IIITHE PLOT
HOW was it that no one noticed, when I returned to the house, that I had suddenly changed and grown? I was almost scandalised at their blindness.
“Well, here you are!” observed my father, who was beginning to be uneasy about my absences.
Aunt Deen ran after me to make me put on another coat, more obviously worn. I had hastily slipped on my best, for my visit to Nazzarena. It may have been the memorable olive-green of my convalescence, at last become better adapted to my size after three or four years of growth, unless it had already been retired to a clothes press, in camphor and naphtha, until such time as James should grow to it. I commanded not the slightest respect, although the entire household ought to have been struck with my changed countenance. Instead of thinking only of my adventure, which indeed I could not quite understand, I was vexed with the familiarity with which I was treated.
We were all gathered in mother’s room because of little Nicola, who was somewhat grippy, and who, being a delicate child, needed watchful care. Notwithstanding my absorbing secret I felt that some important eventwas impending. The too turbulent Jamie was admonished to keep quiet in a corner. Mélanie, always somewhat in the moon—Aunt Deen insisted that she was listening to her voices, like Jeanne d’Arc—quietly undertook to amuse her sick sister, so that father was finally able to show mother the letter which he had in his hand.
“It is from Monsignor’s secretary,” he said as he opened it.
I thought he was speaking of the bishop, who always dined with us once a year. But the name of the Count de Chambord occurred in it. When he had finished reading it—I had not heard it distinctly—father added simply:
“Very well; I will present myself, since the prince desires that nothing be neglected for the welfare of the country.”
“Oh, the prince!” murmured grandfather, smothering his little laugh.
Father looked at him with that straightforward, penetrating gaze which was always hard to bear. But grandfather at once put on his most innocent air, such as I remembered him to have assumed the time we met mamma in the street — when he said, “We are going to buy a paper.”
I at once divined that father was the mysterious and terrible leader whose intervention in the assault upon the mayor’s office Martinod had so feared. It could be no one but he, and how was it possible that heshould not win the battle? A look at him was enough. He bore victory about with him. My childish eyes, still loyal and clear-sighted, could see the signs of superiority radiating from his brow. How should I have guessed that superiority is a small factor in success, since all sorts of dubious weapons against it are being forged in dark places? I might indeed endeavour to escape from my father’s influence, but at least I never dreamed of underrating it.
The watchful care usually extended to me was diminished by the illness of Nicola, who was always asking for her mother. I had remarked that father was making the most of his infrequent moments of leisure to talk with Mélanie, go out with Mélanie, take walks with Mélanie. More than ever he treated her with an affection at once tender and reserved, almost respectful, and seemed to extend his strength over her, as if some one was endangering his daughter or seeking to take her from him. As for Aunt Deen, who almost worshipped her nephews and nieces, individually and collectively, she remarked between going up and down stairs that I was a model child and an exemplary son, and even placed to her brother’s credit a large part in this happy state of things.
I made the most of this relaxed vigilance, which in fact was merely comparative, to continue my visits to the circus in spite of the prohibition which had been put upon them. With a hypocrisy which hadalready become perspicacious, I had persuaded myself that I was not disobeying when I walked around the tent to where the waggons were stationed. The side scenes are not the theatre. Thus from argument to argument I went on until at last I actually entered the tent. Had not grandfather taken me there the first time? He was the oldest, he ought to know better than any one else what was good for me. Besides, no one would know; there was no risk of any member of the family meeting me there, unless, indeed, grandfather. And Nazzarena rode her horse for me alone, and when she bowed courteously in response to the applause it was still for me alone. With all the ease in the world I suppressed the existence of the surrounding public.
Nevertheless, as my conscience was not perfectly easy, I clung to grandfather, who in case of need could ward off suspicions or bear the burden of responsibility. I even went with him to the Café des Navigateurs, though I had exhausted its pleasures and should have preferred another society. Martinod was unusually glad to see us.
“Father Rambert! What a pleasure to see you again! Father Rambert, sit here beside me in the place of honour.”
I observed that if he had formerly excelled in passing over the bills to others, he now kept open purse not only for his own drinks but for those of others. Gallus and Merinos perceived it sooner than I did and refused themselves no indulgence. As for Casenave and Galurin,they had never troubled themselves about the score. I had already before this remarked a complete change in Martinod; he was less and less concerned with oratorical effect, and no longer sought to dazzle us with descriptions of festivals where fraternal embraces were the general order. He produced lists and figures, enumerated proper names and with a bit of pencil which he moistened at his lips industriously addressed himself to checking them up.
A newspaper man having laid the local gazette upon a table, he called the servant to bring it to him in so imperious a voice that the girl was startled and came near upsetting a dish of food which she was carrying. Hardly had he unfolded the sheet when he cried:
“There it is! I was sure of it!Hepresents himself.”
Hehad no need of being more definitely designated. Every one in the café unhesitatingly recognised him, and I as well as the others. Our group, which up to that moment had probably not felt sure that he would be a candidate, appeared to be deeply impressed and indeed quite demoralised. All wore long faces as they bent over their tumblers. Secretly scanning them one by one, as an impartial outsider, I considered their party, however numerous, quite incapable of carrying on a contest against my father.
Martinod permitted the others, and especially the neophytes who formed a sort of court around him, and for whose drinks he paid, to startup, exclaim, though without naming the enemy, while he, inattentive or meditative, fixed grandfather with his eyes. As he continued for some time in this attitude, a passage from my natural history recurred to my mind, concerning a serpent that fascinated birds, and I laughed to myself at this absurd idea. For a long time he maintained his fixed gaze; then, after ordering drinks all around, except for me, whom he had forgotten, he leaned forward and in a fawning voice spoke in his neighbour’s ear, but not so softly but that I heard.
“So, Father Rambert, you are no longer in your own house?”
“How so?” replied grandfather indifferently.
“Why, no; that fine château that you live in isn’t yours now.”
He pronounced the wordchâteaulike the farmer, only omitting a few circumflex accents. Grandfather observed it, and it amused him. “Oho! the château,” he said; “why not the palace?”
“Call it what you like, for all me,” replied Martinod; “the fact remains that it is the finest residence in the country. And well situated—town and country at once. All the same, ha! ha! They have played you a trick, and you are no longer master of the house.”
Grandfather scratched his eyebrow, then pulled his beard. He never spoke to any one of his abdication, not even to me in our walks, and I had perceived that allusions to this old story, several years old now,did not interest him. I knew that he despised property and deemed it detrimental to the general good. But wasn’t that a sacred dogma at the Café of the Navigators, too?
“Well, yes,” he replied with a forced laugh. “I am no longer in my own house; there’s a discovery for you! My poor Martinod, you are behind the times! It’s many a long day since I’ve been in my own house and glad I am, as you see. No more bother, no more care. I am no longer the master, but I am my own master.”
Upon this the dialogue proceeded, more and more gaily.
“Ta, ta, ta! At your age it’s not easy to get used to camping in other folks’ houses.”
“At my age one likes peace and quiet.”
“Yes, I know. They have relegated you to the end of the table.”
“I put myself there of my own accord, and food tastes just as good there as in the middle.”
“But here, Father Rambert, you have the place of honour.”
“There is no place of honour in a café.”
“And your room?—every one knows that you have been hoisted to the garret.”
“Every one knows that I love heights.”
All of which was said banteringly. They were playing at tossing questions and answers to and fro, as we tossed balls at school. Listening to them, my mind was for a moment distracted from itsabsorbing sentiment, and I inwardly condemned myself for this as for a fault.
The subject soon became a theme for cheap pleasantries. Every one in the café began to talk of Father Rambert’s end of the table, Father Rambert’s garret. He would shrug his shoulders and take it all laughingly.
“Really, isn’t all that true, Father Rambert?” asked Martinod one day.
“Why, to be sure it is true in a sense. If you make a point of it, it is true. But what is it that is true?”
As if everybody didn’t know what is true and what is not true! Grandfather was rather fond of dark sayings. That same afternoon we went home together, he gay and sprightly, I downcast because I had not, even at a distance (which I preferred), seen Nazzarena. At the top of the steps we met father, who was waiting for us, and who seemed much disturbed. He had a newspaper crumpled up in his hand, and handed it without a word to grandfather, who made no motion to take it.
“Do you know who wrotethat?” he asked. How contemptuously he pronounced the wordthat! I felt that he was controlling himself, but that something serious was going on at our house.
“How should I know?” asked grandfather. “I never read the local papers.”
“Very well, read this one.”
“No, thank you; I’m not interested.”
“Then I’ll read it to you.”
“If you insist upon it.”
I saw them go together into father’s consulting room, leaving the door open, and I had no notion of going away. Grandfather sat down resignedly in an easy chair, and father began to read at once. I felt ill rewarded for the curiosity which had kept me there, for I couldn’t understand a word of that dull, prosy and ill-worded article, which seemed to leave a bad taste in your mouth like grated cheese that melts in onion soup and turns into a sticky glue that clings to your gums. It was about the approaching elections, and a certain omnipotent and despotic personage, eager to rule the public with a rod of iron as he ruled his household. After this there was something about a garret full of rats, exposed to all the winds of heaven, yet good enough, it appeared, for the miserable old man who had been relegated to it, and who was expiating his social kindliness by being treated with contempt and forced into the meanest position in his own house. The article closed with a warm appeal to justice and sympathy. No name, no place, was mentioned. How could I have understood the illusions? It was too complicated an act of perfidy for a child to see through.
“Is that all?” asked grandfather when the indignant voice was silent.
“It seems to me that it is enough.”
“Oh, there isn’t enough there to whip a cat for—mere vague generalities.”
“Is that your opinion?” asked father. “Don’t you feel how venomous, and how dishonouring to me it all is? Have not you always been well treated here? Whose wish was it to sit at the end of the table? Who took possession of the tower chamber in spite of all we could say? Which of us has ever been lacking in respect to you? When has any one neglected to care for you most tenderly and deferentially? Of whom, of what, do you complain? Father, I entreat you,—tell me; this is a grave matter.”
Entreaty followed entreaty, hurrying one upon another, in a voice which gave them a pathetic intonation that thrilled me from head to foot. The obscure article suddenly became clear to me, and I grasped its entire significance. Some one was accusing my father of harshness to grandfather. The scene of the abdication rose up before me, and the morning in which I had borne a part by carrying the pile ofLimping Messengers of Berne and Vevey.
“I am not complaining,” said grandfather; “I have never complained.”
“And of what could you have complained? This house has continued to be yours. I have taken upon myself only the duties and expenses which were a burden to you. But these calumnies have not been invented.”
“My dear Michel, all these stories bore me to death. I don’t read thenewspapers, and get along very comfortably without them. I advise you to follow my example.”
“Because it is not you who are attacked. Because I shall never permit any one to attack you. This attack upon me comes from the Café of the Navigators. I am sure that you still go there, though I have informed you that it is the headquarters of our enemies. But you place in those people all the confidence that you refuse to me.”
“As for that, I go where I please and I see whom I like.”
“You are free, father, without the slightest doubt. But in a family all the members stand or fall together. Whoever aims at you strikes me. Whoever defames me insults you.”
“I have no such narrow views as to the family. I have never opposed you; do the same to me.”
At that moment father saw me through the half-open door, and a suspicion must have crossed his mind, for he cut the discussion short, and pointing to me said,
“I hope you never take that child there!”
“Where, pray?”
“To the Café of the Navigators.”
And turning to me father added in a tone which admitted of no reply, “Go away!”
So that I did not hear the reply.
I have forgotten no incident of that scene and am certain of having reconstructed it in its integrity, and if not in the same wordsat least in equivalent ones. As I had been successively born into a mysterious longing by a word of the shepherd who was leading his sheep to the mountain, into the knowledge of liberty by a walk with grandfather in the wild forest, into the sense of beauty by having met the lady in white, into the disquietude of love because Nazzarena had told me with a laugh that I was her little lover, so now I was born into a knowledge of human wickedness, to which all my childhood had been a stranger. Aunt Deen’s famous they, at whom I scoffed after having vainly sought them around me, did then exist, and Martinod was one of them, and the gentle and gay Casenave, whom my father had cured, and the old photographer Galurin, and the two artists!
This unexpected revelation completely upset me. People went to the café to enjoy themselves and not to hatch plots. They drank vari-coloured drinks and made jokes the while. No, it could not be possible! A doubt swept over me, both because of grandfather’s calmness, and because the “go away” which dismissed me had been somewhat brusque and aroused in me a desire to take the other side. Perhaps that scrap of paper was indeed not worth reading.
The next day I was in mother’s room when father came in with his hat on, coming straight in from outside without stopping in the vestibule. He took off his hat hastily, and we saw that his face was animated andsuffused with colour. He had his grand air of a battle, and he laughed as if pleased.
“I have slapped Martinod’s face,” he said simply, as if he had said, “I have been to see such and such a patient.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” murmured my mother; “what will he invent against you now?”
I heard Aunt Deen running heavily, shaking the floor, rushing in like a whirlwind. She had heard my father’s words from a distance.
“Well done, Michel; well done!” she cried, all out of breath. “They are beaten; well done!”
There was one who didn’t haggle over the defence of the house!
I made the most of the unusual excitement to steal away. I had no objection to Martinod being slapped, so long as I profited by it in some way. I had been feeling myself more closely watched; opportunities to slip away were becoming rare. With all speed I made off to the street and rushed in the direction of the town. But as soon as I reached the Market Place I began to walk slowly, even putting on an unconcerned, indifferent manner, as of a loiterer who has no special point in view and doesn’t quite know where he is going. Thus I proceeded toward the circus, and started to walk around it, being careful to look about me carelessly, to show plainly that I was walking without a purpose. No one could be mistaken. How many times had I executed this little manœuvre and not always with success! IfNazzarena was there, occupied with some household duty, that was no reason why I should approach her, or even greet her. As a general thing I went past her without speaking, stiff as a poker. Our first conversation had exhausted my courage, and moreover I did not know what to talk about next. Sometimes she would laugh at me as she saw me pass—for when it came to playing with me or mocking at me she would lay aside her professional gravity as a horsewoman. Sometimes she would call me. I always went to her at her call, but not for worlds would I have spoken first.
That day she was leading her horse to water at the public fountain. Seen without his trappings and the blaze of torches with which the tent was lighted during performances, this steed appeared to me singularly like our farmer’s old blind mare that I had occasionally bestridden; it was a long bony beast, continually wrinkling his skin all over his body to shake off the flies. But I immediately closed my eyes to so pitiful a sight, and imagined in its place the red roan steed of the Romance of the Swan’s Nest which, in my book of ballads, bore the Knight to the young girl sitting in the grass by the river side, her bare feet in the water.
My adored one was absorbed in her work, or pretended to be, and did not deign to observe my presence. There was nothing for it but to keep on my way, since she would not turn her eyes toward me. And that horse kept on drinking, as if he were capable of drinking the fountain dry.It was enough to make one desperate! At last she turned her head. She was laughing. The naughty girl! She had seen me then! But in her most natural tone, as if she had suddenly discovered me, she bade me good morning.
Having given up hope of her speaking, I found nothing to say. My discomfited face no doubt betrayed my feelings, for she seemed not displeased with my silence, and even spoke of it:
“So, you are dumb to-day?” she asked, laughing all the more heartily as she added, “Aha! so you aren’t my little lover any more?”
I hung my head to conceal my embarrassment. Not love her any more! The foolish question! When one loved it was for always. The wordalways, which my lips could never have uttered, made a strange music in my heart, so sweet that nothing sweeter could ever be heard in the world.
Reassured as to my condition, and no doubt as to the effect she produced upon me, she calmly pulled the halter. Her horse had ceased to drink and from his moist nostrils drops of water were falling back into the basin.