LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

last word.

      “Your play, monsieur le baron,” she said, with an air of importance.

      “My nephew is not one of those youths who like monstrosities,” remarked Zephirine, taking out her knitting-needle and scratching her head.

      “Mistigris!” cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, making no reply to her friend.

      The rector, who appeared to be well-informed in the matter of Calyste and Mademoiselle des Touches, did not enter the lists.

      “What does she do that is so extraordinary, Mademoiselle des Touches?” asked the baron.

      “She smokes,” replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

      “That’s very wholesome,” said the chevalier.

      “About her property?” asked the baron.

      “Her property?” continued the old maid. “Oh, she is running through it.”

      “The game is mine!” said the baroness. “See, I have king, queen, knave of trumps, Mistigris, and a king. We win the basket, sister.”

      This victory, gained at one stroke, without playing a card, horrified Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who ceased to concern herself about Calyste and Mademoiselle des Touches. By nine o’clock no one remained in the salon but the baroness and the rector. The four old people had gone to their beds. The chevalier, according to his usual custom, accompanied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to her house in the Place de Guerande, making remarks as they went along on the cleverness of the last play, on the joy with which Mademoiselle Zephirine engulfed her gains in those capacious pockets of hers—for the old blind woman no longer repressed upon her face the visible signs of her feelings. Madame du Guenic’s evident preoccupation was the chief topic of conversation, however. The chevalier had remarked the abstraction of the beautiful Irish woman. When they reached Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel’s door-step, and her page had gone in, the old lady answered, confidentially, the remarks of the chevalier on the strangely abstracted air of the baroness:—

      “I know the cause. Calyste is lost unless we marry him promptly. He loves Mademoiselle des Touches, an actress!”

      “In that case, send for Charlotte.”

      “I have sent; my sister will receive my letter to-morrow,” replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, bowing to the chevalier.

      Imagine from this sketch of a normal evening the hubbub excited in Guerande homes by the arrival, the stay, the departure, or even the mere passage through the town, of a stranger.

      When no sounds echoed from the baron’s chamber nor from that of his sister, the baroness looked at the rector, who was playing pensively with the counters.

      “I see that you begin to share my anxiety about Calyste,” she said to him.

      “Did you notice Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel’s displeased looks to-night?” asked the rector.

      “Yes,” replied the baroness.

      “She has, as I know, the best intentions about our dear Calyste; she loves him as though he were her son, his conduct in Vendee beside his father, the praises that MADAME bestowed upon his devotion, have only increased her affection for him. She intends to execute a deed of gift by which she gives her whole property at her death to whichever of her nieces Calyste marries. I know that you have another and much richer marriage in Ireland for your dear Calyste, but it is well to have two strings to your bow. In case your family will not take charge of Calyste’s establishment, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel’s fortune is not to be despised. You can always find a match of seven thousand francs a year for the dear boy, but it is not often that you could come across the savings of forty years and landed property as well managed, built up, and kept in repair as that of Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. That ungodly woman, Mademoiselle des Touches, has come here to ruin many excellent things. Her life is now known.”

      “And what is it?” asked the mother.

      “Oh! that of a trollop,” replied the rector—“a woman of questionable morals, a writer for the stage; frequenting theatres and actors; squandering her fortune among pamphleteers, painters, musicians, a devilish society, in short. She writes books herself, and has taken a false name by which she is better known, they tell me, than by her own. She seems to be a sort of circus woman who never enters a church except to look at the pictures. She has spent quite a fortune in decorating Les Touches in a most improper fashion, making it a Mohammedan paradise where the houris are not women. There is more wine drunk there, they say, during the few weeks of her stay than the whole year round in Guerande. The Demoiselles Bougniol let their lodgings last year to men with beards, who were suspected of being Blues; they sang wicked songs which made those virtuous women blush and weep, and spent their time mostly at Les Touches. And this is the woman our dear Calyste adores! If that creature wanted to-night one of the infamous books in which the atheists of the present day scoff at holy things, Calyste would saddle his horse himself and gallop to Nantes for it. I am not sure that he would do as much for the Church. Moreover, this Breton woman is not a royalist! If Calyste were again called upon to strike a blow for the cause, and Mademoiselle des Touches—the Sieur Camille Maupin, that is her other name, as I have just remembered—if she wanted to keep him with her the chevalier would let his old father go to the field without him.”

      “Oh, no!” said the baroness.

      “I should not like to put him to the proof; you would suffer too much,” replied the rector. “All Guerande is turned upside down about Calyste’s passion for this amphibious creature, who is neither man nor woman, who smokes like an hussar, writes like a journalist, and has at this very moment in her house the most venomous of all writers—so the postmaster says, and he’s a juste-milieu man who reads the papers. They are even talking about her at Nantes. This morning the Kergarouet cousin who wants to marry Charlotte to a man with sixty thousand francs a year, went to see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, and filled her mind with tales about Mademoiselle des Touches which lasted seven hours. It is now striking a quarter to ten, and Calyste is not home; he is at Les Touches—perhaps he won’t come in all night.”

      The baroness listened to the rector, who was substituting monologue for dialogue unconsciously as he looked at this lamb of his fold, on whose face could be read her anxiety. She colored and trembled. When the worthy man saw the tears in the beautiful eyes of the mother, he was moved to compassion.

      “I will see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to-morrow,” he said. “Don’t be too uneasy. The harm may not be as great as they say it is. I will find out the truth. Mademoiselle Jacqueline has confidence in me. Besides, Calyste is our child, our pupil—he will never let the devil inveigle him; neither will he trouble the peace of his family or destroy the plans we have made for his future. Therefore, don’t weep; all is not lost, madame; one fault is not vice.”

      “You are only informing me of details,” said the baroness. “Was not I the first to notice the change in my Calyste? A mother keenly feels the shock of finding herself second in the heart of her son. She cannot be deceived. This crisis in a man’s life is one of the trials of motherhood. I have prepared myself for it, but I did not think it would come so soon. I hoped, at least, that Calyste would take into his heart some noble and beautiful being—not a stage-player, a masquerader, a theatre woman, an author whose business it is to feign sentiments, a creature who will deceive him and make him unhappy! She has had adventures—”

      “With several men,” said the rector. “And yet this impious creature was born in Brittany! She dishonors her land. I shall preach a sermon upon her next Sunday.”

      “Don’t do that!” cried the baroness. “The peasants and the paludiers would be capable of rushing to Les Touches. Calyste is worthy of his name; he is Breton; some dreadful thing might happen to him, for he would surely defend her as he would the Blessed Virgin.”

      “It is now ten o’clock; I must bid you good-night,” said the abbe, lighting the wick of his lantern, the glass of which was clear and the metal shining, which testified to the care his housekeeper bestowed on the household property.

Скачать книгу