Book: Jacqueline, Complete

T >> Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) >> Jacqueline, Complete




"Charity seems to cover many things," thought the young man as he
withdrew from her smiles and her glances, but yet he had seen nothing so
attractive among the black, yellow, green or tattooed ladies about whom
Jacqueline had been pleased to tease him.

"Fred!"

It was Jacqueline's voice that arrested him. It was sharp and almost
angry. She, too, was selling flowers, while at the same time she was
helping Madame de Nailles with her toys; but she was selling with that
decorum and graceful reserve which custom prescribes for young girls.
"Fred, I do hope you will wear no roses but mine. Those you have are
frightful. They make you look like a village bridegroom. Take out those
things; come! Here is a pretty boutonniere, and I will fasten it much
better in your buttonhole--let me."

In vain did he try to seem cold to her; his heart thawed in spite of
himself. She held him so charmingly by the lapel of his coat, touching
his cheek with the tip end of an aigrette which set so charmingly on the
top of the most becoming of fur caps which she wore. Her hair was turned
up now, showing her beautiful neck, and he could see little rebellious
hairs curling at their own will over her pure, soft skin, while she,
bending forward, was engaged in his service. He admired, too, her slender
waist, only recently subjected to the restraint of a corset. He forgave
her on the spot. At this moment a man with brown hair, tall, elegant, and
with his moustache turned up at the ends, after the old fashion of the
Valois, revived recently, came hurriedly up to the table of Madame de
Nailles. Fred felt that that inimitable moustache reduced his not yet
abundant beard to nothing.

"Mademoiselle Jacqueline," said the newcomer, "Madame de Villegry has
sent me to beg you to help her at the buffet. She can not keep pace with
her customers, and is asking for volunteers."

All this was uttered with a familiar assurance which greatly shocked the
young naval man.

"You permit me, Madame?"

The Baroness bowed with a smile, which said, had he chosen to interpret
it, "I give you permission to carry her off now--and forever, if you wish
it."

At that moment she was placing in the half-unwilling arms of Hubert
Marien an enormous rubber balloon and a jumping-jack, in return for five
Louis which he had laid humbly on her table. But Jacqueline had not
waited for her stepmother's permission; she let herself be borne off
radiant on the arm of the important personage who had come for her, while
Colette, who perhaps had remarked the substitution for her two roses,
whispered in Fred's ear, in atone of great significance "Monsieur de
Cymier."

The poor fellow started, like a man suddenly awakened from a happy dream
to face the most unwelcome of realities. Impelled by that natural
longing, that we all have, to know the worst, he went toward the buffet,
affecting a calmness which it cost him a great effort to maintain. As he
went along he mechanically gave money to each of the ladies whom he knew,
moving off without waiting for their thanks or stopping to choose
anything from their tables. He seemed to feel the floor rock under his
feet, as if he had been walking the deck of a vessel. At last he reached
a recess decorated with palms, where, in a robe worthy of 'Peau d'Ane' in
the story, and absolutely a novelty in the world of fashions robe all
embroidered with gold and rubies, which glittered with every movement
made by the wearer--Madame de Villegry was pouring out Russian tea and
Spanish chocolate and Turkish coffee, while all kinds of deceitful
promises of favor shone in her eyes, which wore a certain tenderness
expressive of her interest in charity. A party of young nymphs formed the
court of this fair goddess, doing their best to lend her their aid.
Jacqueline was one of them, and, at the moment Fred approached, she was
offering, with the tips of her fingers, a glass of champagne to M. de
Cymier, who at the same time was eagerly trying to persuade her to
believe something, about which she was gayly laughing, while she shook
her head. Poor Fred, that he might hear, and suffer, drank two mouthfuls
of sherry which he could hardly swallow.

"One who was really charitable would not hesitate," said M. de Cymier,
"especially when every separate hair would be paid for if you chose. Just
one little curl--for the sake of the poor. It is very often done:
anything is allowable for the sake of the poor."

"Maybe it is because, as you say, that it is very often done that I shall
not do it," said Jacqueline, still laughing. "I have made up my mind
never to do what others have done before me."

"Well, we shall see," said M. de Cymier, pretending to threaten her.

And her young head was thrown back in a burst of inextinguishable
laughter.

Fred fled, that he might not be tempted to make a disturbance. When he
found himself again in the street, he asked himself where he should go.
His anger choked him; he felt he could not keep his resentment to
himself, and yet, however angry he might be with Jacqueline, he would
have been unwilling to hear his mother give utterance to the very
sentiments that he was feeling, or to harsh judgments, of which he
preferred to keep the monopoly. It came into his mind that he would pay a
little visit to Giselle, who, of all the people he knew, was the least
likely to provoke a quarrel. He had heard that Madame de Talbrun did not
go out, being confined to her sofa by much suffering, which, it might be
hoped, would soon come to an end; and the certainty that he should find
her if he called at once decided him. Since he had been in Paris he had
done nothing but leave cards. This time, however, he was sure that the
lady upon whom he called would be at home. He was taken at once into the
young wife's boudoir, where he found her very feeble, lying back upon her
cushions, alone, and working at some little bits of baby-clothes. He was
not slow to perceive that she was very glad to see him. She flushed with
pleasure as he came into the room, and, dropping her sewing, held out to
him two little, thin hands, white as wax. "Take that footstool--sit down
there--what a great, great pleasure it is to see you back again!" She was
more expansive than she had been formerly; she had gained a certain ease
which comes from intercourse with the world, but how delicate she seemed!
Fred for a moment looked at her in silence, she seemed so changed as she
lay there in a loose robe of pale blue cashmere, whose train drawn over
her feet made her look tall as it stretched to the end of the gilded
couch, round which Giselle had collected all the little things required
by an invalid--bottles, boxes, work-bag, dressing-case, and writing
materials.

"You see," she said, with her soft smile, "I have plenty to occupy me,
and I venture to be proud of my work and to think I am creating marvels."

As she spoke she turned round on her closed hand a cap that seemed
microscopic to Fred.

"What!" he cried, "do you expect him to be small enough to wear that!"

"Him! you said him; and I am sure you will be right. I know it will be a
boy," replied Giselle, eagerly, her fair face brightened by these words.
"I have some that are still smaller. Look!" and she lifted up a pile of
things trimmed with ribbons and embroidery. "See; these are the first!
Ah! I lie here and fancy how he will look when he has them on. He will be
sweet enough to eat. Only his papa wants us to give him a name that I
think is too long for him, because it has always been in the
family--Enguerrand."

"His name will be longer than himself, I should say, judging by the
dimensions of this cap," said Fred, trying to laugh.

"Bah!" replied Giselle, gayly, "but we can get over it by calling him
Gue-gue or Ra-ra. What do you think? The difficulty is that names of that
kind are apt to stick to a boy for fifty years, and then they seem
ridiculous. Now a pretty abbreviation like Fred is another matter. But I
forget they have brought up my chocolate. Please ring, and let them bring
you a cup. We will take our luncheon together, as we used to do."

"Thank you, I have no appetite. I have just come from a certain buffet
where I lost it all."

"Oh! I suppose you have been to the Bazaar--the famous Charity Fair! You
must have made a sensation there on your return, for I am told that the
gentlemen who are expected to spend the most are likely to send their
money, and not to show themselves. There are many complaints of it."

"There were plenty of men round certain persons," replied Fred, dryly.
"Madame de Villegry's table was literally besieged."

"Really! What, hers! You surprise me! So it was the good things she gave
you that make you despise my poor chocolate," said Giselle, rising on her
elbow, to receive the smoking cup that a servant brought her on a little
silver salver.

"I didn't take much at her table," said Fred, ready to enter on his
grievances. "If you wish to know the reason why, I was too indignant to
eat or drink."

"Indignant?"

"Yes, the word is not at all too strong. When one has passed whole months
away from what is unwholesome and artificial, such things as make up life
in Paris, one becomes a little like Alceste, Moliere's misanthrope, when
one gets back to them. It is ridiculous at my age, and yet if I were to
tell you--"

"What?--you puzzle me. What can there be that is unwholesome in selling
things for the poor?"

"The poor! A pretty pretext! Was it to benefit the poor that that odious
Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces? I have seen
kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good form in
comparison."

"Oh! Countess Strahlberg! People have heard about her doings until they
are tired of them," said Giselle, with that air of knowing everything
assumed by a young wife whose husband has told her all the current
scandals, as a sort of initiation.

"And her sister seems likely to be as bad as herself before long."

"Poor Colette! She has been so badly brought up. It is not her fault."

"But there's Jacqueline," cried Fred, in a sudden outburst, and already
feeling better because he could mention her name.

"Allons, donc! You don't mean to say anything against Jacqueline?" cried
Giselle, clasping her hands with an air of astonishment. "What can she
have done to scandalize you--poor little dear?"

Fred paused for half a minute, then he drew the stool in the form of an
X, on which he was sitting, a little nearer to Giselle's sofa, and,
lowering his voice, told her how Jacqueline had acted under his very
eyes. As he went on, watching as he spoke the effect his words produced
upon Giselle, who listened as if slightly amused by his indignation, the
case seemed not nearly so bad as he had supposed, and a delicious sense
of relief crept over him when she to whom he told his wrongs after
hearing him quietly to the end, said, smiling:

"And what then? There is no great harm in all that. Would you have had
her refuse to go with the gentleman Madame de Villegry had sent to fetch
her? And why, may I ask, should she not have done her best to help by
pouring out champagne? An air put on to please is indispensable to a
woman, if she wishes to sell anything. Good Heavens! I don't approve any
more than you do of all these worldly forms of charity, but this kind of
thing is considered right; it has come into fashion. Jacqueline had the
permission of her parents, and I really can't see any good reason why you
should complain of her. Unless--why not tell me the whole truth, Fred? I
know it--don't we always know what concerns the people that we care for?
And I might possibly some day be of use to you. Say! don't you think you
are--a little bit jealous?"

Less encouragement than this would have sufficed to make him open his
heart to Giselle. He was delighted that some woman was willing he should
confide in her. And what was more, he was glad to have it proved that he
had been all wrong. A quarter of an hour later Giselle had comforted him,
happy herself that it had been in her power to undertake a task of
consolation, a work in which, with sweet humility, she felt herself at
ease. On the great stage of life she knew now she should never play any
important part, any that would bring her greatly into view. But she felt
that she was made to be a confidant, one of those perfect confidants who
never attempt to interfere rashly with the course of events, but who wait
upon the ways of Providence, removing stones, and briers and thorns, and
making everything turn out for the best in the end. Jacqueline, she said,
was so young! A little wild, perhaps, but what a treasure! She was all
heart! She would need a husband worthy of her, such a man as Fred. Madame
d'Argy, she knew, had already said something on the subject to her
father. But it would have to be the Baroness that Fred must bring over to
their views; the Baroness was acquiring more and more influence over her
husband, who seemed to be growing older every day. M. de Nailles had
evidently much, very much upon his mind. It was said in business circles
that he had for some time past been given to speculation. Oscar said so.
If that were the case, many of Jacqueline's suitors might withdraw. Not
all men were so disinterested as Fred.

"Oh! As to her dot--what do I care for her dot?" cried the young man. "I
have enough for two, if she would only be satisfied to live quietly at
Lizerolles!"

"Yes," said the judicious little matron, nodding her head, "but who would
like to marry a midshipman? Make haste and be a lieutenant, or an
ensign."

She smiled at herself for having made the reward depend upon exertion,
with a sort of maternal instinct. It was the same instinct that would
lead her in the future to promise Enguerrand a sugar-plum if he said his
lesson. "Nobody will steal your Jacqueline till you are ready to carry
her off. Besides, if there were any danger I could give you timely
warning."

"Ah! Giselle, if she only had your kind heart--your good sense."

"Do you think I am better and more reasonable than other people? In what
way? I have done as so many other girls do; I have married without
knowing well what I was doing."

She stopped short, fearing she might have said too much, and indeed Fred
looked at her anxiously.

"You don't regret it, do you?"

"You must ask Monsieur de Talbrun if he regrets it," she said, with a
laugh. "It must be hard on him to have a sick wife, who knows little of
what is passing outside of her own chamber, who is living on her reserve
fund of resources--a very poor little reserve fund it is, too!"

Then, as if she thought that Fred had been with her long enough, she
said: "I would ask you to stay and see Monsieur de Talbrun, but he won't
be in, he dines at his club. He is going to see a new play tonight which
they say promises to be very good."

"What! Will he leave you alone all the evening?"

"Oh! I am very glad he should find amusement. Just think how long it is
that I have been pinned down here! Poor Oscar!"




CHAPTER X

GISELLE'S CONSOLATION

The arrival of the expected Enguerrand hindered Giselle from pleading
Fred's cause as soon as she could have wished. Her life for twenty-four
hours was in great danger, and when the crisis was past, which M. de
Talbrun treated very indifferently, as a matter of course, her first cry
was "My baby!" uttered in a tone of tender eagerness such as had never
been heard from her lips before.

The nurse brought him. He lay asleep swathed in his swaddling clothes
like a mummy in its wrappings, a motionless, mysterious being, but he
seemed to his mother beautiful--more beautiful than anything she had seen
in those vague visions of happiness she had indulged in at the convent,
which were never to be realized. She kissed his little purple face, his
closed eyelids, his puckered mouth, with a sort of respectful awe. She
was forbidden to fatigue herself. The wet-nurse, who had been brought
from Picardy, drew near with her peasant cap trimmed with long blue
streamers; her big, experienced hands took the baby from his mother, she
turned him over on her lap, she patted him, she laughed at him. And the
mother-happiness that had lighted up Giselle's pale face died away.

"What right," she thought, "has that woman to my child?" She envied the
horrid creature, coarse and stout, with her tanned face, her bovine
features, her shapeless figure, who seemed as if Nature had predestined
her to give milk and nothing more. Giselle would so gladly have been in
her place! Why wouldn't they permit her to nurse her baby?

M. de Talbrun said in answer to this question:

"It is never done among people in our position. You have no idea, of all
it would entail on you--what slavery, what fatigue! And most probably you
would not have had milk enough."

"Oh! who can tell? I am his mother! And when this woman goes he will have
to have English nurses, and when he is older he will have to go to
school. When shall I have him to myself?"

And she began to cry.

"Come, come!" said M. de Talbrun, much astonished, "all this fuss about
that frightful little monkey!"

Giselle looked at him almost as much astonished as he had been at her.
Love, with its jealousy, its transports, its anguish, its delights had
for the first time come to her--the love that she could not feel for her
husband awoke in her for her son. She was ennobled--she was transfigured
by a sense of her maternity; it did for her what marriage does for some
women--it seemed as if a sudden radiance surrounded her.

When she raised her infant in her arms, to show him to those who came to
see her, she always seemed like a most chaste and touching representation
of the Virgin Mother. She would say, as she exhibited him: "Is he not
superb?" Every one said: "Yes, indeed!" out of politeness, but, on
leaving the mother's presence, would generally remark: "He is Monsieur de
Talbrun in baby-clothes: the likeness is perfectly horrible!"

The only visitor who made no secret of this impression was Jacqueline,
who came to see her cousin as soon as she was permitted--that is, as soon
as her friend was able to sit up and be prettily dressed, as became the
mother of such a little gentleman as the heir of all the Talbruns. When
Jacqueline saw the little creature half-smothered in the lace that
trimmed his pillows, she burst out laughing, though it was in the
presence of his mother.

"Oh, mon Dieu!" she cried, "how ugly! I never should have supposed we
could have been as ugly as that! Why, his face is all the colors of the
rainbow; who would have imagined it? And he crumples up his little face
like those things in gutta-percha. My poor Giselle, how can you bear to
show him! I never, never could covet a baby!"

Giselle, in consternation, asked herself whether this strange girl, who
did not care for children, could be a proper wife for Fred; but her
habitual indulgence came to her aid, and she thought:

"She is but a child herself, she does not know what she is saying," and
profiting by her first tete-a-tete with Jacqueline's stepmother, she
spoke as she had promised to Madame de Nailles.

"A matchmaker already!" said the Baroness, with a smile. "And so soon
after you have found out what it costs to be a mother! How good of you,
my dear Giselle! So you support Fred as a candidate? But I can't say I
think he has much chance; Monsieur de Nailles has his own ideas."

She spoke as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any
ideas but her own. When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was likely
to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband's having an opinion of his
own.

"Oh! Madame, you can do anything you like with him!"

The clever woman sighed:

"So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains as
much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de
Talbrun? You will learn to know better, my dear."

"But I have no influence," murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her
husband's slave.

"Oh! I know better. You are making believe!"

"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 Saturday 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."

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.