Jacquetta/Chapter VIII
After a breakfast by no means pleasant, at which the baron laboured to sustain a flagging conversation, and to drag his wife into notice, she took his arm and they walked together in the garden.
As they approached a pedestal that sustained nothing, Alphonse said, ‘My dear Jacquetta, I believe that the ambition of my life approaches satisfaction. I have for several years desired to see this pedestal support once more a globe of glass, silvered inside, which shall be, in fact, a globular mirror, reflecting every surrounding object in the most extraordinary and distorted manner. If you approach it, your nose will assume dimensions perfectly colossal, whereas your extremities will be reduced to points.’
‘My dear husband,’ said Jacquetta, who had not been listening to what he said, ‘how long does your mother remain in the house?’
‘How? What?’
‘And your aunt? When do they leave?’
‘Leave! What do you mean?’
‘I suppose now they go elsewhere; it would have been better had they vacated the chateau before our arrival, as they evidently have made up their minds not to like me.’
The baron shivered as if touched with a sudden frost.
‘Of course she remains—I mean, they remain; the one is my mother, the other is my aunt.’
‘But—now I have come here, your mother assuredly leaves.’
‘Leaves! Mon Dieu! Turn my own mother out of doors; it would be a crime, infamous and scandalous.’
‘But she has her own house into which to retire.’
‘She has no house.’
‘Then—lodgings.’
‘Lodgings! Ma foi! I am hot. Je transpire.’
He took out his handkerchief and wafted it before his face to cool it. He looked very hot.
‘But,’ said Jacquetta, ‘now I am mistress here.’
‘You! My mother!—that is! I am in despair.’
He was clearly frightened—horror-struck at the unheard of proposal, to turn his mother and aunt out of the chateau merely because he had brought a wife into it. ‘You do not understand. My mother came here—to Plaissac, when she married my father. She became a mother here—I was born here. The place is endeared to her by the most loving, the most sacred associations. To turn her out! Sainte Vierge! It would be a frightful scandal.’
‘But how can we get on together? She will not like me.’
‘Good heavens! You must get on together. You can eat at the same table, sleep under the same roof. You do not say, she must clear out of this world because you are in it.’
‘No, that is altogether different. I cannot live under the same roof with her, if she refuses to treat me with common civility.’
‘Ah! I know my mother well. Be tranquil; she thinks it is due to her dignity to act with coldness, but you will find out that after a while she will be good to you.’
‘I cannot endure this. If I remain here I shall be utterly miserable. Oh, why did I leave my dear father and mother, who loved me so tenderly!’
‘Be reassured, my cherished one! You see everything in wrong proportion as if you looked into a silvered globe such as once stood on that pedestal. Be at ease. Assure yourself. Though your nose may look like the proboscis of an elephant it is moderate in size—quite small. It is so with everything. You are mistaken. This trouble is not a mountain, it is a molehill.’
He tried hard to comfort her. He said every kind thing that came into his head.
‘I will go this afternoon and see Aunt Betsy,’ she said after a while; ‘and you will come with me, Alphonse. We can, of course, have the carriage.’
‘Yes,’ answered the baron, ‘I will ask mamma.’
Mdme. la douairière looked very glum when her son mentioned that the carriage was wanted.
‘What for?’ she asked.
‘Madame,’ said Jacquetta, ‘I desire to pay a visit to my aunt, at Champclair.’
The dowager’s face darkened more than before. ‘I object to your going there,’ she said. ‘Before you were married, it was inevitable—now you belong to us, and no longer to the society of inferiors.’
‘Madame,’ answered Jacquetta, ‘I intend to call on my aunt. I belong to her by ties of blood which I cannot and will not forget.’
‘This is a tone that ill becomes you, madame!’
‘Excuse me, mother-in-law, I know my duty.’
The old lady was staggered by the resolution of her daughter-in-law, accustomed as she was to implicit obedience on the part of her son.
‘If you must go, I suppose you must; but understand, I object to seeing the Pain-au-lait here.’
‘I shall be grieved, belle-mere, that you should be confined to your room when not indisposed.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, madame, that of course my aunt will visit me here, and if you decline to meet her, it will be your care to keep out of her way.’
‘Mon Dieu!’ gasped the baron. ‘Comme je sue!’
The dowager said no more. The carriage was ordered, and came round—a wretched turn out—a yellow landau with a coat of arms and baron’s coronet on it, but the paint off the wheels, the leather blistered, chipped, and dull, the harness unpolished, no bright brass or silver in the mountings, the horse a gaunt, shambling creature that advanced at a dance, throwing out its rough feet sideways. The driver was the gardener, who also cleaned the knives and boots, with a copper-coloured face, and the shabbiest livery. He held the reins with both hands, and his hands were not encased in gloves.
‘Has he no gloves?’ asked Jacquetta.
‘Oh, yes! Jean, you have a pair. Put them on whilst going through the town.’
Jacquetta could not help laughing in spite of her trouble. ‘My dear Alphonse, we will change all this in time. Of course, I have plenty of money, and if my dear papa and mamma come to see us, they will expect a proper baronial turn out. Why—even the surgeons with us drive better carriages and horses, and have more stylish servants than you nobles.’
‘We have been very poor,’ said Alphonse.
‘Yes, dear husband, but now we are rich.’
Aunt Betsy was wild with delight at seeing her niece, and thanked her over and over again for coming at once to visit her.
‘You only arrived yesterday evening, and you drive this first day to see me! That is kind. What did the dowager baroness say?’
Alphonse was not present just then, he was in the garden talking to the gardener, so Jacquetta told her aunt about her little fight with the old lady. ‘I have carried my point, and I will not give way,’ she said. ‘I know my right as a married woman.’
‘My gracious, Jacket! I had no idea there was so much spirit in you. Come and visit me when you like, but I will not go to Plaissac.’
‘Why not, aunt?’
‘Because I do not want further to offend the baroness. Perhaps when I am dead and you have Champclair, she will not feel so bitter against me.’ The good old Pain-au-lait was a humble creature, not at all pushing, and she looked with profound admiration at the family of her late mistress and benefactress. ‘No, my dear, don’t take it ill of me. I know what I am. I’m an old servant, and not a lady. Come and see me, and you are always welcome; but I’ll not intrude on the baroness and Mdlle. de Pleurans. You may tell them so. Also, my dear, don’t try to fight them, you will gain nothing by it. As the newspapers say, you can’t fight away from your base. See how the baron reverences these ladies.’
It was clear that her residence in France, and with Mme. de Hoelgoet, had imbued the Pain-au-lait with the modes of thought and views of those with whom she had associated.
When the baron and Jacquetta were in the carriage again on their way back, ‘You will be submissive to my mother?’ he pleaded; ‘she always has been mistress in Plaissac, I mean, ever since her marriage. Only Revolution dethrones queens. She has been head of the house—only in the Reign of Terror do royal heads fall—you—you will not inaugurate a Reign of Terror?’
‘May I rule in the gardens?’
‘Oh, yes; my mother does not care about the gardens.’
‘And I will begin my rule there by ordering a silvered globe for the vacant pedestal. We drive through Nantes. We will stop at a glass shop.’
‘My angel! my queen!’ He clasped her hands and kissed them, he would have knelt to her in the carriage had she suffered it. ‘We will carry it home. You will see your nose in it—colossal, and your extremities reduced to the pattes of flies.’
As proposed, so done. At the shop it was suggested that the glass globe, a yard in diameter, should be sent to the chateau, but of this the baron would not hear. He was like a child with a new toy. He was impatient to have the pedestal re-occupied. He knew how dilatory they were in shops. Time was of no object to the messengers. Besides, the globe might be broken. In the carriage he and madame could sustain it between them. The weight was not excessive, and they could amuse themselves on the way, looking into it.
Accordingly the baron and young baroness got into the carriage, and the globe was handed to them, and they found it quite possible to carry it. The driver was ordered to go ‘doucement,’ and through the streets of Nantes, and along the road to Plaissac, the horse danced, much as though he were performing on a tight-rope, and the coach man with his red hands held both reins—he had pulled off his white cotton gloves on leaving Nantes—and talked to the horse. In the carriage, the baron looked over the top of the enormous globe at Jacquetta ‘My angel! I see you.’
‘Yes, Alphonse,’ she answered. The carrying of the great glass ball was fatiguing. ‘I also see you.’
‘I hope you are not exhausted. We shall soon be at the chateau.’
‘No, Alphonse, I can carry the globe very well, so far.’
‘Can you see yourself in it?’
‘Yes, Alphonse.’
‘And what do you think now of your nose?’
‘It is as you said, colossal.’
She could hear the baron laughing on the other side of the ball, and by the motion of his knees, saw that he was thrusting his body and head forward, then withdrawing them, so as to observe the development and reduction of his nasal organ in the mirror according as he altered his distance.
On entering the gates of the chateau and driving up to the door, the coachman cracked his whip, and the baron shouted ‘Maman! maman!’
The heads of the dowager and the aunt appeared at an up-stair window, and the old baroness shouted from it to her son to know what he wanted.
‘See, see! I have a reflecting globe for the pedestal. My angel, my cherished one, has given it me. It came very expensive, but she paid for it. I am so happy, oh, so happy! Come down, mamma and Aunt Celestine and help to remove the globe. I will allow no hands but those I love to touch it. Think, mamma! My father gave you this when you married—I mean the other globe—and now my charming Jacquetta presents me with one to replace that broken by the detestable gamin—may he be thunder struck!—on this most auspicious day.’
The two old ladies came down and assisted in removing the globe. Then all four, standing round it, with their hands under it, moved along the terrace in the direction of the vacant pedestal.
Inevitably their hands touched under the ball, that of the dowager rested on that of Jacquetta.
The situation was really comical, the four had to step very cautiously. The baron went backwards, looking over his shoulder to take his direction.
‘Keep pace,’ he said. ‘Gently, gently, or it will fall.’
Then the dowager baroness laughed. ‘Celestine, are you not ashamed of your nose?’
‘But, Josephine, yours is as prodigious.’
‘And so must be that of Alphonse,’ said madame.
‘And that of Jacquetta,’ said the baron. Now, then, cautiously—very cautiously, lift the globe into its place.’
When the great silvered ball was planted securely on its basement, the baron said:—‘See, ladies! A shining world of happiness was disclosed to the eyes of my mother when my poor father brought her here. That fell to pieces, apparently destroyed for ever. But no! Another shining glittering, yet fragile world of happiness, and love, and transport, appears before our eyes to-day. To-day it is my darling Jacquetta who gives it us. It is very beautiful; it shines like the sun, but it is very fragile. It will inevitably go to pieces unless—we unite hands and bear it together. Let us embrace.’
It was impossible to hold out against his good-nature, and the situation had been so grotesque as to shake the resolution of the baroness-mother, who had measured weapons with her daughter-in-law, had come off the worst, and rather respected her for her spirit.
‘Very well,’ she said, ‘let us embrace.’ But the embrace resolved itself into a cold touch with the lips on the brow of Jacquetta.