When he had made his choice of a career, when in spite of remonstrances he had become an actor, his father had felt disgraced. His father was the hatter in the rue de la Paroisse. The shop was not prosperous—in Ville-Nogent people made their hats last a long while—but it was at least a shop, and the old man wished his son to be respectable. This, you see, was France. The little French hatter had not heard that, across the Channel, the scions of noble houses turned actors, and he would not have believed it if he had been told.
Once, the son of a little French tradesman humiliated his father by going on the stage and became the admiration of the world; but this tradesman's son did not distinguish himself like that. Indeed, he did not distinguish himself at all. Many years later the hatter patted the artist's hand, and said feebly: "After I am gone, take a hat, my poor Olivier. Heaven knows thou needest one!" A hat, and his blessing were well-nigh all he had to give by this time.
In his youthful dreams—day-dreams behind the counter—Olivier Picq had seen himself a leading man in Paris, making impassioned love in the limelight to famous actresses. His engagements had proved so different from his dreams that not once had he attained to the hero's part, even in the least significant of provincial holes. No manager could be induced to regard him as a hero. By slow degrees he had ceased to expect it. By still slower degrees he ceased to expect even parts of prominence. He was the fatuous valet, who came on, with the laughing chambermaid, to explain what the characters that mattered had been doing between the acts; he was the gaby that made inane remarks, in order that the low comedian might reply with something funny; he was the moody defaulter that committed suicide early in the piece—and he changed his wig (alas! not his voice) to become the uninteresting figure that broke the tragic tidings to the widow.
"Ah," says the reader, "he wasn't clever. That's why he didn't get on."
Well, it is not pretended that Picq had genius; for such parts as fell to him he had not even marked ability. But the truth is, that in the rôle of romantic hero, which he had not had a chance to play, he would have been good. The laughing chambermaid used to say he would have been splendid. Often they grieved over the bad luck that had attended him, as they reviewed the years of struggle, hand in hand. He had married the chambermaid.
"Oh, I can guess the end of this story already!" says the reader. "He became a leading man in Paris, after all."
So he did, madam. But not quite so felicitously as you may think. Picq, dizzied by the sudden transformation, was promoted to be the hero—a gallant, dashing boy—in a revival on a Paris stage, one winter when he was subject to lumbago, and fifty-eight years old. You see, most of the actors of military age that still lived were either in the line or the hospitals, while many of the popular actresses were nursing. A manager who had the temerity to cast a play now was in no position to be fastidious, and playgoers were indulgent. They accepted the elderly man as the gallant boy. He was applauded. And while he declaimed bombast across the footlights—those turgid love appeals to which he had aspired, behind the counter, forty years ago—it was with a heart torn with anxiety for his own boy, who was in the trenches.
When Jean had slept as a baby, the utility actor and the chambermaid had sat by the cradle and talked in low tones of the fine things he was to do when he grew up. Not on the stage—both had outlived its glamour; he was to be an advocate. "It is so refined, dearest," said the chambermaid. "And there is money in it, my love," agreed the father. And for half a lifetime unflinchingly they had scraped and hoarded, to realise that ambition for him. Their salaries were not vast, and there were numerous vacations in which there was no salary at all; often the sum that they had garnered during one tour would melt before the next; but every hundred francs that they could stick to looked a milestone on the journey. Only one annual extravagance did they allow themselves. On Jean's birthday it was Picq's custom to take home a bottle of cheap champagne. The dinner might be meagre, the vacation might be long, but on Jean's birthday they must be joyous. And in a shabby lodging-house bedroom—a parlour was beyond the means of poor players who pinched to make their son an advocate—the pair would festively clink glasses to his future.
"We have not been unhappy together all these years, Nanette, my little wife, though you did throw yourself away in marrying me, hein?" Picq would say tenderly, embracing her. And Nanette, who still looked almost as young sometimes as she had looked at the wedding breakfast—at any rate, Picq thought so—would answer, with a catch in her voice: "Sweetheart, I have thanked the good God on my knees every night for that 'throwing myself away.'"
"All the same, it is possible that, without me, you would have got on far better—even have made a name."
"Silly! It is more likelyIwho have heldyouback; perhaps alone you would have gone to the top. Ah, no, I cannot bear to think it; I cannot bear to think I have been a hindrance to you!"
Then Picq, denying it vigorously, would cry: "But a fig for the stage! Ma foi, have we not each other, and our Jean? It is wealth enough. I tell you he is going to be a famous man one day, our Jean—he has the brow."
By rare good fortune, when he was old enough to have ideas of his own on the subject of a career, Jean had not opposed their plan; he did not, as night easily have been the case, inherit a craving to be the hero. He had long been a student in Paris, and they were playing in a rural district remote from him on the day of the mobilisation. Never while life lasted would they forget that day—that beating on a tocsin, and the glare of a blue sky that turned suddenly black to them; the deathly silence that spread; and then the shrill voice of a child, the first to speak—"C'est la guerre!" The shaking of their limbs held the father and mother apart; only their gaze rushed to each other. "Jean!" she had moaned.
And Jean fought for France still, and already it seemed to them that the war was eternal. Twice—on two anniversaries since that terrible Saturday—they had raised trembling glasses to a photograph on the wall and pretended to be gay, and a third anniversary was approaching. "Be confident, be brave," he wrote to them; "we are going to win." But the thoughts that crowded on his little mother, in the dark, after she went to bed kept her awake for hours; and marking the change that the war had wrought in her, Picq's misgivings for his wife were sometimes hardly less acute than his anxieties for his boy. The laughing chambermaid, who had retained girlishness of disposition for two decades after girlhood was past, seemed to him all at once middle-aged. Ever the first formerly to propose trudging a long distance to save a tram fare, she was now fatigued after an hour's stroll. By the time they came to Paris, too, she was subject to spells of some internal trouble, which the doctor had failed to banish permanently. There could be no question of her seeking an engagement.
"Itisa shame, when the double salary would have been so nice," she repined, one evening. The trouble had recurred, and a new doctor had been no more definite than his predecessor. "We might have lived on my money, and put the whole of yours aside every week. Itisa shame that you should have an invalid for a wife."
"An invalid!" laughed Picq, affecting great amusement. "Now, is not that absurd? To hear you talk, one would imagine it was some terrible malady, instead of a little derangement of the system that will pass and be forgotten. Very likely you will be in a show again before Jean's birthday. And it shall be a good part, also, parbleu! There are not so many stars available to-day that they can afford to put on an artist like you to flick the furniture with a feather-brush. Listen, Nanette, my best beloved, if it were anything serious that you had the matter with you, it would not right itself as it does from time to time—it would be always the same. The fact that you are sometimes as well as ever shows that it is nothing organic. Have not both doctors said so? Did not the other man tell us so again and again?"
She nodded, forcing a smile. Her smile was girlish still, and somehow it looked to him strangely poignant on her altered face. His gaze was blurred, as he muffled himself in his shabby cloak, and set forth through the sleet, to be the dashing hero. A child came towards him, calling papers, and he thought, "If only the news were that Germany sued for peace! That would be the best medicine for her."
And on the morning before the birthday she wasnot"in a show again;" she was feeling so much worse that she clung to Picq, alarmed. Picq was alarmed, too, though he tried to hide it.
"Look here, I tell you what!" he exclaimed, in the most confident tone that he could summon. "We are going to call in a big man and get you cured without any more delay! That's what we're going to do. This chap is too slow for me. I dare say his medicines might do the trick eventually, but it does not suit me to wait so long. No, it does not suit me. I am not going to see you worried like this while he potters about as if time were no object. We shall call in a big man and put an end to the nuisance at once. I wish to heaven I had done it before. I am going now. I am going to the chap's house to tell him plainly I am not content."
"Mais non, mais non!" demurred Nanette piteously. "It would cost such a lot, chéri—what are you thinking about? I shall get all right without that. You mustn't take any notice of me; I am a coward—I have never been used to feeling ill, you see—but I shall get all right without that."
"I care nothing what it costs. That is my intention," declared Picq. "And it will not cost such a great sum either. Anyhow, whether it is forty francs or five hundred, my mind is made up. I am going to him this moment to tell him I want the highest authority in Paris. Now, be tranquil, mignonne. Try to sleep. We have chosen the shortest course at last—we were bien bêtes not to take it at the start—and in a week at the outside you will be yourself again."
Never in her life had Nanette contemplated spending forty francs all at once on a physician. She knew she would be unable to sleep for the awfulness of such expense. But, if his prescription cured her promptly and she could earn a salary again soon——
"What a weight I have become to thee, my little husband!" she faltered, stroking his hand.
"Hush! Thouwiltsleep while I am away, pauvrette?" asked Picq tenderly.
She closed her eyes, smiling—to lie and grieve over the "weight she had become to him" when he had gone; and Picq went apace to the doctor's.
When the motive for the inopportune call was explained, the doctor evidently resented the suggestion that his own treatment of the patient could be bettered.
"Another opinion, monsieur? Parfaitement—if you desire it." His shrug was eloquent. "But your wife has only to continue with the medicine I have prescribed——"
"She has continued," stammered Picq; "she has continued. There it is—she has continued for a long time. I grow anxious. No doubt it is unreasonable of me, but——" Truth to tell, the veteran of the boards, who faced a crowded auditorium without a tremor, found himself nervous in the room of the dignified practitioner.
"One must not expect miracles. I am not a magician. In such cases——"
"Mais enfin, another opinion would ease my mind. If you would do me the great kindness to indicate a specialist, monsieur—the best? Such a one as you would recommend if it were—I do not know what itcouldbe, I; but such a one as you would recommend if you feared something grave? I should be thankful. I know nothing of these things. If you would be so very kind as to communicate with someone for me——" He with-drew, after five minutes, clumsily, relieved to be able to tell Nanette that, with luck, they might receive a visit from a specialist on the morrow.
"And his charge—how much?" panted Nanette, who feared that such celerity might cost more still.
When the specialist had been, on the morrow—when Picq had closed the street door after him, and stumbled up the stairs, in his hurry to rejoin Nanette, and sat down on the bed, with his cheek resting against hers—they did not speak for some seconds.
"Well, well," he brought forth at last, "after all, it is not so bad, what? It is a shock, of course—I own it is a shock; but really, when one comes to think it over——"
She moaned—a child afraid.
"Don't—don't! An operation!"
"Yes, yes, it is a shock; we were hoping for an easy cure. But when all is said, we have learnt thereisa cure. If he had told us there was nothing to be done? Thereisa cure! And you will feel nothing, mignonne—you will feel no pain at all. And afterwards, when you lie there at peace—so comfortable in the knowledge that all the misery is over—I shall come every day and bring you flowers. And every day I shall find you brighter and stronger. Upon my word, I would not mind making a bet that, in looking back at it, you remember it as a happy time."
Big tears were on her frightened face.
"And it is Jean's birthday," she wailed.
"Yes, it is unfortunate. It cannot be helped. Well, we shall have our fête when you come home instead, and—listen, listen! We will drink his health at a restaurant—we will make up for the delay. To the devil with the cost! When you come home cured, we will have a swagger supper out, to celebrate the double event. Nanette—it is useless to expostulate—I register a vow that this time we will squander a couple of louis on a supper on the Boulevard. And you shall put on your pink silk dress!"
"Petit bonhomme, wilt thou do me a favour?" she whimpered.
"Now thou art going to say something foolish."
"No; we will have that supper on the Boulevard. After the awful expense I shall have been, two louis more or less——But let us fête Jean the same as usual to-night. We must. We've never missed doing it once since he was a baby; I couldn't bear to let the day go by without our doing that. Think of the danger he is in. Get champagne as you always do. If it would be bad for me, I won't take any; but get it! My illness mustn't spoil the birthday altogether. Get it, and we'll forget about me for an hour. Chéri, I shall go into the hospital braver in the morning for having had our fête."
"Agreed, agreed," said Picq chokingly. "But it will be a poor treat to me, if I am to drink it alone. I shall ask if you may take a sip."
He rang up the specialist, to inquire, on the way to the theatre in the evening. "It is our boy's birthday, monsieur," he pleaded—"our boy who is in the war. You see, it is his birthday!"
"One glass of champagne? Yes. It will do no harm," said the authoritative voice. "But no excitement, you understand. And no solid food. To-morrow and the next day they will see to her diet—and the day after that, we shall operate."
That word "operate," booming from the receiver, struck horror to Picq afresh. He marvelled that anyone could be capable of uttering it so cheerfully, as he went out into the streets again. A child came towards him, calling papers, and he sighed, "If they but announced that Germany sued for peace! She would not be thinking so much about the operation then."
During the performance, the bottle of paltry wine stood among the articles of make-up on the table of his dressing-room; and in his wait in the last act, he sat staring at it, and thinking of the days when his boy in the 120ième Régiment Territorial had been a tiny child, and the wife who was so ill had been all sunshine and laughter. It had not been withheld from him, on the doorstep, in the morning, that the operation would be a serious one, and he felt sick in contemplating the next three days' suspense. How would Nanette contrive to bear it, he wondered, away from him, among strangers in a hospital? When the fearful moment came for her to be carried from the ward to the operating table! Cold sweat burst out on him. As he sat huddled there, in the garish dressing-room, Picq prayed to Heaven to give her courage. His chin was sunk on his chest; he rocked to and fro.
There was a sudden rap at the door.
"Entrez!" said Picq, and somebody brought him a telegram.
He read: "I have the pain of informing you of the death on the field of honour of your son Jean Picq." It was from the War Office.
"Better hurry up, Picq—you haven't too long!" called a colleague, carelessly, looking in. "Good God!" And he sprang towards him.
Picq staggered, from his colleague's arms, up the crazy staircase to the wings—and straightened his back to be dashing. He entered upon the scene in time. And he delivered his lines, and struck his attitudes, and paused, by force of habit, when a round of applause was due. At the climax of a tirade, when he took a step back and mechanically raised his gaze to the first circle, nobody would have supposed that, with his mind's eye he looked, through the tier of faces, on the mangled body of his son.
The curtain fell again. The play was over, and he tottered back to the room. The bottle of champagne on the dressing-table, among the litter of make-up, was the first thing he noticed. "My wife!" gasped Picq, and broke down. He was shaken by sobs.
Some of the players had followed. Sympathy surrounded him.
"I see her face when I tell her—I see her face! How to keep it from her? To-night she mustn't know—it would kill her; but to keep it from her for weeks till she has recovered—is it possible?"
"Poor chap! Be brave. Time——" They mumbled useless words.
"To have to pretend to her every time I go, for weeks, perhaps months! And then, when she is so happy at being well again, to have to strike her down with the blow! Ah, I know I am not the only father to lose his son—she is not the only mother, but——"
"You don't think it might be best to break it to her now?" someone suggested.
He shook his head impatiently, the throbbing head from which the jeune premier's curls were not removed yet.
"It would be murder. I am warned she is to avoid excitement. And this evening, when she tries to be bright, to go in and say, 'He is killed'! I mustn't tell her till she is well—quite, quite well. I must keep her cheerful; I must be in good spirits, but—I haven't the courage to go home."
It was the truth: he had not the courage to go home.
"She is waiting for me—I must make haste to change," he faltered more than once; but even when he had "changed" at last, his soul cowered before the thought of the ordeal, and he lingered nerveless in the chair.
"She is waiting for me—I must go," he kept repeating while the lights in the theatre went out. "I must go," he said again, and rose. They had called a cab for him, and his legs felt so unreliable that he offered no protest, though a cab seemed a terrible extravagance. Yes, he would take one; it was certain he could not walk fast enough to make up for the delay, and Nanette mustn't be allowed to grow anxious. He lay back in the cab dizzily, a hand round the neck of the bottle on his knees. "In good spirits—in good spirits!" he cautioned himself. "But her instinct is so strong. If she suspects?" On the rattling course, imagination wrung him with the moment of her suspicion—the horror in her dilating eyes, the impuissance of his agony.... "Dead!" He perceived with a shock that he had not understood that Jean was dead—that he still did not understand. "Dead." Jean, who seemed so vividly alive, was only a memory. His eagerness, his laughter, his allusions, all the intimate realities that represented Jean had been blown out. It was inconceivable; his mind would not grasp it. Where, then, did comprehension he, that he was stricken?... The cab startled him by stopping.
As he had said, she was trying to be bright. She had not cast her fears aside, but she meant to hide them. She welcomed him with a smile. "Champagneanda cab? What next?"
"Yes, what do you think of it? I was in a hurry to get back. How has it been with you, chérie—has the evening seemed very long? Well, there is good news—you may have a glass."
"He was sure?"
"He said 'Yes' at once. Oh, I wouldn't have tried to persuade him—that would have been folly. I told him the reason, but I did not try to persuade him."
"How tired you look! How did it go?"
"It was a good audience—what there was of it. Three calls after the third act. What an appetite I've got—and what a thirst! I can't wait to take my boots off. The spread attracts me. What? I declare I see my favourite sausage!"
"I couldn't go out for any flowers this year, and I forgot to remind you," she said. "But you'll find enough to eat."
"And you—what is there foryou? Let me put the pillow behind you, mignonne. And now to open the bottle! I am not an expert at the game, but—ah! it is coming. Prepare yourself for the bang.... Tiens, it is of a gentle disposition. But no doubt it will taste just as good. Sapristi, how it sparkles!"
He bore a glassful to her side, and their gaze turned together to the likeness on the wall.
"Well, little wife, the usual toast. To our boy, our darling Jean! May God bless him."
"May God bless him," breathed the mother. They looked at the photograph silently for a moment. "I wonder if he is thinking of us?" she murmured. "Perhaps he is fancying us like this?"
"I venture to say so," replied Picq. "He knows we should never forget his birthday; he knows that."
"If—he is alive," she said in a whisper.
"Ah, why should we doubt it?" His arm encouraged her. "How often we have alarmed ourselves! And always hewasalive. Take another sip, mignonne. It is a sound wine, hein? I should not be surprised if on the Boulevard they charge fifteen francs for such a wine."
"You must go and sit down now and have your supper."
"Not for a minute or two. The bouquet is so excellent I can't take my nose out of the glass. And I think I am more thirsty than hungry, after all."
"Petit bonhomme, petit bonhomme," she faltered pitifully.
"And why 'petit bonhomme' like that—what are you making so much of me about?"
"Do you think I am blind? Do you suppose you can hide it from me? Your hands tremble and your eyes are red. As soon as you came in I saw. You have been tormenting yourself about the operation all the evening."
"Mais non, mais non! If I worry, it is not about the operation, because it is a simple thing, though it sounds so big tous. They tell me it is an everyday affair, like having out a tooth; that was his very expression: 'Monsieur, it is no more dangerous than having out a tooth.' I worry, if I worry at all, in thinking that you are frightened. If I could only make you believe that there is nothing to be frightened of!"
"I know I am a coward. I told you so. It is fromyouthat he gets his courage."
"What an illusion! A fine fire-eaterIam! Old stick-in-the-mud!"
"Ah, yes. I'm ashamed. When I think of what he is going through—how splendidly he bears it! And here am I, afraid of everything. He has no heroine for a mother."
"I forbid thee to say it. He knows it is not true."
"He loves me just the same. Don't you, Jean—you don't love your little mother any less?" The photograph hung too high for her. "Take it down," she pleaded. "If I could change places with thee, my son! I would find the courage for that, though I died of terror in the first hour. Ah, my little baby, my little baby! And I was so glad he was a boy!"
"You are not to upset yourself," quavered Picq. "I cannot stand it. Will you be sorry he was a boy when he gets the Croix de Guerre? I make you a bet they give him that at the very least. I see you polishing it all day. Pick up your glass. To tell the truth, I have a strong presentiment, and I am not given to foolish fancies, that he comes home 'Captain.' What triumph for us—hale and hearty and a captain. Imagine it. At his age! Nanette, pick up your glass. We will paint the town red that night, and you will say you were 'always sure of it.' When I chaff you about your tremors you will declare you never had any. Mind you, I am putting it down very low; it is quite on the cards that he becomes 'Colonel.' Nanette, I entreat thee, pick up thy glass! Again a toast. Good luck, my son! We drink to your future. A bumper to our next merry meeting!"
That toast reverberated to Picq when she lay sleeping and Picq was sleepless. But, at any rate, she had no suspicion so far.
She remained without suspicion when he visited her at the hospital, during the following week, but always she remained a prey to fear. Not for herself now—they said the operation had been successful; it was the thought of Jean's peril that haunted her. As she was wakened in the early morning, the burden of dread rolled upon her. Through the long monotonous day her mind was in the blood-soaked line more often than in the ward. They hinted to Picq that her anxiety was detrimental, and he tried to reason with her once; but it seemed to do more harm than good, for she burst out, "If he should be killed!" and wrung her hands on the quilt. "He has everything before him, he's so fond of life. If he should be killed!"
"He will not be killed. Is not my love for him as great as yours? And you see I am confident. I swear to you I am confident! I implore you, don't dwell on these thoughts. Make haste and get well." And again he asked himself, "How am I to break it to her when sheiswell?"
Then there was a morning when they sent him away for a while, stupefied by the announcement that never would she be well. "The conditions had changed;" he must be "prepared for the worst." She, too, had been prepared, before he was admitted. He had foreseen her speechless with fright; but, strange to say, the "coward" who had been so timorous of an operation, had spoken of her approaching death quite calmly. Her terror for Jean it was, increasingly her terror for Jean, that tortured her last hours. "Petit bonhomme, it is like being on the rack," she had gasped. "If only I were sure he would be spared!"
"God of heaven, it is 'like being on the rack' for her," shuddered Picq, sobbing in the street; "it is for her 'like being on the rack'! And there is nothing I can do."
And a child came towards him, calling papers.
It was with the connivance of the nurses that he brought joy and thanksgiving to her heart during the hours that remained to her. He pretended to her that Germany sued for peace. If he was condemned to affect the tones of hysterical rejoicing, he had no need to counterfeit the tears. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, as he feigned to fight for mastery of a whirlwind of exultance, and panted to her that the war was won.
"I return with good news—the greatest; but I implore thee, keep still—they forbid thee to sit up. Nanette, my loved one, our boy is safe. The danger is all over—he will soon be home. The Boches are beaten. I rush back to tell thee. They cave in. Paris has gone mad. The boulevards are impassable for crowds. I am deaf with the cheers. They cave in! They have been on the verge of it for months. Bluff, it has all been bluff for a long time, and now America has called their hand. They collapse, the Boches. An armistice is arranged. It is certain they restore Alsace-Lorraine. I have cried like a child. Glory to God. France has conquered. Vive la France!"
"Jean safe!" she breathed, smiling.
She seemed to grow younger during the afternoon, before she died.
"And though she knows now it was a he," said Picq, when they had crossed her hands on her breast, "it is no disappointment to her, since she has him with her now."
At the corner of the rue Baba stands the Maison Séverin, with its board announcing furnished flats to let. One December evening a journalist went to call upon a colleague there. As he climbed the last flight of stairs, a door was opened violently and a gesticulating female appeared. She shrieked defiance over her shoulder, pulled down her sleeves, and descended with such precipitance that she nearly butted Jobic over the banisters.
Dodging her by a miracle, Jobic entered unannounced.
"Your domestic seems to be perturbed, my dear Pariset," he remarked.
"Tiens, you?" said the young widower, panting. "Yes, she has 'returned her apron,' she has resigned the situation, that devil—a situation that offered unsurpassed opportunities for pillage. I am left with the dinner unprepared, and the twins to put to bed—and I ought to be at Batignolles by eight o'clock!"
"You should marry again," said Jobic.
"I cannot do it in the time. Mon Dieu, just because I mentioned that it was unintelligent of her always to keep the empty wine bottles among the full ones! It took me a quarter of an hour to get hold of anything to drink. You may tell a bonne that she is an inveterate liar without disturbing her in the least; you may say that she is an habitual thief, and she will accept the truism placidly; but insinuate that she is a fool, and her vanity is in arms at once! What has brought you here?"
"I come to borrow a louis."
"Visionary!"
"Spendthrift! What do you do with your salary, then? The fact is, your rent is an extravagance, and you spend far too much in dressing up your babies; for some time I have had the intention of remonstrating with you on the subject. If you exercised reasonable economy you would be in a position to lend me a louis on your head."
"I am. But the monotonous fatigues me. To attain the charm of variety I propose to lend you nothing at all. I tell you what, however—I can provide you with a job."
"For putting twins to bed my lowest figure is five francs. I will cook the dinner for forty sous, and an invitation to share it."
"The tenders are declined. Listen; you may go to Batignolles and write a column around a communist meeting for me. The kiddies are too young for me to leave them by themselves, and I have been counting on this affair to supply material for my causerie in to-morrow'sEcho."
"Communist meeting?" exclaimed Jobic, with distaste; "I do not believe I could borrow any more money under communism than I can now."
"Are we discussing your beliefs? Has your welfare the remotest interest for me? All I ask of you is to fill a column. Bring the stuff for me to sign before you sleep, and I will pay you your own price for it."
"Cash?"
"Cash."
"It's a deal," said Jobic. "Some sprightly copy is as good as on your desk. Your editor will not fail to note a vast improvement in your literary style."
It was in these circumstances thatL'Echo du Quartiercontained a column, over Pariset's pen name of "Valentin Vance," that drove the prettiest communist in Paris to tears of fury. For not only did the writer burlesque her impassioned speech, not only did he poke fun at her theories, and deride her elocution—he actually made unflattering comments upon her personal appearance.
Not since she embraced the Cause six months ago had Suzanne Duvivier read anything to compare with it.
"If I were a married woman," she raged, "my husband should call the monster out for such insults!" And then, since she was an accomplished pupil at one of the best-known salles for instructing the fair Parisienne to fence, it occurred to her that the lack of a husband was no drawback.
Though there were pressing domestic matters to claim her this morning, she betook herself to kindred spirits, and burst in upon them to demand their services.
"Mais, ma chère," gasped mademoiselle Tisserand and mademoiselle Lagarde, "we have never acted as seconds in a duel, never! We implore you to dismiss the notion; we counsel you to treat the abuse with the silent scorn that it deserves. The man might run you through your valiant heart."
"Do we shirk danger, we communists?" cried Suzanne.
"Dear comrade, the Cause cannot spare you. Moreover, every novel with a duel in it that we have ever read makes it clear that it is the privilege of the party challenged to choose the weapons. This monsieur Vance might choose pistols. The novels, again, indicate that it devolves upon the seconds to load the pistols, and we have never done such a thing in our lives. It may also be that you have never handled one yourself?"
For a moment Suzanne Duvivier quailed—she was only twenty-five, and normally no swash-buckler. If monsieur Vance did choose pistols, she knew very well she would have to shut her eyes as she fired. Then the obloquy of the column overwhelmed her anew, and she flung timidity to the winds.
"We must hope for the best, girls," she said, resolutely. "If you are my pals you will not desert me in this hour. I fight for the Cause far more than for myself. I do not know precisely what phrases you should employ—consult the novels!—but the first thing to be done is for you to present yourselves to the man and desire him to name the day. You had better not say 'name the day,' because that has another association, but he must fix the date. If you can contrive to suggest that I hanker after pistols, perhaps he will say 'swords.' Au revoir, my friends. Bear yourselves firmly—look as if you were used to it. Wear serious hats."
She departed to put in half an hour's practice at the fencing school, and mademoiselle Lagarde moaned to mademoiselle Tisserand, "It is terrible, is it not? However, we need not make frumps of ourselves, I suppose. I wonder if my toque would be inappropriate?"
"Not the least in the world," said mademoiselle Tisserand. "What do you think of my hat with the bird of paradise? She is right as regards our demeanour, though—we must be deadly calm. Let us remember that the dignity of communism is at stake. The brute must not be allowed to guess that we are afraid."
A couple of hours later, Pariset, after struggling with a fire that refused to be lit, and breakfasting without any coffee, and dressing his twins with some of their underlinen back in front, gave the concierge a tip to let him leave them in her loge, and went forth to theEchobuilding, anathematising his ex-domestic with continuous fervour on the way. Arrived there, he found two young women strenuously inquiring for the address of "monsieur Valentin Vance."
"You behold him, mesdemoiselles," said Pariset. "What can I have the honour of doing for you?"
The young women looked embarrassed.
"It is you who are the author of this article, monsieur—this infamous calumny?" queried the plumper of the two.
"Oh!" exclaimed Pariset, taken aback. "Oh ... I am speaking to mademoiselle Suzanne Duvivier?"
"No, monsieur, I am not mademoiselle Duvivier. Neither of us is mademoiselle Duvivier. But we inquire if you are the monsieur Vance who is the author of this article?"
"Well—er—yes, certainly, I am the author of it."
The pair conferred a moment in undertones. The one in the toque gave the one with the bird of paradise a slight push.
"Then, monsieur, I have the honour to inform you that we are the bearers of a challenge from the lady you have slandered."
"A challenge?" stammered Pariset. "What do you say? Is this a joke?"
"You will find it very far from a joke," put in mademoiselle Lagarde, strategically; "our principal is a crack shot."
"In that case you may be sure I shall not choose pistols," said Pariset with a smile.
"Ah!" breathed the girl, dissembling her elation. "You choose swords. No matter."
"No," demurred Pariset. "I do not choose swords, either."
"But—not swords, either? What, then?"
"I choose roses. I am a champion with roses, and I have the right to avail myself of my skill."
"Monsieur," cried her companion, peremptorily, "we shall not be patient with pleasantries!"
"Nor I with hysteria, mademoiselle.Comment?Do you figure yourself I am going to fight a woman? You must be demented."
"You refuse to meet her?"
"Point-blank."
"On the pretext of convention?"
"On the score of manhood."
"Your manhood did not restrain you from attacking her."
"Was it so bad, the attack?" faltered Pariset, who had not done much more than glance at Jobic's masterpiece.
"Pshaw!" sneered both the girls, as nearly as their ejaculation can be spelt. "Shame! How perfectly disgusting! You insult a lady, and then refuse her satisfaction. It is the act of a coward. Ah! Oh!"
"Listen!" volleyed Pariset. "I will not meet her if you go on saying 'Ah! 'and 'Oh!' till you are black in the face. But, to cut it short, she shall have her satisfaction. I will cross swords with any man that she appoints as her deputy. All is said. I await the gentleman's representatives. Mesdemoiselles, bonjour."
"And now I have got a duel on my hands, as well as two babies in my arms!" he reflected. "Jobic is an imbecile. Why did I trust him? That sacrée bonne! her desertion is giving me a fine time. I should like to wring her neck." He spent a feverish afternoon at registry offices. Suzanne was exasperated too. The news of the demand for a deputy was a heavy blow, for she couldn't think of anybody likely to oblige her. Vainly she reviewed the list of her male acquaintances; none seemed to possess all the necessary qualities. Ineligible herself, and unable to find a substitute—what a dilemma! The more provoking because scattered throughout France must breathe several heroic spirits who would have been willing to fight for a nice girl and the guerdon of her gratitude. But she was reluctant to advertise "Duellist wanted," with a portrait of her attractions.
She was removing on the morrow to a furnished flat, and it had been her intention to supervise the removal of some of its dust this morning. Late in the afternoon she ran round to see how matters had progressed without her. A damsel from a registry office in the quarter had undertaken to commence the work punctually at 8 a.m. The flat was in the Maison Séverin. All unconscious that she was to dwell beneath the same roof as the villain she had challenged, Suzanne ascended, sanguine of seeing the clean curtains up.
The damsel hadn't put in an appearance. Either she had received an offer more to her taste, or she had decided to prolong her vacation; there had been no message to explain her caprice.
Suzanne sped to the registry office tumultuously.
TheBureau de Placement des Deux Sexeswas presided over by a very large woman at a very small table. Three of the four employers present were excited ladies, complaining of bonnes who had arranged to take service with them, but who had neither arrived nor written. The fourth was a personable gentleman, awaiting his turn in an attitude of the deepest despondence. Suzanne sat on the bench, by the gentleman's side, while the fat woman strove to appease the three ladies.
"Next, please," she said, eventually. "Monsieur desires?"
Suzanne heard that monsieur desired a capable bonne a tout faire at once, and that by "at once" he did not mean a fortnight hence, or even the following day—he meant "now."
The proprietress said mechanically that she would see what could be done, and asked for five francs.
"Don't you believe it!" said the gentleman, "am a widower and know the ropes—I might part with five francs and remain servantless for a month. Produce a servant. Trot one of your treasures out. Let me get a grip of it and take it away with me, and I will pay you ten—fifteen francs."
"But it happens that there is no servant on the premises this afternoon. Monsieur is not reasonable. He should comprehend that I cannot show him what I have not got."
"It is equally comprehensible, madame, that I cannot pay for what I do not see."
"Next, please," said the fat woman, shrugging her shoulders.
"Madame," began Suzanne, vehemently, "I must ask you to find another femme-de-ménage for me immediately, if you please—your Angélique that I settled with here has never turned up!"
"There you are!" cried Pariset. "Everybody says the same thing."
"Mais, monsieur!" snorted the proprietress. "Your affair is finished—the business of mademoiselle does not concern you."
"Pardon, madame, my affair is not finished; on the contrary, my need is dire. I have offspring who clamour for female ministrations, voyons. Mademoiselle will accept my apologies?"
"They are superfluous, monsieur," said Suzanne, acknowledging his bow. "But, madame, my case is urgent! I go into my new appartement in the morning, and there is nobody there yet to shake a mat or light a fire."
"And what a job it is to light a fire!" put in Pariset, with fellow feeling.
"The life they lead us, these bonnes!" responded Suzanne.
"Above all, mademoiselle, when one has two little children and is without experience. Figure yourself my confusion!"
"Dreadful, monsieur! I can imagine it."
"What do you expect me to say to you, you two?" shouted the fat woman, banging the table. "I tell you that there is no bonne waiting just now. Am I le bon Dieu to create model domestics out of the dust on the office floor?"
And at this instant the door opened, and there entered briskly a comely wench, wearing an apron, and no hat.
"Ah!" gasped Pariset and Suzanne together.
"Ah!" exclaimed the fat woman, jubilant. "Everything arranges itself! Now I know this one. I recommend her. You can take a place to-day, Marceline? Good! It is forty francs a month, as usual, and you sleep in, hein?"
"Fifty. And I sleep out—with my aunt," said Marceline, promptly, seizing the circumstances.
"I agree," announced the eager clients, in a duet.
"Mais, monsieur——" remonstrated Suzanne, dismayed.
"Mais, mademoiselle——" expostulated Pariset.
"Enfin, take her! I yield her to you. My children pine for her care, but we will suffer!"
"I am averse from appearing selfish, monsieur——"
"Ah, chivalry forbids that I wrench this unique boon from your arms, mademoiselle."
"No! She is for monsieur," said Suzanne, in a burst of magnanimity.
The proprietress picked up her pen. "Monsieur resides——?"
"No matter. I renounce my claim in favour of mademoiselle."
The proprietress dipped the pen in the inkpot: "Mademoiselle goes to the Maison Séverin, n'est ce pas?"
"What?" cried Pariset. "The Maison Séverin? It is at the Maison Séverin you have taken a flat, mademoiselle? Why, that is my address, too! What storey are you on?"
"The fourth."
"And I! Listen, an idea, a compromise. If you would be so generous, might you not lend her to me now and then?"
"But everything arranges itself," repeated the fat woman, joyously. "Mademoiselle and monsieur can share her to perfection. Marceline, you would render service in two little appartements on the same floor?"
"That is worth more money," said Marceline; and proceeded to estimate the suggestion at a monstrous figure.
However, her views were modified at last. The fat woman made entries in a tattered book. Suzanne heard the gentleman give his name as "monsieur Henri Pariset." Pariset did not hear the lady give her name, because the proprietress, of course, knew it already. Far from suspecting each other's identity, the Challenger and the Challenged exchanged cheerful smiles. Then Marceline was prevailed upon to fetch her box forthwith, and the elated journalist and the charming girl who thirsted for his blood bore their domestic gaily to the rue Baba together.
"How things happen!" said Pariset, as they went along.
"N'est ce pas?" said she. "All the same, my flat cannot be got ready by the morning now."
"I don't see why not; my own share of her this evening will be slight. Let her put my babies to bed at once, and then you can have all you want of her. As to my dinner, I will eat at a restaurant."
"Ah, mais non, if it is not your custom!" said Suzanne. "She can manage your dinner all right—she will have no cooking to do for me. I am at a pension de famille till to-morrow."
And as they reached the house, the concierge remarked, by way of welcome: "It is not unfortunate that you have returned, monsieur. Your twins have been disturbing the whole district."
"But they are adorable, your twins!" exclaimed Suzanne, with genuine admiration, for now they were tranquil and beamed. "I cannot pretend to know whether they are big or small for four years old, but they are darlings."
"Not bad," said Pariset, who thought the world of them himself. "Well, then, when Marceline has tucked them up she shall come to you straightway, and it is agreed that you are to monopolise her as long as you like."
Half an hour passed.
"Monsieur!" cried Marceline, reappearing.
"Eh, bien—you cannot find the children's night-gowns?"
"Si, si. The little ones sleep. But the compliments of mademoiselle, and would monsieur be so amiable as to lend her the feather-brush from his broom-cupboard?"
"Take all she wants. How goes it opposite?"
"There is enough for two persons to do!"
"I don't doubt it," said Pariset. "Inquire of mademoiselle whether I can be of any assistance."
But on second thoughts he was prompted to put the question himself.
In a long blue apron, with her sleeves rolled up, she told him that he couldn't. And he took off his coat and got to work. What a sweeping and a polishing there was! Nine o'clock had struck when he began to hang the curtains, and the dinner at the pension de famille was a thing of the past.
"Evidently, mademoiselle," he said, from the top of a step-ladder, "you also will have to dine out this evening. What do you say to leaving Marceline to put the finishing touches now, and taking nourishment in my company?"
"Monsieur," returned Suzanne, "you dizzy me with your neighbourly kindness. If you can turn round without risking your neck, however, you will note that Marceline is absent. She is engaged in improvising a meal for us, and I beg you to accept my invitation."
"Enchanted. Only, as you are still somewhat at sixes and sevens here, may I propose that you invite me to my own flat, instead of yours?"
So it befell that the bouillon, brought hot in a can from the little greengrocer's across the road, was served at Pariset's table. And Marceline's omelette, created while the cutlets were frizzling on the grille, proved to be delicious.
"Our bonne," remarked the widower, complacently, "might be worse, hein?"
"I was thinking the same thing," assented Suzanne. "It seems to me that we have done very well for ourselves."
"You smoke a cigarette?"
"It is one of my consolations."
"I hope that I may be privileged to see you console yourself here often."
"And if you ever have leisure to call upon me corle feeve o'clock, monsieur, I shall be charmed. You can hardly excuse yourself on the plea that my address is too remote."
"Believe me," said Pariset, "I warmly felicitate myself on the address; if I may say so, I am daring to foresee a friendship. And it would be very welcome, for I lead a lonely life."
"I, too," she sighed. "I am a painter, I am a communist, but all the same, I am alone."
"Ah, you are a painter, and communist, hein? We shall have subjects to talk about."
"You are surprised?"
"I am, above all, surprised to hear that you are alone. It is difficult to realise how that can be."
"It is true, I assure you. Only to-day I had the strongest need of a man's arm to render me a service, and I could think of no one to ask."
"There are a couple of arms here," announced Pariset, displaying them in an heroic gesture.
"And doughty deeds they have just accomplished for me!" she laughed.
"No, but seriously——" he urged.
"Oh, seriously, the service that I speak of is far too big for even the best of new friends."
"You are wrong. Without having heard it, I venture to pronounce it just the right size."
"How sincere you are! And how I appreciate your earnestness!" she exclaimed. "But it is out of the question."
"I have not yet proved myself worthy of your confidence," he regretted sentimentally. "I understand."
"If you imagine it isthat"—deep reproach was in her gaze—"I must explain. Have you heard of a journalist called 'Valentin Vance'?"
"Yes."
"Well, I sent him a challenge to-day, and he answered that I must find a deputy."
Pariset sat dumfounded. Twice he essayed to articulate, without producing so much as a mono-syllable.
At last he stuttered:
"You are mademoiselle Suzanne Duvivier? I had no idea."
"How stupid of me. You have read his article?"
"Well—er—I have still not had time to read it very attentively. But I have heard a good deal about it."
"Ah! Then you do not wonder at my resentment?" she cried. And, though the twins forbade her to jeopardise his life, she hoped to hear him gallantly offer to fight monsieur Vance.
This was just what Pariset could not do. After his boasted avidity to execute the service, he must wear an air of funking it. His embarrassment was intense; constraint fell upon them both. Disillusion clouded her eyes. She had begun to like him so much, it grieved her to see him turn tail.
After some very painful seconds he faltered:
"You are disappointed in me?"
"Disappointed?"
"Oh, yes. I seem to you a braggart who has backed out of his boast. Yet I assure you I am not to blame. You seek the one service in the world that I am utterly unable to perform."
"Monsieur," replied the girl coldly, "your parental duties are so obviously paramount that it is unnecessary to remind me of them."
"Oh, as to that, one does not expect more than a scratch in a duel, so it is not from parental reasons that I say it can't be done. The reasons are physical. I cannot meet monsieur Vance because ... I shall sink lower in your esteem with every word ... I cannot meet him because ... enfin, Valentin Vance is I!"
"You?" She had started to her feet.
"My pen name."
The silence was awful. She leant on the back of the chair for support. Then, with a dignity that he felt to be superb, she said:
"Monsieur, as a tenant I thank you for your co-operation; as a communist, I ask permission to retire."
"Ah, I implore you to listen!" raved Pariset.
"It is strange," she added, more spontaneously, "that, since you found me so hideous on the lecture platform, you put yourself out to be so agreeable to me at the registry office."
"I? I find you hideous?" vociferated Pariset. "It was not I who wrote it; not a single word was mine, believe me! My bonne flounced off last night, and the twins kept me at home. I entrusted the job to a dunderheaded confrère. Ah, mon Dieu, 'since I found you hideous'! The spirituality of your face is an inspiration. I admire you with all my heart. Yes, I shall confess it, with all my heart! I love you! Do not condemn me for a column that I did not perpetrate—be merciful, be tender! I will write others that you shall approve. You shall instruct me—I will gather wisdom from your lips. Yes, at your feet, on our hearth, I will learn from you. I will become a disciple of communism—the mouthpiece of your Cause; I will consecrate my pen to your service. My pen shall annihilate your opponents, though my sword could not chasten monsieur Vance." His arms entreated her. "Suzanne——"
"The appartement of mademoiselle is completely ready!" proclaimed Marceline. She rushed in, and out again, triumphant.
"It appears to me I shall not need it long," smiled Suzanne, surrendering to his embrace.
Every Sunday Mrs. Findon went with her two stepdaughters to the cemetery and put flowers on the grave. Every Sunday since her husband's death she had done so—every Sunday for four years, excepting during the month of August, which was passed in the unattractive village where his widowed sister lived. When the melancholy walk was over and they had returned to the house, the Misses Findon used to sit on either side of the fireplace, moist-eyed, and slightly pink about the noses, speaking at long intervals in subdued tones; and their young stepmother would gaze from the window, wondering whether the pretence of mourning a husband she had not loved was to be her lot for life.
When she was twenty her father had said to her, "Belle, Mr. Findon wants to marry you. Don't look like that. He is much older than you are, of course, and it isn't the ideal, but what have you got to look forward to? I'm a pauper, and we both know I can't last much longer, and when I've gone you'll be all alone. How are you to live? You'll be left with about fifty pounds, and waste some of that on crape. It's a ghastly thing for me to lie here and know you'll soon be destitute. He's decent enough in a dull way, and if you were to marry him I should feel I had a right to die."
So she had married him; and Mr. Findon had endeavoured to mould her disposition to his requirements. He moulded so much that it seemed to her he must lament that she wasn't an entirely different person, and she wondered why he had asked her to be his wife. The provincial town to which he took her was depressing, and the furniture and ornaments of his house made her want to shriek, and the people who paid her visits never mentioned any subject that had any interest for her.
More dejecting than the visitors were her step-children. To the two colourless schoolgirls—Amy, fourteen years of age, Mildred nearly sixteen—she had turned eagerly; turned achingly, because no child of her own came to lighten the gloom; and for long she had striven to believe that the slowness of their minds was due to their environment. "They need waking up," she would think, and exhausted herself in efforts to make them fluent. But she found that nothing that was done could make them fluent. And as they grew older, she found that nothing that was said could make them laugh. They laughed only when the wind blew somebody's hat off.
They were sandy, undemonstrative girls, and they had manifested no great affection for their father till he died suddenly five years after the marriage. Then, however, the words "dear father" were for ever on their lips, and a strain of unsuspected sentiment in their nature had opposed itself morbidly to the slightest departure from any domestic arrangement that he had desired. She still remembered Amy's pained stare, and Mildred's startled "I don't think dear father would have liked that!" when she had diffidently proposed to transfer a huge photograph of his mother from the drawing-room wall to the spare bedroom. She still reproached herself for her compliant "Oh, I won't, then, of course." It was among the first of the concessions that had made the house seem to her a sepulchre. By her stepdaughters' wish, nothing had been altered in his study—not the position of an armchair, or of the footstool. Even to the pipes on the table, and a gum-bottle on the mantelpiece, the room, which was never used now, remained as he had left it last. And every morning for four years she had accompanied Mildred and Amy solemnly to the threshold, and regarded the armchair and the pipes with an air of reverence; and afterwards sat down to breakfast, thinking that the girls looked as if they had been to the funeral over again. At the beginning, if she had not shrunk from wounding them, she might have hinted that that piece of hypocrisy was horrible to her. Now she could do so no more than she could hint that she did not want to feign bereavement in the cemetery every Sunday, or to take an annual change that was made doleful by the triteness of Aunt Harriet, and the presence of her invalid son. At the age of five-and-twenty, the gentleness and weakness of the woman had committed her to act a lie. At the age of twenty-nine, the woman reflected miserably that, unless her stepdaughters married, she would have to act the lie for life.
The oppressive thought was no new one—and she had asked stupid people to dinner, and accepted invitations to wearisome households. She had urged Mildred and Amy to join the golf and tennis clubs, though they were apathetic about golf and tennis, and she usually took them to London to buy their frocks, instead of to the local High Street. But girls less becomingly dressed had got married, and no young man had paid any attentions to Mildred or Amy. Though Mildred was but twenty-five, and Amy only twenty-three, both had already the air of girls destined for spinsterhood. Sometimes, as she regarded their premature primness, she found it impossible to suppose that proposals would ever come to them, impossible to picture either of the staid, angular figures in a man's arms. Timidly, once, when her dread of a lifetime spent in Beckenhampton had grown unbearable, she had nerved herself to suggesting a removal. "Don't you think we should find it brighter to live somewhere else?" she had pleaded. "In London we should have concerts, and pictures and things."
"London?" Amy had faltered, with dismay. "Oh, no, I shouldn't like that at all."
"Well, it needn't be London, then; but there are nicer towns than this. What doyouthink, Mildred?"
"I'm sure we could, none of us, be as happy as we are at home," said Mildred in a shocked voice. "It would seem dreadful to leave the home where dear father used to be with us."
And the little stepmother, her hope extinguished, had found herself murmuring, "Yes, of course, thereisthat, I know." The terms of their father's will had made the house more theirs than hers; it seemed to her that she lacked the right to persist, even if she could have felt sanguine of persistence prevailing. But what she lacked most of all, of course, was courage. She was good-natured, she was charming, she had some beautiful qualities, but she was without the force of mind to oppose anybody. She was a tender, lovable, and exasperating coward. That is to say, she would have been exasperating if there had been anyone to regret her cowardice, anyone to care much whether she was miserable or not.
And then, one summer, after Mildred had influenza, the doctor recommended Harrogate, instead of the dismal village—and the possibility of Harrogate yielding husbands to the girls quickened the woman's heart. In the season there, among so many men—mightn't there be two to find Mildred and Amy congenial?
It was she, not they, who pondered so carefully and paid so much for the morning, afternoon, and evening dresses in which they lagged about a fashionable hydro a fortnight later. It was she, not they, who knew a throb of hope when either of them danced twice, monosyllabically, with the same partner, and who welcomed their opportunity to play in an amateur performance, with its attraction of daily rehearsals.
"I don't think we care much for acting," Amy demurred. "I think we would rather look on, like you."
"Dr. Roberts said that Mildred needed to be taken out of herself; ifyoudon't go in for it,shewon't. Oh, I should say yes. It is sure to be a lot of fun, you know."
"I don't think that Mildred and I care much for fun," demurred Amy.
However, the Misses Findon attended the rehearsals—with the dramatic instinct possessed by pasteboard figures on a toy stage. And blankly their stepmother noted that, though young men were ambitious of "polishing their scenes" in alcoves, at various hours, with other girls, no young man's histrionic fervour urged him to any spontaneous polishing with Mildred or Amy.
The thing that did happen at Harrogate was unlooked-for: a man displayed considerable interest in Mrs. Findon herself.
They had spoken first in the hall, where he was sitting when she came out of the breakfast-room with the girls one morning; and on subsequent mornings they had all loitered for ten minutes in the hall; and then, when the rehearsals prevented Mildred and Amy from loitering, she had paused awhile without them. One day, when the rehearsal took place after luncheon, she was surprised to find that she had sat talking to him the whole afternoon. But though their tone had long since grown informal and they talked spontaneously, though he had told her he was in the last fortnight of his leave from India and spoken of his prospects of a judgeship there, she did not realise how far their acquaintance had progressed until he said to her, "You don't look like a happy woman, and yet it doesn't sound to me as if your husband had been all the world to you. If it isn't the loss of your husband that's weighing on you, what's the matter?"
She gazed at him, startled. And still stranger to her than the boldness of his question, was the intimacy of her reply, after she had made it. "Mr. Murray, I'mnota happy woman."
From that moment they were not acquaintances—they were friends. Piecemeal he learnt her story, and perceived the weakness of her character. And their confidences were more frequent and prolonged after a hurried letter from Aunt Harriet, saying that "her dear boy had passed away, and that it would help her to bear her cross if dear Mildred and Amy would go to her for two or three days." A week slid by, and they were with her still. And meanwhile Mr. Murray and Mrs. Findon fell in love with each other.
It was her first breath of romance. A father's ailments, encompassing her girlhood, had excluded sentimental episodes. To marriage she had been moved by nothing but docility. She would soon be thirty—and for the first time she found a strange pulsating promise in the birds' twittering when she woke; lingered at a looking-glass, and turned back to it, that a man might approve. She eyed intently time's touches on her face, noting with new sensitiveness that it showed her age. She knew, for the first time, restlessness if one man was absent; and if he was present, knew impatience of all others who were present too. And she sparkled at her own blitheness; and but for the recurring thought that it would all be over soon, she lived in Eden for a week.
They had been speaking of her stepdaughters, and he had said, "The first time I saw you with them I wondered what the relationship was. You can't have much in common with them? You must have hoped to see them marry, haven't you?"
"Do you think they will?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know. It doesn't follow, because one finds no charm in a girl oneself, that nobody else will find any. I've known men crazy about women that I wouldn't have turned my head to look at—and men that were by no means fools. Isn't there anybody in Beckenhampton?"
"There aren't many chances for a girl in Beckenhampton. Besides, they don't care for young men's society—that's one of the reasons why men don't find much to say to them, I think. I hoped something might come of their staying here, but——"
"But a man has wanted to talk toyou, instead."
Could she control her voice? "Oh, that's a different thing."
"Why is it a different thing?"
"I meant that I hoped it might lead to something for them—I wasn't thinking of friendship."
"I'mnot thinking of friendship; your friendship wouldn't be much use to me out there. I want you to be my wife. Will you?"
They were in the garden, after dinner. From the ladies' orchestra in the hall came the barcarolle fromThe Tales of Hoffmann. In sentiment she was in her teens.
"I can't," she said, in a whisper.
"I'm so fond of you. Do you know I've never heard your name?"
She told him her name.
"Belle, I'd be so good to you. Don't you like me?"
She turned to him. No one could see them. The first kiss of her first love—moonlight, and the barcarolle. Though she did not recognise it, there was a single instant in which she was capable of any weakness. But she was not capable of strength.
"I can't," she repeated. "How can I? To marry again! I couldn't say such a thing to them. What would they—I couldn't do it."
"I don't understand. You 'can't marry me' because they wouldn't like it? You don't mean that? Or is it because you don't think you ought to leave them?"
"Both."
"But—good heavens!... Besides, there's this aunt they've gone to—they could live with her. You aren't telling me—you can't mean you won't marry me because you imagine it's your duty to sacrifice our happiness for the sake of two young women you don't care about? You know you don't care about them! It's mad! I need you more than they do; I can make you happier than they do. I shall never be a millionaire, but I shall come into a bit by and by, and I can make things bright for you at home, one day. You'd have rather a good time out there, for that matter. Iwantto make things bright for you—I want to see you what you were meant to be. You've never had your youth yet, you've been done out of it; I want to give it to you, I want you to forget what it means to feel depressed. That'd be just my loveliest joy, to see you in high spirits, laughing, waking up younger instead of older, growing more like a girl every day.... People'd begin to take me for your father! That'd be rough on me, wouldn't it?"
She looked, misty-eyed and smiling, at this man who had transfigured life for her.
"I know it sounds silly of me."
"That's meek," he laughed. "Very well, then. As soon as they come back we'll tell them. Perhaps they won't mind as much as you think—they aren't so devoted to you, are they?"
"It isn't that. Their father's memory means so much to them—they'll think it so awful of me. And——"
"And what?"
"You don't know everything—I haven't told you all about it. It sounds hideous, I know, but I couldn't help it—I drifted into it. I—I've had to pretend so much. Pretend to miss him, I mean. All the time. Every day. I——To tell them that it wasn't true——How can I?"
"You wouldn't be the only woman who had loved twice; other women have cared for their husbands, and married again."
"It has been all the time," she muttered, shame-faced. "Even since we have been here I've had to——Just before they went, we sent flowers to the cemetery and I was supposed to—I mean, I had to pretend to be sorry we couldn't take them ourselves. What a hypocrite I shall seem! What'll they say?"
He grasped her hands, and held her tight, and told her whathewould be willing to do forher—and though he was older than she, and looked it, he talked like a boy. "Do you disbelieve me?" he asked. "And if you don't disbelieve me, won'tyouface a little awkwardness forme? If it comes to that,Ican speak to them first. Once the news is broken, the worst'll be over for you. What a baby you are, darling! May I call you a baby the moment I'm engaged to you, Mrs. Findon, madam? Oh, you little timid, foolish, sweetest soul, fancy talking about missing all our happiness for life, to avoid a bad half-hour! It'd be a funny choice, wouldn't it, Belle my Belle?"
She nodded, radiant; and aglow with the courage he had communicated, she thought she could have proclaimed her intention straightway, if the young women had returned then.
They did not, however, return at all. Next morning the post brought from them the news that they felt too sad to find Harrogate congenial now, and that they would rather be at home. They were going back to Beckenhampton the "day after to-morrow."
It meant that her precious hours here were numbered. She showed the letter disconsolately to Murray.
"I shall have to go this afternoon," she said.
"I don't see what for—I don't see why you should be dragged away at a minute's notice. You're not a child to be 'sent for.'"