A Woman of Thirty

“I am his wife,” she answered proudly, and there was something very noble in her tone. “This is the first happiness in seven years that has not come to me through him,” she said – then, as she caught her father’s hand and kissed it – “and this is the first word of reproach that I have heard.”

“And your conscience?”

“My conscience; he is my conscience!” she cried, trembling from head to foot. “Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep among all the others on deck,” she cried.

A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the General.

It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair, took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment’s silence, for the General’s deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene – a dreamlike vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with the wealth of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings.

The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love. And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?

It was the captain who broke the silence at last.

“Am I in the way?” he asked, looking at his wife.

“No,” said the General, answering for her. “Helene has told me all. I see that she is lost to us – ”

“No,” the captain put in quickly; “in a few years’ time the statute of limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience is clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to – ” he stopped short, as if scorning to justify himself.

“How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes, without remorse?”

“We had no provisions,” the privateer captain retorted calmly.

“But if you had set the men ashore – ”

“They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we should never have seen Chili again.”

“Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty – ” began the General.

“But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?”

The General shrank under the other’s eyes. He said no more, and his daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.

“General,” the privateer continued, in a deep voice, “I have made it a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to you in another form – ”

He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.

“You can understand,” he said, “that I cannot spend my time in watching vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation, or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our third meeting will be completely happy.”

“Victor,” said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, “I should like to see a little more of my father.”

“Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull.”

“Oh, father, go!” cried Helene, “and take these keepsakes from me to my sister and brothers and – mother,” she added. She caught up a handful of jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly held it out.

“But what shall I say to them from you?” asked he. Her hesitation on the word “mother” seemed to have struck him.

“Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day.”

“Helene,” he began, as he watched her closely, “how if we should not meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?”

“That secret is not mine,” she answered gravely. “Even if I had the right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more miserable than words can say – ”

She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of a soldier’s career, so he took Helene’s gifts and comforted himself with the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene’s pure and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only daughter, with a soldier’s expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the face with the proud, strong look that once he had loved to see. “The Parisian,” deeply moved, brought the children for his blessing. The parting was over, the last good-bye was a long farewell look, with something of tender regret on either side.

A strange sight to seaward met the General’s eyes. The Saint-Ferdinand was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the Othello was already amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail any chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life at sea. As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the Saint-Ferdinand, manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help looking at the burning vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by her husband’s side on the stern of the Othello. He saw Helene’s white dress flutter like one more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble figure against a background of sea, queenly still even in the presence of Ocean; and so many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a soldier’s recklessness of life, he forgot that he was being borne over the grave of the brave Gomez.

A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a murky dome reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had been burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred and blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it flared, crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame licked up the rigging, and flashed across the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing along the streets of a city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting lights. Some sea god might have been stirring the furious liquor as a student stirs the joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat.

The Othello made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight of her father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greeting.

A few more minutes, and the Saint-Ferdinand went down with a bubbling turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that had been was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The Othello was far away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the cloud came between the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the swaying smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Helene. A prophetic vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood out against the murky background. Then the brig was not even visible between the green water and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck, a faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory.

The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged to take Moina to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child had a wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths, and the following tragical incident occurred on their way home.

“Dear me, mother,” said Moina, “it was very foolish of us not to stay among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did you hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman, gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single word she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room to ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my life.”

“I heard nothing,” said the Marquise, “but I will see the landlady, darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole suite of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do you feel this morning? Are you tired?”

As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moina’s bedside.

“Let us see,” she said, feeling for the girl’s hand.

“Oh! let me alone, mother,” said Moina; “your fingers are cold.”

She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but with such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint prolonged cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman who heard it.

“Why, if you heard that all night long, why did you not wake me? We should have – ”

A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the Marquise.

“Some one is dying there,” she cried, and hurried out of the room.

“Send Pauline to me!” called Moina. “I shall get up and dress.”

The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the courtyard with a little group about her, apparently much interested in something that she was telling them.

“Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill indeed – ”

“Oh! don’t talk to me about it!” cried the mistress of the house. “I have just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman, a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her. Poor soul! she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at death’s door. ‘Madame,’ says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger, ‘this is all that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough; I shall not stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together soon!’ she said, looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked her who she was, but she never would tell me her name… I have just sent for the doctor and M. le Maire.”

“Why, you must do all that can be done for her,” cried the Marquise. “Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything that is necessary – ”

“Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don’t know that she would allow it.”

“I will go to see her at once.”

The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger’s room, without thinking of the shock that the sight of her widow’s weeds might give to a woman who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in Helene’s beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.

But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.

“My daughter,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, “what is to be done? Pauline!.. Moina!..”

“Nothing now for me,” said Helene faintly. “I had hoped to see my father once more, but your mourning – ” she broke off, clutched her child to her heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she turned her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw it, and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was the child conceived amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter’s side, remembering nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother’s eyes were full of tears. “Helene, my child!..” she cried, with her arms about her daughter.

Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her breast.

Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter’s ice-cold hand in both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children, spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. “All this is your work,” she said. “If you had but been for me all that – ”

“Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!” cried Mme. d’Aiglemont, her shrill tones drowning Helene’s voice. – “For pity’s sake,” she continued, “let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now – ”

“I will be silent,” Helene answered with a preternatural effort. “I am a mother; I know that Moina ought not… Where is my child?”

Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.

“Sister,” said the spoiled child, “the doctor – ”

“It is all of no use,” said Helene. “Oh! why did I not die as a girl of sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside the laws. Moina… you…”

Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.

“Your sister, Moina,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, bursting into tears when she reached her room, “your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother.”

VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER

It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in the Rue Plument in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention; then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of branches with the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat she could look through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to the wonderful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a forest of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a protocol.

The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise d’Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great house belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.

The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s youngest child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons, first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d’Aiglemont, had died of the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left a widow and children, but the dowager’s affection for her sons had been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was decidedly tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives. The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she could devote her savings and her own property to her darling Moina.

Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable, sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her darling’s pretty face, the sound of Moina’s voice, her ways, her manner, her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir a mother’s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the Marquise’s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young heart. Moina, with better fortune, had survived four older children. As a matter of fact, Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew exactly what became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a dreadful accident.

The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and it was inevitable the Mme. d’Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive tenderness for Moina was found highly interesting by not a few who respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely went into society at all; and the few families who knew her thought of her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family. What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface with which the world is quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon to old people, if only they will efface themselves like shadows, and consent to be regarded as memories and nothing more!

Indeed, Mme. d’Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own lifetime; the young Countess’ happiness was enough for her, she only lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here and there condemned the course with – “Perhaps Mme. d’Aiglemont may be sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may be sure of Moina, but how can she be equally sure of her son-in-law?” – these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all sides a chorus of praise went up for Moina.

“It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, that her mother cannot feel the slightest difference,” remarked a young married woman. “Mme. d’Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do – ”

“Except to the Italiens,” remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly parasite, one of those persons who show their independence – as they think – by riddling their friends with epigrams.) “Except to the Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her daughter – it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But the Countess’ box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess’ mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens.”

“Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful ‘At Homes’ for her mother,” said a rosebud. “All Paris goes to her salon.

“And no one pays any attention to the Marquise,” returned the parasite.

“The fact is that Mme. d’Aiglemont is never alone,” remarked a coxcomb, siding with the young women.

“In the morning,” the old observer continued in a discreet voice, “in the morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o’clock dear Moina drives in the Bois. In the evening dear Moina goes to a ball or to the Bouffes. – Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d’Aiglemont has the privilege of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if dear Moina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, sir,” continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, “not a week ago, I saw the poor mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside. – ‘What is the matter?’ I asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had been crying. – ‘I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should be left alone when I have had five children,’ she said, ‘but that is our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moina is enjoying herself.’ – She could say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a place at Court under Charles X.”

Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples, sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the spring? – all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to Him all things return.

Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up now and again on the current of Mme. d’Aiglemont’s thoughts; they were always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly, sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed surface of a stormy sea.

She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much thinking – with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of those who feel that Death is near.