And at this he fixed his eyes on her face with a meaning smile so that she wondered if there were something at which she ought to have blushed. As it seemed too late to manage this, she replied simply, “Only when I go early to church. Today you know is the day of the blessed Saint Hymenée.”
“You went—to church this morning?”
“Yes, at five o’clock. But what is the matter, Monsieur? I fear you are unwell.”
It was as he had thought. She was dévote, a religious prude, a horror. As soon as he could, he returned to kick the blockhead of a footman, and command that the maid of the young ladies should be brought to him. This the footman did, but with a stupidly suspicious air and persisted in hovering near by while Beaux Airs questioned her as to the movements of her mistresses that morning.
He learned that Mademoiselle Madeleine had risen and walked out at an unusually early hour. Mademoiselle Madeleine! Of course! How could he have doubted? He had never doubted. That aloof mysterious smile, as of a goddess in disguise, had told him from the first.
He returned to the gallery. He approached Mademoiselle Madeleine at the clavichord. He asked if he might join her in a duet. Under the notes of the music he asked if she often walked abroad at an early hour.
“Yes, when I go a-milking,” she replied. “It delights me to dress as a shepherdess and visit our farm.”
“Do you never walk early in the park?” he faltered.
“Ah no, I detest prim alleys and fountains when I am alone and am all for nature and the simple life.”
It was as he had thought. She was a coarse creature, a hulking farm wench. Heavens, what he had escaped! She might even wish to suckle her infants.
He rose from the music-stool with the pain of a shattered illusion in his eyes.
But consolation suddenly flooded him with its healing glow. Since his nymph was neither Mesdemoiselles Elizabeth nor Madeleine, she must be Mademoiselle Guilberte. Of course! How could he have doubted? He had never doubted. In spite of all the weight of evidence against it, he had known it from the first. He had known by the deep and spiritual bond between them which had caused her, when harshly forced by her sisters to flee from him, to look back at him three times. The joy of certainty settled on his formerly perplexed spirit. In the exquisite grace of Mademoiselle Guilberte’s position as she sat on the footstool and teased the cat, he recognized the voluptuous yet tender curves of the nymph of the fountain.
He advanced towards her with a flushed cheek and flashing eye; but recollected in time that he now needed no further enquiry but must make his addresses to the proper quarter. He therefore checked himself and asked for the favour of speech with Monsieur le Comte. Madame their mother offered to accompany him and together they left the gallery to a shrill outburst of enquiry which exploded as soon as the young ladies were alone.
All were agreed that the extraordinary behaviour of the Marquis de Beaux Airs was due to his being in love, but no two could agree as to the object of his affections.
In due time the Marquis returned between their parents who called Mademoiselle Guilberte to their side, gave her hand to that of Beaux Airs and pronounced their approval of the match. This astonishing procedure of her betrothal, before her two elder sisters, when she herself was scarcely out of the schoolroom, caused Mademoiselle Guilberte to lose her head completely. She burst into a wild fit of giggling, and with some confused memory of being presented to the Lord Cardinal on her confirmation, she knelt and kissed the Marquis” hand.
Her sisters were disgusted and her mother pained at this display of ill-breeding, her indulgent father did his best to excuse her awkwardness as the result of being kept much in the background. But Beaux Airs was enchanted with this naïve act of grateful homage. She alone was sufficiently young and virginal to accord with the wild freshness of his nymph of the morning sunlight. Certainly he could never have doubted.
He was all adoration, and she all gratified pleasure.
They were permitted to converse apart in a window-seat, sometimes he was able, undetected, to hold her hand. They gazed at each other, and discovered unimagined perfections. They were ecstatically happy. He had no need now to question her about her bathe, and even no wish, for as his passion grew each minute, he discovered in himself a strange new delicacy, a tender reverence for the immaculate purity of this child goddess. With the delight of a jaded and world-weary man, he listened to the artless prattle that wished to inform him of all her pleasures, all her trials, and even—touching innocence—all her faults.
“Yes indeed,” she insisted, “I have a multitude of faults, I fear you will not love me when you know them all. My sisters say I answer back, though indeed if they speak, why should I not answer back? And my father calls me a chatterbox, but indeed he loves to hear me chatter, and my mother complains that I am sadly idle, and indeed I love to lie abed. Do you not love to lie abed? Only this morning I was so shocking idle, my maid could not get me to rise before seven o’clock.”
“Before—seven—o’clock?”
“Yes indeed. Was it not shocking of me? You are quite shocked, you see. I told you you would be when you knew me. Oh but what is the matter? I would never have told you if I had thought you would be angry. You cannot be really angry about such a little thing as lying abed?”
Her voice faltered, died away. She saw him rise and leave her, heard him make some mumbled apology to her father about being indisposed.
He left the gallery. It was as he had thought. She was a hoyden, a pert baggage, an idle silly chattering slut. It was as he had thought. He had chosen the wrong one. He was condemned to marry a woman he could never love.
“But one of them must be the right one,” he cried to himself, and once more sought the maid, whom he found this time alone. Seizing her by the wrists, he forced her to swear on the crucifix to speak the truth, and then demanded which of her young mistresses had bathed in a fountain in the park early that morning.
“To my certain knowledge, Monsieur,” she replied, “none of my mistresses has ever committed such an imprudence.”
“Infamous and blasphemous daughter of Judas, you lie!” he shouted. “With my own eyes I saw a lady bathing in the fountain at the end of the box alley.”
“That, Monsieur,” said she, with a very pretty blush, “was no lady, for it was myself.”
She would have escaped, but he caught her hand and stared at her while his whole world fell about his ears. Birth, tradition, circumstance and power, tumbled crashing round him, and he never noticed except to account the world well lost.
“In that case,” he said, “I will marry you.”
“Alas, Monsieur, I am married already. To the head footman.”
“What!” he cried in anguish. “Does that clown, that doltish flunkey, enjoy the exquisite rapture of beholding this nymph clad only in her beauty and the dewy morn?”
“Certainly not,” she protested, scandalized. “My husband and myself are honest folk. Neither he nor I would dream of his beholding me in such a disgraceful condition.’
1 Duke of Orleans, Regent of France during the minority of Louis XV.
1 Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV and Regent of France during his minority.
1 Louis XV.
To my sister
Elizabeth Julia Irwin
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
Copyright © Margaret Irwin, 1935, 1940, 1953
First published in this collection in 1953 by Chatto & Windus, Ltd
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ISBN: 9781448200719
eISBN: 9781448202034
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