White Lies Part 35

"Yes,--no. I am very angry with him. I won't hear a word in his favor,"

said Rose pouting: then she gave his defender a kiss. "Yes, dear," said Josephine, answering the kiss, and ignoring the words, "he is a dear; and he is not cross, nor so very vain, poor boy! now don't you see what it was?"

"No."

"Yes, you do, you little cunning thing: you are too shrewd not to see everything."

"No, indeed, Josephine; do tell me, don't keep me waiting: I can't bear that."

"Well, then--jealous! A little."

"Jealous? Oh, what fun! Of Camille? Ha! ha! Little goose!"

"And," said Josephine very seriously, "I almost think he would be jealous of any one that occupied your attention. I watched him more or less all the evening."

"All the better. I'll torment my lord."

"Heaven forbid you should be so cruel."

"Oh! I will not make him unhappy, but I'll tease him a little; it is not in nature to abstain."

This foible detected in her lover, Rose was very gay at the prospect of amus.e.m.e.nt it afforded her.

And I think I have many readers who at this moment are awaiting unmixed enjoyment and hilarity from the same source.

I wish them joy of their prospect.

Edouard called the next day: he wore a gloomy air. Rose met this with a particularly cheerful one; on this, Edouard's face cleared up, and he was himself again; agreeable as this was, Rose felt a little disappointed. "I am afraid he is not very jealous after all," thought she.

Josephine left her room this day and mingled once more with the family.

The bare sight of her was enough for Camille at first, but after awhile he wanted more. He wanted to be often alone with her; but several causes co-operated to make her shy of giving him many such opportunities: first, her natural delicacy, coupled with her habit of self-denial; then her fear of shocking her mother, and lastly her fear of her own heart, and of Camille, whose power over her she knew. For Camille, when he did get a sweet word alone with her, seemed to forget everything except that she was his betrothed, and that he had come back alive to marry her.

He spoke to her of his love with an ardor and an urgency that made her thrill with happiness, but at the same time shrink with a certain fear and self-reproach. Possessed with a feeling no stronger than hers, but single, he did not comprehend the tumult, the trouble, the daily contest in her heart. The wind seemed to him to be always changing, and hot and cold the same hour. Since he did not even see that she was acting in hourly fear of her mother's eye, he was little likely to penetrate her more hidden sentiments; and then he had not touched her key-note,--self-denial.

Women are self-denying and uncandid. Men are self-indulgent and outspoken.

And this is the key to a thousand double misunderstandings; for believe me, good women are just as stupid in misunderstanding men as honest men are in misunderstanding women.

To Camille, Josephine's fluctuations, joys, tremors, love, terror, modesty, seemed one grand total, caprice. The component parts of it he saw not; and her caprice tortured him almost to madness. Too penitent to give way again to violent pa.s.sion, he gently fretted. His health retrograded and his temper began to sour. The eye of timid love that watched him with maternal anxiety from under its long lashes saw this with dismay, and Rose, who looked into her sister's bosom, devoted herself once more to soothe him without compromising Josephine's delicacy. Matters were not so bad but what a fine sprightly girl like Rose could cheer up a dejected but manly colonel; and Rose was generally successful.

But then, unfortunately, this led to a fresh mystification. Riviere's natural jealousy revived, and found constant food in the attention Rose paid Camille, a brilliant colonel living in the house while he, poor wretch, lived in lodgings. The false position of all the parties brought about some singular turns. I give from their number one that forms a link, though a small one, in my narrative.

One day Edouard came to tell Rose she was making him unhappy; he had her alone in the Pleasaunce; she received him with a radiant smile, and they had a charming talk,--a talk all about HIM: what the family owed him, etc.

On this, his late jealousy and sense of injury seemed a thing of three years ago, and never to return. So hard it is for the loving heart to resist its sun.

Jacintha came with a message from the colonel: "Would it be agreeable to Mademoiselle Rose to walk with him at the usual hour?"

"Certainly," said Rose.

As Jacintha was retiring Edouard called to her to stop a minute.

Then, turning to Rose, he begged her very ceremoniously to reconsider that determination.

"What determination?"

"To sacrifice me to this Colonel Dujardin." Still politely, only a little grimly.

Rose opened her eyes. "Are you mad?" inquired she with quiet hauteur.

"Neither mad nor a fool," was the reply. "I love you too well to share your regard with any one, upon any terms; least of all upon these, that there is to be a man in the world at whose beck and call you are to be, and at whose orders you are to break off an interview with me.

Perdition!"

"Dear Edouard, what folly! Can you suspect me of discourtesy, as well as of--I know not what. Colonel Dujardin will join us, that is all, and we shall take a little walk with him."

"Not I. I decline the intrusion; you are engaged with me, and I have things to say to you that are not fit for that puppy to hear. So choose between me and him, and choose forever."

Rose colored. "I should be very sorry to choose either of you forever; but for this afternoon I choose you."

"Oh, thank you--my whole life shall prove my grat.i.tude for this preference."

Rose beckoned Jacintha, and sent her with an excuse to Colonel Dujardin.

She then turned with an air of mock submission to Edouard. "I am at monsieur's ORDERS."

Then this unhappy novice, being naturally good-natured, thanked her again and again for her condescension in setting his heart at rest. He proposed a walk, since his interference had lost her one. She yielded a cold a.s.sent. This vexed him, but he took it for granted it would wear off before the end of the walk. Edouard's heart bounded, but he loved her too sincerely to be happy unless he could see her happy too; the malicious thing saw this, or perhaps knew it by instinct, and by means of this good feeling of his she revenged herself for his tyranny. She tortured him as only a woman can torture, and as even she can torture only a worthy man, and one who loves her. In the course of that short walk this inexperienced girl, strong in the instincts and inborn arts of her s.e.x, drove pins and needles, needles and pins, of all sorts and sizes, through her lover's heart.

She was everything by turns, except kind, and nothing for long together.

She was peevish, she was ostentatiously patient and submissive, she was inattentive to her companion and seemingly wrapped up in contemplation of absent things and persons, the colonel to wit; she was dogged, repulsive, and cold; and she never was herself a single moment. They returned to the gate of the Pleasaunce. "Well, mademoiselle," said Riviere very sadly, "that interloper might as well have been with us."

"Of course he might, and you would have lost nothing by permitting me to be courteous to a guest and an invalid. If you had not played the tyrant, and taken the matter into your own hands, I should have found means to soothe your jeal--I mean your vanity; but you preferred to have your own way. Well, you have had it."

"Yes, mademoiselle, you have given me a lesson; you have shown me how idle it is to attempt to force a young lady's inclinations in anything."

He bade her good-day, and went away sorrowful.

She cut Camille dead for the rest of the day.

Next morning, early, Edouard called expressly to see her. "Mademoiselle Rose," said he, humbly, "I called to apologize for the ungentlemanly tone of my remonstrances yesterday."

"Fiddle-dee," said Rose. "Don't do it again; that is the best apology."

"I am not likely to offend so again," said he sadly. "I am going away. I am sorry to say I am promoted; my new post is ten leagues. HE WILL HAVE IT ALL HIS OWN WAY NOW. But perhaps it is best. Were I to stay here, I foresee you would soon lose whatever friendly feeling you have for me."

"Am I so changeable? I am not considered so," remonstrated Rose, gently.

Riviere explained; "I am not vain," said he, with that self-knowledge which is so general an attribute of human beings; "no man less so, nor am I jealous; but I respect myself, and I could never be content to share your time and your regard with Colonel Dujardin, nor with a much better man. See now; he has made me arrogant. Was I ever so before?"

"No! no! no! and I forgive you now, my poor Edouard."

"He has made you cold as ice to me."