Time, whatever may be said of it by the calendars, is not to be measured
by days, weeks, and months in all cases; expectation, hope, happiness
and grief have very different ways of counting hours, and we know from
our own experience that some are as short as a minute, and others as
long as a century. The love or the suffering of those who can tell just
how long they have suffered, or just how long they have been in love, is
only moderate and reasonable.
Madame d’Argy found the two lonely years she passed awaiting the return
of her son, who was winning his promotion to the rank of ensign, so
long, that it seemed to her as if they never would come to an end. She
had given a reluctant consent to his notion of adopting the navy as a
profession, thinking that perhaps, after all, there might be no harm
in allowing her dear boy to pass the most dangerous period of his youth
under strict discipline, but she could not be patient forever! She
idolized her son too much to be resigned to living without him; she felt
that he was hers no longer. Either he was at sea or at Toulon, where
she could very rarely join him, being detained at Lizerolles by the
necessity of looking after their property. With what eagerness she
awaited his promotion, which she did not doubt was all the Nailles
waited for to give their consent to the marriage; of their happy
half-consent she hastened to remind them in a note which announced the
new grade to which he had been promoted. Her indignation was great on
finding that her formal request received no decided answer; but, as her
first object was Fred’s happiness, she placed the reply she had received
in its most favorable light when she forwarded it to the person whom
it most concerned. She did this in all honesty. She was not willing
to admit that she was being put off with excuses; still less could she
believe in a refusal.
She accepted the excuse that M. de Nailles gave for returning no decided
answer, viz.: that “Jacqueline was too young,” though she answered him
with some vehemence: “Fred was born when I was eighteen.” But she had to
accept it. Her ensign would have to pass a few more months on the
coast of Senegal, a few more months which were made shorter by the
encouragement forwarded to him by his mother, who was careful to
send him everything she could find out that seemed to be, or that
she imagined might be, in his favor; she underlined such things and
commented upon them, so as to make the faintest hypothesis seem a
certainty. Sometimes she did not even wait for the post. Fred would
find, on putting in at some post, a cablegram: “Good news,” or “All goes
well,” and he would be beside himself with joy and excitement until,
on receiving his poor, dear mother’s next letter, he found out on how
slight a foundation her assurance had been founded.
Sometimes, she wrote him disagreeable things about Jacqueline, as if she
would like to disenchant him, and then he said to himself: “By this, I
am to understand that my affairs are not going on well; I still count
for little, notwithstanding my promotion.” Ah! if he could only
have had, so near the beginning of his career, any opportunity of
distinguishing himself! No brilliant deed would have been too hard for
him. He would have scaled the very skies. Alas! he had had no chance
to win distinction, he had only had to follow in the beaten track of
ordinary duty; he had encountered no glorious perils, though at St.
Louis he had come very near leaving his bones, but it was only a case of
typhoid fever. This fever, however, brought about a scene between M. de
Nailles and his mother.
“When,” she cried, with all the fury of a lioness, “do you expect to
come to the conclusion that my son is a suitable match for Jacqueline?
Do you imagine that I shall let him wait till he is a post-captain to
satisfy the requirements of Mademoiselle your daughter--provided he does
not die in a hospital? Do you think that I shall be willing to go
on living--if you can call it living!--all alone and in continual
apprehension? Why do you let him keep on in uncertainty? You know his
worth, and you know that with him Jacqueline would be happy. Instead of
that--instead of saying once for all to this young man, who is more in
love with her than any other man will ever be: ‘There, take her, I give
her to you,’ which would be the straightforward, sensible way, you go on
encouraging the caprices of a child who will end by wasting, in the
life you are permitting her to lead, all the good qualities she has and
keeping nothing but the bad ones.”
“Mon Dieu! I can’t see that Jacqueline leads a life like that!” said M.
de Nailles, who felt that he must say something.
“You don’t see, you don’t see! How can any one see who won’t open his
eyes? My poor friend, just look for once at what is going on around you,
under your own roof--”
“Jacqueline is devoted to music,” said her father, good-humoredly.
Madame d’Argy in her heart thought he was losing his mind.
And in truth he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more
anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle--not for life;
that might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and noble--but
for superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own
part, he cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to
exertion by those near to him, who insisted on extravagances.
“Oh! yes, Jacqueline, I know, is devoted to music,” went on Madame
d’Argy, with an air of extreme disapproval, “too much so! And when she
is able to sing like Madame Strahlberg, what good will it do her?
Even now I see more than one little thing about her that needs to
be reformed. How can she escape spoiling in that crowd of Slavs and
Yankees, people of no position probably in their own countries, with
whom you permit her to associate? People nowadays are so imprudent about
acquaintances! To be a foreigner is a passport into society. Just think
what her poor mother would have said to the bad manners she is adopting
from all parts of the globe? My poor, dear Adelaide! She was a genuine
Frenchwoman of the old type; there are not many such left now. Ah!”
continued Madame d’Argy, without any apparent connection with her
subject, “Monsieur de Talbrun’s mother, if he had one, would be truly
happy to see him married to Giselle!”
“But,” faltered M. de Nailles, struck by the truth of some of these
remarks, “I make no opposition--quite the contrary--I have spoken
several times about your son, but I was not listened to!”
“What can she say against Fred?”
“Nothing. She is very fond of him, that you know as well as I do.
But those childish attachments do not necessarily lead to love and
marriage.”
“Friendship on her side might be enough,” said Madame d’Argy, in the
tone of a woman who had never known more than that in marriage. “My poor
Fred has enthusiasm and all that, enough for two. And in time she will
be madly in love with him--she must! It is impossible it should be
otherwise.”
“Very good, persuade her yourself if you can; but Jacqueline has a
pretty strong will of her own.”
Jacqueline’s will was a reality, though the ideas of M. de Nailles may
have been illusion.
“And my wife, too!” resumed the Baron, after a long sigh. “I don’t
know how it is, but Jacqueline, as she has grown up, has become like an
unbroken colt, and those two, who were once all in all to each other,
are now seldom of one mind. How am I to act when their two wills cross
mine, as they often do? I have so many things on my mind. There are
times when--”
“Yes, one can see that. You don’t seem to know where you are. And do
you think that the disposition she shows to act, as you say, like an
unbroken colt, is nothing to me? Do you think I am quite satisfied
with my son’s choice? I could have wished that he had chosen for his
wife--but what is the use of saying what I wished? The important thing
is that he should be happy in his own way. Besides, I dare say the young
thing will calm down of her own accord. Her mother’s daughter must be
good at heart. All will come right when she is removed from a circle
which is doing her no good; it is injuring her in people’s opinion
already, you must know. And how will it be by-and-bye? I hear people
saying everywhere: ‘How can the Nailles let that young girl associate so
much with foreigners?’ You say they are old school-fellows, they went to
the ‘cours’ together. But see if Madame d’Etaples and Madame Ray, under
the same pretext, let Isabelle and Yvonne associate with the Odinskas!
As to that foolish woman, Madame d’Avrigny, she goes to their house
to look up recruits for her operettas, and Madame Strahlberg has one
advantage over regular artists, there is no call to pay her. That is the
reason why she invites her. Besides which, she won’t find it so easy to
marry Dolly.”
“Oh! there are several reasons for that,” said the Baron, who could see
the mote in his neighbor’s eye, “Mademoiselle d’Avrigny has led a life
so very worldly ever since she was a child, so madly fast and lively,
that suitors are afraid of her. Jacqueline, thank heaven, has never yet
been in what is called the world. She only visits those with whom she is
on terms of intimacy.”
“An intimacy which includes all Paris,” said Madame d’Argy, raising her
eyes to heaven. “If she does not go to great balls, it is only because
her stepmother is bored by them. But with that exception it seems to me
she is allowed to do anything. I don’t see the difference. But, to be
sure, if Jacqueline is not for us, you have a right to say that I am
interfering in what does not concern me.”
“Not at all,” said the unfortunate father, “I feel how much I ought to
value your advice, and an alliance with your family would please me more
than anything.”
He said the truth, for he was disturbed by seeing M. de Cymier so slow
in making his proposals, and he was also aware that young girls in our
day are less sought for in marriage than they used to be. His friend
Wermant, rich as he was, had had some trouble in capturing for Berthe a
fellow of no account in the Faubourg St. Germain, and the prize was not
much to be envied. He was a young man without brains and without a sou,
who enjoyed so little consideration among his own people that his wife
had not been received as she expected, and no one spoke of Madame de
Belvan without adding: “You know, that little Wermant, daughter of the
‘agent de change’.”
Of course, Jacqueline had the advantage of good birth over Berthe,
but how great was her inferiority in point of fortune! M. de Nailles
sometimes confided these perplexities to his wife, without, however,
receiving much comfort from her. Nor did the Baroness confess to her
husband all her own fears. In secret she often asked herself, with the
keen insight of a woman of the world well trained in artifice and who
possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind, whether there might not be
women capable of using a young girl so as to put the world on a
wrong scent; whether, in other words, Madame de Villegry did not talk
everywhere about M. de Cymier’s attentions to Mademoiselle de Nailles
in order to conceal his relations to herself? Madame de Villegry indeed
cared little about standing well in public opinion, but rather the
contrary; she would not, however, for the world have been willing,
by too openly favoring one man among her admirers, to run the risk of
putting the rest to flight. No doubt M. de Cymier was most assiduous in
his attendance on the receptions and dances at Madame de Nailles’s, but
he was there always at the same time as Madame de Villegry herself. They
would hold whispered conferences in corners, which might possibly have
been about Jacqueline, but there was no proof that they were so, except
what Madame de Villegry herself said. “At any rate,” thought Madame de
Nailles, “if Fred comes forward as a suitor it may stimulate Monsieur de
Cymier. There are men who put off taking a decisive step till the last
moment, and are only to be spurred up by competition.”
So every opportunity was given to Fred to talk freely with Jacqueline
when he returned to Paris. By this time he wore two gold-lace stripes
upon his sleeve. But Jacqueline avoided any tete-a-tete with him as if
she understood the danger that awaited her. She gave him no chance of
speaking alone with her. She was friendly--nay, sometimes affectionate
when other people were near them, but more commonly she teased him,
bewildered him, excited him. After an hour or two spent in her society
he would go home sometimes savage, sometimes desponding, to ponder in
his own room, and in his own heart, what interpretation he ought to put
upon the things that she had said to him.
The more he thought, the less he understood. He would not have confided
in his mother for the world; she might have cast blame on Jacqueline.
Besides her, he had no one who could receive his confidences, who would
bear with his perplexities, who could assist in delivering him from
the network of hopes and fears in which, after every interview with
Jacqueline, he seemed to himself to become more and more entangled.
At last, however, at one of the soirees given every fortnight by Madame
de Nailles, he succeeded in gaining her attention.
“Give me this quadrille,” he said to her.
And, as she could not well refuse, he added, as soon as she had taken
his arm: “We will not dance, and I defy you to escape me.”
“This is treason!” she cried, somewhat angrily. “We are not here to
talk; I can almost guess beforehand what you have to say, and--”
But he had made her sit down in the recess of that bow-window which
had been called the young girls’ corner years ago. He stood before her,
preventing her escape, and half-laughing, though he was deeply moved.
“Since you have guessed what I wanted to say, answer me quickly.”
“Must I? Must I, really? Why didn’t you ask my father to do your
commission? It is so horribly disagreeable to do these things for one’s
self.”
“That depends upon what the things may be that have to be said. I should
think it ought to be very agreeable to pronounce the word on which the
happiness of a whole life is to depend.”
“Oh! what a grand phrase! As if I could be essential to anybody’s
happiness? You can’t make me believe that!”
“You are mistaken. You are indispensable to mine.”
“There! my declaration has been made,” thought Fred, much relieved that
it was over, for he had been afraid to pronounce the decisive words.
“Well, if I thought that were true, I should be very sorry,” said
Jacqueline, no longer smiling, but looking down fixedly at the pointed
toe of her little slipper; “because--”
She stopped suddenly. Her face flushed red.
“I don’t know how to explain to you;” she said.
“Explain nothing,” pleaded Fred; “all I ask is Yes, nothing more. There
is nothing else I care for.”
She raised her head coldly and haughtily, yet her voice trembled as she
said:
“You will force me to say it? Then, no! No!” she repeated, as if to
reaffirm her refusal.
Then, alarmed by Fred’s silence, and above all by his looks, he who had
seemed so gay shortly before and whose face now showed an anguish such
as she had never yet seen on the face of man, she added:
“Oh, forgive me!--Forgive me,” she repeated in a lower voice, holding
out her hand. He did not take it.
“You love some one else?” he asked, through his clenched teeth.
She opened her fan and affected to examine attentively the pink
landscape painted on it to match her dress.
“Why should you think so? I wish to be free.”
“Free? Are you free? Is a woman ever free?”
Jacqueline shook her head, as if expressing vague dissent.
“Free at least to see a little of the world,” she said, “to choose, to
use my wings, in short--”
And she moved her slender arms with an audacious gesture which had
nothing in common with the flight of that mystic dove upon which she had
meditated when holding the card given her by Giselle.
“Free to prefer some other man,” said Fred, who held fast to his idea
with the tenacity of jealousy.
“Ah! that is different. Supposing there were anyone whom I liked--not
more, but differently from the way I like you--it is possible. But you
spoke of loving!”
“Your distinctions are too subtle,” said Fred.
“Because, much as it seems to astonish you, I am quite capable of seeing
the difference,” said Jacqueline, with the look and the accent of a
person who has had large experience. “I have loved once--a long time
ago, a very long time ago, a thousand years and more. Yes, I loved some
one, as perhaps you love me, and I suffered more than you will ever
suffer. It is ended; it is over--I think it is over forever.”
“How foolish! At your age!”
“Yes, that kind of love is ended for me. Others may please me, others do
please me, as you said, but it is not the same thing. Would you like
to see the man I once loved?” asked Jacqueline, impelled by a juvenile
desire to exhibit her experience, and also aware instinctively that to
cast a scrap of past history to the curious sometimes turns off their
attention on another track. “He is near us now,” she added.
And while Fred’s angry eyes, under his frowning brows, were wandering
all round the salon, she pointed to Hubert Marien with a movement of her
fan.
Marien was looking on at the dancing, with his old smile, not so
brilliant now as it had been. He now only smiled at beauty collectively,
which was well represented that evening in Madame de Nailles’s salon.
Young girls ‘en masse’ continued to delight him, but his admiration as
an artist became less and less personal.
He had grown stout, his hair and beard were getting gray; he was
interested no longer in Savonarola, having obtained, thanks to his
picture, the medal of honor, and the Institute some months since had
opened its doors to him.
“Marien? You are laughing at me!” cried Fred.
“It is simply the truth.”
Some magnetic influence at that moment caused the painter to turn his
eyes toward the spot where they were talking.
“We were speaking of you,” said Jacqueline.
And her tone was so singular that he dared not ask what they were
saying. With humility which had in it a certain touch of bitterness he
said, still smiling:
“You might find something better to do than to talk good or evil of a
poor fellow who counts now for nothing.”
“Counts for nothing! A fellow to be pitied!” cried Fred, “a man who has
just been elected to the Institute--you are hard to satisfy!”
Jacqueline sat looking at him like a young sorceress engaged in sticking
pins into the heart of a waxen figure of her enemy. She never missed an
opportunity of showing her implacable dislike of him.
She turned to Fred: “What I was telling you,” she said, “I am quite
willing to repeat in his presence. The thing has lost its importance
now that he has become more indifferent to me than any other man in the
world.”
She stopped, hoping that Marien had understood what she was saying
and that he resented the humiliating avowal from her own lips that her
childish love was now only a memory.
“If that is the only confession you have to make to me,” said Fred, who
had almost recovered his composure, “I can put up with my former rival,
and I pass a sponge over all that has happened in your long past of
seventeen years and a half, Jacqueline. Tell me only that at present you
like no one better than me.”
She smiled a half-smile, but he did not see it. She made no answer.
“Is he here, too--like the other!” he asked, sternly.
And she saw his restless eyes turn for an instant to the conservatory,
where Madame de Villegry, leaning back in her armchair, and Gerard
de Cymier, on a low seat almost at her feet, were carrying on their
platonic flirtation.
“Oh! you must not think of quarrelling with him,” cried Jacqueline,
frightened at the look Fred fastened on De Cymier.
“No, it would be of no use. I shall go out to Tonquin, that’s all.”
“Fred! You are not serious.”
“You will see whether I am not serious. At this very moment I know a man
who will be glad to exchange with me.”
“What! go and get yourself killed at Tonquin for a foolish little girl
like me, who is very, very fond of you, but hardly knows her own mind.
It would be absurd!”
“People are not always killed at Tonquin, but I must have new interests,
something to divert my mind from--”
“Fred! my dear Fred”--Jacqueline had suddenly become almost tender,
almost suppliant. “Your mother! Think of your mother! What would she
say? Oh, my God!”
“My mother must be allowed to think that I love my profession better
than all else. But, Jacqueline,” continued the poor fellow, clinging in
despair to the very smallest hope, as a drowning man catches at a straw,
“if you do not, as you said, know exactly your own mind--if you would
like to question your own heart--I would wait--”
Jacqueline was biting the end of her fan--a conflict was taking place
within her breast. But to certain temperaments there is pleasure in
breaking a chain or in leaping a barrier; she said:
“Fred, I am too much your friend to deceive you.”
At that moment M. de Cymier came toward them with his air of assurance:
“Mademoiselle, you forget that you promised me this waltz,” he said.
“No, I never forget anything,” she answered, rising.
Fred detained her an instant, saying, in a low voice:
“Forgive me. This moment, Jacqueline, is decisive. I must have an
answer. I never shall speak to you again of my sorrow. But decide
now--on the spot. Is all ended between us?”
“Not our old friendship, Fred,” said Jacqueline, tears rising in her
eyes.
“So be it, then, if you so will it. But our friendship never will show
itself unless you are in need of friendship, and then only with the
discretion that your present attitude toward me has imposed.”
“Are you ready, Mademoiselle,” said Gerard, who, to allow them to
end their conversation, had obligingly turned his attention to some
madrigals that Colette Odinska was laughing over.
Jacqueline shook her head resolutely, though at that moment her heart
felt as if it were in a vise, and the moisture in her eyes looked like
anything but a refusal. Then, without giving herself time for further
thought, she whirled away into the dance with M. de Cymier. It was over,
she had flung to the winds her chance for happiness, and wounded a heart
more cruelly than Hubert Marien had ever wounded hers. The most horrible
thing in this unending warfare we call love is that we too often repay
to those who love us the harm that has been done us by those whom we
have loved. The seeds of mistrust and perversity sown by one man or by
one woman bear fruit to be gathered by some one else.