Mated from the Morgue Part 14

The sly rascal! They little knew that he had provided himself with pistols from a conjuring friend, and had withdrawn the bullets before their eyes by the aid of a ramrod ending in a screw. The duel had been fought, like that of Jeffreys and Tom Moore, with leadless weapons.

And thus ended the hostile meeting at Clamart, and thus was Marguerite, like a soldier, committed to oblivion with a discharge of harmless gunpowder.

CHAPTER XII.

ORANGE-BLOSSOMS.

There be marriages which are made in heaven, some poet tells us, but in France they are more usually negotiated over the desk of the notary public. This is the system: Monsieur A---- wants a wife, he goes to Lawyer B----, says:

'Old friend, you are aware of my pecuniary circ.u.mstances--it is time for me to think of getting mated--do you know any lady with an eligible fortune in your _clientele_?'

'Let me see,' says B----, taking a pinch of snuff. 'Oh! there's C----'s widow, a capital alliance; got a good annuity in her own right.'

Perhaps A---- is particularly nice, doesn't like widows.

'Then, what d'ye think of D----'s daughter?' continues the lawyer.

'Faded and ugly.'

'But rich, accomplished, and of good family.'

A---- shakes his head negatively.

'Hem, so we must have beauty! What do you say to E----'s sister?'

'Do you want me to marry my grandmother--don't like the reigning toasts of the last generation. Good-morning.'

'Stay, there's F----'s niece; that's your mark.'

'Ah! now you're getting reasonable; think I could like the woman; saw her once at the opera.'

'And she has a pretty dowry and big expectations.'

A----'s face is getting radiant.

'Where can I meet her?'

'Madame B---- will give a little _soiree_ on Thursday night; we shall invite her.'

Mdlle. F---- is trotted out like a filly at Tattersail's--her paces are shown--report favourable.

'Have you any objection to receiving Monsieur A---- as a suitor?' asks the nearest of kin.

Mademoiselle blushes, but is too well-bred to say no. Monsieur comes, dressed to death, spruce as if he stepped out of a bandbox, and mademoiselle is prepared to receive him, nearest of kin being always present. Mademoiselle has got her instructions; they were somewhat in the key of the admonition little boys make to the bears in the Jardin des Plantes: _fais le beau_, 'do the handsome.' Monsieur pays compliments to mademoiselle, always through the nearest of kin, and she, dear, well-bred creature, listens to monsieur with sweetest politeness, never betraying a vulgar desire to look into the face, much less into the heart, of the man who is to be her future guide through life, her partner in the tomb. Thus the comedy proceeds. Nearest of kin does the courting, which is not too painfully elongated. The _trousseau_ is bought and exhibited. Monsieur buys the _corbeille_, which is ordinarily expected to amount in value to one-tenth of the dowry he gets with his wife (which dowry particular care is taken to settle on the wife herself). The banns are published; one day a party appears before the Mairie, and a commercial--we beg pardon, a marriage contract is signed, a supererogatory gallop to a neighbouring church takes place to satisfy conventionalism, and Mdlle. F---- becomes Madame A----. There is no love before marriage in nine cases out of ten; of the love which grows up after marriage we are too delicate to speak. It is understood--only sometimes it will happen that monsieur has a club and madame a _cavalier eservente_. And madame, dear, well-bred creature, endeavours to make up for the reserve imposed on mademoiselle, and it is perfectly astonis.h.i.+ng to discover what a profound knowledge of the world and its schemes and slanders the shy young maiden of last week contrives to develop all at once in her married household.

The reader will have remarked that O'Hara received the announcement that his Irish friend had succeeded in his proposal without surprise. The sole reason was that O'Hara had been living sufficiently long in France to know that marriages are arranged with the same celerity that one would toss a pancake, and that if the financial requirements are satisfied it is easy to fulfil the exigencies of affection.

During the interval that preceded the interesting ceremony (to borrow a phrase from the newspapers), which was not to take place until after Easter, the O'Hoolohan Roe was a constant visitor at the Rue de la Vieille Estrapade, only now he called himself the O'Hoolohan Dhuv, his sly countryman having bantered him on the affix Roe, which applies only to a light-complexioned, red-haired man, while he was tawny of complexion and black-haired as a Spaniard of the south. A most unmerciful bantering he did give him anent his a.s.sumption of the _The_.

'You a democrat!' he said, 'how is it that you cling to that particle?'--and then he told him the anecdotes of the English officer in charge of a detachment of troops at Bruff, one Captain Bull, upon whom the O'Grady of Kilballyowen left his card, who had scribbled The Bull of Bruff on the pasteboard he left in return; and of Sir Allan M'Nab, who had had the good taste to write on his card The _other_ M'Nab, after he had received a visit from _The_ M'Nab in Scotland. But O'Hoolohan was proof against satire, and retorted to his friend's joking that Mr. Bull and the Canadian knight were sn.o.bs, and deserved to be horse-whipped by The O'Grady and The M'Nab--that he was The O'Hoolohan, and that though his father chose to call himself Holland, he reverted to the old Irish name, O'Hoolohan, for which it was the subst.i.tute, and which meant 'proud little man.' He repeated the lines:

'By Mac and O You'll always know True Irishmen, they say; But if they lack Both O and Mac, No Irishmen are they.'

And in the end O'Hara, who was also proud of his Milesian patronymic, was obliged to admit he was right.

The banns were published at the church and at the Mairie, and at the close of the necessary three weeks, during which Berthe received a delicious fresh bouquet every morning from her lover, and then secluded herself over some mysterious female work with Caroline, the happy day (we draw on the newspapers again) arrived. Two carriages were marshalled before the munic.i.p.al inst.i.tution in the Place du Pantheon; two charming girls in white and a venerable, stately, white-haired man descended from the one; a man in the prime of life, with a younger companion of the same s.e.x, both in suit of ceremony, alighted from the other. There was a brief series of interrogatories and a jotting down of signatures inside, and the party emerged, re-entered the carriages in the same order, and leisurely drove to the Church of St. Stephen of the Mount at the other side of the square. A beadle, magnificently attired, awaited and conducted them with pompous air, pounding his staff of office at intervals on the sacred pavement, to a little altar, where the priest stood ready-vested. The ceremony by which two are made one was solemnized: there was blus.h.i.+ng as a ring was pressed on a little finger, and a few tears as a little hand parted from the tight grasp of Captain Chauvin; and then the nuptial Ma.s.s was said and the Benediction p.r.o.nounced in which G.o.d is prayed to make the newly-wedded amiable to her husband as Rachel, wise as Rebecca, and faithful as Sarah. Again the party emerged, but this time Captain Chauvin, Caroline, and O'Hara entered the second carriage together, for the first was occupied by Monsieur and Madame O'Hoolohan.

Half an hour afterwards there was solemn silence in the apartment in the Rue de la Vieille Estrapade, for Mr. Ma.n.u.s O'Hara, in a particularly neat and appropriate speech, had proposed the memory of the Man, and Captain Chauvin was crying, but--the wicked old man!--there was more gladness than sorrow in his tears. The Irish are born orators. n.o.body who heard the brilliant discourse in which Monsieur O'Hoolohan gave France, and eulogized the _entente cordiale_ which had been made that morning before the altar between it and Ireland, could deny that fact.

His voice, like O'Brien's of the Irish Brigade, in the lyric of Thomas Davis, was 'hoa.r.s.e with joy,' as he fondly regarded his bride, and wound up a florid and flouris.h.i.+ng peroration by a marked allusion to future alliances between the countries which he hoped to live to see, ill.u.s.trated by playful winks at O'Hara and the brunette. But the brunette kept never minding, and O'Hara's hand rose involuntarily to his s.h.i.+rt-bosom, under which reposed a certain tress of woman's hair. As for Pat, who was among the guests, he had feasted so heartily in honour of the occasion that he fell asleep while his master was on his legs.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE HONEYMOON TRIP.

It is a mistake to begin married life by gormandizing, by an outlay which one cannot afford, by affectation of a social position to which luxuries are common, or by servility to the despotism of fas.h.i.+on. Our friends in the Rue la de Vieille Estrapade knew and dreaded all this.

They owned that the ostentatious enjoyment which brings remorse at its heels is not worth the cost. Therefore, though they 'did the thing,' as the bridegroom put it, properly--that is, not shabbily--they did not put on airs and ape the grand. They did not gormandize, for gluttony leads to a fit of indigestion, and that leads to bad temper. They did not waste economies that might be needed after; but they had a jovial party conducted on the principles of prescient generosity. To be paradoxical, the wedding-breakfast and surroundings were a sample of thrifty extravagance. No more was spent on dresses and favours, bouquets and gloves, than could well be avoided without the semblance of meanness. No big man of the quarter was invited to the feast simply because he was a big man--wore ma.s.sive gold trinkets, had a balance at his banker's, a prominent pew in church, a seat at the council of Paris magnates, or a villa in the suburbs with a large garden. These people condescend; curse people who condescend, but compa.s.sionate not the people who stand condescension! They are treated as they deserve.

The custom in Paris is that those who cannot go for the honeymoon to Baden, or to a friend's country-house, pa.s.s it apart in some secluded suburb. O'H. and Madame O'H. were not such fools; they resolved to pa.s.s it under the captain's roof--their future home; they had no particular wish or necessity to confine themselves to each other's society till they lost novelty and palled on each other, seeing that they were linked while they breathed, and would have ample leisure to improve acquaintance, and spy out small imperfections. For, look you, this is no romance; our heroes and heroines are real, which is saying they are human and weak. The way to celebrate the marriage-day is just as one celebrates any ordinary holiday; the way to enjoy the honeymoon is in activity in the midst of bustling life, not in mooning indolence. The place for both is at home, amongst those whom we know and who are attached to us.

This is what our friends did. They drove to the Mairie and the church as we have described; they had a hearty breakfast, at which none were present but the five of the wedding party. Caroline did not fling a shower of rice at the retreating figure of the O'Hoolohan as he left for his chateau in Spain, but sensibly put the rice in a pot to boil for a supper pudding. Nor did the captain throw an old slipper at the poll of his departing Berthe, for old slippers are useful when one is gouty, and, besides, they sometimes disarrange a head-dress and hurt a little head.

Rice and old slippers! What superst.i.tious folly! And yet some very eminent men, wise and no way credulous, have been burdened with the log of superst.i.tion. Tyco Brahe was afraid to lay the first stone of his observatory till the stars were in a 'happy conjunction.' The astronomer who discovered the spots on the sun wiped his spectrum fifty times before he could persuade himself to believe his own sight. Sainte-Beuve, sceptic though he was, grew pale if the salt were spilt.

O'Hoolohan and O'Hara were not superst.i.tious. They were of the school which believes that it is unlucky to walk under a ladder--only when an awkward workman is handling bricks overhead; unlucky to sit down thirteen at table--only when there is not food enough for more than twelve.

But Captain Chauvin was superst.i.tious, after a kind. Like his idol, he held by destiny, and had faith in his planet. On all high days and holy days it was his wont to make pilgrimage to the shrine of his patron saint. Call this whim if you like, superst.i.tion if you will. On this happy day his secretly-cherished idea was to carry out his habit, and the moment he spoke of it his friends agreed to humour him. And in this wise it came to pa.s.s that there was a honeymoon trip, but a brief one in limit of time and travelling.

Now, where should the honeymoon trip be taken? In London, that is a question easier to answer than in Paris.

'Anywhere, anywhere _out_ of London,' would be the answer.

But in Paris the air you breathe is pure and brisk; the flowers in the city gra.s.s-plots are fresh and fragrant; the waters of the Seine course swiftly on with sparkling movement; the tall trees on the boulevards make friendly rustle; there are wide shady shrubs, clad in thick mantle of emerald, varied with citron and flecked with brown, in the public gardens; silvery fountains seem to dance to inaudible music; the shafts of suns.h.i.+ne play through cl.u.s.tering branches in the Elysian Fields and the Luxembourg, and make fretwork of black and gold on the smooth sward.

This happens when Nature is in gracious mood and scatters broadcast her charms from her bounteous lap. In Paris her mood is usually gracious, for Paris is the favoured city, the queen-city, the one haunt of the mult.i.tude where you can meet the Rus in Urbe, where you can salute the pets of art in the bosom of the Benign Mother.

In two open victorias the party started on the trip. Captain Chauvin and Caroline were on the seat of the first, and O'Hara on the strapontin in front of them, dangerously near to the tempting hands of the tall girl and in full range of her witching eyes. The bridegroom and bride were in the second victoria. The captain went foremost, for he was _cicerone_.

To the Champ de Mars they drove first and entered the Military School, the Chelsea Hospital of France.

'Go up, my children,' said Captain Chauvin; 'I am too feeble to accompany you. Mount one hundred and seventy-three steps and you will find the cell my saint occupied when he was a boy. There he lay in his camp-bed; there he dreamed dreams, and there he made his first sketch.

Till your return, I shall fight an old fight with--a comrade.'