"AN AFFAIR OF HONOR"
A meeting took place yesterday at Vesinet between the Vicomte de
Cymier, secretary of Embassy at Vienna, and M. Frederic d'Argy,
ensign in the navy. The parties fought with swords. The seconds of
M. de Cymier were the Prince de Moelk and M. d'Etaples, captain in
the --th Hussars; those of M. d'Argy Hubert Marien, the painter.
M. d'Argy was wounded in the right arm, and for the present the
affair is terminated, but it is said it will be resumed on M.
d'Argy's recovery, although this seems hardly probable, considering
the very slight cause of the quarrel--an altercation at the Cercle
de la Rue Boissy d'Anglas, which took place over the card-table.
Such was the announcement in a daily paper that met the eyes of
Jacqueline, as she lay hidden in Modeste's lodging, like a fawn in its
covert, her eyes and ears on the alert, watching for the least sign of
alarm, in fear and trembling. She expected something, she knew not what;
she felt that her sad adventure at Monaco could not fail to have its
epilogue; but this was one of which she never had dreamed.
"Modeste, give me my hat! Get me a carriage! Quick! Oh, my God, it is
my fault!--I have killed him!"
These incoherent cries came from her lips while Modeste, in alarm, picked
up the newspaper and adjusted her silver spectacles upon her nose to read
the paragraph. "Monsieur Fred wounded! Holy Virgin! His poor mother!
That is a new trouble fallen on her, to be sure. But this quarrel had
nothing to do with you, my pet; you see they say it was about cards."
And folding up the Figaro, while Jacqueline in all haste was wrapping her
head in a veil, Modeste, with the best intentions, went on to say:
"Nobody ever dies of a sword-thrust in the arm."
"But you see it says that they are going to fight all over again--don't
you understand? You are so stupid! What could they have had to quarrel
about but me? O God! Thou art just! This is indeed punishment--too
much punishment for me!"
So saying, she ran down the many stairs that led up to Modeste's little
lodging in the roof, her feet hardly touching them as she ran, while
Modeste followed her more slowly, crying: "Wait for me! Wait for me,
Mademoiselle!"
Calling a fiacre, Jacqueline, almost roughly, pushed the old woman into
it, and gave the coachman the address of Madame d'Argy, having, in her
excitement, first given him that of their old house in the Parc Monceau,
so much was she possessed by the idea that this was a repetition of that
dreadful day, when with Modeste, just as now, she went to meet an
irreparable loss. She seemed to see before her her dead father--
he looked like Fred, and now, as before, Marien had his part in the
tragedy. Could he not have prevented the duel? Could he not have done
something to prevent Fred from exposing himself? The wound might be no
worse than it was said to be in the newspaper--but then a second meeting
was to take place. No!--it should not, she would stop it at any price!
And yet, as the coach drew nearer to the Rue de Varenne, where Madame
d'Argy had her winter residence, a little calm, a little sense returned
to Jacqueline. She did not see how she could dare to enter that house,
where probably they cursed her very name. She would wait in the street
with the carriage-blinds pulled down, and Modeste should go in and ask
for information. Five minutes passed--ten minutes passed--they seemed
ages. How slow Modeste was, slow as a tortoise! How could she leave her
there when she knew she was so anxious? What could she be doing? All
she had to do was to ask news of M. Fred in just two words!
At last, Jacqueline could bear suspense no longer. She opened the coach-
door and jumped out on the pavement. Just at that moment Modeste
appeared, brandishing the umbrella that she carried instead of a stick,
in a manner that meant something. It might be bad news, she would know
in a moment; anything was better than suspense. She sprang forward.
"What did they say, Modeste? Speak!--Why have you been such a time?"
"Because the servants had something else to do than to attend to me.
I wasn't the only person there--they were writing in a register.
Get back into the carriage, Mademoiselle, or somebody will see you--
There are lots of people there who know you--Monsieur and Madame
d'Etaples--"
"What do I care?--The truth! Tell me the truth--"
"But didn't you understand my signals? He is going on well. It was only
a scratch--Ah! Madame that's only my way of talking. He will be laid up
for a fortnight. The doctor was there--he has some fever, but he is not
in any danger."
"Oh! what a blessing! Kiss me, Modeste. We have a fortnight in which
we may interfere--But how--Oh, how?--Ah! there is Giselle! We will go to
Giselle at once!"
And the 'fiacre' was ordered to go as fast as possible to the Rue Barbet-
de-Jouy. This time Jacqueline herself spoke to the concierge.
"Madame la Comtesse is out."
"But she never goes out at this hour. I wish to see her on important
business. I must see her."
And Jacqueline passed the concierge, only to encounter another refusal
from a footman, who insisted that Madame la Comtesse was at home to no
one.
"But me, she will see me. Go and tell her it is Mademoiselle de
Nailles."
Moved by her persistence, the footman went in to inquire, and came back
immediately with the answer:
"Madame la Comtesse can not see Mademoiselle."
"Ah!" thought Jacqueline, "she, too, throws me off, and it is natural.
I have no friends left. No one will tell me anything!--I think it will
drive me mad?"
She was half-mad already. She stopped at a newsstand and bought all the
evening journals; then, up in her garret, in her poor little nest under
the roof-which, as she felt bitterly, was her only refuge, she began to
look over those printed papers in which she might possibly find out the
true cause of the duel. Nearly all related the event in almost the exact
terms used by the Figaro. Ah!--here was a different one! A reporter who
knew something more added, in Gil Blas: "We have stated the cause of the
dispute as it has been given to the public, but in affairs of this nature
more than in any others, it is safe to remember the old proverb: 'Look
for the woman.' The woman could doubtless have been found enjoying
herself on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, while men were drawing
swords in her defense."
Jacqueline went on looking through the newspapers, crumpling up the
sheets as she laid them down. The last she opened had the reputation of
being a repository of scandals, never to be depended on, as she well
knew. Several times it had come to her hand and she had not opened it,
remembering what her father had always said of its reputation. But where
would she be more likely to find what she wanted than in the columns of a
journal whose reporters listened behind doors and peeped through
keyholes? Under the heading of 'Les Dessous Parisiens', she read on the
first page:
"Two hens lived in peace; a cock came
And strife soon succeeded to joy;
E'en as love, they say, kindled the flame
That destroyed the proud city of Troy.
"This quarrel was the outcome of a violent rupture between the two
hens in question, ending in the flight of one of them, a young and
tender pullet, whose voice we trust soon to hear warbling on the
boards at one of our theatres. This was the subject of conversation
in a low voice at the Cercle, at the hour when it is customary to
tell such little scandals. M. de C----- was enlarging on the
somewhat Bohemian character of the establishment of a lovely foreign
lady, who possesses the secret of being always surrounded by
delightful friends, young ladies who are self-emancipated, quasi-
widows who, by divorce suits, have regained their liberty, etc.
He was speaking of one of the beauties who are friends of his friend
Madame S----, as men speak of women who have proved themselves
careless of public opinion; when M. d'A----, in a loud voice,
interrupted him; the lie was given in terms that of course led to
the hostile meeting of which the press has spoken, attributing it to
a dispute about the Queen of Spades, when it really concerned the
Queen of Hearts."
Then she had made no mistake; it had been her flight from Madame
Strahlberg's which had led to her being attacked by one man, and defended
by the other! Jacqueline found it hard to recognize herself in this
tissue of lies, insinuations, and half-truths. What did the paper mean
its readers to understand by its account? Was it a jealous rivalry
between herself and Madame Strahlberg?--Was M. de Cymier meant by the
cock? And Fred had heard all this--he had drawn his sword to refute the
calumny. Brave Fred! Alas! he had been prompted only by chivalric
generosity. Doubtless he, also, looked upon her as an adventuress.
All night poor Jacqueline wept with such distress that she wished that
she might die. She was dropping off to sleep at last, overpowered by
fatigue, when a ring at the bell in the early morning roused her. Then
she heard whispering:
"Do you think she is so unhappy?"
It was the voice of Giselle.
"Come in--come in quickly!" she cried, springing out of bed. Wrapped in
a dressing-gown, with bare feet, her face pale, her eyelids red, her
complexion clouded, she rushed to meet her friend, who was almost as much
disordered as herself. It seemed as if Madame de Talbrun might also have
passed a night of sleeplessness and tears.
"You have come! Oh! you have come at last!" cried Jacqueline, throwing
her arms around her, but Giselle repelled her with a gesture so severe
that the poor child could not but understand its meaning. She murmured,
pointing to the pile of newspapers: "Is it possible?--Can you have
believed all those dreadful things?"
"What things? I have read nothing," said Giselle, harshly. "I only know
that a man who was neither your husband nor your brother, and who
consequently was under no obligation to defend you, has been foolish
enough to be nearly killed for your sake. Is not that a proof of your
downfall? Don't you know it?"
"Downfall?" repeated Jacqueline, as if she did not understand her.
Then, seizing her friend's hand, she forcibly raised it to her lips:
"Ah! what can anything matter to me," she cried, "if only you remain my
friend; and he has never doubted me!"
"Women like you can always find defenders," said Giselle, tearing her
hand from her cousin's grasp.
Giselle was not herself at that moment. "But, for your own sake, it
would have been better he should have abstained from such an act of
Quixotism."
"Giselle! can it be that you think me guilty?"
"Guilty!" cried Madame de Talbrun, her pale face aflame. "A little more
and Monsieur de Cymier's sword-point would have pierced his lungs."
"Good heavens!" cried Jacqueline, hiding her face in her hands. "But I
have done nothing to--"
"Nothing except to set two men against each other; to make them suffer,
or to make fools of them, and to be loved by them all the same."
"I have not been a coquette," said Jacqueline, with indignation.
"You must have been, to authorize the boasts of Monsieur de Cymier. He
had seen Fred so seldom, and Tonquin had so changed him that he spoke in
his presence--without supposing any one would interfere. I dare not tell
you what he said--"
"Whatever spite or revenge suggested to him, no doubt," said Jacqueline.
"Listen, Giselle--Oh, you must listen. I shall not be long."
She forced her to sit down; she crouched on a foot stool at her feet,
holding her hands in hers so tightly that Giselle could not draw them
away, and began her story, with all its details, of what had happened to
her since she left Fresne. She told of her meeting with Wanda; of the
fatal evening which had resulted in her expulsion from the convent;
her disgust at the Sparks family; the snare prepared for her by Madame
Strahlberg. "And I can not tell you all," she added, "I can not tell you
what drove me away from my true friends, and threw me among these
people--"
Giselle's sad smile seemed to answer, "No need--I am aware of it--I know
my husband." Encouraged by this, Jacqueline went on with her confession,
hiding nothing that was wrong, showing herself just as she had been, a
poor, proud child who had set out to battle for herself in a dangerous
world. At every step she had been more and more conscious of her own
imprudence, of her own weakness, and of an ever-increasing desire to be
done with independence; to submit to law, to be subject to any rules
which would deliver her from the necessity of obeying no will but her
own.
"Ah!" she cried, "I am so disgusted with independence, with amusement,
and amusing people! Tell me what to do in future--I am weary of taking
charge of myself. I said so the other day to the Abbe Bardin. He is the
only person I have seen since my return. It seems to me I am coming back
to my old ideas--you remember how I once wished to end my days in the
cell of a Carmelite? You might love me again then, perhaps, and Fred and
poor Madame d'Argy, who must feel so bitterly against me since her son
was wounded, might forgive me. No one feels bitterly against the dead,
and it is the same as being dead to be a Carmelite nun. You would all
speak of me sometimes to each other as one who had been very unhappy, who
had been guilty of great foolishness, but who had repaired her faults as
best she could."
Poor Jacqueline! She was no longer a girl of the period; in her grief
and humiliation she belonged to the past. Old-fashioned forms of
penitence attracted her.
"And what did the Abbe Bardin tell you?" asked Giselle, with a slight
movement of her shoulders.
"He only told me that he could not say at present whether that were my
vocation."
"Nor can I," said Giselle.
Jacqueline lifted up her face, wet with tears, which she had been leaning
on the lap of Giselle.
"I do not see what else I can do, unless you would get me a place as
governess somewhere at the ends of the earth," she said. "I could teach
children their letters. I should not mind doing anything. I never
should complain. Ah! if you lived all by yourself, Giselle, how I
should implore you to take me to teach little Enguerrand!"
"I think you might do better than that," said Giselle, wiping her
friend's eyes almost as a mother might have done, "if you would only
listen to Fred."
Jacqueline's cheeks became crimson.
"Don't mock me--it is cruel--I am too unworthy--it would pain me to see
him. Shame--regret--you understand! But I can tell you one thing,
Giselle--only you. You may tell it to him when he is quite old, when he
has been long married, and when everything concerning me is a thing of
the past. I never had loved any one with all my heart up to the moment
when I read in that paper that he had fought for me, that his blood had
flowed for me, that after all that had passed he still thought me worthy
of being defended by him."
Her tears flowed fast, and she added: "I shall be proud of that all the
rest of my life! If only you, too, would forgive me."
The heart of Giselle was melted by these words.
"Forgive you, my dear little girl? Ah! you have been better than I.
I forgot our old friendship for a moment--I was harsh to you; and I have
so little right to blame you! But come! Providence may have arranged
all for the best, though one of us may have to suffer. Pray for that
some one. Good-by--'au revoir!"
She kissed Jacqueline's forehead and was gone, before her cousin had
seized the meaning of her last words. But joy and peace came back to
Jacqueline. She had recovered her best friend, and had convinced her of
her innocence.