19 La Reine Blanche

“A LADY for you, ma Mère.”

So says Sister Humiliana, and lays a card before Mère Maddelena, who sits busily writing in her bare little room. The mother looks up, and at the card, and knits her brows.

“Valentine?” she says. “We have no one of that name, my sister.”

“No, my mother. Perhaps it is some one who comes concerning a new pupil. She is in the second parlor. It is une grande dame, ma mère.”

“It is well, ma sœur. I will go.”

Mère Maddelena lays down her pen with some reluctance, for she is very busy. To-day there are the closing exercises of the school, distribution of premiums, addresses, graduation speeches, awarding of gold medals, wreaths, &c., with music, and a dramatic performance. And “His Grandeur” is coming, and many other very great personages, lay and ecclesiastical, among them a distinguished English “milor” and his lady. All these dignitaries Mère Maddelena has to receive and entertain; her girls are to have one last drilling in their parts—a thousand things are before her. And now she is called to waste her golden moments, in futile talk, it may be, in the second parlor.

But she goes, with her slow, stately step, a very ideal lady abbess, serene of face, gracious of manner—a very gracious manner—quite the mien of a princess. And with some right, too, for Mère Maddelena once upon a time was a very great lady. So long ago, so like a dream it seems to her now, when it flits for a moment across her memory. In the days of the Second Empire, when the glory and the splendor thereof filled the earth, no braver soldier marched to the Crimea, among the legions of Louis Napoleon, than Colonel, the Count de Rosiere. Among all the brilliant ones of a brilliant court, few outshone Laure, Countess de Rosiere, either in beauty, in birth, or in high-bred grace. She let him go, and mourned for her Fernand, gayly—he would return with the Cross of the Legion, a Marshal of France. He did return—in his coffin, and his fair young wife took her bruised heart out of the world and into the cloister. At first she only entered en retraite, in those early days of death and despair, and there peace found her—a new peace, that no death could take away. That was in the dim past—Mère Maddelena is here now, but under the serge of her habit, under the humility of the religieuse, the old court manners, the old air noble, still remain. It is a very inspiring and graceful presence that enters the “second parlor” and bows profoundly to the elderly lady, so richly robed, who sits therein.

Madam Valentine rises, and returns that profound obeisance, impressed at once by the stately mien of the nun.

“Upon my word,” she thinks, “these Frenchwomen, whether nuns or society belles, have beautiful manners. I only hope she has managed to instill a little of her high-bred grace into this girl I have come to see.”

“Be seated, madame,” Mère Maddelena says, and stands until her guest has done so. “A grande dame, truly!” she thinks, as their eyes meet, “and a handsome and striking face.”

“My name, perhaps, may not be unfamiliar to you, reverend mother,” begins the lady, glancing at the card the mother still retains: “Valentine.”

“It is unpardonable of me if I forget, but—Valentine? No—I do not recall that, madame.”

“And yet you have had a pupil here for many years, bearing that name, have you not?”

“A pupil? But no, madame—no one called Valentine.”

“Perhaps then she is called,” with some reluctance, “Trillon.”

“Trillon? Stay! Ah! but yes, madame, it is the little Dolores whom you mean. The protegee of our good Dr. Macdonald.”

“Dolores? She never was called Dolores that I knew of. Snowball if you like—a silly name.”

“The same—the same! But madame fails to recollect—it was by madame’s permission we christened her Dolores. She was written to on the subject.”

“Was I? And when? Who wrote? I remember nothing of it,” says Madam Valentine, rather abruptly.

“It is many years ago now, fully six at least. Madam Macdonald died, and the little one was sent to us. She had no name but the so foolish one of Snowball, and had never been baptized. Madame is aware,” deprecatingly, “we could not tolerate that. Dr. Macdonald wrote to his very good friend M. Paul Farrar, then at Fayal, and M. Paul—he wrote to you did he not? Or a member of your family, perhaps, for the requisite permission.”

“Ah-h! to a member of my family! I see,” says madame’s sarcastic voice.

“Permission came we might do as we pleased. And we called the child Marie Dolores. Is it possible, madam, that this is the first you have heard of it?”

“Quite possible—the very first, my good mother. But it does not signify at all. I prefer Dolores to Snowball, which, in point of fact, is no name at all. Well, it is your Dolores then, that I have come to see.”

” Madame is——”

“Her grandmother! I have never seen her in my life! You will wonder at that, my mother, but her father, my only son, married against my will, and to my great and bitter grief. He is dead since many years” (this conversation is carried on in French), “and his death I cease not to deplore. But toward his child I did not relent; I banished her from my sight. I sent her here. I fatigue you, I fear, my good mother, with all these family details.”

She speaks with a certain coldness, a certain haughty abruptness of manner, that she is apt unconsciously to assume when forced to unveil ever so little of her heart to strangers. But Mère Maddelena’s gentle, sympathetic face makes the task easy.

“Ah! but no, madame. I am interested. I am sorry It’s all very sad for you.”

“I grow an old woman, I find.” Madam Valentine resumes, still in that abrupt tone,” and I am lonely. She—this girl—is nearer to me than anything else on earth. It is natural I should wish to see her, at least. That’s why I am here.”

“Ah, madame?” in profoundest sympathy, “and once having seen her, you will love her so dearly. It is a heart of gold—it is a child of infinite talent, and goodness, and grace. A little wild and joyous, I grant you, but what will you—it is youth. And a paragon of beauty. We do not tell her that, you understand, but it is a loveliness most surpassing. All Villa des Anges will be desole if madame, la bonne maman, takes her away. And next year she is to graduate. Surely madame will not take her away!”

“If she is what you describe her, I surely will!” replies la bonne maman, decisively. “You paint a fascinating picture, my mother. Why, a girl like that, with a fortune such as I can give her, may have the world at her feet. Sixteen years old, you say?”

“Nearer seventeen, I believe, and tall and most womanly for her age. Ah! ma chere petite! how we will be sorry to lose you! Shall I send for her, madame, that you may see for yourself?”

She stretches out her hand to the bell, but the other stops her.

“No,” she says, “wait. I do not mistrust your judgment, my mother, but I prefer to judge for myself. Let me see her, hear her, myself unknown, first. How can I do this?”

“Most easily. Honor us with your presence at the exercises this afternoon. She is to be crowned for excellence in music, and to receive the second medal. She afterward performs in a little vaudeville, we have dramatized ourselves from history, “La Reine Blanche” we call it. When all is over, the pupils mingle with the guests in the parlors. You can there see and hear, and talk to her as much as you like.

“That will do admirably,” madame says, rising; “and now, as I am sure you are very busy, reverend mother, I will detain you no longer.”

“Let me present you with one of our admission cards,” says Mère Maddelena, rising also; “so many wish to assist at the closing exhibition, that we are forced to protect ourselves against a crowd. Until this afternoon, then, madame, au revoir.”

The portress glides forward with her key, the big convent door opens and closes, and Madam Valentine is out, driving in her cab through the streets of St. Gildas to her hotel.

Her calm mind is almost in a tumult of hope, of fear. If this girl only proves to be what Mère Maddelena makes her out, or even half-what solace, what companionship may yet be in store for her! For even in her reparation and she honestly desires to make it—madam’s first thought is of self. She grows, as she has admitted for the first time, very lonely in her desolate old age. Vane Valentine is no companion. She half fears, wholly distrusts him. She rebels against the sort of power he is beginning to exercise over her. His impatience is too manifest.

“I shall not die yet, my good Vane,” she thinks, with a little bitter smile, “even to oblige you. How will you look, I wonder, when you hear in England that a graceful, golden-haired granddaughter has usurped your place? George’s child—George’s little daughter! To think that she is over sixteen, and I have never seen her yet!”

A pang of self-reproach passes through her—a pang that yet holds a deeper pity for herself.

“How blind I have been! All these years—these long, lonely, wasted years, she might have been with me; I might have won her love. What if now she refuses to come, or, if coming, comes reluctantly? What if she prefers her friends here—this doctor and his family, who have cared for her always? It would be quite natural. But I would feel it! I would feel it! George’s child!”

Still she does not fear it greatly. She has so much to offer—so much; they have nothing but love. And how often does love not kick the beam when gold is in the other scale? No one ever says “no” to Katherine Valentine. So she dreams on—of a future in which she will live over again her own wasted life, in the bright young life of this girl. How happy she will make her! How wholly she will win her heart!

“It will atone,” she says, and her eyes fill with slow tears, “to the living and to the dead—oh! most of all, to the dead! What I refused the father shall be given, a thousand times over, to the child.”

She counts the hours with impatience until the hour she can return to the villa. She does not wish to go too soon, and be forced to bear her impatience under the eyes of a hundred people. Her maid stares at her. Is this her calm, self-repressed, proudly silent mistress this feverish, flushed woman, walking restlessly up and down her room?

The hour strikes at last; the distance is but short; a carriage is waiting. She descends, and is driven back to Villa des Anges. A stream of people and carriages for the last half hour has been setting in the same direction.

A waiting sister receives and escorts her, and several other arrivals, to an upper seat in the long and lofty hall. It is rather like going to the theater—there is the stage, the green drop-curtain, and silks rustle, and fans wave, and plumes nod, and an odor as of roses and violets abounds. Here is the ecclesiastical element, a bishop, and numerous priests; here is the British personage and his lady—an imposing assemblage as a whole. Sisters in black veils and white coifs, flit about, and all along one side, tier upon tier of innocence, white Swiss, blue sashes, and carefully arranged tresses, sit the “angels ” of Villa des Anges. Silent and demure they sit, wreaths on their youthful heads, white kids on their angelic hands, dancing light in their bright eyes. It is an effective picture altogether, and so thinks madam, taking it all in through her double eyeglass. The granddaughter of many Valentines might be in a very much worse place than this Canadian convent, after all. Madam has been given a conspicuous seat among the nobility and gentry, and in an excellent position to see everything. Bills of the performance, white satin, gold lettering, attar of roses, are distributed. She glances eagerly at hers, and sees the name for which she looks, “La Reine Blanche—A Drama in Three Acts! Marie Stuart—MLLE. DOLORES MACDONALD!”

There is a list of other names—madame cares to read no farther. That name occurs in two or three other places, as performer of a “Moonlight Sonata,” as soprano in a quartet, as second medalist. She hears the murmur of voices about her, she sees a sea of faces, but she takes in no details—cares for none. Yes, once she is slightly awakened. Two young men in a seat near her are discussing the coming entertainment in vivacious tones.

“Gilt lettering—ess. Bouquet—white satin,” says one, sniffing at his programme, “when Mère Maddelena does this sort of thing she does do it. Drilled the girls, too, in their parts, and you will see they will do her honor. She does not forget; she once took part in private theatricals at the court of Napoleon Third.”

“I see Snowball down for the ‘White Queen,’ says the second voice; “she will look the part very fairly, at least, if she cannot act it. She is not unlike the pictures of the Queen of Scots—the same oval type of face, the same alluring sort of smile, I shouId fancy. Snowball will not make half a bad Marie Stuart. I saw Ristori in the part in New York not long ago.”

“WelI, Snowball won’t equal Ristori certainly, but my sister Inno says, she does herself and Mère Maddelena much credit by her rendering. Look at this venerable party on our right,” says M. Victor Desereaux, the photographer, lowering his voice, “her black eyes are going through us—you particularly—like gimlets.”

Rene Macdonald, still half smiling, glances carelessly. The “venerable party” looks both haughty and displeased—he sees that. Who are these young men who are discussing her granddaughter—her granddaughter? Our Snowball, forsooth! Then it dawns upon her—one of these may be, must be, the doctor’s son. What if—a quite new and altogether unpleasant idea strikes her what if Dolores—pshaw! the child is but sixteen, and with no thought, doubtless, beyond her piano-playing and school-books. But her keen eyes linger on his face. Is this young man handsome? Well, hardly, and yet it is a fine face, a striking face, a clear-cut olive face, full of promise and power.

“Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?” quotes Victor Desereaux. “It is a clear case, Rene, my friend. The elderly party has succumbed to your charms, she can’t take her venerable eyeglass off your too captivating face. If such is the havoc you work with a glance upon sixty years, what—oh! what must it be when the victim is but sixteen?”

The orchestra bursts forth at the moment, and drowns his persiflage, and the performance commences. Ces demoiselles, in airy white Swiss, flash on and off, “speak pieces,” sing songs, play the piano, make lovely courtesies to the audience, appear and disappear. Madam Valentine sees them, and sees them not; they are not the rose, but they grow near that peerless flower. She is hot with impatience—her nerves are pulling hard. Why does not this foolery end, and the drama begin? It is the piece de resistance of the day, and is kept until lesser matters are well out of the way. But its turn comes at last, and Marie Stuart, the child-widow of the Dauphin, in the snowy robes of her royal widowhood, “worn according to custom by the qweens of France, hence called reines blanches,” stands before them.

There is a murmur—a whisper—”Snowball“—a sort of vibration all through the audience, fairly taken by surprise at sudden sight of all that blonde beauty and grace. In those trailing pearly robes (white silk), her flaxen ringlets falling to her waist, with blue star-like eyes but delicate rosebud face, those loosely clasped hands, she is a vision. Not Marie Stuart herself, in the days when her radiant loveliness was a world’s wonder, could—it seems to those who look—have outshone this.

“My faith!” says the lowered voice of M. Desereaux. “That little sister of yours is a dazzling beauty, my friend, Rene! How is it? I have only thought her a pretty little girl, hitherto.”

Is Rene Macdonald asking himself the same question?

He leans forward, his dark eyes kindling, watching every motion, drinking in every word.

Is this Snowball—little madcap Snowball, with whom he has been quarreling all his life; whom he has pelted blind with her namesakes, every winter; whom he has snubbed, and contradicted, and put down on every occasion? This fairy vision—this radiant Reine Blanche, the mocking, exasperating mischief-maker, whose breath he has half shaken out of her body erstwhile for her pranks, whose ears he has tweaked, whose misdeeds on the high seas he has reprobated! He feels dazed. Has he been blind—or is it the dress she wears—he has never seen her walking in silk attire before—is it his three months’ absence in New York—what is it?

He has never seen this girl before, it seems to him, in his life—never, certainly, with the same dazzled eyes.

Will she be his commonplace, everyday Snowball to-morrow, and will this glamour have gone?

He almost hopes so; he does not know himself—or her—in this mood.

And still the play goes on—other people seem to be under the spell of the siren, too. She is singing, now, with “tears in her voice,” in a veiled, vibrating tone, that goes to the heart:

“Adieu! O plaisant pays de France,
O ma patrie!”

And so on.

She is leaving that sunny land for bleak Scotland.

How low, how hushed is her voice! She seems to feel the words she sings. You may hear a pin drop in that long and crowded hall.

And now the curtain is down, and the music is playing, and the first act is over, and Rene Macdonald, like one who wakes from a dream, leans back and passes his hand across his eyes, as if to dispel a mist.

“My word of honor, Macdonald,” says young Desereaux, “she is a marvel. She never looked like that before. How do you suppose she does it?”

The whole audience is in that flutter and stir that invariably follow the dropping of a stage curtain.

All are discussing “La Reine Blanche,” her beauty, her surprising acting of the part, her vague resemblance to the lovely Scottish queen.

Rene Macdonald sits nearly silent, lost, in a sort of dream—waiting with a tingling of the pulses, a thrilling of the blood, a quickening of his calm heart-beats, altogether new and inexplicable.

Why should he care—like this—to see Snowball? He never has cared before?

The orchestra are playing something very brilliant—in the midst of it the curtain rises again. Yes—there is Mary Stuart, widow once more—exiled—imprisoned. She stands on the shore of Lochleven, and Willie Douglas kneels at her feet.

The white robes are gone—the floating curls are hidden away under a velvet “snood “—the face is sad and pale. Willie Douglas kneels there, urging her to fly.

1. Victor Desereaux, with one eye on the play, keeps the other well on other things, and notices—especially the rapt attention of the dignified elderly lady, whose hard stare at Rene caught his attention from the first. He sees her now, all through this act, sitting erect, a flush on her thin cheeks, an eager light in her fine eyes.

All present are interested, but none to the same extent. Who is she? he wonders. Snowball has no relatives that any one knows of. Whosoever she may be, she is vividly absorbed in the fair little heroine of the drama.

And now it is the third and closing act—the very last scene. She might be called la Reine Noire as she stands, all in black—black velvet—(een)—that trails far behind, and gives height and dignity to slim sixteen, a stiffly starched ruff, a dear little Marie Stuart cap on her blonde head. In that sweeping robe, that ruff, that cap, Mlle. Trillon feels a very important little personage indeed, and treads the boards every inch a queen. She stands—her queenly head well thrown back, her royal eyes flashing, her royal cheeks flushing, voice ringing—confronting and denouncing her great enemy, Elizabeth of England. One of the good sisters, with more love for the memory of Mary Stuart than strict fidelity to historic facts, has written this drama, and here, face to face, the rival queens stand and glare at each other. Elizabeth, a tall, stout young lady, in ruff and farthingale, and conspicuously flame-colored hair, cowers, strong-minded though she be, before the outraged majesty of that glance, and is altogether crushed and annihilated by the eloquent outburst of regal wrath and reproach with which the royalty of Scotland finally quenches her. But marry! what avail reproaches? Marie Stuart is sentenced and doomed to die.

The last scene: Dim light; mournful music; solemn, expectant hush, and Marie Stuart, still in trailing velvet—black, wearing a long veil, carrying a crucifix, followed by her maids of honor, with lace mouchoirs to their dry eyes, is led forth to die. It is only a school play, but there is the block, sable, and suggestive, there is the headsman, in a frightful little black mask, and—most dreadful of all—there is a horribly bright and cutting looking meat axe. It is only a school play, but Rene Macdonald is pale with vague emotions as he sits and looks. If it were real? How white she is, in that black dress—how tall it makes her look, how mournful are the blue, steadfast eyes, that never leave the symbol she carries. The low, wailing music of the orchestra gives him a desolate sense of loss and pain. He wishes they would stop. There is deepest silence. “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” How despairingly the solemn words fall. She kneels, her eyes are bandaged, “with a Corpus Christi cloth, by Mistress Kennedy,” saith history.

The sweet face droops forward, the golden head rests on the block. The headsman lifts in both hands the glittering axe! There is a sound—a sound as of hard drawn breaths through the halls, then—it is the curtain that falls, and not the axe. Music and light flash up! Marie Stuart has had her head comfortably off, and her manifold troubles are over!

“Parbleu!” says M. Desereaux, and laughs.

Rene falls back; he has been leaning forward in that almost painful tension—he is thoroughly glad it is over.

“Why, Rene, old fellow,” his friend says, “how pale you look. If little Boule-de-neige were really getting her pretty head off, you could hardly put on a more tragic face.”

“I find it close here,” Rene says, with some impatience. “I wish it was over. What comes next?”

He looks at his satin slip, but when the next comes he hardly heeds. How lovely she looked! Who would have thought it was in her to throw herself into a powerful part like that? A clever little head in spite of its wealth of sunny curls; odd he should never have found it out before. She will appear again presently to play—afterward to sing. She will do both well; he knows her musical power at least.

She comes—this time in the white Swiss and wreath of the other pensionnaires—a school-girl—no longer a white queen. She receives her crown and medal from Episcopal hands, and has a few gracious words spoken to her by that very great vice-regal personage, and that other distinguished visitor, “my lady,” by his side.

Then there follows the general distributions of prizes, and the bishop and the personages are kept busy for awhile, and literally have their hands full. This, too, ends, and meeting and mingling in the parlors, and congratulations and mild refreshments are to follow.

Everybody rises and moves away. Sister Ignatia, second in command, comes to Madam Valentine. Mère Maddelena is of course devoting herself to her patrons, and the personage and my lady.

“You will come to the parlors, madame?” asks smiling Sister lgnatia. “I fear you must be tired. It was rather long.”

“I did not find it so. I have been deeply interested,” replies madame, truthfully; “they acquitted themselves excellently, one and all. The performance leaves nothing to be desired.”

“And Dolores?” says the sister gently; “pardon, but reverend mother has told me all. How do you find your granddaughter, madame?”

“So charming, my sister,” says madame, smiling her brightest in return, “that my mind is quite made up. When I leave St. Gildas my granddaughter leaves with me.”