LES PAPILLONS.
“La beauté,” reprit Riquet à la Houppe, “est unsi grand avantage qu’il doit tenir lieu de tout le reste; et, quand on le possède, je ne vois pas qu’il y ait rien qui puisse vous affliger beaucoup.”
Charles Perrault.
GENEVIÈVE meanwhile had made her way home again—through the pretty lanes, across the daisy-besprinkled fields she passed, heeding but little the summer loveliness surrounding her on all sides, though not insensible to the direct pleasantness of the sunshine, of the soft sweet air and universal warmth and brightness.
Daisies were only daisies to her, the birds’ songs no more than a pretty twitter in a language of which it had never occurred to her that there could be any interpretation; to her “the witchery of the soft blue sky” was almost as little known as to the immortal potter; yet careless and ignorant as she was of Nature’s subtler influences, of the beauty buried everywhere, of the tender secrets of “water, earth, and air,” revealed not to the senses “without a soul behind,” Geneviève was keenly alive to everything affecting, agreeably or the reverse, her material existence. She was miserable on a rainy day, she crept together like a sensitive plant at the approach of cold; she would have drooped and pined far more speedily than her cousin Cicely, had fate suddenly cast her life in some ugly, grimy manufacturing town, she loved brightness and warmth and colour almost as much as admiration.
So this morning her spirits, which had already experienced several chamelion-like variations since she had wakened, rose again when she found herself alone in the sunny, green meadows, out of sight of Cicely’s pale, grave face, which for the last day or two she had been unable to see without an uncomfortable, indefinite sensation of self reproach.
“How strange Cicely is!” she reflected; “they say English girls marry for love—love indeed, they know not what it means. She looks miserable at the thought of leaving her home and her parents—her father surtout, who assuredly cannot live long; her mother, who has all she can wish for, a fine house, carriages, horses, plenty of money, and yet she imagines herself that she cares for Mr. Fawcett! It is not in her cold nature to care. Sensibilité, she can have none; how, if she had any, could she go among those misérables at Notcotts? To see a child who is dying—what a taste! What good can she do? She is not a doctor. However, chacun a son goút, as Mathurine says.”
The recollection of Mathurine brought the cloud back to her face. “I had meant to send her a so beautiful dress of black silk the day I was married,” she thought regretfully.
When she reached the Abbey, she found her aunt in the middle of a housewifely consultation with Mrs. Moore in the store-room.
“Is that you—back again already,—my dear Geneviève?” exclaimed Mrs. Methvyn. “I am so sorry that you have hurried home. I find that your uncle has not got his notes arranged yet for the catalogue of French engravings, so it will have to wait till to-morrow. I am so sorry.”
“It matters not the least in the world, dear aunt,” said Geneviève sweetly. I walked quite far enough, and Cicely, I think, preferred to pay her little visit of charity alone. Is there then nothing else that I can do for you? If not, I will study the piano-practice, I mean, in the library.”
“Yes, dear, do so. Mrs. Moore and I have quite a morning’s work before us, and Cicely will be back by the time her father wants her; so go and practice, by all means.”
Geneviève went slowly to the library. She opened the piano and looked out a piece of music she had half learnt. It was a brilliant waltz, calling for considerable execution, and Geneviève had been working at it very zealously, for Mr. Fawcett had said that he admired it, and had mentioned having heard it beautifully played by some lady of his acquaintance. But to-day it sounded flat and commonplace, her fingers seemed to have lost their cunning; all the verve and spirit had deserted her! Geneviève left off playing, and leant her head wearily on the piano. What was the use of it now? Why should she care any more to please Mr. Fawcett? He had Cicely to play to him—her soft, unobtrusive “songs without words,” and nocturnes, and so on; it was Cicely’s business to play to him, not hers. Mr. Fawcett did not care about her; he had only been amusing himself while all the time he had belonged to Cicely. He had called her butterfly once, had he not? “Yes,” thought Geneviève, “that is just it. He thinks me a pretty silly little butterfly. He liked to play with me, that was all!”
But still she was not angry—not indignant; she was only bitterly disappointed.
She sat thus for a minute or two. She did not hear the glass door, already unlatched, open softly; her eyes were hidden; she did not see a shadow that fell across the white pages of her waltz—Les Papillons, it happened to be called; she was unconscious that any one had entered the room, till a voice close behind her made her start.
“Geneviève,” it said, “are you asleep?”
Then she looked up, knowing full well before she did so whose it was, knowing, too, by the quick beating of her heart, the sudden thrill through all her being, how welcome, how dangerously welcome was its owner—Cicely’s lover! Little thought she of Cicely at that moment.
She lifted her lovely face; she looked up at Mr. Fawcett with smiles dimpling about her mouth, though her eyes were still wet with tears.
“Mr. Fawcett!” she exclaimed softly. “No, I was not asleep, but I did not hear you come in.”
“What are you doing, or pretending to be doing, you idle little person?” he said, coming nearer and looking over her at the sheets of music on the desk; “practising ‘Les Papillons!’ That is very good of you. I have been longing to hear it again.”
“I do not know it well yet,” said Geneviève, with the right hand idly playing the notes of the waltz. Now that she had got over the first surprise of his presence, she began to feel constrained and unhappy, to realise the vast distance between to-day and yesterday.
“Never mind,” he said. “I won’t ask to hear it till you wish to play it. You will know it soon, your fingers will dance away at it beautifully. But I won’t interrupt you any more,” he added, glancing round the room. “Where is Cicely, by the bye, do you know? Up with her father, I suppose; there is never any getting hold of her.”
“No,” said Geneviève, feeling the colour deepen in her cheeks as she spoke, “no, Cicely is not with my uncle. She is out.”
“Out,” exclaimed Mr. Fawcett impatiently. “Where has she gone to? I thought she never went out in the morning. Or do you only mean,” he went on, his voice softening again, that she is in the garden?”
“No,” said Geneviève again, with a curious sort of timid reluctance in her manner, “no; I think not that she will be long of returning, above all, if she expected you; oh! no, surely, she will not be long, but she has gone to Notcotts to see some poor person that is ill, I think.”
“Gone to Notcotts!” repeated Mr. Fawcett. Then he gave vent to some angry exclamation, which Geneviève did not understand, and walked away to the window, muttering to himself. Some of the words reached the girl’s ear as she sat silently, growing rather frightened, at the piano.
“Gone to Notcotts!” he repeated again. “Yes, there or anywhere else rather than wait at home to see me. Father, mother, anything, anybody, before me. . . By George, what a fool I am!”
He was evidently very much put out, indeed. He had walked over to the Abbey early this morning on purpose to see Cicely, to “make friends” again by begging her to forgive him for his unkind words of the day before. He had been very unhappy in remembering them; never before had he parted from her in anger; never once before in all the years during which they had been childish friends, then boy and girl together, now promised husband and wife. And he could not bear the thought of having done so now. He was very ready to own himself to blame, though in his innermost heart he knew that the very subject of their disagreement, the point on which they differed, was only insisted on by him through his loyalty to Cicely, through his half-acknowledged consciousness that for the first time this loyalty was likely to be tested. Temptation, for the first time in his easy prosperous life, had drawn near him—might, he felt, draw nearer yet. He wished, he longed to resist it, to be true to himself, to Cicely, to what he knew was his best chance in life, what had been, what would be yet more and more, in very truth, “the making of him.” And full of these feelings he had hurried over to Greystone to find—what? Cicely, whom he had been picturing to himself as to the full as unhappy as he, absent—away calmly and comfortably to play the Lady Bountiful in a dirty village with which she had nothing whatever to do—and—Temptation, seated at Cicely’s piano, learning the music he loved, glancing up in his face with sweetest smiles and eyes yet glistening with tears, called forth, he strongly suspected, by his folly.
A pleasant and promising state of things. Being a man, he did what in such circumstances most men would do. He blamed everybody but himself; he swore at everything under his breath, he worked himself up into a passion; but he did not leave the library again by the glass door, still standing ajar—the unlucky glass door, but for which he would have gone round to the front entrance, and there made decorous inquiry for Cicely, or failing her, for her mother; he did not say good-bye to pretty Temptation, sitting there, gazing at him with childish alarm and concern in her great lovely eyes.
She was really frightened. Passions and naughty tempers were tabooed in the peaceful dwelling of Monsieur le Pasteur Casalis, as were worldly tastes and frivolities of all kinds. Only the latter class of unholy visitors, being more easy of concealment, had found their way into one youthful heart in that orthodox household, and made themselves very much at home there. But Geneviève had very rarely seen any one in a passion—her father, good man, never. And the sight of Trevor’s anger altogether overcame her. She sat still for another minute or two, then jumped up, ran across the room to where the young man was standing, his fair face dark with irritation and annoyance, laid her hand on his arm and whispered tremblingly, “Oh! do not be so angry. Oh! please not. She will come soon. I am so sorry; oh! so very sorry for you.”
He turned round quickly. For an instant she feared that his anger was turned upon her, and she trembled more visibly. Trevor’s face softened as he looked at her.
“Don’t look so frightened, child,” he said, not unkindly, but with some impatience. “I am only annoyed. There is nothing to be very, very sorry about.”
“Yes there is,” sobbed Geneviève. “I am sorry for you because I know all now. I know why you are chagrined—vexed, I mean—that Cicely is out. I understand all now.”
“Do you?” said Mr. Fawcett. “Who told you, Geneviève?”
“My aunt. She told me yesterday.”
“And were you surprised?” inquired Trevor, with a curious mingling of expressions in his face.
Geneviève did not reply at once. When she did so, there was a change in her tone. Mr. Fawcett’s coldness had galled her.
“What matters it?” she said with some indignation, “what matters it if I was surprised? I, what am I? A butterfly—yes, a butterfly you call me. Butterflies have no soul, no heart; what matters what a butterfly feels?”
Mr. Fawcett thought she was going out of her mind. But her eccentric speech had, at least, the effect of calming down his own irritation. He began to laugh.
“When did I call you a butterfly?” he said. “I don’t remember it.”
Geneviève grew more angry.
“You did say so,” she exclaimed. “One day, I know not when; I forget. It matters not. You think not that I have any heart, any feeling. I suffer when I see you suffer. I tell you I am sorry, very sorry, and you laugh! Cicely is not foolish, as I am. She is calm and quiet. She does not weep when her friends are in trouble. She goes quietly to see some sick villager when she knows you are coming. I am a silly butter fly. Soit donc! I leave you to your Cicely.”
She was really so angry, so mortified and miserable that she hardly knew what she was saying. She was rushing out of the room when Trevor called her back.
“Geneviève,” he exclaimed, “dear Geneviève, I entreat you not to go. Listen to me. You have quite misunderstood me.”
She stopped short at this appeal. She stood still, she looked up in his face with tearful reproach in her beautiful eyes, but she said nothing. Trevor drew near her very near.
“Forgive me, Geneviève,” he said, “I did not mean to hurt you. Are you sorry for me, dear, are you really? Tell me why you are sorry for me?”
He had laid one hand upon her shoulder as he spoke; his voice was very gentle and persuasive.
“I was only sorry to see you unhappy. I meant not to blame Cicely,” replied Geneviève confusedly. “Cicely is very good.”
“Too good, by a long way,” muttered Trevor.
“I only thought that Cicely—that I—” she stopped short.
“That you—? Tell me, do. It can do no harm,” urged Trevor.
“That—that Cicely cared not so much as—I cannot say,” exclaimed Geneviève.
“Shall I say? You mean that Cicely does not care for poor me as much as I do for her—is that it?
“I know not. No, not that,” replied the girl with crimson cheeks and downcast eyes.
“What is it then? Did you mean that she does not care for me as much as a silly little girl I know, will care, some day, for some lucky man who will believe she has a heart? Was that what you meant?”
Geneviève whispered a scarcely audible “Yes.”
“You kind, good little girl,” said Trevor impulsively. But Geneviève shrunk back.
“You know not,” she said, “that day you speak of, that ‘some day’ will never come to me.”
Then she threw away the hand that still rested on her shoulder; she darted one reproachful glance at Mr. Fawcett—“Do you understand me now?” it seemed to say; “do you see what you have done?” and rushed out of the room.
Not a moment too soon. As her figure disappeared through the library door, a slight sound at the window made Trevor look up. There at the glass door stood Cicely, her empty basket on her arm, a smile of welcome on her face as she caught sight of Mr. Fawcett. “Trevor,” she exclaimed, “I am so glad you have come. I wish I had not stayed out so long.” And her betrothed somehow hardly felt equal to reproaching her for her absence, angry though it had made him but ten short minutes before.
At luncheon that day, the cousins again seemed to have changed characters. Cicely had regained her cheerfulness, Geneviève looked anxious and depressed. She had dark lines under her eyes, and a bright crimson spot on each cheek, and in answer to Mrs. Methvyn’s inquiries she owned to a bad headache.
“You did not walk too far, I hope?” said her aunt. “Was the sun very powerful, Cicely? I am afraid Geneviève is the worse for her walk in some way. You looked so well at breakfast,” she observed, turning to her niece.
“I am not ill, dear aunt. I often have a little headache,” said Geneviève.
Cicely looked at her anxiously.
“I don’t think it could be the walk,” she said. “Geneviève did not come very far and the sun was not unusually hot. Nothing to what it is at Hivèritz, was it, Geneviève?” she remarked cheerfully to her cousin. “I went to the little door with Trevor and even then—just at noon—it was not very hot. There was a pleasant breeze.”
“Why did not Trevor stay to luncheon, by the bye?” said Mrs. Methvyn.
“I really don’t know. I forget if I asked him,” replied Cicely. “Oh! yes, I remember,” she went on, `“he had to go home because his father wanted him. They are going away again—did you know, mother?”
“How should I know?” said her mother. “I have not seen Trevor or any of them for two days, and then there was certainly no thought of it. When are they going, and where to, and which of them?”
“All of them,” answered Cicely. “Sir Thomas and Lady Frederica are going to the seaside somewhere. They are thinking of the Isle of Wight. And Trevor is going to town again for two or three weeks, and then he is going to join them.”
“I can’t think why they are never contented to stay at home,” said Mrs. Methvyn.
“I am rather glad they are going,” observed Cicely quietly.
Then the attention reverted to Geneviève again. She now looked as pale as she had a few minutes before appeared flushed.
“I hope you are not going to be really ill, my dear child,” said Mrs. Methvyn anxiously. “You don’t feel as if you were, do you?”
“Oh! no, dear aunt. I am sure it is nothing that signifies,” replied Geneviève. “I often have a little headache for a few hours; but a little rest, and I am all right again.”
“If it were you Cicely,” observed her mother, “I should be more alarmed, for I never feel sure where you have been. There is no fever at Notcotts, I hope? You were there to-day?”
“Yes,” replied Cicely, “but I ran no risk. The child I told you about died of consumption. I am sure there is no infectious illness about just now. Mother dear,” she added appealingly, “you know you can trust me. I would not do anything foolish.”
“I am not sure, my dear. Since that Mr. Hayle has been here you seem to me to be always running about among sick people. And one never knows what risk one may run.”
“Mr. Hayle is very careful I assure you, mother,” replied Cicely. “Indeed,” she went on laughingly, “I think he would be very sorry to put me in the way of risk, for he has designs upon me. He thinks that under proper influence and direction I might be trained into a very useful “sister.”
“Cicely!” exclaimed Mrs. Methvyn aghast, “how can you joke about such things? If I thought Mr. Hayle that sort of a high-church clergyman, I would be very sorry to admit him to our acquaintance. One might just as well invite a Jesuit to one’s house.”
Cicely laughed again, but Mrs. Methvyn was really uneasy. There were points on which she did not thoroughly understand her daughter. She was in many ways unlike other girls, and Mrs. Methvyn deprecated eccentricity. She never felt sure of Cicely’s not taking up some crotchet, and, sweet and gentle though the girl was, a crotchet once “taken up” by her, would be, her mother felt instinctively, by no means easy to dislodge. Cicely’s laugh to some extent reassured her.
“You are joking, I know, my dear,” she said philosophically, “but there are some subjects I do not like joking upon. I have known too many sad realities. Do you not remember Evelyn Parry? Why she actually ran away from home to become a nun. It was dreadful!”
“But nuns and sisters are quite different institutions, mother dear, and Evelyn Parry was not quite ‘right’ in her head; she was always doing silly things. You don’t think I am like her, do you? You certainly need not fear my ever running away from you for anything or anybody; our only trouble is that you want me to run away and I won’t.”
Geneviève had left the room by this time, and Cicely was in her favourite posture, kneeling on the ground beside her mother, her fair head resting on Mrs. Methvyn’s knees.
“Cicely, my darling,” said the mother reproachfully.
In an instant the sweet face turned to her with a smile. “I am naughty, mother; I am in a teasing humour. I am so much happier since I have seen Trevor again.”
“Then it is all right?”
“Yes, quite. Trevor was very nice; but I have got my way, we are not going to be married for six months. He is quite pleased, however; he understands me about it now. He was quite different this morning, so gentle, and ready to agree to what I wished. I am glad they are going away for awhile, however, the change will keep Trevor from grumbling. Now I think I will go to poor Geneviève, and make her lie down for an hour or two. But I am sure there is not much the matter with her, mother, as she says herself.”
“I trust not,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “Cicely,” she said with sudden anxiety, “I hope I have not done her any harm by what I said to her about Mr. Guildford; I mean I hope I have not put it into her head so as to unsettle her and cause these variable spirits.”
“‘By what you said to her about Mr. Guildford!’ What did you say? I don’t understand,” said Cicely, her brow contracting a little.
“Oh! yes, you do. It was very little; only what I said to you, you remember, about Mr. Guildford’s admiring her. Of course, I did not say it so broadly; I only hinted it as it were, more for the sake of amusing and gratifying her when she was in such low spirits yesterday. For, do you know, Cicely, it did strike me afterwards that all that crying and so on when I told her about you might be partly a girlish sort of envy of you—a feeling she was, I dare say, only half conscious of herself.”
“Could she be so silly?” said Cicely. “If so, she certainly may be silly enough to have attached too serious a meaning to what you said. I wish you hadn’t said it, mother dear; but I don’t think Geneviève could be so silly.”
“It is natural she should look forward to being married,” said Mrs. Methvyn, rather inclined again to defend Geneviève.
“Is it? I suppose it is,” replied Cicely thoughtfully. “It is a pity when a girl has no future except marriage to look forward to. There is something lowering and undignified in the position. But still, mother, you have no actual reason for trying to make Geneviève fancy that Mr. Guildford is to be the hero of her third volume.”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Methvyn dubiously.
Cicely said no more. She found Geneviève in her own room, but by no means in a very biddable humour. She obstinately refused to “lie down,” declaring that there was nothing the matter with her. Cicely grew tired of the discussion.
“You don’t look well, Geneviève,” she said, “but I dare say it is only the hot weather. Mother is uneasy about you, otherwise I would not tease you.”
“You are not teasing, you are very kind,” Geneviève condescended to say. “It is only that I become first red, then white, that my aunt remarks me. But that is my nature. Remember, I come from the south. I am not quiet and never vexed like you, Cicely.”
Cicely smiled. “Am I never vexed?” she said.
“Not as I am,” said Geneviève. “You are wise and calm. I, when I am unhappy, I could cry a whole week without ceasing.”
“And are you unhappy now?” asked Cicely.
Geneviève did not reply. She turned from her cousin and began putting away her hat and gloves, which were lying as she had thrown them down.
“Tell me, Geneviève,” pursued Cicely boldly—“I am not asking out of curiosity has your unhappiness anything to do with Mr. Guildford?”
Geneviève flashed round upon her.
“With Mr. Guildford!” she exclaimed. “Certainly not. What know I of him? Not as much as you do. I know him but as my uncle’s doctor—voilà tout.”
Her hastiness rather confirmed Cicely’s suspicion.
“I don’t think we do know him only as a doctor,” she said. “He comes here much more like a friend. I don’t think you need be indignant at my question, Geneviève. I see you are unhappy; you have not been like your self for some time, and it is not—it would not be unnatural if Mr. Guildford or any gentleman you meet were to—you know how I mean; you know you are very pretty.”
Geneviève flushed with pleasure.
“Do you really think so, Cicely?” she said shyly. “It gives me pleasure that you do. You are very kind. But it is not that. I think not that Mr. Guildford has any thought of whether I am pretty or ugly. And if he had—oh! no,” with a grave shake of the head, “I should not wish to marry him.”
But that she had taken the possibility into consideration was evident. And somehow Cicely did not feel sorry that her mother’s very mild attempt at match-making promised to fall to the ground.
“No,” said Geneviève to herself, when her cousin had left her, “no. I don’t want to marry Mr. Guildford. “Si on n’a pas ce qu’on aime, il faut aimer ce qu’on a, Mathurine used to say when I was a little girl. But I am not a little girl now.”
She sighed, and then glanced at herself in the looking-glass. What a strange girl Cicely was! Stéphanie Rousille would never have so frankly acknowledged another’s beauty! And again Geneviève felt the slight uncomfortable twinge of self-reproach. “But he is going away to-morrow,” she remembered. “When he returns, it will be the time for the marriage without doubt. He will think no more of me. I wish I had never come here.”