Jacquetta/Chapter VI

M. de Montcontour returned home. He ate nothing at dinner. He scarcely spoke. His face was pale and drawn, and though he tried to conceal the state of agitation in which he was, his mother and aunt saw that his hand shook.

Neither of the ladies was in good spirits, but Madame de Montcontour affected a buoyancy she did not possess, and talked gaily of excursions in the neighbourhood, and of economies in the farm. Her son was not deceived, he knew that this was put on to disguise her inner trouble. The baroness loved her son, and was very proud of him. Indeed, he was the idol of her worship, and she would not suffer her idol to cast himself down from his pedestal. She had talked the matter over with her sister. She had known for some time about his visits to Champclair, she had even heard of his journey from St. Malo with the ladies, and her suspicions and fears had been roused. She had called on Mrs Asheton, and from that lady had heard about the Fairbrothers. The father of the young demoiselle was a grocer, and the mother was the niece of Mdlle. Painaulait, who had been the servant of Madame de Hoelgoet. Mrs Asheton concealed nothing, she insisted on the vulgarity of Mrs Fairbrother, and when asked about the daughter, shrugged her shoulders. It was to the interest of Mrs Asheton to set the baroness against Jacquetta, because Mrs Asheton, as a good mother, wanted the girl for her own son, and knew perfectly that the baron was his rival. Accordingly, when Alphonse announced to his mother that he desired to marry Mdlle. de Fareboutier, as he rendered her name, craftily inserting the de as a hope of disguising to his mother the plebian origin of his affianced, he found that the lady was perfectly acquainted with the antecedents of his beloved, she scorned the assumption of de, and asked if he had not mistaken the end of her name, and that it was boutiquier not boutier.

Her son withered under the sarcasm of his mother. He made a pathetic appeal, with much poetry of elocution to her maternal feelings, which entirely failed in its desired effect. Mdlle. de Pleurans threw in her remarks, she sneered at the niece of the Painaulait, because she was the niece of that infamous woman who had ‘assassinated her mistress and plundered her carcase.’ This was an exaggeration, as the baron ventured to point out; the Painaulait had not been guilty of the crimes imputed to her, Madame de Hoelgoet had died of an internal disorder as had been attested by her medical attendant.

‘Feed to say so by the Painaulait,’ interjected Mdlle. de Pleurans.

‘Pardon, ma tante, it was well known that the disorder was ravaging Madame de Hoelgoet for months, even for a year and a half, before it terminated fatally.’

Then Mdlle. de Pleurans changed her attack.

‘Because you cannot recover the property of your family by any other means, you stoop to put your coronet and our unblemished arms under the dirty foot of the menial who robbed us. It is infamous. Sainte Vierge! that I should have lived to see this day!’

‘Again, pardon, aunt. I have not offered my hand to the Painaulait, but to the beautiful and accomplished and virtuous Mdlle. de Fareboutier.’

‘If you utter that de again in connection with the name,’ said Madame de Montcontour rising with dignity, ‘I leave the room.’

She looked coldly, disdainfully, at her son.

‘Alphonse, contemplate these portraits of your ancestresses.’

‘I do, mother, and think they were very ugly women.’

‘Alphonse, they were all titled ladies with pedigrees back to Adam, and historic names.’ ‘We are poor, mother.’

‘But—noble,’ she said sternly.

After a pause she laughed harshly, and said with curling lips, ‘Mademoiselle is an heiress. We shall see the lilies of Montcontour quartered, quartered for eternity, with three pots of Dundee marmalade, in chief—a cheese-scoop. Remember, my son, if she were not an heiress, her detestable modern arms—evoked from Heaven knows where—might pass away into nonentity, and be forgotten, but the arms of an heiress continue, quartered, in permanence, a perpetual glory, or an indelible stain.’

During dinner, after the baron’s return from Champclair, he said in a broken voice to his mother, ‘It is possible that Jacques Asheton may call on me this evening. If so—entertain him; say I am unwell, and cannot see him.’

‘Yes,’ answered the baroness, ‘we will do so.’

When the servants retired, he took some Pistachio nuts, cracked them, and said, ‘Mother, for the last time I ask you to re-consider your determination.’

‘Alphonse, I will never consent.’

‘You, my mother, would wreck my whole existence. You, who gave me life, would take it away. You have been to me my Clotho, even you will be my Antropos—cutting the thread you began to spin.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean this—that if I do not obtain Mdlle. Fareboutier, life has for me no charms, it is a horrible gulf of blackness irradiated by no star. My Jacquette is everything that is amiable, virtuous, noble, and beautiful; it is you, mother, who taught me to love virtue and admire the ideal in woman. It is because I have been thus inspired by you that I aspire to Mdlle. Jacquette. You have taught me to look for a saint, and when I behold the saint, you forbid me to worship her.’

‘Fi-donc! She is no saint, she is a Protestant,’ shrieked Mdlle. de Pleurans. ‘Will you taint the blood of your house with the poison of heresy, as well as mix it with the treacle of the shop!’

‘Remember this, mother,’ said the baron solemnly, ‘if you refuse to allow me to marry the woman I adore, I shall never marry. I shall expire, the last of my race and of my name.’

‘It is well—expire with honour.’

The baron became as pale as one of the almonds on his plate. He stood up nnd bowed to his mother. He said not another word but walked to the door, there turned, looked wildly at her, bowed again, and withdrew.

‘Josephine,’ said Mdlle. de Pleurans, after the silence of several minutes, during which the ladies listened to his retiring step on the stairs, ‘have you not expressed yourself too strongly? What if he were to take you at your word?’

‘How so?’

‘He threatened to put an end to himself; and you bade him do so.’

‘I did not understand his words thus; you exaggerate.’

‘Not at all. Remember his expression. “I will perish, the last of my race and name”—and you replied, “So be it—perish with honour.”’

‘Mon Dieu! I did not think that.’ The baroness became alarmed, and trembled. ‘He meant that he would go to Algiers, and if necessary, die for his country in war.’

‘That is possible, but his words might be taken otherwise, and he might understand yours as conveying an order to him to terminate his blighted life.’

‘Merciful heavens! Celestine! Take off your shoes and steal after him. He has gone to his own room. Listen at the door. Peep through the keyhole. Try the lock. If he has fastened himself in, he means something terrible. I dare not go—my tread is too heavy. You, run.’

The aunt did as requested, and the heart of the baroness beat with alarm. Her poor Alphonse was more enamoured than she had supposed; it was really true that life would be a blank to him without that grocer’s daughter. Why had she been so abrupt with him 1 Why had she not dealt more skilfully with him and used her ingenuity to break through the engagement later on, instead of forbidding it bluntly at the outset, when he was in the first fervour of his passion?

‘Well—oh, Celestine! what is it?’ Mdlle. de Pleurans reappeared at the door, with her finger to her lip.

‘He has locked himself in,’ she said, with a ghastly face.

‘Run, run back,’ exclaimed the agitated mother. ‘Run and look through the keyhole. If you see anything suspicious, come and tell me. Perhaps he is only going to write her a letter—perhaps he is only going to shave.’

The aunt again disappeared.

In the meantime the baron was pacing his room with folded arms. He had a large room with long windows that commanded the garden. Between the windows was a rack on which hung a gun, a sword, and a couple of pistols; also some riding-whips and a pair of spurs. Over the marble mantelshelf, at the end of the room, was a mirror.

The baron, as he paced the room, came up to the looking-glass, and considered himself in it. He saw how pale he was. He saw the red line marked on his white brow by the pressure of the new hat. The leather must have had some improper dressing, for it had drawn his flesh like a blister, and made it very red. An hour and a half had passed since he had removed his hat, yet the red line remained.

The baron went to the window and looked out. Far away, behind yonder belt of poplars, at a distance of about three miles, was Champclair, the place, to which all his thoughts, all his ambition turned. There, where that dense osier-growth was visible, lay the Loire, that river which had been choked with the body of royalists in the Reign of Terror. His grandfather on his mother’s side had perished in one of the Noyades. None of his family feared death. The sky was very blue; not a bird was in it—yes, there was a magpie, not high up, but in the garden, darting past the arbre Judas. One magpie for sorrow. For sorrow! what sorrow was his! A sigh escaped his bosom. Again he paced the room, and again hooked at himself in the glass. He started. It seemed to him that his dark hair was turned white in places. No wonder! He had heard of men condemned to death whose raven locks had been bleached in a night. Why not his? He had suffered mortal agony, and a night and a day of inexpressible desolation.

He ran and got himself a hand toilette-glass, and held it behind the back of his head, then at the side. He had been mistaken. The side-light from the windows on his smooth and glossy hair had given a pale reflection. On closer examination he found he had been misled by appearances. His hair had not changed a tint.

Then he flung himself at full length on his sofa, and clasped his hands over his eyes to shut out the light that poured in on him through the windows. He drew up his right leg till it was bent as much as it could bend, whilst the left was extended, and the foot drooped like a fuchsia-blossom over the edge of the sofa. Then he thrust out the right leg and drew up the left. And all the while, Aunt Celestine was watching him, with her eye glued to the keyhole.

He took his pocket-handkerchief from his tail pocket, and to do this, had to turn over on his side on the sofa; then he resumed his position on his back, and threw the handkerchief over his face, and placed his right hand on his heart. Now both his legs were extended, and both feet hung limply over the end of the sofa, for his body was longer by twenty-five centimetres than the sofa.

Aunt Celestine’s heart beat, and she trembled so violently, that she shook the door, but her nephew did not hear her. He might have been a dead man lying thus. If Aunt Celestine had not seen the white cambric over the nose distend itself with his breath, and then contract, she would have believed he was dead, that his noble heart had broken out of sheer grief.

But no! he certainly was alive. He leaped from his prostrate position, and went again to the window. The garden was large but badly kept. He could not afford a proper gardener, and could not afford to let the man who did the garden stick to it. The walks needed weeding, the flower-beds were untidy. There was a summer-house, covered with Caucoras japonica, untrimmed and falling away from the trellis. There was a fountain in a pond in the garden, but the water was stagnant, choked with green slime, and the jet no longer played. The pipe was out of order, and he had not the money available for relaying lead pipe. There were statues in the garden, by the fountain, a nymph with a pitcher. The nymph’s nose was broken off. He had himself stuck on one of putty, but the frost of winter had taken it off again, and another had not been fitted. Money was needed. At the top of the pavilion, which was shaped like a Chinese pagoda, were glass bells, white and red, and yellow and blue. In the autumn a storm had broken half the bells, and he could not afford to replace them. How romantic it was to sit in the pagoda when a soft breeze blew and to hear the glass bells tinkle. How Paradise-like it would have been to sit there with Jacquetta, eating ices, and feeling that he had several five-franc franc pieces in his pocket, listening to the glass bells chiming a song of love overhead.

On the terrace was a pedestal on which had stood a glass globe, a metre in diameter, silvered inside so that it acted like a concave mirror. Any one who looked at himself in it saw his nose like the proboscis of an elephant, and his ears the size of cowrie-shells. A mischievous gamin had thrown a stone at it five years ago and broken it, and he had not been able to replace it since. Oh the loveliness, the exquisiteness of the thought, that if Jacquetta had been his bride, he might have been able to put another glass-silvered globe on that pedestal, and take her soft, delicate hand in his, and lead her up to it, and show her how it exaggerated her nose and diminished her ears!

The poor baron could not bear the thought. He closed his shutters and turned the strips of wood in the jalousies so as to exclude the view of the garden and the dazzling light. Then he took down one of his pistols, and polished it, then loaded it, and put a cap on the nipple. No Montcontour, no De Pleurans had shrunk from facing death.

Then the baron walked the length of his room once more, and stood gravely before the mirror over the mantelpiece, and contemplated himself in it. His face was grey, it was not white as before, but grey. It was grey because the room was partly darkened by the closed shutters.

He heaved a bitter, long sigh and raised the pistol.

Aunt Celestine had seen him contemplate the garden. She had seen him take down, load and prime, the pistol. Then she rushed down stairs to Madame de Montcontour.

She found James Asheton with her. The young English man had just called, and Madame la Baronne was hastily explaining to him the cause of her anxiety. In dashed Mdlle. de Pleurans with her eyes distended and her hands raised ‘Josephine! he has darkened the room! He has taken and cocked the pistol! ’

The baroness was frozen with terror. Even Asheton was mute with dismay. Aunt Celestine stood in the door looking from one to the other.

At that moment they heard an explosion—the report of fire-arms. The baroness and Mdlle. de Pleurans screamed, Asheton rushed up stairs. He knew his friend’s room. He knocked at the door. No answer.

Then up came Madame de Montcontour and Mdlle. de Pleurans wringing their hands, weeping; then the servants in dismay, whispering.

Asheton tried the door, it was locked. He put his knee to it to force it. ‘Run!’ he called to the gardener. ‘Put a ladder against the window; get in that way,’ but he could not wait for this to be effected, he ran against the door, struck it with his whole weight, and burst it open.

In the darkened room, seated on the end of the sofa, with the pistol still in his hand, with his other hand over the back of the sofa, and his head resting thereon, was the baron, motionless, and the floor was strewn with pieces of glass, that crushed under the feet of those who rushed in. The atmosphere within was charged with the smoke from the pistol.

Madame de Montcontour flew to her son, cast herself on her knees by him, caught his hand, wrenched from it the pistol. ‘Alphonse! speak, my soul! You have not blown out your brains!’

He did not answer; perhaps he could not. His hand was warm and flexible. The tears of his mother flowed over it.

‘Alphonse! I withdraw the refusal. If you still live—take her.’

Then the baron slowly raised his head and said, ‘Mamma! you have resuscitated me!’

‘He lives! He breathes! He speaks!’ The good woman nearly fainted.

‘Let all leave the room,’ said Montcontour slowly. ‘All, that is, but Mr Asheton.’ He spoke with an effort. He was obeyed, with awestruck faces the servants stole away. They had trodden on the threshold of a great family mystery. The mother and aunt retired with raised hands and streaming eyes, blessing Providence which had miraculously interfered to save the life of their dear Alphonse.

When they were gone Asheton said gravely, ‘What is the meaning of this? What have you attempted?’

‘To shoot myself.’

‘But why?’

‘My mother forbade the union.’

‘You—you deliberately took aim at yourself?’

The baron nodded.

‘Where, at your heart?’

He shook his head.

‘Where? At your head?’

Again he made a sign of dissent.

‘But where then—at yourself?’

‘Yes, at myself,’ solemnly. ‘But where?’

‘In the glass.’