CHAPTER XV.THE SKATING-RINK.
Where was it? Whither was she being taken? The cab had been going for a long, long time; seated at her side, Audiberte had been holding her hands, reassuring her and talking to her with a feverish violence. She did not look at anything, she did not hear anything; the noise of the wheels, the sharp tones of that shrill little voice had no sense for her mind whatever; nor did the streets and boulevards and house-fronts seem to her to wear their usual aspect, but were discolored by the lively emotion within, as if she were looking at them out of the carriage in a funeral or marriage procession.
Finally they brought up with a jerk and stopped before a wide pavement inundated by white light which carved the crowd of people swarming here into black sharp-cut shadows. At the entrance of the large corridor was a wicket for the tickets, then a double door of red velvet, and right upon that a hall, an enormous hall, which with its nave and its side aisles and the stucco on its high walls, recalled to her an Anglican church which she had once visited on the occasion of a marriage. Onlyin this case the walls were covered with placards and advertisements in every color, setting forth the virtues of pith helmets, shirts made to measure for four francs and a half and announcements of clothing-shops, alternating with the portrait of the tabor-player, whose biography one could hear cried in that voice of a steam-valve used by programme-sellers. They were in the midst of a stunning noise in which the murmur of the circulating mob, the humming of the tops on the cloth of the English billiard tables, calls for drinks, snatches of music broken by patriotic gunshots coming from the back of the hall, were dominated by a constant noise of roller skates going and coming across a broad asphalted space surrounded by balustrades, the centre of a perfect storm of crush hats and bonnets of the time of the Directory.
Hortense walked behind the Provençal girl, anxious and frightened, now turning pale and now turning red beneath her veil, following her with difficulty through a perfect labyrinth of little round tables at which women were seated two and two drinking, their elbows on the table, cigarettes in their mouths and their knees up, overwhelmed with a look of boredom. Against the wall from point to point stood crowded counters and behind each was a girl standing erect, her eyes blackened with kohl, her mouth red as blood and little flashes of steel coming from a bang of black or russet hair plastered over her brow. And this white and black of painted skin, this smile with its painted vermilion-point, were to be found on all the women, as if itwere a livery belonging to nocturnal and pallid apparitions which all were forced to wear.
Sinister also was the slow strolling of the men who elbowed their way in an insolent and brutal manner between the tables, puffing the smoke of their thick cigars right and left with the insult of their marketing as they pushed about to look as closely as possible at the wares. And what gave it still more the impression of a market was the cosmopolite public talking all kinds of French, a hotel public which had just arrived and run into the place in their travelling clothes—Scotch bonnets, striped jackets, tweeds still full of the fog of the Channel and Muscovite furs thawing fast in the Paris air. And there were the long black beards and insolent airs of people from the banks of the Spree covering satyr grins and Tartar mugs; there too were Turkish fezzes surmounting coats without any collars, negroes in full evening dress gleaming like the silk of their tall hats and little Japanese men dressed like Europeans, dapper and correct, like tailors’ advertisements fallen into the fire.
“Bou Diou!How ugly he is,†said Audiberte suddenly, as they passed a very solemn Chinaman with his long pigtail hanging down the back of his blue gown; or else she would stop and, nudging her companion with her elbow, cry “Vé! vé!see the bride!†and show her some woman dressed entirely in white lounging on two chairs—one of which supported her white satin shoes with silver heels—the waist of her dress wide open, the train of her gown all which-way, and orange flowers fasteningthe lace of a short mantilla in her hair. Then, suddenly scandalized by certain words which gave her the clue to these very chance bridal flowers, the Provençal girl would add in a mysterious manner: “A regular snake, you know!†Then suddenly, in order to drag Hortense away from a bad example, she would hurry her toward the central part of the building where a theatre rose far in the back, occupying the same place as the choir in a church. The stage was there under electric flames which came and went in two big glass spheres away up in the ceiling, like two gleaming, starry eyes of an Eternal Father in a book of holy images.
Here they could compose themselves after the tumultuous wickedness of the lobbies. Families of little citizens, the shopkeepers of the quarter, filled the orchestra stalls. There were few women. It might have been possible to believe oneself in some kind of an auditorium, were it not for the horrible noise all about, which was always being overborne by the regular rolling of the skaters on the asphalt floor, drowning even the brass instruments and the drums of the orchestra, so that really on the boards all that was possible was the dumb-show of living pictures.
As they seated themselves the curtain went down on a patriotic scene: an enormous Belfort lion made of cardboard, surrounded by soldiers in triumphant poses on crumbling ramparts, their military caps stuck on the ends of their guns, gesticulating to the measure of the Marseillaise,which nobody could hear. This performance and this wild excitement stimulated the Provençal girl; her eyes were bulging in her head; as she found a place for Hortense she exclaimed:
“Qué!we are nice here,qué!But do haul up your veil—don’t tremble so, there is no dangerwidme!â€
The young girl did not answer, still overwhelmed by the impression of that slow, insulting crowd of strollers where she had been confounded with the rest, among all those livid masks of women. And behold, right in front of her, she found those horrible masks once more, with their blood-stained lips—found them in the grimacing faces of two clowns in tights who were dislocating all their joints, a bell in each hand with which they were sounding out, whilst they frolicked about, an air from “Marthaâ€â€”a veritable music of the gnomes, formless and stuttering, very much in its place in the musical babel of the skating-rink. Then the curtain fell again, and for the tenth time the peasant girl stood up and sat down again, fussed about, fixed her head-dress anew and suddenly exclaimed, as she looked down the programme: “There, the Cordova Mount—the summer locusts, the farandole—there, there, it is beginning,vé, vé!â€
Rising once more, the curtain displayed upon the background of the scenery a lilac mountain, up which mounted buildings of stone most weird in construction, partly castle, partly mosque, here a minaret and there a terrace; they rose inogival arches, crenelations and Moorish work, with aloes and palm-trees of zinc rising at the foot of towers sharply cut against the indigo blue of a very crude sky. One may see just such absurd architecture in the suburbs of Paris among villas inhabited by newly enriched merchants. In spite of all, in spite of the crying tones of the slopes blossoming with thyme and exotic plants placed there by mistake because of the word “Cordova,†Hortense was rather embarrassed at sight of that landscape which held for her the most delightful recollections. And that palace of the Turk perched upon the mountain all rose-colored porphyry, and that reconstructed castle, really did seem to her the realization of her dreams, but quite grotesque and overdone, as it happens when one’s dream is about to slip into the oppression of a nightmare.
At a signal from the orchestra and from an electric jet, long devil’s-darning-needles, personated by girls in an undress of tightly-fitting silks, a sort of emerald-green tights, rushed upon the stage waving their long membranous wings and whirling their wooden rattles.
“What! those are locusts? Not much!†said the Provençal girl indignantly.
Already they had arranged themselves in a half circle, like a crescent-shaped mass of seaweed, all the time whirling their rattles, which sounded very distinctly now, because the row made by the parlor skates was softened and for a moment the noise of the lobby was hushed in a close wall of heads leaning toward the stage, their eyes glaringunder every kind of head-dress in the world. The wretchedness which tore Hortense’s heart grew deeper when she heard coming, at first from afar and gradually increasing, the low sound of the tabor.
She would have liked to flee in order not to have seen what was coming. In its turn the shepherd’s pipe sounded out its high notes and the farandole, raising under the cadence of its regular steps a thick dust the color of the earth, unrolled itself with all the fantastic costumes imaginable, short skirts meant to lure the eye, red stockings with gold borders, spangled waists, head-dresses of Arab coins, of Indian scarfs, of Italian kerchiefs or those from Brittany or Caux, all worn with a fine Parisian disdain of truth to locality.
Behind them, pushing forward on his knee a tabor covered with gold paper, came the great troubadour of the placards—his legs incased in tights, one leg yellow with a blue shoe on and one leg blue shod in yellow, with his satin waistcoat covered with puffs and his crenelated velvet cap overshadowing a countenance which remained quite brown despite cosmetics, and of which nothing could be seen well except a big moustache stiffened with Hungarian pomade.
“Ah!†said Audiberte in perfect ecstasy.
When the farandole had taken up its place on the two sides of the stage in front of the locusts with their big wings, the troubadour, standing alone in the centre, saluted with an air of assurance and victory under the glaring eyes of theEternal Father whose rays poured a luminous hoarfrost upon his coat.
The aubade began, rustic and shrill, yet it went forward into the halls hardly farther than the footlights; there it lived a very short life, fighting for a moment with the flamboyant banners on the ceiling and the columns of the enormous interior, and then fell flat into a great and bored silence. The public looked on without the slightest comprehension. Valmajour began another piece, which at the first sounds was received with laughter, murmurs and cat-calls. Audiberte took Hortense’s hand:
“Listen! that’s the cabal!â€
At this point the cabal consisted merely of a few “Heh! louder!†and of jokes of this sort, which were called out by a husky voice belonging to some low woman on seeing the complicated dumb-show that Valmajour employed: “Oh, give us a rest, you chump!â€
Then the rink took up again its sound of parlor skates and of English billiards and its ambulatory marketing, overwhelming the shepherd’s pipe and the tabor which the musician insisted upon using until the very end of the aubade. After this he saluted again, marched forward toward the footlights, always accompanied by that mysterious grand air which never quitted him. His lips could be seen moving and a few words came here and there into ear-shot: “It came to me all of a sudden ... one hole ... three holes ... the good God’sbirrd....â€
His despairing gesture was understood by theorchestra and gave the signal for a ballet in which the locusts twined themselves about the odalisques from Caux and formed plastic poses, undulatory and lascivious dances beneath Bengal flames which threw their rainbow light as far as the pointed shoes of the troubadour, who continued his dumb-show with the tabor in front of the castle of his ancestors in a great glory and apotheosis.
There lay the romance of poor little Hortense! That is what Paris had made of it.
The clear bell of the old clock hanging on the wall of her chamber sounded one as Hortense roused herself from the arm-chair into which she had fallen utterly crushed when she entered. She looked around her gentle maiden’s nest, warm with the reassuring gleams of a dying fire and of an expiring night-lamp.
“What am I doing here? Why did I not go to bed?â€
She could not remember at first what had happened, only feeling a complete sickness through her entire being and in her head a noise which made it ache. She stood up and walked a step or two before she perceived that she still wore her hat and mantle; then all came back to her. She remembered then their departure after the curtain fell, their return through the hideous market, more brilliantly illumined than before, among drunken book-makers fighting with each other in front of a counter, through cynical voiceswhispering a sum of money as she passed—and then the scene at the exit, with Audiberte who wished her to come and felicitate her brother; then Audiberte’s wrath in the coach, the abuse which the creature heaped upon her, only ended by Audiberte humiliating herself before her, and kissing her hands for pardon; all that and still other things danced through her memory along with the horrible faces of the clowns, harsh noises of bells, cymbals and rattles, and the rising up of many-colored flames about that ridiculous troubadour to whom she had given her heart! A terror that was physical roused her at that idea:
“No, no; never! I’d far rather die!â€
All of a sudden, in the looking-glass in front of her, she caught sight of a ghost with hollow cheeks and narrow shoulders drawn together in front with the gesture of a person shuddering with cold. The spectre looked a little like her, but much more like that poor Princess of Anhalt who had so roused her curiosity and pity at Arvillard that she had described her sad symptoms in a letter. The princess had just died at the opening of winter.
“Why, look—look!†She bent forward, came nearer to the glass and recalled the inexplicable kindness that everybody down there had shown her, the fright her mother evinced, the tenderness of old Bouchereau at her departure—and understood! Now at last she knew what it was, she knew the end of the game! It was here without any one to aid it. Surely it was long enough she had been looking for its coming.