THE PROBLEM STILL UNSOLVED
An hour went by in solemn stillness broken only by the cabalistic phrases of the whist-players: "Spades!" "Trumped!" "Cut!" "How are honors?" "Two to four." "Whose deal?"--phrases which represent in these days the higher emotions of the European aristocracy. Modeste continued to work, without seeming to be surprised at her mother's silence. Madame Mignon's handkerchief slipped from her lap to the floor; Butscha precipitated himself upon it, picked it up, and as he returned it whispered in Modeste's ear, "Take care!" Modeste raised a pair of wondering eyes, whose puzzled glance filled the poor cripple with joy unspeakable. "She is not in love!" he whispered to himself, rubbing his hands till the skin was nearly peeled off. At this moment Exupere tore through the garden and the house, plunged into the salon like an avalanche, and said to Dumay in an audible whisper, "The young man is here!" Dumay sprang for his pistols and rushed out.
"Good God! suppose he kills him!" cried Madame Dumay, bursting into tears.
"What is the matter?" asked Modeste, looking innocently at her friends and not betraying the slightest fear.
"It is all about a young man who is hanging round the house," cried Madame Latournelle.
"Well!" said Modeste, "why should Dumay kill him?"
"Sancta simplicita!" ejaculated Butscha, looking at his master as proudly as Alexander is made to contemplate Babylon in Lebrun's great picture.
"Where are you going, Modeste?" asked the mother as her daughter rose to leave the room.
"To get ready for your bedtime, mamma," answered Modeste, in a voice as pure as the tones of an instrument.
"You haven't paid your expenses," said the dwarf to Dumay when he returned.
"Modeste is as pure as the Virgin on our altar," cried Madame Latournelle.
"Good God! such excitements wear me out," said Dumay; "and yet I'm a strong man."
"May I lose that twenty-five sous if I have the slightest idea what you are about," remarked Gobenheim. "You seem to me to be crazy."
"And yet it is all about a treasure," said Butscha, standing on tiptoe to whisper in Gobenheim's ear.
"Dumay, I am sorry to say that I am still almost certain of what I
told you," persisted Madame Mignon.
"The burden of proof is now on you, madame," said Dumay, calmly; "it is for you to prove that we are mistaken."
Discovering that the matter in question was only Modeste's honor, Gobenheim took his hat, made his bow, and walked off, carrying his ten sous with him,--there being evidently no hope of another rubber.
"Exupere, and you too, Butscha, may leave us," said Madame Latournelle. "Go back to Havre; you will get there in time for the last piece at the theatre. I'll pay for your tickets."
When the four friends were alone with Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, after looking at Dumay, who being a Breton understood the mother's obstinacy, and at her husband who was fingering the cards, felt herself authorized to speak up.
"Madame Mignon, come now, tell us what decisive thing has struck your mind."
"Ah, my good friend, if you were a musician you would have heard, as I
have, the language of love that Modeste speaks."
The piano of the demoiselles Mignon was among the few articles of furniture which had been moved from the town-house to the Chalet.
Modeste often conjured away her troubles by practising, without a master. Born a musician, she played to enliven her mother. She sang by nature, and loved the German airs which her mother taught her. From these lessons and these attempts at self-instruction came a phenomenon not uncommon to natures with a musical vocation; Modeste composed, as far as a person ignorant of the laws of harmony can be said to compose, tender little lyric melodies. Melody is to music what imagery and sentiment are to poetry, a flower that blossoms spontaneously.
Consequently, nations have had melodies before harmony,--botany comes later than the flower. In like manner, Modeste, who knew nothing of the painter's art except what she had seen her sister do in the way of water-color, would have stood subdued and fascinated before the pictures of Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Murillo, Rembrandt, Albert Durer, Holbein,--in other words, before the great ideals of many lands.
Lately, for at least a month, Modeste had warbled the songs of nightingales, musical rhapsodies whose poetry and meaning had roused the attention of her mother, already surprised by her sudden eagerness for composition and her fancy for putting airs into certain verses.
"If your suspicions have no other foundation," said Latournelle to Madame Mignon, "I pity your susceptibilities."
"When a Breton girl sings," said Dumay gloomily, "the lover is not far off."
"I will let you hear Modeste when she is improvising," said the mother, "and you shall judge for yourselves--"
"Poor girl!" said Madame Dumay, "If she only knew our anxiety she would be deeply distressed; she would tell us the truth,--especially if she thought it would save Dumay."
"My friends, I will question my daughter to-morrow," said Madame Mignon; "perhaps I shall obtain more by tenderness than you have discovered by trickery."
Was the comedy of the "Fille mal Gardee" being played here,--as it is everywhere and forever,--under the noses of these faithful spies, these honest Bartholos, these Pyrenean hounds, without their being able to ferret out, detect, nor even surmise the lover, the love-
affair, or the smoke of the fire? At any rate it was certainly not the result of a struggle between the jailers and the prisoner, between the despotism of a dungeon and the liberty of a victim,--it was simply the never-ending repetition of the first scene played by man when the curtain of the Creation rose; it was Eve in Paradise.
And now, which of the two, the mother or the watch-dog, had the right of it?