CHAPTER XIII
It was a bond of sympathy between Paul and Toni that each should, as it were, love above his station. Paul was a frequent visitor at the Château Bernard, and was regarded by the stately and imposing Madame Bernard with very mixed feelings. The old lady looked on Lucie very much as a hen does which has hatched out a duckling among her brood. Madame Bernard was a representative of the strictness of manners, such as had prevailed in France fifty years before.
Although dragon-like in her manner, Madame Bernard was at heart a grandmother, and that tells the tale. Lucie was her idol, and the two years the young girl had spent with her mother’s family in America had been one long nightmare to Madame Bernard. When she returned she was the same Lucie, with an added dash of Americanism which frightened Madame Bernard almost out of her wits. Nevertheless there was something about this wild young creature, this half American, something which gave Madame Bernard instinctive confidence that she could never commit the fearful error of Sophie Ravenel.
Madame Bernard was now more than seventy years of age, and quite unequal to opposing Lucie’s will, and Lucie, at twenty years of age, reigned over the Château Bernard in a manner that terrified and enchanted all under her sway. She had, somewhere in her beautiful head, a nugget of American common sense—a thing which none of those around her quite understood, only they saw that Mademoiselle Lucie never came to grief in any of her pranks and schemes. She was, of course, surrounded by admirers. Madame Bernard had been considering offers of marriage for her ever since her eighteenth year, and had nearly arranged one or two for her of the most advantageous description, but what should this madcap Lucie do but laugh at every one of these desirable lovers, declaring that she did not mean to marry until she was quite ready, and might not marry at all. This latter grotesque idea mortified Madame Bernard, who had already promised no less than six ambitious mamas that in a year or two she was sure that Lucie would come to her senses. Then Lucie was given to joking, a practice which Madame Bernard had never heard of any girl indulging, and actually made fun of the excellent partis which Madame Bernard offered for her consideration, drew caricatures of them, wrote nonsense verses about them, and otherwise amused herself at their expense.
Madame Bernard observed that the sandy-haired young sublieutenant, Paul Verney, cool, calm, and matter-of-fact, seemed to have a singular influence, and that for good, over Lucie.
Their meeting had come about in the most natural way possible. On Lucie’s return from America she had gone to Bienville to pay Madame Ravenel that longed for visit. Her coming upset the whole town, and was of itself a cyclone. With the rash generosity of youth Lucie, who now understood Sophie’s sad history, took on herself the task of placing the Ravenels upon the footing which she thought they deserved. This meant bringing, as she had promised to do in her childish days long ago, a retinue of horses and carriages and servants with her, likewise of dazzling gowns and ravishing hats, and making her visit one long fête. The Ravenels, wiser than little Lucie, tried to curb her, but as well try to curb a wandering zephyr as Lucie Bernard, with a noble and generous impulse in her heart. The people of Bienville were a kindly set on whom the self-respecting seclusion of the Ravenels had not been without its impress. When ambitious mamas and impressionable young officers found that the only way to make any terms with this child of brilliant destiny was to accept those she loved at the value she placed on them, it was not so difficult to accomplish. The Ravenels, in that fortnight of Lucie’s visit, got more invitations than they had received in all the years they had lived in Bienville.
Among the first was to drink tea in the Verneys’ garden—a modest form of entertainment suited to the advocate’s means. It happened to be Madame Verney’s fête-day, a day which Paul always spent with his mother, if possible. Madame Verney had not only written, but telegraphed, for Paul to get leave if he possibly could. It was a long distance to travel to spend twenty-four hours with his mother, and Paul’s two thousand francs’ allowance, besides his pay, had a habit of walking off mysteriously, just like the allowances of other young officers, but one line at the end of Madame Verney’s letter settled the matter for Sublieutenant Paul Verney. The line ran thus—“Mademoiselle Lucie Bernard will be staying with the Ravenels—her first visit since her return from America—and the Ravenels are coming to tea with us on my fête-day.” Paul went that moment and asked boldly for a week’s leave.
He got to Bienville at noon on the great day, and at five o’clock, when the little festivity was inaugurated in the garden and the Ravenels entered, there was Paul, still pink and white and sandy-haired, not spoiled with beauty, but adorned with manliness. With the new affectation of the young French officers he adopted the modern fashion of discarding his uniform on every possible occasion and wearing citizens’ clothes whenever he could, but on this day he could not but remember what Lucie had said, a long time ago, about his wearing a uniform next time they should meet. So he put on his handsome new undress uniform and looked a soldier. His mother admired him immensely, so did his father, and so, in fact, did Lucie, when that young lady, in a dazzling white costume and charming white hat and white shoes, came tripping along the garden path. Paul blushed from his head to his heels as he made her a beautiful bow, but Lucie, who had acquired the startling American fashion of shaking hands with any and everybody, deliberately slipped her little hand in his and gave him a look from under her long eyelashes which said as plainly as words—“Welcome, Paul.” And by Madame Verney’s tea-table in the little garden their hearts were cemented without one word being spoken between them.