Part 16 (1/2)
It was he really.
He stepped leisurely out of his carriage, and came up in his usual phlegmatic manner. He knew the majority, perhaps, of the young men in the crowd; and so he commenced at once shaking hands all around, and then said in an easy tone of voice,- ”Who has seen the bride?”
”I!” replied an old beau, whose perpetual smile displayed all the thirty-two teeth he owed to the dentist.
”Well, what do you think of her?”
”She is always sublime in her beauty, my dear. When she walked up the aisle to kneel down at the altar, a murmur of admiration followed her all the way. Upon my word of honor, I thought they would applaud.”
This was too much enthusiasm. M. de Brevan cut it short, asking,- ”And Count Ville-Handry?”
”Upon my word,” replied the old beau ironically, ”the good count can boast of a valet who knows almost as much as Rachel, the famous English enameller. At a little distance you would have sworn that he was sixteen years old, and that he was going, not to be married, but to be confirmed.”
”And how did he look?”
”Restless, I think.”
”He might well be,” observed a stout, elderly gentleman, who was said not to be very happily married.
Everybody laughed; but a very young man, a mere youth, who did not catch the joke, said,- ”Why so?”
A man of about thirty years, a perfect model of elegance, whom the others called, according to the degree of intimacy which they could claim, either ”Your Grace,” or ”Duke” simply replied,- ”Because, my dear viscount, Miss Brandon is one of those ladies who never are married. They are courted; they are wors.h.i.+pped; they make us commit a thousand follies for their sakes; they allow us to ruin ourselves, and, finally, to blow our brains out for them, all right! But to bear our name, never!”
”It is true,” said Brevan, ”that they tell a number of stories about her; but it is all gossip. However”- ”You certainly would not ask,” replied the duke, ”that I should prove her to have been brought before a police-court, or to have escaped from the penitentiary?”
And, without permitting himself to be interrupted, he went on,- ”Good society in France, they say, is very exclusive. It does not deserve that reputation. Except, perhaps, a score of houses, where old traditions are still preserved, all other houses are wide open to the first-comer, man or woman, who drives up in a carriage. And the number of such first-comers is prodigiously large. Where do they come from? No one knows. From Russia, from Turkey, from America, from Hungary, from very far, from everywhere, from below, I do not count the impudent fellows who are still muddy from the gutter in which they have been lying. How do all these people live? That is a mystery. But they do live, and they live well. They have, or at least seem to have, money; and they s.h.i.+ne, they intrigue, they conspire, they make believe, and they extort. So that I verily believe all this high-life society, by dint of helping one another, of pus.h.i.+ng and crowding in, will, in the end, be master of all. You may say that I am not in the crowd. Very true. I willingly shake hands with the workmen who work for me, and who earn their living worthily; but I do not shake hands with these ambiguous personages in yellow kids, who have no t.i.tle but their impudence, and no means of living but their underhand intrigues.”
He addressed himself apparently to no one, following, with his absent- minded glance, the crowd in the garden; and yet, by his peculiar manner, you would have known that he was speaking at some one among the listeners.
However, it was evident that he had no success, and that his doctrine seemed to be utterly out of season, and almost ridiculous. A young man with a delicate black mustache, and extremely well dressed, even turned to his neighbor, and asked,- ”Who is our friend, the preacher?”
”What! don't you know him?” replied the other.
”That is the Duke of Champdoce, you know, who has married a princess of Mussidan. Quite an original.”
M. de Brevan, however, had remained perfectly impa.s.sive, and now said,- ”At all events, I suppose it was not altogether a question of interest which made Miss Brandon marry the count.”
”Why not?”
”Because she is immensely rich.”
”Pshaw!”
An old gentleman came up, and said,- ”She must needs be perfectly disinterested; for I have it from the count himself that none of the property is to be settled upon Miss Brandon.”
”That certainly is marvellously disinterested.”
Having said what he meant to say, the duke had entered the church; and the old beau now took the word.
”The only thing that is clear to me in this matter is, that I think I know the person whom this wedding will not please particularly.”
”Whom do you mean?”
”Count Ville-Handry's daughter, a young girl, eighteen years old, and wondrously pretty. Just imagine! Besides, I have looked for her all over the church, and she is not there.”
”She is not present at the wedding,” replied the old gentleman, the friend of Count Ville-Handry, ”because she was suddenly taken ill.”
”So they say,” interposed the young man; ”but the fact is, that a friend of mine has just seen her driving out in her carriage in full dress.”
”That can hardly be so.”
”My friend was positive. She intended this pretty piece of scandal as a wedding-present for her stepmother.”
M. de Brevan shrugged his shoulders, and said in an undertone,- ”Upon my word, I should not like to stand in the count's shoes.”
As a faithful echo of the gossip that was going on in society, this conversation, carried on in broken sentences, under the porch of St. Clothilda, made it quite clear that public opinion was decidedly in favor of Miss Brandon. It would have been surprising if it should have been otherwise. She triumphed; and the world is always on the side of the victor. That Duke of Champdoce, an original, was the only one there who was disposed to remember the past; the others had forgotten it. The brilliancy of her success was even reflected on those who belonged to her; and a young man who copied to exaggeration English fas.h.i.+ons was just singing the praises of M. Thomas Elgin and Mrs. Brian, when a great commotion was noticed under the porch.
People came out, and said,- ”It is all over. The wedding-guests are in the vestry now to sign their names.”
The conversation stopped at once. The old beau alone exclaimed,- ”Gentlemen, if we wish to present our respects to the newly-married couple, we must make haste.”
And with these words he hurried into the church, followed by all the others, and soon reached the vestry, which was too small to hold all the guests invited by Count Ville-Handry. The parish register had been placed upon a small table; and every one approached, as his turn came, taking off his gloves before seizing the pen. Fronting the door, and leaning against one of the cupboards in which the holy vessels are kept, stood Miss Brandon, now Countess Ville-Handry, having at her side grim Mrs. Brian, and tall, stiff M. Elgin.
Her admirers had exaggerated nothing. In her white bridal costume she looked amazingly beautiful; and her whole person exhaled a perfume of innocence and ingenuous purity.
She was surrounded by eight or ten young persons, who overwhelmed her with congratulations and compliments. She replied with a slightly tremulous voice, and casting down her eyes with the long, silky eyelashes. Count Ville-Handry stood in the centre of the room, swelling with almost comic happiness; and at every moment, in replying to his friends, used the words, ”My wife,” like a sweet morsel which he rolled on his tongue.
Still a careful observer might have noticed underneath his victorious airs a trace of almost painful restraint. From time to time his face darkened as one of those unlucky, awkward people, who turn up everywhere, asked him,- ”I hope Miss Henrietta is not complaining much? How very sorry she must be to be detained at home!”
It is true, that, among these unlucky ones, there were not a few malicious ones. n.o.body was ignorant that something unpleasant had happened in the count's family. They had suspected something from the beginning of the ceremony.
For the count had hardly knelt down by Miss Brandon's side, on a velvet cus.h.i.+on, when a servant wearing his livery had come up, and whispered a few words in his ear. The guests who were nearest had seen him turn pale, and utter an expression of furious rage.
What had the servant told him?
It became soon known, thanks to the Countess Bois, who went about telling everybody with inexhaustible volubility, that she had just met Miss Ville-Handry in the street.
When the last name had been signed, n.o.body was, therefore, surprised at seeing Count Ville-Handry give his arm to his wife, and hand her hurriedly to her carriage,-a magnificent state-carriage. He had invited some twenty people, former friends of his, to a great wedding- breakfast; but he seemed to have forgotten them. And once in his carriage, alone with Mrs. Brian, M. Elgin, and the young countess, he broke forth in incoherent imprecations and absurd threatenings.
When they reached the palace, he did not wait for the coachman to drive as usually around the yard, but jumped out, and, rus.h.i.+ng up to the vestibule, cried out,- ”Ernest! send Ernest here!”
Ernest was his own valet, the clever artist to whom he was indebted for the roses of his complexion. As soon as he appeared, he asked,- ”Where is the young lady?”
”Gone out.”
”When?”
”Immediately after you, sir.”
The young countess, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin, had, in the meantime, come up, and gone into the room in the lower story, where this scene took place.