Gerfaut Part 2

"I am not so deaf as that yet," replied the old maid. "Shut that window; do you not know that currents of air attract lightning?"

Clemence obeyed, dropping the curtain to shut out the flashes of lightning which continued to dart through the heavens; she then approached the fireplace.

"Since you are so afraid of lightning," said her aunt; "which, by the way, is perfectly ridiculous in a Corandeuil, what induced you to go out upon the balcony? The sleeve of your gown is wet. That is the way one gets cold; afterward, there is nothing but an endless array of syrups and drugs. You ought to change your gown and put on something warmer.

Who would ever think of dressing like that in such weather as this?"

"I a.s.sure you, aunt, it is not cold. It is because you have a habit of always being near the fire--"

"Ah! habit! when you are my age you will not hint at such a thing. Now, everything goes wonderfully well; you never listen to my advice--you go out in the wind and rain with that flighty Aline and your husband, who has no more sense than his sister; you will pay for it later. Open the curtains, I pray; the storm is over, and I wish to read the Gazette."

The young woman obeyed a second time and stood with her forehead pressed against the gla.s.s. The distant rumbling of the thunder announced the end of the storm; but a few flashes still traversed the horizon.

"Aunt," said she, after a moment's silence, "come and look at the Montigny rocks; when the lightning strikes them they look like a file of silver columns or a procession of ghosts."

"What a romantic speech," growled the old lady, never taking her eyes from her paper.

"I a.s.sure you I am not romantic the least in the world," replied Clemence. "I simply find the storm a distraction, and here, you know, there is no great choice of pleasures."

"Then you find it dull?"

"Oh, aunt, horribly so!" At these words, p.r.o.nounced with a heartfelt accent, the young woman dropped into an armchair.

Mademoiselle de Corandeuil took off her eye-gla.s.ses, put the paper upon the table and gazed for several moments at her pretty niece's face, which was tinged with a look of deep melancholy. She then straightened herself up in her chair, and, leaning forward, asked in a low tone:

"Have you had any trouble with your husband?"

"If so, I should not be so bored," replied Clemence, in a gay tone, which she repented immediately, for she continued more calmly:

"No, aunt; Christian is kind, very kind; he is very much attached to me, and full of good-humor and attentions. You have seen how he has allowed me to arrange my apartments to suit myself, even taking down the part.i.tion and enlarging the windows; and yet, you know how much he clings to everything that is old about the house. He tries to do everything for my pleasure. Did he not go to Strasbourg the other day to buy a pony for me, because I thought t.i.tania was too skittish? It would be impossible to show greater kindness."

"Your husband," suddenly interrupted Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, for she held the praise of others in sovereign displeasure, "is a Bergenheim like all the Bergenheims present, past, and future, including your little sister-in-law, who appears more as if she had been brought up with boys than at the 'Sacred Heart.' He is a worthy son of his father there," said she, pointing to one of the portraits near the young Royal-Na.s.sau officer; "and he was the most brutal, unbearable, and detestable of all the dragoons in Lorraine; so much so that he got into three quarrels at Nancy in one month, and at Metz, over a game of checkers, he killed the poor Vicomte de Megrigny, who was worth a hundred of him and danced so well! Some one described Bergenheim as being 'proud as a peac.o.c.k, as stubborn as a mule, and as furious as a lion!' Ugly race! ugly race! What I say to you now, Clemence, is to excuse your husband's faults, for it would be time lost to try to correct them. However, all men are alike; and since you are Madame de Bergenheim, you must accept your fate and bear it as well as possible.

And then, if you have your troubles, you still have your good aunt to whom you can confide them and who will not allow you to be tyrannized over. I will speak to your husband."

Clemence saw, from the first words of this tirade, that she must arm herself with resignation; for anything which concerned the Bergenheims aroused one of the hobbies which the old maid rode with a most complacent spite; so she settled herself back in her chair like a person who would at least be comfortable while she listened to a tiresome discourse, and busied herself during this lecture caressing with the tip of a very shapely foot the top of one of the andirons.

"But, aunt," said she at last, when the tirade was over, and she gave a rather drawling expression to her voice, "I can not understand why you have taken this idea into your head that Christian renders me unhappy.

I repeat it, it is impossible that one should be kinder to me than he, and, on my side, I have the greatest respect and friendship for him."

"Very well, if he is such a pearl of husbands, if you live so much like turtle-doves-and, to tell the truth, I do not believe a word of it--what causes this ennui of which you complain and which has been perfectly noticeable for some time? When I say ennui, it is more than that; it is sadness, it is grief? You grow thinner every day; you are as pale as a ghost; just at this moment, your complexion is gone; you will end by being a regular fright. They say that it is the fashion to be pale nowadays; a silly notion, indeed, but it will not last, for complexion makes the woman."

The old lady said this like a person who had her reasons for not liking pale complexions, and who gladly took pimples for roses.

Madame de Bergenheim bowed her head as if to acquiesce in this decision, and then resumed in her drawling voice:

"I know that I am very unreasonable, and I am often vexed with myself for having so little control over my feelings, but it is beyond my strength. I have a tired sensation, a disgust for everything, something which I can not overcome. It is an inexplicable physical and moral languor, for which, for this reason, I see no remedy. I am weary and I suffer; I am sure it will end in my being ill. Sometimes I wish I were dead. However, I have really no reason to be unhappy. I suppose I am happy--I ought to be happy."

"Truly, I can not understand in the least the women of today. Formerly, upon exciting occasions, we had a good nervous attack and all was over; the crisis pa.s.sed, we became amiable again, put on rouge and went to a ball. Now it is languor, ennui, stomach troubles--all imagination and humbug! The men are just as bad, and they call it spleen! Spleen! a new discovery, an English importation! Fine things come to us from England; to begin with, the const.i.tutional government! All this is perfectly ridiculous. As for you, Clemence, you ought to put an end to such childishness. Two months ago, in Paris, you did not have any of the rest that you enjoy here. I had serious reasons for wishing to delay my departure; my apartment to refurnish, my neuralgia which still troubles me--and Constance, who had just been in the hands of the doctor, was hardly in a condition to travel, poor creature! You would listen to nothing; we had to submit to your caprices, and now--"

"But, aunt, you admitted yourself that it was the proper thing for me to do, to join my husband. Was it not enough, and too much, to have left him to pa.s.s the entire winter alone here while I was dancing in Paris?"

"It was very proper, of course, and I do not blame you. But why does the very thing you so much desired two months ago bore you so terribly now? In Paris you talked all the time of Bergenheim, longed only for Bergenheim, you had duties to fulfil, you wished to be with your husband; you bothered and wore me out with your conjugal love. When back at Bergenheim, you dream and sigh for Paris. Do not shake your head; I am an old aunt to whom you pay no heed, but who sees clearly yet. Will you do me the favor to tell me what it is that you regret in Paris at this time of the year, when there are no b.a.l.l.s or parties, and not one human being worth visiting, for all the people you know are in the country? Is it because--"

Mademoiselle de Corandeuil did not finish her sentence, but she put a severity into these three words which seemed to condense all the quintessence of prudery that a celibacy of sixty years could coagulate in an old maid's heart.

Clemence raised her eyes to her aunt's face as if to demand an explanation.

It was such a calm, steady glance that the latter could not help being impressed by it.

"Well," said she, softening her voice, "there is no necessity for putting on such queenly airs; we are here alone, and you know that I am a kind aunt to you. Now, then, speak freely--have you left anything or any person in Paris, the remembrance of which makes your sojourn here more tiresome than it really is? Any of your adorers of the winter?"

"What an idea, aunt! Did I have any adorers?" exclaimed Madame de Bergenheim, quickly, as if trying to conceal by a smile the rosy flush that mounted to her cheeks.

"And what if you should have some, child?" continued the old maid, to whom curiosity lent an unaccustomed coaxing accent to her voice, "where would be the harm? Is it forbidden to please? When one is of good birth, must one not live in society and hold one's position there? One need not bury one's self in a desert at twenty-three years of age, and you really are charming enough to inspire love; you understand, I do not say, to experience it; but when one is young and pretty conquests are made almost unwittingly. You are not the first of the family to whom that has happened; you are a Corandeuil. Now, then, my good Clemence, what troubled heart is pining for you in Paris? Is it Monsieur de Mauleon?"

"Monsieur de Mauleon!" exclaimed the young woman, bursting into laughter; "he, a heart! and a troubled one, too! Oh, aunt, you do him honor! Monsieur de Mauleon, who is past forty-five years old and wears stays! an audacious man who squeezes his partners' hands in the dance and looks at them with pa.s.sionate glances! Oh! Monsieur de Mauleon!"

Mademoiselle de Corandeuil sanctioned by a slight grimace of her thin lips her niece's burst of gayety, when, with one hand upon her heart, she rolled her sparkling eyes in imitation of the languishing air of her unfortunate adorer.

"Perhaps it is Monsieur d'Arzenac?"

"Monsieur d'Arzenac is certainly very nice; he has perfect manners; it may be that he did not disdain to chat with me; on my side, I found his conversation very entertaining; but you may rest a.s.sured that he did not think of me nor I of him. Besides, you know that he is engaged to marry Mademoiselle de la Neuville."

"Monsieur de Gerfaut?" continued Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, with the persistency with which aged people follow an idea, and as if determined to pa.s.s in review all the young men of their acquaintance until she had discovered her niece's secret.

The latter was silent a moment before replying.

"How can you think of such a thing, aunt?" said she at last, "a man with such a bad reputation, who writes books that one hardly dares read, and plays that it's almost a sin to witness! Did you not hear Madame de Pontivers say that a young woman who cared for her reputation would permit his visits very rarely?"

"Madame de Pontivers is a prude, whom I can not endure, with her show of little, grimaces and her pretentious, outrageous mock-modesty. Did she not take it into her head this winter to const.i.tute me her chaperon? I gave her to understand that a widow forty years old was quite old enough to go about alone! She has a mania for fearing that she may be compromised. The idea of turning up her nose at Monsieur de Gerfaut!

What presumption! He certainly is too clever ever to solicit the honor of being bored to death in her house; for he is clever, very clever. I never could understand your dislike for him, nor your haughty manner of treating him; especially, during the latter part of our stay in Paris."

"One is not mistress of one's dislikes or affections, aunt. But to reply to your questions, I will say that you may rest a.s.sured that none of these gentlemen, nor any of those whom you might name, has the slightest effect upon my state of mind. I am bored because it probably is my nature to need distractions, and there are none in this deserted place.

It is an involuntary disagreeableness, for which I reproach myself and which I hope will pa.s.s away. Rest a.s.sured, that the root of the evil does not lie in my heart."

Mademoiselle de Corandeuil understood by the cold and rather dry tone in which these words were spoken that her niece wished to keep her secret, if she had one; she could not prevent a gesture of anger as she saw her advances thus repelled, but felt that she was no wiser than when she began the conversation. She manifested her disappointment by pushing the dog aside with her foot--the poor thing was perfectly innocent!--and in a cross tone, which was much more familiar than her former coaxing one, she continued:

"Very well, since I am wrong, since your husband adores you and you him, since, to sum it all up, your heart is perfectly tranquil and free, your conduct is devoid of common-sense, and I advise you to change it. I warn you that all this hypochondria, paleness, and languor are caprices which are very disagreeable to others. There is a Provence proverb which says: Vaillance de Blacas, prudence de Pontevez, caprice de Corandeuil. If there was not such a saying, it should be created for you, for you have something incomprehensible enough in your character to make a saint swear. If anybody should know you, it is I, who brought you up. I do not wish to reproach you, but you gave me trouble enough; you were a most wayward, capricious, and fantastic creature, a spoiled child--"

"Aunt," interrupted Clemence, with heightened color in her pale cheeks, "you have told me of my faults often enough for me to know them, and, if they were not corrected, it was not your fault, for you never spared me scoldings. If I had not been so unfortunate as to lose my mother when I was a baby, I should not have given you so much trouble."

Tears came into the young woman's eyes, but she had enough control over herself to keep them from streaming down her burning cheeks. Taking a journal from the table, she opened it, in order to conceal her emotion and to put an end to this conversation, which had become painful to her. Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, on her side, carefully replaced her eye-gla.s.ses upon her nose, and, solemnly stretching herself upon her chair, she turned over the leaves of the 'Gazette de France,' which she had neglected so long.

Silence reigned for some moments in the room. The aunt apparently read the paper very attentively. Her niece sat motionless, with her eyes fastened upon the yellow cover of the last number of 'La Mode,' which had chanced to fall into her hands. She aroused herself at last from her revery and carelessly turned over the leaves of the review in a manner which showed how little interest she felt in it. As she turned the first page a surprised cry escaped her, and her eyes were fastened upon the pamphlet with eager curiosity. Upon the frontispiece, where the d.u.c.h.esse de Berry's coat-of-arms is engraved, and in the middle of the shield, which was left empty at this time by the absence of the usual fleurs de lys, was sketched with a pencil a bird whose head was surmounted by a baron's coronet.

Curious to know what could have caused her niece so much surprise, Mademoiselle de Corandeuil stretched out her neck and gazed for an instant upon the page without seeing, at first, anything extraordinary, but finally her glance rested upon the armorial bearings, and she discovered the new feature added to the royal Bourbon coat-of-arms.

"A c.o.c.k!" exclaimed she, after a moment's reflection; "a c.o.c.k upon Madame's shield! What can that mean, 'bon Dieu'! and it is not engraved nor lithographed; it is drawn with a pencil."