VIII
Will it not be admitted that a letter such as this was calculated to cause a flutter of agitation in the meekest feminine bosom? To be recalled from School before the completion of the tiresome process technically known as "finishing," that was matter for rejoicing. The little bedroom-boudoir in the Colonel's quarters at the Cavalry Barracks, "elegantly furnished, suitable for a young lady of refinement," presented an alluring picture, the tiny kitchen, "full of pots and bright pans," charmed....
For Mademoiselle de Bayard, going back to her Colonel after two years' absence, laden as the working-bee with the honey of accomplishments and the well-kneaded wax of useful knowledge, promised herself that it should not be long before her idol should be convinced by practical demonstration that his Juliette had not forgotten how to cook. Irish stew, saddle-of-mutton with onion-sauce, pancakes, Scotch collops, English plum-pudding and mince-pies had been added to her lengthy list of recipes, by grace of the Convent cook, Sister Boniface, who had permitted the ardent amateur to experiment in a second kitchen, used in hot weather, abutting on the garden, and not regarded as a portion of the nuns' enclosure.
To return, and resume the old dear life of companionship, how sweetly welcome had been the summons. But nothing could disguise the taste of the powder that came after the jam.
You are to conceive the struggle in Juliette's faithful heart between obedience and anger. Marry, my faith! yes! Every sensible young girl naturally expected to be married; but a husband approved of by oneself, if selected by one's father—that was what one had had reason to expect.
And this Charles, eulogized as wise, sensible, far-seeing, and business-like. Were these qualities, though naturally desirable in the estimation of a father-in-law, attributes that weighed down the scale in the opinion of a bride? Had one ever beheld him? She shut her eyes and summoned up all the masculine faces in her gallery of mental portraits, dismissing one after the other with no's, and no's, and no's! ... Was it not horrible to have to admit even to oneself that one had not the faintest recollection of ever having seen or spoken to him? Madame Tessier she remembered well as a little, stout, very gentille and amiable, elderly lady, whom she had visited with M. le Colonel, who had embraced one cordially, and insisted on one's partaking—immediately and at great length—of a collation of sandwiches, fruit, cakes, and syrups; excellent—and to a hungry school-girl, welcome at any hour of the day. What more? ... Ah, yes! Madame had much deplored Charles's absence, possibly at Lyons or in Belgium. Further, Madame had remarked to M. le Colonel:
"My friend, your Juliette is the image of her beloved grandmother!"
"Will nobody ever say that I am like my mother?" Juliette had gaily cried. And with a strange stiff smile, the Colonel had answered for Madame Tessier,—who at that juncture had opportunely upset a dish of little sugar-cakes.
"There have been moments, my child, when I have"—he coughed rather awkwardly for M. le Colonel—"anticipated that a resemblance might exist."
Could he have been on the verge of saying "feared," and substituted the other word at the last moment? Such an idea was ridiculous, yet it had occurred to Juliette.
To questions on the subject of the faintly remembered mother the grandmother had been impervious. The Colonel had always answered—yet with palpable reticence....
"You have no mother, my little Juliette; she was taken from us, my child, while I was absent with the Army in the Crimea," or "She left us, while yet I was detained in Eastern Russia, serving as aide upon the staff of M. le Maréchal Grandguerrier.... It is true, she was both good and beautiful when I married her! Now run and play!" Or, in later years: "Now come and read to me!" or "Walk with me," or "Ride with me," or "Now tell me how and where thou didst learn to turn out such savory dishes with those tiny pattes de mouche of thine? Nowhere is there a chef whose choicest efforts can com-pare with my Juliette's. And I have dined with the Emperor—and with Milord Hertford at Bagatelle—and with Consul-General Baron Rothschild—and—parole d'honneur!—I have told them so!"
And all the time M. le Colonel had been keeping back something.... Was it not strange, thought Juliette, that, while upon the anniversary of the Jour des Mort Mass had invariably been offered for all deceased relatives of the De Bayard family, the actual date of the death of one so young and beautiful had never been marked with special solemnity.
Could it be that the lost mother was not dead, but living! Oh, but impossible! ... And yet—once awakened, the doubt would never sleep again....
Did ever a girl receive such a letter? It was fuller of darts than even the fabled porcupine. It awakened stinging doubts of the kindness of the gentlest and tenderest of fathers. "Tear the picture!—forget the dream!" he had said. Ah, my Heaven! what young girl cherishes not such images—such visions! ... Juliette wondered sorrowfully. Sitting on her school locker, lost in thought, her elbows on her knees, her little pointed chin cupped in the slender hands, you saw her as a haggard, weary little creature. For while joy made of Juliette a living rainbow, grief transformed her to the wan and rigid nymph that droops above a classic urn upon a mourning cameo; and anxiety or suspense or remorse of soul set a changeling in her place, wizened her, pinched her, struck her prematurely old.
She might—to employ hyperbole—have been sitting on her locker until the present hour, had not her sad eyes lighted upon a colored photograph of M. le Colonel in full military harness and equipment, contained in a little ivory frame fastened by a safety-pin to one of the starched white dimity curtains that imparted an air of select privacy to the little white-covered dormitory bed.
You are to behold Juliette's father—per medium of this pen-portrait—and would that you might have heard his cordial voice, and pressed his living hand.... Conceive him as a little man; and somewhat stout and paunchy; you would never have dared to term him so in the presence of Juliette. And yet so manly, soldierlike and ingratiating was the boldly-featured face, with its brave eyes, curled moustache and imperial; the fur talpack with the green and scarlet plume and the red Hussar bag, was worn with such an air; the dolman of fine green cloth, laced and corded with heavy galons of silver and faced with the brilliant red of his silver-striped pantaloons, fitted his compact round person with such creaseless tightness; his silver-striped ceinture, belts and buckles were so point-device; his spurred Hessian boots graced such neat small feet; his right hand rested on his hip, his left upon the hilt of his long saber, with so pleasant a grace, that you could not but warm to this picture of a cavalry commander.
His daughter melted even as she gazed. The generous soul, once wrought to the pitch of heroism, piles sacrifice on sacrifice. She had meant to temporize, but she would not do so now. She began to comprehend, as stray sentences of the father's letter floated back, that his mood had been sorrowful when he wrote it; and that those wounds of the soul he spoke of had been bleeding, though hidden from his daughter, many a year.... He was never sentimental; that sentence about laying his bones in a trench hastily dug by peasants in a foreign province had been struck from the steel of his nature by some flint hurled from the sling of Fate. The words that followed, picturing War,—sudden, unexpected, sweeping as a cataclysm over the country,—had the solemnity of deep organ-notes. And the rushing tenderness in the words, "Living or dead, to know thee safe and cherished!" thrilled, and the dignity of the entreaty touched and conquered: "Wilt thou obey thy father, who loves thee as his soul? ..."
You saw light and warmth and youth and loveliness visibly flowing back into her as she looked at the picture. The witches' changeling fled, a christened maiden remained in her place. Words came to the lips that had been dumb, dews of tenderness bathed the eyes that had been dry as those of a sandstone statue in the Theban desert....
"Dearest—beloved—best! ... Oh! shame that I should have dreamed of doubting you! ... There is some great reason for this decision—something terrible behind this haste of yours. What, I may not know now!—one day all will be explained to me! ... Until then"—she rose and kissed the portrait—"until then I will trust you—who have never deceived me.... I will write to you as you would wish me to this very night. Now I must pack, and then go down to Monica.... How to answer if she should question! ... but no, she never will!"
Dismissing the phantom of Charles, faceless and bodiless, but none the less terrible, she flew at the locker—pulled out the three drawers—stripped the row of regulation dress-pegs. Brushing, smoothing, and folding, she even sang as she worked.... Presently a bell rang twice. It was yet vibrating where it hung, on the passage-landing at the dormitory stair-head, when Juliette passed on her way to the guest-parlor. Monica was waiting there.