jean and his father have been estranged, oh! for months?
That the poor young man had been cast off,--forsaken by father and
mother----"
"But why?" insisted Mlle. Remy. "It must have been something
dreadful,--some horrible mistake, I mean. Why should----"
The confusion of Mlle. Fouchette was too evident to press this
questioning. And it was increased by the curious manner in which the
pair regarded her.
For a single instant she had wavered. She had secretly pressed her
lips to her sister's dress, and she felt that she could give the whole
world for one little loving minute in her sister's arms.
"Fouchette!"
At least one dilemma relieved her from another; so she flew to answer
Jean's call, like the well-trained servant she was fast becoming.
"That's right, Fouchette. I'm glad to find you more attentive to our
guests than I am. But I've been so confoundedly upset--and
everlastingly happy. We shall want another plate. Yes, my father will
honor us. I say, Fouchette, what a night! What a night!"
"I am so glad, Monsieur Jean! I am so glad!"
He considered her an instant and then hustled her into the kitchen and
shut the door. "Let us consult a moment, my petite ménagère," were his
last words to be overheard. In the kitchen he took her hands in his.
"Look here, Fouchette! I owe my happiness to you. Everything, mind
you,--everything!"
"But have I not been happy, too?"
"There! For what you have done for me I could not repay you in a
lifetime, little one."
"Then don't try, Monsieur Jean," she retorted, as if annoyed.
"And I'm going to ask you to increase the obligation. It is that you
will continue to preserve the character you have assumed,--just for
this occasion, you know. It will save me from----"
"Ah, çà! It is not much, Monsieur Jean," she interrupted, with a
seraphic smile. "To be your servant, monsieur, is---- I mean, to do
anything to please you is happiness."
"You are good, Fouchette,--so good! And when I think that I have no
way to repay you----"
"Have I laid claim to reward?" she interposed, suddenly withdrawing
her hands. "Have I asked for anything?"
"No, no! that is the worst of it!"
"Only your friendship,--your--your esteem, monsieur,--it is enough.
Yet now that your affairs are all right and that you are happy, we
must--must part,--it will be necessary,--and--and----" There was a
pleading note in her low voice.
"Well?"
"You have been a brother,--a sort of a brother and protector to me,
anyhow, you know, and it would wrong--nobody----"
The blood had slowly mounted to her neck as she spoke and the lips
quivered a little as she offered them.
It was the last, and when he was gone she felt that it would
strengthen her and enable her to bear up under the burden she had laid
upon herself. She went about the additional preparations for the
dinner mechanically.
There was not a happier quartette in all Paris on this eventful
evening than that which sat around the little table in Jean Marot's
humble appartement in ancient Rue St. Jacques.
And poor little Mlle. Fouchette!
The very sharpness of the contrast made her patient, resolute
abnegation more beautiful, her sacrifice more complete, her poignant
suffering more divine. Unconsciously she rose towards the elevated
plane of the Christ. She wore the crown of thorns in her heart; on her
face shone the superhuman smile of sainthood.
If in his present sudden and overwhelming happiness Jean forgot Mlle.
Fouchette except when she was actually before him he must be forgiven.
But neither his father nor Henri Lerouge was so blind, though the
latter evidently saw Mlle. Fouchette from a totally different point of
view.
The gracious manner and encouraging smile of Mlle. Remy happily
diverted Fouchette from the consideration of her critics. Every kind
word and every smile went home to Mlle. Fouchette. And for the moment
she gave way to the pleasure they created, as a stray kitten leans up
against a warm brick. Sometimes it seemed as if she must break down
and throw herself upon the breast of this lovely girl and claim her
natural right to be kept there, forever next to her heart!
At these moments she had recourse to her kitchen, where she had time
to recover her equilibrium. But Fouchette was a more than ordinarily
self-possessed young woman. She had been educated in a severe school,
though one in which the emotions were permitted free range. It was
love now which required the curb.
She served the dinner mechanically, but she served it well. Amid the
wit and badinage she preserved the shelter of her humble station.
Yet she knew that she was the frequent subject of their conversation.
She saw that she was being covertly scrutinized by Lerouge. And, what
was harder to bear, the elder Marot showed his sympathy by
good-natured comments on her appearance and service. The cry of
"Fouchette!" recalling her to all this from her refuge in the kitchen
invariably sent a tremor through her slender frame.
"Henri said you were so practical!" laughingly remarked Mlle. Andrée.
"And am I not?" asked Jean, looking around the room.
"Not a bit! There is nothing practical here,--no,--and your Fouchette
is the most impossible of all."
"Ah, Jean!" broke in Henri, "this Fouchette,--come now, tell us about
her."
"With proper reservations," said M. Marot, seriously.
"No; everything!" cried Andrée.
She could see that it teased him, and persisted. "Anybody would know
that she is not a common servant. Look at her hands!"
"I've seen your Fouchette somewhere under different circumstances,"
muttered Lerouge, "but I can't just place her."
"Well," said Jean, after a moment's reflection, "she is an uncommon
servant."
He began to see that some frankness was the quickest way out of an
unpleasant subject. "The fact is, as she has already told my father,
Fouchette is an artist's model and lives next door to me. She takes
care of my rooms for a consideration. But all the money in the world
would not repay what I owe her,--quite all of my present happiness!
Let me add, my dear mademoiselle, that the less attention you show
her, the less you seem to notice her, the better she will like it."
"How interesting!" cried Andrée; "and how unsatisfactory!"
"Very," said her brother, with a meaning smile.
"Some day, mademoiselle, I will tell you,--not now. I beg you to
excuse me just now."
"Certainly, monsieur; but, pardon me, she must be ill,--and her face
is heavenly!"
"Is it?" asked Jean. "I had not noticed. Perhaps because one heavenly
face is all I can see at the same time."
"Ah, monsieur!"
She tried to hide her confusion in a sip of champagne.
M. Marot and Lerouge became suddenly interested in a sketch upon the
wall and rose, puffing their cigars, to make a closer and more
leisurely examination.
Jean's hand somehow came in contact with Andrée's,--does any one know
how these things come about?--and the girl's cheeks grew more rosy
than usual. She straightway forgot Mlle. Fouchette. Her eyes were
lowered and she gently removed her hand from the table.
"Here is the true model for an artist," said he.
"But I never sat," she declared.
"Oh, don't be too sure."
"Never; wouldn't I remember it?"
"Perhaps not. One doesn't always remember everything."
She blushed through her smile. She had unconsciously yielded her hand
again.
They talked airy nothings that conceal the thoughts. Then, in a few
minutes, she discovered that his hand again covered hers and was
innocently caressing it. She drew it away in alarm.
"Do not take it away! Are we not cousins, mademoiselle?"
"Oh, yes; funny, isn't it? Long-lost cousins!" She laughed merrily.
"And now that we are found----"
"It seems to me as if I had known you a long time," she
continued,--"for years and years! Or, perhaps it is
because--because----"
"Come! let me show you something," he interrupted, still retaining the
hand, "some poor sketches of mine."
He led her to the portfolio-stand in the corner and seated himself at
her feet.
The elder connoisseurs, meanwhile, had taken the sketch in which they
were interested from its place on the wall to the better light at the
table.
"'La Petite Chatte.'"
"An expressive title, truly."
"Why, its Mademoiselle Fouchette!" exclaimed M. Marot, holding the
picture off at arm's length.
"It is, indeed! And the real Fouchette as I last beheld her at the
notorious Café Barrate. It's the 'Savatière'! That solves a mystery."
Lerouge thereupon took M. Marot by the arm, replaced the picture on
the wall, and led the old gentleman to the corner farthest from that
occupied by the younger couple, and there the two conversed over their
cigars in a low tone for a long time.
In that time they had mutually disposed of the other couple,--Henri
Lerouge, as brother and legal custodian of Mlle. Andrée Remy; M.
Marot, as father of Jean Marot. They had not only agreed that these
two should marry, but had arranged as to the amount of the "dot" of
the girl and the settlement upon the young man. Mlle. Andrée had two
hundred and fifty thousand francs in her own right, but the chief
consideration in the case was, to M. Marot, the fact that she was the
daughter of the beautiful woman whom he had once loved. For this
consideration he agreed to double the amount of her dot and give his
son a junior partnership in the silk manufactory at Lyons.
This arrangement had no relation whatever to the sentiment existing
between the young couple. It would have been concluded, just the same,
if they had not loved.
In French matrimonial matters love is a mere detail. The parents, or
those who stand in the place of parents, are the absolute masters, and
therefore the high contracting powers. Sons as well as daughters are
subject to this will until after marriage. It is a custom strong as
statute law. If inclination coincide with parental desire, well and
good; if not, a social system which rears young orphan girls to feed
the insatiate lust of Paris winks at the secret lover and the
mistress.
With the reasonable certainty of the approval of both father and
brother and with a heart surcharged with love for the sweet girl whom
he felt was not indifferent to him, Jean had reason to feel happy and
confident. As they bent over the pictures they formed a charming
picture themselves.
"Really, monsieur!"
Mlle. Remy saw herself reproduced with such faithfulness that she
started.
"Well?"
Jean looked up in her face with all his passion concentrated in his
eyes.
She was bending over the head of a young girl with a profusion of fair
hair down upon her shoulders, and she forgot. Another showed the same
face in a pen-and-ink profile, with the same glorious hair.
"They are amateurish----"
"Au contraire," she interrupted, "they are quite--but Henri did not
tell me, monsieur, that you were an artist."
"And he was right, cousin."
She had turned her face away from the light, so he could not see her
blushes. For these pictures told a story of love more vividly and more
eloquently than words. She was trying to piece out that which remained
untold.
"The pictures are well done, Cousin Jean,--and your model----"
"Fouchette."
"Oh, yes; I see now! She is a model, truly!"
Mlle. Remy seemed to derive a good deal of satisfaction from this
conclusion.
[Illustration: IT WAS A CRITICAL MOMENT]
"But," she added, quickly, "do you think she looks so much like me?"
"A mere suggestion," he said.
"It is curious,--very curious, mon--Cousin Jean; but do you know----"
Their heads were very close together. Unconsciously their lips met.
Mlle. Fouchette had been engaged in the work of washing dishes. It was
an excuse to kill time and something to occupy her attention. As she
carefully arranged everything in its place she realized that it was
for the last occasion. She knew her work was done. So she made
everything particularly bright and clean. The dessert dishes and
glasses were still on the table, and she had stepped out cautiously
and timidly to fetch them. It was a critical moment.
With the noiseless tread of a scared animal she turned back again into
the kitchen, and, closing the door softly, leaned against it with
ghostly face. She quickly stuffed the corner of her apron into her
mouth to keep back the scream of agony that involuntarily rose to her
lips. Her thin hands were tightly clinched and her body half drawn
into a knot.
"Ah! mon Dieu! mon Dieu!"
Even the Saviour stumbled and fell beneath the heavy cross He had
assumed to insure the happiness of others.
And Mlle. Fouchette was only a poor little, weak, nervous, ignorant
woman, groping blindly along the same rugged route of her Calvary.
Unconsciously the same despairing cry had broken from her lips.
"Fouchette!"
It was Jean's voice.
Half fainting, half terror-stricken at her unfortunate position, she
drew a needle from the bosom of her dress and thrust it into her
thigh--twice.
"Fouchette!"
"Yes, monsieur!"
"That poor girl is certainly ill, Je--Cousin Jean," said Mlle. Remy,
sympathetically.
"Nonsense!" he lightly replied.
He wished to spare the unhappy Fouchette this attention. "She has
worked too hard. Drop it till to-morrow, little one," he said, gently.
"You must let things alone for to-night."
"Indeed, it is nothing, monsieur. I must clear away these dessert
dishes----"
"Have a glass of wine," insisted Andrée, putting her arm
affectionately about the slender waist and pouring out a glass of
champagne.
Lerouge regarded them with a frown of disapproval. Turning to M.
Marot, he said,--
"You were congratulating France just now upon a new ministry,
monsieur. At least the new ministry ought to give us a new set of
spies. Don't you think----"
But the wine-glass broke the last sentence, as it fell to the floor
with a crash.
Only the protecting arm of Mlle. Remy sustained the drooping figure
for a moment, then Jean and his affianced bride bore it gently to the
model's home.