“Very well. You have hardly noticed little Jonaca, and you have really told me to go away. I think you have behaved in a very rude and unkind manner. You can say to Sappha I am sorry for her. If she will remember I told her often that Leonard Murray was not at all sincere. I don’t think he ever loved Sappha well enough to wish to marry her.”
“Good-morning, Annette!” And with these words Annette found herself alone. She immediately drove to her grandmother’s. She felt sure of appreciation there. And madame was delighted to see her and the child. She took the little one in her arms and held it to her breast with a soft cradling motion that soon put it to sleep, and then she laid it tenderly down among the pillows on the sofa.
“So sweet, so pretty is she!” sighed madame. “I wonder if it is possible that I was ever like to her!”
“Once I too was so sweet! so pretty! so loved and happy! but now--now----”
“Well then, _now_, you are also sweet and pretty and loved and happy.”
“Oh, no, I am not, grandmother. Every one is cross with me, every one seems to hate me--except you.”
“_Hush! hush!_ What you are saying is not true. It is unlucky to put into words such thoughts.”
“I have just been at aunt Carlita’s, and she hardly noticed Jonaca, and told me she was busy, and I must excuse her.”
“Where was Sappha?”
“Aunt says she is sick. She would not let me see her.”
“Well, then, Sappha looks ill--I have noticed it.”
“She is fretting about Leonard. You know he was really made to fight that duel. I think Achille made him fight it, and now he has run away from New York. I suppose he did not like to meet his acquaintances.”
At this point Annette suddenly stopped speaking, being admonished thereto by her grandmother’s rising anger. The old lady was regarding her with an expression Annette seldom saw on her face, but which was one she did not care to neglect.
“Have you said all the wickedness in your heart, Annette?” she asked sternly. “You know that false, false, false! are all your words. The truth I had from Achille--the whole truth--and Leonard has not run away; why then should he run away? Your uncle Gerardus tells me that very wisely and very honourably he behaved. Also, I heard from him about the affair in New Orleans. That, then, was a duel to be proud of.”
“In New Orleans? What affair in New Orleans, grandmother? I never heard of that.”
“Achille can tell you. Ask him.”
“He has not told me, and he knows. You see then, how much he trusts me, grandmother. I will not ask him. You tell me, grandmother.”
“No, I will not tell you what he has kept from you. Good reasons he may have, of which I know nothing.”
“_So!_ I begin to find out things! Very good! I shall make Achille tell me.”
“Can you make Achille speak if he wishes not to speak? Try it once, and you will be sorry. Annette, Annette, I fear me for your future, if so unreasonable you are!”
“Unreasonable! Grandmother! I assure you I have many good reasons for all I do. Very unhappy I have been lately! Oh, I wish you would pity me a little!”
“Surely Annette St. Ange needs not pity. Come, now, tell me all your troubles,--very small are they,--and in telling they will go away. Achille loves you--is kind to you; Jonaca is well, you are well--what then is the matter?”
“If Achille loves me, he loves far better that pastry cook.”
“There it is--‘that pastry cook.’ You have no good right to use those words, and well you know it. The pastry cook De Singeron is now Count de Singeron, and goes home to take again his place in a court regiment. But _so!_ even if he were yet a pastry cook, he is the friend of Achille; he is loved by Achille; by you also he ought to be loved for Achille’s sake.”
“You always take Achille’s part.”
“When Achille is right and you are wrong.”
“Thank goodness, I have done with the Count de Singeron! He left New York yesterday, and Achille sat up all night and cried about it.”
“Have you quarrelled--you and Achille?”
“No one can quarrel with Achille. If I get angry he says only, ‘Madame is not well,’ or ‘Madame needs a little rest,’ and then bows and leaves me--perhaps he kisses my hand, and then I feel as if I should like to---- Oh, grandmother, it is terrible! If he would only get angry!”
“My dear one, you know not the anger of such men as Achille. _That_ would be terrible indeed! I warn you of it. To rude words or cross words he will never condescend; but--but--the thing he will _do_, if you love him, your heart it will break!”
“He does not talk to me as he should. Here is this New Orleans affair! I am not told of it, and Leonard’s duel with Mr. Gilson I knew nothing of till it was over--and so it was really Achille who is to blame for the trouble with Sappha.”
“Oh! Oh! The trouble with Sappha! What did you do to Sappha, Annette?”
“Nothing much--it is not worth telling you, grandmother.”
“The judge of that I will be myself.”
“I do not wish to tell you, grandmother. It is nothing.”
“Very good! I will ask Sappha. The truth she will tell me, I know.”
“I do not like that Sappha should complain of me to you, grandmother. I will tell you myself. It was the dreadful morning of the duel. When I awoke I found Achille had gone, and I was afraid he would be hurt, and very angry indeed that he should mix himself up in Leonard Murray’s disgraceful quarrel. I thought I ought to have been considered. Just think, grandmother, how disagreeable it was likely to be for me--every one of the De Vries coming to talk it over, and all the Cruger women, and Fanny Curtenius, and the Sebrings, Fishers, Ogdens, and all the rest of them. I felt as if I could not bear the shame, and then never to have been consulted about such an affair! It was too bad.”
“That was to spare you anxiety. Achille was thoughtful for you.”
“No, he was thoughtful for himself. He knew I should not permit him to have anything to do in such a quarrel, and he really ran away from me.”
“I advise you, say nothing like that to Achille.”
“Well, then, I was angry, very angry, and I thought I would get uncle Gerardus to interfere--or you, grandmother. And uncle was unkind, and told me to go home and not to disturb aunt Carlita, who had, of course, one of her bad headaches.”
“Annette! You should not say such a thing.”
“Well, it is the truth. Aunt has a headache whenever it is inconvenient for her to have one; and uncle said Sappha had been up all night with her, and I was ordered not to worry Sappha or say anything unpleasant to her. I felt then very, very angry, and I went into the house and when I saw Sappha with her white face and injured manner I could not be quiet. I told her all that I had been told about Leonard, and she was what I call insolent to me, and she will not speak to me now; she goes away if I call there, and aunt Carlita is almost as rude. This morning she hardly noticed poor little innocent Jonaca, and she asked me to excuse her. Sappha went to her room as soon as she saw me coming.”
“Now, then, Annette, a family quarrel I will not have. In my family we have all had to bear and forbear, and you must make up friends with Sappha. What, in short, did you say that so offended your cousin? Tell me the worst.”
“Well, to be sure, I said people called Leonard a coward and usurer, and that no respectable person would speak to him, and no good girl could be seen with him, and that I, like the others, would have to shut my door against him.”
“Thou cruel one! Tell me no more--and all these things thou knew to be lies.”
“How could I know? Achille told me nothing.”
“Who did tell thee?”
“Alida de Vries, and Fanny Curtenius, and Emma Ogden, and many others.”
“And Leonard himself ate with thee on the Sunday previous to the duel, and what he told Achille thou heard. If it seemed true and good to Achille, could thou not also have believed? I am ashamed of thee! Thou hast not one decent excuse. All thou said to Sappha, thou said, knowing in thy cruel heart it was lies.”
“Grandmother, it is too bad to put all the blame on me. And I will not now be scolded as if I was a child.”
“Then why did thou come here, deceitful one? Did thou think I would bless thee for thy shameless cruelty? Go to thy own home, then.”
“Dear grandmother--you will make me ill. I cannot bear you to be angry.”
“Well, then, go tell thy cousin thou art sorry.”
“Yes, I will, if I can see her. I will do it for your sake, grandmother. I will do anything, if you will forgive me. I was so miserable that morning--if you would tell Sappha I am sorry, then perhaps she will listen to me.”
“I will see to that. I want not to have the whole city talking of the quarrel in the Bloommaert family. Our troubles are our own, and our own are our quarrels. To-morrow I will talk to Sappha; and the next day thou must make all right that is wrong. See thou do it.”
With this understanding Annette went home, and on the day appointed she visited Sappha. In the interval madame had also visited Sappha, and with the help of her son and daughter-in-law arranged a kind of truce between Annette and the cousin she had injured so seriously. But now, if never before, all three learned the strength of that unbendable will which madame had pointed out as existing in Sappha’s nature, when as yet no one had ever seen any evidence of it. Sappha agreed, for the sake of preventing gossip about the Bloommaerts, to speak politely to Annette whenever they met; and also not pointedly to avoid their meeting by disappearing whenever Annette appeared. Beyond this concession she would not move; and when madame proposed a family dinner at Annette’s house, Sappha said with a positiveness even her father respected: