Poor Relations

On seeing Hortense come in, it struck Lisbeth that some long-suppressed complaint was about to break through the thin veil of reticence. Lisbeth, from the first days of the honeymoon, had been sure that this couple had too small an income for so great a passion.

Hortense, as she embraced her mother, exchanged with her a few whispered phrases, heart to heart, of which the mystery was betrayed to Lisbeth by certain shakes of the head.

"Adeline, like me, must work for her living," thought Cousin Betty. "She shall be made to tell me what she will do! Those pretty fingers will know at last, like mine, what it is to work because they must."

At six o'clock the family party went in to dinner. A place was laid for Hector.

"Leave it so," said the Baroness to Mariette, "monsieur sometimes comes in late."

"Oh, my father will certainly come," said Victorin to his mother. "He promised me he would when we parted at the Chamber."

Lisbeth, like a spider in the middle of its net, gloated over all these countenances. Having known Victorin and Hortense from their birth, their faces were to her like panes of glass, through which she could read their young souls. Now, from certain stolen looks directed by Victorin on his mother, she saw that some disaster was hanging over Adeline which Victorin hesitated to reveal. The famous young lawyer had some covert anxiety. His deep reverence for his mother was evident in the regret with which he gazed at her.

Hortense was evidently absorbed in her own woes; for a fortnight past, as Lisbeth knew, she had been suffering the first uneasiness which want of money brings to honest souls, and to young wives on whom life has hitherto smiled, and who conceal their alarms. Also Lisbeth had immediately guessed that her mother had given her no money. Adeline's delicacy had brought her so low as to use the fallacious excuses that necessity suggests to borrowers.

Hortense's absence of mind, with her brother's and the Baroness' deep dejection, made the dinner a melancholy meal, especially with the added chill of the Marshal's utter deafness. Three persons gave a little life to the scene: Lisbeth, Celestine, and Wenceslas. Hortense's affection had developed the artist's natural liveliness as a Pole, the somewhat swaggering vivacity and noisy high spirits that characterize these Frenchmen of the North. His frame of mind and the expression of his face showed plainly that he believed in himself, and that poor Hortense, faithful to her mother's training, kept all domestic difficulties to herself.

"You must be content, at any rate," said Lisbeth to her young cousin, as they rose from table, "since your mother has helped you with her money."

"Mamma!" replied Hortense in astonishment. "Oh, poor mamma! It is for me that she would like to make money. You do not know, Lisbeth, but I have a horrible suspicion that she works for it in secret."

They were crossing the large, dark drawing-room where there were no candles, all following Mariette, who was carrying the lamp into Adeline's bedroom. At this instant Victorin just touched Lisbeth and Hortense on the arm. The two women, understanding the hint, left Wenceslas, Celestine, the Marshal, and the Baroness to go on together, and remained standing in a window-bay.

"What is it, Victorin?" said Lisbeth. "Some disaster caused by your father, I dare wager."

"Yes, alas!" replied Victorin. "A money-lender named Vauvinet has bills of my father's to the amount of sixty thousand francs, and wants to prosecute. I tried to speak of the matter to my father at the Chamber, but he would not understand me; he almost avoided me. Had we better tell my mother?"

"No, no," said Lisbeth, "she has too many troubles; it would be a death-blow; you must spare her. You have no idea how low she has fallen. But for your uncle, you would have found no dinner here this evening."

"Dear Heaven! Victorin, what wretches we are!" said Hortense to her brother. "We ought to have guessed what Lisbeth has told us. My dinner is choking me!"

Hortense could say no more; she covered her mouth with her handkerchief to smother a sob, and melted into tears.

"I told the fellow Vauvinet to call on me to-morrow," replied Victorin, "but will he be satisfied by my guarantee on a mortgage? I doubt it. Those men insist on ready money to sweat others on usurious terms."

"Let us sell out of the funds!" said Lisbeth to Hortense.

"What good would that do?" replied Victorin. "It would bring fifteen or sixteen thousand francs, and we want sixty thousand."

"Dear cousin!" cried Hortense, embracing Lisbeth with the enthusiasm of guilelessness.

"No, Lisbeth, keep your little fortune," said Victorin, pressing the old maid's hand. "I shall see to-morrow what this man would be up to. With my wife's consent, I can at least hinder or postpone the prosecution – for it would really be frightful to see my father's honor impugned. What would the War Minister say? My father's salary, which he pledged for three years, will not be released before the month of December, so we cannot offer that as a guarantee. This Vauvinet has renewed the bills eleven times; so you may imagine what my father must pay in interest. We must close this pit."

"If only Madame Marneffe would throw him over!" said Hortense bitterly.

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Victorin. "He would take up some one else; and with her, at any rate, the worst outlay is over."

What a change in children formerly so respectful, and kept so long by their mother in blind worship of their father! They knew him now for what he was.

"But for me," said Lisbeth, "your father's ruin would be more complete than it is."

"Come in to mamma," said Hortense; "she is very sharp, and will suspect something; as our kind Lisbeth says, let us keep everything from her – let us be cheerful."

"Victorin," said Lisbeth, "you have no notion of what your father will be brought to by his passion for women. Try to secure some future resource by getting the Marshal to marry me. Say something about it this evening; I will leave early on purpose."

Victorin went into the bedroom.

"And you, poor little thing!" said Lisbeth in an undertone to Hortense, "what can you do?"

"Come to dinner with us to-morrow, and we will talk it over," answered Hortense. "I do not know which way to turn; you know how hard life is, and you will advise me."

While the whole family with one consent tried to persuade the Marshal to marry, and while Lisbeth was making her way home to the Rue Vanneau, one of those incidents occurred which, in such women as Madame Marneffe, are a stimulus to vice by compelling them to exert their energy and every resource of depravity. One fact, at any rate, must however be acknowledged: life in Paris is too full for vicious persons to do wrong instinctively and unprovoked; vice is only a weapon of defence against aggressors – that is all.

Madame Marneffe's drawing-room was full of her faithful admirers, and she had just started the whist-tables, when the footman, a pensioned soldier recruited by the Baron, announced:

"Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos."

Valerie's heart jumped, but she hurried to the door, exclaiming:

"My cousin!" and as she met the Brazilian, she whispered:

"You are my relation – or all is at an end between us! – And so you were not wrecked, Henri?" she went on audibly, as she led him to the fire. "I heard you were lost, and have mourned for you these three years."

"How are you, my good fellow?" said Marneffe, offering his hand to the stranger, whose get-up was indeed that of a Brazilian and a millionaire.

Monsieur le Baron Henri Montes de Montejanos, to whom the climate of the equator had given the color and stature we expect to see in Othello on the stage, had an alarming look of gloom, but it was a merely pictorial illusion; for, sweet and affectionate by nature, he was predestined to be the victim that a strong man often is to a weak woman. The scorn expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs, which blazed like a star on a handsome blue silk cravat, tucked into a white waistcoat in such a way as to show corners of a fabulously fine shirt front.

His brow, bossy like that of a satyr, a sign of tenacity in his passions, was crowned by thick jet-black hair like a virgin forest, and under it flashed a pair of hazel eyes, so wild looking as to suggest that before his birth his mother must have been scared by a jaguar.

This fine specimen of the Portuguese race in Brazil took his stand with his back to the fire, in an attitude that showed familiarity with Paris manners; holding his hat in one hand, his elbow resting on the velvet-covered shelf, he bent over Madame Marneffe, talking to her in an undertone, and troubling himself very little about the dreadful people who, in his opinion, were so very much in the way.

This fashion of taking the stage, with the Brazilian's attitude and expression, gave, alike to Crevel and to the baron, an identical shock of curiosity and anxiety. Both were struck by the same impression and the same surmise. And the manoeuvre suggested in each by their very genuine passion was so comical in its simultaneous results, that it made everybody smile who was sharp enough to read its meaning. Crevel, a tradesman and shopkeeper to the backbone, though a mayor of Paris, unluckily, was a little slower to move than his rival partner, and this enabled the Baron to read at a glance Crevel's involuntary self-betrayal. This was a fresh arrow to rankle in the very amorous old man's heart, and he resolved to have an explanation from Valerie.

"This evening," said Crevel to himself too, as he sorted his hand, "I must know where I stand."

"You have a heart!" cried Marneffe. "You have just revoked."

"I beg your pardon," said Crevel, trying to withdraw his card. – "This Baron seems to me very much in the way," he went on, thinking to himself. "If Valerie carries on with my Baron, well and good – it is a means to my revenge, and I can get rid of him if I choose; but as for this cousin! – He is one Baron too many; I do not mean to be made a fool of. I will know how they are related."

That evening, by one of those strokes of luck which come to pretty women, Valerie was charmingly dressed. Her white bosom gleamed under a lace tucker of rusty white, which showed off the satin texture of her beautiful shoulders – for Parisian women, Heaven knows how, have some way of preserving their fine flesh and remaining slender. She wore a black velvet gown that looked as if it might at any moment slip off her shoulders, and her hair was dressed with lace and drooping flowers. Her arms, not fat but dimpled, were graced by deep ruffles to her sleeves. She was like a luscious fruit coquettishly served in a handsome dish, and making the knife-blade long to be cutting it.

"Valerie," the Brazilian was saying in her ear, "I have come back faithful to you. My uncle is dead; I am twice as rich as I was when I went away. I mean to live and die in Paris, for you and with you."

"Lower, Henri, I implore you – "

"Pooh! I mean to speak to you this evening, even if I should have to pitch all these creatures out of window, especially as I have lost two days in looking for you. I shall stay till the last. – I can, I suppose?"

Valerie smiled at her adopted cousin, and said: