A Dozen Ways Of Love Part 21

They thought he had been drinking wine, but this was not so, although his eye was bloodshot and his voice unsteady.

'Can you believe it!' he cried, 'the notary never wrote letters to her; there was no aunt; there is no money!'

'It is incredible,' said Madame Verine, and then there was a pause of great astonishment.

'It is impossible!' cried the Russian lady, who had come in.

'It is true,' said the bridegroom hoa.r.s.ely; and he wept.

And now Celeste herself came into the house. She came within the room, and looked at the ladies, who stood with hands upraised, and at her weeping husband. If you have ever enticed a rosy-faced child to bathe in the sea, and seen it stand half breathless, half terrified, yet trying hard to be brave, you know just the expression that was on the face of the child-like deceiver. With baby-like courage she smiled upon them all.

Now the next person who entered the room was the notary himself. He was a gentleman of manners; he bowed with great gallantry to the ladies, not excepting Celeste.

'She is a child, and has had no chance to learn the arts of cunning,'

cried the Russian lady, who had thought that she knew the world.

The notary bowed to her in particular. 'Madam, the true artist is born, not made.'

Then he looked at Celeste again. There were two kinds of admiration in his glance--one for her face, the other for her cleverness. He looked at the weeping husband with no admiration at all, but the purpose in his mind was steady as his clear grey eye, unmoved by emotion.

'I have taken the trouble to walk so far,' said he, 'to tell this young man what, perhaps, I ought to have mentioned when he was at my office.

Happily, the evil can be remedied. It is the law of our land that if the fortune has been misrepresented, a divorce can be obtained.'

Celeste's courage vanished with her triumph. She covered her face. The husband had turned round; he was looking eagerly at the notary and at his cowering bride.

'Ah, Heaven!' cried the two matrons, 'must it be?'

'I have walked so far to advise,' said the notary.

All this time Marie was sitting upon the piano-stool; she had turned it half-way round so that she could look at the people. She was not pretty, but, as the morning light struck full upon her face, she had the comeliness that youth and health always must have; and more than that, there was the light of a beautiful soul s.h.i.+ning through her eyes, for Marie was gentle and submissive, but her mind and spirit were also strong; the individual character that had grown in silence now began to a.s.sert itself with all the beauty of a new thing in the world. Marie had never acted for herself before.

She began to speak to the notary simply, eagerly, as one who could no longer keep silence.

'It would be wrong to separate them, monsieur.'

Madame Verine chid Marie; the notary, no doubt just because he was a man and polite, answered her.

'This brave young fellow does not deserve to be thus fooled. I shall be glad to lend him my aid to extricate himself.'

'He does deserve it,' cried Marie. 'Long ago he pretended to have love for her, just for the pleasure of it, when he had not--that is worse than pretending to have money! And in any case, it is a _wicked_ law, monsieur, that would grant a divorce when they are married, and--look now--left to himself he will forgive her, but he is catching at what you say. You have come here to tempt him! You dare not go on, monsieur!'

'Dare not, mademoiselle?' said the notary, with a superior air.

'No, monsieur. Think of what the good G.o.d and the holy saints would say!

This poor girl has brought much punishment on herself, but--ah, monsieur, think of the verdict of Heaven!'

'Mademoiselle,' said the notary haughtily, 'I was proposing nothing but justice; but it is no affair of mine.' And with that he went out brusquely--very brusquely for a gentleman of such polite manners.

'I am astonished at you, Marie,' said Madame Verine. This was true, but it was meant as a reproach.

'She is beside herself with compa.s.sion,' said the Russian lady; 'but that is just what men of the world despise most.'

Then Marie went to her room weeping, and the two ladies talked to Celeste till her soft face had hard lines about the mouth and her eyes were defiant. Young Fernand slipped out and went again to the market-place.

'I come to ask your aid, monsieur the notary.'

'I do not advise you.'

'But, monsieur, to whom else can I apply?'

'I am too busy,' said the notary.

Fernand and Celeste walked back to their village, hand in hand, both downcast, both peevish, but still together.

Now the notary was not what might be called a bad man himself, but he believed that the world was very bad. He had seen much to confirm this belief, and had not looked in the right place to find any facts that would contradict it. This belief had made him hard and sometimes even dishonest in his dealings with men; for what is the use of being good in a world that can neither comprehend goodness nor admire it? On the whole, the notary was much better satisfied with himself than with human nature around him, although, if he had only known it, he himself had grown to be the reflex--the image as in a mirror--of what he thought other men were; it is always so. There was just this much truth in him at the bottom of his scorn and grumbling--he flattered himself that if he could see undoubted virtue he could admire it; and there was in him that possibility of grace.

After he left Madame Verine's door he thought with irritation of the girl who had rebuked him. Then he began to remember that she was only a woman and very young, and she had appealed to his heart--ah, yes, he had a heart. After all, he was not sure but that her appeal was charming.

Then he thought of her with admiration. This was not the result of Marie's words--words in themselves are nothing; it is the personality of the speaker that makes them live or die, and personality is strongest when nourished long in virtue and silence and prayer. When it came to pa.s.s that the notary actually did the thing Marie told him to do, he began to think of her even with tenderness in his heart.

Now a very strange thing happened. In about a week the notary called on Madame Verine a second time; he greeted her with all ceremony, and then he sat down on a little stiff chair and explained his business in his own brief, dry way.

Marie was not there. The little _salon_, all polished and s.h.i.+ning, gave faint lights and shadows in answer to every movement of its inmates.

Madame Verine, in a voluminous silk gown, sat all attention, looking at the notary; she thought he was a very fine man, quite a great personage, and undoubtedly handsome.

'Madam,' began he, 'I am, as you know, at middle age, yet a bachelor, and the reason, to be plain with you, is that I have not believed in women. Pardon me, I would not be rude, but I am a business man. I have no delusions left, yet it has occurred to me that a young woman who would make the lives of the saints her rule of life--I do not believe in such things myself, but--in short, madam, I ask for your daughter in marriage.'

He said it as if he was doing quite a kind thing, as, indeed, he thought he was. Madame Verine thought so too, and with great astonishment, and even some apologies, gave away her daughter with grateful smiles.

Marie was married to the notary, and he made her very happy. At first she was happy because he had good manners and she had such a loving heart that she loved him. After a few years he found out that she was too good for him, and then he became a better man.

X

THE PAUPERS' GOLDEN DAY

Betty Lamb was a comely girl; she was big to look at, being tall and strong. She was never plump; she was never well clothed, not even in the best days of her youth. She had been brought up in the work-house; after that she belonged to no one. Her mind was a little astray: she had strong, rude, strange ideas of her own; she would not be humble and work day in, day out, like other folk, and for that reason she never throve in the world. She lived here and there, and did this and that. All the town knew her; she was just 'Betty Lamb'; no one expected aught of her.

It was a small town in the west of Scotland. On different sides of it long lanes of humble cottages straggled out into the fields; the cottages had grey stone walls and red tiled roofs. There were new grey churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops. The people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about the real glory of the town--a ruined abbey which stood upon an open heath just beyond the houses.

Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken, a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground, and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the sky in exquisite outline--these formed the ruin. It was built of the red sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country.

Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides. Sheep and goats came nibbling against the old altar steps. A fringe of wallflower and gra.s.s grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken fragments of the wall.

All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and grey.

Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a baby. They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she rose when her baby was but a day old and went away from the place.