George Fenn - The Haute Noblesse - A Novel

“No, Harry,” said Madelaine sadly, “you are to understand that I care for you too much to encourage you in a weak folly.”

“A weak folly – to ask you what you have always expected I should ask!”

“Yes, to ask it at such a time when, after being placed in post after post by my father’s help, and losing them one by one by your folly, you – ”

“Oh, come, that will do,” cried the young man angrily; “if it’s to be like this it’s a good job that we came to an explanation at once. So this is gentle, amiable, sweet-tempered Madelaine, eh! Hallo! You?”

He turned sharply, for during the latter part of the conversation they had been standing still, and Louise and Pradelle had come over a stretch of sand with their footsteps inaudible.

“It is quite time we returned, Madelaine,” said Louise gravely; and without another word the two girls walked away.

“’Pon my word,” cried Harry with a laugh, “things are improving. Well, Vic, how did you get on?”

“How did I get on indeed!” cried Pradelle angrily. “Look here, Harry Vine, are you playing square with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I say; are you honest, or have you been setting her against me?”

“Why you – no, I won’t quarrel,” cried Harry.

“What did she say to you?”

“Say to me? I was never so snubbed in my life. Any one would think I had been the dirt under her feet; but I’ve not done yet. Her ladyship doesn’t know me if she thinks I’m going to give up like that.”

“There, that’ll do, Vic. No threats, please.”

“Oh, no; I’m not going to threaten. I can wait.”

“Yes,” said Harry, thoughtfully; “we chose the wrong time. We mustn’t give up, Vic; we shall have to wait.”

And they went back to their old nook beneath the cliff to smoke their pipes, while as the thin blue vapour arose, Harry’s hot anger grew cool, and he began to think of his aunt’s words, of Comte Henri des Vignes, and of the fair daughters of France – a reverie from which he was aroused by his companion, as he said suddenly —

“I say, Harry lad, I want you to lend me a little coin.”

The two friends parted at the gate, Madelaine refusing to go in.

“No,” she said; “they will be expecting me at home.”

They kissed, and then stood holding one another’s hands, both wanting to relieve their full hearts, but dreading to begin. Hardly a word had been spoken on their way back, and such words as had been said were upon indifferent subjects.

But now the moment for parting had come, and they gazed wistfully in each other’s eyes.

Louise was the first to break the painful since.

“Maddy, dear, ought we not to confide in each other?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Madelaine, with a sigh of relief that the constraint was over. “Yes, dear. Did Mr Pradelle propose to you?”

“Yes.”

“And you told him it was impossible?”

“Yes. What did my brother want to say?”

“That we ought to be married now, and it would make him a better man.”

“And you told him it was impossible?”

“Yes.”

There was another sigh as if of relief on both sides, and the two girls kissed again and parted.

It was a brisk quarter of an hour’s walk to the Van Heldre’s, which lay at the end of the main street up the valley down which the little river ran; and on entering the door, with a longing upon her to go at once to her room and sit down and cry, Madelaine uttered a sigh full of misery, for she saw that it was impossible.

As she approached the great stone porch leading into the broad hall, which was one of the most attractive looking places in the house, filled as it was with curiosities and other objects brought by the various captains from the Mediterranean, and embracing cabinets from Constantinople with rugs and pipes, little terra-cotta figures from Sardinia, and pictures and pieces of statuary from Rome, Naples, and Trieste – there was the sound of music, but such music as might be expected from a tiny bird organ, whose handle Mrs Van Heldre was turning as she gazed wistfully up at a bullfinch, whose black cap was set on one side, and little beady eyes gazed down from the first one and then the other side of their owner’s little black stumpy beak, which it every now and then used to ruffle the delicate red feathers of its breast or the soft grey blue of its back.

The notes that came from the little box-like instrument – a very baby of an organ – as Mrs Van Heldre turned, were feeble in the extreme, but there was a method in the machine which piped forth most irregularly and in the most feeble way the quaint old French air “Ma Normandie;” and as Madelaine heard it, her broad white forehead grew perplexed and a thrill of misery and discomfort ran through her.

“Ah, my dear, I’m so glad you’ve come back. Where’s papa?”

“I have not seen him, mamma.”

“Busy, I suppose. How he does work! But do look, dear, at this tiresome bird. He’ll never learn to pipe.”

“Not with patience, mamma? I think so.”

“I don’t, Maddy. It seems to take more patience than I’ve got. It’s worse than trying to teach that parrot. It never would learn the words you wanted it to.”

“Is it worth the trouble, mamma, dear?”

“No, my dear, I don’t think it is; but I seemed to fancy that I should like to have a piping bullfinch. Every body has some fancy, dear; and I’m sure mine’s better than Margaret Vine’s for aristocratic connections. Ah! how cross that woman does make me feel.”

“She is rather irritating,” said Madelaine, holding the tip of a white finger between the bars of the cage.

“Irritating?” said the plump little woman flushing; “I call her maddening. The life she leads that poor patient man! dictating as she does, and worrying him about the French estates and the family name, while George Vine is so patient that – ”

“He would succeed in teaching a bullfinch to pipe, mamma.”

“Ah, now you’re laughing at me, and thinking me weak; but it’s better to have my weakness than hers. Only fancy: ever since she formed that mad, foolish attachment for that French scoundrel, who coaxed the whole of her money away from her and then threw her over, has George Vine taken her to his home and let her tyrannise over him. A silly woman! Your father always said the man was a scamp. And, by the way, that Mr Pradelle, I don’t like him, my dear.”

“Neither do I, mamma.”

“That’s right, my dear; I’m very glad to hear you say so; but surely Louie Vine is not going to be beguiled by him?”

“Oh, no.”

“Ah, that’s all very well; but Luke Vine came in as he went by, to say in his sneering fashion that Louie and Mr Pradelle were down on the shore, and that you were walking some distance behind with Harry.”

“Mr Luke Vine seems to have plenty of time for watching his neighbours,” said Madelaine, contemptuously.

“Yes; he is always noticing things; but don’t blame him, dear. I’m sure he means well, and I can forgive him anything for that. Ah! here’s your father.”

“Ah! my dears,” said Van Heldre cheerily. “Tired out.”

“You must be,” said Mrs Van Heldre, bustling about him to take his hat and gloves. “Here do come and sit down.”

The merchant went into the drawing-room very readily, and submitted to several little pleasant attentions from wife and daughter, as he asked questions about the bullfinch, laughing slily the while at Madelaine.

Evening came on with Van Heldre seated in his easy chair, thoughtfully watching wife and daughter, both of whom had work in their laps; but Mrs Van Heldre’s was all a pretence, for, after a few stitches, her head began to nod forward, then back against the cushion, and then, as if by magic, she was fast asleep.