All This and Heaven Too E-Book

Rachel Field

• Herausgeber: Raanan Editeur
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Rachel Field's novel is based on the true story of Field's great-aunt, Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, a French governess who fell in love with the Duc de Praslin, her employer. When Praslin's wife was murdered, Henriette was implicated. It was a real-life scandal that contributed to the political turmoil before the French Revolution of 1848 which deposed France's Louis Philippe I.| Wikipedia|

Leseprobe

SOMMMAIRE

NOTE

A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION

PART I. "Mademoiselle D." 1841-1848

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-four

PART II. Mademoiselle Henriette Desportes 1849-1851

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

PART III. Mrs. Henry M. Field 1851-1875

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

RACHEL FIELD

ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO

1938

Raanan Editeur

Digital book995| Publishing 1

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ARTHUR PEDERSON

NOTE

The title of this book is accredited to Matthew Henry (1662-1714), who wrote of his father, the Reverend Philip Henry: "He would say sometimes when he was in the midst of the comforts of this life—'All this, and Heaven too!'"

A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION

DEAR GREAT-AUNT HENRIETTA,

Although I never knew you in life, as a child I often cracked butternuts on your tombstone. There were other more impressive monuments in our family lot, but yours for some unaccountable reason became my favourite in that group erected to the glory of God and the memory of departed relatives.

Knowing what I know of you now, I should like to think that some essence of your wit and valour and spice still lingered there and had power to compel a child's devotion. I should like to believe that the magnetic force which moved you to plead your own cause in the murder trial that was the sensation of two continents and helped a French king from his throne was in some way responsible for the four-leafed clover I left there on a summer day in the early nineteen hundreds. But I am not sentimentalist enough for such folly. You had been dead for more than thirty years by the time I came along with my butternuts and four-leafed clovers; when I traced with curious forefinger the outlines of a lily, unlike any growing in New England gardens, cut into the polished surface of your stone.

My forefinger has grown none the less curious in the thirty more years that I have been tracing your legend from that inscription, bare as a detached twig, stripped of leaf or bloom:

HENRIETTE DESPORTES The Beloved Wife of Henry M. Field Died March 6, 1875

There it is, almost defiant in its brevity, without date or place of birth; with no reference to Paris; nothing to suggest the transplanting of a life uprooted from obscurity by an avalanche of passion and violence and class hatred.

Half a century ago no memorial was complete without some pious comment or a Biblical text chosen to fit the life and works of the departed. Why should yours be the only one in that group of marble and slate that asks nothing of God or man? Why is there no hint of the destiny which was reserved for you alone out of a world of other human beings? Only you know the answer, and only you could have written the epitaph that was omitted from your stone.

The omission must have been deliberate. I know that as surely as if you had told me so yourself.

"My dear great-niece," I think you would answer me with the wise, faintly amused expression which is yours in the only likeness I have ever seen of you, "some day you will learn as I did to make a virtue of necessity." Then, with that slight Parisian shrug you were able to subdue but never entirely shed, you might add: "Who knows most speaks least."

Still, legends are not easily shed. Silence and obscurity may not be had for the asking. You had your way at the last, and your stone is bare and impersonal; but you could not erase your name from those records of crime, or do away with the files of French and English newspapers for the year 1847. It is your fate to be remembered against your will. You must have waked sometimes in the big Empire bed of polished mahogany that stands now in my room, turning from memories of words spoken and looks exchanged in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré; from the din of newsboys calling out your name on crowded boulevards; from the grey walls of the Conciergerie where you walked under guard with curious eyes pressed to the grating. I, too, have lain wakeful in that same bed half a century later, trying to piece together from scattered fragments of fact and hearsay all that you spent so many years of your life trying to forget.

I have grown up with your possessions about me. I know the marble-topped mahogany bureau that matches your bed; the pastel portrait you made of the little girl who became your adopted child; I know the rosewood painting table that held the brushes and paints and crayons it was your delight to use; I know your silver forks and spoons with the delicately flowing letter D on their handles. On my hand as I write is a ring that was yours, and I never take out a certain enamel pin from its worn, carnelian-studded box without wondering if it may not have been some bit of jewellery tendered as peace-offering by the Duchesse after one of her stormy outbursts. Strange that these intimate keepsakes should survive when I have never seen so much as a word in your handwriting.

Your portrait, painted by Eastman Johnson, has made you visible to me as you looked in the years when you were no longer the notorious Mademoiselle Deluzy-Desportes riding rough seas alone, but a married woman of assured position, presiding over the house near Gramercy Park where men of letters, artists, philanthropists and distinguished visiting foreigners gathered and expanded under the stimulating spell of your presence. I know your calm dignity of expression even as I know your bodice of coffee-coloured silk and that single tea rose tucked in the fall of black lace. Yours was a strongly marked face, square of chin and broad of brow. The thick chestnut hair was smoothly parted after the fashion made familiar by your contemporaries Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot. Your eyes, not particularly large or beautiful in themselves, were keen, full-lidded, and intent above well-defined cheekbones and a rather flat nose with a wide, spirited flare to the nostrils. But, of all your features, the mouth was the most dominant, speaking for you from the canvas in eloquent silence. Too large and firm a mouth for the accepted rosebud model of your day, it must have been a trial to you in your youth. Humorous, sensitive and inscrutable—one could tell anything to the possessor of such a mouth and never know what response might be forthcoming except that it would most certainly be wise and shrewd and worth hearing.

Fragments of your wit and sagacity have survived, like chips of flint left where arrowheads were once sharpened. But the arrowheads themselves, those verbal darts for which you were famous, having found their mark, did not remain for our time. A phrase here, tinged with foreign picturesqueness; a quick comment still vivid with personal pungency; a half-forgotten jest; some humorous anecdote, they made a meagre and strangely assorted sheaf for your great-niece to cull.

And I am only your great-niece by marriage. You left no legacy of flesh and blood behind you. Fate played many tricks upon you, yet this was the one you most bitterly resented. You were barren, who should have been the most fruitful of women. To you children were more than amusing puppets to be dressed and coddled and admonished after the manner of the Victorian era to which you belonged. They were a passion, as absorbing as if each had been an unknown continent to be explored and charted. Even your most disapproving censors admitted this power, and your sway over the young Praslins was certainly one of the strongest links in the chain of evidence brought against you. Youth was a necessity to your nature, and so you took a child from your husband's family into your home to be a substitute for your own.

"Eh bien," I can almost hear you saying, "one has not the choice in this world. But to live without a child in the house—that would be tragedy. Is it not so, my leetle Henri?"

Your leetle Henri, who was my great-uncle, agreed, as he agreed in most of your projects, marvelling not a little at the Gallic sprightliness and wisdom of that extraordinary lady who had done him the honour to become his wife. A bird of rare plumage had taken possession of his home; a strange blend of nightingale and parakeet was gracing the nest he had vaguely expected to be shared by some meek, dun-feathered wren. He never quite knew how it had happened, but he knew his good fortune in having won you. He was proud of your elegance and wit; of your charm and intelligence, and, yes, of your slightly arrogant ways.

Great-Uncle Henry was small in stature and was your junior by ten years; but there was fire in him, and you knew how to kindle what lay beneath that New England exterior so different from your own. He may have lacked the shrewdness of your judgment, the whiplash of your wit; but his enthusiasm, his warmth and idealism fused with the sterner stuff of which you were made.

I can just remember Great-Uncle Henry as a small elderly man with a vague smile, whose mind had a disconcerting way of wandering off without warning into labyrinths of the past where a matter-of-fact seven- or eight-year-old might not follow. But that memory has nothing to do with an eager young man who, for all his Puritanical upbringing and ecclesiastical turn of mind, was born with feet that itched to walk in far places, and an imagination that kindled romantically to the plight of a French governess suddenly faced with the charge of instigating a murder that shook the empire. He was twenty-five years old when he first heard your name echoing through Paris that summer of 1847. There he stood, fresh from a boyhood in the Berkshire Hills where his father had followed Jonathan Edwards with more hellfire and brimstone sermons in the meeting-house that faced the village green. A Williams College valedictory delivered at sixteen, and those first years of preaching sermons of his own from pulpits that only accentuated his boyishness, were behind him. There he stood, earnest and young and unaware that you and he were to spend twenty years together across the Atlantic.

It may be that, like Victor Hugo who described your enforced exercise under guard in the Conciergerie courtyard, Great-Uncle Henry had his first glimpse of you through iron bars. We shall never know. I set down here only what may have happened. Perhaps I have put words into your mouth that you would never have said. My thoughts, at best, can never be your thoughts. I know that, and still I must write them, since you yourself emerge from the web of fact and legend as definite as the spider that clears the intricate maze of its own making, I shall not claim to be unprejudiced, though I shall try to tell the truth as I know it. For the more complex the subject, the more each separate version must vary with the teller. So, each hand that touches the piano strikes a different chord.

Dear Great-Aunt Henrietta, you will never know what I think of you, but here it is—the letter I have always wanted to write; the story I have always wanted to tell.

PART I."Mademoiselle D."1841-1848

Chapter One

Among the ill-assorted group of passengers waiting to leave the small steamer that had brought them across the Channel from Southampton to Le Havre, a woman stood erect and alone with her luggage piled about her. It was unusual in the year 1841 for a woman of her age and appearance to be travelling unaccompanied. Not that she showed striking beauty, but a certain spirited grace of carriage distinguished her from her fellow-travellers.

Late March was not the most propitious time for crossing, and the English Channel had lived up to its reputation for choppiness. The night had been rough and rainy, and a general air of limp resignation prevailed in the little group so soon to be scattered. Curls and once crisp feathers drooped damply against wan faces; eyes were circled in unbecoming dark hollows; huddled forms in shawls and steamer rugs slumped miserably on benches as the edged wind of early morning blowing across salt water strove with the thickness of the ship's saloon. The stale scents of food and tobacco and human occupation mingled with that unmistakable smell peculiar to all such vessels, a combination of tar and rope and brass polish, of varnish and smoky oil lamps—hardly an atmosphere to enhance a woman's charm. But this solitary female bore up well under the ordeal. She was young—at least she could not be called old—and she appeared considerably less than her twenty-eight years; she was vigorous and full of a lively interest in the world and her temporary companions, and she had learned long before this how to conduct herself alone.

A shaft of salty air came in with the opening and closing of doors as men went out into the rapidly thinning dimness on deck. In response to the freshness her head lifted and her nostrils dilated as she breathed deeply. Involuntarily she made a half-move to leave the overcrowded saloon; but the impulse was checked almost at once. Much as she would have welcomed fresh air, it would not do to go out and join the men who tramped the damp decks in masculine freedom, untrammelled by billowing skirts of cashmere or taffeta, by yards of petticoat and bonnet strings that were prey to every current of air. Besides, there were all her possessions in the neatly roped bandboxes and bags and the new leather portmanteaus with the brass-headed nails driven into the lid to form the letters "H.D." There was no one to whom she might entrust them.

"Ah, well," she thought, and her shoulders shrugged ever so slightly under the Paisley shawl, folded to display the richly patterned border to best advantage, "it would hardly be comme il faut at this hour of the morning, and with so few women about."

It was pleasant to hear the sound of her native tongue again from one or another of the passengers. Though she had spoken English fluently from childhood, and though she had even come to think as easily in one tongue as in the other during the years which she had spent in London, yet she quickened to the familiar accents. Already she felt younger and lighter of heart for the sound. She had been away too long. Yesterday, to be sure, she had shed courteous tears at parting from the Hislop family—especially from the grave and gentle girl who had been her sole charge, and who turned to her with such reverent, adoring eyes. Those candid blue eyes had been red-rimmed almost from the moment the matter of a change had been mentioned. It had been affecting to see the child's genuine emotion.

"Come, chérie, you have shed too many foolish tears. The time has come when you no longer need a governess. You are a young lady, almost sixteen, and ready to attend finishing school. Why, you will be marrying in a year or two more."

"But, mademoiselle, you have always been so much more than a governess. Papa himself says so, and you know he is not easy to please."

That was true enough. Sir Thomas Hislop expected much of those who served him, especially of the one into whose charge he had given the training of his only child. She had never given him cause to regret the confidence he had placed in her, and as time went on he had added unusual household privileges to those customarily accepted as fitted to the station of nursery governess. As his daughter had said, mademoiselle had grown to be far more than governess in that home, and never once had she overstepped. His letter of recommendation, on paper bearing the family crest, was for an Englishman lavish of praise, informing the world in general and the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin in particular that Mademoiselle Henriette Desportes had served him for the better part of eight years as governess and companion to his daughter Nina, and that, in all things pertaining to deportment, personal integrity, and tact, she had proved herself a model and an ornament to her sex. Her gifts, also, he had added as an afterthought, were considerable, for besides being qualified to teach the rudiments of learning she spoke French and English fluently, was familiar with literature and the classics, and had a charming talent for flower painting and crayon portraiture.

There had been farewell gifts in token of the Hislop family's esteem—the handsome shawl which had cost more than twice what she might have contrived to save out of her wages; the umbrella with the ivory handle now crooked over her arm; the beaded bag worked by her young charge's own devoted fingers. All these were tangible signs of her personal conquest. She smiled with satisfaction, and then sighed, remembering that these conquests were now behind her; remembering, too, certain disturbing rumours that had reached her ears concerning the household which she would so soon be entering.

"On arrive," a Frenchman was telling his plump wife, while the sound of chains and churning water and the sudden bustle of landing filled her ears.

It required all her attention to marshal her belongings, seize a blue-smocked porter, and get herself safely ashore. No husband or father or brother guided her down the steep and slippery gang-plank and superintended the luggage and formalities of customs and passport inspection. She awaited her turn alone, shivering in the pier's half-open shed.

Her passport was duly read and stamped, and the French authorities thereby informed that Henriette Desportes, aged twenty-eight years, single woman, native of Paris, parents deceased, nearest of kin, her grandfather, the Baron Félix Desportes, former officer of Napoleon Bonaparte, now residing at Paris, was returning to continue her occupation of governess. Port of embarkation, Southampton, England, March 28, 1841.

"Bien." Mademoiselle Henriette Desportes tipped the porter as frugally as one dared and settled herself for the train journey to Paris. Just for a moment she had let her mind linger over the prospect of a first-class ticket. But the habit of economy had asserted itself, and she had resisted temptation. The compartment benches were hard and narrow, but she had been fortunate in securing a place by one of the windows. She felt comforted by this and a cup of chocolate and a roll she had hastily secured in the nearest café. From a small package in her bag—labelled in a girlish hand, "Mademoiselle, with the affectionate regard of her devoted pupil Nina H."—she selected a glacé fruit and nibbled it appreciatively as the last whistle sounded and the train steamed slowly out into the early morning countryside.

Even the dirty pane of glass could not altogether dim the effect of sunlight on a world that was dear and familiar to her. She had been so long among smoking chimney pots and houses of brick and chill grey stone that she had almost forgotten walls could show cream-coloured or even softly rose where the sun touched their plaster and whitewash. The delicate turrets of a far château pricked out of massed woods. Beside a shallow stream a stooped peasant in sabots and faded blue paused in his turf-gathering to watch the passing train. A woman drove a flock of white geese across a bridge under willows that were already dripping green. Smoke rose blue and wavering from a cluster of thatched roofs. Indeed, everything seemed to swim in a faint blue haze. Always responsive to the picturesque in nature and humanity, Henriette Desportes missed nothing of the passing scene. It filled her with pleased detachment, and she relaxed under the dreamlike unreality beyond the window.

Oh, well, it might look like a patterned world, laid out in prim design, but to those living there it could never be so simple. They were as alive as she: that old peasant contriving to outwit the cold; that woman anxiously counting her comical flock lest one goose escape her vigilance; all those who slept, or toiled, or loved under the low-hung roofs or the sharp turrets. Those people out there, if they caught sight of her own face pressed close to the window pane, might be speculating about her. To them she was part of the pattern of the lumbering train with its trail of smoke and little boxlike carriages. Perhaps they envied leer, riding at ease to distant Paris. How little they knew of that! How little she herself knew what awaited her at the end of the journey!

Yesterday marked the end of an era. A cycle of her life lay behind in the dark, well-ordered rooms of the Hislop house. She could never recapture that part of herself again. Eight years gone—and what had she to show for them? A letter testifying to her good character; a few English pounds that represented years of patient scrimping; the whole-hearted devotion of a girl who would presently be too submerged in the cares of marriage to need her; a modest wardrobe that fitted easily into the luggage on the rack above and under the seat; some cheap books and trinkets, and certain experiences in self-denial and discipline that had strengthened her character at the expense of her youthful freshness and spontaneity. Twenty-eight was not an advanced age, but it was certainly not youth.

"What chance have I ever had for youth?" she asked herself in a surge of unuttered bitterness. "First the convent without even a summer's holiday free from bells and masses and instruction in books and conduct, and then more lessons—only I am no longer pupil but teacher; and now it will be no different except that I shall be in Paris, where the heart and step should be lightest if one has the means to keep them so!"

Perhaps she had been foolish to come. But the offer had been exceptional. The Hislops had been kind, had urged her to continue in their home till the right opening presented itself; but she knew the signs of change. She could read the writing on the wall and see how soon her young charge would be full-grown. And then this chance to be governess to the children of one of the oldest families of French nobility at two thousand francs and her board and apartment had dropped into her very lap. She could hardly have refused even if she had wished to remain in England, which was far from the case. She knew she had made a most favourable impression upon her interviewer, a friend of the Duchesse who had been commissioned to find the proper guardian for the Praslin progeny. Yes, her credentials were impeccable, and her qualifications obvious. Could she arrange to assume her duties immediately?

In this haste and obvious eagerness, Henriette had sensed something not quite usual, not quite as it should be. She had parried with modest adroitness, and suddenly the positions had been reversed: the questioner became the questioned. The interview was in her hands. Reluctantly she had ferreted out the truth. Governesses seldom stayed long in the Château Praslin. There had been quite a procession in the last two years. That was indeed strange, she had suggested, with just the proper shade of pointed naïveté in her manner, since the position was obviously such a desirable one and the salary so generous. Were the young Praslins perhaps difficult and undisciplined? No, she was assured, they were charming and intelligent children. It was only—Well, perhaps a word to the wise would be sufficient. Mademoiselle Desportes was not without experience in domestic affairs, and in this case the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin, though both were from the best families of France and Corsica and their marriage certainly was more than fruitful since it had produced no fewer than nine children in eleven years—Still it must be admitted that there were times when they seemed to be not in complete accord. Of course she must understand this was only a matter of temperament—there was nothing to suggest discord; but the Duchesse, besides having a Corsican inheritance of hot temper, was far from well. She was not always herself, and the Duc was not the sort of man to make compromises with another's moods.

The children were too often witnesses to family disagreements. In fact it was frequently round them that the controversies raged. The Duc had a very deep attachment for his children and very decided ideas about their instruction. The Duchesse, poor woman, resented her husband's interference in such domestic matters—and who could blame her? It required extraordinary tact and understanding on the part of a governess. That was why Mademoiselle Desportes had seemed so particularly fitted for the position, though naturally there were dozens of others as well recommended as she to fill it. Well, there could be no harm in giving the matter a trial. Henriette had evidenced not too great eagerness in her acceptance. She would need a fortnight to prepare herself; that would be little enough time, but she wished to be as considerate as possible. She had promised to report for her new duties upon the first of April.

"And that is day after to-morrow," she reminded herself. "God knows if I shall last long in this ménage!"

Yet she did not dread the thought of entering it. The difficulties it presented would at least be stimulating. One would not perish of boredom in a place where charges of gunpowder might lurk in unexpected corners to explode without warning. She felt oddly exhilarated—almost, she thought, as if she were about to step upon a lighted stage filled with unknown players, to act a rôle she had had no chance to rehearse beforehand. She must find the cues for herself and rely on her own resourcefulness to speak the right lines. Henriette Desporte's heart under the plain grey alpaca basque that was her badge of discreet servitude beat quickly, but with steady self-confidence. She knew she was no fool, though she must not betray such an unladylike knowledge.

Rouen with its cathedral towers and market-place was fair and sleepy under the noon sun. The train stopped there for a quarter-hour, and she made bold to get out and stretch her cramped body. She was the only woman to do so, but her own preoccupation wrapped her in unapproachable dignity. She remembered Rouen from her childhood years because she had gone there with two of the Sisters making a pilgrimage to the Cathedral. The dim, austere beauty of the great Gothic arches and aisles had laid a deep hold upon her young imagination, and the Sisters' pious recital of Jeanne d'Arc's martyrdom had stirred her then, as now. She had veered from the religion those zealous Sisters had instilled into her youth. She was a Protestant now, but the early association and mystic ardour sometimes returned as it did to-day. Only now it was Jeanne the woman, sore beset and alone, not the saint, who quickened her sympathies.

"You, too," she thought as she returned to the railway carriage, "you, too, were a single woman, defying the pattern of your world. We should have understood each other, you and I."

She settled herself for the second part of the journey and unfolded the English newspaper she had not read the day before. It was a copy of the London Times, and already the items she pored over seemed part of another world in which only yesterday she had been an infinitesimal human part.

Lord Palmerston's foreign policy was receiving much comment at home and abroad. It seemed to have excited considerable ill will in France, where Guizot held the reins of foreign affairs. According to latest reports it appeared that, in spite of Great Britain and Austria taking part with Turkey against Mehemet Ali, he would be recognised as hereditary ruler of Egypt. The Queen and the Prince Consort had formally opened a new hospital for foundlings at Whitechapel. The Queen's speech was reported in full, and there had been much enthusiasm in token of the recent anniversary of the royal pair's first year of conjugal bliss. Her Majesty not only appeared in excellent spirits but seemed to have improved in health since the birth of the little Princess. The Royal Family had graciously sat for daguerreotype likenesses at the newly opened parlours in Pall Mall. This remarkable process for reproducing the human features was proving a sensation in Paris and London and even in America. Monsieur Daguerre deserved all praise for his invention, which was indeed an artistic achievement worthy of support though as yet too great a luxury to be indulged in by the masses. Rachel, the greatest tragédienne of her day, would shortly cross the Channel to introduce her art and repertoire to London.

Henriette read every word of that last bit of news. To her mind, Rachel was worth all the Royal Families of England and Europe rolled into one. She meant to see that pale face and those flashing Semitic eyes; to hear the vibrant tones of the voice that had shaken all Paris, even the strait-laced bourgeoisie who disapproved of her private life while they wept and marvelled at the spell she cast to the most distant balcony seat. "Where I," Henriette told herself as she folded the paper, "shall most certainly be sitting if I am fortunate enough to squeeze myself into the theatre at all!"

Chapter Two

Madame Le Maire's establishment, one of a row of dingy houses in the unfashionable quarter of Marais, rue du Harlay, was one not easily defined. Half pension, half school, its narrow high-ceilinged bed-chambers and musty salons had for many years sheltered a procession of students from various shores and other such temporary sojourners to Paris as the extremely elastic proportions of the ménage could accommodate. Madame Le Maire might be said to specialise in female flotsam and jetsam, though she made it a point to be sure of the morals as well as the financial status of her paying guests. Her terms were a week's rent paid in advance and two letters of reference, carefully scanned and verified before the prospective occupant was allowed to take possession. Her reverence for respectability was well known and far outruled the dictates of her heart and sympathies. If tears and entreaties fell upon her gold-ringed ears they left less impression than the drip of rain on the ancient grey slate of her own roof. But Madame Le Maire was not so much hard as inflexible. She did no favours herself and expected none in return. Her guests received care and simple meals so long as they continued to behave themselves and pay the bills she personally made out every Friday evening in her fine hand that suggested the tracings of a mathematically inclined spider.

"I ask nothing else of le bon Dieu and my guests," she frequently explained to all listeners, "than that my account should balance to the last sou and the police never darken my door. So far my efforts have been blessed with success."

Henriette Desportes and Madame Le Maire were well acquainted. Henriette had spent six months in the old house the year she had left the convent to continue her studies in art. Since that time she had returned for brief visits. Only the year before, she had spent a month there while the Hislop family were travelling in Switzerland. Madame Le Maire greeted her upon her arrival in a barouche from the boat train with marked approval, if not with the effusive welcome of Pierre the porter.

"Mademoiselle has returned with the spring," the old fellow told her as he shouldered her possessions and led the way through the familiar entrance. "Day before yesterday I heard a songbird in the Bois, and when I returned from my errand Madame is already preparing the Needle's Eye because Mademoiselle Henriette is arriving to occupy it."

"So it is to be the Needle's Eye again." Henriette smiled at mention of the narrow slit of a room under the roof which she knew so intimately. Because of its size and inconvenience and the four steep flights that must be climbed to it Madame Le Maire seldom managed to keep it permanently filled, but whenever occasion warranted, she pressed it into service.

"Well"—Henriette exchanged a knowing look with Pierre—"I can put up with a closet this time since I shall be leaving again day after to-morrow."

"Mademoiselle is leaving, and just as she has arrived—" Pierre's old tongue clicked in affectionate concern.

"Not Paris, Pierre, only the Needle's Eye. I have come back to stay—at least—"

She broke off at sight of Madame Le Maire's erect and tightly boned form at the head of the stairs. The two women did not embrace. They never had indulged in such unbusinesslike pleasantries. They met, as they had always done, on a plane of mutual respect and shrewd admiration each for the other's abilities. Henriette had always known that the older woman favoured her above the other feminine boarders. She had never exactly said it in so many words, but the girl knew that this keen-eyed, dumpy Parisienne liked her spirit and good taste in dress and manners. Some of the young ladies had grown deplorably careless in such matters. But Madame Le Maire had always let Henriette know that she knew good breeding when she met it.

"We may have our backs to the wall," she might almost have been saying as the two stood looking each other over after the absence of many months, "but we shall always stand straight, you and I. Yes, our spines will not melt at the first signal of storm."

"Well, Mademoiselle Desportes," was what she really said as they met, "you might have done me the honour of giving me more time to prepare for your arrival. Only by the greatest chance and by considerable shifting about could I find a place for you."

"It was good of you, Madame, to overlook the short notice." Henriette was aware of the older woman's self-importance and knew the value of admitting favours and being grateful for them. "The change was very sudden, and I wrote you at once. I hope it is not too inconvenient at this time?"

"No, no," Madame Le Maire was mollified. "I am always glad to oblige if I am able. The only room now vacant is rather small and at the top of the house. You may perhaps remember—"

"I do—very well," Henriette resisted the temptation to smile and call it by name.

Better to accept the poor accommodation without protest. Madame Le Maire's good will was above rubies. She could afford to puff a little and be cramped for two nights for the sake of keeping it. There were precious few places in Paris where a lone woman might find respectable food and shelter within means of a slim pocket-book. Her tact was rewarded by the offer of a glass of wine and a wafer in Madame's own salon. She accepted the invitation and, as her weariness responded to the delicate glow which stole over her at each sip of the canary, she and Madame grew less formal.

"So you have left London behind you, mademoiselle? And are you glad to return to Paris—permanently, it seems, this time?"

"Very glad indeed, Madame; but as to permanence—who can say? I least of all concerned."

"To be sure, nothing is permanent in this world—nothing except dying; and that is certainly more my affair than yours if years mean anything."

"Years should mean very little to one who wears hers so becomingly." Henriette knew Madame's dread of growing old. She had always felt inclined to humour, rather than to laugh at, her attempt to hide the trace of years. The front hair, so darkly luxuriant and curled in contrast to the scanty greying strands at the old woman's neck, the pince-nez that so inadequately did duty for spectacles, the touches of rouge on her faded cushions of cheeks—all these seemed pathetic, but commendable efforts. Madame Le Maire, she thought, was no more brave than the rest when it came to facing what she really feared. This was her way of showing defiance, as Henriette had seen children strut and whistle through the dark stretches of some long corridor leading to bed.

"But"—she returned to her earlier remark after she had taken another sip of wine and felt the pleasant warmth slowly lifting the weariness from her body—"when I said 'permanence' I meant only that one can never count upon certainty in a new position, and this appointment presents certain new problems."

"Nine altogether new problems if what I hear of the Praslin family is correct. It is the household of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin which you wrote you were about to enter, is it not?"

"It is, but all the children will not be under my supervision. The older boys have a tutor and three of the daughters are at a convent. I shall have charge of three girls and the youngest boy only."

"I should call that more than enough. Well, you have good courage and tact. You will need more than your share of that."

Her tone was casual, but opaque dark eyes fixed her visitor with the wise inscrutability of an old parrot. Henriette did not waver under the look.

"I hope I may please my pupils and their parents." She set down her glass, brushed a crumb of wafer from her skirt, and rose. "I shall do my best."

"Naturally." Madame Le Maire made no offer to refill the glasses. "To please is your bread and butter; and if you are clever enough to add a bonbon now and then to sweeten your diet, all the better. But do not acquire the taste for bonbons. A sweet tooth can be dangerous at your age."

"Madame Le Maire, if you mean that I shall grow too fond of luxury—"

"I mean more than that. The household you are entering is certainly luxurious, but it is also—well—let us say difficult. You are young to meet the requirements of such a position, but perhaps you know better than I what is expected of you. A grey head is sometimes placed on green shoulders. But if I may offer one bit of advice—look as much like a governess as possible when you go to your interview to-morrow."

The sharp old eyes took careful survey of the younger woman, lingering significantly over the richness of the shawl, the grey bonnet with cherry ruching and ribbons that brought out the clear colour of the wearer's cheeks and lips, the sheen of loosely curling chestnut hair.

"There are times when it is advisable to hide one's light under a bushel. And now you no doubt wish to refresh yourself after your journey. You will find hot water in your apartment, and we dine as usual at half-past seven."

Henriette began the long climb, half amused, half annoyed by Madame Le Maire's abrupt dismissal. It was not unpleasant to be warned against her youth, which had of late seemed slipping from her, but she would have liked to get to the bottom of those insinuations. Probably the old woman was merely letting her tongue run away with her; still, she had seldom been so talkative. And the airs she gave herself—calling that hole under the roof an apartment! As for "dining at half-past seven"—Henriette knew exactly what the meal would be like, from cabbage soup, whose familiar fragrance followed her up the stairs, to the pyramid of withered tangerines and nuts that would accompany the demitasse.

The Needle's Eye had not changed by one crack less or one piece of furniture more. All was exactly as she remembered. The couch which was converted into a bed only by virtue of necessity and good will on the part of the sleeper, the corner washstand where she had splashed so often with lowered head because the sloping eaves made it impossible to stand otherwise, the row of wooden pegs awaiting their burden of dresses, the shelf which did duty for dressing-table, and the mirror above it, perpetually dimmed so that the reflected face appeared blurred with inexhaustible tears. But beyond the high peaked window all of Paris waited—ancient and ageless in the late March twilight, fair as some hazy though well remembered dream.

Henriette's fingers shook as she unfastened her bonnet strings. Her breath came quickly, as much from emotion as from her hasty climb. She opened the casement and leaned out to the cool air that lifted the hair from her forehead, that seemed almost like a hand laid to her cheek. All about her, other roofs rose, red-tiled or grey, with their smoking chimneys less blackened and less ominous than London chimneypots. Lights were beginning to appear in windows, and an irregular patch of river between buildings shone softly luminous like a bit of polished pewter. The Seine—she felt its presence in the freshened air; in the faint reflection of sky it still held; in the occasional sound of passing boats. Almost she felt that she could distinguish the murmur of its watery flow from that other flow of sound which was the city itself, man-made and more insistent.

"Paris—Paris—Paris," her pulse beat over and over while she leaned there motionless at the casement and twilight dwindled into darkness. It was as if she held the city in her arms and it in turn held her fate hidden—in which corner she could not know.

"Oh, let me be happy here! Let me know that I am alive. Do not let me be old before I have ever been young!"

So, in the dusk of the twenty-ninth day of March in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-one, Henriette Desportes prayed to the city whose streets were to ring to her name six years later. At half-past nine she climbed more stairs—a not too clean or well lighted flight that led to the second floor of an old stone house just off the Boulevard Montmartre. A slatternly woman answered her ring at the porter's bell and grudgingly admitted that Monsieur Félix Desportes was in his apartment. Henriette did not care for the appraising glances of the old creature and explained her presence in crisp accents.

"Please announce me to the Baron Desportes. Tell him that his grand-daughter is here. He is expecting me."

But the woman only grinned and shrugged.

"Grand-daughter or not," she threw over a lifted shoulder as she disappeared into the shadows from which she had come, "it's all the same to me. I ask no questions, and I'm not paid to announce guests. Be sure you shut the door when you leave, mademoiselle—"

"Mademoiselle Desportes," Henriette repeated with annoyance, "and please be so good as to remember it."

But there was no further response and nothing for her to do but climb the stairs alone, picking her way with care in the flickering light from a single gas jet at the landing. She shook her skirts free of dust and paused to steady herself before she knocked. It was not a visit she anticipated with pleasure, but she was determined to carry off her part of it to the best of her abilities. Perhaps this time her only relative might display some sign of affection or interest. The reunion did not, however, begin with promise.

"Oh, so it's you." There was no welcome in the voice or in the face that greeted her. "Well, come in since you're here. I hardly expected you so soon."

"But, Grandfather, I wrote you that I should come at once. You had my letter?"

"Yes, I had it. It's somewhere about." The tall old man in a worn dressing-gown and slippers shuffled back to his chair by the grate fire, waving a long, veined hand towards a heap of newspapers, letters, pens, and sticky glasses that crowded a nearby table to overflowing. "I knew you would turn up whether or no."

Henriette felt a sudden chill at his words. The old resentment of childhood flooded her at his unresponsiveness. It had always been so. Ever since she could remember he had made her spirit shrink inwardly like a leaf the frost can shrivel in a single night. Upon their rare meetings in her youth he had always made it clear that he found her a nuisance. She had been a plain child, but clever and sensitive. She had hoped that her excellence in studies at the convent might please him, might disarm him into a word of praise or pride. But he had never uttered one. Before each visit of her childhood she had gone to him with hope. Always she had come away with baffled discouragement and a vague sense of actual physical repugnance which both shared. She had hoped that perhaps when she grew older it would be different. But now she knew that a barrier of restraint and even of human dislike must always lie between them.

"You have dined?" The question was perfunctory, and though Monsieur Desportes reached for his own glass of brandy he made no offer to pour her a liqueur.

"Yes, at Madame Le Maire's. One of the students escorted me here. He did not wish me to walk so far alone."

"Well, going about alone should be no novelty to you." He eyed her shrewdly from under his bushy, greying brows. "You should be able to conduct yourself without help by this time. You're almost thirty."

Henriette flushed at his look and words. She was not ashamed of her age, but no woman cares to be reminded of it.

"I am only too used to making my way alone," she answered, stretching out her hands to the fire and taking some comfort in their white shapeliness and the flash of a small ring which caught the light. "I only thought you might be relieved to know—But no matter, I am well, and you? I hope your rheumatism has not returned."

The veined hand holding the stem of the brandy glass was not altogether steady, but the denial was instant.

"Rheumatism! I have nothing of the sort. A twinge now and then in the disgraceful damp of this hole they are pleased to let out in the name of comfortable apartments. But when one has come through the campaigns I have and slept with the snows of the Alps and the steppes for pillow, one learns to put up with poor fare and hardships. My health need give you no anxiety. Better keep your concern for yourself, since, if what you wrote is true, you will have need of it."

"Grandfather!" Henriette leaned forward and laid a hand on his sleeve. "I had hoped you might be glad that I was returning to Paris and even a little pleased and proud at the post that has been offered me."

"Proud—pleased," he echoed her words heavily. Her hand might have been a shadow on his arm for all the notice he took of it. "You have the effrontery to ask me to be glad because you have chosen to cast your lot with the house of Choiseul Praslin that I hate."

"But it is one of the greatest families in France."

"They stand for everything that I spent the best years of my life trying to stamp out of France. This white-livered nobility that feeds on the life-blood like some poisonous fungus—that will fasten on us again now that there is no one strong enough to defy them."

Involuntarily his eyes turned to the souvenirs of his fighting days: his sword and the uniform that hung like a grey ghost in a corner, the portrait of Napoleon in full regalia, his framed commission as officer in the Imperial Guard, his cherished decorations for valour in action and the parchment which had conferred upon him the honorary title of Baron in return for loyal service to his country and his Emperor. As he recognised each symbol of the lost cause to which he would always cling, his voice took on pride along with a more intense bitterness as he continued.

"First you must go to England, to the country that humiliated us and betrayed the Emperor into exile and death. But that is not enough. Now you must choose out of all France those who were the first to hurry back to the side of Orléans when the wind veered in that direction."

"Can I help it if the times have changed?" Henriette answered his accusations quietly, but her colour deepened.

"You could help bringing this last insult upon me. Better families than this Praslin tribe have not forgotten past benefits or run so quickly to the side of the King. If the Duc de Praslin has sold his birthright for what favours he can win from this blundering Louis-Philippe let him take what he can get. Let him be made an officer in the royal household. But you need not serve him and his sons and his daughters."

"Grandfather"—Henriette spoke, in the firmly soothing tone she would have used to quiet an over-excited child—"I am not royalist in my sympathies. I should like to see France a Republic, but—"

"A fine way to show it then." He broke in testily.

"The Emperor Napoleon is dead," she went on, "and his son is dead. I honour you for your loyalty to the past, but what would you have me do? The past does not buy one food to eat, or clothes to wear, or a roof over one's head. For nearly ten years I have had to think of such things. I cannot afford the luxury of living in the past."

"So!" The old man drained his glass and reached a shaking hand to refill it. "Throw it in my teeth that I haven't provided you with servants and carriages and half the Rue de la Paix to put on your back! This is the thanks I get for educating you above your station!"

"And just what is my station?" She stiffened in her chair and faced him squarely across the untidy table with its green-shaded oil lamp. "I should very much like to know. It has never been quite clear to me."

"You need not add insolence to your other faults or reproach me because you are poor and single. I suppose you think I should have added a handsome dowry along with this expensive schooling that has only made you more difficult and headstrong?"

"No, Grandfather, I have never reproached you, and I have not come here asking you for money. But it is not strange that I should want to know something of myself now that I am grown."

"If you know enough to keep out of mischief, that is all I ask of you!"

"But I am asking you." His ruthlessness only made her more determined to force an answer to what had troubled her so long. "You have never seen fit to tell me anything of my birth or of my parents. All I know is that I was christened Henriette Desportes and that you are the Baron Desportes."

She was careful not to omit the title he clung to the more tenaciously as it dwindled in prestige.

"I was told at the convent," she went on, "that you were my only living relative; and when the other girls wrote letters to their parents each week I wrote to you with all the affection I had in my heart to give. I was lonely and eager to make you proud of me. Well, I was foolish and sentimental as children will be. I tried so hard, and I hoped—"

"That is neither here nor there, and you are no longer a child." He broke in irritably. "Get to the point, and tell me what you want of me—why you have come here to-night."

"You are still my only relative, Grandfather." She pressed her hands tightly together in her lap. It was hard to go on against the wall of his displeasure, but she had determined to make one final effort to break down his reserve.

"It is not right to go on year after year with such a blank in one's life. If I have anything good in me that was theirs, I should like to know; and if there are faults and weaknesses that have continued in me, it is only fair that I should know these, too, and try to overcome these defects."

"Defects may be overcome without knowing where they were inherited."

"Yes, but it would help me to understand myself. I feel sometimes like those silhouettes artists cut from black paper and paste on a white card just the outlines of a person standing against nothing. Don't let me be like that all my life."

"I do not propose to rake up the past. Your parents are both dead. You know that already."

"Yes, I know." She sighed uneasily and watched him refill his glass for the third time. "I should like to know that something of passion and love went into my making. I have had little enough of them since."

Her voice had grown low as she forced herself to put the last question. But it vibrated with the intensity of her emotion as a single harp-string twangs suddenly in a still room. The old man roused himself. He set down the half-filled glass and leaned towards her. His gaunt, greyish face was only an arm's length from her, and his expression had sharpened into a hard, malignant stare.

"My name is, unfortunately, yours," he told her levelly, "but only so long as you are a credit to it. If you go against my wishes and take this position which you propose to do, you will forfeit the right to it."

"But, Grandfather, that is impossible. I cannot return to England again, where it might be months before I found another opening. I have done nothing to bring disgrace upon us, and if I needed a good name before, I need it doubly now in this family—"

"Do not mention their name to me again," he broke in. "You have your choice. If you persist in taking this place you must not go as Mademoiselle Desportes."

"But they already know that is my name. If I tell the Duc and Duchesse otherwise they will think it most peculiar."

"What they think is no affair of mine. You accepted this post before consulting me, and if you go to them you need not look to me again for anything. You have no relatives living or dead."

"You cannot speak for the dead." Henriette rose and gathered her shawl about her. She looked unusually tall in the dim room, and her face took on a pallor in the green lamplight that gave it the strength and colour of a marble bust. "You can only speak for yourself, and I can only answer for myself. You need never be afraid that I shall come to you again. After to-morrow I shall be at the residence de Praslin in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Number 55, if you should care to know where to find me."

She moved to the door, and though the Baron Félix Desportes followed her with his eyes he did not rise from his chair. He still held the glass and, as she paused on the threshold to the draughty corridor, Henriette saw him lift it towards the pictured features of his Emperor with the faded knot of tricolour dangling from the frame. With rage and pity struggling in her she watched him offering a silent toast.

"Well," she told herself, feeling her way down the dark well of the staircase, "my only bridge is burned behind me. From now on I must build them myself or drown!"

Chapter Three

She walked to meet her future in the Faubourg-Saint-Honoré as if spring itself were at her heels. The visit to her grandfather, she put behind her. His words had shaken her momentarily, but they were, after all, only the croakings of an embittered old man who resented her youth. To him her hopefulness was merely one more symbol of his own declining power. Because misfortune had turned life bitter for him, he could not reconcile himself to another's happiness. She regretted the grim interview of night before last, but it could not touch her. Neither could Madame Le Maire's pointed insinuations of personal pitfalls take root in her renewed self-assurance.

She felt equal to anything that morning as she passed the little stalls with their prints and trinkets and tattered volumes along the Quai. In one of these displays her eyes caught a print of the Empress Josephine, highly coloured and fluttering in the river wind, and such was her feeling of confidence that the Empress seemed almost waving a signal to her.

A blind man, led by his little dog, passed, and Henriette found a sou in her purse to drop into the extended tin cup.

"God bless you, mademoiselle," the man thanked her.

"How did you know that I am mademoiselle?" she laughed incredulously.

"Ah, that was easy." He nodded. "I heard the rustle of skirts and smelled lavender when you opened your purse. Mignon and I wish you good luck, and may your gift be multiplied."

The pair moved away, the dog full of subdued importance and curiosity, his master unhurried and detached as became one to whom smells and rustles and footsteps determined his own small world. There had been no one else to wish her good luck as she set forth for her interview, and so she cherished his blessing. Better to have one she had earned for herself than to have had none at all.

Flower-vendors were selling primroses and violets. She hesitated by one basketful, half tempted to buy a small nosegay. But they would be dear so early, she knew. Besides, her previous experience had taught her that such a display might create a poor first impression. Otherwise considerate mistresses did not tolerate jewellery and flowers on the persons of governesses in their households. She would take no chance of offending the Duchesse at their first meeting by even so innocent a lapse of dignity.

When she was within several streets of her destination she hailed a fiacre, telling the driver to take her to the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Number 55. Then she settled back to compose herself for the interview.