Nathalie; a tale

Preface

. The singular interpretations to which works of fiction are sometimes subject, render a Preface a matter of necessity. In writing the following tale, I think it, therefore, necessary to state that I had no other definite object in view than to draw two very opposite characters, and show as truthfully as I could how those characters attracted, repelled, and influenced each other. I by no means intend to imply that these pages contain no other moral ; I hope they do : but I cannot claim the merit of having made any peculiar moral my aim. A moral, unless when based on a very broad truth, seldom fails to prove fatal to works of art.

PREFACE.

. Such being the case, I make no apology for having chosen two very imperfect characters for my heroine and hero. I am too well aware of their deficiencies to imagine that they run any chance of being con sidered as models, or even of being mistaken as embodiments of the author's conceptions of moral beauty. J. K. NATHALIE.

Chapter I

" Bring in the light, and tell Mademoiselle Natha lie that it is my desire to speak to her instantly.1' Mademoiselle Dantin uttered her commands in a sharp, imperative tone. A timid-looking servant, in conical Norman cap, and short petticoats of startling fulness, vanished as if to hear were to obey, and the old schoolmistress stiffly sank back in her chair, with arms folded on her breast and a frown upon her brow. It was a chill Norman evening — almost cool enough for England, and, in the deepening twilight, the room looked well-nigh dark. Through the narrow panes of a low glass door penetrated a faint gleam of lingering light, and the shadowy outlines of a few tall trees were dimly visible in the garden beyond. Thus seen, without light or fire, in the gathering gloom of evening, with pale maps and VOL. I. b NATHALIE. shadowy globes, long sombre curtains, and stiff straight-backed chairs, the apartment looked most comfortless; but the withered features and rigid figure of Mademoiselle Dantin made her look by far the most dreary object it contained.

She was thin, wrinkled, and hard-favoured; she wore no amiable look, nor was she very amiable in reality; being dogmatic and imperious, she rather liked teaching; it was power — authority*, and turned out, moreover, to be as good a way as any of fastening her own peculiar opinions — more strongly marked than varied — on others. But then, as misfortune would have it, she had a decided antipathy to children and young girls, so that betw*een her delight in the tuition and her general aversion for the objects taught — an aversion which, as usual, was most heartily returned — Mademoiselle Dantin and her pupils had rather an uncomfortable life of it, and might not have got on at all, had there happened to be another school and schoolmistress in the town of Sainville. SainviUe — we cannot advise the reader to look for it on the map — is a quiet little place buried in the very bosom of Normandy.

This province is perhaps the prettiest, and certainly is the greenest nook in all the pleasant land of France. It has many low hills many shallow little valleys, with bright glancing streams and a clear blue sky; above all, it has picturesque old towns of quaint and venerable aspect, NATHALIE. that seize on the imagination with a peculiar and mysterious charm. Dark, lonely, and rather misanthropic-looking, these quiet places contrast strikingly with the cheerful verdure and soft pastoral beauty of the surrounding scenery; they look like morose her mits, who have at least chosen pleasant spots wherein to do penance. But though their quaintness strikes the eye, and their monastic gloom awakes the fancy, they are cold and cheerless — they cannot win the heart ; we feel that there Hfe glides away in too dull and monotonous a flow; we look, wonder, linger for a while in narrow, winding streets, with crazy wooden houses rising high on either side, and then pass on, feeling we have left a human prison behind us.

Sainville w*as one of those little moral islands; it had no trade, no commerce, no life, and was, more over, shut out from the great and busy world by a barrier of aristocratic chateaux rising on the slope of the surrounding declivities, or enjoying the shade and silence of the neighbouring valleys. In these luxuri ous abodes, life was as gay and pleasant as heart could wish, and some of the best of French society could make it. Balls, plays, concerts, fishing excursions, and hunting parties, seemed to be ever renewing for the amusement of the privileged owners and guests of the chateaux. Many a time did the inhabitants of Sainville, who all belonged to the smaller bourgeoisie, and who had not wealth, importance, or talent to rise above their station, comment, with the puritanic b NATHALIE. severity of the excluded, on the sin and folly trans acted in those abodes whence ever proceeded the sounds of merriment and pleasure ; and many a time did they grumble more morosely still, when wakened in the early morning by some gay cavalcade clattering away along the silent streets.

This exclusion, in which she shared like her fellow citizens, had not improved the mind or temper of Mademoiselle Dantin. She had accustomed herself to think of nothing save her school, its propriety, its ceremonious routine, above all its immaculate purity ; and on this subject she had grown to be somewhat severe and irritable. She was so in a peculiar degree on the day when this story opens. This was, how ever, a day which generally found and left her in a singular state of good humour, being neither more nor less than that appointed for the annual distribution of prizes among her pupils. On the morning of this eventful ceremony the room had been hung with white draperies, ornamented with green wreaths. Made moiselle Dantin opened the proceedings by seating herself on a sort of throne erected at the upper end of the room, from which elevated position she looked down triumphantly on the curled heads and white robes of the pupils, who demurely sat iu rows in the centre of the apartment, whilst their friends and relatives formed a semicircle around them.

After making a little speech, Mademoiselle Dantin, holding an eye glass in her right hand, and a paper in her left, sen- NATHALIE. 5 tentiously read aloud the names of the pupils on whom she had resolved to confer the distinction of a prize. Each of the girls thus designated then left her place and walked up to a tight, lively-looking little gentle man, in a dark wig, the professor of dancing, who sat alone between two tables, one covered with books, the other with wreaths, took from his hands the volume adjudged to her, and stooped to receive the laurel wreath which, with prompt and courteous grace, he rose to place on her head, whilst delighted papas and mammas shed tears, and Mademoiselle Dantin looked on and felt in her glory. When there were no more prizes or wreaths to give, Mademoiselle Dantin rose, and the company dispersed, the children all going home for their holidays.

As soon as every one had departed, the schoolmistress gave prompt orders for the taking down of hangings and wreaths : in a few minutes all was over; the room was empty, the walls were bare, and the school, instead of being filled with the murmuring hum of pupils conning over their lessons, fell into a deep and unnatural stillness, destined to last six weeks. But though the ceremony had passed off in the best possible manner, the triumph of this day was soon clouded by a discovery which filled the mind of the schoolmistress with indignant wrath. What that discovery was will be seen farther on. A few minutes had elapsed since she had, in a tone of ominous severity, given, with regard to the appearance of " Mademoiselle Nathalie," the order recorded in the NATHALIE. first lines of this chapter, when the door of the room where she sat opened, and Marianne, the servant, entered, bearing a lighted tallow candle in an old plated candlestick, which she placed on the table before her mistress.

" Well V observed Mademoiselle Dantin, with in quiring sharpness. " Mademoiselle Nathalie is not in her room," was the low reply. " Not in her room ! and what is she allowed a room of her own for unless to be in it?" exclaimed the schoolmistress, with subdued irritation. ' Perhaps she s gone to breathe a little fresh air in the garden," timidly suggested Marianne. '; Not at this hour, Marianne," majestically replied Mademoiselle Dantin; "no, I will not admit that any member of my establishment, however faulty in other respects," she feelingly added, " could, against my well-known rule, be out in the garden at this hour.11 " Shall I go and see, madame?" " No, Marianne, I cannot allow that ; to allow it would be to admit such a thing as possible, and this I never will ; look for her in the class."

Marianne silently left the room, but the door did not close behind her. For the head and wig of the " Professor" who had played so important a part in the morning's ceremony, suddenly made their appear ance in the dark aperture, smiled and nodded at Made- NATHALIE. moiselle Dantin with mingled familiarity and respect, and lisped in a tone of soft entreaty : " May I come in?" " Yes, Monsieur le Chevalier, you may come in," replied the schoolmistress, half rising from her seat ; her tone was gracious and mollified, and a faint smile passed over her faded face. Thus encouraged, the Chevalier, a middle-aged Httle man with a thin, sallow visage, quick eyes, and an aquiline nose, entered the room with erect bearing and elastic tread. He was proceeding to shut the door with a prompt decision natural to him, when Mademoiselle Dantin shook her head, and admonishingly observed : " The door, Monsieur le Chevalier."" " Ah ! yes, the door," he sighed, and left it open.

" Rules must be obeyed," continued the schoolmistress. " Yes, rules must be obeyed," answered the Che valier, repressing a shiver as the keen draught came full upon him. It was a rule in Mademoiselle Dantin's establishment, for no lady to converse with a gentleman, not her father or brother, in a closed room. The mistress was the first to set the example, and obey the rule in all its severity. To say the truth, she generally sat facing the door ; and the male visitor, whoever he might be, had his back turned to it, so that all the hardship of this rule could not be said to fall upon her; but what gentleman would complain, NATHALIE. when feminine modesty was at stake ? assuredly not so devoted a squire of dames as the Chevalier Theo dore de Meranville-Louville. No mummery ever yet existed without some special adviser or other in male shape, and what a father confessor might have been to an abbess and her gentle sisterhood, the Chevalier was to Mademoiselle Dantin and her fair pupils.

He was the only individual of his sex attached to the establishment, for the salic law still holds good with regard to the tuition of dancing. To this law Mademoiselle Dantin, who, if she could, would have effaced the masculine gender from dictionary and grammar, very indignantly submitted. But the gentle blood of the Chevalier, who, though of an impoverished family, had an authentic claim to the noble names he bore, and his title of Knight of the Legion of Honour, bestowed upon him for saving a drowning man, but which many considered a government reward for his invention of a new pas, called the Sainville pas, a rumour he rather favoured — above all, his chivalrous devotedness to the fair sex, had conquered the anti pathy and subdued the obdurate heart of the schoolmistress. Woman was indeed sacred as woman to the gallant little Chevalier ; he cherished a platonic and universal passion for the whole sex, and rever enced a petticoat in its earliest and latest stages ; ho believed neither in little girls nor in aged dames ; he took off his hat to young ladies of six, and flirted with NATHALIE. ladies of sixty, and did both with equal grace.

But though thus gentle to those whom he called " earthly angels," the Chevalier was to his own sex stern and somew*hat haughty. Having taken the seat which Mademoiselle Dantin condescendingly designated, the Chevalier could not but notice the gloom which overshadowed the features of the fair schoolmistress. In a neat little speech, he immediately expressed his sympathy with the regret she naturally felt at the temporary separation between herself and her beloved pupils. Mademoi selle Dantin tossed her head. " As if I cared for the little flirts !" she said, almost indignantly. The Chevalier looked distressed. Flirts ! there were no flirts in his creed. " A set of forward coquettes !" continued she. "Oh! Madame!" he exclaimed, raising his hands imploringly. " And of deceitful minxes, as all girls are," she persisted.

The Chevalier was shocked. He gently endea voured to remonstrate, and ventured to remind her, " That though women were tender flowers at every a^e, they were frail, very frail rosebuds in their youth." " Well, then, one of the rosebuds is going to get a nipping," retorted Mademoiselle Dantin, looking as dark and chill as a wintry breeze. NATHALIE. She rang the bell as she spoke, and Marianne promptly made her appearance. " Is Mademoiselle Nathalie coming or not ?" asked the schoolmistress. " Yes, madame ; she said she would come directly." " Pray where did you find her \" The girl hesitated. " In the garden, reading, " she replied at length. Mademoiselle Dantin rose. " Chevalier," she said, with great state, " be good enough to leave me. I have a duty to perform ; — an act of justice and authority to exercise.

I must be alone." The Chevalier rose, looked dismayed, but retired on tiptoe, without so much as remonstrating. He knew that Mademoiselle Dantin's justice was always administered privately, and with a strictness of se crecy that, like the Vehmgericht, only rendered it more awful to the apprehension of the uninitiated. "What has our pretty southern flower done?" he poetically inquired, as Marianne closed the door and followed him out ; but the girl only shook her head in reply, and seemed struck with consternation. As soon as she was alone, Mademoiselle Dantin walked up to the glass door that led into the garden, and stood there for a few seconds, peering through the narrow panes with sharp attention. There was a peculiar smile on her face as she turned away and resumed her seat. Scarcely had she done NATHALIE. so when the glass door opened.

The schoolmistress heard it very well, but did not choose to look up ; a light step glided in, still she remained motionless and grim, looking straight before her. It is the culprit that must seek the glance of the judge, and not the judge that must look at the culprit. Made moiselle Dantin was a true Normande, litigious in spirit, and versed in legal knowledge ; besides the rules wdiich she mercilessly imposed on others, she had certain rules for her own use, which she rigidly obeyed : one of these rules was to give a judicial form to almost everything she did. " Did you wish to speak to me, madame?" asked a clear, cheerful voice at her elbow. The schoolmistress made no reply, but slowly raised her head, and turned it with a keen and severe glance in the direction whence the voice had proceeded.

A handsome, slender girl of seventeen or eighteen years of age, very simply attired in black, but dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with animated features of southern symmetry, was standing by her side. This was Na thalie Montolieu, chief and only resident teacher in the establishment of Mademoiselle Dantin. She was scarcely above the middle height of w*oman, but of a light and erect figure. Freedom and careless grace marked her look, her bearing, and her attitude, even whilst she stood there quietly by the chair of the old schoolmistress. As she turned slightly to hear Mademoiselle Dantin's expected reply, with NATHALIE. an air too easy to be dignified, but not free from the quick, impatient pride of youth, the light which fell full on her whole person, leaving all dark behind it, gave to the outline of her graceful figure, and to her clear and well-defined profile a vivid distinctness, still further heightened by the shadow*y background of the ill-lit room.

The brow open and poetic, with wavy hair braided back; the dark eyes soft and deep through all their fire ; the short upper lip and curved chin told a daughter of the sunny south ; and the innate southern grace of her half-averted head and listening attitude, would have been the very desire of a sculptor's eye. Yet hers was not the still beauty of cold art ; it had the light from within which is to a countenance as is the lambent flame to "the alabaster lamp in which it burns ; the warm ray which reveals, though it may not create, its beauty. And in her that ray seemed, from the ever-varying expression of her mobile features, to burn with a light as changeful as it was clear. She had not the soothing and almost divine calm of perfect loveliness. Her beauty charmed because it was so human with the light and bloom of youth, and all the genial warmth of her ripening years.

It was neither serene nor angel-like, but fervent and living ; not ideal though highly poetic. Indeed, to look upon her as she stood there, to see her intelligent forehead and arched eyebrows, to meet her look, gentle though fearless, and seldom veiled by drooping eyelids, to mark the flexibility, denoting NATHALIE. 13 both courage and a temper easily moved, of her delicately chiselled features, above all to note the light, capricious smile of her sensitive and half-parted lips, — those lips of the south averse to silence, and wdiich express so quickly and so significantly frankness, impatience, good-humoured raillery, or angry disdain, — was to know her as one in whom blended both the highest and the weakest attributes of an imaginative and impulsive woman ; from the energy, passion, and devotion of the heart to the caprice and endless mobility of temper destined to render life as changeful as an April day.

" Did you wish to speak to me?" she asked again, in a quick, impatient tone, which rendered the fulness of her southern voice and its rapid accent still more apparent. She glanced down somewhat impatiently as she spoke, and the life and warm colouring of her whole countenance contrasted strikingly with the stony look and pale, rigid features of Mademoiselle Dantin. " I did wish to speak to you ; I sent for you for that express purpose, and you will soon know why," replied the schoolmistress, in the long, nasal drawl of Normandy ; " but first, may I ask why, against my express rule, you were out in the garden at this late hour?" " I did not think the rule applied to the holidays," quietly replied the young girl. " Then I beg to inform you that it does." NATHALIE. An expression of much annoyance passed over the features of Nathalie, but she subdued it, and merely said, " Very well, madame."

" Indeed," resumed Mademoiselle Dantin, " I think it strange that you should like the garden at this hour, and I should feel inclined to make some remarks on the subject, did I not remember that as a Pro vencal, that is to say, a native of that southern part of France which has never been remarkable for the observance of feminine propriety, you are entitled to indulgence." A kindling light passed iu the dark eyes of the southern girl, but the schoolmistress never noticed it, and resumed in the same ceremonious, legal tone : " May I ask what you were doing in the garden at this late hour ? " " I was reading." " Some pernicious romance, of course. Must I ever keep telling you that it is dangerous and im proper to feed your mind with the absurdities which abound in such works? Must I keep assuring you that no character is so ridiculous as that of a romantic young lady?"

"Romantic!" echoed Nathalie, with a gesture of impatience; " and what has one in my position to be romantic about, madame ? The realities of my life are surely sufficient to drive all romance away." " True. Besides, you are so sensible and so pru- NATHALIE. 15 dent. Will you savour me, however, with the name of the book you were reading ?" " It was a very harmless book." "Was it a fiction?" " An innocent one at least." " Which was, of course, the reason why you hid it in your pocket before coming in?" said the schoolmistress, closing up her thin lips with an ironical smile, and triumphantly straightening her meagre neck. Nathalie gave her a quick look, dropped her eyes, and smiled demurely. " I assure you, madame," she slowly observed, " that the book is a harmless book. Interesting, however, for the character of the hero, though some what stern, is original and striking.

I confess I like him ; the whole story is, no doubt, melo-drainatic, but " "How did you get it?" interrupted Mademoiselle Dantin, with a sort of sudden jerk in her look and speech, which she held infallible for the detection of deceit. " I found it in the garden, w*here it had been left by one of the pupils," quietly answered the young girl. " One of the pupils ? Good Heavens ! And this is what goes on in spite of all my vigilance. Give me that book, Mademoiselle Montolieu ; give me that book," she repeated, with a sort of desperate calmness that seemed to say she was quite ready to obtain it, no matter what the cost might be. NATHALIE. Nathalie smiled again, this time rather scornfully, but the book was produced and laid on the table. Mademoiselle Dantin took up the volume, drew the light nearer, looked, and laying down the book, gave the J'oung teacher a glance of indignant wrath.

The dangerous fiction was a volume of romantic fairy tales. Nathalie's face beamed with pleasure and mischief as she met Mademoiselle Dantin's look of exasperation ; but the lady soon recovered, and merely observed in a sharp key : " I really wonder, Mademoiselle Montolieu, you will persist in losing your time with such foolish reading." " I took up the book by chance. I fell on a story which, I acknowledge it, interested me. The chief character, though dark, is not without a mysterious power of attraction." " Mademoiselle Montolieu," inquired the schoolmistress, with slow and dignified amazement, " do you imagine I asked you to come here in order to hear your opinion of a fairy tale ? You are guilty of the strangest absurdities ! I suppose ladies in the south talk in that heedless, flighty manner.

Re member that in Normandy it will not do. I be°* therefore, that you will — if it is indeed possible — restrain your southern vivacity for a few mo ments. May I ask if you remember the conditions we made when you entered this house three years ago?" NATHALIE. 17 " I remember. I was to teach French, music, geography." " I do not speak of that." " History, arithmetic, &c, for the sum of three hundred francs a-year." " Mademoiselle Montolieu, you wilfully misunderstand me." " Board and lodging included." "MademoiseUe Montolieu!" exclaimed the schoolmistress, folding her arms, " will you be so good as to remain silent." Nathalie looked all innocence, but a furtive smile lurked around the corners of her mouth. " If I spoke, madame," she composedly replied, " it was because you asked if I remembered the conditions."

" I alluded to moral conditions ; not to those paltry conditions of money, board, and lodging, on which your mind is always running." " And yet, madame, you say I am romantic." " The moral part which passed between us when you entered this house three years ago," resumed Ma demoiselle Dantin, without heeding the young teacher's last remark, and closing her eyes to speak with more effect, " related to the morality, the propriety, the purity, " " I think I had better take a seat to hear you," quietly observed Nathalie, and she took one as she spoke, seating herself so as to receive the full benefit vol. i. c NATHALIE. of the awful glance the schoolmistress immediately directed towards her. But the young girl, leaning her elbow on the table, and resting her chin on the palm of her left hand, eyed her stern mistress without impertinence, though very composedly.

Her look, always expressive, was now particularly so ; it said in plain language : " I have been called in for a quarrel — I know it — I am used to it; I have tried to avoid it, but since I cannot, go on ; I am ready." Mademoiselle Dantin resumed : " The moral part or series of moral conditions — I hold part to be quite as correct an expression, but shall use ' series1 for the sake of clearness — the series of moral conditions I alluded to bore reference to the propriety, the purity, the womanly reserve of your conduct." " In what have I failed?" asked Nathalie, with an impetuosity that showed patience did not rank amongst her peculiar virtues. " Strict womanly propriety and discretion," con tinued the schoolmistress, "were to be your chief attributes. Without modesty " A flush crossed the brow of Nathalie ; her voice trembled as she spoke : " Your hints are becoming insulting.

Madame, beware ! " " if you had condescended to hear me to the end," said Mademoiselle Dantin, with irritating coolness, " there would have been no necessity for this unfemi- NATHALIE. 19 nine burst of temper. And this reminds me of another remark I wish to make to you: you are in Normandy, not in Provence ; pray remember it. You must please to drop that rapid and startling mode of speech, to talk a little lower, to laugh less, and to keep your southern blood and temper rather more under your control. What may have been only an agreeable vivacity in your native pro vince, is unladylike and repulsive here." Nathalie eyed her very quietly. " You were talking about modesty," she said, in a tone calm enough for the most phlegmatic Normande. " I was, and if you will be so good as not to inter rupt me, I mean to give you a definition of that virtue.

Modesty I conceive to be the strict guard which a woman of principle keeps over her looks and demeanour with persons of the opposite sex. In that reserve you have failed." "How so?" asked Nathalie, whose voice had already lost some of its calmness. " Mademoiselle Montolieu," frigidly observed the schoolmistress, " I have begged, I now implore you not to interrupt me. I will tell you how you have failed : you are vain ; you think yourself handsome ; you flirt, as well as you can, with every man you meet. Oh ! you need not give me that basilisk look ; it is so. Your alluring ways in a certain quarter have not escaped me. If you w*ere only ambitious, I should not mind ; but the immodesty of the thing revolts me." c2 NATHALIE. " For heaven's sake, madame," exclaimed Nathalie, tapping her foot with uncontrollable impatience, " be so good as to say at once the ill-natured thing you have been aiming at all along."

" Mademoiselle Montolieu," reproachfully said the schoolmistress, " have you really no idea of that beau tiful feminine composure which subdues the manifest ation of everything approaching emotion ? If you would only remember that the most bitter quarrel can and ought to be conducted like a logical discus sion; if, instead of speaking in that vehement way, you had only said quietly, ' Will you be so good, madame, as to come to the point?' or something of the kind. Mademoiselle Montolieu," she feelingly added, " there is a form in everything, and your want of form will break my heart." She looked and felt distressed. If she tormented Nathalie, the young teacher certainly tormented her almost as much. They were antipathetic by nature, temperament, and birth; theirs was the old quarrel of the northern and southern races, — a quarrel which has endured for ages, and will endure ages still.

The schoolmistress kept the teacher because she was full of intelligence and talent, and much loved by the pupils; the teacher remained because she was poor and needed a home. The Dantin discipline had failed to subdue her vivacity of spirit and temper; she was still the gay and yet ardent Provencal girl, with all the fire and impulsiveness of her race. But thoudi NATHALIE. to others she might seem like the beauties of a kindred land, with Heart on her lips and soul within her eyes Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies; the unhappy schoolmistress, who felt like the keeper of some young and half-wild thing, unhesitatingly pronounced her a proud, passionate, vindictive south ern, who would never know anything about the beauties of feminine propriety. After a moody pause, she now abruptly observed : " May I ask how long you have been acquainted with our neighbour?"