XX
Could Juliette have known how she had been disposed of in a boy's imagination, perhaps the Spanish Infanta would have replaced the rosy nymph. But while her Prince dreamed, her jingling vehicle had crossed the Port de St. Cloud, and so by Ville d'Avray up the long avenue between the breasting woods, stately and glorious still, though stripped by the blasts of January, to the clean white town that had sprung up, nearly three hundred years before (upon the site of a little village patronized by wagoners), where an ancient feudal castle stood on a plateau surrounded by lake, forest, and marsh.
A touch of a King's scepter changed this ancient castle to a Royal Hunting-Lodge, a whim of his successor transformed the humbler dwelling to a Palace. Courtiers, officials, functionaries, guards, valets, lackeys, pimps, cooks, barbers and innumerable hangers-on are necessary to the upkeep of State; and these must be housed in stately fashion. Behold whole streets of buildings, with noble avenues, radiating like the sticks of a fan from the sunlike center, uprising like fungi from the swampy soil. Behold, as the power and glory of the monarch redoubled,—no less than thirty thousand workmen engaged in enlarging and beautifying the residence of His Majesty, while a regiment of Swiss Guards dig out the lake. And when pneumonia, fever, and ague carry off so many thousands of these hapless toilers that the dead have to be carted away by night, and secretly dumped into pits dug for the purpose, and the bottoms of the Royal coffers are seen through a thinning layer of gold, and the Building Accounts of the Crown Demesne show totals of unpaid debts sufficiently colossal to stagger a lightning-calculator, and Ministers grow dizzy, seeing a Kingdom on the brink of financial ruin, the sublime forehead beneath the bediamonded hat and the towering wig is illuminated by an inspiration. "Ha! We have it! Quick! commence new works! Pile on the national taxes, press a million unpaid laborers into the Royal service. Let rivers of tears flow to swell the sources of our dwindling fountains. Upon the uncounted corpses of vulgar toilers erect fresh monuments to all the glories of France!"
No ghastly visions disturbed the royal dreams, no awful Finger wrote the dreadful sentence upon the marble friezes of his banqueting-halls. The shadow of the little cocked hat that was to overtop his tallest wig by the whole height of a Crown Imperial was never shown him in Witch Montespan's magic mirror. The bees that were to swarm over his lilies and drain their golden honey were not to be hatched for many years yet. He deemed himself immortal in spite of the twinges of the gout, until it took him in the stomach and carried him off, at seventy-seven, leaving France to shudder in the embraces of a far worse man than himself. Until, aphrodisiacs and apoplexy having made an end of the infamous Regent, and Louis the Well-Beloved having succumbed to vice and smallpox, and the Red Widow having hugged the heads off Louis the Locksmith and his fair young Queen, the Terror ushered in the Revolution, Era of Liberty, Equality, and Universal Phlebotomy; until men, wearied of serving many masters, looked about for one to lead them, and the Little Corporal with the pale hatchet-face and the inscrutable gray-blue eyes under the great marble forehead rose up and said, "Here am I!"
The Court of his nephew was just now at the Tuileries. You saw the town of Versailles in its winter slumber, undisturbed by the roll of innumerable carriages, luggage fourgons, pastrycooks' and tradesmen's vans, and other vehicles, over its historic and venerable cobblestones.... Fashionable people lived there all the year round; many of the crack regiments of the Imperial Guard were quartered in the innumerable barracks; there was no lack of society—not the cream of the cream, perhaps, but charming, lively and gay.
The 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard were garrisoned in that antique quarter of barracks and churches, convents and Royal harems, once known as the Parc aux Cerfs. South of the great central avenue leading from the Place d'Armes to Paris, you found its huge monumental entrance on the right of the Rue de l'Orangerie, once the Hotel of the Gardes du Corps du Roi. It boasted a frontage at once chaste and imposing. The high window of the mess-room, balconied and dominated by a lofty pediment, surmounted the great gates of wrought-iron rolling back upon a wide sanded courtyard. If I do not err, the quarters of M. le Colonel were upon the second-floor upon the left-hand side of the gate, immediately above a confectioner's, whence rose delicious odors of baking pastry and simmering chocolate to titillate the nostrils of Mademoiselle. The sleeping-chamber and boudoir, described in the Colonel's letter as hung with rosebud chintz, and elegantly furnished; the little kitchen on the same floor, full of pots and bright pans, scoured by the Colonel's soldier-servant into dazzling brilliancy, more than fulfilled the expectations provoked beforehand. I rather think that the dinner—an inexpensive and savory little meal, consisting of vegetable soup with fillets of sole Normande, an infinitesimal steak jardinière, an omelette soufflée, Brie cheese (nowhere upon earth does one get such Brie as at Versailles), and dessert—had come from the pastrycook's on the street-floor. After the cooking one got at the Convent and in default of the much better dinner Mademoiselle could have evolved out of similar materials, it was a meal for demi-gods. And you do not know Juliette if you imagine she did not dispose of her share.
"I am gourmande, me," she would assure her confidantes in all sincerity, fitting the tip of a slender finger into a dint that would have needed slight persuasion to become a dimple. "I love good dishes, or how should I be able to cook them? One of these days it is possible that I may even grow fat. Believe me, I am not joking. Already I perceive the beginning of a double chin!"
M. le Colonel had excused himself from attendance at Mess that he might dine with his daughter. Both Monsieur and Mademoiselle were prodigiously gay, you may conceive. But even while Juliette laughed and clapped her little hands in delight at the paternal witticisms, while she leaned upon her Colonel's shoulder, or sat upon the arm of his chair; while her slender arm twined round his neck, and her cheek, no longer ivory-pale, but painted by the delicate brush of the artist Joy with the loveliest rose-flush, was tickled by the waxed end of his martial mustachio, the hateful shadow of the faceless Charles rose up and thrust itself between. It blotted out the last rays of the red wintry sun, it sprawled across the shade of the Argand lamp. It was heavy though impalpable, and diffused a numbing chill throughout the little apartment.
Perhaps the father felt it, for as they sat together talking by the cheerful fire of crackling beech-billets that burned upon the open hearth, he gradually fell silent.
You can see him in his undress uniform jacket of green cloth, braided, frogged, and with fur edging, unhooked at the neck and showing the white shirt, stiff linen collar, and scarlet tie. His polished boots and bright spurs, buttons, buckles, and so forth, reflected the dancing firelight. His forage-cap, a head-dress gaudy and bizarre enough to have come out of a Christmas cracker, crowned a porcelain bust of a young negress, chocolate-hued, with purplish-crimson lips, pink protruding tongue, and rolling onyx eyes (an art-object left behind as too fragile for transport by the previous occupant of the quarters)—while his long saber leaned against her wooden pedestal.
His handsome face was very grave, almost somber, as he pulled his crisp imperial, and stared at the little dancing hearth-flames, forgetful of the excellent cigar burning itself away to ash between the first and second fingers of his well-kept right hand. The other hand sometimes rested on his knee, sometimes touched his daughter's hair; for Juliette had slipped from her previous seat to the carpet, where she sat leaning against him.
And all at once the chill barrier of reserve broke down. It was when a heavy tear splashed upon the hand that rested on the knee of the crimson overall, a strong, brown, manly hand, rather hairy on the back. It clenched as though the single drop had been of molten metal, and then Juliette caught it in both her own and spoke:
"Oh, my father, why must this marriage take place? We have not said one word, but I know well that what is in my mind is in yours also. Feel!"—she drew the prisoned hand closely to her—"here lies your letter over where my heart is beating so. Much of it I comprehend, but the rest is anguish—mystery! War is threatened—that at least is clear. The regiment will sooner or later be ordered on active service. And—were your daughter the wife of a gentleman of her father's profession, you fear that she might suffer as her grandmother—as her own beloved dead mother did. But though my grandmother lost her husband, War spared her son. You returned to her and to my mother, not even wounded, darling! And if you apprehend for me a lot less fortunate, why need I marry any one? Take me with you or leave me behind, I am your obedient daughter always—always! But I had rather you would take me, dear!"
Not trusting himself to speak, the father took the little head between his palms and kissed the blue-veined temples and the clear space between the wide-arched eyebrows. The candid eyes met his, that were cloudy and troubled. He searched for phrases to disguise a truth that must stab.
"If I met death upon the field, you by my side, you would be left alone and unprotected. Were I to leave you behind even, in the care of Madame Tessier, you would none the less be alone. There is safety in permanent ties; but only when her husband is by her side does the sacrament of marriage open a haven to a young girl where the libertine and the seducer dare not enter. I speak with certainty—only when her husband is by her side!"
So women were not to be trusted! ... His palms might have been burned had he not withdrawn them, so fiery the sudden blush that rose in the clear, pale cheeks.
Barely comprehending his meaning, she faltered:
"Yet my grandmother——"
The Colonel broke in hastily:
"My mother was a Saint! What I have said does not apply to her!"
"And my mother?"
Something like a groan broke from the man. She felt him wince and shudder as she leaned upon him, saw the strong square teeth of the upper-jaw nip the ruddy lower lip, noted the ashen grayness that replaced the ebbed color, and the points of moisture that broke out upon his temples where his rich black hair was frosted with white. And looking, she bleached and shuddered in sympathy. His haunted eyes and haggard face bent over an upturned white mask, that had little of the grace of girlhood left in it. The distended pupils encroached upon the blue until her eyes seemed inky-black. He would have withdrawn the hand she held in both hers, but the soft little fingers turned to living steel, and he could not free himself. And the blue-black eyes staring out of the pinched elfin face quested in search of something that his own eyes strove to hide. As though his had been the weaker nature and hers the stronger (impossible, the creature being feminine), he felt his loathed secret being relentlessly drawn to light. The clear, unshaken question:
"Was not my mother good?" compelled him to truthful utterance. He heard a voice unlike his own replying:
"At the beginning—yes! I would stake my soul upon it. But during the war in the Crimea, when the Allies watered with the best blood of France and England that fatal soil, her loyalty to the absent husband weakened—her heart strayed!" He struck himself upon the breast passionately. "Yet here beat a heart that would have throbbed for love in death, had her lips kissed the shape of icy clay that housed it. It burns now with shame that I must strip off the veil of secrecy that until this moment has hidden from thee thy mother's sin!"
The head bent, a swift kiss touched his hand. Her mouth felt very cold. He went on, realizing that she demanded it:
"She fled with her lover upon the very day of the re-entry of the Army into Paris. After the triumph I hastened to Auteuil, where she and her child were living with my mother. That sainted soul met me at the door—the first glimpse of her face told the terrible intelligence. Had other lips than those beloved ones stabbed me with the truth, that night my revolver would have ended it!—I would not have lived to endure the pity in the faces of the friends who loved me—the curiosity in strangers' eyes."
A deep sigh stirred her, quickening in him the knowledge that since she had kissed his hand she had listened without breathing. She murmured now:
"Poor, dearest, best father! How old was I when she——"
He said tenderly:
"Let me see ... it was the August of 1856; thou hadst five years, and thy curls were as soft and as yellow as chicken-down. Thy mother used to say, Juliette will never be black like me!"
That disloyal mother had been the darkest of brunettes, ivory-skinned, and ebon-haired, with eyes of tawny wine-color, and the tall, lithe, exuberant form of a goddess of Grecian myth. To question the man she had deserted with regard to his betrayer seemed hideous, and yet... Juliette strung herself to the effort, faltering:
"And for whom...? with whom...? Do not tell me if it costs thee too much!"
His comprehension was instant. Very coldly the answer came:
"He was a personage of rank in his own country. A military attaché of the Prussian Embassy in Paris. They had met at one of the Imperial receptions at the Tuileries."
"Is he alive?"
The whispered words might have been shrieked in his ear, such a leap of the heart and such a thrilling of the nerves responded. He rose to his feet and said sternly, not looking at his daughter, but directly at the wall before him:
"The man is dead! But he did not fall in a duel. He lived to meet his end during the Prusso-Austrian War. He had left Paris en route for Berlin when my representative called at the Prussian Embassy. Strive as I would, I could gain no answer from him. Nor might the utmost influence I could command obtain a response to my cartel. This being so, the disgrace is his—not mine!"
He grew quite tall in saying this, so dignified was the little tubby man, so noble in his soldierly simplicity. His daughter looked up at him, wondering at him, loving him, sorrowing over him; yet yearning to hear more of that beloved, faithless one who had dealt those bleeding wounds he now bared in the sight of the child she had deserted, and plowed such deep lines in his wrung and suffering face. The words would break out, though she nipped her lips to stop them:
"And my mother ... did she repent and ask your pardon? Did you not forgive her before she died?"
"She did not die!"
The little Colonel had a great voice. His "Garde à vous!" roared down the files like a spherical mortar-shell, his "Chargez!" might have set dead men and horses up and galloping. Indeed, his nickname among the troopers of his regiment was, I believe, nothing less than "Bouche à feu!" When he thundered the answer to Juliette's question, not only did Mademoiselle Bayard leap to her feet, vibrating in every fiber of her slender, rigid body, but the crystal drops of the mantelshelf chandeliers left by the previous tenant danced and tinkled, and the panes of the windows rattled in their frames. What more the Colonel might have said was drowned, as the customary fanfare of trumpets sounded from the Mess, heralding the loyal toast. Then the "Vive l'Empereur!" rang out, and the regimental band crashed into "Partant Pour La Syrie," and very soon afterward, from the uncurtained window commanding the barrack-square, lights could be seen moving across the shadowy space as the dispersing officers returned to their quarters or went about their duty, attended by orderlies carrying stable-lanterns of the smoky, smelly, tallow-burning kind. The Colonel's own duty called him elsewhere, and he was glad of it. He muttered an inaudible word, his eyes averted from his daughter; took his cap, gloves, and riding-whip, and strode jingling from the room.
Ah, it would need a great artist in words to depict the swift and changing emotions that swelled and wrung the heart of the poor girl he left behind him, and give some adequate idea of the storm that swept over her in that lonely hour. Joy at the discovery that the adored mother of her childish memories yet lived was drowned in anguish at the piercing thought, "She lives, but not for me!" Shame burned her cheeks to crimson, grief washed them white again; her heart bounded in her bosom, or sank, heavy as lead. Except Madame Suchard, the soldier's wife who had been engaged to wait upon Mademoiselle de Bayard, and who now might be heard washing up the dinner-plates and dishes in the little kitchen, there was no earthly woman near to whom she might turn for comfort in this her hour of need.
But as she wept, not the freely-flowing tears of girlhood, but with the dry sobbings and painful convulsions that tortured women know, there chimed from the great cathedral Church of St. Louis close by, the first long triple of the Angelus, echoed by the thinner-sounding bells from the Convent of the Augustinian Sisters, from the Priory of the Bernardine Fathers, from the House of the Sœurs de l'Esperance, from the House of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Mechanically Juliette's hand went to her bosom, her pale lips moved, shaping the sacred words. And then she went to her room and knelt at the little straw-bottomed prie-Dieu that stood before her Crucifix, and prayed with passionate earnestness that He, Who when hanging upon His Cross of Agony gave His Mother to be our Mother, would hear Her pure prayer of intercession for that mother who had deserted her child. Wherever she might be, however low she might have fallen, whatever the sins, vices, follies that yet environed her, held her back or dragged her down, the ray of Divine Grace had power to reach her, raise her up, and lead her back by the path of Penance into the Way of Peace.
And pending the miracle, toward which end Masses should be offered and Communions given; obedience to that father so cruelly betrayed, so bitterly wronged, must, more than ever, be the watchword of Juliette. For the conviction began to dawn in her that belief in the innate purity and truth of her sex having been destroyed in him by the unfaith of that most beloved, most unhappy one; he sought to safeguard her daughter's virtue by means of a husband, who, being the only son of a widow, and therefore exempt from the obligations of military service, must always be on the spot. Sorrowfully she sought her bed, to remember, the moment her head touched the pillow, that although she had mustered courage to plead against the Colonel's sentence of marriage, provoking him thereby to reveal the long-hidden secret of his betrayal, she had never mentioned Charles except by inference.
What was he like, this young man, pious, virtuous, devoted to his mother, energetic, frugal, a manufacturer of, and merchant in, the commodity of woolen cloth? Could one build a husband out of such materials? Was it possible?
She tried once more. The effort led to tossing and turning. Conscience is most active in the night-watches. Juliette's bosom-monitor reproached her with having boasted to dear Monica's untidy brother of the faceless Charles's mastery of the art of fence. Other lapses from the strict line of veracity had preceded and followed. She had told one curious girl that Charles owned the form of an athlete, and hair of ruddy chestnut; another had reaped the information that he possessed a profile resembling that of Edgar Ravenswood, with dark, melancholy eyes, and a jet-black mustache of the kind that is silky and sweeps. Yet another eager inquirer had elicited the information that Charles was quite a duodecimo edition of a lover, slender, brilliantly fair, and not much taller than the bride-elect. Should it occur to these girls to compare notes in some hour of recess or exercise, what would be the impression conveyed to the Great Class?
One had left School, however, and one was glad of it. To go back with that tragic secret locked in one's bosom, and mingle with fortunate girls whose mothers were good women, happily alive or safely in Paradise, how could one have borne that?
A well-known footstep outside the door of her room, which opened from the little salon, and a gentle rustling sent a shiver through her. When the step moved away with its soldierly jingle of spurs accompanying it, De Bayard's daughter sat up in bed and kissed both hands to him, passionately; stretching out her arms with a wide gesture as though something of the maternal mingled with her love for him now.... When "Lights Out" sounded, and the gas was extinguished, and no line of yellow showed under the door, and the footsteps retreated and his door shut upon them, Juliette crept out of bed, lighted the candle, and picked up the scrap of paper that had been pushed across her threshold by the strong, beloved hand.
It proved to be a note dated that day, and addressed from the Tessier's house in the Rue de Provence, in Madame's angular, spidery caligraphy. Felicitations to her dear friend on the safe return of his cherished one were followed by regrets. "My Charles, alas! will be detained in Belgium at least until the Mardigras. The meeting of these dear young people must necessarily be deferred until that date. But to-morrow being the Feast of Saint Polycarpe, possibly M. le Colonel would bring Mademoiselle to visit a friend, old and most affectionate, punctually at the hour of one midi?" With tender remembrances the note concluded. Beneath the signature—Marie-Anastasie Tessier—M. le Colonel had scrawled in pencil the curt intimation: "Arranged.—H.A.A. de B."
Knowing Charles safely bestowed in Belgium, Juliette sank back upon her pillow, and soon was calmly sleeping between her two great hair-plaits. But slippered footsteps patroled the Colonel's room until gray dawn showed between the slits of the window-shutters, and the heavy sighs and muttered words that broke from him would have wrung his daughter's faithful heart. Sleepless and haggard, the first pale beams of January daylight found him still pacing his brown-striped drugget, a letter—the cause of his own and another's misery,—crushed in his strong right hand:
"555, AVENUE DE L'ALMA, PARIS,
"December 18, 1869.
"MONSIEUR,
"Acting upon instructions received from the senior partner of the Berlin branch of our firm, we beg to acknowledge your reply to his communication of the 7th instant, and must point out to you that the attitude you assume with regard to our client is equally unjust and indefensible. No legal remedy was sought by you for the injuries you allege that you sustained through the infidelity of the lady who until the autumn of 1856 occupied—and without reproach—the position of your wife.
"Further, during the years of her absence from your side, she has neither asked nor received from you any monetary payments toward her support and maintenance, facts which certainly appear to suggest consent and knowledge upon your part. You may further be aware that His deceased Excellency, Count Maximilian von Schön-Valverden, late junior military attaché to the Prussian General Staff, fully atoned for an indiscretion of his earlier years, by making an ample settlement upon Madame de Bayard; and that she is now in a position to render liberal assistance to relatives whom Fortune has not dowered with ample means.
"Under the circumstances, we have advised our client, whose natural affection for her daughter strongly urges her to assert her maternal rights to the society of Mademoiselle de Bayard, to enforce her claim by the reëstablishment of personal influence.
"The young lady in question is still unmarried, under age, and therefore subject to maternal authority; and our client does not disguise her hope that, by awakening the long silent chords of filial tenderness, she may gain a powerful advocate upon the side of reconciliation, reunion, and that unblemished and peaceful happiness which is only to be found by the domestic fireside.
"Recollect, Monsieur, that no legal bar exists to this most virtuous and irreproachable aspiration. And understand that unless a favorable answer is shortly received by our firm to the application now made by us to you on behalf of our client, her next appeal will be made to your daughter and hers.
"We remain, etc.,
"WIEGELT, NADIER AND BIDUQUET,
"Solicitors."
By the chill light of the new day the Colonel for the twentieth time re-read the letter, and its cunning mixture of truth and falsehood, the venomed hint at knowledge and complicity, struck fangs once more into his quivering heart.
A devout Catholic, he had never sought to divorce the wife who had betrayed him. Thus a civil marriage with her paramour had been rendered impossible to Adelaide, even had the Count desired it. Now, furnished with ample means by the generosity of her dead lover, did the false wife seek at the hands of the injured husband rehabilitation, in return for a heap of tainted gold?
Horrible thought! The walls of the room seemed to close upon De Bayard suffocatingly. He opened the window and leaned out, drawing in deep drafts of the frosty morning air. It cleared his brain; he realized, in the event of his contemptuous rejection of the hideous bargain, a menace to his daughter's peace of mind.
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.