Such foolish words! Ah, no! Such words of delightful wisdom! And happy indeed is the woman who in her youth hides such letters away in her Book of Life. They will sweeten every page of it--even to the very end.
CHAPTER FOUR
_Introduces Mr. Achille St. Ange_
On the afternoon of November the twenty-fifth Annette was sitting with her grandmother in the comfortable, large living room which the elder woman loved. Outside the day was extraordinarily beautiful for the season. The sky was nearly cloudless, the balmy air had just that snap of early frost which made it exhilarating, and there was not a breath of wind. The tall, straight Michaelmas daisies stood radiantly still in their late purple glory; the golden marigolds glowed at their feet; every twig, and every blade of grass might have been cut out of stone. It was a speechless, motionless, spell-bound garden, lit up with a flood of winter sunshine.
Madame had her knitting in her hand, but she was not busy with it; her gaze was fixed upon Annette, who was fastening more carefully the silver spangles on a gown of blue gauze. “Madame Duval barely catches them,” she said plaintively, “and I suppose there will be dancing to-night.”
“I do not think there will be anything of the kind, Annette. Your aunt will have to use the largest room for dinner, and dinner dishes are not moved by magic. Also, I do not intend to remain there all night; so fine is the weather we can easily return home. It has been such a tumultuous day that I shall need sleep, and out of my own bed I never get it.”
“But the parade was splendid, grandmother; and I am sure you are glad you saw it.”
“Oh, my child, my years it made me count. So well I remember the first Evacuation Day parade. General Washington and the victorious army led it. Then I wept because your grandfather was not among living heroes--to-day I did not weep--so soon we shall meet again.” A sound of distant music arrested speech, and they listened in silence till it died away. Then Annette said: “There are to be so many public dinners, and the theatre is to be brilliantly illuminated. Oh, grandmother, I wish you would let me go with the Westervelt party to the theatre. What excitement there will be there! What cheering and singing and fine acting! and at uncle’s!--well, you know what uncle’s Evacuation dinners are--ten or twelve old men who were in his company will be there; and they will tell the same stories, and sing the same songs, and pay the ladies the same compliments. I would like to go to the theatre.”
“To your uncle’s dinner party you will go to-night; and I think the dress you are spangling is too light. You had better wear something warmer.”
“Grandmother, I saw Sappha’s dress yesterday--it is a white gauze with brilliant crimson roses scattered over it; and it is to be worn over a rich, white satin slip. Do you want me to look a dowdy beside her?”
“Like a dowdy you could not look, not if you tried to, Annette. Of your health I want you to take good care. Your mother had very weak lungs.”
“My lungs are strong enough, grandmother, it is my heart that is so dangerously weak. It is always giving me sensations. Leonard Murray has come back so handsome, I felt my heart as soon as I saw him.”
“Annette, in such a way as that a good girl should not talk, even to her grandmother. I do not think it is respectable. I am too lenient with you, and you are too free with me.”
“Grandmother, who is that? He is coming in here. I never saw the man before. How handsome! how genteel! how simply noble he looks! I must send Lucas to open the door.”
In a minute or two the stranger let the knocker fall lightly in a rat-tat-tat, and the little negro boy who answered his summons put him into the chill best parlour, and brought his card to madame. She read the name on it with difficulty, and passing the card to Annette, drew her brows together in an effort of remembrance.
“_Mr. Achille St. Ange._”
“St. Ange! St. Ange! Ah, yes, I now recollect. Gertrude Bergen married a French gentleman called St. Ange. Gertrude and I were schoolgirls together. I was one of her bridesmaids. This young man must be her grandson. It seems incredible--impossible----”
“But in the meantime, grandmother, this young man is waiting in the cold parlour.”
“I had forgotten. Let Lucas bring him here. Do you hear, Lucas?”
“Yes, madame.”
In a few moments Mr. St. Ange entered, with the air and manner of a prince; bowing first to madame, and then, with a shade less deference, to Annette. His slight, agile figure had the erect carriage of one born to command; and his general appearance and aspect was suggestively haughty, and yet when people became familiar with him, they saw only a careless tolerance of all opinions, and a certain compatibility of temper, which easily passed for good nature. His hair was intensely black and soft, and lay in straight locks on his white brow; his eyes, equally dark, were full of a sombre fire; his skin had the pallor of the hot land from which he came.
Madame rose to welcome him and remained standing until he was seated, then she smilingly resumed her chair, and said:
“Indeed, Mr. St. Agne, for a moment I had forgotten. Backward for more than half a century I had to think--then I remembered your grandmother--Gertrude Bergen. Am I right?”
“Madame is correct,” he answered; “my grandmother died ten years ago. My mother is also no longer with the son, who needs her so much. I have come to New York, and I have ventured to present a claim on your kindness three generations old.”
His handsome face, his direct manner, the utter absence of anything subtle in his air or appearance, perhaps even the grave richness of his perfectly suitable attire prepossessed both women instantly in his favour. Madame took out wine and cake with her own hands; Annette was the cup-bearer, and he accepted the service with a grace far more flattering than any challenge or deprecation of it could have been. And as Annette handed him the glass, he incidentally--quite incidentally, indeed--lifted his eyes to hers, and the glance seemed to rivet her to the spot, to include not only her vision, but her very soul.
Mr. Achille St. Ange wanted a friend, that was all; and madame promised to do her best to advise him in the new life upon which he was entering. They talked a little of his Louisiana home, and of his future intentions, but the visit was not prolonged at this time. “He had made his introduction,” he said, “the future he hoped to justify it.”
The advent of this rekindled friendship was quite an event to madame. She could do nothing but talk of it; she kept recalling her life with Gertrude Bergen, and she wondered a little over her grandson’s appearance. “But, then,” she continued, “Gertrude was from Belgium, and swarthy, though fine-looking. Much darker is her grandson, more intense, more buoyant--well, that, too, is natural; it is the French _esprit_ upon the Dutch respectability. His grandfather I remember now--the most careless of mortals, full of fire and fight, and yet amiable--most amiable. We all envied Gertrude a little. He took her to France--to some little town near Paris. How did they get to Louisiana, I wonder?”
Annette was the silent one in this event. She let her grandmother talk. She wanted to hear all about Achille. The man had made a singular impression on her. Many lovers had been at her feet, but she had really loved none of them. Was this strange emotion--more akin to tears than laughter--really love? She told herself that the man was captivating, and that she must be “on guard” whenever he was present. And withal she kept wondering “what he thought of her,” and worrying because she was not dressed to the best advantage.
Perhaps she would not have been quite pleased if she had been truthfully told Mr. St. Ange’s feeling concerning her, for it was one of a perverse admiration, oddly mingled of repulsion and fascination. He had never before seen a woman so startlingly fair, so white--so white and pink--eyes so blue, hair so palely yellow; her beauty struck him as great, but almost uncanny--he wondered if so white a woman was not equally cold. Would she ever warm to love? And then he answered his reflections with a soft utterance: “We shall see! We shall see!”
The dinner party at the judge’s was to be at four o’clock, and the rest of the afternoon was fully occupied in preparing for it. And in this preparation, if Annette had been keeping “guard” over herself, she would have noticed that even already the stranger influenced her. She laid aside the spangled robe and put on a gown of purple cloth trimmed with minever. And she thought, and said, that this change was in deference to her grandmother’s desires; but in reality it came from the feeling that Mr. St. Ange would not be at her uncle’s, and that no one else much mattered. Even if Leonard was present, she felt now that Leonard was a past interest; St. Ange was new and different, and his favour full of all kinds of possibilities.
On arriving at the house on the Bowling Green they found it in a festal state of confusion. The largest parlour had been stripped of all its movable furniture, and the space devoted to a long table, and to chairs for the twenty or more people that were to be seated. It already shone with massive silver and beautiful crystal; while the odours of delicious meats and confections inspired a sense of warmth and comfort, and of good things to come. Blazing fires were in every grate; the numerous silver sconces on the walls, and the scintillating crystal chandelier above the table were all filled with wax candles, which would be lit as soon as the daylight waned a little farther. The judge was in full evening dress, and madame in brocaded ruby velvet, with a string of pearls round her yet beautiful throat. And when Sapphira came into the room Annette was deeply mortified at her own foolishness in dressing so plainly. She felt that she had wounded and humiliated herself for a probability. In a moment of new hope she had let slip the certainties Sappha had embraced. For Sappha, in her rose-sprinkled gown, looked as if she stepped out of the heart of a rose. Her brilliant colour, the sunlike radiancy of her eyes, her glowing gown, made her, indeed, a beauteous apparition, wonderfully sweet and noble. Annette looked at her with an envious surprise. Something had happened to her cousin Sappha; what it was she did not understand, but Sappha had an air of mystery and mastery, unperceived by herself, but rousing in all who knew the girl intimately a questioning wonder. It came from an interior sense of settlement and completeness; Sappha had found him whom her soul loved, and the restlessness, the unconscious seeking and craving of girlhood, was over.