Delphi complete works of.., p.351
Delphi Complete Works of Alphonse Daudet (Illustrated), page 351
“If you ask me that way, it must be because you think you have a right to,” said the girl with fascinating seriousness.
And touching Claudius’s hand with the ends of her little fingers, she added:
“No, I will not go to Marc Javel’s; but this means more mystery and fables with mamma!”
Hitherto there had never been a secret between that mother and that daughter. Separated for so long a time from her boys, having with her at the house of her provincial relations, who kept them for charity’s sake, only her little Dina, even then very shrewd and quick of comprehension, Madame Eudeline had come to take delicious enjoyment in their habit of whispering confidences to each other every evening, on the pillows of the great bed which had followed them from Faubourg du Temple to Cherbourg, and from Cherbourg to the back shop of the Wonderful Lamp. But for a few days past their confidences had become less unreserved; the mother felt that her daughter was concealing something from her. She was so cold in the face of such a flattering offer of marriage, and asked time for reflection when any other girl would have accepted immediately — that it must be that Dina’s heart was engaged. Just try to confess a child who distrusts even her own mother! Her brothers could obtain nothing from her, the one being too imperious, the other too timid. There remained Tantine, dear Tantine, who seemed to have returned from London for the purpose of extricating her old friend from her embarrassment.
This is what Madame Eudeline was thinking, under her long, sentimental English curls, as she bent her steps toward the Corps Législatif at the end of that same day, when, under the influence of a last anonymous letter, Claudius had nerved himself to a mighty resolution. She expected to find Geneviève alone in the little room, the windows of which, under the eaves, looked out upon one of the inner courtyards of the Palais Bourbon. Unluckily, when she arrived, Père Izoard was with his daughter.
Tantine was seated beside the open window, gazing sadly at the horizon of roofs and gutters outlined against a frosty sky in which crows were cawing lustily, while the old stenographer lighted the hanging lamp, humming with a somewhat forced gayety. As if that artificial illumination shut them up in different rooms, the father and daughter seemed far away from each other and were not speaking. And so, when Madame Eudeline appeared, the emotional Marseillais uttered a familiar, characteristically Southern cry of joy:
“Ah! adieu, Maman Deline!”
“What a nuisance not to be alone with her!” said the mother to herself, as she sat down beside Geneviève. And involuntarily she translated her thought aloud: “Did you have a session to-day, Monsieur Izoard? How early it is over!”
“But it isn’t over, if you please. This terrible Dejarine affair has led to an interpellation, which has raised the deuce with everything. I just came up to tell my little girl to sit down to supper without me, for our orators are so slow with their speeches.”
He took a few steps, twisting his long beard, a sign of great perplexity with him. Then suddenly, pointing to Geneviève, he said:
“Mamma Eudeline, I place her in your charge; I rely upon you to brighten her up a bit. Tell me, is this reasonable? Since her return from London, that’s the face my child has had all the time. Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another, according to what she tells her old father, that is to say. To-day it’s this Dejarine affair, it seems; she is afraid that her poor Casta will be compromised; why, since she is not in Paris?”
“We know nothing about it,” said Geneviève hastily. “And surely Lupniak must be in hiding. They suspect him of being one of the principal actors in the drama. And so, although my dear Sophie no longer meddles in politics, and her mind has broadened out to a dream of universal charity and compassion — everybody knows about her founding of hospitals and clinics for sick children — I know her to be so ardent, so passionately enthusiastic over the gallantry of her revolutionary friends, that I tremble every moment for fear of seeing her come in.”
Madame Eudeline assumed a compassionate tone: “Of course, I understand that that worries you.” But Père Izoard blinked his little coal-black eyes, and sighed to his old friend:
“There’s nobody but a mamma to find out what goes on in these little girls’ noddles.”
And his words seemed to imply: “Try questioning mine, will you?”
That is how his old friend understood it, for no sooner had the stenographer gone away and left her alone for a confidential talk with Geneviève, than she murmured:
“The mammas know no more about it than other people; and the proof is that I came here to ask you—”
She hesitated; and lo! Genevieve’s pale face flushed with a secret apprehension: Raymond perhaps. But Madame Eudeline, engrossed by her own thoughts, paid no heed.
“My little Dina worries me; I wish that you would help me fathom her.”
Geneviève started; what did Dina matter to her? That was not the name that she expected to hear from the mother’s lips.
“Why, your daughter is a mere child, and she worries you, you say?”
“Oh! cruelly.”
Thereupon Madame Eudeline began to tell of her little Cinderella’s adventure, as much as she knew of it at least, and of the fear which had come to the poor mother on finding her so contemptuous in the face of a most excellent offer of marriage.
“Perhaps she is right to be contemptuous,” said Tantine gravely. “I have heard my father declare many times that those Valfons and Marquès were a very poor sort of people. Who knows if your little Dina is not guided by an instinct of dignity and virtue?”
Geneviève’s voice, ordinarily profound and tranquil, quivered with a secret indignation which kindled a flame in her eyes and her cheeks. Suddenly she recovered herself, a little confused:
“After all, is it not an evil sentiment that leads me to slander those people? But how do you suppose that I can hesitate between them and your daughter, who is naturally so straightforward and frank?”
“Then you don’t think that her reason for refusing is that her heart has spoken for another?”
Madame Eudeline gurgled that simple sentence like the refrain of an old romance.
“She would have told you of it, madame.”
“Do you think so?”
“Oh! surely.”
The mother, transported with joy, smiled as if Heaven were in sight.
“Ah! Tantine, Tantine, if you knew how much good you do me! it is so sad to suspect any one whom one loves! To think that my little Dina, who has slept by my side ever since she was born, whose existence has always been a part of mine, should seem to me now so far away! I am afraid that she is hiding something from me.”
“What has given you the right to be afraid?” asked Tantine, rising to close the blind, for night had fallen. Below, under the galleries of the courtyard, they could hear the clash of weapons and the measured footsteps of the sentries just relieved.
“What has given me the right?”
Madame Eudeline produced from one of those unfindable dress pockets, so inconveniently placed that women always seem to be sitting on them, two or three unsigned letters of the type which Claudius had received in the morning.
“Are you very sure,” asked one of these letters, “that Dina goes to her office every day? With the connivance of a chief of staff or an over-looker, nothing is easier than a false report as to the departure or arrival of clerks. So then—”
Another note called Madame Eudeline’s attention to the fact that her daughter returned from the office an hour or three-quarters of an hour late several times a week. It would be interesting to know where the little one passed that time.
“These are shameful things to say,” murmured the poor woman, as Genevieve, standing near the lamp, deciphered these infamies. “These letters, which you are the first, the only one to see, are spoiling my life. Now, when my child comes home, when she goes out, my eyes instantly go to the clock. Not a fold in her dress, not a lock of her hair that I do not examine; when she is asleep, I watch her sleep and her dreams, I rise to feel in her pockets, and as I never find anything, instead of consoling me, that distresses me; I say to myself: ‘The fact is that she is cleverer than I.’ In our ‘boat,’ you know, as Monsieur Mauglas used to say, we are all for sentiment and sedative water.”
She took the tall, lovely girl in her arms and said in an outflow of selfish affection:
“My darling, you are so sensible, my children have always listened to you more willingly than to their mother; help me to find my little Dina again; I don’t know what to do.”
Oh! the sweet, distressed smile on Tantine’s face, the accent of sorrowful irony in her reply!
“It is true that I am very sensible, I have always been so, too much so, indeed; doubtless a little folly would have been better for me. However, I will be sensible this time again, and if your child is in need of advice I will give it. But first of all” — with a gesture of disgust, she handed the anonymous letters to the mother—” you must burn these villainous things and not besmirch your eyes and your thoughts with them any more. I fancy my poor father receiving such accusations against his daughter’s honor! He would die of it, or he would kill some one.”
A joyous ring at the bell, a whirlwind of youthful laughter and blond curls. It was Dina, who had come in search of her mother and threw her arms around her neck, apologizing for coming so late. Whose fault was it? Why, Monsieur Raymond’s, whom she had found at the shop preparing to dine out, and making a toilet which cluttered up the whole house. No, one could not imagine the room that a young man requires nowadays to dress in, and the complications of a masculine toilet: the boot-trees to prevent the boots from getting out of shape, and the stretchers to prevent trousers from bagging at the knees. Never had such refinements been heard of before. But they should see Antonin’s face at sight of these things; the boot-trees above all, and the garters for silk socks made him open a pair of eyes! It was very certain that all those inventions were not known in his workshop.
“Does your brother dine out every evening?” asked Genevieve, forcing herself to smile at all this chatter.
A wink from Madame Eudeline warned her daughter:
“Do not be too unkind.”
But the little one, once started, could not stop.
“Raymond? He cares for nothing but dining with foreign swells, who send him messengers on horseback. Oh! I told him—”
“I was sure of it,” her mother interrupted; “when I saw you come in all flushed with excitement, I understood that you had come from a dispute with your brother. Tantine ought to scold you. You are not fair to Raymond. When Tonin does not dine at home, do you reproach him in the same way?”
The little one was so indignant that for a moment she almost suffocated? But she soon recovered herself.
“Reproach Tonin, mon Dieu! And for what? It is work which keeps him at the shop, when he doesn’t dine with us; some urgent order, which does not, however, prevent him from coming to close the shop, nor from going to oversee the last preparations for the Dauphin’s installation, as he has done this evening.”
That name of “Dauphin,” with which the little one sometimes crushed the older brother, made Tantine smile.
“And when is the installation to take place?” she asked.
“Next Sunday, I suppose; I still have a pair of curtains to finish,” replied Madame Eudeline with a glance at her daughter.
Dina shook her head crossly.
“I do not know as I shall have the time.”
“Oh! yes, of course you will have the time, little demon,” said Tantine, putting her arm affectionately around her neck; “and I will help you if necessary. Let me see; suppose I come and meet you at your office, and we will return to your house together?”
Dina seemed embarrassed.
“But — but I am never sure just when I shall come out, with the extra work!”
“Before I went to London we would have worked all the evening and had one of our pleasant old-time talks.”
“Never fear, Tantine, we shall have another opportunity.” And Dina, taking her friend’s short, plump hand, held it caressingly against her cheek.
Over her head the two women exchanged a meaning glance, as if to say: —
“What did I tell you?”
“Indeed, there must be something; but have no fear, I will find it out; she will tell me.”
The night which followed that visit to the Palais-Bourbon seemed terribly long to Dina. Lying beside her mother, behind the screen, with her face to the wall, obliged to keep perfectly still with all that fire which swelled her veins, all the fever that gleamed under her lowered eyelids, she wondered what would be Père Jacquand’s reply, and if Claudius, in case of a refusal, would have the courage to keep his word. What distressed her especially was the timid appeal which Madame Eudeline essayed before going to sleep:
“Are you asleep, my Dina? Don’t you want to talk a little with mamma?”
Then a long sigh and silence. Ah! if she could have thrown herself into her mother’s arms and told her everything! But no; Claudius asked her to keep it a secret and to wait, to wait a little longer.
Her first thought in the morning, on rising, was a fervent prayer to Notre Dame de Fourvières, whose image never left her. The day was to be decisive for the happiness of them all, for she did not separate her destiny from that of her dear ones; and so, when, on her arrival at the central office, she entered the dressing-room where the clerks remove their cloaks and hats and don the long black working frock, her hands trembled as she hung her satchel on the peg. It was in that black calico bag that she would find Claudius’s reply, good or bad. The thought kept her restless throughout the day, which, luckily, was filled with work. Feverish with loss of sleep, cheeks and eyes on fire, she kept pulling the cord of the ventilating window; but the north wind was blowing sharply outside, the rain and hail blew into the middle of the room and pattered on the floor, and indignant exclamations from every side compelled the superintendent to come and close the glass, until Dina opened it again in an involuntary spasm of nervousness.
“That little Eudeline must be terribly warm this morning,” muttered her neighbors at the machines; and the chief of staff, making his round with short steps and hands behind his back, observed as he passed:
“It must be the tall young man with the light gloves that has brought the blood so to her skin.”
The chief of staff considered Mademoiselle Dina very attractive, and, since the day before, that pair of light gloves had worried him exceedingly. Indeed, everybody in the department was talking of the mysterious and stylish visitor; and during the ten minutes that the young ladies pass every hour in the lavatory, some knitting, others readjusting before the mirror a detail of headdress or gown, the tall young man was the only subject of conversation.
“Who could he be?”
“A cousin? a fiancé?”
“You are burning, mesdames,” said the little one, making an effort to appear cheerful, despite the sadness that oppressed her heart, for her reply had not come. At three o’clock, still nothing. And yet she could not despair, so great was her confidence in Notre Dame de Fourvières. At last, during the last recess before the close of the day’s work, her hand felt the rustling of an envelope through the calico. But the people were watching her all about, even the jealous chief of staff. She could only slip the letter into her pocket, — with what impatience and agitation! — and keep it there until the end of the day.
The change of service is announced by the violent ringing of a bell. From the three rooms in which women are employed on the first floor, — Paris, Suburbs, Provinces — a whole rustling swarm of little caps and cloaks and satchels escapes at once, filling the broad staircase, where they meet other caps and cloaks and satchels of those who take their places, saluted as they pass by inquisitive glances and mocking smiles. As always, Dina, being smaller and more active, had glided through the crowd, and, being the first to leave the building, hastened to Cité Vaneau, a narrow street, then quite new and deserted, a line of empty houses and signs waving in the wind. After a swift glance about, she could at last take the letter from her pocket and read it, her hands trembling feverishly.
“My father has not replied. My father has not come, and certainly will not come. I learn that he is very ill: congestion of the lungs, almost hopeless at his age. I start instantly, my heart full of him and of you, and I shall be in Lyon before dawn, in time, I trust, to embrace him. May I tell him that I love you, and that you are before God my spotless fiancée? They did not read to him last night the long despatch in which I told him of my love for you and of our troth plighted on the Blessed Image of Fourvières. That despatch would have had a bad effect on him. So I am not sorry that he knows nothing of it. Does it seem credible that in that shipwrecked, ruined mind, ambition alone still survives? In his delirium he talks of nothing but the Valfons and the Ministry of the Marine. That hope will absorb his last breath. You will understand that I do not propose to deprive him of it, and that I beg you to pray for him as well as for the man who signs himself
“Your faithful and passionate
“CLAUDIUS JACQUAND.”
The letter read, re-read and tucked into her glove in the hollow of the warm little hand, Dina thought fervently: “Oh! yes, I will pray for your father, my dear friend.” And with quick and ringing steps, her veil over her eyes, the black satchel on her arm, she walked in the direction of Saint-Sulpice, the church where she liked best to go. This custom, which she had adopted in the long idle days in the provinces with Madame Eudeline, of stepping into church for a short prayer, a mental appeal to God, Dina preserved in Paris; and it was ineffably sweet, after the commotion and tumult of the office and the noise of the streets, to soothe herself with a childish prayer, ending in meditation, in the silence and repose of the lofty naves, in the semi-darkness of the chapels; a delicious retreat for a maiden’s imagination, and of such a nature that there could be none better in which to shelter itself, to take its full flight without the risk of bruising or breaking its wings.
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