20 Adieu! O plaisant pays de France!

THREE long parlors, en suite, are filled with admiring, congratulating, pleased papas and mammas, as Sr. Ignatia with Madam Valentine make their way through. Many eyes follow curiously the distinguished-looking elderly lady, so elegantly simple of dress, so proudly severe of face—a face that seems cut in old ivory—bearing unmistakably the stamp of “the world.” There are introductions—the two titled people, the bishop, a few others of the more elect——and is then escorted to an easy-chair, slightly raised, whence, at her ease, she may sit and view the rooms. A very bright picture it is, very animated—all the smiling papas and mammas, and the “sisters, and the cousins, and the aunts;” the pupils chiefly in Swiss and rosebuds, but the actresses all retaining their fancy dresses. The Empress Josephine, in the costume of the First Empire, her waist-belt under her arms, balloon sleeves and puffed hair, is sauntering arm in arm with that sanguinary young miss, who but now, in a scarlet blouse and black velvet mask, chopped off a royal head. Joan of Arc is present, in a helmet of shining silver paper, a shield of the same invincible armor, a tin sword by her side, and valo on her lofty brow.

Marie Antoinette flits by pretty and piquant, and looking none the worse for her misadventures, all and sundry, in the temple. All the sugar-plums of French history are there—Blanche Castile, queen and saint; Genevieve, peasant girl and patroness of Paris. And last, but not least—ever charming Marie Stuart, in full feather, black velvet cap, ruffs, and stomacher, all dotted over with sham pearls. Blue eyes sparkle, long ringlets flow, red lips smile—a dainty fan of black and gold flutters coquettishly—she looks to the full as alluring as her bewitching prototype.

Madam Valentine sits, unable for a moment to take her entranced eyes off this brilliant little queen of the revels.

“Shall I bring her up now, madame?” asks, deferentially, Sister Ignatia.

“If you please, sister. Stay! who is that young man?”

“That is M. Rene Macdonald, the elder son of our good doctor, of Isle Perdrix, and the brother—comprenez vous—of mademoiselle.”

“I see. Yes, bring her up.”

The brother—comprenez vous—of mademoiselle has just stopped her, by catching one yellow curl and pulling it out to a preposterous length.

“Will it please your decapitated majesty of Scotland to cast an eye on the most unworthy of your subjects?” he inquires; and Snowball, turning quickly, gives a little ecstatic scream.

“Rene!” Both hands go out to him in a rapture of welcome. “Dearest boy! When did you come?”

“Dearest boy! Ah! happy Rene!” sighs M. Desereaux, and takes himself off.

“To-day, couple of hours ago,” answers Rene, inwardly much gratified by his reception, outwardly nonchalant, “just in time to see you beheaded. You did it very well, Snowball. I dare say we shall almost be proud of you one of these days. So Johnny’s gone!”

“Yes,” says Snowball, and a sigh, big, deep, sincere, heaves up from the very depths of her whaleboned stomacher, “Johnny’s gone. And oh! how I have missed him. ‘The heart may break, yet brokenly live on’—was it Byron who said that? It is dreadfully true, and I am a living example. My heart broke when Johnny sailed for Liverpool, and even the pieces went with him. Dear—dearest boy! (I mean Johnny this time, not you.) Life is a waste and howling wilderness without him. And to think he will not be back for two long months to come!”

Another sigh, deeper, if possible, than the first. And a very real one; Snowball is as deeply desolated as Snowball well can be, at the loss of her Johnny. John Macdonald has gone for a sailor, has accomplished the desire of his heart to plow the raging main. He is going to do his plowing, however, under unusually favorable circumstances—the captain is his cousin. No duckling ever took to water from its hatching more naturally or lovingly than he.

“And it is but the beginning of the end—think of that,” says unsympathetic Rene, “now that he has got a taste of tar and bilge-water, you will never be able to keep him on land while he lives.”

“As if I needed you to remind me of that!” reproachfully. “As if it ever was out of my thoughts. First you went—although that was only a happy release—the island was like paradise for awhile after. And then came Captain Campbell for Johnny, and he——”

“Jumped at it,” says Rene, as Snowball falters, and actually places a lace pocket-handkerchief gingerly to her eyes, “only too thankful to get away from the ceaseless hen-pecking—chicken-pecking, perhaps I should say, that he has been suffering from all his life. You see I judge of his feelings by my own. You don’t ask me what sort of time I have been having in New York, Snowball.”

“Because I don’t care. Because I know selfish people, who only think of themselves, enjoy life wherever they go. Of course,” resentfully, “you have been having a good time, while I have been breaking my heart!”

“Broken hearts become some people, I think,” says Rene, laughing, “and yours need be very badly broken, indeed, to enable you to act Marie Stuart con amore, as you did. I know it nearly broke mine, to look at you. Yes, Miss Trillon, I have been having a good time. I like New York; I like sculpture; I like my taste of Bohemia. And I am going back next week.”

“Next week! Seven whole days—one hundred and sixty-eight hours! Do you mean to tell me we are to be afflicted with your society all that time?”

These little customary amenities have been going on while Sister Ignatia makes her way through the moving throng. She smiles and beckons to Snowball, at this juncture catching her eye.”

“There! Sister lgnatia wants me. Come on.”

She shoves her white kid hand through Rene’s arm, and walks him captive in the direction of the sister.

“Sister Ignatia may want you; she may not want me. There is lnnocente Desereaux, too, looking lovely as Queen Blanche. I haven’t spoken to her.”

“Oh, come on! Never mind lnnocente Desereaux! She will survive, I dare say, if you never speak to her. I am sure you never have anything so agreeable to say. Sour things always keep well! Inno can wait.”

Snowball may bicker with him, but she holds him fast, a not unwilling captive. Perhaps this sort of repartee is the spice of life to them, the sauce piquant, the leaven that lightens the whole. At this moment Snowball is proudly thinking there is not Rene’s equal in the room.

“And how nicely he is dressed!” thinks this demoiselle of sixteen, though tortures would not have wrung the admission from her. “That is a most becoming suit—New York, I suppose. And that assured manner—his lofty way of carrying himself. A young man should always walk well. New York again. But no—Rene always had an air of distinction, the air noble Mère Maddelena says she likes. You beckoned to me, Sister!” (Aloud) “Did you not?”

“Yes, cherie. Do you see that lady yonder, in black, with the cashmere shawl and lace bonnet?”

“My old lady, by Jupiter!” ejaculated Rene. “Lady Macbeth returned to earth!”

“Looking all that there is lofty and unapproachable—yes, I see,” replies mademoiselle. “Who is she?”

“She is Madame Valentine,” answers the sister, looking attentively at her; “and she wishes very much that I should present you.”

Snowball has many things at this moment to think of—the name conveys nothing to her mind; but it strikes Rene with a certain unpleasant consciousness—surely it is a name he has heard somewhere before!

“Wants to know me!” exclaims Snowball, with open eyed surprise. “Now why, I wonder?”

“Come!” says Sister Ignatia, and leads the way. She still clings to her captive knight, who now makes a second effort to break his bonds.

“Let go, Snowball. The severe old lady in the gorgeous raiment doesn’t want me. I will take you home whenever you want to go.”

“Don’t be foolish!” is Miss Trillon’s only reply. “The old lady will not keep me a moment. ‘Distance lends enchantment to the view.’ She will be glad to dismiss me in about a second and a half.”

They stand before her with the words.

“Dolores,” says Sister Ignatia, briefly, “this lady is Madam Valentine.”

Snowball drops her blue eyes under the fixed gaze of the piercing black ones, and makes a sliding school obeisance, without a word. The sister perforce presents the young gentleman.

“M. Rene Macdonald, madame.”

Rene, standing very erect, clicks his two heels together, and bends his body forward profoundly. The whole performance is so French, that Snowball gives him a mischievous smile, and side glance from under her long lashes. Madam Valentine stretches out her hand, to the girl’s surprise, and takes one of hers in a close clasp.

“My dear,” she says, and in the resolute voice there is a tremor, “you do not know who I am?”

Snowball is not embarrassed; if she is, at least she does not show it. She lifts her eyes, and looks at the lady. Sister Ignatia, at the moment, feels a thrill of pardonable pride—the young lady’s composure is admirable.

“No, madame,” she says, “I have not that honor.”

“My child—I am your grandmother!”

There is an exclamation from Rene—it all rushes upon him. He has heard the name from his father. Snowball’s family are called Valentine. For her, she turns quite white.

“Madame!” she says, faintly, and stands—stunned.

“You are surprised, dear child. It is no wonder. Yes, I am your grandmother. I have come here expressly to see you. I remain to take you away.”

She lifts her eyes to Rene standing beside her; his olive complexion has blanched to that dead white dark faces take under the influence of strong emotion.

Involuntarily, unconsciously almost, her hand seeks his. But on the moment he turns, and with a low bow to the lady, goes hastily away. Sister Ignatia, too, turns and leaves them alone.

Madam Valentine looks, with a sudden sense of fear and pain at the face beside her, from which her words have in one instant driven color and life.

“Dear little one,” she says, “you say nothing. Have I been too sudden, or is it—that you do not want to come?”

Snowball wakes as from a dream. Sudden! Yes. She feels as if for a moment her heart had stopped beating with the shock of the surprise. She draws a long breath, and the blue, wistful eyes look steadily into the dark ones bent upon her.

“Ah, madame!” it is all she finds to say for one tremulous moment. “Yes—it has been sudden—sudden! Mon Dieu! my grandmother! indeed that?”

It is a very cry of orphanage. “I am sixteen and half years old,” it seems to say, “and in all my life I have known no one of my blood. Why do you come to trouble me now?”

“I love them so dearly,” she goes on, without waiting for a reply, “so dearly, so dearly. They are all I have ever known. They have been so good to me—so good!” Her voice breaks.

“Whom do you mean by ‘they’—that young man, for example?” asks madame, a touch of her old, cold imperiousness in her voice.

“My brother Rene? Yes, madame”—the fair head lifts suddenly—”he as well as the rest. I mean all—Papa Macdonald, Mère Maddelena, the sisters, the girls, Johnny——”

“Who is Johnny, my little one?” with a smile.

“My other brother—Rene’s brother. I love them with all my heart. I have been with them all my life.”

“I know that. It sounds like a reproach to hear you say so. It should never have been; for you are mine, Dolores—you understand?—my very own!—my son’s daughter! Ah! my little girl, I am an old woman; there is no one in all the world so near to me as you. See! I plead—badly, I fear, for I am not used to words of pleading—I plead for your love. Do not give it all to these good friends, to whom I, too, am grateful. Shall I ask in vain? Look at me, dearest child; give me your hands; let your heart speak; say, ‘I am looking at my father’s mother, who wishes in her old age to make up to his orphan daughter what she denied to him.’ lt is reparation, my child. If you come, it must be willingly, else not at all. I could not take you with me a reluctant captive. Speak, my child; it is for you to say how it shall be.”

They are in a crowded room, but to all intents and purposes they are alone. No one observes them—if they do, what is there to see? An elderly lady in an arm-chair, holding the hands of a graceful girl in the dress of the Queen of Scots—both faces earnest, one pleading, one drooping, and startled, and pale.

“I shall not hurry you,” the elder lady goes on. “I know that you are half-stunned by the surprise and suddenness of this, now. You shall have days—weeks, if you will. You shall consult your friends—this good doctor, this wise Mother Maddelena. I will not tear you from your dear ones; you shall always love them, and visit them; but you must not leave them all your heart. See! my Dolores, I am a very rich woman; but that is not to weigh with you. You are to be an heiress, and my darling. All that wealth can give you shall be yours—the pleasures, the brightness, the fairest things of life. Love, too—the love of these good people you possess already, and there awaits your acceptance all that my heart has to give. How strangely it sounds to me to hear myself plead! I, who, I think, never pleaded before. But you must come, my dear one, when I go, and willingly. The life you leave is good—you shall go to a better. The friends you quit are kind—you shall still find kinder. You shall travel the whole world over, if you choose; you shall see all those fair, far-off lands of which I know you must have dreamed. Your education shall be completed by the best masters. I am proud of my granddaughter to-day—I shall be far prouder of her years hence.”

“Oh, madame!”

It is all poor little Snowball can say, overwhelmed by this torrent of persuasion. Her eyes are filled with tears, but it is not on the handsome, earnest old face bending over her they rest. They follow Rene’s tall figure, far away in the crowd, and see him through a mist.

“I will not detain you now; you want to return to your friends,” madame says, very gently. She hardly knows herself in this mood; her heart melts as she gazes on this girl beside her, the last of her line. “Men, like pears, grow mellow before they drop off,” says a wise and witty Boston poet; the mellowing process must in deed have set strongly in, when hard, haughty Madam Valentine can use such tones and words as these! But to this girl—George’s daughter—it is easy.

“There is the doctor,” Snowball exclaims. A tall, white head and benign face appear at the other end of the room, and she brightens at once.

“Ah! the doctor. Well, my dear, go then, and send him to me. I have much to say to him, and it may as well be said here as elsewhere.”

Snowball darts off with alacrity, pauses, looks back. “Shall I—” hesitatingly, “shall I return, madame?”

“Surely, child, before this company breaks up.”

“Shall I—” the fair head droops again. “Shall I have to go with you—to your hotel?”

“There must be no have to in the case. You shall do as you like best—quite freely, remember that. But I do not even wish it. If you come with me, it will be only when I go ‘for good.’ ”

“And that will be, madame——”

“Say grandmamma, my little one. Oh! not for weeks to come, I foresee that. You must be thoroughly reconciled to the change before we leave St. Gildas. Now go and send your doctor.”

Snowball goes, and the doctor comes and takes a seat beside madame, and it is a very prolonged and earnest conversation that follows. For Snowball, she goes to Rene, straight as the needle to the north star. He is leaning against a pillar in an angle of the room, and glances gloomily as she comes up. A small, pale face and two pathetic young eyes look up.

“Rene!”

“Yes, Snowball.”

“Is it not awful—awful!“—a long, hard, tense breath “Oh! Rene, do you suppose she is my grandmother?”

“I see no reason to doubt it. I really cannot believe any old lady, however, eccentric, would come, in cold blood, and claim you, if stern duty did not drive her to it.”

Even in this supreme moment, Rene cannot quite lay aside the familiar style of snubbing, although his tone and look are unmistakably dreary.

“Rene”—pathetically—”don’t be horrid. I know it is not in your nature to be anything else, but just for once, ‘assume a virtue, if you have it not.’ Do you know she is going to take me away?”

“Poor old lady!”

“Rene——”

“I mean,” Rene says, laughing, but ruefully, “I am awfully sorry, upon my word, I am, Snowball. Of course, I am going away myself, it may be for years, and it may be forever, as Kathleen Mavourneen says——”

“Kathleen Mavourneen says nothing of the sort. It was——”

“Well, the other fellow; the fact remains, whatever Irishman said it. But while away enjoying life in New York, and going in for sculpture as a profession, and anatomy as a study, and artists and doctors in embryo for chums, it would have been soothing to remember that you were pining in your loneliness here, the last rose of summer, a sort of vestal virgin on Isle Perdrix, growing up for me expressly, and counting the hours until my return. Now all that is at an end, and you are going to start in life on your own hook, and set up, I dare say, for an heiress. I don’t wish your long-lost grandmother any harm, Snowball, but if we ever get her on Dree Island, she shall never leave it alive!”

A pause.

Snowball stands, a youthful picture of pallid woe; Rene stands nervously twisting the ends of a still innocent and youthful looking mustache, and feeling sore and savage, although his manner of expressing these emotions is degage enough.

“I wish she were at the bottom of Bay Chalette!” he bursts forth, at last. “Confound the old dame! After deserting you all these years, and never concerning herself in the slightest degree to know whether you were dead or alive, to come now and claim you! Snowball, don’t go!”

“I must,” mournfully.

“When does she propose to take you?”

“Not until I am ready,” she says, “which will be never if I have my own way. You should have heard her, Rene; one would think I was a prize—something precious and peerless—to hear her go on!”

“Ah!” relapsing into cynicisms, “she’ll get over that. She doesn’t know you, you see. I say, where does she live when at home?”

“I don’t know. I never asked. What does it matter?” despairingly.

“It does matter. If it is in New York I could see you. Find out, will you, the next time you talk to her! For me—I will address myself to her no more. I am only mortal—my feelings might rise to the surface, and there might be a tragedy. I am all at home in my anatomy, Snowball. I could run her under the fifth rib, and she would be out of the world and out of mischief before she knew what had hurt her——”

“Rene, don’t talk in that dreadful way, please. Are you going home after this is over?”

“Of course. You don’t mean to say you are not going, too?”

“Certainly I am going. I shall remain on the island until——Oh, Rene, what shall I do? I hate to go. How shall I leave you all? And when Johnny comes back—” emotion chokes further words.

“Never mind, Johnny! There are others in the world, though you never seem to think so! Snowball” earnestly, “if you really don’t want to go, don’t go. She cannot make you.”

But Snowball shakes her head, and wipes her eyes.

“It is my duty, Rene; I belong to her, not to anybody here. But it b-b-breaks my heart——”

“It has been so often broken!” begins Rene, from sheer force of habit, then stops remorsefully. “Don’t cry,” he says, “I hate to see you, and you. will make the point of your nose pink!”

A pause. “You will write, I suppose?” gloomily.

“Oh, yes.”

The pink suggestion has its effect. Snowball dries her eyes, and represses a last sniff or two.

Another gloomy pause.

“And, Snowball!” struck by a sudden alarming thought.

“Yes, Rene.”

“There is that fellow—the nephew, or cousin, you know. M. Paul told us of him. He lives with this old lady—hang her! and was to be her heir.”

“Yes.”

“Well. He isn’t married.”

“No?” not seeing the drift.

“No, Snowball!”

“Yes, Rene.”

“You won’t” marry him!”

“Oh-h!” a very prolonged “Oh?” of immense amaze. Then suddenly Snowball bursts out into her clear, joyous laugh.

“No, of course not,” says Rene, not looking at her; “besides; he is as old as the everlasting hills. Very likely he will ask you, though. You had better not—not——”

“Well?” imperiously, “not what?”

“Marry any one, in fact! Fellows want to marry an heiress, don’t you know—fortune-hunters and vauriens; of that sort. But you won’t, will you?”

“No!” says Snowball, and it is the old saucy, defiant Snowball all in a moment. “No, Rene, dear. Having known and loved you all my life, how could I ever look twice at any other man? I will wait for you, mon frere, until you grow up!”

And then laughing over her shoulder, Mary, Queen of Scots, turns her pretty shoulder to this darkling young Bothwell, and flits away to join her royal sister, Blanche of Castile—in every-day life Mlle. Innocente Desereaux.

*          *          *

It is the evening of the last day, two weeks later. Her boat is on the shore, and her bark might be on the sea, only they happen to be going by the 4.50 up express. And Snowball and Rene are pacing the sands of Isle Perdrix for the last time. All adieux have been made, everything has been arranged; Dr. Macdonald, with tears in his eyes, has bidden her go; Mère Maddelena indorses his words, her trunk is packed; madame la bonne maman waits impatiently, jealously, to bear away her treasure-trove. In these two weeks she has grown passionately fond of the child-it is Snowball’s sunny nature to work her way into people’s hearts.

For Rene—well, he has “looked at her as one who awakes”—looked at her with eyes new-opened from the moment she shone forth La Reine Blanche!

“My path runs east, and hers runs west,
And each a chosen way;
But now-oh! for some word, some charm,
By which to bid her stay!”

Something like this is in his thoughts, a cold ache and fear of the future fills him. She is going—going into a world, brighter, fairer than his, far out of his reach. She is to be an heiress, a belle, a queen of society. And he—well, he will have his heart’s desire he will be a sculptor if it is in him—a marble-carver, at the least, and dwelling in a world of which she will know nothing. He may return here, but there will be no Snowball to meet and welcome him with radiant eyes and smile. And he feels he would give all his hopes, the best years of his life, to keep her here, to know, to know she remains waiting his coming, rejoicing in his success—his very own. A selfish wish, it may be, but a most thoroughly natural and masculine one. He thinks of the story of the Arabian genie who carried his princess about the world with him, safely locked up in a glass box—he understands the genie, and his sympathies are with him. After to-day, who is to tell whether he will ever look upon her more? It is a jealous old grandmamma that, who waits, one who will know how to guard her own.

They walk in silence, arm in arm. Old Tim and the boat wait, their good-by will be here, where no eye, unless the fish-hawks are on the lookout, can behold. And they are silent. In life’s supremest hours there is never much to be said; the heart is too full. The yellow haze and hush of a sweet summer day lies over sea and land, the bay glitters, the sky is deepest blue, the little oily waves lap and whisper. Isle Perdrix looks a very haven of peace and rest.

“Adieu! O plaisant pays de France,
O ma patrie!
La plus cherie,
Qui a nourre ma jeune enfance;
Adieu, France, adieu!”

sings Snowball, softly, not knowing she sings. She wears a traveling suit of pale gray, lit with ribbons the hue of her eyes, a gray hat and feather, all the bounteous pale gold hair falling free. She speaks, and her words break the spell.

“It will be lonely for Johnny, when he comes,” she says, in the same soft voice, “you and me gone, Rene.”

“Always Johnny,” he says, impatiently. “I believe you care a thousand times more for Johnny than you do for—any one else in the world.”

“I love Johnny,” she says, gently; “don’t be cross, Rene—now. I like you, too.”

“Love—like! Snowball, you always cared for Johnny most.”

“Did I? I care for you, too, Rene. Oh! Rene! Rene! I am sorry to go.”

“Are you, Snowball? Really, truly sorry?”

He stops, and catches her hands, a swift flush rising over his dusk face, a quick fire flashing in his brown eyes, “sorry to go? Sorry to go from me?”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry? Don’t you know I am? It has been such a good life, every day of it—all happy, all full as they could hold of pleasant things, and thoughts, and people. And I go from all that. Rene, nothing that can come—be it what it may—will be half as dear as what I leave.”

“You mean that! Snowball, Snowball, you will not forget us—you will not forget me——”

“Never, Rene! Never while I live! You—you all—will be more to me than the whole world besides.”

“Ah! you say so now, but you don’t know. And people change. And it is such a different life you are going to. Snowball, if I thought you would forget——” He stops, his heart is passionately full, full to overflowing, but what is there he may say!

“I never will. I am not like that. I will write to you often—often. I will come back here, whenever I may. And we may meet, Rene—you and I—out in that world beyond Dree Isle. Give my dearest love to Johnny, when he comes back, if you see him before I do. And Rene—my brother—forgive me for all the things I have said, for all the times I have made you angry in the past. I liked you dearly, dearly through it all!”

Forgive her! Old Tim is waiting impatiently—it will be full time to light the lamp before he gets back from the other side. Will they never have done standing there, holding hands, and saying good-by. It is a blessed release, Timothy is thinking in the depths of his misanthropic old soul, as he sits and smokes his dudeen, “sure there was iver an’ always mischafe and divilment ,wid that gerrel, and nothin’ else, since she first set fut in the island.”

“An’ her an’ Master Raynay—sure they did be fightin’ like Kilkenny cats mornin’, noon, an’ night,” ruminates Tim, “an’ there’s for ye now, afther it—houldin’ hans as if it was playin’ ring-a-rosy they wor, instid o’ jumpin’ out o’ their skins wid joy—in their sleeves. Dear knows it’s many’s the dhry eye there’ll be afther the same Miss Snowball.”

It is over. Snowball is here, running with red eyes down to the boat, and Rene is standing where she has left him—motionless in the twilight. Old Tim shoves off; the boat glides across the luminous river. St. Gildas side is reached, and grandmamma in a carriage awaits her darling. One backward glance the girl gives. Rene is standing there still, with that most desolate of feelings, “left behind.” She can just discern him, a lonely figure on the island shore. Then she is in the carriage, in grandmamma’s arms, her tears being kissed away, and Isle Perdrix, and Rene, and St. Gildas are already as “days that are over, dreams that are done.”