The baroness, as I have said, drew Josephine aside, and tried to break
to her the sad news: but her own grief overcame her, and bursting into
tears she bewailed the loss of her son. Josephine was greatly shocked.
Death!--Raynal dead--her true, kind friend dead--her benefactor dead.
She clung to her mother’s neck, and sobbed with her. Presently she
withdrew her face and suddenly hid it in both her hands.
She rose and kissed her mother once more: and went to her own room: and
then, though there was none to see her, she hid her wet, but burning,
cheeks in her hands.
Josephine confined herself for some days to her own room, leaving it
only to go to the chapel in the park, where she spent hours in prayers
for the dead and in self-humiliation. Her “tender conscience” accused
herself bitterly for not having loved this gallant spirit more than she
had.
Camille realized nothing at first; he looked all confused in the
doctor’s face, and was silent. Then after awhile he said, “Dead? Raynal
dead?”
“Killed in action.”
A red flush came to Camille’s face, and his eyes went down to the ground
at his very feet, nor did he once raise them while the doctor told him
how the sad news had come. “Picard the notary brought us the Moniteur,
and there was Commandant Raynal among the killed in a cavalry skirmish.”
With this, he took the journal from his pocket, and Camille read it,
with awe-struck, and other feelings he would have been sorry to see
analyzed. He said not a word; and lowered his eyes to the ground.
“And now,” said Aubertin, “you will excuse me. I must go to my poor
friend the baroness. She had a mother’s love for him who is no more:
well she might.”
Aubertin went away, and left Dujardin standing there like a statue, his
eyes still glued to the ground at his feet.
The doctor was no sooner out of sight, than Camille raised his eyes
furtively, like a guilty person, and looked irresolutely this way
and that: at last he turned and went back to the place where he had
meditated suicide and murder; looked down at it a long while, then
looked up to heaven--then fell suddenly on his knees: and so remained
till night-fall. Then he came back to the chateau.
He whispered to himself, “And I am afraid it is too late to go away
to-night.” He went softly into the saloon. Nobody was there but Rose and
Aubertin. At sight of him Rose got up and left the room. But I suppose
she went to Josephine; for she returned in a few minutes, and rang the
bell, and ordered some supper to be brought up for Colonel Dujardin.
“You have not dined, I hear,” said she, very coldly.
“I was afraid you were gone altogether,” said the doctor: then turning
to Rose, “He told me he was going this evening. You had better stay
quiet another day or two,” added he, kindly.
“Do you think so?” said Camille, timidly.
He stayed upon these terms. And now he began to examine himself. “Did
I wish him dead? I hope I never formed such a thought! I don’t remember
ever wishing him dead.” And he went twice a day to that place by the
stream, and thought very solemnly what a terrible thing ungoverned
passion is; and repented--not eloquently, but silently, sincerely.
But soon his impatient spirit began to torment itself again. Why did
Josephine shun him now? Ah! she loved Raynal now that he was dead. Women
love the thing they have lost; so he had heard say. In that case, the
very sight of him would of course be odious to her: he could understand
that. The absolute, unreasoning faith he once had in her had been
so rudely shaken by her marriage with Raynal, that now he could only
believe just so much as he saw, and he saw that she shunned him.
He became moody, sad, and disconsolate: and as Josephine shunned him, so
he avoided all the others, and wandered for hours by himself, perplexed
and miserable. After awhile, he became conscious that he was under a
sort of surveillance. Rose de Beaurepaire, who had been so kind to him
when he was confined to his own room, but had taken little notice of him
since he came down, now resumed her care of him, and evidently made it
her business to keep up his heart. She used to meet him out walking in
a mysterious way, and in short, be always falling in with him and trying
to cheer him up: with tolerable success.
Such was the state of affairs when the party was swelled and matters
complicated by the arrival of one we have lost sight of.
Edouard Riviere retarded his cure by an impatient spirit: but he got
well at last, and his uncle drove him in the cabriolet to his own
quarters. The news of the house had been told him by letter, but, of
course, in so vague and general a way that, thinking he knew all, in
reality he knew nothing.
Josephine had married Raynal. The marriage was sudden, but no doubt
there was an attachment: he had some reason to believe in sudden
attachments. Colonel Dujardin, an old acquaintance, had come back
to France wounded, and the good doctor had undertaken his cure: this
incident appeared neither strange nor any way important. What affected
him most deeply was the death of Raynal, his personal friend and patron.
But when his tyrants, as he called the surgeon and his uncle, gave him
leave to go home, all feelings were overpowered by his great joy at the
prospect of seeing Rose. He walked over to Beaurepaire, his arm in a
sling, his heart beating. He was coming to receive the reward of all he
had done, and all he had attempted. “I will surprise them,” thought he.
“I will see her face when I come in at the door: oh, happy hour! this
pays for all.” He entered the house without announcing himself; he went
softly up to the saloon; to his great disappointment he found no one
but the baroness: she received him kindly, but not with the warmth he
expected. She was absorbed in her new grief. He asked timidly after her
daughters. “Madame Raynal bears up, for the sake of others. You will
not, however, see her: she keeps her room. My daughter Rose is taking
a walk, I believe.” After some polite inquiries, and sympathy with his
accident, the baroness retired to indulge her grief, and Edouard thus
liberated ran in search of his beloved.
He met her at the gate of the Pleasaunce, but not alone. She was walking
with an officer, a handsome, commanding, haughty, brilliant officer. She
was walking by his side, talking earnestly to him.
An arrow of ice shot through young Riviere; and then came a feeling of
death at his heart, a new symptom in his young life.
The next moment Rose caught sight of him. She flushed all over and
uttered a little exclamation, and she bounded towards him like a little
antelope, and put out both her hands at once. He could only give her
one.
“Ah!” she cried with an accent of heavenly pity, and took his hand with
both hers.
This was like the meridian sun coming suddenly on a cold place. He was
all happiness.
When Josephine heard he was come her eye flashed, and she said quickly,
“I will come down to welcome him--dear Edouard!”
The sisters looked at one another. Josephine blushed. Rose smiled and
kissed her. She colored higher still, and said, “No, she was ashamed to
go down.”
“Why?”
“Look at my face.”
“I see nothing wrong with it, except that it eclipses other people’s,
and I have long forgiven you that.”
“Oh, yes, dear Rose: look what a color it has, and a fortnight ago it
was pale as ashes.”
“Never mind; do you expect me to regret that?”
“Rose, I am a very bad woman.”
“Are you, dear? then hook this for me.”
“Yes, love. But I sometimes think you would forgive me if you knew how
hard I pray to be better. Rose, I do try so to be as unhappy as I ought;
but I can’t, I can’t. My cold heart seems as dead to unhappiness as once
it was to happiness. Am I a heartless woman after all?”
“Not altogether,” said Rose dryly. “Fasten my collar, dear, and don’t
torment yourself. You have suffered much and nobly. It was Heaven’s
will: you bowed to it. It was not Heaven’s will that you should be
blighted altogether. Bow in this, too, to Heaven’s will: take things
as they come, and do cease to try and reconcile feelings that are too
opposite to live together.”
“Ah! these are such comfortable words, Rose; but mamma will see this
dreadful color in my cheek, and what can I say to her?”
“Ten to one it will not be observed; and if it should, I will say it is
the excitement of seeing Edouard. Leave all to me.”
Josephine greeted Edouard most affectionately, drew from him his whole
history, and petted him and sympathized with him deliciously, and made
him the hero of the evening. Camille, who was not naturally of a jealous
temper, bore this very well at first, but at last he looked so bitter
at her neglect of him, that Rose took him aside to soothe him. Edouard,
missing the auditor he most valued, and seeing her in secret conference
with the brilliant colonel, felt a return of the jealous pangs that
had seized him at first sight of the man; and so they played at cross
purposes.
At another period of the evening the conversation became more general;
and Edouard took a dislike to Colonel Dujardin. A young man of
twenty-eight nearly always looks on a boy of twenty-one with the air of
a superior, and this assumption, not being an ill-natured one, is apt to
be so easy and so undefined that the younger hardly knows how to resent
or to resist it. But Edouard was a little vain as we know; and the
Colonel jarred him terribly. His quick haughty eye jarred him. His
regimentals jarred him: they fitted like a glove. His mustache and his
manner jarred him, and, worst of all, his cool familiarity with Rose,
who seemed to court him rather than be courted by him. He put this act
of Rose’s to the colonel’s account, according to the custom of lovers,
and revenged himself in a small way by telling Josephine in her ear
“that the colonel produced on his mind the effect of an intolerable
puppy.”
Josephine colored up and looked at him with a momentary surprise. She
said quietly, “Military men do give themselves some airs, but he is very
amiable at bottom. You must make a better acquaintance with him, and
then he will reveal to you his nobler qualities.”--“Oh! I have no
particular desire,” sneered unlucky Edouard. Sweet as Josephine was,
this was too much for her: she said nothing; but she quietly turned
Edouard over to Aubertin, and joined Rose, and under cover of her had a
sweet timid chat with her falsely accused.
This occupied the two so entirely that Edouard was neglected. This hurt
his foible, and seemed to be so unkind on the very first day of his
return that he made his adieus to the baroness, and marched off in
dudgeon unobserved.
Rose missed him first, but said nothing.
When Josephine saw he was gone, she uttered a little exclamation, and
looked at Rose. Rose put on a mien of haughty indifference, but the
water was in her eyes.
Josephine looked sorrowful.
When they talked over everything together at night, she reproached
herself. “We behaved ill to poor Edouard: we neglected him.”
“He is a little cross, ill-tempered fellow,” said Rose pettishly.
“Oh, no! no!”
“And as vain as a peacock.”
“Has he not some right to be vain in this house?”
“Yes,--no. I am very angry with him. I won’t hear a word in his favor,”
said Rose pouting: then she gave his defender a kiss. “Yes, dear,” said
Josephine, answering the kiss, and ignoring the words, “he is a dear;
and he is not cross, nor so very vain, poor boy! now don’t you see what
it was?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do, you little cunning thing: you are too shrewd not to see
everything.”
“No, indeed, Josephine; do tell me, don’t keep me waiting: I can’t bear
that.”
“Well, then--jealous! A little.”
“Jealous? Oh, what fun! Of Camille? Ha! ha! Little goose!”
“And,” said Josephine very seriously, “I almost think he would be
jealous of any one that occupied your attention. I watched him more or
less all the evening.”
“All the better. I’ll torment my lord.”
“Heaven forbid you should be so cruel.”
“Oh! I will not make him unhappy, but I’ll tease him a little; it is not
in nature to abstain.”
This foible detected in her lover, Rose was very gay at the prospect of
amusement it afforded her.
And I think I have many readers who at this moment are awaiting unmixed
enjoyment and hilarity from the same source.
I wish them joy of their prospect.
Edouard called the next day: he wore a gloomy air. Rose met this with
a particularly cheerful one; on this, Edouard’s face cleared up, and
he was himself again; agreeable as this was, Rose felt a little
disappointed. “I am afraid he is not very jealous after all,” thought
she.
Josephine left her room this day and mingled once more with the family.
The bare sight of her was enough for Camille at first, but after awhile
he wanted more. He wanted to be often alone with her; but several causes
co-operated to make her shy of giving him many such opportunities:
first, her natural delicacy, coupled with her habit of self-denial; then
her fear of shocking her mother, and lastly her fear of her own heart,
and of Camille, whose power over her she knew. For Camille, when he did
get a sweet word alone with her, seemed to forget everything except that
she was his betrothed, and that he had come back alive to marry her.
He spoke to her of his love with an ardor and an urgency that made her
thrill with happiness, but at the same time shrink with a certain fear
and self-reproach. Possessed with a feeling no stronger than hers, but
single, he did not comprehend the tumult, the trouble, the daily contest
in her heart. The wind seemed to him to be always changing, and hot and
cold the same hour. Since he did not even see that she was acting in
hourly fear of her mother’s eye, he was little likely to penetrate
her more hidden sentiments; and then he had not touched her
key-note,--self-denial.
Women are self-denying and uncandid. Men are self-indulgent and
outspoken.
And this is the key to a thousand double misunderstandings; for believe
me, good women are just as stupid in misunderstanding men as honest men
are in misunderstanding women.
To Camille, Josephine’s fluctuations, joys, tremors, love, terror,
modesty, seemed one grand total, caprice. The component parts of it he
saw not; and her caprice tortured him almost to madness. Too penitent
to give way again to violent passion, he gently fretted. His health
retrograded and his temper began to sour. The eye of timid love that
watched him with maternal anxiety from under its long lashes saw this
with dismay, and Rose, who looked into her sister’s bosom, devoted
herself once more to soothe him without compromising Josephine’s
delicacy. Matters were not so bad but what a fine sprightly girl like
Rose could cheer up a dejected but manly colonel; and Rose was generally
successful.
But then, unfortunately, this led to a fresh mystification. Riviere’s
natural jealousy revived, and found constant food in the attention Rose
paid Camille, a brilliant colonel living in the house while he, poor
wretch, lived in lodgings. The false position of all the parties brought
about some singular turns. I give from their number one that forms a
link, though a small one, in my narrative.
One day Edouard came to tell Rose she was making him unhappy; he had her
alone in the Pleasaunce; she received him with a radiant smile, and they
had a charming talk,--a talk all about HIM: what the family owed him,
etc.
On this, his late jealousy and sense of injury seemed a thing of three
years ago, and never to return. So hard it is for the loving heart to
resist its sun.
Jacintha came with a message from the colonel: “Would it be agreeable to
Mademoiselle Rose to walk with him at the usual hour?”
“Certainly,” said Rose.
As Jacintha was retiring Edouard called to her to stop a minute.
Then, turning to Rose, he begged her very ceremoniously to reconsider
that determination.
“What determination?”
“To sacrifice me to this Colonel Dujardin.” Still politely, only a
little grimly.
Rose opened her eyes. “Are you mad?” inquired she with quiet hauteur.
“Neither mad nor a fool,” was the reply. “I love you too well to share
your regard with any one, upon any terms; least of all upon these, that
there is to be a man in the world at whose beck and call you are to
be, and at whose orders you are to break off an interview with me.
Perdition!”
“Dear Edouard, what folly! Can you suspect me of discourtesy, as well as
of--I know not what. Colonel Dujardin will join us, that is all, and we
shall take a little walk with him.”
“Not I. I decline the intrusion; you are engaged with me, and I have
things to say to you that are not fit for that puppy to hear. So choose
between me and him, and choose forever.”
Rose colored. “I should be very sorry to choose either of you forever;
but for this afternoon I choose you.”
“Oh, thank you--my whole life shall prove my gratitude for this
preference.”
Rose beckoned Jacintha, and sent her with an excuse to Colonel Dujardin.
She then turned with an air of mock submission to Edouard. “I am at
monsieur’s ORDERS.”
Then this unhappy novice, being naturally good-natured, thanked her
again and again for her condescension in setting his heart at rest. He
proposed a walk, since his interference had lost her one. She yielded
a cold assent. This vexed him, but he took it for granted it would wear
off before the end of the walk. Edouard’s heart bounded, but he loved
her too sincerely to be happy unless he could see her happy too; the
malicious thing saw this, or perhaps knew it by instinct, and by means
of this good feeling of his she revenged herself for his tyranny. She
tortured him as only a woman can torture, and as even she can torture
only a worthy man, and one who loves her. In the course of that short
walk this inexperienced girl, strong in the instincts and inborn arts
of her sex, drove pins and needles, needles and pins, of all sorts and
sizes, through her lover’s heart.
She was everything by turns, except kind, and nothing for long together.
She was peevish, she was ostentatiously patient and submissive, she was
inattentive to her companion and seemingly wrapped up in contemplation
of absent things and persons, the colonel to wit; she was dogged,
repulsive, and cold; and she never was herself a single moment. They
returned to the gate of the Pleasaunce. “Well, mademoiselle,” said
Riviere very sadly, “that interloper might as well have been with us.”
“Of course he might, and you would have lost nothing by permitting me
to be courteous to a guest and an invalid. If you had not played the
tyrant, and taken the matter into your own hands, I should have found
means to soothe your jeal--I mean your vanity; but you preferred to have
your own way. Well, you have had it.”
“Yes, mademoiselle, you have given me a lesson; you have shown me how
idle it is to attempt to force a young lady’s inclinations in anything.”
He bade her good-day, and went away sorrowful.
She cut Camille dead for the rest of the day.
Next morning, early, Edouard called expressly to see her. “Mademoiselle
Rose,” said he, humbly, “I called to apologize for the ungentlemanly
tone of my remonstrances yesterday.”
“Fiddle-dee,” said Rose. “Don’t do it again; that is the best apology.”
“I am not likely to offend so again,” said he sadly. “I am going away. I
am sorry to say I am promoted; my new post is ten leagues. HE WILL HAVE
IT ALL HIS OWN WAY NOW. But perhaps it is best. Were I to stay here, I
foresee you would soon lose whatever friendly feeling you have for me.”
“Am I so changeable? I am not considered so,” remonstrated Rose, gently.
Riviere explained; “I am not vain,” said he, with that self-knowledge
which is so general an attribute of human beings; “no man less so, nor
am I jealous; but I respect myself, and I could never be content to
share your time and your regard with Colonel Dujardin, nor with a much
better man. See now; he has made me arrogant. Was I ever so before?”
“No! no! no! and I forgive you now, my poor Edouard.”
“He has made you cold as ice to me.”
“No! that was my own wickedness and spitefulness.”
“Wickedness, spitefulness! they are not in your nature. It is all that
wretch’s doing.”
Rose sighed, but she said nothing; for she saw that to excuse Camille
would only make the jealous one more bitter against him.
“Will you deign to write to me at my new post? once a month? in answer
to my letters?”
“Yes, dear. But you will ride over sometimes to see us.”
“Oh, yes; but for some little time I shall not be able. The duties of a
new post.”
“Perhaps in a month--a fortnight?”
“Sooner perhaps; the moment I hear that man is out of the house.”
Edouard went away, dogged and sad; Rose shut herself up in her room and
had a good cry. In the afternoon Josephine came and remonstrated with
her. “You have not walked with him at all to-day.”
“No; you must pet him yourself for once. I hate the sight of him; it
has made mischief between Edouard and me, my being so attentive to him.
Edouard is jealous, and I cannot wonder. After all, what right have I to
mystify him who honors me with his affection?”
Then, being pressed with questions by Josephine, she related to her all
that had passed between Edouard and her, word for word.
“Poor Camille!” sighed Josephine the just.
“Oh, dear, yes! poor Camille! who has the power to make us all
miserable, and who does it, and will go on doing it until he is happy
himself.”
“Ah! would to Heaven I could make him as happy as he deserves to be.”
“You could easily make him much happier than that. And why not do it?”
“O Rose,” said Josephine, shocked, “how can you advise me so?”
She then asked her if she thought it possible that Camille could be
ignorant of her heart.
“Josephine,” replied Rose, angrily, “these men are absurd: they believe
only what they see. I have done what I can for you and Camille, but it
is useless. Would you have him believe you love him, you must yourself
be kind to him; and it would be a charitable action: you would make four
unhappy people happy, or, at least, put them on the road; NOW they are
off the road, and, by what I have seen to-day, I think, if we go on so
much longer, it will be too late to try to return. Come, Josephine,
for my sake! Let me go and tell him you will consent--to all our
happinesses. There, the crime is mine.” And she ran off in spite of
Josephine’s faint and hypocritical entreaties. She returns the next
minute looking all aghast. “It is too late,” said she. “He is going
away. I am sure he is, for he is packing up his things to go. I spied
through the old place and saw him. He was sighing like a furnace as he
strapped his portmanteau. I hate him, of course, but I was sorry for
him. I could not help being. He sighed so all the time, piteously.”
Josephine turned pale, and lifted her hands in surprise and dismay.
“Depend on it, Josephine, we are wrong,” said Rose, firmly: “these
wretches will not stand our nonsense above a certain time: they are not
such fools. We are mismanaging: one gone, the other going; both losing
faith in us.”
Josephine’s color returned to her cheek, and then mounted high.
Presently she smiled, a smile full of conscious power and furtive
complacency, and said quietly, “He will not go.”
Rose was pleased, but not surprised, to hear her sister speak so
confidently, for she knew her power over Camille. “That is right,” said
she, “go to him, and say two honest words: ‘I bid you stay.’”
“O Rose! no!”
“Poltroon! You know he would go down on his knees, and stay directly.”
“No: I should blush all my life before you and him. I COULD not. I
should let him go sooner, almost. Oh, no! I will never ask a man to stay
who wishes to leave me. But just you go to him, and say Madame Raynal
is going to take a little walk: will he do her the honor to be her
companion? Not a word more, if you love me.”
“I’ll go. Hypocrite!”
Josephine received Camille with a bright smile. She seemed in unusually
good spirits, and overflowing with kindness and innocent affection. On
this his high gloomy brow relaxed, and all his prospects brightened as
by magic. Then she communicated to him a number of little plans for next
week and the week after. Among the rest he was to go with her and Rose
to Frejus. “Such a sweet place: I want to show it you. You will come?”
He hesitated a single moment: a moment of intense anxiety to the smiling
Josephine.
“Yes! he would come: it was a great temptation, he saw so little of
her.”
“Well, you will see more of me now.”
“Shall I see you every day--alone, I mean?”
“Oh, yes, if you wish it,” replied Josephine, in an off-hand,
indifferent way.
He seized her hand and devoured it with kisses. “Foolish thing!”
murmured she, looking down on him with ineffable tenderness. “Should I
not be always with you if I consulted my inclination?--let me go.”
“No! consult your inclination a little longer.”
“Must I?”
“Yes; that shall be your punishment.”
“For what? What have I done?” asked she with an air of great innocence.
“You have made me happy, me who adore you,” was the evasive reply.
Josephine came in from her walk with a high color and beaming eyes, and
screamed, “Run, Rose!”
On this concise, and to us not very clear instruction, Rose slipped up
the secret stair. She saw Camille come in and gravely unpack his little
portmanteau, and dispose his things in the drawers with soldier-like
neatness, and hum an agreeable march. She came and told Josephine.
“Ah!” said Josephine with a little sigh of pleasure, and a gentle
triumph in her eyes.
She had not only got her desire, but had arrived at it her way,--woman’s
way, round about.
This adroit benevolence led to more than she bargained for. She and
Camille were now together every day: and their hearts, being under
restraint in public, melted together all the more in their stolen
interviews.
At the third delicious interview the modest Camille begged Josephine to
be his wife directly.
Have you noticed those half tame deer that come up to you in a park so
lovingly, with great tender eyes, and, being now almost within reach,
stop short, and with bodies fixed like statues on pedestals, crane
out their graceful necks for sugar, or bread, or a chestnut, or a
pocket-handkerchief? Do but offer to put your hand upon them, away they
bound that moment twenty yards, and then stand quite still, and look at
your hand and you, with great inquiring, suspicious, tender eyes.
So Josephine started at Camille’s audacious proposal. “Never mention
such a thing to me again: or--or, I will not walk with you any more:”
then she thrilled with pleasure at the obnoxious idea, “she Camille’s
wife!” and colored all over--with rage, Camille thought. He promised
submissively not to renew the topic: no more he did till next day.
Josephine had spent nearly the whole interval in thinking of it; so she
was prepared to put him down by calm reasons. She proceeded to do so,
gently, but firmly.
Lo and behold! what does he do, but meets her with just as many reasons,
and just as calm ones: and urges them gently, but firmly.
Heaven had been very kind to them: why should they be unkind to
themselves? They had had a great escape: why not accept the happiness,
as, being persons of honor, they had accepted the misery? with many
other arguments, differing in other things, but agreeing in this, that
they were all sober, grave, and full of common-sense.
Finding him not defenceless on the score of reason, she shifted her
ground and appealed to his delicacy. On this he appealed to her
love, and then calm reason was jostled off the field, and passion and
sentiment battled in her place.
In these contests day by day renewed, Camille had many advantages.
Rose, though she did not like him, had now declared on his side. She
refused to show him the least attention. This threw him on Josephine:
and when Josephine begged her to help reduce Camille to reason, her
answer would be,--
“Hypocrite!” with a kiss: or else she would say, with a half comic
petulance, “No! no! I am on his side. Give him his own way, or he will
make us all four miserable.”
Thus Josephine’s ally went over to the enemy.
And then this coy young lady’s very power of resistance began to give
way. She had now battled for months against her own heart: first for her
mother; then, in a far more terrible conflict for Raynal, for honor and
purity; and of late she had been battling, still against her own heart,
for delicacy, for etiquette, things very dear to her, but not so great,
holy, and sustaining as honor and charity that were her very household
gods: and so, just when the motives of resistance were lowered, the
length of the resistance began to wear her out.
For nothing is so hard to her sex as a long steady struggle. In matters
physical, this is the thing the muscles of the fair cannot stand; in
matters intellectual and moral, the long strain it is that beats them
dead.
Do not look for a Bacona, a Newtona, a Handella, a Victoria Huga.
Some American ladies tell us education has stopped the growth of these.
No! mesdames. These are not in nature.
They can bubble letters in ten minutes that you could no more deliver
to order in ten days than a river can play like a fountain. They can
sparkle gems of stories: they can flash little diamonds of poems. The
entire sex has never produced one opera nor one epic that mankind could
tolerate: and why? these come by long, high-strung labor. But, weak as
they are in the long run of everything but the affections (and there
giants), they are all overpowering while their gallop lasts. Fragilla
shall dance any two of you flat on the floor before four o’clock, and
then dance on till the peep of day.
Only you trundle off to your business as usual, and could dance again
the next night, and so on through countless ages.
She who danced you into nothing is in bed, a human jelly tipped with
headache.
What did Josephine say to Rose one day? “I am tired of saying ‘No! no!
no! no! no!’ forever and ever to him I love.”
But this was not all. She was not free from self-reproach. Camille’s
faith in her had stood firm. Hers in him had not. She had wronged him,
first by believing him false, then by marrying another. One day she
asked his pardon for this. He replied that he had forgiven that; but
would she be good enough to make him forget it?
“I wish I could.”
“You can. Marry me: then your relation to that man will seem but a
hideous dream. I shall be able to say, looking at you, my wife, ‘I was
faithful: I suffered something for her; I came home: she loved me still;
the proof is, she was my wife within three months of my return.’”
When he said that to her in the Pleasaunce, if there had been a priest
at hand--. In a word, Josephine longed to show him her love, yet wished
not to shock her mother, nor offend her own sense of delicacy; but
Camille cared for nothing but his love. To sacrifice love and happiness,
even for a time, to etiquette, seemed to him to be trifling with the
substance of great things for the shadow of petty things; and he said
so: sometimes sadly, sometimes almost bitterly.
So Josephine was a beleagured fortress, attacked with one will, and
defended by troops, one-third of which were hot on the side of the
besiegers.
When singleness attacks division, you know the result beforehand. Why
then should I spin words? I will not trace so ill-matched a contest step
by step, sentence by sentence: let me rather hasten to relate the one
peculiarity that arose out of this trite contest, where, under the names
of Camille and Josephine, the two great sexes may be seen acting the
whole world-wide distich,--
“It’s a man’s part to try,
And a woman’s to deny [for a while?].”
Finding her own resolutions oozing away, Josephine caught at another
person.
She said to Camille before Rose,--
“Even if I could bring myself to snatch at happiness in this indelicate
way--scarce a month after, oh!” And there ended the lady’s sentence.
In the absence of a legitimate full stop, she put one hand before her
lovely face to hide it, and so no more. But some two minutes after she
delivered the rest in the form and with the tone of a distinct remark,
“No: my mother would never consent.”
“Yes, she would if you could be brought to implore her as earnestly as I
implore you.”
“Now would she?” asked Josephine, turning quickly to her sister.
“No, never. Our mother would look with horror on such a proposal. A
daughter of hers to marry within a twelvemonth of her widowhood!”
“There, you see, Camille.”
“And, besides, she loved Raynal so; she has not forgotten him as we
have, almost.”
“Ungrateful creature that I am!” sighed Josephine!
“She mourns for him every day. Often I see her eyes suddenly fill; that
is for him. Josephine’s influence with mamma is very great: it is double
mine: but if we all went on our knees to her, the doctor and all, she
would never consent.”
“There you see, Camille: and I could not defy my mother, even for you.”
Camille sighed.
“I see everything is against me, even my love: for that love is too much
akin to veneration to propose to you a clandestine marriage.”
“Oh, thank you! bless you for respecting as well as loving me, dear
Camille,” said Josephine.
These words, uttered with gentle warmth, were some consolation to
Camille, and confirmed him, as they were intended to do, in the above
good resolution. He smiled.
“Maladroit!” muttered Rose.
“Why maladroit?” asked Camille, opening his eyes.
“Let us talk of something else,” replied Rose, coolly.
Camille turned red. He understood that he had done something very
stupid, but he could not conceive what. He looked from one sister to the
other alternately. Rose was smiling ironically, Josephine had her eyes
bent demurely on a handkerchief she was embroidering.
That evening Camille drew Rose aside, and asked for an explanation of
her “maladroit.”
“So it was,” replied Rose, sharply.
But as this did not make the matter quite clear, Camille begged a little
further explanation.
“Was it your part to make difficulties?”
“No, indeed.”
“Was it for you to tell her a secret marriage would not be delicate?
Do you think she will be behind you in delicacy? or that a love without
respect will satisfy her? yet you must go and tell her you respected her
too much to ask her to marry you secretly. In other words, situated as
she is, you asked her not to marry you at all: she consented to that
directly; what else could you expect?”
“Maladroit! indeed,” said Camille, “but I would not have said it, only I
thought”--
“You thought nothing would induce her to marry secretly, so you said to
yourself, ‘I will assume a virtue: I will do a bit of cheap self-denial:
decline to the sound of trumpets what another will be sure to deny me if
I don’t--ha! ha!’--well, for your comfort, I am by no means so sure she
might not have been brought to do ANYTHING for you, except openly defy
mamma: but now of course”--
And here this young lady’s sentence ended: for the sisters, unlike in
most things, were one in grammar.
Camille was so disconcerted and sad at what he had done, that Rose began
to pity him: so she rallied him a little longer in spite of her pity:
and then all of a sudden gave him her hand, and said she would try and
repair the mischief.
He began to smother her hand with kisses.
“Oh!” said she, “I don’t deserve all that: I have a motive of my own;
let me alone, child, do. Your unlucky speech will be quoted to me a
dozen times. Never mind.”
Rose went and bribed Josephine to consent.
“Come, mamma shall not know, and as for you, you shall scarcely move in
the matter; only do not oppose me very violently, and all will be well.”
“Ah, Rose!” said Josephine; “it is delightful--terrible, I mean--to have
a little creature about one that reads one like this. What shall I do?
What shall I do?”
“Why, do the best you can under all the circumstances. His wound is
healed, you know; he must go back to the army; you have both suffered to
the limits of mortal endurance. Is he to go away unhappy, in any
doubt of your affection? and you to remain behind with the misery of
self-reproach added to the desolation of absence?--think.”
“It is cruel. But to deceive my mother!”
“Do not say deceive our mother; that is such a shocking phrase.”
Rose then reminded Josephine that their confessor had told them a wise
reticence was not the same thing as a moral deceit. She reminded her,
too, how often they had acted on his advice and always with good effect;
how many anxieties and worries they had saved their mother by reticence.
Josephine assented warmly to this.
Was there not some reason to think they had saved their mother’s very
life by these reticences? Josephine assented. “And, Josephine, you are
of age; you are your own mistress; you have a right to marry whom you
please: and, sooner or later, you will certainly marry Camille. I doubt
whether even our mother could prevail on you to refuse him altogether.
So it is but a question of time, and of giving our mother pain, or
sparing her pain. Dear mamma is old; she is prejudiced. Why shock her
prejudices? She could not be brought to understand the case: these
things never happened in her day. Everything seems to have gone by rule
then. Let us do nothing to worry her for the short time she has to
live. Let us take a course between pain to her and cruelty to you and
Camille.”
These arguments went far to convince Josephine: for her own heart
supported them. She went from her solid objections to untenable ones--a
great point gained. She urged the difficulty, the impossibility of a
secret marriage.
Camille burst in here: he undertook at once to overcome these imaginary
difficulties. “They could be married at a distance.”
“You will find no priest who will consent to do such a wicked thing as
marry us without my mother’s knowledge,” objected Josephine.
“Oh! as to that,” said Rose, “you know the mayor marries people
nowadays.”
“I will not be married again without a priest,” said Josephine, sharply.
“Nor I,” said Camille. “I know a mayor who will do the civil forms for
me, and a priest who will marry me in the sight of Heaven, and both will
keep it secret for love of me till it shall please Josephine to throw
off this disguise.”
“Who is the priest?” inquired Josephine, keenly.
“An old cure: he lives near Frejus: he was my tutor, and the mayor is
the mayor of Frejus, also an old friend of mine.”
“But what on earth will you say to them?”
“That is my affair: I must give them some reasons which compel me to
keep my marriage secret. Oh! I shall have to tell them some fibs, of
course.”
“There, I thought so! I will not have you telling fibs; it lowers you.”
“Of course it does; but you can’t have secrecy without a fib or two.”
“Fibs that will injure no one,” said Rose, majestically.
From this day Camille began to act as well as to talk. He bought a
light caleche and a powerful horse, and elected factotum Dard his groom.
Camille rode over to Frejus and told a made-up story to the old cure and
the mayor, and these his old friends believed every word he said, and
readily promised their services and strict secrecy.
He told the young ladies what he had done.
Rose approved. Josephine shook her head, and seeing matters going as
her heart desired and her conscience did not quite approve, she suddenly
affected to be next to nobody in the business--to be resigned, passive,
and disposed of to her surprise by Queen Rose and King Camille, without
herself taking any actual part in their proceedings.
At last the great day arrived on which Camille and Josephine were to be
married at Frejus.
The mayor awaited them at eleven o’clock. The cure at twelve. The family
had been duly prepared for this excursion by several smaller ones.
Rose announced their intention over night; a part of it.
“Mamma,” said she, blushing a little, “Colonel Dujardin is good enough
to take us to Frejus tomorrow. It is a long way, and we must breakfast
early or we shall not be back to dinner.”
“Do so, my child. I hope you will have a fine day: and mind you take
plenty of wraps with you in case of a shower.”
At seven o’clock the next morning Camille and the two ladies took a
hasty cup of coffee together instead of breakfast, and then Dard brought
the caleche round.
The ladies got in, and Camille had just taken the reins in his hand,
when Jacintha screamed to him from the hall, “Wait a moment, colonel,
wait a moment! The doctor! don’t go without the doctor!” And the next
moment Dr. Aubertin appeared with his cloak on his arm, and, saluting
the ladies politely, seated himself quietly in the vehicle before the
party had recovered their surprise.
The ladies managed to keep their countenances, but Dujardin’s
discomfiture was evident.
He looked piteously at Josephine, and then asked Aubertin if they were
to set him down anywhere in particular.
“Oh, no; I am going with you to Frejus,” was the quiet reply.
Josephine quaked. Camille was devoured with secret rage: he lashed the
horse and away they went.
It was a silent party. The doctor seemed in a reverie. The others did
not know what to think, much less to say. Aubertin sat by Camille’s
side; so the latter could hold no secret communication with either lady.
Now it was not the doctor’s habit to rise at this time of the morning:
yet there he was, going with them to Frejus uninvited.
Josephine was in agony; had their intention transpired through some
imprudence of Camille?
Camille was terribly uneasy. He concluded the secret had transpired
through female indiscretion. Then they all tortured themselves as to the
old man’s intention. But what seemed most likely was, that he was with
them to prevent a clandestine marriage by his bare presence, without
making a scene and shocking Josephine’s pride: and if so, was he there
by his own impulse? No, it was rather to be feared that all this was
done by order of the baroness. There was a finesse about it that smacked
of a feminine origin, and the baroness was very capable of adopting such
a means as this, to spare her own pride and her favorite daughter’s.
“The clandestine” is not all sugar. A more miserable party never went
along, even to a wedding.
After waiting a long time for the doctor to declare himself, they turned
desperate, and began to chatter all manner of trifles. This had a good
effect: it roused Aubertin from his reverie, and presently he gave them
the following piece of information: “I told you the other day that a
nephew of mine was just dead; a nephew I had not seen for many years.
Well, my friends, I received last night a hasty summons to his funeral.”
“At Frejus?”
“No, at Paris. The invitation was so pressing, that I was obliged to go.
The letter informed me, however, that a diligence passes through Frejus,
at eleven o’clock, for Paris. I heard you say you were going to
Frejus; so I packed up a few changes of linen, and my MS., my work on
entomology, which at my last visit to the capital all the publishers
were mad enough to refuse: here it is. Apropos, has Jacintha put my bag
into the carriage?”
On this a fierce foot-search, and the bag was found. Meantime, Josephine
leaned back in her seat with a sigh of thankfulness. She was more intent
on not being found out than on being married. But Camille, who was more
intent on being married than on not being found out, was asking himself,
with fury, how on earth they should get rid of Aubertin in time.
Well, of course, under such circumstances as these the diligence did
not come to its time, nor till long after; and all the while, they were
waiting for it they were failing their rendezvous with the mayor, and
making their rendezvous with the curate impossible. But, above all,
there was the risk of one or other of those friends coming up and
blurting all out, taking for granted that the doctor must be in their
confidence, or why bring him.
At last, at half-past eleven o’clock, to their great relief, up came the
diligence. The doctor prepared to take his place in the interior, when
the conductor politely informed him that the vehicle stopped there a
quarter of an hour.
“In that case I will not abandon my friends,” said the doctor,
affectionately.
One of his friends gnashed his teeth at this mark of affection. But
Josephine smiled sweetly.
At last he was gone; but it wanted ten minutes only to twelve.
Josephine inquired amiably, whether it would not be as well to postpone
matters to another day--meaning forever. “My ARDOR is chilled,” said
she, and showed symptoms of crying at what she had gone through.
Camille replied by half dragging them to the mayor. That worthy received
them with profound, though somewhat demure respect, and invited them to
a table sumptuously served. The ladies, out of politeness, were about to
assent, but Camille begged permission to postpone that part until after
the ceremony.
At last, to their astonishment, they were married. Then, with a promise
to return and dine with the mayor, they went to the cure. Lo and behold!
he was gone to visit a sick person. “He had waited a long time for
them,” said the servant.
Josephine was much disconcerted, and showed a disposition to cry again.
The servant, a good-natured girl, nosed a wedding, and offered to run
and bring his reverence in a minute.
Presently there came an old silvery-haired man, who addressed them all
as his children. He took them to the church, and blessed their union;
and for the first time Josephine felt as if Heaven consented. They took
a gentle farewell of him, and went back to the mayor’s to dine; and
at this stage of the business Rose and Josephine at last effected a
downright simultaneous cry, apropos of nothing that was then occurring.
This refreshed them mightily, and they glowed at the mayor’s table like
roses washed with dew.
But oh! how glad at heart they all were to find themselves in the
carriage once more going home to Beaurepaire.
Rose and Josephine sat intertwined on the back seat; Camille, the reins
in his right hand, nearly turned his back on the horse, and leaned back
over to them and purred to Rose and his wife with ineffable triumph and
tenderness.
The lovers were in Elysium, and Rose was not a little proud of her good
management in ending all their troubles. Their mother received them
back with great, and as they fancied, with singular, affection. She was
beginning to be anxious about them, she said. Then her kindness gave
these happy souls a pang it never gave them before.
Since the above events scarce a fortnight had elapsed; but such
a change! Camille sunburnt and healthy, and full of animation and
confidence; Josephine beaming with suppressed happiness, and more
beautiful than Rose could ever remember to have seen her. For a soft
halo of love and happiness shone around her head; a new and indefinable
attraction bloomed on her face. She was a wife. Her eye, that used to
glance furtively on Camille, now dwelt demurely on him; dwelt with a
sort of gentle wonder and admiration as well as affection, and, when
he came or passed very near her, a keen observer might have seen her
thrill.
She kept a good deal out of her mother’s way; for she felt within that
her face must be too happy. She feared to shock her mother’s grief with
her radiance. She was ashamed of feeling unmixed heaven. But the flood
of secret bliss she floated in bore all misgivings away. The pair were
forever stealing away together for hours, and on these occasions Rose
used to keep out of her mother’s sight, until they should return. So
then the new-married couple could wander hand in hand through the thick
woods of Beaurepaire, whose fresh green leaves were now just out, and
hear the distant cuckoo, and sit on mossy banks, and pour love into
one another’s eyes, and plan ages of happiness, and murmur their deep
passion and their bliss almost more than mortal; could do all this and
more, without shocking propriety. These sweet duets passed for trios:
for on their return Rose would be out looking for them, or would go and
meet them at some distance, and all three would go up together to the
baroness, as from a joint excursion. And when they went up to their
bedrooms, Josephine would throw her arms round her sister’s neck, and
sigh, “It is not happiness, it is beatitude!”
Meantime, the baroness mourned for Raynal. Her grief showed no decrease.
Rose even fancied at times she wore a gloomy and discontented look as
well; but on reflection she attributed that to her own fancy, or to the
contrast that had now sprung up in her sister’s beaming complacency.
Rose, when she found herself left day after day alone for hours, was sad
and thought of Edouard. And this feeling gained on her day by day.
At last, one afternoon, she locked herself in her own room, and, after a
long contest with her pride, which, if not indomitable, was next door to
it, she sat down to write him a little letter. Now, in this letter,
in the place devoted by men to their after-thoughts, by women to their
pretended after-thoughts; i. e., to what they have been thinking of
all through the letter, she dropped a careless hint that all the party
missed him very much, “even the obnoxious colonel, who, by-the-by, has
transferred his services elsewhere. I have forgiven him that, because he
has said civil things about you.”
Rose was reading her letter over again, to make sure that all the
principal expressions were indistinct, and that the composition
generally, except the postscript, resembled a Delphic oracle, when
there was a hasty footstep, and a tap at her door, and in came Jacintha,
excited.
“He is come, mademoiselle,” cried she, and nodded her head like a
mandarin, only more knowingly; then she added, “So you may burn that.”
For her quick eye had glanced at the table.
“Who is come?” inquired Rose, eagerly.
“Why, your one?”
“My one?” asked the young lady, reddening, “my what?”
“The little one--Edouard--Monsieur Riviere.”
“Oh, Monsieur Riviere,” said Rose, acting nonchalance. “Why could you
not say so? you use such phrases, who can conjecture what you mean? I
will come to Monsieur Riviere directly; mamma will be so glad.”
Jacintha gone, Rose tore up the letter and locked up the pieces, then
ran to the glass. Etc.
Edouard had been so profoundly miserable he could stand it no longer; in
spite of his determination not to visit Beaurepaire while it contained
a rival, he rode over to see whether he had not tormented himself idly:
above all, to see the beloved face.
Jacintha put him into the salle a manger. “By that you will see her
alone,” said the knowing Jacintha. He sat down, hat and whip in hand,
and wondered how he should be received--if at all.
In glides Rose all sprightliness and good-humor, and puts out her hand
to him; the which he kisses.
“How could I keep away so long?” asked he vaguely, and self-astonished.
“How indeed, and we missing you so all the time!”
“Have YOU missed me?” was the eager inquiry.
“Oh, no!” was the cheerful reply; “but all the rest have.”
Presently the malicious thing gave a sudden start.
“Oh! such a piece of news; you remember Colonel Dujardin, the obnoxious
colonel?”
No answer.
“Transferred his attentions. Fancy!”
“Who to?”
“To Josephine and mamma. But such are the military. He only wanted to
get rid of you: this done (through your want of spirit), he scorns the
rich prize; so now I scorn HIM. Will you come for a walk?”
“Oh, yes!”
“We will go and look for my deserter. I say, tell me now; cannot I write
to the commander-in-chief about this? a soldier has no right to be a
deserter, has he? tell me, you are a public man, and know everything
except my heart.”
“Is it not too bad to tease me to-day?”
“Yes! but please! I have had few amusements of late. I find it so dull
without you to tease.”
Formal permission to tease being conceded, she went that instant on the
opposite tack, and began to tell him how she had missed him, and how
sorry she had been anything should have occurred to vex their kind good
friend. In short, Edouard spent a delightful day, for Rose took him one
way to meet Josephine, who, she knew, was coming another. At night the
last embers of jealousy got quenched, for Josephine was a wife now, and
had already begun to tell Camille all her little innocent secrets; and
she told him all about Edouard and Rose, and gave him his orders; so he
treated Rose with great respect before Edouard; but paid her no marked
attention; also he was affable to Riviere, who, having ceased to
suspect, began to like him.
In the course of the evening, the colonel also informed the baroness
that he expected every day an order to join the army of the Rhine.
Edouard pricked his ears.
The baroness said no more than politeness dictated. She did not press
him to stay, but treated his departure as a matter of course. Riviere
rode home late in the evening in high spirits.
The next day Rose varied her late deportment; she sang snatches of
melody, going about the house; it was for all the world like a bird
chirping. In the middle of one chirp Jacintha interfered. “Hush,
mademoiselle, your mamma! she is at the bottom of the corridor.”
“What was I thinking of?” said Rose.
“Oh! I dare say you know, mademoiselle,” replied the privileged
domestic.
A letter of good news came from Aubertin. That summons to his nephew’s
funeral was an era in his harmless life.
The said nephew was a rich man and an oddity; one of those who love to
surprise folk. Moreover, he had no children, and detected his nephews
and nieces being unnaturally civil to him. “Waiting to cut me up,” was
his generous reading of them. So with this he made a will, and there
defied, as far as in him lay, the laws of nature; for he set his wealth
a-flowing backwards instead of forwards; he handed his property up to an
ancestor, instead of down to posterity.
All this the doctor’s pen set down with some humor, and in the calm
spirit with which a genuine philosopher receives prosperity as well as
adversity. Yet one natural regret escaped him; that all this wealth,
since it was to come, had not come a year or two sooner.
All at Beaurepaire knew what their dear old friend meant.
His other news to them was that they might expect him any moment.
So here was another cause of rejoicing.
“I am so glad,” said Josephine. “Now, perhaps, he will be able to
publish his poor dear entomology, that the booksellers were all so
unkind, so unfeeling about.”
I linger on the brink of painful scenes to observe that a sweet and
loving friendship, such as this was between the good doctor and three
persons of another sex, is one of the best treasures of the human heart.
Poverty had strengthened it; yet now wealth could not weaken it. With
no tie of blood it yet was filial, sisterly, brotherly, national,
chivalrous; happy, unalloyed sentiment, free from ups and downs, from
heats and chills, from rivalry, from caprice; and, indeed, from all
mortal accidents but one--and why say one? methinks death itself does
but suspend these gentle, rare, unselfish amities a moment, then waft
them upward to their abiding home.