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ABBE CONSTANTIN
By LUDOVIC HALEVY WITH a step still valiant and firm the old Abbe Constantin walked along the dusty road of the little village where for more than thirty years he had been the cure. At the entrance of the Castle of Longueval he stopped and mournfully regarded the big blue posters fixed on the pillars. They announced the sale of the castle, the former home of the cure's dear old friend, the marquise, who had recently died. And the result of that auction? The great estate bought by two entire strangers ! "Do you know who they are?" asked Madame de Lavardens. "Yes. Mrs. Scott is an American possessing a colossal fortune. Ten years ago Mrs. Scott begged in the streets of New York, they say. They are rich parvenus who amuse themselves by throwing handfuls of gold out of the window, and who will turn up their noses at us and care nothing for our traditions or our life." Such was the story. But when young Mrs. Scott and her beautiful sister arrived, to take possession of the castle, and called immediately upon the abbe, he learned a different tale. Religious, generous, amiable, and lovable they proved. And they were certainly beautiful, particularly the younger sister, Bettina Percival. Both had the same large eyes, black, laughing, and gay, and the same hair, not red, but fair, with golden shades which daintily danced in the light of the sun. At the cure's little home they met Jean Reynaud, the son of that gallant doctor of the village who, while advancing with the soldiers in the war of 1870 to carry on his work of mercy side by side with his dear old friend the abbe, had suddenly been struck by a bullet and killed on the spot. Jean, inheriting the noble traits of his father, was beloved by the whole village. But he was poor, while the American sisters were immeasurably rich. As acquaintances and friendships grew, very pleasing it was to the gentle, lovable old cure to learn that his new parishioners were most anxious to extend their benefactions among the poor in the hamlet, asking him, indeed, to be their medium. And it de-lighted him to learn that those stories about begging in the street and questionable life were mere calumnies. They had, indeed, been poor until an inherited silver-mine made them fabulously rich. Now they had hosts of admirers-Mrs. Scott because she was frankly flirtatious, and Bettina because, as she realized, the fortune-hunters-thirty-four of them she counted, including a French duke and a Spanish noble-sought her wealth. But through it all they retained their genuine simplicity and sweetness of heart. And when, one day, they all went over with Jean to visit the little church, and Bettina at the organ played a reverie of Chopin, good gentle Abbe Constantin's heart was filled with such joy that the tears came to his eyes. But all this left a deep problem in Jean's mind-" Which of the two sisters is the prettier?" At first he was convinced that it was the coquettish Mrs. Scott who charmed him the more; then he would see Bettina, smiling and blushing amid the sunlit clouds of her floating hair, and he would declare to himself, "I was mistaken-the prettier was Miss Percival." So, in the confusion of his meditations, he would say, "Is it possible that I have fallen madly in love at first sight? No; one might fall in love with a woman, but not with two women at once." The days went on and Jean and Bettina were often thrown into each other's company. What resulted is best pictured in Miss Percival's own remark to her sister when one day she exclaimed : "He is the first man, positively the first, in whose eyes I have not read, 'Oh how glad I should be to marry that little body's millions!'" And then, as Mrs. Scott went up-stairs to kiss her sleeping children, 'Bettina remained long leaning on the balustrade of her balcony. "It seems to me," said she, "that I am growing to be very fond of this place!" One day when Jean was telling of his expectations of promotion and the probability that he should wander from garrison to garrison, finally coming back to the little house that was his father's, as an old colonel on half pay, she exclaimed : "Always quite alone?" "Why quite alone? I certainly hope not." "You intend to marry?" "Yes, certainly." "Yet you have refused several good opportunities. Tell me why." "Because," he replied, "I think it best not to marry rather than to marry without love." "And I think so, too." She looked at him; he looked at her; and suddenly, to the great surprise of both, they found nothing more to say-nothing at all. But now Jean is no longer tranquil; with impatience and at the same time with sorrow he sees the moment of his departure approach. Yet how could he stay and resist the temptation of Bettina's charm? As an honorable man Jean felt for Bettina's money horror, positive horror. In Bettina's mind the sensation of love had come at the same time that it had to Jean's. But while he, horrified, had cast it violently from him, she, on the contrary, had yielded in all the simplicity of her perfect innocence to this flood of emotion and of tenderness. As Bettina grew more tender, Jean became more gloomy. He was not only afraid of loving; he was afraid of being loved. He felt he ought to remain away, but he could not; the temptation was too strong. He tried to avoid Bettina at receptions and even to leave without saying good-by. "If I touch her hand," he thought, "my secret will escape me." His secret! He did not know that Bettina read his heart like an open book. When Jean descended the stairs these words were upon his lips : "I love you, I adore you, and that is why I will see you no more!" But he did not utter them; he actually fled into the darkness. Bettina, standing in the hall door and taking no notice of the rain driving across her bare shoulders, watched him go. "I knew very well that he loved me," she thought, "but now I am very sure that I. too-oh yes ! I, too-" Meanwhile Jean hastens to his dear old friend the cure to tell him that he is going away immediately to Paris to seek exchange into another regiment, to leave the little hamlet forever. And then in his emotion he confessed to the abbe that he adored Bettina. "It is a madness which has seized me," he exclaimed. "Ah! if she were only poor!" "Do you know what I think, Jean?" exclaimed his good friend. "Jean, I believe that she loves you." "And I believe it, too; but that is the very reason I must go. Her money is the great obstacle." At that moment some one knocked gently at the door. It was Bettina. Going directly to Jean, she cried, "Oh, how glad I am you are here." Then she took both his hands in hers and, addressing the cure, she said, "I have come to beg you, Monsieur le Cure, to listen to my confession." And to herself she was saying, "I wish to be loved ! I wish to love ! I wish to be happy and to make him happy! And since he cannot have the courage to say it, I must have the courage for both!" "I am rich, Monsieur le Cure," she continued, aloud, "very rich, but I love money most for the good which it allows me to do. So I have the care of this money, and I have always wished that my husband should be worthy of sharing this great fortune in order that he should help me make good use of it. I thought of another thing, too-'He who will be my husband must be some one I can love!' There is a man who has done all he can to conceal from me that he loves me, but I do not doubt that he loves me. You do love me, Jean?" "Yes," said Jean, in a low voice, his eyes cast down, looking like a criminal, "I do love you." "I knew it very well, but I wanted to hear you say it. And now, Jean, I say to you, `I love you!' Do not come near me, yet. Before I came here I thought I had a good stock of courage, but you see I have no longer my fine composure of a minute ago. And now, Monsieur le Cure, I want you to answer me, not him. Tell me, if he loves me and feels me worthy of my love, should he not agree to be my husband?" "Jean," said the old priest, gravely, "marry her; it is your duty." And as Jean took Bettina in his arms the girl continued : "You have often told me, Monsieur le Cure, that Jean was almost like your own son. Now you will have two children, that is all." A month later Bettina, in the simplest of wedding-dresses, entered the church. The old cure said mass. Jean and Bettina knelt before him. He pronounced the benediction. Then floated from the organ the same reverie of Chopin's which Bettina had played the first time she had entered that village church where was to be consecrated the happiness of her life. And this time it was Bettina who wept. |