The Golden Dog/Chapter XV
Chapter XV: The Charming Josephine[edit]
The few words of sympathy dropped by Bigot in the secret chamber had fallen like manna on the famine of Caroline's starving affections as she remained on the sofa, where she had half fallen, pressing her bosom with her hands as if a new-born thought lay there. "I am sure he meant it!" repeated she to herself. "I feel that his words were true, and for the moment his look and tone were those of my happy maiden days in Acadia! I was too proud then of my fancied power, and thought Bigot's love deserved the surrender of my very conscience to his keeping. I forgot God in my love for him; and, alas for me! that now is part of my punishment! I feel not the sin of loving him! My penitence is not sincere when I can still rejoice in his smile! Woe is me! Bigot! Bigot! unworthy as thou art, I cannot forsake thee! I would willingly die at thy feet, only spurn me not away, nor give to another the love that belongs to me, and for which I have paid the price of my immortal soul!"
She relapsed into a train of bitter reflections as her thoughts reverted to herself. Silence had been gradually creeping through the house. The noisy debauch was at an end. There were trampings, voices, and footfalls for a while longer, and then they died away. Everything was still and silent as the grave. She knew the feast was over and the guests departed; but not whether Bigot had accompanied them.
She sprang up as a low knock came to her door, thinking it was he, come to bid her adieu. It was with a feeling of disappointment she heard the voice of Dame Tremblay saying, "My Lady, may I enter?"
Caroline ran her fingers through her disordered hair, pressed her handkerchief into her eyes, and hastily tried to obliterate every trace of her recent agony. She bade her enter.
Dame Tremblay, shrewd as became the whilom Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport, had a kind heart, nevertheless, under her old- fashioned bodice. She sincerely pitied this young creature who was passing her days in prayer and her nights in weeping, although she might rather blame her in secret for not appreciating better the honor of a residence at Beaumanoir and the friendship of the Intendant.
"I do not think she is prettier than I, when I was the Charming Josephine!" thought the old dame. "I did not despise Beaumanoir in those days, and why should she now? But she will be neither maid nor mistress here long, I am thinking!" The dame saluted the young lady with great deference, and quietly asked if she needed her service.
"Oh! it is you, good dame!"--Caroline answered her own thoughts, rather than the question,--"tell me what makes this unusual silence in the Chateau?"
"The Intendant and all the guests have gone to the city, my Lady: a great officer of the Governor's came to summon them. To be sure, not many of them were fit to go, but after a deal of bathing and dressing the gentlemen got off. Such a clatter of horsemen as they rode out, I never heard before, my Lady; you must have heard them even here!"
"Yes, dame!" replied Caroline, "I heard it; and the Intendant, has he accompanied them?"
"Yes, my Lady; the freshest and foremost cavalier of them all. Wine and late hours never hurt the Intendant. It is for that I praise him, for he is a gallant gentleman, who knows what politeness is to women."
Caroline shrank a little at the thought expressed by the dame. "What causes you to say that?" asked she.
"I will tell, my Lady! 'Dame Tremblay!' said he, just before he left the Chateau. 'Dame Tremblay'--he always calls me that when he is formal, but sometimes when he is merry, he calls me 'Charming Josephine,' in remembrance of my young days, concerning which he has heard flattering stories, I dare say--"
"In heaven's name! go on, dame!" Caroline, depressed as she was, felt the dame's garrulity like a pinch on her impatience. "What said the Intendant to you, on leaving the Chateau?"
"Oh, he spoke to me of you quite feelingly--that is, bade me take the utmost care of the poor lady in the secret chamber. I was to give you everything you wished, and keep off all visitors, if such were your own desire."
A train of powder does not catch fire from a spark more quickly than Caroline's imagination from these few words of the old housekeeper. "Did he say that, good dame? God bless you, and bless him for those words!" Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of his tenderness, which, although half fictitious, she wholly believed.
"Yes, dame," continued she. "It is my most earnest desire to be secluded from all visitors. I wish to see no one but yourself. Have you many visitors--ladies, I mean--at the Chateau?"
"Oh, yes! the ladies of the city are not likely to forget the invitations to the balls and dinners of the bachelor Intendant of New France. It is the most fashionable thing in the city, and every lady is wild to attend them. There is one, the handsomest and gayest of them all, who, they say, would not object even to become the bride of the Intendant."
It was a careless shaft of the old dame's, but it went to the heart of Caroline. "Who is she, good dame?--pray tell me!"
"Oh, my Lady, I should fear her anger, if she knew what I say! She is the most terrible coquette in the city--worshipped by the men, and hated, of course, by the women, who all imitate her in dress and style as much as they possibly can, because they see it takes! But every woman fears for either husband or lover when Angelique des Meloises is her rival."
"Is that her name? I never heard it before, dame!" remarked Caroline, with a shudder. She felt instinctively that the name was one of direful omen to herself.
"Pray God you may never have reason to hear it again," replied Dame Tremblay. "She it was who went to the mansion of Sieur Tourangeau and with her riding-whip lashed the mark of a red cross upon the forehead of his daughter, Cecile, scarring her forever, because she had presumed to smile kindly upon a young officer, a handsome fellow, Le Gardeur de Repentigny--whom any woman might be pardoned for admiring!" added the old dame, with a natural touch of the candor of her youth. "If Angelique takes a fancy to the Intendant, it will be dangerous for any other woman to stand in her way!"
Caroline gave a frightened look at the dame's description of a possible rival in the Intendant's love. "You know more of her, dame! Tell me all! Tell me the worst I have to learn!" pleaded the poor girl.
"The worst, my Lady! I fear no one can tell the worst of Angelique des Meloises,--at least, would not dare to, although I know nothing bad of her, except that she would like to have all the men to herself, and so spite all the women!"
"But she must regard that young officer with more than common affection, to have acted so savagely to Mademoiselle Tourangeau?" Caroline, with a woman's quickness, had caught at that gleam of hope through the darkness.
"Oh, yes, my Lady! All Quebec knows that Angelique loves the Seigneur de Repentigny, for nothing is a secret in Quebec if more than one person knows it, as I myself well recollect; for when I was the Charming Josephine, my very whispers were all over the city by the next dinner hour, and repeated at every table, as gentlemen cracked their almonds and drank their wine in toasts to the Charming Josephine."
"Pshaw! dame! Tell me about the Seigneur de Repentigny! Does Angelique des Meloises love him, think you?" Caroline's eyes were fixed like stars upon the dame, awaiting her reply.
"It takes women to read women, they say," replied the dame, "and every lady in Quebec would swear that Angelique loves the Seigneur de Repentigny; but I know that, if she can, she will marry the Intendant, whom she has fairly bewitched with her wit and beauty, and you know a clever woman can marry any man she pleases, if she only goes the right way about it: men are such fools!"
Caroline grew faint. Cold drops gathered on her brow. A veil of mist floated before her eyes. "Water! good dame water!" she articulated, after several efforts.
Dame Tremblay ran, and got her a drink of water and such restoratives as were at hand. The dame was profuse in words of sympathy: she had gone through life with a light, lively spirit, as became the Charming Josephine, but never lost the kindly heart that was natural to her.
Caroline rallied from her faintness. "Have you seen what you tell me, dame, or is it but the idle gossip of the city, no truth in it? Oh, say it is the idle gossip of the city! Francois Bigot is not going to marry this lady? He is not so faithless"--to me, she was about to add, but did not.
"So faithless to her, she means, poor soul!" soliliquized the dame. "It is but little you know my gay master if you think he values a promise made to any woman, except to deceive her! I have seen too many birds of that feather not to know a hawk, from beak to claw. When I was the Charming Josephine I took the measure of men's professions, and never was deceived but once. Men's promises are big as clouds, and as empty and as unstable!"
"My good dame, I am sure you have a kind heart," said Caroline, in reply to a sympathizing pressure of the hand. "But you do not know, you cannot imagine what injustice you do the Intendant"--Caroline hesitated and blushed--"by mentioning the report of his marriage with that lady. Men speak untruly of him--"
"My dear Lady, it is what the women say that frightens one! The men are angry, and won't believe it; but the women are jealous, and will believe it even if there be nothing in it! As a faithful servant I ought to have no eyes to watch my master, but I have not failed to observe that the Chevalier Bigot is caught man-fashion, if not husband-fashion, in the snares of the artful Angelique. But may I speak my real opinion to you, my Lady?"
Caroline was eagerly watching the lips of the garrulous dame. She started, brushed back with a stroke of her hand the thick hair that had fallen over her ear,--"Oh, speak all your thoughts, good dame! If your next words were to kill me, speak them!"
"My next words will not harm you, my Lady," said she, with a meaning smile, "if you will accept the opinion of an old woman, who learned the ways of men when she was the Charming Josephine! You must not conclude that because the Chevalier Intendant admires, or even loves Angelique des Meloises, he is going to marry her. That is not the fashion of these times. Men love beauty, and marry money; love is more plenty than matrimony, both at Paris and at Quebec, at Versailles as well as at Beaumanoir or even at Lake Beauport, as I learned to my cost when I was the Charming Josephine!"
Caroline blushed crimson at the remark of Dame Tremblay. Her voice quivered with emotion. "It is sin to cheapen love like that, dame! And yet I know we have sometimes to bury our love in our heart, with no hope of resurrection."
"Sometimes? Almost always, my Lady! When I was the Charming Josephine--nay, listen, Lady: my story is instructive." Caroline composed herself to hear the dame's recital. "When I was the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport I began by believing that men were angels sent for the salvation of us women. I thought that love was a better passport than money to lead to matrimony; but I was a fool for my fancy! I had a good score of lovers any day. The gallants praised my beauty, and it was the envy of the city; they flattered me for my wit,--nay, even fought duels for my favor, and called me the Charming Josephine, but not one offered to marry me! At twenty I ran away for love, and was forsaken. At thirty I married for money, and was rid of all my illusions. At forty I came as housekeeper to Beaumanoir, and have lived here comfortably ever since I know what royal intendants are! Old Hocquart wore night- caps in the daytime, took snuff every minute, and jilted a lady in France because she had not the dower of a duchess to match his hoards of wealth! The Chevalier Bigot's black eye and jolly laugh draw after him all the girls of the city, but not one will catch him! Angelique des Meloises is first in his favor, but I see it is as clear as print in the eye of the Intendant that he will never marry her--and you will prevent him, my Lady!"
"I? I prevent him!" exclaimed Caroline in amazement. "Alas! good dame, you little know how lighter than thistledown floating on the wind is my influence with the Intendant."
"You do yourself injustice, my Lady. Listen! I never saw a more pitying glance fall from the eye of man than the Intendant cast upon you one day when he saw you kneeling in your oratory unconscious of his presence. His lips quivered, and a tear gathered under his thick eyelashes as he silently withdrew. I heard him mutter a blessing upon you, and curses upon La Pompadour for coming between him and his heart's desire. I was a faithful servant and kept my counsel. I could see, however, that the Intendant thought more of the lovely lady of Beaumanoir than of all the ambitious demoiselles of Quebec."
Caroline sprang up, and casting off the deep reserve she had maintained, threw her arms round the neck of Dame Tremblay, and half choked with emotion, exclaimed,--
"Is that true? good, dear friend of friends! Did the Chevalier Bigot bless me, and curse La Pompadour for coming between him and his heart's desire! His heart's desire! but you do not know--you cannot guess what that means, dame?"
"As if I did not know a man's heart's desire! but I am a woman, and can guess! I was not the Charming Josephine for nothing, good Lady!" replied the dame, smiling, as the enraptured girl laid her fair, smooth cheek upon that of the old housekeeper.
"And did he look so pityingly as you describe, and bless me as I was praying, unwitting of his presence?" repeated she, with a look that searched the dame through and through.
"He did, my Lady; he looked, just then, as a man looks upon a woman whom he really loves. I know how men look when they really love us and when they only pretend to? No deceiving me!" added she. "When I was the Charming Josephine--"
"Ave Maria!" said Caroline, crossing herself with deep devotion, not heeding the dame's reminiscences of Lake Beauport. "Heaven has heard my prayers! I can die happy!"
"Heaven forbid you should die at all, my Lady! You die? The Intendant loves you. I see it in his face that he will never marry Angelique des Meloises. He may indeed marry a great marchioness with her lap full of gold and chateaux--that is, if the King commands him: that is how the grand gentlemen of the Court marry. They wed rank, and love beauty--the heart to one, the hand to another. It would be my way too, were I a man and women so simple as we all are. If a girl cannot marry for love, she will marry for money; and if not for money, she can always marry for spite--I did, when I was the Charming Josephine!"
"It is a shocking and sinful way, to marry without love!" said Caroline, warmly.
"It is better than no way at all!" replied the dame, regretting her remark when she saw her lady's face flush like crimson. The dame's opinions were rather the worse for wear in her long journey through life, and would not be adopted by a jury of prudes. "When I was the Charming Josephine," continued she, "I had the love of half the gallants of Quebec, but not one offered his hand. What was I to do? 'Crook a finger, or love and linger,' as they say in Alencon, where I was born?"
"Fie, dame! Don't say such things!" said Caroline, with a shamed, reproving look. "I would think better of the Intendant." Her gratitude led her to imagine excuses for him. The few words reported to her by Dame Tremblay she repeated with silently moving lips and tender reiteration. They lingered in her ear like the fugue of a strain of music, sung by a choir of angelic spirits. "Those were his very words, dame?" added she again, repeating them-- not for inquiry, but for secret joy.
"His very words, my Lady! But why should the Royal Intendant not have his heart's desire as well as that great lady in France? If any one had forbidden my marrying the poor Sieur Tremblay, for whom I did not care two pins, I would have had him for spite--yes, if I had had to marry him as the crows do, on a tree-top!"
"But no one bade you or forbade you, dame! You were happy that no one came between you and your heart's desire!" replied Caroline.
Dame Tremblay laughed out merrily at the idea. "Poor Giles Tremblay my heart's desire! Listen, Lady, I could no more get that than you could. When I was the Charming Josephine there was but one, out of all my admirers, whom I really cared for, and he, poor fellow, had a wife already! So what was I to do? I threw my line at last in utter despair, and out of the troubled sea I drew the Sieur Tremblay, whom I married, and soon put cosily underground with a heavy tombstone on top of him to keep him down, with this inscription, which you may see for yourself, my Lady, if you will, in the churchyard where he lies:
"'Ci git mon Giles,
Ah! qu'il est bien,
Pour son repos,
Et pour le mien!'
"Men are like my Angora tabby: stroke them smoothly and they will purr and rub noses with you; but stroke them the wrong way and whirr! they scratch your hands and out of the window they fly! When I was the Charming--"
"Oh, good dame, thanks! thanks! for the comfort you have given me!" interrupted Caroline, not caring for a fresh reminiscence of the Charming Josephine. "Leave me, I pray. My mind is in a sad tumult. I would fain rest. I have much to fear, but something also to hope for now," she said, leaning back in her chair in deep and quiet thought.
"The Chateau is very still now, my Lady," replied the dame, "the servants are all worn out with long attendance and fast asleep. Let my Lady go to her own apartments, which are bright and airy. It will be better for her than this dull chamber."
"True, dame!" Caroline rose at the suggestion. "I like not this secret chamber. It suited my sad mood, but now I seem to long for air and sunshine. I will go with you to my own room."
They ascended the winding stair, and Caroline seated herself by the window of her own chamber, overlooking the park and gardens of the Chateau. The huge, sloping forest upon the mountain side, formed, in the distance, with the blue sky above it, a landscape of beauty, upon which her eyes lingered with a sense of freshness and delight.
Dame Tremblay left her to her musings, to go, she said, to rouse up the lazy maids and menservants, to straighten up the confusion of everything in the Chateau after the late long feast.
On the great stair she encountered M. Froumois, the Intendant's valet, a favorite gossip of the dame's, who used to invite him into her snug parlor, where she regaled him with tea and cake, or, if late in the evening, with wine and nipperkins of Cognac, while he poured into her ear stories of the gay life of Paris and the bonnes fortunes of himself and master--for the valet in plush would have disdained being less successful among the maids in the servants' hall than his master in velvet in the boudoirs of their mistresses.
M. Froumois accepted the dame's invitation, and the two were presently engaged in a melee of gossip over the sayings and doings of fashionable society in Quebec.
The dame, holding between her thumb and finger a little china cup of tea well laced, she called it, with Cognac, remarked,--"They fairly run the Intendant down, Froumois: there is not a girl in the city but laces her boots to distraction since it came out that the Intendant admires a neat, trim ankle. I had a trim ankle myself when I was the Charming Josephine, M. Froumois!"
"And you have yet, dame,--if I am a judge," replied Froumois, glancing down with an air of gallantry.
"And you are accounted a judge--and ought to be a good one, Froumois! A gentleman can't live at court as you have done, and learn nothing of the points of a fine woman!" The good dame liked a compliment as well as ever she had done at Lake Beauport in her hey- day of youth and beauty.
"Why, no, dame," replied he; "one can't live at Court and learn nothing! We study the points of fine women as we do fine statuary in the gallery of the Louvre, only the living beauties will compel us to see their best points if they have them!" M. Froumois looked very critical as he took a pinch from the dame's box, which she held out to him. Her hand and wrist were yet unexceptionable, as he could not help remarking.
"But what think you, really, of our Quebec beauties? Are they not a good imitation of Versailles?" asked the dame.
"A good imitation! They are the real porcelain! For beauty and affability Versailles cannot exceed them. So says the Intendant, and so say I!," replied the gay valet. "Why, look you, Dame Tremblay!" continued he, extending his well-ringed fingers, "they do give gentlemen no end of hopes here! We have only to stretch out our ten digits and a ladybird will light on every one of them! It was so at Versailles--it is just so here. The ladies in Quebec do know how to appreciate a real gentleman!"
"Yes, that is what makes the ladies of Ville Marie so jealous and angry," replied the dame; "the King's officers and all the great catches land at Quebec first, when they come out from France, and we take toll of them! We don't let a gentleman of them get up to Ville Marie without a Quebec engagement tacked to his back, so that all Ville Marie can read it, and die of pure spite! I say we, Froumois; but you understand I speak of myself only as the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport. I must content myself now with telling over my past glories."
"Well dame, I don't know but you are glorious yet! But tell me, what has got over my master to-day? Was the unknown lady unkind? Something has angered him, I am sure!"
"I cannot tell you, Froumois: women's moods are not to be explained, even by themselves." The dame had been sensibly touched by Caroline's confidence in her, and she was too loyal to her sex to repeat even to Froumois her recent conversation with Caroline.
They found plenty of other topics, however, and over the tea and Cognac the dame and valet passed an hour of delightful gossip.
Caroline, left to the solitude of her chamber, sat silently with her hands clasped in her lap. Her thoughts pressed inward upon her. She looked out without seeing the fair landscape before her eyes.
Tears and sorrow she had welcomed in a spirit of bitter penitence for her fault in loving one who no longer regarded her. "I do not deserve any man's regard," murmured she, as she laid her soul on the rack of self-accusation, and wrung its tenderest fibres with the pitiless rigor of a secret inquisitor. She utterly condemned herself while still trying to find some excuse for her unworthy lover. At times a cold half-persuasion, fluttering like a bird in the snow, came over her that Bigot could not be utterly base. He could not thus forsake one who had lost all--name, fame, home, and kindred--for his sake! She clung to the few pitying words spoken by him as a shipwrecked sailor to the plank which chance has thrown in his way. It might float her for a few hours, and she was grateful.
Immersed in these reflections, Caroline sat gazing at the clouds, now transformed into royal robes of crimson and gold--the gorgeous train of the sun filled the western horizon. She raised her pale hands to her head, lifting the mass of dark hair from her temples. The fevered blood, madly coursing, pulsed in her ear like the stroke of a bell.
She remembered a sunset like this on the shores of the Bay of Minas, where the thrush and oriole twittered their even-song before seeking their nests, where the foliage of the trees was all ablaze with golden fire, and a shimmering path of sunlight lay upon the still waters like a glorious bridge leading from themselves to the bright beyond.
On that well-remembered night her heart had yielded to Bigot's pleadings. She had leaned her head upon his bosom, and received the kiss and gave the pledge that bound her to him forever.
The sun kept sinking--the forests on the mountain tops burst into a bonfire of glory. Shadows went creeping up the hill-sides until the highest crest alone flamed out as a beacon of hope to her troubled soul.
Suddenly, like a voice from the spirit world, the faint chime of the bells of Charlebourg floated on the evening breeze: it was the Angelus, calling men to prayer and rest from their daily labor. Sweetly the soft reverberation floated through the forests, up the hill-sides, by plain and river, entering the open lattices of Chateau and cottage, summoning rich and poor alike to their duty of prayer and praise. It reminded men of the redemption of the world by the divine miracle of the incarnation announced by Gabriel, the angel of God, to the ear of Mary blessed among women.
The soft bells rang on. Men blessed them, and ceased from their toils in field and forest. Mothers knelt by the cradle, and uttered the sacred words with emotions such as only mothers feel. Children knelt by their mothers, and learned the story of God's pity in appearing upon earth as a little child, to save mankind from their sins. The dark Huron setting his snares in the forest and the fishers on the shady stream stood still. The voyageur sweeping his canoe over the broad river suspended his oar as the solemn sound reached him, and he repeated the angel's words and went on his way with renewed strength.
The sweet bells came like a voice of pity and consolation to the ear of Caroline. She knelt down, and clasping her hands, repeated the prayer of millions,--
"'Ave Maria! gratia plena.'"
She continued kneeling, offering up prayer after prayer for God's forgiveness, both for herself and for him who had brought her to this pass of sin and misery. "'Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!'" repeated she, bowing herself to the ground. "I am the chief of sinners; who shall deliver me from this body of sin and affiction?"
The sweet bells kept ringing. They woke reminiscences of voices of by-gone days. She heard her father's tones, not in anger as he would speak now, but kind and loving as in her days of innocence. She heard her mother, long dead--oh, how happily dead! for she could not die of sorrow now over her dear child's fall. She heard the voices of the fair companions of her youth, who would think shame of her now; and amidst them all, the tones of the persuasive tongue that wooed her maiden love. How changed it all seemed! and yet, as the repetition of two or three notes of a bar of music brings to recollection the whole melody to which it belongs, the few kind words of Bigot, spoken that morning, swept all before them in a drift of hope. Like a star struggling in the mist the faint voice of an angel was heard afar off in the darkness.
The ringing of the Angelus went on. Her heart was utterly melted. Her eyes, long parched, as a spent fountain in the burning desert, were suddenly filled with tears. She felt no longer the agony of the eyes that cannot weep. The blessed tears flowed quietly as the waters of Shiloh, bringing relief to her poor soul, famishing for one true word of affection. Long after the sweet bells ceased their chime Caroline kept on praying for him, and long after the shades of night had fallen over the Chateau of Beaumanoir.