A Woman of Thirty

Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings by imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own experience on such bruises as this mother’s heart received, know also how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her memories, Mme. d’Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath smiles.

At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter’s windows, she dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little time. As she stood under her daughter’s windows, the shutters were hastily closed.

“Moina, is it you?” she asked.

No answer.

The Marquise went on into the house.

“Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room,” said the maid, when the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Hereen had finished dressing.

Mme. d’Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder under the cap tossed carelessly on he head, her feet thrust into slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.

“What makes people come in!” she cried, crossly. “Oh! it is you, mother,” she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.

“Yes, child; it is your mother – ”

Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the word “holy.” So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning of approach through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the door.

“It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to your husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was wrong), that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for once at least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear in mind, Moina that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of whom you may well be proud, a man who – ”

“I know what you are going to say, mother!” Moina broke in pettishly. “I am to be lectured about Alfred – ”

“Moina,” the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears, “you would not guess at once if you did not feel – ”

“What?” asked Moina, almost haughtily. “Why, really, mother – ”

Mme. d’Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. “Moina,” she said, “you must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you – ”

“I am attending,” returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting insolent submission. “Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline,” she added with incredible self-possession; “I will send her away first.”

She rang the bell.

“My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear – ”

“Mamma,” interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck her mother as something unusual, “I must – ”

She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.

“Pauline, go yourself to Baudran’s, and ask why my hat has not yet been sent.”

Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation, which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina’s eyes to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt and indignant at her mother’s suspicions of a son of the Marquis de Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.

“Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of the father– ” she said, with a forced laugh.

Mme. d’Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space, as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.

“My child,” she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, “you have been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!”

Mme. d’Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but surprise in her daughter’s face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path, she saw fresh marks on the path, a man’s footprints were distinctly recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had gone before it. She drew her own inferences – the son of the Marquis de Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her daughter’s mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost consciousness, and sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.

The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that her mother had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few attentions that evening would make all right again.

A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding the Marquise in her arms.

“Do not frighten my daughter!” those were the last words the mother uttered.

Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and overcome by the sight, Moina followed in silence, and helped to undress her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her mother – too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her darling Moina; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her daughter. That smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is always to be found in the great deep of a mother’s heart.

Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and surgeon and for Mme. d’Aiglemont’s grandchildren. Mme. d’Aiglemont the younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moina from her grief, for she flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard eyes upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise’s feet were stretched out stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moina, leaning against the door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a hollow voice:

“I have lost my mother!”

PARIS, 1828-1844

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy

Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d’

At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

The Firm of Nucingen

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The Vendetta

The Gondreville Mystery

Colonel Chabert

Domestic Peace

The Seamy Side of History

Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)

Madame Firmiani

The Government Clerks

A Daughter of Eve

The Member for Arcis

Chatillonest, De

Modeste Mignon

Crottat, Alexandre

Cesar Birotteau

Colonel Chabert

A Start in Life

Cousin Pons

Desroches (son)

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Colonel Chabert

A Start in Life

The Commission in Lunacy

The Government Clerks

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Firm of Nucingen

A Man of Business

The Middle Classes

Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel

The Gondreville Mystery

Ronquerolles, Marquis de

The Imaginary Mistress

The Peasantry

Ursule Mirouet

Another Study of Woman

The Thirteen

The Member for Arcis

Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de

A Daughter of Eve

The Member for Arcis

Serizy, Comtesse de

A Start in Life

The Thirteen

Ursule Mirouet

 

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Another Study of Woman

The Imaginary Mistress

Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de

A Start in Life

A Daughter of Eve