The Porcelain Dove

by Sherman, Delia

  I stood a-tiptoe at the church door, searching for my mistress in among the chapeaux-bras, bow-knots, plumes, and powdered horsehair wigs swarming on the church porch and steps. In the street below, liveried guards linked arms against the canaille, whose gaunt and filthy faces grimaced in the lurid flare of the flambeaux like so many fiends of hell. Some several caws could be heard above the high-bred shrieking of the wedding guests:

  "Hey, sieur! Let me break her in for you!"

  "Make her show you what they taught her in the convent!"

  "Don't cry, missus. It'll be over soon."

  "Aye. From the looks of him, he'll be finished long before you begin to enjoy it!"

  "Think she'll pleasure you better than your manservant, sieur?"

  Briefly the flow of guests parted around my mistress, who was cringing against M. le duc's arm in an attitude more suitable to a new-caught thief than a new-made bride. I wormed my way to her, then, suddenly shy, smoothed my apron and coughed for her attention. She clutched his arm—I remember the pearly silk wrinkling under her fingers—and turned a frightened face to me.

  "My felicitations, mademoiselle," I murmured, curtsying low.

  My mistress smiled—a small, tight, cold smile. "I am not mademoiselle anymore, Berthe, but the duchesse de Malvoeux. You must call me madame now."

  I swallowed tears. "Yes, madame. I . . . wish you happy, madame."

  "Thank you, Berthe," she said more easily, and I think would have embraced me had not M. de Malvoeux put his arm about her waist to bear her down the steps and into the carriage. Nobles and beggars raised a cheer, and then the bridal couple were off, their horses plunging madly and scattering the rabble like rats before them.

  That night, while the duchesse de Malvoeux was toasting her husband before two hundred noble guests, I was rattling my bones in the baron's old traveling coach over the cobbles towards the rue des Lions.

  In physical distance, at least, the distance between the hôtel Fourchet and the hôtel Malvoeux wasn't far. It seemed to me that M. du Fourchet's coachman had no sooner turned out of the rue Quincampoix than he was reining up the horses and shouting for someone to come untie the duchesse de Malvoeux's trunks while I peeked nervously from the window. Save for a single guttering flambeau, the courtyard was dark as a pit; alighting from the coach, I could see nothing of the hôtel save three stained marble steps and a scarred black door.

  The running footman mounted the steps and gave the door six new dents with the knob of his staff. Time passed; he knocked again. The door opened a little way, grudgingly, and a thin, seamed face peered around it.

  "It'll be the new mistress' servingmaid no doubt," said the face sourly. "Well, come in, girl, and bring one of those bags with you. 'Tis not my place to carry bags and boxes. Madame's servants must see to madame's things; I know nothing of women's fol-de-rols."

  Reluctantly, I followed the face into a high, dark hall lit only by a branch of candles on a gilded console. "I am Dentelle," said the face's owner, and when I neither exclaimed nor swooned, pursed his lips together like an alms-box. "I am the valet of M. le duc de Malvoeux. Madame's apartments are left at the top of the stairs. Cul-terroux!"—this to the footman, who was staggering under the weight of a banded trunk—"Have a care with that trunk. Those urns flanking the stairs are from Cathay, brought to France by the great-grandfather of M. le duc, and worth twice your miserable hide."

  Jean, my friend and faithful adviser, Jean agrees that I've caught Dentelle to the life: the face of a river pike and the soul of a dung hill cock. Timid and strange as I felt that first night, I'm proud to say I retained sufficient spirit to hate him at once.

  "Oh?" I said. "And is his great-grandsire's taste in urns the reason M. le duc is too poor to hire lackeys? Is there no one to wait upon him and his new duchesse but one miserable valet? Bah. This is not what I am accustomed to, me."

  Dentelle puffed out his chest, drew himself stiffly upright, and clapped his hands sharply together, calling the pie-faced boy and three other lackeys up from the hôtel's nether regions. "Carry this paraphernalia above," he said, disdainfully flicking his fingers at my mistress' trunks. "And one of you keep a watch at the end of the street for monsieur's carriage. Fetch some tapers, and you, Gaston, sweep the floor. Who knows what harm all this to-ing and fro-ing, all these bundles and boxes, might not do the parquet? Well, louts? Do you wait for Our Lord to come again?"

  With a great show of energy and speed, the lackeys hefted madame's luggage upstairs, glaring at me the while as though I were to blame for the valet's ill-temper. They dumped everything outside the door and slouched away, leaving me to muddle along alone. For an hour or more, I dragged trunks into the dressing-room and emptied them, hastily laying gowns in the tall presses and stuffing petticoats, stays, sleeve-ruffles, ribbons, chemises and caps higgledy-piggledy into drawers to get them out of the way.

  I've always found it a tedious business unpacking and bestowing my mistress' clothes, but never more than on my first night in the hôtel Malvoeux. The dressing-room was cramped and musty; the bedchamber was hot and ill-aired. There was no antechamber. The furniture was as grand as you please, though outmoded and sadly sparse: a bed, a tambour table, a satin-covered bergère by the fire, and a long-case clock, all of them set far apart as feuding relatives and meagerly lit by a pair of wax candles on the mantelpiece. What with the lateness of the hour and the shadows in the corners, I was as frightened and low-spirited as a whore in a Hôtel Dieu. Mme de Bonsecours feared for her sister's happiness: at the moment, I feared chiefly for my own. Olympe, Mignon, Saint-Cloud, LeBeau—all my friends and my family were left behind in the warm, well-ordered house on the rue Quincampoix and the future stretched before me, cold and bleak and friendless. Would my mistress still love me as she had before? Must I trade Olympe for Dentelle?

  I broke a nail on the latch of the dressing-case. The long-case clock struck four. I laid a silk gauze négligée ready upon the bed, noticing that the curtains were burgundy silk embroidered in black, more suited to a catafalque than a bridal bed. I tucked them back, thought about going in search of another candle to brighten the room, decided my mistress might be happier not seeing it clearly. Would they never come?

  Suddenly in the hall below I heard a great banging accompanied by muffled shouts and cheering and then a man's voice shouting, "Good night to you, my friends, or rather, good morning! You're all very kind, but I can see her to bed myself!"

  If that is the duc, I thought, his voice is a measure less merry than his words. I waited. The front door creaked and closed. I heard an obsequious murmur that could only be Dentelle, my mistress' soft voice responding, steps mounting the stairs. A silence, a rustle, and a hoarse whisper in the hall: "I'll come to you soon, madame. Prepare for me."

  Timidly, I opened the door. My mistress, very dark around the eyes, entered and sank into the bergère with a most un-bridal sigh.

  However strange and melancholy I might feel, I knew where my duty lay. "Come, madame, and let me unlace you," I said gently. "You'll feel much more comfortable without the false hair and the heavy corset. Be of good cheer, madame. 'Tis your wedding night."

  "Yes," said my mistress. " 'Tis my wedding night, and I promise you, Berthe, I've heard enough pleasantries on that head to last me until this time next year. As you love me, no more."

  Though she spoke very sharp, her lips trembled. I chattered brightly, as I undressed her, of how Mme Hortense had feared she'd drop her child in the vestry and other such nonsense. Gradually she held up her head again and began to look more cheerful.

  "'Tis the long day and the wine and that monstrous corset, Berthe. I'll soon be myself again." She smoothed the folds of her négligée and surveyed her new bedchamber. The hangings catching her eye, she shook her head and sighed. "Tomorrow I shall ask monsieur my husband to order new bed-curtains. And surely"—glancing nervously towards the long-case clock—"he cannot expect me to sleep with that horrid ticking." She gathered her lace ruffle to her
throat and glanced again towards the clock. Following her gaze, I saw she was looking at the gilt outline of a door in the paneling.

  There was a silence, and then, "My mother has told me a little of what must happen this night," said my mistress in a small voice. "I cannot think what Stéphanie-Germaine found so distressing in it. If the man is skilled, maman says it can be very pleasant." She looked up at me pleadingly.

  What, pray, did the child think I knew about it? I was visited by a sudden wild vision of a shrewdness of lady's maids sitting bare-shanked before a convent fire, comparing the manhood of one lover to an anchovy, of another to a battering ram. To conceal my confusion, I bent my face above her head and busied myself with her hair. "So I've heard, madame," I said, very prim. "And consider: why should so many women take lovers to their beds if what they did there were distasteful?"

  "Because 'tis à la mode." She flung her arms around my waist and pressed her cheek to my bosom. "Long ago dids't thou swear to stand by me. Surely, Berthe, thou wilt not leave me here alone?"

  I rested my cheek against her fragrant hair. "Not alone," I said a little sadly. "Never alone."

  She nodded and released me, only to clutch at my hand when the door in the paneling opened in a blaze of light. My heart began to pound painfully and though I could not bring myself to shake her off, I turned away, thus by unhappy chance bringing myself face-to-face with my new master's reflection in the mantelpiece mirror. Night-capped and gowned in dark brocade, he looked more skeletal than ever, and his dark eyes were hungry as a vengeful ghost's. I do not think he saw me.

  "My wife," he said, his harsh voice quivering. "My darling little bird, how your heart beats—why, I can see the lace trembling at your breast. Come to me, ma mie, ma chère, ma colombe blanche."

  My mistress released my hand and, breathing fast and shallow, rose and took a faltering step. It might have been towards her husband or it might have been away: I did not see, for I ran like a mouse for the dressing-room and latched its door behind me.

  How the habits of youth die hard! I've not laid out a gown nor mended so much as a ruffle for a hundred years or more, except by my own will and desire. My former mistress and I sit down at the same table and address one another as "chérie" and "thou." In fine, I am a free woman, me, who may speak her mind to whom she likes. Yet, recounting the days of my service, I find myself haunted by Olympe's lessons in comme il faut.

  A good femme de chambre, she taught me, is the soul of discretion and the heart of good temper. She never addresses her mistress uninvited; she neither weeps nor sighs save in sympathy for her mistress' woes. With her fellow femmes de chambre she may unbend, but not so far as to gossip of her mistress' private affairs. For a tittle-tattle's indiscretions will always be discovered, and the brothels are full of maids who could not learn to hold their tongues. Her favorite maxim was: "Better to die of grief unspoken in a noble hôtel than of disease and starvation in a ditch." A cautious woman, Olympe, despite her bright and fluttering ways. How shocked she'd be at this history of mine!

  To be sure, I'm half-shocked myself, a little at the liveliness of my memories, more at the anger that curdles my breast as I inscribe them. For Mme de Bonsecours had not been altogether mistaken in fearing that the duc de Malvoeux might drive me from my mistress' side.

  Not that he worked against me, you understand—on the contrary, he scarcely gave himself the trouble of acknowledging my existence. I was of less account than Doucette: a pair of hands to dress his wife and disappear. Oh, how slighted I felt! For seven years, I'd awakened my mistress every morning, borne her company every day, lighted her to her bed every night. Suddenly, I was barred from her room until she called for me, often not until eleven or even twelve of the clock. And even then we were not alone, for monsieur her husband loved to watch her toilette, and would lounge on the bergère with his stockings ungartered and his shirt agape, exclaiming upon the pearliness of her skin and the trimness of her ankles while she simpered and preened until I could hardly keep my countenance. Before, we'd often read and talked together. Now all I did was dress her, twice, sometimes four times in a day, for rides in the Bois and walks in the Tuileries, for expeditions to the cabinet du roi to examine birds and to the salon of the baron d'Holbach to converse with famous wits and philosophes. He was monstrous fond of philosophes, M. le duc de Malvoeux, and less fond of balls and musical evenings. Nevertheless, madame seldom laid down her head before three in the morning, which meant that I was forever short of sleep. On the occasion of her formal presentation to His Most Serene Majesty, King Louis XV of France, neither one of us retired until dawn.

  The presentation at Versailles—that was the one scene in my fairy tale of wedlock that adhered to the playbook. My mistress has never, save once, been so beautiful. Her gown I remember as though I had it before me—black and silver as custom dictated, with court sleeves and lappets of Alençon lace. The train was two ells long, and so heavy that the little black page monsieur had bought her was hard put to keep it from the floor. Her coiffure was stuck with silver bees. Alone with me in her dark, cavernous bedchamber, she glittered with diamonds and excitement like a starry night. And she insisted that I accompany her to Versailles, where I waited in a hot and gilded antechamber with the other maids while my mistress traded pleasantries with the king and danced with princes of the blood royal.

  Her presentation itself I need not describe—Colette has heard it from her own lips often and often, from her first trembling curtsy to monsieur's declaration, as he handed her into the carriage, that she was a bird of paradise among poultry. Decorated or plain, Adèle's account must be truer than mine, for my own memory of that night is painted over with images of a thousand other nights, a thousand other entertainments. When first I walked under the painted ceilings of Versailles, did I think them splendid and astonishing? Or did I judge them immediately as being gaudy, overgilded, overheated, overcrowded? To say true, I don't recall.

  For the rest of my romance, well, 'twas false as a gypsy's fortune. Freedom and honor, bah! Bien sûr, I was free to wander Paris as I would, but I had no friend to wander with. Monsieur kept no maidservants in town, and all the conversation the lackeys had with me was my beauty and their desire to plunder it. As for Pompey, madame's little black page, though he ran willingly upon my errands, he did not speak, and when he wasn't fanning madame or bringing her bonbons, kept very much to himself. Often in my loneliness I was reduced to taking Doucette on my lap and fondling her curly ears and hard, round head until she lost patience with my caresses and snapped at my fingers.

  For me, the only bearable hour of the day fell between dinner and the evening's entertainment. Dentelle attended to monsieur, and I pinned fresh ornaments in madame's hair while she, as often as not, pored over a volume of Brisson's Ornithologie. In those quiet moments, she'd confide in me as of old. Well, not quite as of old; for now her confidences were all of her husband.

  "Look, here is the picture of a jacamar, Berthe, just like the one monsieur my husband showed me at the bird-market. 'Tis not nearly so lovely as the bird itself. M. de Malvoeux says I am lovelier than any bird he has seen, and my bosom much softer than feathers." Blushing furiously, she'd break off and, stealing a sidelong glance into her mirror, stroke her haresfoot down her breast with a reminiscent smile. "Ah, Berthe, 'tis so delightful to be loved! I have only to think of him to feel myself grow prettier. Stéphanie-Germaine de Hautebriande is a great fool. There is nothing better than an exigent husband."

  And here I'd thought she had always known herself loved—by me. Husbands are different—I understood that. And I understood that she did not wound me from malice, would, in fact, be vastly astonished to discover that I felt each word as an arrow to my heart. Pride and decorum both decreed that I must bleed in private, so, "Yes, madame," I'd answer coolly. "No doubt, madame. Will madame wear the pink paduasoy tomorrow or the blue lustring?"

  I was happiest when she was telling me the latest on-dit, for hearing her relate the misadven
tures of Nathalie and Stéphanie-Germaine I might imagine that nothing had changed between us. The best stories were provided by the comtesse de Fleuru, who combined the carnal appetite of a she-wolf with a monkey's lack of discretion.

  "Just think, Berthe, Nathalie de Fleuru has bestowed her favors upon the chevalier d'Emplumer!" my mistress might declare, all wicked innocence. "How she could, knowing what he is! Why, he wears the key to her summer house on his watch-chain, and now all the world is calling her the comtesse de la Petite Maison. Imagine how she must feel when she comes to hear of it! I could not endure to have such things said of me, indeed I could not!"

  Sometimes I'd catch her eye in the mirror and essay some teasing sally as, "Ah, but madame has no summer house," or "Madame would be much too discreet, I'm sure." Once such small jests had made her giggle. Now they were more likely to make her frown and scold. "Peste, Berthe," she'd pout, "but you are naughty today! You know very well that's not at all what I meant. I am devoted to monsieur my husband."

  "Yes, madame."

  At times like these, I was greatly tempted to pull her hair or pin her lace right through her feather-soft bosom. What had Mme de Bonsecours called the duc de Malvoeux? A famine that consumed utterly. Well, he'd certainly consumed my mistress. She thought of nothing save him, talked of nothing save him, was deaf to all voices and blind to all faces save his. In thought, in word, even in gesture and mien, she was his faithful mirror, reflecting both the good and the ill in him with unjudging fidelity.