Part 16 (2/2)
”Well, but we were not talking about me, but--”
”Oh! yes. I understood. I will think about it. I will try to bring over Monsieur de Nailles.”
She was not at all disposed to drop the meat for the sake of the shadow, but she was not sure of M. de Cymier, notwithstanding all that Madame de Villegry was at pains to tell her about his serious intentions. On the other hand, she would have been far from willing to break with a man so brilliant, who made himself so agreeable at her Tuesday receptions.
”Meantime, it would be well if you, dear, were to try to find out what Jacqueline thinks. You may not find it very easy.”
”Will you authorize me to tell her how well he loves her? Oh, then, I am quite satisfied!” cried Giselle.
But she was under a mistake. Jacqueline, as soon as she began to speak to her of Fred's suit, stopped her:
”Poor fellow! Why can't he amuse himself for some time longer and let me do the same? Men seem to me so strange! Now, Fred is one who, just because he is good and serious by nature, fancies that everybody else should be the same; he wishes me to be tethered in the flowery meads of Lizerolles, and browse where he would place me. Such a life would be an end of everything--an end to my life, and I should not like it at all. I should prefer to grow old in Paris, or some other capital, if my husband happened to be engaged in diplomacy. Even supposing I marry--which I do not think an absolute necessity, unless I can not get rid otherwise of an inconvenient chaperon--and to do my stepmother justice, she knows well enough that I will not submit to too much of her dictation!”
”Jacqueline, they say you see too much of the Odinskas.”
”There! that's another fault you find in me. I go there because Madame Strahlberg is so kind as to give me some singing-lessons. If you only knew how much progress I am making, thanks to her. Music is a thousand times more interesting, I can tell you, than all that you can do as mistress of a household. You don't think so? Oh! I know Enguerrand's first tooth, his first steps, his first gleams of intelligence, and all that. Such things are not in my line, you know. Of course I think your boy very funny, very cunning, very--anything you like to fancy him, but forgive me if I am glad he does not belong to me. There, don't you see now that marriage is not my vocation, so please give up speaking to me about matrimony.”
”As you will,” said Giselle, sadly, ”but you will give great pain to a good man whose heart is wholly yours.”
”I did not ask for his heart. Such gifts are exasperating. One does not know what to do with them. Can't he--poor Fred--love me as I love him, and leave me my liberty?”
”Your liberty!” exclaimed Giselle; ”liberty to ruin your life, that's what it will be.”
”Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your eyes--this life of your own, Giselle. To leave one cage to be shut up in another--that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are others who like to use their wings to soar into the air. I like that expression. Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your lot is the only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman.”
Giselle answered with a strange smile:
”You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great things seem to have been revealed to me. When I hold him to my breast I seem to understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family ties and sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys. You can not understand that now, but you will some day. You, too, will gaze upon the horizon as I do. I am ready to suffer; I am ready for self-sacrifice. I know now whither my life leads me. I am led, as it were, by this little being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for whom I was embroidering caps and dresses. You ask whether I am satisfied with my lot in life. Yes, I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian angel, thanks to my precious Enguerrand.”
Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike her cousin's usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with the tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh, it was in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the Monredons and the Talbruns.
”How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear,” she answered.
”You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your example?”
”Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun,” said the young wife, for the moment forgetting herself.
”Do you mean to say--”
”I meant nothing, except that if you married Fred you would have had the advantage of first knowing him.”
”Ah! that's your fixed idea. But I am getting to know Monsieur de Cymier pretty well.”
”You have betrayed yourself,” cried Giselle, with indignation. ”Monsieur de Cymier!”
”Monsieur de Cymier is coming to our house on Sat.u.r.day evening, and I must get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to charm his ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well.
Won't you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand can spare you? There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our accompaniment. Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play Chopin! He is charming, poor young man! an exile, and in poverty; but he is cared for by those ladies, who take him everywhere. That is the sort of life I should like--the life of Madame Strahlberg--to be a young widow, free to do what I pleased.”
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