White Lies Part 9

Rose eyed him and the ground, alternately, from under her long lashes.

At last he began to color and flutter. She saw something was coming, and all the woman donned defensive armor.

"Mademoiselle."

"Monsieur."

"Is it quite decided that your family refuse my acquaintance, my services, which I still--forgive me--press on you? Ah! Mademoiselle Rose, am I never to have the happiness of--of--even speaking to you?"

"It seems so," said Rose, ironically.

"Have you then decided against me too?"

"I?" asked Rose. "What have I to do with questions of etiquette? I am only a child: so considered at least."

"You a child--an angel like you?"

"Ask any of them, they will tell you I am a child; and it is to that I owe this conversation, no doubt; if you did not look on me as a child, you would not take this liberty with me," said the young cat, scratching without a moment's notice.

"Mademoiselle, do not be angry. I was wrong."

"Oh! never mind. Children are little creatures without reserve, and treated accordingly, and to notice them is to honor them."

"Adieu then, mademoiselle. Try to believe no one respects you more than I do."

"Yes, let us part, for there is Dard's house; and I begin to suspect that Josephine never sent you."

"I confess it."

"There, he confesses it. I thought so all along; WHAT A DUPE I HAVE BEEN!"

"I will offend no more," said poor silly Edouard. "Adieu, mademoiselle.

May you find friends as sincere as I am, and more to your taste!"

"Heaven hear your prayers!" replied the malicious thing, casting up her eyes with a mock tragic air.

Edouard sighed; a chill conviction that she was both heartless and empty fell on him. He turned away without another word. She called to him with a sudden airy cheerfulness that made him start. "Stay, monsieur, I forgot--I have a favor to ask you."

"I wish I could believe that:" and his eyes brightened.

Rose stopped, and began to play with her parasol. "You seem," said she softly, "to be pretty generous in bestowing your acquaintance on strangers. I should be glad if I might secure you for a dear friend of mine, Dr. Aubertin. He will not discredit my recommendation; and he will not make so many difficulties as we do; shall I tell you why? Because he is really worth knowing. In short, believe me, it will be a valuable acquaintance for you--and for him," added she with all the grace of the De Beaurepaires.

Many a man, inferior in a general way to Edouard Riviere, would have made a sensible reply to this. Such as, "Oh, any friend of yours, mademoiselle, must be welcome to me," or the like. But the proposal caught Edouard on his foible, his vanity, to wit; and our foibles are our manias. He was mortified to the heart's core. "She refuses to know me herself," thought he, "but she will use my love to make me amuse that old man." His heart swelled against her injustice and ingrat.i.tude, and his crushed vanity turned to strychnine. "Mademoiselle," said he, bitterly and doggedly, but sadly, "were I so happy as to have your esteem, my heart would overflow, not only on the doctor but on every honest person around. But if I must not have the acquaintance I value more than life, suffer me to be alone in the world, and never to say a word either to Dr. Aubertin, or to any human creature if I can help it."

The imperious young beauty drew herself up directly. "So be it, monsieur; you teach me how a child should be answered that forgets herself, and asks a favor of a stranger--a perfect stranger," added she, maliciously.

Could one of the dog-days change to mid-winter in a second, it would hardly seem so cold and cross as Rose de Beaurepaire turned from the smiling, saucy fairy of the moment before. Edouard felt as it were a portcullis of ice come down between her and him. She courtesied and glided away. He bowed and stood frozen to the spot.

He felt so lonely and so bitter, he must go to Jacintha for comfort.

He took advantage of the ladies being with Dard, and marched boldly into the kitchen of Beaurepaire.

"Well, I never," cried Jacintha. "But, after all, why not?"

He hurled himself on the kitchen table (clean as china), and told her it was all over. "She hates me now; but it is not my fault," and so poured forth his tale, and feeling sure of sympathy, asked Jacintha whether it was not bitterly unjust of Rose to refuse him her own acquaintance, yet ask him to amuse that old fogy.

Jacintha stood with her great arms akimbo, taking it all in, and looking at him with a droll expression of satirical wonder.

"Now you listen to a parable," said she. "Once there was a little boy madly in love with raspberry jam."

"A thing I hate."

"Don't tell me! Who hates raspberry jam? He came to the store closet, where he knew there were jars of it, and--oh! misery--the door was locked. He kicked the door, and wept bitterly. His mamma came and said, 'Here is the key,' and gave him the key. And what did he do? Why, he fell to crying and roaring, and kicking the door. 'I don't wa-wa-wa-wa-nt the key-ey-ey. I wa-a-ant the jam--oh! oh! oh! oh!'"

and Jacintha mimicked, after her fas.h.i.+on, the mingled grief and ire of infancy debarred its jam. Edouard wore a puzzled air, but it was only for a moment; the next he hid his face in his hands, and cried, "Fool!"

"I shall not contradict you," said his Mentor.

"She was my best friend. Once acquainted with the doctor, I could visit at Beaurepaire."

"Parbleu!"

"She had thought of a way to reconcile my wishes with this terrible etiquette that reigns here."

"She thinks to more purpose than you do; that is clear."

"Nothing is left now but to ask her pardon, and to consent; I am off."

"No, you are not," and Jacintha laid a grasp of iron on him. "Will you be quiet?--is not one blunder a day enough? If you go near her now, she will affront you, and order the doctor not to speak to you."

"O Jacintha! your s.e.x then are fiends of malice?"

"While it lasts. Luckily with us nothing lasts very long. Now you don't go near her till you have taken advantage of her hint, and made the doctor's acquaintance; that is easy done. He walks two hours on the east road every day, with his feet in the puddles and his head in the clouds.

Them's HIS two tastes."

"But how am I to get him out of the clouds and the puddles?" inquired Riviere half peevishly.

"How?" asked Jacintha, with a dash of that contempt uneducated persons generally have for any one who does not know some little thing they happen to know themselves. "How? Why, with the nearest blackbeetle, to be sure."

"A blackbeetle?"

"Black or brown; it matters little. Have her ready for use in your handkerchief: pull a long face: and says you--'Excuse me, sir, I have THE MISFORTUNE not to know the Greek name of this merchandise here.' Say that, and behold him launched. He will christen you the beast in Hebrew and Latin as well as Greek, and tell you her history down from the flood: next he will beg her of you, and out will come a cork and a pin, and behold the creature impaled. For that is how men love beetles. He has a thousand pinned down at home--beetles, b.u.t.terflies, and so forth.

When I go near the rubbish with my duster he trembles like an aspen.

I pretend to be going to clean them, but it is only to see the face he makes, for even a domestic must laugh now and then--or die. But I never do clean them, for after all he is more stupid than wicked, poor man: I have not therefore the sad courage to make him wretched."

"Let us return to our beetle--what will his tirades about its antiquity advance me?"

"Oh! one begins about a beetle, but one ends Heaven knows where."

Riviere profited by this advice. He even improved on it. In due course he threw himself into Aubertin's way. He stopped the doctor reverentially, and said he had heard he was an entomologist. WOULD he be kind enough to tell him what was this enormous chrysalis he had just found?