Our Novelettes.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1585, 15 April 1887, Page 4

Our Novelettes.

LORLOTTE AND THE CAPITAINE. Chaptbe I.—(Continued). The capitaine was just such a military man as M. Dupont had described, the antipodes of the popular English idea of a Frenchman : unmistakably elderly, heavy, vet gaunt, so accustomed to face dangers and disigreeables in a long life of discipline, that he did everything, good and bad, with almost the same imperturbability of mien ; stiff and starch 'n his dark blue uniform and high collar like the efl'igv of a man. unless when ho blazed out in a Gallic childishness of passim, during which he w.:s as dangerous to himself as to his neighbours.

Madame was the capitaine's junior by five yearn, as one courts the years of a man's life, but she was his senior by a century in worldly wisdom. She knew him well, took a family pride in hisrank, his red ribbon, his distinctions, bis courage and fimplicity; as in her catholicitv of nature she took a pride in the good looks and bonhomie of her butterfly husband. She had helped the capitaine, Denis lo Froy, before now, got him out of bis spendthrift scrapes, and made a clear way for his soldier's tramp through the thicket oI difficulties which hedge in a rann whose very sous burn his pocket, until she had a right to co;:n«el and direct him, and the capitaine, honest and honourable, admitted the right. Madame, without persiflage and in strong terms, made out her case at her point. She did not spare the capitaine, while she did not omit tho capabilities aud good qualities of Lorlotte. She convicted the poor captaine, standing at attention on her own parquetted iloor, disconcerted, troubled, all but shamed—he was too good a man to be out and out shamed before her—of mature age, of want of provision for the future. For example, he would need a nurse some day, perhaps soon, for lie had suffered from yellow fever at Guadeloupe, cholera at Berbice, frost-bite in the Crimea, and ague near Solforino, and not without leaving their traces behind them; and unless he went permanently into the hospital, or depended upon one of the hlebsed si.-ters, who was to lok uftor him F His mother bad died when he wis a little fellow, his sisters were long macric I, and not having had the bent fit of madame's ndvicc in marriage, had wedded a couple of roturiers, needy and disreputable, and ore I little lor him, save to accept his gifts and strip him of es much of his pension us i e was fno i-h enough lo give them.

Would the capitair.e not like to lmve two little apartments which he could call his own aft«-r all Ins wanderings, to which he could ret ire when he was not in spirits for the barruck company, where he could roar his flowers on treiiises in boxis in the windows or on his store —a stove of his own, by which he might tnioke and study his treatises on fortification and military memoirs without molestation ? Would lie not like to have a boy and girl of his own to bear his name—the one to enter the regiment as he had done, and rise to be a general, and the other to be dutiful to him, fond of him, and to mend his collars and sew on his buttons, and play e -arte with him, and smooth the way to his seeing the priest, when her mother's eyes had grown dim and her memory fulled ? In the mean time Lurlotte would be as gay as a bird, fluttering under his wing; and in the summer, when madame took her holiday, her one holiday in tiie year, they would all go together, mon-ieur and she, the capitaine and Lorlotte, to spend the day at Versailles or at St. Cloud, to see the garden or the manufuctory of porcelain, and to dme in the forest or the meadows.

The rapitaine lieard his life in its landmarks pulled up and laid down afresh without resistance ; he even accented eubmissively, " Oui, oui, that is true; " and warmed into a sudden ruddy glow which seemed out of proportion to t 1 e occasion, at the running mention ot the flowers and the children, Still he sud candidly, " But, madame, will Mademoiselle Lorlotte put up with the pipe, and the comrades, and with certain rough phrases, that we're grown into the use of ? I could not nive them up at once ; there ave some of them I might not give up —ever." " My dear cousin, Lorlotte, is an obedient, affectionate child, moie liberal than most girls, though she is also confirmed, and believes and worships as a good Catholic," Madame assured him. "It is understood that all bachelors r.-form and become family men and Christians when they marry : but you have so little to reform by comparison, that the reformation may be made by degrees.' " But, madame my cousin, will Lorlotte bear with me when lam a madman? You know that I do not mean it, and I do not think that I would harm her; but I might frijhtcn the poor child beside herself, notwithstanding." And the big fellow fumbled with his belt, moved to being stonily abashed and distressed. Madame smiled her superior smile, and waved her hand, dismissing the Quixotic scruple. "Lorlotte has been accustomed to the Knglish moods like the English you think that she will mind your thunderstorms, my old boy ? And although it were so, she is out in the world alone, earning her bread. Say, do you not think that there is more in the world, you who have seen its vices iilid crimes from east to west, to hurt an unprotected orphan girl, body and soul, than the idle blast, soou spent, of a few furious words and acts ? '

'■ I believe it, I believe it, my good madame, and I thank you with all my heart" The capitaine toi)k the propitiation gratefully, and with manifest relief. " You trust me; I hope that I may never abuse yjur trust., Bud I think that I might make it up to her. But will not mademoiselle expect more than I can give her? You know that lam ns poor as a rat, and that I hare not mad« hoards. Sacre ! I can barely afford her food and clothes. Where all the fine cashmeres and silks, mirrors, and consoles like those around me, are to come from, for my lifo I cannot tell. We can have no better menage than a student's den. " To begin with, my capitaine," madame premised hep anxious kinsman, " Lorlo'te will mend all that in the cracking of the joint of a fore linger. She is as sensible as a grandmother, that cricket of a girl. I should not wonder thoueh you were to end the rich man of the family, and to leave behind you a hundred thousand frano§ to endow a military colh'go when you are done with your fortune, and have provided for your children." The capitaine laughed at this climax a hoarse laugh, and the interview terminated in madame's having her will, and getting carte blanche from the capitaine to bring Lorlotte to Faria to marry him.

Chaptee 11. Lorlotte was come. And without so much as a private conversation with madame, Lor* lotto knew that she had been brought to Paris for a purpose ; and alas! for madame's pet scheme and the capitaine's matrimonial prospects, she made up her mind to have nothing to say to him; so far had English communication corrupted French good manners. But Lorlotte was too wise, and, poor child, she was too dependent, to fly in the face of the great

woman, Madame Dupont. Lorlotte would keep her own counsel and enjoy the season, the sweete»t of the four, well expressed by the "grown green agiin" of its French description, reverderies —and reverderies in Paris. Without committing herself, Lorlotte was not quite ingenuous, disinterested, and regardless of consequences; but what will you have, though she had lived eighteen months in an English school ? Lorlotte was bappy in having a face and figure which in a degree interpreted the spirit within. She was a dark, bright, cspiegle child, with a child's naivete, contending with a woman's consciousness. Her figure was small, light, exquisitely dainty, even elegant in her spring muslins, and huts and bonnets trimmed and manufactured by horown lissome fingers, and always anticipating the season in their adornment of a single wild rose, a spray of hawthorn, a little plume of lilac. Her face was small too, and irregular-featured in its youthful roundness, but with delicate, slightly contracted, very expressive brown brows over violet eyes, a tinge of poppy red in the clear brown of her cheeks, and a dimpled cleft cherry for a mouth, and its stone cleft for teeth.

Let us observe that Madame Dupont had said not a word of Lorlotte's personal attractions to the capitaine. In the fir.-t place, they had nothing to do with the advantages of the match in madame's eyes j in the second, if they weighed at all in a man s foolish fancy, they would weigh with double weight coming upon him unexpectedly. The effect which Lorlotte's attractions really had on the capitaine when the two were formally presented to each other, and Lirlotte had executed her school-girl bow in ret urn for the capitaine's salute, was not only that the capitaine was enslaved, but struck dumb in bis slavery ; while Lorlotte, the heedless, hard-hearted girl,—for young girls have at once the kindest and the most cruel of hearts in their inexperience and ignorance, laughed at him. turned up her tiny little nose at him, set herself coolly to mock and make a cat's-paw of him, »nd as if that were not bad enough, privately to tease and vex him. Not onlv was there nothing in the capitaine to catch a girl's eye at first sight; there was not even anything to make him respectable to the sharp eyes of her cupidity. " The man is as poor as a Franciscan, Lorlotte exclaimed herself in derisi.m. " I heard him borrow a finely nr. c piece from midarne the other day, and she told him to sjb that he made a note of it and paid her. 1 shculd have to work for bim and cook for him. Perhaps I should have to take pupils again, when he went on Half-pay or lost his n outh's incjmo at a lottery. I suppose 1 am intended to serve as his breadwinner in bis old uge and infirmities," meditated Lorlotte sa icily. " No, thank you, madame, I would rather not. I should prefer at least the help of a strong arm to work for me and to lean upon, if not a heavy purse for me to empty, or 1 should choose the sympathies of a grand passion like what the English are not afraid to speak of as coming even before marriage and lasting all the life afterwards."

But Lorlotte was not rebellious in the preliminaries, before the capitaine s shyness had yielded to more energetic impulses, and caused him to empower madame te cross the rubicon and mnke his proposal, which was quite an understood thing, in form for him. Such behaviour 011 Lorlotte's part would have been regarded as an outrage on a young girl's sen-e of propriety, almost of decency, and would have been sufficient provocation to cause her to be packed off in dire disgrace back to her verbs and scales at Boulogne. And Lirlotte dearly loved a holiday, above all a holiday in Paris in May; had a natural distaste to" the comparative isolation, selfrestraint, and drudgery ot her school-room (though she was a favourite both with principals and pupils), and shrank above all Irom disgrace. So Lorlotte fiines> d, laughed, sparkled all over, protested,—and permitted the diily to stand sentry at her elbow, she accepted his daily bouquets in neatly cut paper bouquetiers, inscribed in a stiff hand-writing wilt tine flourishes, " the sweetest to the most sweet," and walked abroad with him and madame to church aud market.

But madame was a shrewd woman, and far-sighted. She saw through Lorlotte's pretended demurenoss and real evasions. She did not altogether like the look of matters. The capitaine in his humility and blindness might be satisfied; madame was not content, and she had made known her wishes ana so far staked her credit on the event. Madame delivered many a stinging stricture on che contumacy of girls, and the iDgratitude of the world, in the ear of M. Dupont, who tried to reassure her, in his light confident line, that Lorlotte must do her duty. When was such an enormity, absurdity, and indelicacy ever heard of as a young girl's having a mind of her own, and resisting the intentions of her best friends in her disposal in marriage ? At the same time madame acted warily; she was not double, but she was not rash. She did not want to come to close quarters with Lorlo'te too soon, to push the perverted girl into the heinousness of defiance ol righteous authority; and madame was a merciful woman, particularly when it wou.d serve no purpose save the worst to be harau. She would prefer to draw the lines of her strong teuacious will contrasted with Lorlotte's youthful frivolity and helplessness, mo-e and more tightly rouud the girl, till she was caught beyond escape, let her flutter ever so wildly. Midame's displeasure and mdignation was reserved in the background, not altogether concealed, yet not pouncing on their victim. For the present mauame kept the peace with Lorlotte because there was no time to be lost. Within three weeks the cupitaine's regiment would have qui:ted Fontainebleau, and madame had fixed unalterably that within that brief space the capitainc should have taken to himself tt wife, retired from acjive service, an I pitched his tent that is, rented and filled a suite of rooms in a convenient quarter-which should be home to him for the rest of bis days.

A couple-main was called for. Madame, in her pbilunthropy and family devotion, antedated her annual holiday. Every summer madamo was in the habit of lading a-ide her black jacket, cap, arid rose janne, ana of arraying herself in an imposing what monsieur called a sublime —black silk gown, with innumerable flounces (which passed the most of its existence in silvor paper), a lace shawl, and a wouderful white capote, with a compliment of grand arters and nodding wheat ears—in a single stroke, airy and magnificent. Thus attired she went, attended by hor joli ijar<-on, the most amiable of coxcombs, and provided with a huge hamper of simple dainty eatables by way of luggage, along with other pleasure-seekers, by an excursion train to the country, to pay her respects to nature for the eason.

Everybody knows that the moat foaailiferous of lovers will burst into life and pnenness under the in fluenco of a holiday in the country. Madame afforded the capitaine the opportunity of liming a twig for Lorlotte. There was madamo, in the sublimely flounced silk gown and capote, seated with dignity, yet with more fervour in her very pursuit of excursion than lingers in a middle* . aged tradeswoman out of Paris, making the moit of her ticket and her day abroad*

There was Lorlotte, in her simplest and most bewitohing toilet—a buff napkin cotton shirt, and jacket which would not crush, (raided like a child's dress, and a garden hat with a dark green ribbon and a little knot of violets that could be thrown down with impunity among the long grass, and heaped up with the most poetically named of daisies, —the marguerites of May. There was the capitaine, in his horribly unbecoming tight uniform, with its high collar, his short, grizzled hair in the regimental cut, covered by a small comical casquette, with a leather strap over his white bearded chin, moving his legs—right, left, right, left—in strides, exactly as a child can draw out the legs of a whole platoon of toy wooden soldiers, guarding the women. The three formed a suggestive group, among noisy ouvriers, long-haired students and clerks, picturesque farmers' wives and peasant-women of the country, and the smart grisettes of the city, their fellow pleasure-seekers. Punctuality is not the virtue of petit* miitres, and neither is discretion. When monsieur did turn up in his outre dandy costume —hunting boots (when monsieur had never so much as seen a hunt in his days), vest striped a la jockey, pin in the mould of a genuine fox's bead—he merely exhausted the toleration which madame was wont to show to his shortcomings. He was not alone: he had a friend on his arm; a bachelor, a student from a neighbouring quarter. He introduced him volubly all round ; he proposed him easily as a volunteer addition to the party. Madame wag or.e of the most catholicminded of bees. It has been seen that she did not quarrel with butterflies, and she did not even quarrel in the abstract with dragonflies. But the contretemps was cruel. She had arranged a partie carce, which could e.isily fall into two couples, and here were five people, an utterly unmanageable number, and the fifth, to say the least, more than a foil to the cipitaine. M. Hyacinthe Masset was a handsome, dashing young man of four-and-twenty—one year older than Lorlotte She had heard of him already as the lean yarron not only so—but as the witty and wild misguiding star, and chief lure of all the bachelors of his quarter, who wro f e the cleverest fetiilleton-i in the most reckless journals, and danced the hardest and the longest the most furious gallop at the fastest dancing-hall. Possibly, if you were very near him, you might get a coarse whiff of the strong smoke with whieh he and all his belongings were impregnated j you might detect that his linen had been frayed, rent, Hnd darned several times —and that his jaunty hat was napless. In the some way the subtle mind might discover that there were windy fumes in his eloquence, holes repaired as best might be in his philosophy, and a general baldness and hollowness in his assumption of universal learning, general accomplishments, and knowledge of the world. But a subtle mind was needed <br the discovery of tha last. To an inexperienced little girl, conceited on her own account, M. Hyacinthe was the pride aud flower of the manliness, genius, and good looks of young France. .And there was 11. Hyacinthe, bowing to Lorlotte with marked deferential gallantry, and staring at her admiringly with his great black eyes till her violet eyes sank before his in pretty confusion, while the poor capitaine was keeping guard in vain. M. Dupont's bftise was so monstrous, and he was so unconscious of it, that it was piquante; but madame could not enjoy it as she enjoyed many of his hetises. The Duponts and their friends were going with the rost of the holiday wjrl.l to Montmorenci, where there was a fete; but though they ?ook advantage of the cheap trains there for the day they considered themselves above disporting themselves with the multitude about tbe stalls, shows, and open-air lotteries. Madame Dupont and hor cousin the capitaine were too erect and serious, because of their responsibilities and obligations. M. Dupont was too refined, notwithstanding that he was dying to show off his airs and graces, his boots, and the silk lining of his paletot, his rings and charms —wi'h which madams supplied him liberally—to the gaping throng M. Hyacinthe and Mademoiselle Lorlotte were too intellectual when they happened to be, as in the present instance, in rarely congenial company; out of it, Lorlotte could head a village dauee joyously, and Hyacinthe could prove the veriest mountebank of a fair.

The Dupont party strolled away from the hubbub of the shooting at a mark and the merry-go-rounds, to the natural attractions of Montmorenci on a May-day. They sought out a little path past the lake, through vineyards, through a fragrant vista of walnut trees and feathery acacias, to a natural orchard, enamelled with jonquills below and appleblossoms above, enough to make any cockney of London or Paris cry out to be allowed to " pick " on all sides. There the party took possession of the enchanting dining-room, seated themselves on the turf like a bourgeois version of a group by Watteau or Wouvermann, minus the horses and dogs, and were not so sentimental a» to despise madame's provision basket, with its pates and spiced bread, its humble eau de groseille, and more pretentions sparkling Burgundy, which two gamins from the railway-station had carried in triumph behind them.

But there was a disadvantage in going aMiying even when the weather was unexceptionable, with an end iu view, and when you were not sure of all your company. Although the Duponts kept themselves distinct and apart trom the lower orders, they could not altogether escape the freedom of tone implied in the association. Just when madame wished to be most stringent in the enforcement of her bourgeotss etiquette, the student, M. Hyacinthe, set her at naught and defied her, as he could not have done in her own house or in that of an acquaintance. He attached himself to Lorlotte, devoted himself to her, and constituted himself her partner in place of the capitaine, unwarrantably and unceremoniously jostling asi le the antique awkward warrior, as if Lorlotte was not a young hourgeoise under a married friend's wing, who outfit not to have a word to say unless to her fiance till she *\as matried out of hand at ieast; —as if Lorlotte was no better than a and he one of the workmen who hud come to have a day's jollity and desperate flirtation with her, unminded of the consequences, like so many of the visitors to Montmorenci.

The truth was, both Hvarinthe Sand Lorlotte forgot themselves in an abandonment of youthful sentiment and gaiety: harangued and prattled, moralized and laughed, as if thoy had known each other all their lives, and had been brother's or sister's children at least. French men and women—the most artificial race on earth—are more enraptured and intoxicated with their glimpses of nature, perhaps by reason of its freshness and novelty to them, than English, Germans, or Italians allow themselves to be. Fo itively M. llyacinthe became eloquent in hi* rhodomontades on primitive arcadia, truth, tenderness, and by a youthful analogy, death. His pale, large-eyed face, with its clouds of long hair and its traces of excess in all things, rather than of dry addiction to law or pbysic, was lit up, not with passion, but with spirituality. On her side, Lorlotte's vivacity was softened and melted, and acquired a new grace without losing its spontaneous naivete, (X 9 it continual),