The Porcelain Dove

by Sherman, Delia

  When I held the paper tape across his back, "Are not my shoulders grown astonishing broad, Berthe?" he asked me, squaring them proudly.

  "Astonishing broad, M. le vicomte," I agreed coolly, and indeed they were broad for a child, and his chest also.

  I passed the tape about his waist, marked it, and moved it down around his hips. Then I knelt to measure his inside leg, whereupon he turned and displayed, not three inches from my nose, a most unchildish bulge in his breeches.

  "Pretty Berthe," he leered. "How you blush, just like a little virgin. But then, you are a virgin, or so I've heard. Tell me, ma belle, do I hear truly?"

  I primmed my mouth and averted my eyes. "If the vicomte will please to turn around, I can proceed with my work."

  The vicomte caressed the bulge. "Here's other work for you, ma belle."

  I wished Marie were present, or even better, mère Boudin. If ever there lived a woman who could, with a single glance, stem the rise of a young sprig's sap, Guyette Boudin was that woman. "If you'll not be a good child and stand still, vicomte or no, I shall call your nurse to hold you."

  I spoke at full voice, and from the bedchamber, madame called out querulously, "Léon? Only be patient for a little minute, and 'twill be soon done."

  M. Léon pouted. " 'Twill not be done at all, ma mère. I don't like her clumsy hands upon me. Tell her to stop touching me."

  "She cannot take thy measure without touching thee," said madame reasonably. "Berthe, do make haste. I want your advice on this head. Shall the ribbons be soupir de Vénus, or cheveux de reine? I vow, I cannot decide betwixt them."

  Hard as I tried to keep my countenance, my lips began to quiver with laughter and the threat to my virtue abruptly subsided. Swiftly I took the remaining measurements, rose, and curtsied. "That will be all, M. Léon. When the suit's ready, Dentelle will fit it for you. In matters of the mode, a valet's a better adviser to a young man than a femme de chambre."

  The vicomte de Montplaisir bared his teeth at me, then snatched aside my fichu and pinched my breast so cruelly that tears of pain rose in my eyes. 'Twas a childish revenge; but his smile when I gasped was not childish, nor the leer with which he said, "Pretty Berthe," before taking up his coat and leaving the dressing-room.

  "Your Berthe is as clever with her tongue as she is with her fingers, maman," I heard him say. "Such a girl might have risen to the top of her profession, had she only stayed in Paris."

  I came around the dressing-screen in time to see my mistress pat her son's smooth cheek. "Sweet child," she murmured. "Yes, my Berthe speaks like a lady, and is far cleverer than her silly mistress, are you not, Berthe? Now, the ribbons. The cheveux de reine is more a la mode, but do you not think the yellow makes me look sallow?"

  After madame had retired to dream of ribbons, I sat late in the Fan room with Marie and Peronel, cutting M. Léon's new coat and breeches out of plum-colored broadcloth. Reflections of our work-candles flickered in the glass cases, so that you might almost swear the mounted fans waved again while the ghosts of coquettish eyes peeped around their lacy or feathered edges, searching in vain for new hearts to enslave.

  Snip, snip went the scissors along my chalked lines.

  "You'd best make it larger than the measure, Berthe: boys that age grow monstrous quick," said Marie.

  I finished cutting a sleeve and handed it to Peronel to baste in a silk lining. The broadcloth was soft and tightly woven, 10 écus the ell at least. "Such fine stuff, to be squandered on a child," I sighed. "He's sure to outgrow it within the six-month, if he doesn't spoil it first."

  "Very like," Marie said. "Would you have him therefore go naked? Or dress in leather and russet like a peasant boy?"

  "Bah, Marie! What a great silly you are! He'd be known for a Maindur no matter how he was dressed."

  Marie took up chalk and tape to mark out the breeches. "He'll be taller than monsieur, I think; his hands and feet are like a giant's. There's no telling how much he's likely to grow when he starts his beard in another year or so."

  I snorted. "Another year or so? I wouldn't wonder if he were shaving daily by this year's harvest, and the father of a brace of bastards besides. Our vicomte is a forward lad."

  Snip, snip, snip around the little pocket at the breeches front. Marie laughed. " 'Tis you who are the great silly, Berthe. Any peasant boy in a haystack can make bastards. All the world knows that a Maindur proves his manhood by making a collection."

  "I shudder to contemplate what this Maindur's collection might be. Dismembered frogs? Wingless flies? Wait, I know. Maidenheads!"

  "Berthe! For shame," exclaimed Marie, vastly diverted. "The vicomte de Montplaisir's a wicked child, to be sure, but he's the heir to Beauxprés for all that." She giggled. "Maidenheads! What an idea! I know how he'd collect them, but oh, Berthe—how would he display them?"

  "Blood-stained sheets?"

  "No," said Marie. "I fancy a bed would be too ordinary for our M. Léon. He'll have a taste for stables and hay-cocks and empty stairways."

  "Blood-stained petticoats, then. And a snip of the chevelure mounted beside it, with the date and time collected written out in crimson ink. They can call it . . ."—helplessly, I began to laugh—"they can call it the Bloody chamber."

  Peronel, who'd kept very quiet through this exchange, made a sound, almost as though she were going to be sick. I laid down my scissors and turned to see her face puckered and her plump lower lip caught between her teeth. "Why, Peronel," I said. "Never say you're a prude?"

  "No prude she," said Marie nastily. "Not LeRoi's precious hobby-horse. She's only jealous that she didn't think of the jest."

  "No," said Peronel. "Maidenheads and Bloody chambers—'tis not a fit matter for a jest, indeed 'tis not."

  Marie gaped with astonishment. "Hoity-toity! Pray tell us, demoiselle whore of LeRoi, why not?"

  In answer, Peronel threw her apron over her head and began to sob, whereupon Marie flew at her to shake her. I stepped between them; for although Peronel was goosish and had undoubtedly been Menée's mistress, she was also gentle-hearted, and I'd a kind of affection for her from the night of the beggar's curse, when she held my mistress' hand and talked to her of laundry. So I glared Marie down, then knelt by Peronel and pulled the apron from her face.

  "Now, now, little cabbage, dry up thy tears," I said gently. "What is it in our fool's talk has distressed thee so?"

  Peronel gulped and clutched her apron. "A week ago, or perhaps 'twas two—a fast day, at any rate, for we had salt fish to our supper, I remember. Anyway, I was on the stairs, carrying eau de vie to mère Boudin, and there I came upon M. Léon just below the landing, where the stair is straitest. I stood aside for him to pass me, but he put up one foot to the step above and barred my way with his arm. 'I am a troll and this is my bridge,' he says, smiling with all his teeth. 'Pay the toll or I'll not let thee pass but eat thee up, hair and bones and all.'

  "Well, when I ask him what toll I must pay, he answers, 'A kiss.' 'Very well, M. Léon: a kiss will not break me' says I, and lean down, thinking to buss him on the brow. And what do I get but his lips, and they open, and his tongue lapping and his teeth nipping my underlip until it bled, and his hands upon my paps. . . . Oh!" And up came the apron again, while Marie and I stared at one another open-mouthed.

  I put my arm about Peronel's heaving shoulders and gave them a hearty squeeze. "What horror, Peronel! Yet a kiss is not a thing to distress oneself over."

  "Oh, Berthe, the shame of it! I hardly dared struggle for fear of dropping the tray or waking mère Boudin, who might have stopped him, and might equally have not, or blamed the whole on me."

  With an exclamation of impatience, Marie pulled down Peronel's apron and peered eagerly into her face. "Well? Did he? Only twelve years old! Could he?"

  "Let the girl be, Marie," I snapped, but Peronel was already sobbing that he could have and he would have, save for the awkwardness of the stairs. "He would go at it hindside before, like a dog, and so I escaped, though I d
id spill the eau de vie."

  "There," said Marie. "What did I tell you? However eager, a child can't do a man's work until he's fourteen. I'll wager he didn't even know what he was doing."

  Peronel wouldn't have it so, but wept more heartily than before, and declared she'd even thought of leaving Beauxprés, so fearful had she grown of meeting M. Léon. "And I'd not have you think I'm alone, neither. Elizabel won't stir a step without Eve or Oudette to accompany her, and we all sleep together, though 'tis very cramped."

  I soothed her with promises of a new ribbon for her hair and freedom from the vicomte's attentions if she'd only persevere for a month. 'Twas no more than high spirits, I told her, and being mewed up in the country all winter with nothing to occupy him.

  "Isn't natural for a boy to be left so completely to his own company," I said. "In Switzerland he'll have more to think about than the arses of servingmaids. Mark my words, Peronel. Two weeks in Lausanne, and he'll be changed out of all recognition."

  CHAPTER THE NINTH

  In Which Madame Adventures Far from Home

  On the first day of May, 1777, we set off for Lausanne. There was nothing so unusual in either journey or destination that I should recall the date so particularly, save that monsieur did not accompany us and madame's children did.

  I was glad enough of the change, you may be sure, after the alarms of the winter. Although I'd done my best to dismiss it from my mind, the beggar's curse lay heavy on my heart, so that the prospect of Lausanne seemed to me like the promise of Heaven to a soul in Purgatory. There is something about Lausanne that steadies even the flightiest imagination—the clear air, perhaps, or the mineral baths, or the mountains that are more enduring than the most powerful wizard's curse. There are no mysteries in Lausanne, save the mysteries of clock-making and Swiss government, no ghosts, no omens, no Porcelain Doves. And this time there would be no monsieur either, to come between my mistress and me. There were, however, the children.

  I cannot expect Colette to understand how very little I knew or cared for my mistress' children—after all this length of time, I hardly understand myself how I had wandered so far from the little femme de chambre who pitied Mlle Adèle because her mother had no time for her. If I thought of madame's sons at all, 'twas with a kind of impatient distaste. They were such a tiresome pair, after all: wolf and hare, devil and martyr. M. Léon existed to torture; Justin existed to be tortured. C'est tout.

  And Linotte? Linotte was a very infant still, pretty in the way of infants, with her mother's black hair and velvet eyes. Pompey loved her, itself a recommendation of some weight, and she was a lively little thing, full of strange snippets of tales and fancies. I remember rattling along the precipitous mountain roads towards Lausanne to the accompaniment of Linotte's clear pipe exclaiming over each alpine meadow, each chalet, each beetling cliff and shadowy gorge. She was particularly excited when we came in sight of the snowy cliffs of the high ranges, visible from Beauxprés only on the clearest of days and at the edge of vision. "Magic castles!" she crowed. "Is that where the good fairies live, Berthe?"

  "Hearken to the child," sneered M. Léon, who was riding with us. "Magic castles! Have you ever heard such nonsense? Madame my mother, pray tell her to be quiet. Her prattling makes me quite ill."

  Linotte thrust out her tongue at him, precipitating a quarrel and a migraine and a rearrangement of the party so that the children all rode with mère Boudin and the sous-chef in the second carriage while Pompey and I bore madame company in the first. Afterwards, the journey proceeded more quietly, and I had leisure to close my eyes and feel the blessed leagues unreeling between me and Beauxprés and the curse. Soon, all would be as it had been, I thought. I'd have madame to myself, and I'd be happy.

  The Réverdils had taken a house for us near the north-west edge of Lausanne, in the quiet but not unfashionable rue Devant de la cite Dessus. The house was called Bellevue, and its hire included a garden, a laundry, and a goat-shed stocked with a little herd of milch goats and a strapping red-cheeked goat-girl who giggled when she saw Pompey. Within were ten pleasant chambers, two servingmaids, and a half-dozen boys to serve as grooms or scullions as the need arose. The rooms were well-appointed, and from the salon windows we could see Lac Leman and the white peaks of Mont Billiat and Mont Ouzon beyond. Comte Réverdil had done well by us, I thought. So had Mme la comtesse, who'd made the place quite homelike with a pot of early roses on the writing-desk and a dozen cards of invitation upon the mantel.

  Madame blanched upon seeing the pasteboard array and declared herself too exhausted to read even one. She was here to rest, she said, to gather her strength in tranquillity, not to amuse herself. Nevertheless, she took up the largest card, read it through, and held it out to me with a weary sigh.

  I searched out the card this morning, and found it jumbled in a drawer with unpaid bills, ancient billets-doux, and long, crossed letters from Mme Réverdil and Mme de Bonsecours. The pasteboard's a little yellowed now with age, the ink a little faded, but I felt as though that long-ago visit to Lausanne—grand mountains, butterfly society, heartfelt pain and all—had been inscribed upon a card a hand's breadth wide, decked with nymphs and shepherds, the whole scribbled edge to edge in Eveline Réverdil's childish hand.

  My very Dear and Beloved duchesse. I am giving a journée—nothing so Stylish as you might attend in Paris, yet I remember your ancient Love of our Swiss Simplicity, and Dare invite you nonetheless. You've no conception how you've been looked for. Adorn my garden tomorrow, Sweet Friend, and you will be sure of meeting any number of your old Acquaintance. Do not Disappoint them, or me, your Ever-devoted—Eveline, Comtesse Réverdil.

  "There," said madame. "How can I refuse such kindness? I cannot. If I do not go and drink a cup of coffee at her journée tomorrow, I will appear sadly ill-mannered. Now, not another word, Berthe. You mean well, I know, but the duties of friendship must come before a selfish desire for solitude. 'Tis a certain contempt for her own wants makes a lady amiable, Berthe, and you'd do well to remember it."

  "Yes, madame," I said so fervently that she chid me for mocking her, yet smiled as she scolded, gay as I'd not seen her for many a long week. Her spirits rose even higher when she turned to the other cards, all bearing similar messages. Some expressed the writer's earnest wish to divert the so-charming French duchesse from her recent sufferings, some gave her sage advice on physicians, diet, clinics. All were kind. Prodigiously kind. Too kind to be refused. Before I'd so much as unpacked her dressing-case, madame had written to accept, in addition to the journée, an assembly, a musical evening, and a lecture on the history of the cantons.

  Next morning, however, when it came time to leave for the journée, she sang another song. "Ah, Berthe, I look a hag!" she exclaimed and then, "Mme de Charrière's bound to be there and M. Deyverdun. What on earth am I to say to them?"

  To hear her, you'd have thought she'd never been to court or taken tea with the redoubtable Mme du Deffand. And so I told her, somewhat sharply, to which she answered that 'twas not the same thing at all. Then, she'd been in excellent health and looks, supported by her beloved husband. Now, she was alone, weak, dizzy with weariness, and hideous beyond description.

  Stifling a sudden desire to shake her until she was weak and dizzy in very truth, I perched a fetching chapeau tambour atop her towering coiffure and said that the paleness of madame's cheeks set off the luster of her large, dark eyes—most women, I reminded her, must suffer themselves to be bled in order to achieve that fashionable pallor. She demurred, she sighed, and at length—as I'd known she would—she agreed to appear at the journée, if only to please Mme Réverdil, who'd been so prodigious kind.

  The comtesse had indeed been kind, even to sending a chair to carry my mistress up the hill to her house, which was called Portsûreté. She was awaiting us at the door and affectionately embraced my mistress, when she alighted, upon both cheeks.

  "You cannot conceive," she bleated, "how I am enchanted! I hardly dared believe you'd come,
dearly though I desired it. I myself am always prostrate with exhaustion for at least three days after the journey from France, and entirely unable to face a soul. Never fear; the entertainment this afternoon is of the simplest—just a few intimates who are equally amenable to a hand of whist, a game of lotto, a charade, or whatever pleases you. You've brought your Berthe, I see, and Pompey. Splendid." The comtesse smiled upon us warmly and took madame's arm in hers. "Now we may all be quite comfortable."

  Mme Réverdil's intimates proved to be numerous as the stars of Heaven. Her gardens were like the Palais-Royal on a Sunday, filled with Swiss card-players sitting on rustic benches, French charade-players posturing on the close-clipped grass, and English gossips wandering among the rose beds in twos and threes, sipping coffee between confidences. I gawked at the sight like a grisette at her first play.

  "M. le comte is in Geneva," Mme Réverdil was saying, "and half the household gone to attend him. We are therefore amazingly shorthanded. Berthe, do you have the goodness to help LeGrand at the sideboard. And Pompey, you will pass a tray, will you not? Come, Adèle. Mme de Charrière has been asking for you."

  I was glad enough for a task to occupy me; gladder still of this cozy world in which sorcerers were only to be found in hearth-tales. I hungered for news beyond Beauxprés; Mme Réverdil's guests hungered for strawberries and cold roast tongue. Between their gossip and the comte's chef, there was plenty to satisfy all.

  As I took my place behind the sideboard, a tall, florid woman in a feathered turban fell upon the strawberries with a cry of, "Ah, M. Deyverdun! Look, here are strawberries, 'pon my soul, and as red as a soldier's coat. I vow I know not how Eveline finds them so ripe at this time of year!" She scooped up a handful, regardless of the dark stains they left upon her gloves, and popped one into the mouth of her companion, a stout man of middle years. " 'Tis a pity M. Gibbon's not here to share them with us."