Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed, followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by swiftly. Julie’s confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as a dying woman’s, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped out of the background of tapestry upon the walls.
“What can be the matter with you, child?” asked the Marquise. “Why are you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying alone, at your age?”
Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the while devouring the unfinished letter.
“Were you writing to your husband?”
“Do I know where he is?” returned the Countess.
Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things else, were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes, that she longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:—
“MY DEAR LOUISA,—Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
marry, yes, in a few months’ time one of the keenest pangs of
regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
did? We embraced each other; ‘like lovers,’ said we. We solemnly
promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
will be, what I am already—ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
Victor d’Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
innocent. I played endless child’s tricks with my bridal veil, my
wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year’s
gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood...”
When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as yet.
“My little girl,” she said, “a married woman cannot write such a letter as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper—”
“So I was thinking,” Julie broke in upon her aunt. “I felt ashamed of myself while you were reading it.”