The arrival of the expected Enguerrand hindered Giselle from pleading
Fred’s cause as soon as she could have wished. Her life for twenty-four
hours was in great danger, and when the crisis was past, which M. de
Talbrun treated very indifferently, as a matter of course, her first cry
was “My baby!” uttered in a tone of tender eagerness such as had never
been heard from her lips before.
The nurse brought him. He lay asleep swathed in his swaddling clothes
like a mummy in its wrappings, a motionless, mysterious being, but he
seemed to his mother beautiful--more beautiful than anything she had
seen in those vague visions of happiness she had indulged in at the
convent, which were never to be realized. She kissed his little purple
face, his closed eyelids, his puckered mouth, with a sort of respectful
awe. She was forbidden to fatigue herself. The wet-nurse, who had been
brought from Picardy, drew near with her peasant cap trimmed with
long blue streamers; her big, experienced hands took the baby from his
mother, she turned him over on her lap, she patted him, she laughed at
him. And the mother-happiness that had lighted up Giselle’s pale face
died away.
“What right,” she thought, “has that woman to my child?” She envied
the horrid creature, coarse and stout, with her tanned face, her bovine
features, her shapeless figure, who seemed as if Nature had predestined
her to give milk and nothing more. Giselle would so gladly have been in
her place! Why wouldn’t they permit her to nurse her baby?
M. de Talbrun said in answer to this question:
“It is never done among people in our position. You have no idea, of all
it would entail on you--what slavery, what fatigue! And most probably
you would not have had milk enough.”
“Oh! who can tell? I am his mother! And when this woman goes he will
have to have English nurses, and when he is older he will have to go to
school. When shall I have him to myself?”
And she began to cry.
“Come, come!” said M. de Talbrun, much astonished, “all this fuss about
that frightful little monkey!”
Giselle looked at him almost as much astonished as he had been at her.
Love, with its jealousy, its transports, its anguish, its delights had
for the first time come to her--the love that she could not feel for her
husband awoke in her for her son. She was ennobled--she was transfigured
by a sense of her maternity; it did for her what marriage does for some
women--it seemed as if a sudden radiance surrounded her.
When she raised her infant in her arms, to show him to those who came
to see her, she always seemed like a most chaste and touching
representation of the Virgin Mother. She would say, as she exhibited
him: “Is he not superb?” Every one said: “Yes, indeed!” out of
politeness, but, on leaving the mother’s presence, would generally
remark: “He is Monsieur de Talbrun in baby-clothes: the likeness is
perfectly horrible!”
The only visitor who made no secret of this impression was Jacqueline,
who came to see her cousin as soon as she was permitted--that is, as
soon as her friend was able to sit up and be prettily dressed, as became
the mother of such a little gentleman as the heir of all the Talbruns.
When Jacqueline saw the little creature half-smothered in the lace
that trimmed his pillows, she burst out laughing, though it was in the
presence of his mother.
“Oh, mon Dieu!” she cried, “how ugly! I never should have supposed we
could have been as ugly as that! Why, his face is all the colors of the
rainbow; who would have imagined it? And he crumples up his little face
like those things in gutta-percha. My poor Giselle, how can you bear to
show him! I never, never could covet a baby!”
Giselle, in consternation, asked herself whether this strange girl,
who did not care for children, could be a proper wife for Fred; but her
habitual indulgence came to her aid, and she thought:
“She is but a child herself, she does not know what she is saying,” and
profiting by her first tete-a-tete with Jacqueline’s stepmother, she
spoke as she had promised to Madame de Nailles.
“A matchmaker already!” said the Baroness, with a smile. “And so soon
after you have found out what it costs to be a mother! How good of you,
my dear Giselle! So you support Fred as a candidate? But I can’t say I
think he has much chance; Monsieur de Nailles has his own ideas.”
She spoke as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any
ideas but her own. When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was
likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband’s having an
opinion of his own.
“Oh! Madame, you can do anything you like with him!”
The clever woman sighed:
“So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains
as much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de
Talbrun? You will learn to know better, my dear.”
“But I have no influence,” murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her
husband’s slave.
“Oh! I know better. You are making believe!”
“Well, but we were not talking about me, but--”
“Oh! yes. I understood. I will think about it. I will try to bring over
Monsieur de Nailles.”
She was not at all disposed to drop the meat for the sake of the shadow,
but she was not sure of M. de Cymier, notwithstanding all that Madame de
Villegry was at pains to tell her about his serious intentions. On the
other hand, she would have been far from willing to break with a man so
brilliant, who made himself so agreeable at her Tuesday receptions.
“Meantime, it would be well if you, dear, were to try to find out what
Jacqueline thinks. You may not find it very easy.”
“Will you authorize me to tell her how well he loves her? Oh, then, I am
quite satisfied!” cried Giselle.
But she was under a mistake. Jacqueline, as soon as she began to speak
to her of Fred’s suit, stopped her:
“Poor fellow! Why can’t he amuse himself for some time longer and let
me do the same? Men seem to me so strange! Now, Fred is one who, just
because he is good and serious by nature, fancies that everybody else
should be the same; he wishes me to be tethered in the flowery meads of
Lizerolles, and browse where he would place me. Such a life would be an
end of everything--an end to my life, and I should not like it at all. I
should prefer to grow old in Paris, or some other capital, if my husband
happened to be engaged in diplomacy. Even supposing I marry--which I do
not think an absolute necessity, unless I can not get rid otherwise of
an inconvenient chaperon--and to do my stepmother justice, she knows
well enough that I will not submit to too much of her dictation!”
“Jacqueline, they say you see too much of the Odinskas.”
“There! that’s another fault you find in me. I go there because Madame
Strahlberg is so kind as to give me some singing-lessons. If you only
knew how much progress I am making, thanks to her. Music is a thousand
times more interesting, I can tell you, than all that you can do as
mistress of a household. You don’t think so? Oh! I know Enguerrand’s
first tooth, his first steps, his first gleams of intelligence, and all
that. Such things are not in my line, you know. Of course I think your
boy very funny, very cunning, very--anything you like to fancy him, but
forgive me if I am glad he does not belong to me. There, don’t you see
now that marriage is not my vocation, so please give up speaking to me
about matrimony.”
“As you will,” said Giselle, sadly, “but you will give great pain to a
good man whose heart is wholly yours.”
“I did not ask for his heart. Such gifts are exasperating. One does not
know what to do with them. Can’t he--poor Fred--love me as I love him,
and leave me my liberty?”
“Your liberty!” exclaimed Giselle; “liberty to ruin your life, that’s
what it will be.”
“Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your
eyes--this life of your own, Giselle. To leave one cage to be shut up
in another--that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are
others who like to use their wings to soar into the air. I like that
expression. Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your
lot is the only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman.”
Giselle answered with a strange smile:
“You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great
things seem to have been revealed to me. When I hold him to my breast
I seem to understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family
ties and sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys. You can
not understand that now, but you will some day. You, too, will gaze
upon the horizon as I do. I am ready to suffer; I am ready for
self-sacrifice. I know now whither my life leads me. I am led, as it
were, by this little being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for
whom I was embroidering caps and dresses. You ask whether I am satisfied
with my lot in life. Yes, I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian
angel, thanks to my precious Enguerrand.”
Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike
her cousin’s usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with
the tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh,
it was in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the
Monredons and the Talbruns.
“How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear,” she answered.
“You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are
not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you
feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your
example?”
“Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun,” said the young wife, for the moment
forgetting herself.
“Do you mean to say--”
“I meant nothing, except that if you married Fred you would have had the
advantage of first knowing him.”
“Ah! that’s your fixed idea. But I am getting to know Monsieur de Cymier
pretty well.”
“You have betrayed yourself,” cried Giselle, with indignation. “Monsieur
de Cymier!”
“Monsieur de Cymier is coming to our house on Saturday evening, and
I must get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to
charm his ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well.
Won’t you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand
can spare you? There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our
accompaniment. Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play
Chopin! He is charming, poor young man! an exile, and in poverty; but he
is cared for by those ladies, who take him everywhere. That is the sort
of life I should like--the life of Madame Strahlberg--to be a young
widow, free to do what I pleased.”
“She may be a widow--but some say she is divorced.”
“Oh! is it you who repeat such naughty scandals, Giselle? Where shall
charity take refuge in this world if not in your heart? I am going--your
seriousness may be catching. Kiss me before I go.”
“No,” said Madame de Talbrun, turning her head away.
After this she asked herself whether she ought not to discourage Fred.
She could not resolve on doing so, yet she could not tell him what was
false; but by eluding the truth with that ability which kind-hearted
women can always show when they try to avoid inflicting pain, she
succeeded in leaving the young man hope enough to stimulate his
ambition.