Book: Jacqueline, Complete

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




"But my dear friend, I can not stay," murmured Jacqueline, for those
unexpected words "the stage, why not?" rang in her head, made her heart
beat fast, and made lights dance before her eyes. "They are expecting me
to dine at home."

"At your convent? I beg your pardon, I'll take care of that. Don't you
know me? My claws seldom let go of a prize, especially when that prize is
worth the keeping. A little telegram has already been sent, with your
excuses. The telegraph is good for that, if not for anything else: it
facilitates 'impromptus'."

"Long live impromptus," cried out Colette, "there is nothing like them
for fun!" And while Jacqueline was trying to get away, not knowing
exactly what she was saying, but frightened, pleased, and much excited,
Colette went on: "Oh! I am so glad, so glad you came to-day; now you can
see the pantomime! I dreamed, wasn't it odd, only last night, that you
were acting it with us. How can one help believing in presentiments? Mine
are always delightful--and yours?"

"The pantomime?" repeated Jacqueline in bewilderment, "but I thought your
sister told me you were all alone."

"How could we have anything like company in August?" said Madame
Strahlberg, interrupting her; "why, it would be impossible, there are not
four cats in Paris. No, no, we sha'n't have anybody. A few friends
possibly may drop in--people passing through Paris--in their
travelling-dresses. Nothing that need alarm you. The pantomime Colette
talks about is only a pretext that they may hear Monsieur Szmera."

And who was M. Szmera?

Jacqueline soon learned that he was a Hungarian, second half-cousin of a
friend of Kossuth, the most wonderful violinist of the day, who had
apparently superseded the famous Polish pianist in these ladies' interest
and esteem. As for the latter, they had almost forgotten his name, he had
behaved so badly.

"But," said Jacqueline, anxiously, "you know I am obliged to be home by
ten o'clock."

"Ah! that's like Cinderella," laughed Wanda. "Will the stroke of the
clock change all the carriages in Paris into pumpkins? One can get
'fiacres' at any hour."

"But it is a fixed rule: I must be in," repeated Jacqueline, growing very
uneasy.

"Must you really? Madame Saville says it is very easy to manage those
nuns--"

"What? Do you know Madame Saville, who was boarding at the convent last
winter?"

"Yes, indeed; she is a countrywoman of ours, a friend, the most charming
of women. You will see her here this evening. She has gained her divorce
suit--"

"You are mistaken," said Colette, "she has lost it. But that makes no
difference. She has got tired of her husband. Come, say 'Yes,'
Jacqueline--a nice, dear 'Yes'--you will stay, will you not? Oh, you
darling!"

They dined without much ceremony, on the pretext that the cook had been
turned off that morning for impertinence, but immediately after dinner
there was a procession of boys from a restaurant, bringing whipped
creams, iced drinks, fruits, sweetmeats, and champagne--more than would
have been wanted at the buffet of a ball. The Prince, they said, had sent
these things. What Prince?

As Jacqueline was asking this question, a gentleman came in whose age it
would have been impossible to guess, so disguised was he by his black
wig, his dyed whiskers, and the soft bloom on his cheeks, all of which
were entirely out of keeping with those parts of his face that he could
not change. In one of his eyes was stuck a monocle. He was bedizened with
several orders, he bowed with military stiffness, and kissed with much
devotion the ladies' hands, calling them by titles, whether they had them
or not. His foreign accent made it as hard to detect his nationality as
it was to know his age. Two or three other gentlemen, not less decorated
and not less foreign, afterward came in. Colette named them in a whisper
to Jacqueline, but their names were too hard for her to pronounce, much
less to remember. One of them, a man of handsome presence, came
accompanied by a sort of female ruin, an old lady leaning on a cane,
whose head, every time she moved, glittered with jewels, placed in a very
lofty erection of curled hair.

"That gentleman's mother is awfully ugly," Jacqueline could not help
saying.

"His mother? What, the Countess? She is neither his mother nor his wife.
He is her gentleman-in-waiting-that's all. Don't you understand? Well,
imagine a man who is a sort of 'gentleman-companion'; he keeps her
accounts, he escorts her to the theatre, he gives her his arm. It is a
very satisfactory arrangement."

"The gentleman receives a salary, in such a case?" inquired Jacqueline,
much amused.

"Why, what do you find in it so extraordinary?" said Colette. "She adores
cards, and there he is, always ready to be her partner. Oh, here comes
dear Madame Saville!"

There were fresh cries of welcome, fresh exchanges of affectionate
diminutives and kisses, which seemed to make the Prince's mouth water.
Jacqueline discovered, to her great surprise, that she, too, was a dear
friend of Madame Saville's, who called her her good angel, in reference,
no doubt, to the letter she had secretly put into the post. At last she
said, trying to make her escape from the party: "But it must be nine
o'clock."

"Oh! but--you must hear Szmera."

A handsome young fellow, stoutly built, with heavy eyebrows, a hooked
nose, a quantity of hair growing low upon his forehead, and lips that
were too red, the perfect type of a Hungarian gypsy, began a piece of his
own composition, which had all the ardor of a mild 'galopade' and a
Satanic hunt, with intervals of dying sweetness, during which the painted
skeleton they called the Countess declared that she certainly heard a
nightingale warbling in the moonlight.

This charming speech was forthwith repeated by her "umbra" in all parts
of the room, which was now nearly filled with people, a mixed multitude,
some of whom were frantic about music, others frantic about Wanda
Strahlberg. There were artists and amateurs present, and even respectable
women, for Madame d'Avrigny, attracted by the odor of a species of
Bohemianism, had come to breathe it with delight, under cover of a wish
to glean ideas for her next winter's receptions.

Then again there were women who had been dropped out of society, like
Madame de Versanne, who, with her sunken eyes and faded face, was not
likely again to pick up in the street a bracelet worth ten thousand
francs. There was a literary woman who signed herself Fraisiline, and
wrote papers on fashion--she was so painted and bedizened that some one
remarked that the principal establishments she praised in print probably
paid her in their merchandise. There was a dowager whose aristocratic
name appeared daily on the fourth page of the newspapers, attesting the
merits of some kind of quack medicine; and a retired opera-singer, who,
having been called Zenaide Rochet till she grew up in Montmartre, where
she was born, had had a brilliant career as a star in Italy under the
name of Zina Rochette. La Rochette's name, alas! is unknown to the
present generation.

In all, there were about twenty persons, who made more noise with their
applause than a hundred ordinary guests, for enthusiasm was exacted by
Madame Strahlberg. Profiting by the ovation to the Hungarian musician,
Jacqueline made a movement toward the door, but just as she reached it
she had the misfortune of falling in with her old acquaintance, Nora
Sparks, who was at that moment entering with her father. She was forced
to sit down again and hear all about Kate's marriage. Kate had gone back
to New York, her husband being an American, but Nora said she had made up
her mind not to leave Europe till she had found a satisfactory match.

"You had better make haste about it, if you expect to keep me here," said
Mr. Sparks, with a peculiar expression in his eye. He was eager to get
home, having important business to attend to in the West.

"Oh, papa, be quiet! I shall find somebody at Bellagio. Why, darling, are
you still in mourning?"

She had forgotten that Jacqueline had lost her father. Probably she would
not have thought it necessary to wear black so long for Mr. Sparks.
Meantime, Madame Strahlberg and her sister had left the room.

"When are they coming back?" said Jacqueline, growing very nervous. "It
seems to me this clock must be wrong. It says half-past nine. I am sure
it must be later than that."

"Half-past nine!--why, it is past eleven," replied Miss Nora, with a
giggle. "Do you suppose they pay any attention to clocks in this house?
Everything here is topsy-turvy."

"Oh! what shall I do?" sighed poor Jacqueline, on the verge of tears.

"Why, do they keep you such a prisoner as that? Can't you come in a
little late--"

"They wouldn't open the doors--they never open the doors on any pretext
after ten o'clock," cried Jacqueline, beside herself.

"Then your nuns must be savages? You should teach them better."

"Don't be worried, dear little one, you can sleep on this sofa," said
Madame Odinska, kindly.

To whom had she not offered that useful sofa? Wanda and Colette were just
as ready to propose that others should spend the night with them as, on
the smallest pretext, to accept the same hospitality from others. Wanda,
indeed, always slept curled up like a cat on a divan, in a fur wrapper,
which she put on early in the evening when she wanted to smoke
cigarettes. She went to sleep at no regular hour. A bear's skin was
placed always within her reach, so that if she were cold she could draw
it over her. Jacqueline, not being accustomed to these Polish fashions,
did not seem to be much attracted by the offer of the sofa. She blamed
herself bitterly for her own folly in having got herself into a scrape
which might lead to serious consequences.

But this was neither time nor place for expressions of anxiety; it would
be absurd to trouble every one present with her regrets. Besides, the
harm was done--it was irreparable--and while she was turning over in her
mind in what manner she could explain to the Mother Superior that the
mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers--and the Mother
Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom
she had visited--the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes,
accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little
flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted
cries of admiration from all the women.

Suddenly, the screens parted, and upon the little platform that
represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and
charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English vulgarize
and call Harlequin. He had white camellias instead of buttons on his
loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out from his
red-and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most charming of
serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened by a white,
round arm, revealed Colette, dressed as Colombine.

The little pantomime piece was called 'Pierrot in Love'. It consisted of
a series of dainty coquetries, sudden quarrels, fits of jealousy, and
tender reconciliations, played by the two sisters. Colette with her
beauty, Wanda with her talent, her impishness, her graceful and
voluptuous attitudes, electrified the spectators, especially in a long
monologue, in which Pierrot contemplated suicide, made more effective by
the passionate and heart-piercing strains of the Hungarian's violin, so
that old Rochette cried out: "What a pity such a wonder should not be
upon the stage!" La Rochette, now retired into private life, wearing an
old dress, with her gray hair and her black eyes, like those of a
watchful crocodile, took the pleasure in the pantomime that all actors do
to the very last in everything connected with the theatre. She cried
'brava' in tones that might reach Italy; she blew kisses to the actors in
default of flowers.

Madame d'Avrigny was also transported to the sixth heaven, but
Jacqueline's presence somewhat marred her pleasure. When she first
perceived her she had shown great surprise. "You here, my dear?" she
cried, "I thought you safe with our own excellent Giselle."

"Safe, Madame? It seems to me one can be safe anywhere," Jacqueline
answered, though she was tempted to say "safe nowhere;" but instead she
inquired for Dolly.

Dolly's mother bit her lips and then replied: "You see I have not brought
her. Oh, yes, this house is very amusing--but rather too much so. The
play was very pretty, and I am sorry it would not do at my house. It is
too--too 'risque', you know;" and she rehearsed her usual speech about
the great difficulties encountered by a lady who wished to give
entertainments and provide amusement for her friends.

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 fashionable 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 assured 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 assumed the imposing air of a noble matron.

Alas! it was in vain! Jacqueline, was made to understand that such an
infraction of the rules could not be overlooked. To pass 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
pronounced 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.

"Satisfied? I am not satisfied with anything or anybody," said Madame de
Nailles, indignantly. "How could I be satisfied; I never have met with
anything but ingratitude."




CHAPTER XVI

THE SAILOR'S RETURN

Madame D'Argy did not leave her son in ignorance of all the freaks and
follies of Jacqueline. He knew every particular of the wrong-doings and
the imprudences of his early friend, and even the additions made to them
by calumny, ever since the fit of in dependence which, after her father's
death, had led her to throw off all control. She told of her sudden
departure from Fresne, where she might have found so safe a refuge with
her friend and cousin. Then had not her own imprudence and coquetry led
to a rupture with the families of d'Etaples and Ray? She told of the
scandalous intimacy with Madame Strahlberg; of her expulsion from the
convent, where they had discovered, even before she left, that she had
been in the habit of visiting undesirable persons; and finally she
informed him that Jacqueline had gone to Italy with an old Yankee and his
daughter--he being a man, it was said, who had laid the foundation of his
colossal fortune by keeping a bar-room in a mining camp in California.
This last was no fiction, the cut of Mr. Sparks's beard and his
unpolished manners left no doubt on the subject; and she wound up by
saying that Madame d'Avrigny, whom no one could accuse of ill-nature, had
been grieved at meeting this unhappy girl in very improper company, among
which she seemed quite in her element, like a fish in water. It was said
also that she was thinking of studying for the stage with La Rochette--M.
de Talbrun had heard it talked about in the foyer of the Opera by an old
Prince from some foreign country--she could not remember his name, but he
was praising Madame Strahlberg without any reserve as the most delightful
of Parisiennes. Thereupon Talbrun had naturally forbidden his wife to
have anything to do with Jacqueline, or even to write to her. Fat Oscar,
though he was not all that he ought to be himself, had some very strict
notions of propriety. No one was more particular about family relations,
and really in this case no one could blame him; but Giselle had been very
unhappy, and to the very last had tried to stand up for her unhappy
friend. Having told him all this, she added, she would say no more on the
subject.

Giselle was a model woman in everything, in tact, in goodness, in good
sense, and she was very attentive to the poor old mother of Fred, who but
for her must have died long ago of loneliness and sorrow. Thereupon
ensued the poor lady's usual lamentations over the long, long absence of
her beloved son; as usual, she told him she did not think she should live
to see him back again; she gave him a full account of her maladies,
caused, or at least aggravated, by her mortal, constant, incurable
sorrow; and she told how Giselle had been nursing her with all the
patience and devotion of a Sister of Charity. Through all Madame d'Argy's
letters at this period the angelic figure of Giselle was contrasted with
the very different one of that young and incorrigible little devil of a
Jacqueline.

Fred at first believed his mother's stories were all exaggeration, but
the facts were there, corroborated by the continued silence of the person
concerned. He knew his mother to be too good wilfully to blacken the
character of one whom for years she had hoped would be her
daughter-in-law, the only child of her best friend, the early love of her
son. But by degrees he fancied that the love so long living at the bottom
of his heart was slowly dying, that it had been extinguished, that
nothing remained of it but remembrance, such remembrance as we retain for
dead things, a remembrance without hope, whose weight added to the
homesickness which with him was increasing every day.

There was no active service to enable him to endure exile. The heroic
period of the war had passed. Since a treaty of peace had been signed
with China, the fleet, which had distinguished itself in so many small
engagements and bombardments, had had nothing to do but to mount guard,
as it were, along a conquered coast. All round it in the bay, where it
lay at anchor, rose mountains of strange shapes, which seemed to shut it
into a kind of prison. This feeling of nothing to be done--of nothing
likely to be done, worked in Fred's head like a nightmare. The only thing
he thought of was how he could escape, when could he once more kiss the
faded cheeks of his mother, who often, when he slept or lay wakeful
during the long hours of the siesta, he saw beside him in tears. Hers was
the only face that he recalled distinctly; to her and to her only were
devoted his long reveries when on watch; that time when he formerly
composed his love verses, tender or angry, or full of despair. That was
all over! A sort of mournful resignation had succeeded his bursts of
excited feeling, his revolt against his fate.

This was Fred's state of mind when he received orders to return
home--orders as unexpected as everything seems to be in the life of a
naval man. "I am going back to her!" he cried. Her was his mother, her
was France. All the rest had disappeared as if into a fog. Jacqueline was
a phantom of the past; so many things had happened since the old times
when he had loved her. He had crossed the Indian Ocean and the China Sea;
he had seen long stretches of interminable coast-line; he had beheld
misery, and glory, and all the painful scenes that wait on warfare; he
had seen pestilence, and death in every shape, and all this had wrought
in him a sort of stoicism, the result of long acquaintance with solitude
and danger. He remembered his old love as a flower he had once admired as
he passed it, a treacherous flower, with thorns that had wounded him.
There are flowers that are beneficent, and flowers that are poisonous,
and the last are sometimes the most beautiful. They should not be blamed,
he thought; it was their nature to be hurtful; but it was well to pass
them by and not to gather them.

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