Cousin Bette (7 page)

The stubborn, crotchety, independent spirit, the inexplicable inability to conform, of this young woman for whom the Baron had on four different occasions found a possible husband (a clerk in his department, a regimental adjutant, an army contractor, a retired army captain), and who had also refused an embroiderer who had become a rich man since theft, had earned for her the nickname ‘Nanny', which the Baron jokingly gave her.

But that nickname applied only to the superficial oddities, to those variations from the norm which, in one another's
eyes, we all exhibit within society's conventions. This woman, more closely observed, would have revealed the fiercely ungovernable side of the peasant character. She was still the child who had tried to tear her cousin's nose off, and who, if she had not learned rational behaviour, would perhaps have killed her in a paroxysm of jealousy. She held in check, only by her knowledge of law and the world, the primitive impetuous directness with which country people, like savages, translate emotion into action.

In this directness, perhaps, lies the whole difference between primitive and civilized man. The savage has only emotions. The civilized man has emotions plus ideas. In the savage, the brain receives, one may conclude, few impressions, so that he is at the mercy of one all-pervading emotion; whereas thoughts, in the civilized man, act upon his feelings and alter them. He is alive to a host of interests and many emotions, while the savage entertains only one concept at a time. The momentary ascendancy that a child holds over his parents is due to a similar cause, but it ceases when his wish is satisfied, whereas in primitive people this cause operates constantly.

Cousin Bette, a primitive peasant from Lorraine and not without a strain of treachery, had a nature of this savage kind, a kind that is commoner among the masses than is generally supposed and that may explain their behaviour during revolutions.

At the time when the curtain rises on this drama, if Cousin Bette had chosen to allow herself to be well dressed, if she had learned to follow the fashion – like Parisian women – through every change of style, she would have been presentable and acceptable; but she remained as stiff as a stick. Now, without charm or grace a woman might as well not exist in Paris. Her black head of hair, her fine hard eyes, the rigid lines of her face, the Spanish darkness of her complexion – which made her look like a figure by Giotto, and which a true Parisian would have set off and used as assets – above all her strange clothes, gave Cousin Bette such a bizarre appearance that at times she reminded one of the monkeys dressed up as women that children, in Savoy, lead about on a string. As she
was well known in the households connected by family ties among whom she moved, as she restricted her social movements to that circle and liked to keep herself to herself, her oddities no longer surprised anyone and, out-of-doors, were lost to view in the ceaseless maelstrom of life thronging Parisian streets, where it is only pretty women that attract attention.

Hortense's laughter at that moment was caused by a triumph over an obstinate refusal of Cousin Bette's. She had just caught her out in an admission which she had been trying for three years to wring from her. However secretive an old maid may be, there is one emotion that will always make her break silence, and that is vanity! For three years Hortense had been extremely inquisitive about a certain topic, and had bombarded her cousin with questions, which, indeed, revealed her completely innocent mind: she wanted to know why her cousin had not married. Hortense, who knew the story of the five rejected suitors, had built up her own little romance. She believed that Cousin Bette was cherishing a secret passion in her heart, and a half-serious game of attack and riposte had developed between them. Hortense would speak of ‘marriageable young girls like us!' meaning herself and her cousin. Cousin Bette had on several occasions retorted provocatively: ‘How do you know that I haven't a sweetheart?' So Cousin Bette's sweetheart, real or fictitious, was now a centre of interest and a subject for playful teasing. On Bette's last visit, after three years of this light-hearted warfare, Hortense had greeted her with the words:

‘How is your sweetheart?'

‘Only middling,' she had replied. ‘He's not very well, poor young man.'

‘Ah! He's delicate, is he?' the Baroness had asked, with a laugh.

‘Yes, indeed. He is so fair.… A coal-black creature like me had to fall in love, of course, with a fair man, the colour of moonlight.'

‘But who is he? What does he do?' said Hortense. ‘Is he a prince?'

‘A prince of tools, just as I'm a queen of spools. Can a poor
girl like me expect to be loved by a rich man with a house of his own, and money in government stocks, or a duke and peer, or some Prince Charming out of one of your fairy tales?'

‘Oh, how I should like to see him!' Hortense had exclaimed, smiling.

‘To find out what the man who can love an old nanny looks like?' asked Cousin Bette.

‘He must be some monster of an old clerk with a goatee beard!' said Hortense, looking at her mother.

‘Well, that's where you are mistaken, Mademoiselle!'

‘Ah, then you really have a sweetheart?' exclaimed Hortense triumphantly.

‘Just as really as you have not!' her cousin had retorted, apparently piqued.

‘Well, if you have a sweetheart, Bette, why don't you marry him?' the Baroness had said, exchanging a look with her daughter. ‘It's three years now since we first heard of him, and you have had plenty of time to find out what he is like. If he has remained faithful to you, you ought not to prolong a situation that he must find trying. It's a question of conscience. And then, even if he is young, it is time that you were thinking of providing a crutch for old age.'

Cousin Bette had stared at the Baroness, and, seeing that she was laughing, had replied:

‘That would be hunger marrying thirst. He works for his living as I work for mine. If we had children they would have to work for theirs.… No, no, ours is a love of the soul. It costs less!'

‘Why do you hide him?' Hortense asked.

‘He's not presentable,' replied the old maid, laughing.

‘Do you love him?' the Baroness asked.

‘Certainly I do! I love him for himself alone, the angel. I have been carrying his image in my heart for four years now.'

‘Well, if you love him for himself,' the Baroness had said gravely, ‘if he really exists, you are treating him shockingly badly. You don't know what it means to love.'

‘We all know that from birth!' said her cousin.

‘No, some women love and yet remain egoists, which is what you are doing!'

Cousin Bette had bowed her head, and the look in her eyes would have made anyone who saw it shudder, but she kept her gaze fixed on her reel of silk.

‘If you introduced your sweetheart to us, Hector might be able to find him a place, and help him to make his way in the world.'

‘That is not possible,' Cousin Bette had said.

‘Why not?'

‘He's a sort of Pole, a refugee…'

‘A conspirator?' exclaimed Hortense. ‘How lucky you are! Has he had exciting adventures?'

‘He fought for Poland. He was a teacher in the school whose students started the revolt, and as it was the Grand Duke Constantine who placed him there he can't hope to be pardoned.'

‘Teacher of what?'

‘Art!'

‘And he came to Paris after the revolt had been suppressed?'

‘In 1833. He had crossed Germany on foot.…'

‘Poor young man! And how old is he?'

‘He was only just twenty-four at the time of the insurrection. He is twenty-nine now.…'

‘Fifteen years younger than you,' the Baroness had said then.

‘How does he live?' asked Hortense.

‘By his talent.…'

‘Ah! he gives lessons?'

‘No,' Bette had answered, ‘he takes them, and hard ones too!'

‘And what's his Christian name? Has he a nice one?'

‘Wenceslas!'

‘What imaginations old maids have!' the Baroness had exclaimed. ‘From the way you talk, anyone would believe that you were telling the truth, Lisbeth.'

‘Don't you see, Mama? He's a Pole brought up on the knout, and Bette reminds him of that little amenity of his native land!'

They had all three burst out laughing, and Hortense had
sung: ‘
Wenceslas! O my heart's dearest love!
' instead of ‘
O Mathilde…
', and for a few moments there had been something like an armistice.

‘These little girls,' said Cousin Bette next time she came, looking at Hortense, ‘imagine that no one but themselves can have sweethearts.'

‘Now,' said Hortense, as soon as she and her cousin were alone, ‘prove to me that Wenceslas isn't a fairytale, and I'll give you my yellow cashmere shawl.'

‘But Wenceslas is a Count!'

‘All Poles are Counts!'

‘But he isn't a Pole, he's a Li… va… Lith…'

‘Lithuanian?'

‘No…'

‘Livonian?'

‘Yes. That's what he is!'

‘But what's his name?'

‘Tell me, are you sure you can keep a secret?'

‘Oh, Cousin, I'll be dumb!'

‘As a fish?'

‘As a fish!'

‘You swear by your eternal salvation?'

‘By my eternal salvation!'

‘No, by your happiness in this world?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, he's Count Wenceslas Steinbock!'

‘That's the name of one of Charles XII of Sweden's generals.'

‘That was his great-uncle! His father settled in Livonia after the death of the King of Sweden; but he lost all his money in the 1812 campaign, and died, leaving the poor child, aged eight, penniless. The Grand Duke Constantine, for the sake of the name of Steinbock, took him under his protection and sent him to school.'

‘I'll keep my word,' Hortense had said. ‘Give me proof of his existence and my yellow shawl is yours! Ah, yellow is a brunette's colour – it does as much for her as cosmetics!'

‘You will keep my secret?'

‘I'll give you all mine.'

‘Well, the next time I come, I shall have the proof.'

‘But the proof is the sweetheart,' Hortense had said.

Cousin Bette's fancy had been greatly taken by the wraps that she had seen in Paris, and she had been fascinated by the prospect of possessing the yellow shawl, which the Baron had given to his wife in 1808, and which, in 1830, had passed from mother to daughter, in accordance with the custom in some families. The shawl had become somewhat the worse for wear in the past ten years' use, but the precious web, always kept in a sandal-wood box, seemed, like the Baroness's furniture, unalterably new to the old maid's eyes. So she had brought a present in her reticule that she intended to give the Baroness for her birthday, and that she considered convincing proof of the legendary lover's existence.

The present consisted of a silver seal composed of three figures wreathed in foliage, standing back to back and bearing the globe aloft. The three figures represented Faith, Hope, and Charity. Their feet rested on snarling snapping monsters, among which the symbolic serpent writhed. In 1846, after the tremendous impetus given to Benvenuto Cellini's art by the work of Mademoiselle de Faveau and such artists as Wagner, Jeanest, Froment-Meurice, and wood-carvers like Liénard, this fine piece of work would surprise no one, but at that time a girl with some interest in jewellery could hardly fail to be impressed as she examined the seal, which Cousin Bette handed to her with the words: ‘Here, what do you think of this?'

The figures, with their flowing draperies, had the composition and rhythm of the style of Raphael. In execution they suggested the Florentine school of workers in bronze created by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Benvenuto Cellini, John of Bologna, and their peers. The French Renaissance had produced no more fantastic whimsical monsters than those symbolizing the evil passions. The palms, ferns, rushes, reeds, springing up around the Virtues showed a virtuosity, and a style and taste, that expert craftsmen might despair of rivalling. A ribbon twined among the three heads, and where it appeared between them displayed a W, a chamois, and the word
fecit
.

‘Who can have made this?' Hortense asked.

‘My sweetheart, of course,' Cousin Bette replied. ‘there are ten months of work in it. I earn more by making sword-knots. He told me that Steinbock means creature of the rocks or chamois, in German. He intends to sign everything he makes like this… Ah! your shawl is mine!'

‘Just tell me why.'

‘Could I buy a thing like this? Or commission it? Impossible – so it must have been given to me. Who would give such a present? Why, only a sweetheart!'

Hortense, with a lack of candour that would have alarmed Lisbeth if she had perceived it, carefully refrained from expressing all her admiration, although she experienced the thrill that people sensitive to beauty feel when they see a masterpiece: faultless, complete, and unexpected.

‘Certainly,' she said, ‘it's very pretty.'

‘Yes, it's pretty,' answered the old maid; ‘but I would rather have an orange shawl. Well, my dear, my sweetheart spends his time working at things like this. Since he came to Paris he has made three or four trinkets of the same sort, and that's the fruit of four years' study and work. He has been serving an apprenticeship with founders, moulders, jewellers.… Bah! a mint of money has gone on it all. The young man tells me that in only a few months, now, he will be rich and famous.'

‘So you do really see him?'

‘Well, do you think I'm inventing all this? I was laughing, but I told you the truth.'

‘And he loves you?' Hortense asked, with intense interest.

‘He adores me!' her cousin replied solemnly. ‘You see, my dear, he has only known insipid, die-away women; they're all like that in the north. A young, dark, slender girl, like me, soon warmed the cockles of his heart. But mum's the word! You promised!'