Books: Jacqueline, v1
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Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) >> Jacqueline, v1
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His wife, it was said, had shown rare zeal and activity at the time of
the election, employing in her husband's service all those little arts
which enable her sex to succeed in politics, as well as in everything
else they set their minds to. No lady ever more completely turned the
heads of country electors. It was really Madame de Nailles who took her
seat in the Left Centre of the Chamber, in the person of her husband.
After that she returned to Limouzin only long enough to keep up her
popularity, though, with touching resignation, she frequently offered to
spend the summer at Grandchaux, even if the consequences should be her
death, like that of Pia in the Maremma. Her husband, of course,
peremptorily set his face against such self-sacrifice.
The facilities for Jacqueline's education were increased by their
settling down as residents of Paris. Madame de Nailles superintended the
instruction of her stepdaughter with motherly solicitude, seconded,
however, by a 'promeneuse', or walking-governess, which left her free to
fulfil her own engagements in the afternoons. The walking-governess is
a singular modern institution, intended to supply the place of the too
often inconvenient daily governess of former times. The necessary
qualifications of such a person are that she should have sturdy legs,
and such knowledge of some foreign language as will enable her during
their walks to converse in it with her pupil. Fraulein Schult, who came
from one of the German cantons of Switzerland, was an ideal 'promeneuse'.
She never was tired and she was well-informed. The number of things that
could be learned from her during a walk was absolutely incredible.
Madame de Nailles, therefore, after a time, gave up to her, not without
apparent regret, the duty of accompanying Jacqueline, while she herself
fulfilled those duties to society which the most devoted of mothers can
not wholly avoid; but the stepmother and stepdaughter were always to be
seen together at mass at one o'clock; together they attended the Cours
(that system of classes now so much in vogue) and also the weekly
instruction given in the catechism; and if Madame de Nailles, when, at
night, she told her husband all she had been doing for Jacqueline during
the day (she never made any merit of her zeal for the child's welfare),
added: "I left Jacqueline in this place or in that, where Mademoiselle
Schult was to call for her," M. de Nailles showed no disposition to ask
questions, for he well understood that his wife felt a certain delicacy
in telling him that she had been to pay a brief visit to her own
relatives, who, she knew, were distasteful to him. He had, indeed, very
soon discerned in them a love of intrigue, a desire to get the most they
could out of him, and a disagreeable propensity to parasitism. With the
consummate tact she showed in everything she did, Madame de Nailles kept
her own family in the background, though she never neglected them. She
was always doing them little services, but she knew well that there were
certain things about them that could not but be disagreeable to her
husband. M. de Nailles knew all this, too, and respected his wife's
affection for her family. He seldom asked her where she had been during
the day. If he had she would have answered, with a sigh: "I went to see
my mother while Jacqueline was taking her dancing-lesson, and before she
went to her singing-master."
That she was passionately attached to Jacqueline was proved by the
affection the little girl conceived for her. "We two are friends," both
mother and daughter often said of each other. Even Modeste, old Modeste,
who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of
her dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no
ordinary step mother. It might have been truly said that Madame de
Nailles had never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done
anything contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles. When anything went
wrong it was Fraulein Schult who was reproached first; if there was any
difficulty in the management of Jacqueline, she alone received
complaints. In the eyes of the "two friends," Fraulein Schult was
somehow to be blamed for everything that went wrong in the family,
but between themselves an observer might have watched in vain for the
smallest cloud. Madame de Nailles, when she was first married, could not
make enough of the very ugly yet attractive little girl, whose tight
black curls and gypsy face made an admirable contrast to her own more
delicate style of beauty, which was that of a blonde. She caressed
Jacqueline, she dressed her up, she took her about with her like a little
dog, and overwhelmed her with demonstrations of affection, which served
not only to show off her own graceful attitudes, but gave spectators a
high opinion of her kindness of heart.
When from time to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her for
being childless, Madame de Nailles would say: "What do you mean? I have
one daughter; she is enough for me."
It is a pity children grow so fast, and that little girls who were once
ugly sometimes develop into beautiful young women. The time came when
the model stepmother began to wish that Jacqueline would only develop
morally, intellectually, and not physically. But she showed nothing of
this in her behavior, and replied to any compliments addressed to her
concerning Jacqueline with as much maternal modesty as if the dawning
loveliness of her stepdaughter had been due to herself.
"Her nose is rather too long-don't you think so? And she will always be
too dark, I fear." But she used always to add, "She is good enough and
pretty enough to pass muster with any critic--poor little pussy-cat!"
She became desirous to discover some tendency to ill-health in the plant
that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have
liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline's health would not permit her
to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to
her, that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as
she could be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being
ill, and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be
before she could go to her first ball--three or four possibly. Was
Madame de Nailles in three or four years to be reduced to the position of
a chaperon? The young stepmother thought of such a possibility with
horror. Her anxiety on this subject, however, as well as several other
anxieties, was so well concealed that even her husband suspected nothing.
The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved
made M. de Nailles very happy. He had but one thing to complain of in
his wife, and that thing was very small. Since she had married she had
completely given up her painting. He had no knowledge of art himself,
and had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity. The fact
was that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make
a living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her own
limited ability. Her practice of art, she said, had only served to give
her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized in her
dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and furniture.
Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was arranged to
perfection. She had a genius for decoration, for furniture, for trifles,
and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the tying of a ribbon,
or the arrangement of a nosegay.
"This is all I retain of your lessons," she said sometimes to Hubert
Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his
advice as to how to prepare herself for the "struggle for life."
This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips. What!--
"struggle for life" with those little delicate, soft, childlike hands?
How absurd! She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard her
laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one. He, who had
befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the
Baroness in her prosperity the same respectful and discreet devotion he
had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker. He had sent a wonderful portrait
of her, as the wife of M. de Nailles, to the Salon--a portrait that the
richer electors of Grandchaux, who had voted for her husband and who
could afford to travel, gazed at with satisfaction, congratulating
themselves that they had a deputy who had married so pretty a woman.
It even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de Nailles belonged in some
sort to the arrondissement, so proud were those who lived there of having
their share in her charms.
Another portrait--that of M. de Nailles himself--was sent down to
Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were
invited to come and look at it. That also produced a very favorable
impression on the rustic public, and added to the popularity of their
deputy. Never had the proprietor of Grandchaux looked so grave, so
dignified, so majestic, so absorbed in deep reflection, as he looked
standing beside a table covered with papers--papers, no doubt, all having
relation to local interests, important to the public and to individuals.
It was the very figure of a statesman destined to high dignities. No one
who gazed on such a deputy could doubt that one day he would be in the
ministry.
It was by such real services that Marien endeavored to repay the
friendship and the kindness always awaiting him in the small house in the
Parc Monceau, where we have just seen Jacqueline eagerly offering him
some spiced cakes. To complete what seemed due to the household there
only remained to paint the curiously expressive features of the girl at
whom he had been looking that very day with more than ordinary attention.
Once already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes, the great
painter had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head, a sketch in
which she looked like a little imp of darkness, and this sketch Madame de
Nailles took pains should always be seen, but it bore no resemblance to
the slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming, whatever might be
done to arrest her development, a beautiful young woman. Jacqueline
disliked to look at that picture. It seemed to do her an injury by
associating her with her nursery. Probably that was the reason why she
had been so pleased to hear Hubert Marien say unexpectedly that she was
now ready for the portrait which had been often joked about, every one
putting it off to the period, always remote, when "the may-pole" should
have developed a pretty face and figure.
And now she was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which she
felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the painter's
brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible.
Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked
about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed
to her to be terribly long. Marien himself had said: "There is a great
interval between a dream and its execution." These words had thrown cold
water on her sudden joy. She wanted to force him to keep his promise--
to paint her portrait immediately. How to do this was the problem her
little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles's lap after the departure of
their visitors, had been endeavoring to solve.
Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother, who for the
most part willed whatever she wished her to do? A vague instinct--an
instinct of some mysterious danger--warned her that in this case her
father would be her better confidant.
CHAPTER III
THE FRIEND OF THE FAY
A week later M. de Nailles said to Hubert Marien, as they were smoking
together in the conservatory, after the usual little family dinner on
Wednesday was over:
"Well!--when would you like Jacqueline to come to sit for her picture?"
"What! are you thinking about that?" cried the painter, letting his
cigar fall in his astonishment.
"She told me that you had proposed to make her portrait."
"The sly little minx!" thought Marien. "I only spoke of painting it
some day," he said, with embarrassment.
"Well! she would like that 'some day' to be now, and she has a reason
for wanting it at once, which, I hope, will decide you to gratify her.
The third of June is Sainte-Clotilde's day, and she has taken it into
her head that she would like to give her mamma a magnificent present--
a present that, of course, we shall unite to give her. For some time
past I have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my
daughter," continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for
the portrait than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into
his head. But the women of his household, little or big, could persuade
him into anything.
"I really don't think I have the time now," said Marien.
"Bah!--you have whole two months before you. What can absorb you so
entirely? I know you have your pictures ready for the Salon."
"Yes--of course--of course--but are you sure that Madame de Nailles would
approve of it?"
"She will approve whatever I sanction," said M. de Nailles, with as much
assurance as if he had been master in his domestic circle; "besides, we
don't intend to ask her. It is to be a surprise. Jacqueline is looking
forward to the pleasure it will give her. There is something very
touching to me in the affection of that little thing for--for her
mother." M. de Nailles usually hesitated a moment before saying that
word, as if he were afraid of transferring something still belonging to
his dead wife to another--that dead wife he so seldom remembered in any
other way. He added, "She is so eager to give her pleasure."
Marien shook his head with an air of uncertainty.
"Are you sure that such a portrait would be really acceptable to Madame
de Nailles?"
"How can you doubt it?" said the Baron, with much astonishment. "A
portrait of her daughter!--done by a great master? However, of course,
if we are putting you to any inconvenience--if you would rather not
undertake it, you had better say so."
"No--of course I will do it, if you wish it," said Marien, quickly, who,
although he was anxious to do nothing to displease Madame de Nailles, was
equally desirous to stand well with her husband. "Yet I own that all the
mystery that must attend on what you propose may put me to some
embarrassment. How do you expect Jacqueline will be able to conceal--"
"Oh! easily enough. She walks out every day with Mademoiselle Schult.
Well, Mademoiselle Schult will bring her to your studio instead of taking
her to the Champs Elysees--or to walk elsewhere."
"But every day there will be concealments, falsehoods, deceptions.
I think Madame de Nailles might prefer to be asked for her permission."
"Ask for her permission when I have given mine? Ah, fa! my dear Marien,
am I, or am I not, the father, of Jacqueline? I take upon myself the
whole responsibility."
"Then there is nothing more to be said. But do you think that Jacqueline
will keep the secret till the picture is done?"
"You don't know little girls; they are all too glad to have something of
which they can make a mystery."
"When would you like us to begin?"
Marien had by this time said to himself that for him to hold out longer
might seem strange to M. de Nailles. Besides, the matter, though in some
respects it gave him cause for anxiety, really excited an interest in
him. For some time past, though he had long known women and knew very
little of mere girls, he had had his suspicions that a drama was being
enacted in Jacqueline's heart, a drama of which he himself was the hero.
He amused himself by watching it, though he did nothing to promote it.
He was an artist and a keen and penetrating observer; he employed
psychology in the service of his art, and probably to that might have
been attributed the individual character of his portraits--a quality to
be found in an equal degree only in those of Ricard.
What particularly interested him at this moment was the assumed
indifference of Jacqueline while her father was conducting the
negotiation which was of her suggestion. When they returned to the salon
after smoking she pretended not to be the least anxious to know the
result of their conversation. She sat sewing near the lamp, giving all
her attention to the piece of lace on which she was working. Her father
made her a sign which meant "He consents," and then Marien saw that the
needle in her fingers trembled, and a slight color rose in her face--but
that was all. She did not say a word. He could not know that for a week
past she had gone to church every time she took a walk, and had offered a
prayer and a candle that her wish might be granted. How very anxious and
excited she had been all that week! The famous composition of which
she had spoken to Giselle, the subject of which had so astonished the
young girl brought up by the Benedictine nuns, felt the inspiration of
her emotion and excitement. Jacqueline was in a frame of mind which made
reading those three masterpieces by three great poets, and pondering the
meaning of their words, very dangerous. The poems did not affect her
with the melancholy they inspire in those who have "lived and loved,"
but she was attracted by their tenderness and their passion. Certain
lines she applied to herself--certain others to another person. The very
word love so often repeated in the verses sent a thrill through all her
frame. She aspired to taste those "intoxicating moments," those "swift
delights," those "sublime ecstasies," those "divine transports"--all the
beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were as
yet unknown to her. How could she know them? How could she, after an
experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain
such sweet remembrances as the poets described?
"Let us love--love each other! Let us hasten to enjoy the passing hour!"
so sang the poet of Le Lac. That passing hour of bliss she thought she
had already enjoyed. She was sure that for a long time past she had
loved. When had that love begun? She hardly knew. But it would last as
long as she might live. One loves but once.
These personal emotions, mingling with the literary enchantments of the
poets, caused Jacqueline's pen to fly over her paper without effort, and
she produced a composition so far superior to anything she usually wrote
that it left the lucubrations of her companions far behind. M. Regis,
the professor, said so to the class. He was enthusiastic about it, and
greatly surprised. Belle, who had been always first in this kind of
composition, was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at her
defeat that she would not speak to her for a week. On the other hand
Colette and Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were moved
to tears when the "Study on the comparative merits of Three Poems, 'Le
Lac,' 'Souvenir,' and 'La Tristesse d'Olympio,'" signed "Mademoiselle de
Nailles," received the honor of being read aloud. This reading was
followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses which may have
proceeded from the viper of jealousy. But the paper made a sensation
like that of some new scandal. Mothers and governesses whispered
together. Many thought that that little de Nailles had expressed
sentiments not proper at her age. Some came to the conclusion that
M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls.
A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more prudent
for the future. He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline's success,
one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the class), whose
mother took her away, saying, with indignation, "One might as well risk
the things they are teaching at the Sorbonne!"
This literary incident greatly alarmed Madame de Nailles! Of all things
she dreaded that her daughter should early become dreamy and romantic.
But on this point Jacqueline's behavior was calculated to reassure her.
She laughed about her composition, she frolicked like a six-year-old
child; without any apparent cause, she grew gayer and gayer as the time
approached for the execution of her plot.
The evening before the day fixed on for the first sitting, Modeste, the
elderly maid of the first Madame de Nailles, who loved her daughter, whom
she had known from the moment of her birth, as if she had been her own
foster-child, arrived at the studio of Hubert Marien in the Rue de Prony,
bearing a box which she said contained all that would be wanted by
Mademoiselle. Marien had the curiosity to look into it. It contained a
robe of oriental muslin, light as air, diaphanous--and so dazzlingly
white that he remarked:
"She will look like a fly in milk in that thing."
"Oh!" replied Modeste, with a laugh of satisfaction, "it is very
becoming to her. I altered it to fit her, for it is one of Madame's
dresses. Mademoiselle has nothing but short skirts, and she wanted to be
painted as a young lady."
"With the approval of her papa?"
"Yes, of course, Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron gave his consent. But for
that I certainly should not have minded what the child said to me."
"Then," replied Marien, "I can say nothing," and he made ready for his
sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which
might have shocked her, with their faces to the wall.
A foreign language can not be properly acquired unless the learner has
great opportunities for conversation. It therefore became a fixed habit
with Fraulein Schult and Jacqueline to keep up a lively stream of talk
during their walks, and their discourse was not always about the rain,
the fine weather, the things displayed in the shop-windows, nor the
historical monuments of Paris, which they visited conscientiously.
What is near the heart is sure to come eventually to the surface in
continual tete-a-tete intercourse. Fraulein Schult, who was of a
sentimental temperament, in spite of her outward resemblance to a
grenadier, was very willing to allow her companion to draw from her
confessions relating to an intended husband, who was awaiting her at
Berne, and whose letters, both in prose and verse, were her comfort in
her exile. This future husband was an apothecary, and the idea that he
pounded out verses as he pounded his drugs in a mortar, and rolled out
rhymes with his pills, sometimes inclined Jacqueline to laugh, but she
listened patiently to the plaintive outpourings of her 'promeneuse',
because she wished to acquire a right to reciprocate by a few half-
confidences of her own. In her turn, therefore, she confided to Fraulein
Schult--moved much as Midas had been, when for his own relief he
whispered to the reeds--that if she were sometimes idle, inattentive,
"away off in the moon," as her instructors told her by way of reproach,
it was caused by one ever-present idea, which, ever since she had been
able to think or feel, had taken possession of her inmost being--the idea
of being loved some day by somebody as she herself loved.
"Was that somebody a boy of her own age?"
Oh, fie!--mere boys--still schoolboys--could only be looked upon as
playfellows or comrades. Of course she considered Fred--Fred, for
example!--Frederic d'Argy--as a brother, but how different he was from
her ideal. Even young men of fashion--she had seen some of them on
Tuesdays--Raoul Wermant, the one who so distinguished himself as a leader
in the 'german', or Yvonne's brother, the officer of chasseurs, who had
gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides these--seemed to
her very commonplace by comparison. No!--he whom she loved was a man in
the prime of life, well known to fame. She didn't care if he had a few
white hairs.
"Is he a person of rank?" asked Fraulein Schult, much puzzled.
"Oh! if you mean of noble birth, no, not at all. But fame is so
superior to birth! There are more ways than one of acquiring an
illustrious name, and the name that a man makes for himself is the
noblest of all!"
Then Jacqueline begged Fraulein Schult to imagine something like the
passion of Bettina for Goethe--Fraulein Schult having told her that story
simply with a view of interesting her in German conversation only the
great man whose name she would not tell was not nearly so old as Goethe,
and she herself was much less childish than Bettina. But, above all,
it was his genius that attracted her--though his face, too, was very
pleasing. And she went on to describe his appearance--till suddenly she
stopped, burning with indignation; for she perceived that,
notwithstanding the minuteness of her description, what she said was
conveying an idea of ugliness and not one of the manly beauty she
intended to portray.
"He is not like that at all," she cried. "He has such a beautiful smile-
a smile like no other I ever saw. And his talk is so amusing--and--"
here Jacqueline lowered her voice as if afraid to be overheard, "and I do
think--I think, after all, he does love me--just a little."
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