Your loving brother,Abel de Freydet.
I have opened my letter again to say that the morning papers announce the death of Loisillon. The stroke of fate is always affecting, even when fully expected. What a sad event! What a loss to French literature! And unhappily, dear, it will keep me here still longer. Please pay the labourers. More news soon.
DESTINY had willed that Loisillon, fortunate always, should be fortunate in dying at the right moment. A week later, when houses were closed, society broken up, the Chamber and the Institute not sitting, his funeral train would have been composed of Academicians attentive to their tallies, followed only by deputies from the numerous societies of which he was Secretary or President. But business-like to the last and after, he went off to the moment, just before the Grand Prix, choosing a week entirely blank, when, as there was no crime, or duel, or interesting lawsuit, or political event, the sensational obsequies of the Permanent Secretary would be the only pastime of the town.
The funeral mass was to be at twelve o’clock, and long before that hour an immense crowd was gathering round St. Germain des Prés. The traffic was stopped, and no carriages but those of persons invited were allowed to pass within the rails, strictly kept by a line of policemen posted at intervals. Who Loisillon was, what he had done in his seventy years’ sojourn among mankind, what was the meaning of the capital letter embroidered in silver on the funeral drapery, was known to but few in the crowd. The one thing which struck them was the arrangement of the protecting line, and the large space left to the dead, distance, room, and emptiness being the constant symbols of respect and grandeur. It had been understood that there would be a chance of seeing actresses and persons of notoriety, and the cockneys at a distance were putting names to the faces they recognised among the groups conversing in front of the church.
There, Under the Black-draped Porch 164
There, under the black-draped porch, was the place for hearing the true funeral oration on Loisillon, quite other than that which was to be delivered presently at Mont Parnasse, and the true article on the man and his work, very different from the notices ready for to-morrow’s newspapers. His work was a ‘Journey in Val d’Andorre,’ and two reports published at the National Press, relating to the time when he was Superintendent at the Beaux-Arts. The man was a sort of shrewd attorney, creeping and cringing, with a permanent bow and an apologetic attitude, which seemed to ask your pardon for his decorations, your pardon for his insignia, your pardon for his place in the Académie—where his experience as a man of business was useful in fusing together a number of different elements, with none of which he could well have been classed—your pardon for the amazing success which had raised so high such a worthless winged grub. It was remembered that at an official dinner he had said of himself complacently, as he bustled round the table with a napkin on his arm, ‘What an excellent servant I should have made!’ And it might have been written on his tomb.
And while they moralised upon the nothingness of his life, his corpse, the remains of nothing, was receiving the honours of death. Carriage after carriage drew up at the church; liveries brown and liveries blue came and disappeared; long-frocked footmen bowed to the pavement with a pompous banging of doors and steps; the groups of journalists respectfully made way, now for the Duchess Padovani, stately and proud, now for Madame Ancelin, blooming in her crape, now for Madame Eviza, whose Jewish eyes shone through her veil with blaze enough to attract a constable—all the ladies of the Académie, assembled in full congregation to practise their worship, not so much by a service to the memory of Loisillon, as by contemplation of their living idols, the ‘deities’ made and fashioned by the cunning of their little hands, the work upon which, as women, they had employed the superabundance of their energy, artfulness, ambition, and pride. Some actresses had come too, on the pretext that the deceased had been the president of some sort of Actors’ Orphanage, but moved in reality by the frantic determination ‘not to be out of it,’ which belongs to their class. Their expressions of woe were such that they might have been taken for near relations. A carriage suddenly drawing up set down a distracted group of black veils, whose sorrow was distressing to witness. The widow, at last? No, it is Marguerite Oger, the great sensational actress, whose appearance excites all round the square a prolonged stir and much pushing about. From the porch a journalist ran forward to meet her, and taking her hands besought her to bear up. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I ought to be calm; I will,’ Whereupon, drying her tears and forcing them back with her handkerchief, she entered, or it should rather be said ‘went on,’ into the darkness of the nave, with its background of glimmering tapers, fell down before a desk on the ladies’ side in a prostration of self-abandonment, and rising with a sorrowful air said to another actress at her side, ‘How much did they take at the Vaudeville last night?’ ‘168L. 18s.,’ answered her friend, with the same accent of grief.
Lost in the crowd at the edge of the square, Abel de Freydet heard the people round him say, ‘It’s Marguerite. How well she did it!’ But being a small man, he was trying in vain to make his way, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder. ‘What, still in Paris? It must be a trial for your poor sister,’ said Védrine, as he carried him along. Working his way with his strong elbows through the stream of people who only came up to his shoulder, and saying occasionally, ‘Excuse me, gentlemen—members of the family,’ he brought to the front with him his country friend, who, though delighted at the meeting, felt some embarrassment, as the sculptor talked after his fashion, freely and audibly. ‘Bless me, what luck Loisillon has! Why there weren’t more people for Béranger. This is the sort of thing to keep a young man’s pecker up.’ Here Freydet, seeing the hearse approaching, took off his hat. ‘Good gracious, what have you done to your head? Turn round. Why you look like Louis Philippe!’ The poet’s moustache was turned down, his hair brushed forward, and his pleasant face showed its complexion of ruddy brown between whiskers touched with grey. He drew up his short figure with a stiff dignity, whereat Védrine laughing said, ‘Ah, I see. Made up for the grandees at Chantilly? So you are still bent upon the Académie! Why, just look at the exhibition yonder.’
In the sunlight and on the broad enclosure the official attendants immediately behind the hearse made a shocking show. Chance might seem to have chosen them for a wager among the most ridiculous seniors in the Institute, and they looked especially-ugly in the uniform designed by David, the coat embroidered with green, the hat, the Court sword, beating against legs for which the designer was certainly not responsible. First came Gazan; his hat was tilted awry by the bumps of his skull, and the vegetable green of the coat threw into relief the earthy colour and scaly texture of his elephantine visage. At his side was the grim tall Laniboire with purple apoplectic veins and a crooked mouth. His uniform was covered by an overcoat whose insufficient length left visible the end of his sword and the tails of the frock, and gave him an appearance certainly much less dignified than that of the marshal with his black rod, who walked before. Those that followed, such as Astier-Réhu and Desminières, were all embarrassed and uncomfortable, all acknowledged by their apologetic and self-conscious bearing the absurdity of their disguise, which, though it might pass in the chastened light of their historic dome, seemed amid the real life of the street not less laughable than a show of monkeys. ‘I declare one would like to throw some nuts to see if they would go after them on all fours,’ said Freydet’s undesirable companion. But Freydet did not catch the impertinent remark. He slipped away, mixed with the procession, and entered the church between two files of soldiers with arms reversed. He was in his heart profoundly glad that Loisillon was dead. He had never seen or known him; he could not love him for his work’s sake, as he had done no work; and the only thing for which he could thank him was that he had left his chair empty at such a convenient moment. But he was impressed notwithstanding. The funeral pomp to which custom makes the old Parisian indifferent, the long line of knapsacks, the muskets that fell on the flags with a single blow (at the command of a boyish little martinet, with a stock under-his chin, who was probably performing on this occasion his first military duty), and, above all, the funeral music and the muffled drums, filled him with respectful emotion: and as always happened when he felt keenly, rimes began to rise. He had actually got a good beginning, presenting a grand picture of the storm and electric agitation and mental eclipse produced in the atmosphere of a nation when one of its great men disappears. But he broke off his thoughts to make room for Danjou, who, having arrived very late, pushed on amid the looks and whispers of the ladies, gazing about him coldly and haughtily and passing his hand over his head as he habitually does, doubtless to ascertain the safety of his back hair.
‘He did not recognise me,’ thought Freydet, hurt by the crushing glance with which the Academician relegated to the ranks the nobody who had ventured to greet him; ‘it’s my whiskers, I suppose.’ The interruption turned the thoughts of the candidate from his verses, and he began to consider his plan of operations, his calls, his official announcement to the Permanent Secretary. But what was he thinking of? The Permanent Secretary was dead! Would Astier-Réhu be appointed before the vacation? And when would the election be? He proceeded to consider all the ‘details, down to his coat. Should he go to Astier’s tailor now? And did the tailor supply also the hat and sword?
Pie Jesu, Domine, sang a voice behind the altar, the swelling notes of an opera singer, asking repose for Loisillon, whom it might be thought the Divine Mercy had destined to special torment, for all through the church, loud and soft, in every variety of voice, solo and in unison, came the supplication for ‘repose, repose.’ Ah, let him sleep quietly after his many years of turmoil and intrigue! The solemn stirring chant was answered in the nave by women’s sobbing, above which rose the tragic convulsive gasp of Marguerite Oger, the gasp so impressive in the fourth act of ‘Musidora.’ All this lamentation touched the kind-hearted candidate and linked itself in his feelings to other lamentations and other sorrows. He thought of relatives who had died, and of his sister who had been a mother to him, and who was now given up by all the doctors, and knew it, and spoke of it in every letter. Ah! would she live even to see the day of his success? Tears blinded him, and he was obliged to wipe his eyes.
‘Don’t come it too strong, it won’t seem genuine,’ said the sneering voice of fat Lavaux, grinning close at his ear. He turned round angrily; but here the young officer gave at stentorian pitch the command ‘Carry—arms!’ and the bayonets rattled on the muskets while the muffled tones of the organ rolled out the ‘Dead March.’ The procession began to form for leaving the church, headed as before by Gazan, Laniboire, Desminières, and Freydet’s old master, Astier-Réhu. They all looked superb now, the parrot green of their laced coats being subdued by the dim religious light of the lofty building as they walked down the central aisle, two and two, slowly, as if loth to reach the great square of daylight seen through the open doors. Behind came the whole Society, headed by its senior member, the wonderful old Jean Réhu, looking taller than ever in a long coat, and holding up the little brown head, carved, one might fancy, out of a cocoa-nut, with an air of contemptuous indifference telling that ‘this was a thing he had seen’ any number of times before. Indeed in the course of the sixty years during which he had been in receipt of the tallies of the Académie, he must have heard many such funeral chants, and sprinkled much holy water on illustrious biers.
But if Jean Réhu was a ‘deity,’ whose miraculous immortality justified the name, it could only be applied in mockery to the band of patriarchs who followed him. Decrepit, bent double, gnarled as old apple trees, with feet of lead, limp legs, and blinking owlish eyes, they stumbled along, either supported on an arm or feeling their way with outstretched hands; and their names whispered by the crowd recalled works long dead and forgotten. Beside such ghosts as these, ‘on furlough from the cemetery,’ as was remarked by a smart young soldier in the guard of honour, the rest of the Academicians seemed young. They posed and strutted before the delighted eyes of the ladies, whose bright gleams reached them through the black veils, the ranks of the crowd, and the cloaks and knapsacks of the bewildered soldiers. On this occasion again Freydet, bowing to two or three ‘future colleagues,’ encountered cold or contemptuous smiles, like those which a man sees when he dreams that his dearest friends have forgotten him. But he had not time to be depressed, being caught and turned about by the double stream which moved up the church and towards the door.
‘Well, my lord, you will have to be stirring now,’ was the advice of friendly Picheral, whispered in the midst of the hubbub and the scraping of chairs. It sent the candidate’s blood tingling through his veins. But just as he passed before the bier Danjou muttered, without looking at him, as he handed him the holy-water brush, ‘Whatever you do, be quiet, and let things slide.’ His knees shook beneath him. Bestir yourself! Be quiet! Which advice was he to take? Which was the best? Doubtless his master, Astier, would tell him, and he tried to reach him outside the church. It was no easy task in the confusion of the court, where they were forming the procession, and lifting the coffin under its heap of countless wreaths. Never was a scene more lively than this coming out from the funeral into the brilliant daylight; everywhere people were bowing and talking gossip quite unconnected with the ceremony, while the bright expression on every face showed the reaction after a long hour’s sitting still and listening to melancholy music. Plans were made, meetings arranged; the hurrying stream of life, stopped for a brief while, impatiently resumed its course, and poor Loisillon was left far behind in the past to which he belonged.
‘At the Français to-night, don’t forget; it’s the last Tuesday,’ simpered Madame Ancelin, while Paul said to Lavaux, ‘Are you going to see it through?’
‘No; I’m taking Madame Eviza home.’
‘Then come to Keyser’s at six. We shall want freshening after the speeches.’
The mourning coaches were drawing up one after the other, while the private carriages set off at a trot. People were leaning out of all the windows in the square, and over towards the Boulevard Saint-Germain men standing on the stationary tramcars showed tier after tier of heads rising in dark relief against the blue sky. Freydet, dazzled by the sun, tilted his hat over his eyes and looked at the crowd, which reached as far as he could see. He felt proud, transferring to the Académie the posthumous glory which certainly could not be ascribed to the author of the ‘Journey in Val d’Andorre,’ though at the same time he was distressed at noticing that his dear ‘future colleagues’ obviously kept him at a distance, became meditative when he drew near, or turned away, making little groups to keep out the intruder. And these were the very men who only two days ago at Voisin’s had said to him, ‘When are you going to join us?’ But the heaviest blow was the desertion of Astier-Réhu.
‘What a calamity, sir!’ said Freydet, coming up to him and putting on a doleful expression for the purpose of saying something sympathetic. Astier-Réhu, standing by the hearse, made no answer, but went on turning over the leaves of the oration he would shortly have to deliver. ‘What a calamity!’ repeated Freydet.
‘My dear Freydet, you are indecent,’ said his master, roughly, in a loud voice. And with one harsh snap of the jaw he betook himself again to his reading.
Indecent! What did he mean? The poor man looked himself over, but could find no explanation of the reproach. What was the matter? What had he done?
For some minutes he was quite dazed. Vaguely he saw the hearse start under its shaking pyramid of flowers, with green coats at the four corners, more green coats behind, then all the Society, and immediately following, but at a respectful distance, another group, in which he found himself involved and carried along he knew not how. Young men, old men, all terribly gloomy and depressed, all marked on the brow with the same deep furrow, set there by one fixed idea, all expressing with their eyes the same hatred and distrust of their neighbours. When he had got over his discomfiture, and was able to identify these persons, he recognised the faded, hopeless face of old Moser, the candidate everlasting; the honest expression of Dalzon, the author of ‘that book,’ who had failed at the last election; and de Salêles!—and Guérineau!—Why, they were the ‘fish in tow’! They were the men about whom the Académie ‘does not trouble itself,’ whom it leaves, hanging on to a strong hook, to be drawn along in the wake of the ship of fame. There they all were—all of them, poor drowned fish!—some dead and under the water; others still struggling, turning up sad and greedy eyes full of an eager craving, never to be appeased. And while he vowed to himself to avoid a similar fate, Abel de Freydet followed the bait and dragged at the line, too firmly struck already to get himself free.
Far away, along the line cleared for the procession, muffled drums alternated with the blast of trumpets, bringing crowds of bystanders on the pavement and heads to every window. Then the music again took up the long-drawn strains of the Hero’s March. In the presence of so impressive a tribute as this national funeral, this proud protest on the part of humanity, crushed and overcome by death but decking defeat in magnificence, it was hard to realise that all this pomp was for Loisillon, Permanent Secretary of the Académie Française—for nothing, servant to nothing.
EVERY day between four and six, earlier or later according to the time of year, Paul Astier came to take hisdoucheat Keyser’s hydropathic establishment at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré Twenty minutes’ fencing, boxing, or single-stick followed by a bath and a colddouche; then a little halt at the flower-shop, as he came out, to have a carnation stitched in his buttonhole; then a constitutional as far as the Arc de l’Etoile, Stenne and the phaeton following close to the footway. Finally came a turn in the Bois, where Paul, thanks to his observance of fashionable hygiene, displayed a feminine delicacy of colouring and a complexion rivalling any lady’s. By this visit to Keyser’s he also saved himself the trouble of reading the papers. Gossip went on between one dressing-room and another, or on the lounges of the fencing-room, where the visitors sat in fencing dress or flannel dressing-gowns, or even outside the doctor’s door while awaiting thedouche. From clubs, drawing-rooms, the Chamber, the Bourse, or the Palais de Justice came in the news of the day, and there it was proclaimed freely in loud tones, to the accompaniment of the clashing of swords and sticks, shouts for the waiter, resounding slaps on bare backs, creaking of wheel-chairs for rheumatic patients, heavy plunges re-echoing under the reverberating roof of the swimming-bath, while above the various sounds of splashing and spurting water rose the voice of worthy Dr. Keyser, standing on his platform, and the ever-recurring burden, ‘Turn round.’
On this occasion Paul Astier was ‘turning round’ under the refreshing shower with great enjoyment; he was getting rid of the dust and fatigue of his wearisome afternoon, as well as of the lugubrious sonorities of Astier-Réhu’s Academic regret ‘His hour sounded upon the bell’... ‘the hand of Loisillon was cold’... ‘he had drained the cup of happiness’... &c, &c. Oh Master! Master! oh, respected papa! It took a good deal of water, showers, streams, floods of it, to wash off all that grimy rubbish.
Passed a Tall Figure Bent Double 182
As he went away with the water running off him, he passed a tall figure bent double, coming up from the swimming bath, which gave him a shivering nod from under a huge gutta-percha cap covering the head and half the face. The man’s lean pallor and stiff stooping walk made Paul take him for one of the poor invalids who attend the establishment regularly, and whose apparition, silent as night-birds in the fencing-room where they come to be weighed, contrasts so strangely with the healthy laughter and superabundant vigour of the rest of the company. But the contemptuous curve of the large nose and the weary lines round the mouth vaguely recalled some face he knew in society. In his dressing-room he asked the man who was shampooing him, ‘Who was that, Raymond, who bowed to me just now?’
‘Why, that’s the Prince d’Athis, sir,’ replied Raymond, with a plebeian’s satisfaction in uttering the word ‘prince.’ ‘He has been takingdouchesfor some time past, and generally comes in the morning. But he is later to-day, on account of a burial, so he told Joseph.’
The door of Paul’s dressing-room was partly open during this dialogue, and in the room on the opposite side of the passage was visible La vaux. As he pulled on and buckled his long clerical hose, he said, ‘I say, Paul, did you see Sammy coming to freshen himself up a bit?’
‘Freshen himself up?’ said Paul. ‘What for?’
‘He’s going to be married in a fortnight, you know.’
‘Oh! And when does he go to his Embassy?’
‘Why, now, at once. The Princess has started. They are to be married out there.’
Paul had a horrid presentiment. ‘The Princess?’ he asked. ‘Whom is he going to marry?’
‘Where have you been? It’s been the talk of Paris for the last two days! Colette, of course; Colette the inconsolable. I should like to see what the Duchess looks like. At the Loisillon affair she carried herself well, but never lifted her veil or spoke a word. It’s a tough bit to swallow, eh? When you think that only yesterday I was helping her to choose materials for the room he was to have at St. Petersburg!’
The ill-natured unctuous voice of the fashionable scandalmonger went on with the story as he finished buckling his garters, accompanied by the sound of adouchetwo boxes off, and the Prince’s voice saying, ‘Harder, Joseph, harder, don’t be afraid.’ Freshening himself up, was he?
Paul had crossed the passage as soon as Lavaux began to talk, that he might hear better. He was seized with a wild desire to kick in the door of the Prince’s room, spring on him, and have an explanation face to face with the scoundrel who was stealing the fortune almost in his grasp. Suddenly he perceived that he had nothing on, reflected that his wrath was ill-timed, and went back to his room, where he calmed down a little as he realised that the first thing to do was to have a talk with his mother and find out exactly how matters stood.
That afternoon, for once, he had no flower in his buttonhole, and while, as the stream of carriages went past, the ladies looked languidly for the charming young man in the usual row, he was driving rapidly to the Rue de Beaune. There he was greeted by Corentine with bare arms and a dirty apron. She had taken the opportunity of her mistress’s absence to have a great clean-up.
‘Do you know where my mother is dining?’
No, her mistress had not told her. But the master was upstairs, rummaging in his papers. The little staircase leading to the paper-room creaked under Léonard Astier’s heavy tread.
‘Is that you, Paul?’ he asked.
The dim light of the passage and his own agitation prevented the young man from noticing his father’s extraordinary appearance and the dazed sound of his voice when he answered.
‘How’s the Master?’ said the son—‘So mamma’s not in?’
‘No, she is dining with Madame Ancelin and going on to the Français; I am to join them in the evening.’
After this the father and son had nothing further to say to each other. They met like two strangers, like two men of hostile races. On this occasion, indeed, Paul in his impatience was half inclined to ask Leonard whether he knew anything about the marriage; but he thought the next minute, ‘No, he is too stupid; mother would never say a word to him.’ His father, who was also strongly tempted to put a question, called him back with an air of embarrassment.
‘Paul,’ he said, ‘I have lost—I can’t find——’
‘Can’t find what?’ asked the son.
Astier-Réhu hesitated a moment; but after looking closely at the pretty face, whose expression, on account of the bend in the nose, was never perfectly straightforward, he added in a gloomy, surly tone—
‘No, nothing; it does not matter. I won’t keep you.’
There was nothing for it but to meet his mother at the theatre in Madame Ancelin’s box. That meant two or three hours to be got through first. Paul dismissed his carriage and ordered Stenne to bring him his dress things at his club. Then he started for a stroll through the city in a faint twilight, while the clipped shrubs of the Tuileries Gardens assumed brighter colours as the sky grew dark around them. It was the mystic hour so precious to people pursuing dreams or making plans. The carriages grow fewer, the shadowy figures hurry by and touch the stroller lightly. There is no interruption to the flow of a man’s thoughts. So the ambitious young fellow, who had quite recovered his presence of mind, carried on his reflections clearly. His thoughts were like those of Napoleon at the last hour of the battle of Waterloo: after a long day of success defeat had come with night. What was the reason? What mistake had he made? He replaced the pieces on the chessboard, and looked for the explanation of failure, but in vain. It had perhaps been rash of him to let two days pass without seeing her. But it was the most elementary rule that after such a scene as that in the cemetery a woman should be left to herself to recover. How was he to foresee this sudden flight? Suddenly a hope flashed upon him. He knew that the Princess changed her plan as often as a bird its perch. Perhaps she might not yet have gone; perhaps he should find her in the midst of preparations, unhappy, undecided, asking Herbert’s portrait for advice, and should win her back by one embrace. He understood and could follow now all the capricious turns of the romance which had been going on in her little head.
He took a cab to the Rue de Courcelles. Nobody there. The Princess had gone abroad, they told him, that very morning. A terrible fit of despair came over him, and he went home instead of to the club, so as not to have to talk and answer questions. His spirits sank even lower at the sight of his great mediaeval erection and its front, in the style of theTour de la Faim, all covered with bills; it suggested the piles of overdue accounts. As he felt his way in, he was greeted by a smell of fried onions filling the whole place; for his spruce little valet on nights when his master dined at the club would cook himself a tasty dish. A gleam of daylight still lingered in the studio, and Paul flung himself down on a sofa. There, as he was trying to think by what ill-luck his artfullest, cleverest designs had been upset, he fell asleep for a couple of hours and woke up another man. Just as memory gains in sharpness during the sleep of the body, so had his determination and talent for intrigue gone on acting during his short rest. He had found a new plan, and moreover a calm fixity of resolution, such as among the modern youth of France is very much more rarely met with than courage under arms.
He dressed rapidly and took a couple of eggs and a cup of tea; and when, with a faint odour of the warm curling-iron about his beard and moustaches, he entered the Théâtre Français and gave Madame Ancelin’s name at the box-office, the keenest observer would have failed to detect any absorbing preoccupation in the perfect gentleman of fashion, and would never have guessed the contents of this pretty drawing-room article, black-and-white lacquered, and well locked.
Madame Ancelin’s worship of official literature had two temples, the Académie Française and the Comédie Française. But the first of these places being open to the pious believer only at uncertain periods, she made the most of the second, and attended its services with great regularity. She never missed a ‘first night,’ whether important or unimportant, nor any of the Subscribers’ Tuesdays. And as she read no books but those stamped with the hall-mark of the Académie, so the actors at the Comédie were the only players to whom she listened with enthusiasm, with excited ejaculations and rapturous amazement. Her exclamations began at the box-office, at the sight of the two great marble fonts, which the good lady’s fancy had set up before the statues of Rachel and Talma in the entrance to the ‘House of Molière.’
‘Don’t they look after it well? Just look at the door-keepers! What a theatre it is!’
The jerky movements of her short arms and the puffing of her fat little body diffused through the passage a sense of noisy gleefulness which made people say in every box, ‘Here’s Madame Ancelin!’ On Tuesdays especially, the fashionable indifference of the house contrasted oddly with the seat where, in supreme content, leaning half out of the box, sat and cooed this good plump pink-eyed pigeon, piping away audibly, ‘Look at Coquelin! Look at De-launay! What perennial youth! What an admirable theatre!’ She never allowed her friends to talk of anything else, and in theentr’actesgreeted her visitors with exclamations of rapture over the genius of the Academic playwright and the grace of the Actress-Associate.
At Paul Astier’s entrance the curtain was up; and knowing that the ritual of Madame Ancelin required absolute silence at such a time, he waited quietly in the little room, separated by a step from the front of the box, where Madame Ancelin was seated in bliss between Madame Astier and Madame Eviza, while behind were Danjou and De Freydet looking like prisoners. The click, which the box-door made and must make in shutting, was followed by a ‘Hush!’ calculated to appal the intruder who was disturbing the service. Madame Astier half turned round, and felt a shiver at the sight of her son. What was the matter? What had Paul to say to her of such pressing importance as to bring him to that haunt of boredom—Paul, who never let himself be bored without a reason? Money again, no doubt, horrid money! Well, fortunately she would soon have plenty; Sammy’s marriage would make them all rich. Much as she longed to go up to Paul and reassure him with the good news, which perhaps he had not heard, she was obliged to stay in her seat, look on at the play, and join as chorus in her hostess’s exclamations, ‘Look at Coquelin! Look at De-launay! Oh! Oh!’ It was a hard trial to her to have to wait So it was to Paul, who could see nothing but the glaring heat of the footlights, and in the looking-glass at the side the reflection of part of the house, stalls, dress-circle, boxes, rows of faces, pretty dresses, bonnets, all as it were drowned in a blue haze, and presenting the colourless ghostly appearance of things dimly seen under water. During theentr’actecame the usual infliction of indiscriminate praise.
‘Monsieur Paul! Di’ y’ see Reichemberg’s dress? Di’ y’ see the pink-bead apron? and the ribbon ruching? Di’ y’ see? This is the only place where they know how to dress, that it is!’
Visitors began to come, and the mother was able to get hold of her son and carry him off to the sofa. There, in the midst of wraps and the bustle of people going out, they spoke in low voices with their heads close together.
‘Answer me quickly and clearly,’ began Paul ‘Is Sammy going to be married?’
‘Yes, the Duchess heard yesterday. But she has come here to-night all the same. Corsican pride!’
‘And whom has he caught? Can you tell me now?’
‘Why, Colette, of course! You must have had a suspicion.’
‘Not the least,’ said Paul. ‘And what shall you get for it?’
She murmured triumphantly, ‘Eight thousand pounds!’
Well, by Your Schemes I Have Lost a Million 192
‘Well, by your schemes I have lost a million!—a million, and a wife!’ He grasped her by the wrists in his anger, and hissed into her face, ‘You selfish marplot!’
The news took away her breath and her senses. It was Paul then, Paul, from whom proceeded the force which acted, as she had occasionally perceived, against her influence; it was Paul whom the little fool was thinking of when she said, sobbing in her arms, ‘If you only knew!’ And now, just at the end of the mines which with so much cunning and skilful patience they had each been driving towards the treasure, one last stroke of the axe had brought them face to face, empty-handed! They sat silent, looking at each other, with corresponding crooks in their noses and the same fierce gleam in both pairs of grey eyes, while all around them were the stir of people coming and going and the buzz of conversation. Rigid indeed is the discipline of society, seeing that it could repress in these two creatures all the cries and groans, all the desire to roar and slay, which filled and shook their hearts. Madame Astier was the first to express her thoughts aloud:
‘If only the Princess were not gone!’
And she writhed her lips with rage at the thought that the sudden departure had been her own suggestion.
‘We will get her back,’ said Paul.
‘How?’
Without answering her question, he asked, ‘Is Sammy here to-night?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, assheis—— Where are you going? what do you mean to do?’
‘Keep quiet, won’t you? Don’t interfere. You are too unlucky for me.’
He left with a crowd of visitors who were driven away by the end of theentr’acte, and she went back to her seat on Madame Ancelin’s left. Her hostess worshipped with the same ecstasy as before, and it was one perpetual giving of thanks.
‘Oh, look at Coquelin! What humour he has! My dear, do look at him!’
‘My dear’ was indeed not attending; her eyes wandered, and on her lips was the painful smile of a dancer hissed off the boards. With the excuse that the footlights dazzled her, she was turning every moment towards the audience to look for her son. Perhaps there would be a duel with the Prince, if he was there. And all her fault—all through her stupid bungling.
‘Ah, there’s Delaunay! Di’ y’ see him? Di’ y’ see?’
No, she had seen nothing but the Duchess’s box, where some one had just come in, with a youthful elegant figure, like her Paul. But it was the little Count Adriani, who had heard of the rupture like the rest of Paris and was already tracking the game. Through the rest of the play the mother ate her heart out in misery, turning over innumerable confused plans for the future, mixed in her thoughts with past events and scenes which ought to have forewarned her. Stupid, how stupid of her! How had she failed to guess?
At last came the departure, but oh how long it took! She had to stop every moment, to bow or smile to her friends, to say good-bye. ‘What are you going to do this summer? Do come and see us at Deauville.’ All down the narrow passage crammed with people, where ladies finish putting on their wraps with a pretty movement to make sure of their ear-rings, all down the white marble staircase to the men-servants waiting at the foot, the mother, as she talks, still watches, listens, tries to catch in the hum of the great fashionable swarm dispersing for some months a word or hint of a scene that evening in a box. Here comes the Duchess, haughty and erect in her long white and gold mantle, taking the arm of the young officer of the Papal Guard. She knows the shabby trick her friend has played her, and as the two women pass they exchange a cold expressionless glance more to be dreaded than the most violent expletive of a fishwoman. They know now what to think of each other; they know that in the poisoned warfare, which is to succeed their sisterly intimacy, every blow will tell, will be directed to the right spot by practised hands. But they discharge the task imposed by society, and both wear the same mask of indifference, so that the masterful hate of the one can meet and strike against the spiteful hate of the other without producing a spark.
Downstairs, in the press of valets and young clubmen, Léonard Astier was waiting, as he had promised, for his wife. ‘Ah, there is the great man!’ exclaimed Madame Ancelin; and with a final dip of her fingers into the holy water she scattered it around her broadcast, over the great Astier-Réhu, the great Danjou, and Coquelin, you know! and Delaunay, you know! Oh! Oh! Oh!—Astier did not reply, but followed with his wife on his arm and his collar turned up against the draught. It was raining. Madame Ancelin offered to take them home; but it was only with the conventional politeness of a ‘carriage’ lady afraid of tiring her horses and still more afraid of her coachman’s temper (she has invariably the best coachman in Paris). Besides, ‘the great man’ had a cab; and without waiting for the lady’s benediction—‘Ah, well, we know you two like to be alone. Ah! what a happy household!’—he dragged off Madame Astier along the wet and dirty colonnade.
When, at the end of a ball or evening party, a fashionable couple drive off in their carriage, the question always suggests itself, ‘Now what will they say?’ Not much usually, for the man generally comes away from this kind of festivity weary and knocked up, while the lady continues the party in the darkness of the carriage by inward comparisons of her dress and her looks with those she has just seen, and makes plans for the arrangement of her drawing-room or a new costume. Still the restraint of feature required by society is so excessive, and fashionable hypocrisy has reached such a height, that it would be interesting to be present at the moment when the conventional attitude is relaxed, to hear the real natural tone of voice, and to realise the actual relations of the beings thus suddenly released from trammels and sent rolling home in the light of their brougham lamps through the empty streets of Paris. In the case of the Astiers the return home was very characteristic. The moment they were alone the wife laid aside the deference and pretended interest exhibited towards the Master in society, and spoke her mind, compensating herself in so doing for the attention with which she had listened for the hundredth time to old stories which bored her to death. The husband, kindly by disposition and accustomed to think well of himself and everyone else, invariably came home in a state of bliss, and was horrified at the malicious comments of his wife on their hosts and the guests they had met. Madame Astier would utter calmly the most shocking accusations, exaggerating gossip in the light unconscious way which is characteristic of Parisian society. Rather than stimulate her he would hold his tongue and turn round in his corner to take a little doze. But on this evening Léonard sat down straight, regardless of the sharp ‘Do mind my dress!’ which showed that somebody’s skirts were being crumpled. What did he care about her dress? ‘I’ve been robbed!’ he said, in such a tone that the windows rattled.
Oh dear, the autographs! She had not been thinking of them, least of all just now, when tormented by very different anxieties, and there was nothing feigned in her surprise.
Robbed—yes, robbed of his ‘Charles-the-Fifths,’ the three best things in his collection! But the assurance which made his attack so violent died out of his voice, and his suspicion hesitated, at the sight of Adelaide’s surprise. Meanwhile she recovered her self-possession. ‘But whom do you suspect?’ Corentine, she thought, was trustworthy. Teyssèdre? It was hardly likely that an ignorant——
Teyssèdre! He exclaimed at it, the thing seemed so obvious. Helped by his hatred for the man of polish, he soon began to see how the crime had come about, and traced it step by step from a chance allusion at dinner to the value of his documents, heard by Corentine and repeated in all innocence. Ah, the scoundrel! Why, he had the skull of a criminal! Foolish to struggle against the intimations of instinct! There must be something out of the common, when a floor-polisher could arouse so strange an antipathy in a member of the Institute! Ah, well, the dolt was done for now! He should catch it! ‘My three Charleses! Only fancy!’ He wanted to inform the police at once, before going home. His wife tried to prevent him. ‘Are you out of your mind? Go to the police-station after midnight?’ But he insisted, and thrust his great numskull out into the rain to give orders to the driver. She was obliged to pull him back with an effort, and feeling too much exhausted to carry on the lie, to let him say his say and bring him round gradually, she came out with the whole truth.
‘It’s not Teyssèdre—it’s I! There!’ At one breath she poured out the story of her visit to Bos, the money she had got, the 800L., and the necessity for it. The silence which ensued was so long that at first she thought he had had a fit of apoplexy. It was not that; but like a child that falls or hits itself, poor Crocodilus had opened his mouth so wide to let out his anger, and taken so deep a breath, that he could not utter a sound. At last came a roar that filled the Carrousel, where their cab was at that minute splashing through the pools.
‘Robbed, robbed! Robbed by my wife for the sake of her son!’ In his insane fury he jumbled together indiscriminately the abusive patois of his native hillside, ‘Ah la garso! Ah li bongri!’ with the classical exclamations of Harpagon bewailing his casket,Justice, justice du ciel!’ and other select extracts often recited to his pupils. It was as light as day in the bright rays of the tall electric lamps standing round the great square, over which, as the theatres were emptying, omnibuses and carriages were now passing in all directions.
‘Do be quiet,’ said Madame Astier; ‘everyone knows you.’
‘Except you, Madame!’
She thought he was going to beat her, and in the strained condition of her nerves it might perhaps have been a relief. But under the terror of a scandal he suddenly quieted down, swearing finally by his mother’s ashes that as soon as he got home he would pack up his trunk and go straight off to Sauvagnat, leaving his wife to depart with her scoundrelly prodigal and live on their spoils.
Once more the deep old box with its big nails was brought hastily from the anteroom into the study. A few billets of wood were still left in it from the winter’s supply, but the ‘deity’ did not change his purpose for that. For an hour the house resounded with the rolling of logs and the banging of cupboard doors, as he flung among the sawdust and bits of dry bark linen, clothes, boots, and even the green coat and embroidered waistcoat of the Academic full dress, carefully put away in napkins. His wrath was relieved by this operation, and diminished as he filled his trunk, till his last resentful grumblings died away when it occurred to him that, fixed as he was to his place, to uproot himself was utterly impossible. Meanwhile Madame Astier, sitting on the edge of an armchair in her dressing-gown, with a lace wrap round her head, watched his proceedings and murmured between yawn and yawn with placid irony, ‘Really, Léonard, really!’