IVTHE TREATY
WHEN one is a child one imagines that events are going to rush one upon another like the two opposite camps of a game of prison-bars. The next morning I expected something extraordinary to happen, the first result of which would be a holiday from school. Surely no one would work when the house was threatened! I was astonished on being called at the usual hour, when I was settling myself to make up my lost sleep, and sent to school just as usual. Stephen, always absent minded and absorbed in his prayers, had noticed nothing. But Bernard, the eldest, appeared to me to lack his usual high spirits; no doubt he considered me too young to share his dejection. None of us exchanged any confidences on the way to school.
This silence was the beginning of forgetting. I soon recovered from the alarm of the preceding evening, and very soon, as we continued to live in the house, I concluded that our enemies had beat an unexpected retreat.
“They wouldn’t dare,” Aunt Deen had declared.
Nevertheless, a few days later, happening to be in mother’s room, she received a visit from her dressmaker, a maiden of a certain age withmahogany coloured hair, such as I have never seen on any other head. Mother excused herself for having summoned her for so small a matter, simply a making-over, and not a new gown.
“When one has seven children,” she added prettily, “one must be reasonable. And besides I am no longer very young.”
“Madame is always young and beautiful,” protested the artist.
From my corner I considered this protest misplaced. Neither the age nor the face of my mother belonged to this lady of the mahogany hair, but well and duly to me and my brothers and sisters. Whether she was pretty or ugly, young or old, concerned us alone.
“So,” concluded my mother, “here is a gown which you can easily alter a little. You are so clever.”
“Madame has worn it a good deal already.”
“Precisely, I am attached to it.”
This time I thought the dressmaker was right, in putting on a disdainful air as she accepted the work so unworthy of her. Without question the gown in question had been often worn.
At the moment I saw no connection between this episode and our domestic drama. My mother would always be beautiful enough, and clothes could make no difference. Family discussions, however, usually took place in the octagon parlour, which could only be entered by passing throughour bedroom. It was quite isolated, and one could be sure of not being interrupted. We hardly ever went there except for our music lessons, since the cupboard chapel had been put out of commission.
It was there that I had lost my faith in the Christmas miracle. It is true that grandfather’s dry laugh, whenever the descent of the little Jesus was anticipated, had prepared me for incredulity. The morning of the festival day desired and expected by all children, we used to find in this room a pine tree, its branches bent down under the weight of toys, and lighted up by blue and pink candles. At the foot of the tree a wax baby would be lying upon straw, holding out to us his little arms. The ox and the ass were there, too, but the child was larger than they. Their smaller proportions simply put them in their proper place of subordination. Without seeking to penetrate the mystery I always supposed that the tree grew there of itself during the night, with all the strange fruits, which were quite enough to distract my curiosity. But on the night of December 24, lying awake from curiosity, I saw my father and mother pass through the room, walking on tiptoe, only in old houses there are always planks that cry out and betray the presence of people. It even happens that they cry out when no one is there, as if they were supporting invisible persons, the steps of all those who had trodden upon them while living. My parents were laden with all sortsof packages. From that time I understood their collaboration with the little Jesus.
Now, I again believe in the miracle, though like Jesus himself it descended from heaven upon the earth. It was a miracle of love.
How did our father and mother manage to realise at one time all the dreams of our excited imaginations and distribute to each one the paradisaical things that he longed for? How, above all, did they manage to diminish nothing from the divine generosity which they represented during the sorrowful times that we were soon to know? My wonder never ceases when I see, on Christmas day, in the quarters where the poor live, children running about with their hands full of gifts. They are only cheap little toys, but they bear in themselves the virtue of a miracle....
Of the secret consultations in the music room, notwithstanding its remarkable acoustic properties, I could hear nothing. Neither of the two spoke above a low murmur: they were always of one mind. Yet I divined that they were talking of the lawsuit. Something serious was lurking in the darkness. Preparations were being made to repel the enemy. And I wondered why the enemy did not make his appearance.
One morning—it was a Thursday—as we came home for the midday breakfast, my brothers and I, what was our stupefaction, our horror, on perceiving on one of the stone columns into which the entrance gateswere set, an enormous bill, which bore the outrageous inscription:
VILLA FOR SALE
We looked at one another, all alike indignant.
“It’s an insult!” exclaimed Bernard, who already had a sense of military honour.
“No, it’s a mistake,” affirmed Stephen, with unbounded amazement.
Absent-minded and unobservant, he had not for one moment reflected upon the trifling incidents which Bernard and I had been observing, and which, inspiring us with a holy horror, had prepared us for this catastrophe.
We should not have felt more overcome with shame if we had all three been slapped in the face. Bernard, the boldest of us, tried to tear down the bill, but it was glued fast and resisted the attempt. Like a reinforcing army we rushed into the besieged house, which I expected to find full of mole-crickets. The first person we met was Aunt Deen, gesticulating and talking to herself. We had hardly opened our lips when she perceived our agitation and at once her fury put ours into the shade.
“Yes,theywant to rob us of everything!Theypropose to take possession of our property. I would rather have died than live to see this.”
On her lips the wordpropertytook on a solemn grandeur. Then they had passed through the breach;theywere advancing uponus in serried ranks. Beyond this assurance it was needless to expect anything more intelligible from Aunt Deen.
We turned for further explanation to grandfather, coming in from his walk. He waved us off with a gesture of superb indifference; he seemed to us to be soaring in a region far above our agitations. Had he not declared that it was all one to him whether he lived in one house or another? He had been out for a walk on this fine July morning, when the whole sunny country-side seemed swimming in light; he looked healthy, radiant; why should he permit us to spoil his pleasure by inopportune remarks? On the contrary he proposed to share some of his pleasure with us.
“I love this good summer sun,” he said. “And no one can rob us of it.”
His remark was not calculated to quiet our alarm. Its singularity struck me: in such a moment as this, when all our combative energies were not enough to resist the danger that hung over us, he would draw our attention to a simple source of happiness which had no lawful owner and was beyond attack. When one is a child one never thinks that the sun is something he may enjoy.
Mother was clasping my two elder sisters in her arms, trying to console them and not succeeding, for she shared their sorrow. At her feet the two little ones, Nicola and Jamie, were lamenting themselves indiscriminately. Imagine the effect upon us of this weeping group!Even Louise, the laughing Louise, was abandoning herself to tears.
“Here comes your father,” suddenly exclaimed mamma. “Stop crying, I beg of you. He has trouble enough already.”
She had been the first to hear his step. The effect of her words was instantaneous. We all controlled ourselves as quickly as we could, and went down to the dining-room with faces in good order.
At table The Father began to be absorbed in his thoughts, the course of which we followed. We used to call himthe fatheramong ourselves, as we used to saythe house. Did he see the anxiety in all those faces turned toward him? Did he read in our eyes the dishonouring inscription,Villa for sale? He looked us full in the face one by one and his frank smile reassured us. Come! He still had his air as of the chief who commands. We had the feeling that he could not consent to such a downfall. Peace and appetite returned to us at the same time, and seldom was luncheon more gay than this one. We enjoyed the relief to our strained nerves, under the shelter of that protecting strength.
After the meal, while my brothers, whose studies were already of importance, completed a task, I ran into the garden; the afternoon was mine. The figure of Tem Bossette emerged from the vines. I went to him. He was tying the too luxuriant branches to poles with bands of straw, but he asked nothing better than to interrupt his work which, to judgeby the number of branches already tied, was not making much headway. An empty bottle at his feet bore witness to the obstinate struggle against the heat which he had maintained.
He evidently saw my approach with satisfaction. I could hear from a distance his hoarse voice muttering to himself like Aunt Deen. At a later time I understood better the secret reason of his indignation. He was acknowledging to himself, not being as stupid as Mimi Pachoux, his rival, insisted, that his whims and his drink habits would make him of no use anywhere else; his destiny was closely allied with the destiny of the house. So he lost none of his rage and did not cease to lift up his head, his great pumpkin shaped head, against the reigning king, whose idleness, whose home and foreign politics and above all, whose financial condition he never ceased to deplore. As soon as I was near enough to hear him, he put into words the griefs which were obscurely struggling within him:
“You have read the bill, Master Francis?”
“To be sure I have read it.”
And I added, bitter with family pride,
“What is that to you?”
The question suffocated him. His eyes started from his head. “To me? To me?” he exclaimed, foaming at the mouth with fury.
The ancient habit of respect recalled him to himself, and in a lamentable tone he began to set forth his own claim to a part in the family sorrows.
“I have chopped wood here for forty years (he exaggerated everything). It was I who planted these vines and this garden.”
As a matter of fact there was not much to be proud of in that. Our garden sometimes looked like a field and sometimes like a forest, and the prematurely yellowed leaves of the vines revealed a chlorotic condition which would doubtless have been the better for a vigorous medication. But grandfather and his gardener were of one mind in distrusting medicines, as well for plants as for people.
“Where should I go if I left you?” Tem continued frankly. “I might as well throw myself into the water and done with it.”
It would have been his only opportunity to take a good drink of it. Would it then be necessary henceforth to watch him, too?—as if we hadn’t enough with the tiresome propensity of The Hanged? I confess, however, that I did not take this threat very seriously. I had indeed no difficulty in convincing Tem of the advantage of continuing to live. Then his lamentation took another turn.
“What need had Monsieur (that was grandfather) to plunge into all those schemes? Paving the town, and dealing in slates, and agricultural credit. Agricultural credit! As if any one ever paid when you gave them credit. What would be the use of credit, then, if you had to pay in the end like any one else? Not to speak of other bad luck here and there,when all he needs is the sun and the fresh air. Won’t do to undertake to manage things when the third or the quarter is all the same to one. The thing is to keep quiet in a corner with one’s income and let other folks work for you. If it were Monsieur Michel, that’s another pair of sleeves; Monsieur Michel, that’s all right, he’s one who understands governing things. With him there’s nothing to fear, everything goes as if on wheels. But what’s to be done when the other won’t see it?”
I began confusedly to understand that grandfather’s philanthropic enterprises and the unfortunate results of his administration were ending in the ruin of us all. Tem’s long harangue, uttered without interruption, had at once comforted him and made him thirsty. He gazed upon the empty bottle that lay at the foot of a vine and constituted his sole supply for the day. Taking advantage of the respite, I tried to understand more about our discomfiture.
“But why should the house be sold?”
“Why, it’s the lawsuit. When you lose a lawsuit they seize you, they arrest you, they strangle you, they turn you out of doors, they take possession of your house, and you are good for nothing but to throw to the dogs.”
This deplorable picture was not calculated to reassure me. And far from being sorry for us, Tem, perceiving my grandfather who was majestically coming down the garden walk, cheerful, erect, flourishing his cane,grew doubly irritated with him, as the cause of all the trouble.
“All right—all right! When one has got himself into a mess he is prosecuted, arrested, condemned. No good to embrace every one like a brother when one has good land to look after. One has bother enough with the land—there are plenty of folk to prowl about it. Just look at him! He doesn’t even see us—it’s all the same to him—everything’s all the same to him.”
As a general thing Tem had no desire to be observed. Now he was making a great racket to attract attention and not succeeding. This failure completed his disgust—his failure combined, I think, with the prospect of finishing the afternoon without a drink. He deliberately laid down the straw of which he made his ligatures, and deserting his post he abandoned me into the bargain.
“I won’t see it! I won’t see it!” he exclaimed as he went, irritated and discouraged.
See what? The invasion of the mole-crickets? Neither did I want to see it.
I followed the deserter as far as the gate, where I read the bill three or four times over the better to understand the extent of our disaster, and then came slowly back. What could I do now? My horses—the poles—my wooden sword, my plays, were no longer anything to me. For the first time in my life, perhaps, I let my arms hang useless by my sides. By this feeling of the vanity of all things I was being borninto grief. I was learning to separate myself from things. Since that moment I have always felt the pang of separation as soon as I see it coming and long before it actually reaches me.
I went back to the garden and threw myself down in the long grass which Tem had neglected to mow, and there I lay, face downward, I know not how long. All the garden enveloped me in perfume, and I breathed the garden. The house, from its open windows, looked at me across the grass, and I wept for the house. The strength of my love for the house had been as unknown to me as my own heart.
It was a warm, still summer afternoon, full of the hum of insects in the sunshine. Little by little I felt myself drowned in a soft sweetness, as a fly is drowned in honey. And little by little I became happy in spite of my pain. Later I came to know that debasing consolation that comes to us from the beauty of the day, when death has passed that way.
I fell asleep at last, like a baby in its tears. When I awoke evening had come into the garden, noiselessly, and was hiding under the trees. I got up and ran to seek it in the chestnut grove. The dinner bell rang and I turned back. A quantity of things that I had never noticed before impressed themselves upon my mind: the tone of the bell, the rosy tint of the sky between the branches, the long sprays of clematis drooping from the balcony, the lack of symmetry in the windows, and even the creaking of the door as I pushed it open, though it must always havecreaked just so. With fierce ardour I was discovering all that I was about to lose.
We could never get used to seeing without indignation, on returning from school, the ill-omened bill that dishonoured the entrance. Tem Bossette had not returned; we learned that he was drinking himself drunk in all the wine-shops. Mimi Pachoux was working elsewhere; the ship was leaking at every joint and the crew was escaping. Only the long, woe-begone face of The Hanged occasionally showed itself here and there like a sign of distress, or an abhorrent symbol of the evil fate which was pursuing us.
“He is faithful,” Aunt Deen would say, overshadowing him with her protection and aiding him in his work.
More faithful than he, and keeping vigilant guard over the menaced home, she met us at the gate one day in an unusual state of agitation.
“I was watching for you, children,” she said, “to warn you.”
What was going on now? We were not kept long in ignorance.
“A wretch has come, a wretch from Paris (that was an aggravating circumstance, for nothing good could come out of that notorious Babylon, corrupt as it was and fit only for the flames), who has taken upon himself to go through every part of the house, from cellar togarret. Your father is going with him. I can’t imagine how he can keep from throwing him out of window. He must have a patience quite beyond me!”
We were thunderstruck. A stranger dared to come into our house! And our father,—The Father—consented to escort him through it! Aunt Deen might well be terrified: the laws of the universe were turned upside down. As we followed her dejectedly into the house, with hanging heads and shame-flushed cheeks, we came upon this visitor descending the stairs on his way to the kitchen. He was loudly criticising, laying his plans, estimating the size of the rooms, with manifold gesticulations, as if already building a house of his own on the ruins of ours.
“The stairs are too narrow. The kitchen is out of proportion to the other rooms; I shall convert it into a drawing-room.”
My father was showing him about politely, though without alacrity, preserving a calm and distant manner that checked the loquacity of the other when he turned to him, the better to set forth his plans. We went straight up to mother’s room as to our natural refuge. Our mother, who was kneeling at her faldstool, rose when she heard us coming. Her emotion appeared in her face.
“God will protect us,” she said.
When she uttered the name of God she was, as it were, illumined. At that moment I understood what it is to hate the foreigner—theinvader. My father’s subordination, my mother’s tears, and our house trodden, judged, appraised, by a stranger—those are sights that I can never forget. Later, when I read in my History of France that the Allies had crossed the frontiers in 1814 and 1815, and had come and encamped in our capital, when I learned that the Prussians had torn Alsace and Lorraine from us, like a part of our very flesh, I had no difficulty in giving material form to those past woes; I could most distinctly see that gentleman who went from top to bottom of our house as if he were at home.
“Why did you bow to him?” Aunt Deen asked grandfather, who came in with his usual deliberate indifference.
“I am polite to every one.”
“One doesn’t compound with the enemy.”
How could our father, who was not generally considered easy-going, have endured this outrage without faltering? He was in charge of our safety, and the exercise of power imposes obligations which irresponsible folk are apt to neglect. His good humour amazed us also on another occasion. One day at table he suddenly said to mamma:
“Do you know what news is going about the town?”
“I have seen no one.”
“They say we are leaving town; the house being sold, we shalldisappear. Our pride would never endure a less conspicuous establishment. And who do you suppose has spread the report? I give you a thousand guesses. But no, you have too much faith in human goodness. It is my beloved colleagues. They have discovered a practical method of sharing my practice among them. One after another my patients ask, ‘Is it true that you are going away? Stay with us! What will become of us?’ It is very touching. But I have reassured them.”
He laughed,—the hearty laugh of a man accustomed to the fray. We were too young to perceive all the contempt and force that resounded in this victorious laugh, which in our indignation almost scandalised us. Especially Bernard and Louise, hasty and impressionable, protested vehemently against the odious implication, though indeed their opinion had not been asked. Our mother, even she, had blushed for the harm that had been devised against us, and which she herself would never have imagined. As for Aunt Deen, she doubled her fist at the enemy—“they” indeed had at last been discovered:
“Oh, the monsters! I’m not a bit surprised. It would be no more than they deserve if they were compelled to swallow all their own medicines.”
Her aspiration moved grandfather to hilarity. Till then he had been passive, but he was too much the enemy of doctors not to relish his sister’s prescription for vengeance.
It was she who, a few days later, told us of our deliverance. She had placed herself outside of the gate, like an advanced sentinel, and made to us from afar unintelligible signs, which as we drew near we interpreted unfavourably. Assuredly the invader had taken possession of the fortress. The house was sold. We had no longer a roof to shelter us. As Tem had prophesied, we were good for nothing but to be thrown to the dogs.
When we were within hearing distance she hailed us:
“Come quick, come quick! The house is ours! The house is ours!”
We rushed wildly forward.
“The bill isn’t there,” cried Bernard, who was ahead.
Only the marks of nails remained upon the pillar.
“Aha!” continued Aunt Deen’s voice, bursting out in a triumphant cadence. “Theythought they had it! But they won’t get it!”
Theywere no longer the doctors, but the gentleman from Paris and other purchasers, who had appeared while we were in school. With uplifted arm she sketched the flight of the dispersed troop.
With a step that was rapid in spite of her years she led us to the music room where the family was assembled, with the exception of grandfather, who no doubt had made no change in his hour of walking, and who was probably ignorant of our salvation. Mariette followed us at a respectful distance. Her long service gave her the right to a placein the procession.
Our mother, deeply moved, was caressing the hair of my two elder sisters, whom joy, like grief, had moved to tears. But I attached no importance to the tears of my sisters, which used to flow for nothing at all. My father standing, his hand upon the back of my mother’s chair, was smiling. I had never seen his face so radiant, and through the window, behind the group, the sun was coming in like a distinguished guest.
“The bill isn’t there,” repeated Bernard without the usual greeting.
“Yes,” said our father; “we shall keep the house.”
And as our enthusiasm was about to burst forth, he added:
“You owe it to your mother and also to your Aunt Bernardine.”
The latter, whose parchment cheeks would crimson for no reason but that some one spoke of her, while she kept neither her thoughts nor her property for herself, and daily robbed herself as a matter of course, stoutly refused all praise.
“How you talk, Michel! For nothing but a signature! You mustn’t mislead these children.”
Mother at once approved:
“She is right; it is your father who has saved us all.”
And lowering her voice she turned to him, murmuring—but I heard her:
“Is not all that I have, yours?”
I paid little heed, I acknowledge, to this debate. Of course the saving of the house was due solely to our father. How could our mother and Aunt Been have helped? It had been necessary to throw out the gentleman from Paris and the other invaders, as Ulysses on his return to Ithaca had thrown out the lovers. That was an exercise of strength which belonged only to a man. My notions of life were simple: the man governed, the woman’s sole charge was of domestic matters. That Aunt Deen had her rights, however diminished, in the building that “they” were trying to get away from us I could never have understood, any more than I could understand what a dowry was, and how the consent of the wife was necessary to enable the husband to dispose of property.
Nevertheless I recalled the incident of the dressmaker. Mother had no doubt made some savings in the matter of clothes and turned them in. Does not every one make his contribution to the wars? I immediately slipped out of the room and came back bringing the savings bank in which I had been encouraged to drop such little sous as I received. I expected an ovation for the magnanimity of my sacrifice. Without a word I handed it to my father.
“What do you want me to do with it?” was all his response.
Somewhat abashed, being gazed upon by all present, I said, blushing furiously:
“It is for the house.”
This time my father drew me to him and publicly gave me theaccoladewith the dazzling Order of the Day.
“This child will be our joy.”
Thus the Emperor rewarded his marshals on the field of battle; nothing in history is surprising to one who has had a childhood like mine.
Coming in while the bell was ringing, grandfather was the last one to learn what had happened. Aunt Deen informed him in a fiery harangue. He heard her with interest but without emotion, his serenity all undisturbed. And when the heroic story was finished he nodded his head, vouchsafing merely the words of faint admiration:
“Well, well! so much the better!”
Things had been arranged with no help from him.