Mademoiselle Mathilde. A novel

Preface

. When asked to write the first story which has ever appeared in the " Gentleman's Magazine " in a course of 137 years, I was extremely diffident, feeling somewhat like a modest young cm-ate, who has to return thanks for the clergy before a large audience principally composed of dissenters ; I was not reassured by being told, before I began, that a large number of the subscribers strongly objected to the arrangement ; and I am glad to hear that the opposition has ceased, but it made me as careful as I could be, and it accounts for many little notes which I was forced to give as authority, and some of which we have thought worth retaining even for the general reader. The longest one, not by my hand, was retained through a mistake of my own as to its length. It

PREFACE.

. VIII is, however, valuable and interesting, and so the reader may be consoled as Mr. Swiveller was by Mr. Brass, when he complained that one leg of his stool was longer than the others, " He has got a piece of timber in for his money." The choice of a story was extremely difficult, till in consultation one said, " Tell them the story we heard at St. Malo, and of which we have so often spoken since." The thing was done. To make the plot go squarely, to turn it from a simple narrative to a dramatically-written fiction, I had to take a few little liberties. Mathilde of this story was not the cousin but the married sister of the heroic Andre. Adele, again, was the younger and unmarried sister, and was by no means the weak little creature which one sees in Adele ; she was of very singular personal beauty, and of great corn-age and resolution.

The real Mathilde did all that she is represented as doing here, but something more besides, so weird and odd, that I have omitted it from the story as being likely to be thought improbable even for fiction. When the conspiracy, which I have described as being in the house of Madame, in the

PREFACE.

. IX Rue de Jesouil, at Dinan, was surprised by the Revolutionists, the list of the conspirators was on Adele's person, and there was no fire. Mathilde took it from her, and before the Revolutionists could reach them, had eaten and swallowed it. These Desilles must have been a strange family. My authority for Marat's having lectured in England is M. Lamartine. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. — A CHAPTER WHICH WILL HAVE TO BE WRITTEN SEVERAL TIMES AGAIN : EACH TIME IN DARKER INK 1 n. — SOME NECESSARY GOSSIP AND CONVERSATION . 13 m. — MORE NECESSARY GOSSIP 23 IV. GOSSIP STILL, PRINCIPALLY ABOUT MADEMOISELLE ADELE ....... 42 V. — LOUIS AND ANDRE TALK OVER THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS ; . . . . . . . 52 vi. — and finding them unsatisfactory, discuss the d'isignys : 66 VII. WHICH ENDS IN ANDRE GOING TO CHURCH; . . 79 Vni.

AND THE AUTHOR, HAVING TO TAKE UP THE THREAD OF THE STORY .... 89 IX. — LANDS THE READER ONCE MORE AT SHEEPSDEN . 108 X. — MONSIEUR D'lSlGNY RETURNS 115 XI. "IPHIGENIA IN AULIS " . . . . ' . 123 XII. — NEWS FROM FRANCE FOR M. D'lSlGNY . . . 135 xm. ADELE'S PENANCE 158 XIV. — MATHILDE WALKS OUT WITH HER FATHER . . CONTENTS. XN CHAPTER PAGE XV. FATHER MARTIN'S ADVICE ..... 186 XVI. — THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN THE STOUR VALLEY . 191 XVII. — THE FIRST SACRIFICE ...... 217 XVUI. — ASHURST AND SHEEPSDEN 232 xix. — m. d'isigny's explosion ..... 240 XX. NEWS FROM FRANCE 259 XXI. — SIR LIONEL FINDS HIMSELF AGAIN IN THE MARKET CHAPTEE I. A CHAPTER WHICH WILL HAVE TO BE WRITTEN SEVERAL TIMES AGAIN : EACH TIME IN DARKER INK. It was quite impossible, so Mademoiselle Ma thilde DTsigny concluded, that any reasonable being could dream of going out on such an after noon.

It was not to be thought of. Nevertheless, she began thinking at once about her sabots and her red umbrella. A wild revolutionarj'-looking nimbus, urged on by a still wilder wind, which seemed, from its direction, to have started from America, had met the rapidly heated and rapidly-eooled strata of chalk in the valley of the Stour in Dorsetshire. The nimbus, chased by the furious headlong American wind, met the chalk downs while they were cooled by a VOL. I. B long winter's frost, and at once dissolved itself into cataracts of water; into cataracts more steady, more persistent, and, in the end, more dangerous, than any which ever came from the wildest and noisiest summer thunderstorm. It was quite impossible that any reasonable woman could go out on such an afternoon ; still the sabots and the red umbrella dwelt on her mind, for it might under certain circumstances become necessary, although impossible.

No summer thunderstorm, in its very worst behaviour, had ever done worse by one than this. You could in a way calculate on those summer thunderstorms. The worst of them came from south-east, then changed to south-west, and the moment the wind got north of west it was all over. But here was a tearing wild wind, straight from godless, or, to say the least, "uncatholic " America, which persisted and deluged and drenched one, and, if one went in and got dry, was perfectly ready to deluge one again. Was there ever such an ill conditioned, inexorable wind and rain as this ? Toilers in fields migfit stand such weather for then own purposes ; but it was quite evident that Introductory. 3 no lady could be expected, under any circumstances, to go out in it. Given even the sabots and the red umbrella, it was quite impossible.

For the vast Atlantic, set in motion, doubtless, by the pestilent republicanism of America, had broke loose, and was pouring its torrents on the unsympathetic chalk hills of Dorsetshire ; hills which absorb the deluge of rain, and in their way utilize it; but which never "scour" down in a revolutionary manner. On these English hills there are what we dwellers on the chalk call " swilly holes," down which your revolutionary rain chan nel pours, and, having reconsidered itself, comes up again gently in the meadows and other low lands, which, however, from time to time require draining. But the meadows in 1789 were not drained, and, therefore, the furious, persistent downfall of rain deserved the epithet which we gave it just now, of "dangerous." It meant flood; and, in those low lying meadows, between unexpandable hills, flood meant temporary disaster.

Stored stacks of hay were carried off, though the next year's crop was improved by the silt left by the flood ; lambs were b drowned, but the breed of sheep was improved in the end by Mr. Coke's finer sorts, brought from Norfolk; boats, such as careless people had left afloat in such strange times as 1789, were dashed against bridges and broken ; which, in the long run, must have been good for the boatbuilders. Mademoiselle Mathilde may or may not have thought of these things ; but one thing is certain, she came to the conclusion that no lady coidd possibly be expected to go out in such weather. And almost immediately afterwards she rang the bell, and told the middle-aged woman who answered it, to bring her cloak with the hood, and her sabots, and her red umbrella ; and, in short, began to make preparations for going out into the very weather which she had just before voted impossible.

" I have seen neither my sabots nor my umbrella for some days, Mrs. Bone," she said, " and should expect penance after confession for my carelessness ; but that does not excuse my servant. I hope that the sabots have not been mislaid, and that my umbrella was properly dried before it was put by. If such has not been the case, I shall find it necessary to rebuke Anne," their foolish little maid. INTRODUCTORY. 5 "I value those things very much. I got those sabots a bargain at Pontorson Fair ; and I bought that red umbrella, the colour of which you object to, from old Barbot at Dol, and I beat him down from eleven livres to nine. These things, if lost, can never be replaced." Some people said that Mademoiselle Mathilde was decidedly plain. Some said that she must have been rather pretty when she was younger.

Others, again, said that what little beauty she had wore well, and that she did not show her age, which was twenty-four. Others, again, said that she had a cold, hard, and somewhat stupid face. Others said that her face wanted expression until she was roused. But Mrs. Bone, the middle-aged woman before mentioned, declared until far on into this century that mademoiselle's face was that of an angel. And Sir Joshua Reynolds, of all people, almost forgot his manners one evening, after having been introduced to her; (at least, so one reads in the " DTsigny Memories," written by the sobered Adele, not so long ago). French memories are French memories ; and Adele's are much as others. Sir Joshua is represented as saying to Boswell, " I can't make that face out ; I never saw one exactly like it before."

He then, according to Adele's Memoires, pushed himself through the press up to her, bowing ; and, after a little light and easy con versation, asked her, would she favour him with a sitting, to which she answered, — " Most assuredly no. My sister Adele plays the ornamental role in ouifamily. Paint her, milord, if you wish to paint a DTsigny." Now, with all due deference to Mrs. Bone and Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mathilde was not a pretty woman ; any face more utterly unlike his lovely " Kitty Fisher" cannot be imagined; and I very much doubt if she ever had been. The face was very aquiline — strongly Norman ; a face which you find not only in the Pays de Caux, but also about Coutances and Avranches everywhere. A face which is, for a few years, almost always beautiful ; a face which still remains here and there among the British aristocracy; a face, however, which often, after a very few years, gets peaked and sharp and hawk-like ; — if I dare say such a thing, ugly, hard, and avaricious.

Hers was this kind of face, but with a difference. INTRODUCTORY. 7 The beauty of the real Norman face consists in its exquisite form in early w-omanhood. The Norman women, like the Jewish women, discount their beauty in about two years of unapproachable splendour; at this time the features of Norman beauty are, as the penny novelist would say, " ex quisitely chiselled." Whether he knows what he means or no, he is perfectly right; their features are beautifully chiselled ; but it does not last, this chiselling. The hard old Scandinavian muscle asserts itself; and the result is often a British dowager of that extreme type with which John Leech and Richard Doyle between them have made the general public familiar. Mathilde had escaped all this. The form of her face was certainly Norman and hawk-like ; but it was also, in largeness of mouth, and a certain breadth in the upper jaw, Anglo-Teutonic ; and the softer, tenderer, Teutonic muscles in her face refused to become "ropy" and prononces, like those in the face of the Dowager-Marchioness of Thingaby and the Comtesse de Chose.

She was always what she had been, both in personal ap pearance and in character. She had escaped the "chiselling" phase of beauty, and at the same time had escaped the first, fierce, impatient phase of Norman womanhood. She was a woman who could wait : she had got that habit from her Anglo- Teutonic mother. Her sister Adele always told her that she could never make up her mind ; and she always told her sister that she leaped at con clusions without any sound basis. They were both right in a way. A few more words about her before we see her through the medium of incident. There was a strong suspicion of beauty about her. Eveiyone called her plain, and yet Sir Joshua Reynolds would have painted her. Her figure was almost deformed, and her gait was very clumsy. She was very broad, though not fat ; and above her shoulders was that half Norman, half Teutonic head, which gave rise to so many theories as to what was inside it.

A short clumsy woman, with such a head as I have mentioned. I have no further portrait. I know the portrait of her great cousin, fourth, as I remember, from Lamennais, nearly opposite that of Jacques Cartier, with Chateaubriand, painted in apparent imitation of David's Marat, looking in INTRODUCTORY. 9 from the end of the room. She may have been like him. But I distrust that portrait. I fear it was painted under the later empire. Adele, in her Memories, says that Mathilde was the very image of her cousin ; but I distrust both Adele and the portrait ; and so we must make out a portrait of Mademoiselle Mathilde DTsigny for our selves or go without one. Even the great Emerald Portrait, they tell us, is a forgery of the third century. But their deeds live after them, when their place knoweth them no more.

She never knew her own mind, said her sister Adele. A "thin thing" like her sister Adele, might easily believe so. Mathilde spent her life in violently protesting against doing anything what ever, in a real Teutonic manner, and in doing such things as were fit to be done, such as were right after all : which is all we ask from any one. Not an obstructive woman, or she would not have found herself where she did at last. She did not want a reason for everything. So we begin our little journey with her. She began by declaring in the most positive manner that no respectable woman could go out in such weather, and immediately afterwards ordered her sabots and her umbrella, and went out in it, because some wretched old hind, down in the village of Stourminster Osborne, was dying. The Romanists were then, as they are now, au fait with the machinery of charity ; and Mademoiselle Mathilde was a Romanist, and so she went to the old man.

So she passed out of the shelter of the porch and faced the furious weather, protesting and a little petidant; yet she faced it. Protesting in her in most heart against the weather, but not uttering her protest to Mrs. Bone. Petulant to a very little degree at finding that her common-sense resolution to stay at home was overridden by her sentimental desire to make the death of the old man down by the river more easy and more comfortable. She went out into the driving wild weather. She knew that she was "protesting" against the weather God had sent, and she knew she was petulant towards Mrs. Bone. But she could confess the matter about the weather, and give Mrs. Bone her prayers, a novena, if necessary. Nevertheless, human nature is human nature, and the bill about INTRODUCTORY. 11 the confession and the prayers was not yet pre sented.

So she was still a little bit cross. The priceless sabots were there, but they had not been properly dried ; and expensive sabots like these were subject to the dry rot, and these in particular could never be replaced to her. (She had forgotten that she had told Mrs. Bone that she had picked them up a bargain at Pontorson; she wanted to be sentimental about them.) The red umbrella had been improperly dried, and there was never such an umbrella before. The horn handle, too, had come off; innumerable little complaints, about which the Teutonic Bone cared as much as a horse did for a house-fly, knowing Mademoiselle's worth. Still Mrs. Bone was glad when Mademoiselle had fairly got out into the rain, under her great red umbrella, and she, Bone, could get back to the fire and see about the dinner.

Her opinion of Mademoiselle's character was strangely like, and yet strangely different from, that of Mademoiselle Adele's. " She says one thing and does another, William," said Mrs. Bone to the quiet young man who was sitting by the fire, shelling kidney-beans ; " but she is worth tlie whole lot of us put together." "Worth developing," says a critic. I answer, Mademoiselle Mathilde is already developed. The circumstances around her will develop ; but she will remain the same.

Chapter II. Some Necessary Gossip And Conversation

The wild furious weather from the south-west, which swept up the valley of the Stour, into which weather Mademoiselle Mathilde had trusted herself, did not produce , any great effect on the ordinary inmates of the old Grange from which she had issued. It took the full fury of that weather : it was a very draughty, early seventeenth-century old place, with large stone-framed windows filled with latticed panes ; and yet no one complained of the draughts to-day, for the wind was south-west and warm. Mademoiselle Adele did not, at all events ; and if she did not complain, you might be pretty sure that no one within twenty miles was dissatis fied. Sheepsden was nestled among elms, in a deep hollow, half-way up the side of one of the chalk hills which form the valley of the Stour, and over looking the low-lying meado.ws.

The most com fortable room in it was not a very comfortable room in the ordinary way of speaking, taking into con sideration modern ideas of comfort. It was large and draughty; it was hall, kitchen, and eating room all in one ; and opened, through the porch from which Mademoiselle Mathilde had just passed, on to the wild weather; yet, even in these dark early spring days, when the weather was an enemy, and not a friend as it was in summer, this room was really the most comfortable in the house. There were no fauteuils or easy chairs ; yet these French people, these DTsignys, who had kept the house on their own hands while they let all the farms, had made it, in their way, most comfortable. The room was naturally what Mrs. Bone called " whistling cold." The great antre of a fireplace, pile it as high as you would with blazing logs, never cast its warmth over one-fifth of it, until M. DTsigny had brought French ingenuity to bear upon it.

He had caused to be made two great folding-screens, which, starting from each side of the fireplace, overlapped each other in the middle, leaving a passage between which might be closed by a curtain. These two screens inclosed a large space, which was well warmed by the heat of the fire, and in which space the family, servants and all, principally lived : reading, writing, singing, work ing, eating, chinking, and even cooking. Yet they were wonderfully comfortable. Next to the fire, on the right-hand side as you looked at it, was the writing-table, and the shaded lamp of M. DTsigny himself. On the same side, but further from the fire, was a longer table, the fireside fialf of which was the drawing-room table, sacred to the ladies ; while the half farthest from the fire represented the dining-room table, and was devoted to the meals of the DTsignys.

Altogether on the other side of the fireplace, was another table parallel to it, which was the servants' table — the half next the fire being given up to cooking pur poses, and the cooler half to the meals, the lighter work, and recreations of these few domestics. .In this charmed circle of warmth and cheerfulness, the whole of the family lived nine-tenths of their strict innocent life. Only two clays before the day we speak of, Adele had objected, for the very first time, to this arrangement about the servants, and had dared (for she made Mathilde tremble at her audacity some times) to go as far as to say to her father that she should not care if the servants were French, but that she did not like to consort with English boors. Mathilde trembled as she heard this fearful indiscretion of Adele's. She knew that her father would punish her for it in some way, and Adele was so fearfully indiscreet and rebellious whilst undergoing " punition."

Her father's manner on this occasion did not re-assure her experienced judgment. He was sedate, calm, and explanatory; and when he took that line his punishments were generally severe. He leant calmly against the high mantel-piece, which, high as it was, was just of the height to supi^ort his great shoulders, and confronted his two daughters. Mathilde folded her hands, and looked patiently and submissively at him; Adele drooped her head, and was ready for tears and recantation even before he had begun, with the beautifully modulated voice of the old French gentleman, still to be heard occasionally, to give his reasons. " The great cause which has led to these illimitable troubles, now threatening to become incalculable disasters in France, has been a want of confidence between classes. Had classes in France confided in one another, and studied one another's habits and wants more, there might have been some chance of a general and confidential consultation; and the present hideous state of affairs, growing more hideous every day, might have been averted.

A revolution is impossible here : not because of the better being of the peasantry, but because the aristocracy are deservedly in better rapport with the peasantry than in France. No one agrees with me in this view of the matter, not even Sir Lionel Somers ; but I hold it, and intend that our servants should live with us. If Sir Lionel Somers objects to the arrangements, he may cease his visits. A DTsigny of the thirteenth century, need not, I hope, go on his knees to ask for the society of an English baronet of the seventeenth, whose title was only got by the most extraordinary — I will go as far as that, extraordinary — use of the Divine Right which the world has ever seen." At this dreadful allusion to James I.'s baronet- VOL. I. c cies, which were a pet grievance of her father's, and which caused him to ride a considerably high horse with Sir Lionel, Mathilde gave herself up for lost.

" Bread and water on fast days, and haricots with out gravy on flesh days ; and I doubt we shall not get out of it with that. I wish I was at Avranches ; I'd go pilgrimage bare-foot to Mount St. Michael. It is only four leagues, and when you pass Louis it is not bad walking across the sands. I'd do it gladly to save Adele, for she is so indiscreet under these impositions; and there is eight pounds of prime beef in the house, besides dripping. And this will be a month's maigre for us. It must go to the poor, that is all. I wonder how much he knows. I wish we had a priest. Since he has taken to doing the priest business himself, things are getting perfectly intolerable. No priest would set us such penances." He very soon let Adele and Mathilde know how much he knew. " I may be crotchety, and I may be an old fool, though I am not so old.

But I have my opinions and my will in spite of Sir Lionel Somers, who might have done better, as my future son-in-law, than incite my daughter Adele to rebellion. There is another reason, young ladies, why more than ever I intend to live in presence of my servants. I wish you to hear every word which the servants dare to say in your presence ; a process which will, by curbing then tongues, elevate them to something like your level; and I wish the servants to hear every word which you say, which will curb your tongues, and make you careful about scandalous talk." Mathilde put in a mental protest against her being classed with Adele in this respect, as well she might, but she said nothing ; only thought to herself, " now comes our penance." " Therefore," said Monsieur DTsigny, " I forbid either of you, from this moment, to address one word of French to me, or to one another."

He acted on his determination on the instant, as he always did. " For ze future, my daughtare, we sail all spek ze English for everlasting everare more, until we sail leam our obediences and our dutys. Ze servants sail laugh at our English, without doubt. That is good disci plines for our vanity. But we sail, all spek o English till we learn our obediences. Have you reply, you two?" Adele had nothing to say. Sir Lionel Somers had certainly been ridiculing her father, and she had listened and laughed. She was glad to get out of it under the penance of speaking the hated English for a limited time. Mathilde, however, had something to say. She was dreadfully afraid of her father, his word was law to her; yet the woman always said what was in her, and said it now, in perfectly beautiful English, — a strange contrast to her father's English, — perhaps with a slight and pretty French accent.

" Adele is as near blameless as possible in this matter, sir. Your discipline is, I think, a good one : we should talk more English. Adele's English and your own are absolutely ridiculous; mine is not good, but it is better than yours. Adele, I say, is blameless in this matter, or nearly so. The lover you have chosen for her made jokes, and she laughed at them, but rebuked him at the same time. The fault lies at my door entirely. I could have stopped them, but I did not." " And why not, daughter ?" " Because what he said was in the main true. He said that you were sujet aux lubies." " That is French," said M. DTsigny, " I beg pardon ; but it is true, you know.' " I did not know it. It is possibly in conse quence of the conduct of my daughters," replied M. DTsigny, whose bad English we are not going to reproduce.

" I do not say that my English is good, and you will even allow that your own might be improved. But read for me in your English the tragedy of King Lear, and put it to your heart. Lear had three daughters : I have but two — my Regan and Goneril; but where is my Cordelia?" After which bitter sarcasm M. DTsigny mounted his horse, and went off for Silchester. " He will make himself so utterly ridiculous with that English of his," thought Mathilde, when he was gone, and she was helping Mrs. Bone with the cooking, " that he will lose half his prestige. I wish there were a priest nearer than Lulworth; I'd go barefoot to him twenty miles. My father has assumed a kind of amateur priesthood, and one gets neither confession nor absolution — only pen ance. Father Martin, dear old man, would never have condemned us to talk English till further orders. I must and will talk French. I shall talk French to Mrs. Bone, who don't understand it, and get out of it in that way."

Chapter III. More Necessary Gossip

So Monsieur DTsigny, in redingote, buckskin breeches, top-boots, and three-cornered hat, cover ing a close-cropped head (a chevelure, which, like everything else he did, gave extreme offence to both parties, both to the new party and the old), had ridden away on a splendid, large-boned brown horse, through the bad weather, on the day before our opening. He was in the very best temper possible. He had done his duty, and that was quite enough for him. He was bound on an anti quarian journey to Silchester. We will make his further acquaintance on his return. " He beant much like a frog-eating French man," said an old stone-breaker by the road-side to an old shepherd who was leaning over a gate as he passed. MA DEMOISELLE MA THILDE. 24 " No, a beant," said the shepherd. " He's a straight upstanding old chap, for a Frenchman," replied he.

" He'd give good account of Sir Lionel, or of any gentleman in these parts, for the matter of that." He never condescended for one moment to let his household know the possible or probable period of his return, although he always expected, under penalties, that his daughters should be at home to receive him. It was part of his discipline. He used to quote to them the text, " Let thy master when he cometh find thee watching." So on the next day after his departure, Mathilde not only faced the furious weather, in going to see the dying old man by the river, but also the chance of some extra penance for herself. Still, as I impressed on you by reiteration in the first chapter, she went in defiance of both duty and inclination. There are some women who are so entirely love able, beautiful, fragile, illogical, childish — to sum up all, irresistible — in favour of whom the very sternest man, if he has anything of the man in him, gives up a few, more or less, of his pet crotchets.

These are generally silly women, who appeal to his pity, like a starving bird in a frost. Adele was such a woman ; Mathilde was not. Mathilde would have liked a quiet little bower of a room upstairs, with a few flowers and birds, for there were plenty of rooms for the purpose ; but she proposed it to her father, and seeing, from his cold, steady look, that he entirely disapproved of it, abandoned the idea at once. Adele, on the other hand, had made such a bower without consulting her father at all, and he had never looked coldly on her. He would have paid Mathilde the respect of despising her had she insisted on any such frivolity. Adele, as he put it to himself, was too fight and childish to be despised; her character was not formed, and she must be treated as a child. He never allowed to himself the fact, that in spite of her waywardness, and, what is more, her foolishness, he loved her more deeply than any human being, and that if she only went the right way to work she could do what she liked with him.