Jacqueline

"Well! she would like that "some day" to be now, and she has a reason for wanting it at once, which, I hope, will decide you to gratify her.

The third of June is Sainte-Clotilde"s day, and she has taken it into her head that she would like to give her mamma a magnificent present--a present that, of course, we shall unite to give her. For some time past I have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my daughter,"

continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for the portrait than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into his head. But the women of his household, little or big, could persuade him into anything.

"I really don"t think I have the time now," said Marien.

"Bah!--you have whole two months before you. What can absorb you so entirely? I know you have your pictures ready for the Salon."

"Yes--of course--of course--but are you sure that Madame de Nailles would approve of it?"

"She will approve whatever I sanction," said M. de Nailles, with as much a.s.surance as if he had been master in his domestic circle; "besides, we don"t intend to ask her. It is to be a surprise. Jacqueline is looking forward to the pleasure it will give her. There is something very touching to me in the affection of that little thing for--for her mother." M. de Nailles usually hesitated a moment before saying that word, as if he were afraid of transferring something still belonging to his dead wife to another--that dead wife he so seldom remembered in any other way. He added, "She is so eager to give her pleasure."

Marien shook his head with an air of uncertainty.

"Are you sure that such a portrait would be really acceptable to Madame de Nailles?"

"How can you doubt it?" said the Baron, with much astonishment. "A portrait of her daughter!--done by a great master? However, of course, if we are putting you to any inconvenience--if you would rather not undertake it, you had better say so."

"No--of course I will do it, if you wish it," said Marien, quickly, who, although he was anxious to do nothing to displease Madame de Nailles, was equally desirous to stand well with her husband. "Yet I own that all the mystery that must attend on what you propose may put me to some embarra.s.sment. How do you expect Jacqueline will be able to conceal--"

"Oh! easily enough. She walks out every day with Mademoiselle Schult.

Well, Mademoiselle Schult will bring her to your studio instead of taking her to the Champs Elysees--or to walk elsewhere."

"But every day there will be concealments, falsehoods, deceptions. I think Madame de Nailles might prefer to be asked for her permission."

"Ask for her permission when I have given mine? Ah, fa! my dear Marien, am I, or am I not, the father, of Jacqueline? I take upon myself the whole responsibility."

"Then there is nothing more to be said. But do you think that Jacqueline will keep the secret till the picture is done?"

"You don"t know little girls; they are all too glad to have something of which they can make a mystery."

"When would you like us to begin?"

Marien had by this time said to himself that for him to hold out longer might seem strange to M. de Nailles. Besides, the matter, though in some respects it gave him cause for anxiety, really excited an interest in him. For some time past, though he had long known women and knew very little of mere girls, he had had his suspicions that a drama was being enacted in Jacqueline"s heart, a drama of which he himself was the hero.

He amused himself by watching it, though he did nothing to promote it. He was an artist and a keen and penetrating observer; he employed psychology in the service of his art, and probably to that might have been attributed the individual character of his portraits--a quality to be found in an equal degree only in those of Ricard.

What particularly interested him at this moment was the a.s.sumed indifference of Jacqueline while her father was conducting the negotiation which was of her suggestion. When they returned to the salon after smoking she pretended not to be the least anxious to know the result of their conversation. She sat sewing near the lamp, giving all her attention to the piece of lace on which she was working. Her father made her a sign which meant "He consents," and then Marien saw that the needle in her fingers trembled, and a slight color rose in her face--but that was all. She did not say a word. He could not know that for a week past she had gone to church every time she took a walk, and had offered a prayer and a candle that her wish might be granted. How very anxious and excited she had been all that week! The famous composition of which she had spoken to Giselle, the subject of which had so astonished the young girl brought up by the Benedictine nuns, felt the inspiration of her emotion and excitement. Jacqueline was in a frame of mind which made reading those three masterpieces by three great poets, and pondering the meaning of their words, very dangerous. The poems did not affect her with the melancholy they inspire in those who have "lived and loved,"

but she was attracted by their tenderness and their pa.s.sion. Certain lines she applied to herself--certain others to another person. The very word love so often repeated in the verses sent a thrill through all her frame. She aspired to taste those "intoxicating moments," those "swift delights," those "sublime ecstasies," those "divine transports"--all the beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were as yet unknown to her. How could she know them? How could she, after an experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain such sweet remembrances as the poets described?

"Let us love--love each other! Let us hasten to enjoy the pa.s.sing hour!"

so sang the poet of Le Lac. That pa.s.sing hour of bliss she thought she had already enjoyed. She was sure that for a long time past she had loved. When had that love begun? She hardly knew. But it would last as long as she might live. One loves but once.

These personal emotions, mingling with the literary enchantments of the poets, caused Jacqueline"s pen to fly over her paper without effort, and she produced a composition so far superior to anything she usually wrote that it left the lucubrations of her companions far behind. M. Regis, the professor, said so to the cla.s.s. He was enthusiastic about it, and greatly surprised. Belle, who had been always first in this kind of composition, was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at her defeat that she would not speak to her for a week. On the other hand Colette and Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were moved to tears when the "Study on the comparative merits of Three Poems, "Le Lac," "Souvenir," and "La Tristesse d"Olympio,"" signed "Mademoiselle de Nailles," received the honor of being read aloud. This reading was followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses which may have proceeded from the viper of jealousy. But the paper made a sensation like that of some new scandal. Mothers and governesses whispered together. Many thought that that little de Nailles had expressed sentiments not proper at her age. Some came to the conclusion that M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls.

A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more prudent for the future. He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline"s success, one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the cla.s.s), whose mother took her away, saying, with indignation, "One might as well risk the things they are teaching at the Sorbonne!"

This literary incident greatly alarmed Madame de Nailles! Of all things she dreaded that her daughter should early become dreamy and romantic.

But on this point Jacqueline"s behavior was calculated to rea.s.sure her.

She laughed about her composition, she frolicked like a six-year-old child; without any apparent cause, she grew gayer and gayer as the time approached for the execution of her plot.

The evening before the day fixed on for the first sitting, Modeste, the elderly maid of the first Madame de Nailles, who loved her daughter, whom she had known from the moment of her birth, as if she had been her own foster-child, arrived at the studio of Hubert Marien in the Rue de p.r.o.ny, bearing a box which she said contained all that would be wanted by Mademoiselle. Marien had the curiosity to look into it. It contained a robe of oriental muslin, light as air, diaphanous--and so dazzlingly white that he remarked:

"She will look like a fly in milk in that thing."

"Oh!" replied Modeste, with a laugh of satisfaction, "it is very becoming to her. I altered it to fit her, for it is one of Madame"s dresses. Mademoiselle has nothing but short skirts, and she wanted to be painted as a young lady."

"With the approval of her papa?"

"Yes, of course, Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron gave his consent. But for that I certainly should not have minded what the child said to me."

"Then," replied Marien, "I can say nothing," and he made ready for his sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which might have shocked her, with their faces to the wall.

A foreign language can not be properly acquired unless the learner has great opportunities for conversation. It therefore became a fixed habit with Fraulein Schult and Jacqueline to keep up a lively stream of talk during their walks, and their discourse was not always about the rain, the fine weather, the things displayed in the shop-windows, nor the historical monuments of Paris, which they visited conscientiously.

What is near the heart is sure to come eventually to the surface in continual tete-a-tete intercourse. Fraulein Schult, who was of a sentimental temperament, in spite of her outward resemblance to a grenadier, was very willing to allow her companion to draw from her confessions relating to an intended husband, who was awaiting her at Berne, and whose letters, both in prose and verse, were her comfort in her exile. This future husband was an apothecary, and the idea that he pounded out verses as he pounded his drugs in a mortar, and rolled out rhymes with his pills, sometimes inclined Jacqueline to laugh, but she listened patiently to the plaintive outpourings of her "promeneuse", because she wished to acquire a right to reciprocate by a few half-confidences of her own. In her turn, therefore, she confided to Fraulein Schult--moved much as Midas had been, when for his own relief he whispered to the reeds--that if she were sometimes idle, inattentive, "away off in the moon," as her instructors told her by way of reproach, it was caused by one ever-present idea, which, ever since she had been able to think or feel, had taken possession of her inmost being--the idea of being loved some day by somebody as she herself loved.

"Was that somebody a boy of her own age?"

Oh, fie!--mere boys--still schoolboys--could only be looked upon as playfellows or comrades. Of course she considered Fred--Fred, for example!--Frederic d"Argy--as a brother, but how different he was from her ideal. Even young men of fashion--she had seen some of them on Tuesdays--Raoul Wermant, the one who so distinguished himself as a leader in the "german", or Yvonne"s brother, the officer of cha.s.seurs, who had gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides these--seemed to her very commonplace by comparison. No!--he whom she loved was a man in the prime of life, well known to fame. She didn"t care if he had a few white hairs.

"Is he a person of rank?" asked Fraulein Schult, much puzzled.

"Oh! if you mean of n.o.ble birth, no, not at all. But fame is so superior to birth! There are more ways than one of acquiring an ill.u.s.trious name, and the name that a man makes for himself is the n.o.blest of all!"

Then Jacqueline begged Fraulein Schult to imagine something like the pa.s.sion of Bettina for Goethe--Fraulein Schult having told her that story simply with a view of interesting her in German conversation only the great man whose name she would not tell was not nearly so old as Goethe, and she herself was much less childish than Bettina. But, above all, it was his genius that attracted her--though his face, too, was very pleasing. And she went on to describe his appearance--till suddenly she stopped, burning with indignation; for she perceived that, notwithstanding the minuteness of her description, what she said was conveying an idea of ugliness and not one of the manly beauty she intended to portray.

"He is not like that at all," she cried. "He has such a beautiful smile-a smile like no other I ever saw. And his talk is so amusing--and--" here Jacqueline lowered her voice as if afraid to be overheard, "and I do think--I think, after all, he does love me--just a little."

On what could she have founded such a notion? Good heaven!--it was on something that had at first deeply grieved her, a sudden coldness and reserve that had come over his manner to her. Not long before she had read an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands).

It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious pa.s.sages, but in it she was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness, much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away. English novels are nothing if not moral.

This story, not otherwise interesting, threw a gleam of light on what, up to that time, had been inexplicable to Jacqueline. He was above all things a man of honor. He must have perceived that his presence troubled her. He had possibly seen her when she stole a half-burned cigarette which he had left upon the table, a prize she had laid up with other relics--an old glove that he had lost, a bunch of violets he had gathered for her in the country. Yes! When she came to think of it, she felt certain he must have seen her furtively lay her hand upon that cigarette; that cigarette had compromised her. Then it was he must have said to himself that it was due to her parents, who had always shown him kindness, to surmount an attachment that could come to nothing--nothing at present. But when she should be old enough for him to ask her hand, would he dare? Might he not rashly think himself too old? She must seek out some way to give him encouragement, to give him to understand that she was not, after all, so far--so very far from being a young lady--old enough to be married. How difficult it all was! All the more difficult because she was exceedingly afraid of him.

It is not surprising that Fraulein Schult, after listening day after day to such recitals, with all the alternations of hope and of discouragement which succeeded one another in the mind of her precocious pupil, guessed, the moment that Jacqueline came to her, in a transport of joy, to ask her to go with her to the Rue de p.r.o.ny, that the hero of the mysterious love-story was no other than Hubert Marien.

As soon as she understood this, she perceived that she should be placed in a very false position. But she thought to herself there was no possible way of getting out of it, without giving a great deal too much importance to a very innocent piece of childish folly; she therefore determined to say nothing about it, but to keep a strict watch in the mean time. After all, M. de Nailles himself had given her her orders.

She was to accompany Jacqueline, and do her crochet-work in one corner of the studio as long as the sitting lasted.

All she could do was to obey.

"And above all not a word to mamma, whatever she may ask you," said Jacqueline.

And her father added, with a laugh, "Not a word." Fraulein Schult felt that she knew what was expected of her. She was naturally compliant, and above all things she was anxious to get paid for as many hours of her time as possible--much like the driver of a fiacre, because the more money she could make the sooner she would be in a position to espouse her apothecary.

When Jacqueline, escorted by her Swiss duenna, penetrated almost furtively into Marien"s studio, her heart beat as if she had a consciousness of doing something very wrong. In truth, she had pictured to herself so many impossible scenes beforehand, had rehea.r.s.ed the probable questions and answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed her fancy with so many extravagant ideas, that she had at last created, bit by bit, a situation very different from the reality, and then threw herself into it, body and soul.

The look of the atelier--the first she had ever been in in her life--disappointed her. She had expected to behold a gorgeous collection of bric-a-brac, according to accounts she had heard of the studios of several celebrated masters. That of Marien was remarkable only for its vast dimensions and its abundance of light. Studies and sketches hung on the walls, were piled one over another in corners, were scattered about everywhere, attesting the incessant industry of the artist, whose devotion to his calling was so great that his own work never satisfied him.

Only some interesting casts from antique bronzes, brought out into strong relief by a background of tapestry, adorned this lofty hall, which had none of that confusion of decorative objects, in the midst of which some modern artists seem to pose themselves rather than to labor.

A fresh canvas stood upon an easel, all ready for the sitter.