As the years went by, and the little women of the dark house by the river grew with them, the wealth of Monsieur Lenormant declined, and when Dr. Vermont, now a distinctive somebody in his profession, came down one summer, and rode out from Beaufort to see him, matters were so bad that he found it his duty to come every day during the rest of his vacation. Adèle was now sixteen, a lovely flower opening in the sun of romantic dreams. Can we wonder if Dr. Vermont’s glance rested on her in amazed admiration? Dr. Vermont said nothing, but he looked. He looked constantly, and his glances were not without eloquence for the maiden blushing vividly beneath them. All this Henriette saw, and loved her sister none the less, wished not the less heartily both her dear ones happiness and success, though her own misery came of it. Only Monsieur Lenormant understood nothing of the situation. His dream always had been to marry his favourite Henriette to his young friend Vermont, but death overtook him before he could accomplish it.
One evening, as Dr. Vermont sat beside him with his hand upon his pulse, the poor gentleman looked up at him anxiously.
‘I have written for a relative, a lady, to come and look after my girls, but you, François, I expect to be their real protector. I like to think of you as my daughter’s husband. She is a good girl, François, an excellent girl. She has been a devoted daughter, and an adoring sister. She will make the best of wives.’
‘I am sure of it,’ said Dr. Vermont musingly, as he glanced down to where the two girls were silently embroidering in the deep recess of a window above the river. He knew perfectly well which daughter he was expected to marry and which he intended to marry, but he kept his counsel, and gazed in soft approbation upon the charming profile of Adèle.
When he came next day, Monsieur Lenormant had departed from this world of marriage and giving in marriage, and the lady relative had arrived. A formal engagement with Adèle was speedily entered upon, and the Doctor took the train for Paris, a happy prospective bridegroom, with the advantage of being in no hurry to jump into domestic responsibilities. His betrothed was somewhat young, and meanwhile he would have leisure to pursue pleasure elsewhere, and nourish her placid love upon the most expensive boxes of sweets direct from Boissier, and instalments of light and elegant literature to teach her what to respect of life and from mankind.
The bride was eighteen and the groom twenty-eight, when they were married one spring morning in the Mairie and in the Cathedral of Beaufort. That marriage still brought tears to Joséphine’s old eyes, and tempted her to unhabitual eloquence. How lovely the bride had looked!—too lovely, too delicate for health and long life. Eyes limpid like an angel’s, so sweetly blue and soft, a face upon which the tenderest breath would bring a stain of deepened colour, form slim and curved and dainty in every detail. The groom was proud, radiantly proud, perhaps not tender enough and unapprehensive of the rough winds of life for a creature so fragile and for bloom so evanescent. But he looked distinguished, well-bred, and eminently Parisian; and what more could provincial spectators desire?
A more interesting figure far was the grave, sad young lady, who smiled upon her happy sister through her tears, and could find words above the pain of a breaking heart to remind the groom that Adèle had always been petted and spoiled and cared, and fervently implore him to do the same by her, and treat her more like a child than a wife. The scene was clear before me. Mademoiselle, as she must have been at twenty-three, not pretty, but captivating enough for eyes not blinded by mere animal beauty, as the Doctor’s were. And he, fatuous, sure of himself, at heart indifferent to others, and intoxicated with foolish marital satisfaction. Did he know that tragedy brushed his happiness that moment—softly, benignantly, with blessing instead of prayer, with gaze of hope instead of reproach?
Joséphine could tell me nothing, and it pleased me to believe that he understood, and some day might remember.
After some months in Paris, the little bride was brought back to the dark house by the river by an anxious husband, there to linger in the warmth of two loves, two devotions, waited upon, worshipped in vain. The opening of her baby’s eyes was the signal for the closing of her own. Not then, not then could Dr. Vermont be expected to understand. As far as I could gather from Joséphine’s account, he passionately loved his young wife. Her death crushed him for a while, and he walked the earth like one blind to the changes of seasons, blind to surrounding faces, and fronting a future that would remain for ever a blank. Mademoiselle came, and gently touched his hand to remind him that he was not alone in his sorrow. He neither felt the fraternity nor the unspoken tenderness. The paleness of her cheek held no eloquence of suffering for him; the sadness of her eyes left his heart untouched. As for the child, far from feeling a thrill of paternity upon sight of it, he desired never to behold it more. He would regard it henceforth as the cause of his moral ruin, the beginning of a broken and joyless life.
In this hard and sullen mood he returned to Paris, and Gabrielle grew up with Mademoiselle, without any knowledge of her father, who apparently had forgotten the existence of both.