White Lies

C >> Charles Reade >> White Lies


The next Sunday he went to church--and there worshipped--whom? Cupid.
He smarted for his heathenism; for the young ladies went with higher
motives, and took no notice of him. They lowered their long silken
lashes over one breviary, and scarcely observed the handsome citizen.
Meantime he, contemplating their pious beauty with earthly eyes, was
drinking long draughts of intoxicating passion. And when after the
service they each took an arm of Dr. Aubertin, and he with the air of an
admiral convoying two ships choke-full of specie, conducted his precious
charge away home, our young citizen felt jealous, and all but hated the
worthy doctor.

This went on till he became listless and dejected on the days he did not
see them. Then he asked himself whether he was not a cowardly fool
to keep at such a distance. After all he was a man in authority. His
friendship was not to be despised, least of all by a family suspected of
disaffection to the state.

He put on his glossy beaver with enormous brim, high curved; his
blue coat with brass buttons; his white waistcoat, gray breeches, and
top-boots; and marched up to the chateau of Beaurepaire, and sent in his
card with his name and office inscribed.

Jacintha took it, bestowed a glance of undisguised admiration on
the young Adonis, and carried it to the baroness. That lady sent her
promptly down again with a black-edged note to this effect.


Highly flattered by Monsieur de Riviere's visit, the baroness must
inform him that she receives none but old acquaintances, in the present
grief of the family, and of the KINGDOM.


Young Riviere was cruelly mortified by this rebuff. He went off
hurriedly, grinding his teeth with rage.

"Cursed aristocrats! We have done well to pull you down, and we will
have you lower still. How I despise myself for giving any one the chance
to affront me thus. The haughty old fool; if she had known her interest,
she would have been too glad to make a powerful friend. These royalists
are in a ticklish position; I can tell her that. She calls me De
Riviere; that implies nobody without a 'De' to their name would have the
presumption to visit her old tumble-down house. Well, it is a lesson; I
am a republican, and the Commonwealth trusts and honors me; yet I am
so ungrateful as to go out of the way to be civil to her enemies, to
royalists; as if those worn-out creatures had hearts, as if they could
comprehend the struggle that took place in my mind between duty, and
generosity to the fallen, before I could make the first overture to
their acquaintance; as if they could understand the politeness of
the heart, or anything nobler than curving and ducking and heartless
etiquette. This is the last notice I will ever take of that old woman,
unless it is to denounce her."

He walked home to the town very fast, his heart boiling, and his lips
compressed, and his brow knitted.

To this mood succeeded a sullen and bitter one. He was generous, but
vain, and his love had humiliated him so bitterly, he resolved to tear
it out of his heart. He absented himself from church; he met the young
ladies no more. He struggled fiercely with his passion; he went about
dogged, silent, and sighing. Presently he devoted his leisure hours
to shooting partridges instead of ladies. And he was right; partridges
cannot shoot back; whereas beautiful women, like Cupid, are all archers
more or less, and often with one arrow from eye or lip do more execution
than they have suffered from several discharges of our small shot.

In these excursions, Edouard was generally accompanied by a thick-set
rustic called Dard, who, I believe, purposes to reveal his own character
to you, and so save me that trouble.

One fine afternoon, about four o'clock, this pair burst remorselessly
through a fence, and landed in the road opposite Bigot's Auberge; a long
low house, with "ICI ON LOGE A PIED ET A CHEVAL," written all across it
in gigantic letters. Riviere was for moving homeward, but Dard halted
and complained dismally of "the soldier's gripes." The statesman had
never heard of that complaint, so Dard explained that the VULGAR name
for it was hunger. "And only smell," said he, "the soup is just fit to
come off the fire."

Riviere smiled sadly, but consented to deign to eat a morsel in the
porch. Thereat Dard dashed wildly into the kitchen.

They dined at one little round table, each after his fashion. When Dard
could eat no more, he proceeded to drink; and to talk in proportion.
Riviere, lost in his own thoughts, attended to him as men of business do
to a babbling brook; until suddenly from the mass of twaddle broke forth
a magic word--Beaurepaire; then the languid lover pricked up his ears
and found Mr. Dard was abusing that noble family right and left. Young
Riviere inquired what ground of offence they had given HIM. "I'll tell
you," said Dard; "they impose on Jacintha; and so she imposes on me."
Then observing he had at last gained his employer's ear, he became
prodigiously loquacious, as such people generally are when once they get
upon their own griefs.

"These Beaurepaire aristocrats," said he, with his hard peasant
good-sense, "are neither the one thing nor the other; they cannot keep
up nobility, they have not the means; they will not come down off their
perch, they have not the sense. No, for as small as they are, they must
look and talk as big as ever. They can only afford one servant, and
I don't believe they pay her; but they must be attended on just as
obsequious as when they had a dozen. And this is fatal to all us little
people that have the misfortune to be connected with them."

"Why, how are you connected with them?"

"By the tie of affection."

"I thought you hated them."

"Of course I do; but I have the ill-luck to love Jacintha, and she loves
these aristocrats, and makes me do little odd jobs for them." And at
this Dard's eyes suddenly glared with horror.

"Well, what of that?" asked Riviere.

"What of it, citizen, what? you do not know the fatal meaning of those
accursed words?"

"Why, I never heard of a man's back being broken by little odd jobs."

"Perhaps not his back, citizen, but his heart? if little odd jobs will
not break that, why nothing will. Torn from place to place, and from
trouble to trouble; as soon as one tiresome thing begins to go a bit
smooth, off to a fresh plague, in-doors work when it is dry, out-a-doors
when it snows; and then all bustle; no taking one's work quietly, the
only way it agrees with a fellow. 'Milk the cow, Dard, but look sharp;
the baroness's chair wants mending. Take these slops to the pig, but you
must not wait to see him enjoy them: you are wanted to chop billets.'
Beat the mats, take down the curtains, walk to church (best part of
a league), and heat the pew cushions; come back and cut the cabbages,
paint the door, and wheel the old lady about the terrace, rub
quicksilver on the little dog's back,--mind he don't bite you to make
hisself sick,--repair the ottoman, roll the gravel, scour the kettles,
carry half a ton of water up two purostairs, trim the turf, prune the
vine, drag the fish-pond; and when you ARE there, go in and gather water
lilies for Mademoiselle Josephine while you are drowning the puppies;
that is little odd jobs: may Satan twist her neck who invented them!"

"Very sad all this," said young Riviere.

Dard took the little sneer for sympathy, and proceeded to "the cruellest
wrong of all."

"When I go into their kitchen to court Jacintha a bit, instead of
finding a good supper there, which a man has a right to, courting a
cook, if I don't take one in my pocket, there is no supper, not to
say supper, for either her or me. I don't call a salad and a bit of
cheese-rind--SUPPER. Beggars in silk and satin! Every sou they have goes
on to their backs, instead of into their bellies."

"I have heard their income is much reduced," said Edouard gently.

"Income! I would not change with them if they'd throw me in half a
pancake a day. I tell you they are the poorest family for leagues round;
not that they need be quite so starved, if they could swallow a little
of their pride. But no, they must have china and plate and fine linen
at dinner; so their fine plates are always bare, and their silver
trays empty. Ask the butcher, if you don't believe ME. Just you ask him
whether he does not go three times to the smallest shopkeeper, for once
he goes to Beaurepaire. Their tenants send them a little meal and eggs,
and now and then a hen; and their great garden is chock full of fruit
and vegetables, and Jacintha makes me dig in it gratis; and so they
muddle on. But, bless your heart, coffee! they can't afford it; so they
roast a lot of horse-beans that cost nothing, and grind them, and serve
up the liquor in a silver coffee-pot, on a silver salver. Haw, haw,
haw!"

"Is it possible? reduced to this?" said Edouard gravely.

"Don't you be so weak as to pity them," cried the remorseless plebeian.
"Why don't they melt their silver into soup, and cut down their plate
into rashers of bacon? why not sell the superfluous, and buy the
needful, which it is grub? And, above all, why don't they let their old
tumble-down palace to some rich grocer, and that accursed garden along
with it, where I sweat gratis, and live small and comfortable, and pay
honest men for their little odd jobs, and"--

Here Riviere interrupted him, and asked if it was really true about the
beans.

"True?" said Dard, "why, I have seen Rose doing it for the old woman's
breakfast: it was Rose invented the move. A girl of nineteen beginning
already to deceive the world! But they are all tarred with the same
stick. Down with the aristocrats!"

"Dard," said Riviere, "you are a brute."

"Me, citizen?" inquired Dard with every appearance of genuine surprise.

Edouard Riviere rose from his seat in great excitement. Dard's abuse of
the family he was lately so bitter against had turned him right round.
He pitied the very baroness herself, and forgave her declining his
visit.

"Be silent," said he, "for shame! There is such a thing as noble
poverty; and you have described it. I might have disdained these people
in their prosperity, but I revere them in their affliction. And I'll
tell you what, don't you ever dare to speak slightly of them again in my
presence, or"--

He did not conclude his threat, for just then he observed that a
strapping girl, with a basket at her feet, was standing against the
corner of the Auberge, in a mighty careless attitude, but doing nothing,
so most likely listening with all her ears and soul. Dard, however, did
not see her, his back being turned to her as he sat; so he replied at
his ease,--

"I consent," said he very coolly: "that is your affair; but permit me,"
and here he clenched his teeth at remembrance of his wrongs, "to say
that I will no more be a scullery man without wages to these high-minded
starvelings, these illustrious beggars." Then he heated himself red-hot.
"I will not even be their galley slave. Next, I have done my last little
odd job in this world," yelled the now infuriated factotum, bouncing
up to his feet in brief fury. "Of two things one: either Jacintha quits
those aristos, or I leave Jacin--eh?--ah!--oh!--ahem! How--'ow d'ye do,
Jacintha?" And his roar ended in a whine, as when a dog runs barking
out, and receives in full career a cut from his master's whip, his
generous rage turns to whimper with ludicrous abruptness. "I was just
talking of you, Jacintha," quavered Dard in conclusion.

"I heard you, Dard," replied Jacintha slowly, softly, grimly.

Dard withered.

It was a lusty young woman, with a comely peasant face somewhat
freckled, and a pair of large black eyes surmounted by coal-black brows.
She stood in a bold attitude, her massive but well-formed arms folded so
that the pressure of each against the other made them seem gigantic, and
her cheek red with anger, and her eyes glistening like basilisks upon
citizen Dard. She looked so grand, with her lowering black brows, that
even Riviere felt a little uneasy. As for Jacintha, she was evidently
brooding with more ire than she chose to utter before a stranger. She
just slowly unclasped her arms, and, keeping her eye fixed on Dard,
pointed with a domineering gesture towards Beaurepaire. Then the doughty
Dard seemed no longer master of his limbs: he rose slowly, with his eyes
fastened to hers, and was moving off like an ill-oiled automaton in the
direction indicated; but at that a suppressed snigger began to shake
Riviere's whole body till it bobbed up and down on the seat. Dard turned
to him for sympathy.

"There, citizen," he cried, "do you see that imperious gesture? That
means you promised to dig in the aristocrat's garden this afternoon,
so march! Here, then, is one that has gained nothing by kings being put
down, for I am ruled with a mopstick of iron. Thank your stars, citizen,
that you are not in may place."

"Dard," retorted Jacintha, "if you don't like your place, I'd quit it.
There are two or three young men down in the village will be glad to
take it."

"I won't give them the chance, the vile egotists!" cried Dard. And he
returned to the chateau and little odd jobs.

Jacintha hung behind, lowered her eyes, put on a very deferential
manner, and thanked Edouard for the kind sentiments he had uttered; but
at the same time she took the liberty to warn him against believing the
extravagant stories Dard had been telling about her mistress's poverty.
She said the simple fact was that the baron had contracted debts, and
the baroness, being the soul of honor, was living in great economy to
pay them off. Then, as to Dard getting no supper up at Beaurepaire, a
complaint that appeared to sting her particularly, she assured him she
was alone to blame: the baroness would be very angry if she knew it.
"But," said she, "Dard is an egotist. Perhaps you may have noticed that
trait in him."

"Glimpses of it," replied Riviere, laughing.

"Monsieur, he is so egotistic that he has not a friend in the world
but me. I forgive him, because I know the reason; he has never had a
headache or a heartache in his life."

Edouard, aged twenty, and a male, did not comprehend this piece of
feminine logic one bit: and, while he puzzled over it in silence,
Jacintha went on to say that if she were to fill her egotist's paunch,
she should never know whether he came to Beaurepaire for her, or
himself. "Now, Dard," she added, "is no beauty, monsieur; why, he is
three inches shorter than I am."

"You are joking! he looks a foot," said Edouard.

"He is no scholar neither, and I have had to wipe up many a sneer and
many a sarcasm on his account; but up to now I have always been able
to reply that this five feet one of egotism loves me sincerely; and the
moment I doubt this, I give him the sack,--poor little fellow!"

"In a word," said Riviere, a little impatiently, "the family at
Beaurepaire are not in such straits as he pretends?"

"Monsieur, do I look like one starved?"

"By Jove, no! by Ceres, I mean."

"Are my young mistresses wan, and thin?"

"Treason! blasphemy! ah, no! By Venus and Hebe, no!"

Jacintha smiled at this enthusiastic denial, and also because her sex is
apt to smile when words are used they do not understand.

"Dard is a fool," suggested Riviere, by way of general solution. He
added, "And yet, do you know I wish every word he said had been true."
(Jacintha's eyes expressed some astonishment.) "Because then you and I
would have concerted means to do them kindnesses, secretly; for I see
you are no ordinary servant; you love your young mistresses. Do you
not?"

These simple words seemed to touch a grander chord in Jacintha's nature.

"Love them?" said she, clasping her hands; "ah, sir, do not be offended;
but, believe me, it is no small thing to serve an old, old family. My
grandfather lived and died with them; my father was their gamekeeper,
and fed to his last from off the poor baron's plate (and now they have
killed him, poor man); my mother died in the house and was buried in
the sacred ground near the family chapel. They put an inscription on her
tomb praising her fidelity and probity. Do you think these things do not
sink into the heart of the poor?--praise on her tomb, and not a word on
their own, but just the name, and when each was born and died, you know.
Ah! the pride of the mean is dirt; but the pride of the noble is gold."

"For, look you, among parvenues I should be a servant, and nothing more;
in this proud family I am a humble friend; of course they are not always
gossiping with me like vulgar masters and mistresses; if they did, I
should neither respect nor love them; but they all smile on me whenever
I come into the room, even the baroness herself. I belong to them, and
they belong to me, by ties without number, by the many kind words in
many troubles, by the one roof that sheltered us a hundred years, and
the grave where our bones lie together till the day of judgment."*

* The French peasant often thinks half a sentence, and
utters the other half aloud, and so breaks air in the middle
of a thought. Probably Jacintha's whole thought, if we had
the means of knowing it, would have run like this--"Besides,
I have another reason: I could not be so comfortable myself
elsewhere--for, look you"--

Jacintha clasped her hands, and her black eyes shone out warm through
the dew. Riviere's glistened too.

"That is well said," he cried; "it is nobly said: yet, after all, these
are ties that owe their force to the souls they bind. How often have
such bonds round human hearts proved ropes of sand! They grapple YOU
like hooks of steel; because you are steel yourself to the backbone. I
admire you, Jacintha. Such women as you have a great mission in France
just now."

Jacintha shook her head incredulously. "What can we poor women do?"

"Bring forth heroes," cried Publicola with fervor. "Be the mothers of
great men, the Catos and the Gracchi of the future!"

Jacintha smiled. She did not know the Gracchi nor their politics; but
the name rang well. "Gracchi!" Aristocrats, no doubt. "That would be too
much honor," replied she modestly. "At present, I must say adieu!" and
she moved off an inch at a time, in an uncertain hesitating manner, not
very difficult to read; but Riviere, you must know, had more than once
during this interview begged her to sit down, and in vain; she had
always thanked him, but said she had not a moment to stay. So he made no
effort to detain her now. The consequence was--she came slowly back
of her own accord, and sat down in a corner of the porch, where nobody
could see her, and then she sighed deeply.

"What is the matter now?" said Edouard, opening his eyes.

She looked at him point-blank for one moment; and her scale turned.

"Monsieur," said she timidly, "you have a good face, and a good heart.
All I told you was--give me your honor not to betray us."

"I swear it," said Edouard, a little pompously.

"Then--Dard was not so far from the truth; it was but a guess of his,
for I never trusted my own sweetheart as I now trust a stranger. But to
see what I see every day, and have no one I dare breathe a word to, oh,
it is very hard! But on what a thread things turn! If any one had told
me an hour ago it was you I should open my heart to! It's not economy:
it's not stinginess; they are not paying off their debts. They never
can. The baroness and the Demoiselles de Beaurepaire--are paupers."

"Paupers, Jacintha?"

"Ay, paupers! their debts are greater than their means. They live here
by sufferance. They have only their old clothes to wear. They have
hardly enough to eat. Just now our cow is in full milk, you know; so
that is a great help: but, when she goes dry, Heaven knows what we shall
do; for I don't. But that is not the worst; better a light meal than a
broken heart. Your precious government offers the chateau for sale.
They might as well send for the guillotine at once, and cut off all our
heads. You don't know my mistress as I do. Ah, butchers, you will drag
nothing out of that but her corpse. And is it come to this? the great
old family to be turned adrift like beggars. My poor mistress! my pretty
demoiselles that I played with and nursed ever since I was a child! (I
was just six when Josephine was born) and that I shall love with my last
breath"--

She could say no more, but choked by the strong feeling so long pent up
in her own bosom, fell to sobbing hysterically, and trembling like one
in an ague.

The statesman, who had passed all his short life at school and college,
was frightened, and took hold of her and pulled her, and cried,
"Oh! don't, Jacintha; you will kill yourself, you will die; this is
frightful: help here! help!" Jacintha put her hand to his mouth, and,
without leaving off her hysterics, gasped out, "Ah! don't expose me."
So then he didn't know what to do; but he seized a tumbler and filled
it with wine, and forced it between her lips. All she did was to bite a
piece out of the glass as clean as if a diamond had cut it. This did
her a world of good: destruction of sacred household property gave her
another turn. "There, I've broke your glass now," she cried, with a
marvellous change of tone; and she came-to and cried quietly like a
reasonable person, with her apron to her eyes.

When Edouard saw she was better, he took her hand and said proudly,
"Secret for secret. I choose this moment to confide to you that I love
Mademoiselle Rose de Beaurepaire. Love her? I did love her; but now you
tell me she is poor and in distress, I adore her." The effect of this
declaration on Jacintha was magical, comical. Her apron came down from
one eye, and that eye dried itself and sparkled with curiosity: the
whole countenance speedily followed suit and beamed with sacred joy.
What! an interesting love affair confided to her all in a moment! She
lowered her voice to a whisper directly. "Why, how did you manage? She
never goes into company."

"No; but she goes to church. Besides, I have met her eleven times out
walking with her sister, and twice out of the eleven she smiled on me.
O Jacintha! a smile such as angels smile; a smile to warm the heart and
purify the soul and last forever in the mind."

"Well, they say 'man is fire and woman tow:' but this beats all. Ha!
ha!"

"Oh! do not jest. I did not laugh at you. Jacintha, it is no laughing
matter; I revere her as mortals revere the saints; I love her so that
were I ever to lose all hope of her I would not live a day. And now that
you have told me she is poor and in sorrow, and I think of her walking
so calm and gentle--always in black, Jacintha,--and her low courtesy to
me whenever we met, and her sweet smile to me though her heart must be
sad, oh! my heart yearns for her. What can I do for her? How shall I
surround her with myself unseen--make her feel that a man's love waits
upon her feet every step she takes--that a man's love floats in the air
round that lovely head?" Then descending to earth for a moment, "but I
say, you promise not to betray me; come, secret for secret."

"I will not tell a soul; on the honor of a woman," said Jacintha.

The form of protestation was quite new to Edouard, and not exactly the
one his study of the ancient writers would have led him to select. But
the tone was convincing: he trusted her. They parted sworn allies; and,
at the very moment of parting, Jacintha, who had cast many a furtive
glance at the dead game, told Edouard demurely, Mademoiselle Rose was
very fond of roast partridge. On this he made her take the whole bag;
and went home on wings. Jacintha's revelation roused all that was noble
and forgiving in him. His understanding and his heart expanded from that
hour, and his fancy spread its pinions to the sun of love. Ah! generous
Youth, let who will betray thee; let who will sneer at thee; let me,
though young no longer, smile on thee and joy in thee! She he loved was
sad, was poor, was menaced by many ills; then she needed a champion. He
would be her unseen friend, her guardian angel. A hundred wild schemes
whirled in his beating heart and brain. He could not go in-doors,
indeed, no room could contain him: he made for a green lane he knew at
the back of the village, and there he walked up and down for hours.
The sun set, and the night came, and the stars glittered; but still he
walked alone, inspired, exalted, full of generous and loving schemes: of
sweet and tender fancies: a heart on fire; and youth the fuel, and the
flame vestal.




CHAPTER III.


This very day was the anniversary of the baron's death.

The baroness kept her room all the morning, and took no nourishment but
one cup of spurious coffee Rose brought her. Towards evening she came
down-stairs. In the hall she found two chaplets of flowers; they were
always placed there for her on this sad day. She took them in her hand,
and went into the little oratory that was in the park; there she found
two wax candles burning, and two fresh chaplets hung up. Her daughters
had been there before her.

She knelt and prayed many hours for her husband's soul; then she rose
and hung up one chaplet and came slowly away with the other in her hand.
At the gate of the park, Josephine met her with tender anxiety in her
sapphire eyes, and wreathed her arms round her, and whispered, "But you
have your children still."