Yseulte the next day was sitting writing a German theme in the
children's room, of which the windows opened on the gardens, when
Alain de Vannes, with a cigarette in his mouth, pushed open the glass
door and sauntered in from the open air.
'Well, my cousin,' he said gaily. 'Here you are, shut up like a little
mouse. What nonsense it is! German? What good will that do you? When
the _revanche_ comes, we shall speak with bullets and they will
understand as we understood. Pardieu! When they burnt my woods in
Charente!--I had a ball in my ribs at Saarbrück; did you know it?
Where were you? In Paris?--during the siege? A baby like you! Is it
possible!'
'There were many other little children there,' said the girl with a
shudder; she had been such a little child then, that the horror of the
time had left an ineffaceable mark upon her.
'Of course, of course,' said the Duc, seating himself on the edge of
the table. 'But not many of your rank. Most people got away. Ah, to be
sure, I remember your uncles de Creusac were both shot; yes, we all
lost heavily; it is no use thinking of it; but I would give my life to
enter Berlin. _Tiens!_ this is not what I came to say, but you make
one serious; why will you not laugh? Do you know that we have a ball
next week?'
'I heard Blanchette saying so.'
'Ah, the little cat! She knows everything. Now, this ball--would you
not like to come to it, instead of being shut up in your room writing
crabbed German characters?'
'It is impossible.'
While she said the cruel word firmly, her heart gave a great leap of
longing that was almost hope.
'Not impossible; perhaps difficult,' said de Vannes, with a smile as
he threw his cigar out on to the grass. 'But I think I could persuade
Cri-Cri; it is a shame for you to be shut up; you will have enough of
that all your life if you go where they say.'
Yseulte was silent; her heart was still beating tumultuously, she
breathed quickly.
'How handsome she is!' thought the Duc. 'She only wants that flush of
life to be perfect. Women are like alabaster lamps, unlit until they
learn envy and desire. When that flame is lighted, then the alabaster
glows.'
He stooped his head and kissed her hand, but he did it with a
different touch to Othmar's, and she coloured with a sense of pain and
anger.
'_Ma mie!_' he murmured. 'I will undertake to combat successfully the
scruples of your cousin; you shall see the ball next week. Cri-Cri
shall find you a frock, and jewels you want none; you have the supreme
jewel--youth; crowns are dull without it; and, let our dear women use
what arts they may, they cannot counterfeit it. I will be your good
genius, Yseulte, and open your prison doors. You will not refuse me a
little gratitude--a little goodwill? Something quite simple and
commonplace will content me, you see, but you must give it _de bon
coeur_.'
The words were harmless, and said little, but his eyes as they were
bent upon her said much; much more than he knew. There was a look in
them which lighted their pale blue with a fire from which she shrank
by instinct, as from something which scorched and hurt her. The eyes
of Alain de Vannes, like those of most men who have lived his life and
had his experiences, were cold, jaded, passionless in repose, but when
amorous, were cruel, eager, rapacious. Yseulte drew her hand from him;
her heart sank five fathoms deep, but she gathered up all her courage.
'You are very good, _M. mon cousin_,' she said with a ceremonious
coldness worthy of one twice her years. 'But do not trouble yourself
for me. That sort of pleasure would not accord with the life that I am
always to lead. I do not know the world; I do not wish to know it; it
is never to have anything to do with me; it is better I should not
even see it, I might only regret.'
She said the little speech bravely, not faltering once, though to make
it cost her a pang, but she crushed out all her natural longings, all
her wistful instincts, all her youthful dreams to do so; flowers
plucked up by the roots and thrown down at the foot of the altars of
Marie. But even at this moment the altar still seemed to her that
which she had been always told that it was, a refuge sweet, safe,
unfailing. A refuge from what? She did not know, but a vague fear had
assailed her.
De Vannes looked at her with surprise and irritation; at the bottom of
his heart he was himself ashamed of the unholy wishes which had
awakened in him, of the treacherous temptations which he had begun to
put in the path of a girl who was his own guest, his wife's relative,
and whose position ought in its sheer defencelessness to have been her
best safeguard with any man of honour. He was not without honour, in a
loose fashion, but he was very unscrupulous when his fancy was
excited. If before her retirement to the religious life she should
have an 'affaire,' and if that 'affaire' should have himself for its
hero, it did not seem to him that anything terrible would have taken
place. What was the use of occupying a high position if one could not
successfully conduct and cover a little intrigue like that?
At the same time he knew that his designs would scarcely be condoned,
even by the very light-minded set amongst which he lived, if it were
seriously known that he endeavoured to be the first to corrupt his
young cousin. Therefore her words struck a certain nerve of
susceptibility within him; he felt a kind of compunction before that
serious and guileless regard. Yet he was very angry. He, Alain de
Vannes, who never looked at a _fillette_, who never deigned to notice
any lesser thing than some of the famous beauties of the great world,
or of the half-world, had taken the infinite trouble to distinguish
this child, to seek her and to offer her his influence and protection,
and she had repulsed him, with her hands lying crossed on her German
books and her rose-leaf cheeks growing neither the warmer nor the
colder for his regard.
He rose, and his eyebrows contracted in a heavy frown. He was a
good-humoured man usually, but in such rare times as his will was
crossed he had the petulance and the malice of a spoiled child.
'You are not wise, _fillette_,' he said, with a little laugh. 'I would
be a good friend to you, and you may want one before you are safe in
the bosom of Our Lady. I wonder the ball did not tempt you. You would
have seen your friend Othmar--and Madame Napraxine.'
Then he pulled the glass door open with an impatient hand, and went
out into the grounds without, leaving behind him the odour of his
cigarette and the sting of his last words.
Blanchette peeped in from behind a silk curtain; her saucy babyish
eyes were full of curiosity and wonder.
'_Tiens_, Yseulte,' she said, running up to her cousin, 'I heard all
papa said. Why should he want you at the ball, and why should you not
go? You are a goose, such a goose! You know papa can always make mamma
do what he chooses. He always threatens to send away M. de Prangins.'
Then Blanchette laughed, curling herself up in a little ball at her
cousin's feet.
'You should not say such wicked things, Blanchette,' said Yseulte;
'and it is very shameful and dishonourable to listen anywhere
unseen----'
Blanchette made a _pied de nez_ with her little rosy fingers, with all
the mockery and insolence of Gavrôche himself.
'You are vulgar as well as wicked,' said her cousin sadly, as she
looked away.
'It is distinguished to be vulgar, now,' said the little ten-year-old
Parisienne. 'All the great ladies are, except Madame Napraxine; she is
always wrapped up in herself. She has no _entrain_, she cares for
nothing. She is not at all my model. Listen! If you were not such an
idiot, you would see that _petit papa_ is in love with you, ever so
much in love! Why don't you get all kinds of things out of him while
he is in the humour? He would buy you all the Palais Royal if you knew
how to manage him, and mamma will not say anything as long as the
Marquis Raymond is here.'
'Blanchette!' cried the girl, indignantly. She rose to her feet; a
flood of shame seemed to roll over her.
The insolent, malicious turquoise eyes of Blanchette amused themselves
with her horror and trouble.
'You are such a baby!' said the child again, contemptuously. 'You
never seem to understand anything. Me, I understand it all. I shall
_do_ it all when I am married. I shall be just like mamma. It is the
Marquis Raymond now; it was the Prince Jacques last year. I liked the
Prince Jacques best. He gave me an orchestra of monkeys; you wound it
up and all the monkeys played--fife, drum, clarionet, flute, too-too,
too-too, tra-la-la-la! The marquis has never given me anything, except
a sack of bonbons he might have bought at St. Cloud. If he do not give
me something very good at new year, I shall say out loud in the salon,
when a lot of people are making visits: "You are not as nice as Prince
Jacques!" And how he will look, because he always frets and fumes
about the prince! I think they fought about mamma. Oh, it must be such
fun to be a woman! I wish, I wish, I wish I were fifteen. I would be
so naughty, they would have to marry me to-morrow! If you were not a
goose you would be as naughty as ever you could be. They would get you
a husband then; papa would see to it.'
'Blanchette!' cried Yseulte, again, in desperation, not knowing how to
stem the tide of the child's words. She, like Blanchette herself, was
ignorant of all the horrible import of those words which the little
thing used, half in malicious precocious knowledge, and half in
absolute childish ignorance; but they terrified her and appalled her
both in themselves and for their speaker, and for all which, even to
her innocence, they suggested of unspeakable inconceivable
shamefulness.
'Blanchette!' echoed the child, mimicking the horror and expostulation
of her cry. 'Oh, how glad I am I have Schemmitz and Brawn to teach me
instead of going to a convent to be made a goose of like you.
Schemmitz and Brawn are old owls, but I keep my eyes and my ears open
at Trouville, at Biarritz, in Paris, here, anywhere, everywhere. Now,
in your nunnery you see no more, you hear no more, than if you were a
statue in a chapel. That is why you are so stupid. _Tiens!_ Why did
papa call Count Othmar your friend? Is he your friend? You are as
still as a mouse about everything.'
Her quick glance saw the colour mount into her cousin's face, and the
cruel child laughed triumphantly. 'Oh, how you blush, oh-oh! Nobody
blushes now-a-days. One must be old-fashioned like you to be so silly.
_I_ shall never blush. _Tiens_, Yseulte, tell me all about it and I
will not tell Toinon.'
'There is nothing to tell,' said Yseulte, almost losing her patience.
'Papa never says anything without meaning something by it,' said
Blanchette, sagaciously. 'And if there be nothing, why should you
blush? I know all about Count Othmar; he is rich--oh, so rich! Nobody
was ever so rich outside the _Juiverie_; I heard them say so this
autumn at Aix. But all he cares about is Princess Napraxine. Have you
ever seen Princess Napraxine? She drives in the Bois with three horses
in the Russian way; the one in the middle is a little in front of the
others, and they have only little bits of silver for harness, and they
fly--ouf! I mean to marry a Russian.'
'Is she so very beautiful?' said Yseulte, in a low tone, ashamed of
questioning the child, and yet impelled by an irresistible desire to
hear more of this wondrous sovereign.
'_Pas tant que ça!_' said Blanchette, critically. 'But she is much
more than only handsome. She makes every one that goes near her mad
about her. She is pale, and has great eyes; but there is no one like
her, they say. What do you think they call her? They call her Flocon
de Neige. She cares for nobody, you know; that is what they mean. She
is not at all what I admire; what I admire is the Duchesse d'Ambrée.
_Elle sait se faire une tête!_'--continued Blanchette, growing
breathless, and powerless to express her immense admiration.
Madame d'Ambrée was a blonde, with a profusion of real gold curls,
cheeks admirably tinted, and a tiny Cupid's bow of a mouth; a great
huntress, a great swimmer, a great smoker; she had very extravagant
toilettes, and very loud manners, and was a really great lady, with
the language of a cantinière: she was the object of the child's
idolatry.
'I will be just like that,' Blanchette said to herself whenever she
saw Madame d'Ambrée walking on the planks at Trouville, going into the
casino at Aix, or driving her piebald ponies round the Bois.
Blanchette admired her own mother immensely, but she admired the
Duchesse d'Ambrée still more.
'_Maman baisse un peu_,' she often said to her sister, with a little
scornful smile. She knew that her mother was twenty-eight; to
Blanchette that age seemed to be quite hopeless decrepitude.
'Yseulte,' she said, suddenly now, 'if you do not give me your silver
prayer-book, I shall tell mamma about you and papa. _Dis donc, sois
sage._ Give me the silver Hours.'
The silver prayer-book had belonged to a Marquise de Creusac, in the
time of Louis Treize. It was adorned with illuminated letters, and the
coronet and initials were set in opals on one side of the silver
cover. Yseulte had been given the book by her grandmother on her
death-bed; she used it always, and it was the object of Blanchette's
desires.
'You know that I cannot give it you,' said Yseulte, gently. 'It was my
grandmother's last gift; it is an heirloom.'
Blanchette looked up from under her yellow hair.
'You had better give it me. _Sois sage!_'
She had the same expression--half menace, half malice--that her father
had had.
'I cannot,' repeated her cousin, 'I have told you so, dear, a hundred
times. I should not have a moment's peace if I parted with that book.'
Blanchette said nothing more, but she made a wheel of herself on the
school-room floor, as she had seen the boys do on the pavement in
Paris. 'Comme on est bête! Comme on est bête!' she kept thinking in
her shrewd little mind, as she stood on her wise little skull with all
the dexterity of any street-boy.
Blanchette at ten years old had already resolved the problem of life
with great simplicity; its solution seemed to her to consist in
getting whatever you wanted by being detestable whenever you did not
get it.
On the night of the ball, when the first carriages rolled up to the
_perron_ of Millo, Yseulte, who had gone to bed at ten o'clock, but
had not slept, rose and went to her window, which looked on the front
of the house. The illuminations of the building and of the grounds
were so brilliant that the light was almost as strong as day. The
awnings hid from her sight the steps at which the arriving guests
descended, but she could see the carriages as they came up toward
them, and she could hear the Suisse bawl out the names of those who
arrived one after another; amongst them some of the greatest names of
Europe. At twelve she heard the name of Othmar; but she had not seen
him, for the blinds of his brougham were down.
An hour and a half later, almost the last of the apparently endless
succession of champing horses and lamp-lit coupés, she saw one
carriage of which the window next her was lowered as it drove up; she
could see within it a very lovely woman, with a little tiara of
diamonds on her head, and a great bouquet, made entirely of gardenias,
in her hand, and a cloak of gold tissue, lined with ermine, drawn up
as high as her mouth. The lady's profile, delicate as if it were cut
in ivory, with something satirical and mutinous in its expression, was
all that Yseulte could see of her; but she felt that in that moment
she had looked on the Princess Napraxine. In effect, as the carriage
rolled beneath the awning, the sonorous Muscovite name was shouted by
the waiting lackeys.
The girl withdrew from the casement and shut the shutters; she did not
want to see any more.
She lay down again, but she did not sleep. The sound of dance music,
played by the band of the ball-room, echoed through all the villa,
which was a light modern structure, and had little solidity in it. She
did not care for the dancing; she hardly knew what it was like; but
she thought of the lovely woman with the pretty contemptuous profile,
and the diamonds and the gardenias in her hair. She could not sleep
for thinking of her; she was there below in the light, amidst the
music and the flowers, and Othmar was there too. The visitants which
Alain de Vannes had wished should go to her, envy and regret, entered
her innocent soul, and made sad ravages there, as when a rat runs
amidst a white rose and pulls its blossoms down.
Sleep kept aloof from her; she was ashamed of her own thoughts, but
the dawn found her with hot wide-open eyes. The music was still
sounding, like a tireless, immortal thing that shouted and laughed for
its pleasure. It was only the first notes of the cotillon; but to
Yseulte it sounded like the song of triumph of the world--that world
which she would never know.
All her nuns and priests could not perhaps have read her a sounder
homily than the house mutely spoke when she went timidly downstairs
and through its many rooms at sunrise.
The flowers covering the balustrades and walls of the staircase were
dying; the sleepy servants were turning out the gas, putting out the
wax candles; other servants were drinking champagne and smoking
cigars as they hurried to clear away the supper tables; in the
ball-room there was a litter of dropped flowers, torn lace, discarded
cotillon toys, atoms of fringe and of ribbon which looked scarcely
better than rags; the torches were still flaming amongst the scorched
clusters of azaleas and roses; in the vestibule two gentlemen who had
stayed to drink some black coffee were putting on their furs and
yawning miserably; Alain de Vannes, as he sauntered upstairs, was
muttering, 'C'est crevant!--un bal chez soi:--on ne me reprendra
jamais!' and a maid of his wife's was recounting her griefs to a tall
powdered lackey, with sobs of rage; 'Madame m'a donnée des gifles,
mais des gifles!--enfin--elle tomba de sommeil et puis le petit
Prangins n'a pas été gentil pour elle, du tout, du tout, ce soir!'