IVMY BETRAYAL
BECAUSE of that wordalways, continually singing in my heart, the days that followed were at once delicious and bitter, like the fruit that I used to gather too early in the garden. I was sure of the future and indeed of all eternity, enjoying to the full the love that as yet asks for nothing outside of itself. For the slight distress that I had felt at the contact of Nazzarena’s cheek when our heads had been jokingly bumped together had soon passed; nothing indeed was lacking to fill the cup of my happiness but never to see my beloved; my embarrassment returned whenever we met. If at least I had not been obliged to speak to her! I could not have endured to kiss her—I never so much as touched her hand. Each of us—so I think now—perhaps believed in the superiority of the other: she because my house was so solid, and I because of her horse, her golden robe, her talent as a horsewoman, her wandering life, and that indefinable something with which love endowed her. She soon perceived that the two sides were not equal: she could appear in public and be applauded; I was a mere spectator.
Conscious of her domination, she no longer shrank from laying commandsupon me. She would ask little services of me,—to buy her a thimble in town, or gold thread and needles to mend her fine robe; and to ask for things used by girls and not by boys made me blush in the shop. If I Had to add some complementary explanations, I didn’t know where to turn to hide myself. She made me help her peel potatoes and delighted in my embarrassment when she saw me casting furtive glances toward the open square.
“Don’t worry, little man; no one is passing,” she would say, robbing me at a blow of all the benefit of my heroism.
Every day, either morning or evening, I would somehow manage to come home from school by way of the Market Place where she was living. What stratagems were mine to avoid suspicion! Sometimes my parents would come to walk home with me, or, the distance not being great, would merely meet me a few steps from the gate. How did I manage not to arouse their misgivings? One or another of my school fellows having discovered my manœuvres tried to make fun of me, but Fernand de Montraut’s intervention spared me the vexation of practical jokes. As the boys urged upon him that I refused to talk about the little horsewoman he pronounced my silence chivalrous; and this opinion, from so competent a judge, filled me with pride.
The same tawny young man who had knocked our heads together, finding me one day in conversation with Nazzarena, jabbered something again intheir jargon, pointing his finger at me, and both burst out laughing. As for me, I could have cried.
By degrees this passion, greater than I, and too serious for my fourteen years, made a chasm between me and my family, all unawares to myself. I forgot the elections, and the newspaper article, and Martinod’s slapped face, which had brought about none of the immediate results that mother had dreaded. At the same time I would gladly have made a confidant of grandfather, because of our visits to the pavilion and also because of the lady in white, the memory of whom, until then somewhat vague, was now definitely fixed in my mind. Like a bouquet of fresh flowers I breathed in all the romance of our former walks. Their charm mysteriously affected me—was it not to them that I owed the precocious emotions of my excited sensibilities? But for them I should probably have been thinking only of playing tricks upon my teachers, or at most of enjoying these first days of spring without knowing why.
One Thursday afternoon—our holiday was Thursday—as I had with some difficulty escaped to the circus, to enjoy the performance and gaze upon my horsewoman, who that day did not deign to notice me, not knowing how to go back to the house without attracting attention, I decided to go to the Café of the Navigators, where there was some chance of meeting grandfather. The discussion between him and myfather on this subject had already slipped my mind, and my only object was to get home without questionings, with no thought of Martinod and his acolytes. I half opened the door with beating heart; it was the first time that I had entered such a place alone. Grandfather was there; I was saved! So long as I went home under his protection no questions would be asked, and my absence would be justified by the very fact.
I seated myself in a corner to wait until he was ready to go. Near me Martinod was talking with the head of the establishment. I knew him, for he used to mingle familiarly with the patrons, and even in his days of prodigal humour, he would treat them all round.
“You see,” he was saying in a tearful voice, “the bill has been running several years.”
“Send it to the son,” Martinod advised.
“It is not his affair.”
“All the same, you’ll see that he will pay it. That I can guarantee. It’s a good trick to pay him against the elections. And besides, the boy has had some.”
Whom was he talking about? I had not noticed. But suddenly Martinod gazed at me, and under that gaze I at once remembered the slap he had received. I even felt a vague remorse at being in his company; but grandfather had surely kept on going with him. After all, he hadreceived and not given the slap, and here he was, raising his arm to heaven as if some one had committed an unpardonable crime against me:
“That child has nothing to drink!”
I should never have believed him so solicitous with regard to me. Everybody had neglected me for a long time, and in fact, but for the passion which absorbed me, and inclined me to privations for the very love of suffering, I should have observed the infrequency of the glasses of syrup. The oversight was immediately repaired. The materials generally reserved for full grown men were set before me; I was solemnly offered averte—of course an attenuated, diluted, inoffensiveverte.
“I will mix it myself,” declared Martinod.
“I’ll leave it to you,” observed grandfather indifferently, interrupting himself in a heated discussion with Gallus as to the Andante of Bach’s second sonata for piano and violin. “And no practical jokes.”
“Father Rambert, don’t you worry!”
Certainly that Martinod was a good fellow, agreeable and slow to take offence. His cheek was perhaps still warm from that slap, and he was caring for me as for his own youngster!
He didn’t mix it the same way grandfather did. The superimposed lumps of sugar were melted; now he might pour the absinthe. Upon my word! Hesurely was treating me seriously and not like a baby gorged with milk! That brew must be extraordinary!
I tasted it and pronounced it delicious, without knowing why, the better to play my own part; and this gained me the suffrages of Casenave and Galurin.
“That’s the first,” they declared, “but it shall not be the last.”
I was almost the object of an ovation, and in gratitude I turned upon Martinod a humid eye. But why did he look at me in silence with that compassionate look? Had I a papier-mâché countenance? He finally leaned over me and whispered in my ear a few simple words that completed my disquietude:
“Poor little fellow!”
Why under the sun did he call me poor little fellow? Did I look as wretched as that? No doubt I hadn’t succeeded in seeing Nazzarena the whole day long. Yes, to be sure, I was unhappy, since everybody noticed it. Only no one ought to notice it. This was a secret, hidden in the very bottom of my heart, and no one had any right to speak to me of it. I at once assumed a repellant face, intended to discourage sympathy. But I couldn’t keep up this attitude. Ever since I emptied my glass, I felt, as it were, a veil before my eyes, and a warmth through all my body, an enervating torpor, and a sort of longing for confidence and affection. Furthermore, I had been mistaken as to Martinod’s intentions. He was not thinking of my love, he knew nothing about it,and with small respect to consistency I began now to regret that I didn’t hear him pronounce Nazzarena’s name. He was fascinating me with his gaze, as the serpent in my natural history must have fascinated the birds, and in a voice of caressing inflections, insinuating, coaxing, he gave me to understand that in my family I was misunderstood. In ambiguous words, with all sorts of circumlocutions, hesitations, reticences, he revealed to me that my father cared more for one of his older sons than for me. Which one? Stephen or Bernard? At this distance of time I do not remember which one he indicated. Was it Bernard, for his military air, his decided manner, his gaiety, his enthusiasm, and his resemblance to father? Or Stephen, for his fine and even temper, his good marks, his application, even his absence of mind? Upon my word I can not say which, now. Our parents treated us without the slightest difference, and each one was the object of special attention which he was free to consider a favour. Still, I did not hesitate to believe this stranger who did not know us, who had never set foot in our house, and who, I knew, had been chastised by my father for his perfidy.
Yes, I was misunderstood by my family. Imperceptible proofs started up from the shadows, and grew like clouds chased before the wind. My father was always talking about the absent ones, and when he received news of them he was radiant. Their letters were bulletinsof victory. He wore paternal pride upon his forehead. I, I alone, was systematically kept in the background, I was of no consequence. How severely, the other week, he had cried “go away!” Did he know that I was frequenting the circus in spite of his prohibition, and that I peeled potatoes in the public square? If Bernard or Stephen had been the offender he would have come to know it, and would have scolded them, whereas he treated me with outrageous contempt; I, who was bearing the burden of so noble a love, I was treated only with humiliation and insult. Worst of all, worst of all, my father did not love me—nobody loved me. Everything conspired to make me think so, since I had not once met Nazzarena that whole day long! There was only grandfather, and grandfather was absorbed in his conversations, his music, in smoking his pipe, in his telescope and his almanacs.
I cast an imploring glance in his direction. Now he was waxing warm with Gallus over a quintette by Schumann. At such a time the world did not exist for him.
I would have consented to get along without the existence of the world, provided he would concern himself with me. I had the horrible sensation of being abandoned by every one, and that this man close at hand who insinuated his sympathy in a moved and compassionate voice had just informed me of an irreparable misfortune. I could have cried, but in the face of curious looks I kept back my tears. But on that bench, inthat café, I learned to know the sadness of being misunderstood, of solitude in the midst of a crowd, of despair. Life is made up of many griefs; have I ever experienced a more intense pain than this imaginary despair?
Thus disarmed by the very tenderness that bared my sensibility to the quick, and fascinated by the serpent, I unconsciously entered into the plot which was being concocted against my father. Having accomplished his purpose—more easily than he had believed possible, for he was unaware that love was his ally—Martinod repeated in a heart-rending tone,
“Poor little fellow!”
My stifled sobs were suffocating me. He might blazen his triumph abroad, for he had succeeded even beyond his hopes; the seed of his suggestions was destined to spring up later and bear noxious fruit. But had he not found an easy prey?
I was still too unsophisticated to know that hate can flatter and smile, look pleasant, appear sympathetic or compassionate, and enwrap its object in fine phrases as bandits bind ropes about the man they would render powerless. Hatred of this sort, which with affected sympathy addresses itself to the friends and relations of the man it pursues, certain of wounding him on the rebound, can not always be denounced even later. There are few sentinels like Aunt Deen to keep guard over the sacred ark of the family.
It has been said that circumstances conspired to further Martinod’s plan. One Sunday afternoon, as I was idling at the window instead of finishing a task—I usually preferred grandfather’s tower chamber, but he was absent—I suddenly beheld a wonderful, a terrifying sight! The circus troop was invading our garden! They had come through the gate, which, notwithstanding Aunt Deen’s vigilance, had been left open because of the more frequent comings and goings of a holiday. The whole company was swarming over the grass plats and shamelessly trampling the flower borders. There were ragged women with babies in their arms, there were the two clowns whom I had in time come to identify, there was the grey-headed rope dancer and there—oh, woe! there was Nazzarena herself! Nazzarena without a hat, her hair unbound and her dress in rags. For the first time I realised that she was poor. In our garden, in the carefully tended alley, one might have taken her for a poor country girl.
Dumb with amazement, I dared neither hide nor lean out of the window. Terror at what was sure to happen paralysed me. Why had they come? What did they want? What ill wind had brought them? Our garden was not a place for wandering folk, bohemians, people whose only knowledge of land was to walk upon it. If only it had been the old-time garden, overgrown with weeds, never pruned nor watered! Or if only grandfather had been there to receive these suspicious guests! Nazzarena,Nazzarena, hasten back to yourroulotteand the white tent in which you reign! I assure you that this is no place for you!
I was actually undergoing martyrdom on seeing them thus shamelessly making merry over our grass and flowers. I longed at heart to cry out, to warn them, but I could not. And in infinite agony I measured the distance which separated the house from my love.
One of the clowns was already ringing the door bell. My God! what would happen next? They had hardly begun to parley with Mariette, whose uncompromising humours I knew, when the catastrophe fell upon us. Aunt Deen came flying to the rescue and stoutly made head against the whole band. The dialogue was distinctly audible at my window:
“What do you people want?”
A chirping voice replied:
“This is Father Rambert’s house, isn’t it?”
“What do you want with Father Rambert? Go about your business. Get out!”
What abominable injustice! All the beggars of our town were always kindly treated by us; they even had their days, like society ladies, and Zeeze Million, who was crazy, and that drunkard Yes-Yes received a regular allowance at our door. Then why not give these honourable acrobats a chance to explain? Aunt Deen, always so charitable andready to help, was turning them out with harsh words merely because they were strangers!
Thus ignominiously ordered out, they rebelled, and poured invectives upon their persecutor, who, I must admit, was not mute.
An infernal uproar arose. The rope dancer yelled, beating her sides. At last I resolved to intervene in behalf of my friends, Nazzarena’s friends. Suddenly, at the very moment when I was about to quit my post of observation to fly to the fray, my father, no doubt drawn by the uproar, appeared upon the scene. Without so much as opening his lips, with a single gesture—but how unanswerable!—he pointed to the entrance. And the whole roaring troop retreated, crowding between the two pillars that supported the gate, and fled, immediately and most astonishingly.
I was furious at so sudden and complete a rout. Since it was thus, I, by myself alone, would resist that authority which no one ever dared to brave. All my new-found enthusiasm again sweeping over me, I rushed to the stairs, flew down four steps at a time at the risk ofcarabossingmyself, to overtake my beloved.
“Where are you going?” asked father, still at his post, and barring my way.
I was silent. My enthusiasm was already falling flat.
“Go back at once,” he went on. “I forbid you to go out.”
Unhesitatingly, but swelling with wrath, I went upstairs, gnawing my fists with rage. Was no one to resist him, then? I, too, like those others, had been immediately vanquished, overthrown, petrified, merely by having faced him. People think it is easy to revolt against the powers that be: I had just learned that that depends upon the character of the government. Again and again I went over Martinod’s insinuations. How true they were!Heunderstood;hewas a true friend!
I had only obeyed in appearance. I had hardly reached the tower when I began to listen for the sound of closing doors, and no sooner was I convinced that my father had gone back to his study than I furtively crept down and slipped out of the house. Once beyond the gate new courage inspired me: I straightened up and breathed freely. This time, I had no thought of taking a roundabout way, putting on airs of indifference, deceiving any whom I might meet, but ran by the shortest road to the Market Square. The gipsies were rolling up the tent, piling up the benches, the Sunday loiterers looking on with interest. This raising of the camp boded ill—I saw Nazzarena at last; she was gathering together the scattered household utensils. This was no time to be bashful: it called for heroic resolution. In the very face of all the spectators, most of whom doubtless knew the Rambert boy, I flew tomy beloved, like one of the knights of my ballads. When she saw me she cast a heart-broken glance upon me.
“They drove us out of your garden,” she said before I had spoken a word.
How reply to this grievous statement? No doubt she included me among her persecutors.
“It wasn’t I!” I cried, hasting to separate myself from my family.
“Of course it wasn’t you,” she replied philosophically. “You are too little. We went to tell your grandfather that we are going away to-morrow. To-morrow morning.”
“To-morrow!” I repeated, as if I had not heard, or had not understood.
“Yes, to-morrow. See for yourself. They are loading the things on the waggons now. The Marinetti brothers have left us. There’ll be no matinée to-day—that’s one good haul lost.”
To my surprise, she was not angry with me for her expulsion, and even in my grief I observed an unexpected reversal of parts: she was showing an unaccustomed consideration for me, and I was taking on a little protecting air. The prestige of power was doing its work all unawares to myself. Thus she did not suggest that I should help her in her work, though the day before she would not have failed to do so.
One of the old hags stuck her long yellow face out of the nearestwaggon, and upbraided her for wasting her time.
“I must go,” said Nazzarena. “Such a job to get ready for moving! Good-bye, good-bye, my little lover! I wish you another sweetheart; you’s cute; you’ll find one.”
She did not offer her hand; perhaps she dared not, because of the respect for me which the sight of the house had inspired in her. And I found no words in which to reply to her. I smiled foolishly at her strange wish for me: it seemed abominable and sacrilegious, though the affectionate way in which she uttered it was as sweet to me as a caress. Her departure floored me—seemed to cut my legs and arms and empty my brain. I stood there like a dolt. Time and place were nothing to me—she was going away!
I saw her in the distance, stumbling under the heavy trappings of her horse, and she made a little gesture of adieu as she disappeared behind one of the waggons. It seemed to me as if she was already far off, and I managed to walk away.
Where should I go? Associating the cruelty of my family with Nazzarena’s departure, I could not go back home. What consolation, what support would I have found there? Father had forbidden me to go out: I could judge of the reception which awaited me. I wandered up and down the streets among the people in their Sunday best, absent-mindedly bumping against one or another, who hurled at me the epithet ofblockhead, or boor. I almost enjoyed it, so tempestuously did I long to change the character of my pain. Powerless to direct my steps, I automatically found myself at the Café des Navigateurs. Grandfather would understand me; grandfather was the embodiment of that security for which that dear Martinod was working.
The room was crowded, and I suddenly felt comforted by the atmosphere of tobacco and anise, the stir and movement. I lost the immediate sense of my grief, I was even able to perceive distinctly that something solemn and unusual was going on. A decision of capital importance had been arrived at, and from the way they were talking it seemed to me that this was one of those historic events that by and by boys would study in school. Grandfather was the object of a thousand testimonials of honour and admiration. They were crowding around him, congratulating him, shaking hands with him, though this he resisted. And champagne was being brought—highest favour! Champagne on a day like this! I began to feel deeply moved, all the more that no one offered me any.
“A goblet!” cried Martinod, that dear Martinod who certainlywasgood to me; “a goblet for the little fellow!”
And lifting high his own, with a grand gesture he proclaimed,
“To the election of Father Rambert! To the victory of the Republic!”
“Bravo!” exclaimed the faithful Galurin.
Callus and Merinos were overflowing with happiness: no doubt they were foreseeing that era of Beauty which they had so often anticipated in my hearing. As for Casenave, he was supporting the weight of his head with both hands, his vague eyes perhaps fixed upon some vision. The barmaid was inclining the bottle over his glass: he may have seen in her one of those beautiful ladies in empire gowns who used to come down through the ceiling of his garret to give him drinks and visit him openly.
“Ziou!” he exclaimed, sitting up.
As he gazed upon the frothing beverage, and the golden stream, he was seized with a convulsive shudder. His trembling hands failed to grasp the goblet, and he hiccoughed with impotent greed.
Grandfather alone showed no enthusiasm nor even pleasure. His ill-humour was evident. He found small enjoyment in popularity or applause. All this open-mouthed, drinking, shouting crowd got on his nerves. I am sure he would rather have been somewhere else—in the country—for instance, eating strawberries and sweet cream. Still, he was constrained to yield before the general enthusiasm.
“After all, it is perhaps well,” he conceded. “No tyrants, above all; liberty!”
No, indeed; no tyrants! In an instant the vision of my father rose before me, standing on the doorstep, his extended arm driving away those poor gipsies. And by way of protest, I emptied my goblet.
At that precise moment—so long as I live I shall never forget the sight—father entered the Café des Navigateurs. Unheard-of act! My back was turned to the door, so that I could only see him in the mirror. But it was Martinod’s face that told me of his presence. Martinod had suddenly turned pale, and the hand which held his glass trembled like that of Casenave, so that a little champagne slopped over. Father, before whom every one hastily gave way as before an important personage, or as if in fear, was already at our table. He raised his hat, saying most courteously,
“Good day, gentlemen. I have come for my son.”
No one spoke. There was utter silence, not only in our group but all through the room, every one attentive to the incident. The apparition of Nazzarena in the circus upon her black horse would not have aroused so much interest. The only sound was the exclamation, “Oh!” uttered by the proprietor, who, napkin in hand, stood motionless behind the bar.
Grandfather was the first to regain self-possession. He remarked, calmly, almost impertinently:
“Good afternoon, Michel. Will you take something with us?”
The offer was received by the bystanders with mocking little laughs and all tongues were unloosed. But the diversion was of brief duration. Father merely replied, “Thank you, I came for my son. It is nearlydinner time, and we are expecting you both.”
Thus he invited grandfather to go with us. Perceiving that his invitation was not accepted, he turned to Martinod, who was giggling, and measured him from head to foot.
“See here, Monsieur Martinod, since I have removed my hat, I beg you to remove yours.”
It is true that Martinod had kept his hat on, but I knew that it was the custom in the café. Far from complying with the order—no one could mistake that it was an order, notwithstanding the “I beg you”—he hastened to pull his hat lower on his head. Interested and enthralled, every one in the room was watching, and a wag in the corner ejaculated:
“He will. He will not.”
My father took a step forward, and to me he seemed a very giant. Alone among them all, it was he who spread terror. In that clear voice that I so well knew, the voice that moved Tem Bossette in the depths of his vines and brought the whole household together in an instant, he said:
“Do you wish me to knock off your hat with my cane, Monsieur Martinod? For my hand will never touch you again.”
This time the laughs ceased. The case was becoming tragic: one might have heard a spider spinning her web. Grandfather saved the situation.
“Come, Martinod,” he said; “one must be polite.”
“Then it’s for you, Father Rambert,” Martinod replied, suddenly uncovering. His face was bloodless, and no one could doubt of his defeat.
My father, having conquered, turned to Casenave, lost in his dreams.
“You, too, friend, would do well to go home.”
The terrified Casenave cried in a melancholy voice which broke the tension, so droll did it seem.
“I haven’t been drinking, Doctor. I swear I haven’t.”
Thereupon we went out, father and I; I behind him, and though the crowded tables were full of company, I moved between them without difficulty, so large was the place respectfully made for my guide. By way of not resembling Martinod, whose cowardice disgusted me, I forced myself to hold up my head and appear indifferent. At the bottom of my heart I was in unspeakable dread of what might happen in the street, when we were alone. Never, save perhaps in my earliest childhood, had my parents inflicted corporal punishment upon us: self-esteem was a part of our education. But now I expected it. If only he didn’t slap my face like Martinod! Martinod was an enemy of the house and I had drunk his champagne. Little did I care for the house, however; like grandfather, I proposed to be free. Hadn’t grandfather taken a gun when he had failedin the blood of the days of June, againstthe prohibition of his own father, the magistrate, the nurseryman, whom he held in such slight esteem? They might beat me, might abuse me, but they should get nothing out of me. I braced myself against the terror which was gripping me, until I at last came to feel a sort of insensibility, a strength of resistance which enabled one to endure anything without uttering a complaint.
I had, however, no occasion to make use of the provision of energy which I was laying in against my martyrdom. As we walked along father merely asked me, without raising his voice,
“Have you often been to that café?”
“Sometimes.”
“Never set foot in it again.”
I felt that indeed I never could set foot in it again. But would that be all my punishment? We were walking side by side, very fast. Though he gave no sign of what he was thinking, I understood,—I can not tell how—that a great tempest was inwardly agitating him. He had it in his power to crush me, to break me in two, and he kept silent. Thus we crossed the Market Place, and I seemed to myself like one of those criminals whom I had seen escorted to prison by a gendarme. If only Nazzarena did not see me! To me she represented the life of liberty, as I was slavery in person.
At last we reached the door of the house. Before opening it fatherturned to me, covering me from head to foot with a look, under which I hung my head in spite of myself, like one guilty.
“Poor child!” he said—it was Martinod’s very expression—“what are they trying to make of you?”
In my tense condition this sudden pity conquered my rebellion, and I was on the point of throwing myself into his arms with tears. But he had already regained his self-control, and in his tone of command he went on:
“You simply must obey. You simply must.”
I at once hardened my heart again. He was affirming his authority: and though he had certainly not abused it, there was for me only the sacred war for independence.
Mother, whose anxious shadow I had distinguished behind the window, was watching for our return, and came to the top of the steps to meet us.
“He was there,” said my father simply. “I was not mistaken.”
“Oh, my God!” she murmured, as if she could not have imagined so tragic a misfortune.
Aunt Deen, who was close behind her, lifted up her hands to heaven:
“It’s not possible! It’s not possible!”
Beyond this I was not scolded. With his will or against his will the prodigal son had been brought back. But, far from being grateful for this indulgence, which now I better understand as being due to theuncertainty of my parents as to the influences to which I had been subject, and the best way of winning me back, I tried to revive with all my recovered strength the love-pain which had been dulled by all these incidents, saying over and over to myself,
“Nazzarena is going to-morrow. Nazzarena is going to-morrow.”