A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.
The sergeant was intensely amused and interested in the French priest.
He obtained a few days’ leave from his duties, and occupied himself
in showing his guest the sights of an American city. The innocence,
the childishness, and the curiosity of his companion, and, above all,
the attention that he attracted, provided the sergeant with the most
agreeable sensation that he had had for many a day.
Eugene sometimes accompanied them, oftener he did not. He was no longer
cheerful and contented, but had fallen into the reserved, quiet, almost
sullen state in which he had been when Mrs. Hardy first knew him; and
instead of mingling freely with the little family, he preferred to be
left alone in his room, where he sat musing by the hour.
Occasionally he roused himself as the claims of hospitality asserted
themselves in his mind, and he politely endeavored to entertain the
priest by conversations about French matters. To these conversations
the sergeant lent a most attentive ear. He had an immense curiosity on
the subject of foreign countries; and the precocious remarks of Eugene
with regard to the peasant vote, the political clubs, and the rural
life of the nobility in France, with the almost infantile responses of
the curé to the boy’s questions and unfathomable prejudices, formed
subjects on which he would remember to inform himself after they were
gone.
It had been definitely settled that Eugene and the priest were to leave
Boston at the end of the week, and sail across the sea to France.
Mrs. Hardy rarely spoke of the boy’s departure; but when she did, the
reference was made cheerfully, and as if she expected that he would
really go. In the meantime, when she could spare a few hours from
her household duties, she busied herself with making preparations
for his journey by adding to his rather scanty wardrobe. Eugene went
shopping with her while the sergeant and the priest were engaged in
sight-seeing.
Late in the afternoon of the day preceding the one on which they were
to leave, Eugene took the curé aside, and requested his companionship
while he made a call of importance.
“It is to see the father of the little Virgie,” he said to Mrs. Hardy
who was standing near.
“Oh, yes! I understand,” she said; “you wish to say good-by to your
small playmate.”
Eugene did not wish to say good-by to his small playmate. However, he
did not explain this to Mrs. Hardy, but simply gave her an inscrutable
look from his deep black eyes, and walked out of the room with the
priest.
It was a dark, chilly afternoon, and the priest shivered slightly
inside his black cassock as they wended their way toward the broad and
fashionable avenue where Virgie’s parents lived. He was not accustomed
to such piercing winds in sunny France; and he murmured softly to
himself, “_Le climat de Loir-et-Cher est doux et tempéré_.”
Mr. Manning, Virgie’s father, quite unaware of the visitors on their
way to see him, had just come home from his office, and sat in his
wife’s room talking to her, and waiting for dinner to be announced,
when a maid knocked at the door, and said that a priest and a boy
wanted to see him. He glanced sharply at her, and asked, “What are
their names?”
“I forget, sir,” she said hesitatingly. “They were queer-sounding and
foreign.”
“I cannot see them,” said Mr. Manning, settling himself back
comfortably in his chair. “They are probably begging.”
The maid went down-stairs to a small reception-room, and gave the
strangers Mr. Manning’s message.
“Return to your master, and say that I request an interview with him on
the subject of business,” said Eugene firmly.
The maid felt the strange power that the lad exerted on all those
who came in contact with him; and throwing him a glance of veiled
admiration, she again went up-stairs.
“Tell the boy that I talk business in my office,” said Mr. Manning
shortly. “Let him go there in the morning.”
Eugene was not daunted by this message. “Repeat carefully my words,”
he said to the amused maid; and his eyes flamed as he looked at her.
“To-morrow I shall be on my way to France. I have now a last chance to
see the gentleman of this house. If he refuses, he may regret his loss.”
The maid once more bent her footsteps toward the staircase, and on the
way met Bridget, with whom she had a whispered colloquy.
“It’s the little French boy, sir, that plays with Miss Virgie,” she
said on returning to Mr. Manning.
“Is it?” said the gentleman with a laugh. “He is going to get on in
the world, whoever he is;” and he hurried down-stairs.
The priest and Eugene rose and bowed profoundly at the entrance of
the little, short, sharp business man. His gray eyes took in their
peculiarities at one glance; then, somewhat flattered by their
obeisances, he responded by a nod of his head, and motioned them to be
seated.
“You know my small daughter?” he asked, addressing Eugene.
“Sir, I have the honor of romping with her at times,” said the boy
solemnly.
“Indeed!” replied Mr. Manning with equal solemnity; then with a quick,
brisk movement of his hand he brushed back the hair from his forehead,
and looked out of the window.
Eugene, overcome by the knowledge of the importance of his mission,
neither smiled nor tried to make himself agreeable in any way to this
brusque man, but waited in sober patience for a sufficient time to
elapse before the proper moment arrived to approach the object of his
visit.
“It is a raw day,” Mr. Manning said at last, addressing the priest.
A raw day was something quite beyond the curé’s ken; so he made no
attempt to reply to the remark, but bowed agreeably and kept silence.
[Illustration: “I AM COME,” SAID EUGENE AT LAST, “TO DEMAND THE HAND
OF YOUR DAUGHTER IN MARRIAGE.”]
”I hope that mademoiselle your daughter is well,” said Eugene after a
long pause.
“She is, thank you,” said Mr. Manning; then he, too, relapsed into
silence.
“I am come,” said Eugene at last, seeing that the gentleman was
politely yet stubbornly resolved not to enter into conversation with
him, “supported by my friend monsieur le curé of Châtillon-sur-Loir, to
demand the hand of mademoiselle your daughter in marriage.”
Mr. Manning was a man who had attained to great self-possession; but at
Eugene’s astonishing request, he was again obliged to stroke his hair
vigorously, and once more look out of the window.
Eugene contemplated him meanwhile in great satisfaction. This composed
man of business would make an excellent father-in-law.
“May I ask,” said Mr. Manning at length, abruptly bringing his
attention once more to bear upon his guest, “whether this is for
immediate or future marriage?”
“For the future,” said Eugene quickly.
“How old are you?” asked the gentleman.
“I am thirteen, but I will be fourteen on my next birthday,” replied
the lad.
“Well, now, don’t you think,” said Mr. Manning in an almost coaxing
tone of voice, “that you are rather young yet to consider so important
a question as the choosing of your future wife?”
“Exceedingly young,” said Eugene in an equally reasonable voice. “I
am taking a part that is quite unusual, yet it suits me; for I am leaving
this country, perhaps not to return for many years, therefore I beg you
to grant me your best attention.”
Mr. Manning stared at the curé, whom he was almost forgetting in his
interest in Eugene. What kind of a man was this who, after he had
attained to years of maturity, suffered a child to go about making
himself ridiculous?
The curé, blissfully unconscious of this thought, and not understanding
a word of what he said or of what Eugene said, sat gazing tranquilly
out through the door of the reception-room at the magnificence of
two parlors across the hall. He, a poor priest, had never been in so
handsome a house in his life. The stone château of the de Vargas, which
was large, bare, and comfortless, could not be compared with this
mansion. As a young man, he had gone from the cottage of his peasant
father and mother to a seminary, and from thence to Paris for a few
months, where he lived the life of a student. He had seen the exterior
of fine hotels and palaces, but never had his feet trodden such velvety
carpets, never had his limbs pressed such soft furniture, never had
he been received as a visitor in the home of such a one as this small
amiable gentleman, who was probably a merchant prince in this strange
new country, and who talked to his young friend with brevity, and yet
without the smallest tincture of haughtiness.
The curé beamed amiably at Mr. Manning, and not a suspicion of envy
found lodgment in his gentle breast. He was delighted to see a man in
possession of so much luxury. “I felicitate you, sir,” he murmured
when Mr. Manning briefly asked him what relation he bore to Eugene.
“He cannot understand you, sir,” interposed Eugene, “unless you speak
French or slow American.”
Mr. Manning made a gesture that significantly commended the curé to the
pleasant company of his own thoughts. He was not the man to talk “slow
American” when a few quick sentences would dispose of the business in
hand.
“So you wish me to seriously consider your proposal, little boy,” he
said, again confronting Eugene.
“I do, sir.”
“Well, then, give me your reasons for breaking through the custom of
this country, which I suppose you know is not to arrange marriages
until the contracting parties are of age.”
“When they usually arrange them for themselves,” continued Eugene.
Mr. Manning was excessively amused. “I see you know all about it,” he
said.
“This is my excuse for breaking through your habits,” said Eugene
earnestly. “I am noble; you are not. You might desire to have me for
a son-in-law some day when I am no longer here, for I go to France
to-morrow.”
“Couldn’t I write you a letter?” asked Mr. Manning.
“By the time of a few years I might form other arrangements; therefore,
while I am here, where there are so few nobles, is it not better to
secure me for mademoiselle your daughter?”
“Suppose mademoiselle my daughter didn’t wish to marry you when she
grew up?”
“Oh! but she would,” said Eugene in great surprise. “Well-bred ladies
are always arranged for in marriage in France, and they enjoy it. It
would not be necessary to inform her until the time.”
“I know you fix these things in a different way in France,” said Mr.
Manning with extraordinary seriousness; “but upon my word, I don’t like
to be the first to start the custom here.”
“I am sure there would be no regret in the case,” said Eugene warmly.
“As little girls are concerned, Mademoiselle Virgie is one of the
healthiest and the best-tempered. A suitable dowry being attached to
her, she will have the benefit of my _beau nom_, as one says in France.
And will she not rejoice to be madame la comtesse?”
“She will be too sensible a girl to hang her happiness on a title, I
hope,” said Mr. Manning; “and though you seem a decent enough boy now,
you may grow up to be a scamp.”
Eugene’s little straight back grew more rigid than before. “I am a de
Vargas,” he said with an expression of proud and conscious superiority.
“There are no scamps in our family.”
Mr. Manning twisted his lips to conceal the inward laughter that was
consuming him. “Granted that you are not going to be a scamp, how will
you earn your bread?”
“By my sword.”
“But there doesn’t seem to be much use for swords nowadays. The
sentiment of to-day is against war; and I would rather have a whole
son-in-law, not one that somebody is going to carve to pieces.”
“But the army must be maintained. I shall be an officer, and hold
myself ready for war.”
“Oh! I see. Well, to come back to my starting-point, I don’t like
this plan. It’s too one-sided—too sure for you, too risky for my
daughter.”
“Are not American girls equal to French girls who do this?”
“Yes, I daresay; but I prefer an American husband for my child. I know
that French people look out for money. You won’t let your army officers
marry without getting a certain amount with a wife, I have heard; but
somehow or other the thing does not commend itself to me. I don’t
believe in marrying for money.”
“But we do not do that,” exclaimed Eugene. “Oh! you are rashly
mistaken. A Frenchman does not marry to obtain gold. It is to protect
his wife. Some money is necessary to be assured to her; it is rarely
enough to maintain a carriage and a table. All women like the
arrangement—otherwise, why would mothers marry their daughters if they
themselves have been unhappy?”
“I tell you what I’ll do,” said Mr. Manning with prodigious gravity.
“As I have told you, I don’t like to be the first to launch this
newfangled thing in America. I believe I would be mobbed if I started
to go down town among people who knew I had promised my baby girl in
marriage to a strange boy that I had only seen once in my life; but you
go round and visit some of the other business men of this city, and if
you can get them to give their consent to let this custom have a fair
trial here, I will sign a paper that will commit my daughter to an
engagement to you.”
Eugene’s face fell. “There will not be time,” he said in a pained
voice, “as we leave to-morrow. I hoped that a writing could be made out
to-day.”
“I am not prepared to go that length,” said Mr. Manning decidedly.
“You see you have sprung this thing on me. You will be coming to
America again—leave it till then, and we’ll talk it over. Hello, boy,
you’re not going to faint, are you?”
Every vestige of color had left Eugene’s face. He was not able to
analyze his own feelings, but deep down in his heart there was a
profound and blank regret that he was to leave America. He had hoped
that a definite agreement could be made with the father of little
Virgie, which would give an excuse for a return to the city where he
had lately experienced the only happy days of his life. If there was to
be no agreement, there could be no return.
“No, I never faint,” he said; and a sudden reserve came over him. “I
have only to apologize for this intrusion and leave you. Monsieur le
curé, may I request you to go?”
“Sit down, boy, sit down,” said his host kindly. “I want to ask you
some questions about yourself.”
Eugene resumed his seat, and with the air of a complaisant though
suffering martyr responded to the questions put to him.
Something about his coldly courteous answers excited the keenest
interest in his interrogator. “See here, my lad,” he said at last, “I
want you to stay to dinner this evening and meet my wife. Don’t say a
word to her on the subject of our conversation. I wish that to be a
secret between you and me; for to tell the truth, you would only be
laughed at if it were to get out. Will you stay? and you, sir?” and he
addressed the curé.
Eugene at first recoiled in spirit from this proposal, but he felt
himself bound to convey the invitation to the curé; and the delight of
the good man at the honor was so extravagant and unbounded that the
boy gracefully yielded and consented to stay, only stipulating that a
message be sent to the Hardys, who were expecting them to return to
partake of their supper.
“I will send my man up,” said Mr. Manning. “Will you excuse me
while I give him the message, and notify my wife that you are here?”
Eugene sat stiffly in his seat. He looked neither to the right nor
to the left, and he made only monosyllabic replies to the admiring
sentences rippling from the mouth of the curé.
When Mr. Manning re-entered the room escorting his wife, Eugene’s face
brightened somewhat. With a grace and a composure that charmed the
lady, he rose and stood aside, while monsieur le curé almost prostrated
himself before her. Then he, too, made an inflexion of his slender,
supple body, and gazed from under his black, drooping eyelashes at the
pretty mother of his desired _fiancée_.
He had never seen her before, and she had never seen him. “Virgie talks
a great deal about you,” she said. “Thank you, no, I will not take a
chair. Dinner is just about to be announced. Why, you are ever so much
older than Virgie. I thought you were quite a young boy.”
Mr. Manning laughed quietly to himself. He was apparently carrying
on communications with the curé in dumb show, but in reality he was
listening to his wife’s conversation with Eugene.
“I do not feel young,” said Eugene soberly, walking beside the lady out
to the brilliant splendor of the dining-room; “at times it seems to me
that I have lived my whole life.”
Mrs. Manning was a plump, phlegmatic woman, and by no means sensitive;
yet at the boy’s involuntary expression of inward suffering and mental
experiences beyond his years, a sympathetic thrill passed over her, and
with an expression of pity, she showed him his place at the table.
Eugene caught this expression, and in deep irritation lowered his eyes
to his plate. “Why is it,” he reflected bitterly, “that since I came
among these Americans I catch their candid ways—I reveal everything? I
even think in their language. I will begin to reform at once, now that
I am to return to my own country;” and a reform he immediately began
according to his own standard. It was easier for him to be composed and
reserved at this table than at the Hardys. He sat up very straight in
his chair, and in an adroit and delicate manner parried Mrs. Manning’s
rather curious questions about his mode of life since his grandfather’s
death.
Rather to her own surprise, as their conversation progressed, Mrs.
Manning found that she was telling the boy far more about herself than
he was telling her about himself. For one thing, she confessed to him
her longing to go to Europe; and Eugene said, “It is our misfortune
that you have not yet visited us. May we not look forward to the
pleasure of soon seeing you in France?”
“I want to go to Europe next summer and take Virgie,” she said.
“May I express the wish that you will honor Châtillon-sur-Loir with a
visit?”
“I should like to see something of real French life ever so much,” said
Mrs. Manning; “and Virgie would be delighted to look you up.”
“Then we shall live in the hope of seeing you,” said Eugene sweetly,
and with a side glance at the curé, who, in blissful unconsciousness of
the fact that visitors were being invited under his humble roof, was
taking his soup with some noise, and in a state of utter beatification.
As course after course was served, Eugene, who six months before would
have been enchanted by the display of riches about him, became more and
more unhappy. He preserved his composure, but it was at the expense
of his nerves. Mrs. Manning’s voice often sounded distant and hollow
in his ears; and once or twice he roused himself with a start, to
find that a servant stood at his elbow vainly striving to attract his
attention.
What was the matter with him? He was surrounded with things in which he
took delight; and in this fine house with these rich people he should
feel perfectly at home, yet his dull and inappreciative eye wandered
carelessly over the costly dinner-service and the display of exquisite
flowers. The servants moving noiselessly about wearied him; and the
lights, soft as they were, made his eyes smart with unshed tears; while
Mrs. Manning’s satin dress, dainty as it was, had less beauty in his
sight than the plain white cotton gown of the sergeant’s wife.
She was thinking about him now, that kind woman in the cottage by the
Fens. Probably she was just drawing her chair up to the fire in the
cosey parlor, and was taking from her workbasket one of the fine new
garments that she was making for him.
Perhaps she was murmuring softly to her husband, “How I miss that boy!”
“What will she do when I am gone?” thought Eugene in sudden terror.
Something seemed to gripe his heart, and he could have cried out in
his distress; yet he controlled himself, and replied in a quiet, clear
voice to a question that Mrs. Manning was asking him.
“Yes, madam, I will thank you for some preserved ginger. I am fond of
it, and it is some time since I have eaten of it.”
The curé ate long and with an admirable appetite, and shortly after
dinner showed an amiable inclination to retire into a corner of one of
the parlors where a few luxurious armchairs stood in inviting solitude.
“Suppose I were to try one of these _fauteuils_,” he said in a jocular
way to Eugene; and dropping into one, he buried his face in a newspaper
which Mr. Manning handed him, and over whose pages, which were almost
wholly unintelligible to him, he was soon dozing gently.
Mr. Manning politely ignored his presence; and, being chiefly
interested in Eugene, he, quite unintentionally, kept the lad on the
rack for some time by asking him further questions about himself and
his plans for the future.
The boy could not evade his sharp businesslike inquiries as he had
done those of his wife. He endured them with the best grace possible,
only growing a little white in the effort to control himself. As soon
as Mrs. Manning’s return from the nursery, where she had been to see
her child, gave Eugene an excuse for leaving, he rose gracefully, and
looked toward the curé.
“What, going already?” said Mr. Manning. “Mamma, can’t this boy say
good-by to your little daughter? He thinks a great deal of her;” and
his eyes gleamed mischievously as they rested on Eugene.
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Manning. “As a general thing I don’t like
her to be disturbed after she goes to bed, but we will make an
exception in favor of her playfellow.”
“Come along, then,” said Mr. Manning; and he ran up-stairs more nimbly
than Eugene, and waited for him at the top of the staircase.
“Here we are,” he said briskly; and he opened the door of a dimly
lighted room. “Are you asleep, pet?”
“No, papa,” said Virgie sleepily; and Eugene saw her pretty head rising
from a crib.
“Where is nurse?” asked Mr. Manning, advancing to the crib.
“Gone down-stairs, cross old thing,” said Virgie. “Have you brought
your little girl a present, papa?”
“No,” said her father with a laugh. “I have brought a boy that wants
to say good-by to you. He is going away. Do you know who it is?”
“’Course I do,” said Virgie, who was clearly in a bad temper;
“it’s that cross boy Eugene. Is he going to his old remperor?”
Eugene felt as if he were suffocating. He had always fancied that he
did not like this little American girl, that he only endured her; and
he had considered it a great condescension on his part that he should
include her in the childish stroke of diplomacy by which he proposed to
make the way clear for a return to America. Now he saw that he had been
mistaken. He loved the small child next to Mrs. Hardy and the sergeant,
and her indifference cut him to the heart.
“Little one,” he said resentfully, as he stepped nearer, “you may
never see me again.”
“Then Virgie will be glad,” said the child, pouting out her lips at
him; “once you sweeped the ground with me.”
Mr. Manning was convulsed with amusement at the calmly vindictive
attitude of his youthful daughter, and waited attentively for Eugene’s
next sentence.
“Shall I send you a present from France?” he asked at last.
“No; Virgie hates French dolls.”
“Across the sea,” said Eugene mournfully, “I shall soon forget you;
for I shall have boys to play with and you are but a girl.”
“When you go ’way, Eugene,” replied Virgie in a cool and impassive
manner, “I’ll frow all the stones in the park at the remperor.”
This shaft did not excite his anger as she thought it would; so she
continued, cautiously feeling her way, for she was afraid of him when
he lost his temper. “An’ maybe I’ll kill the king, an’ the other
pussies, an’ the mister policeman, an’ maybe I’ll come an’ kill
you.”
Her sweet and silly defiance did not provoke the boy, and she lashed
her childish imagination for another taunt. “If Virgie had a gun,” she
murmured, “a big, big gun, I guess she’d shoot you now.”
Eugene smiled sadly, and yet his eyes were full of tears. Was he going
to cry before this child and the man who was silently regarding him?
The thought filled him with dismay; and he turned on his heel, and
abruptly went toward the door.
“Oh, oh!” squealed Virgie dismally, “the pretty buttons! come back, I
want to see them!”
Her volatile, childish fancy had been taken with the glitter of some
new buttons on Eugene’s coat; and hastily wiping his eyes, he returned
to her, and before Mr. Manning could prevent him, he had gallantly
twisted a button from its place, and put it in the child’s hand.
“Thank you, Eugene, just dreffully,” she said in delight; and she
sprang up in her crib, clasping her new treasure firmly in one hand,
while she extended the other toward him. “Good-by, Virgie won’t hurt
the remperor; here’s a present for you;” and she caught up a legless,
armless doll lying on her dainty pillow.
Eugene went to her, and she stuffed it in his pocket. Then she yawned
sleepily, put her pink lips to his ear, and murmured, “Good-by, Eugene,
be a good girl;” and dropping down on her pillow was asleep before they
had fairly left the room.
Ten minutes later Eugene and the priest were walking quietly up the
avenue in the direction of the Hardys’ house, and Mr. Manning and his
wife sat talking together with amused faces.
“What do you make of that boy?” he asked.
“I don’t make much of him,” she replied. “He seems a polite little
cynic.”
“He is more than that,” said Mr. Manning sagely. “If he were going to
stay in this country, I would do something for him.”