THE FALSE PEARLS
After two or three years of intimacy with Claire, of sharing her
amusements, years during which Sidonie acquired the familiarity with
luxury and the graceful manners of the children of the wealthy, the
friendship was suddenly broken.
Cousin Georges, whose guardian M. Fromont was, had entered college some
time before. Claire in her turn took her departure for the convent with
the outfit of a little queen; and at that very time the Chebes were
discussing the question of apprenticing Sidonie to some trade. They
promised to love each other as before and to meet twice a month, on the
Sundays that Claire was permitted to go home.
Indeed, little Chebe did still go down sometimes to play with her
friends; but as she grew older she realized more fully the distance that
separated them, and her clothes began to seem to her very simple for
Madame Fromont's salon.
When the three were alone, the childish friendship which made them equals
prevented any feeling of embarrassment; but visitors came, girl friends
from the convent, among others a tall girl, always richly dressed, whom
her mother's maid used to bring to play with the little Fromonts on
Sunday.
As soon as she saw her coming up the steps, resplendent and disdainful,
Sidonie longed to go away at once. The other embarrassed her with
awkward questions. Where did she live? What did her parents do? Had
she a carriage?
As she listened to their talk of the convent and their friends, Sidonie
felt that they lived in a different world, a thousand miles from her own;
and a deathly sadness seized her, especially when, on her return home,
her mother spoke of sending her as an apprentice to Mademoiselle Le Mire,
a friend of the Delobelles, who conducted a large false-pearl
establishment on the Rue du Roi-Dore.
Risler insisted upon the plan of having the little one serve an
apprenticeship. "Let her learn a trade," said the honest fellow.
"Later I will undertake to set her up in business."
Indeed, this same Mademoiselle Le Mire spoke of retiring in a few years.
It was an excellent opportunity.
One morning, a dull day in November, her father took her to the Rue du
Rio-Dore, to the fourth floor of an old house, even older and blacker
than her own home.
On the ground floor, at the entrance to the hall, hung a number of signs
with gilt letters: Depot for Travelling-Bags, Plated Chains, Children's
Toys, Mathematical Instruments in Glass, Bouquets for Brides and Maids of
Honor, Wild Flowers a Specialty; and above was a little dusty show-case,
wherein pearls, yellow with age, glass grapes and cherries surrounded the
pretentious name of Angelina Le Mire.
What a horrible house!
It had not even a broad landing like that of the Chebes, grimy with old
age, but brightened by its window and the beautiful prospect presented by
the factory. A narrow staircase, a narrow door, a succession of rooms
with brick floors, all small and cold, and in the last an old maid with a
false front and black thread mitts, reading a soiled copy of the 'Journal
pour Tous,' and apparently very much annoyed to be disturbed in her
reading.
Mademoiselle Le Mire (written in two words) received the father and
daughter without rising, discoursed at great length of the rank she had
lost, of her father, an old nobleman of Le Rouergue--it is most
extraordinary how many old noblemen Le Rouergue has produced!--and of an
unfaithful steward who had carried off their whole fortune. She
instantly aroused the sympathies of M. Chebe, for whom decayed gentlefolk
had an irresistible charm, and he went away overjoyed, promising his
daughter to call for her at seven o'clock at night in accordance with the
terms agreed upon.
The apprentice was at once ushered into the still empty workroom.
Mademoiselle Le Mire seated her in front of a great drawer filled with
pearls, needles, and bodkins, with instalments of four-sou novels thrown
in at random among them.
It was Sidonie's business to sort the pearls and string them in necklaces
of equal length, which were tied together to be sold to the small
dealers. Then the young women would soon be there and they would show
her exactly what she would have to do, for Mademoiselle Le Mire (always
written in two words!) did not interfere at all, but overlooked her
business from a considerable distance, from that dark room where she
passed her life reading newspaper novels.
At nine o'clock the work-women arrived, five tall, pale-faced, faded
girls, wretchedly dressed, but with their hair becomingly arranged, after
the fashion of poor working-girls who go about bare-headed through the
streets of Paris.
Two or three were yawning and rubbing their eyes, saying that they were
dead with sleep.
At last they went to work beside a long table where each had her own
drawer and her own tools. An order had been received for mourning
jewels, and haste was essential. Sidonie, whom the forewoman instructed
in her task in a tone of infinite superiority, began dismally to sort a
multitude of black pearls, bits of glass, and wisps of crape.
The others, paying no attention to the little girl, chatted together as
they worked. They talked of a wedding that was to take place that very
day at St. Gervais.
"Suppose we go," said a stout, red-haired girl, whose name was Malvina.
"It's to be at noon. We shall have time to go and get back again if we
hurry."
And, at the lunch hour, the whole party rushed downstairs four steps at a
time.
Sidonie had brought her luncheon in a little basket, like a school-girl;
with a heavy heart she sat at a corner of the table and ate alone for the
first time in her life. Great God! what a sad and wretched thing life
seemed to be; what a terrible revenge she would take hereafter for her
sufferings there!
At one o'clock the girls trooped noisily back, highly excited.
"Did you see the white satin gown? And the veil of point d'Angleterre?
There's a lucky girl!"
Thereupon they repeated in the workroom the remarks they had made in
undertones in the church, leaning against the rail, throughout the
ceremony. That question of a wealthy marriage, of beautiful clothes,
lasted all day long; nor did it interfere with their work-far from it.
These small Parisian industries, which have to do with the most trivial
details of the toilet, keep the work-girls informed as to the fashions
and fill their minds with thoughts of luxury and elegance. To the poor
girls who worked on Mademoiselle Le Mire's fourth floor, the blackened
walls, the narrow street did not exist. They were always thinking of
something else and passed their lives asking one another:
"Malvina, if you were rich what would you do? For my part, I'd live on
the Champs-Elysees." And the great trees in the square, the carriages
that wheeled about there, coquettishly slackening their pace, appeared
momentarily before their minds, a delicious, refreshing vision.
Little Chebe, in her corner, listened without speaking, industriously
stringing her black grapes with the precocious dexterity and taste she
had acquired in Desiree's neighborhood. So that in the evening, when M.
Chebe came to fetch his daughter, they praised her in the highest terms.
Thereafter all her days were alike. The next day, instead of black
pearls, she strung white pearls and bits of false coral; for at
Mademoiselle Le Mire's they worked only in what was false, in tinsel,
and that was where little Chebe was to serve her apprenticeship to life.
For some time the new apprentice-being younger and better bred than the
others--found that they held aloof from her. Later, as she grew older,
she was admitted to their friendship and their confidence, but without
ever sharing their pleasures. She was too proud to go to see weddings
at midday; and when she heard them talking of a ball at Vauxhall or the
'Delices du Marais,' or of a nice little supper at Bonvalet's or at the
'Quatre Sergents de la Rochelle,' she was always very disdainful.
We looked higher than that, did we not, little Chebe?
Moreover, her father called for her every evening. Sometimes, however,
about the New Year, she was obliged to work late with the others, in
order to complete pressing orders. In the gaslight those pale-faced
Parisians, sorting pearls as white as themselves, of a dead, unwholesome
whiteness, were a painful spectacle. There was the same fictitious
glitter, the same fragility of spurious jewels. They talked of nothing
but masked balls and theatres.
"Have you seen Adele Page, in 'Les Trois Mousquetaires?' And Melingue?
And Marie Laurent? Oh! Marie Laurent!"
The actors' doublets, the embroidered costumes of the queens of
melodrama, appeared before them in the white light of the necklaces
forming beneath their fingers.
In summer the work was less pressing. It was the dull season. In the
intense heat, when through the drawn blinds fruit-sellers could be heard
in the street, crying their mirabelles and Queen Claudes, the workgirls
slept heavily, their heads on the table. Or perhaps Malvina would go and
ask Mademoiselle Le Mire for a copy of the 'Journal pour Tous,' and read
aloud to the others.
But little Chebe did not care for the novels. She carried one in her
head much more interesting than all that trash.
The fact is, nothing could make her forget the factory. When she set
forth in the morning on her father's arm, she always cast a glance in
that direction. At that hour the works were just stirring, the chimney
emitted its first puff of black smoke. Sidonie, as she passed, could
hear the shouts of the workmen, the dull, heavy blows of the bars of the
printing-press, the mighty, rhythmical hum of the machinery; and all
those sounds of toil, blended in her memory with recollections of fetes
and blue-lined carriages, haunted her persistently.
They spoke louder than the rattle of the omnibuses, the street cries, the
cascades in the gutters; and even in the workroom, when she was sorting
the false pearls even at night, in her own home, when she went, after
dinner, to breathe the fresh air at the window on the landing and to gaze
at the dark, deserted factory, that murmur still buzzed in her ears,
forming, as it were, a continual accompaniment to her thoughts.
"The little one is tired, Madame Chebe. She needs diversion. Next
Sunday I will take you all into the country."
These Sunday excursions, which honest Risler organized to amuse Sidonie,
served only to sadden her still more.
On those days she must rise at four o'clock in the morning; for the poor
must pay for all their enjoyments, and there was always a ribbon to be
ironed at the last moment, or a bit of trimming to be sewn on in an
attempt to rejuvenate the everlasting little lilac frock with white
stripes which Madame Chebe conscientiously lengthened every year.
They would all set off together, the Chebes, the Rislers, and the
illustrious Delobelle. Only Desiree and her mother never were of the
party. The poor, crippled child, ashamed of her deformity, never would
stir from her chair, and Mamma Delobelle stayed behind to keep her
company. Moreover, neither possessed a suitable gown in which to show
herself out-of-doors in their great man's company; it would have
destroyed the whole effect of his appearance.
When they left the house, Sidonie would brighten up a little. Paris in
the pink haze of a July morning, the railway stations filled with light
dresses, the country flying past the car windows, and the healthful
exercise, the bath in the pure air saturated with the water of the Seine,
vivified by a bit of forest, perfumed by flowering meadows, by ripening
grain, all combined to make her giddy for a moment. But that sensation
was soon succeeded by disgust at such a commonplace way of passing her
Sunday.
It was always the same thing.
They stopped at a refreshment booth, in close proximity to a very noisy
and numerously attended rustic festival, for there must be an audience
for Delobelle, who would saunter along, absorbed by his chimera, dressed
in gray, with gray gaiters, a little hat over his ear, a light top coat
on his arm, imagining that the stage represented a country scene in the
suburbs of Paris, and that he was playing the part of a Parisian
sojourning in the country.
As for M. Chebe, who prided himself on being as fond of nature as the
late Jean Jacques Rousseau, he did not appreciate it without the
accompaniments of shooting-matches, wooden horses, sack races, and a
profusion of dust and penny-whistles, which constituted also Madame
Chebe's ideal of a country life.
But Sidonie had a different ideal; and those Parisian Sundays passed in
strolling through noisy village streets depressed her beyond measure.
Her only pleasure in those throngs was the consciousness of being stared
at. The veriest boor's admiration, frankly expressed aloud at her side,
made her smile all day; for she was of those who disdain no compliment.
Sometimes, leaving the Chebes and Delobelle in the midst of the fete,
Risler would go into the fields with his brother and the "little one" in
search of flowers for patterns for his wall-papers. Frantz, with his
long arms, would pull down the highest branches of a hawthorn, or would
climb a park wall to pick a leaf of graceful shape he had spied on the
other side. But they reaped their richest harvests on the banks of the
stream.
There they found those flexible plants, with long swaying stalks, which
made such a lovely effect on hangings, tall, straight reeds, and the
volubilis, whose flower, opening suddenly as if in obedience to a
caprice, resembles a living face, some one looking at you amid the
lovely, quivering foliage. Risler arranged his bouquets artistically,
drawing his inspiration from the very nature of the plants, trying to
understand thoroughly their manner of life, which can not be divined
after the withering of one day.
Then, when the bouquet was completed, tied with a broad blade of grass as
with a ribbon, and slung over Frantz's back, away they went. Risler,
always engrossed in his art, looked about for subjects, for possible
combinations, as they walked along.
"Look there, little one--see that bunch of lily of the valley, with its
white bells, among those eglantines. What do you think? Wouldn't that
be pretty against a sea-green or pearl-gray background?"
But Sidonie cared no more for lilies of the valley than for eglantine.
Wild flowers always seemed to her like the flowers of the poor, something
like her lilac dress.
She remembered that she had seen flowers of a different sort at the house
of M. Gardinois, at the Chateau de Savigny, in the hothouses, on the
balconies, and all about the gravelled courtyard bordered with tall urns.
Those were the flowers she loved; that was her idea of the country!
The little stations in the outskirts of Paris are so terribly crowded and
stuffy on those Sunday evenings in summer! Such artificial enjoyment,
such idiotic laughter, such doleful ballads, sung in whispers by voices
that no longer have the strength to roar! That was the time when M.
Chebe was in his element.
He would elbow his way to the gate, scold about the delay of the train,
declaim against the station-agent, the company, the government; say to
Delobelle in a loud voice, so as to be overheard by his neighbors:
"I say--suppose such a thing as this should happen in America!" Which
remark, thanks to the expressive by-play of the illustrious actor, and to
the superior air with which he replied, "I believe you!" gave those who
stood near to understand that these gentlemen knew exactly what would
happen in America in such a case. Now, they were equally and entirely
ignorant on that subject; but upon the crowd their words made an
impression.
Sitting beside Frantz, with half of his bundle of flowers on her knees,
Sidonie would seem to be blotted out, as it were, amid the uproar, during
the long wait for the evening trains. From the station, lighted by a
single lamp, she could see the black clumps of trees outside, lighted
here and there by the last illuminations of the fete, a dark village
street, people continually coming in, and a lantern hanging on a deserted
pier.
From time to time, on the other side of the glass doors, a train would
rush by without stopping, with a shower of hot cinders and the roar of
escaping steam. Thereupon a tempest of shouts and stamping would arise
in the station, and, soaring above all the rest, the shrill treble of M.
Chebe, shrieking in his sea-gull's voice: "Break down the doors! break
down the doors!"--a thing that the little man would have taken good care
not to do himself, as he had an abject fear of gendarmes. In a moment
the storm would abate. The tired women, their hair disarranged by the
wind, would fall asleep on the benches. There were torn and ragged
dresses, low-necked white gowns, covered with dust.
The air they breathed consisted mainly of dust. It lay upon their
clothes, rose at every step, obscured the light of the lamp, vexed one's
eyes, and raised a sort of cloud before the tired faces. The cars which
they entered at last, after hours of waiting, were saturated with it
also. Sidonie would open the window, and look out at the dark fields, an
endless line of shadow. Then, like innumerable stars, the first lanterns
of the outer boulevards appeared near the fortifications.
So ended the ghastly day of rest of all those poor creatures. The sight
of Paris brought back to each one's mind the thought of the morrow's
toil. Dismal as her Sunday had been, Sidonie began to regret that it had
passed. She thought of the rich, to whom all the days of their lives
were days of rest; and vaguely, as in a dream, the long park avenues of
which she had caught glimpses during the day appeared to her thronged
with those happy ones of earth, strolling on the fine gravel, while
outside the gate, in the dust of the highroad, the poor man's Sunday
hurried swiftly by, having hardly time to pause a moment to look and
envy.
Such was little Chebe's life from thirteen to seventeen.
The years passed, but did not bring with them the slightest change.
Madame Chebe's cashmere was a little more threadbare, the little lilac
frock had undergone a few additional repairs, and that was all. But, as
Sidonie grew older, Frantz, now become a young man, acquired a habit of
gazing at her silently with a melting expression, of paying her loving
attentions that were visible to everybody, and were unnoticed by none
save the girl herself.
Indeed, nothing aroused the interest of little Chebe. In the work-room
she performed her task regularly, silently, without the slightest thought
of the future or of saving. All that she did seemed to be done as if she
were waiting for something.
Frantz, on the other hand, had been working for some time with
extraordinary energy, the ardor of those who see something at the end of
their efforts; so that, at the age of twenty-four, he graduated second in
his class from the Ecole Centrale, as an engineer.
On that evening Risler had taken the Chebe family to the Gymnase, and
throughout the evening he and Madame Chebe had been making signs and
winking at each other behind the children's backs. And when they left
the theatre Madame Chebe solemnly placed Sidonie's arm in Frantz's, as if
she would say to the lovelorn youth, "Now settle matters--here is your
chance."
Thereupon the poor lover tried to settle matters.
It is a long walk from the Gymnase to the Marais. After a very few steps
the brilliancy of the boulevard is left behind, the streets become darker
and darker, the passers more and more rare. Frantz began by talking of
the play. He was very fond of comedies of that sort, in which there was
plenty of sentiment.
"And you, Sidonie?"
"Oh! as for me, Frantz, you know that so long as there are fine
costumes--"
In truth she thought of nothing else at the theatre. She was not one of
those sentimental creatures; a la Madame Bovary, who return from the play
with love-phrases ready-made, a conventional ideal. No! the theatre
simply made her long madly for luxury and fine raiment; she brought away
from it nothing but new methods of arranging the hair, and patterns of
gowns. The new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even
the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest
distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and
the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages,
and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a
popular play; that was what she loved, that was what absorbed her
thoughts.
"How well they acted their love-scene!" continued the lover.
And, as he uttered that suggestive phrase, he bent fondly toward a little
face surrounded by a white woollen hood, from which the hair escaped in
rebellious curls.
Sidonie sighed:
"Oh! yes, the love-scene. The actress wore beautiful diamonds."
There was a moment's silence. Poor Frantz had much difficulty in
explaining himself. The words he sought would not come, and then, too,
he was afraid. He fixed the time mentally when he would speak:
"When we have passed the Porte Saint-Denis--when we have left the
boulevard."
But when the time arrived, Sidonie began to talk of such indifferent
matters that his declaration froze on his lips, or else it was stopped by
a passing carriage, which enabled their elders to overtake them.
At last, in the Marais, he suddenly took courage:
"Listen to me, Sidonie--I love you!"
That night the Delobelles had sat up very late.
It was the habit of those brave-hearted women to make their working-day
as long as possible, to prolong it so far into the night that their lamp
was among the last to be extinguished on the quiet Rue de Braque. They
always sat up until the great man returned home, and kept a dainty little
supper warm for him in the ashes on the hearth.
In the days when he was an actor there was some reason for that custom;
actors, being obliged to dine early and very sparingly, have a terrible
gnawing at their vitals when they leave the theatre, and usually eat when
they go home. Delobelle had not acted for a long time; but having, as he
said, no right to abandon the stage, he kept his mania alive by clinging
to a number of the strolling player's habits, and the supper on returning
home was one of them, as was his habit of delaying his return until the
last footlight in the boulevard theatres was extinguished. To retire
without supping, at the hour when all other artists supped, would have
been to abdicate, to abandon the struggle, and he would not abandon it,
sacre bleu!
On the evening in question the actor had not yet come in and the women
were waiting for him, talking as they worked, and with great animation,
notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. During the whole evening they
had done nothing but talk of Frantz, of his success, of the future that
lay before him.
"Now," said Mamma Delobelle, "the only thing he needs is to find a good
little wife."
That was Desiree's opinion, too. That was all that was lacking now to
Frantz's happiness, a good little wife, active and brave and accustomed
to work, who would forget everything for him. And if Desiree spoke with
great confidence, it was because she was intimately acquainted with the
woman who was so well adapted to Frantz Risler's needs. She was only a
year younger than he, just enough to make her younger than her husband
and a mother to him at the same time.
Pretty?
No, not exactly, but attractive rather than ugly, notwithstanding her
infirmity, for she was lame, poor child! And then she was clever and
bright, and so loving! No one but Desiree knew how fondly that little
woman loved Frantz, and how she had thought of him night and day for
years. He had not noticed it himself, but seemed to have eyes for nobody
but Sidonie, a gamine. But no matter! Silent love is so eloquent, such
a mighty power lies hid in restrained feelings. Who knows? Perhaps some
day or other:
And the little cripple, leaning over her work, started upon one of those
long journeys to the land of chimeras of which she had made so many in
her invalid's easychair, with her feet resting on the stool; one of those
wonderful journeys from which she always returned happy and smiling,
leaning on Frantz's arm with all the confidence of a beloved wife. As
her fingers followed her thought, the little bird she had in her hand at
the moment, smoothing his ruffled wings, looked as if he too were of the
party and were about to fly far, far away, as joyous and light of heart
as she.
Suddenly the door flew open.
"I do not disturb you?" said a triumphant voice.
The mother, who was slightly drowsy, suddenly raised her head.
"Ah! it's Monsieur Frantz. Pray come in, Monsieur Frantz. We're
waiting for father, as you see. These brigands of artists always stay
out so late! Take a seat--you shall have supper with him."
"Oh! no, thank you," replied Frantz, whose lips were still pale from the
emotion he had undergone, "I can't stop. I saw a light and I just
stepped in to tell you--to tell you some great news that will make you
very happy, because I know that you love me--"
"Great heavens, what is it?"
"Monsieur Frantz Risler and Mademoiselle Sidonie are engaged to be
married."
"There! didn't I say that all he needed was a good little wife,"
exclaimed Mamma Delobelle, rising and throwing her arms about his neck.
Desiree'had not the strength to utter a word. She bent still lower over
her work, and as Frantz's eyes were fixed exclusively upon his happiness,
as Mamma Delobelle did nothing but look at the clock to see whether her
great man would return soon, no one noticed the lame girl's emotion, nor
her pallor, nor the convulsive trembling of the little bird that lay in
her hands with its head thrown back, like a bird with its death-wound.