III
But all these pinings and idle regrets were silenced, and gave place to rapturous content the first afternoon on which he walked up the long avenue of his uncle’s country house at Marly. The week of trial was at an end, and he was now to claim his reward from dear lips. Everything under the sun seemed to him perfect, and even banks had their own charm, discernible to the happy eye. There was a beauty in gold he had hitherto failed to perceive, and crusty old gentlemen were the appropriate guardians of lovely nymphs. In such a mood, there is melody in all things, and warmth lies even in frosted starlight. Nothing but the sweetness of life is felt: its turbidness and accidents, its disappointments, pains, and stumbles, lie peacefully forgotten in the well of memory; and we wish somebody could have told us in some past trouble that the future contained for us a moment so good as this.
‘Mademoiselle is in the garden,’ a servant informed him, and led the way through halls and salons, down steps running from the long window into a shaded green paradise. And then he heard a fresh voice that he seemed not to have heard for so long, and on hearing it only was his heart made aware how much he had missed it during the past age of privation.
‘Ah, my cousin Armand!’
There was a young man dawdling at her feet in an attitude that sent the red blood to Armand’s forehead. This was Bernard Francillon, his other and less sympathetic cousin. The young man jumped up, and measured him in a stare of insolent interrogation, and Marguerite, with a look of divine self-consciousness and a lovely blush, said, very softly: ‘So, Armand, you have let yourself be tamed, and you have actually forsaken your delightful den, I hear. How could you, my cousin? The cooking-stove, the fishing-rod, the easel, blouse, and velvet jacket,—all abandoned for the less interesting resources of our everyday existence!’
Her eyes and voice were full of arch protest, and her smile went to the troubled lad’s head, more captivating than wine. ‘It was for your sake, Marguerite,’ he answered timidly, in tones dropped to an unquiet murmur.
‘Permit me, cousin, to retire for the moment,’ said Bernard, turning his back deliberately upon his disconcerted relative.
What was it in their exchanged looks, in their clasped hands, in Bernard’s unconscious air of fond proprietorship, in Marguerite’s half droop towards him of shy surrender, that carried to Armand the conviction of fatal error? He watched his rival departing, and turned a blank face upon the radiant girl, whose delicious smile had all the eloquence and trouble of maiden’s relinquished freedom. She met his white empty gaze with a glance more full and frank than the one she had just lifted so tenderly to Bernard Francillon. ‘I don’t understand you, Armand. Why for my sake?’
‘It was your father’s error. He thought you loved me, and I, heaven help me! till now I thought so too,’ he breathed in a despairing undertone, not able to remove his eyes from her surprised and delicately concerned face.
‘Poor Armand! I am very sorry,’ was all she said, but the way in which she held her hand out to him was a mute admission of his miserable error. He lifted the little hand to his lips, and turned from her in silence.
The sun that had shone so brightly a moment ago was blotted from the earth, and the music of the birds was harsh discordance, as he wandered among the evening shadows of the woods. All things jarred upon his nerves, until night dropped a veil upon the horrible nakedness of his sorrow. He felt he wore it upon his face for all eyes to see, and he thanked the darkness, as it sped over the starry heavens. Beyond the beautiful valley, where the river flowed, the spires and domes and bridges of Paris showed through the reddish glimmer of sunset as through a dusty light. Soon there would be noise and laughter upon the crowded boulevards, and a flow of carriages making for the theatres through the flaunting gas-flames; and happy lovers in defiant file would be driving towards the Bois. How often had he and Maurice watched them on foot, as they smoked their evening cigarette, and sighed or laughed as might be their mood. Would he ever have the heart to laugh at lovers again, or laugh at anything, he wondered drearily! And there was no one here to remind him that sorrow, like joy, is evanescent, and that all wounds are healed. Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe,—even pain and broken hearts.
Here silence was almost palpable to the touch, like the darkness of Nature dropping into sleep. He turned his back upon Paris, and faced the dim country.
MR. MALCOLM FITZROY
A Don José Maria de Pereda
de la Academía Real