He had quite enough of love for her to make him wish to marry her; quite
enough now, at this moment, to make the idea of her marriage with the
capitaine very distasteful to him; enough probably to make him become a
decently good husband to her, should fate enable him to marry her; but
not enough to enable him to support all the punishment which would be
the sure effects of his mother’s displeasure. Besides, he had promised
his mother that he would give up Marie;--had entirely given in his
adhesion to that plan of the marriage with the capitaine. He had owned
that the path of life as marked out for him by his mother was the one
which it behoved him, as a man, to follow. It was this view of his
duties as a man which had been specially urged on him with all the
capitaine’s eloquence. And old Campan had entirely succeeded. It is so
easy to get the assent of such young men, so weak in mind and so weak
in pocket, when the arguments are backed by a promise of two thousand
francs a year.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” at last he said. “I’ll get my mother by
herself, and will ask her to let the matter remain as it is for the
present.”
“Not if it be a trouble, M. Adolphe;” and the proud girl still held her
hands upon her bosom, and still looked towards the mountain.
“You know what I mean, Marie. You can understand how she and the
capitaine are worrying me.”
“But tell me, Adolphe, do you love me?”
“You know I love you, only--”
“And you will not give me up?”
“I will ask my mother. I will try and make her yield.”
Marie could not feel that she received much confidence from her lover’s
promise; but still, even that, weak and unsteady as it was, even that
was better than absolute fixed rejection. So she thanked him, promised
him with tears in her eyes that she would always, always be faithful to
him, and then bade him go down to the house. She would follow, she said,
as soon as his passing had ceased to be observed.
Then she looked at him as though she expected some sign of renewed love.
But no such sign was vouchsafed to her. Now that she thirsted for the
touch of his lip upon her cheek, it was denied to her. He did as she
bade him; he went down, slowly loitering, by himself; and in about half
an hour she followed him, and unobserved crept to her chamber.
Again we will pass over what took place between the mother and the son;
but late in that evening, after the guests had gone to bed, Marie
received a message, desiring her to wait on Madame Bauche in a small
salon which looked out from one end of the house. It was intended as a
private sitting-room should any special stranger arrive who required
such accommodation, and therefore was but seldom used. Here she found La
Mère Bauche sitting in an arm-chair behind a small table on which stood
two candles; and on a sofa against the wall sat Adolphe. The capitaine
was not in the room.
“Shut the door, Marie, and come in and sit down,” said Madame Bauche. It
was easy to understand from the tone of her voice that she was angry and
stern, in an unbending mood, and resolved to carry out to the very
letter all the threats conveyed by those terrible spectacles.
Marie did as she was bid. She closed the door and sat down on the chair
that was nearest to her.
“Marie,” said La Mère Bauche--and the voice sounded fierce in the poor
girl’s ears, and an angry fire glimmered through the green
glasses--“what is all this about that I hear? Do you dare to say that
you hold my son bound to marry you?” And then the august mother paused
for an answer.
But Marie had no answer to give. She looked suppliantly towards her
lover, as though beseeching him to carry on the fight for her. But if
she could not do battle for herself, certainly he could not do it for
her. What little amount of fighting he had had in him, had been
thoroughly vanquished before her arrival.
“I will have an answer, and that immediately,” said Madame Bauche. “I am
not going to be betrayed into ignominy and disgrace by the object of my
own charity. Who picked you out of the gutter, miss, and brought you up
and fed you, when you would otherwise have gone to the foundling? And
this is your gratitude for it all? You are not satisfied with being fed
and clothed and cherished by me, but you must rob me of my son! Know
this then, Adolphe shall never marry a child of charity such as you
are.”
Marie sat still, stunned by the harshness of these words. La Mère Bauche
had often scolded her; indeed, she was given to much scolding; but she
had scolded her as a mother may scold a child. And when this story of
Marie’s love first reached her ears, she had been very angry; but her
anger had never brought her to such a pass as this. Indeed, Marie had
not hitherto been taught to look at the matter in this light. No one had
heretofore twitted her with eating the bread of charity. It had not
occurred to her that on this account she was unfit to be Adolphe’s wife.
There, in that valley, they were all so nearly equal, that no idea of
her own inferiority had ever pressed itself upon her mind. But now--!
When the voice ceased she again looked at him; but it was no longer a
beseeching look. Did he also altogether scorn her? That was now the
inquiry which her eyes were called upon to make. No; she could not say
that he did. It seemed to her that his energies were chiefly occupied in
pulling to pieces the tassel on the sofa cushion.
“And now, miss, let me know at once whether this nonsense is to be over
or not,” continued La Mère Bauche; “and I will tell you at once, I am
not going to maintain you here, in my house, to plot against our welfare
and happiness. As Marie Clavert you shall not stay here. Capitaine
Campan is willing to marry you; and as his wife I will keep my word to
you, though you little deserve it. If you refuse to marry him, you must
go. As to my son, he is there; and he will tell you now, in my presence,
that he altogether declines the honour you propose for him.”
And then she ceased, waiting for an answer, drumming the table with a
wafer stamp which happened to be ready to her hand; but Marie said
nothing. Adolphe had been appealed to; but Adolphe had not yet spoken.
“Well, miss?” said La Mère Bauche.
Then Marie rose from her seat, and walking round she touched Adolphe
lightly on the shoulder. “Adolphe,” she said, “it is for you to speak
now. I will do as you bid me.”
He gave a long sigh, looked first at Marie and then at his mother, shook
himself slightly, and then spoke: “Upon my word, Marie, I think mother
is right. It would never do for us to marry; it would not indeed.”
“Then it is decided,” said Marie, returning to her chair.
“And you will marry the capitaine?” said La Mère Bauche.
Marie merely bowed her head in token of acquiescence.
“Then we are friends again. Come here, Marie, and kiss me. You must know
that it is my duty to take care of my own son. But I don’t want to be
angry with you if I can help it; I don’t indeed. When once you are
Madame Campan, you shall be my own child; and you shall have any room in
the house you like to choose--there!” And she once more imprinted a kiss
on Marie’s cold forehead.
How they all got out of the room, and off to their own chambers, I can
hardly tell. But in five minutes from the time of this last kiss they
were divided. La Mère Bauche had patted Marie, and smiled on her, and
called her her dear good little Madame Campan, her young little Mistress
of the Hôtel Bauche; and had then got herself into her own room,
satisfied with her own victory.
Nor must my readers be too severe on Madame Bauche. She had already done
much for Marie Clavert; and when she found herself once more by her own
bedside, she prayed to be forgiven for the cruelty which she felt that
she had shown to the orphan. But in making this prayer, with her
favourite crucifix in her hand and the little image of the Virgin before
her, she pleaded her duty to her son. Was it not right, she asked the
Virgin, that she should save her son from a bad marriage? And then she
promised ever so much of recompense, both to the Virgin and to Marie; a
new trousseau for each, with candles to the Virgin, with a gold watch
and chain for Marie, as soon as she should be Marie Campan. She had been
cruel; she acknowledged it. But at such a crisis was it not defensible?
And then the recompense should be so full!
But there was one other meeting that night, very short indeed, but not
the less significant. Not long after they had all separated, just so
long as to allow of the house being quiet, Adolphe, still sitting in his
room, meditating on what the day had done for him, heard a low tap at
his door. “Come in,” he said, as men always do say; and Marie opening
the door, stood just within the verge of his chamber. She had on her
countenance neither the soft look of entreating love which she had worn
up there in the grotto, nor did she appear crushed and subdued as she
had done before his mother. She carried her head somewhat more erect
than usual, and looked boldly out at him from under her soft eyelashes.
There might still be love there, but it was love proudly resolving to
quell itself. Adolphe, as he looked at her, felt that he was afraid of
her.
“It is all over then between us, M. Adolphe?” she said.
“Well, yes. Don’t you think it had better be so, eh, Marie?”
“And this is the meaning of oaths and vows, sworn to each other so
sacredly?”
“But, Marie, you heard what my mother said.”
“Oh, sir! I have not come to ask you again to love me. Oh no! I am not
thinking of that. But this, this would be a lie if I kept it now; it
would choke me if I wore it as that man’s wife. Take it back;” and she
tendered to him the little charm, which she had always worn round her
neck since he had given it to her. He took it abstractedly, without
thinking what he did, and placed it on his dressing-table.
“And you,” she continued, “can you still keep that cross? Oh, no! you
must give me back that. It would remind you too often of vows that were
untrue.”
“Marie,” he said, “do not be so harsh to me.”
“Harsh!” said she, “no; there has been enough of harshness. I would not
be harsh to you, Adolphe. But give me the cross; it would prove a curse
to you if you kept it.”
He then opened a little box which stood upon the table, and taking out
the cross gave it to her.
“And now good-bye,” she said. “We shall have but little more to say to
each other. I know this now, that I was wrong ever to have loved you. I
should have been to you as one of the other poor girls in the house.
But, oh! how was I to help it?” To this he made no answer, and she,
closing the door softly, went back to her chamber. And thus ended the
first day of Adolphe Bauche’s return to his own house.
On the next morning the capitaine and Marie were formally betrothed.
This was done with some little ceremony, in the presence of all the
guests who were staying at the establishment, and with all manner of
gracious acknowledgments of Marie’s virtues. It seemed as though La Mère
Bauche could not be courteous enough to her. There was no more talk of
her being a child of charity; no more allusion now to the gutter. La
Mère Bauche with her own hand brought her cake with a glass of wine
after her betrothal was over, and patted her on the cheek, and called
her her dear little Marie Campan. And then the capitaine was made up of
infinite politeness, and the guests all wished her joy, and the servants
of the house began to perceive that she was a person entitled to
respect. How different was all this from that harsh attack that was made
on her the preceding evening! Only Adolphe,--he alone kept aloof. Though
he was present there he said nothing. He, and he only, offered no
congratulations.
In the midst of all these gala doings Marie herself said little or
nothing. La Mère Bauche perceived this, but she forgave it. Angrily as
she had expressed herself at the idea of Marie’s daring to love her son,
she had still acknowledged within her own heart that such love had been
natural. She could feel no pity for Marie as long as Adolphe was in
danger; but now she knew how to pity her. So Marie was still petted and
still encouraged, though she went through the day’s work sullenly and in
silence.
As to the capitaine it was all one to him. He was a man of the world. He
did not expect that he should really be preferred, con amore, to a young
fellow like Adolphe. But he did expect that Marie, like other girls,
would do as she was bid; and that in a few days she would regain her
temper and be reconciled to her life.
And then the marriage was fixed for a very early day; for as La Mère
said, “What was the use of waiting? All their minds were made up now,
and therefore the sooner the two were married the better. Did not the
capitaine think so?”
The capitaine said that he did think so.
And then Marie was asked. It was all one to her, she said. Whatever
Maman Bauche liked, that she would do; only she would not name a day
herself. Indeed she would neither do nor say anything herself which
tended in any way to a furtherance of these matrimonials. But then she
acquiesced, quietly enough if not readily, in what other people did and
said; and so the marriage was fixed for the day week after Adolphe’s
return.
The whole of that week passed much in the same way. The servants about
the place spoke among themselves of Marie’s perverseness, obstinacy, and
ingratitude, because she would not look pleased, or answer Madame
Bauche’s courtesies with gratitude; but La Mère herself showed no signs
of anger. Marie had yielded to her, and she required no more. And she
remembered also the harsh words she had used to gain her purpose; and
she reflected on all that Marie had lost. On these accounts she was
forbearing and exacted nothing--nothing but that one sacrifice which was
to be made in accordance to her wishes.
And it was made. They were married in the great salon, the dining-room,
immediately after breakfast. Madame Bauche was dressed in a new puce
silk dress, and looked very magnificent on the occasion. She simpered
and smiled, and looked gay even in spite of her spectacles; and as the
ceremony was being performed, she held fast clutched in her hand the
gold watch and chain which were intended for Marie as soon as ever the
marriage should be completed.
The capitaine was dressed exactly as usual, only that all his clothes
were new. Madame Bauche had endeavoured to persuade him to wear a blue
coat; but he answered that such a change would not, he was sure, be to
Marie’s taste. To tell the truth, Marie would hardly have known the
difference had he presented himself in scarlet vestments.
Adolphe, however, was dressed very finely, but he did not make himself
prominent on the occasion. Marie watched him closely, though none saw
that she did so; and of his garments she could have given an account
with much accuracy--of his garments, ay! and of every look. “Is he a
man,” she said at last to herself, “that he can stand by and see all
this?”
She too was dressed in silk. They had put on her what they pleased, and
she bore the burden of her wedding finery without complaint and without
pride. There was no blush on her face as she walked up to the table at
which the priest stood, nor hesitation in her low voice as she made the
necessary answers. She put her hand into that of the capitaine when
required to do so; and when the ring was put on her finger she
shuddered, but ever so slightly. No one observed it but La Mère Bauche.
“In one week she will be used to it, and then we shall all be happy,”
said La Mère to herself. “And I,--I will be so kind to her!”
And so the marriage was completed, and the watch was at once given to
Marie. “Thank you, maman,” said she, as the trinket was fastened to her
girdle. Had it been a pincushion that had cost three sous, it would have
affected her as much.
And then there was cake and wine and sweetmeats; and after a few minutes
Marie disappeared. For an hour or so the capitaine was taken up with the
congratulations of his friends, and with the efforts necessary to the
wearing of his new honours with an air of ease; but after that time he
began to be uneasy because his wife did not come to him. At two or three
in the afternoon he went to La Mère Bauche to complain. “This
lackadaisical nonsense is no good,” he said. “At any rate it is too late
now. Marie had better come down among us and show herself satisfied with
her husband.”
But Madame Bauche took Marie’s part. “You must not be too hard on
Marie,” she said. “She has gone through a good deal this week past, and
is very young; whereas, capitaine, you are not very young.”
The capitaine merely shrugged his shoulders. In the mean time Mère
Bauche went up to visit her protégée in her own room, and came down with
a report that she was suffering from a headache. She could not appear at
dinner, Madame Bauche said; but would make one at the little party which
was to be given in the evening. With this the capitaine was forced to be
content.
The dinner therefore went on quietly without her, much as it did on
other ordinary days. And then there was a little time for vacancy,
during which the gentlemen drank their coffee and smoked their cigars at
the café, talking over the event that had taken place that morning, and
the ladies brushed their hair and added some ribbon or some brooch to
their usual apparel. Twice during this time did Madame Bauche go up to
Marie’s room with offers to assist her. “Not yet, maman; not quite yet,”
said Marie piteously through her tears, and then twice did the green
spectacles leave the room, covering eyes which also were not dry. Ah!
what had she done? What had she dared to take upon herself to do? She
could not undo it now.
And then it became quite dark in the passages and out of doors, and the
guests assembled in the salon. La Mère came in and out three or four
times, uneasy in her gait and unpleasant in her aspect, and everybody
began to see that things were wrong. “She is ill, I am afraid,” said
one. “The excitement has been too much,” said a second; “and he is so
old,” whispered a third. And the capitaine stalked about erect on his
wooden leg, taking snuff, and striving to look indifferent; but he also
was uneasy in his mind.
Presently La Mère came in again, with a quicker step than before, and
whispered something, first to Adolphe and then to the capitaine,
whereupon they both followed her out of the room.
“Not in her chamber,” said Adolphe.
“Then she must be in yours,” said the capitaine.
“She is in neither,” said La Mère Bauche, with her sternest voice; “nor
is she in the house!”
And now there was no longer an affectation of indifference on the part
of any of them. They were anything but indifferent. The capitaine was
eager in his demands that the matter should still be kept secret from
the guests. She had always been romantic, he said, and had now gone out
to walk by the river-side. They three and the old bath-man would go out
and look for her.
“But it is pitch, dark,” said La Mère Bauche.
“We will take lanterns,” said the capitaine. And so they sallied forth
with creeping steps over the gravel, so that they might not be heard by
those within, and proceeded to search for the young wife.
“Marie! Marie!” said La Mère Bauche, in piteous accents; “do come to me;
pray do!”
“Hush!” said the capitaine. “They’ll hear you if you call.” He could not
endure that the world should learn that a marriage with him had been so
distasteful to Marie Clavert.
“Marie, dear Marie!” called Madame Bauche, louder than before, quite
regardless of the capitaine’s feelings; but no Marie answered. In her
innermost heart now did La Mère Bauche wish that this cruel marriage had
been left undone.
Adolphe was foremost with his lamp, but he hardly dared to look in the
spot where he felt that it was most likely that she should have taken
refuge. How could he meet her again, alone, in that grotto? Yet he alone
of the four was young. It was clearly for him to ascend. “Marie,” he
shouted, “are you there?” as he slowly began the long ascent of the
steps.
But he had hardly begun to mount when a whirring sound struck his ear,
and he felt that the air near him was moved; and then there was a crash
upon the lower platform of rock, and a moan, repeated twice, but so
faintly, and a rustle of silk, and a slight struggle somewhere as he
knew within twenty paces of him; and then all was again quiet and still
in the night air.
“What was that?” asked the capitaine in a hoarse voice. He made his way
half across the little garden, and he also was within forty or fifty
yards of the flat rock. But Adolphe was unable to answer him. He had
fainted and the lamp had fallen from his hands and rolled to the bottom
of the steps.
But the capitaine, though even his heart was all but quenched within
him, had still strength enough to make his way up to the rock; and
there, holding the lantern above his eyes, he saw all that was left for
him to see of his bride.
As for La Mère Bauche, she never again sat at the head of that
table,--never again dictated to guests,--never again laid down laws for
the management of any one. A poor bedridden old woman, she lay there in
her house at Vernet for some seven tedious years, and then was gathered
to her fathers.
As for the capitaine--but what matters? He was made of sterner stuff.
What matters either the fate of such a one as Adolphe Bauche?
THE O’CONORS OF CASTLE CONOR, COUNTY MAYO.
I shall never forget my first introduction to country life in Ireland,
my first day’s hunting there, or the manner in which I passed the
evening afterwards. Nor shall I ever cease to be grateful for the
hospitality which I received from the O’Conors of Castle Conor. My
acquaintance with the family was first made in the following manner. But
before I begin my story, let me inform my reader that my name is
Archibald Green.
I had been for a fortnight in Dublin, and was about to proceed into
county Mayo on business which would occupy me there for some weeks. My
head-quarters would, I found, be at the town of Ballyglass; and I soon
learned that Ballyglass was not a place in which I should find hotel
accommodation of a luxurious kind, or much congenial society indigenous
to the place itself.
“But you are a hunting man, you say,” said old Sir P---- C----; “and in
that case you will soon know Tom O’Conor. Tom won’t let you be dull. I’d
write you a letter to Tom, only he’ll certainly make you out without my
taking the trouble.”
I did think at the time that the old baronet might have written the
letter for me, as he had been a friend of my father’s in former days;
but he did not, and I started for Ballyglass with no other introduction
to any one in the county than that contained in Sir P----’s promise
that I should soon know Mr. Thomas O’Conor.
I had already provided myself with a horse, groom, saddle and bridle,
and these I sent down, en avant, that the Ballyglassians might know that
I was somebody. Perhaps, before I arrived, Tom O’Conor might learn that
a hunting man was coming into the neighbourhood, and I might find at the
inn a polite note intimating that a bed was at my service at Castle
Conor. I had heard so much of the free hospitality of the Irish gentry
as to imagine that such a thing might be possible.
But I found nothing of the kind. Hunting gentlemen in those days were
very common in county Mayo, and one horse was no great evidence of a
man’s standing in the world. Men there, as I learnt afterwards, are
sought for themselves quite as much as they are elsewhere; and though my
groom’s top-boots were neat, and my horse a very tidy animal, my entry
into Ballyglass created no sensation whatever.
In about four days after my arrival, when I was already infinitely
disgusted with the little pot-house in which I was forced to stay, and
had made up my mind that the people in county Mayo were a churlish set,
I sent my horse on to a meet of the fox-hounds, and followed after
myself on an open car.
No one but an erratic fox-hunter such as I am,--a fox-hunter, I mean,
whose lot it has been to wander about from one pack of hounds to
another,--can understand the melancholy feeling which a man has when he
first intrudes himself, unknown by any one, among an entirely new set of
sportsmen. When a stranger falls thus as it were out of the moon into a
hunt, it is impossible that men should not stare at him and ask who he
is. And it is so disagreeable to be stared at, and to have such
questions asked! This feeling does not come upon a man in Leicestershire
or Gloucestershire, where the numbers are large, and a stranger or two
will always be overlooked, but in small hunting fields it is so painful
that a man has to pluck up much courage before he encounters it.
We met on the morning in question at Bingham’s Grove. There were not
above twelve or fifteen men out, all of whom, or nearly all, were
cousins to each other. They seemed to be all Toms, and Pats, and Larrys,
and Micks. I was done up very knowingly in pink, and thought that I
looked quite the thing; but for two or three hours nobody noticed me.