Part 1 (1/2)
Name and Fame.
by Adeline Sergeant.
CHAPTER I.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
It was a brilliant day in June. The sky was cloudless and dazzlingly blue, but the heat of the sun's rays was tempered by a deliciously cool breeze, and the foliage of the trees that clothe the pleasant slopes round the vivacious little town of Aix-les-Bains afforded plenty of shade to the pedestrian. Aix was, as usual, very crowded and very gay.
German potentates abounded: French notabilities were not wanting: it was rumored that English royalty was coming. A very motley crowd of divers nationalities drank the waters every morning and discussed the latest society scandal. Festivity seemed to haunt the very air of the place, beaming from the trim white villas with their smart green jalousies, the tall hotels with crudely tinted flags flying from their roofs, the cheery little shops with their cheerier _dames de comptoir_ smiling complacently on the tourists who unwarily bought their goods. Ladies in gay toilets, with scarlet parasols or floating feathers, made vivid patches of color against the green background of the gardens, and the streets were now and then touched into picturesqueness by the pa.s.sing of some half-dozen peasants who had come from the neighboring villages to sell their b.u.t.ter or their eggs. The men in their blue blouses were mostly lean, dark, and taciturn; the women, small, black-eyed, and vivacious, with bright-colored petticoats, long earrings, and the quaintest of round white caps. The silvery whiteness of the lake, flas.h.i.+ng back an answer to the sunlight, gave a peculiarly joyous radiance to the scene. For water is to a landscape what the eye is to the human countenance: it gives life and expression; without it, the most beautiful features may be blank and uninteresting.
But the brightness of the scene did not find an echo in every heart.
”Dame!” said a French waiter, who stood, napkin in hand, at a window of the Hotel Venat, watching the pa.s.sers-by, ”there they go, that cold, sullen English pair, looking as if nothing on earth would make them smile again!”
A bullet-headed little man in a white ap.r.o.n stepped up to the window and stared in the direction that Auguste's eyes had taken.
”Tiens, donc! Quelle tournure! But she is superb!” he exclaimed, as if in remonstrance.
”She is handsome--oui, sans doute; but see how she frowns! I like a woman who smiles, who coquettes, who knows how to divert herself--like Mademoiselle Lisette here, queen of my heart and life.”
And Auguste bowed sentimentally to a pretty little chambermaid who came tripping up the stairs at that moment, and laid his hand upon his heart.
”You are too polite, Monsieur Auguste,” Lisette responded amicably. ”And at whom are you gazing so earnestly?”
”At the belle Anglaise--you can still see her, if you look--she is charmingly dressed, but----”
”She is magnificent! simply magnificent,” murmured the bullet-headed Jean, who was not, like his friend, enamored of the pert Lisette. ”I have never seen so splendid an Englishwoman, never! nor one who had so much the true Parisian air!”
Lisette uttered a shrill little scream of laughter. ”Do you know the reason, mon ami? She is not English at all: she is a compatriot. He--the husband--_he_ is English; but she is French, I tell you, French to the finger-tips.”
”Voyons; what rooms have they?”
”They are au quatrieme--they are poor--poor,” said Lisette, with infinite scorn. ”I wait on them a little--not much; they have been here three days, and one can see----But the gentleman, he is generous. When madame scolds, he gives me money to buy my forbearance; she has the temper of a demon, the tongue of a veritable fiend!”
”Ah! He loves her, then!” said Auguste, putting his head on one side.
Lisette snapped her fingers. ”Ah, oui! He loves her so well that he will strangle her one of these days when she says a word too much and he is in his sombre mood! Quiet as he is, I would not go too far with him, ce beau monsieur! He will not be patient always--you will see!”
She went on her way, and the waiters remained at the window in the corridor. The lady and gentlemen of whom they spoke had turned into the hotel garden, and were walking up and down its gravelled paths, apparently in silence. Auguste and Jean watched them, as if fascinated by the sight of the taciturn pair, who now and then were lost to sight behind a clump of trees or in some shady walk, presently reappearing in the full suns.h.i.+ne, with the air of those who wish for some reason or other to show themselves as much as possible.
This, at least, was the impression produced by the air and gait of the woman; not by those of the man. He walked beside her gravely, somewhat dejectedly, indeed. There was a look of resignation in his face, which contrasted forcibly with the flaunting audacity visible in every gesture of the woman who was his wife.
He was the less noticeable of the two, but still a handsome man in his way, of a refined and almost scholarly type. He was tall, and although rather of slender than powerful build, his movements were characterized by the mingled grace and alertness which may be seen when well-proportioned limbs are trained to every kind of athletic exercise.
His face, however, was that of the dreamer, not of the athlete. He had a fine brow, thoughtful brown eyes, a somewhat long nose with sensitive nostrils, a stern-set mouth, and resolute chin. The spare outlines of his face, well defined yet delicate withal, sometimes reminded strangers of Giotto's frescoed head of Dante in his youth. But the mouth was partly hidden beneath a dark brown moustache; a pity from the artistic point of view. Refinement was the first and predominating characteristic of his face; thoughtful melancholy, the second. It was evident, even to the most casual observer, that this man was eminently unfitted to be the husband of the woman at his side.
For a woman she was unusually tall. She was also unusually handsome. She had a magnificent figure, a commanding presence, good features, hair, and eyes; yet the impression that she produced was anything but pleasant. The flas.h.i.+ng dark eyes were too bold and too defiant; the carmine on her cheeks was artificially laid on, and her face had been dabbed with a powder puff in very reckless fas.h.i.+on. Her black hair was frizzed and tortured in the latest mode, and her dress made in so novel a style that it looked _outre_, even at a fas.h.i.+onable watering-place.
Dress, bonnet and parasol were scarlet of hue; and the vivid tint was softened but slightly by the black lace which fell in cascades from her closely-swathed neck to the hem of her dress, fastened here and there by diamond pins. If it were possible that, as Lisette had said, Mr. and Mrs. Alan Walcott were poor, their poverty was not apparent in Mrs.