An old folks' wooing

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I

In a retired corner nean the fireplace, where he was equally removed from the danger of being run down by the dancers and the risk of taking cold from insidious draughts, Fontenoy, crush-hat in hand, stood gazing on the phantasmagoric spectacle of black coats and gleaming shoulders. He was not particularly elated, neither was he specially bored by his contemplation of those evolutions wherein he had for a long time been a participator, and in which, for some years past, he had ceased to figure, unless under constraint and duress. Rare indeed are they who waltz for the pleasure of it when their fortieth year is past ! Should some minister take it in his head to create a special decoration for them, perhaps we should see an increase in the number of waltzers ; but in that event it would be for the glory, not for the pleasure of the thing.

‘‘To think that I was that way once!’’ reflected Fontenoy, as he beheld some young men when the waltz came to an end surreptitious!/

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take their handkerchiefs from their pocket and slip out into the vestibule to wipe their perspiring brow. “I have danced — not too madly — I have supped — pretty much everywhere — I have — ’ ’

His retrospective meditation was interrupted by a hand laid lightly on his arm. He turned to look at the interrupter and discovered him to be an old friend.

‘^What, my dear sir, are you here?” said Fontenoy, with as rnuch deference as the place and circumstances permitted. The current of young people setting in the direction of the buffet occasionally backed up against them, producing little eddies and whirlpools that were the reverse of comfortable; he adroitly changed places with Comte Forest, standing before him and affording him a measure of protection.

“Did you think, because I have selected as the refuge of my old age a spot less crowded than the Boulevard Malesherbes, that I had turned hermit out and out? I live at Cerisy, I admit, although the locality is not of the most fashionable; but during the months of January and February I am to be met with in the world — I have not entirely renounced its pomps and vanities, althciugh I am no longer an active sharer in its labors. And you, how do you spend. your time?”

“I am a looker-on,” Fontenoy replied; “I watch the dancers — and I watch people live.”

“You live too, so I’m told, and don’t find

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life such a very heavy burden,” said Forest, scrutinizing his friend from the corner of an eye that was bright and restless as a bird’s. “I saw Mme. Fontenoy just now; she is handsome as an angel — I congratulate you.”

Fontenoy bowed with the air of a man to whom the compliment was an old story; no one ever conversed with him for five minutes in a ball-room without alluding to the beauty of his wife. The stream of men and women had grown thinner and thinner and finally dribbled out; the spacious room appeared still more spacious in its emptiness; here and there lay scattered on the floor a strip of tulle, bits of lace and ribbon, a flower that had graced some corsage; the electric lights shed their impartial light upon all these things and on a few dejected young men who had been unable to force an entrance to the supper-room.

“Let!s sit down,” said the Comte; ‘‘my legs are conscious of their burden of seventy-two years, and I don’t know why it is that they tire more quickly on the waxed floor than on our woodland paths. How young you look, Fontenoy — positively you do! It is astonishing! And yet — no one can hear us — you disclosed the date of your birth on the day when I had the pleasure of acting as witness at your marriage. That was nineteen years ago. You were thirty then, my young friend ; that makes you forty-nine to-day. You can own up to forty and not be afraid; no one will think of adding more than +vvo or three years.”

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“What difference does it make?” Fontenoy murmured with an absent air.

‘ ‘ Eh ! it makes a great difference, my young friend, particularly as we begin to grow old. I say we; it is merely a manner of expressing myself. What a pity it is that your children did not live ! You would have to-day a marriageable daughter and a son about graduating from college. That would steady you and give you something to think about.”

Fontenoy checked an incipient yawn. The old bore ! a fine time he had selected for delivering his lecture !

“You have enjoyed yourself, Fontenoy; you have had a good time. I am not blaming you for it, understand ; but there comes a time when, if we wish to make old bones, we must give up enjoying ourselves — so as not to add to the enjoyment of others. The transition is not agreeable; it comes hard. I settled the queS^tion by going to live in the country. The remedy was heroic, you tnow ! But I was an old bachelor ; for a married man there are more difficulties in the way.”

Fontenoy listened more attentively. He felt that Forest was right ; but there are truths that we do not like to hear. We tolerate them sometimes, but only in the privacy of our own minds, where we handle them very tenderly, on rainy days or after a night of bad luck at cards.

“The first white hair,” Forest went on, “amounts to nothing at all; we pluck it out and say to ourselves: ‘K-ature has strange

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freaks sometimes ! ’ and think no more of it. But when we find a whole grove of them growing on our head we do not dismiss the matter so lightly. And that is not so bad as to lose all your hair. When I was sixty I had to provide myself with a little ‘head- warmer’ — not out of vanity, I beg you to believe, but I was continually taking cold, and as I value my precious life — You will never have need of that, though! Your crop is pepper-and-salt, but it is superb ! You look like one of Clouet’s portraits with your square- trimmed beard and your hair en brosse / ’ ’

Fontenoy smiled ; while one may not be a coxcomb, a truth from the lips of a friend is never disagreeable.

“You and your wife are an extremely good-looking pair; your portraits would look well hung as pendants in a gallery. What a pretty girl Mile. Edmee de Pressac was the day you conducted her to the altar ! She made a picture that one does not soon forget. And charming withal, distinguished in mind and person, and so amiable! You were singularly blessed, dear sir, in making a marriage of expediency, which was at the same time a marriage of love. You will have gathered all the flowers of life. But here come the men, maids and matrons, with re-enforcements ; they are going to abandon themselves to saltatory exercise, and I am going to bed. Good-night. ’ ’

He gave his hand to Fontenoy, who retained it in his own.

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‘‘Will you come and dine with us some day?” he asked.

“Certainly; provided it is a family dinner, or at least a very small one. And then you must know that I don’t make a point of truffles. I have eaten such quantities of them in my time that to-day I believe I would rather have a potato. Pardon a woodman’s bluntness.”

The old man vanished, leaving his friend in a somewhat troubled frame of mind. When we are young the idea of old age does not obtrude itself on us, or if it does the image is so dimmed and blurred by the mists of the remote future that its impression is fleeting and unsubstantial. But when we have passed our second youth and -are approaching the third, although it may be dispiriting to reflect that the time is at hand when we shall have no youth at all, there are occasions when we are forced to look this disagreeable contingency in the face. When one is alone he dismisses it as best he can ; but let it be propounded by some one else with its hard, confirmatory facts, and the idea takes possession of one and refuses to be exorcised.

Pontenoy was a sensible man, or very nearly so. He had no raw head and bloody bones to disturb his peace of mind. He knew that he must grow old, like every one else, and that, on the whole, this was probably the best thing that could happen him. He therefore made a mental promise to give this strange conversation further consideration at some future time. The present moment was hardly propitious to reflec-

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tion of any kind ; for the crowd had come back and resumed possession of the room, and the hospitable corner which had afforded him shelter earlier in the evening was now occupied by a fat, bald-headed gentleman with gold-bowed spectacles, who was inquisitively scrutinizing every one in his vicinity. All at once, Fontenoy perceived that he was unusually fatigued. What could be the cause of it? Was it the games of billiards he had played before coming there, or his horseback ride of the afternoon? or was it because he had not got to bed until four o’clock that morning? But that was nothing more than the ordinary round of his daily occupations, and they had never caused him any inconvenience before — a slight momentary sensation of fatigue on rising, maybe, that was quickly put to flight by the cold bath and a few minutes’ exercise with the dumb-bells.

“I’ve a great mind to go home,” he said to himself; “if Edmee don’t mind we’ll leave.”

He looked to right and left, and finally discovered his wife — the center of a group — seated near a pillar and overarched by a cluster of tall palms.

“ True as gospel, she was never prettier in her life!” he murmured to himself, contemplating her admiringly. “And yet she has thirty-eight years to her account, even as I have forty-nine. We are a well-preserved couple!”

He smiled — a not particularly happy smile it was — at his own conceit, and bent his steps toward Mine. Fontenoy.

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Mme. Fontenoy was conversing, not without animation, but with the placidity of a woman who, during four or five months of the year, has accomplished these social observances for two lustrums ; which gives the very respectable total of, say, two thousand evenings “out,” due allowance being made for time lost by illness and other unavoidable causes. Unless a woman, by reason of qualities inherent in herself, finds society particularly attractive, she is apt to discover that pleasures of this nature pall after being exercised for such length of time. Therefore Mme. Fontenoy, seeing her husband coming toward her, rose and prepared to go with him.

“Where is Juliette?” he asked.

“Over there with the young girls. Shall I go and fetch her?”

“If you v/ill be so kind.”

But Juliette had seen them talking and came to them.

“Together, you? Oh, that is a very bad sign,” said she. “When my uncle and my aunt are seen together, you may be sure that they have either just come or are just going away. And I have promised to dance the cotilion!”

Fontenoy was in a quandary. He did not like to disappoint Juliette, whom he loved and petted as if she had been a bright-colored, graceful bird ; but, on the other hand, his fatigue was increasing and threatened to become insupportable.

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‘‘Auntie,” the young lady entreated, “ my dear, good aunt, I beseech you ! don’t condemn your naughty niece to go to bed yet. ’ ’

“With whom do you dance the cotilion?” asked Mrne. Fontenoy.

“With little Descrosses. I know very well that there is neither money nor glory to be gained, auntie,” said Juliette in a low voice, and with a delicious smile that parted her red lips somewhat obliquely over her regular white teeth. “It’s just for the fun there’s in it! He is so amusing ! Have pity on a poor girl who is working hard to secure a husband and doesn’t have a good time every night!”

Mme. Fontenoy was unable to resist such an appeal. “Well, my friend,” said she, addressing her husband, “do you go home without me. I will take Juliette home, and Francois will be sufficient protection for me. Only please don’t forget to send the carriage back.”

Two hours later, while conducting Juliette home to Mme. Chassagny’s, her aunt could not resist the desire, natural enough in a chaperon, to learn whether “little Descrosses’ ” position toward the young girl was exactly what she had stated it to be. Girls are such strange creatures! and the little blind god sometimes shoots his arrows where you would least expect it. That Descrosses was not on the eligible list was a fact universally submitted. He v/as twenty-seven years old, possessed an income of six thousand francs, and was entirely destitute of talent or aptitude for any of the pro-

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fessions. That is, of those professions which giv^e a man standing and authorize him to aspire to a great fortune by marriage. Descrosses was a lawyer, but he would never again address a jury: his first case had finished him.

His client was a poor devil indicted for burglary. It was the opportunity of a lifetime! the young lawyer said. With no foundation to build on he reared a most extraordinary rhetorical structure, bristling at every point with fun and paradox and every sort of ridiculous and irrelevant ornament; the general effect being that of a display of fireworks on which rain has fallen and the various pieces of which go off when least expected, now with a bang, now with a sulphurous fizz and sputter, driving the artificers to shelter, spreading consternation among the spectators, and bringing the fete to an untimely end. Never in the memory of man had the Palais resounded with such merriment; the president alleged a violent cold in the head as an excuse for keeping his handkerchief constantly before the judicial face. The prisoner himself squirmed and wriggled on his bench Between his hilarious guardians. The peroration elicited a storm of bravos and applause such as is never heard save in the playhouses; but M. Joseph Prudhomme does not care to be amused outside the temple of Melpomene. The young lawyer’s harangue was voted flippant and impertinent. It is not permissible to ridicule the vices and miseries of a social state which, etc. To make a long story short, thanks to a cross-grained and

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punctilious attorney-general and to a jury that took an unusually serious view of its duties, the unlucky burglar received the maximum penalty awarded by the law.

‘‘ What a success!” said Descrosses’s friends, •‘for a beginner.”

“Yes,” replied M. Joseph Prudhomme, “it is his first case, but it is also his last.”

He was quickly made to understand this. The imprudent man, with his keen wit and trenchant sallies, had mowed his harvest of glory before it was ripe; prospective clients, seeing that he had no standing with the court, carried their cases to other lawyers, men of less brilliancy but more solidity. Descrosses husbanded what reputation he had gained and waited.

“Some of these days,” said he, “the world will get over being stupid and tiresome, and then I’ll make a figure in the magistracy. What a president of assizes I would make! People wouldn’t go to sleep in my court-room, I warrant you!”

“You began too early,” Comte Forest, who had long known his family, said to him one day. “You forgot the story of Sixtus Y., my young friend; and yet what a lesson is that which the grand old man has handed down to us! to hide our light to-day in order that it may shine with glorious brilliancy to-morrow. Why don’t you set up as a consulting lawyer?” suggested his venerable mentor.

“The thing is not to be thought of. A man

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must be bom to that, don’t you see; and I was born for something quite different.”

“For what, pray?”

“That’s just where the trouble is! I don’t know. Perhaps to paint like Daumier; only my talent has never been cultivated, and, I’m too old now to enter the Ecole des Beaux- Arts. I never could do much with a pencil. I think I’ll be a professional leader of the German. That will probably keep down my superfluous flesh while I am young.”

Calling to mind these well known traits of Descrosses’s character, it seemed clear to Mme. Fontenoy that such an aggregate was not likely to arouse any very tender sentiments in her niece’s bosom, and still —

“Did you find your partner in the cotilion as amusing as ever to-night?” she asked, just as the carriage was drawing up in front of Mme. Chassagny’s door.

“I nearly cried my eyes out laughing, auntie. I’m sure I don’t know where he picks up all his yarns. And then he is not a bad-hearted fellow, either; it’s incredible!”

“He ought to have something to make up for that in which he is deficient.”

“Do you mean that he is ugly? Do you really consider him ugly, auntie? He has such an intelligent face! Here we are. Thanks, my dear aunt; it was angelically good of you to waste half your night cn me. We’ll make it up to you when mamma gets well.”

She planted a kiss on Mme. Fontenoy’s cheek.

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Jamped lightly to the curb, barely grazing with her fingers the sleeve of the tall footman, and disappeared.

“I am not so very much the wiser after all,” Edmee reflected as she drove away. “The only thing calculated to throw any light on the subject is the freedom with which the girl spoke of that merry-andrew. But what does that prove? Juliette is not like other girls.”

II

On the morning after the soiree, Fabien Malvois awoke with a vague impression of something forgotten that should have been attended to, something extremely urgent and important; one of those impressions that haunt a man ail day and destroy his pleasure. He jumped from his bed to the floor precipitately, as if about to run for a train, slipped on his dressing-gown with feverish haste, threw back his curtains and gave a look at the leaden sky that threatened snow, then stopped and began to think.

“I would like to know why I am hurrying like this,” he said to himself. “I have nothing BO pressing on hand for this morning. But what can it be that I neglected yesterday?”

The glance that he cast about the chamber rested on his dress-coat, its button-hole decked with a faded flower, which told him nothing.

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He had passed a pleasant evening with friends at the theater, and had finished up the night at a restaurant famed for its excellent suppers. There was nothing strange in that; it was not the first time, and would not be the last.

‘‘But what can I have forgotten?” Fabien asked himself as he crossed over to his dressing-room, “I was not tipsy, I did not touch a card — and I was in by half-past three o’clock, which is a very respectable hour. What had I to do? for I certainly had something to do.”

The faculty of thought was suspended for a minute or two while he was under the salubrious influence of the shower-bath. The valet’s duties were restricted to brushing his master’s clothes, and the friction that he inflicted on himself occupied him entirely. As he was returning to his bedroom — warmed and cooled at the same time — his eyes lighted on the corner of a square of bristol board, half-buried under a pile of newspapers of the day before. He took it, looked at it, and threw it down disgustedly.

“ I knew very well I had forgotten something. It was that ball — that long-talked-of ball at Mme. de Classens’ — which I had promised to attend, and where my dear cousin Fontenoy was to present me to a niece of his, or of his wife’s — I don’t know which; at all events, a charming young lady with a handsome dowry. And to think that it slipped my mind entirely — entirely! ”

With an expression of deep contrition on his face he reckoned up the visits that his heedless-

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ness would cost him : one to Madame de Classens, one to the person who had presented him to her, one to his cousin Fontenoy — who would present him to his wife — and one to Mme. Fontenoy, when she should have accorded him permission to show himself in her salon : in all, four. And he might have spared himself at least half the number by a slight exercise of memory.

“It is not so very bad, after all; a little disagreeable exertion will set things straight,” said Fabien to himself; for he did not like to remain longer than he could help under the influence of unpleasant thoughts. “And first for my cousin Fontenoy, for it is he who has most right to feel offended.”

A short while after breakfast Fabien, dressed in the newest style and faultlessly cravated, shod and gloved, sent in his card, and was received with the greatest affability. He was too discreet to make confession of his faulty memory, for that would have been an unpardonable blunder against the usages of good society; but pleaded instead as his excuse a business engagement of the highest importance.

Fontenoy listened to his tale with an indulgent smile, and when he had finished looked him in the eyes without questioning him too closely; he knew how much confidence to repose in the excuse, having frequently employed it himself.

“The sum and substance of the matter is that you were unable to come,” he said. “I am very sorry, but it is only adjourning our pleasure

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until another day. If you like I will introduce you to my wife; we do not dance here, but we give a dinner now and then, and sometimes have a little music r it comes to pretty much the same thing in the end.”

Having first inquired if Mme. Fontenoy was at home, the husband left Fabien alone for a moment and went to ask if she would receive them.

‘‘He is a very agreeable young fellow,” said he. “We are distant relatives, and his father, who was a man much older than I, was my friend. He has been abroad a good deal of late, but now he wants to settle down in Paris and marry. You are always so kind for everyone, my dear, I thought you would not refuse him your protection.”

“Bring him in,” Edmee simply replied.

Notwithstanding Mme. Fontenoy’s reputation for beauty, Fabien had not looked forward to seeing so pretty, and, still more, so young a woman. She had married early in life, and consequently had labored under the disadvantage of having to maintain her prestige over a period of twenty years. In place of the artistic restoration of a glorious past which he had expected to see, the young man was delighted to find a fair structure of the present day, and his attitude expressed, not surprise, which would have hardly been polite, but pleasure, which was becoming and gallant. They parted, after a few agreeable speeches had been interchanged, well pleased with one another.

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“He’s quite presentable, don’t you think so?” said Fontenoy, who had remained in his wife’s drawing-room. He was toying with a carved ivory paper-cutter, while she had resumed the book that she had laid aside on her husband’s entrance.

“He is altogether charming,” she replied in her low sweet voice. “How happens it that you have never brought him here before?”

“He had interests in England and was obliged to go out to India to settle his affairs. More recently he has met with ^afflictions — and has come into property.”

“That accounts for it all,” Edmee calmly said. “You wish to find him a wife?”

“If it be possible.”

“Well, we’ll arrange a dinner for him.”

“By the way, my dear, would you object to iiiviting our old friend Comte Forest some day? Only the party must be a very quiet one. He asked it as a favor.”

A pink flush rose to Edmee’s pale cheeks and her eyes sparkled with pleasure. “Our old friend Forest? I shall be delighted! Ah, how time flies! It is at least ten years since we have seen him, except for a casual meeting now and then. What a strange thing is society! We lose sight of one another and meet again after years and years.”

“Don’t you think it would be a good plan to have Forest and Fabien together? With a few others to keep them company, of course — your niece, for instance.”

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Edmee’s penetrating look rested for a moment on her husband’s tranquil face. ‘‘And some young women,” said she; “for women are a necessity at a dinner party, and the prettier they are the better.”

“Act as you think best; whatever you do cannot fail to please me,” Fontenoy politely said. “Suppose you ask the Verseleys?”

“Very well.”

“That’s understood, then. I owe an acknowledgment to Verseley. Are you going out?”

“Not now; later.”

“Then I will leave you. Good-by.”

Very graciously he bent and kissed the pretty hand that held the book, then replaced the paper-cutter on the table and left the room with the jaunty ease of a handsome, rich and happy man. When he was gone the volume slid gently from her lap to the floor and Edmee took no notice, for she had remained with eyes riveted on the sumptuous tapestries that masked the door through which her husband had vanished.

During the space of twenty years he had presented to her many men, most of whom were agreeable and attractive. She felt it was due to him to admit that he had always behaved nobly, generously, with a confldence that reflected honor on him. Was it confldence, or was it indifference? A little of both, perhaps. However that might be, she had always been treated by her husband with respect and esteem, and even a certain degree of friendship.

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She was conscious of a feeling of profound bitterness. She rose to escape her thoughts and passed into the adjoining room, which was her bedroom ; but she had scarce more than crossed the threshold when she turned about and gazed straight before her. The opposite door on which her eyes rested was that of her husband’s bedroom, separated from hers by that little drawing-room in which most of her time was spent. It was through that door, across that drawing-room, that he had come to her on their wedding night — twenty years ago.

In those days she had called him Gilbert and he had called her Edmee; now she addressed him as: ‘‘My friend,” and he responded with: “My dear.” They had never had a quarrel, nothing more serious than an occasional slight tiff, and those — thanks to their good breeding and good sense — had never been allowed to go very far. They had entered their new life with every imaginable worldly blessing, including that of a bishop in partibus^ who had solemnized their nuptials; with equal fortunes; that fine old mansion where they lived so comfortably; with beauty, intelligence, honor, troops of friends. What would they have more, the lucky creatures! They had all those things, and in addition, they had love; or, if not love, then a very sincere liking for each ether. They had had an inexpressibly delightful honeymoon, and after that, at intervals of two years, two children, whom they had lost during an epidemic of croup, when the poor little things were babies.

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And then in some way — neither of them could have told exactly how — that sorrow which should have been the means of bringing them closer to each other, served to some extent to part them ; perhaps because a mother’s life is bound up in her children, while the father feels less deepl}^ trials of this nature; perhaps, too, because a man’s affliction does not deter him from going abroad and pursuing his usual avocations, while custom confines a woman to the house. However that may be, the ribbon of silk and gold which had connected the young couple had imperceptibly loosed its knots; it held them imprisoned still, but not with its former rigor; it would have required but little to make the two ends fall asunder, never to be re-united.

Mme. Fcntenoy continued gazing at the door of her husband’s chamber; that and the corresponding one, the door of her own room, constituted the two ends of that nuptial ribbon. The tie had never been severed or loosed, because in twenty years those doors had never once been closed.