Part 2 (1/2)
”I am not so deaf as that yet,” replied the old maid. ”Shut that window; do you not know that currents of air attract lightning?”
Clemence obeyed, dropping the curtain to shut out the flashes of lightning which continued to dart through the heavens; she then approached the fireplace.
”Since you are so afraid of lightning,” said her aunt; ”which, by the way, is perfectly ridiculous in a Corandeuil, what induced you to go out upon the balcony? The sleeve of your gown is wet. That is the way one gets cold; afterward, there is nothing but an endless array of syrups and drugs. You ought to change your gown and put on something warmer.
Who would ever think of dressing like that in such weather as this?”
”I a.s.sure you, aunt, it is not cold. It is because you have a habit of always being near the fire--”
”Ah! habit! when you are my age you will not hint at such a thing. Now, everything goes wonderfully well; you never listen to my advice--you go out in the wind and rain with that flighty Aline and your husband, who has no more sense than his sister; you will pay for it later. Open the curtains, I pray; the storm is over, and I wish to read the Gazette.”
The young woman obeyed a second time and stood with her forehead pressed against the gla.s.s. The distant rumbling of the thunder announced the end of the storm; but a few flashes still traversed the horizon.
”Aunt,” said she, after a moment's silence, ”come and look at the Montigny rocks; when the lightning strikes them they look like a file of silver columns or a procession of ghosts.”
”What a romantic speech,” growled the old lady, never taking her eyes from her paper.
”I a.s.sure you I am not romantic the least in the world,” replied Clemence. ”I simply find the storm a distraction, and here, you know, there is no great choice of pleasures.”
”Then you find it dull?”
”Oh, aunt, horribly so!” At these words, p.r.o.nounced with a heartfelt accent, the young woman dropped into an armchair.
Mademoiselle de Corandeuil took off her eye-gla.s.ses, put the paper upon the table and gazed for several moments at her pretty niece's face, which was tinged with a look of deep melancholy. She then straightened herself up in her chair, and, leaning forward, asked in a low tone:
”Have you had any trouble with your husband?”
”If so, I should not be so bored,” replied Clemence, in a gay tone, which she repented immediately, for she continued more calmly:
”No, aunt; Christian is kind, very kind; he is very much attached to me, and full of good-humor and attentions. You have seen how he has allowed me to arrange my apartments to suit myself, even taking down the part.i.tion and enlarging the windows; and yet, you know how much he clings to everything that is old about the house. He tries to do everything for my pleasure. Did he not go to Strasbourg the other day to buy a pony for me, because I thought t.i.tania was too skittish? It would be impossible to show greater kindness.”
”Your husband,” suddenly interrupted Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, for she held the praise of others in sovereign displeasure, ”is a Bergenheim like all the Bergenheims present, past, and future, including your little sister-in-law, who appears more as if she had been brought up with boys than at the 'Sacred Heart.' He is a worthy son of his father there,” said she, pointing to one of the portraits near the young Royal-Na.s.sau officer; ”and he was the most brutal, unbearable, and detestable of all the dragoons in Lorraine; so much so that he got into three quarrels at Nancy in one month, and at Metz, over a game of checkers, he killed the poor Vicomte de Megrigny, who was worth a hundred of him and danced so well! Some one described Bergenheim as being 'proud as a peac.o.c.k, as stubborn as a mule, and as furious as a lion!' Ugly race! ugly race! What I say to you now, Clemence, is to excuse your husband's faults, for it would be time lost to try to correct them. However, all men are alike; and since you are Madame de Bergenheim, you must accept your fate and bear it as well as possible.
And then, if you have your troubles, you still have your good aunt to whom you can confide them and who will not allow you to be tyrannized over. I will speak to your husband.”
Clemence saw, from the first words of this tirade, that she must arm herself with resignation; for anything which concerned the Bergenheims aroused one of the hobbies which the old maid rode with a most complacent spite; so she settled herself back in her chair like a person who would at least be comfortable while she listened to a tiresome discourse, and busied herself during this lecture caressing with the tip of a very shapely foot the top of one of the andirons.
”But, aunt,” said she at last, when the tirade was over, and she gave a rather drawling expression to her voice, ”I can not understand why you have taken this idea into your head that Christian renders me unhappy.
I repeat it, it is impossible that one should be kinder to me than he, and, on my side, I have the greatest respect and friends.h.i.+p for him.”
”Very well, if he is such a pearl of husbands, if you live so much like turtle-doves-and, to tell the truth, I do not believe a word of it--what causes this ennui of which you complain and which has been perfectly noticeable for some time? When I say ennui, it is more than that; it is sadness, it is grief? You grow thinner every day; you are as pale as a ghost; just at this moment, your complexion is gone; you will end by being a regular fright. They say that it is the fas.h.i.+on to be pale nowadays; a silly notion, indeed, but it will not last, for complexion makes the woman.”
The old lady said this like a person who had her reasons for not liking pale complexions, and who gladly took pimples for roses.
Madame de Bergenheim bowed her head as if to acquiesce in this decision, and then resumed in her drawling voice:
”I know that I am very unreasonable, and I am often vexed with myself for having so little control over my feelings, but it is beyond my strength. I have a tired sensation, a disgust for everything, something which I can not overcome. It is an inexplicable physical and moral languor, for which, for this reason, I see no remedy. I am weary and I suffer; I am sure it will end in my being ill. Sometimes I wish I were dead. However, I have really no reason to be unhappy. I suppose I am happy--I ought to be happy.”
”Truly, I can not understand in the least the women of today. Formerly, upon exciting occasions, we had a good nervous attack and all was over; the crisis pa.s.sed, we became amiable again, put on rouge and went to a ball. Now it is languor, ennui, stomach troubles--all imagination and humbug! The men are just as bad, and they call it spleen! Spleen! a new discovery, an English importation! Fine things come to us from England; to begin with, the const.i.tutional government! All this is perfectly ridiculous. As for you, Clemence, you ought to put an end to such childishness. Two months ago, in Paris, you did not have any of the rest that you enjoy here. I had serious reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to delay my departure; my apartment to refurnish, my neuralgia which still troubles me--and Constance, who had just been in the hands of the doctor, was hardly in a condition to travel, poor creature! You would listen to nothing; we had to submit to your caprices, and now--”
”But, aunt, you admitted yourself that it was the proper thing for me to do, to join my husband. Was it not enough, and too much, to have left him to pa.s.s the entire winter alone here while I was dancing in Paris?”