Early in the winter of 1822 Paul de Manerville, through the intervention of his grandaunt, Madame la Baronne de Maulincour, asked the hand of Mademoiselle Evangelista. Though the Baroness usually spent no more than two months in Médoc, she remained on this occasion till the end of October to be of use to her grandnephew in this matter, and play the part of a mother. After laying the overtures before Madame Evangelista, the experienced old lady came to report to Paul on the results of this step.
“My boy,” said she, “I have settled the matter. In discussing money matters I discovered that Madame Evangelista gives her daughter nothing. Mademoiselle Natalie marries with but her barest right.—Marry, my dear; men who have a name and estates to transmit must sooner or later end by marriage. I should like to see my dear Auguste do the same.
“You can get married without me, I have nothing to bestow on you but my blessing, and old women of my age have no business at weddings. I shall return to Paris tomorrow. When you introduce your wife to society, I shall see her much more comfortably than I can here.—If you had not your house in Paris, you would have found a home with me. I should have been delighted to arrange my second-floor rooms to suit you.”
“Dear aunt,” said Paul, “thank you very warmly. … But what do you mean by saying her mother gives her nothing, ana that she marries only with her bare rights?”
“Her mother, my dear boy, is a very knowing hand, who is taking advantage of the girl’s beauty to make terms and give you no more than what she cannot keep back—the father’s fortune. We old folks, you know, think a great deal of ‘How much has he? How much has she?’ I advise you to give strict instructions to your notary. The marriage contract, my child, is a sacred duty. If your father and mother had not made their bed well, you might now be without sheets.—You will have children—they are the usual result of marriage—so you are bound to think of this. Call in Maître Mathias, our old notary.”
Madame de Maulincour left Paul plunged in perplexity.—His mother-in-law was a knowing hand! He must discuss and defend his interests in the marriage contract!—Who, then, proposed to attack them? So he took his aunt’s advice and entrusted the matter of settlements to Maître Mathias.
Still, he could not help thinking of the anticipated discussion. And it was not without much trepidation that he went to see Madame Evangelista with a view to announcing his intentions. Like all timid people, he was afraid lest he should betray the distrust suggested by his aunt, which he thought nothing less than insulting. To avoid the slightest friction with so imposing a personage as his future stepmother seemed to him, he fell back on the circumlocutions natural to those who dare not face a difficulty.
“Madame, you know what an old family notary is like,” said he, when Natalie was absent for a minute. “Mine is a worthy old man, who would be deeply aggrieved if I did not place my marriage contract in his hands—”
“But, my dear fellow,” said Madame Evangelista, interrupting him, “are not marriage contracts always settled through the notaries on each side?”
During the interval while Paul sat pondering, not daring to open the matter, Madame Evangelista had been wondering, “What is he thinking about?” for women have a great power of reading thought from the play of feature. And she could guess at the great-aunt’s hints from the embarrassed gaze and agitated tone which betrayed Paul’s mental disturbance.
At last
, thought she, the decisive moment has come; the crisis is at hand; what will be the end of it?
—“My notary,” she went on, after a pause, “is Maître Solonet, and yours is Maître Mathias; I will ask them both to dinner tomorrow, and they can settle the matter between them. Is it not their business to conciliate our interests without our meddling, as it is that of the cook to feed us well?”
“Why, of course,” said he, with a little sigh of relief.
By a strange inversion of parts, Paul, who was blameless, quaked, while Madame Evangelista, though dreadfully anxious, appeared calm. The widow owed her daughter the third of the fortune left by Monsieur Evangelista, twelve hundred thousand francs, and was quite unable to pay it, even if she stripped herself of all her possessions. She would be at her son-in-law’s mercy. Though she might override Paul alone, would Paul, enlightened by his lawyer, agree to any compromise as to the account of her stewardship? If he withdrew, all Bordeaux would know the reason, and it would be impossible for Natalie to marry. The mother who wished to secure her daughter’s happiness, the woman who from the hour of her birth had lived in honor, foresaw the day when she must be dishonest.
Like those great generals who would fain wipe out of their lives the moment when they were cowards at heart, she wished she could score out that day from the days of her life. And certainly some of her hairs turned white in the course of the night when, face to face with this difficulty, she bitterly blamed herself for her want of care.
In the first place, she was obliged to confide in her lawyer, whom she sent for to attend her as soon as she was up. She had to confess a secret vexation which she had never admitted even to herself, for she had walked on to the verge of the precipice, trusting to one of those chances that never happen. And a feeling was born in her
