Part 17 (1/2)
”She may be a widow--but some say she is divorced.”
”Oh! is it you who repeat such naughty scandals, Giselle? Where shall charity take refuge in this world if not in your heart? I am going--your seriousness may be catching. Kiss me before I go.”
”No,” said Madame de Talbrun, turning her head away.
After this she asked herself whether she ought not to discourage Fred.
She could not resolve on doing so, yet she could not tell him what was false; but by eluding the truth with that ability which kind-hearted women can always show when they try to avoid inflicting pain, she succeeded in leaving the young man hope enough to stimulate his ambition.
CHAPTER XI. FRED ASKS A QUESTION
Time, whatever may be said of it by the calendars, is not to be measured by days, weeks, and months in all cases; expectation, hope, happiness and grief have very different ways of counting hours, and we know from our own experience that some are as short as a minute, and others as long as a century. The love or the suffering of those who can tell just how long they have suffered, or just how long they have been in love, is only moderate and reasonable.
Madame d'Argy found the two lonely years she pa.s.sed awaiting the return of her son, who was winning his promotion to the rank of ensign, so long, that it seemed to her as if they never would come to an end. She had given a reluctant consent to his notion of adopting the navy as a profession, thinking that perhaps, after all, there might be no harm in allowing her dear boy to pa.s.s the most dangerous period of his youth under strict discipline, but she could not be patient forever! She idolized her son too much to be resigned to living without him; she felt that he was hers no longer. Either he was at sea or at Toulon, where she could very rarely join him, being detained at Lizerolles by the necessity of looking after their property. With what eagerness she awaited his promotion, which she did not doubt was all the Nailles waited for to give their consent to the marriage; of their happy half-consent she hastened to remind them in a note which announced the new grade to which he had been promoted. Her indignation was great on finding that her formal request received no decided answer; but, as her first object was Fred's happiness, she placed the reply she had received in its most favorable light when she forwarded it to the person whom it most concerned. She did this in all honesty. She was not willing to admit that she was being put off with excuses; still less could she believe in a refusal.
She accepted the excuse that M. de Nailles gave for returning no decided answer, viz.: that ”Jacqueline was too young,” though she answered him with some vehemence: ”Fred was born when I was eighteen.” But she had to accept it. Her ensign would have to pa.s.s a few more months on the coast of Senegal, a few more months which were made shorter by the encouragement forwarded to him by his mother, who was careful to send him everything she could find out that seemed to be, or that she imagined might be, in his favor; she underlined such things and commented upon them, so as to make the faintest hypothesis seem a certainty. Sometimes she did not even wait for the post. Fred would find, on putting in at some post, a cablegram: ”Good news,” or ”All goes well,” and he would be beside himself with joy and excitement until, on receiving his poor, dear mother's next letter, he found out on how slight a foundation her a.s.surance had been founded.
Sometimes, she wrote him disagreeable things about Jacqueline, as if she would like to disenchant him, and then he said to himself: ”By this, I am to understand that my affairs are not going on well; I still count for little, notwithstanding my promotion.” Ah! if he could only have had, so near the beginning of his career, any opportunity of distinguis.h.i.+ng himself! No brilliant deed would have been too hard for him. He would have scaled the very skies. Alas! he had had no chance to win distinction, he had only had to follow in the beaten track of ordinary duty; he had encountered no glorious perils, though at St.
Louis he had come very near leaving his bones, but it was only a case of typhoid fever. This fever, however, brought about a scene between M. de Nailles and his mother.
”When,” she cried, with all the fury of a lioness, ”do you expect to come to the conclusion that my son is a suitable match for Jacqueline?
Do you imagine that I shall let him wait till he is a post-captain to satisfy the requirements of Mademoiselle your daughter--provided he does not die in a hospital? Do you think that I shall be willing to go on living--if you can call it living!--all alone and in continual apprehension? Why do you let him keep on in uncertainty? You know his worth, and you know that with him Jacqueline would be happy. Instead of that--instead of saying once for all to this young man, who is more in love with her than any other man will ever be: 'There, take her, I give her to you,' which would be the straightforward, sensible way, you go on encouraging the caprices of a child who will end by wasting, in the life you are permitting her to lead, all the good qualities she has and keeping nothing but the bad ones.”
”Mon Dieu! I can't see that Jacqueline leads a life like that!” said M.
de Nailles, who felt that he must say something.
”You don't see, you don't see! How can any one see who won't open his eyes? My poor friend, just look for once at what is going on around you, under your own roof--”
”Jacqueline is devoted to music,” said her father, good-humoredly.
Madame d'Argy in her heart thought he was losing his mind.
And in truth he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle--not for life; that might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and n.o.ble--but for superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own part, he cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to exertion by those near to him, who insisted on extravagances.
”Oh! yes, Jacqueline, I know, is devoted to music,” went on Madame d'Argy, with an air of extreme disapproval, ”too much so! And when she is able to sing like Madame Strahlberg, what good will it do her?
Even now I see more than one little thing about her that needs to be reformed. How can she escape spoiling in that crowd of Slavs and Yankees, people of no position probably in their own countries, with whom you permit her to a.s.sociate? People nowadays are so imprudent about acquaintances! To be a foreigner is a pa.s.sport into society. Just think what her poor mother would have said to the bad manners she is adopting from all parts of the globe? My poor, dear Adelaide! She was a genuine Frenchwoman of the old type; there are not many such left now. Ah!”
continued Madame d'Argy, without any apparent connection with her subject, ”Monsieur de Talbrun's mother, if he had one, would be truly happy to see him married to Giselle!”
”But,” faltered M. de Nailles, struck by the truth of some of these remarks, ”I make no opposition--quite the contrary--I have spoken several times about your son, but I was not listened to!”
”What can she say against Fred?”
”Nothing. She is very fond of him, that you know as well as I do.
But those childish attachments do not necessarily lead to love and marriage.”
”Friends.h.i.+p on her side might be enough,” said Madame d'Argy, in the tone of a woman who had never known more than that in marriage. ”My poor Fred has enthusiasm and all that, enough for two. And in time she will be madly in love with him--she must! It is impossible it should be otherwise.”