lucie had only four days more to remain in bienville, but, except for the approaching parting from sophie and ravenel, they were indeed very happy days to her. the child’s active and aggressive little mind, which was part of her american inheritance, dwelt on that charming vision which harper, with the usual indiscretion of servants and nursery governesses, had shown her—that vision of all the money she wished to spend, which would be hers at eighteen, with no one, not even madame bernard, to interfere.
lucie enjoyed another stolen interview with paul verney, for this young lady, at ten years of age, was a well-developed flirt and romanticist. not all her french training had been able to get the american out of her, and she had with it all the generous impulses and the happy daring with which the american child seems to be dowered.
paul verney, in his afternoon walks, had the pleasure of bowing twice to captain and madame ravenel, but neither time was lucie with them. on the afternoon before lucie left bienville, she was walking with the ravenels, harper, as usual, in the distance. lucie, with the ingenuity peculiar to her age and sex, determined to go on a search for paul verney, and so arranged her plans with much art.
she asked sophie if harper could take her to the fountain in the park to see the little fishes swim in the basin. this reasonable proposal being agreed to, harper took lucie by the hand, and off they went. once at the fountain, around which there were benches, harper was sure to find some of her colleagues, and lucie, providing she reported at the end of every ten minutes, was certain of an hour of liberty.
lucie utilized her first ten minutes by finding paul verney. there he was, sitting on the same bench and reading the same english book as on the first afternoon that she had spoken to him. when paul saw his lady-love approach he rose and blushed and smiled, and lucie bowed and smiled, without blushing, however. seating herself on the bench, and settling her fluffy white skirts around her, she said to paul with a queenly air:
“you may sit down.” then she added, quite seriously, “i am going away to-morrow.”
paul’s boyish heart gave a jump. he was secretly very much afraid of lucie, and disapproved of her—but she was so fascinating, and life at bienville would seem so different after she went away. he stammered:
“i am sorry, mademoiselle.”
“but i shall come back,” said lucie in a sprightly tone. “you see, it is so very easy to frighten grandmama. all i have to do is to stop eating for two days, and it really isn’t so bad at all.”
paul verney, although not a greedy youngster like toni, thought that to go without eating for two days was a very severe test of affection, but it was like everything else about lucie, dashing and daring, and quite out of the common. he replied timidly:
“i hope, mademoiselle, you won’t make yourself ill. it always makes me ill to go without my dinner even.”
“i suppose,” said lucie, “that is when your mama punishes you—isn’t it?”
paul blushed more deeply than ever. he wished to appear a man, and here was lucie reminding him that he was, after all, only a little boy. then lucie asked him:
“what do you mean to be when you grow up?”
“a soldier, mademoiselle,” said paul, straightening himself up involuntarily. “i am going to the cavalry school at st. cyr. i shall ride a fine horse like the officers here in bienville. i told papa and mama my last birthday, and they are quite willing.”
“but it will be a long time yet,” said lucie, “won’t it?”
“not so very long,” said paul. “in four years i shall go to the cavalry school, and then in four years more i shall be graduated, and then i shall be a lieutenant, and have a sword, and wear a helmet with a horse-hair plume in it.”
the picture which paul unconsciously drew of himself was very attractive to the imaginative lucie. she looked at him meditatively, and wondered how he would look when he was grown up, with his sword and horse-hair plume. paul was not particularly handsome, but his somewhat stocky figure was well-knit, and he looked unqualifiedly clean and honest—two great recommendations in any man or boy.
“by the time you are a lieutenant with a sword,” she continued, “i shall be a young lady with a long train and i shall be very rich. harper told me so, and then i am coming to bienville, and i will buy the commandant’s house, and have the finest carriage in bienville, and have a ball every night.”
paul listened to this with a sudden sinking of the heart. the realization came to him, as much as if he had been twenty instead of twelve years old, that this splendid picture which lucie drew of her future did not accord with his, the son of a bienville advocate, who lived in a modest house and whose mother made most of her own gowns. and besides that, he did not like, and did not understand lucie’s innocent bragging. he was a sweet, sensible boy, with a practical french mind, who never bragged about anything in his life, and who did heroic, boyish things in the most matter-of-fact manner in the world, and never thought they were heroic. but lucie was so charming! like many a grown up man his judgment and his heart went different ways. lucie had his heart—there was no question about it.
lucie would have liked to stay a long time with paul, and paul would have enjoyed staying with lucie, but, looking up, he saw his father and mother approaching, on their way to the terrace, where, like all the other inhabitants of bienville, they spent their summer afternoons having ices or drinking tea and listening to the music. the verneys were a comfortable-looking couple, fond of each other and adoring paul. they smiled when they saw paul seated on the bench and the charming little girl talking to him. they knew it was none of paul’s doing, for he was afraid of girls and always ran away from them.
as his father and mother drew nearer, paul’s impulse to rush away, in order to avoid being seen with lucie, almost overpowered him, but he was at heart a courageous boy, and a chivalrous one, and he thought it would be cowardly to run off; so he stood, or rather sat his ground with apparent boldness, but his face was reddening and his heart thumping as his father and mother approached. lucie, however, was not at all timid, and when she saw monsieur and madame verney coming so close, asked paul who they were.
“it is my father and mother,” said paul in a shaky voice, opening his book with much embarrassment and turning over its pages.
“i think they look very nice,” said lucie, “and see, they are smiling at you. i think they are smiling at you because you are talking to me.”
paul’s head went down still lower on his book, and his face burned crimson. lucie, with great self-possession, got up from the bench, and, making a pretty little bow to monsieur and madame verney, skipped off back to harper.
monsieur verney, a pleasant-faced man of fifty, prodded paul with his cane.
“what charming young lady was that, my son, with whom you were speaking?”
“mademoiselle lucie bernard,” paul managed to articulate.
“and a very pretty little thing she is!” said madame verney, who was, herself, pretty and pleasant-looking, sitting down on the bench, and putting paul’s blushing face upon her shoulder. “for shame, charles, to tease the boy so!”
paul hid his face on his mother’s shoulder, meanwhile screwing up his courage to its ultimate point. then, raising his head, and looking his father directly in the eye, paul said:
“when i grow up, i mean to marry mademoiselle lucie.”
the boy’s clear blue eyes looked directly into his father’s, which were also clear and blue, and between the boy and the man a look of sympathy, of understanding, passed. his father might laugh at him, but paul knew that it was only a joke, after all, and as long as he behaved himself, no unkind word would be spoken to him by that excellent father.
“oho!” said monsieur verney to madame verney, “so we are promised a daughter-in-law already!”
“that pleases me very much,” said madame verney, smiling. “i hope that mademoiselle lucie will grow up as good as she is pretty, and then i shall be very glad to have her for a daughter-in-law.”
then his mother kissed him, and paul got up and walked on with his father and mother, holding a hand of each and wondering if any boy ever had such a kind father and mother. they joked him about lucie, but paul did not mind that. he rather liked it, now that the murder was out. presently, when paul had gone off to play and the verneys were sitting at a little table by themselves on the terrace, monsieur verney suddenly fell into a brown study, and, after a few minutes, bringing his fist down on the table and making the glasses ring, said to madame verney:
“i know who that little girl is now—i could not place her at first. she is the half-sister of madame ravenel. the child is allowed to visit her once a year—what can the family be thinking of to permit it?”
madame verney knew sophie ravenel’s history perfectly well, as did everybody in bienville, and she knew more than most people; for she said to monsieur verney:
“at the time when madame delorme left her husband for ravenel, this child, whom she had brought up from her birth, was taken away from her by her grandmother, their father’s mother, who is also the grandmother of madame ravenel. this little girl’s mother was an american, i am told. the child, i know, has been permitted to visit madame ravenel before, but this will scarcely be allowed after she is two or three years older. i have also heard that she has a large fortune through her mother, in her own right.”
at this the great maternal instinct welled up in madame verney’s heart. why should not her paul, [pg 75]the best of boys, marry a girl with a large fortune and a position like lucie’s, which was far above paul’s? she began to dream about paul’s matrimonial prospects—dreams which had begun when he was a little pink baby lying in his cradle. the verneys were not rich, nor distinguished, nor was there anything except love which would be likely to provide paul with a wife suitable to his merits. madame verney, following up this dream concerning paul, began secretly to pity madame ravenel, and argued that, after all, nothing about that unfortunate lady could reflect on lucie.
meanwhile lucie, kneeling down on the edge of the basin of the fountain, looked into it and saw there a church brilliantly lighted, with palms and flowers all about, and full of gaily-dressed ladies and officers in uniform. and then the organ sounded and up the aisle came marching herself, in a white satin gown and lace veil; and she leaned on the arm of a young officer with a sword and a helmet with a horse-hair plume in it, and he had the honest eyes of paul verney.
at the end of the week lucie vanished from paul’s sight, but not from his memory. according to all the laws of fitness, paul, the most honest, [pg 76]straightforward, matter-of-fact, obedient little fellow in the world, should have found his counterpart in the shape of another denise duval of his own class; for little denise was as honest, as correct, as matter-of-fact and as obedient as paul verney. but, behold how it works! paul fell in love with the vivacious, sprightly, charming lucie, while toni had determined to link his fate with the irreproachable and demure denise.
