Book: Jacqueline, Complete

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




After that time Madame d'Argy and Modeste were the only people who spoke
to her of the mother who was gone. Madame d'Argy, indeed, came on certain
days to take her to visit the tomb, on which the child read, as she
prayed for the departed:

MARIE JACQUELINE ADELAIDE DE VALTIER

BARONNE DE NAILLES

DIED AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS

And such filial sentiment as she still retained, concerning the unknown
being who had been her mother, was tinged by her association with this
melancholy pilgrimage which she was expected to perform at certain
intervals. Without exactly knowing the reason why, Jacqueline was
conscious of a certain hostility that existed between Madame d'Argy and
her stepmother.

The intimate friend of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with
neither elegance nor beauty. She never had left off her widow's weeds,
which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth. In the
eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting Duty,
a kind of duty not attractive to her. That very day it seemed as if duty
inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was deeply
interesting to her. The impatient gesture that she made when her mother
called her might have been interpreted into: Bother Madame d'Argy!

"Jacqueline!" called again the silvery voice that had first summoned her;
and a moment after the young girl found herself in the centre of a circle
of grown people, saying good-morning, making curtseys, and kissing the
withered hand of old Madame de Monredon, as she had been taught to do
from infancy. Madame de Monredon was Giselle's grandmother. Jacqueline
had been instructed to call her "aunt;" but in her heart she called her
'La Fee Gyognon', while Madame d'Argy, pointing to her son, said: "What
do you think, darling, of such a surprise? He is home on leave. We came
here the first place-naturally."

"It was very nice of you. How do you do, Fred?" said Jacqueline, holding
out her hand to a very young man, in a jacket ornamented with gold lace,
who stood twisting his cap in his hand with some embarrassment "It is a
long time since we have seen each other. But it does not seem to me that
you have grown a great deal."

Fred blushed up to the roots of his hair.

"No one can say that of you, Jacqueline," observed Madame d'Argy.

"No--what a may-pole!--isn't she?" said the Baronne, carelessly.

"If she realizes it," whispered Madame de Monredon, who was sitting
beside Madame d'Argy on a 'causeuse' shaped like an S, "why does she
persist in dressing her like a child six years old? It is absurd!"

"Still, she can have no reason for keeping her thus in order to make
herself seem young. She is only a stepmother."

"Of course. But people might make comparisons. Beauty in the bud
sometimes blooms out unexpectedly when it is not welcome."

"Yes--she is fading fast. Small women ought not to grow stout."

"Anyhow, I have no patience with her for keeping a girl of fifteen in
short skirts."

"You are making her out older than she is."

"How is that?--how is that? She is two years younger than Giselle, who
has just entered her eighteenth year."

While the two ladies were exchanging these little remarks, the Baronne de
Nailles was saying to the young naval cadet:

"Monsieur Fred, we should be charmed to keep you with us, but possibly
you might like to see some of your old friends. Jacqueline can take you
to them. They will be glad to see you."

"Tiens!--that's true," said Jacqueline. "Dolly and Belle are yonder. You
remember Isabelle Ray, who used to take dancing lessons with us."

"Of course I do," said Fred, following his cousin with a feeling of
regret that his sword was not knocking against his legs, increasing his
importance in the eyes of all the ladies who were present. He was not,
however; sorry to leave their imposing circle. Above all, he was glad to
escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles. On the
other hand, to be sent off to the girls' corner, after being insulted by
being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of self-importance.

Meantime Jacqueline was taking him back to her own corner, where he was
greeted by two or three little exclamations of surprise, shaking hands,
however, as his former playmates drew their skirts around them, trying to
make room for him to sit down.

"Young ladies," said Jacqueline, "I present to you a 'bordachien'--a
little middy from the practice-ship the Borda."

They burst out laughing: "A bordachien! A middy from the practice-ship!"
they cried.

"I shall not be much longer on the practice-ship," said the young man,
with a gesture which seemed as if his hand were feeling for the hilt of
his sword, which was not there, "for I am going very soon on my first
voyage as an ensign."

"Yes," explained Jacqueline, "he is going to be transferred from the
'Borda' to the 'Jean-Bart'--which, by the way, is no longer the
'Jean-Bart', only people call her so because they are used to it.
Meantime you see before you "C," the great "C," the famous "C," that is,
he is the pupil who stands highest on the roll of the naval school at
this moment."

There was a vague murmur of applause. Poor Fred was indeed in need of
some appreciation on the score of merit, for he was not much to look
upon, being at that trying age when a young fellow's moustache is only a
light down, an age at which youths always look their worst, and are
awkward and unsociable because they are timid.

"Then you are no longer an idle fellow," said Dolly, rather teasingly.
"People used to say that you went into the navy to get rid of your
lessons. That I can quite understand."

"Oh, he has passed many difficult exams," cried Giselle, coming to the
rescue.

"I thought I had had enough of school," said Fred, without making any
defense, "and besides I had other reasons for going into the navy."

His "other reasons" had been a wish to emancipate himself from the
excessive solicitude of his mother, who kept him tied to her
apron-strings like a little girl. He was impatient to do something for
himself, to become a man as soon as possible. But he said nothing of all
this, and to escape further questions devoured three or four little cakes
that were offered him. Before taking them he removed his gloves and
displayed a pair of chapped and horny hands.

"Why--poor Fred!" cried Jacqueline, who remarked them in a moment, "what
kind of almond paste do you use?"

Much annoyed, he replied, curtly: "We all have to row, we have also to
attend to the machinery. But that is only while we are cadets. Of course,
such apprenticeship is very hard. After that we shall get our stripes and
be ordered on foreign service, and expect promotion."

"And glory," said Giselle, who found courage to speak.

Fred thanked her with a look of gratitude. She, at least, understood his
profession. She entered into his feelings far better than Jacqueline, who
had been his first confidante--Jacqueline, to whom he had confided his
purposes, his ambition, and his day-dreams. He thought Jacqueline was
selfish. She seemed to care only for herself. And yet, selfish or not
selfish, she pleased him better than all the other girls he knew--a
thousand times more than gentle, sweet Giselle.

"Ah, glory, of course!" repeated Jacqueline. "I understand how much that
counts, but there is glory of various kinds, and I know the kind that I
prefer," she added in a tone which seemed to imply that it was not that
of arms, or of perilous navigation. "We all know," she went on, "that not
every man can have genius, but any sailor who has good luck can get to be
an admiral."

"Let us hope you will be one soon, Monsieur Fred," said Dolly. "You will
have well deserved it, according to the way you have distinguished
yourself on board the 'Borda.'"

This induced Fred to let them understand something of life on board the
practice-ship; he told how the masters who resided on shore ascended by a
ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how six
cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks
hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a
closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in the
rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they
been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a
poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach
unanimously after hearing his descriptions, was discouraging. They cried
almost with one voice--

"Think of any woman being willing to marry a sailor."

"Why not?" asked Giselle, very promptly.

"Because, what's the use of a husband who is always out of your reach, as
it were, between water and sky? One would better be a widow. Widows, at
any rate, can marry again. But you, Giselle, don't understand these
things. You are going to be a nun."

"Had I been in your place, Fred," said Isabelle Ray, "I should rather
have gone into the cavalry school at Saint Cyr. I should have wanted to
be a good huntsman, had I been a man, and they say naval officers are
never good horsemen."

Poor Fred! He was not making much progress among the young girls. Almost
everything people talked about outside his cadet life was unknown to him;
what he could talk about seemed to have no interest for any one, unless
indeed it might interest Giselle, who was an adept in the art of
sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say.

Besides this, Fred was by no means at his ease in talking to Jacqueline.
They had been told not to 'tutoyer' each other, because they were getting
too old for such familiarity, and it was he, and not she, who remembered
this prohibition. Jacqueline perceived this after a while, and burst out
laughing:

"Tiens! You call me 'you,"' she cried, "and I ought not to say 'thou' but
'you.' I forgot. It seems so odd, when we have always been accustomed to
'tutoyer' each other."

"One ought to give it up after one's first communion," said the eldest
Mademoiselle Wermant, sententiously. "We ceased to 'tutoyer' our boy
cousins after that. I am told nothing annoys a husband so much as to see
these little familiarities between his wife and her cousins or her
playmates."

Giselle looked very much astonished at this speech, and her air of
disapproval amused Belle and Yvonne exceedingly. They began presently to
talk of the classes in which they were considered brilliant pupils, and
of their success in compositions. They said that sometimes very difficult
subjects were given out. A week or two before, each had had to compose a
letter purporting to be from Dante in exile to a friend in Florence,
describing Paris as it was in his time, especially the manners and
customs of its universities, ending by some allusion to the state of
matters between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

"Good heavens! And could you do it?" said Giselle, whose knowledge of
history was limited to what may be found in school abridgments.

It was therefore a great satisfaction to her when Fred declared that he
never should have known how to set about it.

"Oh! papa helped me a little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles
much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' "But he
said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff
to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have
to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio, Souvenir, and Le
Lac'. That will be something interesting."

"The Tristesse d'Olympio?" repeated Giselle, in a tone of interrogation.

"You know, of course, that it is Victor Hugo's," said Mademoiselle de
Wermant, with a touch of pity.

Giselle answered with sincerity and humility, "I only knew that Le Lac
was by Lamartine."

"Well!--she knows that much," whispered Belle to Yvonne--"just that
much, anyhow."

While they were whispering and laughing, Jacqueline recited, in a soft
voice, and with feeling that did credit to her instructor in elocution,
Mademoiselle X----, of the Theatre Francais:

May the moan of the wind, the green rushes' soft sighing,
The fragrance that floats in the air you have moved,
May all heard, may all breathed, may all seen, seem but trying
To say: They have loved.

Then she added, after a pause: "Isn't that beautiful?"

"How dares she say such words?" thought Giselle, whose sense of propriety
was outraged by this allusion to love. Fred, too, looked askance and was
not comfortable, for he thought that Jacqueline had too much assurance
for her age, but that, after all, she was becoming more and more
charming.

At that moment Belle and Yvonne were summoned, and they departed, full of
an intention to spread everywhere the news that Giselle, the little
goose, had actually known that Le Lac had been written by Lamartine. The
Benedictine Sisters positively had acquired that much knowledge.

These girls were not the only persons that day at the reception who
indulged in a little ill-natured talk after going away. Mesdames d'Argy
and de Monredon, on their way to the Faubourg St. Germain, criticised
Madame de Nailles pretty freely. As they crossed the Parc Monceau to
reach their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard
Malesherbes, they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead,
that they might have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the
old dowager especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity
of smirching the character and the reputation of her neighbors.

"When I think of the pains my poor cousin de Nailles took to impress upon
us all that he was making what is called a 'mariage raisonnable'! Well,
if a man wants a wife who is going to set up her own notions, her own
customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one will
simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people are
living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for
Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did
you observe the Baronne's gown?--of rough woolen stuff. She told some one
it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies! His
serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns . . . . And then her
artistic tastes, her bric-a brac! Her salon looks like a museum or a
bazaar. I grant you it makes a very pretty setting for her and all her
coquetries. But in my time respectable women were contented with
furniture covered with red or yellow silk damask furnished by their
upholsterers. They didn't go about trying to hunt up the impossible. 'On
ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures'. You hold, as I do, to the old
fashions, though you are not nearly so old, my dear Elise, and
Jacqueline's mother thought as we think. She would say that her daughter
is being very badly brought up. To be sure, all young creatures nowadays
are the same. Parents, on a plea of tenderness, keep them at home, where
they get spoiled among grown people, when they had much better have the
same kind of education that has succeeded so well with Giselle; bolts on
the garden-gates, wholesome seclusion, the company of girls of their own
age, a great regularity of life, nothing which stimulates either vanity
or imagination. That is the proper way to bring up girls without notions,
girls who will let themselves be married without opposition, and are
satisfied with the state of life to which Providence may be pleased to
call them. For my part, I am enchanted with the ladies in the Rue de
Monsieur, and, what is more, Giselle is very happy among them; to hear
her talk you would suppose she was quite ready to take the veil. Of
course, that is a mere passing fancy. But fancies of that sort are never
dangerous, they have nothing in common with those that are passing
nowadays through most girls' brains. Having 'a day!'--what a foolish
notion: And then to let little girls take part in it, even in a corner of
the room. I'll wager that, though her skirts are half way up her legs,
and her hair is dressed like a baby's, that that little de Nailles is
less of a child than my granddaughter, who has been brought up by the
Benedictines. You say that she probably does not understand all that goes
on around her. Perhaps not, but she breathes it in. It's poison-that's
what it is!"

There was a good deal of truth in this harsh picture, although it
contained considerable exaggeration.

At this moment, when Madame de Monredon was sitting in judgment on the
education given to the little girls brought up in the world, and on the
ruinous extravagance of their young stepmothers, Madame de Nailles and
Jacqueline--their last visitors having departed--were resting themselves,
leaning tenderly against each other, on a sofa. Jacqueline's head lay on
her mother's lap. Her mother, without speaking, was stroking the girl's
dark hair. Jacqueline, too, was silent, but from time to time she kissed
the slender fingers sparkling with rings, as they came within reach of
her lips.

When M. de Nailles, about dinner-time, surprised them thus, he said, with
satisfaction, as he had often said before, that it would be hard to find
a home scene more charming, as they sat under the light of a lamp with a
pink shade.

That the stepmother and stepdaughter adored each other was beyond a
doubt. And yet, had any one been able to look into their hearts at that
moment, he would have discovered with surprise that each was thinking of
something that she could not confide to the other.

Both were thinking of the same person. Madame de Nailles was occupied
with recollections, Jacqueline with hope. She was absorbed in
Machiavellian strategy, how to realize a hope that had been formed that
very afternoon.

"What are you both thinking of, sitting there so quietly?" said the
Baron, stooping over them and kissing first his wife and then his child.

"About nothing," said the wife, with the most innocent of smiles.

"Oh! I am thinking," said Jacqueline, "of many things. I have a secret,
papa, that I want to tell you when we are quite alone. Don't be jealous,
dear mamma. It is something about a surprise--Oh, a lovely surprise for
you."

"Saint Clotilde's day-my fete-day is still far off," said Madame de
Nailles, refastening, mother-like, the ribbon that was intended to keep
in order the rough ripples of Jacqueline's unruly hair, "and usually your
whisperings begin as the day approaches my fete."

"Oh, dear!--you will go and guess it!" cried Jacqueline in alarm. "Oh!
don't guess it, please."

"Well! I will do my best not to guess, then," said the good-natured
Clotilde, with a laugh.

"And I assure you, for my part, that I am discretion itself," said M. de
Nailles.

So saying, he drew his wife's arm within his own, and the three passed
gayly together into the dining-room.




CHAPTER II

A CLEVER STEPMOTHER

No man took more pleasure than M. de Nailles in finding himself in his
own home--partly, perhaps, because circumstances compelled him to be very
little there. The post of deputy in the French Chamber is no sinecure. He
was not often an orator from the tribune, but he was absorbed by work in
the committees--"Harnessed to a lot of bothering reports," as Jacqueline
used to say to him. He had barely any time to give to those important
duties of his position, by which, as is well known, members of the Corps
Legislatif are shamelessly harassed by constituents, who, on pretence
that they have helped to place the interests of their district in your
hands, feel authorized to worry you with personal matters, such as the
choice of agricultural machines, or a place to be found for a wet-nurse.

Besides his public duties, M. de Nailles was occupied by financial
speculations--operations that were no doubt made necessary by the style
of living commented on by his cousin, Madame de Monredon, who was as
stingy as she was bitter of tongue. The elegance that she found fault
with was, however, very far from being great when compared with the
luxury of the present day. Of course, the Baronne had to have her horses,
her opera-box, her fashionable frocks. To supply these very moderate
needs, which, however, she never insisted upon, being, so far as words
went, most simple in her tastes, M. de Nailles, who had not the
temperament which makes men find pleasure in hard work, became more and
more fatigued. His days were passed in the Chamber, but he never
neglected his interest on the Bourse; in the evening he accompanied his
young wife into society, which, she always declared, she did not care
for, but which had claims upon her nevertheless. It was therefore not
surprising that M. de Nailles's face showed traces of the habitual
fatigue that was fast aging him; his tall, thin form had acquired a
slight stoop; though only fifty he was evidently in his declining years.
He had once been a man of pleasure, it was said, before he entered
politics. He had married his first wife late in life. She was a prudent
woman who feared to expose him to temptation, and had kept him as far as
possible away from Paris.

In the country, having nothing to do, he became interested in
agriculture, and in looking after his estate at Grandchaux. He had been
made a member of the Conseil General, when unfortunately death too early
deprived him of the wise and gentle counsellor for whom he felt, possibly
not a very lively love, but certainly a high esteem and affection. After
he be came a widower he met in the Pyrenees, where, as he was whiling
away the time of seclusion proper after his loss, a young lady who
appeared to him exactly the person he needed to bring up his little
daughter--because she was extremely attractive to himself. Of course M.
de Nailles found plenty of other reasons for his choice, which he gave to
the world and to himself to justify his second marriage--but this was the
true reason and the only one. His friends, however, all of whom had urged
on him the desirability of taking another wife, in consideration of the
age of Jacqueline, raised many objections as soon as he announced his
intention of espousing Mademoiselle Clotilde Hecker, eldest daughter of a
man who had been, at one time, a prefect under the Empire, but who had
been turned out of office by the Republican Government. He had a large
family and many debts; but M. de Nailles had some answer always ready for
the objections of his family and friends. He was convinced that
Mademoiselle Hecker, having no fortune, would be less exacting than other
women and more disposed to lead a quiet life.

She had been almost a mother to her own young brothers and sisters, which
was a pledge for motherliness toward Jacqueline, etc., etc. Nevertheless,
had she not had eyes as blue as those of the beauties painted by Greuze,
plenty of audacious wit, and a delicate complexion, due to her Alsatian
origin--had she not possessed a slender waist and a lovely figure, he
might have asked himself why a young lady who, in winter, studied
painting with the commendable intention of making her own living by art,
passed the summers at all the watering-places of France and those of
neighboring countries, without any perceptible motive.

But, thanks to the bandage love ties over the eyes of men, he saw only
what Mademoiselle Clotilde was willing that he should see. In the first
place he saw the great desirability of a talent for painting which,
unlike music--so often dangerous to married happiness--gives women who
cultivate it sedentary interests. And then he was attracted by the model
daughter's filial piety as he beheld her taking care of her mother, who
was the victim of an incurable disorder, which required her by turns to
reside at Cauterets, or sometimes at Ems, sometimes at Aix in Savoy, and
sometimes even at Trouville. The poor girl had assured him that she asked
no happier lot than to live eight months of the year in the country,
where she would devote herself to teaching Jacqueline, for whom at first
sight she had taken a violent fancy (the attraction indeed was mutual).
She assured him she would teach her all she knew herself, and her
diplomas proved how well educated she had been.

Indeed, it seemed as if only prejudice could find any objection to so
prudent and reasonable a marriage, a marriage contracted principally for
the good of Jacqueline.

It came to pass, however, that the air of Grandchaux, which is situated
in the most unhealthful part of Limouzin, proved particularly hurtful to
the new Madame de Nailles. She could not live a month on her husband's
property without falling into a state of health which she attributed to
malaria. M. de Nailles was at first much concerned about the condition of
things which seemed likely to upset all his plans for retirement in the
country, but, his wife having persuaded him that his position in the
Conseil General was only a stepping-stone to a seat in the Corps
Legislatif, where his place ought to be, he presented himself to the
electors as a candidate, and was almost unanimously elected deputy, the
conservative vote being still all powerful in that part of the country.

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