Part 24 (1/2)
Meantime Pierrot, or rather Madame Strahlberg, had leaped over an imaginary barrier and came dancing toward the company, shaking her large sleeves and settling her little snake-like head in her large quilled collar, dragging after her the Hungarian, who seemed not very willing.
She presented him to Madame d'Avrigny, hoping that so fas.h.i.+onable a woman might want him to play at her receptions during the winter, and to a journalist who promised to give him a notice in his paper, provided--and here he whispered something to Pierrot, who, smiling, answered neither yes nor no. The sisters kept on their costumes; Colette was enchanting with her bare neck, her long-waisted black velvet corsage, her very short skirt, and a sort of three-cornered hat upon her head. All the men paid court to her, and she accepted their homage, becoming gayer and gayer at every compliment, laughing loudly, possibly that her laugh might exhibit her beautiful teeth.
Wanda, as Pierrot, sang, with her hands in her pockets, a Russian village song: ”Ah! Dounai-li moy Dounai” (”Oh! thou, my Danube”). Then she imperiously called Jacqueline to the piano:--”It is your turn now,”
she said, ”most humble violet.”
Up to that moment, Jacqueline's deep mourning had kept the gentlemen present from addressing her, though she had been much stared at.
Although she did not wish to sing, for her heart was heavy as she thought of the troubles that awaited her the next day at the convent, she sang what was asked of her without resistance or pretension. Then, for the first time, she experienced the pride of triumph. Szmera, though he was furious at not being the sole lion of the evening, complimented her, bowing almost to the ground, with one hand on his heart; Madame Rochette a.s.sured her that she had a fortune in her throat whenever she chose to seek it; persons she had never seen and who did not know her name, pressed her hands fervently, saying that her singing was adorable.
All cried ”Encore,” ”Encore!” and, yielding to the pleasure of applause, she thought no more of the flight of time. Dawn was peeping through the windows when the party broke up.
”What kind people!” thought the debutante, whom they had encouraged and applauded; ”some perhaps are a little odd, but how much cordiality and warmth there is among them! It is catching. This is the sort of atmosphere in which talent should live.”
Being very much fatigued, she fell asleep upon the offered sofa, half-pleased, half-frightened, but with two prominent convictions: one, that she was beginning to return to life; the other, that she stood on the edge of a precipice. In her dreams old Rochette appeared to her, her face like that of an affable frog, her dress the dress of Pierrot, and she croaked out, in a variety of tones: ”The stage! Why not? Applauded every night--it would be glorious!” Then she seemed in her dream to be falling, falling down from a great height, as one falls from fairyland into stern reality. She opened her eyes: it was noon. Madame Odinska was waiting for her: she intended herself to take her to the convent, and for that purpose had a.s.sumed the imposing air of a n.o.ble matron.
Alas! it was in vain! Jacqueline, was made to understand that such an infraction of the rules could not be overlooked. To pa.s.s the night without leave out of the convent, and not with her own family, was cause for expulsion. Neither the prayers nor the anger of Madame Odinska had any power to change the sentence. While the Mother Superior calmly p.r.o.nounced her decree, she was taking the measure of this stout foreigner who appeared in behalf of Jacqueline, a woman overdressed, yet at the same time shabby, who had a far from well-bred or aristocratic air. ”Out of consideration for Madame de Talbrun,” she said, ”the convent consents to keep Mademoiselle de Nailles a few days longer--a few weeks perhaps, until she can find some other place to go. That is all we can do for her.”
Jacqueline listened to this sentence as she might have watched a game of dice when her fate hung on the result, but she showed no emotion. ”Now,”
she thought, ”my fate has been decided; respectable people will have nothing more to do with me. I will go with the others, who, perhaps, after all are not worse, and who most certainly are more amusing.”
A fortnight after this, Madame de Nailles, having come back to Paris, from some watering-place, was telling Marien that Jacqueline had started for Bellagio with Mr. and Miss Sparks, the latter having taken a notion that she wanted that kind of chaperon who is called a companion in England and America.
”But they are of the same age,” said Marien.
”That is just what Miss Sparks wants. She does not wish to be hampered by an elderly chaperon, but to be accompanied, as she would have been by her sister.”
”Jacqueline will be exposed to see strange things; how could you have consented--”
”Consented? As if she cared for my consent! And then she manages to say such irritating things as soon as one attempts to blame her or advise her. For example, this is one of them: 'Don't you suppose,' she said to me, 'that every one will take the most agreeable chance that offers for a visit to Italy?' What do you think of that allusion? It closed my lips absolutely.”
”Perhaps she did not mean what you think she meant.”
”Do you think so? And when I warned her against Madame Strahlberg, saying that she might set her a very bad example, she answered: 'I may have had worse.' I suppose that was not meant for impertinence either!”
”I don't know,” said Hubert Marien, biting his lips doubtfully, ”but--”
He was silent a few moments, his head drooped on his breast, he was in some painful reverie.
”Go on. What are you thinking about?” asked Madame de Nailles, impatiently.
”I beg your pardon. I was only thinking that a certain responsibility might rest on those who have made that young girl what she is.”
”I don't understand you,” said the stepmother, with an impatient gesture. ”Who can do anything to counteract a bad disposition? You don't deny that hers is bad? She is a very devil for pride and obstinacy--she has no affection--she has proved it. I have no inclination to get myself wounded by trying to control her.”
”Then you prefer to let her ruin herself?”
”I should prefer not to give the world a chance to talk, by coming to an open rupture with her, which would certainly be the case if I tried to contradict her. After all, the Sparks and Madame Odinska are not yet put out of the pale of good society, and she knew them long ago. An early intimacy may be a good explanation if people blame her for going too far--”
”So be it, then; if you are satisfied it is not for me to say anything,”
replied Marien, coldly.