IN the course of a day or two, a handsome carriage drew up in front
of Mrs. Scudder’s cottage, and a brilliant party alighted. They were
Colonel and Madame de Frontignac, the Abbé Léfon, and Colonel Burr.
Mrs. Scudder and her daughter, being prepared for the call, sat in
afternoon dignity and tranquillity, in the best room, with their
knitting-work.
Madame de Frontignac had divined, with the lightning-like tact
which belongs to women in the positive, and to French women in the
superlative degree, that there was something in the cottage-girl, whom
she had passingly seen at the party, which powerfully affected the man
whom she loved with all the jealous intensity of a strong nature, and
hence she embraced eagerly the opportunity to see her,—yes, to see her,
to study her, to dart her keen French wit through her, and detect the
secret of her charm, that she, too, might practise it.
Madame de Frontignac was one of those women whose beauty is so striking
and imposing, that they seem to kindle up, even in the most prosaic
apartment, an atmosphere of enchantment. All the pomp and splendour of
high life, the wit, the refinements, the nameless graces and luxuries
of courts, seemed to breathe in invisible airs around her, and she made
a Faubourg St. Germain of the darkest room into which she entered.
Mary thought, when she came in, that she had never seen anything so
splendid. She was dressed in a black velvet riding-habit, buttoned to
the throat with coral; her riding-hat drooped with its long plumes
so as to cast a shadow over her animated face, out of which her dark
eyes shone like jewels, and her pomegranate cheeks glowed with the
rich shaded radiance of one of Rembrandt’s pictures. Something quaint
and foreign, something poetic and strange, marked each turn of her
figure, each article of her dress, down to the sculptured hand on which
glittered singular and costly rings,—and the riding-glove, embroidered
with seed-pearls, that fell carelessly beside her on the floor.
In Antwerp one sees a picture in which Rubens, who felt more than
any other artist the glory of the physical life, has embodied his
conception of the Madonna, in opposition to the faded, cold ideals of
the Middle Ages, from which he revolted with such a bound. _His_ Mary
is a superb Oriental sultana, with lustrous dark eyes, redundant form,
jewelled turban, standing leaning on the balustrade of a princely
terrace, and bearing on her hand, _not_ the silver dove, but a gorgeous
paroquet. The two styles, in this instance, were both in the same room;
and as Burr sat looking from one to the other, he felt, for a moment,
as one would who should put a sketch of Overbeck’s beside a splendid
painting of Titian’s.
For a few moments, everything in the room seemed faded and cold, in
contrast with the tropical atmosphere of this regal beauty. Burr
watched Mary with a keen eye, to see if she were dazzled and overawed.
He saw nothing but the most innocent surprise and delight. All the
slumbering poetry within her seemed to awaken at the presence of her
beautiful neighbour,—as when one, for the first time, stands before
the great revelations of Art. Mary’s cheek glowed, her eyes seemed to
grow deep with the enthusiasm of admiration, and, after a few moments,
it seemed as if her delicate face and figure reflected the glowing
loveliness of her visitor, just as the virgin snows of the Alps become
incarnadine as they stand opposite the glorious radiance of a sunset
sky.
Madame de Frontignac was accustomed to the effect of her charms; but
there was so much love in the admiration now directed towards her,
that her own warm nature was touched, and she threw out the glow of
her feelings with a magnetic power. Mary never felt the cold, habitual
reserve of her education so suddenly melt, never felt herself so
naturally falling into language of confidence and endearment with a
stranger; and as her face, so delicate and spiritual, grew bright with
love, Madame de Frontignac thought she had never seen anything so
beautiful, and stretching out her hands towards her, she exclaimed, in
her own language,—
‘_Mais, mon Dieu! mon enfant, que tu es belle!_’
Mary’s deep blush, at her ignorance of the language in which her
visitor spoke, recalled her to herself;—she laughed a clear, silvery
laugh, and laid her jewelled little hand on Mary’s with a caressing
movement.
‘_He_ shall not teach you French, _ma toute belle_,’ she said,
indicating the Abbé, by a pretty, wilful gesture; ‘_I_ will teach
you;—and you shall teach me English. Oh I shall try _so_ hard to
learn!’ she said.
There was something inexpressibly pretty and quaint in the childish
lisp with which she pronounced English. Mary was completely won over.
She could have fallen into the arms of this wondrously beautiful fairy
princess, expecting to be carried away by her to Dreamland.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Scudder was gravely discoursing with Colonel Burr and
M. de Frontignac; and the Abbé, a small and gentlemanly personage, with
clear black eye, delicately-cut features, and powdered hair, appeared
to be absorbed in his efforts to follow the current of a conversation
imperfectly understood. Burr, the while, though seeming to be entirely
and politely absorbed in the conversation he was conducting, lost not
a glimpse of the picturesque aside which was being enacted between the
two fair ones whom he had thus brought together. He smiled quietly when
he saw the effect Madame de Frontignac produced on Mary.
‘After all, the child has flesh and blood!’ he thought, ‘and may feel
that there are more things in heaven and earth than she has dreamed of
yet. A few French ideas won’t hurt her.’
The arrangements about lessons being completed, the party returned to
the carriage. Madame de Frontignac was enthusiastic in Mary’s praise.
‘_Cependant_,’ she said, leaning back, thoughtfully, after having
exhausted herself in superlatives,—‘_cependant elle est dévote,—et à
dix-neuf comment cela se peut-il?_’
‘It is the effect of her austere education,’ said Burr. ‘It is not
possible for you to conceive how young people are trained in the
religious families of this country.’
‘But yet,’ said Madame, ‘it gives her a grace altogether peculiar;
something in her looks went to my heart. I could find it very easy to
love her, because she is really good.’
‘The Queen of Hearts should know all that is possible in loving,’ said
Burr.
Somehow, of late, the compliments which fell so readily from those
graceful lips had brought with them an unsatisfying pain. Until a woman
really _loves_, flattery and compliment are often like her native air;
but when that deeper feeling has once awakened in her, her instincts
become marvellously acute to detect the false from the true. Madame de
Frontignac longed for one strong, unguarded, real, earnest word from
the man who had stolen from her her whole being. She was beginning to
feel in some dim wise what an untold treasure she was daily giving for
tinsel and dross. She leaned back in the carriage, with a restless,
burning cheek, and wondered why she was born to be so miserable. The
thought of Mary’s saintly face and tender eyes rose before her as the
moon rises on the eyes of some hot and fevered invalid, inspiring vague
yearnings after an unknown, unattainable peace.
Could some friendly power once have made her at that time clairvoyant
and shown her the _reality_ of the man whom she was seeing through
the prismatic glass of her own enkindled ideality! Could she have
seen the calculating quietness in which, during the intervals of a
restless and sleepless ambition, he played upon her heart-strings, as
one uses a musical instrument to beguile a passing hour,—how his only
embarrassment was the fear that the feelings he was pleased to excite
might become too warm and too strong, while as yet his relations to her
husband were such as to make it dangerous to arouse his jealousy! And
if he could have seen that pure ideal conception of himself which alone
gave him power in the heart of this woman,—that spotless, glorified
image of a hero without fear, without reproach,—would he have felt a
moment’s shame and abasement at its utter falsehood?
The poet says that the Evil Spirit stood abashed when he saw virtue in
an angel form! How would a man, then, stand, who meets face to face
his own glorified, spotless ideal, made living by the boundless faith
of some believing heart? The best must needs lay his hand on his mouth
at this apparition; but woe to him who feels no redeeming power in the
sacredness of this believing dream,—who with calculating shrewdness
_uses_ this most touching miracle of love only to corrupt and destroy
the loving! For him there is no sacrifice for sin, no place for
repentance. His very mother might shrink in her grave to have him laid
beside her.
Madame de Frontignac had the high, honourable nature of the old blood
of France, and a touch of its romance. She was strung heroically, and
educated according to the notions of her caste and church, purely and
religiously. True it is, that one can scarcely call _that_ education
which teaches woman everything except herself,—_except_ the things
that relate to her own peculiar womanly destiny, and, on plea of the
holiness of ignorance, sends her without one word of just counsel
into the temptations of life. Incredible as it may seem, Virginie
de Frontignac had never read a romance or work of fiction of which
love was the staple; the _régime_ of the convent in this regard was
inexorable; at eighteen she was more thoroughly a child than most
American girls at thirteen. On entrance into life, she was at first so
dazzled and bewildered by the mere contrast of fashionable excitement
with the quietness of the scenes in which she had hitherto grown up,
that she had no time for reading or thought,—all was one intoxicating
frolic of existence, one dazzling, bewildering dream.
He whose eye had measured her for his victim verified, if ever man
did, the proverbial expression of the iron hand under the velvet
glove. Under all his gentle suavities there was a fixed, inflexible
will, a calm self-restraint, and a composed philosophical measurement
of others, that fitted him to bear despotic rule over an impulsive,
unguarded nature. The position, at once accorded to him, of her
instructor in the English language and literature, gave him a thousand
daily opportunities to touch and stimulate all that class of finer
faculties, so restless and so perilous, and which a good man approaches
always with a certain awe. It is said that he once asserted that he
never beguiled a woman who did not come half-way to meet him,—an
observation much the same as a serpent might make in regard to his
birds.
The visit of the morning was followed by several others. Madame
de Frontignac seemed to conceive for Mary one of those passionate
attachments which women often conceive for anything fair and
sympathizing, at those periods when their whole inner being is made
vital by the approaches of a grand passion. It took only a few visits
to make her as familiar as a child at the cottage; and the whole air
of the Faubourg St. Germain seemed to melt away from her, as, with
the pliability peculiar to her nation, she blended herself with the
quiet pursuits of the family. Sometimes, in simple straw hat and white
wrapper, she would lie down in the grass under the apple-trees, or join
Mary in an expedition to the barn for hen’s eggs, or a run along the
sea-beach for shells; and her childish eagerness and delight on these
occasions used to arouse the unqualified astonishment of Mrs. Katy
Scudder.
The Doctor she regarded with a _naïve_ astonishment, slightly
tinctured with apprehension. She knew he was very religious, and
stretched her comprehension to imagine what he might be like. She
thought of Bossuet’s sermons walking about under a Protestant coat,
and felt vaguely alarmed and sinful in his presence, as she used to
when entering under the shadows of a cathedral. In her the religious
sentiment, though vague, was strong. Nothing in the character of Burr
had ever awakened so much disapprobation as his occasional sneers at
religion. On such occasions she always reproved him with warmth, but
excused him in her heart, because he was brought up a heretic. She held
a special theological conversation with the Abbé, whether salvation
were possible to one outside of the True Church,—and had added to her
daily prayer a particular invocation to the Virgin for him.
The French lessons with her assistance proceeded prosperously. She
became an inmate in Mrs. Marvyn’s family also. The brown-eyed,
sensitive woman loved her as a new poem; she felt enchanted by her;
and the prosaic details of her household seemed touched to poetic life
by her innocent interest and admiration. The young Madame insisted on
being taught to spin at the great wheel; and a very pretty picture she
made of it, too, with her earnest gravity of endeavour, her deepening
cheek, her graceful form, with some strange foreign scarf or jewelry
waving and flashing in odd contrast with her work.
‘Do you know,’ she said, one day, while thus employed in the north
room at Mrs. Marvyn’s,—‘do you know Burr told me that princesses used
to spin? He read me a beautiful story from the “Odyssey,” about how
Penelope cheated her lovers with her spinning, while she was waiting
for her husband to come home;—_he_ was gone to sea, Mary,—her _true_
love,—you understand.’
She turned on Mary a wicked glance, so full of intelligence that the
snowdrop grew red as the inside of a sea-shell.
‘_Mon enfant!_ thou hast a thought _deep in here_!’ she said to Mary,
one day, as they sat together in the grass under the apple-trees.
‘Why, what?’ said Mary, with a startled and guilty look.
‘Why, what? _petite!_’ said the fairy princess, whimsically mimicking
her accent. ‘_Ah! ah! ma belle!_ you think I have no eyes;—Virginie
sees deep in here!’ she said, laying her hand playfully on Mary’s
heart. ‘_Ah, petite!_’ she said, gravely, and almost sorrowfully, ‘if
you love him, wait for him,—_don’t marry another!_ It is dreadful not
to have one’s heart go with one’s duty.’
‘I shall never marry anybody,’ said Mary.
‘Nevare marrie anybodie!’ said the lady, imitating her accents in tones
much like those of a bobolink. ‘Ah! ah! my little saint, you cannot
always live on nothing but the prayers, though prayers are verie good.
But, _ma chère_,’ she added, in a low tone, ‘don’t you ever marry that
good man in there; priests should not marry.’
‘Ours are not priests,—they are ministers,’ said Mary. ‘But why do you
speak of him?—he is like my father.’
‘Virginie sees something!’ said the lady, shaking her head gravely;
‘she sees he loves little Mary.’
‘Of course he does!’
‘Of-course-he-does?—ah, yes; and by-and-by comes the mamma, and she
takes this little hand, and she says, “Come, Mary!” and then she gives
it to him; and then the poor _jeune homme_, when he comes back, finds
not a bird in his poor little nest. _Oh, c’est ennuyeux cela!_’ she
said, throwing herself back in the grass till the clover heads and
buttercups closed over her.
‘I do assure you, dear Madame!’—
‘I do assure you, dear Mary, _Virginie knows_. So lock up her words in
your little heart; you will want them some day.’
There was a pause of some moments, while the lady was watching the
course of a cricket through the clover. At last, lifting her head, she
spoke very gravely,—
‘My little cat! it is _dreadful_ to be married to a good man, and
want to be good, and want to love him, and yet never like to have him
take your hand, and be more glad when he is away than when he is at
home; and then to think how different it would all be, if it was only
somebody else. That will be the way with you, if you let them lead you
into this; so don’t you do it, _mon enfant_.’
A thought seemed to cross Mary’s mind, as she turned to Madame de
Frontignac, and said, earnestly,—
‘If a good man were my husband, I would never think of another,—I
wouldn’t let myself.’
‘How could you help it, _mignonne_? Can you stop your thinking?’
Mary said, after a moment’s blush,—
‘I can _try_!’
‘Ah, yes! But to try all one’s life,—oh, Mary, that is too hard! Never
do it, darling!’
And then Madame de Frontignac broke out into a carolling little French
song, which started all the birds around into a general orchestral
accompaniment.
This conversation occurred just before Madame de Frontignac started for
Philadelphia, whither her husband had been summoned as an agent in some
of the ambitious intrigues of Burr.
It was with a sigh of regret that she parted from her friends at the
cottage. She made them a hasty good-bye call,—alighting from a splendid
barouche with two white horses, and filling their simple best room with
the light of her presence for a last half-hour. When she bade good-bye
to Mary, she folded her warmly to her heart, and her long lashes
drooped heavily with tears.
After her absence, the lessons were still pursued with the gentle,
quiet little Abbé, who seemed the most patient and assiduous of
teachers; but, in both houses, there was that vague _ennui_, that sense
of want, which follows the fading of one of life’s beautiful dreams! We
bid her adieu for a season;—we may see her again.