Part 14 (1/2)
Here, with a boyish flourish of her hands, she seemed to send that cla.s.sic land to Jericho!
”Do promise me, papa!”
”Before asking a reward, you must deserve it,” said her father, severely, who saw something was wrong.
During her stay at Lizerolles, which her perverseness, her resentment, and a repugnance founded on instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer to a journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it into her head to write to her friend Fred. The young man received three letters at three different ports in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies, whose names were long a.s.sociated in his mind with delightful and cruel recollections. When the first was handed to him with one from his mother, whose letters always awaited him at every stopping-place, the blood flew to his face, his heart beat violently, he could have cried aloud but for the necessity of self-command in the presence of his comrades, who had already remarked in whispers to each other, and with envy, on the pink envelope, which exhaled 'l'odor di femina'. He hid his treasure quickly, and carried it to a spot where he could be alone; then he kissed the bold, pointed handwriting that he recognized at once, though never before had it written his address. He kissed, too, more than once, the pink seal with a J on it, whose slender elegance reminded him of its owner. Hardly did he dare to break the seal; then forgetting altogether, as we might be sure, his mother's letter, which he knew beforehand was full of good advice and expressions of affection, he eagerly read this, which he had not expected to receive:
”LIZEROLLES, October, 5, 188-
”MY DEAR FRED:
”Your mother thinks you would be pleased to receive a letter from me, and I hope you will be. You need not answer this if you do not care to do so. You will notice, 'par parenthese', that I take this opportunity of saying you and not thou to you. It is easier to change the familiar mode of address in writing than in speaking, and when we meet again the habit will have become confirmed. But, as I write, it will require great attention, and I can not promise to keep to it to the end. Half an hour's chat with an old friend will also help me to pa.s.s the time, which I own seems rather long, as it is pa.s.sed by your sweet, dear mother and myself at Lizerolles. Oh, if you were only here it would be different! In the first place, we should talk less of a certain Fred, which would be one great advantage. You must know that you are the subject of our discourse from morning to night; we talk only of the dangers of the seas, the future prospects of a seaman, and all the rest of it. If the wind is a little higher than usual, your mother begins to cry; she is sure you are battling with a tempest. If any fis.h.i.+ng-boat is wrecked, we talk of nothing but s.h.i.+pwrecks; and I am asked to join in another novena, in addition to those with which we must have already wearied Notre Dame de Treport. Every evening we spread out the map: 'See, Jacqueline, he must be here now--no, he is almost there,' and lines of red ink are traced from one port to another, and little crosses are made to show the places where we hope you will get your letters--'Poor boy, poor, dear boy!' In short, notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is sometimes too much for me. In fact, I think I must be very fond of thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss.
There! In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said thee! That ought to gild the pill for you!
”We do not go very frequently to visit Treport, except to invoke for you the protection of Heaven, and I like it just as well, for since the last fortnight in September, which was very rainy, the beach is dismal--so different from what it was in the summer. The town looks gloomy under a cloudy sky with its blackened old brick houses! We are better off at Lizerolles, whose autumnal beauties you know so well that I will say nothing about them.--Oh, Fred, how often I regret that I am not a boy! I could take your gun and go shooting in the swamps, where there are clouds of ducks now. I feel sure that if you were in my place, you could kill time without killing game; but I am at the end of my small resources when I have played a little on the piano to amuse your mother and have read her the 'Gazette de France'. In the evening we read a translation of some English novel. There are neighbors, of course, old fogies who stay all the year round in Picardy--but, tell me, don't you find them sometimes a little too respectable? My greatest comfort is in your dog, who loves me as much as if I were his master, though I can not take him out shooting. While I write he is lying on the hem of my gown and makes a little noise, as much as to tell me that I recall you to his remembrance. Yet you are not to suppose that I am suffering from ennui, or am ungrateful, nor above all must you imagine that I have ceased to love your excellent mother with all my heart. I love her, on the contrary, more than ever since I pa.s.sed this winter through a great, great sorrow--a sorrow which is now only a sad remembrance, but which has changed for me the face of everything in this world. Yes, since I have suffered myself, I understand your mother. I admire her, I love her more than ever.
”How happy you are, my dear Fred, to have such a sweet mother,-- a real mother who never thinks about her face, or her figure, or her age, but only of the success of her son; a dear little mother in a plain black gown, and with pretty gray hair, who has the manners and the toilette that just suit her, who somehow always seems to say: 'I care for nothing but that which affects my son.' Such mothers are rare, believe me. Those that I know, the mothers of my friends, are for the most part trying to appear as young as their daughters--nay, prettier, and of course more elegant. When they have sons they make them wear jackets a l'anglaise and turn-down collars, up to the age when I wore short skirts. Have you noticed that nowadays in Paris there are only ladies who are young, or who are trying to make themselves appear so? Up to the last moment they powder and paint, and try to make themselves different from what age has made them.
If their hair was black it grows blacker--if red, it is more red.
But there is no longer any gray hair in Paris--it is out of fas.h.i.+on.
That is the reason why I think your mother's pretty silver curls so lovely and 'distingues'. I kiss them every night for you, after I have kissed them for myself.
”Have a good voyage, come back soon, and take care of yourself, dear Fred.”
The young sailor read this letter over and over again. The more he read it the more it puzzled him. Most certainly he felt that Jacqueline gave him a great proof of confidence when she spoke to him of some mysterious unhappiness, an unhappiness of which it was evident her stepmother was the cause. He could see that much; but he was infinitely far from suspecting the nature of the woes to which she alluded. Poor Jacqueline!
He pitied her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of sympathy, and an honest desire to do anything in the world to make her happy. Was it really possible that she could have been enduring any grief that summer when she had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a little flirtation? Young girls must be very skilful in concealing their inmost feelings! When he was unhappy he had it out by himself, he took refuge in solitude, he wanted to be done with existence. Everybody knew when anything went wrong with him. Why could not Jacqueline have let him know more plainly what it was that troubled her, and why could she not have shown a little tenderness toward him, instead of a.s.suming, even when she said the kindest things to him, her air of mockery? And then, though she might pretend not to find Lizerolles stupid, he could see that she was bored there. Yet why had she chosen to stay at Lizerolles rather than go to Italy?
Alas! how that little pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil--that little pink letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it crackle as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near his heart! It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to overpower the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the air, to perfume everything.
”That young fellow has the instincts of a sailor,” said his superior officers when they saw him standing in att.i.tudes which they thought denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie. He would stand with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could see emerging from the waves a small, brown, s.h.i.+ning head, with long hair streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl he knew so well.
”One can see that he takes an interest in nautical phenomena, that he is heart and soul in his profession, that he cares for nothing else. Oh, he'll make a sailor! We may be sure of that!”
Fred sent his young friend and cousin, by way of reply, a big packet of ma.n.u.script, the leaves of which were of all sizes, over which he had poured forth torrents of poetry, amorous and descriptive, under the t.i.tle: At Sea.
Never would he have dared to show her this if the ocean had not lain between them. He was frightened when his packet had been sent. His only comfort was in the thought that he had hypocritically asked Jacqueline for her literary opinion of his verses; but she could not fail, he thought, to understand.
Long before an answer could have been expected, he got another letter, sky-blue this time, much longer than the first, giving him an account of Giselle's wedding.
”Your mother and I went together to Normandy, where the marriage was to take place after the manner of old times, 'in the fas.h.i.+on of the Middle Ages,' as our friends the Wermants said to me, who might perhaps not have laughed at it had they been invited. Madame de Monredon is all for old customs, and she had made it a great point that the wedding should not take place in Paris. Had I been Giselle, I should not have liked it. I know nothing more elegant or more solemn than the entrance of a bridal party into the Madeleine, but we shall have to be content with Saint-Augustin. Still, the toilettes, as they pa.s.s up the aisle, even there, are very effective, and the decoration of the tall, high altar is magnificent. Toc! Toc! First come the beadles with their halberds, then the loud notes of the organ, then the wide doors are thrown open, making a noise as they turn on their great hinges, letting the noise of carriages outside be heard in the church; and then comes the bride in a ray of suns.h.i.+ne. I could wish for nothing more. A grand wedding in the country is much more quiet, but it is old-fas.h.i.+oned. In the little village church the guests were very much crowded, and outside there was a great mob of country folk.
Carpets had been laid down over the dilapidated pavement, composed princ.i.p.ally of tombstones. The rough walls were hung with scarlet.
All the clergy of the neighborhood were present. A Monsignor-- related to the Talbruns--p.r.o.nounced the nuptial benediction; his address was a panegyric on the two families. He gave us to understand that if he did not go back quite as far as the Crusades, it was only because time was wanting.
”Madame de Monredon was all-glorious, of course. She certainly looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun --well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be.
To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on his hands. It is horrid, and it makes him look like an animal. You have no idea how queer he looked when he sat down, with his big, pink head just peeping over the back of the crimson velvet chair, which was, however, almost as tall as he is. He is short, you may remember. As to our poor Giselle, the prettiest persons sometimes look badly as brides, and those who are not pretty look ugly. Do you recollect that picture--by Velasquez, is it not? of a fair little Infanta stiffly swathed in cloth of gold, as becomes her dignity, and looking crushed by it? Giselle's gown was of point d'Alencon, old family lace as yellow as ancient parchment, but of inestimable value. Her long corsage, made in the fas.h.i.+on of Anne of Austria, looked on her like a cuira.s.s, and she dragged after her, somewhat awkwardly, a very long train, which impeded her movement as she walked. A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown, but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the present dowager's included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or more ugly. Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face of misery, and the air of a martyr. For all this her grandmother scolded her sharply, which of course did not mend matters. 'Du reste', she seemed absorbed in prayer or thought during the ceremony, in which I took up the offerings, by the way, with a young lieutenant of dragoons just out of the military school at Saint Cyr: a uniform always looks well on such occasions. Nor was Monsieur de Talbrun one of those lukewarm Christians who hear ma.s.s with their arms crossed and their noses in the air. He pulled a jewelled prayerbook out of his pocket, which Giselle had given him. Speaking of presents, those he gave her were superb: pearls as big as hazelnuts, a ruby heart that was a marvel, a diamond crescent that I am afraid she will never wear with such an air as it deserves, and two strings of diamonds 'en riviere', which I should suppose she would have reset, for rivieres are no longer in fas.h.i.+on. The stones are enormous.