A question of love, a story of Switzerland

Chapter I

T he night my story opens everything is going on as usual. The two old men are listening to Miss Celanie as she reads from the newspaper in her low, monotonous voice, whose very intonations are melancholy. The old, old grandfather’s face is of a waxen pallor, which is death-like as it shines out from the silky whiteness of his beard. His companion has a withered, wrinkled face, close shaven, and its fresh carnation tints have changed long since to the purplish shades on last winter’s apples.

The grandfather sits with closed eyes, in order to hear better and also to save them, his long thin hands, with their nails like polished ivory, extended on the arms of his chair. He sits like a statue, but Cousin Clovis is always in motion, swinging his foot in its green slipper, or interlacing his fingers into

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

all sorts of curious forms. It used to amuse Zoe to watch Cousin Clovis at this, for he could make a cradle, two men sawing wood, a little man in a well, and many other things, which, perched on his knee, she tried to imitate, working her soft little hands, trying to follow the bony old fingers which crossed and uncrossed so briskly. But this was when she was little, for Grandpa and Cousin Clovis were as old then as now. This evening Zoe sat thinking of the strange quiet of these two lives, between which her own had sprung up so quickly, like a blade of grass between two stones. This grandfather, the father of her own grandfather, was eighty years old when Zoe was born. He had not changed since, for when one is so very old he changes no more. So Zoe, who had always seen the same wrinkles on his face, the same tremulous smile creasing the rosy cheeks of Cousin Clovis, the two easy-chairs in the same place, the same habits and customs throughout the house, looked upon the two old men as something immutable, without beginning or end. They had lived so long that it never occurred to her that they could do anything else. She thought of them as she sat leaning her cheek on her hand ; and then her eyes wandered to Miss Celanie, whose high forehead, lit up by

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

the lamp, is framed in by straight bands of hair. These bands of hair, by the way, have a greenish tint in them, such as certain blonde heads acquire when they whiten. Zoe remembered with shame the day when she innocently asked her aunt why her hair was green.

Even the lamp is old, — its high stand in the form of an Egyptian obelisk, and all covered with hieroglyphics of black on a white ground, — and belongs to that long ago time of which the grandfather always speaks, and which Zoe thinks of as a misty country, with vague silhouettes of battles floating in the air; for grandfather knew all the battles, and discusses them yet with Cousin Clovis, showing with pencil and paper just the faults of strategy by which the Emperor lost Leipsic.

Absorbed, Zoe no longer listened to the reading, but the melancholy voice made a sombre background to her revery. Why had Flora been baptized by that name? Was it because her godmother had never dreamed she would some day be an old servant, sixty years old, with her withered face brown and hard as a nut, and her hands — ah! the poor blackened hands !

Zoe took up her work, which had fallen to her knees, and looked at her own hands, so small, so slender, so transparently white, with delicate touches of rose-color, like a flower. Miss Celanie had once said to her, “ You inherit your hands from me. Mine were just like them at your age.” As she thought of this, Zoe felt so sad that she had a sudden wish to weep, without knowing why. She bent her head over her work that Flora might not see her eyes fill with tears; for Flora watched her incessantly, and made her account for everything.

Suddenly a horse’s ringing trot is heard outside, and the crunch of the gravel under a wheel which turned the corner of the house and grazed against the stone gate-post.

“What’s that?” said Clovis, interrupting the reading.

The grandfather opened his eyes with a gesture of impatience. “That? What? I hear nothing. You are always imagining that you hear noises, Clovis.”

“ It is Voumard’s wagon just back,” said Flora, in her strong, coarse voice, like that of a drill-sergeant commanding his men. “ I hear them unharnessing.”

“You hear, you hear,” said the old man.

“ I hear also ; I am not deaf. Is it Voumard’s wagon, Celanie?”

His daughter raised her head to listen. “I think so, father,” she replied absently.

Very well, go on with the reading. Are there no obituaries in the paper this evening?”

Yes, but I am not up to them yet.”

Very good, but skip the next. Read me the obituaries ; they interest me.”

How strange ! This old man, ninety-eight years of age, bent, decrepit, with failing sight and weakened hearing, his knees so feeble that they knocked together, his hands deprived of power, was intensely interested in the deaths of his neighbors, — indeed was interested in little else. He had seen so many die around him, so many lights had gone out while his endured, that he had taken refuge in a strange, half-unconscious feeling of security, which perhaps would have formulated itself thus : ‘‘ Many others are yet to go before me.” But it never was put into words, and remained a vague, floating idea, like a shrouding cloud before the entrance to the sombre country. When younger men were taken, — fathers of families, bread-winners, in the flower of their years, — when a youth or maiden was snatched away, the heart of the old man — his poor hardened heart, in which for ages past the divine spring of sympathy had ceased to flow — thrilled with a throb of inexpressible satisfaction, of triumph even.

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

Perhaps it had lived too long, this heart of the nonagenarian. Its noblest fibres were worn out or hardened, just as the delicate fibres of the eye wear out, and the muscles of the limbs stiffen ; the egotistic desires, the fierce instincts of self-preservation, alone survived.

“ We must have been made of good stuff, Clovis,” the old man said ; “ men like us are not made now. Look at the young people ; how they fade. But we are still left. You are not too robust, however, — you will never reach my age, my poor fellow.”

“ As God wills,” said the other, with emphasis.

“ We all live as long as God wills,” said Flora in her most military voice. “ The important thing is to live well.”

But the old man was in no mood for edifying remarks. “ Good, good, — you shall preach on Sunday. Celanie, go on with the reading.”

And Miss Celanie began the obituaries in exactly the same tone in which she had read the advertisements, and the items of news or politics, her slow studied pronunciation suggesting an old governess.

The grandfather resumed his unchanging attitude, and closed his eyes again. Cousin

A QUESTION OF LOVE. II

Clovis, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs, watched with amusement the shadow of his foot as it waved to and fro on the wall, where a brilliantly lighted space was crossbarred by the shadow of a chair-back. This he fancied looked like a prison window, and the shadow made his foot, if held in a certain position, represent the prisoner’s head, which was first thrust forth and then quickly withdrawn. With a silent gesture and a roll of the eye, for he dared not interrupt the reading again. Cousin Clovis tried to draw Zoe’s attention to his sport. But the young girl shook her head and turned away, instead of smiling, as usual, at the childish play. A moment later, she rose hastily and without a sound glided from the room. She could stand no more. She was overcome by sadness, — she was so weary of the monotony.

“ Here, father, is something I am sure you will like,” said Miss Celanie, as her eyes ran over a column; and with a movement which was a relic of the time when her hand was pretty, she smoothed her braids with the tips of her fingers, pushed a stray hair behind her ear, and, settling her glasses firmly, began to read.

The article was about an official ovation tendered by a neighboring village to its oldest inhabitant, in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, to which they had hardly dared to hope he could live. By dint of infinite care and numberless precautions, he had, however, survived the sunset which closed his century of life. But he had nearly failed to see the dawn of another day because of the strain caused by a serenade, an oration, and the presentation of a fine silver dish engraved with appropriate emblems.

The grandfather was thoroughly awakened. He no longer sat with closed eyes, but, leaning ' forward, clutching both arms of his chair in his intense attention, he drank in each syllable that Miss Celanie uttered. When she had finished, he said, irritably, “ Well, go on. What next? Why do you stop? ”

“ That ’s all, father.”

“That’s all? Just turn to the summary of news, and see how he is to-day. Poor Francis Dumont! I have not seen him in years; but I have often thought of him. I did not think h^ would last so long, — a thin small man like that, with a weak will. I knew him well when I was in business. Do you remember, Clovis, the day he came and proposed to me that I should go for him to Magdeburg? But no, you were only a slip of a boy then. How old were you, — three

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

or four years? I was twenty-two. That was in ’14. Did you find anything more, Celanie? ”

“ No, father, nothing more.”

“ Poor Francis ! ” repeated the old man after some moments of silence, during which he had once more resumed his habitual attitude. “ He never had much of a head, and it does not astonish me that he was upset with all their speeches and ceremonies. Did he answer properly? Does it say whether he thanked them, Celanie?”

“ No, father, there ’s no mention of it.”

That 's it, then, — he lost his head. I can just see him stammering and stuttering. Poor Francis ! old age is dreadful when the powers go,” — and he straightened himself in his chair.

Miss Celanie folded the paper, laid it on her basket, took off her glasses, then sat motionless, her hands crossed over her gray apron, her faded blue eyes lost in revery. Her father recalled her suddenly. ‘‘ Celanie, I don’t think that article really interested you.” Too passive to protest, she did not answer at all, and the old man added in a moment, “In two years it will be my turn; do you hear? — Isn’t it a fine thing, my daughter, to have a centenarian for a father !

I must have my little celebration, too,” he went on persuasively. Then, as his thoughts returned to the flattering demonstration of which Dumont had been the recipient, he muttered, “ I wonder if they are thinking of doing as much for me? Do they even know my age? Clovis, are you sure every one knows my age?”

It was Flora who answered, laying down her knitting: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Ninetieth Psalm.” This said, she took up her knitting again, and Miss Celanie bowed her head reverently.

“ Thanks, Flora, thanks,” said the old man, turning uneasily, “you are a good girl.”

He felt impelled to propitiate her. When she rose like a threatening prophetess, and proclaimed the vanity of life and its near termination, she affected him most disagreeably, and he always spoke to her with humility, hoping to avert some baleful influence. Privately, he was much irritated ; and as soon as her back was turned, he scolded Miss Celanie for the liberties she allowed her old servant to take.

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

Cousin Clovis had softly gone out. His green slippers with their felt soles made no noise on the oaken floor, nor in the tiled corridor under whose high ceiling a hundred echoes were lurking. A small lamp with a brilliant reflection, like a miniature sun, lit the lofty arches of this passage, which ought by all means to have led to a court or some mysterious postern, but which in reality, after running through the length of Ihe house, opened out on the slope which led to the barn door, and from here you could go across to the farmer’s house. The ground floor of the right wing turned to the northwest.

A large low window, divided into three parts by ancient mullions of stone, fashioned into columns, opened upon a yard at the back only two or three feet abov^e the ground. A bright light shone from it, and illumined the recesses of the court and the broken tiles. In the deepest shadow which surrounded this brilliancy stood Zoe, — pressed close to the wall, her face hidden in her hands, and sobbing as if her heart would break. Now and then she thrust her head forward, glanced into the lighted room, drew quickly back, and began to cry again, — always very softly, and smothering her sobs in her handkerchief, in mortal terror of being overheard.

l6 A QUESTION OF LOVE.

Suddenly she gave a cry, for, just as she leaned forward, some one whose approach she had not heard came up behind and laid a hand on her shoulder. “What is it? Why are you crying, my poor little Zosette?” said the sympathetic voice of Cousin Clovis.

“ Sh ! sh ! ” said Zoe ; “ don’t speak ! don’t speak ! ”

“ I saw you crying, my dear,” said the good cousin, panting a little, for the impetuous child had dragged him back too quickly. “ You are in trouble? ”

“ No, nothing is the matter,” she said, hanging her head. “Go in. Cousin, do go in; the night air is bad for you ; you will take cold.”

If it had been lighter she would have seen Cousin Clovis’s eyes fill with tears; for old age is more easily touched than youth, and its wisdom is born of experience.

“ I will go in if you wish, but on one condition, — that you tell your trouble to your aunt.”

“ Never ! never ! ” and she began to knead her handkerchief into a hard little ball, which she applied nervously to her eyes.

“ Suppose then, you tell it to me? ”

“ I would willingly, if I knew what to say; but it is nothing, — nothing at all.”

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

She hung on his arm, and together they slowly climbed the grassy slope leading to the barn door, as if drawn to the feeble light of a lantern which had been forgotten there.

“ Sit down here, it is sheltered, said Zoe,” pushing back the halves of the folding door, which yielded slightly, and formed a cosey nook above the dry floor of the barn.

Cousin Clovis sat down on an old stump which was always kept there, and used to hold the doors wide open while the wagons were being driven in.

“ All the same, you had better open your heart to your aunt,” said he, thoughtfully. “ Women, they say, understand these things, especially if they have gone through them.”

“ Gone through them ; why. Cousin Clovis, is it like a book? ”

“ No ; no, it’s not like a book nor anything in one,” he said, hastily. He did not know why he answered thus; and what did she mean by her strange question? “What were you looking at, that interested you so much, in the Voumards’ house?” Zoe did not answer. She sat in the doorway beside the lantern ; its light fell on the delicate outlines of her bodice, on her hands and slender white neck; but the little head was all in shadow as it was thrown back to lean against the door. “ How old are you, seventeen or eighteen? ”

“ I am eighteen,” she answered, with a sorrowful little whimper.

“ Exactly. Well, Zoe, we can’t stay here until morning; you must tell me at once why you were crying.”

“ Dear cousin, I do assure you I don’t know myself. Sometimes it comes to me like that, and I have to run away. When Aunt is reading aloud, or Grandpa is telling a story, or when I look at the chairs and tables which are so very, very old, something seizes me here, crushes me, and I must cry, or I should die. I don’t know if you understand me,’’ she added, after this lucid explanation of her symptoms.

“ Not too well,” said her kind cousin, “ unless — In my young days, ladies called this, I think, the vapors.”

“ Ah ! and what did they do when they had the vapors? ”

“ Oh ! well, they were told to seek amusement, ordered to the baths — You have no friends. That ’s not natural at your age.”

At Zoe’s deep sigh, her cousin saw he had touched a tender point. “ Are there no girls in the neighborhood?”

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

“ Two or three, perhaps, but they are all rough peasants,” she said, with a pout of disdain. “ Those are not girls with whom I could be intimate. At school,” — she stopped at some sudden recollection, — “ I never told any one,” she went on bravely, laying both hands on his arm, and he was touched to feel the young creature turning to him in a passion of confidence. “ I will tell you if you promise never to repeat it to any one.”

“ I promise.”

“ Well, at school I did so want to have a chum, — all the other girls had them ; but not one would have me, and one day I found out they had given me a nickname,” — her voice trembled with indignation, — “ they called me Nankeen, because of my dress. You must remember the dress Aunt Celanie made me out of hers, with birds and baskets all over a nankeen ground. They said I looked like a little old grandmother.”

“What stupid girls!” cried Mr. Clovis, indignant too. “ Of course I remember the dress, and very pretty it was. Yes, a nankeen ground ; in olden times it was the one color for brunettes, and you are a real brunette, — so what could have been better? We shall find you some friends, Zosette, don’t be afraid. We shall find some.” So saying, he

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

rose slowly, for the evening air had stiffened his joints.

“ We shall find some,” he repeated, as he went down the slope leaning heavily on his little cousin’s shoulder.

Chapter II

E very morning the affairs of the house were regulated as follows. Flora rose first, made the coffee, swept the rooms on the ground floor and the entries, and then went up to Zoe to dress her hair. Ever since the days when — a tiny child, delicate and timid as a little bird — Zoe had come into this household of old people, it had been understood that Flora should have charge of her body and Miss Celanie of her mind. The old servant did not always respect this strict limitation, and frequently made incursions upon Miss Celanie’s domains, but at the same time would permit no interference with her own.

While dressing Zoe’s hair, she inculcated various maxims. Zoe would have much preferred to dress her hair herself; as to the maxims, they often caused her strange perplexities.

When Plora opened the door this morning, Zoe, who was standing before her little glass, a brush in her hands, turned quickly with a blush.

“What are you doing?” cried the old

servant.

“ I am trying to arrange my hair, — you have done it in the one way for years.”

“ You must first learn to comb it properly. What a state you have got it into ! no part in the middle, none on the side, nothing.

Come along; sit down, and give me the

brush.”

Zoe yielded docilely, but with a sigh.

How pretty she was in her dimity sacque of old-fashioned cut, trimmed with a wide round collar, above which her long and delicate neck rose like the stem of a flower ! Her wide open sleeves showed the slender pretty arms whose skin was so sensitive that it blushed like her cheeks, like her neck, at the least emotion. As a child Zoe had amused those around her by her strange power to blush down to her finger tips. Flora used to take her to her grandfather — sometimes even before strangers — in her low-necked and short-sleeved dress. “ Look at this child,” she would say, with a sign to the spectators. The confusion caused by the knowledge that she was being looked at, by the horror of knowing that she was going to blush, made Zoe sensible of a flush of heat passing over her, — over her little

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

bare arms, over her rounded shoulders, that grew rosy under the lace ruchings by which they were outlined. At last, one day she revolted, had a violent fit of crying, and so put an end to these exhibitions.

Under her gypsy-like hair, whose waves fell on all sides, — a strange contrast to her delicate blonde skin, — Zoe had a tiny face, and dark eyebrows, straight and even as if traced with a brush, but which could frown easily. Her eyes were not often noticed, for she kept them almost always lowered, perhaps from timidity, perhaps from indifference to things around her.

If you wish,” said the old servant, unbending, “ I will make you to-day braids of eight, — or the Marie Louise, — or the wheatheads, — just to change.”

“ No, — no, thank you. I hate those wide plaits, they look like basket-work.”

“ As you like,” said Flora, vexed ; and she carefully arranged the abundant hair in little smooth divisions, separated by narrow lines of straight partings. When she had brushed the front bands, she made two heavy plaits of them, which she passed before the ears, framing in the cheeks, joined them to the plaits at the back, and rolled them together around a shell comb. It was thus that

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

Flora’s mother had arranged her hair in 1840. Under the plaits Zoe’s face had a quaint grace, a sedate air, which her eyes did not contradict. At the school she had been much teased on the subject of these plaits, but she clung to the belief that since then this fashion had come in again. Flora, among other maxims, had told her that one should never change a becoming style, since it is very sure to come up again. Zoe believed her, having no other oracle within reach.

“ The Voumards are happy this morning,” said Flora, who loved to talk as she wielded the comb. “ The eldest son is back. That was he who came last night when Mr. Clovis heard their wagon. The young ones are jumping around him ; you ought to see them. But he is a regular romp, that boy: never in my life did I see such an upsetting; he would turn the house inside out, if they would let him. Yesterday evening, according to his mother, he carried them one after another in his arms, and then he tossed the little ones into the air, — in fact, a frightful carnage r

Zoe said to herself, that in the verses of Corneille, which her aunt made her read, the word carriage was never used in that

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

sense. Nothing could have been less like her idea of carnage than the joyous scene she was looking at so stealthily, and with such full eyes, the night before. But Flora was not too particular in her choice of words. In general, it even seemed that she preferred to use them in an impossible sense, when she did not invent them brand-new, without any particular sense.

After breakfast the two old men ordinarily sat side by side on the bench against the wall by the door. Miss Celanie stayed in her room with Zoe, whom she kept by her until noon, making her read and do needlework.

It was always verses from the classics, the letters of the sententious Madame Lambert, the pages of Buffon, chapters of Chateaubriand carefully chosen, and then interminable worsted work, or little squares of fine linen, on which she wrought marvels of hemstitching, which filled Zoe’s mornings. With her glasses Miss Celanie still could see well enough to 'inspect the work of her niece every fifteen minutes; without them, she superintended her position, and never for one moment allowed her to lean back in her chair, to cross her feet, or to bend over her embroidery. Thus she had made Zoe a model of deportment. In the room there

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

floated an indefinable odor of age. The eye distinguished no colors, — nothing but faded washed-out tints, — the faint yellow of the damask curtains, — the old reds and greens of the pictures in tapestry or in raised worstedwork. under glasses, — the dusty white of the bead-baskets in which nothing was ever put, — and here and there superannuated bric-a-brac, somewhat ridiculous, since no one knew its use or purpose. On the wall at the end were some portraits in silhouette, which Miss Celanie spoke of as “ Madame the Countess,” — “ Our Privy-Councillor,” — “ Dear Little Wolfgang.” On a stand were the books for the morning reading, — all solidly bound in boards, with parchment backs. Most of them had a certain number of leaves glued together with wafers, — three in the front margin, two at the top, two at the bottom, so that it was impossible to catch a glimpse of any of the pages thus condemned to eternal obscurity. Zoe had acquired great facility in skipping from the back of one leaf to the face of another without indicating by her voice any lack of the intervening pages.

“ But that does not make sense, — the rhyme is wanting,” says Miss Celanie, who always listened with great attention.

“ It is because there are wafers there. Aunt.”

“ Ah ! if there are wafers, go on.”

And Zoe would begin again, with perfect indifference, some tirade whose commencement was on the hidden page, along with the name of the wise confidante or the passionate princess who was pronouncing the Alexandrines.

“Who is speaking?” Miss Celanie would ask.

“ I really don ’t know. Aunt, since it is glued.”

“ From the sense, it is easy to guess that it must be Hermione.”

Zoe would shrug her shoulders and hasten on. What mattered it to her whether it was Hermione, or any one else? The classic dramas meant nothing to her: what she really loved, what added happiness to her life, were the little old volumes, as big as your hand, — badly printed on poor paper, badly bound, and patiently resewed and reglued, — which filled a wardrobe in Cousin Clovis’s room. Among them were “ Les Trois Mousquetaires,” “La Tulip Noire,” “ Le Collier de la Reine,” “Monte Cristo,” — all those charming books of Dumas, with their childish, powerful phantasmagories.

A QUESTION OF LOVE.

At the hour for the siesta — each one had a siesta, and a long one at that, in this household of old people — Zoe slipped quietly into her cousin’s room, opened the wardrobe noiselessly, and quickly hid in her pocket two or three of the beloved volumes, with their gray paper covers.

Mr. Clovis in his low chair half opened his eyes, and made Zoe a sign of friendly complicity. Then she ran away quickly, went down the staircase on tiptoe, slipped like a mouse past the open door of the kitchen where Flora was napping, but with one eye only. If it chanced to be raining, she had a hiding place in the barn; if it was fine, she went to a seat under a tree on the edge of the meadow, and for the hundredth time threw herself, on the saddle of the faultless Athos, the seductive Aramis, or that amiable giant of a Porthos, into impossible adventures. Ah, Miss Celanie and her wafers !

But the effect which this continuous reading produced on Zoe’s mind was not what might have been expected. It may be that a dose of good sense of more than usual strength kept her from romantic brooding; it may be that it was because there was no youth near hers and that her own still slept ; but in some way Zoe was convinced that the