In the Bois, one day, I met madame Aribaud. By madame "Aribaud" I mean the wife of a very popular dramatist, and I call them Aribaud because it wouldn't do to mention their real name. I like meeting madame Aribaud when I am in Paris. It refreshes me, not only because she isn't preceded by a gust of scent, and doesn't daub her mouth clown red, like so many Parisiennes, but because she is so cheerful. She diffuses cheerfulness. She sat beaming at her little son, while he scattered crumbs for the birds, and she informed me—it was in 1912—that he was in the latest fashion, having a nurse from England to give him the real English pronunciation, though as yet he was hardly a linguist. And the nurse said, "I tell madam we must be pietient with 'im; we can't expect 'im to talk like I do hall at once."
Also the lady informed me that they had finished arranging their new house, and that on the morrow I must go there to dÉjeuner. Very readily I went, and they showed me the "English nursery," and an American contrivance that she had presented to her husband for his dressing-room—"Comme ils sont pratiques, les amÉricains!"—and an antique or two that she had picked up for his study; and, not least, she showed us both some croquettes de pommes that looked ethereal and—I have never tasted croquettes de pommes like madame Aribaud's! I always say she is the most domesticated of pretty women, and her husband the most pampered of good fellows. Playgoers who know him merely by his comedies, in which married people get on together so badly up to the fourth act, might be surprised to see inside his villa.
Only when he and I were lounging in the study afterwards—my hostess was in the little garden, pretending to be a horse—I said to him, as the boy's shouts came up to us through the open window, "Doesn't the child disturb you out there when you're busy?"
My friend nodded. "Sometimes," he acknowledged, "he disturbs me. What would you have? He must play, and the 'garden' is too diminutive for him to go far away in it. It makes me think of what Dumas pÈre said when he paid a visit to his son's chalet in the suburbs—'Open your dining-room window and give your garden some air!' Once or twice I have wondered whether I should work in a front room, instead, but to tell you the truth, I always come to the conclusion that I like the noise. Believe me, a dramatist may suffer from worse drawbacks than a child's laughter." He blew smoke thoughtfully, and added, "I had a wife who was childless."
Now, though I knew Maurice Aribaud very well indeed, I had never heard that this was his second marriage, and I suppose I stared.
"Yes," he said again, "I had a wife who was childless." And then, with many pauses, he told me a lot that I had not suspected about his life, and though I can't pretend to remember his precise words, or the exact order in which details were forthcoming, I am going to quote him as well as I can.
"I had not two louis to knock together when I met her—and I wasn't so very young. I had been writing for the theatre for years, and had begun to despair of ever seeing anything produced. To complete my misery, I had no companionship, if one excepts books—no friend who wrote, or aspired to write, no acquaintance who did not draw his screw from a billet as humdrum as my own. I was a clerk in the Magasins du Louvre, and though of course the other men in the office talked about plays—in France everybody is interested in plays; in England, I hear, you are interested only in the players—none of them was so congenial that I was tempted to announce my ambitions to him. I used to think how exciting it must be to know authors and artists, even though they were obscure and out-at-elbows. Every night, as I walked home and passed the windows of a bohemian cafÉ I used to look at it wistfully. I envied the fiercest disappointments of the habitues inside, for they were at least professionals of sorts; they moved on a different planet from myself. Once in a blue moon I found the resolution to enter, pushing the door open timidly, like a provincial venturing into Paillard's. I suppose I had a vague hope that something might happen, something that would yield confidences, perhaps a comrade for life. But I sat in the place embarrassed, with the air of an intruder, and came out feeling even lonelier than when I went in.
"One windy, wet day I was at the mont-de-piÉtÉ to redeem my watch. I had pawned it two or three weeks before, because I had seen a second-hand copy of a book that I wanted very much and couldn't afford at the moment. I will not inquire whether you have ever pawned anything in Paris, yourself, but if you haven't, you may not know the formalities of the dÉgagement. Ah, you have pawned things only in London.
"Well, after you have paid the principal and the interest, you are given a numbered ticket, and then you go into a large room and take your choice among uncomfortable benches, and wait your turn. It is something like cashing a cheque at the head office of the CrÉdit Lyonnais, only at the mont-de-piÉtÉ the people on the benches sit waiting for the most disparate articles. On one side of you, there may be a fashionably dressed woman who rises to receive a jewel-case—and on the other, some piteous creature who clutches at a bundle. The goods and chattels descend in consignments, and when one consignment has been distributed, the interval before the next comes down threatens to be endless. The officials behind the counter converse in undertones, and you meanwhile have nothing livelier to do than listen to the rain and wonder how hard-up your neighbour may be.
"That day, however, I did not chafe at the delay. There was a young girl there whose face caught and held my attention almost immediately. Not only was her prettiness remarkable—her expression was astonishing. She looked happy. Yes, in the gaunt room, among the damp, dismal crowd, relieving the tedium by a heavy sigh or an occasional shuffling of their shoes, this fair-haired, neat, innocent little girl looked happy. Smiles hovered about her lips, and her eyes sparkled with contentment. I tried to conjecture the reason for her delight, what treasured possession she was about to regain. A trinket? No, something indefinable in her bearing forbade me to think it was a trinket. My imagination ranged over a dozen possible pledges, without finding one to harmonise with her. Ridiculous as it sounds, I could picture nothing so appropriate for her to recover as a canary, which should fly, singing, to her finger. Every time a number was called, curiosity made me hope that her turn had come. The latest load that had been delivered was almost exhausted. Only three packages remained. Another call, and she got up at last! The package was a bulky one. I craned my neck. It was a typewriter.
"Quite five minutes more lagged by before I got my watch, and when I crossed the courtyard I had no expectation of seeing her again; but no sooner had I passed through the gate than I discovered her in trouble. She had been trying to carry the typewriter and an open umbrella, and now the umbrella had blown inside out, and she had put the typewriter on the pavement.
"In such a situation it was not difficult for me to speak.
"I picked the thing up for her. She thanked me, and made another ineffectual attempt to depart. I offered my help. She demurred. I insisted. We made for her tram together—and tram after tram was full. It had been raining for several hours and Paris was a lake of mud. In the end I trudged beside her through the swimming streets, carrying her typewriter all the way to the step of her lodging. So began my courtship.
"She was as solitary as I; her father's death had left her quite alone. He had been old, and very poor. Blind, too. But his work had been done up to the last, my little sweetheart guiding him to the houses—he had earned a living as a piano-tuner. In SÈvres she had an aunt, his sister-in-law; but though the woman boasted a respectable business and was fairly well-to-do, she had come foward with nothing more substantial than advice, and the orphan had had only her typewriter to keep the wolf from the door. Her struggles in Paris with a typewriter! She had been forced to pawn it every time she lost a situation. But every time she saved enough to recapture it she felt prosperous again. Her own machine meant 'luxuries.' With her own machine she could afford a plant to put in her attic window, and a rosebud for her breast.
"She loved flowers, and she often wore them, tucked in her bodice, after the Magasins du Louvre closed—the lonely clerk used to hurry to meet the little typist on her way home. Yet she told me once that her love for them had come very late; for years the sight of all flowers had saddened her. She had been born on that melancholy boulevard that leads to the cemetery of PÈre La Chaise, that quarter of it where one sees, exposed for sale, nothing but floral tokens for the mourners—nothing to right and left but mountains of artificial wreaths, and drear chrysanthemums in stiff white paper cones. As a child she had thought that flowers were grown only for graves.
"I recall the courtship in all seasons, and always in the streets—when the trees were brown and the light faded while we walked; and when the trees had whitened and the lamps were gleaming; and when the trees grew green and we walked in sunshine. It was in the streets that we fell in love—in the streets that I asked her if she would marry me.
"We were on the quai des OrfÈvres one Sunday afternoon in summer. I had meant to wait till we were in the Garden of the Tuileries, but we had stopped to look at the river, and I can see it all now, the barge folk's washing hanging out to bleach, and a woman knitting among the geraniums on a deck. There was a little fishing-tackle shop, I remember, called 'Au Bon PÊcheur,' and a poodle and a Persian cat were basking together on the doorstep. Our hands just touched, because of the people passing; and then we went on to the Tuileries, and talked. And before we seemed to have talked much, it was moonlight; a concert had begun, and away in the distance a violinist was playing La PrÉcieuse. 'Why,' I exclaimed,' I've given you no dinner!' She laughed; she hadn't been hungry, either. No millionaires have ever dined at Armenonville more merrily than we, for a hundred sous, at a little table on a sidewalk.
"She said, 'When I am your wife, I shall type-write all your plays for you, Maurice—perhaps that will bring you luck.' And by and by, when we came to the Magasins du Louvre, she pointed to the ComÉdie-FranÇaise: 'You haven't far to travel to reach it, dearest!' she smiled—'we'll cross the road together.'
"How sweet she looked in the wedding frock that she had stitched! How proud I was of her! Our mÉnage was two rooms on the left bank; and in the evening, in our tiny salon on the sixth floor, her devoted hands clattered away on her machine, transcribing my manuscript, till I kissed and held them prisoners. Didn't she work hard enough all day for strangers, poor child?—my salary was too small to liberate her. 'You are jealous,' she would say gaily, 'because I write your dialogue so much faster than you.' And often I wished that I could create a scene as rapidly as she typewrote it. But we had our unpractical evenings, also, when we built castles-in-the-air, and chose the furniture for them. I had brought home, from the Magasins, one of the diaries that they issue annually. It contained plans of the theatres—it always does—and, perched on my knee, she pictured a play of mine at each of them in turn, and the house rocking with applause. And then we pencilled the private box we'd have; and drove, in fancy and our auto-mobile, to sit there grandly on the three-hundredth night.
"We spent many hours in selecting presents that I would have made to her if I could. One of the things she wanted was, of course, a theatre bag: 'the prettiest that you can pretend!' and I pretended a beauty for her in rose brocade—and inside I put the daintiest enamelled opera-glasses that the rue de la Paix could show, and a fan of Brussels point, and a Brussels-point handkerchief, and a quaint gold bonbonniere with sugared violets in it. I remember she threw her arms round my neck as ecstatically as if the things were really there. We were, at the time, supping on stale bread, with a stick of chocolate apiece."
The dramatist sat silent, his eyes grown wide. I think that for a moment he had forgotten his new, desirable home and the antiques on the mantelpiece—that he was back in a girl's arms in a room on a sixth floor. Under the window, his wife had ceased to play at horses, and was swinging their son, instead. The child's delight was boisterous.
She called up to us now: "Are we a nuisance, messieurs? Shall we go to the nursery?"
"No, no," cried Aribaud, starting, "not at all; we are doing nothing. Continue, mon ange, continue!"
"What a heaven opened," he went on, turning to me, "when I had a piece taken at last! As long as I live I shall think of the morning that letter came, of our reading it together, half dressed, and crying with joy. She was making the coffee for breakfast. And yet, even when the contract was signed, it sometimes seemed incredible. I used to dream that it had happened, and dream that I was dreaming—that I was to wake and find it wasn't true. And the eternity of delay, the postponements, one after another! And then, when we felt worn out with waiting, the night that we jolted to the show in an omnibus, and sat breathless in the fauteuils de balcon! I remember the first laugh of approval that the audience gave, her clutching my hand; and how she clung to me, sobbing and comforting, when we got home and knew that the piece had failed.
"I had a short run the next autumn with Successeur de Son PÈre, but my first hit, of course, was Les Huit Jours de LÉonie. When that was produced, the fees came tumbling in.
"Weren't we dazed at the beginning! And how important we felt to be taking a flat and going to a bureau de placement to engage a servant! We were like children playing with a doll's-house. The change was marvellous. And when I received an invitation from somebody or other who had been unapproachable only a year before—her exultance to see me go! The invitations to the author, you understand, did not always include his wife; and, unfortunately, those that ignored her were often those that it would have been unwise for me to decline. I found that rather pathetic; we had hoped together for so long, and now that success had come she wasn't getting her fair half of the fun. An elaborate evening gown that we had hurried expectantly to order for her was not needed, after all—it was out of fashion before she wore it. Still, as I say, she exulted to see me go—at first. And later Well, when I insisted on a refusal because she had not been asked, it grieved her that I neglected opportunities for her sake; and when I consented to go without her she was, not unnaturally, dull.
"It was not very lively for her in the daytime, either. When my duties as a clerk had taken me from her, she, too, had had employment, but now, of course, her berth had been resigned, and while I wrote all day upstairs, she was alone. She was not used to leisure—all her life she had worked. We had no child to claim her time, to occupy her thoughts and yield the interests of maternity. Though she endeavoured to create distractions for herself, the flat that we had been so proud of was rather dreary for her, after its novelty faded. She sighed in it oftener than she laughed.
"The very few women that she met were actresses, who talked of nothing but their careers—their genius, their wrongs, and their Press notices. What companion could she find among them, even had I wished her to seek their companionship? And the men who came to us also talked shop continuously, and directed themselves chiefly to me. No doubt they would have had enough, and too much, to say to her had I been absent, but, as it was, they often appeared to forget that she was there. As time went on, too, the theatre made more and more demands upon me—a comedy in rehearsal while another was being written; the telephone bell always ringing to call me away just when I had arranged to take a half-holiday with her. And when I left the theatre I could not dismiss the anxieties of a production from my mind as I had dismissed the affairs of the Magasins when I left my office stool—they were mine, and I brought them home with me. She grew bored, restless. She was nervy with solitude, and chagrined at feeling herself insignificant. She told me one day that she wanted me to put her on the stage.
"Mon Dieu! To begin with, she had no gift for the stage—and if she had been ever so clever, did I want to see her there? I was aghast.
"'But, mignonne,' I said, 'what makes you think, all of a sudden, you could act? Leaving everything else aside, what reason is there to suppose you would succeed? You have had no experience, you have never even shown the slightest tendency towards it.'
"'I want something to do,' she said.
"'But,' I said,' that isn't enough. And besides, you would not like it at all—you would find it odious. You sit in a box and you see a celebrated woman bringing the house down, and to be an actress looks to you very fine. But she has been half a lifetime arriving at celebrity—there is nothing fine about the journey to it. You would feel that you had given up a good deal, I assure you—a dramatist's wife in the box is a much more dignified figure than a dramatist's wife rehearsing a trivial part and being corrected by the stage-manager.'
"'I did not mean trivial parts,' she said disconsolately—and I realised for the first time that she had been dreaming of a dÉbut in the principal rÔle. But she let the discussion drop, and I half thought I had convinced her.
"I was very much mistaken. A few weeks later she referred to it again, and more urgently. She seemed to imagine that her project was a perfectly simple matter for me to arrange, that the only obstacle in the way was my personal objection to it. 'What you say about trivial parts is quite true,' she acknowledged, with an air of being extremely reasonable, 'but in one of your own pieces you could easily get me lead. Everybody wants plays from you now; you would only have to say that you wished me to be engaged. Of course, I should study; I should go to a professor of diction and take lessons.'
"Well, I tried to explain the commercial aspect of the case to her. I told her that, for one thing, the managers would see my plays in Jericho before they agreed to entrust the leading part to a novice. And I told her that, supposing for an instant I did find a manager reckless enough to consent, I should be ruining my own property.
"'Ah,' she said, 'you make up your mind in advance that I have no dramatic instinct?'
"I said: 'It is not even a question whether you have any dramatic instinct; it is enough that you haven't any renown. You have heard too much of the business by this time not to know that everybody tries to secure the most popular artists that he can. For me to put up a play with an absolutely unknown name, instead of a star's, would be asking for a failure.'
"'If I were billed as "madame Aribaud" the name would not be unknown,'" she argued.
"'Whether you were billed as "madame Aribaud," or as anybody else,' I said, 'the point would be how good you were in the part. The public would not pay to see an indifferent performance because you were madame Aribaud.'
"'Ah, then you admit it—that is it, after all!' she cried; 'you declare beforehand that I have no ability. Why should you say such a thing? It isn't right of you.'
"I said: 'I declare beforehand that you have had no training! I declare beforehand that you could not master, in a few weeks or months, a technique that other women acquire only after years. And on top of all that, I declare that I don't want to see you in the profession. Why do you become dissatisfied after we have got on? Why can't you be as content as you used to be when we had nothing?'
"'The days are longer than they used to be; I want something to do,' she insisted.
"Oh, I understood! But I need hardly tell you that this fever of hers didn't make for bliss. The theatre became a bone of contention between us—the position that I had dreamed of and yearned for was dividing me from my wife. It got worse every year. I no longer dared to mention business in my home. We were on affectionate terms only in the hours when the theatre was forgotten. One day I would hold her in my arms, and on the next some chance allusion would estrange us. If I happened to come across a little actress who was suitable to a more conspicuous part than those that she had had hitherto, my casting her for it was a domestic tragedy—I 'made opportunities for every woman but one!' I have been told that strangers who pestered me for theatrical engagements complained that I was unsympathetic—they little guessed how I was pestered for engagements on my own hearth!
"The aunt at SÈvres also had something to say. She had managed to get on a semi-friendly footing with us when Les Huit Jours was running, and now she had the effrontery to take the tone of a mother-in-law with me. She 'knew I was devoted to her niece, but I was not being fair to her—I ought to realise that she had a right to a career, too.' What audacity!—a woman who had given nothing but phrases when her niece was penniless! I did not wrap up my answer in silver paper—and I fancy the aunt's influence was responsible for a good deal; I think she revenged herself by offering all the encouragement possible behind my back.
"Anyhow, my wife announced to me at last that she had determined to go her own road without my help. It was as if she had struck me.
"She meant to seek an opening in some minor company in the provinces—in the obscurest of the theatres ambulants, if she could do no better. It sounded so mad that at first I could hardly believe she was in earnest. The doggedness of her air soon convinced me; I would have welcomed the wildest hysteria in preference. Since I refused to further her ambition, she must resign herself to beginning in the humblest way, she told me quietly; she 'regretted to defy my wishes, but she was a woman, and I had been wrong to expect from her the blind obedience of a child—she could not consent to remain a nonentity any longer!' She dumfounded me. It meant actual separation, it meant the end of our life together—and she was telling me this composedly, coolly, as if our life together were the merest trifle, compared with the fascination of the footlights. I cursed the footlights and the day I first wrote for them. I swear I wished myself back in the Magasins du Louvre. My excitement was so violent that I could not articulate; I stuttered and stood mute. I went from her overwhelmed, asking myself what I was to do.
"There is one course that never fails to remedy marital unhappiness and bring husband and wife together again—on the stage. It is when he leads her to an ottoman, and, standing a pace or two behind her, proceeds with tender gravity to recite a catalogue of her defects. He contrasts them pathetically with the virtues that endeared her to him in the springtime of their union—and the wife, moved to tears, becomes immediately and for ever afterwards the girl that she used to be. The situation is pretty, it is popular, and it is quite untrue, for in real life one cannot recreate a character by making a speech. However, I was a dramatist, and more credulous than I am now, and I tried.
"For days I pondered what I should say. Arguments were plentiful, but the problem was how to present them forcefully enough to show her the wildness of her plan, and yet gently enough to avoid incensing her. Our future hung upon the scene, and I prayed to Heaven that not a tactless word should escape me. I knew that we had reached the crisis, that a mistaken adjective, even an impatient gesture, might be fatal. I considered and reconsidered that appeal with more tireless fervour than any lines that I have ever put into the mouth of a leading man. I thought about it so much that sometimes I was enraged to find the things I meant to say falling mentally into sentences too rhythmic and rounded, as if I had indeed been writing for the stage, and I damned my metier anew. You are an author yourself, my friend—you should understand: I longed to open my heart to her with all simplicity—never had any one sought to pour his heart out more earnestly, more freely, more unaffectedly than I—and it seemed to me in these moments that the artifices of the theatre were fighting against me to the very end. It was as if its influence were unconquerable—it had surmounted her love for me, and now it threatened even to mock my plea!
"Enfin, the opportunity came. She sat down on the couch—the ottoman of the stage situation—and I began to speak, with all the tenderness and gravity of the stage husband. Struggle as I would to banish the thought, I could not help being conscious of our resemblance to the hero and heroine of a thousand comedies in the last act. I say that I 'began' to speak, and that I felt constrained by a shoal of theatrical reminiscences, but our likeness to the hero and heroine was brief. She interrupted me, she defied the dramatic convention. In lieu of being moved to tears, she replied, with a world of dignity, that the faults were mine. She advised me, for my own sake, to try to attain a more unselfish view. With a flow of impromptu eloquence that I envied, she warned me that, though I was not intentionally unjust, I was allowing 'prejudice and egotism to warp my better nature.' Before I knew what had happened, I stood listening to a homily. The situation that meant my last hope had come out upside down!"
Aribaud paused again. On the little lawn the child had left the swing; the most devoted of wives and mothers was playing chat perchÉ with him now. They made a pretty picture, but my thoughts were with her predecessor; I was mourning the love-story that had begun like an idyll, and that seemed to have had so bad an end.
The man's voice brought me back. "Yes, the infallible situation had failed," he repeated. "What do you suppose was the sequel?"
"I suppose," I sighed, "she had her way?"
"No," said Aribaud; "she had her baby." He waved a triumphant hand towards the garden. "And from the first promise of that God-sent gift, the glamour of the theatre faded from her mind and me talked only of her home. From that day to this we have been as happy together as you see us now."
My exclamation was cut short by the hostess whose history I had been hearing.
"Messieurs, are you really sure we aren't laughing too much for you?" she pealed up to us again.
"Sure, sure! It is well—it is as it should be—we come to join you," shouted Aribaud. "Laugh loud, my love—laugh on!"
III
THAT VILLAIN HER FATHER
Henri Vauquelin was a widower with one daughter, to whom he had denied nothing from the time she used to whimper for his watch and drop it on the floor. So, after she left the convent where she had been educated, and told him how much she was missing her friend Georgette, he said gaily, "Mais, ma petite, invite mademoiselle—whatever her name may be, to come to Paris and stay with us for a month."
His gaiety was a trifle forced, however. Though he was happy to give his daughter a companion, he was pained to learn that his own companionship hadn't been enough. "For I have done all I could," he mused. "The fact is, that though I feel fairly young, I am elderly. That's the trouble. To a girl of twenty-one, a father of forty-five is an ancient for the chimney corner. I must see about finding her a husband—I shall have to talk to madame Daudenarde about her son the first time I am in the neighbourhood." And after Blanche had flung her arms round his neck, and darted forth to send the invitation to her friend, he surveyed his reflection in a glass pensively, and noted that his moustache was much greyer than he had thought.
When the indispensable Georgette arrived, in a costume that became her admirably, and sat at dinner, in a dress that became her more admirably still, replying to him with composure and point, he was surprised at the girls' attraction for each other—and his surprise did not diminish as the days passed. Though not actually more than two or three years older than Blanche, mademoiselle Paumelle was in tone much older. Blanche was an ingenue; Georgette was a woman. Excepting in moments, when she romped like a schoolgirl, all spontaneity and high spirits.
"She is a queer compound, your chum," he remarked when she had been with them for a fortnight. "Alternately thirty, and thirteen!"
"You don't like her, papa?"
"Oh, yes, she is well enough, and not bad-looking. I am relieved she did not turn out to be ugly—that would have depressed me. But it is a trifle confusing to be uncertain whether I am about to be addressed by a woman of the world or a madcap from a nursery."
"She used always to be a madcap till she lost her mother—you see, there are only her stepfather and his two sisters now. It is that that has changed her so dreadfully."
"I find nothing 'dreadful' about her," said Vauquelin a shade sharply. "On the contrary, it—I suppose some people might find it rather fascinating. I merely observe that she is different from any other girl that I have met. What's the matter with her stepfather?"
"She tells me he never stops talking."
"His topics must be pretty catholic. This jeune fille from the country appears to know more of politics, finance, society, and sport than I, who have lived in Paris forty-five years."
"How you do exaggerate, papa!" rippled Blanche reprovingly.
"At any rate, I do not exaggerate the years," sighed Vauquelin. "Well, if she is not happy at home, why not ask her to stay with us for two months? She is not in my way, you know."
But mademoiselle Paumelle declared that it would be impossible for her to prolong her visit. Blanche reported this to him with wistful lips, and he said, "I'll see if I can persuade her—I will speak to her about it in the morning when you go to take your music-lesson."
On the morrow, "Blanche tells me that she is greatly disappointed," he began. "She will miss you terribly when you leave us, mademoiselle. I wish you would think over your objection."
"It is infinitely kind of you, monsieur Vauquelin. I fear that a month is the very most I can manage."
"Even to do us a service?"
"Ah, a 'service'!" She smiled. "You will find plenty of people ready to do you such services."
"Not plenty of mesdemoiselles Paumelle. I am in earnest. It is dull here for Blanche, alone with me. I have done my best for her, I am not consciously selfish—I have sat at home when I wanted to go out, and gone out when I wanted to stop at home. I have taken her to the FranÇais and pretended to enjoy myself, though I could have yawned my head off, and the question of her clothes has absorbed me more than the affairs of France. But I am old. All my tenderness for her cannot alter that."
"You do not seem to me old," said mademoiselle Paumelle.
"Don't I?" said Vauquelin, regarding her gratefully. "Look how grey my moustache is getting. And yet, do you know, when we're all laughing together I feel as young as ever I was."
"Your manner is young. The face alters ever so long before the manner."
"I am forty-f—er—over forty, and Blanche is twenty-one. What will you? I must get her married soon. It is my paramount desire. I rather fancy that Daudenarde and she may not dislike each other—the gentleman you saw the other evening."
"She was doing her hair from seven o'clock till eight, and he sighed when he handed her the lemonade."
"Your observation is invaluable. I must have a chat with his mother soon. It would be an excellent match. In the meantime she stands in need of the companionship and counsel of a young lady like you; she needs it most urgently. If your stepfather can spare you——"
"Ah, my stepfather could spare me for ever," she put in; "there are others to listen to him."
"And if you are not bored here——"
"Bored? I am having the time of my life."
"Eh bien? Remain for two months, I beg. Be merciful to us. I need your advice, myself. There is a matter that is harassing me: I cannot determine whether her new jumper should be beaded, silk-broidered, or fringed."
"If it is telling on your health——" Her eyes laughed into his.
"You yield?"
"I weakly wobble."
"There is, further, the consuming question of a simple evening dress—what it should be made of."
"I succumb. Tulle would be all right, or Georgette."
"It shall be Georgette—we shall not lose you so utterly when you go."
"Oh, you are—priceless!" she pealed.
Vauquelin reflected, "She has three sterling qualities, this girl—she is pretty, she is nice, and she looks at me as if I were a young man."
During the next six weeks Vauquelin developed a zest for the FranÇais that was astonishing. And not for the FranÇais only, or for the OpÉra Comique, and concerts, and kinemas. Blanche had never applauded her papa so ardently. He would be seized with captivating whims for expeditions, and picnics, and moonlight runs in the car. His frolicsomeness passed belief.
Not till the six weeks were over and mademoiselle Paumelle had departed, bearing Blanche with her, did his spirits fall. And then there would have been no buyers. The middle-aged gentleman was plunged into melancholy, the worse to bear from the fact that he was conscious of being comic. Trying to throw dust in his own eyes, "It is frightful how I miss Blanche," he would soliloquise at the elegiac dinner-table. But the eyes were fixed sentimentally on the place that had been Georgette's. And as the date approached for Blanche to return, and his heart sank before the necessity for resuming his capers, "It is clear," he told himself, "that the affection I entertained for that Georgette Paumelle was almost parental!"
The fatherliness of his feelings for her, however, did not avert increased regrets at the greying moustache; and he abandoned his shaving mirror, because it magnified the lines about his nose and mouth.
Blanche, on his knee again, had plenty to tell. She described the stepfather as a "trial," and his maiden sisters as "cats." She had enjoyed herself, because Georgette and she had been together all day, but it must be hideous there for Georgette alone. "She isn't going to stick it much longer. She is miserable with them."
"How distressing that is!" said Vauquelin. "To whom does she go?"
"Well, she has money of her own, you know—she can live where she likes."
"Mais—Comment donc? She cannot live by herself—une jeune fille, bien ÉlevÉe! What an idea! Her people would never sanction it."
"I think they would be rather glad to get rid of her," said Blanche, choosing a chocolate with deliberation.
"But—but it is monstrous! To live like a bohemian, she! It is unheard of, terrible. Is she out of her mind? Listen, ma chÉrie, if her plight upsets you so violently, she can make her home with us."
"Ah, papa!" cried Blanche in ecstasy. "It is the very thing I thought of, but I was afraid it was too much to ask you."
"Now, when did I ever refuse you anything?"
"But such an enormous favour!"
"Not at all, not at all. I shall adapt myself to the arrangement well enough."
"But, papa, it might get on your nerves in time."
"Not at all, not at all. There is my study for me to retire to—I shall not see more of her than I want to."
"You promise that?"
"I can swear it."
"Oh, it will be adorable! I only wonder if I am being selfish to let you do it."
"I insist," said Vauquelin, with a noble gesture. "Say we entreat her to agree, that we shall be wounded if she declines. Say our flat is her home for as long as she will honour us—the longer, the better. I will write a few lines to her, too. Be tranquil, my sweet child—I do not sacrifice myself. Is it not my highest joy to indulge you?"
After many letters had been indited to her, mademoiselle Paumelle was prevailed upon to come; and after many remonstrances had been made to her, she ceased to speak of going. But for the fact that her gifts to the girl were expensive, it was as if she were a member of the family. Blanche was relieved to note that her papa was not driven to the seclusion of his study often; and never did he withdraw to it when Blanche was absent, to take her music-lesson. As he had predicted, Vauquelin adapted himself to the arrangement plastically. He approved it so much, especially the tÊte-À-tÊte during the music-lessons, that when six months had flashed by, he resented an incident which reminded him that it couldn't be permanent. A monsieur Brigard, an old comrade, arrived to advocate nothing less than that Blanche should espouse Brigard's boy.
"My friend, I have other views for my daughter," replied Vauquelin firmly.
But the arrival dejected him, in the knowledge that when Blanche should marry, Georgette would have to go. And in their next hour alone together, Georgette asked him what his worry was.
"Nothing. I am a little—we must all think of the future, our children's future. A father has responsibilities."
"À propos de—what? Am I inquisitive?"
"Do I not confide everything to you? Some pest has made matrimonial overtures about his son. Preposterous."
"The young man's position is not good enough?"
"Ah, his position is first rate. I say nothing against his position."
"It is his character that displeases you?"
"No. As for that, he is steady, and not unamiable."
"But what do you complain of?"
Vauquelin waved his hand vaguely. "The proposal does not accord with my ideas. I have different intentions for her."
"Ah, yes, that monsieur Daudenarde! I thought perhaps that affair had faded out."
"By no means," affirmed Vauquelin, clutching at the excuse. "Precisely. I wish her to marry monsieur Daudenarde. And that is a sound and laudable reason why I should resent being badgered by Brigard. I find such intrusions on my routine very offensive. Daudenarde's mother and I are going to have a little talk together some time or other."
"But——"
"What?"
"You decided to have a little talk with her nine or ten months ago."
"I must avoid precipitance. In such matters a father cannot act with too much caution."
"Blanche is a darling. But there are other girls in Paris. If you desire the match, be careful you don't let him slip."
"Have no misgiving," said Vauquelin irritably. "I am quite content. Madame Daudenarde will receive a visit from me—when Blanche is older. And we shall see what we shall see."
The captivating Georgette looked thoughtful. The more so after a chat with Blanche had drawn forth the nervous confession that she "thought monsieur Daudenarde very nice."
And then, when the volatile father had banished the menace of the future from his mind, and was again basking in the sunshine of the present, what should happen but that madame Daudenarde inconsiderately broached the matter to him, instead of waiting for him to approach her.
"Dear lady, my daughter is too young," replied Vauquelin promptly.
"How, too young?" demurred madame Daudenarde. "She is one-and-twenty. I was but nineteen when I married."
"Yes," said Vauquelin, "but my sainted mother did not marry till she was thirty-two, and she always impressed upon me that it was the best age."
"Thirty-two?" cried madame Daudenarde shrilly. "Do you ask me to adjourn our conference for eleven years?"
"My honoured friend, I do not make it a hard-and-fast condition," stammered the unhappy man, struggling for coherence. "It is possible there may be something to be said against it. But your gratifying proposal is so sudden—I had not contemplated the alliance—I need time to balance my parental duties against my reverence for my mother's views."
Now, Georgette, who could put two and two together as accurately as the Minister of Finance, had not failed to remark that the interview took place privately in the study, and noted that her host was evasive when Blanche inquired why madame Daudenarde had "called at such a funny time." Feelers during the next music-lesson found him evasive also. In the days that followed, when Blanche developed a tendency to sigh plaintively, and turned against chocolates, it grew clear to Georgette that this father must be shown the error of his ways.
"May I say that I hope that conversation with madame Daudenarde contented you?" she ventured.
"Hein?" said Vauquelin, starting.
"That the engagement will soon be announced?"
"Mon Dieu, is it not extraordinary how people seek to rob me of my child?" he moaned.
"Does that mean that nothing is arranged yet?"
"Why not leave well alone? Are we not all comfortable as we are? I have made no definite reply to madame Daudenarde—I cannot be bustled. Have you ever thought that when I part from Blanche, I shall be left here by myself?"
"Yes. It has even occurred to me that you have thought of it, too."
"Naturally. It is not strange that I should tremble at such a prospect. To be solitary is a sad thing."
"It is for your own sake, then, not hers, that you delay?"
"For the first time I find you lacking!" he broke out. "You do not seem to comprehend the workings of a father's heart."
"I have never had one."
"Don't split straws! When I lose her I shall be alone. You do not require to be a father to know that."
"You could always go to see her."
"FlÛte!"
"And your grandchildren. Respectful grandchildren that clustered at your knee."
"I will not anticipate grandchildren—I am not a hundred!" exclaimed Vauquelin angrily. "I repeat that the present conditions are entirely to my taste, and I desire to prolong them."
"It is also possible you might re-marry."
"At my age? Who would have me? Some ripe and ruddled widow."
"Girls, quite young, marry men much older than you."
"But not for love. Tell me, what would you put me down at? Without flattery."
"I should call you in the prime of life."
"The friendly phrase for 'senile.' Depend upon it, people said that to Methuselah. Supposing—a man is never too old to make a fool of himself, you know—supposing, for the sake of argument, I felt a tenderness, a devotion for a girl scarcely older than Blanche: a devotion which I strove to think platonic, even while I sighed under her window, and which revived in me unsought, the emotions—all the sentiment, the throes, the absurdities—of the youth that had gone from me before I knew how divine it was. Would it—could it—is it imaginable that she might not laugh?"
"She would not laugh if she were worth it all."
"To marry me for love—a girl? To see me romantic without thinking me ridiculous—to melt to my tears, not shrink from the crows'-feet round my eyes? I wonder!"
"If you choose wisely, you will not wonder."
"In love, who chooses? Fate decides. What would you call 'wisely'? She should be—how old?"
"Old enough to know her mind. Young enough to attract you."
"For the rest?"
"She should have means, that you might never fear it had been yours that won her. She should have affection for your child, that she might know no jealousy of yours. She should take interest in your child's future, that, if you were wilful, she might guide you.... To revert to madame Daudenarde, I counsel you to write to-day that you consent."
Vauquelin stood gazing at her incredulously.
"Georgette! Georgette!" he panted. "Do you know you have given me your own portrait?"
"With my love," she told him, smiling.
IV
THE STATUE
In the Square d'IÉna, which teems with little Parisians in charge of English nurses, Vera Simpson wheeled the baby-carriage to a bench on fine mornings, and exchanged patriotic sentiments with her compeers. When disparagement of France flagged, Vera Simpson occasionally observed. So as she always entered the square at the same end and nearly always chose the same bench, she observed the eccentric proceedings of a young man who took to coming every morning to stare at the statue on the opposite grass plot. After standing before it as if he were glued there, the young man would reverse one of the chairs that faced the path in an orderly line, and then sit mooning at the statue, with his back to everybody, for nearly an hour. It was, Miss Simpson surmised, a statue to a departed Frenchy. She had never approached it to ascertain what name it bore, and could see nothing about the thing to account for the fellow's taking such stock of it. Some time before he had appeared for nine days in succession, she and her circle had nicknamed him the "rum 'un."
On the tenth day, instead of the young man, a woman went to the statue, and stood before it just as stupidly and as long as the man had done. The most comical bit was that, when she turned away at last, it was seen that the statue had been making the woman cry. After that, neither of the funny pair came back to the Square d'IÉna; but as Vera Simpson chooses the same bench still, she sometimes recalls their queerness and, before her mind wanders, tries again to guess their game. This was the game that Vera Simpson tries to guess.
Gaby Dupuy was wishing that the summer were over; she was a model. Not one of the wretched models that wait at the corner of the boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse on Mondays, to crave the vote of students in academies; she went by appointment to the ateliers of the successful. But now the painters and the sculptors were all at the seaside, and her appointment book had shown no sitting for ever so long.
Gaby's qualities had never placed her among the stars of her profession. Nobody had ever said of her, as a great man said of one of the most celebrated of models, that he had only to reproduce her faithfully; still less could it be asserted that she had the genius to penetrate an artist's purport and present the pose that was eluding him. But if she had neither the beauty of a Sarah Brown, nor the intuition of a Dubosc, her face possessed a certain attractiveness, and she could achieve the expression demanded of her when it was laboriously explained.
Once upon a time her face had been more attractive still; Gaby wasn't so young as she used to be.
While the woman was regretting that her scanty provision for the dreaded summer would not allow her a more adequate menu, she received a letter. A stranger, who signed himself Jacques Launay, earnestly desired an interview. He wrote that, being unfamiliar with Paris, he had had great difficulty in ascertaining her address, and added that, as his stay in the capital was drawing to a close, he would deeply appreciate the favour of an early reply. Her eyebrows climbed as she saw that, in lieu of requiring her to betake herself to his studio, he "begged for the privilege of calling upon her at any hour that she might find convenient." Probably, though, as a provincial, he hadn't got a studio here. Still, what deference! he had written to her as if she were of the ancienne noblesse.
But if he hadn't a studio, where did he expect her to pose? Did he want her to go to him in the country? Yes, that must be it. FlÛte! Gaby didn't think it would be good enough—the end of the dead season was in sight at last, and in Paris she would often be booked for two studios a day. Nevertheless she was eager to hear what he had to say for himself. She answered that he could see her at seven o'clock the following evening at the Paradis des Artistes, round the corner. To meet him at a restaurant, she reflected, would at least ensure his asking her to have something to drink; and as the tables would be laid, by seven o'clock, he might even spring to a meal.
The Paradis des Artistes was a small establishment where, for three francs, one found a homely dinner, inclusive of wine, and a cripple who wore a red jacket, to look like a Tzigane, and chanted to a mandoline. The "artistes" were chiefly models, and the lesser lights of a cafÉ-concert. As most of the company knew one another, and the proprietress called many of the ladies by their Christian names, and played piquet with them between midnight and 2 a.m., the tone of the restaurant was as informal as a family party. When Gaby arrived, the only person present whom she had never seen there before was a young man, who sat at a table near the door, solitary and seemingly expectant. Their gaze met, but although he looked undecided, he did not salute her. Then, as she was greeted by acquaintances, somebody cried, "Gaby, comment va?" and the young man's head was turned again. If he was her correspondent, it was rather odd that he didn't know her when he saw her. But she gave him another opportunity.... He approached with marked hesitation.
"Mademoiselle Gabrielle Dupuy?"
"Mais oui, monsieur," she said, smiling graciously. "It is monsieur Launay?"
"Oh, mademoiselle, it is most kind of you!" faltered the stranger. His confusion was extraordinary, considering his age, for he could not have been less than eight- or nine-and-twenty. They stood mute for some seconds. As he remained too much embarrassed to suggest her taking a seat at his table, "I hope I have not kept you waiting?" she asked, carelessly moving towards it.
They sat down now, and the waitress, whose tone was informal too, whisked over with, "And for mademoiselle Dupuy?"
"Give me a glass of madÈre, Louise," she said.
Still the young man seemed unable to find his tongue, and she went on:
"I am afraid this place was rather out of the way for you? But I have got into the habit of dropping in here about this time; and it is cosy and one can talk."
"Yes," he assented. He stole a timid glance at her, and looked quickly away. "Oh yes."
"Who was it who gave you my address at last, monsieur?"
"I do not know," he said awkwardly. "It was a man who heard me inquiring. I had immense trouble to find it out."
"It is not a dead secret, however."
"I suppose not—no—but I have no friends in Paris; I have never been in Paris before. And at the start I did not even know who you were."
"You did not know who I was? Oh, you had seen something I had posed for?"
"Yes, it was like that. I was anxious to find you, but I did not know your name. And I had no one to help me," he stammered; "it was enormously difficult."
"You are a painter, monsieur Launay?"
"No, mademoiselle."
"Ah, a sculptor! That interests me still more."
"I am not a sculptor either, mademoiselle," he admitted. "I am a composer."
"A composer?" she echoed. "But—but a composer does not employ models."
"No, mademoiselle, but I beg you not to think my motive impudent," exclaimed the young man, with the first touch of spontaneity that he had shown yet.
"Mysterious merely," she smiled. Her expression offered him encouragement to elucidate the mystery, but nervousness seemed to overcome him again. He was boring her. She exchanged remarks across the room with a lady who wore one of the figured veils then in vogue, under which the victim of fashion appeared to have lost portions of her face.
"Going to feed, Gaby?"
"Yes, my dear, in a minute," she answered.
She saw her correspondent regard the announcement "DINER 3 Fr." His invitation was constrained, and her acceptance listless.
It no doubt surprised the young man to discover that the veiled lady was his guest as well; he must have wondered how it had happened. Also it may have startled him, when he made to fill Gaby's glass from one of the little decanters that stood before them, to learn that she "did not take it" and to see a bottle labelled "Pouilly FuissÉ" display itself before he could say "Why?" for he had not heard it ordered. He heard no order given for the second bottle that he beheld, nor for the tarte aux cÉrises that graced their repast—a delicacy that was not a feature of the other people's. But though these incidents may have caused him disquietude, since he was far from having an air of wealth, he manifested no objection to them. Gaby allowed that that was gentil. A singularly taciturn host, but an amenable one. And, briefly as he spoke, he yielded continuous attention to her prattle to the lady with the veil. It was queer that the more she prattled, the more despondent he grew. She found him piquing her curiosity.
When a bill for twenty-nine francs fifty was presented to him, after the cafÉ filtrÉ and Egyptian cigarettes, Gaby put out her hand for it and knocked off four francs without discussion. "I don't let them make their little mistakes with friends of mine," she told him languidly, rising. "I am going home to get my coat—you can come with me." He accepted her invitation with as scant enthusiasm as she had shown for his own; and by way of a hint, forgetful of her earlier statement, she added, "This place is rotten—it's so noisy and one can't talk."
But he proved no more talkative in the street. One might almost have imagined that the task of explaining his petition for the interview was a duty that he sought to escape.
Her lodging was so close that the doorway took him aback. He followed her up the stairs submissively. She was not impatient for the coat. After lighting the lamp, she lit another of the cigarettes, and sat. The young man stood staring from the window.
"Well, chatterbox?" she said.
He swung round with unexpected vehemence. "I know I look a hopeless idiot," he cried.
"But ... what an idea!" Her gesture was all surprised denial.
"I prayed to see you—I said nothing all the evening, I stand like a dummy here. I must tell you why I wrote. But—but it is not so easy as I thought it would be."
"You make me curious."
"Listen," he exclaimed. "I had had two passions in my life—music, and the poetry of RichardiÈre! No other poet has meant half—a tithe—so much to me as he. His work inspired me when I was a boy; if I had had the means, I would have taken the journey to Paris just to wait on the pavement and see his face when he went out. When he died——Of course all France mourned his loss, but none but his dearest friends, I think, could have felt as I did. Well, since I have been a man I have made an opera of his Arizath, and I came to Paris last week because there was a prospect of its being produced. Five minutes after I had found a room at an hotel, I was asking my way to the Square d'IÉna to see the statue to him. I knew nothing about it excepting that it had been erected there—and as I approached it my heart sank: I had always pictured a statue of the man, and I saw merely a bust of him—the statue was of a woman, recalling a verse."
She nodded. "I know. Beauvais kept me posing for three hours and a half without budging, and I had a chilblain that itched like mad on the finger inside the book."
"The disappointment was keen. I almost wished I had not come, for it had been a long walk, and I was very tired. And then, after I had stood looking at the bust, noting how handsome he had been, and thinking of his genius, I looked down at the statue of the woman, and I felt that it would have been worth coming simply to see that. It was so wonderful, so real! The naturalness of the attitude, the perfection of the toilette—I had never realised that the sculptor's art could do such things; I think I looked for minutes at the slippers. I admired the sleeves, the sweep of the gown, that seemed as if it must be soft to touch; I was amazed by a thousand trifles before my glance lingered on the face. And after my glance lingered on the face I saw nothing else; I could not even move to look at it in profile—it held me fixed."
"It is Beauvais' masterpiece," said Gaby; "they all say it is the finest thing he has done."
"It is a masterpiece, yes. But I was not thinking of the sculptor and his art any more—I was thinking of the face, without remembering how it had come about. It was as if a beautiful mind were really pondering behind that brow. The character of the mouth and chin impressed me as if the marble had been flesh and blood; the abstracted eyes couldn't have stirred me to more reverence if they had had sight. And while I looked at them, they seemed, by an optical illusion, to meet my own. Not with interest; with an unconsciousness that mortified me—they seemed to gaze through my insignificance into the greatness of RichardiÈre. I blinked, I suppose, for the next instant they had been averted. I wanted them to come back, to realise my presence. I concentrated all my will upon the effort to trick myself once more—and I could have sworn they turned. Now, too, they seemed to notice me; there was a smile in them, an ironical smile—they smiled at the presumption of my linking an immortal poet's work with mine! Insane? But I felt it, I shrank from the derision. Again I raised my head to RichardiÈre, and for the first time I remarked that his expression was a poor acknowledgment of the figure's homage. It was consequential and impertinent. A tinge of cruelty in it, even. He had an air of sensualism, of one who held women very light. I could imagine his having said horrible things to women. He was not worthy of the look in the statue's eyes....
"I went there the next day, after vowing that I would not go. The eyes discerned me sooner this time, and I contrived to fancy that their gaze was gentler. I was happy in the fancy that their gaze was gentler. When the eyes wandered from me I was humbled, and when they looked in mine I held my breath. I persuaded myself—no, I did not 'persuade myself,' the thought was born—that there was comprehension in the gaze, that my worship, though undesired, was understood. In the afternoon I had a business appointment that I had been thinking about for weeks, but instead of being excited by its nearness, I regretted that it obliged me to leave the Square d'IÉna. When I kept the appointment, the bad news that there had been a delay in the arrangements hardly troubled me—I was impatient only to be outside. Originally my plan had been to see the Louvre as soon as the business was over—now my one desire was to return to the statue. It was a delight to hasten to it; people must have thought me bound for a rendezvous, as I strode smiling through the streets. Not once did I regard the arrogance of RichardiÈre on the pedestal, but it was only in moments that the musing figure ceased to remind me that her god was there. Though I never looked at it, an intense repugnance to the face of RichardiÈre was in my blood—a jealousy, if you will! It possessed me while I was away—while I was reiterating that I had made my last visit to the square, knowing nevertheless that on the morrow I should yield again. The jealousy persisted when I turned the pages of my opera now, and the magic of the master's poetry was gone. I could not forget his domination of the figure—I wanted to think of the beautiful statue freed, aloof from him!"
He had left the window, and was moving restlessly about the room. Intent, her face propped by her hands, the model for the statue sat and watched him. The cigarette between her lips was out.
"The fact that there must have been a model for it was borne upon me quite suddenly. It had the thrill of a revelation, and nearly dazed me. This woman lived! Somewhere in the world she was walking, speaking! It was as if a miracle had happened, as if the statue had come to life. I repeated breathlessly that it was true, but it appeared fabulous. I had attributed emotions to the marble figure with ease—to grasp the simple truth of the woman's existence was inconceivably difficult. I trembled with the marvel of it; Pygmalion was not more stupefied than I. When my heart left off pounding so hard, I began to question how long it would take me to discover who she was. I did not even know the way to set about it. But I knew that if she was in France I meant to find her.... I need not talk about the rest."
After a silence Gaby stirred and spoke:
"It was a triumph to pose for the statue—your story makes me very proud."
"I could not avoid telling it to you," answered the young man drearily.
"But how you say it—as if you had done wrong! Shall I tell you what would have been wrong? Not to let me know. That would have been pathetic. Mon Dieu! it would be atrocious for a woman to have done all that and never to hear. And to think that at the beginning I fancied you were——You were so quiet while we dined."
"I was listening to you," he sighed.
"That's true. You were entitled to it by then—you had done much to get the chance!"
"Yes, I had done much to get the chance."
"It was beautiful of you. I mean it. Because you have spoken earnestly, from your heart, and I could see—I could see very well that what you were saying was true, that you were not exaggerating to please me. Oh, I am moved, believe me, I am really moved!" She put out her hand to him impulsively, and he took it, as in duty bound. But he did not raise it to his lips. Her body stiffened a little as the hand drooped slowly to her lap. A shade of apprehension aged her face. Again there was silence.
"Well?" she murmured.
"Well?"
"Enfin, when you sought the chance, when you wrote to me at last, you foresaw—what?"
"Infinitely less than you have granted, mademoiselle," he returned, with an obvious effort. "A briefer meeting, a more formal one. I thank you most gratefully for your patience, your kindness, the honour you have done me."
She gave a harsh laugh. "And now you 'regret that you must say good night'?"
"It is a fact that I have to see my man again this evening," he acknowledged hurriedly, glancing at his watch. "I had forgotten the time."
"Yes," said the woman, "you had forgotten the time—you had forgotten that the statue was modelled eleven years ago.... So you did not find her, after all! You began your search too late."
"It is not that!" he cried, distressed.
"Ah!" She had sprung to her feet, and stood panting. "Why lie to me? I am sorry for you, in a way—you haven't been a brute consciously."
"A brute?"
"What do you imagine you have been? A fool, you think, to yourself: I have changed, and you should have known I must have changed; it would have spared you the bother of seeking me, the disillusion when we met—there are no wrinkles creeping on the statue. Oh, it has been a fraud for you, I realise the sell! But you are not the only sufferer by your folly. A man can't talk to a woman as you have talked to me and leave her cold. He can't say, 'I felt all this for you before I saw you—now, good-bye,' and leave her proud; he can't adore her in the marble and disdain her in the flesh without her being ashamed. You have degraded me, jeered at me—you have taunted me with every blemish on my skin!"
"It isn't that!" he cried again. "I was a fool, I own it—a brute, if you choose to call me one—but it isn't that."
"What then? Is it my frock that alters me? I am poor, I can't afford such gowns as Beauvais put on me for the statue. Is it the way my hair is dressed? I can dress it like the statue again. The brow? You liked the brow. Well, look! time hasn't been so rough on me there—the brow is young. And you need not be jealous of my thoughts of RichardiÈre, for I have never read a single word he wrote. What is there lacking in me? Tell me what you miss."
"I can't tell you," he groaned. But he had started.
"You have told me," she said, shrinking. "I know now. My face is ignorant—the statue has more mind than I!"
He no longer said, "It isn't that." He drooped before her, dumb, contrite.
After a long pause she quavered, dabbing at her eyes:
"Well, I'm not an idiot—I should improve."
"Is it an imbecile like me who could teach you?"
"I should be content."
"Never in a single hour! I fell in love with an ideal and went to look for it—failure was ordained. It is I who lack sense, not you."
A ghost of a smile twitched her lips. "It was all the fault of that Beauvais; he stuck an expression on me, with the clothes. I did look like that in his studio, though the chilblain was itching. But even if I made myself look like it now, it wouldn't take you in, would it? Don't look so frightened of me, I shan't go on at you again. Poor boy, you have had a deuce of an evening!... Well, I suppose you are right, failure was ordained—and it is wise to cut one's failures short. You may go. And don't flatter yourself that you have hurt me so much as I said—my vanity was stung for a minute, that's all; to-morrow I shall have forgotten all about you.... You can find your way downstairs?"
He hesitated—and took an irresolute step towards her, with half-opened arms.
"Good night," she said, not moving. "Good-bye."
On the tenth day, instead of the young man, a woman went to the statue, and stood before it just as stupidly and as long as he had done. The most comical bit was that, when she turned away at last, it was seen that the statue had been making the woman cry. After that, neither of the funny pair came back to the Square d'IÉna; but as Vera Simpson chooses the same bench still, she sometimes recalls their queerness and, before her mind wanders, tries again to guess their game. This was the game that an English nursemaid tries to guess.
V
THE CELEBRITY AT HOME
Before boarding-houses in London were all called Hotels and while snobbery had advanced no further than to call them Establishments, there was one in a London square where two of the "visitors"—which is boarding-house English for "boarders"—were a girl and a young man. Irene Barton was a humble journalist, who wrote stories when she would have been wiser to go to bed, and yearned to be an admired author. Jack Humphreys was an athletic clerk, who was renouncing clerkships for Canada and foresaw himself prospering in a world of wheat. The young man and the girl used to confide their plans to each other—when they weren't saying how detestable all the other boarders were—and before the time came for him to sail they had complicated matters by falling in love.
When he had begged her to wait for him and she had explained that matrimony did not enter into her scheme of things, Miss Barton was miserable. But she did not let him guess that she was miserable, and she didn't change her mind. She had dreamed of being a celebrated novelist from the days when she wrote stories, in penny exercise books, at the nursery table, and his appeal amounted to asking her to sacrifice her aspirations and remain a nobody. She had scoffed too often at women who "ruined their careers for sickly sentiment" to be guilty of the same blunder. Still, she had had no suspicion that sentiment could lure so hard, and she viewed the women more leniently now.
She reflected that the experience of sickly sentiment at first hand should be of benefit to her fiction, but the thought failed to encourage her so much as she would have expected of it. "They learn in suffering what they teach in song," she reminded herself—and an old-fashioned instinct, which she rebuked, whispered, "But isn't it better to be happy than to teach?"
Because Jack Humphreys persisted they discussed the subject more than once. Sauntering round the garden of the square in the twilight, she expounded her philosophy to him.
"I am not," she insisted, "the least bit the kind of girl you ought to care for. It'll be five years at the very least before you can marry, and in five years' time I shall have written books, and—well, I hope I shall have done something worth while. Do you suppose I could be satisfied to give it all up? I know myself, I couldn't do it. Or, if I did do it, I should be wretched—and make you wretched too."
"But why should you give it all up?" he said miserably. "Don't you think I should be interested in it? Haven't I been interested here—have you found me so wooden? I don't know much about it, but Oh, my dear, I'm so fond of you! Whatever interested you would be bound to interest me. You could write novels as my wife—I'd never put any difficulties in your way, heaven knows I wouldn't!"
She shook her head.
"You think all that now, but you'd know better then. You won't want a wife to write novels—you'll want one to bake the bread and feed the chickens and make herself useful. You'll want the domesticated article—and I'm an artist. I should be an encumbrance, not a wife. Besides, I should hate it all. Oh, I know I'm hurting you, but it's true! I should bore myself to death. To write, I need to live among men and women, to live in London, Paris, among other writers. I want to see pictures, and hear music—real music, not Verdi and that kind of treacle—and be in the movement. Perhaps by the time you wanted me to come to you I should be in the movement—five years is a long while, and I'm going to work hard. And you fancy I could turn my back on it all! Oh, Mr. Humphreys, don't let us talk about it any more!"
Trying to steady his voice, the young man asked:
"May I write to you sometimes, as a friend?"
"I think you had better not," she said, though her heart had jumped at the suggestion.
"I haven't any people who'd care much about hearing from me," he pleaded; "I shall be pretty humped over there at the start. I'd promise faithfully not to—er—I'd write to you just as I might write to any other chum, if I had one."
"Very well," she assented. "Write to me like that and I'll answer."
He did not write quite like that, but he suppressed two-thirds of what he wanted to say, and signed himself "Yours sincerely." Nobody could have found any definite endearment to object to in the pages. Though she checked the impulse to reply by the next mail, she replied at considerable length. She told him the latest details of the boarding-house—-that Mrs. Usher was looking seriously ill because she couldn't find out why Mrs. Dunphy received so many telegrams; and that because Mrs. Kenyon's husband wasn't able to come to England yet, Mrs. Wykes was suggesting that she hadn't a husband at all. She told him that she had "had enough of these awful people" and that he was to direct his next letter elsewhere. And always his next letter was awaited more eagerly than was consistent of a young woman who was quite sure that she preferred celebrity to love.
So, although they did not write to each other more than twice or thrice a year, they were still corresponding after both had made some progress. The homestead was the man's own property at last, and the woman had had a novel published. She sent a copy of it to him, with two or three of the best reviews. It had been reviewed very highly, and if the ex-clerk had sometimes questioned whether she mightn't be exaggerating her prospects, his doubt was banished when he read the compliments that the critics paid her.
He grinned a little wryly in the solitude of the homestead. Yes, it would have been a queer kind of life here for a woman of her talent! "I should bore myself to death." Like a knife through him when she said it. Of course, he had not grasped then what the life would be. If he had thoroughly divined——Looking back, he wondered whether he would have found the pluck to tackle it himself. That first awful year, when he had ploughed a bit of wilderness, craving in every hour for the sight of a girl in England!... Well, time worked wonders, and his labours interested him now. He pulled, and viewed proudly, a few heads of the wheat he had sown with his own hands. Jolly colour they were! Better than a clerkship; no more London for him. Irene Barton was finding it a Tom Tiddler's ground, he supposed. Good luck to her! Oh, of course, she had done the sensible thing in refusing him—and, heaven be praised, he wasn't broken up about it any longer. One could get over any blow.
By way of thanks for the book, he scribbled a friendly letter, in which there was no endearment, definite or indefinite, to object to. It implied that her choice had been a wise one, and he congratulated her very cordially. The letter was sincere; he felt that it would give her pleasure. And when it reached her and she read between the lines, the woman's heart sank, and tears crept down her face.
He wondered mildly why he didn't hear from her any more.
The novel that the papers praised so warmly had enriched her by the sum of ten pounds; and when she was five years older than she had been on the day she said good-bye to him, she was writing in a boarding-house much like the one where he had met her. She remembered wistfully that within five years she had foreseen herself rejoicing in Upper Bohemia.
She wrote well. She did not think as well as she wrote, of course—her horizon was clouded by myths, like those that have it that Scots are all skinflints, and Jews are all rogues—but her work had beauty; and critics saw it, and she made a reputation. But the general public did not see it, or, seeing the beauty, were a Channel's width from perceiving that it was beautiful, so she did not make money. And without money she found a literary reputation was less ecstatic than she had presumed. It did not mean congenial society, because she could not afford to join the clubs where congenial society might be supposed to exist. It did not mean concerts, or picture-galleries, or less physical discomfort, or a breath of sea air when she was sick for it; it did not mean a single amelioration of her life's asperities, because Press notices were not to be tendered in lieu of cash. Even those who lauded her fiction remained strangers to her. Only for a few weeks after each book was issued, she read, in her boarding-house attic, that she was a "distinguished novelist," and then she was again ignored.
And meanwhile her youth was fading, and her eyes were dimming, and she looked in the glass and mourned. In the emptiness of her "distinction" she longed for laughter and a home. Desperate at last, she did join a club of professional women; but nominal as the fees were, considering the splendour of the place, it was an annual effort for her to pay the subscription. And she did not go there often enough to make any intimate friends, because she was generally too tired.
And every year she grew more tired still.
When she had been growing tired for sixteen years she was in a dreary lodging, in a dingy street, toiling at a novel, between the fashion articles by which she earned her daily bread. Mr. Humphreys, in easy circumstances by this time, was in London too, though when memories awoke in her she pictured him in Manitoba. He was indulging in a trip, and had been in England three weeks. One afternoon, in the hall of the new and expensive hotel, he picked up a book and came upon her name among the publisher's advertisements. It was an advertisement of one of her shattered hopes, but Mr. Humphreys didn't know that—he merely saw her referred to as a "distinguished novelist." She was, at the moment, trudging from a modiste's to a milliner's, to gather something to say in her inevitable article. It was raining, and she had a headache, and she would have to hammer out a sprightly column about Paris models before she could lie down. His holiday was proving rather dull, and he wondered idly whether it would be a foolish impulse to recall himself to such a prominent woman.
His formal note, re-directed by the publisher's clerk, and re-directed again, reached her some days later. "If you have not quite forgotten our old friendship, I should be glad of an opportunity to call and congratulate you on your triumphs." She read that line many times. Her face was white, and her eyes were wide. She looked again at the name of the expensive hotel, and stared at the sordid parlour in which she sat—the pitiable parlour with its atrocious oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases, from the tea-grocer's, on the dirty mantelpiece. He would be "glad to congratulate her"!
She remembered the unaffected cheeriness of the previous congratulations, the letter that had shown her his love was dead. She had fancied that nothing could hurt more deeply than that letter, but she had been wrong—to expose her mistake to him would be bitterer still. The humiliation of it, the punishment! All the arrogance of her rejection, all the boasts of her girlhood thronged back upon her tauntingly. God! if she could have seen ahead—if only she could have her life again.
She debated her reply. To say that she was leaving town would sound ungracious. The alternative was to receive him at the club. Almost for the first time she was devoutly thankful to be a member—the club would spare her the ignominy of revealing her parlour; the stationery would avert the need for betraying her address.
On the imposing stationery she wrote that she would be "pleased to see him here on either Wednesday or Thursday next." Her clothes, she supposed, wouldn't give her away, as he was a man.
Was he married? There was no hint of a wife in his letter. How much changed would she find him? Would the change in herself shock him greatly? There were women as old as she who were still spoken of as "young," but their lives had run on smoother lines than hers—and when he saw her last she had been twenty-two and sanguine. It seemed to her that he would meet a stranger. She trembled in the club on Wednesday afternoon, and began to hope that his choice would fall on "Thursday."
She was told that he had come. She rose with an effort. A big man, with greying hair, approached her uncertainly. She smiled with stiff lips. "Mr. Humphreys," she faltered. And a voice that she didn't remember, a new deep voice that wasn't like Jack's at all, was saying, "Why, Miss Barton! This is very kind of you."
"How d'ye do? So glad to see you again," she murmured. "Let—let us go and sit down." Her heart was thumping, and she felt a little deaf.
"So—er Well, how does London look to you after such a long time? Are you home for good?"
"No, about a couple of months. My home is on the other side now. Well, this is a real pleasure! I never expected—I was rather nervous about writing, but——"
"It would have been too bad if you hadn't," she said.
"Well, I thought I'd take my chance. Er—yes, London looks rather different. I managed to get lost in it the other day; I had to find a taxi to take me back. No taxis when I was here before!"
"You take tea?"
The alcove was very comfortable, and the long room was exquisite in all its tones. The beauty of the carpet, she felt, more than repaid her for that annual effort. And how deferential was the service!
"A fine place," said Mr. Humphreys admiringly.
"Yes, it's rather decent," she drawled; "they do one very well here. A club is one of the necessaries of life."
"I suppose so." He was remembering the way her tea had been served in the boarding-house. "Wealth buys more in the old country than over there—you get more for your money than I do."
"Do you have to rough it very badly?" Her tone was gentler. "Are you still in the same place?"
"Well, I haven't known I was roughing it of recent years, but I don't see luxury like this in Manitoba. Not bad. And I've got a gramophone. Pretty rotten records, I'm afraid. Verdi is about the most classical of them."
"Isn't it lovely, how Verdi reminds one?" she said. "If I hear Verdi, I'm about ten years old again, and—it's funny—I'm always in the same bow window, and it's always a summer's afternoon, though I suppose the organs used to come in the winter, too. Just as, if I hear that hymn with 'pilgrims of the night' in it, it's always the nursery, and the gas over the mantelpiece is lighted. Verdi gives me my childhood back. I hope to hear Verdi in heaven. You've nothing very dreadful to complain of, then? You aren't sorry you went?"
"Well, no—I'm glad I went. It has panned out all right. It has been a funny thing to walk down the Strand again and remember that the last time I was in it I was short of sixpences. The other day I looked in at the office where I used to clerk. Two of the boys I had known were there still—grown round-shouldered and pigeon-chested. I suppose they've had a rise of about fifty pounds a year in the meantime. They came round to dinner at the hotel last night, and it made me melancholy to hear them talk. I used to want them to chuck the office and go out to Canada with me—they'd got the stamina once—but they hadn't got the grit. Now it's too late.... You know, it's capital to see you flourishing like this! You're about the only survivor of the old days that it hasn't given me the hump to meet. You always were sure you'd get on, weren't you?"
"I was," she said. "Yes, I used to say so."
"Do you remember the people in that house? And how we used to groan about the extras in the bills?"
"It was a bad time for us both," she stammered.
"But it's good to look back on now it's over. Helps one to appreciate. When you're feeling dull now, you can drive round here and have a chat with a friend, and say, 'Well, it used to be much worse—I used to be poor.' Isn't that so?"
She nodded helplessly. Her mind was strained to find another subject.
"I wish you'd come round to dinner with me one evening, if you've nothing better to do?"
"I'm not going out very much just now," she demurred. "I—-"
"It'd be a charity, I'm all alone, and—by the way, I don't know if 'Miss Barton' is just your literary name now? If there is a lucky man, I hope he will give me the pleasure, too?"
"No, I'm not married," she said.
"Like me, you've been too busy. You know, I really think our victories should be fÊted. It'd be friendly of you to come. You can find one evening free before I go back?"
"I suppose," she said, trying to laugh, "I'm not so full of engagements that I can't do that!"
And, though neither of them had foreseen the invitation, she was pledged to dine with him. Heavily she reflected that, when the dinner finished, she would be obliged to ask him to send for a taxi and that it would probably cost her a half-crown.
She went by train. That her solitary evening gown was wrong, having been bought three years since, did not worry her, though as "Lady Veronica," in her The Autocrat at the Toilet-Table column, she wrote of things being "hopelessly last season's" when their vogue had been declining for a week; but she was embarrassed by her lack of evening shoes. At the table she bore herself bravely, supported by the knowledge that the epoch of her sleeves was unsuspected by him, but when she rose she found it difficult to conceal her feet.
Yet, if it had not been that the shame of failure poisoned each mouthful that she took, the evening would have had its fascination. When she led him to speak of his early blunders on the homestead, while he told her how he had shrunk dismayed from the first bleak sight of that patch of prairie, she forgot she was pretending, and forgot to feel abased. In moments she even forgot to feel old. The story of his struggles bore her back. As she heard these things, the greying man became to her again the boy that had loved her—and as the woman leant listening, the man caught glimpses of the girl that she had been.
His trip was proving queerly unlike his forecast of it on the farm. When he packed his bags he had had no idea of seeing her, but he had looked for emotions that he hadn't obtained. The strangeness of sauntering on the London pavements as a prosperous man had been less exhilarating than his anticipation of it. To drive to a fashionable tailor's and order clothes had failed to induce a burst of high spirits, though on the way he had laudably reminded himself that once it would have been the day of his life. He was, in fact, feeling solitary, and to loll in stalls at the theatres, instead of being jammed in the pit, would have seemed livelier to him if he had had a companion. In the circumstances, it was not astonishing that he proposed to take Irene Barton to the theatre a night or two later—and as he insisted a good deal, she compromised with a matinÉe.
Somehow or other he was having tea with her, at the club again, the day afterwards. And on the day after that, there was something else.
They had always found much to say to each other in the old days—they found much to say now, when the constraint wore off. The man told himself that he felt a calm friendship for the woman whom he had once wanted for his wife. And the woman told herself that, since he would soon be gone, she'd snatch happy hours with the man she loved while he was here. Her philosophy had changed since she expounded it in the garden of the square.
And then—the claims of The Autocrat at the Toilet-Table had compelled her to break an appointment—it manifested itself to Mr. Humphreys that his feelings were not so calm as he had thought. Irritable in the hotel hall, he perceived that this "friendship" threatened his holiday with a disastrous end. He wanted no second experience of fevering in Canada for a face in England. Grimly he decided that the acquaintance must be dropped. If it came to that, why remain in England any longer? It was time for him to go.
On the morrow, in another charming corner of the familiar club, he told her his intention, and she tried to disguise how much it startled her. When she had "hoped that he hadn't received bad news" and he had said briefly that he hadn't, there was a pause. In his endeavour to be casual he had been curt, and both were conscious of it. He wondered if he had hurt her. Perhaps he should have offered an excuse for his sudden leave-taking? He began to invent one—and she politely dismissed it. He was certain now that he had hurt her. After all, why not be candid?
He leant forward, and spoke in a lowered tone:
"Do you know why I'm going? I'm going because, if I stopped, I should make a fool of myself again."
The cup in her hand jerked. She felt suffocating, voiceless. Not a word came from her.
"I'm remembering that discretion is the better part of valour, Miss Barton."
"How do you mean?" she faltered.
"I'm running away in time. You see, I—I made a mistake: I reckoned you wouldn't be dangerous to me any more, and I was wrong.... So you won't think me ungrateful for going, will you? You've given me some very happy hours; I don't want you to think I didn't appreciate them. But I appreciate, too, the fact that you're a successful woman and that I've even less to hope for now than I had before. I went through hell about you once, dear—I couldn't stick it twice."
Her hand was passed across her eyes, and she trailed it on her skirt.
"Are you running away from—from my success? If I cared for you, do you think my success would matter?"
"Do you care for me?" His voice shook, like hers. He hated the chattering groups about them, as he bent conventionally over the tea-table. "Do you mean you could give your position up to be my wife?"
She rose. Her lips twitched before her answer came. It came in a whisper:
"You've never seen my rooms. Will you drive me there?"
And on the way she was very quiet.
The taxi stopped. In a dingy street she took a latchkey from her pocket, and opened a door, from which a milk-can hung. Perplexed, he followed. She led him to a parlour—a pitiable parlour, with atrocious oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases on a dirty mantelpiece.
"This," she said dryly, "is where I live. You see the celebrity at home."
He tried to take her to him, and she drew swiftly back.
"I have failed," she cried; "no one has read my books; I'm as poor as when you knew me first. I've spent years in holes like this! I've shammed to you because I was ashamed. My talk of people I know, of places I go to has been lies—I know no one, I go nowhere. I refused to marry you, when I was a girl, because I didn't think it good enough for me; before you stoop to ask me again, go away and think whether it's good enough for you. I've lost my hopes, my youth, my looks—you'd be giving me everything, and I should bring you nothing in return!"
His arms were quick now, and they held her fast.
"Nothing?" he demanded. His eyes challenged her. "Nothing, Irene?"
"Oh, my dearest," she wept, smiling, "if my love's enough——?"
When he had made his choice of a career, when in spite of remonstrances he had become an actor, his father had felt disgraced. His father was the hatter in the rue de la Paroisse. The shop was not prosperous—in Ville-Nogent people made their hats last a long while—but it was at least a shop, and the old man wished his son to be respectable. This, you see, was France. The little French hatter had not heard that, across the Channel, the scions of noble houses turned actors, and he would not have believed it if he had been told.
Once, the son of a little French tradesman humiliated his father by going on the stage and became the admiration of the world; but this tradesman's son did not distinguish himself like that. Indeed, he did not distinguish himself at all. Many years later the hatter patted the artist's hand, and said feebly: "After I am gone, take a hat, my poor Olivier. Heaven knows thou needest one!" A hat, and his blessing were well-nigh all he had to give by this time.
In his youthful dreams—day-dreams behind the counter—Olivier Picq had seen himself a leading man in Paris, making impassioned love in the limelight to famous actresses. His engagements had proved so different from his dreams that not once had he attained to the hero's part, even in the least significant of provincial holes. No manager could be induced to regard him as a hero. By slow degrees he had ceased to expect it. By still slower degrees he ceased to expect even parts of prominence. He was the fatuous valet, who came on, with the laughing chambermaid, to explain what the characters that mattered had been doing between the acts; he was the gaby that made inane remarks, in order that the low comedian might reply with something funny; he was the moody defaulter that committed suicide early in the piece—and he changed his wig (alas! not his voice) to become the uninteresting figure that broke the tragic tidings to the widow.
"Ah," says the reader, "he wasn't clever. That's why he didn't get on."
Well, it is not pretended that Picq had genius; for such parts as fell to him he had not even marked ability. But the truth is, that in the rÔle of romantic hero, which he had not had a chance to play, he would have been good. The laughing chambermaid used to say he would have been splendid. Often they grieved over the bad luck that had attended him, as they reviewed the years of struggle, hand in hand. He had married the chambermaid.
"Oh, I can guess the end of this story already!" says the reader. "He became a leading man in Paris, after all."
So he did, madam. But not quite so felicitously as you may think. Picq, dizzied by the sudden transformation, was promoted to be the hero—a gallant, dashing boy—in a revival on a Paris stage, one winter when he was subject to lumbago, and fifty-eight years old. You see, most of the actors of military age that still lived were either in the line or the hospitals, while many of the popular actresses were nursing. A manager who had the temerity to cast a play now was in no position to be fastidious, and playgoers were indulgent. They accepted the elderly man as the gallant boy. He was applauded. And while he declaimed bombast across the footlights—those turgid love appeals to which he had aspired, behind the counter, forty years ago—it was with a heart torn with anxiety for his own boy, who was in the trenches.
When Jean had slept as a baby, the utility actor and the chambermaid had sat by the cradle and talked in low tones of the fine things he was to do when he grew up. Not on the stage—both had outlived its glamour; he was to be an advocate. "It is so refined, dearest," said the chambermaid. "And there is money in it, my love," agreed the father. And for half a lifetime unflinchingly they had scraped and hoarded, to realise that ambition for him. Their salaries were not vast, and there were numerous vacations in which there was no salary at all; often the sum that they had garnered during one tour would melt before the next; but every hundred francs that they could stick to looked a milestone on the journey. Only one annual extravagance did they allow themselves. On Jean's birthday it was Picq's custom to take home a bottle of cheap champagne. The dinner might be meagre, the vacation might be long, but on Jean's birthday they must be joyous. And in a shabby lodging-house bedroom—a parlour was beyond the means of poor players who pinched to make their son an advocate—the pair would festively clink glasses to his future.
"We have not been unhappy together all these years, Nanette, my little wife, though you did throw yourself away in marrying me, hein?" Picq would say tenderly, embracing her. And Nanette, who still looked almost as young sometimes as she had looked at the wedding breakfast—at any rate, Picq thought so—would answer, with a catch in her voice: "Sweetheart, I have thanked the good God on my knees every night for that 'throwing myself away.'"
"All the same, it is possible that, without me, you would have got on far better—even have made a name."
"Silly! It is more likely I who have held you back; perhaps alone you would have gone to the top. Ah, no, I cannot bear to think it; I cannot bear to think I have been a hindrance to you!"
Then Picq, denying it vigorously, would cry: "But a fig for the stage! Ma foi, have we not each other, and our Jean? It is wealth enough. I tell you he is going to be a famous man one day, our Jean—he has the brow."
By rare good fortune, when he was old enough to have ideas of his own on the subject of a career, Jean had not opposed their plan; he did not, as night easily have been the case, inherit a craving to be the hero. He had long been a student in Paris, and they were playing in a rural district remote from him on the day of the mobilisation. Never while life lasted would they forget that day—that beating on a tocsin, and the glare of a blue sky that turned suddenly black to them; the deathly silence that spread; and then the shrill voice of a child, the first to speak—"C'est la guerre!" The shaking of their limbs held the father and mother apart; only their gaze rushed to each other. "Jean!" she had moaned.
And Jean fought for France still, and already it seemed to them that the war was eternal. Twice—on two anniversaries since that terrible Saturday—they had raised trembling glasses to a photograph on the wall and pretended to be gay, and a third anniversary was approaching. "Be confident, be brave," he wrote to them; "we are going to win." But the thoughts that crowded on his little mother, in the dark, after she went to bed kept her awake for hours; and marking the change that the war had wrought in her, Picq's misgivings for his wife were sometimes hardly less acute than his anxieties for his boy. The laughing chambermaid, who had retained girlishness of disposition for two decades after girlhood was past, seemed to him all at once middle-aged. Ever the first formerly to propose trudging a long distance to save a tram fare, she was now fatigued after an hour's stroll. By the time they came to Paris, too, she was subject to spells of some internal trouble, which the doctor had failed to banish permanently. There could be no question of her seeking an engagement.
"It is a shame, when the double salary would have been so nice," she repined, one evening. The trouble had recurred, and a new doctor had been no more definite than his predecessor. "We might have lived on my money, and put the whole of yours aside every week. It is a shame that you should have an invalid for a wife."
"An invalid!" laughed Picq, affecting great amusement. "Now, is not that absurd? To hear you talk, one would imagine it was some terrible malady, instead of a little derangement of the system that will pass and be forgotten. Very likely you will be in a show again before Jean's birthday. And it shall be a good part, also, parbleu! There are not so many stars available to-day that they can afford to put on an artist like you to flick the furniture with a feather-brush. Listen, Nanette, my best beloved, if it were anything serious that you had the matter with you, it would not right itself as it does from time to time—it would be always the same. The fact that you are sometimes as well as ever shows that it is nothing organic. Have not both doctors said so? Did not the other man tell us so again and again?"
She nodded, forcing a smile. Her smile was girlish still, and somehow it looked to him strangely poignant on her altered face. His gaze was blurred, as he muffled himself in his shabby cloak, and set forth through the sleet, to be the dashing hero. A child came towards him, calling papers, and he thought, "If only the news were that Germany sued for peace! That would be the best medicine for her."
And on the morning before the birthday she was not "in a show again;" she was feeling so much worse that she clung to Picq, alarmed. Picq was alarmed, too, though he tried to hide it.
"Look here, I tell you what!" he exclaimed, in the most confident tone that he could summon. "We are going to call in a big man and get you cured without any more delay! That's what we're going to do. This chap is too slow for me. I dare say his medicines might do the trick eventually, but it does not suit me to wait so long. No, it does not suit me. I am not going to see you worried like this while he potters about as if time were no object. We shall call in a big man and put an end to the nuisance at once. I wish to heaven I had done it before. I am going now. I am going to the chap's house to tell him plainly I am not content."
"Mais non, mais non!" demurred Nanette piteously. "It would cost such a lot, chÉri—what are you thinking about? I shall get all right without that. You mustn't take any notice of me; I am a coward—I have never been used to feeling ill, you see—but I shall get all right without that."
"I care nothing what it costs. That is my intention," declared Picq. "And it will not cost such a great sum either. Anyhow, whether it is forty francs or five hundred, my mind is made up. I am going to him this moment to tell him I want the highest authority in Paris. Now, be tranquil, mignonne. Try to sleep. We have chosen the shortest course at last—we were bien bÊtes not to take it at the start—and in a week at the outside you will be yourself again."
Never in her life had Nanette contemplated spending forty francs all at once on a physician. She knew she would be unable to sleep for the awfulness of such expense. But, if his prescription cured her promptly and she could earn a salary again soon——
"What a weight I have become to thee, my little husband!" she faltered, stroking his hand.
"Hush! Thou wilt sleep while I am away, pauvrette?" asked Picq tenderly.
She closed her eyes, smiling—to lie and grieve over the "weight she had become to him" when he had gone; and Picq went apace to the doctor's.
When the motive for the inopportune call was explained, the doctor evidently resented the suggestion that his own treatment of the patient could be bettered.
"Another opinion, monsieur? Parfaitement—if you desire it." His shrug was eloquent. "But your wife has only to continue with the medicine I have prescribed——"
"She has continued," stammered Picq; "she has continued. There it is—she has continued for a long time. I grow anxious. No doubt it is unreasonable of me, but——" Truth to tell, the veteran of the boards, who faced a crowded auditorium without a tremor, found himself nervous in the room of the dignified practitioner.
"One must not expect miracles. I am not a magician. In such cases——"
"Mais enfin, another opinion would ease my mind. If you would do me the great kindness to indicate a specialist, monsieur—the best? Such a one as you would recommend if it were—I do not know what it could be, I; but such a one as you would recommend if you feared something grave? I should be thankful. I know nothing of these things. If you would be so very kind as to communicate with someone for me——" He with-drew, after five minutes, clumsily, relieved to be able to tell Nanette that, with luck, they might receive a visit from a specialist on the morrow.
"And his charge—how much?" panted Nanette, who feared that such celerity might cost more still.
When the specialist had been, on the morrow—when Picq had closed the street door after him, and stumbled up the stairs, in his hurry to rejoin Nanette, and sat down on the bed, with his cheek resting against hers—they did not speak for some seconds.
"Well, well," he brought forth at last, "after all, it is not so bad, what? It is a shock, of course—I own it is a shock; but really, when one comes to think it over——"
She moaned—a child afraid.
"Don't—don't! An operation!"
"Yes, yes, it is a shock; we were hoping for an easy cure. But when all is said, we have learnt there is a cure. If he had told us there was nothing to be done? There is a cure! And you will feel nothing, mignonne—you will feel no pain at all. And afterwards, when you lie there at peace—so comfortable in the knowledge that all the misery is over—I shall come every day and bring you flowers. And every day I shall find you brighter and stronger. Upon my word, I would not mind making a bet that, in looking back at it, you remember it as a happy time."
Big tears were on her frightened face.
"And it is Jean's birthday," she wailed.
"Yes, it is unfortunate. It cannot be helped. Well, we shall have our fÊte when you come home instead, and—listen, listen! We will drink his health at a restaurant—we will make up for the delay. To the devil with the cost! When you come home cured, we will have a swagger supper out, to celebrate the double event. Nanette—it is useless to expostulate—I register a vow that this time we will squander a couple of louis on a supper on the Boulevard. And you shall put on your pink silk dress!"
"Petit bonhomme, wilt thou do me a favour?" she whimpered.
"Now thou art going to say something foolish."
"No; we will have that supper on the Boulevard. After the awful expense I shall have been, two louis more or less——But let us fÊte Jean the same as usual to-night. We must. We've never missed doing it once since he was a baby; I couldn't bear to let the day go by without our doing that. Think of the danger he is in. Get champagne as you always do. If it would be bad for me, I won't take any; but get it! My illness mustn't spoil the birthday altogether. Get it, and we'll forget about me for an hour. ChÉri, I shall go into the hospital braver in the morning for having had our fÊte."
"Agreed, agreed," said Picq chokingly. "But it will be a poor treat to me, if I am to drink it alone. I shall ask if you may take a sip."
He rang up the specialist, to inquire, on the way to the theatre in the evening. "It is our boy's birthday, monsieur," he pleaded—"our boy who is in the war. You see, it is his birthday!"
"One glass of champagne? Yes. It will do no harm," said the authoritative voice. "But no excitement, you understand. And no solid food. To-morrow and the next day they will see to her diet—and the day after that, we shall operate."
That word "operate," booming from the receiver, struck horror to Picq afresh. He marvelled that anyone could be capable of uttering it so cheerfully, as he went out into the streets again. A child came towards him, calling papers, and he sighed, "If they but announced that Germany sued for peace! She would not be thinking so much about the operation then."
During the performance, the bottle of paltry wine stood among the articles of make-up on the table of his dressing-room; and in his wait in the last act, he sat staring at it, and thinking of the days when his boy in the 120iÈme RÉgiment Territorial had been a tiny child, and the wife who was so ill had been all sunshine and laughter. It had not been withheld from him, on the doorstep, in the morning, that the operation would be a serious one, and he felt sick in contemplating the next three days' suspense. How would Nanette contrive to bear it, he wondered, away from him, among strangers in a hospital? When the fearful moment came for her to be carried from the ward to the operating table! Cold sweat burst out on him. As he sat huddled there, in the garish dressing-room, Picq prayed to Heaven to give her courage. His chin was sunk on his chest; he rocked to and fro.
There was a sudden rap at the door.
"Entrez!" said Picq, and somebody brought him a telegram.
He read: "I have the pain of informing you of the death on the field of honour of your son Jean Picq." It was from the War Office.
"Better hurry up, Picq—you haven't too long!" called a colleague, carelessly, looking in. "Good God!" And he sprang towards him.
Picq staggered, from his colleague's arms, up the crazy staircase to the wings—and straightened his back to be dashing. He entered upon the scene in time. And he delivered his lines, and struck his attitudes, and paused, by force of habit, when a round of applause was due. At the climax of a tirade, when he took a step back and mechanically raised his gaze to the first circle, nobody would have supposed that, with his mind's eye he looked, through the tier of faces, on the mangled body of his son.
The curtain fell again. The play was over, and he tottered back to the room. The bottle of champagne on the dressing-table, among the litter of make-up, was the first thing he noticed. "My wife!" gasped Picq, and broke down. He was shaken by sobs.
Some of the players had followed. Sympathy surrounded him.
"I see her face when I tell her—I see her face! How to keep it from her? To-night she mustn't know—it would kill her; but to keep it from her for weeks till she has recovered—is it possible?"
"Poor chap! Be brave. Time——" They mumbled useless words.
"To have to pretend to her every time I go, for weeks, perhaps months! And then, when she is so happy at being well again, to have to strike her down with the blow! Ah, I know I am not the only father to lose his son—she is not the only mother, but——"
"You don't think it might be best to break it to her now?" someone suggested.
He shook his head impatiently, the throbbing head from which the jeune premier's curls were not removed yet.
"It would be murder. I am warned she is to avoid excitement. And this evening, when she tries to be bright, to go in and say, 'He is killed'! I mustn't tell her till she is well—quite, quite well. I must keep her cheerful; I must be in good spirits, but—I haven't the courage to go home."
It was the truth: he had not the courage to go home.
"She is waiting for me—I must make haste to change," he faltered more than once; but even when he had "changed" at last, his soul cowered before the thought of the ordeal, and he lingered nerveless in the chair.
"She is waiting for me—I must go," he kept repeating while the lights in the theatre went out. "I must go," he said again, and rose. They had called a cab for him, and his legs felt so unreliable that he offered no protest, though a cab seemed a terrible extravagance. Yes, he would take one; it was certain he could not walk fast enough to make up for the delay, and Nanette mustn't be allowed to grow anxious. He lay back in the cab dizzily, a hand round the neck of the bottle on his knees. "In good spirits—in good spirits!" he cautioned himself. "But her instinct is so strong. If she suspects?" On the rattling course, imagination wrung him with the moment of her suspicion—the horror in her dilating eyes, the impuissance of his agony.... "Dead!" He perceived with a shock that he had not understood that Jean was dead—that he still did not understand. "Dead." Jean, who seemed so vividly alive, was only a memory. His eagerness, his laughter, his allusions, all the intimate realities that represented Jean had been blown out. It was inconceivable; his mind would not grasp it. Where, then, did comprehension he, that he was stricken?... The cab startled him by stopping.
As he had said, she was trying to be bright. She had not cast her fears aside, but she meant to hide them. She welcomed him with a smile. "Champagne and a cab? What next?"
"Yes, what do you think of it? I was in a hurry to get back. How has it been with you, chÉrie—has the evening seemed very long? Well, there is good news—you may have a glass."
"He was sure?"
"He said 'Yes' at once. Oh, I wouldn't have tried to persuade him—that would have been folly. I told him the reason, but I did not try to persuade him."
"How tired you look! How did it go?"
"It was a good audience—what there was of it. Three calls after the third act. What an appetite I've got—and what a thirst! I can't wait to take my boots off. The spread attracts me. What? I declare I see my favourite sausage!"
"I couldn't go out for any flowers this year, and I forgot to remind you," she said. "But you'll find enough to eat."
"And you—what is there for you? Let me put the pillow behind you, mignonne. And now to open the bottle! I am not an expert at the game, but—ah! it is coming. Prepare yourself for the bang.... Tiens, it is of a gentle disposition. But no doubt it will taste just as good. Sapristi, how it sparkles!"
He bore a glassful to her side, and their gaze turned together to the likeness on the wall.
"Well, little wife, the usual toast. To our boy, our darling Jean! May God bless him."
"May God bless him," breathed the mother. They looked at the photograph silently for a moment. "I wonder if he is thinking of us?" she murmured. "Perhaps he is fancying us like this?"
"I venture to say so," replied Picq. "He knows we should never forget his birthday; he knows that."
"If—he is alive," she said in a whisper.
"Ah, why should we doubt it?" His arm encouraged her. "How often we have alarmed ourselves! And always he was alive. Take another sip, mignonne. It is a sound wine, hein? I should not be surprised if on the Boulevard they charge fifteen francs for such a wine."
"You must go and sit down now and have your supper."
"Not for a minute or two. The bouquet is so excellent I can't take my nose out of the glass. And I think I am more thirsty than hungry, after all."
"Petit bonhomme, petit bonhomme," she faltered pitifully.
"And why 'petit bonhomme' like that—what are you making so much of me about?"
"Do you think I am blind? Do you suppose you can hide it from me? Your hands tremble and your eyes are red. As soon as you came in I saw. You have been tormenting yourself about the operation all the evening."
"Mais non, mais non! If I worry, it is not about the operation, because it is a simple thing, though it sounds so big to us. They tell me it is an everyday affair, like having out a tooth; that was his very expression: 'Monsieur, it is no more dangerous than having out a tooth.' I worry, if I worry at all, in thinking that you are frightened. If I could only make you believe that there is nothing to be frightened of!"
"I know I am a coward. I told you so. It is from you that he gets his courage."
"What an illusion! A fine fire-eater I am! Old stick-in-the-mud!"
"Ah, yes. I'm ashamed. When I think of what he is going through—how splendidly he bears it! And here am I, afraid of everything. He has no heroine for a mother."
"I forbid thee to say it. He knows it is not true."
"He loves me just the same. Don't you, Jean—you don't love your little mother any less?" The photograph hung too high for her. "Take it down," she pleaded. "If I could change places with thee, my son! I would find the courage for that, though I died of terror in the first hour. Ah, my little baby, my little baby! And I was so glad he was a boy!"
"You are not to upset yourself," quavered Picq. "I cannot stand it. Will you be sorry he was a boy when he gets the Croix de Guerre? I make you a bet they give him that at the very least. I see you polishing it all day. Pick up your glass. To tell the truth, I have a strong presentiment, and I am not given to foolish fancies, that he comes home 'Captain.' What triumph for us—hale and hearty and a captain. Imagine it. At his age! Nanette, pick up your glass. We will paint the town red that night, and you will say you were 'always sure of it.' When I chaff you about your tremors you will declare you never had any. Mind you, I am putting it down very low; it is quite on the cards that he becomes 'Colonel.' Nanette, I entreat thee, pick up thy glass! Again a toast. Good luck, my son! We drink to your future. A bumper to our next merry meeting!"
That toast reverberated to Picq when she lay sleeping and Picq was sleepless. But, at any rate, she had no suspicion so far.
She remained without suspicion when he visited her at the hospital, during the following week, but always she remained a prey to fear. Not for herself now—they said the operation had been successful; it was the thought of Jean's peril that haunted her. As she was wakened in the early morning, the burden of dread rolled upon her. Through the long monotonous day her mind was in the blood-soaked line more often than in the ward. They hinted to Picq that her anxiety was detrimental, and he tried to reason with her once; but it seemed to do more harm than good, for she burst out, "If he should be killed!" and wrung her hands on the quilt. "He has everything before him, he's so fond of life. If he should be killed!"
"He will not be killed. Is not my love for him as great as yours? And you see I am confident. I swear to you I am confident! I implore you, don't dwell on these thoughts. Make haste and get well." And again he asked himself, "How am I to break it to her when she is well?"
Then there was a morning when they sent him away for a while, stupefied by the announcement that never would she be well. "The conditions had changed;" he must be "prepared for the worst." She, too, had been prepared, before he was admitted. He had foreseen her speechless with fright; but, strange to say, the "coward" who had been so timorous of an operation, had spoken of her approaching death quite calmly. Her terror for Jean it was, increasingly her terror for Jean, that tortured her last hours. "Petit bonhomme, it is like being on the rack," she had gasped. "If only I were sure he would be spared!"
"God of heaven, it is 'like being on the rack' for her," shuddered Picq, sobbing in the street; "it is for her 'like being on the rack'! And there is nothing I can do."
And a child came towards him, calling papers.
It was with the connivance of the nurses that he brought joy and thanksgiving to her heart during the hours that remained to her. He pretended to her that Germany sued for peace. If he was condemned to affect the tones of hysterical rejoicing, he had no need to counterfeit the tears. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, as he feigned to fight for mastery of a whirlwind of exultance, and panted to her that the war was won.
"I return with good news—the greatest; but I implore thee, keep still—they forbid thee to sit up. Nanette, my loved one, our boy is safe. The danger is all over—he will soon be home. The Boches are beaten. I rush back to tell thee. They cave in. Paris has gone mad. The boulevards are impassable for crowds. I am deaf with the cheers. They cave in! They have been on the verge of it for months. Bluff, it has all been bluff for a long time, and now America has called their hand. They collapse, the Boches. An armistice is arranged. It is certain they restore Alsace-Lorraine. I have cried like a child. Glory to God. France has conquered. Vive la France!"
"Jean safe!" she breathed, smiling.
She seemed to grow younger during the afternoon, before she died.
"And though she knows now it was a he," said Picq, when they had crossed her hands on her breast, "it is no disappointment to her, since she has him with her now."
VII
A FLAT TO SPARE
At the corner of the rue Baba stands the Maison SÉverin, with its board announcing furnished flats to let. One December evening a journalist went to call upon a colleague there. As he climbed the last flight of stairs, a door was opened violently and a gesticulating female appeared. She shrieked defiance over her shoulder, pulled down her sleeves, and descended with such precipitance that she nearly butted Jobic over the banisters.
Dodging her by a miracle, Jobic entered unannounced.
"Your domestic seems to be perturbed, my dear Pariset," he remarked.
"Tiens, you?" said the young widower, panting. "Yes, she has 'returned her apron,' she has resigned the situation, that devil—a situation that offered unsurpassed opportunities for pillage. I am left with the dinner unprepared, and the twins to put to bed—and I ought to be at Batignolles by eight o'clock!"
"You should marry again," said Jobic.
"I cannot do it in the time. Mon Dieu, just because I mentioned that it was unintelligent of her always to keep the empty wine bottles among the full ones! It took me a quarter of an hour to get hold of anything to drink. You may tell a bonne that she is an inveterate liar without disturbing her in the least; you may say that she is an habitual thief, and she will accept the truism placidly; but insinuate that she is a fool, and her vanity is in arms at once! What has brought you here?"
"I come to borrow a louis."
"Visionary!"
"Spendthrift! What do you do with your salary, then? The fact is, your rent is an extravagance, and you spend far too much in dressing up your babies; for some time I have had the intention of remonstrating with you on the subject. If you exercised reasonable economy you would be in a position to lend me a louis on your head."
"I am. But the monotonous fatigues me. To attain the charm of variety I propose to lend you nothing at all. I tell you what, however—I can provide you with a job."
"For putting twins to bed my lowest figure is five francs. I will cook the dinner for forty sous, and an invitation to share it."
"The tenders are declined. Listen; you may go to Batignolles and write a column around a communist meeting for me. The kiddies are too young for me to leave them by themselves, and I have been counting on this affair to supply material for my causerie in to-morrow's Echo."
"Communist meeting?" exclaimed Jobic, with distaste; "I do not believe I could borrow any more money under communism than I can now."
"Are we discussing your beliefs? Has your welfare the remotest interest for me? All I ask of you is to fill a column. Bring the stuff for me to sign before you sleep, and I will pay you your own price for it."
"Cash?"
"Cash."
"It's a deal," said Jobic. "Some sprightly copy is as good as on your desk. Your editor will not fail to note a vast improvement in your literary style."
It was in these circumstances that L'Echo du Quartier contained a column, over Pariset's pen name of "Valentin Vance," that drove the prettiest communist in Paris to tears of fury. For not only did the writer burlesque her impassioned speech, not only did he poke fun at her theories, and deride her elocution—he actually made unflattering comments upon her personal appearance.
Not since she embraced the Cause six months ago had Suzanne Duvivier read anything to compare with it.
"If I were a married woman," she raged, "my husband should call the monster out for such insults!" And then, since she was an accomplished pupil at one of the best-known salles for instructing the fair Parisienne to fence, it occurred to her that the lack of a husband was no drawback.
Though there were pressing domestic matters to claim her this morning, she betook herself to kindred spirits, and burst in upon them to demand their services.
"Mais, ma chÈre," gasped mademoiselle Tisserand and mademoiselle Lagarde, "we have never acted as seconds in a duel, never! We implore you to dismiss the notion; we counsel you to treat the abuse with the silent scorn that it deserves. The man might run you through your valiant heart."
"Do we shirk danger, we communists?" cried Suzanne.
"Dear comrade, the Cause cannot spare you. Moreover, every novel with a duel in it that we have ever read makes it clear that it is the privilege of the party challenged to choose the weapons. This monsieur Vance might choose pistols. The novels, again, indicate that it devolves upon the seconds to load the pistols, and we have never done such a thing in our lives. It may also be that you have never handled one yourself?"
For a moment Suzanne Duvivier quailed—she was only twenty-five, and normally no swash-buckler. If monsieur Vance did choose pistols, she knew very well she would have to shut her eyes as she fired. Then the obloquy of the column overwhelmed her anew, and she flung timidity to the winds.
"We must hope for the best, girls," she said, resolutely. "If you are my pals you will not desert me in this hour. I fight for the Cause far more than for myself. I do not know precisely what phrases you should employ—consult the novels!—but the first thing to be done is for you to present yourselves to the man and desire him to name the day. You had better not say 'name the day,' because that has another association, but he must fix the date. If you can contrive to suggest that I hanker after pistols, perhaps he will say 'swords.' Au revoir, my friends. Bear yourselves firmly—look as if you were used to it. Wear serious hats."
She departed to put in half an hour's practice at the fencing school, and mademoiselle Lagarde moaned to mademoiselle Tisserand, "It is terrible, is it not? However, we need not make frumps of ourselves, I suppose. I wonder if my toque would be inappropriate?"
"Not the least in the world," said mademoiselle Tisserand. "What do you think of my hat with the bird of paradise? She is right as regards our demeanour, though—we must be deadly calm. Let us remember that the dignity of communism is at stake. The brute must not be allowed to guess that we are afraid."
A couple of hours later, Pariset, after struggling with a fire that refused to be lit, and breakfasting without any coffee, and dressing his twins with some of their underlinen back in front, gave the concierge a tip to let him leave them in her loge, and went forth to the Echo building, anathematising his ex-domestic with continuous fervour on the way. Arrived there, he found two young women strenuously inquiring for the address of "monsieur Valentin Vance."
"You behold him, mesdemoiselles," said Pariset. "What can I have the honour of doing for you?"
The young women looked embarrassed.
"It is you who are the author of this article, monsieur—this infamous calumny?" queried the plumper of the two.
"Oh!" exclaimed Pariset, taken aback. "Oh ... I am speaking to mademoiselle Suzanne Duvivier?"
"No, monsieur, I am not mademoiselle Duvivier. Neither of us is mademoiselle Duvivier. But we inquire if you are the monsieur Vance who is the author of this article?"
"Well—er—yes, certainly, I am the author of it."
The pair conferred a moment in undertones. The one in the toque gave the one with the bird of paradise a slight push.
"Then, monsieur, I have the honour to inform you that we are the bearers of a challenge from the lady you have slandered."
"A challenge?" stammered Pariset. "What do you say? Is this a joke?"
"You will find it very far from a joke," put in mademoiselle Lagarde, strategically; "our principal is a crack shot."
"In that case you may be sure I shall not choose pistols," said Pariset with a smile.
"Ah!" breathed the girl, dissembling her elation. "You choose swords. No matter."
"No," demurred Pariset. "I do not choose swords, either."
"But—not swords, either? What, then?"
"I choose roses. I am a champion with roses, and I have the right to avail myself of my skill."
"Monsieur," cried her companion, peremptorily, "we shall not be patient with pleasantries!"
"Nor I with hysteria, mademoiselle. Comment? Do you figure yourself I am going to fight a woman? You must be demented."
"You refuse to meet her?"
"Point-blank."
"On the pretext of convention?"
"On the score of manhood."
"Your manhood did not restrain you from attacking her."
"Was it so bad, the attack?" faltered Pariset, who had not done much more than glance at Jobic's masterpiece.
"Pshaw!" sneered both the girls, as nearly as their ejaculation can be spelt. "Shame! How perfectly disgusting! You insult a lady, and then refuse her satisfaction. It is the act of a coward. Ah! Oh!"
"Listen!" volleyed Pariset. "I will not meet her if you go on saying 'Ah! 'and 'Oh!' till you are black in the face. But, to cut it short, she shall have her satisfaction. I will cross swords with any man that she appoints as her deputy. All is said. I await the gentleman's representatives. Mesdemoiselles, bonjour."
"And now I have got a duel on my hands, as well as two babies in my arms!" he reflected. "Jobic is an imbecile. Why did I trust him? That sacrÉe bonne! her desertion is giving me a fine time. I should like to wring her neck." He spent a feverish afternoon at registry offices. Suzanne was exasperated too. The news of the demand for a deputy was a heavy blow, for she couldn't think of anybody likely to oblige her. Vainly she reviewed the list of her male acquaintances; none seemed to possess all the necessary qualities. Ineligible herself, and unable to find a substitute—what a dilemma! The more provoking because scattered throughout France must breathe several heroic spirits who would have been willing to fight for a nice girl and the guerdon of her gratitude. But she was reluctant to advertise "Duellist wanted," with a portrait of her attractions.
She was removing on the morrow to a furnished flat, and it had been her intention to supervise the removal of some of its dust this morning. Late in the afternoon she ran round to see how matters had progressed without her. A damsel from a registry office in the quarter had undertaken to commence the work punctually at 8 a.m. The flat was in the Maison SÉverin. All unconscious that she was to dwell beneath the same roof as the villain she had challenged, Suzanne ascended, sanguine of seeing the clean curtains up.
The damsel hadn't put in an appearance. Either she had received an offer more to her taste, or she had decided to prolong her vacation; there had been no message to explain her caprice.
Suzanne sped to the registry office tumultuously.
The Bureau de Placement des Deux Sexes was presided over by a very large woman at a very small table. Three of the four employers present were excited ladies, complaining of bonnes who had arranged to take service with them, but who had neither arrived nor written. The fourth was a personable gentleman, awaiting his turn in an attitude of the deepest despondence. Suzanne sat on the bench, by the gentleman's side, while the fat woman strove to appease the three ladies.
"Next, please," she said, eventually. "Monsieur desires?"
Suzanne heard that monsieur desired a capable bonne a tout faire at once, and that by "at once" he did not mean a fortnight hence, or even the following day—he meant "now."
The proprietress said mechanically that she would see what could be done, and asked for five francs.
"Don't you believe it!" said the gentleman, "am a widower and know the ropes—I might part with five francs and remain servantless for a month. Produce a servant. Trot one of your treasures out. Let me get a grip of it and take it away with me, and I will pay you ten—fifteen francs."
"But it happens that there is no servant on the premises this afternoon. Monsieur is not reasonable. He should comprehend that I cannot show him what I have not got."
"It is equally comprehensible, madame, that I cannot pay for what I do not see."
"Next, please," said the fat woman, shrugging her shoulders.
"Madame," began Suzanne, vehemently, "I must ask you to find another femme-de-mÉnage for me immediately, if you please—your AngÉlique that I settled with here has never turned up!"
"There you are!" cried Pariset. "Everybody says the same thing."
"Mais, monsieur!" snorted the proprietress. "Your affair is finished—the business of mademoiselle does not concern you."
"Pardon, madame, my affair is not finished; on the contrary, my need is dire. I have offspring who clamour for female ministrations, voyons. Mademoiselle will accept my apologies?"
"They are superfluous, monsieur," said Suzanne, acknowledging his bow. "But, madame, my case is urgent! I go into my new appartement in the morning, and there is nobody there yet to shake a mat or light a fire."
"And what a job it is to light a fire!" put in Pariset, with fellow feeling.
"The life they lead us, these bonnes!" responded Suzanne.
"Above all, mademoiselle, when one has two little children and is without experience. Figure yourself my confusion!"
"Dreadful, monsieur! I can imagine it."
"What do you expect me to say to you, you two?" shouted the fat woman, banging the table. "I tell you that there is no bonne waiting just now. Am I le bon Dieu to create model domestics out of the dust on the office floor?"
And at this instant the door opened, and there entered briskly a comely wench, wearing an apron, and no hat.
"Ah!" gasped Pariset and Suzanne together.
"Ah!" exclaimed the fat woman, jubilant. "Everything arranges itself! Now I know this one. I recommend her. You can take a place to-day, Marceline? Good! It is forty francs a month, as usual, and you sleep in, hein?"
"Fifty. And I sleep out—with my aunt," said Marceline, promptly, seizing the circumstances.
"I agree," announced the eager clients, in a duet.
"Mais, monsieur——" remonstrated Suzanne, dismayed.
"Mais, mademoiselle——" expostulated Pariset.
"Enfin, take her! I yield her to you. My children pine for her care, but we will suffer!"
"I am averse from appearing selfish, monsieur——"
"Ah, chivalry forbids that I wrench this unique boon from your arms, mademoiselle."
"No! She is for monsieur," said Suzanne, in a burst of magnanimity.
The proprietress picked up her pen. "Monsieur resides——?"
"No matter. I renounce my claim in favour of mademoiselle."
The proprietress dipped the pen in the inkpot: "Mademoiselle goes to the Maison SÉverin, n'est ce pas?"
"What?" cried Pariset. "The Maison SÉverin? It is at the Maison SÉverin you have taken a flat, mademoiselle? Why, that is my address, too! What storey are you on?"
"The fourth."
"And I! Listen, an idea, a compromise. If you would be so generous, might you not lend her to me now and then?"
"But everything arranges itself," repeated the fat woman, joyously. "Mademoiselle and monsieur can share her to perfection. Marceline, you would render service in two little appartements on the same floor?"
"That is worth more money," said Marceline; and proceeded to estimate the suggestion at a monstrous figure.
However, her views were modified at last. The fat woman made entries in a tattered book. Suzanne heard the gentleman give his name as "monsieur Henri Pariset." Pariset did not hear the lady give her name, because the proprietress, of course, knew it already. Far from suspecting each other's identity, the Challenger and the Challenged exchanged cheerful smiles. Then Marceline was prevailed upon to fetch her box forthwith, and the elated journalist and the charming girl who thirsted for his blood bore their domestic gaily to the rue Baba together.
"How things happen!" said Pariset, as they went along.
"N'est ce pas?" said she. "All the same, my flat cannot be got ready by the morning now."
"I don't see why not; my own share of her this evening will be slight. Let her put my babies to bed at once, and then you can have all you want of her. As to my dinner, I will eat at a restaurant."
"Ah, mais non, if it is not your custom!" said Suzanne. "She can manage your dinner all right—she will have no cooking to do for me. I am at a pension de famille till to-morrow."
And as they reached the house, the concierge remarked, by way of welcome: "It is not unfortunate that you have returned, monsieur. Your twins have been disturbing the whole district."
"But they are adorable, your twins!" exclaimed Suzanne, with genuine admiration, for now they were tranquil and beamed. "I cannot pretend to know whether they are big or small for four years old, but they are darlings."
"Not bad," said Pariset, who thought the world of them himself. "Well, then, when Marceline has tucked them up she shall come to you straightway, and it is agreed that you are to monopolise her as long as you like."
Half an hour passed.
"Monsieur!" cried Marceline, reappearing.
"Eh, bien—you cannot find the children's night-gowns?"
"Si, si. The little ones sleep. But the compliments of mademoiselle, and would monsieur be so amiable as to lend her the feather-brush from his broom-cupboard?"
"Take all she wants. How goes it opposite?"
"There is enough for two persons to do!"
"I don't doubt it," said Pariset. "Inquire of mademoiselle whether I can be of any assistance."
But on second thoughts he was prompted to put the question himself.
In a long blue apron, with her sleeves rolled up, she told him that he couldn't. And he took off his coat and got to work. What a sweeping and a polishing there was! Nine o'clock had struck when he began to hang the curtains, and the dinner at the pension de famille was a thing of the past.
"Evidently, mademoiselle," he said, from the top of a step-ladder, "you also will have to dine out this evening. What do you say to leaving Marceline to put the finishing touches now, and taking nourishment in my company?"
"Monsieur," returned Suzanne, "you dizzy me with your neighbourly kindness. If you can turn round without risking your neck, however, you will note that Marceline is absent. She is engaged in improvising a meal for us, and I beg you to accept my invitation."
"Enchanted. Only, as you are still somewhat at sixes and sevens here, may I propose that you invite me to my own flat, instead of yours?"
So it befell that the bouillon, brought hot in a can from the little greengrocer's across the road, was served at Pariset's table. And Marceline's omelette, created while the cutlets were frizzling on the grille, proved to be delicious.
"Our bonne," remarked the widower, complacently, "might be worse, hein?"
"I was thinking the same thing," assented Suzanne. "It seems to me that we have done very well for ourselves."
"You smoke a cigarette?"
"It is one of my consolations."
"I hope that I may be privileged to see you console yourself here often."
"And if you ever have leisure to call upon me cor le feeve o'clock, monsieur, I shall be charmed. You can hardly excuse yourself on the plea that my address is too remote."
"Believe me," said Pariset, "I warmly felicitate myself on the address; if I may say so, I am daring to foresee a friendship. And it would be very welcome, for I lead a lonely life."
"I, too," she sighed. "I am a painter, I am a communist, but all the same, I am alone."
"Ah, you are a painter, and communist, hein? We shall have subjects to talk about."
"You are surprised?"
"I am, above all, surprised to hear that you are alone. It is difficult to realise how that can be."
"It is true, I assure you. Only to-day I had the strongest need of a man's arm to render me a service, and I could think of no one to ask."
"There are a couple of arms here," announced Pariset, displaying them in an heroic gesture.
"And doughty deeds they have just accomplished for me!" she laughed.
"No, but seriously——" he urged.
"Oh, seriously, the service that I speak of is far too big for even the best of new friends."
"You are wrong. Without having heard it, I venture to pronounce it just the right size."
"How sincere you are! And how I appreciate your earnestness!" she exclaimed. "But it is out of the question."
"I have not yet proved myself worthy of your confidence," he regretted sentimentally. "I understand."
"If you imagine it is that"—deep reproach was in her gaze—"I must explain. Have you heard of a journalist called 'Valentin Vance'?"
"Yes."
"Well, I sent him a challenge to-day, and he answered that I must find a deputy."
Pariset sat dumfounded. Twice he essayed to articulate, without producing so much as a mono-syllable.
At last he stuttered:
"You are mademoiselle Suzanne Duvivier? I had no idea."
"How stupid of me. You have read his article?"
"Well—er—I have still not had time to read it very attentively. But I have heard a good deal about it."
"Ah! Then you do not wonder at my resentment?" she cried. And, though the twins forbade her to jeopardise his life, she hoped to hear him gallantly offer to fight monsieur Vance.
This was just what Pariset could not do. After his boasted avidity to execute the service, he must wear an air of funking it. His embarrassment was intense; constraint fell upon them both. Disillusion clouded her eyes. She had begun to like him so much, it grieved her to see him turn tail.
After some very painful seconds he faltered:
"You are disappointed in me?"
"Disappointed?"
"Oh, yes. I seem to you a braggart who has backed out of his boast. Yet I assure you I am not to blame. You seek the one service in the world that I am utterly unable to perform."
"Monsieur," replied the girl coldly, "your parental duties are so obviously paramount that it is unnecessary to remind me of them."
"Oh, as to that, one does not expect more than a scratch in a duel, so it is not from parental reasons that I say it can't be done. The reasons are physical. I cannot meet monsieur Vance because ... I shall sink lower in your esteem with every word ... I cannot meet him because ... enfin, Valentin Vance is I!"
"You?" She had started to her feet.
"My pen name."
The silence was awful. She leant on the back of the chair for support. Then, with a dignity that he felt to be superb, she said:
"Monsieur, as a tenant I thank you for your co-operation; as a communist, I ask permission to retire."
"Ah, I implore you to listen!" raved Pariset.
"It is strange," she added, more spontaneously, "that, since you found me so hideous on the lecture platform, you put yourself out to be so agreeable to me at the registry office."
"I? I find you hideous?" vociferated Pariset. "It was not I who wrote it; not a single word was mine, believe me! My bonne flounced off last night, and the twins kept me at home. I entrusted the job to a dunderheaded confrÈre. Ah, mon Dieu, 'since I found you hideous'! The spirituality of your face is an inspiration. I admire you with all my heart. Yes, I shall confess it, with all my heart! I love you! Do not condemn me for a column that I did not perpetrate—be merciful, be tender! I will write others that you shall approve. You shall instruct me—I will gather wisdom from your lips. Yes, at your feet, on our hearth, I will learn from you. I will become a disciple of communism—the mouthpiece of your Cause; I will consecrate my pen to your service. My pen shall annihilate your opponents, though my sword could not chasten monsieur Vance." His arms entreated her. "Suzanne——"
"The appartement of mademoiselle is completely ready!" proclaimed Marceline. She rushed in, and out again, triumphant.
"It appears to me I shall not need it long," smiled Suzanne, surrendering to his embrace.
VIII
A PORTRAIT OF A COWARD
Every Sunday Mrs. Findon went with her two stepdaughters to the cemetery and put flowers on the grave. Every Sunday since her husband's death she had done so—every Sunday for four years, excepting during the month of August, which was passed in the unattractive village where his widowed sister lived. When the melancholy walk was over and they had returned to the house, the Misses Findon used to sit on either side of the fireplace, moist-eyed, and slightly pink about the noses, speaking at long intervals in subdued tones; and their young stepmother would gaze from the window, wondering whether the pretence of mourning a husband she had not loved was to be her lot for life.
When she was twenty her father had said to her, "Belle, Mr. Findon wants to marry you. Don't look like that. He is much older than you are, of course, and it isn't the ideal, but what have you got to look forward to? I'm a pauper, and we both know I can't last much longer, and when I've gone you'll be all alone. How are you to live? You'll be left with about fifty pounds, and waste some of that on crape. It's a ghastly thing for me to lie here and know you'll soon be destitute. He's decent enough in a dull way, and if you were to marry him I should feel I had a right to die."
So she had married him; and Mr. Findon had endeavoured to mould her disposition to his requirements. He moulded so much that it seemed to her he must lament that she wasn't an entirely different person, and she wondered why he had asked her to be his wife. The provincial town to which he took her was depressing, and the furniture and ornaments of his house made her want to shriek, and the people who paid her visits never mentioned any subject that had any interest for her.
More dejecting than the visitors were her step-children. To the two colourless schoolgirls—Amy, fourteen years of age, Mildred nearly sixteen—she had turned eagerly; turned achingly, because no child of her own came to lighten the gloom; and for long she had striven to believe that the slowness of their minds was due to their environment. "They need waking up," she would think, and exhausted herself in efforts to make them fluent. But she found that nothing that was done could make them fluent. And as they grew older, she found that nothing that was said could make them laugh. They laughed only when the wind blew somebody's hat off.
They were sandy, undemonstrative girls, and they had manifested no great affection for their father till he died suddenly five years after the marriage. Then, however, the words "dear father" were for ever on their lips, and a strain of unsuspected sentiment in their nature had opposed itself morbidly to the slightest departure from any domestic arrangement that he had desired. She still remembered Amy's pained stare, and Mildred's startled "I don't think dear father would have liked that!" when she had diffidently proposed to transfer a huge photograph of his mother from the drawing-room wall to the spare bedroom. She still reproached herself for her compliant "Oh, I won't, then, of course." It was among the first of the concessions that had made the house seem to her a sepulchre. By her stepdaughters' wish, nothing had been altered in his study—not the position of an armchair, or of the footstool. Even to the pipes on the table, and a gum-bottle on the mantelpiece, the room, which was never used now, remained as he had left it last. And every morning for four years she had accompanied Mildred and Amy solemnly to the threshold, and regarded the armchair and the pipes with an air of reverence; and afterwards sat down to breakfast, thinking that the girls looked as if they had been to the funeral over again. At the beginning, if she had not shrunk from wounding them, she might have hinted that that piece of hypocrisy was horrible to her. Now she could do so no more than she could hint that she did not want to feign bereavement in the cemetery every Sunday, or to take an annual change that was made doleful by the triteness of Aunt Harriet, and the presence of her invalid son. At the age of five-and-twenty, the gentleness and weakness of the woman had committed her to act a lie. At the age of twenty-nine, the woman reflected miserably that, unless her stepdaughters married, she would have to act the lie for life.
The oppressive thought was no new one—and she had asked stupid people to dinner, and accepted invitations to wearisome households. She had urged Mildred and Amy to join the golf and tennis clubs, though they were apathetic about golf and tennis, and she usually took them to London to buy their frocks, instead of to the local High Street. But girls less becomingly dressed had got married, and no young man had paid any attentions to Mildred or Amy. Though Mildred was but twenty-five, and Amy only twenty-three, both had already the air of girls destined for spinsterhood. Sometimes, as she regarded their premature primness, she found it impossible to suppose that proposals would ever come to them, impossible to picture either of the staid, angular figures in a man's arms. Timidly, once, when her dread of a lifetime spent in Beckenhampton had grown unbearable, she had nerved herself to suggesting a removal. "Don't you think we should find it brighter to live somewhere else?" she had pleaded. "In London we should have concerts, and pictures and things."
"London?" Amy had faltered, with dismay. "Oh, no, I shouldn't like that at all."
"Well, it needn't be London, then; but there are nicer towns than this. What do you think, Mildred?"
"I'm sure we could, none of us, be as happy as we are at home," said Mildred in a shocked voice. "It would seem dreadful to leave the home where dear father used to be with us."
And the little stepmother, her hope extinguished, had found herself murmuring, "Yes, of course, there is that, I know." The terms of their father's will had made the house more theirs than hers; it seemed to her that she lacked the right to persist, even if she could have felt sanguine of persistence prevailing. But what she lacked most of all, of course, was courage. She was good-natured, she was charming, she had some beautiful qualities, but she was without the force of mind to oppose anybody. She was a tender, lovable, and exasperating coward. That is to say, she would have been exasperating if there had been anyone to regret her cowardice, anyone to care much whether she was miserable or not.
And then, one summer, after Mildred had influenza, the doctor recommended Harrogate, instead of the dismal village—and the possibility of Harrogate yielding husbands to the girls quickened the woman's heart. In the season there, among so many men—mightn't there be two to find Mildred and Amy congenial?
It was she, not they, who pondered so carefully and paid so much for the morning, afternoon, and evening dresses in which they lagged about a fashionable hydro a fortnight later. It was she, not they, who knew a throb of hope when either of them danced twice, monosyllabically, with the same partner, and who welcomed their opportunity to play in an amateur performance, with its attraction of daily rehearsals.
"I don't think we care much for acting," Amy demurred. "I think we would rather look on, like you."
"Dr. Roberts said that Mildred needed to be taken out of herself; if you don't go in for it, she won't. Oh, I should say yes. It is sure to be a lot of fun, you know."
"I don't think that Mildred and I care much for fun," demurred Amy.
However, the Misses Findon attended the rehearsals—with the dramatic instinct possessed by pasteboard figures on a toy stage. And blankly their stepmother noted that, though young men were ambitious of "polishing their scenes" in alcoves, at various hours, with other girls, no young man's histrionic fervour urged him to any spontaneous polishing with Mildred or Amy.
The thing that did happen at Harrogate was unlooked-for: a man displayed considerable interest in Mrs. Findon herself.
They had spoken first in the hall, where he was sitting when she came out of the breakfast-room with the girls one morning; and on subsequent mornings they had all loitered for ten minutes in the hall; and then, when the rehearsals prevented Mildred and Amy from loitering, she had paused awhile without them. One day, when the rehearsal took place after luncheon, she was surprised to find that she had sat talking to him the whole afternoon. But though their tone had long since grown informal and they talked spontaneously, though he had told her he was in the last fortnight of his leave from India and spoken of his prospects of a judgeship there, she did not realise how far their acquaintance had progressed until he said to her, "You don't look like a happy woman, and yet it doesn't sound to me as if your husband had been all the world to you. If it isn't the loss of your husband that's weighing on you, what's the matter?"
She gazed at him, startled. And still stranger to her than the boldness of his question, was the intimacy of her reply, after she had made it. "Mr. Murray, I'm not a happy woman."
From that moment they were not acquaintances—they were friends. Piecemeal he learnt her story, and perceived the weakness of her character. And their confidences were more frequent and prolonged after a hurried letter from Aunt Harriet, saying that "her dear boy had passed away, and that it would help her to bear her cross if dear Mildred and Amy would go to her for two or three days." A week slid by, and they were with her still. And meanwhile Mr. Murray and Mrs. Findon fell in love with each other.
It was her first breath of romance. A father's ailments, encompassing her girlhood, had excluded sentimental episodes. To marriage she had been moved by nothing but docility. She would soon be thirty—and for the first time she found a strange pulsating promise in the birds' twittering when she woke; lingered at a looking-glass, and turned back to it, that a man might approve. She eyed intently time's touches on her face, noting with new sensitiveness that it showed her age. She knew, for the first time, restlessness if one man was absent; and if he was present, knew impatience of all others who were present too. And she sparkled at her own blitheness; and but for the recurring thought that it would all be over soon, she lived in Eden for a week.
They had been speaking of her stepdaughters, and he had said, "The first time I saw you with them I wondered what the relationship was. You can't have much in common with them? You must have hoped to see them marry, haven't you?"
"Do you think they will?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know. It doesn't follow, because one finds no charm in a girl oneself, that nobody else will find any. I've known men crazy about women that I wouldn't have turned my head to look at—and men that were by no means fools. Isn't there anybody in Beckenhampton?"
"There aren't many chances for a girl in Beckenhampton. Besides, they don't care for young men's society—that's one of the reasons why men don't find much to say to them, I think. I hoped something might come of their staying here, but——"
"But a man has wanted to talk to you, instead."
Could she control her voice? "Oh, that's a different thing."
"Why is it a different thing?"
"I meant that I hoped it might lead to something for them—I wasn't thinking of friendship."
"I'm not thinking of friendship; your friendship wouldn't be much use to me out there. I want you to be my wife. Will you?"
They were in the garden, after dinner. From the ladies' orchestra in the hall came the barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann. In sentiment she was in her teens.
"I can't," she said, in a whisper.
"I'm so fond of you. Do you know I've never heard your name?"
She told him her name.
"Belle, I'd be so good to you. Don't you like me?"
She turned to him. No one could see them. The first kiss of her first love—moonlight, and the barcarolle. Though she did not recognise it, there was a single instant in which she was capable of any weakness. But she was not capable of strength.
"I can't," she repeated. "How can I? To marry again! I couldn't say such a thing to them. What would they—I couldn't do it."
"I don't understand. You 'can't marry me' because they wouldn't like it? You don't mean that? Or is it because you don't think you ought to leave them?"
"Both."
"But—good heavens!... Besides, there's this aunt they've gone to—they could live with her. You aren't telling me—you can't mean you won't marry me because you imagine it's your duty to sacrifice our happiness for the sake of two young women you don't care about? You know you don't care about them! It's mad! I need you more than they do; I can make you happier than they do. I shall never be a millionaire, but I shall come into a bit by and by, and I can make things bright for you at home, one day. You'd have rather a good time out there, for that matter. I want to make things bright for you—I want to see you what you were meant to be. You've never had your youth yet, you've been done out of it; I want to give it to you, I want you to forget what it means to feel depressed. That'd be just my loveliest joy, to see you in high spirits, laughing, waking up younger instead of older, growing more like a girl every day.... People'd begin to take me for your father! That'd be rough on me, wouldn't it?"
She looked, misty-eyed and smiling, at this man who had transfigured life for her.
"I know it sounds silly of me."
"That's meek," he laughed. "Very well, then. As soon as they come back we'll tell them. Perhaps they won't mind as much as you think—they aren't so devoted to you, are they?"
"It isn't that. Their father's memory means so much to them—they'll think it so awful of me. And——"
"And what?"
"You don't know everything—I haven't told you all about it. It sounds hideous, I know, but I couldn't help it—I drifted into it. I—I've had to pretend so much. Pretend to miss him, I mean. All the time. Every day. I——To tell them that it wasn't true——How can I?"
"You wouldn't be the only woman who had loved twice; other women have cared for their husbands, and married again."
"It has been all the time," she muttered, shame-faced. "Even since we have been here I've had to——Just before they went, we sent flowers to the cemetery and I was supposed to—I mean, I had to pretend to be sorry we couldn't take them ourselves. What a hypocrite I shall seem! What'll they say?"
He grasped her hands, and held her tight, and told her what he would be willing to do for her—and though he was older than she, and looked it, he talked like a boy. "Do you disbelieve me?" he asked. "And if you don't disbelieve me, won't you face a little awkwardness for me? If it comes to that, I can speak to them first. Once the news is broken, the worst'll be over for you. What a baby you are, darling! May I call you a baby the moment I'm engaged to you, Mrs. Findon, madam? Oh, you little timid, foolish, sweetest soul, fancy talking about missing all our happiness for life, to avoid a bad half-hour! It'd be a funny choice, wouldn't it, Belle my Belle?"
She nodded, radiant; and aglow with the courage he had communicated, she thought she could have proclaimed her intention straightway, if the young women had returned then.
They did not, however, return at all. Next morning the post brought from them the news that they felt too sad to find Harrogate congenial now, and that they would rather be at home. They were going back to Beckenhampton the "day after to-morrow."
It meant that her precious hours here were numbered. She showed the letter disconsolately to Murray.
"I shall have to go this afternoon," she said.
"I don't see what for—I don't see why you should be dragged away at a minute's notice. You're not a child to be 'sent for.'"
"Oh, I must go," she sighed; "I must get there before them, to see to things."
They stood together in the hall—the hall that he knew would look so pathetically blank to him this afternoon.
"We haven't had long, have we?" he said. "How I'm going to hate everybody in this hydro when you've gone!—the people that mention you, and the people that don't mention you; every single one of them; because I shall be missing you in every second and they'll all be chattering and scandalmongering just the same. When shall I hear from you? You'll tell them as soon as you see them—you won't put it off, even for an hour? Oh, my darling, don't think I'm not alive to all that's beautiful in you, but"—he tried to smile—"you are a little bit of a coward where they're concerned, aren't you? Keep remembering you're free to do as you like. If they aren't pleased, they can be displeased. You haven't got to ask their permission. It's a perfectly simple statement-you're' going to marry me.' They haven't a shadow of right to complain. If you'll remind yourself of that, it'll make it smoother for you.... I wish we could have had a day together first—away from all this crew, I mean. Couldn't you make it to-morrow instead? We'd have a car and go somewhere. Couldn't you, Belle?"
"I can't," she said wistfully. "It'd be heavenly. But I can't. I ought to go upstairs and pack now."
"All right, little woman," said he; "I don't want to make it worse for you. Go along, then. I may see you off, mayn't I? And I'll 'phone at once about your passage on the boat. And I'll come to Beckenhampton the instant you send for me. And we're to be married by special licence next week. Oh, isn't it great! And then your new life begins—the laughter life, the girl life. I'm going to wipe out that troubled look they've put in your eyes—I'm going to make you self-willed, make you tyrannise over me."
"Tyrannise over the Judge! Wouldn't it be a shame?" she laughed. "What a reward for you!"
"I don't know," he said; "I believe I'd like it—it's time you did a little tyrannising. I can't kiss you, darling, because somebody's coming down the stairs, but look at me and let's pretend!"
Downcast as she felt, as the train bore her from him, she felt firm. She could not view the ordeal before her as lightly as he—he did not understand, she told herself; it was natural that he shouldn't—but she was resolved to meet it without delay, and to be bold in the face of the consternation she foresaw. How easy it would have been but for the insincerities she had been guilty of, the craven insincerities! It was her own horrible hypocrisy, not her stepdaughters' disapproval, chat made the task so difficult. As she dwelt upon the difficulties, as she realised the almost incredible shock she was about to deal, the fortitude within her faded, and during the latter half of the journey it was with thankfulness she reflected that she would not have to confront the situation that day.
It should be directly they arrived, though! She vowed it.
She had watched tremulously till nearly three o'clock, when a cab rumbled to the house at last; and her heart turned sicker still as she saw that her stepdaughters were accompanied by their aunt.
"We persuaded her to come."
"I'm afraid I shall be a sad visitor for you, my dear."
"They were quite right. The change will do you good."
They explained that they had lunched early, and they sat awhile in the drawing-room, with their hats and coats on—her sister-in-law oppressive with much crape; the young women also wearing black dresses, very badly made.
"A glass of wine, Harriet? You must be tired after the journey." She rang the bell.
Sipping the port, and alternately nibbling a biscuit, and flicking crumbs from her lap, Aunt Harriet was taciturn and tearful. And she had little to say between tea and dinner, excepting when she spoke huskily of her son's last hours. But in the evening her thoughts reverted to the "happy days she had spent in the house when her dear brother was alive," and she discoursed on them, remarking how "sadly different it seemed now."
"It was a terrible loss for you, Belle," she moaned. "But the parting is only for this life. That's all, my dear, only for this life. You'll meet again where there are no partings. You must keep thinking of that. It's only faith that helps us all to bear up."
And the hypocrite, loathing her hypocrisy, heard herself answer, "Oh, I know! Oh yes!"
At Harrogate the orchestra would be playing now, and he was wondering if she had told them yet! She gazed before her helplessly. She would have to put it off till to-morrow.
Said Mildred, "I daresay Aunt would like to go to bed early."
"If you'll all excuse me, dear, I think I should."
"I think we're all of us ready, aren't we?" murmured Mrs. Findon.
And as they got up and filed from the room, Amy said in sacerdotal tones, "There's one thing we want to do, isn't there, before we go upstairs to-night?" And, like one who performs a rite, she opened the study door; and on the threshold they drooped devoutly.
"O God, forgive me, and help me to be truthful!" prayed the hypocrite when she was alone.
The morrow was Sunday, and in the morning they went to church; and after service they walked dismally to the cemetery. At dinner she could scarcely swallow. She felt faint, and her hands trembled when the return to the drawing-room was made. It had to be now! Her sister-in-law was settling herself for a nap. Amy turned listlessly the pages of a book. Mildred, her shallow eyes upturned, and her head slightly sideways, wore an air of pious resignation to some unexpressed calamity. Turning from the window, with a gulp, the coward stammered:
"Oh ... after you had gone from Harrogate, Mr. Murray asked me to marry him."
The silence seemed to her to last for minutes.
"To do what?" gasped Amy.
"Well!" exclaimed Mildred. "It didn't take long to put him in his place, I hope. What impudence!"
"He had an impudent look," said Amy.
"Some man who was staying at the hydro where you were?" inquired Aunt Harriet. "Fancy! That's the worst of those large places. But I shouldn't let it worry you, my dear. It isn't worth worrying about. Very likely he didn't mean any harm by it. He didn't understand, that's all—didn't know your heart was buried with him who's gone."
"Disgusting, I call it," said Mildred. "But Aunt's quite right—we needn't talk about it.... I thought this morning—I don't know if you noticed it—that the saxifrage on the grave had gone rather thin; there was a gap here and there. I think we'd better see the superintendent. It isn't what it ought to be, by any means."
She stood struggling to say the rest—she struggled with all the puny will that was within her. And so unfit was she to struggle, that on surrendering, her paramount emotion was relief. She said, "Yes, we'll see him about it, and have some more."
She had intended to write to Murray in time for the evening collection. But she could not write that she had kept her word, and she shrank from writing that she had paltered with it. She lay sleepless, crying with mortification. Once a desperate impulse to be done with her compliance then and there, pulled her up, and she thrust on her dressing-gown; but her mind quailed even as she reached the door, and she sank on to the edge of the bed, procrastinating—and then crept back between the sheets.
She could not write that she had kept her word on the next day either, nor during the two days that followed. The just thing to them both would have been to write him exactly what had happened, but as she was a woman, the thing natural to her when she was to blame was to behave worse still by not writing at all. A feeble attempt she made, but ... what was there to say, excepting that she had failed? In every moment she was conscious of his waiting; she realised the glances that he cast at that letter-rack over the console table, and saw his mouth tighten at every disappointment that it dealt. And she was fond of him. Yet it was beyond her to sustain the effort to confess herself demeaned.
He telegraphed: "Coming to you by the seven o'clock train to-morrow Friday morning."
From her bedroom window, before breakfast, she saw the boy crossing the road with the message, and she darted downstairs and took it from him before the double knock could crash. No one was aware, when the family group made their matins to the study, that in her pocket she had a telegram from a lover. No one surmised, when she served the eggs and bacon, that she was questioning, terrified, how to keep his coming secret. If any of them were in, when the maid said that he was asking for her? She would be tongue-tied. And they—how insulting they'd be to him! It would be awful ... awful, unless she were to prepare them, unless she were to say now that she had heard from him and that they must receive him properly. She knew she wasn't going to say it, but she imagined the sensation if she said it: "Mr. Murray's calling this morning. You've made a mistake—I accepted him." She shivered at the mere notion, at fancying how horror would distort their faces. Just after she had been shamming in that room!... She would make an excuse to go out—she'd meet him at the station.
It was going to be very painful—she wished he weren't coming. In love with him though she was, she knew that she wished he weren't coming. And in that moment it was borne upon her that her expectation of marrying him had died days ago. She could never go through with it! She would have to tell him so—and he wouldn't understand, wouldn't make allowances for her. He had not understood at Harrogate. He'd reproach her, tell her she had treated him badly. And she'd have to sit there, in the waiting-room, trying not to cry, with people looking on....
If she could have been picked up in his arms and carried off this morning, without coming back to the house at all! That would be nice. The girls and Harriet might say what they chose, if she hadn't got to listen to it. But he wouldn't ask her to go like that; she would have to propose it herself. How could she? Besides, when she went out to meet him she couldn't even take a suit-case.... Oh, what good would it do to meet him? Pain for nothing. He thought he would be able to argue her into it, make her promise over again. Wretched. And very likely she would promise—and then what was she going to do? She would feel worse then than she felt now. It would have been far better for them not to see each other. If she told the servant——She couldn't say "Not at home," that would sound dreadful.
He might be here soon, she supposed, unless he had to wait long for the change of trains. If she did mean to go to the station, she ought to go directly she had given orders to the cook. Walking into misery with her eyes open! And walking back with her heart in her shoes. It wouldn't be any easier to say it to them later than it was at this minute—and she would know it even while he was wringing the promise from her. Oh, what was he coming for, to make things worse still? He might have known by her not having written to him——She pushed back her chair with vexation.
After breakfast, when the beds were being made, Mrs. Findon said:
"Doreen, if anybody calls this morning—a gentleman—say we're away from home for a few days. You understand? For a few days—all of us. Oh, and, Doreen, if he asks where we are, you don't know."
More than six years have gone by since Mrs. Findon peeped, breathless, as Mr. Murray got into a cab again and was driven out of her life. And now when she reads in her newspaper, every day, on one page or another, how sublimely mankind has progressed by relapsing into barbarism, and that the new human nature is purged of frailties that were inherent in men and women until the 4th August 1914, she vaguely wonders how it is that her household, and her social circle, and Beckenhampton at large, and she herself have not had their characters regenerated, like the rest of the world. For each morning she goes with the Misses Findon to gaze upon the study, and each Sunday she goes with them to gaze upon the grave; and on their return, while the Misses Findon sit by the fireplace, speaking at long intervals, in subdued tones, their stepmother stares from the window, knowing that her pretence of mourning a husband she did not love will continue as long as she lives. And when she looks back on her romance, she marvels—not at the recreancy of her submission, but that once she briefly dared to dream she would rebel.
IX
THE BOOM
At this time of day I do not mind publishing the facts. It happened a few weeks after those pillars of the State—Thibaudin and Hazard—disappeared from Paris with a couple of million francs. They were leading the police a pretty dance, and people said, "Ah, they are probably at the world's end by this time!" I used to think to myself how securely a man who had a mind to do so might lie hidden within an hour's journey of the Grand Boulevard. It was really the disappearance of Thibaudin and Hazard that originated my Idea.
I was manager at that period of the ThÉÂtre SuprÊme, where we were very soon to produce Beauregard's play, Omphale. I descried a way to attract additional attention to our project. I went to see Beauregard one October morning, and gave him a shock. He was breakfasting in bed.
"Bonjour, maÎtre," I said. "Are you too much occupied to talk business?"
"Panage," exclaimed the dramatist, "if you have come to demand any more mutilations of the manuscript, I tell you without parleying that no consideration on earth will induce me to yield. There is a limit; mon Dieu, there is a limit! Rather than cut another line, or substitute another syllable I will put the contract in the fire."
"Dear friend, you have evidently slept ill and are testy this morning," I said. "Compose yourself. I come to exhilarate you with a great scheme."
He still eyed me apprehensively, and to pacify him I made haste to explain, "It has nothing to do with any alterations in the play."
"Ah!" He breathed relief, and dipped his croissant in his cup.
"It is a scheme for booming it."
My host was forthwith genial. A smile suffused his munching face, and he offered me a cigarette.
"I ask your pardon if I was abrupt," he said. "As you surmise, I passed a bad night. A boom? Well, you know my views on the subject of booming. The ordinary puff preliminary is played out. One needs something novel, Panage, something scholarly. 'Scholarly' is the word. For Omphale, a play of pre-Hellenic times, one needs the boom scholarly, classical, and grandiose."
"You voice my own sentiments," said I. "One needs nothing less than a production of 'unrivalled accuracy'—costumes 'copied from designs discovered in Crete and dating back to the dim days of the Minotaur.' That would look tasteful in print, would it not? Alors, what do you say to our going to Crete and discovering them?"
"Crete?" stammered Beauregard. Have I mentioned that he was fat and indolent and had never travelled further than Trouville?
"What think you of exploring the Minotaur's lair?" I questioned. "Of penetrating to the apartments of PhÆdra? Of examining with your own eyes the labyrinth of Ariadne?"
"I?" he ejaculated.
"You and I together, my old one! Our adventures would make pretty reading, hein? Would not all Paris be chattering about your Omphale? What a fever of impatience for the first night! Think of the effect such paragraphs would have on the advance booking."
The corpulent Beauregard lay back on the pillows, pale and mute. I had spoken too earnestly for him to suspect that I was pulling his leg, and I could see that he was very seriously perturbed. His mind was torn in halves between his longing for the advertisement and his horror of the exertion and expense. After a moment he sat up, perspiring, and wrung my hand.
"Panage," he cried, "you are a man of genius! Your idea is most brilliant; I have never heard its equal. With all my heart I congratulate you. I, alas! cannot accompany you on account of my wife's ill-health, but you are free. Go, mon ami! Your inspiration will crowd your theatre."
His wife's health was offensively robust. I shook with laughter so unrestrained that the cigarette fell out of my mouth.
"Let me be a trifle more explicit," I said. "It is not essential to my scheme that either you or I should actually go to Crete. It is only essential that we should be reported to have gone there. I propose that we should blazon our departure in all the journals—we might give them interviews in the midst of our packing—and that we should then retire for two or three months to some secluded spot near at hand where there will be nobody to recognise us. I shall confide only in Verdeille, my secretary; I can rely on him, and he will keep the Press well supplied with anecdotes of our vicissitudes during our absence. Mon Dieu! We will make Paris bubble and boil with anticipation."
He was admiring, but timid. "Don't you think it would be very risky?" he demurred. "If our imposture were found out? It would be ruin. For example, what spot?"
"Well, I am not prepared with spots at the instant; I came to you on the effervescence of the notion. But somewhere off the beaten track. One can hide very effectually without going far—I would not mind wagering that Thibaudin and Hazard are lying low in some hamlet. While the police are watching Marseilles and Havre, or picturing them already in South America, they are probably concealed within an easy run of the gare St. Lazare, waiting till the search is relaxed. What about one of the little seaside places in Normandy—have you ever stumbled on one of them a day after the season finished? There is nobody left but the garde-champÊtre."
He shivered. "Three months of it?" he queried piteously.
"Our investigations, which we undertake 'to complete the previous labours of the archÆologists,' ought to be thorough," I pointed out.
"Is it not worth our while to suffer a little tedium for such an end? Lift your gaze to the cash that will accrue, Beauregard. Dwell upon the box-office besieged. Positively we shall double the value of your play. Also you can take plenty of exercise and improve your figure."
"I abhor exercise," he murmured.
"And you could keep early hours and prolong your life."
"My life is a series of vexations—to prolong it would be fatuous."
"Further, everybody will say what a conscientious artist you are; I don't mind asserting that your passion for accuracy is sweeping me to the Minotaur's lair against my will."
"Well, I will think about it," he said heavily.
He promised to write to me on the morrow.
There was no difficulty about finding a summer resort forsaken enough in October—the difficulty was to find one sufficiently animated to boast an hotel that remained open; and at last I authorised Verdeille to provide us with a furnished chalet. Of these he had reported an unlimited choice everywhere. The resort finally approved for our purpose contained thirty furnished chalets, and they were all to be let with alacrity until the following July. We took ours until February. I had extracted Beauregard's consent, and a fortnight later I hustled him into a cab. He looked as if he were being removed for a kill-or-cure operation, and I am sure he had half a mind to break his word even when we were in the train. On the journey I perused with pleasure Le Matin, and the current issue of L'Illustration, in which the programme of our imaginary trip was set forth with a wealth of invention that did me credit. The deception, in fact, had been engineered so eloquently that at moments I had almost begun to fancy we were really bound for Crete.
We travelled to Dieppe, and then a cab crawled into a void with us—the motor service, we learnt, was discontinued for the next nine months. The chalet was a high, gaunt house called "Les Myosotis." A peasant, who represented the agence de location, stood at her door to wonder at our arrival. A primitive bonne, whom Verdeille had engaged to attend upon us, appeared to entertain doubts of our sanity. We entered the scene as messieurs "Poupard," and "Bachelet." It was my precaution to choose names beginning with a P and a B; I thought of the initials on our luggage, and our washing—the dramatist had overlooked that point.
Well, I shall not pretend that I was in for a rollicking time. I have a high esteem for Beauregard in the theatre, but Beauregard in a village was unspeakable. His lamentations linger with me yet. We had nothing to do, except to walk in the mud and regard the shutters of the twenty-nine other chalets. At seven o'clock in the evening, the distant lighthouse, and the lamp in our own salon afforded the only lights discoverable for miles round. That fat Parisian's melancholy, his reproaches, his attitudes of despair, defy description. Even when the weather improved, he would perceive no virtue in it. I exclaimed once, "What a beautiful sky to-night!" He replied, "It would be beautiful from the Place de la Concorde!" He had brought a cartload of novels—and before we had been in the place a week he was complaining that he had nothing to read.
"I shall die if I remain any longer," he declared. "I shall be buried here, I foresee it. The climate doesn't agree with me. Honestly, I feel very unwell. I ought to return to Paris, it is my duty—I have my wife to consider."
"You were never so well in your life," I remonstrated sharply. "Rubbish! there's no escape now, you've got to see it through. Foretaste the triumph of Omphale and be blithe."
"How much will a triumph be worth to me if I am dead?" he wailed. "Mon Dieu! what an existence, what demoniac desolation! I shudder when I wake in the morning; the thought of the terrible day before me weighs me down. I have scarcely the energy to put on my socks. To wash my neck exhausts me. Is there nothing, nothing to be done for an hour's respite—is there no entertainment within reasonable distance?"
"My beloved 'Bachelet,'" I said, "you forget; at a place of entertainment we might be recognised. Besides, there isn't any."
He threw up his arms. "It is like being in gaol, word of honour! Who directed you to this fatal hole, where a postman collects letters only when he pleases—this desert, where Monday's Matin drifts by Tuesday night? By what perverse ingenuity did you contrive to find it? How long have we endured it now?"
"Ten days," I told him cheerfully. "Why, we have only got about eighty more!"
He groaned. "It seems like centuries. My misgiving, of course, is that it will drive me to intemperance: such ordeals as this develop the vice. The natives themselves are staggered by our presence; they whisper about me as I pass. Children follow me up the roads, marvelling; if the population sufficed, I should be followed by crowds. I tell you, we are objects of suspicion; we are a local mystery; they conclude we must have 'done something.' Also the laundress here is a violent savage—she is not a laundress at all. I had six new collars when we came, six collars absolutely new from the box—and this devil has frayed them already. I would never have believed it could be accomplished in the time, but she has managed it. Six collars absolutely new from the box!"
Don't imagine that he had finished! don't suppose that it was merely a bad mood. It was the kind of thing I had to bear from him daily, hourly—from the early coffee to the latest cigarette.
One afternoon, when I had gone for a stroll without him, a contretemps occurred. I had entered the outfitter's, and stationer's, and tobacconist's and provision merchant's—the miniature shop was the only one in the place that had not closed until the following summer—to obtain a pair of shoelaces. That the clod-hoppers cackled about our sojourn was a small matter to me, and I paid no more heed to the woman's curious stare to-day than usual. But I was to meet another stare!
As I waited for my change, a shabby young man came in to ask for a copy of Le Petit Journal, and a toy for five sous. Le Petit Journal, which I had just read, contained the latest details of my explorations in Crete, and instinctively I looked round. His eyes widened. I did not know him from Adam; but it was evident that he knew me, at least by sight! I turned hot and cold with confusion.
Grabbing at my coppers, I hurried out, wondering what I had better do if he addressed me. Before I had time to solve the question I heard him striding at my heels. With a deprecating bow that told me he had favours to solicit, he exclaimed, "Monsieur Panage!"
"You are mistaken," I said promptly.
"Oh, monsieur, I beg you to hear me," he cried, "I entreat you! In the theatre you are for ever inaccessible—will you not spare an instant to me here?"
He was so sure of my identity that I realised it would be indiscreet of me to deny it any longer. Since I could not deceive, my only course was to ingratiate him.
"What do you want?" I asked, fuming.
"Monsieur," he broke out, "I am an actor. I have been acting in the provinces since I was a boy. I have played every kind of part from farce to tragedy. I have talent, but I have no influence, and the stage doors of Paris are shut and barred against me! No manager will listen to me, because I am too obscure to obtain an introduction to him; no one will believe that I have ability, because I cannot get a chance to prove it. Oh, I know very well what a liberty I have taken in speaking to you, but I want to get on, I want to get on—I implore you to give me a trial!"
He had me in a nice fix. Apparently he was unaware that I was believed to be in Crete, but he would soon learn it by the newspaper in his pocket, and if I snubbed him he would certainly give me away. He could hold me up to ridicule—I should be the laughing-stock of Paris. It was a fine situation for me. I, the director of the ThÉÂtre SuprÊme, was compelled to temporise with this provincial mummer!
I scrutinised him in encouraging silence, as if mentally casting him for a part. I saw hope bounding in him.
"Ah!" I said thoughtfully. "Y-e-s.... What is your favourite line?"
"Character, monsieur," he panted. "And, of course, I would accept a very small salary, a very small salary indeed."
I did not doubt it. I could picture him strutting and ranting on the boards of a booth for a louis a week, and holding himself lucky when he earned that.
"Walk on a little way with me," I said graciously; "we can talk as we go along. I should have to see you do something before I could consider you, you know; I must be sure that you are capable. Even the gentleman who plays the servant at the SuprÊme and hasn't a single word to utter is an experienced comedian. You are not playing any-where in the neighbourhood? you are not in a travelling theatre about here?"
"No, monsieur," he sighed, "I am out of an engagement; I am here because this is where I live."
"Rather remote from the dramatic world?" I suggested, smiling; "something of a drawback, is it not?" His simplicity in crediting me with the notion of recruiting the SuprÊme from a travelling theatre tickled me nearly to death.
"A grave drawback, monsieur," he agreed. "But I am not alone—I have a child, and she is too delicate to thrive in a city."
"A good many delicate children have thriven in Paris," I remarked.
"In thriving households, monsieur—in healthy quarters. Paris is dear, and I am poor—my child would be condemned to a slum. I should see her lade away. Better to be a barnstormer all my life than lose my child. She is all I have left to love."
"There is your art," I said, humbugging him.
"My art?" He gave an hysterical laugh. A nervous, jumpy fellow, without a particle of repose. "Listen, monsieur, listen. I am an actor, and if I could demolish the barrier that keeps me out, I might be a great one; but I confess to you that I would abandon art and cast figures on an office stool, or break flints on a road, and thank God for the exchange, if it would buy my child a home! I want money. I want to give my child the comforts that other children have. That's my ambition. I have no loftier pose than fatherhood. My prayer is, not applause, and compliments, and notoriety, not the petty pleasure of hearing I have equalled one favourite or eclipsed another; my prayer is—to give things to my child! I want to buy her nourishing food, and a physician's advice, and the education of a gentlewoman. I want the money to send her to the South when it snows, and to the mountains when it's hot. I want to see her laughing in a garden, like the rich men's children in Paris that you spoke of. I stand and watch them sometimes—when I go there to beg at stage doors till an understrapper kicks me out."
"Well, well, the sort of things you desire are not so expensive," I said suavely. "Some day your salary may provide them all."
"You think it possible, monsieur? Really?" His haggard eyes devoured me.
"You have only to make one success. After that, you will be grossly overpaid, like every other star."
"If I could but do it!" he gasped. "If I could only convince a Paris manager that I have it in me! Year after year I've hoped, and tried, and failed to get a hearing. You may judge my desperation by my audacity in stopping you in the streets. What course is open to me—what steps can I take? Even now, when I am pouring out my heart to monsieur Panage himself, how much does it advance me?"
He was not so simple as I had thought.
"Enfin—by the way, what is your name?"
"My name is Paul Manesse, monsieur."
"Well, monsieur, you must surely understand that until I have seen you act I cannot be of any service to you?"
"I could rehearse on approval," he pleaded.
"Moreover," I added hastily, "all my arrangements are made for some time to come. Later on, when an opportunity arises, we shall see what we shall see." I halted. "Write to me during the run of Omphale. I shall not forget our little chat. A propos, I am starting to-morrow for Crete; I see the papers are reporting that I am already there, so you need not mention that you have met me—it is never policy to contradict the Press. Yes, I shall bear your name in mind, I assure you."
He did not look assured, however; he stood silent, and his lips were trembling. Heaven knows what solid help my amiability had led him to expect, but it was plain that honeyed phrases were a meagre substitute.
"You have been most courteous to me," he stammered, "you have done me a great honour—as long as I live I shall remember that I have talked with monsieur Panage; but you are leaving what you found, monsieur—a desperate man!"
"Bah! who knows when an opening may occur?" I said, a shade embarrassed. "I may see a chance for you sooner than you think. When I want you I shall send for you."
I little dreamt in what strange circumstances I was to send for him.
Beauregard was snoring on the sofa when I burst into the room.
"Well, you can bestir yourself and pack!" I volleyed. "The place is too hot to hold us; we have to get out!"
"Hein?"
"There is a pro here who knows me, confound him! I had to tell him we were leaving for Crete in the morning—he mustn't see me here again."
The playwright shifted his slippered feet to the floor and sat up. "We go back to Paris?" he inquired, beaming.
"How can that be? Of course not! We must discover another retreat."
"Fugitives!" moaned Beauregard. "Nomads! Do you not think, Panage, that I might go back to Paris—I could remain cautiously in the house? The truth is, my wife is of a very high-minded character, and it distresses her to have to address tender letters to a monsieur 'Bachelet': she feels that it is not correct."
I was in no mood to be tolerant of his subterfuges. He wept.
I determined to effect our departure the same evening while he was still intimidated—and if only I had been able to accelerate his movements, my change of intentions would have spared us much. His dilatoriness exposed us to a thunderbolt. We had pealed the bell in his bedroom for the lamp, and when the door was opened at last, I turned to utter a sharp complaint of the delay. To my surprise, I saw that a stranger was walking in. There was a fraction of a second in which I stared indignantly, waiting for an apology for his blunder. Then it was as if my heart slipped slowly to my stomach, and I felt catastrophe in the air, even before I heard his rustic, official tones. He arrested us as Thibaudin and Hazard!
Behind me I heard Beauregard's dressing-case drop with a thud.
Our eyes met, and we stood petrified, realising the impossibility of concealing our names. In my terror of the public scandal that was imminent, my clothes stuck to my skin. Curs, as well as criminals, we looked. I rather fancied that our provincial captor was relieved to see what knock-kneed miscreants he had to deal with.
"You bungling idiot!" I gasped. "I am monsieur Panage, of the ThÉÂtre SuprÊme; this gentleman is monsieur Beauregard, of the AcadÉmie Francaise. You shall suffer for this outrage!"
He shifted his feet slightly. It was the least bit in the world, but that motiveless movement betrayed misgiving; I deduced from it that, in his eagerness to distinguish himself, he had taken more responsibility upon his bucolic shoulders than sat quite comfortably on them. I flung my card to him. "Look!"
"What of it?" he said surlily. "What evidence is this? I see you were preparing for flight. No violence!"—Beauregard had impotently wrung his hands—"I have men in the passage. You will offer your explanations in the proper quarter. Come!" He advanced upon me.
"Now, listen to me," I cried, backing in a panic. "Put so much as a finger on us and you are ruined. Not only will I have you discharged from the Force, I will have you hounded out of any employment that you find to the end of your days. It is I who say it! You have no excuse: we bear no resemblance whatever to Thibaudin and Hazard. If you were of Paris you would know as much!"
Again he faltered. Again he saw distinction within his grasp. The workings of a dull intelligence, a fool's passion for promotion, supplied a fascinating study, even in my fear. "Hollow cheeks, small grey moustache, slight stoop?" he recited, eyeing me. His sheep's gaze travelled to Beauregard. "Age forty, bald at crown. Fat."
"Is he the only fat man in France, fool? We can call all Paris to prove who we are!"
"Monsieur will have his opportunity to prove it elsewhere," he returned stubbornly. But the "monsieur" hinted that I was impressing him against his will.
Beauregard began to collect his wits. "If we are compelled to prove it elsewhere, it will be the end of you!" he raged. "Better be convinced in time, I warn you. Hazard is fat, yes; I am, perhaps, a little plump."
"What do you show me?" mumbled the fellow. "I see the card of monsieur Panage. That does not demonstrate that monsieur Panage is present." Complacence was in his gesture, he seemed vain of the brilliance of his reasoning. "All is said. I have no time for discussions."
"Stop!" I cried, inspired. "What if we produce a resident of this very village, to say who I am?"
"Mon Dieu! the man you met," roared Beauregard. "Saved!"
"There is no such person—we have made our inquiries."
"There is a gentleman well known, who has lived here with his daughter since—I don't know how long!"
"Give me his name."
"His name?" I said. "His name is——" I could not recall the name!—it had had no interest for me. I could remember saying, hypocritically, "I shall bear your name in mind "; but what it was I had no idea. I stood dazed. "His name——It escapes me for the moment."
"Enough. The pretence is idle."
"Morbleu!" thundered Beauregard. "Think, Panage, think!"
"I am trying; but I paid no heed to it."
Heavens! what a revenge for the mummer—the name that had fallen on careless ears was now my only chance of rescue. I thrashed my brains for it, sweating with funk.
"The name——It evades me because I have met him only once in my life."
"Or not so often! I am not to be duped."
"Let me think; don't speak for a minute."
"Farceur!"
"His name——I—I nearly had it. Wait."
"I have waited too long. Come! the pair of you."
"His name—his name——" I sought it frantically. "His name is—Paul Manesse!"
I mopped my neck. Our persecutor made a note.
"Where is he to be found?"
"How should I know that? It is not difficult for you to ascertain; doubtless any villager could direct you to him. Now, mark you, I have supplied the name of a resident in a position to correct your monstrous blunder! I advise you to bring him to identify me before the matter becomes more serious for you still. If you put us to public ignominy, apologies will not satisfy me when you discover your mistake. Here is your last chance to extricate yourself."
He ruminated. "Enfin, I will send one of my men to inquire for him," he said grudgingly. "If it turns out that this 'monsieur Manesse' is unknown, I warn you that you will suffer for your game."
The room was about forty feet from the ground—I saw him attentively considering whether, in his absence, we were likely to walk out of the window. He marched into the corridor and gave a whistle. I heard two voices before he came in again.
Uninvited, he sat, clasping his knees. None of us spoke any more. The lamp having still made no appearance, I lit the candles. I do not forget that long half-hour in Les Myosotis. The yokel himself grew restless at last—he rose and went into the corridor again.
"Hark," exclaimed Beauregard suddenly, "the man has come back. Can you hear Manesse? Listen."
"I cannot distinguish," I murmured, straining my ears to the door.
Some minutes passed. To our dismay, our oppressor re-entered alone. Perplexity darkened his brow. He hesitated before he broke the suspensive hush.
"Monsieur Manesse agrees that this afternoon he met monsieur Panage," he announced. "But"—he raised a forensic forefinger—"that does not establish that either of you is monsieur Panage. Monsieur Manesse is occupied in telling a fairy tale to his little daughter and cannot spare the time to come here to identify you. Enfin, you will accompany me to the commissaire de police, and you will obtain the evidence in due course."
"SacrÉ tonnerre!" I screamed. It was the last straw. That strolling player declined to "spare the time," that mountebank neglected Me!
I saw crimson. I paced the room, raving. "What did he say?" I spluttered. "What were the ruffian's words?"
"My man reports that the gentleman replied, 'Monsieur Panage must have had immense difficulty in recollecting my name. He would not stir an inch to save my life—why should I take a walk for him?'"
I sat down. I felt dizzy. I feared I was going to be extremely ill. The man himself seemed moved by my collapse—or increasingly uncertain of his position. He said, "Perhaps a note might be effectual? Alors, if monsieur wishes to write, I will wait."
"Give me your fountain-pen, Beauregard."
"But"—again the forefinger was uplifted—"there must be no secret instructions. I must be satisfied there is no private meaning in the note."
"Good heavens! What am I permitted to say?"
He pondered. "'To monsieur Paul Manesse: Monsieur——' Has monsieur written 'Monsieur'?"
"Yes, yes; go on!"
"'I am now convinced that you can act. I hereby engage you, at the trifling salary of two hundred and fifty francs a week, for prominent parts in my next three productions at the ThÉÂtre SuprÊme.'"
The silence was sensational.
"Who the devil are you?" I stuttered, when I found my voice.
"Paul Manesse, monsieur," he told me—"your new comedian, if you sign."
I signed. You have heard how we boomed Omphale and I found a star! That jolly little Manesse girl has a rich papa to-day.
