Madame Roland (Blind 1886)/Chapter 4
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.
Manon's life was not always darkened by images of fearful punishments and famished crowds, nor did she perpetually pore over the Greek classics and modern encyclopædists. She sometimes went to Christmas and birthday gatherings given by one or other of her many relatives, and would draw a half-ironical picture of herself to her friend as gliding along a room in floating pink draperies trimmed with roses. But her gravity did not resist the infection of pleasure when at a ball, and she seems to have footed it on "the light fantastic toe" with the merriest madcap of them all. At other times, although but rarely, she and her mother would attend what we should now call "Musical At-Homes." At the house of a certain Madame Lépine, Manon got a glimpse of some of the lesser littérateurs of Paris, who, she says, used to meet in a dingy room, up three flights of stairs, and lit up by tallow candles in dirty brass candlesticks, would recite their verses or play their compositions. But this glimpse of literary society—third-rate it is true—had no attraction for Marie, who, although born and bred in Paris, always preferred a country to a town life. To live on your plot of ground, to grow your own fruits and vegetables, to taste the living sweetness of the air, seemed to her the most exquisite lot; and whenever there was any question as to where the family should go for their Sunday excursion, she pleaded for Meudon. One of the most charming passages in her Memoirs is the description of such a trip:—
We went often to Meudon, it was my favourite walk; I preferred its wild woods, its solitary ponds, its avenues of pines, its towering trees, to the crowded paths and monotonous groves of the Bois de Boulogne, to the ornamental gardens of Bellevue, or the clipped alloys of St. Cloud. "Where shall we go to-morrow?" quoth my father, on the Saturday evenings during summer-time; "the fountains are to play; there will be a world of company." "Oh, papa! If you would only go to Meudon, I should like it so much better." At five o'clock on a Sunday morning, everybody was astir. A fresh simple muslin frock, a few flowers and a gauze veil, showed the plans of the day. The Odes of Rousseau, a play by Corneille, or some other author, formed my only baggage. Then the three of us set off and embarked at the Pont Royal (which I could see from my window) on board a little boat, which carried us with delightful rapidity to the shores of Bellevue, not far from the glassworks, the dense black smoke of which is seen from a great distance. Thence by a steep ascent we proceeded to the avenue of Meudon, about the middle of which we had noticed a little house on the right, which became one of our halting places. . . .
One day, after having rambled about for a long time in an unfrequented part of the wood, we reached an open and solitary spot, at the end of an avenue of tall trees, where promenaders were but rarely seen; a few more trees, scattered on a charming lawn, seemed to screen a prettily-built cottage, two stories high.—Ah! What have we here? Two pretty children were playing before the door. They had neither a town-bred air, nor those signs of misery so common to the country; on drawing nearer we noticed a kitchen-garden, where an old man was at work. To walk inland enter into conversation with him was the affair of an instant. We learned that the place was called Ville Bonne; that its inhabitant was the water-bailiff of the Moulin-Rouge, whose office it was to see that the canals conveying water to the different parts of the park were kept in repair; that the slender salary of this place helped to support a young couple, the parents of the children we had seen, and of whom the old man was the grand-father; that the wife was engaged in the cares of the household, while the old man cultivated the garden, the produce of which his son, in leisure moments, went to sell in town. This garden was a long square, divided into four parts, round each of which was a good-sized walk; a pond in the centre facilitated irrigation; and at the further end an arbour of yews, with a large stone scat, afforded rest and shelter. Flowers, intermixed with vegetables, gave the garden a gay and agreeable appearance; while the robust and contented gardener reminded me of the old man on the banks of the Galesus, whom Virgil has sung. We inquired whether they were not in the habit of receiving strangers. "Few come this way," replied the old man; "the place is little known; but if by chance any come, we never refuse such fare as our farm-yard and kitchen-garden afford." We begged something for dinner, and were presently served with new-laid eggs, vegetables, and salads, in a delicious arbour of honeysuckle behind the house. I never made so agreeable a meal; my heart expanded in the innocent enjoyment of this charming situation. I fondled the little children and showed my veneration for the old man. The young woman seemed pleased to have given us accommodation; there was some talk of two rooms which might be let to persons desirous of taking them for three months: and we had an idea of doing so. This delightful intention was never destined to be realised; nor have I ever again revisited Ville Bonne.
About this time Madame Phlipon's health began gradually to decline. She grew more serious and taciturn, and stirred less from home than formerly. Grief and anxiety may also have helped the ravages of disease. For her husband had insensibly begun to neglect his business, to go frequently abroad and to have fits of irritability and ill-temper, which his wife bore with invariable patience and good-humour. If they happened to differ on any subject, although she was his superior in every respect, she gave up her own opinion with the greatest willingness for the sake of domestic peace. So that her daughter never suspected till she was grown up that her mother's life might not possibly be as smooth as it appeared on the surface. When she was older, she often noticed her father's weak points in these conjugal arguments, and, availing herself of the ascendency she at this time had over him, always took her mother's part, and, not inaptly, called herself her watch-dog.
Madame Phlipon, no doubt, felt that her strength was failing, and her experience must have warned her of some of the trials that were in store for her daughter when she should be no more. Her eyes used to follow the girl about everywhere with a wistful tenderness, and she seemed, as it were, to envelop her with the brooding intensity of maternal love—a love that yearned to see her child sheltered in some home of her own before death snatched from her a mother's care. Without exactly daring to utter all she thought and feared, she would often urge Manon to accept one of the many suitors who sought her in marriage. At first she did not particularly press the matter, but when Manon was twenty-one she entreated her earnestly to accept a certain respectable jeweller who had proposed to her. She represented to her daughter that here was a man in a comfortable position, honest, upright, and of good reputation, who had the highest regard for her, and was quite willing to follow her lead. The following dialogue, given in the Memoirs brings the situation vividly before one. Quoth Manon:—
"But, Mamma, I don't want a husband whom I am to guide: he would be too big a child for me."
"Do you know that you are a very whimsical girl, for you would certainly not like a master?"
"Let us understand each other, dear Mamma; I should not like a husband to order me about, he would only teach me to resist him; but neither do I wish to rule my husband. Either I am much mistaken, or those creatures six feet high, with beards on their chins, seldom fell to make us feel they are the stronger; now, if the good man should suddenly bethink himself to remind me of his strength, he would provoke me, and if he submitted to me I should be ashamed of my own power."
"I see; you would like a man to think himself the master while obeying you in everything."
Thus the pair argued without any decisive result, till Madame Phlipon hinting at the possibility of being taken from her daughter, pointed out that, more than twenty, as she was, suitors would no longer be as plentiful as during the last five years, and begged her, therefore, not to reject a man who, if he were not her equal in intellect and taste, would, at least, love her, and with whom she might be happy. "Yes, mamma," cried she, with a deep sigh, "happy as you have been!" Her mother was disconcerted, and made no reply; nor from that moment did she open her lips again on that or any other match, at least in a pressing manner. The exclamation had escaped the daughter without premeditation; its effect convinced her she had touched a sore spot.
In the spring of 1775, Madame Phlipon's health had grown so much worse that they resolved on trying a short stay at Meudon during the Whitsun holidays, and by it she was much benefited. Returned to Paris, her daughter left her for a few hours, fairly well as it seemed, to pay a visit to Sister Agathe; but no sooner had she reached the convent, than an unaccountable anxiety hurried her home again.
Madame Roland says that these presentiments of a coming trouble were never by her laid to the account of superstition, but that, loving her mother above everything on earth, she had, without knowing it, noticed certain slight changes in manner and appearance, which served vaguely to disturb her. On this particular occasion she felt such a sinking of the heart, that she impatiently hurried home, to find the street-door standing wide open, while a young neighbour exclaimed on seeing her, "Oh! Miss, your Mamma is very ill; she has sent for my mother, who is up in the bed-room with her." To utter an inarticulate cry, fly up the stairs, hurry into the room, and find her mother lying back in her easy chair, with arms helplessly hanging over it, wildly-rolling eyes, mouth wide open, was the affair of an instant. At the sight of Manon some animation returned to her face; she made ineffectual efforts to speak, tried to lift her arms, and with a supreme effort of will raised her hand, and, gently stroking the girl's cheeks, as if to calm her, wiped the streaming tears from her face. With that last upflickering of love, her limbs grew rigid; she would fain have smiled, have spoken some parting words of consolation, but it was in vain.
Her daughter seemed to multiply herself to assist in saving her dying mother. She sent for the doctor, for her father, she flew to the apothecary and back, she administered an emetic, she helped her mother to bed, but nothing availed. Her eyes closed, her head fell forward on her breast, her breathing became increasingly painful, and at ten o'clock in the evening, as in a dream, Manon heard the doctor and her father sending for a priest to administer extreme unction. Standing at the foot of the bed, mechanically holding a candle in her hand while the priest was praying, with eyes fixed on her mother, she never stirred, till suddenly the light dropped from her grasp, and she fell senseless on the floor. When she came back to consciousness her mother was no more. The sighs and tears of those around, her father's livid face, the whispers and muffled inquiries, the efforts of the bystanders to withhold her entrance into the room, whence she had been carried, served but too clearly to tell the tale. Presently she managed to escape unperceived, and, rushing back to her mother, flung herself on the bed in a transport of grief, and pressing her mouth to the cold, livid lips, tried to inhale death and perish with her.
With that mother ended the careless, sweet, happy, springtime of Manon's life. It was she who had shielded her from all rough contact with the world, down to those trivial interruptions of domestic life which eat out the heart of time; it was she who had created around her an atmosphere of exquisite peace and purity, interposing as a shield between her and the tainted manners of the time; and now that the young tree had grown tall and lusty, the fencing shelter was removed, and adverse winds were presently to try what it was made of.