CICELY.

A STORY OF THREE YEARS.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

ENNIS GRAHAM,

AUTHOR OF “SHE WAS YOUNG AND HE WAS OLD,” “NOT WITHOUT THORNS,” ETC. ETC.

LONDON TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.

[All rights reserved.]

PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO., LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.

As long as Love continues the most imperious passion, and Death the surest fact of our mingled and marvellous humanity, so long will the sweetest and truest music upon earth be ever in the minor key.

To my Cicely.

December 30th, 1873.

CONTENTS.

Vol.1

I. WIDOW LAFON’S SOUP

II. MR. GUILDFORD OF SOTHERNBAY

III. “LITTLE MASTER”

IV. A SECOND SUMMONS

V. “COME INTO THE GARDEN, MAUD”

VI. “LE JEUNE MILORD”

VII. SOME ARE WISE, SOME OTHERWISE

VIII. “THE WITCHCRAFT OF A TEAR”

IX. OF THE SAME OPINION STILL

Vol. 2.

I. WORK AND PLAY

II. SHADOWS BEFORE.

III. BY THE OLD WATER-MILL

IV. MAN AND WOMAN

V. ONE OF MANY

VI. LES PAPILLONS

VII. FAILING MISS WINTER.

VIII. SOME SUMMER DAYS

IX. A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

X. FORGIVE ME, AND GOOD BYE

Vol. 3.

I. DÉSILLUSIONNÉE

II. AFTER THE BALL

III. THE NEWS THAT FLIES FAST

IV. “TO MY AIN COUNTREE”

V. “HOW LITTLE YOU UNDERSTAND”

VI. A NEW TERROR.

VII. ALONE

VIII. MADAME GENTILLE

IX, A SOUTHERN WINTER

X. AMIEL TO THE FORE

XI. FRIEND AND WIFE

WIDOW LAFON’S SOUP.

“Why a stranger—when he sees her In the street even—smileth.”

ONLY early April, but already a very hot day—what we dwellers in the north would consider an almost unendurably hot day! But in the pleasantest part of the sunny south of France, heat, up to a certain point, is endurable enough, thanks to the perfect purity of the air, ever freshened by the near neighbourhood of mountains and sea.

Still it was very nearly too hot to be pleasant. So thought Geneviève Casalis, the little daughter of the senior pasteur of the Reformed Church at Hivèritz, as she sat under the shade of the wooden gallery running round the little square, half garden, half court-yard, on one side of which was her father’s house. It was Sunday afternoon; Geneviève had been twice at church, and since returning from the second service had read the allotted portion of the history of the Reformation in France, on which she and her brothers would be cross-questioned by their father in the evening. So, Sunday being in certain practical respects a day of rest in the Protestant household, Geneviève felt that her duties for the time were over, and that she might indulge in a little idle meditation. Her Bible and her book of Cantiques lay on her knees; the expression of her girlish face was serious and thoughtful,—“devout,” a casual observer might probably have pronounced it; what and where were her thoughts?

“Ah! but it is truly too vexatious,” she was thinking to herself, “that I should again to-day have had no other dress to wear but this. To see that great awkward Stéphanie Rousille and her sisters in their new piqués,—not that they could ever look bien mises in anything, but it was too provoking. I must absolutely beg maman again to arrange our summer dresses. Poor maman! she has had much to consider lately I know well. It is not that I would add to her troubles; ah! no, but I am sure I could myself alter my last year’s dresses for Eudoxie, which would already save some expense, if maman would let me buy one, or, at the most, two new piqués for myself. Or one piqué and one muslin? I saw some quite charming muslins in the window at Laussat’s yesterday.”

Her glance fell discontentedly on the black alpaca, her Sunday dress for many months past. It was scarcely perhaps the dress for a hot summer’s day, but still far from unbecoming; for it fitted Geneviève’s pretty figure to perfection, and was relieved from sombreness by the neat white collar and coquettish little bow of blue ribbon at the throat.

“This dress,” continued the girl, “will be my every-day one next winter. I think too it will be well to take it when we go to the mountains, there are chilly days there sometimes. Ah! if only it were the time for going. Still six weeks at least, and to me Hivèritz is detestable when every one has left it. How different people’s lives are—how I wish my father were rich and noble, like some of those grand English who come here for the winter and amuse themselves so well! How I wish—”

But at this point Geneviève’s wishes were interrupted. “Mademoiselle,” said a voice at her side, “mademoiselle, madame vous fait demander.”

Geneviève looked up with a momentary impatience. “What is there then, Mathurine?” she asked.

“Only that madame wished that mademoiselle and mademoiselle Eudoxie and I should take the soup to the Widow Lafon. ’Tis not so far, mademoiselle, only round by the allée vert to the other side of St. Cyprien—une gentille promenade, à present qu’il ne fait plus si chaud,” added the old servant coaxingly, observing the slight cloud of unwillingness on Geneviève’s pretty face.

The girl rose slowly. “Ah! well, it must be, I suppose,” she said. “But why take Eudoxie, Mathurine? She is so tiresome when we are out, always wanting to run up the banks and pick flowers. I would much rather—”

“Mais c’est madame qui le veut,” interrupted Mathurine hastily, with a slight gesture of warning; and, turning in the direction of the maid-servant’s eyes, Geneviève caught sight of her mother coming out of the doorway just behind them.

Madame Casalis was tall and thin, with still glossy black hair and bright dark eyes. She looked as if she might once have been pretty and graceful. She was still young; young to be the mother of eighteen-years old Geneviève; but much care and many anxieties had done their usual work, leaving her in appearance considerably older than in years. She had had a hard time of it in many ways; for on her, by nature active, vigorous, and capable, rather than on her gentle, less practical husband, had fallen the greater share of the burden and heat of the day. Under such circumstances some amount of chronic “fussiness,” of irritability even, was, if not inevitable, surely, at least, excusable? Be that as it may, it is very certain that it would have fared but ill with the six young Casalis had their mother belonged to the more easy-going order of matrons. Yet it is to be doubted if in every direction Geneviève’s mother was wholly appreciated: the full depth of a tenderness and devotion which manifest themselves rarely save in ceaseless action is seldom justly estimated; the poetry which only finds expression in prose is too often ignored, its very existence little suspected, least of all by those who benefit most thereby.

But Madame Casalis was on the whole content; she left the dreaming to her husband, the prettinesses to pretty Geneviève, too busy to think about herself at all. And in her own domain she reigned supreme.

“What is there then, Geneviève?” she inquired, as she drew near to her daughter and old Mathurine. “Dost thou not like my little commission, my child? The soup will not be good if we keep it till to-morrow, and the old mother Lafon is always so pleased to see thee.”

Her mother’s tone was unusually gentle. Geneviève felt emboldened by it to express her real objection to the arrangement.

“I like very well to go, mamma,” said Geneviève amiably, “if it might be alone with Mathurine. But with Eudoxie it will take us so long. She is so full of life, the poor child; and surtout le Dimanche, one meets tant de monde, and then it would be so distressing if she soiled her best frock with picking flowers and jumping on the banks. But of course it is as thou wishest, chère mamma.”

A slight look of disappointment crossed Madame Casalis’ face. She would have been glad of an hour’s rest from little Eudoxie’s chatter. But somewhat to Genevievè’s surprise, she answered quickly,

“It may be better for la petite to stay with me. Hasten then, my child; thou shalt go alone with Mathurine.”

Geneviève gave all the credit to her judicious suggestion of possible damage to the best frock; she little suspected that today of all days it would have been hard for her mother to oppose any wish she had expressed. She was turning to go into the house to prepare for her walk, when her mother stopped her.

“When thou shalt be returned, my child,” she said, “come at once to thy father and me. He wishes to talk to thee a little. We shall be in his room;” and she re-entered the house as she spoke, giving Geneviève no opportunity to ask any of the questions her curiosity immediately suggested.

“What could mamma mean, thinkest thou, Mathurine?” she said, a few minutes later, when she and her companion had set off on their errand. “What can my father have to speak about to me?”

“Perhaps some great monsieur, some milord, perhaps—songe à demander ma demoiselle?” said the old servant gravely. “Mademoiselle n’est plus enfant, on voit bien.”

“Nonsense, Mathurine,” exclaimed Geneviève impatiently, with a little toss of her head, “dost thou not understand it will not be so with me. I am Protestant and half English! Thinkest thou I would marry any one, even the greatest ‘milord’ in the world, if he did not make himself agreeable to me myself in the first place? And what is as much to the purpose, perhaps, I have no dot. Great milords are not so ready to marry portionless girls as all that, you silly Mathurine.”

“Pardon, mademoiselle. It is true, I forget often that madame has the English ideas, and it is quite to be understood that mademoiselle should have them too. But what mademoiselle says about having no dot I avow I do not understand. For, à ce que l’on me dit, en Angleterre tout cela est bien différent. I have heard that the demoiselles there, the demoiselles sans dot, je veux dire, se marient souvent très bien,—mais très bien,” with an impressive little pause, “above all, a demoiselle so beautiful, so gracieuse, as mademoiselle.”

“Sometimes perhaps it is so,” said Genevieve with an air of having seriously considered the matter; “still on the whole I would rather take my chance with, than without, a dot. For I am not sure, Mathurine, that I should like to marry an English man, not even a ‘milord.’ Life in England must be often triste, and I imagine also that the husbands there are un peu sévères; expect their wives to amuse themselves enough with the children and the ménage. Bah! that would not suit me. When I marry, it shall not be into that sort of life. I have had enough of it at home. I must have a husband who will let me do as I like; he must adore me, and he must be rich. Oh, so rich!”

“Et beau, mademoiselle,” suggested Mathurine, evidently thinking that as wishing was the order of the day, there was no need to limit the perfections of her young lady’s hero. “Mademoiselle should have un bel homme; mademoiselle who is so pretty.”

“Yes,” agreed Geneviève. “Oh! yes; I should like him to be handsome, though that is not a point of the most important. But every one may not find me pretty, Mathurine? Perhaps, it is only that thou hast taken care of me since I was a baby. Tell me, Mathurine, wast thou pretty in thy youth?” she went on with a sudden change of tone. “Why didst thou never marry? Is it that one has never asked for thee?”

“But no, mademoiselle,” replied the girl, though without the slightest appearance of offence. “One asked for me more than once. But the rich parti was old and ugly, and, one had told me, not too good to his wives—il en avait déjà eu trois—and the young parti was poor, mais très pauvre, and had besides an aged father to support, and I, mademoiselle, had then an aged mother. So what could we do? We waited and waited, but times grew worse instead of better, and other troubles came, and my poor boy and I we lost heart. Then there was a rich widow, a paysanne only, by origin, but her husband had left her his property, who took a fancy to my Etienne, and what prospect had we, that I should keep him? Ah, mademoiselle, dans cette vie, il faut bien souvent marcher sur le caur à deux pieds! The end of it was, Etienne married the widow, and I—enfin, me voilà, mademoiselle, la vieille Mathurine, à votre service.”

“And was Etienne happy with the widow?” asked Geneviève.

“I never heard to the contrary, mademoiselle,” answered Mathurine. “It was many years before I saw him again; then, as it happened one day—it was the neuvaine at the convent close to the village where we lived, and madame, the wife of Etienne, had come with the other fermières of the neighbourhood, and he had driven her over, and as I was saying—”

But Geneviève was not destined to hear the particulars of the meeting of Mathurine and Etienne, for just as the old woman had reached this point her story was interrupted by a sudden cry of warning. It came too late, however. They were crossing the road to enter the allée verte, the ‘Alameda’ of the inhabitants of Hivèritz, when a large open carriage, drawn by two horses, came swiftly round a sharp corner, and in a moment both the young girl and her attendant were thrown to the ground, apparently right under the wheels. There were screams from the carriage, shouts from the by-standers, a general commotion. Mathurine was quickly extricated, still clutching tightly the handle of the little tin soup-can, whose contents lay in a pool on the white dusty road. She declared herself unhurt, and was evidently far more concerned about the fate of her charge than about her own.

“Mais, où est-elle donc, mademoiselle Geneviève, ma petite demoiselle? Ah! qu’est-ce que madame va me dire!” she exclaimed frantically. “Est-elle donc tuée, la chère enfant? La voilà qui ne me ré ponds pas. Dieu, quel horreur!” she continued, as she at last caught sight of Geneviève, pale as death, with eyes closed and apparently quite unconscious, lifted in the arms of a gentleman, who had sprung from the box of the carriage on the first alarm.

“Is she much hurt? Are there any bones broken? Don’t you think you had better not move her till some one can fetch a doctor? Good Heavens, how unfortunate it is! Oh dear! Miss Winter, what will Sir Thomas say?” exclaimed one of the two ladies in the carriage. She was what is euphemistically called “middle-aged,” though to reckon by the old “three score years and ten,” she must a good long time ago have passed the meridian of life. But she was well preserved and well dressed, refined-looking, and on the whole sufficiently pleasing in appearance if not to disarm at least not to suggest criticism. Just now her face was nearly as pale as Geneviève’s own, and as she turned to her companion she seemed on the point of tears.

“Don’t distress yourself so, keep calm, I beseech you, dearest Lady Frederica,” entreated Miss Winter, who, fortunately, had her wits about her; indeed the keeping them well in hand may be said to have been a part of her profession. “Ah! here is some one belonging to the poor girl. What does she say, Mr. Fawcett?”

“I can’t understand her,” replied the gentleman, to whom poor Mathurine had been vainly trying to make herself intelligible. “She talks so confoundedly fast. Can’t you make her out, Miss Winter?”

Miss Winter did her best, but it was no easy matter, for poor Mathurine, in her distress and excitement, unconsciously relapsed at every two or three words, into her native patois. She was begging the young man to lay Geneviève on the ground, for Mr. Fawcett was very tall and Mathurine was very short; in her darling’s present position, therefore, it was almost impossible for the poor woman to obtain a clear view of her face.

“She will soon come to herself, is it not?” Mathurine was saying “She will open her pretty eyes, and will be frightened if she does not see her old Mathurine. If monsieur will but lay her down—see, I can spread my shawl. Ah! but monsieur does not comprehend. What then shall I say?”

She clasped her hands in despair. Miss Winter began a laboured sentence in the most correct French and with the most English of accents. In her turn Mathurine was looking hopelessly puzzled, when, to the amazement of all, a sweet faint voice was suddenly heard in soft tones thanking “monsieur” for his kindness, begging him to deposit its owner beside Mathurine. And to the relief of the English party, the words were in their own tongue, spoken too, without hesitation, and with only the soupçon of a French accent.

“I am not hurt, not wounded at all, I assure monsieur,” said Geneviève, while the bright red rushed to her pale face. “’Twas but the—the shock—is that the word? I can hold myself upright very well at present, and monsieur must be so—géné. Mathurine will take care of me.”

She struggled out of Mr. Fawcett’s arms, as she spoke. He still half held her, however, and but for this she would have fallen. As it was, she grew very pale again and clung to Mathurine’s sturdy figure for support.

“’Tis but a little weakness, my angel,” said the nurse, in her delight at seeing that Geneviève was uninjured, throwing her usual respectful manner to the winds. “She has no pain, mademoiselle chérie, n’est-ce-pas? Only an étourdissement in the head. Naturally, la pauvre enfant! Que le bon dieu soit loué, that it is no worse! If we had only a glass of water; then she could perhaps return to the house!”

Mdlle. Casalis repeated the request in English.

“A glass of water,” said Mr. Fawcett, with a smile. “I think a little brandy would be more to the purpose. Don’t you think so, Miss Winter? Mother,” he continued, turning to the lady in the carriage, “I think our best plan will be to drive mademoiselle—I beg your pardon,” to Geneviève, “I don’t think I heard your name.”

“Casalis,” murmured the girl, but Mr. Fawcett did not catch the word.

“To drive the young lady to our hotel,” he went on; “it is close at hand, and then when you have rested a little,” he turned again to Geneviève, “you must allow us to drive you home.”

“I would like better to go to the house—home, I mean—now, thank you,” said Geneviève. “It is not very far—Rue de la Croix. I think I can walk now.”

“Pray do not attempt it,” said Lady Frederica. “It will be much better to do as my son proposes. Miss Winter, will you help the young lady to get into the carriage? Perhaps,” she added to Geneviève, “your servant (‘maid’ she was going to have said, but poor Mathurine’s appearance puzzled her; her short stout figure, sunburnt face, and fête-day cap by no means suggesting the conventional lady’s-maid) “will follow us if you will direct her to the hotel. What is the name of our hotel, Miss Winter? I never can remember; we have been at so many lately.”

“Hotel d’Espagne,” replied Miss Winter briskly, having by this time settled Geneviève comfortably in the place of honour by Lady Frederica’s side, and seated herself opposite. Then the handsome young ‘milord’ jumped up on to the box again, and the carriage drove off. The little crowd that the accident had collected dropped off one by one, leaving Mathurine standing alone in the middle of the road, shading her eyes with her hand, as she watched the carriage disappear.

“But he is distingué, ce jeune milord!” she murmured to herself, “those are the English of the first rank without doubt, and mademoiselle so beautiful, so gracieuse. Quel dommage she had not a pretty new robe d’été to-day, like the demoiselles Rousille! Still it might have been spoilt, for she is covered with dust. And a dress of alpaca one can brush. Without doubt it is all for the best.”