Perhaps I was not myself solicitous enough about her, and her welfare; because—well, it is clear I am sure—because I was much in love with Blanchette, and as the days brought me nearer to that moment when I would leave home, and struggle for that wealth America seems to hold so temptingly out in her outstretched hands to everyone, I felt almost bitterly the probability that—in the nature of things—Blanchette would not, could not wait for me. When might I return—Ah when?—the thought wrenched me like a physical violence, and the nightly scarlet of the evening skies almost, to my despairing heart, seemed stained with the drops of my own blood.
It was a year before I went to America—that was in 1895—that I sat with Blanchette in the garden back of her pleasant home on a low mound, in a bosque or coppice of trimmed beeches, with a little fairyland of garden beds before us, of larkspur, hollyhocks, geraniums, and piebald four-o'clocks, and the slant lights fading slowly upwards left a thousand hues among their petals. The captain favored our rendez-vous, and I half thought that I saw him in an upper window of the house benignantly smiling upon our tryst.
The comeliness of a sweetly fair girl was Blanchette's, and the ringletted hair of her blonde mother—a Swede—caught in an abundant chignon behind her well shaped head, brought into ravishing relief the rounded and blushing cheeks, the winning deep-set blue eyes, where something, to me almost etherial, dwelt, the full lipped mouth, with the blue veins of her temples, the round white neck, and the ample contours of her shoulders, hidden that night beneath the blue folds of a crepe handkerchief, crossed over her breast like a fichu.
"Blanchette," I said at length, just as the last lingering patches of sunlight seemed to escape skyward from the flowers, "you know that I am going away to America—and—I am not going solely for myself—pas de tout. You will be with me in my daily thoughts, in my work, and every dollar—toujours dollars en l'Amerique—I make, will be put away for YOU; Mais comme je t'aime!"
It was a sudden impulse, and its very awkwardness showed the sincerity of my feeling, its impetuous earnestness; and deliciously was it rewarded. Blanchette caught my face in her soft long hands, and brought it down to her own; our lips met, and the pledge of our future life together unuttered, was sworn so deeply in our hearts, that we were dumbfounded with the overmastering passion of the moment.
Again and again we embraced, and our lips sought each other with a rapture inexpressible—une rapture indicible—while the moving hours swept the heavens of all light, and the fragrance of the gardens rose overpoweringly like sensuous incitations to our immeasurable needs.
The long pent-up torrent of our love caught upon its waves each momentary reserve, and smothered it in the racing tides of our limitless joy. Voices seemed to speak to us from every side, as if the spirits of nature, enthralled in flower, and tree, and grass, and herb, disincarnate through sympathy, spoke to us, inarticulate but real. C'était l'appel aphrodisiac de l'âme—the ecstatic epitome of a life-time.
That night I leaned out of the window of my room, and the night, calm and gloriously light with the gibbous moon half flooding the broad distances with its pale splendors, seemed to bathe my spirit in incredible consolations of hope, ambition. An exorbitant confidence seized me. Anticipation and resolve raised innumerable visions, and the bending salutation of Success almost audibly filled my ears with its siren promises.
Blanchette would wait. I must not be too avaricious. A little was enough for our serene and inconspicuous days. Let it be in a year—two? Les fortunes merveilleuses ne viendraient-ils? Perhaps—perhaps—let us believe so, now, and if the time is lengthened, well—les noces s'attarderaient seulement un peu.
So dreaming, so feeding illustrious hopes, I forgot Gabrielle, in my selfish egotism, and while I had dimly divined the result of her new work I offered no opposition to our parents' designs, and even encouraged Gabrielle with specious flatteries. She would grow stronger; the life of the great city would be full of wonders, and captivate her mind with its marvels. Then there would be fresh friendships, the gayety of companionships, innumerable alleviations of l'ennui.