Valerie
Text“Valerie!” exclaimed Caroline, blushing fiery red.
“Caroline!” replied I, quietly.
“What were you going to say?”
“Fancying her to be a very great heiress,” I continued; “but finding her to be a far better thing, a delightful, beautiful, and excellent wife.”
“Happy man!” said de Chavannes, with a half sigh.
“Why do you say so, Count?”
“To have married one for whom you vouch so strongly. Is that any common fortune?”
“It is rather common, Count, just of late I mean,” said Caroline, laughing. “You do not know that among Valerie’s other accomplishments she is the greatest little match-maker in existence. She marries off all her friends as fast—oh! you cannot think how fast.”
“I hope, I mean to say I think,” he corrected himself, not without some little confusion, “that she is not quite so bad as you make her out. She has not yet made any match for herself, I believe. No, no. I don’t believe she is quite so bad.”
“I would not be too sure, Count, were I you,” she answered, desirous of paying me off a little for some of the badinage with which I had treated her. “These ladies, with so many strings to their bow—”
It was now my time to exclaim “Caroline!” and I did so not without giving some little emphasis of severity to my tone, for I really thought she was going beyond the limits of propriety, if not of persiflage; and I will do her the justice to say that she felt it herself, for she blushed very much as I spoke, and was at once silent.
The awkwardness of this pause was fortunately broken by the return of Auguste and Lionel at a sharp canter; for the review was now entirely at an end, and they had now for the first moment remembered that, having promised to return in a quarter of an hour, they had suffered two hours or more to elapse, and that we were probably all alone.
Caroline immediately began to rally Lionel and Auguste; the former, with whom she was very intimate, pretty severely, for their want of gallantry in leaving us all alone and unprotected in such a crowd.
“Not the least danger—not the least!” replied Lionel hastily. “Had we not known that, we should have returned long ago.”
“In proof of which no danger, we have been all frightened nearly to death; Mademoiselle Valerie de Chatenoeuf has been grievously affronted, and I am not sure but she would have been beaten by a French Chevalier d’Industrie, had it not been for the gallantry of the Count de Chavannes.”
And thereupon out came the whole history of Monsieur G—, his horse-whipping, the opportune appearance of Colonel Jervis, and all the curious circumstances of the scene.
I never in my life saw anyone so fearfully excited as Auguste. He turned white as ashes, even to his very lips, while his eyes literally flashed fire, and his frame shivered as if he had been in an ague fit. “Il me le paiera!” he muttered between his hard-set teeth. “Il me le paiera, le scélérat! Ma pauvre soeur—ma pauvre petite Valerie!”
And then he shook the hand of Chavannes with the heartiest and warmest emotion. “I shall never forget this,” he said, in a thick, low voice; “never, never! From this time forth, de Chavannes, we are friends for ever. But I shall never, never, be able to repay you.”
“Nonsense, mon cher, nonsense,” replied Chavannes. “I did nothing—positively nothing at all. I should not have been a man, had I done otherwise.”
This had, however, no effect at all in stopping Auguste’s exclamations and professions of eternal gratitude; nor did he cease until Monsieur de Chavannes said quietly, “Well, well, if you will have it so, say no more about it; and one day or other I will ask a favour of you, which, if granted, will leave me your debtor.”
“If granted!—it is granted,” exclaimed Auguste, impetuously. “What is it?—name it—I say it is granted.”
“Don’t be rash, mon cher,” replied the Count, laughing; “it is no slight boon which I shall ask.”
“Do not be foolish, Auguste,” I interposed; “you are letting your feelings get the better of you, strangely; and, Caroline, if you do not tell the people to drive home, you will keep the Judge waiting dinner—a proceeding to which you know he is by no means partial.”
“You are right, as usual, Valerie; always thoughtful for other people. So we will go home.”
But, just as we were on the point of starting, the groom with the cockade, whom we had seen following Colonel Jervis, trotted up, and, touching his hat, asked, “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but is any one of you the Count de Chavannes?”
“I am,” replied the Count; “what do you want with me, sir?”
“From Colonel Jervis, sir,” replied the man, handing him a visiting card. “The Colonel’s compliments, Count, and he begs you will do him the favour, in case you hear anything more from that fellow, as you horsewhipped, Count, to let him know at Thomas’s at once, for you must not treat him as a gentleman, no how, the Colonel says; and if so be he gives you any trouble, the Colonel can get his flint fixed—the Colonel can!”
“Thank you, my man,” replied the Count; “give my compliments to your master, and I am much obliged for his interest. I shall do myself the honour of waiting on the Colonel to-morrow. Be so good as to tell him so.”
“I will, sir,” said the man; and rode away without another word.
“You see, Monsieur de Chatenoeuf, you must not dream of noticing the fellow as a gentleman,” said the Count.
“Impossible!” Lionel chimed in, almost in the same breath; and all the ladies followed suit with their absolute “Impossible!”
A rapid drive brought us to the Judge’s house at Kew, where we found dinner nearly ready, though not waiting: and the events of the day were the topic, and the Count the hero of the evening.
The next morning, we returned to town—Auguste and myself, I mean; Monsieur de Chavannes having driven up from Kew in his own cabriolet after dinner.
I called, according to my promise, and found Adèle alone, and delighted to see me, and in the highest possible spirits. She was the happiest of women, she said; and Colonel Jervis was everything that she could wish—the kindest, most affectionate of husbands; and all that she now desired, as she declared, was to see me established suitably.
“You had better let matters take their course, Adèle,” I answered. “Though not much of a fatalist, I believe that when a person’s time is to come, it comes. It avails nothing to hurry—nothing to endeavour to retard it. I shall fare, I doubt not, as my friends before me, dear Adèle; and, if I can consult as well for myself as I seem to have done for my friends, I shall do very well. Caroline, by the way, is quite as happy as you declare yourself to be, and I doubt not are; for I like your Colonel amazingly.”
“I am delighted to hear it. He also is charmed with you. But who is the Count de Chavannes, of whom he is so full just now? He says he is the only Frenchman he ever saw worthy to be an Englishman—which, though we may not exactly regard it as a compliment, he considers the greatest thing he can say in any one’s favour. Who is this Count de Chavannes, Valerie?”
I told her, in reply, all that I knew, and that you know, gentle reader, about the Count de Chavannes.
“Et puis?—Et puis?” asked Adèle, laughing.
“Et puis, nothing at all,” I answered.
“No secrets among friends, Valerie,” said Adèle, looking me earnestly in the face; “I had none with you, and you helped me with your advice. Be as frank, at least, with me, if you love me.”
“I do love you dearly, Adèle; and I have no secrets. There is nothing concerning which to have a secret.”
“Nothing?—not this gay and gallant Count?”
“Not even he.”
“And you are not about to become Madame la Comtesse?”
“I am not, indeed.”
“Indeed—in very deed?”
“In very—very deed.”
“Well, I do not understand it. By what Jervis told me, I presumed it was a settled thing.”
“The Colonel was mistaken. There is nothing settled or unsettled.”
“And do you, really, not like him?”
“I really do like him, Adèle, as a very pleasant companion for an hour or two, and as a very perfect gentleman.”
“Yes, he told me all that. But, if you like him so well, why not like him better? Why not love him?”
“I will be plain and true with you, Adèle. I do not choose to consider at all, whether I could or could not, love him. He has never asked me, has never spoken of love to me; and putting it out of the question that it is unmaidenly to love unasked, I am sure it is unwise.”
“I understand, I understand. But he will ask you, that is certain; and, when he does ask, what shall you say?”
“It will be time enough to consider when that time shall come.”
“Another way of saying, ‘I shall say yes!’ But come, Valerie, you must promise me that if you need my assistance, you will call upon me for it. You know that anything I can do for you will be done without a thought but how I best may serve you; and Jervis will do likewise, since he, as I do, considers that under Heaven, we owe our happiness to you.”
“I promise it.”
“Enough; I will ask no more. Now come up to my room, and I will give you Madame d’Albret’s letters, and some pretty presents she has sent you. Do you know, Valerie, nothing could exceed her kindness to us. I believe she repents bitterly her unkindness to you. I cannot repeat the terms of praise and admiration which she applied to you.”
“And do you know, Adèle, that it was her infamous and miserable husband, Monsieur G—, whom the Count horsewhipped this very day, for insulting me?”
“Indeed? was it indeed? That man’s enmity to you will never cease, so long as he has life. No, Jervis did not tell me who it was, thinking, I fancy, that neither you nor I would have so much as known his name. But never care about the wretch. Here is Madame’s letter.”
It was as kind a letter as could be written, full of thanks for the favour I had shown her in introducing my friends to her, and of hopes that we should one day meet again, when all the past should be forgotten, and I should resume my own place and station in the society of my own land. She begged my acceptance of the pretty dresses she sent, which she said she had selected, not for their value, but because they were pretty; and, in her postscript, she added, what of course outweighed all the rest of her letter, both in interest and importance, that she had recently been informed through a strange channel, and, as it were, by accident, that my mother’s health was failing, seriously, and that, although not attacked by any regular disorder, nor in any immediate danger, it was not thought probable that she could live much longer. “In that case, Valerie,” she continued, “for, although no one could be so unnatural as to wish for a mother’s death, how cruel and unmotherly she might be soever, it cannot be expected that you should regard her decease with more than decent observation, and a proper seriousness, and I shall look to see you dwelling again among us, and spending the little fortune which I understand you have so bravely earned, in the midst of your friends, and in your own country.”
“That I shall never do,” I said, speaking aloud, though in answer partly to her letter, partly to my own words; “that I shall never do. Visit France I may, once and again; but in England I shall dwell. France banished and repudiated me like a step-mother—England received me, kinder than my own, like a mother. In England I shall dwell.”
“Wait till you see the lord of your destinies; and learn where he shall dwell. You will have to say, like the rest of us, ‘Your country shall be my country, and your God my God,’”—observed Adèle interrupting my musings.
“The first perhaps—the last never! never! Catholic I was born, Catholic I will die. I do not say that I will never marry any but a Catholic, but I do say that I will never marry but one who will approve my adoring my own God, according to my own conscience.”
“Is the Count de Chavannes a Catholic?”
“Indeed, I know not. But he is a Breton, and the Bretons are a loyal race, both to their king and their God.”
I now turned to finish my reading, which had been for the moment interrupted.
“Indeed, my dear Valerie,” she concluded her letter, “I have long felt that although we were certainly justified by the circumstances of your situation, in taking the steps we did at that time, we have been hardly pardonable in persisting so long in the maintenance of a falsehood, which has certainly been the cause of great pain and suffering to both your parents, the innocent no less than the guilty. I know that your mother can never forgive me for aiding you in your escape from her authority; but for my part, I am willing to bear her enmity, rather than persist in further concealment, so that you need not in any degree consider me in any steps which you may think it wise or right to take towards revelation and reconciliation. Indeed I think, Valerie, that if it can be done with due regard to your own safety and happiness, you ought to discover yourself to both your parents, and, if possible, even to visit the most unhappy, because the guiltier of the two, before her dissolution, which I really believe to be now very near at hand. Everyone knows so well what you have undergone, that no blame will attach to you in the least degree. Allow me to add, that should you return to France, as I hope you will do, I shall never forgive you if you do not make my house your home.”
This postscript, as will readily be believed, gave me more cause for thought than all the letter beside, and rendered me exceedingly uneasy. If I had felt ill-satisfied before with my condition and my concealment, much more was I now discontented with myself, and unhappy. I was almost resolved to return at all hazards with Auguste; and, indeed, when I consulted with Adèle, she leaned very much towards the same opinion. I would not, however, do anything rashly, but determined to consult not only with my brother, but with the Judge, in whose wisdom I had no less confidence than I had in his friendship and integrity.
Things, however, were destined to occur, which in some degree altered and hastened all my proceedings, for that very evening when the Gironacs had retired, on my beginning to consult Auguste, “Listen to me a moment, before you tell me about your letters from France, or anything about returning, and I entreat you answer me truly, and let no false modesty, or little missish delicacy, prevent your doing so. Many a life has been rendered miserable by such foolishness, I have heard say; and being, as it were, almost alone in the world, as if an only brother with an only sister, to whom, if not to one another, should we speak freely?”
“You need not have made so long a preamble, dear Auguste,” I replied with a smile; “of course, I will answer you; and, when I say that, of course I will answer truly.”
“Well, then, Valerie, do you like this Count de Chavannes?”
“It is an odd question, but—Yes. I do like him.”
“Do you love him, Valerie?”
“Oh! Auguste—that is not fair. Besides, he has never spoken to me of love. He has never—I do not know whether he loves me—I have no reason to believe that he does.”
“No reason!”—he exclaimed, half surprised, half indignant—“no reason! I should think—but never mind—answer me this; if he did love you, do you love him or like him enough to take him for your husband?”
“He has spoken to you, Auguste—he has spoken to you!” I exclaimed, blushing very deeply, but unable to conceal my gratification.
“I am answered, Valerie, by the sparkle of those bright eyes. Yes, he has spoken to me, dearest sister; and asked my influence with you, and my permission to address you.”
“And you replied—?”
“And I replied, that my permission was a matter of no consequence, for that you were entirely your own mistress, and that my influence would be exerted only to induce you to follow your own judgment and inclinations, and to consult for your own happiness.”
“Answered like a good and wise brother. And then he—?”
“Asked, whether I could form any opinion of the state of your feelings. To which I replied, that I could only say that I had reason to suppose that your hand and heart were neither of them engaged, and that the field was open to him if he chose to make a trial. But that I had no opportunity of judging how you felt toward him. I also said, that I thought you knew very little of each other, and that his attachment must have grown up too rapidly to have taken a very strong root. But there I found I was mistaken. For he assured me that it was from esteem of your character, and admiration of your energy, courage, and constancy under adversity, not from the mere prettiness of your face, or niceness of your manners, that he first began to love you. And I since ascertained that there is scarce an incident of your life with which he has not made himself acquainted, and that in the most delicate and guarded manner. I confess, Valerie, that it has raised him greatly in my estimation to find that he looks upon marriage as a thing so serious and solemn, and does not rush into it from mere fancy for a pretty face and lady-like accomplishments.”
“I think so too, Auguste,” I replied. “But I wish we knew a little more about him. His character and principles, I mean.”
Auguste looked at me for a moment, in great surprise. “What an exceedingly matter-of-fact girl you are, Valerie; I never knew any one in the least like you. Do you know I am afraid you are a little—” and he paused a moment, as if he hardly knew how to proceed.
“A little hard and cold, is it not, dear Auguste?” said I, throwing my arms about him. “No, no, indeed I am not; but I have been cast so long on my own sole resources, and obliged to rely only on my own energy and clear-sightedness, that I always try to look at both sides of the question, and not to let my feelings overpower me, until I have proved that it is good and wise to do so. Consider, too, Auguste, that on this step depends the whole happiness or misery of a girl’s existence.”
“You are right, Valerie, and I am wrong. But tell me, do you love him?”
“I do, Auguste. I like him better than any man I have ever seen. He is the only man of whom I could think as a husband—and I have for some time past been fearful of liking him—loving him, too much, not knowing, though I did believe and hope, that he reciprocated my feelings. And now, if I knew but a little more of his principles and character, I would not hesitate.”
“Then you need not hesitate, dearest Valerie; for, as if to obviate this objection, he showed me, in the most delicate manner, private letters from his oldest and most intimate friends, and especially from Mr —, a most respectable clergyman, who lives at Hendon, by whom he was educated, and with whom he has maintained constant intercourse and correspondence ever since. This alone speaks very highly in his favour, and the terms in which he writes to his pupil, are such as prove them both to be men of the highest character for worth, integrity, and virtue. He has proposed, moreover, that I should ride down with him to-morrow to Hendon, to visit Mr —, and to hear from his own lips yet more of his character and conduct, that is to say, if I can give him any hopes of ultimate success.”
“Well, Auguste,” I replied, “I think with you, that all this speaks very highly in favour of your friend; and I think that the best thing you can do, is to take this ride which he proposes, and see his tutor. In the meantime, I will drive down to Kew, and speak with our good friend, Judge Selwyn, on the subject. To-morrow evening I will see the Count, and hear whatever he desires to say to me.”
This was a very matter-of-fact way of dealing with the affair, certainly; but what Auguste had said, was in some sort true. I was in truth rather a matter-of-fact girl, and I never found that I suffered by it in the least; for I certainly was not either worldly or selfish, and the feelings do, as certainly, require to be guided and controlled by sober reason.
After coming to this conclusion, I showed Madame d’Albret’s letter to Auguste, and we came to the decision, also, that, under the circumstances, Auguste should immediately, on his return, communicate the fact of my being alive and in good circumstances, to my father; leaving it at his discretion to inform my mother of the facts or not, as he might judge expedient.
At a very early hour next morning, I took a glass-coach and drove down to Kew, where I arrived, greatly to the astonishment of the whole family, just as they were sitting down to breakfast; and, when I stated that I had come to speak on very urgent business with the Judge, he desired my carriage to return to town, and proposed to carry me back himself, so that we might kill two birds, as he expressed it, with one stone, holding a consultation in his carriage, while on his way to court.
As soon as we got into the coach, while I was hesitating how to open the subject, which was certainly a little awkward for a young girl, the Judge took up the discourse—
“Well, Valerie,” he said, “I suppose you want to know the result of the inquiries which you were so unwilling that I should make about the Count de Chavannes. Is not that true?”
“It is perfectly true, Judge—though I do not know how you ever have divined it.”
“It is lucky, at least, that I consulted my own judgment, rather than your fancy; for otherwise I should have had no information to give you.”
“But as it is, Judge?”
“Why as it is, Mademoiselle Valerie, you may marry him as soon as ever he asks you, and think yourself a very lucky young lady into the bargain. He has a character such as not one man in fifty can produce. He is rich, liberal without being extravagant, never plays, is by no means dissipated, and in all respects is a man of honour, ability, and character; such is what I have learned from a quarter where there can be no mistake.”
I was a good deal affected for a moment or two, and was very near bursting into tears. The good Judge took my hand in his, and spoke soothingly and almost caressingly, bidding me confide in him altogether, and he would advise me, as if he were my own father.
I did so accordingly; and, while he approved highly of all that I had done, and of the delicate and gentlemanly manner in which the Count had acted, he fully advised me to deal frankly and directly with him. “You like him, I am sure, Valerie; indeed, I believe I knew that before you did yourself, and I have no doubt he will make you an admirable husband. Tell him all, show him this letter of your friend Madame d’Albret’s, about your mother, and if he desires it, as I dare say he will, marry him at once, and set out together with Auguste, for France, when his leave of absence is expired, and go directly to Paris with your husband. As a married woman, your parents will have no authority of any kind over you, and I think it is your duty to do so.”
I agreed with him at once; and, when in the evening Auguste returned with the Count from a visit to his former tutor, which had been in all respects satisfactory, and left me alone with Monsieur de Chavannes, everything was determined without difficulty.
Love-scenes and courtships, though vastly interesting to the actors, are always the dullest things in the world to bystanders; I shall therefore proceed at once to the end, merely stating that the Count was all, and did all, that the most exigeante of women could have required—that from the first to the last he was full of delicacy, of tenderness, and honour, and that after twelve years of a happy life with him, I have never had cause to repent for a moment that I consented to give him the hand, which he so ardently desired.
The joy of Madame Gironac can be imagined better than described, as well as the manner in which she bustled about my trousseau and my outfit for France, as it was determined that the Judge’s plan should be adopted to the letter, and that we should start directly from St George’s to Dover and Calais.
Never, perhaps, was a marriage more rapidly organised and completed. The law-business was expedited with all speed by Charles Selwyn; Madame Bathurst, the Jervises, the Gironacs, and the Selwyns were alone present at the wedding, and, though we were all dear friends, there was no affectation of tears or lamentable partings; for we knew that in heaven’s pleasure, we should all meet again within a few months, as, after our wedding tour was ended, Monsieur de Chavannes proposed to take up his abode in England, the land of his choice, as of his education.
There was no bishop to perform the ceremony, nor any duke to give away the bride. No long array of liveried servants with favours in their buttons and in their hats—no pompous paragraph in the morning papers to describe the beauties of the high-bred bride and the dresses of her aristocratic bridesmaids—but two hearts were united as well as two hands, and Heaven smiled upon the union.
A quick and pleasant passage carried us to Paris, where I was received with raptures by my good old friend, Madame Paon, and with sincere satisfaction by Madame d’Albret, who was proud to recognise her old protégée in the new character of the Comtesse de Chavannes, a character which she imagined reflected no small credit on her tuition and patronage.
The threatened émeute having passed over, Auguste easily obtained a renewal of his leave of absence in order to visit his family at Pau, and, as he preceded us by three days, and travelled with the utmost diligence, he outstripped us by nearly a week, and we found both my parents prepared to receive us, and both really happy at the prosperous tidings.
My poor mother was indeed dying; had we come two days later we should have been too late, for she died in my arms on the day following our arrival, enraptured to find herself relieved from the heinous crime of which she had so long believed herself guilty, and blessing me with her dying lips.
My father who had always loved me, and who had erred through weakness of head only, seemed never to weary of sitting beside me, of holding my hand in his, and of gazing in my face. With Monsieur de Chavannes’ consent, the whole of my little earnings, amounting now to nearly 3500 pounds, was settled on him for his life, and then on my sisters, and the income arising from it, though a mere trifle in England, in that cheap region sufficed with what he possessed of his own, to render his old age affluent and happy.
Thus all my trials ended; and, if the beginning of my career was painful and disastrous, the cares and sorrows of Valerie de Chatenoeuf had been more than compensated by the happiness of Valerie de Chavannes.
I may as well mention here that a few years afterwards, Lionel Dempster married my second sister, Elisée, a very nice and very handsome girl, and has settled very close to the villa which the Count purchased on his return from France, near Windsor, on the lovely Thames, ministering not a little by their company to the bliss of our happy, peaceful life.
My eldest brother, Auguste, is now a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Line, having greatly distinguished himself in Algeria; Nicholas, who never returned to France, has acquired both renown and riches by his musical abilities, and all the younger branches of the family are happily provided for.
I have three sweet children, one boy, and two little girls, and the difficulties and sorrows I experienced, owing to an evil and injudicious course of education, have been so far of use, that they have taught me how to bring up my own children, even more to love and honour than to obey.
Perfect happiness is not allotted to any here below; but few and short have been the latter sorrows, and infinite the blessings vouchsafed by a kind Providence, to the once poor and houseless, but now rich, and honoured, and, better than all, loved Valerie.