THE FÊTE
A honey-coloured haze of autumn glory hung over the trees and fields
outside Aix, where a fête was being held, this perfect day in late
October. Among the crowds who wandered in and out of the trees,
the booths, the stalls were Luc de Clapiers and his promised wife,
Clémence de Séguy. He had returned home for his betrothal and to
prepare for the appointment he was to take up in the spring. His
prospects were suddenly pure gold to him; the sense of the opportunity
ahead, of the achievement within his grasp, of success, of fulfilment
mingled with the joy of pleasing his father, of satisfying all those
claims of family affection and family pride, which had so often seemed
a chain and a clog, into one ecstasy of living that was crowned by
the gentle passion and happy devotion of Clémence, who seemed to
have no wish in the world but to shine for him. Her soft youth, her
grave ignorance, her pretty follies and lofty ideals of constancy,
self-sacrifice, and truth won from him a tender respect and a generous
gratitude that seemed to her perfect love. When she was absent from
him he did not often think of her. She filled her place in his mind as
his promised wife; over his soul she had no dominion.
They paused before a stage in front of a tent set among a group of elm
trees. A little group of townsfolk in their best clothes were watching
a marionette show that was nearly concluded. Above the tent fluttered
long red pennons against the blue sky and gold leaves; the stage was
hung at the back with white curtains and in front with a striped
tapestry of many colours, on the edge of which, where it trailed in
the golden dust, a man in green velvet with a comical painted face sat
beating a scarlet drum.
From the back of the tent sounded a brisk, lively music, to which the
puppets danced a _finale_, fluttering their laces and spangles.
Clémence laughed instinctively and laid her hand on Luc’s sleeve.
“Is it not beautiful?” she said. She had never been out of Aix in her
life, and never to a fair before: she was only eighteen.
The marionettes disappeared, and a little girl not above six years old
sprang on to the stage with a coil of rope in her hand.
“I should like to stay,” said Clémence.
There was a thin semicircle of seats about the stage; at one end of
this, in the front, they seated themselves.
The small performer deftly fastened the rope from one end to the other
of the stage, about five feet from the ground, and commenced walking
across it. She wore an apple-green coloured bodice and a white skirt
with a red frill; she had a small, dark face, and frowned down at the
rope with her arms spread wide and her body swaying.
Clémence leant forward and watched with grave absorption. Luc looked
at her, studied her with covert intensity, which she was too occupied
with the performance to notice.
Her face was slightly flushed, the lips parted, the absorbed eyes
shaded by the brim of her straw hat; between her warm-coloured, fine
neck and the frilled cambric of her fichu rolled a cluster of brown
curls that caught the sunlight in threads of gold; her small and
helpless-looking hands, covered in fine black silk mittens, were
folded in her lap; the full folds of her pale violet silk gown fell
over the chair and touched the dust.
Luc marvelled at her. That adorable little face had never expressed
sorrow, weariness, depression, anger, or any sad passion; it was
untouched by yearning, longing--by any struggle; it was, save for
the full development of its beauty, the face of an infant; and yet
she had calmly pledged herself to the stormy virtues of constancy,
self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, unending fidelity--more than he had
ever asked of her.
“I used to consider her a child,” thought Luc; “but she is nearer
an angel.” Then he forgot the stage under the trees, the passing
holiday-makers, and even the near presence of his betrothed, and was
only aware of the sunshine, which carried him back to Paris and the
Pont Neuf--and the river flowing past the Louvre and the isle of the
city (always the river ran through all his dreams and visions)--and
the Rue du Bac at night with the street lights gleaming through the
rain--and then the sunshine again over the poplar trees on the quays
and the spires of the churches.
He thought, too, of M. de Voltaire, and how that great man would smile
to think that he, Luc, was supremely happy in the prospect of his
modest appointment and his simple wife.
A timid touch on his sleeve roused him. Clémence was gazing at him
with shining eyes.
“Is it not wonderful?” she whispered.
Luc glanced at the stage; the child had raised herself by one hand
on the rope upright into the air, her feet close together, her green
tights a vivid line of colour, and her white and crimson skirts a
ruffle round her waist.
A man came from the back of the stage and caught the child in his
arms; he wore a robe of loose pattern composed of squares of black and
white, and he began to execute a fantastic dance with the child on his
shoulder.
The man in green velvet left off beating the drum, and began
collecting from the crowd in a pink and gold shaded shell.
Luc’s gaze wandered from the performers, and he watched the mummer’s
extravagant bows and grimaces as he solicited his guerdon from the
spectators.
Presently he stopped before a lady who stood in the shade under one
of the elm trees, and who was remarkable both for a certain air of
the great world not common to the nobility of Aix, and for the fact
that she was alone with only a black page in attendance. Luc could not
see her face, for she wore a heavy-plumed beaver, and her figure was
disguised by a scarlet riding-cloak, yet she interested him by reason
of an extraordinary mixture of humility and defiance in her air,
conveyed by something in her pose, the droop of her shoulders, and the
set of her head.
She gave the player a coin, and he passed on; she remained under the
tree, a conspicuous figure, and one of a mournfulness out of place in
this time of carnival.
Several people looked at her; some stopped to stare.
Luc wondered who she was, why she was here alone and apart from the
general gaiety.
He was looking at her when she came slowly out of the shadow, her page
behind her, and as she moved into the sunlight Luc recognized Carola
Koklinska.
“The show is over,” said Clémence regretfully.
A gaudy painted curtain had been drawn across the little stage, and
the people were moving away to other booths.
“Shall we go?” asked Luc.
“Yes; it is rather cold,” she answered shyly. She rose from the little
green chair, and as she turned Carola, walking in front of the poles
and canvas, was full in her vision.
Carola looked over her shoulder and saw the girl; the two gazed
directly at each other.
“Who is that lady?” asked Clémence, for she saw Luc’s salutation and
the stranger’s faint, answering smile.
“A Polish Countess,” he answered, “whom I met in Prague and in Paris.”
“Why, what is she here for--alone?” questioned Mademoiselle de Séguy.
“And will you not present me to her?” Her ardent desire to be gracious
to any acquaintance of his showed in her eager words.
Luc smiled.
“I never knew her well enough,” he said, “and it seems she does not
wish to speak to me.”
Certainly Carola, without a backward look, had disappeared in the
crowd. Clémence seemed disappointed.
“I wish she had stayed,” she remarked sincerely.
Luc made no answer; he was wondering what had brought Carola to Aix.
He had thought that she was still in Austria; he supposed she might be
on her way to Avignon; yet he knew M. de Richelieu was in Paris, and
under any circumstances it seemed curious that she should be alone at
a public fête--she who had always affected such magnificence.
A little sigh from Clémence recalled him from his momentary reflection.
“It is cold,” she repeated timidly.
“Come out into the sun,” he answered, and they moved slowly away from
the crowd, beyond the elms, and so beyond the fête, into a little
slope of meadow land where the grass was yet untrod and green. The
western distance, blue, hazed, and mysterious, was half hid by a belt
of beech trees, whose boughs bent beneath a load of tawny, orange,
gold, and crimson leaves.
The distant, mechanical music of the fête was in the air, and
occasional gusts of laughter and of applause broke the monotonous
rhythm of the melody.
Luc and Clémence moved farther and farther away from these sounds; the
streaming sunlight wrapped them in warmth and glory, the beech trees
were a dazzle of golden colour before their eyes, and the sky overhead
was clear blue without a trace of cloud. The girl sighed, looked at
the trees, the heavens, then at the ground.
“Are you sad, my dear?” asked Luc very tenderly.
“No,” she answered in a thin voice; “only I should like to
do--something--for you.”
“For me?” His face flashed into a charming smile.
“Yes.” She lifted her childlike countenance and her voice
was stronger. “Sometimes I wish that you were poor or lonely
or--despised--that I might prove what I can only say now.”
He was abashed and overwhelmed. He saw tears of sincerity glittering
on her long, drooping lashes; the heroic in his own soul was quick to
salute the heroic rising to him in hers.
He stopped and turned to face her.
“You must not say that,” he said, taking her by the shoulders very
gently. “I do not deserve that you should say that, Clémence.”
She shuddered and bent her head lower.
“I am such an ordinary woman--but now I feel I could do something
great--for you. I--I cared for you before you ever thought of me, you
know. When you were in Paris--I used--to--pray--every night--that you
might come back.”
She gave a quivering little laugh. He looked at her with intense
earnestness, and the blood flushed into his face.
“You will have my life’s entire homage, Clémence,” he responded
gravely. “To have you for my wife is beyond my desert. I want you to
do nothing for me but be yourself and smile on my endeavours to please
you.”
He took his hands lightly from her shoulders, and she clung weakly and
gently to his arm.
“You do believe I would do anything in the world for you?” she said in
a kind of broken passion. “Oh, I feel so foolish, so ignorant--and you
have a great career before you. But if I ever have a chance----”
“What makes you speak like this?” he asked in a tone of reverent
wonder. “I have done nothing for you----”
“Oh, oh!” she murmured, as if she concealed a secret pain. “You do not
understand me. But if you are ever in any misfortune----”
“You are the sweetest child in the world,” Luc interrupted, “and you
must not think of misfortune--I trust never to bring you within the
shadow of any trouble.”
She gave a little fluttering sigh and slipped her arm from his. They
reached a low fence that separated the meadow from the beech trees and
there they rested, looking, through a break in the ruddy foliage, at
the sweet expanse of open country.
Luc’s heart was singing within him. All sense of struggle, of discord,
of loneliness, of hopes deferred, of ambitions cheated was over; the
road was open, free. He would tread it in the old ways of honour and
nobility; he would fulfil himself, and at the same time respect his
name, his blazon, and the traditions of his race. His companion was
beside him and prepared to follow him with more than conventional
affection, while he experienced a new and exquisite pleasure in
offering her all the devotion of a hitherto untouched heart. In truth
it seemed to Luc, as he gazed over the prospect of Provence, that
here, in his native place, among his own people, he had found the
peace he had looked for uselessly abroad; here, in simple Clémence,
were the high virtues he had once thrilled to think he had met in
Carola Koklinska.
The sun glowed to its setting; superb bars of purple and scarlet began
to burn out of the dense gold of the west; a low, clear breeze arose
and swept over the grass.
Clémence broke the charmed silence.
“Are you sure of me?” she asked with panting force.
He gave her a quick smile; the glamour of all his visions and hopes
transfigured the moment.
“As I am sure of God,” he said. He raised the cold, mittened hand from
the fence and kissed it.
“Ah, Luc,” she said below her breath, “Luc!”
They went slowly back towards the fête with the sun behind them and
their shadows long across the grass before them, and all the air
circled with glory and the ineffable light of the setting sun.
As they entered the grounds of the fair they met the old Marquis and
Joseph.
If Luc had needed any completion of his happiness he would have found
it in the radiant demeanour of his father, whose every wish had been
now fulfilled and satisfied. He did not know of Luc’s correspondence
with M. de Voltaire; in Aix, Luc attended Mass, and never mentioned
the new philosophy that guided Paris. There was nothing to trouble the
elder M. de Vauvenargues’s touching pleasure in his sons.
Coloured lamps began to appear in the trees, mingling their twinkling
beams with the sanguine fires of the sun, and music sounded with
renewed gaiety from the gaudy tents.
Luc de Clapiers was content.