Part 16

Motherhood is of all earthly relationships the most sacred. Yet there are mothers who in revenge for disappointed hopes and thwarted ambitions have not hesitated to strike, through their own offspring, at husbands abhorred. More than ever the husband of Adelaide bent to his determination of placing Juliette, at the earliest moment, safe out of reach of that spotted maternal embrace.

XXI

Upon the following afternoon the Colonel duly escorted Mademoiselle to the dwelling of Madame Tessier. You may conceive that the portly little warrior, when panoplied in the full-skirted, black frock-coat, gray peg-top trousers, black cravat and vest, and curly-brimmed silk chimney-pot of private life, looked a very gallant gentleman; and that his daughter, attired in a new and charming costume of fine blue cloth, trimmed with velvet and loops of black silk cord, and wearing a sealskin coat and a minute bonnet, consisting of a knot or two of blue velvet, a froth of lace, and half-a-dozen richly-tinted oak-leaves on her coils of black hair, conveyed an effect of elegant simplicity and youthful grace, such as only a well-bred French girl knows how to combine perfectly.

During the walk, which absorbed the best part of a quarter of an hour, Juliette occupied herself in the endeavor to glean a few meager items of information with regard to her destined husband. To her timidly-cast bait the Colonel barely vouchsafed a rise. One may imagine a dialogue of timid interrogations and baffling replies, running somewhat after this fashion:

"Dear father, upon reflection, I find myself unable to recall the features of M. Charles Tessier with anything approaching clearness. I pray you be kind enough to describe him to me?"

"My daughter, I myself experience--how shall I phrase it?--a difficulty in verbally portraying the form and features of that excellent young man. But his mother carries his image in her heart, and doubtless has it on her walls and in her albums. Look in the one before you search the others; it will be wise."

"Assuredly. But, my father----"

"Chut!" The Colonel twirled a waxed end of his magnificent mustache, and resumed presently: "M. Charles Tessier is a gentleman of honor, an excellent man of business, and a most desirable _parti_ for any young girl of good family and limited fortune. Could the most exacting bride-elect demand more than this? In addition, he has a fine hand----"

"Indeed, dear father----"

A fine hand was something tangible. The owner of the commended extremity might in addition be possessor of a good figure, broad shoulders, a handsome nose.... And yet hunchbacks occasionally have neat hands, and the Colonel had only testified to one. That idea might be dismissed as fanciful. Of course, Charles had the proper complement of legs and arms. Half-smiling at her own terrors, Juliette murmured:

"Pray go on, dear father! You said--a fine hand..."

"Hah--aha! yes. A fine hand for a stroke at billiards. In addition, it cannot be denied that Charles has a magnificent head----"

"I am listening, dear father!..."

"A truly magnificent head for figures! Book-keeping by double-entry is infant's play to this admirable young man. He must teach thee the logarithms, my child, when thou art married.... Docile and intelligent as thou art, thou wouldst quickly learn to be his secretary and head-clerk. It should be a true wife's ambition to help her husband in business, and this is alone possible when his avocations are of the strictly civil kind."

It was tragic. In her dreams Juliette Bayard had aided to put on the casque, and buckle the cuirass of a stately warrior. Now she must perforce mend the gray goose-quill of a knight of the counting-house. You might have seen how her slender throat swelled against the encircling band of velvet. Tears sprang to her eyes. To keep them back she bit her lip, straightened her back, and shrugged,--one barely perceptible shrug. The Colonel said,--was his kind glance a little troubled as it turned on her?--

"The letter of Madame Tessier has made it clear to thee, that although thou wilt see thy future husband soon, the meeting will not take place upon the present occasion. Since October M. Charles Tessier"--the Colonel twisted his mustache--"has been detained by affairs at Mons-sur-Trouille in Belgium. I understand that at this country hamlet--near the town of Mons--is situated the manufactory of his partner, M.--the name for the moment escapes me. He is a wealthy gentleman of excellent Flemish family. The daughter, I remember, was called Clémence or Clémentine."

The Colonel cleared his throat. Juliette expressed a preference for the name of Clémentine. The Colonel begged her pardon. After all, it was Clémence. That did not matter. Mademoiselle liked the name of Clémence nearly as well as Clémentine. The Colonel tugged at the other side of the fiercely-waxed mustache, and changed the subject.

"The pavement rings beneath the heel; I prophesy frost to-night. Thou art cold, my child, I saw thee shiver. Shall we walk more quickly? It will be better so."

She quickened her steps at the suggestion. There had already been frost, and the air was keen and sparkling as champagne. The young blood in her veins answered to the pleasant stimulus of exercise. Her cheeks were rose-tinted porcelain, her eyes blue stars, despite her wretchedness, by the time they reached Madame Tessier's door.

The house of the Widow Tessier was in the Rue de Provence, which runs north from the Avenue de Saint Cloud, not far from above its junction with the Carrefour de Montreuil, and ends at the corner of the Boulevard de la Reine.

A quiet, retiring street, its houses separated by ample gardens, hidden by high walls of brick faced with fine gray Caen stone, generally festooned with pretty creepers and overtopped by stately trees. A noble pine shaded the green glass conservatory, large enough to be termed a winter-garden, which projected on the south side, from what was a solidly built villa plastered yellow, with a raised ground-floor, second story and attic story with Mansard windows; the short sloping roof, and these--indeed, the whole of the attic story to the floor-line, where a fine-worked cornice of stone ran round the building--being covered with grayish-blue slates.

You rang at a gate of open ironwork, white-painted, in which was a smaller gate to admit pedestrians, and while you were waiting for someone to answer the bell, you had leisure to admire the heavy _porte cochère_ upon your left, of solid oak timbers, studded with iron bolts, surmounted with a fine arch of stone, centered with a blank lozenge; and the neat balcony railing topping the wall to your right, in which was a modest little iron-studded door leading to the kitchen and servants' offices, always secured by a huge lock, and opened with much groaning of inward bolts.

You are to understand that the roof of the kitchen formed a leaden terrace upon which the bay of the drawing-room and other ground-floor windows opened; these, like the windows on the basement and upper stories, being furnished with outside shutters, the slatted wooden pattern with which Continental travelers are familiar, yellow-painted to match the plaster of the walls. The terrace could be gained by a short flight of stone steps rising upon your right as you entered. But upon a visit of ceremony you went on to the main entrance, which was reached by a handsome ascent of five broad, shallow steps of the Caen stone, continued along the north and east sides of the house, so that from any of the ground-floor windows, which were all of antique French door-pattern, you could descend into the garden at will. The hall-door commanded a view of the stables and the cottage attached to them, whose tenant combined the office of coachman with the duties of a gardener. You could not call those buildings unpicturesque, covered as they were with the now leafless branches of a great vine and a magnificent wistaria. Beyond there stretched a kitchen-garden, with beds of flowers and vegetables, under glass and in the open; and splendid espaliers, whence many a basket of luscious cherries, huge blue plums, brown Bon Chrétien pears, and melting nectarines, were gathered for the table in the season of such luscious fruits. And behind and to the north side of the villa was the pleasance, which must have formed part of a nobleman's park at one time. For winding walks bordered with ground-ivy led you in and out and among clumps of oak and chestnut, and stately limes and acacias stood upon the sunlit spaces of its velvet-lawns; while near its bounds shrubberies and thickets of Portugal laurel and lilac, bird-cherry and hawthorn, syringa and arbutus harbored thrush and blackbird, and in spring rejoiced the lover of beauty and perfume; and one great tulip tree opened its crimson-purple chalices beneath the rains and suns of early June. From the eastern boundary-wall jutted a stone pipe, ending in a mask, from the mouth of which fell a jet of clear water, forming a tiny pond, and a brook that ran away between stones covered with moss and overgrown with ferns and water-plants. But just now the pond was frozen, and a great icicle hung from the jaws of the grinning Satyr, and the blackened leaves of the water-loving plants and club-mosses were hidden under a thin covering of recently-fallen snow. What strange uses this place was to serve before the terrible year of 1870 was ended! How many letters signed "Charles" were to be drawn by the tiny hand of P. C. Breagh's Infanta from that grinning satyr-mouth.

Entering the house--for you are to see it plainly, serving as it did for a theater upon whose table the life-blood of France was to flow; and her body, beneath the steady, skillful hands of a man well fitted to perform such operations, was fated to undergo a terrible mutilation--entering the house by the double glass-doors, you found yourself in a parqueted hall, furnished with Empire consoles and large mirrors in frames of tarnished gilding. The chief staircase, covered with striped drugget in gray-and-red, you found immediately upon your right. Under this was the opening to a servants' stairway leading down to the kitchen beneath the terrace. Upon your left was a small door masking another servants' stairway leading to the attics; and beyond this two large folding-doors, covered with green baize, led into a medium-sized but lofty apartment, used as the dining-room, looking out on the garden, and hung with a crimson flock paper patterned with gilt palm-leaves, against which hung some large landscapes and antique hunting-scenes in oils. There was a handsome white marble fireplace, with a high mantel-slab supported by terminal figures, one a nymph, wanton-lipped and languid-eyed, her full voluptuous bosom partly veiled by a leopard skin, her disheveled hair crowned with ivy, like that of her companion; a faun, and young, judging by his budding horns.

A third pair of folding-doors facing the hall-entrance opened into the drawing-room; a fourth to the right of these gave entrance to the billiard-room, from which access might be gained by a low glass door into the winter-garden, a high-domed glass house full of palms and tree-ferns, boasting a little fountain, whose leaden dolphin, balanced almost perpendicularly on his tail in the center of a moss-stained basin, could spout high enough to wet the green roof when any charitable hand might set him going. A door at the farther end of this winter-garden gave access to a small room lined with books, classical works by standard French authors for the most part, smelling moldy, and apt, when a curious hand strove to remove them from their shelves, to stick to their neighbors on either side. And looking at the conservatory from outside, one perceived, running along the entire length of the rounded glass roof, a wrought-iron gangway, or double-sided balcony. From which, according to the testimony of Madame, the late M. Tessier, from whose dressing-room this aerial promenade could be gained by a glass door had been, accustomed to enjoy the prospect and breathe the air.

XXII

Madame, a discreet and sensible-looking person, with very little more mustache than is becoming to a Frenchwoman of sixty, embraced Juliette warmly on both cheeks, and graciously received the Colonel's salute upon her mittened left hand. The mittens were invariably black in tribute to the memory of the late M. Tessier. Madame's half-mourning, gray poplin gown, trimmed with black gimp upon the gores, round the bottom of the expansive skirt and upon the waist and shoulder-lappets, might have been the same she had always worn, in Juliette's memory. Her cap had lavender ribbons, her front was bay, whereas it had been chestnut, and the net of black chenille-velvet, in which she confined her back hair, plentiful in quantity and iron gray like her mustache and eyebrows, had silver beads upon it here and there.

Father and daughter were made welcome, were entertained with wine of Madeira, raspberry-vinegar--for which sweet, subacid beverage, diluted with water, young ladies were expected to express a preference--macaroons, ratafias, and little pink ice-cakes. The Colonel, having accepted a glass of the good vintage and consumed a biscuit, expressed a desire to walk round the garden; Madame, who had suggested the excursion, and Juliette, who had gone goose-flesh all over--were left to a _tête-à-tête_.

During the collation described above, Mademoiselle's blue eyes had discreetly raked the walls of the dining-room in search of portraits. Nothing rewarded her search but a highly varnished oil presentment of a simpering young woman in the vast flowery bonnet, the bunches of side-curls, and the high-waisted gown of 1830, in whom one must perforce discover Madame in her twentieth year. A case of three miniatures hung beside the copper wood-tongs on the left of the fireplace. When Madame affectionately leaned to her young guest, patted her hand, and bade her take her seat upon a green velvet fauteuil between Madame's own high-backed arm-chair and the carved-oak-framed, glass-covered embroidery picture of Dido on her funeral pyre that served as fire-screen, Juliette, in the act of transit, cast a rapid glance at this case. In vain. Only M. Tessier, in a high satin stock, gray curls and strips of side-whisker, Madame in a lace cap, fiddle-bodied brown silk gown, berthe, and cameo brooch, and a chubby infant of indeterminate sex, with sausage curls and tartan shoulder-knots, rewarded her anxious scrutiny. She could not restrain a sigh.

To be taken by the chin is not unpleasant to a young lady, under the right conditions and given certain circumstances. But when the ringed and bony fingers enclosed in Madame's black mitten, turned the small, pale oval to the light, a choking lump rose in Juliette's throat, and the black lashes veiled the eyes her aged friend would have peered in. She felt given over to harpies, abandoned and alone. Almost she could have rushed to one of the long French windows, wrenched it open, and fled to the shelter of her father. I wonder whether the Colonel was as ill at ease as his daughter, as he paced the winding paths under the leafless trees, between the beds of snow-powdered ground ivy, already sprinkled with patches of aconite in partially thawed places, shining yellow as little suns against dark leaves and wet brown earth....

She could see him from the nearer of the three long windows opening on the steps that led to the garden. He walked among the trees bare-headed, holding his high silk hat and gold-topped Indian cane behind him, his handsome double chin bent upon his breast, his fine face full of care. Even his boldly-curled mustaches seemed to droop under the weight of sorrows that were no longer hidden from his child.

At the bottom of his heart he distrusted her, she was almost certain. And from the bottom of her own heart she forgave the cruel wrong. He had come to believe, since the great betrayal, that every woman save the Mother of all mothers, and his own, had it in her to play the traitress, given the opportunity. Thus the opportunity was not to be given to Juliette.

Madame was speaking. She no longer held the little chin, though the chill of her hard finger-tips still seemed to cling to it. She smiled benevolently, making curves of parenthesis in her well-powdered cheeks, and sometimes punctuating her sentences by a rather disconcerting click of teeth that were too startlingly white and never seemed to fit properly.

"One understands, my cherished" (_click_), "that this visit is a little _triste_ for thee.... One who should have been here to welcome thee does not appear. To repress the feelings is _convenable_" (_click_) "in a young girl of good education, but nevertheless one cannot hide the oppression of the heart. Rest assured, my little one, that my Charles--who is to be thy Charles so soon"--Madame's playfulness, emphasized by the click described, was more than a little grisly--"suffers as thou dost. He is chagrined to the very soul, believe me! that he cannot be with thee here to-day. Detained in Belgium, at Mons-sur-Trouille (where he has a manufactory for the production of woolen fabrics)--by important business in connection with an immense order given by a Paris firm of" (_click_) "drapers, thou canst picture him counting the hours that must elapse before the happy moment of his return. He is ardent, my Charles--noble, sincere, religious, and candid. I, his mother, say to thee: Thou art happy" (_click_) "to have won the love of so estimable a young man!"

And with this maternal peroration two gray poplin sleeves went out and enfolded Mademoiselle de Bayard, and two rapid touches of Madame Tessier's mustache visited first her left cheek and then her right one. Fluttering like a caught robin, Juliette faltered:

"You are so good, dear Madame, but when did I win it?" She added, released from the imprisoning sleeves, and with a bright red rose of agitation blooming in the center of each pale cheek: "Alas! I refer to the love of M. Charles Tessier.... If I might know where he has seen me? ... I cannot recollect his ever having been presented to me. In my mind, Madame, your son has no form, no features.... It is terrible, but there you have the fact!"

The truth was out at last. Now that the room had left off whirling, Madame's benevolent smile shone forth unchanged. She clicked, and returned with archness that was labored.

"My Juliette, I comprehend. Thou wert just a little bewildered.... Thy father has not made it quite clear.... Ah, naughty M. le Colonel, I shall scold him by-and-by!"

"Pray, no!" Juliette's little hands went out entreatingly. "Only explain, dear, dearest Madame, for I am bewildered, as you say truly. My father's command that I should leave school, provide myself with a _trousseau_, and come here to be married--instantly--to M. Charles Tessier!--was so brusque--so sudden--that I might be pardoned for saying I have felt less like a young girl than a poor lamb, hurriedly taken from the fold and driven to the butcher's yard."

"Poor little lamb!" drolled Madame, still portentously playful, and displaying a gleaming double row of teeth between the parenthesis. Juliette felt more than ever like the lamb of her analogy, as she strove to read the meaning of the smile. Madame continued: "Too much boldness--an excessive display of _sangfroid_--my Charles has ever disliked in women. When I tell him how _gentille_ thou art, how sensitive, and how _spirituelle_, he will say to me, 'My mother, thou hast chosen well! and when he sees thee...'"

Something in the well-powdered elderly face of the speaker sent an electrical shock of comprehension through Juliette's being, evoking the cry:

"Sees me.... But then ... he has never seen me?"

It was necessary to hold on with one's own eyes to Madame's, they so spun and whirled in their rather small, round orbits. Then they steadied, as though she had made her mind up. She said, and though the treacly suavity had gone out of her voice, Juliette liked it better:

"No, my child--Charles has never seen thee. This is a betrothal--this will be a marriage exclusively arranged by the parents of the young people concerned. Thy father, the son of my beloved friend Antoinette de Bayard, does not desire that the husband of his Juliette should be a member of the military profession,--I am averse to the idea of my son's bestowing his name upon the Protestant daughter of a Flemish woolen-manufacturer--for that that was originally my son's intention, I will not seek to deny. Wounded in my tenderest and most susceptible spot by the announcement of Charles's infatuation, I might have estranged him for ever--even hurried on the catastrophe I feared, had not the advice of my director, Dom Clovis, of the Carmelite Fathers--fortified and sustained me in the trying hour! I wrote to my son. I poured out my maternal heart in pleadings the most earnest--the most tender. I recalled to him the dispositions of his late father's will. Under this document," Madame went on, drying a tear with a deep-hemmed cambric handkerchief, "I possess the power at pleasure to divert from Charles and his heirs a considerable portion of his sainted father's funded property. And that power," said Madame, drying another tear, "I solemnly assured my child, would--in the event of his union with Mademoiselle Clémence Basselôt--unhesitatingly be used."

Words might have come from the pale parted lips before her. Madame tapped them to silence with a mittened finger and pursued her way.

"Charles is profoundly reasonable--a quality he inherits from both parents. He wrote to me a letter inexpressibly touching in its expressions of filial trust and confidence, over which, I assure thee, I have shed the most consoling tears."

Something had previously crackled in the pocket of Madame's black silk apron, when she had smoothed it over her knees in seating herself. Now she drew it out, and Juliette saw a blue envelope directed in a handwriting of the business-like, copper-plate description. The sheet of white paper the envelope contained had an engraved picture-heading of a square building possessing many windows--no doubt the Belgian cloth manufactory possessed in partnership by MM. Basselôt and Tessier. From the page, closely covered all down one side with regular lines of mercantile handwriting, Madame read:

"Sentiments of the most profound agitated me as I read thy letter. These sentences penned by a mother's hand, have touched me to the quick. Thy arguments, so delicate, yet so powerful, have convinced me of the impossibility of the union toward which--I will own!--my wishes urged me. I abandon the idea henceforth! Since Mademoiselle Clémence is not to be mine, choose then for me, best and noblest of women. Let her who taught my infant lips to murmur the beloved name of mother select for me some virtuous young girl upon whom I may confer the equally sacred title of Wife.

"THY CHARLES."

And there, with a flourish like a double lasso, M. Tessier's letter ended, leaving Juliette swaying between the impulse to shriek with laughter and the urgent desire to melt away in tears.