XII
A VISIT TO MY GREAT-AUNTS
I WAS ailing all winter. I had attacks of intermittent fever, followed by the measles, with delirium.
My father and mother came in turn to help my grandparents take care of me. For a week they all feared not only for my life, but for my sanity—fears which re-established for a while perfect accord between them.
My father, talking one day at my bedside to grandmother, who was accusing her daughter of being responsible for my illness, said:
“It seems to me, mother, that you, too, deserve reproach in this respect, from what my father-in-law tells me. As to Olympe, I assure you she is more unhappy from her suspicions than those whom she suspects. Her jealousy is not her own fault; it is a malady. If you will look at her during her fits of anger, you will see that she has already certain tremblings of her head, too characteristic, alas! Do not forget that her paternal grandfather died of paralysis, which is, perhaps, the explanation of her unconscious cruelties. You must take care of Olympe, mother, rather than blame her. I, also, have a great defect in being too violent, and it comes to me from an affection of my heart, an inheritance from my father.”
My father expressed these words so gently, so sadly, that I at once forgave my mother, with whom I had until that moment still been angry, and I was most unhappy to hear that my father had a disease of the heart.
During my delirium my grandfather had no difficulty in discovering the cause of the tension of my little brain, overheated by the struggle to understand the contradictions between my father’s and grandmother’s ideas. I was endeavouring with all my might to make the ideas agree, and could not succeed, which tormented me. In my fever I did nothing but talk of politics and socialism.
“She must escape from both of you for a time,” he said to my father and grandmother, “and I am going to accept her great-aunt’s invitation to her.”
My grandmother’s half-sisters, Sophie, Constance, and Anastasie, lived with her mother at a country-seat in the environs of Soissons, at Chivres. They led a monastic life, having, all three, refused to marry.
Since their father’s death they had, no one knew why, desired to know me, and this seemed all the more extraordinary to my grandparents because they had never taken any interest in my mother.
A friend of my grandmother’s having spoken to them about me, they said to this friend that if grandmother desired me to be their heiress, instead of one of their mother’s cousins, to whom they were somewhat attached, she must let me go and visit them alone every year during the vacation season, in July and August.
My grandfather said to himself that such a complete separation from my father and grandmother would put my brain “out to grass,” as he expressed it, and would do me immense good. He induced grandmother to write to her friend that she would send me at that time to visit my great-aunts.
The prospect did not please me at first. I was so weary, so weak, that I asked only to be allowed to dream, lying in the large drawing-room beside grandmother, who read or embroidered without speaking to me.
My brain was hard at work during my convalescence. It appeared to me that I was making a great journey in life, and that I discovered many new and serious things every day.
I had taken no interest in money affairs until then, except for the purchase of my sugar-plums. But was it not money which had been the cause of the great quarrel on my return from Blérancourt? Was money, therefore, a very great, very important thing? And now, again, I heard it spoken of apropos of these aunts for whom my grandparents cared so little, and of whom they thought so ill.
This money, which had made my mother so cruel to me, was now going to make my grandparents more kind to my great-aunts.
I discussed these questions very naïvely with myself, although my mind was wide awake with regard to other things; but there was never any question of money affairs between my grandfather and grandmother. My grandfather kept his own accounts with his patients; my grandmother took care of her own fortune.
I questioned grandmother about the necessity of my being my aunts’ heiress, asking her why she considered it so important that I should have money.
“It is not for the money itself,” grandmother answered, “that your grandfather and I desire that you should be your aunts’ heiress, but for a certain satisfaction it would give us, and because it would be creditable to them. You know, for I have told you so several times, that my father kept my mother’s dot, and that he was obstinate in making the keeping of it a condition of my marriage. If my half-sisters desire to repair the wrong they have done me, I approve their conduct; if my stepmother, now very old, wishes to die without remorse, I understand it. That is why I desire that you should play a part in this scheme of reconciliation, more worthy of our family than the unworthy machinations of former times. It is not a question of money, but of a triumph for your grandfather and myself, should your aunts make you their heiress. You see, Juliette, there is nothing more noble than to repair one’s wrong by a righteous act. Try to help in bringing it about.”
I had a mission. I was going to aid in the triumph of justice, and in that of my grandparents. I was still very weak, incapable of any great effort, for a fever brought on by growing pains hindered the progress of my convalescence; but the great rôle of ambassadress extraordinary—“something like a diplomatic work of Monsieur de Talleyrand,” said grandfather, not mockingly, but solemnly—that was worth thinking of.
I had, besides, some experience to guide me. How many times had I not reconciled my grandfather and grandmother, as well as my parents at Blérancourt, or all of them together? While still very small, I had often played the part of arbiter. I gave my personal opinion on all matters and in all discussions.
I should probably have been insupportable had not my grandparents, both of whom were very gay and witty, kept up a spirit of fun between us which banished all gravity, even in questions of quarrels, instead of preserving a tone of stiff, solemn, and stately importance, so that, when I succeeded in hushing up a quarrel between them, it was usually because I had made them laugh.
My father, also, submitted to this course of action on my part, but it exasperated my mother, who would always say:
“I will never admit that a joke should get the better of a grief.”
Might it not be probable that my great-aunts would resemble my mother in character? Ah! in that case I would resign my mission very quickly, so much the worse for the inheritance! I would write at once to be taken home.
“My sisters cannot be dull,” grandmother said to me. “Having remained unmarried, they certainly must have kept their original characters.”
The great day for my departure for Chivres arrived. What an excitement, to be going to pass two months away from my father and grandmother, and with old people whom I had never seen, and on whom I must make a favourable impression, “or else suffer the humiliation of being sent home,” said grandfather.
I was going to be shut up in a sort of cloister. My three great-aunts, their mother, and a servant whom they had had for twenty-five years, lived alone in an old house, situated in an enormous domain surrounded by high hedges and walls. This was the description my great-aunts’ friend gave to us of “the convent.”
My grandfather was to take me, with my packages sewed up by Arthémise, as far as two leagues beyond Coucy-le-Château. Grandmother told me to look well at “the monstrous feudal towers of Coucy.” Marguerite, my aunts’ servant, would await us at the village, her native place, at her mother’s house on the Square opposite a cross. She would meet me there with my aunts’ donkey. I was to dine at her mother’s cottage, after which we would leave Coucy, taking cross-roads, and would arrive at Chivres late at night.
I had been much sermonised by grandmother before I left, and on our way grandfather continually joked me about my “mission à la Talleyrand.”
“Your old aunts must die of ennui,” he said to me; “you will amuse them, and they won’t return the compliment, if I remember them rightly. Sophie will teach you Latin, she knows it very well; you will use some of it with Marguerite in the kitchen, perhaps also with the donkey, and you must bring back to me what remains of it. Mind you don’t forget, for I have great need of it.”
Grandfather left his carriage at the entrance of the village, at the only inn of the place, and as we walked along he continued his jokes.
I laughed so at all the nonsense he said to me that, when I saw Marguerite and the donkey to which I was to talk Latin, I forgot to cry.
Grandfather kissed me quickly, more overcome than myself. After giving Marguerite instructions concerning my health, and the care to be taken of me, he handed her a complimentary note for my aunts, and then flew off so rapidly towards the entrance of the village where he had put up his carriage, that when I turned, after caressing the donkey, I saw no sign of him.
We were to have gone to the inn, on leaving the village, to get my packages to put on the donkey, which had a basket hung on his saddle, but a servant from the inn brought them to us.
My heart was a little heavy at this sudden separation, but my stomach was very empty, and I ate with a good appetite for the first time in many weeks.
Marguerite’s mother had announced my passage to the whole country-side; all the urchins of the place were grouped around the cross. I smiled at the little girls and boys, who followed me into the house to see the “young Miss” who looked like a little “Parisienne.”
My way of speaking, which had no Picardy accent, struck them all. Neither my grandfather, who was from Compiègne, nor my grandmother, which was more extraordinary still, had the least patois accent.
The little chits gathered around the long oaken table at which I was eating, and made me talk by asking questions. I had brought with me some sugar-plums, a necessary cargo for a great journey to an unknown country. I distributed my sugar-plums with the greatest success. I drank to the health of the troop, who had cried: “Vive! the young Miss!” and, a little intoxicated with the bracing air, I half remember having made a speech to the young people, a very moral one, concluding by saying one could never love one’s grandfather and grandmother enough, or one’s father and mother.
“Why is it that you don’t say first that we should love our mother and father?” asked one of the little peasants.
“Oh! that’s as you like,” I answered, thinking it would require too many explanations to be understood.
Marguerite, who took a fancy to me at once, had her share in my success. The “young Miss” already belonged to her.
I mounted Roussot, who intoned at his departure a song so odd for a donkey, with such a ludicrous search for harmony, that I began to imitate him, which encouraged him to continue.
My new friends, the children, burst out laughing. They followed me for a long way, and, on the thresholds of the houses and huts, which became farther and farther apart, their mothers saluted me, waving their hands, wishing Marguerite and her “young Miss” a good journey.
I tasted the sweets of popularity. It was due to my sugar-plums, to my Parisian accent, and to my perfect imitation of the donkey’s bray.
Marguerite made me think of Arthémise. She was full of admiration for everything I did, for all that I said. She answered all my questions with the desire to please me, she said.
Roussot found me a light weight. He trotted along briskly, while Marguerite, holding the bridle, walked beside us with long strides. I thought the sunset was beautiful; it shone over an immense plain, inundating it with its rays, and its reflection illuminated the sky long after it had set.
We journeyed on under the brilliant stars, not along a straight road, for we took many turnings, which by degrees brought us near to Chivres.
The rolling country was so pretty that it pleased me exceedingly, and I should have liked to gather all the flowers which a bright moon showed me along the sides of the road.
“There are flowers in plenty in the close, Mam’zelle Juliette,” said Marguerite. “There are bachelors’ buttons and poppies in the wheat, and daisies around the wash-house; you shall pick as many as you like. You are not so cityfied, after all, if you love the beautiful things in the fields.”