The Little Old Portrait

”‘It cannot go on for ever,’ he would say to his wife; ‘we may not live to see, but our children will, some terrible retribution on this unhappy land. Ah, if all masters were like ours! But I fear there are but few, even in his own family, think of the difference.’

“But when Pierre eagerly asked what he meant, he would say no more – he would say nothing to sow prejudice in the child’s heart. But from others the boy learnt something of what his father was thinking of, and as he grew older and understand still more, his heart ached sometimes with vague fear and anxiety, though not for himself.

”‘It would be a bad day for us all – a bad day for our poor mistress and the dear little lady – if the good Count were taken from us,’ he heard now and then, and the words always struck a cold chill to his heart; for the Count was by no means in good health – he had always been somewhat delicate, unable to take part much in field sports, and such amusement as absorbed the time of most of his country neighbours. He read much and thought much, and in many ways he was different from those among whom he lived. And though somewhat cold in manner, it was evident he was not so in heart, for all the little children in the village loved him as well as his beautiful and loveable young wife, and their dear little daughter, and beyond the limits even of his own domain he was spoken of as the good Count of Valmont.

“Suddenly, as the two children sat there in silence, a voice was heard calling —

”‘Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! wherever can the child have hidden herself? Mademoiselle, you are wanted at once in the drawing-room.’

“And as Edmée rose slowly, and perhaps rather unwillingly, to her feet, she saw coming along the terrace her mother’s new maid Victorine, to whom, it must be confessed, she was not partial.

”‘I am not hidden, Victorine,’ she said; ‘it is easy to see if one looks.’

”‘If one looks in proper places,’ said the maid pertly, ‘I never before saw a young lady always playing with a clodhopper!’ and she came forward as if about to take Edmée by the hand and lead her away. But she reckoned without her host.”

Chapter Three

Edmée drew herself away.

”‘Naughty Victorine!’ she said. ‘You shall not call my Pierrot ugly names. Come away, Pierrot; we won’t go with her.’

”‘But you must come, Mademoiselle Edmée; your lady mamma has sent for you,’ said Victorine, by no means pleased, but a little afraid of getting into some trouble with this determined young lady.

”‘Mamma has sent for me? Oh, then I will come. Come, Pierrot, mamma wants us in the drawing-room. You need not wait, Victorine; Pierre will bring me.’

“Victorine’s face grew very red.

”‘Nobody wants him,’ she said. ‘However, do as you please. Thank goodness, I am not that child’s nurse,’ she muttered as she walked off with her head in the air. She was in hopes that Pierre, and perhaps Edmée too, would get a good scolding if the boy made his appearance with her in the drawing-room; but she was much mistaken. The children entered the house together, crossing the large cool hall, paved with black and white marble, and then making their way down a side passage of red tiles. Here Pierre stopped: it was the way to the Countess’s own rooms, which opened into the large drawing-room by a side door.

”‘I will wait here,’ he said; ‘if my lady wants me you will come and tell me, will you not, Mademoiselle?’

“For it was not often that Pierre returned to the village without some message for his mother from the Countess, who considered her as one of her best and trustiest friends.

“Edmée ran into her mother’s room – there was no one there, but the doors, one at each side of a tiny anteroom, which led into the big drawing-room, were both open, and voices, those of her father and mother and of another person, reached her ears. She ran gaily in.

”‘Here you are at last, my pet!’ said her mother. ‘How long you have been! This gentleman has been waiting to see you; he has come all the way from Tours on purpose to – can Edmée guess what he has come for?’

“Edmée looked up in the stranger’s face with a half-puzzled, half-roguish expression, very pretty to see.

”‘All!’ exclaimed the young man, hastily; ‘excuse me, Madame – if the young lady could but be taken as she is now, it would be admirable.’

”‘All in disorder!’ exclaimed the countess, laughing. ‘Why I was just going to send her to have her hair brushed, and to have a clean white, frock put on; she is all tossed and tumbled.’

”‘All the better – nothing could be better,’ said the artist, for such he was, and the Count agreed with him. But it was not so easily done as said. Edmée could not at all see why she was to sit still on a stiff-backed chair when she so much preferred running about, and though she had jerked one dimpled shoulder out of the strap of her frock, she had by no means intended to keep it there, as the stranger insisted. Furthermore, she objected to looking up at him as he desired, and was on the point of telling him that he was not pretty enough to look at so much, when happily another idea struck her.

”‘Let Pierrot come in,’ she said; ‘Pierrot can come and tell me a story, and then I’ll sit still. Edmée always sits still when Pierrot tells her stories.’

”‘But how are we to get hold of him?’ said the Count, whose patience was rather tried by her fidgetiness. ‘There is not time to send to the village, the light will be failing’ – for it was already advanced in the afternoon – ‘and Mr Denis is so anxious to make the first sketch to-day.’

”‘Pierrot is not in the village; he is here at the door. Send for him and tell him to come in, and then Edmée will be so good – oh so good, and will sit so still!’

“The Countess rang a little bell which stood on a side table; an old man servant soon came to see what was wanted.

”‘Is Pierre Germain still here?’ she said; ‘if so, tell him to come in.’

“In a moment Pierre made his appearance. His boots were thick and clumsy, and clattered on the shining polished floor; he held his cap in both hands, and stayed an instant at the door to make his bow and to wait the lady’s pleasure. But, country boy though he was, he neither looked nor felt foolish or awkward, and the young artist, taking his eyes for a moment from his refractory little sitter, was struck by his bright face and fearless bearing.

”‘I would like to sketch him,’ he said to himself. ‘It is not often one sees peasants of his type now-a-days among the half-starved, wolfish, and yet cowed-looking creatures they are becoming,’ he added, though not so as to be heard by any one else, turning to the Count, who stood beside him.

”‘No, indeed,’ replied the gentleman, and a look of anxiety crossed his pale, serious face.

”‘Come forward, my boy,’ said Edmée’s mother. ‘Why did you not come to see me before? You know you are always welcome.’

”‘I thought as Mademoiselle was sent for, perhaps there was company,’ said Pierre smiling, while his sunburnt face grew ruddier.

”‘It was that naughty Victorine?’ said Edmée, pouting; ‘she called my Pierrot a clodhopper. I don’t like Victorine!’

”‘A clodhopper?’ said the Countess; ‘no, indeed, she should not have said so; that comes of having a maid from Paris, I suppose. I think I shall keep to our own good Touraine girls for the future, even though they are not so clever. Now, Pierre, my boy, you are to help us to get Edmée to keep still; Mr Denis is going to paint her, just as she is now.’

“Pierre’s quick wits soon understood what was wanted. He sat down on a stool by Edmée, and began telling her in a low voice one of her favourite stories, which soon drew all her attention. And it was thus that the portrait which is now hanging in the parlour at Belle Prairie Farm, and which will, I hope, always hang there, came to be taken. If one looks closely at one corner, one will see the date, ‘July 15th 1783,’ and the painter’s initials, ‘R.D.’

“This little scene which I have described is one of the first clearly impressed on my mother’s memory. She has often told it to me. Perhaps the reason that she remembers it so well is that that summer was the last of the unbroken happiness of the Château de Valmont. The good Count my grandfather, though always delicate, had hitherto been well enough to enjoy the quiet home life, which was what he preferred, and to attend himself to the care of his property and of his people, but the winter following this bright summer, which had seen my mother’s fifth birthday, was a severe one. My grandfather unfortunately caught cold one day from having been exposed to a snowstorm on his way home from a visit to his wife’s brother, the Marquis de Sarinet, whose château was about two days’ journey from Valmont-les-Roses. And this illness of my grandfather’s was the beginning of troubles – not for himself and his family alone, but for scores of others whom he had always wished and endeavoured to protect and to make happy, so far as he could; though for him, and the few like him, it was more difficult than could now-a-days be believed to behave with kindness, even with any approach to justice, to those in their power. For these few good and truly wise men stood alone against the blind obstinacy of the many, bent, though they knew it not, on their own destruction.

“A glimpse of life in another and less favoured village than Valmont may perhaps give to those who in future days will, I hope, read this story, a better idea of the state of things than I could otherwise ensure them. I have heard all about it so often from my mother, and even more from my father, who had seen more of the peasant life of the time than she, that it often seems to me as if I had myself been an eye-witness of the scenes I have heard described. And some knowledge of the things which were passing at but a short distance from my mother’s peaceful home will enable her grandchildren and great-grandchildren better to understand the events I have to tell.

“We need travel no further than Sarinet, the place I have spoken of as the home of my grandmother’s family – the wife of the good Count. She had married young, fortunately for her, for Sarinet would not have been a happy home for her. It was in the possession of her half-brother, the proud Marquis de Sarinet, who lived there a great part of the year with his wife and one child, Edmond, a boy about the age of Pierre Germain.

“It is winter – that same cruelly severe winter which laid the seeds of the good Count’s fatal illness. Heavy snow is on the ground, and the air is bitter and cutting. The village of Sarinet seems asleep; there is hardly any one moving about. It is so cold – so cold that the poor inhabitants, such as are not obliged to be away at their daily work, are trying to keep some little warmth in them by staying indoors. And yet indoors it is scarcely warmer; in many of the cottages there is no fire to be seen, in some but a few wretched embers on the great open chimney, down which blows the wintry wind as if angry that any one should attempt to get warm. The well, or fountain, as they call it, whence they all draw water, has been frozen for some days; when the men come home at night they have to break the ice away with hatchets. There are few children to be seen – one is almost glad to think so – and yet the absence of the little creatures has brought sad sorrow to many hearts. For not many months ago the village and some others in the neighbourhood had been visited by a wasting fever, the result of bad food, overwork, and general wretchedness, and scarcely a family but had lost some of its members – above all, among the children.

“At the door of one of the miserable cottages stands a young girl of about fifteen, crying bitterly. Cold though it is, she scarcely seems to feel it. She looks up and down the road as if watching for some one, then she re-enters the cottage, which is bare and miserable beyond description, and tries to coax into flame a little heap of twigs and withered leaves which are all the fuel she possesses. Her clothing is desperately poor – one could scarcely see that it had ever had any colour or shape – and yet there is an attempt at neatness about her, and she is or rather she would have been had she had a fair amount of food and decent clothing, a pretty, sweet-looking girl.

“As she stands again in her restless misery at the door of the cottage, an old woman comes out from the next door.

”‘What is the matter, Marguerite?’ she says; ‘is your brother ill again?’

”‘Oh, Madelon,’ she exclaims, ‘I think it would be better if he were dead! My poor boy!’ and she burst out sobbing again.

”‘What is it? Anything new? Come in here and tell me,’ said the woman, and she drew Marguerite inside her own dwelling, which was, perhaps, a shade less wretched than its neighbour, though in one corner, on a pallet bed hardly worth calling such – it was in reality but a bag of coarse sacking filled with straw – a man, looking more like a corpse than a human being, was lying, apparently in a state of half-unconsciousness.

”‘He is getting better, they say,’ observed the woman nodding her head in his direction. ‘The doctor looked in yesterday – he had been up at the Château to see the little lord. Yes, he says Jean is getting better, and with good food he might be fit for something again,’ she added in a hard, indifferent tone, as if she did not much care.

”‘And will they not send some to him– they – up at the Château?’ said Marguerite, indignantly. ‘They know how the accident happened; it was in saving my lord’s haystacks; but for him every one says they would all have been burnt.’

“The woman gave a short, bitter laugh.

”‘On the other hand, as the bailiff says,’ she replied, ‘we should be overwhelmed with gratitude that Jean has not been accused of setting fire to them. You know what that would have meant,’ and she passed her hand round her neck with an expressive gesture, for in those days a much smaller crime than that of incendiarism – or even, alas! in most cases, the suspicion of such a crime – was too surely punished by hanging, and hanging sometimes preceded by tortures too frightful to tell you of, and followed by hideous insult to the poor, dead body, adding untold horror to the misery of the victim’s friends, even after he could no longer suffer. ‘There is one cause for thankfulness,’ Jean’s wife went on, – I have called her an old woman, but she was, in reality, barely forty, though you would have taken her for fully twenty years more – ‘and that is that he and I are now alone to bear it. The fever has been our best friend after all.’

”‘Yes,’ said Marguerite simply, ‘your children with my mother and little Angèle – they are all at rest and happy in heaven.’