“No!” I replied frankly, and at once, “I cannot say I do!”
My father looked surprised.
“But why?”
“Impossible to tell, mon père. He is fascinating, he is agreeable, he is brilliant; but there is something in him that I mistrust!”
“Tut-tut!” and my father took my arm good-humouredly. “Now thou art an engaged man, Gaston, thou must put thy prejudices in thy pocket. Thou art too much like me in thy chronic suspicion of all priest-craft. Remember, this beautiful youth is not a priest yet, and I would not mind wagering that he never will be.”
“If he has been trained for the priesthood, what else is he fit for?” I asked, rather irritably.
“What else? He is fit for anything, mon choux! A diplomat, a statesman, a writer of astonishing books. He has genius; and genius is like the Greek Proteus, it can take all manner of forms and be great in any one of them! Aye!” and my father nodded his head sagaciously. “Take my word for it, Gaston, there is something in this young man Guidèl that is altogether exceptional and remarkable; he is one of the world’s inspired dreamers, and to my notion he is more likely to aid in over-turning priestcraft, than to place himself in its ranks as a bulwark of defence.”
I murmured something unintelligible by way of reply: my fathr’s praise of the Breton stranger was not so very pleasing to me that I should wish to encourage him in its continuance. We soon reached our own door, and, bidding each other good night, retired at once to rest. But all through my sleep I was haunted by fragments of the violin music played by Héloïse St. Cyr, and scraps of the verses she had recited. At one time, between midnight and morning, I dreamt I saw her standing in my room, robed in a white shroudlike garment; she fixed her eyes on mine, and, as I looked, her lips parted, and she said, “Elle mourût!” and I thought she meant that Pauline was dead. Struggling to escape from the horror of this impression, I cried, “No, no! she lives! She is mine!” and, making a violent effort, I fancied I had awakened, when lo! the curtain at my window seemed to move slowly and stealthily back, and the beautiful calm face of Silvion Guidèl stared full at me, pallidly illumined by the moon. Again I started, and cried out, and this time awoke myself thoroughly. I sprang out of bed, and dashed back the window-draperies; I threw open the closed shutters; the night was one of sparkling frosty splendour, the stars twinkled in their glorious millions above my head; there was not a sound anywhere, not a living soul to be seen! I returned to my tossed and tumbled couch, with a smile at my own absurd visionary fancies, and in my heart blaming Héloïse St. Cyr and her weird violin for having conjured them up in my usually clear and evenly-balanced brain.
VII.
ON the far horizon of my line of life there shines a waving, ever-diminishing gleam of brightness; I know it to be the hazy reflection of my bygone glad days and sweet memories, and when I shut my eyes close and send my thoughts backward, I am almost able to count those little dazzling points of sunshine sparkling through the gloom that now encompasses my soul. But though brilliant they were brief — brief as the few stray flashes of lightning that cross the skies on a hot summer’s evening. My inward vision aches to look at them! let them be swallowed up in blackness, I say, and let me never more remember that once I was happy! For remembrance is very bitter, and very useless as well; to play out one’s part bravely in the world, I have said one should have no conscience; but it is far more necessary to have no memory! Are there any poor souls wearing on forlornly towards the grave and monotonously performing the daily routine of life without either heart or zest in living? Let such look back to the time when the world first opened out before their inexperienced gaze like a brilliant arena of fair fortune wherein they fancied they might win the chiefest prize, and then they will understand the meaning of spiritual torture! Then will the mind be stretched on a wrenching rack of thought! then will the futile tears fill the tired eyes, then will the passionate craving for death become more and more clamorous — death and utter, blessed forgetfulness! Ah! if one could only be sure that we do forget when we die! but that is just what I, for one, cannot count upon. The uncertainty fills me with horror! I dare not allow myself to dwell upon the idea that perhaps I may sink drowningly from the dull shores of life into a tideless ocean of eternal remembrance! I dare not, else I should indeed be mad, more mad than I am now! For even now I am haunted by faces I would fain forget, by voices, by pleading eyes, by praying hands; and anon, by stark rigid forms, dead and white as marble, with the awful frozen smile of death’s unutterable secret carved on their stiff set lips. And yet they are but the phantoms of my own drugged brain; I ought to know that by this time! Let me strive to banish them; let me lose sight of them for a little, while I try to knot together the broken threads of my torn Past.
During the two or three months immediately following my betrothal to Pauline de Charmilles, I think I must have been the proudest, most contented, perfectly light-hearted man in France. No cloud marred my joy; no bitterness nauseated my cup of felicity. All things smiled upon me, and in the warm expansion of my nature, I had at last even admitted Silvion Guidèl to a share in my affections. Truth to tell, it was difficult to resist him; his frank friendliness of behaviour towards me, made me feel ashamed of my former captiousness and instinctive dislike of him, and by degrees, we became as close intimates as it was possible for two young men to be who were following such widely different professions. He was a great favourite with the De Charmilles, and was frequently invited to their house, though I was of course the more constant visitor, and when, after spending the evening there, we took our leave, we always walked part of the way home together. I was particularly pleased with the extreme deference and almost fastidious reserve of his manner to Pauline; he seemed rather to avoid her than otherwise, and to consider the fact of her engagement to me as a sort of title to command his greater respect. He was not half so constrained with Héloïse St. Cyr; he talked to her freely, led her into arguments on literature and music, in which I was often astonished to observe how brilliantly she shone, lent her rare old books now and then, and wrote down for her from memory fragments of old Breton songs and ballads, airs which she afterwards rendered on her violin with surpassing pathos and skill. One touching little unrhymed ditty, which she recited to her own improvised accompaniment, I remember was called “Le Pauvre Clerc,” and ran as follows: —
“J’ai perdu mes sabots et déchiré mes pauvres pieds,
A suivre ma douce dans les champs, dans les bois;
La pluie, le grésil, et la glace,
Ne sont point un obstacle à l’amour!
“Ma douce est jeune comme moi,
Elle n’a pas encore vingt ans;
Elle est fraiche et jolie
Ses regards sont pleins de feu!
Ses paroles charmantes!
Elle est une prison
Où j’ai enfermé mon cœur!
“Je ne saurais à quoi la comparer;
Sera-ce à la petite rose blanche qu’on appelle Rose-Marie?
Petite perle des jeunes filles;
Fleur de lis entre les fleurs;
Elle s’ouvre aujourd’hui, et elle se fermera demain.
“En vous faisant la cour, ma douce, j’ai ressemblé
Au rossignol perché sur le rameau d’aubépine;
Quand il veut s’endormir, les épines le piquent, alors
Il s’élève à la cime de l’arbre et se met à chanter!
“Mon étoile est fatale,
Mon état est contre nature,
Je n’ai eu dans ce monde
Que des peines à endurer,
Je suis comme une âme dans les flammes du purgatoire,
Nul chrétien sur la terre qui me veuille du bien!
“Il n’y a personne qui ait eu autant à souffrir
À votre sujet que moi depuis ma naissance;
Aussi je vous supplie à deux genoux
Et au nom de Dieu d’avoir pitié de votre clerc!”
It was exceedingly simple
and yet peculiarly mournful, so much so, that the first time we heard Héloïse’s rendering of it, I saw, somewhat to my concern, big tears welling up in my pretty Pauline’s eyes and falling one by one on her clasped hands. Guidèl was standing near her at the time, and he too seemed sincerely troubled by her emotion. Bending towards her, he said, with a faint smile —
“Are you crying for ‘le pauvre clerc,’ mademoiselle? Surely he is not worth such tears!”
I smiled also, and took my betrothed’s unresisting hand tenderly in my own.
“She is very sensitive,” I said gently. “She is a little angel-harp that responds sympathetically to everything.”
But here Pauline hastily dried her eyes, pressed my hand, and went quietly away, and when she came back again, she was radiant and bright as ever.
The Feast of Noël and the gay Jour de l’an had been marked to Pauline by the very large number of valuable presents and floral souvenirs she received. All her friends knew she was “fiançée,” and countless congratulations and “etrennes” were poured upon her. But she had grown either slightly blasée or philosophical, for she evinced none of her former child-like delight at the big baskets and boxes of bonbons given to her; even a goodly round hamper of gilded wicker-work, wreathed with violets and packed close with her once adored “marrons glacées,” failed to excite her to any great enthusiasm. On the morning of the Jour de l’An, I had sent her a fancifully-designed osier gondola full of roses, and a necklace of pearls; and of all her gifts this had seemed to please her most, much to my delight. Silvion Guidèl had contented himself with simply wishing her happiness in his usual serious and earnest fashion, and for the New Year he had offered her no token save a large and spotless cluster of the lilies of St. John. She had shown me these, with rather a wistful look, so I fancied, and had asked me whether it would not be well to place them in a vase near the Virgin’s statue in her own little private oratory? I agreed; I never attached importance to the girlishly-romantic notions I knew she had on the subject of religion; in fact, I thought with her, that such pure, white, sacred-looking blossoms were much more fitted for an altar than a drawing-room. And so she put them there, and I encouraged and approved the act — like a fool! Those lilies were allowed to occupy the most honoured place in her sleeping-chamber, — to send out their odours to mingle with every breath she drew — to instil their insidious message through her maiden-dreams! ah God! if I had only known!
With the passing of the worst part of winter, just towards the close of March, Héloïse St. Cyr was summoned to see her mother who was thought to be dangerously ill. The night before she left for Normandy, I was spending a couple of hours at the De Charmilles’ — there was no visitor that evening there but myself, and I was now accounted almost one of the family. I thought she looked very weary and anxious, but attributed this solely to the bad news she had received from her native home. I was therefore rather surprised, when, taking advantage of Pauline’s absence from the room for a few moments, she came hurriedly up to me and sat down by my side.
“I want to speak to you, Monsieur Gaston,” she said, with an odd hesitation and fluttered nervousness of manner. “You cannot imagine how unhappy I am at being obliged to leave Pauline just now!”
“Indeed, I can quite understand it!” I replied quickly, for I entirely sympathized in such a grief, which to me would have been insupportable. “But let us hope you will not be absent long.”
“I hope not — I fervently hope not!” she murmured, her voice trembling a little. “But, M. Gaston, you will not let Pauline be too much alone? You will visit her every day, and see her as often as possible?”
I smiled. “You may rely upon that!” I answered. “Do not be afraid, Héloïse!” — for I called her Héloïse now, as the others did— “I am not likely to neglect her!”
“No, of course not!” she said, in the same low nervous accents. “Yet, she is not quite herself just now, I fancy, a little morbid perhaps and unstrung. She often sheds tears for — for nothing you know, and I think she gives way to too much religion. Oh, you laugh!” for I had been unable to resist a smile at this suggestion of my little darling’s excess of devotion. I knew the reason, I thought! she was praying for me! “But I do not think it is natural in one so young, and I would give anything to be able to stay with her, and watch over her a little, instead of going to Normandy! She used not to be so over-particular about her religious duties — and now she never misses early mass, she is up and out of doors while I am yet asleep, and she is quite cross if we try to keep her away from Benediction. And it is not necessary for her to attend M. Vaudron’s church always, do you think so?”
She looked full at me; but I could perceive no underdrift of meaning in her words. To my mind everything Pauline did or chose to do was perfection.
“She is fond of good old Vaudron,” I replied; “we are all fond of him, and if you ask me frankly, I think I would rather she went to his church than to any other. You are over-anxious, Héloïse — the news of your mother’s illness has quite unstrung you. Don’t be nervous; Pauline is the idol of our hearts; we shall all take extra care of her while you are absent.”
“I hope you will take extra care!” she said, with strange almost passionate earnestness. “I pray to my God you will!”
Her words impressed me very unpleasantly for the moment; what an uncomfortable creature she was I thought, with her great, flashing grey-green eyes, and pale classic features, on which the light of a burning inward genius sent a weird unearthly glow! Just then Pauline came back, so she broke off her conversation with me abruptly, and on the following morning she had gone.
Some few days after her departure I jestingly broached the subject of this “too much religion” to my young fiancée.
“So you go to mass every morning, like a good little girl?” I said merrily, twisting one of her rich brown curls round my finger as I spoke.
She started. “How did you know that?”
“Héloïse told me, before she went away. Why, you don’t mind my knowing it, do you? It is very right of you and very proper; but doesn’t it make you get up too early?”
“No; I never sleep much after daybreak,” she answered, her face flushing a little.
“Like the daisy, awake at sunrise!” I said laughingly. “Well, I must reform, and be good too. Shall I meet you at church to-morrow for instance?”
“If you wish!” she replied quietly.
She was so very serious about it that I did not like to pursue the question further; some of her parents’ religious scruples were no doubt her heritage, I thought, and I had no inclination to offend them by any undue levity. Religion is becoming to a woman: — a beautiful girl praying, is the only idea the world can give of what God’s angels may be. The morrow came, and I did not go to church as I had intended, having overslept myself. But in the course of the day, I happened to meet M. Vaudron, and to him I mentioned Pauline’s regular attendance at his early mass. The good man’s brow clouded, and he looked exceedingly puzzled.
“That is strange! very strange!” he remarked musingly. “I must be getting very short-sighted, or else the dear child must keep very much in the background of the church, for I never see her except on Sundays, when she comes with her father and mother. Early mass, you say? There are several; the first one is at six o’clock, when my nephew assists me as deacon; the next at seven, when I have the usual attendant to help me officiate, for at that time Silvion goes for a long walk, he is accustomed to a great deal of exercise in Brittany, and he does not get enough of it here. It must be at seven that the pretty one slips in to pray; she would hardly come earlier. Ah well; it is easy for my old eyes to miss her then, for my sacred duties take up all my attention. She is a good child, a sweet and virtuous one; thou shouldst be very proud of her, Gaston!”
“And am I not so?” I responded laughingly. “I should love her and be proud of her, even — do not be shocked, mon père! — even if she never went to mass at all!”
&nb
sp; He shook his head with much pious severity at this audacious declaration, but could not quite repress a kindly smile all the same; then we shook hands cordially and parted.
The next day I did manage to rouse myself in time for the seven o’clock mass, and I arrived at the little church in a pleasurable state of excitement, thinking what a surprise my appearance would be to Pauline. To my intense disappointment, however, she was not there! There were very few people present, two or three market-women and an old widow in the deepest mourning being the most conspicuous members of the congregation. Immediately after the Elevation of the Host, I slipped out, and, hurrying home, wrote a little note to my truant betrothed, telling her how I had been to mass hoping to meet her, and how I had missed her after all. Later in the day I called to see her, and found her in one of her radiant laughing moods.
“Pauvre garçon!” she playfully exclaimed, throwing her arms about me. “What a dreadful thing for thee to have risen so early, all for nothing! I did not go to church at all; I stayed in bed for I was sleepy, in fact, I am getting very lazy again, and once lazy, helas! I shall cease to be religious!”
She sighed, and assumed a demurely penitent air; I laughed, and kissed her, and soon, in the charm of her conversation and the fascination of her company, forgot my little disappointment of the morning. When I left her, I was convinced that her fancy for attending early mass regularly had passed, like all the passing fancies of a very young imaginative girl, and I thought no more about the matter.
Just about this time my father was suddenly compelled to go to London on business connected with certain large financial speculations, in which our firm was concerned, both for ourselves and others. He calculated on being absent about a fortnight or three weeks, with the natural and inevitable result, that, while he was away, all the work of superintending our Paris banking-house, fell entirely on my hands. I was busy from morning until night; I had indeed so little leisure of my own, that I could seldom spare more than the Sunday afternoon and evening for the uninterrupted enjoyment of Pauline’s society. I had such rare and brief glimpses of her that I was quite restless and wretched about it; the more so, as Héloïse St. Cyr’s parting words often recurred to me with uncomfortable persistency; but nevertheless, my work had to be done, and, after all, each time I did visit my beautiful betrothed, I found her in such blithe, almost wild spirits, and always looking so lovely and brilliant, that I blamed myself for giving way to any anxiety on her behalf. Besides, we were to be married at the beginning of June, and it was now close on the end of April. The Comtesse de Charmilles was pleasantly occupied with the ordering and preparing of the marriage-trousseaux, and a few stray wedding-gifts had already arrived. I was mounting securely upwards to the very summit of joy, so I thought! I little imagined I was on the brink of ruin!
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 209
