“But I can not see any reason why we should not take Jacqueline with us
to Italy. She is just of an age to profit by it.”
These words were spoken by M. de Nailles after a long silence at the
breakfast-table. They startled his hearers like a bomb.
Jacqueline waited to hear what would come next, fixing a keen look upon
her stepmother. Their eyes met like the flash of two swords.
The eyes of the one said: “Now, let us hear what you will answer!” while
the other strove to maintain that calmness which comes to some people in
a moment of danger. The Baroness grew a little pale, and then said, in
her softest tones:
“You are quite right, ‘mon ami’, but Jacqueline, I think, prefers to
stay.”
“I decidedly prefer to stay,” said Jacqueline.
Her adversary, much relieved by this response, could not repress a sigh.
“It seems singular,” said M. de Nailles.
“What! that I prefer to pass a month or six weeks with Madame d’Argy?
Besides, Giselle is going to be married during that time.”
“They might put it off until we come back, I should suppose.”
“Oh! I don’t think they would,” cried the Baroness. “Madame de Monredon
is so selfish. She was offended to think we should talk of going away
on the eve of an event she considers so important. Besides, she has so
little regard for me that I should think her more likely to hasten the
wedding-day rather than retard it, if it were only for the pleasure of
giving us a lesson.”
“I am sorry. I should have been glad to be, as she wished, one
of Giselle’s witnesses, but people don’t take my position into
consideration. If I do not take advantage of the recess--”
“Besides,” interrupted Jacqueline, carelessly, “your journey must
coincide with that of Monsieur Marien.”
She had the pleasure of seeing her stepmother again slightly change
color. Madame de Nailles was pouring out for herself a cup of tea with
singular care and attention.
“Of course,” said M. de Nailles. His daughter pitied him, and cried,
with an increasing wish to annoy her stepmother: “Mamma, don’t you
see that your teapot has no tea in it? Yes,” she went on, “it must be
delightful to travel in Italy in company with a great artist who would
explain everything; but then one would be expected to visit all the
picture-galleries, and I hate pictures, since--”
She paused and again looked meaningly at her stepmother, whose soft blue
eyes showed anguish of spirit, and seemed to say: “Oh, what a cruel hold
she has upon me!” Jacqueline continued, carelessly--“Picture-galleries I
don’t care for--I like nature a hundred times better. Some day I should
like to take a journey to suit myself, my own journey! Oh, papa, may I?
A journey on foot with you in the Tyrol?”
Madame de Nailles was no great walker.
“Both of us, just you and I alone, with our alpenstocks in our hands--it
would be lovely! But Italy and painters--”
Here, with a boyish flourish of her hands, she seemed to send that
classic land to Jericho!
“Do promise me, papa!”
“Before asking a reward, you must deserve it,” said her father,
severely, who saw something was wrong.
During her stay at Lizerolles, which her perverseness, her resentment,
and a repugnance founded on instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer
to a journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it
into her head to write to her friend Fred. The young man received three
letters at three different ports in the Mediterranean and in the West
Indies, whose names were long associated in his mind with delightful and
cruel recollections. When the first was handed to him with one from his
mother, whose letters always awaited him at every stopping-place, the
blood flew to his face, his heart beat violently, he could have cried
aloud but for the necessity of self-command in the presence of his
comrades, who had already remarked in whispers to each other, and with
envy, on the pink envelope, which exhaled ‘l’odor di femina’. He hid his
treasure quickly, and carried it to a spot where he could be alone;
then he kissed the bold, pointed handwriting that he recognized at once,
though never before had it written his address. He kissed, too, more
than once, the pink seal with a J on it, whose slender elegance reminded
him of its owner. Hardly did he dare to break the seal; then forgetting
altogether, as we might be sure, his mother’s letter, which he knew
beforehand was full of good advice and expressions of affection, he
eagerly read this, which he had not expected to receive:
“LIZEROLLES, October, 5, 188-
“MY DEAR FRED:
“Your mother thinks you would be pleased to receive a letter from
me, and I hope you will be. You need not answer this if you do not
care to do so. You will notice, ‘par parenthese’, that I take this
opportunity of saying you and not thou to you. It is easier to
change the familiar mode of address in writing than in speaking, and
when we meet again the habit will have become confirmed. But, as I
write, it will require great attention, and I can not promise to
keep to it to the end. Half an hour’s chat with an old friend will
also help me to pass the time, which I own seems rather long, as it
is passed by your sweet, dear mother and myself at Lizerolles. Oh,
if you were only here it would be different! In the first place,
we should talk less of a certain Fred, which would be one great
advantage. You must know that you are the subject of our discourse
from morning to night; we talk only of the dangers of the seas, the
future prospects of a seaman, and all the rest of it. If the wind
is a little higher than usual, your mother begins to cry; she is
sure you are battling with a tempest. If any fishing-boat is
wrecked, we talk of nothing but shipwrecks; and I am asked to join
in another novena, in addition to those with which we must have
already wearied Notre Dame de Treport. Every evening we spread out
the map: ‘See, Jacqueline, he must be here now--no, he is almost
there,’ and lines of red ink are traced from one port to another,
and little crosses are made to show the places where we hope you
will get your letters--‘Poor boy, poor, dear boy!’ In short,
notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is
sometimes too much for me. In fact, I think I must be very fond of
thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss.
There! In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said
thee! That ought to gild the pill for you!
“We do not go very frequently to visit Treport, except to invoke for
you the protection of Heaven, and I like it just as well, for since
the last fortnight in September, which was very rainy, the beach is
dismal--so different from what it was in the summer. The town looks
gloomy under a cloudy sky with its blackened old brick houses! We
are better off at Lizerolles, whose autumnal beauties you know so
well that I will say nothing about them.--Oh, Fred, how often I
regret that I am not a boy! I could take your gun and go shooting
in the swamps, where there are clouds of ducks now. I feel sure
that if you were in my place, you could kill time without killing
game; but I am at the end of my small resources when I have played a
little on the piano to amuse your mother and have read her the
‘Gazette de France’. In the evening we read a translation of some
English novel. There are neighbors, of course, old fogies who stay
all the year round in Picardy--but, tell me, don’t you find them
sometimes a little too respectable? My greatest comfort is in your
dog, who loves me as much as if I were his master, though I can not
take him out shooting. While I write he is lying on the hem of my
gown and makes a little noise, as much as to tell me that I recall
you to his remembrance. Yet you are not to suppose that I am
suffering from ennui, or am ungrateful, nor above all must you
imagine that I have ceased to love your excellent mother with all my
heart. I love her, on the contrary, more than ever since I passed
this winter through a great, great sorrow--a sorrow which is now
only a sad remembrance, but which has changed for me the face of
everything in this world. Yes, since I have suffered myself, I
understand your mother. I admire her, I love her more than ever.
“How happy you are, my dear Fred, to have such a sweet mother,--
a real mother who never thinks about her face, or her figure, or her
age, but only of the success of her son; a dear little mother in a
plain black gown, and with pretty gray hair, who has the manners and
the toilette that just suit her, who somehow always seems to say:
‘I care for nothing but that which affects my son.’ Such mothers are
rare, believe me. Those that I know, the mothers of my friends, are
for the most part trying to appear as young as their daughters--nay,
prettier, and of course more elegant. When they have sons they make
them wear jackets a l’anglaise and turn-down collars, up to the age
when I wore short skirts. Have you noticed that nowadays in Paris
there are only ladies who are young, or who are trying to make
themselves appear so? Up to the last moment they powder and paint,
and try to make themselves different from what age has made them.
If their hair was black it grows blacker--if red, it is more red.
But there is no longer any gray hair in Paris--it is out of fashion.
That is the reason why I think your mother’s pretty silver curls so
lovely and ‘distingues’. I kiss them every night for you, after I
have kissed them for myself.
“Have a good voyage, come back soon, and take care of yourself, dear
Fred.”
The young sailor read this letter over and over again. The more he read
it the more it puzzled him. Most certainly he felt that Jacqueline gave
him a great proof of confidence when she spoke to him of some mysterious
unhappiness, an unhappiness of which it was evident her stepmother
was the cause. He could see that much; but he was infinitely far from
suspecting the nature of the woes to which she alluded. Poor Jacqueline!
He pitied her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of
sympathy, and an honest desire to do anything in the world to make her
happy. Was it really possible that she could have been enduring any
grief that summer when she had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a
little flirtation? Young girls must be very skilful in concealing their
inmost feelings! When he was unhappy he had it out by himself, he took
refuge in solitude, he wanted to be done with existence. Everybody knew
when anything went wrong with him. Why could not Jacqueline have let him
know more plainly what it was that troubled her, and why could she not
have shown a little tenderness toward him, instead of assuming, even
when she said the kindest things to him, her air of mockery? And then,
though she might pretend not to find Lizerolles stupid, he could see
that she was bored there. Yet why had she chosen to stay at Lizerolles
rather than go to Italy?
Alas! how that little pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn
things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil--that little pink
letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it crackle
as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near his
heart! It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to overpower
the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the air, to perfume
everything.
“That young fellow has the instincts of a sailor,” said his superior
officers when they saw him standing in attitudes which they thought
denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie. He would stand
with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could
see emerging from the waves a small, brown, shining head, with long hair
streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl he knew so well.
“One can see that he takes an interest in nautical phenomena, that he
is heart and soul in his profession, that he cares for nothing else. Oh,
he’ll make a sailor! We may be sure of that!”
Fred sent his young friend and cousin, by way of reply, a big packet
of manuscript, the leaves of which were of all sizes, over which he
had poured forth torrents of poetry, amorous and descriptive, under the
title: At Sea.
Never would he have dared to show her this if the ocean had not lain
between them. He was frightened when his packet had been sent. His only
comfort was in the thought that he had hypocritically asked Jacqueline
for her literary opinion of his verses; but she could not fail, he
thought, to understand.
Long before an answer could have been expected, he got another letter,
sky-blue this time, much longer than the first, giving him an account of
Giselle’s wedding.
“Your mother and I went together to Normandy, where the marriage was
to take place after the manner of old times, ‘in the fashion of the
Middle Ages,’ as our friends the Wermants said to me, who might
perhaps not have laughed at it had they been invited. Madame de
Monredon is all for old customs, and she had made it a great point
that the wedding should not take place in Paris. Had I been
Giselle, I should not have liked it. I know nothing more elegant or
more solemn than the entrance of a bridal party into the Madeleine,
but we shall have to be content with Saint-Augustin. Still, the
toilettes, as they pass up the aisle, even there, are very
effective, and the decoration of the tall, high altar is
magnificent. Toc! Toc! First come the beadles with their
halberds, then the loud notes of the organ, then the wide doors are
thrown open, making a noise as they turn on their great hinges,
letting the noise of carriages outside be heard in the church; and
then comes the bride in a ray of sunshine. I could wish for nothing
more. A grand wedding in the country is much more quiet, but it is
old-fashioned. In the little village church the guests were very
much crowded, and outside there was a great mob of country folk.
Carpets had been laid down over the dilapidated pavement, composed
principally of tombstones. The rough walls were hung with scarlet.
All the clergy of the neighborhood were present. A Monsignor--
related to the Talbruns--pronounced the nuptial benediction; his
address was a panegyric on the two families. He gave us to
understand that if he did not go back quite as far as the Crusades,
it was only because time was wanting.
“Madame de Monredon was all-glorious, of course. She certainly
looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a
chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with
marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun
--well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be.
To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on
his hands. It is horrid, and it makes him look like an animal. You
have no idea how queer he looked when he sat down, with his big,
pink head just peeping over the back of the crimson velvet chair,
which was, however, almost as tall as he is. He is short, you may
remember. As to our poor Giselle, the prettiest persons sometimes
look badly as brides, and those who are not pretty look ugly. Do
you recollect that picture--by Velasquez, is it not? of a fair
little Infanta stiffly swathed in cloth of gold, as becomes her
dignity, and looking crushed by it? Giselle’s gown was of point
d’Alencon, old family lace as yellow as ancient parchment, but of
inestimable value. Her long corsage, made in the fashion of Anne of
Austria, looked on her like a cuirass, and she dragged after her,
somewhat awkwardly, a very long train, which impeded her movement as
she walked. A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown,
but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the
present dowager’s included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear
little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some
orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or
more ugly. Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face
of misery, and the air of a martyr. For all this her grandmother
scolded her sharply, which of course did not mend matters. ‘Du
reste’, she seemed absorbed in prayer or thought during the
ceremony, in which I took up the offerings, by the way, with a young
lieutenant of dragoons just out of the military school at Saint Cyr:
a uniform always looks well on such occasions. Nor was Monsieur de
Talbrun one of those lukewarm Christians who hear mass with their
arms crossed and their noses in the air. He pulled a jewelled
prayerbook out of his pocket, which Giselle had given him. Speaking
of presents, those he gave her were superb: pearls as big as
hazelnuts, a ruby heart that was a marvel, a diamond crescent that I
am afraid she will never wear with such an air as it deserves, and
two strings of diamonds ‘en riviere’, which I should suppose she
would have reset, for rivieres are no longer in fashion. The stones
are enormous.
“But, poor dear! she could care little for such things. All she
wanted was to get back as quickly as she could into her usual
clothes. She said to me, again and again: ‘Pray God for me that I
may be a good wife. I am so afraid I may not be. To belong to
Monsieur de Talbrun in this world, and in the next; to give up
everything for him, seems so extraordinary. Indeed, I think I
hardly knew what I was promising.’ I felt sorry for her; I kissed
her. I was ready to cry myself, and poor Giselle went on: ‘If you
knew, dear, how I love you! how I love all my friends! really to
love, people must have been brought up together--must have always
known each other.’ I don’t think she was right, but everybody has
his or her ideas about such things. I tried, by way of consoling
her, to draw her attention to the quantities of presents she had
received. They were displayed on several tables in the smaller
drawing-room, but her grandmother would not let them put the name of
the giver upon each, as is the present custom. She said that it
humiliated those who had not been able to make gifts as expensive as
others. She is right, when one comes to think of it. Nor would she
let the trousseau be displayed; she did not think it proper, but I
saw enough to know that there were marvels in linen, muslin, silks,
and surahs, covered all over with lace. One could see that the
great mantua-maker had not consulted the grandmother, who says that
women of distinction in her day did not wear paltry trimmings.
“Dinner was served under a tent for all the village people during
the two mortal hours we had to spend over a repast, in which Madame
de Monredon’s cook excelled himself. Then came complimentary
addresses in the old-fashioned style, composed by the village
schoolmaster who, for a wonder, knew what he was about; groups of
village children, boys and girls, came bringing their offerings,
followed by pet lambs decked with ribbons; it was all in the style
of the days of Madame de Genlis. While we danced in the salons
there was dancing in the barn, which had been decorated for the
occasion. In short; lords and ladies and laborers all seemed to
enjoy themselves, or made believe they did. The Parisian gentlemen
who danced were not very numerous. There were a few friends of
Monsieur de Talbrun’s, however--among them, a Monsieur de Cymier,
whom possibly you remember having seen last summer at Treport; he
led the cotillon divinely. The bride and bridegroom drove away
during the evening, as they do in England, to their own house, which
is not far off. Monsieur de Talbrun’s horses--a magnificent pair,
harnessed to a new ‘caleche’--carried off Psyche, as an old
gentleman in gold spectacles said near me. He was a pretentious old
personage, who made a speech at table, very inappropriate and much
applauded. Poor Giselle! I have not seen her since, but she has
written me one of those little notes which, when she was in the
convent, she used to sign Enfant de Marie. It begged me again to
pray earnestly for her that she might not fail in the fulfilment of
her new duties. It seems hard, does it not? Let us hope that
Monsieur de Talbrun, on his part, may not find that his new life
rather wearies him! Do you know what should have been Giselle’s
fate--since she has a mania about people being thoroughly acquainted
before marriage? What would two or three years more or less have
mattered? She would have made an admirable wife for a sailor; she
would have spent the months of your absence kneeling before the
altar; she would have multiplied the lamentations and the
tendernesses of your excellent mother. I have been thinking this
ever since the wedding-day--a very sad day, after all.
“But how I have let my pen run on. I shall have to put on two
stamps, notwithstanding my thin paper. But then you have plenty of
time to read on board-ship, and this account may amuse you. Make
haste and thank me for it.
“Your old friend,
“JACQUELINE.”
Amuse him! How could he be amused by so great an insult? What! thank her
for giving him over even in thought to Giselle or to anybody? Oh, how
wicked, how ungrateful, how unworthy!
The six pages of foreign-post paper were crumpled up by his angry
fingers. Fred tore them with his teeth, and finally made them into a
ball which he flung into the sea, hating himself for having been so
foolish as to let himself be caught by the first lines, as a foolish
fish snaps at the bait, when, apropos to the church in which she would
like to be married, she had added “But we should have to be content with
Saint-Augustin.”
Those words had delighted him as if they had really been meant for
himself and Jacqueline. This promise for the future, that seemed to
escape involuntarily from her pen, had made him find all the rest of her
letter piquant and amusing. As he read, his mind had reverted to that
little phrase which he now found he had interpreted wrongly. What a
fall! How his hopes now crumbled under his feet! She must have done it
on purpose--but no, he need not blacken her! She had written without
thought, without purpose, in high spirits; she wanted to be witty, to be
droll, to write gossip without any reference to him to whom her letter
was addressed. That we who some day would make a triumphal entry into
St. Augustin would be herself and some other man--some man with whom
her acquaintance had been short, since she did not seem to feel in that
matter like Giselle. Some one she did not yet know? Was that sure? She
might know her future husband already, even now she might have made her
choice--Marcel d’Etaples, perhaps, who looked so well in uniform, or
that M. de Cymier, who led the cotillon so divinely. Yes! No doubt it
was he--the last-comer. And once more Fred suffered all the pangs of
jealousy. It seemed to him that in his loneliness, between sky and sea,
those pangs were more acute than he had ever known them. His comrades
teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all
their jokes in the cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and
at the next port they put into, Jacqueline’s letter was the cause of his
entering for the first time some discreditable scenes of dissipation.
At Bermuda he received another letter, dated from Paris, where
Jacqueline had rejoined her parents, who had returned from Italy. She
sent him a commission. Would he buy her a riding-whip? Bermuda was
renowned for its horsewhips, and her father had decided that she must go
regularly to the riding-school. They seemed anxious now to give her, as
preliminary to her introduction into society, not only such pleasures as
horseback exercise, but intellectual enjoyment also. She had been taken
to the Institute to hear M. Legouve, and what was better still, in
December her stepmother would give a little party every fortnight and
would let her sit up till eleven o’clock. She was also to be taken to
make some calls. In short, she felt herself rising in importance, but
the first thing that had made her feel so was Fred’s choice of her to be
his literary confidant. She was greatly obliged to him, and did not know
how she could better prove to him that she was worthy of so great an
honor than by telling him quite frankly just what she thought of his
verses. They were very, very pretty. He had talent--great talent. Only,
as in attending the classes of M. Regis she had acquired some little
knowledge of the laws of versification, she would like to warn him
against impairing a thought for the benefit of a rhyme, and she pointed
out several such places in his compositions, ending thus:
“Bravo! for sunsets, for twilights, for moonshine, for deep silence, for
starry nights, and silvery seas--in such things you excel; one feels as
if one were there, and one envies you the fairy scenes of ocean. But, I
implore you, be not sentimental. That is the feeble part of your poetry,
to my thinking, and spoils the rest. By the way, I should like to ask
you whose are those soft eyes, that silky hair, that radiant smile, and
all that assortment of amber, jet, and coral occurring so often in your
visions? Is she--or rather, are they--black, yellow, green, or tattooed,
for, of course, you have met everywhere beauties of all colors? Several
times when it appeared as if the lady of your dreams were white, I
fancied you were drawing a portrait of Isabelle Ray. All the girls, your
old friends, to whom I have shown At Sea, send you their compliments,
to which I join my own. Each of them will beg you to write her a sonnet;
but first of all, in virtue of our ancient friendship, I want one
myself.
“JACQUELINE.”
So! she had shown to others what was meant for her alone; what
profanation! And what was more abominable, she had not recognized that
he was speaking of herself. Ah! there was nothing to be done now but to
forget her. Fred tried to do so conscientiously during all his cruise in
the Atlantic, but the moment he got ashore and had seen Jacqueline, he
fell again a victim to her charms.