Books: Jacqueline, v1
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Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) >> Jacqueline, v1
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Madame de Nailles had red eyes; and Jacqueline made the reflection that
women who are thirty-five should never weep. She knew that her face had
not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse
satisfaction in the midst of her misery. Of Marien she thought: "He sits
there as if he had been put 'en penitence'." No doubt he could not
endure scenes, and the one he had just passed through must have given him
the downcast look which Jacqueline noticed with contempt.
What she did not know was that his depression had more than one cause.
He felt--and felt with shame and with discouragement--that the fetters of
a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been fastened on
his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: "I shall lose all my
energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I shall
see ever before me--ah! tortures of Tantalus!--the vision of a new love,
fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before my sight, which
lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see it glide
away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is not all.
If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or deeds done
in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself that I have
acted like an honest man?"
This is what Marien was really thinking, while Jacqueline looked at him
with an expression she strove to make indifferent, but which he
interpreted, though she knew it not: "You have done me all the harm you
can."
M. de Nailles meantime went on talking, with little response from his
wife or his guest, about some vehement discussion of a new law going on
just then in the Chamber, and he became so interested in his own
discourse that he did not remark the constraint of the others.
Marien at last, tired of responding in monosyllables to his remarks,
said abruptly, a short time before dessert was placed upon the table,
something about the probability of his soon going to Italy.
"A pilgrimage of art to Florence!" cried the Baron, turning at once from
politics. "That's good. But wait a little--let it be after the rising
of the Chamber. We will follow your steps. It has been the desire of my
wife's life--a little jaunt to Italy. Has it not, Clotilde? So we will
all go in September or October. What say you?"
"In September or October, whichever suits you," said Marien, with
despair.
Not one month of liberty! Why couldn't they leave him to his Savanarola!
Must he drag about a ball and chain like a galley-slave?
Clotilde rewarded M. de Nailles with a smile--the first smile she had
given him since their quarrel about Jacqueline.
"My wife has got over her displeasure," he said to himself, delightedly.
Jacqueline, on her part, well remembered the day when Hubert had spoken
to her for the first time of his intended journey, and how he had added,
in a tone which she now knew to be badinage, but which then, alas! she
had believed serious: "Suppose we go together!"
And her impulse to shed tears became so great, that when they left the
dinner-table she escaped to her own room, under pretence of a headache.
"Yes--you are looking wretchedly," said her stepmother. And, turning to
M. de Nailles, she added: "Don't you think, 'mon ami', she is as yellow
as a quince!" Marien dared not press the hand which she, who had been
his little friend for years, offered him as usual, but this time with
repugnance.
"You are suffering, my poor Jacqueline!" he ventured to say.
"Oh! not much," she answered, with a glance at once haughty and defiant,
"to-morrow I shall be quite well again."
And, saying this, she had the courage to laugh.
But she was not quite well the next day; and for many days after she was
forced to stay in bed. The doctor who came to see her talked about "low
fever," attributed it to too rapid growth, and prescribed sea-bathing for
her that summer. The fever, which was not very severe, was of great
service to Jacqueline. It enabled her to recover in quiet from the
effects of a bitter deception.
Madame de Nailles was not sufficiently uneasy about her to be always at
her bedside. Usually the sick girl stayed alone, with her window-
curtains closed, lying there in the soft half-light that was soothing to
her nerves. The silence was broken at intervals by the voice of Modeste,
who would come and offer her her medicine. When Jacqueline had taken it,
she would shut her eyes, and resume, half asleep, her sad reflections.
These were always the same. What could be the tie between her stepmother
and Marien?
She tried to recall all the proofs of friendship she had seen pass
between them, but all had taken place openly. Nothing that she could
remember seemed suspicious. So she thought at first, but as she thought
more, lying, feverish, upon her bed, several things, little noticed at
the time, were recalled to her remembrance. They might mean nothing, or
they might mean much. In the latter case, Jacqueline could not
understand them very well. But she knew he had called her "Clotilde,"
that he had even dared to say "thou" to her in private--these were things
she knew of her own knowledge. Her pulse beat quicker as she thought of
them; her head burned. In that studio, where she had passed so many
happy hours, had Marien and her stepmother ever met as lovers?
Her stepmother and Marien! She could not understand what it meant.
Must she apply to them a dreadful word that she had picked up in the
history books, where it had been associated with such women as Margaret
of Burgundy, Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne Boleyn, and other princesses of
very evil reputation? She had looked it out in the dictionary, where the
meaning given was: "To be unfaithful to conjugal vows." Even then she
could not understand precisely the meaning of adultery, and she set
herself to solve it during the long lonely days when she was
convalescent. When she was able to walk from one room to another, she
wandered in a loose dressing-gown, whose long, lank folds showed that she
had grown taller and thinner during her illness, into the room that held
the books, and went boldly up to the bookcase, the key of which had been
left in the lock, for everybody had entire confidence in Jacqueline's
scrupulous honesty. Never before had she broken a promise; she knew that
a well-brought-up young girl ought to read only such books as were put
into her hands. The idea of taking a volume from those shelves had no
more occurred to her than the idea of taking money out of somebody's
purse; that is, up to this moment it had not occurred to her to do so;
but now that she had lost all respect for those in authority over her,
Jacqueline considered herself released from any obligation to obey them.
She therefore made use of the first opportunity that presented itself to
take down a novel of George Sand, which she had heard spoken of as a very
dangerous book, not doubting it would throw some light on the subject
that absorbed her. But she shut up the volume in a rage when she found
that it had nothing but excuses to offer for the fall of a married woman.
After that, and guided only by chance, she read a number of other novels,
most of which were of antediluvian date, thus accounting, she supposed,
for their sentiments, which she found old fashioned. We should be wrong,
however, if we supposed that Jacqueline's crude judgment of these books
had nothing in common with true criticism. Her only object, however, in
reading all this sentimental prose was to discover, as formerly she had
found in poetry, something that applied to her own case; but she soon
discovered that all the sentimental heroines in the so-called bad books
were persons who had had bad husbands; besides, they were either widows
or old women--at least thirty years old! It was astounding! There was
nothing--absolutely nothing--about young girls, except instances in which
they renounced their hopes of happiness. What an injustice! Among these
victims the two that most attracted her sympathy were Madame de Camors
and Renee Mauperin. But what horrors surrounded them! What a varied
assortment of deceptions, treacheries, and mysteries, lay hidden under
the outward decency and respectability of what men called "the world!"
Her young head became a stage on which strange plays were acted. What
one reads is good or bad for us, according to the frame of mind in which
we read it--according as we discover in a volume healing for the sickness
of our souls--or the contrary. In view of the circumstances in which she
found herself, what Jacqueline absorbed from these books was poison.
When, after the physical and moral crisis through which she had passed,
Jacqueline resumed the life of every day, she had in her sad eyes, around
which for some time past had been dark circles, an expression of anxiety
such as the first contact with a knowledge of evil might have put into
Eve's eyes after she had plucked the apple. Her investigations had very
imperfectly enlightened her. She was as much perplexed as ever, with
some false ideas besides. When she was well again, however, she
continued weak and languid; she felt somehow as if, she had come back to
her old surroundings from some place far away. Everything about her now
seemed sad and unfamiliar, though outwardly nothing was altered.
Her parents had apparently forgotten the unhappy episode of the picture.
It had been sent away to Grandchaux, which was tantamount to its being
buried. Hubert Marien had resumed his habits of intimacy in the family.
From that time forth he took less and less notice of Jacqueline--whether
it were that he owed her a grudge for all the annoyance she had been the
means of bringing upon him, or whether he feared to burn himself in the
flame which had once scorched him more than he admitted to himself, who
can say? Perhaps he was only acting in obedience to orders.
CHAPTER VI
A CONVENT FLOWER
One of Jacqueline's first walks, after she had recovered, was to see her
cousin Giselle at her convent. She did not seek this friend's society
when she was happy and in a humor for amusement, for she thought her a
little straightlaced, or, as she said, too like a nun; but nobody could
condole or sympathize with a friend in trouble like Giselle. It seemed
as if nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity--a Gray
Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of her
somewhat dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than stimulated,
by the education she had received.
The Benedictine Convent is situated in a dull street on the left bank of
the Seine, all gardens and hotels--that is, detached houses. Grass
sprouted here and there among the cobblestones. There were no street-
lamps and no policemen. Profound silence reigned there. The petals of
an acacia, which peeped timidly over its high wall, dropped, like flakes
of snow, on the few pedestrians who passed by it in the springtime.
The enormous porte-cochere gave entrance into a square courtyard, on one
side of which was the chapel, on the other, the door that led into the
convent. Here Jacqueline presented herself, accompanied by her old
nurse, Modeste. She had not yet resumed her German lessons, and was
striving to put off as long as possible any intercourse with Fraulein
Schult, who had known of her foolish fancy, and who might perhaps renew
the odious subject. Walking with Modeste, on the contrary, seemed like
going back to the days of her childhood, the remembrance of which soothed
her like a recollection of happiness and peace, now very far away; it was
a reminiscence of the far-off limbo in which her young soul, pure and
white, had floated, without rapture, but without any great grief or pain.
The porteress showed them into the parlor. There they found several
pupils who were talking to members of their families, from whom they were
separated by a grille, whose black bars gave to those within the
appearance of captives, and made rather a barrier to eager demonstrations
of affection, though they did not hinder the reception of good things to
eat.
"Tiens! I have brought you some chocolate," said Jacqueline to Giselle,
as soon as her cousin appeared, looking far prettier in her black cloth
frock than when she wore an ordinary walking-costume. Her fair hair was
drawn back 'a la Chinoise' from a white forehead resembling that of a
German Madonna; it was one of those foreheads, slightly and delicately
curved, which phrenologists tell us indicate reflection and enthusiasm.
But Giselle, without thanking Jacqueline for the chocolate, exclaimed at
once: "Mon Dieu! What has been the matter with you?"
She spoke rather louder than usual, it being understood that
conversations were to be carried on in a low tone, so as not to interfere
with those of other persons. She added: "I find you so altered."
"Yes--I have been ill," said Jacqueline, carelessly, "sorrow has made me
ill," she added, in a whisper, looking to see whether the nun, who was
discreetly keeping watch, walking to and fro behind the grille, might
chance to be listening. "Oh, ask me no questions! I must never tell
you--but for me, you must know--the happiness of my life is at an end--
is at an end--"
She felt herself to be very interesting while she was speaking thus; her
sorrows were somewhat assuaged. There was undoubtedly a certain pleasure
in letting some one look down into the unfathomable, mysterious depths of
a suffering soul.
She had expected much curiosity on the part of Giselle, and had resolved
beforehand to give her no answers; but Giselle only sighed, and said,
softly:
"Ah--my poor darling! I, too, am very unhappy. If you only knew--"
"How? Good heavens! what can have happened to you here?"
"Here? oh! nothing, of course; but this year I am to leave the convent
--and I think I can guess what will then be before me."
Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle,
with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till
she had passed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into
Jacqueline's ear.
From a few words that had passed between her grandmother and Madame
d'Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.
"But that need not make you unhappy," said Jacqueline, "unless he is
really distasteful to you."
"That is what I am not sure about--perhaps he is not the one I think.
But I hardly know why--I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one of
our neighbors in the country. Grandmamma has several times spoken in my
presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates--they touch each
other--oh! I know her ideas! she wants a man well-born, one who has a
position in the world--some one, as she says, who knows something of
life--that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not much
hair on his head--like Monsieur de Talbrun."
"Is he very ugly--this Monsieur de Talbrun?"
"He's not ugly--and not handsome. But, just think! he is thirty-four!"
Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste
in such matters.
"That's twice my age," sighed Giselle.
"Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your
age--for instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and
a hundred and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year--but really to
be twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than
yourself."
In the midst of this chatter, which was beginning to attract the notice
of the nun, they broke off with a laugh, but it was only one of those
laughs 'au bout des levres', uttered by persons who have made up their
minds to be unhappy. Then Giselle went on:
"I know nothing about him, you understand--but he frightens me.
I tremble to think of taking his arm, of talking to him, of being his
wife. Just think even of saying thou to him!"
"But married people don't say thou to each other nowadays," said
Jacqueline, "it is considered vulgar."
"But I shall have to call him by his Christian name!"
"What is Monsieur de Talbrun's Christian name?"
"Oscar."
"Humph! That is not a very pretty name, but you could get over the
difficulty--you could say 'mon ami'. After all, your sorrows are less
than mine."
"Poor Jacqueline!" said Giselle, her soft hazel eyes moist with
sympathy.
"I have lost at one blow all my illusions, and I have made a horrible
discovery, that it would be wicked to tell to any one--you understand--
not even to my confessor."
"Heavens! but you could tell your mother!"
"You forget, I have no mother," replied Jacqueline in a tone which
frightened her friend: "I had a dear mamma once, but she would enter less
than any one into my sorrows; and as to my father--it would make things
worse to speak to him," she added, clasping her hands. "Have you ever
read any novels, Giselle?"
"Hem!" said the discreet voice of the nun, by way of warning.
"Two or three by Walter Scott."
"Oh! then you can imagine nothing like what I could tell you. How
horrid that nun is, she stops always as she comes near us! Why can't she
do as Modeste does, and leave us to talk by ourselves?"
It seemed indeed as if the Argus in a black veil had overheard part of
this conversation, not perhaps the griefs of Jacqueline, which were not
very intelligible, but some of the words spoken by Giselle, for, drawing
near her, she said, gently: "We, too, shall all grieve to lose you, my
dearest child; but remember one can serve God anywhere, and save one's
soul--in the world as well as in a convent." And she passed on, giving a
kind smile to Jacqueline, whom she knew, having seen her several times in
the convent parlor, and whom she thought a nice girl, notwithstanding
what she called her "fly-away airs"--"the airs they acquire from modern
education," she said to herself, with a sigh.
"Those poor ladies would have us think of nothing but a future life,"
said Jacqueline, shrugging her shoulders.
"We ought to think of it first of all," said Giselle, who had become
serious. "Sometimes I think my place should have been among these ladies
who have brought me up. They are so good, and they seem to be so happy.
Besides, do you know, I stand less in awe of them than I do of my
grandmother. When grandmamma orders me I never shall dare to object,
even if--But you must think me very selfish, my poor Jacqueline! I am
talking only of myself. Do you know what you ought to do as you go away?
You should go into the chapel, and pray with all your heart for me, that
I may be brought in safety through my troubles about which I have told
you, and I will do the same for yours, about which you have not told me.
An exchange of prayers is the best foundation for a friendship," she
added; for Giselle had many little convent maxims at her fingers' ends,
to which, when she uttered them, her sincerity of look and tone gave a
personal meaning.
"You are right," said Jacqueline, much moved. "It has done me good to
see you. Take this chocolate."
"And you must take this," said Giselle, giving her a little illuminated
card, with sacred words and symbols.
"Adieu, dearest-say, have you ever detested any one?"
"Never!" cried Giselle, with horror.
"Well! I do detest--detest--You are right, I will go into the chapel.
I need some exorcism."
And laughing at her use of this last word--the same little mirthless
laugh that she had uttered before--Jacqueline went away, followed by the
admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their
cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She
crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel,
where she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place,
tinged purple by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to
enlarge the little chancel, parted in two by a double grille, behind
which the nuns could hear the service without being seen.
The silence was so deep that the low murmur of a prayer could now and
then be heard. The worshipers might have fancied themselves a hundred
leagues from all the noises of the world, which seemed to die out when
they reached the convent walls.
Jacqueline read, and re-read mechanically, the words printed in letters
of gold on the little card Giselle had given her. It was a symbolical
picture, and very ugly; but the words were: "Oh! that I had wings like a
dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest."
"Wings!" she repeated, with vague aspiration. The aspiration seemed to
disengage her from herself, and from this earth, which had nothing more
to offer her. Ah! how far away was now the time when she had entered
churches, full of happiness and hope, to offer a candle that her prayer
might be granted, which she felt sure it would be! All was vanity! As
she gazed at the grille, behind which so many women, whose worldly lives
had been cut short, now lived, safe from the sorrows and temptations of
this world, Jacqueline seemed for the first time to understand why
Giselle regretted that she might not share forever the blessed peace
enjoyed in the convent. A torpor stole over her, caused by the dimness,
the faint odor of the incense, and the solemn silence. She imagined
herself in the act of giving up the world. She saw herself in a veil,
with her eyes raised to Heaven, very pale, standing behind the grille.
She would have to cut off her hair.
That seemed hard, but she would make the sacrifice. She would accept
anything, provided the ungrateful pair, whom she would not name, could
feel sorrow for her loss--maybe even remorse. Full of these ideas, which
certainly had little in common with the feelings of those who seek to
forgive those who trespass against them, Jacqueline continued to imagine
herself a Benedictine sister, under the soothing influence of her
surroundings, just as she had mistaken the effects of physical weakness
when she was ill for a desire to die. Such feelings were the result of a
void which the whole universe, as she thought, never could fill, but it
was really a temporary vacuum, like that caused by the loss of a first
tooth. These teeth come out with the first jar, and nature intends them
to be speedily replaced by others, much more permanent; but children cry
when they are pulled out, and fancy they are in very tight. Perhaps they
suffer, after all, nearly as much as they think they do.
"Mademoiselle!" said Modeste, touching her on the shoulder.
"I was content to be here," answered Jacqueline, with a sigh. "Do you
know, Modeste," she went on, when they got out of doors, "that I have
almost made up my mind to be a nun. What do you say to that?"
"Heaven forbid!" cried the old nurse, much startled.
"Life is so hard," replied her young mistress.
"Not for you, anyhow. It would be a sin to say so."
"Ah! Modeste, we so little know the real truth of things--we can see only
appearances. Don't you think that a linen band over my forehead would be
very becoming to me? I should look like Saint Theresa."
"And what would be the good of your looking like Saint Theresa, when
there would be nobody to tell you so?" said Modeste, with the practical
good-sense that never forsook her. "You would be beautiful for yourself
alone. You would not even be allowed a looking-glass just talk about
that fancy to Monsieur--we should soon see what he would say to such a
notion."
M. de Nailles, having just left the Chamber, was crossing the Pont de la
Concorde on foot at this moment. His daughter ran up to him, and caught
him by the arm. They walked homeward talking of very different things
from bolts and bars. The Baron, who was a weak man, thought in his heart
that he had been too severe with his daughter for some time past. As he
recalled what had taken place, the anger of Madame de Nailles in the
matter of the picture seemed to him to have been extreme and unnecessary.
Jacqueline was just at an age when young girls are apt to be nervous and
impressionable; they had been wrong to be rough with one who was so
sensitive. His wife was quite of his opinion, she acknowledged (not
wishing him to think too much on the subject) that she had been too
quick-tempered.
"Yes," she had said, frankly, "I am jealous; I want things to myself. I
own I was angry when I thought that Jacqueline was about to throw off my
authority, and hurt when I found she was capable of keeping up a
concealment--when I believed she was so open always with me. My behavior
was foolish, I acknowledge. But what can we do? Neither of us can go
and ask her pardon?"
"Of course not," said the father, "all we can do is to treat her with a
little more consideration for the future; and, with your permission, I
shall use her illness as an excuse for spoiling her a little."
"You have carte blanche, my dear, I agree to everything." So M. de
Nailles, with his daughter's arm in his, began to spoil her, as he had
intended.
"You are still rather pale," he said, "but sea-bathing will change all
that. Would you like to go to the seaside next month?"
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