NOT being content with having attached to his person a stray dog and a
mongrel boy and rendering himself responsible for their destinies,
Paragot must now saddle himself with a young woman. Had she been a
beautiful gipsy, holding fascinating allurements in lustrous eyes and
pomegranate lips, and witchery in a supple figure, the act would have
been a commonplace of human weakness. But in the case of poor
Blanquette, squat and coarse, her heavy features only redeemed from
ugliness by youth, honesty and clean teeth, the eternal attraction of
sex was absent.
From the decorative point of view she was as unlovely as Narcisse or
myself. She was dull, unimaginative, ignorant, as far removed from
Paragot as Narcisse from a greyhound. Why then, in the name of men and
angels, should Paragot have taken her under his protection? My only
answer to the question is that he was Paragot. Judge other men by
whatever standard you have to hand; it will serve its purpose in a rough
and ready manner; but Paragot--unless with me idolatry has obscured
reason--Paragot can only be measured by that absolute standard which
lies awful and unerring on the knees of the high gods.
Of course he saved the girl from a hideous doom. Thousands of kindly,
earnest men have done the same in one way or another. But Paragot's way
was different from anyone else's. Its glorious lunacy lifted it above
ordinary human methods.
So many of your wildly impulsive people repent them of their
generosities as soon as the magnanimous fervour has cooled. The grandeur
of Paragot lay in the fact that he never repented. He was fantastic,
self-indulgent, wastrel, braggart, what you will; but he had an
exaggerated notion of the value of every human soul save his own. The
destiny of poor Blanquette was to him of infinitely more importance than
that of the wayward genius that was Paragot. The pathos of his point of
view had struck me, even as a child, when he discoursed on my prospects.
"I am Paragot, my son," he would say, "a film full of wind and wonder,
fantasy and folly, driven like thistledown about the world. I do not
count. But you, my little Asticot, have the Great Responsibility before
you. It is for you to uplift a corner of the veil of Life and show joy
to men and women where they would not have sought it. Work now and
gather wisdom, my son, so that when the Great Day comes you may not miss
your destiny." And once, he added wistfully--"as I have missed mine."
* * * * *
As Paragot decided that we should not start off then and there into the
unknown but remain at the café until we had laid our plan of campaign,
Blanquette took her valise into the house, and, for the rest of the day,
busied herself in the kitchen with the _patronne_; Paragot drank with
the villagers in the café; and I, when Thierry and Narcisse had given me
all the companionship they had to offer, curled myself up on the
mattress spread in a corner of the tiny _salle à manger_ and went to
sleep.
The next morning Paragot awakened with an Idea. He would go to
Aix-les-Bains which was close by, and would return in the evening. The
nature of his errand he would not tell me. Who was I, little grey worm
that I was, to question his outgoings and his incomings? The little grey
worm would stay with Blanquette and Narcisse and see to it that they did
not bite each other. I humbly accepted the rebuke and obeyed the behest.
The afternoon found the three of us in a field under a tree; Blanquette
embracing her knees, and the dog asleep with his throat across her feet.
She was wearing her old cotton dress, and as she had been helping the
_patronne_ all the morning, her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows
displaying stout, stubby arms. The top button of her bodice was open;
she was bare-headed, but her hair, little deeper in shade than her
tanned face and neck, was coiled neatly. Had it not been for the hard
grip of the day before I should have jealously resented her admission
into our vagabond fraternity. As it was, from the height of my
sixteen-year-old masculinity I somewhat looked down upon her: not as
poor Blanquette, the zither-playing vagrant; but as a girl. Could we,
creation's lords, do with a creature of an inferior sex in our
wanderings? Could she perform our feats of endurance? I questioned her
anxiously.
"_Moi?_" she laughed, "I am as strong as any man. You will see."
She leaped to her feet and, before I could protest, had picked me off
the ground like a kitten and was tossing me in her arms.
"_Voilà!_" she said, depositing me tenderly on the grass; and having
collected the dislodged Narcisse she embraced her knees and laughed
again. It was a kind honest laugh; a good-natured, big boy's laugh,
coming full out of her eyes and shewing her strong white teeth. I lost
the sense of insult in admiration of her strength.
"You should have been a boy, Blanquette," said I.
She assented, acknowledging at once her inferiority and thus restoring
my self respect.
"You are lucky, you, to be one. In this world the egg is for the men and
the shell is for the women."
"Why don't you cut off your hair and put on boy's clothes?" I asked.
"Then you would get the egg. No one could tell the difference."
"You don't think I look like a woman? I? _Mon Dieu!_ Where are your
eyes?"
She was actually indignant with me who had thought to please her: my
first encounter with the bewildering paradox of woman.
"_Ah! mais non_," she panted. "I may be strong like a man, but _grâce à
Dieu_, I don't resemble one. Look."
And she sat bolt upright, her hands at her waist developing her bust to
its full extent. She was not _jolie, jolie_, she explained, but she was
as solidly built as another; I was to examine myself and see how like I
was to the flattest of boards. Routed I chewed blades of grass in
silence until she spoke again.
"Tell me of the _patron_."
"The _patron_?" I asked, puzzled.
"Yes--Monsieur--your master."
"You must call him _maître_," said I, "not _patron_." For the _patron_
was any peddling "boss," the leader of a troupe of performing dogs or
the miserable landlord of a village inn, Paragot a _patron_!
"I meant no harm. I have too much respect for him," said Blanquette,
humbly.
Again reinstated in my position of superiority I explained the Master to
her feminine intelligence.
"He has been to every place in the world and knows everything that is to
be known, and speaks every language that is spoken under the sun, and
has read every book that ever was written, and I have seen him break a
violin over a man's head."
"_Tiens!_" said Blanquette.
"In the Forum at Rome last winter he had an argument with the most
learned professor in Europe who is making the excavations, and proved
him to be wrong."
"_Tiens!_" repeated Blanquette, much impressed, though of Forum or
excavations she had no more notion than Narcisse.
"If he wanted to be a king tomorrow, he would only have to go up to a
throne and sit upon it."
"But no," said Blanquette. "To be a king one must be a king's son."
"How do you know that he isn't?" I asked with a could-and if-I-would
expression of mystery.
"King's sons don't go about the high roads with little _gamins_ like
you," replied the practical Blanquette.
"How do you know that I am not a king's son too?" I asked, less with the
idea of self-aggrandisement than that of vindication of Paragot.
"Because you yourself said that your mother sold you as my mother sold
me to Père Paragot."
Whereupon it suddenly occurred to me that as far as retentiveness of
memory was concerned, Blanquette was not such a fool as in my arrogance
I had set her down to be. I was going to retort that his magnificence
in purchasing me proved him a personage of high order, but as I quickly
reflected that the same argument might apply to the rank of the
contemned Père Paragot, I refrained. A silence ensuing, I uncomfortably
resolved to study my master with a view to acquiring his skill in
repartee.
"But what does he do, the Master?" enquired Blanquette.
"Do? What do you mean?"
"How does he earn his living?"
"That shows you know nothing about him," I cried triumphantly. "King's
sons do not earn their living. They have got it already. Haven't you
ever read that in books?"
"I can read and write, but I don't read books," sighed Blanquette. "I am
not clever. You will have to teach me."
"This is the book I am reading," said I, taking the "Récits des Temps
Mérovingiens" from my pocket.
Again Blanquette sighed. "You must be very clever, Asticot."
"Not at all," said I modestly, but I felt that it was nice of Blanquette
to realise the intellectual gulf between us. "It is the Master who has
taught me all I know." I spoke, God wot, as if my knowledge would have
burst through the covers of an Encyclopædia--"Three years ago I could
not speak a word of French. Fancy. And now----"
"You still talk like an Englishman," said Blanquette.
Looking back now on those absurd far-off days, I wonder whether after
all I did not learn as much that was vital from Blanquette as from
Paragot. Her downright, direct, unimaginative common-sense amounted to
genius. At the time I preferred genius in the fantastic form which
inflated my bubbles of self-conceit, instead of bursting them; but in
after life one has a high appreciation of the burster.
In the moment's mortification, however, I recriminated.
"You make worse mistakes than I do. You say '_j'allons faire_,' when you
ought to say '_je vais faire_' and I heard you talk about _une chien_."
"That is because I have no education," replied Blanquette, with her
grave humility. "I speak like the peasants; not like instructed
people--not like the Master, for instance."
"No one could speak like the Master," said I.
There was a long silence. Blanquette hugged her knees and Narcisse
snored at her feet, accepting her as vagabond comrade. I lay on my back
and forgot Blanquette; and out of the intricacies of myriad leaf and
branch against the sky wove pictures of Merovingian women. There where
the black branches cut a lozenge of blue was the pale Queen Galeswinthe
lying on her bed. Through yon dark cluster of under-leaves one could
discern the strangler sent by King Hilperic to murder her. And in that
radiant patch silhouetted clear and cold and fierce in loveliness was
Frédégonde waiting for the King. She was a glittering sword of a woman
whose slayings fascinated me. I much preferred her to the gentler
Brunehilde whose form I saw outlined in a soft shadow of green. I tried
to find frames in my aerial gallery for Brunehilde's two daughters,
Ingonde and Chlodoswinde, especially the latter whose name appealed to
my acquired taste for odd nomenclature, and the conscious effort brought
me back to the modern world, and the sound of Blanquette's voice.
"_Tu sais_, Asticot, I can wash the Master's shirts and mend his
clothes. I can also make his coffee in the morning."
Her eyes had a far-away look. She was living in the land of day dreams
even as I had been.
"I always prepare the Master's breakfast," said I jealously.
"It is the woman's duty."
"I don't care," I retorted.
She unclasped her hands, and coming forward on to her knees and bending
over me, brushed a strand of hair from my forehead.
"I will prepare yours too, Asticot," she said gently, "and you will see
how nice that will be. Men can't do these things where there is a woman
to look after them. It is not proper."
So, flattered in my masculinity, being ranked with Paragot as a "man," I
took a sultanesque view of the situation and graciously consented to her
proposed ministrations.
* * * * *
Paragot came back triumphant from Aix-les-Bains. Hadn't he told me he
had been inspired to go there? The man who played the violin at the
open-air Restaurant by the Lac de Bourget had just that day fallen ill.
The result, a week's engagement for Blanquette and himself.
"But, my child," said he, "you will have to suffer an inharmonious son
of Satan who makes a discordant Hades out of an execrable piano. He had
the impudence to tell me that he came from the Conservatoire. He, with
as much ear for music as an organ-grinder's monkey! He said to
me--Paragot--that I played the violin not too badly! I foresee a hideous
doom overhanging that young man, my children. Before the week is out I
will throw him into the maw of his soul-devouring piano. Ha! my
children, give me to drink, for I am thirsty."
Mindful of my dignity as a man, I glanced at Blanquette, who went into
the café obediently, while I stayed with my master. It was a sweet
moment. Paragot gripped me by the shoulder.
"My son, while Blanquette and I work, which Carlyle says is the noblest
function of man, but concerning which I have my own ideas, you cannot
live in red-shirted, pomaded and otherwise picturesque and studious
laziness. Look," he cried, pointing to a round, flat object wrapped in
paper which he had brought with him. "Do you know what that is?"
"That," said I, "is a cake."
"It is a tambourine," said my master.
* * * * *
The next day found us in the garden of the little lake-side restaurant
at Aix-les-Bains playing at lunch time. The young man at the piano whom
I had expected to see a fiend in human shape was a harmless consumptive
fellow who played with the sweet patience of a musical box. He shook
hands with me and called me "_cher collègue_," and before nightfall told
me of a disastrous love-story in consequence of which, were it not for
his mother, he would drown himself in the lake. He effaced himself
before Paragot much as the bellows-blower does before the organist. His
politeness to Blanquette would have put to the blush any young man at
the Bon Marché or the Louvre. His name was Laripet.
I was ordered to make modest use of my tambourine until sufficient
instruction from Paragot should authorise him to let me loose with it; I
was merely to add to the picturesqueness of the group on the platform,
and at intervals to go the round of the guests collecting money. I liked
this, for I could then jingle the tambourine without fear of reproof.
You have no idea what an ordeal it is for a boy to have a tambourine
which he must not jingle. But the shady charm of the garden compensated
for the repression of noisy instincts. After months of tramping in the
broiling sun, free and perfect as it was, the easy loafing life seemed
sweet. We went little into the gay town itself. For my part I did not
like it. Aix-les-Bains consisted of a vast Enchanted Garden set in a
valley, great mountains hemming it round. Skirting the Enchanted Garden
were shady streets and mysterious palaces, some having gardens of their
own of a secondary enchantment, and shops where jewels and perfumes and
white ties and flowers and other objects of strange luxury were
exhibited in the windows. But these took the humble place of mere
accessories to the Enchanted Garden, jealously guarded against Asticot
by great high gilded railings and by blue-coated, silver-buttoned
functionaries at the gates. Within rose two Wonder Houses gorgeous with
dome and pinnacle, bewildering with gold and snow, displaying before the
aching sight the long cool stretch of verandahs, and offering the
baffling glimpse of vast interiors whence floated the dim sound of music
and laughter; and bright, happy beings, in wondrous raiment, wandered in
and out unchallenged, unconcerned, as if the Wonder Houses were their
birthright.
I, a shabby, penniless little Peri, stood at the gilded gates
disconsolate. I didn't like it. The mystery of the unknown beatitude
within the Wonder Houses oppressed me to faintness. _It was
unimaginable._ Through the leaves of a tree I could see the pale Queen
Galeswinthe; but through those gay enchanting walls I could see nothing.
They baulked my soul. When I tried to explain my feelings to Paragot he
looked at me in his kind, sad way and shook his head.
"My wonder-headed little Asticot," said he, "within those gewgaw Wonder
Houses----" Then he stopped abruptly and waved me away, "No. It's a
devilish good thing for you to have something your imagination boggles
at. Stick to the Ideal, my son, and hug the Unexplained. The people who
have solved the Riddle of the Universe at fifteen are bowled over by the
Enigma of their cook at fifty. Plug your life as full as it can hold
with fantasy and fairy-tale, and thank God that your soul is baulked by
the Mysteries of the Casinos of Aix-les-Bains."
"But what do they do there, Master?" I persisted.
"The men worship strange goddesses and the women run after false gods,
and all practice fascinating idolatries."
I did not in the least know what he meant, which was what he intended.
When I consulted Blanquette one morning, as she and I alone were
sauntering down the long shady avenue which connects the town with the
little-port of the lake, she said that people went into the Cercle and
the Villa des Fleurs, the two Wonder Houses aforesaid, merely to gamble.
I pooh-poohed the notion.
"The Master says they are Temples of great strange gods, where people
worship."
"Gods! What an idea! _Il n'y a que le bon Dieu_," quoth Blanquette.
"You have evidently not heard of the gods of Greece and Rome, Jupiter
and Apollo and Venus and Bacchus."
"_Ah, tiens_," said Blanquette. "I have heard Italians swear 'Corpo di
Bacco.' That is why?"
"Of course," said I in my grandest manner, "and there are heaps of other
gods besides."
"All the same," she objected, "I always thought the Italians were good
Catholics."
"So they may be," said I, "but that doesn't prove that there are not
beautiful gods and goddesses and idols and shrines in the Cercle and the
Villa des Fleurs."
As this was unanswerable Blanquette diverted the conversation to the
less transcendental topic of the premature baldness of Monsieur Laripet.
* * * * *
If the doings of the bright happy beings were hidden from me while they
worshipped in the Casinos, I at least met them at close quarters in the
garden of the Restaurant du Lac. In some respects this garden resembled
that of the Restaurant du Soleil at Chambéry. There was a verandah round
the restaurant itself, there were trees in joyous leafage, there were
little tables, and there were waiters hurrying to and fro with napkins
under their arms. But that was all the resemblance. Our little platform
stood against the railings separating the garden from the quay. Behind
us shimmered the blue lake, great mountains rising behind; away on the
right, embosomed in the green mountainside, flashed the white Château de
Hautecombe. Always in mid-lake a tiny paddle-steamer churned up a wake
of white foam. On the quay itself stood an enchanting little box--a
_camera obscura_--to which I as a fellow artist was given the _entrée_
by the proprietor, and in which one could see heavenly pictures of the
surrounding landscape; there were also idle cabs with white awnings, and
fezzed Turks perspiring under furs and rugs which they hawked for sale.
In front of us, within the garden, a joyous crowd of the radiantly
raimented laughed over dainty food set on snowy cloths. Here and there a
lobster struck a note of colour, or a ray of sunlight striking through
the red or gold translucencies of wine in a glass: which distracted my
attention from my orchestral duties and caused an absent-minded jingle
of my tambourine.
What I loved most was to make my round among the tables and mingle
closely with the worshippers. Of the men, clean and correct in their
perfectly fitting flannels, sometimes stern, sometimes mocking,
sometimes pettishly cross, I was rather shy; but I was quite at my ease
with the women, even with those whose many rings and jewels, violent
perfumes and daring effects of dress made me instinctively differentiate
from their quieter and less bejewelled sisters. Blanquette laughingly
called me a "_petit polisson_" and said that I made soft eyes at them.
Perhaps I did. When one is a hundred and fifty it is hard to realise
that one's little scarecrow boy's eyes may have touched the hearts of
women. But the appeal of the outstretched tambourine was rarely refused.
"Get out of this," the man would say.
"But no. Remain. _Il a l'air si drôle_--what is your name?"
"_Je m'appelle Asticot, Madame, à votre service._"
This always amused the lady. She would search through an invariably
empty purse.
"Give him fifty centimes."
And the man would throw a silver piece into the tambourine.
Once I was in luck. The lady found a ten-franc piece in her purse.
"That is all I have."
"I have no change," growled the man.
"If I give you this," said the lady, "what would you do with it?"
"If Madame would tell me where to get it, I would buy a photograph of
Madame," said I, with one of Paragot's "inspirations"; for she was very
pretty.
"_Voilà_," she laughed putting the gold into my hand. "_Tu me fais la
cour, maintenant._ Come and see me at the Villa Marcelle and I will give
you a photograph gratis."
But Paragot when I repeated the conversation to him called the lady
shocking names, and forbade me to go within a mile of the Villa
Marcelle. So I did not get the photograph.
The next best thing I loved was to see Blanquette's eyes glitter when I
returned to the platform and poured silver and copper into her lap. She
uttered strange little exclamations under her breath, and her fingers
played caressingly with the coins.
"We gain more here in a day than Père Paragot did in a week. It is
wonderful. _N'est-ce pas, Maître?_" she said one morning.
Paragot tuned his violin and looked down on her.
"Money pleases you, Blanquette?"
"Of course."
She counted the takings sou by sou.
"Yet you did not want to accept your just share."
"What you make me take is not just, Master," she said, simply.
Much as she loved money, her sense of justice rebelled against Paragot's
division of the takings--a third for Laripet, a third for Blanquette and
a third for himself which he generously shared with me. Père Paragot
used to sweep into his pockets every sou and Blanquette had to subsist
on whatever he chose to allow for joint expenses. Her new position of
independence was a subject for much inward pride, mingled however with a
consciousness of her own unworthiness. Monsieur Laripet, yes; she would
grant that he was entitled to the same as the Master; but herself--no.
Was not the Master the great artist, and she but the clumsy strummer?
Was he not also a man, with more requirements than she--tobacco,
absinthe, brandy and the like?
"A third is too much," she added.
"If you argue," said he, "I will divide it in halves for Laripet and
yourself, and I won't touch a penny."
"That would be idiotic," said Blanquette.
"It would be in keeping with life generally," he answered. "In a comic
opera one thing is not more idiotic than another. Yes, Monsieur Laripet,
we will give them _Funiculi, Funiculà_. I once drove in coffin nails to
that tune in Verona. Now we will set people eating to it in
Aix-les-Bains--we, Monsieur Laripet, you and I, who ought to be the
petted minions of great capitals! It is a comic opera."
"One has to get bread or one would starve," said Blanquette pursuing her
argument. "And to get bread one must have money. If I had all the money
you would not eat bread."
"I should eat _brioches_," laughed Paragot quoting Marie Antoinette.
"You always laugh at me, Master," said Blanquette wistfully.
Paragot drew his bow across the strings.
"There is nothing in this comical universe I don't laugh at, my little
Blanquette," said he. "I am like good old Montaigne--I rather laugh than
weep, because to laugh is the more dignified."
Laripet struck a chord on the piano. Paragot joined in and played three
bars. Then he stopped short. There was not the vestige of a laugh on his
face. It was deadly white, and his eyes were those of a man who sees a
ghost.
The four bright happy beings, two ladies and two men who had just
entered the garden and at whom his stare was directed, took no notice,
but followed a bowing maître d'hôtel to a table that had been reserved
for them.
I sprang to the platform, on the edge of which I had been squatting at
Blanquette's feet.
"Are you ill, Master?"
He started. "Ill? Of course not. Pardon, Monsieur Laripet.
_Recommençons._"
He plunged into the merry tune and fiddled with all his might, as if
nothing had happened. But I saw his nostrils quivering and the sweat
running down his face into his beard.