CHAPTER XXI
MARGOT was extremely unreasonable about her change of masters; she said she did not like Monsieur Flaubert.
It was true he agreed to teach her for a sum almost nominal. He professed to take the deepest interest in her voice, and told her, as Jean had never done, that she sang with the purity of a lark and the passion of a nightingale. “I do not like him, he chills my spine,” she asserted to Jean after her first lesson; “and you—you do not like him either, Jean!”
This was more unreasonable of Margot still, for Jean had never admitted even to himself that he resented Torialli’s secretary, and he did not admit it now.
He explained elaborately to Margot his reasons for esteeming Monsieur Flaubert; they really added up very respectably, from the fact that he had been with Torialli for ten years to his frank appreciation of Margot’s golden voice.
“Bah!” exclaimed that young person, “dress an eel in gold and he will, still squirm! Why does he come into a room rubbing his hands? He has a bad conscience and he looks like a cat that has stolen the cream. You say I know nothing against him—everything is against him—I do not like the way he does his hair!”
Jean shrugged his shoulders; it was no use trying to argue with Margot; she lived too near the sources of sensation to be easily hoodwinked by ideas.
Jean would have liked to hoodwink her because it would have given him company in the process in which he became daily more and more involved of hoodwinking himself.
At last he had begun his career, but there were moments when he found himself wondering what his career was. He was everybody’s servant and nobody’s master. Music seemed to recede further and further into the distant horizon. For days together all he had of it was the sound of a distant piano; sometimes he was out all day, delivering notes and seeing business people for Louis Flaubert, or Madame Torialli would ask him to organize a little party, a day in the country, or an evening At Home. These last occupations, however, if they were not music, had at least about them an indefinable charm. They seemed to make Jean indifferent to the salary that was never paid, to the extra evening hours no one seemed to besurprised at his resigning for the general good of the Toriallis. After all he had, as Louis often pointed out to him, his great opportunities. He took almost all his meals in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and he met the best people in Paris. Madame Torialli treated him as a friend, almost as a son. Signor Torialli treated him as a fellow musician. Jean often played at the Toriallis’ At Homes; he began to have a vogue in Paris; he was called “that good little fellow at the Toriallis’”; and people smiled indulgently when they mentioned him; but whether the indulgence was for Jean or for the Toriallis never appeared. Romain met him at one of the Toriallis’ At Homes. His smile seemed to have even more humour in it than usual; he did not refer to any of his previous ideas for Jean.
“So, my dear boy,” he said, “we meet again. You arebien installéhere, I take it. I am so glad you have been wise and given up your music.”
“But I have not,” Jean cried in amazement. “That is what I am here for!”
“Tut! tut!” said his uncle. “You must be jesting, Jean; every one knows the good Toriallis have no time for the fine arts; they have only time for receipts! Share them! Share them, my dear boy! for if you do not you will very surely be made to pay them! There are only two ways of getting on in this world—taking and sharing! For my own part I think sharing is the best, theresponsibility is divided, and there is nothing I trust so greatly as a self-interest which is identical with our own. Ah, Madame Torialli, I am congratulating my young nephew on his position with your husband. If I were twenty years younger I should wish I were in his place.” Madame Torialli smiled very gravely and gently; her eyes sought Jean’s with an affectionate expression.
“I am wondering what your uncle means,” she said. “And I am afraid that it is not perhaps quite kind. I am such a simple person.” And then she looked back at Romain, who chuckled.
“Twenty years ago, Madame,” he said, “I should have been a simple person, too. We might then have met upon an equality.”
“Jean and I understand each other,” said Madame, softly, preparing to pass on to her other guests.
“That is doubtless why I congratulate him,” said Romain, drawing aside to let her pass.
Jean was needed elsewhere; he made no attempt to continue his conversation with Romain. He did not know why, but it had made him feel a little uncomfortable.
It was only a small addition to the discomforts his pinched pride gave him every day. All these little pin-pricks together only amounted to the pain of a corn in a tight shoe. When the shoe made him most aware of its presence was in the disagreeable business interviews with the pupils.From the first Louis had sent him to collect money for the accounts. Jean copied them daily into the book from Flaubert’s notes; but the Toriallis’ pupils almost always disputed their accounts, and Jean’s dislike for these interviews increased daily.
“I can’t think what is the matter with these people,” he said at last to Louis. “I can understand some of them being mean—but so many of them are, men and women alike. And they seem so certain that they have had fewer lessons or shorter hours. I suppose therecan’tbe any mistakes in the accounts?”
“How can there be?” said Louis, looking at Jean rather hard. “I put them all down in a book myself, you know, exactly as they take place. Paris is full of cheats, and the worst of them are the rich.”
“Yes, but they aren’t all rich,” Jean answered. “Some of them are poor, and that makes it so much worse.”
“I haven’t the time to explain just now,” said Louis after a pause. “Be so kind as to write down the appointments for next week; and here, by the by, is Miss Vanderpool’s account. You may take that to her to-morrow.”
“Can’t I send it?” Jean asked.
“No! She always likes to argue things out,” said Flaubert. “She thinks she shows a business instinct. Mind you make her pay.”
“Really, Flaubert, I wish to Heaven you’d doit yourself!” said Jean impulsively. “The other day I heard you tell one of the pupils that a mistake in the account was my fault, and you know I never make them out at all!”
Flaubert put his arm genially on the young man’s shoulder.
“My dear boy,” he said. “I apologize a thousand times. I had to get rid of him, and to tell the truth I hadn’t time for a fight. Madame had just sent for me. You came into my head, and I made a scapegoat of you. I apologize profoundly.”
Jean drew away from the insinuating arm.
“I should be very glad if you would give me your word that it doesn’t happen again!” he said curtly.
Louis laughed nervously.
“I will give you my word, of course, if you want it, my dear boy,” he said. “But really, you know, you’ll never learn business at this rate.”
“I’m afraid I must insist,” said Jean.
Flaubert shook his head roguishly. “I give you my word, then,” he said; “but I don’t know what Madame would say if she heard me; she believes in a silent partner, does Madame.”
“But Madame has nothing to do with business?” exclaimed Jean.
Flaubert bit his lip, and forced an unnatural laugh.
“No, no!” he said. “Of course not, that iswhy we must be so careful of her interests. By the by, if you so much dislike tackling the great Pauline, you can after all leave her to me. If she does dispute the account I’ll try to make time for her; she is always disputing something. No! send it by post; after all that is the best way.”
Jean was immensely relieved. After all Flaubert was very easy to work with; he was always good-natured, and he never took offence at any of Jean’s protests. Jean decided that he would try not to protest so much, and he sent the account to Pauline. It seemed even to him, accustomed to the enormous expenses of Torialli’s lessons, an immense account. He congratulated himself on not having to face Pauline with it. Unfortunately his congratulations came a little too soon. The very next day Pauline called, not at the hotel of the Toriallis, but at Louis Flaubert’s house.
She was shown at once into the room where Jean was going through the morning’s correspondence. He was used by now to the sight of angry women, but he had never before seen one so fixedly, fiercely angry as Pauline Vanderpool.
“Where’s your master?” she asked Jean with no formal preface.
“I don’t think I know quite whom you mean, Mademoiselle,” said Jean very quietly.
“I guess you know well enough, Jean D’Ucelles, and you’ll soon know some more. I tell youthose—Send for that man, Flaubert. No! Don’t you stir—I’ll not have you two conspiring behind my back. I’ll see you both together and now. Do you catch on? The daughter of Silas P. Vanderpool isn’t going to be swindled by a pack of low-bred Parisian money-grabbers, not by a long way!”
“Mademoiselle, I do not think you will gain anything by being abusive,” said Jean. “You have very great advantages as a woman. It would perhaps be better manners as well as better policy on your part not to abuse them!”
“Why, you puppy!” gasped Pauline. “Do you dare to stand there and try to teach me manners, when I know you haven’t got a brass cent unless you have stolen it?”
“Be content, Mademoiselle, for apparently I have not succeeded,” said Jean grimly. “Ah! Here is Monsieur Flaubert! Have the kindness to make your complaint to him.”
“Say, do you keep this impertinent young whipper-snapper here to insult your clients?” hissed Pauline, leaning forward and forcing the words out between her teeth, her blue eyes hard as steel and her great chin thrust forward like a rock. “I’ve brought you this bill, Monsieur Flaubert—this isn’t the first time I’ve suspected some monkey trick in my account here—but this time I know it! It won’t be of any use your lying about it. I can prove the mistake and I can prove where it is. Takethis paper I’ve got here, and look through it, and then tell me you’ve not cheated me, if you dare! I tell you what it is, Monsieur, I’ll have these two accounts published in the leading journals throughout your little one-horse village by to-night if you don’t climb down pretty quick—Toriallis or no Toriallis!”
Jean looked at Flaubert with a sympathetic glance; it was very disagreeable to have a mad woman to deal with, and he was sorry for Flaubert. He thought Pauline was mad. To his intense astonishment he saw that Flaubert was white to the lips and trembling like a leaf—great beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead, and he smiled in a sickly way, first at the paper in his shaking hands, and then at Pauline. He moistened his lips before he spoke, and gave Jean a quick, furtive look under his eye-lashes.
“I regret infinitely, Mademoiselle,” he said, “that a mistake should have been made; it is nothing more, I assure you; still it is very natural that you should be annoyed by it. I have not had my secretary here very long, and he is not much up to affairs! You know, Ucelles, you owned to me yourself only this morning that you had a very poor head for business,” said Flaubert, turning to Jean. He had recovered himself by now, the colour had come back to his face. He looked in Jean’s direction, but he did not meet his eyes. “I fear I must ask you, Mademoiselle,to overlook my secretary’s little mistake and to accept our most humble apologies. I trust you will let this affair go no further. I can answer for Monsieur D’Ucelles’ good intentions as I can for my own, and if it reached the ears of the Toriallis they might be annoyed.”
“It shall reach them,” said Pauline sharply.
“I meant annoyed with you, Mademoiselle,” interposed Flaubert, whose confidence was now fully returned. “Signor Torialli is so impetuous, and your attack on me has not been very temperate. It would be such a pity to stop your lessons just now, when your voice is profiting so greatly.”
Pauline paused for a moment. Her lip curved scornfully as she looked at Jean. He had started forward at the first words of Flaubert’s speech, stung beyond his own control and ready with a vehement denial. But even as he did so Flaubert’s words about Madame came back to him; he must do nothing that might be against her interests, and he was in the presence of something that he did not understand. He drew back and stood quietly waiting with his eyes on Pauline.
“As for you, Jean D’Ucelles,” she said, “I guess you’re just about the poorest-headed, lost lamb of a Weary Willie I ever struck! I don’t see, Monsieur Flaubert, how you can suppose a man who has never had anything of his own to look after is likely to make much of a hand lookingafter anybody else’s accounts! If he ever turned up our side of the water they’d send him brick-picking! Now see here! I’ll give you back this bill this one time; make it out again, and let me advise you to send it to me correct! You’ve tried to fool me twice, and it hasn’t paid you any, I guess—but if you try the third time, Louis Flaubert, I’ll turn you down!”
Pauline swept from the room. Flaubert went to the door with her while Jean stood quite still, trying to understand what had happened, and what he must say to Flaubert when he came back. He knew now what all his little misgivings and discomforts had led to—they had led to this; and yet he dared not say even to himself whatthiswas. He had one thing that he could still hold to, and for the sake of holding to that one thing he must make up his mind quickly to let everything else go. He was where he was in order to serve Madame Torialli, and if the man she trusted in was a thief and a liar, the more need she would have of Jean to stand by her, and watch over her; and to do this he must overcome his natural instinct, which was to seize Flaubert and kick him with contumely and finality out of the house.
Louis came back humming a little dance tune, and rubbing his hands together; he did not appear to see Jean standing in the middle of the room with sombre eyes. He smiled cheerfully.
“Well, the storm is over, the sun is out again,” he said. “That big Pauline would make a terrible wife; she should marry a lion-tamer or anapâche; but we have escaped that difficulty, my dear fellow, and now she is out of the house would you mind making a list of the appointments you know, and I shall just try over some of these new accompaniments?”
Flaubert, still without meeting Jean’s eyes, seated himself upon the piano stool, and trilled out the latest drawing-room inanities of Parisian music.
Jean hesitated, but in the end said nothing. What can an honest man say to a liar? Nothing that the liar does not already know, and only that which must put an end to all connection between them. Still, he could not breathe in the same room as Flaubert; he took up a list of appointments and passed into a little ante-room where the most insignificant of the pupils were accustomed to wait their turn; it was empty now. The light music followed him with a mocking insistence; it seemed to Jean to be laughing at his fine principles and triumphantly flouting his stubborn honour.
“I don’t know anything,” said Jean to himself doggedly. “After all, what can I do? I don’t know anything!”
The cold, thin music rang its perverse and sickly sentimentality into his brain. It was like badwine. Jean pushed away the papers in front of him and put his head on his hands. When he lifted it again he looked ten years older. Something had passed away from him never to return.
It was his trust in the integrity of man.