Papa BouchardChapter I
Papa Bouchard
ON a certain day in June, 1901, a cataclysm occurred in the quiet apartment of Mademoiselle Céleste Bouchard, in the Rue Clarisse, the quietest street in the quietest part of Paris. This cataclysm consisted of the simultaneous departure, or rather the levanting, of the entire masculine element in the excellent old lady’s household. And this masculine element had been so admirably trained! Monsieur Paul Bouchard, in particular, ten years his sister’s junior, was reckoned a model man. Mademoiselle could truly say that during Monsieur Bouchard’s fifty-four years of life he had never, until then, given her a moment’s anxiety. All the elderly ladies of theBouchards’ acquaintance pointed with admiration to Monsieur Paul.
“Look!” they said; “such a good brother! Mademoiselle boasts that although he is fifty-four years of age he is still as obedient to her as he was at fifteen. So prosperous and respected as an advocate, too!” And all these ladies sighed because they had not succeeded in petticoating a brother or a husband as Mademoiselle Bouchard had petticoated the prosperous and respected Monsieur Paul Bouchard.
Pierre, the husband of Élise, Mademoiselle Bouchard’s maid for thirty years, was as well disciplined as his master, for he was Monsieur Paul’s valet. He had never had a will of his own since the day, thirty years before, when Élise had sworn before the altar to love, honor and obey him.
The third masculine creature in the dovecote of the Rue Clarisse was the parrot, Pierrot. Nobody knew exactly how old Pierrot was, but he was supposedto have arrived at years of discretion. Mademoiselle had spent a dozen patient years in curing Pierrot of a propensity to bad language, and she had taught him a great variety of moral maxims that made him a model bird, as Monsieur Bouchard was a model man and Pierre a model servant. It is true that Léontine de Meneval, Monsieur Paul’s ward, married to a handsome scapegrace captain of artillery, had amused herself with teaching the bird a number of phrases, such as “Bad boy Bouchard” and others reflecting on “Papa Bouchard,” as she called him. And Pierrot had picked up these naughty expressions with astonishing quickness. But Léontine had always been regarded as incorrigible by her guardian and his sister, although they really loved her, and since her marriage she had become gayer, merrier and more irresponsible than ever. This deterioration both Monsieur and Mademoiselle Bouchard laid at the door ofher husband, Captain de Meneval, with his laughing eyes and devil-may-care manner; with whom, however, aside from these characteristics, not the slightest fault could be found. He was devoted to Léontine, and if the two chose to lead a life as merry and unreflecting as that of the birds in the shadowy forests, nobody could stop them. Papa Bouchard—as the artillery captain had the impudence to call him—did, it is true, keep a tight hand on Léontine’s fortune, and would allow her only half her income, at which Léontine grumbled and incited Captain de Meneval to grumble, too. But Papa Bouchard, having full power as trustee, met their complaints and protests with a proposition to cut down their allowance to one-fourth of their income, at which the two young people grew frightened, and desisted.
Now, there dwells in every masculine breast a germ of lawlessness that no discipline ever invented can wholly kill.Man or parrot, it is the same. After having been brought up in the way he should go, he longs to go it. Such was the case with Pierrot, with Pierre and with Monsieur Bouchard.
It was the bird who made the first dash for liberty
It was the bird that first made a dash for liberty. After ten years of irreproachable conduct, Pierrot, on that June morning, suddenly jumped from the balcony, where he had been walking the railingin the most sedate manner, and scuttled off in the direction of the Alcazar d’Été, the Ambassadeurs, the Moulin Rouge, and the very gayest quarter of Paris.
Monsieur Bouchard was sitting on the balcony at the time. He was rather younger looking, with his clean-shaven face and wiry figure, than most men of his age, but thanks to Mademoiselle Céleste, he patronized the same tailors that had made for his father and his grandfather. Their cut and style indicated that they had been tailors to Cardinal Richelieu and others of that time, and they dressed Monsieur Bouchard in coats and trousers and waistcoats of the pliocene age of tailoring. As for his hats, they might have been dug out of Pompeii, for any modernity they had, and the result was that Monsieur Bouchard’s back and legs looked about seventy-five, while his face looked little more than forty.
Instead of giving the alarm when Pierrot trotted gaily off, MonsieurBouchard felt a strange thrill of sympathy with the runaway.
“Poor devil!” thought he. “No doubt he is sick of the Rue Clarisse—tired of the moral maxims—weary of the whole business. He isn’t so young as he was, but there’s a good deal of life in him still”—Pierrot was just scampering around the corner—“and he wants to see life.”
Monsieur Bouchard’s back and legs looked about seventy-five
“There is a psychologic moment for everything,” so Otto von Bismarck said. The parrot’s escape made a psychologic moment for Monsieur Bouchard, and quietly putting on his hat, and telling Mademoiselle Bouchard that he was going to a meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians at St. Germains, and afterward for a stroll through the museum in the town, made straight for a street in the neighborhood of the ChampsÉlysées. He remembered seeing in that quarter a handsome new apartment house lately finished and thoroughly modern. He had for curiosity’s sake entered it. He had seen furnished apartments so bright, so light, so cheery, so merry that he longed to establish himself there. He had gone back once, twice, thrice, each time more infatuated with the place. To-day he walked in, selected a vacant apartment, and in ten minutes had taken a lease of it for a year.
And then he had to go back to the Rue Clarisse to tell about it.
Of course, he had not thrown off the yoke of thirty years without secret alarms, agitations and palpitations. He walked up and down the Rue Clarisse twice, his heart thumping loudly against his ribs, before he could screw up resolution to enter. He was nerved, however, by the recollection of the apartment he had just seen; it had been given up the day before by a young journalist,named Marsac, who had left various souvenirs of a very pleasant life there. The street was such a bustling, noisy street—and the Rue Clarisse was so quiet, so quiet! In the new street there were two music halls in full view and generally in full blast, gay restaurants blazing with lights, where all sorts of delicious, indigestible things to eat were to be had, and such an atmosphere of jollity and movement! Monsieur Bouchard quivered with delight like a schoolboy as he thought of it, and so he marched in to take his life in his hand while breaking the news to his sister Céleste.
Mademoiselle Bouchard, a small, prim, devoted, affectionate, obstinate creature, was sitting in the drawing-room, bemoaning with Élise the loss of Pierrot. Élise, a hard-featured, hard-working creature, had such a profound contempt for the other sex that it was a wonder she ever brought herself to marry one of them. She was saying to Mademoiselle Bouchard:
“Depend on it, Mademoiselle, that ungrateful Pierrot will never come back of his own accord. If he had been a she bird, now—but Pierrot is like the rest of his sex. It’s in them to run away—and run away they will.”
“He has had a quiet, peaceful home in the Rue Clarisse for seventeen years,” wailed poor Mademoiselle Bouchard.
“That’s reason enough for him to run away. What does he care about a quiet, peaceful home? He wants to be strutting around in some restaurant, drinking and swearing and turning night into day. They’re all like that. My Pierre, now, is just as ready to run away as was Pierrot, but I shall keep an eye onhim.”
With an affectation of ease and debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs ÉlyséesWith an affectation of ease and debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs Élysées.
With an affectation of ease and debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs Élysées.
With an affectation of ease and debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs Élysées.
And then Monsieur Bouchard walked in, with an affectation of case and debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs Élysées, whereat it seemed to poor Mademoiselle Céleste as if the Louvre had moved itself over into the Bois de Boulogne and the Seine had suddenly begun to flow backward. Of course, Monsieur Bouchard had arranged a plausible tale by which his hegira was to appear the most natural and laudable thing in the world. Most men are inventive enough in the matter of personal justification. But it is one thing to make up and tell a plausible tale, and another to get that tale believed. Élise openly sniffed at the theory advanced by Monsieur Bouchard that it was absolutely necessary for him to live nearer the courts. Also, that he was really inspired by a desire to save Mademoiselle the annoyance of clients coming and going.
“You remember, my dear Céleste, you complained of Captain de Meneval the last time he was here. You said he talked and laughed so much, and chucked Élise under the chin——”
“But that was a trifle; you know there’s no real harm done,” protested Mademoiselle Bouchard.
“Why? Because I won’t let him,”said Monsieur Bouchard, with the determined air a man assumes when he wishes to impress a woman with a great notion of the power he holds over another man. “It is because he has to deal withme—a man born with his shirt on, as the peasants say. Otherwise, there might be harm done. De Meneval is very saucy. When I reminded him the other day of the promise I exacted from him when he married Léontine, that he wouldn’t go into debt, the fellow grinned and said he was in love with Léontine, and would have promised to eat his grandmother if I had made that a condition.”
“But in reference to this strange notion of yours about taking an apartment at your time of life——”
“That’s just it, my dear,” cried Monsieur Bouchard. “I am too old not to have a separate establishment.”
“Too old!” cried Mademoiselle, who had never ceased to regard themodel Monsieur Bouchard as a wild sprig of flamboyant youth; “you mean too young!”
Monsieur Bouchard was tickled. What gentleman of fifty-four is not pleased at the assumption that he is merely a colt, after all?
Mademoiselle Bouchard anxiously scrutinized her brother. There was a lawless gleam in his eye—an indefinable something that is revealed when a man has the bit between his teeth and does not mean to let it go. Mademoiselle, good, innocent soul, was not devoid of sense, and she saw her only game was to play for time.
“Very well, Paul. If youwilldesert the Rue Clarisse, I will look about and get you an apartment near by, and I will let you have Pierre——”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Monsieur Bouchard, hastily. He had no mind to have a domestic Vidocq in his new quarters. “I couldn’t think of robbing you of Pierre. Thirty years youhave had him. You could not get on without him.”
“Yes, I could.”
“I can’t accept the sacrifice.”
“I make it cheerfully for your sake.”
“It would be cruel to Pierre.”
“Hewill make the sacrifice.”
“That he will,” interrupted Élise, with the freedom of an old servant. “He will caper at the notion of leaving the Rue Clarisse for some wild, dissipated place such as Monsieur Paul has selected.”
“Monsieur Paul has not selected a place, Élise,” replied Mademoiselle, with severity.
“But—but I have, my dear Céleste. It is No. 25 Rue Bassano. I have taken it for a year. In fact, the van is coming to-day for my personal belongings. Pierre will see to them. And, my dear, I have a busy day before me. I am due at the meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians at St. Germains at one o’clock, and I canbarely make the train. Afterward I shall spend some instructive hours in the museum—I shall see you to-morrow—” and Monsieur Bouchard literally ran out of the room.
“There he goes!” apostrophized Élise to Mademoiselle Céleste, who was almost in tears. “That’s the way Pierrot scampered off, and Pierre wants only half a wink to run off, too, to the Rue Bassano.”
“Élise,” cried Mademoiselle, “you are most unjust, and your suspicions of Pierre will be disproved. Ring the bell.”
Pierre appeared.
He was about Monsieur Bouchard’s age, height and size—medium in all respects—clean shaven, like his master, and wore a cast-off suit of Monsieur Bouchard’s, as it was the morning and his livery was religiously saved for the afternoon. He was, in short, a very good replica of Monsieur Bouchard.
Mademoiselle Bouchard stated the case to him, carefully giving Monsieur Paul’s bogus reasons.
“The Rue Bassano is a very gay and noisy place, Pierre, as you know, with a great many theatres and restaurants about, and much passing to and fro. It will be a change from the Rue Clarisse.”
“Mademoiselle, I know it,” Pierre replied, showing the whites of his eyes. “I would much rather remain in this decent, quiet street.”
Mademoiselle turned to Élise with an I-told-you-so air, and said, “No doubt you would, Pierre—a man of your excellent character.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle. The theatres and music halls must be very objectionable—and the restaurants. I suppose the waiters would laugh at me when I went to fetch Monsieur’s dinner of boiled mutton and rice.”
“Yes; but if it were your duty to go with Monsieur?”
“Duty, Mademoiselle, has ever been a sacred word with me. Though but a servant, I have always revered my duty,” replied the virtuous Pierre. He backed and filled for some time longer, as servants commonly do—and as some of their masters and mistresses do sometimes—but finally, in response to Mademoiselle Bouchard’s pleading that he would not desert Monsieur Bouchard at this critical moment in his career, consented to brave the dangers of the gay Rue Bassano. But when Mademoiselle hinted at the horrid possibility that Monsieur Bouchard might be beguiled into sowing a late crop of wild oats, suddenly a grin flashed for a moment on Pierre’s stolid countenance—flashed and disappeared so instantly that Mademoiselle Bouchard was not sure he grinned at all. If he did, however, it must have been at the notion that the staid, the correct Monsieur Bouchard could ever sow wild oats. Mademoiselle Céleste blushed faintlyat the thought that she reckoned such a thing possible.
He stood on one leg, and softly whispered, “Houp-là!”
Pierre then backed out of the door, wiping two imaginary tears from his eyes. Once outside with the door shut, this miscreant did a very strange thing. He stood on one leg, whirled around with the greatest agility for his years, and softly whispered, “Houp-là!”
That very day came the moving. The van arrived, and Monsieur Bouchard’s books, papers and clothes were put into it by Pierre, who seemed to be in the deepest dejection. Mademoiselle gave him minute and tearful directions about Monsieur Paul’s diet, exercise and clothing. He was to see that Monsieur Paul kept regular hours, and was to report in the Rue Clarisse the smallest infraction of the rules of living which might occur in the Rue Bassano; and Pierre promised with a fervor and glibness that would have excited the suspicions of anyone less kindly and simple-minded than good old Mademoiselle. He did indeed awaken a host of doubts in the mind of his faithful Élise, who had not been married for thirty years without finding out a few things about men. And when he wept at telling her good-bye for a single day, she told him not to be shedding any of those crocodile tears around her.
Pierre, mounted on the van thatcarried away Monsieur Bouchard’s belongings, drove off, looking as melancholy as he could; but as soon as he turned the corner he began whistling so merrily that the driver asked him if his uncle hadn’t died and left him some money.
When the Rue Bassano was reached Pierre jumped down and skipped up stairs with the agility of twenty instead of fifty. He was as charmed with Monsieur’s new apartment as Monsieur himself had been. It was so intensely modern. Light everywhere—all sorts of new-fashioned conveniences—nothing in the least like the dismal old Rue Clarisse. And the view from the windows—so very gay! And the noise—so delicious, so intoxicatingly interesting! The sound of rag time music came from the two music halls across the way. Pierre, dropping all pretence of work, was inspired to do thecan-can, whistling and singing meanwhile. The open window provedso attractive that Pierre spent a good part of the time hanging out of it, and only by fits and starts got Monsieur Bouchard’s belongings in place. And the more he saw of the place, the more exuberant was his delight with it, and the more determined he was to stay there. The last tenant—the jolly young journalist named Marsac—had left, as Monsieur Bouchard had noted, some souvenirs on the walls in the shape of gaudy posters and brilliant chromos of ballet girls. These, Pierre might be expected to remove when he began to hang on the walls the severely classic pictures that constituted Monsieur Bouchard’s collection of art. But Pierre seemed to know by clairvoyance Monsieur Bouchard’s latent tastes. He hung “The Coliseum by Moonlight”—a very fine etching—immediately under a red-and-gold young lady who was making a quarter past six with her dainty, uplifted toe. “Socrates and His Pupils” were put where they could getan admirable view of another red-and-gold young lady who was making twelve o’clock meridian as nearly as a human being could. “Kittens at Play”—a great favorite of Mademoiselle’s—was side by side with a picture of Courier, who won the Grand Prix that year, and a very noble portrait of President Loubet was placed next a cut of a celebrated English prize fighter, stripped for the ring. The remainder of the things were neatly arranged; theconcierge, who was to supply Monsieur Bouchard’s meals, was interviewed, and an appetizing dinner ordered. Then Pierre, taking possession of the evening newspaper and also of a very comfortable chair by the window, awaited Monsieur Bouchard’s arrival.
It was a charming evening in the middle of June, and still broad daylight at seven o’clock. But Pierre, presently lighting a lamp and drawing the shades, gave the apartment a homelike and inviting aspect.
Just as the clock struck seven Monsieur Bouchard’s step was heard on the stair. Seven o’clock had been Monsieur Bouchard’s hour of coming home since he was fifteen years old, and he had never varied from it three minutes in thirty-seven years. He entered the drawing-room with a new and jovial air, but when he saw Pierre his countenance turned as black as a thunder-cloud.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, curtly.
“I came, Monsieur, by Mademoiselle’s orders,” civilly replied Pierre.
“Mademoiselle’s orders” was still a phrase to conjure by with Monsieur Bouchard. When the yoke of forty years is thrown off there is still a feeling as if it were bearing on the neck. Monsieur Bouchard threw his gloves crossly on the table and asked for his dinner.
“It will be here in five minutes, Monsieur,” replied Pierre. “Will notMonsieur look about the apartment and see if I have arranged things to suit him? The pictures, for example?”
Monsieur, still sulky, rose, and the first thing his eye fell on was the prize fighter’s portrait under President Loubet’s.
“This is intolerable!” he said, indignantly. “Why didn’t you take this prize-fighting daub down?”
“Because,” readily responded Pierre, “the place where it was would be marked on the wall; and besides, I did not like to take the liberty without Monsieur’s permission.”
Monsieur Bouchard passed on to the next picture, that of the hero of the Grand Prix. He liked horses—in pictures, that is—and really found Courier more to his taste than “Kittens at Play.” His countenance cleared, and when Pierre gravely directed him to the young lady poised on one toe and reaching skyward with the other, a faint smile actually appearedon Monsieur Bouchard’s face. Then, his eye falling on the other young lady who was trying to make twelve o’clock meridian, every wrinkle on his forehead smoothed out, his mouth came open like a rat trap, and he involuntarily assumed an attitude of pleased contemplation, with his hands under his coat tails.
Suddenly, however, it flashed on him that Mademoiselle Bouchard’s paid detective, in the person of Pierre, was eyeing him, and with the quickness of thought Monsieur Bouchard’s appreciative smile gave way to a portentous frown, and turning to Pierre, he said, sternly:
“Take this thing away! It is reprehensible both in art and morals! I can’t have it here!”
But, wonder of wonders! there stood Pierre, his mouth wide open in a silent guffaw, his left eye nearly closed. Was it possible that he was daring to wink at his master? Pierre,however, pretty soon solved the situation by putting his finger on the side of his nose—a shocking familiarity—and saying, roguishly:
Pierre, however, pretty soon solved the situation by putting his finger to the side of his nose
“Ah, sir, I have something to say to you. I was forced, yes, actually driven, from the decorous quiet of the Rue Clarisse and the company of Mademoiselle Bouchard and my worthy Élise and the cats, to this gay localityby my solicitude for Monsieur. That is to say, Mademoiselle thinks I was. One thing is certain—I was sent here to cake care of Monsieur. Well, it depends entirely on Monsieur how I take care of him. Do you understand, sir?”
“N—n—not exactly.” Monsieur Bouchard was a little frightened. Having Pierre to mount guard over him seemed destructive of the harmless liberty and mild gaiety he had promised himself in the Rue Bassano.
“Just this, sir. My wife, I have reason to know, expects Monsieur to watch me and report to her. Mademoiselle expects me to watch Monsieur and report toher. Now, what prevents us from each giving a good account of the other, and meanwhile doing as we please?”
Monsieur for a moment looked indignant at this impudent proposition, coming, too, as it did from a servant whom he had known as the pattern ofdecorum for thirty years. But only for a moment. Was it strange, after all, that thirty years of the Rue Clarisse had bred a spirit of revolt in this hitherto obedient husband and submissive servant?
I like the lively tunes they play at the music halls across the street
Pierre, seeing evidences of yielding on the part of Monsieur, proceeded to clinch the matter.
“You see, sir, I found out you were looking at this apartment. If I had told Mademoiselle what I knew about it there’d have been a pretty kettle of fish. I doubt if Monsieur would have got away from the Rue Clarisse alive. But I didn’t. I concluded the Rue Bassano was a very pleasant place to live. I like the lively tunes they play at the music halls across the street, and that theatre round the corner is convenient. But I never should have got away if I had showed how much I wanted to come. When Mademoiselle proposed it to me, I lied like a trooper. I not only lied, but I cried, at the prospect of leaving the Rue Clarisse. That settled it. A woman is like a pig. If you want to drive her to Orleans, you must head her for Strasburg. So here we are, sir, and if we don’t have a livelier time here than we did in the Rue Clarisse it will be Monsieur’s fault, not mine.”
Monsieur met this outrageous speechby saying, “You are the most impudent, scandalous, scheming, hypocritical rascal I ever met——”
Pierre just then heard sounds in the little lobby which he understood. He ran out and returned with a tray, which he placed on the table, already laid for one. Then, arranging the dishes with a great flourish, he invited Monsieur Bouchard to take his place at the table. Monsieur complied. The first course was oysters—at three francs the dozen. Then there was turtle soup; devilled lobster, ducklingà la Bordelaise—both of which were forbidden in the Rue Clarisse, because Monsieur Bouchard at the age of seven had been made ill by them—and a bottle of champagne, a wine that Mademoiselle had always told her brother was poison to every member of his family.
But Monsieur Bouchard seemed to forget all about this. He ate and drank these things as if he had forgotten all his painful experiences of forty-fiveyears before and as if he had been brought up on champagne.
It was rather pleasant—this first quaff of liberty—having what he liked to eat and drink, and even to wear. He privately determined before finishing his dinner that he would get a new tailor next day and have some clothes made in the latest fashion.
“Have you found out the names of any persons in the house?” asked Monsieur after dinner, lighting a cigar. It was his second; in the Rue Clarisse he was limited to one.
“No one at all, sir,” replied that double-dyed villain, Pierre. “It isn’t judicious to know all sorts of people. I intend to forget some I know.”
Monsieur Bouchard turned in his chair and looked at Pierre; the fellow really seemed changed into another man from what he had been for thirty years. But to Monsieur Bouchard the change was not displeasing. He felt a bond between himself and Pierre,stronger in the last half-hour than in the thirty years they had been master and man. They exchanged looks—it might even be said winks—and Monsieur Bouchard poured out another glass of champagne—his third. And what with the wine and the dinner, he was in that state of exhilaration which the sense of liberty newly acquired always brings.
“Monsieur won’t want me any more to-night?” asked Pierre.
“No,” replied Monsieur Bouchard, “but—be sure to be here at—” he meant to say at ten o’clock that night, but changed his mind and said, “seven o’clock to-morrow morning.”
“Certainly, sir,” answered Pierre. “I expect to be home and in bed before three.”
And he said this with such a debonair manner that Monsieur Bouchard was secretly charmed, and privately determined to acquire something of the same tone.
Pierre gone, Monsieur Bouchard made himself comfortable in an easychair and began toying with a fourth cigar. How agreeable were these modern apartments, after all—everything furnished, every want anticipated—all a tenant had to do was to walk in and hang up his hat. Then his thoughts wandered to that very pretty woman who had travelled in the same train with him that day to St. Germains, and the day before to Verneuil, whither he had gone to look after some property of Léontine’s. Madame Vernet was her name—it was on her travelling bag—and she was a widow—that fact had leaked out ten seconds after he met her. But she was so very demure, so modest, not to say bashful, that she seemed more like a nun than a widow. And so timid—everything frightened her. She trembled when the guard asked her for her ticket, and clung quite desperately to Monsieur Bouchard’s arm in the station at Verneuil.She had expected her aunt and uncle to meet her, and when they were not to be found, blushingly accepted Monsieur Bouchard’s services in getting a cab. And that day, on stepping into the railway carriage to go to St. Germains, there was the dear little diffident thing again. She was charmed to see her friend of the day before, and explained that she was to spend the day with another uncle and aunt she had living at St. Germains. Knowing her inability to care for herself in a crowd, Monsieur Bouchard had meant to put her into a cab, as he had done the day before. But just as the train stopped he was seized by a couple of snuffy old antiquarians and hustled off by them before he could even offer to take charge of the quiet, the retiring, the clinging and helpless Madame Vernet.
Monsieur Bouchard lay back in his chair recalling her prim but pretty gray gown, her fleecy veil of gray gauze, that covered but did not conceal her charmingfeatures, and her extremely natty boots. He could not for the life of him remember whether he had mentioned to her on their first meeting that he was going to St. Germains next day. While he was cogitating this point he was rudely disturbed by the opening of the door, and Captain de Meneval walked in briskly.
Now, this good-looking captain of artillery, who had married Monsieur Bouchard’s ward, Léontine, was not exactly to Monsieur’s taste. It is true he had never been able to find out anything to de Meneval’s discredit—and he had looked pretty closely into the captain’s affairs at the time of Léontine’s marriage. As for Léontine herself, she was devoted to her captain and always represented him as being the kindest as well as the most agreeable of husbands. True, he was always complaining about the modest income that Papa Bouchard allowed them, but Léontine herself was ever doing that, and urged de Menevalon in his complaints. Monsieur Bouchard was a little annoyed at de Meneval’s entrance, especially as the artillery captain had adopted a hail-fellow-well-met air, highly objectionable on the part of a man toward another man who practically holds the purse-strings for number one.
Therefore, Monsieur Bouchard rather stiffly gave Captain de Meneval three fingers and offered him a chair.
“Changed your quarters, eh?” said de Meneval, looking about him. “Found the Rue Clarisse rather slow, and came off here where you can be your own man, so to speak?”
“I was not actuated by any such motive,” coldly replied Monsieur Bouchard. “I came here because the rooms I had in the Rue Clarisse were cramped, and I needed to have more space, as well as to be in a more convenient quarter of Paris.”
De Meneval’s bright eyes had been travelling round the walls, and MonsieurBouchard remembered, with cold chills running up and down his back, the pictures of his predecessor—that scampish young journalist, Marsac—so indiscreetly left hanging by Pierre. A shout of laughter from de Meneval, and a pointing of his stick toward the red-and-gold young ladies, showed Monsieur Bouchard that his apprehensions were not unfounded.
“Is that your selection, Papa Bouchard?” cried the reprobate captain. “Never saw them before—you must have kept them in hiding in the Rue Clarisse. I’ll tell Léontine,” and the captain laughed loudly.
He had a great haw-haw of a laugh that had always been particularly annoying to Monsieur Bouchard, and this thing of calling him “Papa” Bouchard was an unwarrantable liberty. So he replied, freezingly:
“You are altogether mistaken. These extraordinary prints were left here by my predecessor, a very wildyoung journalist—I believe most young journalists are very wild—and they come down to-morrow. It would seriously disturb me to have those ballet pictures around.”
“Well, now,” said de Meneval, with an unabashed front, “I think you are too hard on the poor girls. I have known a good many of them in my life—taken them to little suppers, you know—and generally they’re very hard-working, decent girls. Some of them have a husband and children to help to support. Others have dependent parents. They’re unconventional—very—and like to eat and drink at somebody else’s expense, but that’s no great harm. Plenty of other people in much higher walks of life do the same.”
“I don’t care to discuss ballet girls with you, Monsieur de Meneval,” remarked Monsieur Bouchard, with great dignity.
“But I want to discuss them withyou,” answered de Meneval, with whatMonsieur Bouchard thought most improper levity and familiarity. “That’s what I came to you this evening about. That’s why I have been haunting the Rue Clarisse during the last ten days, trying to see you alone.”
“Yes. I know that I have been honored with a good many cards of yours. Also of Léontine’s.”
“Oh, Léontine! You may be sure she does not come on the errand that brings me. While she feels the narrowness of our income as much as I do, she manages to live within her allowance, and I don’t believe owes a franc in the world. But, Papa Bouchard, to come to business——”
De Meneval paused. He had a good deal of courage, but the stony silence with which his confidences were met would have disconcerted an ogre.
“Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said Monsieur Bouchard, icily.
“I’m going on. You see, it is just this way—that is—” de Menevalfloundered—“as I was going to say—Léontine, you know, is perfect—it really is touching to see how she bears our enforced but unnecessary poverty. I wish I could do as well.”
Here de Meneval came to a dead stop, and Monsieur Bouchard, by way of encouraging him, repeated, in the same tone:
“Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
“But Ican’tgo on with you fixing that basilisk glare on me,” cried de Meneval, rising and walking about excitedly. “I believe, if you say, ‘Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine,’ to me again, I’ll do something desperate—smash the mirror with my stick, or turn on the fire alarm. I assure you, Monsieur Bouchard, I am still a respectable member of society. I don’t beat my wife or cheat at cards, and I have never committed a felony in my life.”
“Glad to hear it,” was Papa Bouchard’s fatherly reception of this speech.
De Meneval, after walking once ortwice up and down the room, succeeded in mastering his indignation, and sat quietly down in the chair he had just vacated, facing Monsieur Bouchard, and then, still floundering awkwardly, managed to say:
“I—I—am very much in want—I am, at present—in short, I am in the most unpleasant predicament.” And then he mumbled, “Money.”
“So I knew the moment you entered this room,” was Monsieur Bouchard’s rejoinder.
“Then, sir,” said de Meneval, recovering his spirits now that the murder was out, “I wish you had said so in the beginning. It would have saved me a very bad quarter of an hour.”
“Young man,” severely replied Monsieur Bouchard, “I had not the slightest wish to save you a bad quarter of an hour.”
“So it seems; but I will tell you just how it stands. You know I am stationed at Melun——”
“I have known that fact ever since I knew you.”
“Very well, sir. There is a music hall at Melun—the Pigeon House—with a garden back of it, kept by one Michaux, a rascal, if ever I saw one. Now, it’s very dull at Melun the evenings I am on duty and can’t get back to Léontine in Paris, and it’s a small place, and quite naturally, when one hears the music going at the Pigeon House, and sees the lights flashing and the people eating and drinking under the trees on the terrace garden, it’s quite natural, I say, to drop in there for the evening.”
“Quite natural for you, sir. Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
De Meneval restrained his impulse to brain Monsieur Bouchard, sitting so sternly and primly before him, and kept on:
And the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes, to have an ice or a glass of wineAnd the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes, to have an ice or a glass of wine.
And the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes, to have an ice or a glass of wine.
And the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes, to have an ice or a glass of wine.
“Then there is the garden—jolly place, with electric lights—where you can get a pretty fair meal. It is quiteunique—nothing like it in Paris or anywhere else that I can think of, and I’ve seen a good many—” here de Meneval hastily checked himself. “It’s quite the thing to give suppers to the young ladies of the ballet—and some of them are not so young, either—in the gardens. The proprietor, of course, encourages it, and the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes to have an ice or a glass of wine. All the fellows in my regiment do it; it’s considered quite the thing, and their mothers and sisters come out to the Pigeon House to see them do it. If it wasn’t for the support given the place by the garrison it would have to close up, and then Melun would be duller than ever. The Pigeon House is unconventional, but perfectly respectable.”
“Possibly,” drily replied Monsieur Bouchard, “but not probably.”
“Good heavens, sir! you are mistaken. Léontine has been teasing mefor a month past to take her out there to supper some evening, and I’ve promised to do so this very next week. Do you think I’d take my wife to any place that wasn’t respectable?”
De Meneval was getting warm over this, and Monsieur Bouchard was forced to admit that he supposed the Pigeon Housewasrespectable.
“But that doesn’t prevent these jolly little suppers to the young ladies of the ballet, and especially those given to them by the officers. I assure you it is mere harmless eating and drinking. The poor girls have to work hard, and when they get through of an evening I dare say very few of them have two francs to buy something to eat. So a number of us have got into the way of giving these poor souls supper after the performance. Even Major Fallière goes to these suppers, and you know his nickname in the regiment.”
“No, I know of him only as a very correct, middle-aged man. I wish youhad the same sort of reputation as Major Fallière.”
“Well, he is called by the juniors old P. M. P.—that is to say, the Pink of Military Propriety. And Fallière is my chum, andhegoes to these little suppers.”
De Meneval brought this out with an air of triumph, but Monsieur Bouchard remained coldly unresponsive, and then de Meneval let the cat out of the bag.
“And I say, Monsieur Bouchard, the proprietor of the Pigeon House sent me in my account the other day—nineteen hundred francs nineteen centimes—and I haven’t got the money to pay it.”
De Meneval lay back and waited for the explosion. Monsieur Bouchard started from his chair, bawling:
“Nineteen hundred francs! And you no doubt expect me to pay it out of your wife’s income! I wonder what Léontine would say to this!”
“That’s just what I’ve been wondering, too,” replied de Meneval, somewhat dolefully. “Léontine is the dearest girl in the world, but she is a woman, after all. I can prove to her that I have never given a franc’s worth to any other woman, except something to eat and drink, but all the same I’d just as soon she would think I spent my Melun evenings sitting in my quarters, with her picture before me and reading up on ballistics, as an artillery officer should.”
“And would you deliberately impose on her innocence in this respect?” asked Monsieur Bouchard, indignantly.
“My dear sir,” calmly replied de Meneval, “you have never been married. If you had, you would not talk about a man’s imposing on his wife’s innocence. Love is clairvoyant, and most men know what their wives wish to believe, and gratify them accordingly. It’s a very complex subject, and needs to be dealt with intelligently.”
“I think our standard of intelligence is not the same,” grimly responded Monsieur Bouchard. “But when I tell Léontine about this nineteen hundred francs due at the Pigeon House, I trust she will be able to deal with you intelligently.”
“I am afraid she will,” replied de Meneval, with some anxiety; “but after it’s paid I know I can persuade her that it was not the least actual harm—just a little lark in the way of killing time.”
“And may I ask, since you speak so confidently of its being paid, whom do you expect to pay it?”
“You, sir, of course,” replied de Meneval, taking a cigar out of Monsieur Bouchard’s case.
Papa Bouchard jumped as if a hornet had stung him. “I, sir? Since you have assumed this modest expectation, perhaps you anticipate that I will pay it out of my private income?”
“Oh, no, I mean out of my wife’sincome,” replied de Meneval, puffing away at his cigar.
“You are too modest, Monsieur le Capitaine. Now let me tell you this—you misunderstood your customer in bringing this outrageous bill to me, and it won’t be paid. I have a sincere affection for Léontine, and I don’t intend to let any captain of artillery in the French army, husband or no husband, make ducks and drakes of her money.”
Papa Bouchard leaned back, folded his arms and looked the embodiment of statuesque determination. Captain de Meneval puffed a while longer at his cigar, and then rose. There was resolution, as if he still held a trump card to play, written on his countenance.
“Very well, Monsieur Bouchard,” he said, readjusting the blossom in his buttonhole. “I am sorry you are so unyielding. You didn’t ask me if I was prepared to offer any security that the loan would be repaid. If you had I should have given you this.”
De Meneval pulled from his pocket a glittering string of diamonds, every stone glittering like a star.