Was it love

I. A Carriage Accident

“ What great events from little causes spring !"

One warm and pleasant afternoon in the month of April, 1877, a brougham was about to round the corner of the Avenue d’Antin on its way to the Champs Elysees, when the horse took fright at a bicycle and bolted. The carriage veered in contact with the curb, one wheel came off, and it was overturned. Its occupant, the Countess de Candolle, “ one of the prettiest women in Paris,” as the papers say, escaped with a slight shaking and a severe fright. But her arrangements for the day were upset, and judging by the little white slate now lying at the bottom of the carriage. with its former companions, a mother-of-pearl card-case and bijou travelling clock, her visiting-list had been a long one that particular afternoon. Gabrielle de Candolle’s fair brow was clouded w'ith a frowm of vexation. So when she spoke to the footman, it w'as in tones of irritation, little like her usual speech.

“ Fran9ois, as soon as the horse is on its feet, leave that simpleton,” pointing to the coachman, “ to see to his handiwork, and go at once to the Rue Royale cab-stand. I shall want a victoria at Madame de Tilliere’s in less than half an hour.”

Gabrielle turned and walked away. Her fairy-like bronzed boots were but ill-suited for the short walk to the Rue Matignon, where lived the lady whose name Gabrielle had just hurled at the unhappy Frangois : and the countess was out of earshot before the footman, who stood looking conspicuously silly, could articulate a word.

Gabrielle thought only of the upsetting of her afternoon, with all its complicated plans.

“ Idiot ! ” she muttered. “And on the very day of all the week when I was busiest ! I wonder if Juliette is in. ... If not, so much the worse for me. I must wait for her at her mother’s. ... I hope she is at home. It is ten days since I saw her last. I declare, in Paris there is no time to do anything one wants to do.”

But, however vexed, the countess made the best of her way afoot, with her bright curls crowned by a little bonnet all bows and ostrich feathers, and in her tight-fitting gray satin ulster, that set off the charms of her supple figure to advantage. Nor was the average Parisian blind to the occasion. It was as good as a comedy to watch the actions of the passers-by. From the respectful way in which they dropped their eyes you might imagine they had not noticed her : but wait till the countess has passed ! Once, twice, thrice, they crane their necks to note the gait and figure, the gown and bonnet of the aristocrat. And the women ! How they follow her with their eyes ! Let some psychologist explain the mystery of this attrac-

A Carriage Accident.

tion. It is magnetic, and is unmistakable. As for Gabrielle, she had but little need to look round to be aware of the “effect ’’ she was producing. And let the man of mental science solve this further riddle : Why was the lady tickled with the idea that even the very humpback and the cripple were admiring her — Madame de Candolle, one of the haute noblesse of France ? Not that in her own circle there was anything of the coquette about Gabrielle. She had just escaped from a real danger ; her new brougham, sent for all the way to London, was no doubt a wreck ; a valuable horse, the best in the stable, probably ruined for life. It was enough to vex an angel, and yet she was profoundly conscious of the secret stir her appearance was making, even pleased by it. Such are the contrarieties of human nature.

And so the frown had left her forehead by the time the charming “Saint” — for so her devoted friend Juliette sometimes playfully called her — lifted her neatly gloved hand to the old-fashioned knocker of the quiet mansion in the Rue Matignon. She had tasted the genuine pleasure, dear, perhaps, not less to saints than womankind, of the assurance that she was outrageously pretty ; and now she stood within the stained-glass porch, awaiting news of her dear friend, more with the placid air of one who has been listening to sweet music than the startled face of one who has but just emerged from danger. Perhaps her smiles were owing to the news that Madame de Tilli^re had not gone out. To find a confidante so soon, to whom one might relate the ins and outs of a distressful accident, was almost to turn the accident into a thing of joy. And as Gabrielle tripped across the sunlit court to join her friend, she murmured pleasantly :

“Yes, I am sure that Juliette will be more frightened than I was myself.”

Though scarcely a dozen years have passed away since the events that followed this unexpected visit, how many people are there left, even in the sphere of the De Candolles, who remember the lovely and rather mysterious woman whom Gabrielle was glad to call her “bosom friend,” and to acknoAvledge as her spiritual sister ? It will not, then, be out of place for us to paint her portrait in a dozen words ; for Juliette, even by her friend’s acquaintances, was not intimately known in the days of the long ago — and since then has disappeared.

Modest, reserved, even to the low-water mark of selfeffacement, Madame de Tilliere was one of those who, though in the world, are not entirely of it ; one of those who exert as much diplomacy to be allowed to live a quiet life as rivals employ in the effort to shine and reign a little while society’s mock queens. For outward symbol of her nature and index of her taste, what more appropriate than the quaint old mansion, on whose carved stone porch now falls the aristocratic silhouette of Gabrielle? An atmosphere of solitude seemed to surround this ancient house, cut off, as it was, from other habitations by a spacious garden.

If it is in the nature of things that the v/orld has already forgotten this sweet woman, to make up for it her frietids, by no means numerous, still cherish her dear memory with a warmth the years cannot change. To the worldly mind which pauses to ask why one of the loveliest women of ’77 was content to pass her life in a kind of eclipse, those who are even yet her friends respond : !

she had suffered so! ” — pronouncing her name as that of

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one whose tragedy was all too deep and sacred for the common ear. The catastrophe which had made Juliette a widow justified, in part, this explanation of her character. The Marquis Roger de Tilli^re, her husband of three months, one of the most brilliant captains on the French staff, was killed in July, 1870, by the side of General Douay, by one of the very first shots fired in that disastrous campaign. The news, announced by telegram to the marquise, threw her into a state of lethargy dangerous equally to mind and body, from which she did not rally for a month. Was not this reason enough for her remaining broken-hearted ? Yet however terrible and strange the happenings of life, they create no new material in our natures, save as they influence complexities of character. Thus left with her freedom and a fortune at the early age of twenty, Madame de Tilliere and her mother chose to live in calm seclusion. With their two hundred thousand francs a year, it was evident these ladies had no intention of being swallowed in the fashionable mob that circulates in cliques and clatter round those twin idols. Mammon and Astarte. Some instinct froze these ladies in their tracks ; and heedful of every point of true hospitality, they became artists in friendship — and their house the very shrine of sociality for those who had the entrde. To individualize, to be refined, to be particular — such was their charming custom, both in love and friendship, and in externals, too. To them the world was an interpretation, not a tyranny. But were they altogether happy ? That was their own business, not society’s. Thus, in course of time, the presence of these ladies in the salons of the great became a sort of favor. In all this there was some danger of these two becom-

Was It Love!

ing artificial in their loneliness. But tli^ir society was infinitely attractive. To this day, should you meet the painter F^lix Mirant, old General de Jardes, Monsieur d’Avangon, diplomatist of the old school, or Ludovic Accragne, past prefect, and dwell, in confidence, on certain themes which, however remotely, serve to remind them of the sweet lady of the Rue Malignon, you will certainly hear them interpose with :

“Ah! if you had only known Madame de Tilliere or,

“ That was a man you would be certain not to meet at Madame de Tilli^re's ! ” or,

“ There was only one woman I ever knew — and that was Madame de Tilliere — who "

And so on. But do not notice them too much ; or they will put on a rather oracular look, and turn to another subject. It would seem as if these men really learned “ how to talk ” at the dear old receptions in the Rue Matignon. How else could they possibly give you, at this distance of time, such a scintillating word-picture of the grand woman who once was Juliette de Tilliere? And of her charm ? To call up the spirit of Juliette, it will be easiest to go to Madame de Candolle, if she will talk to you about her — which is seldom, for “ the Saint” dreads to ponder on the memory of Juliette with a fear that is born of remorse. When the mind is in a state of tension, it is difficult to dissociate ourselves from the cause of certain evils that have happened to our friends ; albeit we were only the innocent instrument of chance. Often and often the high-spirited Gabrielle will sigh to herself : “ If we had never seen each other on that April day ! If I had not called in the Rue Ma-

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tignon ! If my brougham had not broken down ! ” Is it blind chance, or is it destiny, that oftentimes the weal or woe of an entire life will turn upon a word of information, a card of introduction — upon a train that we have failed to catch, upon a talk that we enjoyed one day “ we met by accident ” ?

Accident, chance, destiny, or Providence — it is certain that, as Madame de Candolle stood in the sunny porch, none of these complex ideas troubled that golden head or followed her through the larger reception-room on her way to the snug boudoir where Juliette was in the habit of receiving.

Madame de Tilliere was writing at a davenport in the angle of a bay-window commanding a view of the garden. Lilac and pink hawthorn were all in bloom ; the scene was an epitome of peace. As soon as she saw Madame de Candolle she rose, with a little glad cry of surprise, and folded her in her arms.

“ Look, dear ! ” she said, “ I am all ready, dressed, and waiting for the carriage. I was just going to your house to get the news.”

“ Where you would not have found me,” responded the Countess, “ nor anybody who was able to inform you that you might have never seen poor me again in this world ! ”

“ You are romancing ? ”

“No, I assure you. I have but just escaped a great danger.”

“ Why do you frighten me ? ”

Then Gabrielle began to tell the tale, a little bit exaggerated, of the carriage accident ; and Juliette punctuated the story with inarticulate cries of terror. It was a

IVas It Love!

pretty nest for such a pair of friends, as the afternoon sun shone in with the splendor of pleased April, and the cheery wood-fire crackled on the brass andirons. By a touch of spiritualism that seemed well-suited to her charming person, Juliette had had this boudoir of her own fitted up with the entire contents of a Louis XVI, saloon, removed from Nan9ay, dating from the day when the castle was restored by an ancestor of Juliette’s, Charles de Nanpay, the friend of Rivarol. The grey-white tints of these old-fashioned pieces of furniture, magnificently carved, the silvery nuances of the old silks with w^hich they were upholstered, blended wuth the fading pigments of the family portraits in their heavy gold frames. It seemed Juliette had a good idea that these survivals of a gracious antiquity would harmonize very w^ell wuth her peculiar style of beauty — and she was not mistaken. With a cloud of powder on those blond locks of hers, a little rouge upon her cheeks, a tiny patch of jet plaster at one corner of her mouth, high-heeled red slippers on her feet, and a Marie Antoinette robe upon her gentle figure, Juliette might have passed as a cousin of the celebrated Laura de Nangay, whose portrait was over the chimney-piece, side by side with that of the Marquis Charles. E^ven without the illusion of patch and powder, she bore a startling likeness to her great-grandmother, so umyorthily rewarded for a romantic passion — in the long ago — by a scathing passage in the Memoires of Tilly. In Juliette, as in this ancestress, the sweet childishness of expression, as of a choice but fragile Dresden statuette, was corrected and adorned by a certain depth of gaze and a slight sadness of smile. At times, w'heu there was something going on that moved her, though she might not wish to seem ex-

A Carriage Accident.

cited, her’ pupils would dilate, and Juliette’s blue eyes became nearly black, giving one the impression of an almost morbid sensibility, controlled by a strong will.

Juliette’s face, thoroughbred and speaking thus of feelings and of passions pent within, contrasted with Madame de Candolle’s, — equally patrician, but the index of an energetic spirit and of action. The latter was a picture by Van Dyck “dressed ” by V/orth ; the former an old-time pastel by Doucet. When these two had finished tattling of the mutual happenings of their last ten days, scraps of news about society and visitors, came the inevitable invitation.

“ When will you come to dinner, dear, to have a real, long talk ? Why not to-morrow ? ” said the Countess.

“To-morrow, no,’’ said Juliette. “My cousin from Nanpay is coming. But the 7iext day ? ”

“ Thursday ? I am not free. I have to dine with Sister d’Arcole. V/ill you come on Friday ? ’’

“ It is a ‘ fixture,’ ” cried Juliette, laughing. “I dine with the Avangons. Fancy me., a peacemaker in the house of my old worshipper ! Luckily, his wife goes to bed at an unearthly hour, and if it is your opera night, and you

have nobody better to share your box ”

“ Not a soul. Better ? I will come for you to the Avangons’, at nine o’clock. But it is an age to Friday ! I have an idea. Why should you not come to me this very evening ? ”

“Look at this letter, scarcely dry! ” exclaimed Juliette. “ I have written to Mirant, who has been begging for an

evening ever so long, and as we were alone ’’

“ You will not post the letter ! — that is all. Oblige me !

lO

IVas It Love ?

This dinner to-night will be a task without you. It is a hunting-party, you know. Prosny, D’Artelles, Mos6, and then ” — with hesitation at her lips — “and then — a man that perhaps you would hardly like to meet. You know, cherie^ you are so what the English call ‘particular.’ ”

“And the French ^ prude,'" put in Juliette, smiling. “And all because I don’t care to come and dine with you amid the hurly burly. But who is this mysterious personage to whom 1 am painted as objecting so to be presented ? ”

“Oh ! not so very mysterious,” laughed the Countess. “ Only Raymond Casal.”

“ The Casal of Madame de Corcieux ? ” asked Juliette ; and after an affirmative nod :

“ The fact is,” said Gabrielle, “ that Monsieur Poyanne would disapprove ! I should not escape the question: ‘ Why does Madame de Candolle keep such people on her visiting list ? ’ ”

It w'as clear that this friend, about whose surveillance Gabrielle rallied Juliette, was no favorite of the Countess. As if encouraged by her owm enjoyment of the fun, she went on with a mocking laugh:

“Tell him, anyway, my love, that Casal is more my husband’s friend than mine. And — will you let me speak my mind t ‘ Casal ’ signifies, no doubt, for you, for Monsieur Poyanne, and for many more, a wicked fellow, who only seeks a woman’s company to do her wrong ; a fop who has compromised Madame de Corcieux, and Madame Ethorel, and others ‘ a thousand and three ’ ; a gambler for the wildest stakes ; a mere animal, who passes from the gaming table to the fencing-school, from luncheon to the stable, and finishes the day ‘ drunk as a

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II lord.’ Isn’t that a picture o( your Casa.], and of your De Poyanne’s Casal ? ”

“My Casal ! ” cried Juliette. “ I know him not. And ‘my Poyanne’— not that. I won’t be held responsible for the antipathies of my acquaintances ! ”

“ Yes, ‘your Poyanne,’ ” persisted Gabrielle. “ Look you : if Poyanne was a widower, instead of living merely separate, and that — wife of his were to do him the favor of dying in Florence ”

“ Go on ! ” said Juliette.

“ I always think that you would be willing to marry him ; and as for Poyanne, I will wager he would jump at the chance, because he mounts guard already over you with all the airs of a betrothed.”

“ Nevertheless, I don’t imagine he nurses such a prospect,” cried Juliette, with a merry laugh ; “ and if the case were to come before me, I am sure I don’t know what my sentence would be ; and even if it were so, a fiaticde of twenty-seven years of age and some odd months is perfectly capable of warding off the terrible charms of a ‘ man of the world,’ who is at one and the same time a bit of a fop, a good deal of a gambler, very much of a jockey, almost a fencing-master, and not a little of the drunkard — for isn’t that the correct likeness of your guest ? ”

“You cut me short just as I was going to tell you that such a myth is no more like Raymond Casal than our poor Napoleon the Third was like the tyrant limned by Hugo. Is it Raymond Casal’s fault that he has succumbed, more than once, to the facile charms of a designing woman ? You have good cause to smile ! Was it Pauline or he that made the echoes ring ? All that I know is, he has never spoken a sinister word to me, or given me a doubtful look, and that he is extremely talented, extremely witty, full of strange experiences in India, China, Australasia, the States — the world ! Man of pleasure ! Gambler ! He is a little better off than the others, and not quite so secretive. He owns more horses, made more bets, and lost more money. Here’s a budget to make a fuss about. I don’t deny he fences — very well. But he never boasts about it, and I have not yet heard of his running any of his friends through the body. It is possible he drinks ; but, seriously, he has always had the good sense to come under my eyes conspicuously sober. Do you know what this man really is ? A spoilt child to whom the world has been too good. Yet he has kept a thousand charming qualities. And with it all. . . . But you have seen him for yourself ? ”

“ I think somebody once pointed him out to me at the Opera,” said Juliette ; “a big man with dark hair and a tawny beard.”

“ It must have been a long, long time ago. He has only a mustache now,” said the Countess. “ How very odd, this Paris life of ours ! I should have thought you rnust have met a hundred times.”

“I go about so little,” said Juliette; “nor do I notice every one I chance to see.”

“ Well, dear, you must come out to-night to visit me, and you will notice our Casal. It is to be ? ”

“ Perhaps. But how you run away with words ! If I ’ did not know you well enough to ”

“ If you did not know me well enough, you would vow I was in love with ‘ our Casal ’ — isn’t that what you mean ? What would you have, my love ? I am a soldier’s daugh-

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ter, and I loathe the want of logic and injustice of the world. And so I fight against it. You will denounce me to Poyanne ? ”

“Still harping on Poyanne?” Juliette shrugged her shoulders.

“ Still harping on Poyanne. Because, when he is out of mind, we two are happy. And when he talks to you, I know so well it takes effect. But some one’s coming. It is the carriage that I ordered.”

Listen to the pretty babbling of “Good-by, good-by ! ” as the footman announces the Countess’s victoria ; the “ So soon,” and the “ You have been here only five minutes ; ” the “ I must go, indeed,” and “ Till this evening, dear, good-by again ! ” And then to the sisterkisses; and then the rippling laughter at the name of Casal whispered once again ; and then, when Gabrielle is really gone, the gentle tick-tack of the ormolu clock on the mantel, and the rustle of the burning oak-logs on the hearth.

All alone Juliette sits forward to her desk, and tears up the note of invitation to the painter Mirant ; then she takes a large, official-looking sheet of paper from a drawer, and twists her pen between her fingers, as those do who find it hard to begin a letter, looking off into the garden, now less beautiful because the sky is overclouded, till at last she finds it in her to begin. And this is how the letter read :

“ Dear Count : Please do not call to-night till ten o’clock. Gabrielle has just this minute gone out. I had not seen her for ten days, and was obliged to tell her I would dine with her to-night. Do not scold me for keeping you waiting two hours over your time to tell me how you spoke in the Chamber of Deputies, and what took place there. And do not come with your eyes cast down to reproach me silently, and so untruly, with my worldliness. You know too well what all the world would be to me without you.

“Juliette.”

And when she had sealed the despatch she wrote the name of a well-known orator of the Right upon the envelope, a man who had played a part at Versailles analogous to that which M. de Mun fills in the Chamber to-day — Henry de Poyanne.

All which shows that the most intimate friends very often indulge in only semi-confidences, and proves, as a modern cynic says, that if you want the whole truth you 2^ must go to those who owe you some small grudge. Since, if Madame de Candolle suspected, as we have seen, that De Poyanne cared for Juliette, she was a thousand miles from thinking that the feeling was reciprocal. For it was impossible to read the placid tribute at the close without concluding that the politician held the foremost place, in all sincerity, in the sweet widow’s sentiments. One might also read between the lines an excuse in advance, as indeed was meant, for Juliette’s frowardness in persisting in seeing what “ our Casal ” was like. Would not Poyanne, who this day was to take a prominent part in an important debate, be rather scandalized if he knew that the woman of his heart had not only put off meeting him with a rather frivolous excuse, but was actually going to dine side by side with a man he thought he had the best of reasons to despise ? Juliette had not told Gabrielle that several times, especially on behalf of Pauline de Corcieux, Poyanne had spoken of Casal in terms of absolute disgust. Had she looked her own writing in the face she might have discovered the signs of incipient

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rebellion against the authority of Henry de Poyanne. And then she might have stood aghast at the thought that the step from incipient rebellion to open rupture is quite an easy one ; and so she might not have sent the letter, and not have gone to dine with Madame de Candolle ; and then she might have never met Casal, and this story would not have been written, for the life of Juliette de Tilliere would have been entirely different. But when we w’rite to those we care for it is seldom that we analyze our sentences ; and, even if we tried to, we might fail, sometimes, to catch our own inner meanings. Thus lightly are the threads of our destinies woven from the ’cobwebs of light words ; and half an hour later, when Juliette stopped her carriage in the Rue Montaigne to put the letter with her own hands into the box, she little thought that with it all her future was slipping through her well-gloved fingers, any more than Gabrielle dreamed, when she pressed her friend to meet Casal, she was pronouncing on the lovely widow a harsher sentence than immediate execution.

II. A New Friend

“ For curiosity the child

Snatches at that or this ;

Till, by a butterfly beguiled.

It oversteps the abyss.”

— Arwn.

Madame de Tilli^re had a pretty way, when she knew she was going out to dinner, of finishing her toilet in advance, so as to be on hand to wait on her mother at dinner, even if she could not share the meal. Madame de Nan^ay was in the daily habit, in accordance with thirty years of country life, of sitting down to table at 6:45 to the minute. The dining-room on the first floor, large enough to seat a dozen persons comfortably, was common to the two. Madame de Nangay worshipped her beautiful Juliette, and the latter was equally proud of her mother — sentiments by no means too common in ^ every-day families — so that the whole house had been arranged, and daily usages detailed, in order that their lives should flow on gently side by side where they might not commingle. The elder lady had her own reception-room, her own servants, and kept her even tenor independently of Juliette ; winter or summer up at six o’clock, frost, rain, dark, or shine, so as to attend mass at the neighboring convent ; with equal regularity to bed

A New Friend.

at nine p.m.; seldom descending to the ground-floor. It was her wish that her daughter should be free as air in all her ways and movements, yet in part protected by a mother’s benevolent presence. With admirable selfabnegation, Madame de Nanpay would hardly allow her daughter to spoil her by waiting at table so assiduously every time Juliette went out to dinner or to a reception. When first, three years before our story opens, Henry -■ de Poyanne began to pay his court to Juliette, how many excuses had he not invented to come and feast his worldweary eyes on the spectacle of such a mother waited on by such a daughter — the last in grandest evening costume, ^crowned with jewels as a daybreak lily with dewdrops the other evermore in sombre black ; the serenity of the dear old home illumined by two ancient silver lamps, the semi-silences of love a benediction on the lonely widow’s simple meal.

This evening Madame de Tilliere wore a dress of rose-colored satin, festooned and subdued by draperies of black lace. In her ears and amidst her waving, delicate light-brown hair, with just a little glint of gold in it, shone speckless pearls. Her corsage just lent to sight the fair lines of a rather slender bust, and revealed the statuesque neck poised on shoulders that would have graced a waternymph. In Juliette one beheld the beauty of a woman and a girl at once. As she waited on Madame de Nangay, now filling her glass with wine and v/ater, now peeling a pear for her, or playfully sharing a saucerful of fruit and milk, her delicate white arms and small hands were seen at their best, had there been anybody except her own dear mother to behold. Brighter than ever the daughter’s blue eyes shone with her task of love, betraying none of i8 those deep-sea flashes that were wont to gleam under the influence of emotions of less simplicity. Her mother reflected, as beloved ones will, the glow of Juliette’s expression.