Honor Bright. Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe
vocation for the cloister? Well, because the little Sister desired that everybody might be happy; and in her heart of hearts she would have liked to see every young girl blissfully married to a young man without fault, of marvelous beauty, large fortune and irreproachable lineage. That was all. Of course, where a young person had a real vocation, it was another matter. Vivette had hitherto shown no signs of special piety, but what would you? She was yet young. If even an unuttered thought should in any mysterious way turn her from heavenly paths, that would be grievous sin on the part of the thinker. Satan was very watchful, and her own heart, Soeur Séraphine reflected, was desperately wicked. The Sister did penance for this, and fasted on a feast day, to the amazement of the girls and the great distress of Madame Madeleine.
She need not have disturbed her sweet self; Vivette had no vocation whatever, except for teaching. She was a very practical girl, and had, at the age of fifteen, mapped out her life methodically. She explained it all to Honor: somehow they all explained things to la Moriole; she was sympathetic, you understood.
“I also shall bee-come an orphanne!” she said in her careful English. “For you, my all-dear, this was unattended, —hein? ‘Unexpected?’ Merci bien, chèrie!– your honored parents being still in the middle ages. Ainsi – hein? I have again made fault?”
Honor explained patiently; “middle ages” meant something wholly different; it meant Charlemagne and Lorenzo de Medici and all that kind of thing; in short, the Feudal System! Besides, she said, Maman was really young, but quite young for an old person; nor was Papa so old as many.
“But go on, Vivi! Why should you become an orphan?”
Vivette explained in turn. Her parents had married late; her father was already bald as a bat, her mother in feeble health. What would you? They had told her all simply that it would be necessary for her to earn her own living when they joined the Saints, or else to make an advantageous marriage.
“It is like that!” said Vivette, simply. “I assure thee, Moriole, I have observed, but with a microscope, every desirable parti in Vevay. There is not one with whom I would spend a day, far less my life. Enough! I desire to teach. To master the English tongue, to go to Amérique, to instruct the young in my own language —voilà! it is my secret, chérie! I confide it to thee as to the priest.”
Honor, with shining eyes, promised to keep the secret, which, by the way, half the school knew. It was very noble of Vivette, she thought. How strange, how incomprehensible, to be able to teach! To write, now, that was different. That was as natural as breathing.
It was noble also of Jacqueline de La Tour de Provence to accept the lot which Fate had in store for her. This also was confided to Honor, in a twilight hour in the garden. Jacqueline was a slender, lily-like girl, too pale and languid, perhaps, for real beauty, but graceful and highbred, aristocrat to her fingertips. She was a Royalist, she told Honor. How could it be otherwise with one of her House.
“What is your house?” asked Honor innocently. “Is it in Vevay? Is it one of the chateaux on the hill?”
Jacqueline laughed her pretty silvery laugh; that also was high-bred, if her speech did not always match.
“The Americans are incredibly ignorant, are they not?” she said amiably. “It is that you have no noblesse, my poor Honor. Every Frenchman knows that in the veins of the family of La Tour de Provence runs the blood royal of France.”
“Oh, Jacqueline! not really? How thrilling!” murmured Honor.
“A La Tour de Provence married a cousin of the Grand Monarque!” said Jacqueline, acknowledging the murmur with a regal bend of the head. “But that is nothing; the Bourbons, you understand, are of yesterday. On my mother’s side – ” she paused, and proceeded slowly, dropping each word as if it were a pearl – “I am a daughter of St. Louis, and of those from whom St. Louis sprang. I am directly descended from la reine Berthe!”
“Jacqueline! What do you tell me? Not Bertha Broadfoot?”
Jacqueline again bent a regal head. “Wife of Pepin d’Heristal!” she said calmly. “Mother of Charlemagne! From that royal and sainted woman descends the House of La Tour de Provence!”
She paused to enjoy for a moment Honor’s look of genuine awe and astonishment; when she continued, it was with a touch of queenly condescension, which might have moved to unseemly mirth any one less direct and simple-minded than Honor.
“We were not in the direct line of succession; our ancestor was a younger brother, you understand, of the Emperor. We have never reigned! But we know our descent, and we never stoop. Such as you see me here – ” Jacqueline made a disparaging gesture – “in a tiny pension (though the Madeleines are well-born, it goes without saying, otherwise were I not here!) surrounded by a little bourgeoisie like this, I remain Myself.”
Jacqueline was silent a moment, contemplating her polished finger-nails.
“I have the Capet hand, you perceive!” she raised a very pretty, useless-looking hand; not to be compared for beauty with Patricia’s hand, thought Honor, that combination of white velvet and steel, but pretty enough.
“Was – was Queen Bertha really lame?” asked Honor timidly; it was really astonishing to be talking with a Capet; she wondered whether she ought to bow when she spoke. “And did she really spin?” And Honor repeated the familiar rhyme that every French child knows:
“Ah! the good time for every one
When good Queen Bertha spun!”1
“My sainted ancestress,” replied Jacqueline, “was all devoted to her people. Her time was principally passed in spinning and weaving garments for the poor. So great was her industry that she spun even on horseback, carrying her distaff with her. Her constant labors at wheel and loom caused one foot, that which worked the treadle, to become larger than the other; this at least is the legend in our House. You can figure to yourself, Moriole, my feelings at seeing, as lately among these children of unknown people, the holy and venerable Queen made part of a childish game.”
Honor blushed to her very ears. She and Stephanie had been playing only that day with Loulou and Toinette, the two youngest pupils, the old nursery game, never dreaming of harm.
“Avez-vous bien des filles, cousin,
Cousine la reine boiteuse —”
She hoped Jacqueline had not seen her. Madame Madeleine had asked her to amuse the little ones for half an hour. Next time they would play something else, “Compagnons de la Marjolaine,” or “Nous n’irons plus au bois!”
“How does your – your family” (Honor could not somehow bring herself to say “House”; it sounded so undemocratic!) “feel about the Republic?”
“We do not recognize it!” said Jacqueline calmly. “For us, it does not exist. We serve his sacred Majesty Louis Philippe Robert, whom you probably know only as the Duc d’Orleans.”
“I don’t know him at all!” said poor Honor.
Jacqueline gave her a compassionate smile. “His Majesty lives in retirement!” she said. “Little people like thee may be excused for an ignorance which is rather the fault of others than of thyself, Moriole. For the rest, we bide our time! We follow the customs of our House, and mate – so nearly as may be – with our equals.”
She then went on to tell Honor of the Fate that awaited her. She was to remain another year at school. Then, when she was eighteen, she was to be married, to the Sieur de Virelai, a nobleman of their own neighborhood, a friend of her father’s. He was somewhat older than her father, but a grand seigneur, with one of the historic castles of France.
“When I am the Lady of Virelai, my poor Honor,” said Jacqueline, “you must visit me, you must indeed. I shall receive you with pleasure.”
The supper bell rang just then, and the future Lady of Virelai jumped up with more animation than she often showed.
“There