A Dozen Ways Of Love, Lily Dougall [best book club books of all time txt] 📗

sew; the Russian lady taught her to write and to cipher, and was surprised at the progress she made, especially in writing. Celeste was the more interesting to them because there was just a shade of sadness in her eye. One day she told Marie why she was sad; it was the story of Fernand, how he had used her ill.

'What a shame!' cried Marie, when the brief facts were repeated.

'It is the way of the country,' said the Russian lady. 'These Swiss peasants, who have so fair a reputation for sobriety, are mercenary above all: they have no heart.'

Celeste lived with Madame Verine for one year. At the end of that time Madame Verine arose one morning to find the breakfast was not cooked, nor the fire lit. In the midst of disorder stood Celeste, with flushed cheeks and startled eyes, and a letter in her hand.

'Ah, madam,' she faltered, 'what a surprise! The letter, it is from monsieur the notary, who lives in the market-place, and to me, madam--_to me_!'

When Madame Verine took the letter she found told therein that an aunt of Celeste, who had lived far off in the Jura, was dead, and had left to Celeste a little fortune of five thousand francs, which was to be paid to her when she was twenty-one, or on her marriage day.

'Ah,' cried Celeste, weeping, 'can it be true? Can it be true?'

'Of course, since monsieur the notary says so.'

'Ah, madam; let me run and see monsieur the notary. Let me just ask him, and hear from his lips that it is true!'

So she ran out into the town, with her apron over her head, and Marie made the breakfast.

The Russian lady came down to talk it over. 'The pretty child is distraught, and at _so small_ a piece of good fortune!' said she.

But when Celeste came in she was more composed. 'It is true,' she said, with gentle joy, and she stood before them breathless and blushing.

'It will be three years before you are twenty-one,' said Madame Verine; 'you will remain with me.'

'If you please, madam, no,' said Celeste, modestly casting down her eyes; 'I must go to my native village.'

'How!' they cried. 'To whom will you go?'

Celeste blushed the more deeply, and twisted her apron. 'I have good clothes; I have saved my year's wages. I will put up at the inn. The wife of the innkeeper will be a mother to me now I can pay for my lodging.'

At which Madame Verine looked at the Russian lady, and that lady looked at her, and said behind her hand, 'Such a baby, and so clever! It is the mere instinct of wisdom; it cannot be called forethought.'

It is to be observed that, all the world over, however carefully a mistress may guard her maid-servant, no great responsibility is felt when the engagement is broken. Madame Verine shrugged her shoulders and got another servant. Celeste went down to her village.

After that, when Marie walked in the market-place, she used to like to look at the notary's house, and at him, if she could espy him in the street. The house was a fine one, and the notary, in spite of iron-grey hair and a keen eye, good-looking; but that was not why Marie was interested; it was because he and his office seemed connected with the romance of life--with Celeste's good fortune.

When summer days grew long, Madame Verine, her friend and daughter, took a day's holiday, and out of good nature they went to see Celeste.

'Celeste lives like a grand lady now,' cried the innkeeper's wife, on being questioned. 'She will have me take her coffee to her in bed each morning.'

'The wages she has saved will not hold out long,' said the visitors.

'When that is finished she gives us her note of hand for the money she will get when she is married. She has shown us the notary's letter. It is certainly a tidy sum she will have, and our son has some thoughts of marrying.'

They saw Celeste, who was radiant; they saw young Fernand, who was paying his court to her. They returned home satisfied.

It was not long after that when one morning Celeste came into Madame Verine's house; she was weeping on account of the loss of some of her money. She had come up to town, she said, to buy her wedding clothes, for which the notary had been so good as to advance her a hundred francs, but her pocket had been picked in the train. The money was gone--quite gone--alas!

So tearful was she that they lent her some money--not much, but a little. Then she dried her eyes, and said she would also get some things on credit, promising to pay in a month, for it was then she was to be married. At the end of the day she came back gaily to show her treasures.

'When the rejoicings of your wedding are over,' said Madame Verine, 'and your husband brings you to town to claim the money, you may stay here in the upper room of this house--it is an invitation.'

In a month came the wedding pair, joyful and blooming. The Russian lady made them a supper. They lodged in an attic room that Madame Verine rented. In the morning they went out, dressed in their best, to see the notary.

An hour later Madame Verine sat in her little salon. The floor was of polished wood; it shone in the morning light; so did all the polished curves of the chairs and cabinets. Marie was practising exercises on the piano.

They heard a heavy step on the stair. The bridegroom came into the room, agitated, unable to ask permission to enter. He strode across the floor and sat down weakly before the ladies.

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 hoarsely; 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 shining 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 assert 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 God 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 compassion,' 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