Chapter XIII (1)
Mrs. Martha Kemblet to her sister Mrs. Polly White, Paris, November 28th, 1831.
“My dear Polly,
“Hoping this finds you quite well as it leaves me at present. I have not had time these weeks so much as to send you a line, and now my head is all in a whirl, and you were always one to want to know things from the beginning. The precious babe is well, thank God, and in spite of all their Popish goings-on, which are enough to scare a Christian woman. Will you believe it, before that dear child was many hours old, with Miss Horatia at death’s door as you may say, they brought in that Monsenior, as they call him, to christen him, and the beautiful christening robe as I put away myself with his dear mother looking on, not so much as two days before, all wasted. When his Reverence came over I did think it would be done again properly, but no! A fine string of names he has, poor mite, but I will not try to write them. Master Maurice is enough for me, and it makes me wild to hear that Joséphine speaking of Monsieur le Vicomte this and Monsieur le Vicomte that.
“But Joséphine can’t show off any of her airs now, for we are all put to the right about by this Madam Carry. Even the old Madam was ready to go down on her knees to her, and as for the Count I think he would have given her a pound a minute. It was a pity to think that nice Mrs. Pole hadn’t come already, but who was to know that Miss Horatia was going to take us all by surprise. Only the day before she was worrying her pretty head counting over all them English baby clothes, with me, she knowing nothing like, and she says to me, ‘Martha, are you sure there is enough?’ and I says, ‘Saving your presence, more than enough for twins twice over.’ And there they are, all lying just as we put them away, and the sweet infant all bundled up in French ones, like any heathen Indian. It’s pitiful to see him.
“The next day after we did this Miss Horatia went out driving to buy some lace for a cap she had set her mind on, and I met her as she was coming in, and said, ‘Have you got the lace you wanted, Mam?’ and she says, looking strange, ‘No, Martha,’ and it seemed to me she had forgotten all about it. Then I went for a turn myself, and when I came in (it might be six o’clock or so) I found such a commotion as it might have been St. Giles’ Fair, and all of them jibbering and jabbering so that I was put to it to know what had happened, but just then the old Madam’s lady came screaming for me, and I ran upstairs to my poor lamb.
“It was sixteen hours before the babe was born; then for three days she was give over, and they sent a messenger to fetch his Reverence. I will say that they spared no expense, and that they took on terrible. As you know, the Count, for all his fair words, has never been a favourite of mine, but I tell you I was sorry for that young man. He was scared pretty nearly out of his life at first, and then it seemed to me that the family looked pretty black at him, and it’s my belief they had cause. That Jackanapes Jules, the Count’s valet, told me for gospel that the Count and she were shut up for a long time in the nursery after she came in that afternoon, and it’s thought they had words.
“Well, as I was saying, his Reverence arrived, and I took good care that things should be to his liking, because, for all that the house is full of duchesses and marquises as they call themselves, they don’t know how to make a body comfortable as I call comfortable. The poor lamb seemed to cling to him like, but I don’t know that she ever so much as asked to see the Count; so I drew my own conclusions.
“But that’s five weeks ago now, and his Reverence went home again, as you know, and now, though the doctor says she may sit up on a couch a little every day it seems as if she couldn’t make the effort. She just lies there, white as a lily, so that it’s pitiful to see her and do you know, what’s worse, she won’t take no notice of that pretty dear. And here all these months she’s been wearing herself to death getting the nurseries ready as if he’d been a royal prince, and she, who never had a needle in her hand, sewing all day at his little clothes. The Lord knows best, I suppose, but it makes my heart ache.”
(2)
The planets of larger bulk which revolved round Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon as their central sun were disturbed in their courses, for Toinette, the least of these luminaries, had just rushed into the nurseries to say that M. le Comte was on his way thither. It was not the first time that this comet had impinged upon their orbits, but it was the first time that he had disturbed such a galaxy of subsidiary lights. Joséphine, who had no business to be there at all, slipped out by a side door; Toinette, blushing deeply, paused but to make a reverence and followed her; but Martha, with merely the slightest sketch of a curtsey, folded her arms and remained placidly in the background. The buxom Breton nurse, rising majestically from her chair (the great consequence of the burden in her arms warranting her in refraining from any movement of respect) waited, as Armand approached, with the air of a smiling priestess.
The centre of the solar system was looking that morning more than usually careworn. He was not asleep; on the contrary some knotty problem of existence or pre-existence was engaging his whole mind. His worried expression, however, slightly relaxed as his father bent to look at him, and his puckered face broke into a different series of puckers.
“Aha! he recognises M. le Comte!” said the Breton delightedly. “He smiles at M. son père!” (This was a very free rendering of Maurice’s facial transformation.) “Let M. le Comte give him his finger, and he will see how strong he is.”
The clutch of the tiny hand round Armand’s forefinger seemed to please him, for he said, “Tiens, Maurice, do not damage me for life!”
“He resembles M. son père astonishingly,” pursued Madame Carré. “Probably his hair will be the hair of Madame la Comtesse, but who could doubt that his eyes are those of M. le Comte?”
The eyes in question, which were indeed more blue than grey, were now staring up unwinkingly and rather disconcertingly at the young man.
“Dost thou recognise me, Maurice?” asked Armand. “Thou art thyself unlike anyone or anything that I have ever seen. Is it possible that I am reminded of a monkey?”
“M. le Comte would not wish to hold him?” suggested the nurse.
“Si,” answered Armand. “Give him to me. He will not break, hein?”
He had the gift of doing everything deftly, and he held his son in a manner to call forth praises from the guardian. Maurice still studied him, and was carried over to Martha at the window.
“Well, my good Martha,” said Armand, “what do you think of him?”
“He takes to you, Sir,” responded Mrs. Kemblet weightily. (Never, though she sometimes accorded her “lamb” a title, did she address the source of that title otherwise.) “And there’s no doubt he has your eyes.”
“He has need to take to someone, has he not?” observed Armand.
And though it had given Martha “a turn” to see the poor innocent in his father’s arms when he had never been in his mother’s, she rose in defence, knowing the Breton ignorant of English.
“She’ll be all right, Sir, my lady will, when she’s stronger, you’ll see, and be as fond of him as never was, she as wanted him so badly.... Will he go back to his Nana now, the precious?”
“Martha,” said the Comte, surrendering his offspring, “never buy your bonnets at Herbault’s. But you don’t, I suppose.”
“Certainly not, Sir,” responded Mrs. Kemblet, in some indignation. “I makes them myself, Sir, not liking the French style, saving your presence.... Here he is, Mrs. Carry.”
And, able then to ponder Armand’s cryptic utterance, she stood staring after him as he left the nursery, and thought, “Poor young gentleman, it’s pitiful! Well, wild oats, as the saying is, always come home to roost.” Nevertheless, from that day she had softer thoughts of “the Count.”
(3)
All these agitations had, as may well be imagined, reverberated nowhere more loudly than in the apartments of Victorine, Duchesse Douairière de la Roche-Guyon. During the crisis she had performed the customary miracle known as “rising to the occasion”; to her had come the terrified Armand, the distressed Emmanuel, and from the top of the house she had directed, as from a quarter-deck, the various manoeuvres which were to guide the family ship once more into smooth water. Now, a veteran admiral, she a little took her ease, though not relaxing her vigilance, for, to change the metaphor, there was something savouring of a mutiny below decks, and the mutineer was the English wife.
The Dowager had been far too much occupied of late to pay attention to that curious soul of hers, which seemed to crave for ghostly nourishment only when her body had received too much of material, and Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, paying a call upon her this December morning, had not found her desirous of spiritual intercourse. He sat there now by her bedside, his fingers tapping gently on the box of Limoges enamel which enshrined her false teeth—but this he did not know—his thin, refined prelate’s face a little flushed from the heat of the room after the cold outside, while the Marquis, leaning rather gloomily against the mantelpiece listened, like his cousin, to the venerable lady’s denunciation of her favourite grandson.
“Not,” said the Duchesse, with a fine liberality of view, “that I pronounce judgment upon his affair with Madame de Vigerie—that is more in your province, Prosper—but that I cannot conceive his not taking sufficient precautions to prevent the slightest whisper of it coming to Horatia’s ears at this time. All Englishwomen are prudes, and he ought to have known what the effect would be. Heaven knows we do not want another secluded wife in the family... No, Emmanuel, you know I do not blame you in the least... That she will scarcely speak to Armand is natural, but it is not natural that she should refuse to take the slightest interest in the child. (Prosper, do leave off tapping your fingers like that!) As you know, it was never my wish that she should nurse it, but though events have made that impossible, I should at least desire——Ah, here is Armand himself. Good-morning, grandson!”
“Good-morning, bonne maman,” said the young man, saluting her extended claw. “Good-morning, Prosper. I suppose you are sitting on my case as usual?”
“Do not be flippant, Armand,” said the Duchesse with majesty. “You ought to be on your knees thanking the saints that the child is as healthy as it is, and that your wife is not in her grave.”
Armand sat down with an air of resignation, and looked across the bed at Prosper.
“If you could make some novel contribution to the joint sermon, cousin,” he said pleasantly, “I should be grateful. The old text is getting threadbare.”
“I don’t want to preach you a sermon, my dear Armand,” replied the priest. “I think recent events must have done that.”
“I will tell you what recent events have done for me,” retorted the young man with vigour. “They have shown me the truth of the English saying, ‘as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.’ You drive me, between you, to wish heartily that I were what you say I am, the lover of the lady to whom you assign me. I should be no worse off—in fact considerably better.”
“Armand!” protested his grandmother, with prudery so manifestly histrionic that even Prosper turned away to hide a smile.
(4)
“Is he a precious pet, then, and will he come to his Martha, and would he like to go to his pretty Mamma?” crooned Martha, rocking a bundle to and fro in her arms. Maurice, just extricated from the voluminous embrace of his foster-mother, gurgled assent.
“Has he had a nice walk then, and did he have a beautiful sleepy sleep?” continued his faithful admirer, hurrying along the corridor in the direction of her mistress’s bedroom. Arrived there she stopped, listened, and knocked.
It was the hour for Horatia to be sitting up in an armchair. She did this religiously, according to the doctor’s orders, from three to four, then wearily allowed herself to be put to bed again. Now she could receive a few visitors. Members of the family, and connections, came to offer their congratulations, but the conversation was extremely one-sided, and Martha would not permit her charge even to say “Yes” and “No” for longer than ten minutes at a time. Even the Duchesse, when she paid her state visit, found herself, to her indignation, back again in her own apartments almost as soon as she had left them, and so there was nothing to do but to send the small parcel containing the promised emeralds to Horatia, since she had not had time to make the presentation in person.
It was a good thing, perhaps, that a kind Providence had prevented this, for her granddaughter-in-law, just glancing at the jewels, told Martha to put them away and never to let her see them again. She had cried after the episode, and for a week no further visits had been allowed. Every day Armand came to kiss her hand. His appearance seemed to make no difference one way or the other. Horatia would say, in answer to his enquiries, “I am quite well, thank you,” and turn her head, so that there was nothing left for him to do but to go away. Her son she had scarcely seen, and her indifference amounted to a positive distaste for his society.
Once or twice after his morning promenade the fat, jolly Breton woman, to whom Maurice owed the preservation of his tiny life, was invited to exhibit her charge, but Horatia refused so much as to look at him, and merely said, “Please ask that woman to go away. I cannot bear her great cap.” Martha regretfully obeyed, and by evening was ready to agree to the exclusion of the child altogether, when she saw how her mistress’s temperature had risen. That was three weeks earlier, and although Horatia’s bitterness and apathy continued the doctors had given it as their opinion that there was a steady if slow improvement. They were agreed that it would be a great step in the right direction if Madame la Comtesse could be induced to take some interest in her baby. Martha had asked and received permission to try again, and she now stood with Maurice in her arms summoning up courage to enter. A fresh gurgle gave the necessary impetus; she turned the handle of the door and went in.
Horatia, as white as her dressing-gown, was sitting with her back to the door, looking into the fire, her hands folded before her.
“Would he like to go to his pretty mamma? and he shall then,” said Martha, laying down the bundle in Horatia’s lap. Horatia started, but with the child already on her knee it was impossible to resist.
“Now, Miss Horatia, just put your hand under his little head and hold him a moment for me while I poke the fire. He wouldn’t cry, no, he wouldn’t, Mother’s poppet,” she went on, as the infant showed signs of weeping.
Horatia put her hand under his head as she was told, and awkwardly tried to make a lap for the tiny creature, who decided at last that his puckerings should end in a smile. The fire needed a great deal of making up, and as soon as Mrs. Kemblet had finished she found that there were handkerchiefs which that careless Joséphine had not yet put away. Horatia appeared afraid to move, while Maurice clutched wildly at his own thumbs, and seemed for the moment content with his rapid change of quarters.
“Martha,” came at last the languid voice, “do you think he is my baby at all?”
“Why, Miss Horatia, how can you talk so! Whose else should he be, and his forehead like his Reverence’s own? Pick him up and cuddle him, my lady; he might be a poor orphan, not so much as seeing his own mother.”
But Maurice at this point, probably feeling himself an orphan, began to cry. In an instant the wily Martha had slipped out of the room, and closed the door behind her.
“My heart was thumping fit to burst,” she afterwards wrote to Polly. “But the precious did not cry for long.” And indeed, when, a quarter of an hour later, she cautiously opened the door, Horatia was bending over the child in her lap. She half turned, and raised a warning finger. Maurice was fast asleep.