The Deputy of Arcis

VIII

IN WHICH THE DOT, ONE OF THE HEROINES OF THIS HISTORY, APPEARS

Entering the Beauvisage house we find a versatile, at the farther end of which rises the staircase.  To right we enter a large salon with two windows opening on the square; to left is a handsome dining-room, looking on the street.  The floor above is the one occupied by the family.

Notwithstanding the large fortune of the Beauvisage husband and wife, their establishment consisted of only a cook and a chamber-maid, the latter a peasant, who washed and ironed and frotted the floors rather than waited on her two mistresses, who were accustomed to spend their time in dressing and waiting upon each other.  Since the sale of the business to Jean Violette, the horse and cabriolet used by Phileas, and kept at the Hotel de la Poste, had been relinquished and sold.

At the moment when Phileas reached his house after the Giguet meeting, his wife, already informed of the resolutions passed, had put on her boots and shawl and was preparing to go to her father; for she felt very sure that Madame Marion would, on that same evening, make her certain overtures relating to Simon and Cecile.  After telling his wife of Charles Keller’s death, Phileas asked her opinion with an artless “What do you think of that, wife?” which fully pictured his habit of deferring to Severine’s opinion in all things.  Then he sat down in an arm-chair and awaited her reply.

In 1839, Madame Beauvisage, then forty-four years old, was so well-preserved that she might, in that respect, rival Mademoiselle Mars.  By calling to mind the most charming Celimene that the Theatre-Francais ever had, an excellent idea of Severine Grevin’s appearance will be obtained.  The same richness of coloring, the same beauty of features, the same clearly defined outlines; but the hosier’s wife was short,—­a circumstance which deprived her of that noble grace, that charming coquetry a la Sevigne, through which the great actress commends herself to the memory of men who saw both the Empire and the Restoration.

Provincial life and the rather careless style of dress into which, for the last ten years, Severine had allowed herself to fall, gave a somewhat common air to that noble profile and those beautiful features; increasing plumpness was destroying the outlines of a figure magnificently fine during the first twelve years of her married life.  But Severine redeemed these growing imperfections with a sovereign, superb, imperious glance, and a certain haughty carriage of her head.  Her hair, still black and thick and long, was raised high upon her head, giving her a youthful look.  Her shoulders and bosom were snowy, but they now rose puffily in a manner to obstruct the free movement of the neck, which had grown too short.  Her plump and dimpled arms ended in pretty little hands that were, alas, too fat.  She was, in fact, so overdone with fulness of life and health that her flesh formed a little pad, as one might call it, above her shoes.  Two ear-drops, worth about three-thousand francs each, adorned her ears.  She wore a lace cap with pink ribbons, a mousseline-de-laine gown in pink and gray stripes with an edging of green, opened at the bottom to show a petticoat trimmed with valencienne lace; and a green cashmere shawl with palm-leaves, the point of which reached the ground as she walked.

“You are not so hungry,” she said, casting her eyes on Beauvisage, “that you can’t wait half an hour?  My father has finished dinner and I couldn’t eat mine in peace without knowing what he thinks and whether we ought to go to Gondreville.”

“Go, go, my dear.  I’ll wait,” said Phileas, using the “thee” and “thou.”

“Good heavens!” cried Severine with a significant gesture of her shoulders.  “Shall I never break you of that habit of tutoying me?”

“I never do it before company—­not since 1817,” said Phileas.

“You do it constantly before the servants and your daughter.”

“As you will, Severine,” replied Beauvisage sadly.

“Above all, don’t say a word to Cecile about this resolution of the electors,” added Madame Beauvisage, who was looking in the glass to arrange her shawl.

“Shall I go with you to your father’s?” asked Phileas.

“No, stay with Cecile.  Besides, Jean Violette was to pay the rest of the purchase-money to-day.  He has twenty thousand francs to bring you.  This is the third time he has put us off three months; don’t grant him any more delays; if he can’t pay now, give his note to Courtet, the sheriff, and take the law of him.  Achille Pigoult will tell you how to proceed.  That Violette is the worthy son of his grandfather; I think he is capable of enriching himself by going into bankruptcy,—­there’s neither law nor gospel in him.”

“He is very intelligent,” said Beauvisage.

“You have given him the good-will of a fine business for thirty thousand francs, which is certainly worth fifty thousand; and in ten years he has only paid you ten thousand—­”

“I never sued anybody yet,” replied Beauvisage, “and I’d rather lose my money than torment a poor man—­”

“A man who laughs at you!”

Beauvisage was silent; feeling unable to reply to that cruel remark, he looked at the boards which formed the floor of the salon.

Perhaps the progressive abolition of mind and will in Beauvisage will be explained by the abuse of sleep.  Going to bed every night at eight o’clock and getting up the next morning at eight, he had slept his twelve hours nightly for the last twenty years, never waking; or if that extraordinary event did occur, it was so serious a matter to his mind that he talked of it all day.  He spent an hour at his toilet, for his wife had trained him not to appear in her presence at breakfast unless properly shaved, cleaned, and dressed for the day.  When he was in business, he departed to his office after breakfast and returned only in time for dinner.  Since 1832, he had substituted for his business occupations a daily visit to his father-in-law, a promenade about the town, or visits to his friends.

In all weather he wore boots, blue coat and trousers, and a white waistcoat,—­the style of dress exacted by his wife.  His linen was remarkable for its fineness and purity, owing to the fact that Severine obliged him to change it daily.  Such care for his person, seldom taken in the provinces, contributed to make him considered in Arcis very much as a man of elegance is considered in Paris.  Externally this worthy seller of cotton hose seemed to be a personage; for his wife had sense enough never to utter a word which could put the public of Arcis on the scent of her disappointment and the utter nullity of her husband, who, thanks to his smiles, his handsome dress, and his manners, passed for a man of importance.  People said that Severine was so jealous of him that she prevented him from going out in the evening, while in point of fact Phileas was bathing the roses and lilies of his skin in happy slumber.

Beauvisage, who lived according to his tastes, pampered by his wife, well served by his two servants, cajoled by his daughter, called himself the happiest man in Arcis, and really was so.  The feeling of Severine for this nullity of a man never went beyond the protecting pity of a mother for her child.  She disguised the harshness of the words she was frequently obliged to say to him by a joking manner.  No household was ever more tranquil; and the aversion Phileas felt for society, where he went to sleep, and where he could not play cards (being incapable of learning a game), had made Severine sole mistress of her evenings.

Cecile’s entrance now put an end to her father’s embarrassment, and he cried out heartily:—­

“Hey! how fine we are!”

Madame Beauvisage turned round abruptly and cast a look upon her daughter which made the girl blush.

“Cecile, who told you to dress yourself in that way?” she demanded.

“Are we not going to-night to Madame Marion’s?  I dressed myself now to see if my new gown fitted me.”

“Cecile!  Cecile!” exclaimed Severine, “why do you try to deceive your mother?  It is not right; and I am not pleased with you—­you are hiding something from me.”

“What has she done?” asked Beauvisage, delighted to see his daughter so prettily dressed.

“What has she done?  I shall tell her,” said Madame Beauvisage, shaking her finger at her only child.

Cecile flung herself on her mother’s neck, kissing and coaxing her, which is a means by which only daughters get their own way.

Cecile Beauvisage, a girl of nineteen, had put on a gown of gray silk trimmed with gimp and tassels of a deeper shade of gray, making the front of the gown look like a pelisse.  The corsage, ornamented with buttons and caps to the sleeves, ended in a point in front, and was laced up behind like a corset.  This species of corset defined the back, the hips, and the bust perfectly.  The skirt, trimmed with three rows of fringe, fell in charming folds, showing by its cut and its make the hand of a Parisian dressmaker.  A pretty fichu edged with lace covered her shoulders; around her throat was a pink silk neckerchief, charmingly tied, and on her head was a straw hat ornamented with one moss rose.  Her hands were covered with black silk mittens, and her feet were in bronze kid boots.  This gala air, which gave her somewhat the appearance of the pictures in a fashion-book, delighted her father.

Cecile was well made, of medium height, and perfectly well-proportioned.  She had braided her chestnut hair, according to the fashion of 1839, in two thick plaits which followed the line of the face and were fastened by their ends to the back of her head.  Her face, a fine oval, and beaming with health, was remarkable for an aristocratic air which she certainly did not derive from either her father or her mother.  Her eyes, of a light brown, were totally devoid of that gentle, calm, and almost timid expression natural to the eyes of young girls.  Lively, animated, and always well in health, Cecile spoiled, by a sort of bourgeois matter-of-factness, and the manners of a petted child, all that her person presented of romantic charm.  Still, a husband capable of reforming her education and effacing the traces of provincial life, might still evolve from that living block a charming woman of the world.

Madame Beauvisage had had the courage to bring up her daughter to good principles; she had made herself employ a false severity which enabled her to compel obedience and repress the little evil that existed in the girl’s soul.  Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had, what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete, and flawless.

“Your dress is enough to make me reflect,” said Madame Beauvisage.  “Did Simon Giguet say anything to you yesterday that you are hiding from me?”

“Dear mamma,” said Cecile in her mother’s ear, “he bores me; but there is no one else for me in Arcis.”

“You judge him rightly; but wait till your grandfather has given an opinion,” said Madame Beauvisage, kissing her daughter, whose reply proved her good-sense, though it also revealed the breach made in her innocence by the idea of marriage.

Severine was devoted to her father; she and her daughter allowed no one but themselves to take charge of his linen; they knitted his socks for him, and gave the most minute care to his comfort.  Grevin knew that no thought of self-interest had entered their affection; the million they would probably inherit could not dry their tears at his death; old men are very sensible to disinterested tenderness.  Every morning before going to see him, Madame Beauvisage and Cecile attended to his dinner for the next day, sending him the best that the market afforded.

Madame Beauvisage had always desired that her father would present her at the Chateau de Gondreville and connect her with the count’s daughters; but the wise old man explained, again and again, how difficult it would be to have permanent relations with the Duchesse de Carigliano, who lived in Paris and seldom came to Gondreville, or with the brilliant Madame Keller, after doing a business in hosiery.

“Your life is lived,” he said to his daughter; “find all your enjoyments henceforth in Cecile, who will certainly be rich enough to give you an existence as broad and high as you deserve.  Choose a son-in-law with ambition and means, and you can follow her to Paris and leave that jackass Beauvisage behind you.  If I live long enough to see Cecile’s husband I’ll pilot you all on the sea of political interests, as I once piloted others, and you will reach a position equal to that of the Kellers.”

These few words were said before the revolution of July, 1830.  Grevin desired to live that he might get under way the future grandeur of his daughter, his grand-daughter, and his great-grandchildren.  His ambition extended to the third generation.

When he talked thus, the old man’s idea was to marry Cecile to Charles Keller; he was now grieving over that lost hope, uncertain where to look in the future.  Having no relations with Parisian society, and seeing in the department of the Aube no other husband for Cecile than the youthful Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, he was asking himself whether by the power of gold he could surmount the animosities which the revolution of July had roused between the royalists who were faithful to their principles, and their conquerors.  The happiness of his grand-daughter seemed to him so doubtful if he delivered her into the hands of the proud and haughty Marquise de Cinq-Cygne that he decided in his own mind to trust to the friend of old age, Time.  He hoped that his bitter enemy the marquise might die, and, in that case, he thought he could win the son through his grandfather, old d’Hauteserre, who was then living at Cinq-Cygne and whom he knew to be accessible to the persuasions of money.

If this plan failed, and Cecile Beauvisage remained unmarried, he resolved as a last resort to consult his friend Gondreville, who would, he believed, find his Cecile a husband, after his heart and his ambition, among the dukes of the Empire.