Could Juliette have known how she had been disposed of in a boy's
imagination, perhaps the Spanish Infanta would have replaced the rosy
nymph. But while her Prince dreamed, her jingling vehicle had
crossed the Port de St. Cloud, and so by Ville d'Avray up the long
avenue between the breasting woods, stately and glorious still,
though stripped by the blasts of January, to the clean white town
that had sprung up, nearly three hundred years before (upon the site
of a little village patronized by wagoners), where an ancient feudal
castle stood on a plateau surrounded by lake, forest, and marsh.
A touch of a King's scepter changed this ancient castle to a Royal
Hunting-Lodge, a whim of his successor transformed the humbler
dwelling to a Palace. Courtiers, officials, functionaries, guards,
valets, lackeys, pimps, cooks, barbers and innumerable hangers-on are
necessary to the upkeep of State; and these must be housed in stately
fashion. Behold whole streets of buildings, with noble avenues,
radiating like the sticks of a fan from the sunlike center, uprising
like fungi from the swampy soil. Behold, as the power and glory of
the monarch redoubled,--no less than thirty thousand workmen engaged
in enlarging and beautifying the residence of His Majesty, while a
regiment of Swiss Guards dig out the lake. And when pneumonia,
fever, and ague carry off so many thousands of these hapless toilers
that the dead have to be carted away by night, and secretly dumped
into pits dug for the purpose, and the bottoms of the Royal coffers
are seen through a thinning layer of gold, and the Building Accounts
of the Crown Demesne show totals of unpaid debts sufficiently
colossal to stagger a lightning-calculator, and Ministers grow dizzy,
seeing a Kingdom on the brink of financial ruin, the sublime forehead
beneath the bediamonded hat and the towering wig is illuminated by an
inspiration. "Ha! We have it! Quick! commence new works! Pile on
the national taxes, press a million unpaid laborers into the Royal
service. Let rivers of tears flow to swell the sources of our
dwindling fountains. Upon the uncounted corpses of vulgar toilers
erect fresh monuments to all the glories of France!"
No ghastly visions disturbed the royal dreams, no awful Finger wrote
the dreadful sentence upon the marble friezes of his
banqueting-halls. The shadow of the little cocked hat that was to
overtop his tallest wig by the whole height of a Crown Imperial was
never shown him in Witch Montespan's magic mirror. The bees that
were to swarm over his lilies and drain their golden honey were not
to be hatched for many years yet. He deemed himself immortal in
spite of the twinges of the gout, until it took him in the stomach
and carried him off, at seventy-seven, leaving France to shudder in
the embraces of a far worse man than himself. Until, aphrodisiacs
and apoplexy having made an end of the infamous Regent, and Louis the
Well-Beloved having succumbed to vice and smallpox, and the Red Widow
having hugged the heads off Louis the Locksmith and his fair young
Queen, the Terror ushered in the Revolution, Era of Liberty,
Equality, and Universal Phlebotomy; until men, wearied of serving
many masters, looked about for one to lead them, and the Little
Corporal with the pale hatchet-face and the inscrutable gray-blue
eyes under the great marble forehead rose up and said, "Here am I!"
The Court of his nephew was just now at the Tuileries. You saw the
town of Versailles in its winter slumber, undisturbed by the roll of
innumerable carriages, luggage _fourgons_, pastrycooks' and
tradesmen's vans, and other vehicles, over its historic and venerable
cobblestones.... Fashionable people lived there all the year round;
many of the crack regiments of the Imperial Guard were quartered in
the innumerable barracks; there was no lack of society--not the cream
of the cream, perhaps, but charming, lively and gay.
The 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard were garrisoned in
that antique quarter of barracks and churches, convents and Royal
harems, once known as the Parc aux Cerfs. South of the great central
avenue leading from the Place d'Armes to Paris, you found its huge
monumental entrance on the right of the Rue de l'Orangerie, once the
Hotel of the Gardes du Corps du Roi. It boasted a frontage at once
chaste and imposing. The high window of the mess-room, balconied and
dominated by a lofty pediment, surmounted the great gates of
wrought-iron rolling back upon a wide sanded courtyard. If I do not
err, the quarters of M. le Colonel were upon the second-floor upon
the left-hand side of the gate, immediately above a confectioner's,
whence rose delicious odors of baking pastry and simmering chocolate
to titillate the nostrils of Mademoiselle. The sleeping-chamber and
boudoir, described in the Colonel's letter as hung with rosebud
chintz, and elegantly furnished; the little kitchen on the same
floor, full of pots and bright pans, scoured by the Colonel's
soldier-servant into dazzling brilliancy, more than fulfilled the
expectations provoked beforehand. I rather think that the dinner--an
inexpensive and savory little meal, consisting of vegetable soup with
fillets of sole Normande, an infinitesimal steak _jardinière_, an
omelette _soufflée_, Brie cheese (nowhere upon earth does one get
such Brie as at Versailles), and dessert--had come from the
pastrycook's on the street-floor. After the cooking one got at the
Convent and in default of the much better dinner Mademoiselle could
have evolved out of similar materials, it was a meal for demi-gods.
And you do not know Juliette if you imagine she did not dispose of
her share.
"I am _gourmande_, me," she would assure her confidantes in all
sincerity, fitting the tip of a slender finger into a dint that would
have needed slight persuasion to become a dimple. "I love good
dishes, or how should I be able to cook them? One of these days it
is possible that I may even grow fat. Believe me, I am not joking.
Already I perceive the beginning of a double chin!"
M. le Colonel had excused himself from attendance at Mess that he
might dine with his daughter. Both Monsieur and Mademoiselle were
prodigiously gay, you may conceive. But even while Juliette laughed
and clapped her little hands in delight at the paternal witticisms,
while she leaned upon her Colonel's shoulder, or sat upon the arm of
his chair; while her slender arm twined round his neck, and her
cheek, no longer ivory-pale, but painted by the delicate brush of the
artist Joy with the loveliest rose-flush, was tickled by the waxed
end of his martial mustachio, the hateful shadow of the faceless
Charles rose up and thrust itself between. It blotted out the last
rays of the red wintry sun, it sprawled across the shade of the
Argand lamp. It was heavy though impalpable, and diffused a numbing
chill throughout the little apartment.
Perhaps the father felt it, for as they sat together talking by the
cheerful fire of crackling beech-billets that burned upon the open
hearth, he gradually fell silent.
You can see him in his undress uniform jacket of green cloth,
braided, frogged, and with fur edging, unhooked at the neck and
showing the white shirt, stiff linen collar, and scarlet tie. His
polished boots and bright spurs, buttons, buckles, and so forth,
reflected the dancing firelight. His forage-cap, a head-dress gaudy
and bizarre enough to have come out of a Christmas cracker, crowned a
porcelain bust of a young negress, chocolate-hued, with
purplish-crimson lips, pink protruding tongue, and rolling onyx eyes
(an art-object left behind as too fragile for transport by the
previous occupant of the quarters)--while his long saber leaned
against her wooden pedestal.
His handsome face was very grave, almost somber, as he pulled his
crisp imperial, and stared at the little dancing hearth-flames,
forgetful of the excellent cigar burning itself away to ash between
the first and second fingers of his well-kept right hand. The other
hand sometimes rested on his knee, sometimes touched his daughter's
hair; for Juliette had slipped from her previous seat to the carpet,
where she sat leaning against him.
And all at once the chill barrier of reserve broke down. It was when
a heavy tear splashed upon the hand that rested on the knee of the
crimson overall, a strong, brown, manly hand, rather hairy on the
back. It clenched as though the single drop had been of molten
metal, and then Juliette caught it in both her own and spoke:
"Oh, my father, why must this marriage take place? We have not said
one word, but I know well that what is in my mind is in yours also.
Feel!"--she drew the prisoned hand closely to her--"here lies your
letter over where my heart is beating so. Much of it I comprehend,
but the rest is anguish--mystery! War is threatened--that at least
is clear. The regiment will sooner or later be ordered on active
service. And--were your daughter the wife of a gentleman of her
father's profession, you fear that she might suffer as her
grandmother--as her own beloved dead mother did. But though my
grandmother lost her husband, War spared her son. You returned to
her and to my mother, not even wounded, darling! And if you
apprehend for me a lot less fortunate, why need I marry any one?
Take me with you or leave me behind, I am your obedient daughter
always--always! But I had rather you would take me, dear!"
Not trusting himself to speak, the father took the little head
between his palms and kissed the blue-veined temples and the clear
space between the wide-arched eyebrows. The candid eyes met his,
that were cloudy and troubled. He searched for phrases to disguise a
truth that must stab.
"If I met death upon the field, you by my side, you would be left
alone and unprotected. Were I to leave you behind even, in the care
of Madame Tessier, you would none the less be alone. There is safety
in permanent ties; but only when her husband is by her side does the
sacrament of marriage open a haven to a young girl where the
libertine and the seducer dare not enter. I speak with
certainty--only when her husband is by her side!"
So women were not to be trusted! ... His palms might have been burned
had he not withdrawn them, so fiery the sudden blush that rose in the
clear, pale cheeks.
Barely comprehending his meaning, she faltered:
"Yet my grandmother----"
The Colonel broke in hastily:
"My mother was a Saint! What I have said does not apply to her!"
"And my mother?"
Something like a groan broke from the man. She felt him wince and
shudder as she leaned upon him, saw the strong square teeth of the
upper-jaw nip the ruddy lower lip, noted the ashen grayness that
replaced the ebbed color, and the points of moisture that broke out
upon his temples where his rich black hair was frosted with white.
And looking, she bleached and shuddered in sympathy. His haunted
eyes and haggard face bent over an upturned white mask, that had
little of the grace of girlhood left in it. The distended pupils
encroached upon the blue until her eyes seemed inky-black. He would
have withdrawn the hand she held in both hers, but the soft little
fingers turned to living steel, and he could not free himself. And
the blue-black eyes staring out of the pinched elfin face quested in
search of something that his own eyes strove to hide. As though his
had been the weaker nature and hers the stronger (impossible, the
creature being feminine), he felt his loathed secret being
relentlessly drawn to light. The clear, unshaken question:
"Was not my mother good?" compelled him to truthful utterance. He
heard a voice unlike his own replying:
"At the beginning--yes! I would stake my soul upon it. But during
the war in the Crimea, when the Allies watered with the best blood of
France and England that fatal soil, her loyalty to the absent husband
weakened--her heart strayed!" He struck himself upon the breast
passionately. "Yet here beat a heart that would have throbbed for
love in death, had her lips kissed the shape of icy clay that housed
it. It burns now with shame that I must strip off the veil of
secrecy that until this moment has hidden from thee thy mother's sin!"
The head bent, a swift kiss touched his hand. Her mouth felt very
cold. He went on, realizing that she demanded it:
"She fled with her lover upon the very day of the re-entry of the
Army into Paris. After the triumph I hastened to Auteuil, where she
and her child were living with my mother. That sainted soul met me
at the door--the first glimpse of her face told the terrible
intelligence. Had other lips than those beloved ones stabbed me with
the truth, that night my revolver would have ended it!--I would not
have lived to endure the pity in the faces of the friends who loved
me--the curiosity in strangers' eyes."
A deep sigh stirred her, quickening in him the knowledge that since
she had kissed his hand she had listened without breathing. She
murmured now:
"Poor, dearest, best father! How old was I when she----"
He said tenderly:
"Let me see ... it was the August of 1856; thou hadst five years, and
thy curls were as soft and as yellow as chicken-down. Thy mother
used to say, _Juliette will never be black like me!_"
That disloyal mother had been the darkest of brunettes,
ivory-skinned, and ebon-haired, with eyes of tawny wine-color, and
the tall, lithe, exuberant form of a goddess of Grecian myth. To
question the man she had deserted with regard to his betrayer seemed
hideous, and yet... Juliette strung herself to the effort, faltering:
"And for whom...? with whom...? Do not tell me if it costs thee too
much!"
His comprehension was instant. Very coldly the answer came:
"He was a personage of rank in his own country. A military attaché
of the Prussian Embassy in Paris. They had met at one of the
Imperial receptions at the Tuileries."
"_Is he alive?_"
The whispered words might have been shrieked in his ear, such a leap
of the heart and such a thrilling of the nerves responded. He rose
to his feet and said sternly, not looking at his daughter, but
directly at the wall before him:
"The man is dead! But he did not fall in a duel. He lived to meet
his end during the Prusso-Austrian War. He had left Paris _en route_
for Berlin when my representative called at the Prussian Embassy.
Strive as I would, I could gain no answer from him. Nor might the
utmost influence I could command obtain a response to my _cartel_.
This being so, the disgrace is his--not mine!"
He grew quite tall in saying this, so dignified was the little tubby
man, so noble in his soldierly simplicity. His daughter looked up at
him, wondering at him, loving him, sorrowing over him; yet yearning
to hear more of that beloved, faithless one who had dealt those
bleeding wounds he now bared in the sight of the child she had
deserted, and plowed such deep lines in his wrung and suffering face.
The words would break out, though she nipped her lips to stop them:
"And my mother ... did she repent and ask your pardon? Did you not
forgive her before she died?"
"She did not die!"
The little Colonel had a great voice. His "_Garde à vous!_" roared
down the files like a spherical mortar-shell, his "_Chargez!_" might
have set dead men and horses up and galloping. Indeed, his nickname
among the troopers of his regiment was, I believe, nothing less than
"_Bouche à feu!_" When he thundered the answer to Juliette's
question, not only did Mademoiselle Bayard leap to her feet,
vibrating in every fiber of her slender, rigid body, but the crystal
drops of the mantelshelf chandeliers left by the previous tenant
danced and tinkled, and the panes of the windows rattled in their
frames. What more the Colonel might have said was drowned, as the
customary fanfare of trumpets sounded from the Mess, heralding the
loyal toast. Then the "Vive l'Empereur!" rang out, and the
regimental band crashed into "_Partant Pour La Syrie_," and very soon
afterward, from the uncurtained window commanding the barrack-square,
lights could be seen moving across the shadowy space as the
dispersing officers returned to their quarters or went about their
duty, attended by orderlies carrying stable-lanterns of the smoky,
smelly, tallow-burning kind. The Colonel's own duty called him
elsewhere, and he was glad of it. He muttered an inaudible word, his
eyes averted from his daughter; took his cap, gloves, and
riding-whip, and strode jingling from the room.
Ah, it would need a great artist in words to depict the swift and
changing emotions that swelled and wrung the heart of the poor girl
he left behind him, and give some adequate idea of the storm that
swept over her in that lonely hour. Joy at the discovery that the
adored mother of her childish memories yet lived was drowned in
anguish at the piercing thought, "_She lives, but not for me!_"
Shame burned her cheeks to crimson, grief washed them white again;
her heart bounded in her bosom, or sank, heavy as lead. Except
Madame Suchard, the soldier's wife who had been engaged to wait upon
Mademoiselle de Bayard, and who now might be heard washing up the
dinner-plates and dishes in the little kitchen, there was no earthly
woman near to whom she might turn for comfort in this her hour of
need.
But as she wept, not the freely-flowing tears of girlhood, but with
the dry sobbings and painful convulsions that tortured women know,
there chimed from the great cathedral Church of St. Louis close by,
the first long triple of the Angelus, echoed by the thinner-sounding
bells from the Convent of the Augustinian Sisters, from the Priory of
the Bernardine Fathers, from the House of the Sœurs de
l'Esperance, from the House of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Mechanically Juliette's hand went to her bosom, her pale lips moved,
shaping the sacred words. And then she went to her room and knelt at
the little straw-bottomed _prie-Dieu_ that stood before her Crucifix,
and prayed with passionate earnestness that He, Who when hanging upon
His Cross of Agony gave His Mother to be our Mother, would hear Her
pure prayer of intercession for that mother who had deserted her
child. Wherever she might be, however low she might have fallen,
whatever the sins, vices, follies that yet environed her, held her
back or dragged her down, the ray of Divine Grace had power to reach
her, raise her up, and lead her back by the path of Penance into the
Way of Peace.
And pending the miracle, toward which end Masses should be offered
and Communions given; obedience to that father so cruelly betrayed,
so bitterly wronged, must, more than ever, be the watchword of
Juliette. For the conviction began to dawn in her that belief in the
innate purity and truth of her sex having been destroyed in him by
the unfaith of that most beloved, most unhappy one; he sought to
safeguard her daughter's virtue by means of a husband, who, being the
only son of a widow, and therefore exempt from the obligations of
military service, must always be on the spot. Sorrowfully she sought
her bed, to remember, the moment her head touched the pillow, that
although she had mustered courage to plead against the Colonel's
sentence of marriage, provoking him thereby to reveal the long-hidden
secret of his betrayal, she had never mentioned Charles except by
inference.
What was he like, this young man, pious, virtuous, devoted to his
mother, energetic, frugal, a manufacturer of, and merchant in, the
commodity of woolen cloth? Could one build a husband out of such
materials? Was it possible?
She tried once more. The effort led to tossing and turning.
Conscience is most active in the night-watches. Juliette's
bosom-monitor reproached her with having boasted to dear Monica's
untidy brother of the faceless Charles's mastery of the art of fence.
Other lapses from the strict line of veracity had preceded and
followed. She had told one curious girl that Charles owned the form
of an athlete, and hair of ruddy chestnut; another had reaped the
information that he possessed a profile resembling that of Edgar
Ravenswood, with dark, melancholy eyes, and a jet-black mustache of
the kind that is silky and sweeps. Yet another eager inquirer had
elicited the information that Charles was quite a duodecimo edition
of a lover, slender, brilliantly fair, and not much taller than the
bride-elect. Should it occur to these girls to compare notes in some
hour of recess or exercise, what would be the impression conveyed to
the Great Class?
One had left School, however, and one was glad of it. To go back
with that tragic secret locked in one's bosom, and mingle with
fortunate girls whose mothers were good women, happily alive or
safely in Paradise, how could one have borne that?
A well-known footstep outside the door of her room, which opened from
the little salon, and a gentle rustling sent a shiver through her.
When the step moved away with its soldierly jingle of spurs
accompanying it, De Bayard's daughter sat up in bed and kissed both
hands to him, passionately; stretching out her arms with a wide
gesture as though something of the maternal mingled with her love for
him now.... When "Lights Out" sounded, and the gas was extinguished,
and no line of yellow showed under the door, and the footsteps
retreated and his door shut upon them, Juliette crept out of bed,
lighted the candle, and picked up the scrap of paper that had been
pushed across her threshold by the strong, beloved hand.
It proved to be a note dated that day, and addressed from the
Tessier's house in the Rue de Provence, in Madame's angular, spidery
caligraphy. Felicitations to her dear friend on the safe return of
his cherished one were followed by regrets. "My Charles, alas! will
be detained in Belgium at least until the Mardigras. The meeting of
these dear young people must necessarily be deferred until that date.
But to-morrow being the Feast of Saint Polycarpe, possibly M. le
Colonel would bring Mademoiselle to visit a friend, old and most
affectionate, punctually at the hour of one _midi_?" With tender
remembrances the note concluded. Beneath the
signature--Marie-Anastasie Tessier--M. le Colonel had scrawled in
pencil the curt intimation: "Arranged.--H.A.A. de B."
Knowing Charles safely bestowed in Belgium, Juliette sank back upon
her pillow, and soon was calmly sleeping between her two great
hair-plaits. But slippered footsteps patroled the Colonel's room
until gray dawn showed between the slits of the window-shutters, and
the heavy sighs and muttered words that broke from him would have
wrung his daughter's faithful heart. Sleepless and haggard, the
first pale beams of January daylight found him still pacing his
brown-striped drugget, a letter--the cause of his own and another's
misery,--crushed in his strong right hand:
"555, AVENUE DE L'ALMA, PARIS,
"_December_ 18, 1869.
"MONSIEUR,
"Acting upon instructions received from the senior partner of the
Berlin branch of our firm, we beg to acknowledge your reply to his
communication of the 7th instant, and must point out to you that the
attitude you assume with regard to our client is equally unjust and
indefensible. No legal remedy was sought by you for the injuries you
allege that you sustained through the infidelity of the lady who
until the autumn of 1856 occupied--and without reproach--the position
of your wife.
"Further, during the years of her absence from your side, she has
neither asked nor received from you any monetary payments toward her
support and maintenance, facts which certainly appear to suggest
consent and knowledge upon your part. You may further be aware that
His deceased Excellency, Count Maximilian von Schön-Valverden, late
junior military _attaché_ to the Prussian General Staff, fully atoned
for an indiscretion of his earlier years, by making an ample
settlement upon Madame de Bayard; and that she is now in a position
to render liberal assistance to relatives whom Fortune has not
dowered with ample means.
"Under the circumstances, we have advised our client, whose natural
affection for her daughter strongly urges her to assert her maternal
rights to the society of Mademoiselle de Bayard, to enforce her claim
by the reëstablishment of personal influence.
"The young lady in question is still unmarried, under age, and
therefore subject to maternal authority; and our client does not
disguise her hope that, by awakening the long silent chords of filial
tenderness, she may gain a powerful advocate upon the side of
reconciliation, reunion, and that unblemished and peaceful happiness
which is only to be found by the domestic fireside.
"Recollect, Monsieur, that no legal bar exists to this most virtuous
and irreproachable aspiration. And understand that unless a
favorable answer is shortly received by our firm to the application
now made by us to you on behalf of our client, her next appeal will
be made to your daughter and hers.
"We remain, etc.,
"WIEGELT, NADIER AND BIDUQUET,
"_Solicitors_."
By the chill light of the new day the Colonel for the twentieth time
re-read the letter, and its cunning mixture of truth and falsehood,
the venomed hint at knowledge and complicity, struck fangs once more
into his quivering heart.
A devout Catholic, he had never sought to divorce the wife who had
betrayed him. Thus a civil marriage with her paramour had been
rendered impossible to Adelaide, even had the Count desired it. Now,
furnished with ample means by the generosity of her dead lover, did
the false wife seek at the hands of the injured husband
rehabilitation, in return for a heap of tainted gold?
Horrible thought! The walls of the room seemed to close upon De
Bayard suffocatingly. He opened the window and leaned out, drawing
in deep drafts of the frosty morning air. It cleared his brain; he
realized, in the event of his contemptuous rejection of the hideous
bargain, a menace to his daughter's peace of mind.
Motherhood is of all earthly relationships the most sacred. Yet
there are mothers who in revenge for disappointed hopes and thwarted
ambitions have not hesitated to strike, through their own offspring,
at husbands abhorred. More than ever the husband of Adelaide bent to
his determination of placing Juliette, at the earliest moment, safe
out of reach of that spotted maternal embrace.