CHAPTER XIX.
IN the course of a day or two, a handsome carriage drew up in frontof Mrs. Scudder’s cottage, and a brilliant party alighted. They wereColonel and Madame de Frontignac, the Abbé Léfon, and Colonel Burr.Mrs. Scudder and her daughter, being prepared for the call, sat inafternoon dignity and tranquillity, in the best room, with theirknitting-work.
Madame de Frontignac had divined, with the lightning-like tactwhich belongs to women in the positive, and to French women in thesuperlative degree, that there was something in the cottage-girl, whomshe had passingly seen at the party, which powerfully affected the manwhom she loved with all the jealous intensity of a strong nature, andhence she embraced eagerly the opportunity to see her,—yes, to see her,to study her, to dart her keen French wit through her, and detect thesecret of her charm, that she, too, might practise it.
Madame de Frontignac was one of those women whose beauty is so strikingand imposing, that they seem to kindle up, even in the most prosaicapartment, an atmosphere of enchantment. All the pomp and splendour ofhigh life, the wit, the refinements, the nameless graces and luxuriesof courts, seemed to breathe in invisible airs around her, and she madea Faubourg St. Germain of the darkest room into which she entered.Mary thought, when she came in, that she had never seen anything sosplendid. She was dressed in a black velvet riding-habit, buttoned tothe throat with coral; her riding-hat drooped with its long plumesso as to cast a shadow over her animated face, out of which her darkeyes shone like jewels, and her pomegranate cheeks glowed with therich shaded radiance of one of Rembrandt’s pictures. Something quaintand foreign, something poetic and strange, marked each turn of herfigure, each article of her dress, down to the sculptured hand on whichglittered singular and costly rings,—and the riding-glove, embroideredwith seed-pearls, that fell carelessly beside her on the floor.
In Antwerp one sees a picture in which Rubens, who felt more thanany other artist the glory of the physical life, has embodied hisconception of the Madonna, in opposition to the faded, cold ideals ofthe Middle Ages, from which he revolted with such a bound. _His_ Maryis a superb Oriental sultana, with lustrous dark eyes, redundant form,jewelled turban, standing leaning on the balustrade of a princelyterrace, and bearing on her hand, _not_ the silver dove, but a gorgeousparoquet. The two styles, in this instance, were both in the same room;and as Burr sat looking from one to the other, he felt, for a moment,as one would who should put a sketch of Overbeck’s beside a splendidpainting of Titian’s.
For a few moments, everything in the room seemed faded and cold, incontrast with the tropical atmosphere of this regal beauty. Burrwatched Mary with a keen eye, to see if she were dazzled and overawed.He saw nothing but the most innocent surprise and delight. All theslumbering poetry within her seemed to awaken at the presence of herbeautiful neighbour,—as when one, for the first time, stands beforethe great revelations of Art. Mary’s cheek glowed, her eyes seemed togrow deep with the enthusiasm of admiration, and, after a few moments,it seemed as if her delicate face and figure reflected the glowingloveliness of her visitor, just as the virgin snows of the Alps becomeincarnadine as they stand opposite the glorious radiance of a sunsetsky.
Madame de Frontignac was accustomed to the effect of her charms; butthere was so much love in the admiration now directed towards her,that her own warm nature was touched, and she threw out the glow ofher feelings with a magnetic power. Mary never felt the cold, habitualreserve of her education so suddenly melt, never felt herself sonaturally falling into language of confidence and endearment with astranger; and as her face, so delicate and spiritual, grew bright withlove, Madame de Frontignac thought she had never seen anything sobeautiful, and stretching out her hands towards her, she exclaimed, inher own language,—
‘_Mais, mon Dieu! mon enfant, que tu es belle!_’
Mary’s deep blush, at her ignorance of the language in which hervisitor spoke, recalled her to herself;—she laughed a clear, silverylaugh, and laid her jewelled little hand on Mary’s with a caressingmovement.
‘_He_ shall not teach you French, _ma toute belle_,’ she said,indicating the Abbé, by a pretty, wilful gesture; ‘_I_ will teachyou;—and you shall teach me English. Oh I shall try _so_ hard tolearn!’ she said.
There was something inexpressibly pretty and quaint in the childishlisp with which she pronounced English. Mary was completely won over.She could have fallen into the arms of this wondrously beautiful fairyprincess, expecting to be carried away by her to Dreamland.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Scudder was gravely discoursing with Colonel Burr andM. de Frontignac; and the Abbé, a small and gentlemanly personage, withclear black eye, delicately-cut features, and powdered hair, appearedto be absorbed in his efforts to follow the current of a conversationimperfectly understood. Burr, the while, though seeming to be entirelyand politely absorbed in the conversation he was conducting, lost nota glimpse of the picturesque aside which was being enacted between thetwo fair ones whom he had thus brought together. He smiled quietly whenhe saw the effect Madame de Frontignac produced on Mary.
‘After all, the child has flesh and blood!’ he thought, ‘and may feelthat there are more things in heaven and earth than she has dreamed ofyet. A few French ideas won’t hurt her.’
The arrangements about lessons being completed, the party returned tothe carriage. Madame de Frontignac was enthusiastic in Mary’s praise.
‘_Cependant_,’ she said, leaning back, thoughtfully, after havingexhausted herself in superlatives,—‘_cependant elle est dévote,—et àdix-neuf comment cela se peut-il?_’
‘It is the effect of her austere education,’ said Burr. ‘It is notpossible for you to conceive how young people are trained in thereligious families of this country.’
‘But yet,’ said Madame, ‘it gives her a grace altogether peculiar;something in her looks went to my heart. I could find it very easy tolove her, because she is really good.’
‘The Queen of Hearts should know all that is possible in loving,’ saidBurr.
Somehow, of late, the compliments which fell so readily from thosegraceful lips had brought with them an unsatisfying pain. Until a womanreally _loves_, flattery and compliment are often like her native air;but when that deeper feeling has once awakened in her, her instinctsbecome marvellously acute to detect the false from the true. Madame deFrontignac longed for one strong, unguarded, real, earnest word fromthe man who had stolen from her her whole being. She was beginning tofeel in some dim wise what an untold treasure she was daily giving fortinsel and dross. She leaned back in the carriage, with a restless,burning cheek, and wondered why she was born to be so miserable. Thethought of Mary’s saintly face and tender eyes rose before her as themoon rises on the eyes of some hot and fevered invalid, inspiring vagueyearnings after an unknown, unattainable peace.
Could some friendly power once have made her at that time clairvoyantand shown her the _reality_ of the man whom she was seeing throughthe prismatic glass of her own enkindled ideality! Could she haveseen the calculating quietness in which, during the intervals of arestless and sleepless ambition, he played upon her heart-strings, asone uses a musical instrument to beguile a passing hour,—how his onlyembarrassment was the fear that the feelings he was pleased to excitemight become too warm and too strong, while as yet his relations to herhusband were such as to make it dangerous to arouse his jealousy! Andif he could have seen that pure ideal conception of himself which alonegave him power in the heart of this woman,—that spotless, glorifiedimage of a hero without fear, without reproach,—would he have felt amoment’s shame and abasement at its utter falsehood?
The poet says that the Evil Spirit stood abashed when he saw virtue inan angel form! How would a man, then, stand, who meets face to facehis own glorified, spotless ideal, made living by the boundless faithof some believing heart? The best must needs lay his hand on his mouthat this apparition; but woe to him who feels no redeeming power in thesacredness of this believing dream,—who with calculating shrewdness_uses_ this most touching
miracle of love only to corrupt and destroythe loving! For him there is no sacrifice for sin, no place forrepentance. His very mother might shrink in her grave to have him laidbeside her.
Madame de Frontignac had the high, honourable nature of the old bloodof France, and a touch of its romance. She was strung heroically, andeducated according to the notions of her caste and church, purely andreligiously. True it is, that one can scarcely call _that_ educationwhich teaches woman everything except herself,—_except_ the thingsthat relate to her own peculiar womanly destiny, and, on plea of theholiness of ignorance, sends her without one word of just counselinto the temptations of life. Incredible as it may seem, Virginiede Frontignac had never read a romance or work of fiction of whichlove was the staple; the _régime_ of the convent in this regard wasinexorable; at eighteen she was more thoroughly a child than mostAmerican girls at thirteen. On entrance into life, she was at first sodazzled and bewildered by the mere contrast of fashionable excitementwith the quietness of the scenes in which she had hitherto grown up,that she had no time for reading or thought,—all was one intoxicatingfrolic of existence, one dazzling, bewildering dream.
He whose eye had measured her for his victim verified, if ever mandid, the proverbial expression of the iron hand under the velvetglove. Under all his gentle suavities there was a fixed, inflexiblewill, a calm self-restraint, and a composed philosophical measurementof others, that fitted him to bear despotic rule over an impulsive,unguarded nature. The position, at once accorded to him, of herinstructor in the English language and literature, gave him a thousanddaily opportunities to touch and stimulate all that class of finerfaculties, so restless and so perilous, and which a good man approachesalways with a certain awe. It is said that he once asserted that henever beguiled a woman who did not come half-way to meet him,—anobservation much the same as a serpent might make in regard to hisbirds.
The visit of the morning was followed by several others. Madamede Frontignac seemed to conceive for Mary one of those passionateattachments which women often conceive for anything fair andsympathizing, at those periods when their whole inner being is madevital by the approaches of a grand passion. It took only a few visitsto make her as familiar as a child at the cottage; and the whole airof the Faubourg St. Germain seemed to melt away from her, as, withthe pliability peculiar to her nation, she blended herself with thequiet pursuits of the family. Sometimes, in simple straw hat and whitewrapper, she would lie down in the grass under the apple-trees, or joinMary in an expedition to the barn for hen’s eggs, or a run along thesea-beach for shells; and her childish eagerness and delight on theseoccasions used to arouse the unqualified astonishment of Mrs. KatyScudder.
The Doctor she regarded with a _naïve_ astonishment, slightlytinctured with apprehension. She knew he was very religious, andstretched her comprehension to imagine what he might be like. Shethought of Bossuet’s sermons walking about under a Protestant coat,and felt vaguely alarmed and sinful in his presence, as she used towhen entering under the shadows of a cathedral. In her the religioussentiment, though vague, was strong. Nothing in the character of Burrhad ever awakened so much disapprobation as his occasional sneers atreligion. On such occasions she always reproved him with warmth, butexcused him in her heart, because he was brought up a heretic. She helda special theological conversation with the Abbé, whether salvationwere possible to one outside of the True Church,—and had added to herdaily prayer a particular invocation to the Virgin for him.
The French lessons with her assistance proceeded prosperously. Shebecame an inmate in Mrs. Marvyn’s family also. The brown-eyed,sensitive woman loved her as a new poem; she felt enchanted by her;and the prosaic details of her household seemed touched to poetic lifeby her innocent interest and admiration. The young Madame insisted onbeing taught to spin at the great wheel; and a very pretty picture shemade of it, too, with her earnest gravity of endeavour, her deepeningcheek, her graceful form, with some strange foreign scarf or jewelrywaving and flashing in odd contrast with her work.
‘Do you know,’ she said, one day, while thus employed in the northroom at Mrs. Marvyn’s,—‘do you know Burr told me that princesses usedto spin? He read me a beautiful story from the “Odyssey,” about howPenelope cheated her lovers with her spinning, while she was waitingfor her husband to come home;—_he_ was gone to sea, Mary,—her _true_love,—you understand.’
She turned on Mary a wicked glance, so full of intelligence that thesnowdrop grew red as the inside of a sea-shell.
‘_Mon enfant!_ thou hast a thought _deep in here_!’ she said to Mary,one day, as they sat together in the grass under the apple-trees.
‘Why, what?’ said Mary, with a startled and guilty look.
‘Why, what? _petite!_’ said the fairy princess, whimsically mimickingher accent. ‘_Ah! ah! ma belle!_ you think I have no eyes;—Virginiesees deep in here!’ she said, laying her hand playfully on Mary’sheart. ‘_Ah, petite!_’ she said, gravely, and almost sorrowfully, ‘ifyou love him, wait for him,—_don’t marry another!_ It is dreadful notto have one’s heart go with one’s duty.’
‘I shall never marry anybody,’ said Mary.
‘Nevare marrie anybodie!’ said the lady, imitating her accents in tonesmuch like those of a bobolink. ‘Ah! ah! my little saint, you cannotalways live on nothing but the prayers, though prayers are verie good.But, _ma chère_,’ she added, in a low tone, ‘don’t you ever marry thatgood man in there; priests should not marry.’
‘Ours are not priests,—they are ministers,’ said Mary. ‘But why do youspeak of him?—he is like my father.’
‘Virginie sees something!’ said the lady, shaking her head gravely;‘she sees he loves little Mary.’
‘Of course he does!’
‘Of-course-he-does?—ah, yes; and by-and-by comes the mamma, and shetakes this little hand, and she says, “Come, Mary!” and then she givesit to him; and then the poor _jeune homme_, when he comes back, findsnot a bird in his poor little nest. _Oh, c’est ennuyeux cela!_’ shesaid, throwing herself back in the grass till the clover heads andbuttercups closed over her.
‘I do assure you, dear Madame!’—
‘I do assure you, dear Mary, _Virginie knows_. So lock up her words inyour little heart; you will want them some day.’
There was a pause of some moments, while the lady was watching thecourse of a cricket through the clover. At last, lifting her head, shespoke very gravely,—
‘My little cat! it is _dreadful_ to be married to a good man, andwant to be good, and want to love him, and yet never like to have himtake your hand, and be more glad when he is away than when he is athome; and then to think how different it would all be, if it was onlysomebody else. That will be the way with you, if you let them lead youinto this; so don’t you do it, _mon enfant_.’
A thought seemed to cross Mary’s mind, as she turned to Madame deFrontignac, and said, earnestly,—
‘If a good man were my husband, I would never think of another,—Iwouldn’t let myself.’
‘How could you help it, _mignonne_? Can you stop your thinking?’
Mary said, after a moment’s blush,—
‘I can _try_!’
‘Ah, yes! But to try all one’s life,—oh, Mary, that is too hard! Neverdo it, darling!’
And then Madame de Frontignac broke out into a carolling little Frenchsong, which started all the birds around into a general orchestralaccompaniment.
This conversation occurred just before Madame de Frontignac started forPhiladelphia, whither her husband had been summoned as an agent in someof the ambitious intrigues of Burr.
It was with a sigh of regret that she parted from her friends at thecottage. She made them a hasty good-bye call,—alighting from a splendidbarouche with two white horses, and filling their simple best room withthe light of her presence for a last half-hour. When she bade good-byeto Mary, she folded her warmly to her heart, and her long lashesdrooped heavily with tears.
After her absence, the lessons were still pursued with t
he gentle,quiet little Abbé, who seemed the most patient and assiduous ofteachers; but, in both houses, there was that vague _ennui_, that senseof want, which follows the fading of one of life’s beautiful dreams! Webid her adieu for a season;—we may see her again.