CHIEFLY CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES
Theft in its simplicity--however sharp and rude, yet if
frankly done, and bravely--does not corrupt men's souls; and
they can, in a foolish, but quite vital and faithful way,
keep the feast of the Virgin Mary in the midst of
it.--Ruskin: _Fors Clavigera_.
It was quite true that he had resolved to be careful of the money that
old Fourget had paid him for the pot-boiler. He still meant to be
careful of it. But he was to be a guest at _dejeuner_ next morning,
and a man must not breakfast with a Princess and wear a costume that
is really shockingly shabby. Cartaret therefore set about devising
some means of bettering his wardrobe.
His impulse was to buy a new suit of clothes, as Seraphin had done
when he sold his picture. Seraphin, however, had received a good deal
more money than Cartaret, and Cartaret was really in earnest about
his economies: when he had spent half the afternoon in the shops, and
found that most of the ready-made suits there exposed for sale would
cost him the bulk of his new capital, he decided to sponge his present
suit, sew on a few buttons and then sleep with it under his mattress
by way of pressing it. A new necktie was, nevertheless, imperative: he
had been absent-mindedly wiping his brushes on the old, and it would
not do to smell more of turpentine than the exigencies of his suit
made necessary; the scent of turpentine is not appetizing.
If you have never been in love, you may suppose that the selection of
so small a thing as a necktie is trivial; otherwise, you will know
that there are occasions when it is no light matter, and you will then
understand why Cartaret found it positively portentous. The first
score of neckties that he looked at were impossible; so were the
second. In the third he found one that would perhaps just do, and this
he had laid aside for him while he went on to another shop. He went
to several other shops. Whereas he had at first found too few
possibilities, he was now embarrassed by too many. There was a flowing
marine-blue affair with white _fleur-de-lys_ that he thought would do
well for Seraphin and that he considered for a moment on his own
account. He went back to the first shop and so through the lot again.
In the end, his American fear of anything bright conquered, and he
bought a gray "four-in-hand" that might have been made in
Philadelphia.
On his return he went to the window to see how his strawberries were
doing. He remembered the anecdote about the good cleric, who said that
doubtless God could have made a better berry, but that doubtless God
never did. Cartaret wondered if it would be an impertinence to offer
his strawberries to the Lady of the Rose.
They were gone.
He went down the stairs in two jumps. He thrust his head into the
concierge's cavern.
"Who's been to my room?" he shouted. He was still weak, but anger lent
him strength.
Refrogne growled.
"Tell me!" insisted Cartaret.
"How should I know?" the concierge countered.
"It's your business to know. You're responsible. Who's come in and
gone out since I went out?"
"Nobody."
"There must have been somebody! Somebody has been to my room and
stolen something."
Thefts are not so far removed from the sphere of a concierge's natural
activities as unduly to excite him.
"To rob it is not necessary that one come in from without," said he.
"You charge a tenant?"
"I charge nobody. It is you that charge, monsieur. I did not know that
you possessed to be stolen. A thief of a tenant? But certainly. One
cannot inquire the business of one's tenants. What house is without a
little thief?"
"I believe you did it!" said Cartaret.
Refrogne whistled, in the darkness, a bar of "Margarita."
Houdon was passing by. He made suave enquiries.
"But not Refrogne," he assured Cartaret. "You do an injustice to a
worthy man, my dear friend. Besides, what is a box of strawberries to
you?"
Cartaret felt that he was in danger of making a mountain of a
molehill; he had the morbid fear, common to his countrymen, of
appearing ridiculous. It occurred to him that it would not have been
beyond Houdon to appropriate the berries, if he had happened into the
room and found its master absent; but to bother further was to be once
more absurd.
"I don't suppose it does matter," he said; "but my supplies have been
going pretty fast lately, and if I was to catch the thief, I'd hammer
the life out of him."
"Magnificent!" gurgled Houdon as he passed gesturing into the street.
Cartaret returned toward his room. The dusk had fallen and, if he had
not known the way so well, he would have had trouble in finding it. He
was tired, too, and so he went slowly. That he also went softly he
did not realize until he gently pushed open the door to his quarters.
A shadowy figure was silhouetted against the window out of which
Cartaret kept his supplies, and the figure seemed to have some of them
in its hands.
Cartaret's anger was still hot. Now it flamed to a sudden fury. He did
not pause to consider the personality, or even the garb, of the thief.
He saw nothing, thought nothing, save that he was being robbed. He
charged the dim figure; tackled it as he once tackled runners on the
football-field; fell with it much as he had fallen with those runners
in the days of old--except that he fell among a hail of
food-stuffs--and then found himself tragically holding to the floor
the duenna Chitta.
It was a terrible thing, this battle with a frightened woman. Cartaret
tried to rise, but she gripped him fast. His amazement first, and next
his mortification, would have left him nerveless, but Chitta was
fighting like a tigress. His face was scratched and one finger bitten,
before he could hold her quiet enough to say, in slow French:
"I did not know that it was you. You are welcome to what you want. I
am going to let you go. Don't struggle. I shan't hurt you. Get up."
He thanked Heaven that she understood at least a little of the
language. Shaken, he got to his own feet; but Chitta, instead of
rising, surprisingly knelt at his.
She spouted a long speech of infinite emotion. She wept. She clasped
and unclasped her hands. She pointed to the room of her mistress; then
to her mouth, and then rubbed that portion of her figure over the spot
where the appetite is appeased.
"Do you mean," gasped Cartaret--"do you mean that you and your
mistress"--this was terrible!--"have been poor?"
Chitta had come to the room without her head-dress, and the subsequent
battle had sent her hair in dank coils about her shoulders. She
nodded; the shaken coils were like so many serpents.
"And that she has been hungry?--Hungry?"
A violent negative. Chitta bobbed toward Cartaret's rifled stores and
then toward the street, as if to include other stores in the same
circle of depredation. She was also plainly indignant at the idea that
she would permit her mistress to be hungry.
"Oh," said Cartaret, "I see! You are a consistent thief."
This time Chitta's nod was a proud one; but she pointed again to the
other room and shook her head violently; then to herself and nodded
once more. Words could not more plainly have said that, although she
had been supplementing her provisions by petty thefts, her employer
knew nothing about them.
And she must not be told. Again Chitta began to bob and moan and weep.
She pointed across the hallway, put a finger to her lips, shook her
old head and finally held out her clasped hands in supplication.
Cartaret emptied his pockets. He wished he had not been so extravagant
as to buy that necktie. He handed to Chitta all the money left from
the price that Fourget had paid him, to the last five-centime piece.
"Take this," he said, "and be sure you don't ever let your mistress
know where it came from. I shan't tell anybody about you. When you
want more, come direct to me." He knew that he could paint marketable
pot-boilers now.
She wanted to kiss his hand, but he hurried from the woman and left
her groveling behind him....
"M. Refrogne," he said to the concierge, "I owe you an apology. I am
sorry for the way I spoke to you a while ago. I have found those
strawberries."
"Bah!" said Refrogne. He added, when Cartaret had passed: "In his
stomach, most likely."
Slowly the horror of having had to use physical force against a woman
left Cartaret. He started for a long walk and thought many things. He
thought, as he trudged at last across L'Etoile, how the April
starshine was turning the Arc de Triomphe to silver, and how the
lovers on the benches at the junction of the rue Lauriston and the
avenue Kleber made Napoleon's arch in praise of war a monument to
softer passions. He thought, as he strolled from the avenue d'Eylan
and across the Place Victor Hugo, how the heart of that poet, whose
statue here represented him as so much the politician, must grow warm
when, as now, boys and girls passed arm in arm about the pediment. The
night bore jonquils in her hands and wore a spray of wisteria in her
hair. Brocaded ghosts of the old regime must be pacing a stately
measure at Ranelagh, and all the elves of Spring were dancing in the
Bois.
The Princess was poor. That brought her nearer to him: it gave him a
chance to help her. Cartaret found it hard to be sorry that she was
poor.