Madame, a discreet and sensible-looking person, with very little more
mustache than is becoming to a Frenchwoman of sixty, embraced
Juliette warmly on both cheeks, and graciously received the Colonel's
salute upon her mittened left hand. The mittens were invariably
black in tribute to the memory of the late M. Tessier. Madame's
half-mourning, gray poplin gown, trimmed with black gimp upon the
gores, round the bottom of the expansive skirt and upon the waist and
shoulder-lappets, might have been the same she had always worn, in
Juliette's memory. Her cap had lavender ribbons, her front was bay,
whereas it had been chestnut, and the net of black chenille-velvet,
in which she confined her back hair, plentiful in quantity and iron
gray like her mustache and eyebrows, had silver beads upon it here
and there.
Father and daughter were made welcome, were entertained with wine of
Madeira, raspberry-vinegar--for which sweet, subacid beverage,
diluted with water, young ladies were expected to express a
preference--macaroons, ratafias, and little pink ice-cakes. The
Colonel, having accepted a glass of the good vintage and consumed a
biscuit, expressed a desire to walk round the garden; Madame, who had
suggested the excursion, and Juliette, who had gone goose-flesh all
over--were left to a _tête-à-tête_.
During the collation described above, Mademoiselle's blue eyes had
discreetly raked the walls of the dining-room in search of portraits.
Nothing rewarded her search but a highly varnished oil presentment of
a simpering young woman in the vast flowery bonnet, the bunches of
side-curls, and the high-waisted gown of 1830, in whom one must
perforce discover Madame in her twentieth year. A case of three
miniatures hung beside the copper wood-tongs on the left of the
fireplace. When Madame affectionately leaned to her young guest,
patted her hand, and bade her take her seat upon a green velvet
fauteuil between Madame's own high-backed arm-chair and the
carved-oak-framed, glass-covered embroidery picture of Dido on her
funeral pyre that served as fire-screen, Juliette, in the act of
transit, cast a rapid glance at this case. In vain. Only M.
Tessier, in a high satin stock, gray curls and strips of
side-whisker, Madame in a lace cap, fiddle-bodied brown silk gown,
berthe, and cameo brooch, and a chubby infant of indeterminate sex,
with sausage curls and tartan shoulder-knots, rewarded her anxious
scrutiny. She could not restrain a sigh.
To be taken by the chin is not unpleasant to a young lady, under the
right conditions and given certain circumstances. But when the
ringed and bony fingers enclosed in Madame's black mitten, turned the
small, pale oval to the light, a choking lump rose in Juliette's
throat, and the black lashes veiled the eyes her aged friend would
have peered in. She felt given over to harpies, abandoned and alone.
Almost she could have rushed to one of the long French windows,
wrenched it open, and fled to the shelter of her father. I wonder
whether the Colonel was as ill at ease as his daughter, as he paced
the winding paths under the leafless trees, between the beds of
snow-powdered ground ivy, already sprinkled with patches of aconite
in partially thawed places, shining yellow as little suns against
dark leaves and wet brown earth....
She could see him from the nearer of the three long windows opening
on the steps that led to the garden. He walked among the trees
bare-headed, holding his high silk hat and gold-topped Indian cane
behind him, his handsome double chin bent upon his breast, his fine
face full of care. Even his boldly-curled mustaches seemed to droop
under the weight of sorrows that were no longer hidden from his child.
At the bottom of his heart he distrusted her, she was almost certain.
And from the bottom of her own heart she forgave the cruel wrong. He
had come to believe, since the great betrayal, that every woman save
the Mother of all mothers, and his own, had it in her to play the
traitress, given the opportunity. Thus the opportunity was not to be
given to Juliette.
Madame was speaking. She no longer held the little chin, though the
chill of her hard finger-tips still seemed to cling to it. She
smiled benevolently, making curves of parenthesis in her
well-powdered cheeks, and sometimes punctuating her sentences by a
rather disconcerting click of teeth that were too startlingly white
and never seemed to fit properly.
"One understands, my cherished" (_click_), "that this visit is a
little _triste_ for thee.... One who should have been here to
welcome thee does not appear. To repress the feelings is
_convenable_" (_click_) "in a young girl of good education, but
nevertheless one cannot hide the oppression of the heart. Rest
assured, my little one, that my Charles--who is to be thy Charles so
soon"--Madame's playfulness, emphasized by the click described, was
more than a little grisly--"suffers as thou dost. He is chagrined to
the very soul, believe me! that he cannot be with thee here to-day.
Detained in Belgium, at Mons-sur-Trouille (where he has a manufactory
for the production of woolen fabrics)--by important business in
connection with an immense order given by a Paris firm of" (_click_)
"drapers, thou canst picture him counting the hours that must elapse
before the happy moment of his return. He is ardent, my
Charles--noble, sincere, religious, and candid. I, his mother, say
to thee: Thou art happy" (_click_) "to have won the love of so
estimable a young man!"
And with this maternal peroration two gray poplin sleeves went out
and enfolded Mademoiselle de Bayard, and two rapid touches of Madame
Tessier's mustache visited first her left cheek and then her right
one. Fluttering like a caught robin, Juliette faltered:
"You are so good, dear Madame, but when did I win it?" She added,
released from the imprisoning sleeves, and with a bright red rose of
agitation blooming in the center of each pale cheek: "Alas! I refer
to the love of M. Charles Tessier.... If I might know where he has
seen me? ... I cannot recollect his ever having been presented to me.
In my mind, Madame, your son has no form, no features.... It is
terrible, but there you have the fact!"
The truth was out at last. Now that the room had left off whirling,
Madame's benevolent smile shone forth unchanged. She clicked, and
returned with archness that was labored.
"My Juliette, I comprehend. Thou wert just a little bewildered....
Thy father has not made it quite clear.... Ah, naughty M. le
Colonel, I shall scold him by-and-by!"
"Pray, no!" Juliette's little hands went out entreatingly. "Only
explain, dear, dearest Madame, for I am bewildered, as you say truly.
My father's command that I should leave school, provide myself with a
_trousseau_, and come here to be married--instantly--to M. Charles
Tessier!--was so brusque--so sudden--that I might be pardoned for
saying I have felt less like a young girl than a poor lamb, hurriedly
taken from the fold and driven to the butcher's yard."
"Poor little lamb!" drolled Madame, still portentously playful, and
displaying a gleaming double row of teeth between the parenthesis.
Juliette felt more than ever like the lamb of her analogy, as she
strove to read the meaning of the smile. Madame continued: "Too much
boldness--an excessive display of _sangfroid_--my Charles has ever
disliked in women. When I tell him how _gentille_ thou art, how
sensitive, and how _spirituelle_, he will say to me, 'My mother, thou
hast chosen well! and when he sees thee...'"
Something in the well-powdered elderly face of the speaker sent an
electrical shock of comprehension through Juliette's being, evoking
the cry:
"Sees me.... But then ... he has never seen me?"
It was necessary to hold on with one's own eyes to Madame's, they so
spun and whirled in their rather small, round orbits. Then they
steadied, as though she had made her mind up. She said, and though
the treacly suavity had gone out of her voice, Juliette liked it
better:
"No, my child--Charles has never seen thee. This is a
betrothal--this will be a marriage exclusively arranged by the
parents of the young people concerned. Thy father, the son of my
beloved friend Antoinette de Bayard, does not desire that the husband
of his Juliette should be a member of the military profession,--I am
averse to the idea of my son's bestowing his name upon the Protestant
daughter of a Flemish woolen-manufacturer--for that that was
originally my son's intention, I will not seek to deny. Wounded in
my tenderest and most susceptible spot by the announcement of
Charles's infatuation, I might have estranged him for ever--even
hurried on the catastrophe I feared, had not the advice of my
director, Dom Clovis, of the Carmelite Fathers--fortified and
sustained me in the trying hour! I wrote to my son. I poured out my
maternal heart in pleadings the most earnest--the most tender. I
recalled to him the dispositions of his late father's will. Under
this document," Madame went on, drying a tear with a deep-hemmed
cambric handkerchief, "I possess the power at pleasure to divert from
Charles and his heirs a considerable portion of his sainted father's
funded property. And that power," said Madame, drying another tear,
"I solemnly assured my child, would--in the event of his union with
Mademoiselle Clémence Basselôt--unhesitatingly be used."
Words might have come from the pale parted lips before her. Madame
tapped them to silence with a mittened finger and pursued her way.
"Charles is profoundly reasonable--a quality he inherits from both
parents. He wrote to me a letter inexpressibly touching in its
expressions of filial trust and confidence, over which, I assure
thee, I have shed the most consoling tears."
Something had previously crackled in the pocket of Madame's black
silk apron, when she had smoothed it over her knees in seating
herself. Now she drew it out, and Juliette saw a blue envelope
directed in a handwriting of the business-like, copper-plate
description. The sheet of white paper the envelope contained had an
engraved picture-heading of a square building possessing many
windows--no doubt the Belgian cloth manufactory possessed in
partnership by MM. Basselôt and Tessier. From the page, closely
covered all down one side with regular lines of mercantile
handwriting, Madame read:
"Sentiments of the most profound agitated me as I read thy letter.
These sentences penned by a mother's hand, have touched me to the
quick. Thy arguments, so delicate, yet so powerful, have convinced
me of the impossibility of the union toward which--I will own!--my
wishes urged me. I abandon the idea henceforth! Since Mademoiselle
Clémence is not to be mine, choose then for me, best and noblest of
women. Let her who taught my infant lips to murmur the beloved name
of mother select for me some virtuous young girl upon whom I may
confer the equally sacred title of Wife.
"THY CHARLES."
And there, with a flourish like a double lasso, M. Tessier's letter
ended, leaving Juliette swaying between the impulse to shriek with
laughter and the urgent desire to melt away in tears.
Madame came to her rescue by proposing a visit to the billiard-room,
built and appointed by the late M. Tessier to afford his son
wholesome recreation at home. For otherwise, Madame explained, the
young man might have been allured by the amusements to be found in
the saloons of the Hôtel des Réservoirs and other brilliant and
fashionable lounges, full of dissipated civilians and officers of
every branch of the military and naval services. Clubs Madame
regarded as gateways to eternal perdition. She dried another tear as
she thanked Heaven that her beloved child did not belong to one.
When possible, she added, Charles avoided restaurants. A congenital
delicacy of constitution rendered over-seasoned dishes little less
than poison to him; he habitually suffered from nettle-rash after the
consumption of shellfish. Green salad was, upon this count,
pernicious to his well-being. Nor should he ever be permitted to
sleep without a nightcap, having been subject to earache from his
youth.
The mental picture of Charles, suffering from an attack of
nettle-rash and crowned with his protective nightcap, sent the
listener's balance dipping toward hysteria. They were in the
billiard-room, a pleasant, longish salle, with two high windows
opening on the frontward terrace. The glass door stood open leading
into the winter-garden: from whence came a smell of hot-water pipes,
damp moss, and mold, with an added whiff of ferniness, and a
suggestion of the cockroaches and mice that pervaded the place.
And then: "Thou seest, my sweet Juliette"--pray imagine Madame,
indicating with a lifted mitten a gilt-framed square of canvas
hanging between the two French windows--"a speaking portrait, painted
but two years ago, of my--I should say, of our beloved Charles."
Obediently the eyes of Mademoiselle Bayard followed the direction of
the pointing finger. The painter or the evil genius of Charles
Tessier had induced him to sit for his portrait in the habiliments of
the chase; thus in sporting checks of the chessboard pattern, with
the addition of yellow leather leggings, gun pads, and a game bag,
and holding between his knees a weapon which obviously embarrassed
him, he was presented for the first time to the gaze of his future
bride. Those eyes of Juliette's fastened on the canvas a single
moment before their dusky lashes dropped. But in that moment
Mademoiselle had classified Charles as belonging to the Order of
Invertebrates; comprehended his profound insignificance, and realized
that from the owner of a head so commonplace, eyes so round, and a
nose so blunt, a mouth so lax, and cheeks so pink and
chubby--possibly the artist had been liberal of carmine--nothing more
of originality, decision, manly force, or power of will might be
expected than is commonly demanded of the child's whirligig of stick
and cardboard, as seen gyrating madly or spinning feebly under the
impetus of its owner's breath.
It was impossible, Mademoiselle told herself, to detest a being so
utterly devoid of character--a human pad of blotting paper--as
uninteresting as a counting-house stool. One could only pity him,
and hope for his mother's sake that sound business capacities were
concealed behind that characterless forehead, topped with brown hair
cut very short and standing upon end--and wonder at or congratulate
Mademoiselle Clémence. Flamandes are generally big and muscular.
One could only hope that she had taken Charles by his sloping
shoulders and soundly shaken him when he had backed out of his
proposal of marriage. Though possibly he had never spoken to the
girl at all.
M. le Colonel found his daughter silent during their walk back to the
Barracks. After a questioning eyeshot or so at the dainty little
figure that moved so demurely beside him--abandoning the vain
endeavor to read her mood from the droop of the pure eyelids, the
chiseled lines of the exquisite profile--the father relapsed into his
own sad thoughts. And then Juliette, stealing a glance at him,
realized, with a pang, that his once luxuriant black curls were
thinning in places, and already thickly sown with white hairs. The
upright martial carriage was marred by a rounding of the
shoulders--the stoop of a man upon whose back sits perched Black
Care. The seams of the immaculately brushed frock-coat of civil
ceremony were shiny in places--the rosette of red ribbon at the lapel
was frayed and faded--the tiny medal tarnished and dull. Perhaps the
mood of the wearer, be it hopeful or despondent, can affect the
apparel, as the chameleon's wrinkled skin changes from the hue of
dead bark to the vivid green of young leaves when sunlight touches
it, and fades back to the neutral tint when the golden ray is
withdrawn.
Juliette would not have thanked me for that analogy of the
prehensile-tongued, long-tailed lizard. Inconstancy as described by
the poets is typified by the chameleon, and her faith in the
sincerity and truth of her Colonel was founded upon the living rock.
We know that she had, or thought she had, discovered why he dared not
trust her to a husband whose career must lead him from her. "My
blood," she had murmured to herself sorrowfully, "it must" (she meant
unfaith) "be in my blood!" The reason for his desperate haste was
all beyond her. It must be cruel, because it hurt him so.
That heart of hers was as great as she herself was tiny. Titania at
need could love like a Titaness. And the blood of Antigone runs in
the veins of living women even to this day, though the noble daughter
of Œdipus died a virgin unspotted. When the fairy hand in the
perfectly fitting gray glove crept under the Colonel's elbow, it
gave, with the smile that accompanied it, a silent pledge of fidelity
to the death. But oh, blind father, could you have seen her, in that
inmost chamber of the heart where the most innocent maiden shrines
the imaginary portrait of a lover--taking down the stately canvas
bearing the presentment of a soldier-hero unknown, and hanging up in
its place the picture of a mere Charles Tessier, your eyes, like
those of the protagonist of the Greek drama, would have wept tears of
blood.
That night a letter was penned to Monica in the small, delicately
pointed handwriting that seemed appropriate to Juliette.
"To you, dear friend, who have exacted of me the pledge that I will
write to you before all, a faithful description of the person of my
future husband, I hasten to fulfill the vow. M. Charles Tessier has
a fine head and a fine hand, my father praises his capacity for
business and his skill at the billiard-table with equal fervor. Of
his powers of conversation I have as yet not sufficient experience to
afford you an opinion. In the presence of his mother he has been
silent and reserved. His letters, however, are eloquently expressed
and forcible. When I mention his letters, it should be explained
that affairs have entailed upon him the necessity of a journey to
Belgium, where he remains for the present, at the house of his
partner, M. Basselôt. Thou wilt draw from this the correct
conclusion that I am not yet married. Do not forget to pray for thy
faithful
"JULIETTE."
"See you well, I am happy--content--I dream not of impossibilities.
_J'ai pris mon parti_. I am sensible, me!"
In answer to a second letter from Monica received upon the ending of
the month there came:
"Tell M. Breagh that I have received his message, so generously
worded. Alas! the poor young girl had no intention of wounding a
heart at once so courageous and so proud. His fellow-student is
unjust to himself. Why term that 'brutality' which was merely honest
_brusquerie_? Yet if he gave pain--and I do not deny it was so--he
may rest assured he has been forgiven. Tell this to thy brother, from
"JULIETTE."
"M. Charles Tessier is still delayed by affairs in Belgium. I visit
his mother nearly every day. An excellent housekeeper and
cuisinière, she is charmed with my skill in cooking. For her and for
my father, who dines with her frequently, I plan delightful little
menus. They eat, and praise the dishes and cry--at least, Madame
cries: '_Ah, Heaven! if my Charles were only here!_' In a letter
which this morning's post brought me from the person mentioned, he
dwells with that impassioned luxuriance of imagery, warmth of color
and fullness of expression not denied to his sex, upon our
approaching union. One cannot deny that it is pleasant to be the
sole object in life of a young man so worthy and so amiable, and--ah,
my dearest! were the sacrifice of a personal wish demanded of me,
could I, _knowing what I_" (_scratched out_) "refuse to gratify the
cherished desire of my dear father's heart? Each day that finds me
by his side closes in deeper respect and love more ardent. Our Lord,
Whose will it was to leave me motherless, decreed that in him I
should find the tenderness of a father and that of a mother too.
"J. M. DE B."
For the delectation of those readers who are anxious to sample the
luxuriant imagery, glowing color and plenitude of expression ascribed
to the epistolary communication received by Mademoiselle de Bayard
from M. Charles Tessier I append the letter referred to as above:
"BASSELÔT AND TESSIER,
"WHOLESALE MERCHANTS.
"WEAVERS AND DYERS OF WOOLEN FABRICS.
"MONS-SUR-TROOTLLE.
"BELGIUM.
"--th _January_, 1870.
"MADEMOISELLE,
"That I have been tardy in personally assuring you of my profound
regard and unfaltering devotion you will pardon, knowing me detained
in a foreign country in the interests of my business affairs.
"Assured that all that concerns my welfare will naturally possess for
you the deepest interest, I hasten to inform you that jointly with my
partner, M. Felix Basselôt, I have entered into a scheme to
facilitate the manufacture of our woolen cloths and other textile
fabrics by the purchase and installation of the most recently
invented machines. Raw cloths are now subjected to perching,
knotting, milling, washing, hydro-extracting, gigging, cutting,
cropping, boiling, brushing and steaming processes of the latest
invention, and we claim that the output of our manufactory will
henceforth vie with the first qualities of goods advertised by the
leading firms of Belgium, England and France.
"My mother's letters palpitate with your praises. What happiness,
Mademoiselle, awaits the man who shall be privileged to confer upon
such beauty, goodness, and amiability, the sacred name of wife. You
will be interested to hear that for Saxonies, tweeds, merinos, and
cashmeres for ladies' drapery our house maintains its old reputation,
as well as for the heavier fabrics of masculine wear.
"Were I now at your side, how enchanting it would be to confide to
you that we have struck out a bold and original line in dress-stuffs,
dyed with the new agent called Aniline. It is extracted from
coal-tar, and the magenta so much admired by our Parisian _mondaines_
is obtained from it, by treating the crude substances with the
chloride of tin. From magenta we derive rosaniline, a dye as
delicate yet as passionate as a lover's fondest wishes. In an
experiment recently made in my presence I beheld a pure young girl
immerse in a solution of this extraction containing a little ammonia,
a spotless lily, when instantly the virginal blossom's whiteness was
changed to the loveliest roseate hue.
"Thus, dear Mademoiselle, your soul, so chaste, so spotless, and so
innocent, being plunged in the consecrated vat of marriage, will
assume the glowing hue of Love. Bleu de Lyons with Violet Imperial,
all the most fashionable shades of mauve and other colors can be
obtained by methods equally simple, and with the addition of aldehyde
and sulphuric acid, we secure a green of the most brilliant, and a
yellow that enchains the eye. By a simple process these colors may
be fortified to stand the test of washing, as firmly and unchangeably
as the affection I am privileged to offer you; which is hallowed by
the blessing of the best of mothers, and of a father noble as your
own.
"Receive then, dear Mademoiselle, the tenderest assurances of
devotion,
"From yours eternally,
"CHARLES JOSEPH TESSIER."
Over this epistle, apparently begotten between a trade-circular and a
polite letter-writer, Juliette had wept helpless tears of mirth.
Reading it, one may conjure up a picture of the excellent Charles,
spurred by the maternal threat of partial disinheritance to a
desperate effort, bending over the paper in the throes of
composition, diluting the ink with the sweat of a non-intellectual
brow.
Also, one may suspect the anonymous heroine of the experiment with
the lily to have been none other than Mademoiselle Clémence Basselôt,
but the suspicion has not, to the present date, been verified.