“A communication? Ah, _mon Dieu_, you alarm me!”
And lowering his voice:
“Are the girls in the way?”
“No. Bonne Maman knows what I mean. Mlle. Elise also must have some
suspicion of it. It is only the children.”
Mlle. Henriette and her sister are asked to retire, which they
immediately do, the one with a dignified and annoyed air, like a true
daughter of the Saint-Amands, the other, the young Chinese Yaia, hardly
hiding a wild desire to laugh.
Thereupon a great silence; after which, the lover begins his little
story.
I quite believe that Mlle. Elise has some suspicion in her mind, for
as soon as their young neighbour spoke of a communication, she drew her
_Ansart et Rendu_ from her pocket and plunged precipitately into the
adventures of somebody surnamed the Hutin, thrilling reading which makes
the book tremble in her hands. There is reason for trembling, certainly,
before the bewilderment, the indignant stupefaction into which M.
Joyeuse receives this request for his daughter’s hand.
“Is it possible? How has it happened? What an extraordinary event! Who
could ever have suspected such a thing?”
And suddenly the good old man burst into a great roar of laughter. Well,
no, it is not true. He had heard of the affair; knew about it, a long
time ago.
Her father knew all about it! Bonne Maman had betrayed them then! And
before the reproachful glances cast in her direction, the culprit comes
forward smiling:
“Yes, my dears, it is I. The secret was too much for me. I found I could
not keep it to myself alone. And then, father is so kind--one cannot
hide anything from him.”
As she says this she throws her arms round the little man’s neck; but
there is room enough for two, and when Mlle. Elise in her turn takes
refuge there, there is still an affectionate, fatherly hand stretched
out towards him whom M. Joyeuse considers thenceforward as his son.
Silent embraces, long looks meeting each other full of emotion, blessed
moments that one would like to hold forever by the fragile tips of
their wings. There is chat, and gentle laughter when certain details
are recalled. M. Joyeuse tells how the secret was revealed to him in the
first instance by tapping spirits, one day when he was alone in
Andre’s apartment. “How is business going, M. Maranne?” the spirits had
inquired, and he himself had replied in Maranne’s absence: “Fairly well,
for the season, Sir Spirit.” The little man repeats, “Fairly well for
the season,” in a mischievous way, while Mlle. Elise, quite confused
at the thought that it was with her father that she talked that day,
disappears under her fair curls.
After the first stress of emotion they talk more seriously. It is
certain that Mme. Joyeuse, _nee_ de Saint-Amand, would never have
consented to this marriage. Andre Maranne is not rich, still less noble;
but the old accountant, luckily, has not the same ideas of grandeur that
his wife possessed. They love each other; they are young, healthy, and
good-looking--qualities that in themselves constitute fine dowries,
without involving any heavy registration fees at the notary’s. The new
household will be installed on the floor above. The photography will
be continued, unless _Revolt_ should produce enormous receipts. (The
Visionary may be trusted to see to that.) In any case, the father will
still remain near them; he has a good place at his stockbroker’s office,
some expert business in the courts; provided that the little ship
continue to sail in deep enough water, all will go well, with the aid of
wave, wind, and star.
Only one question preoccupies M. Joyeuse: “Will Andre’s parents consent
to this marriage? How will Dr. Jenkins, so rich, so celebrated, take
it?”
“Let us not speak of that man,” said Andre, turning pale; “he is a
wretch to whom I owe nothing--who is nothing to me.”
He stops, embarrassed by this explosion of anger, which he was unable to
restrain and cannot explain, and goes on more gently:
“My mother, who comes to see me sometimes in spite of the prohibition
laid upon her, was the first to be told of our plans. She already loves
Mlle. Elise as her daughter. You will see, mademoiselle, how good she
is, and how beautiful and charming. What a misfortune that she belongs
to such a wicked man, who tyrannizes over her, and tortures her even to
the point of forbidding her to utter her son’s name.”
Poor Maranne heaves a sign that speaks volumes on the great grief which
he hides in the depths of his heart. But what sadness would not have
been vanquished in presence of that dear face lighted up with its fair
curls and the radiant perspective of the future? These serious questions
having been settled, they are able to open the door and recall the two
exiles. In order to avoid filling their little heads with thoughts above
their age, it has been agreed to say nothing about the prodigious event,
to tell them nothing except that they have all to make haste and dress,
breakfast still more quickly, so as to be able to spend the afternoon in
the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to them, before they go on to
Suresnes to have dinner at Kontzen’s: a whole programme of delights in
honour of the acceptance of _Revolt_, and of another piece of good news
which they will hear later.
“Ah, really--what is it, then?” ask the two little girls, with an
innocent air.
But if you fancy they don’t know what is in the air, if you think that
when Mlle. Elise used to give three raps on the ceiling they imagined
that it was for information on business, you are more ingenuous even
than _le pere_ Joyeuse.
“That’s all right--that’s all right, children; go and dress, in any
case.”
Then there begins another refrain:
“What frock must I put on, Bonne Maman--the gray?”
“Bonne Maman, there is a string off my hat.”
“Bonne Maman, my child, have I no more starched cravats left?”
For ten minutes the charming grandmother is besieged with questions and
entreaties. Every one needs her help in some way; it is she who had the
keys of everything, she who gives out the pretty, white, fine goffered
linen, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the dainty
things which, taken out from drawers and wardrobes, spread over the bed,
fill a house with a bright Sunday gaiety.
The workers, the people with tasks to fulfil, alone know that delight
which returns each week consecrated by the customs of a nation. For
these prisoners of the week, the almanac with its closed prison-like
gratings opens at regular intervals into luminous spaces, with
breaths of refreshing air. It is Sunday, the day that seems so long
to fashionable folk, to the Parisians of the boulevard whose habits it
disturbs, so gloomy to people far from their homes and relatives, that
constitutes for a multitude of human beings the only recompense, the one
aim of the desperate efforts of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail,
nothing makes any difference, nothing will prevent them from going
out, from closing behind them the door of the deserted workshop, of the
stuffy little lodging. But when the springtime is come, when the May
sunshine glitters on it as this morning, and it can deck itself out in
gay colours, then indeed Sunday is the holiday of holidays.
If one would know it well, it must be seen especially in the working
quarters of the town, in those gloomy streets which it lights up and
enlarges by closing the shops, keeping in their sheds the heavy drays
and trucks, leaving the space free for wandering bands of children
washed and in their Sunday clothes, and for games of battledore and
shuttlecock played amid the great circlings of the swallows beneath some
porch of old Paris. It must be seen in the densely populated, feverishly
toiling suburbs, where, as soon as morning is come, you may feel it
hovering, resposeful and sweet, in the silence of the factories, passing
with the ringing of church-bells and that sharp whistle of the railways,
and filling the horizon, all around the outskirts of the city, with
an immense song, as it were, of departure and of deliverance. Then one
understands it and loves it.
O Sunday of Paris, Sunday of the toilers and the humble, often have I
cursed thee without reason, I have poured whole streams of abusive ink
over thy noisy and extravagant joys, over the dust of railway stations
filled by thy uproar and the maddening omnibuses that thou takest by
assault, over thy tavern songs bawled everywhere from carts adorned with
green and pink dresses, on thy barrel-organs grinding out their tunes
beneath the balconies of deserted court-yards; but to-day, abjuring my
errors, I exalt thee, and I bless thee for all the joy and relief thou
givest to courageous and honest labour, for the laughter of the children
who greet thee with acclamation, the pride of mothers happy to dress
their little ones in their best clothes in thy honour, for the dignity
thou dost preserve in the homes of the poorest, the glorious raiment set
aside for thee at the bottom of the old shaky chest of drawers; I bless
thee especially by reason of all the happiness thou hast brought that
morning to the great new house in the old faubourg.
Toilettes having been completed, the _dejeuner_ finished, taken on
the thumb, as they say--and you can imagine what quantity these young
ladies’ thumbs would carry--they came to put on their hats before the
mirror in the drawing-room. Bonne Maman threw around her supervising
glance, inserted a pin here, retied a ribbon there, straightened her
father’s cravat; but while all this little world was stamping with
impatience, beckoned out of doors by the beauty of the day, there came a
ring at the bell, echoing through the apartment and disturbing their gay
proceedings.
“Suppose we don’t open the door?” propose the children.
And what a relief, with a cry of delight, they see their friend Paul
come in!
“Quick! quick! Come and let us tell you the good news.”
He knew well, before any of them, that the play had been accepted. He
had had a good deal of trouble to get it read by Cardailhac, who, the
moment he saw its “short lines,” as he called verse, wished to send the
manuscript to the Levantine and her _masseur_, as he was wont to do in
the case of all beginners in the writing of drama. But Paul was careful
not to refer to his own intervention. As for the other event, the one of
which nothing was said, on account of the children, he guessed it easily
by the trembling greeting of Maranne, whose fair mane was standing
straight up over his forehead by reason of the poet’s two hands having
been pushed through it so many times, a thing he always did in his
moments of joy, by the slightly embarrassed demeanour of Elise, by the
triumphant airs of M. Joyeuse, who was standing very erect in his new
summer clothes, with all the happiness of his children written on his
face.
Bonne Maman alone preserved her usual peaceful air; but one noticed,
in the eager alacrity with which she forestalled her sister’s wants, a
certain attention still more tender than before, an anxiety to make her
look pretty. And it was delicious to watch the girl of twenty as she
busied herself about the adornment of others, without envy, without
regret, with something of the gentle renunciation of a mother welcoming
the young love of her daughter in memory of a happiness gone by. Paul
saw this; he was the only one who did see it; but while admiring Aline,
he asked himself sadly if in that maternal heart there would ever be
place for other affections, for preoccupations outside the tranquil and
bright circle wherein Bonne Maman presided so prettily over the evening
work.
Love is, as one knows, a poor blind creature, deprived of hearing
and speech, and only led by presentiments, divinations, the nervous
faculties of a sick man. It is pitiable indeed to see him wandering,
feeling his way, constantly making false steps, passing his hands over
the supports by which he guides himself with the distrustful awkwardness
of the infirm. At the very moment when Paul was doubting Aline’s
sensibility, in announcing to his friends that he was about to start on
a journey which would occupy several days, perhaps several weeks, did
not remark the girl’s sudden paleness, did not hear the distressed cry
that escaped her lips:
“You are going away?”
He was going away, going to Tunis, very much troubled at leaving his
poor Nabob in the midst of the pack of furious wolves that surrounded
him. Mora’s protection, however, gave him some reassurance; and then,
the journey in question was absolutely necessary.
“And the Territorial?” asked the old accountant, ever returning to the
subject in his mind. “How are things standing there? I see Jansoulet’s
name still at the head of the board. You cannot get him out, then, from
that Ali-Baba’s cave? Take care--take care!”
“Ah, I know all about that, M. Joyeuse. But, to leave it with honour,
money is needed, much money, a fresh sacrifice of two or three millions,
and we have not got them. That is exactly the reason why I am going to
Tunis to try to wrest from the rapacity of the Bey a slice of that great
fortune which he is retaining in his possession so unjustly. At present
I have still some chance of succeeding, while later on, perhaps--”
“Go, then, and make haste, my dear lad, and if you return, as I wish you
may, with a heavy bag, see that you deal first of all with the Paganetti
gang. Remember that one shareholder less patient than the rest has the
power to smash the whole thing up, to demand an inquiry; and you know
what the inquiry would reveal. Now I come to think of it,” added M.
Joyeuse, whose brow had contracted a frown, “I am even surprised that
Hemerlingue, in his hatred for you, has not secretly brought up a few
shares.”
He was interrupted by the chorus of imprecations which the name of
Hemerlingue raised from all the young people, who detested the fat
banker for the injury he had done their father, and for the ill-will he
bore that good Nabob, who was adored in the house through Paul de Gery.
“Hemerlingue, the heartless monster! Wretch! That wicked man!”
But amid all these exclamations, the Visionary was following up his
idea of the fat baron becoming a shareholder in the Territorial for the
purpose of dragging his enemy into the courts. And you may imagine the
stupefaction of Andre Maranne, a complete stranger to the whole affair,
when he saw M. Joyeuse turn to him, and, with face purple and swollen
with rage, point his finger at him, with these terrible words:
“The greatest rascal, after all, in this affair, is you, sir!”
“Oh, papa, papa! what are you saying?”
“Eh, what? Ah, forgive me, my dear Andre. I was fancying myself in the
examining magistrate’s private room, face to face with that rogue. It is
my confounded brain that is always running away with me.”
All broke into uproarious laughter, which escaped into the outer air
through the open windows, and went to mingle with the thousand noises of
moving vehicles and people in their Sunday clothes going up the Avenue
des Ternes. The author of _Revolt_ took advantage of the diversion to
ask whether they were not soon going to start. It was late--the good
places would be taken in the Bois.
“To the Bois de Boulogne, on Sunday!” exclaimed Paul de Gery.
“Oh, our Bois is not yours,” replied Aline with a smile. “Come with us,
and you will see.”
Did it ever happen to you, in the course of a solitary and contemplative
walk, to lie down on your face in the undergrowth of a forest, amid that
vegetation which springs up, various and manifold, through the fallen
autumn leaves, and allow your eyes to wander along the level of the
ground before you? Little by little the sense of height is lost, the
interwoven branches of the oaks above your head form an inaccessible
sky, and you behold a new forest extending beneath the other, opening
its deep avenues filled by a green and mysterious light, and formed
of tiny shrubs or root fibres taking the appearance of the stems
of sugar-canes, of severely graceful palm-trees, of delicate cups
containing a drop of water, of many-branched candlesticks bearing little
yellow lights which the wind blows on as it passes. And the miraculous
thing is, that beneath these light shadows live minute plants and
thousand of insects whose existence, observed from so near at hand, is
a revelation to you of all the mysteries. An ant, bending like a
wood-cutter under his burden, drags after it a splinter of bark bigger
than itself; a beetle makes its way along a blade of grass thrown like a
bridge from one stem to another; while beneath a lofty bracken standing
isolated in the middle of a patch of velvety moss, a little blue or red
insect waits, with antennae at attention, for another little insect
on its way through some desert path over there to arrive at the
trysting-place beneath the giant tree. It is a small forest beneath a
great one, too near the soil to be noticed by its big neighbours, too
humble, too hidden to be reached by its great orchestra of song and
storm.
A similar revelation awaits in the Bois de Boulogne. Behind those sanded
drives, watered and clean, whereon files of carriage-wheels moving
slowly round the lake trace all day long a worn and mechanical furrow,
behind that admirably set scene of trimmed green hedges, of captive
water, of flowery rocks, the true Bois, a wild wood with perennial
undergrowth, grows and flourishes, forming impenetrable recesses
traversed by narrow paths and bubbling springs.
This is the Bois of the children, the Bois of the humble, the little
forest beneath the great one. And Paul, who knew only the long avenues
of the aristocratic Parisian promenades, the sparkling lake perceived
from the depths of a carriage or from the top of a coach in a drive back
from Longchamps, was astonished to see the deliciously sheltered nook to
which his friends had led him. It was on the banks of a pond lying like
a mirror under willow-trees, covered with water-lilies, with here and
there large white shimmering spaces where sunbeams fell and lay on the
bright surface.
On the sloping bank, sheltered by the boughs of trees where the leaves
were already thick, they sat down to listen to the reading of the play,
and the pretty, attentive faces, the skirts lying puffed out over the
grass, made one think of some Decameron, more innocent and chaste, in
a peaceful atmosphere. To complete this pleasant country scene, two
windmill-sails seen through an opening in the branches were revolving
over in the direction of Suresnes, while of the dazzling and luxurious
vision to be met at every cross-roads in the Bois there reached them
only a confused and perpetual murmur, which one ended by ceasing to
notice. The poet’s voice alone rose in the silence, the verses fell on
the air tremblingly, repeated below the breath by other moved lips, and
stifled sounds of approbation greeted them, with shudders at the tragic
passages. Bonne Maman was even seen to wipe away a big tear. That comes,
you see, from having no embroidery in one’s hand!
His first work! That was what the _Revolt_ was for Andre, that first
work always too exuberant and ornate, into which the author throws, to
begin with, whole arrears of ideas and opinions, pent up like the waters
of a river-lock; that first work which is often the richest if not the
best of its writer’s productions. As for the fate that awaited it, no
one could predict it; and the uncertainty that hovered over the reading
of the drama added to its own emotion that of each auditor, the hopes,
all arrayed in white, of Mlle. Elise, the fantastic hallucinations of
M. Joyeuse, and the more positive desires of Aline as she installed
in advance the modest fortune of her sister in the nest of an artist’s
household, beaten by the winds but envied by the crowd.
Ah, if one of those idle people, taking a turn for the hundredth time
round the lake, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habitual promenade,
had come and parted the branches, how surprised he would have been at
this picture! But would he ever have suspected how much passion, how
many dreams, what poetry and hope there could be contained in that
little green corner, hardly larger than the shadow a fern throws on the
moss?
“You were right; I did not know the Bois,” said Paul in a low voice to
Aline, who was leaning on his arm.
They were following a narrow path overarched by the boughs of trees, and
as they talked were moving forward at a quick pace, well in advance
of the others. It was not, however, _pere_ Kontzen’s terrace nor his
appetizing fried dishes that drew them on. No; the beautiful lines
which they had just heard had carried them away, lifting them to great
heights, and they had not yet come down to earth again. They walked
straight on towards the ever-retreating end of the road, which opened
out at its extremity into a luminous glory, a mass of sunbeams, as if
all the sunshine of that beautiful day lay waiting for them where it had
fallen on the outskirts of the wood. Never had Paul felt so happy. That
light arm that lay on his arm, that child’s step by which his own was
guided, these alone would have made life sweet and pleasant to him, no
less than this walk over the mossy turf of a green path. He would have
told the girl so, simply, as he felt it, had he not feared to alarm that
confidence which Aline placed in him, no doubt because of the sentiments
which she knew he possessed for another woman, and which seemed to hold
at a distance from them every thought of love.
Suddenly, right before them, against the bright background, a group
of persons riding on horseback came in sight, at first vague and
indistinct, then appearing as a man and a woman, handsomely mounted, and
entered the mysterious path among the bars of gold, the leafy shadows,
the thousand dots of light with which the ground was strewn, and which,
displaced by their progress as they cantered along, rose and covered
them with flowery patterns from the chests of the horses to the blue
veil of the lady rider. They came along slowly, capriciously, and the
two young people, who had drawn back into the copse, could see pass
close by them, with a clinking of bits proudly shaken and white with
foam as though after a furious gallop, two splendid animals carrying a
pair of human beings brought very near together by the narrowing of the
path; he, supporting with one arm the supple figure moulded in a dark
cloth habit; she, with a hand resting on the shoulder of her cavalier
and her small head seen in retreating profile beneath the half-dropped
tulle of her veil, resting on it tenderly. This embrace, half disturbed
by the impatience of the horses, that kiss on which their reins became
confused, that passion which stalked in broad day through the Bois with
so great a contempt for public opinion, would have been enough to betray
the duke and Felicia, if the haughty and charming mein of the lady and
the aristocratic ease of her companion, his pallor slightly tinged with
colour as the result of his ride and of Jenkins’s miraculous pearls, had
not already betrayed them.
It is not an extraordinary thing to meet Mora in the Bois on a Sunday.
Like his master, he loved to show himself to the Parisians, to advertise
his popularity with all sections of the public; and then the duchess
never accompanied him on that day, and he could make a halt quite at his
ease in that little villa of Saint-James, known to all Paris, whose red
towers, outlined among the trees schoolboys used to point out to each
other in whispers. But only a mad woman, a daring affronter of society
like this Felicia, could have dreamt of advertising herself like this,
with the loss of her reputation forever. A sound of hoofs dying away in
the distance, of shrubs brushed in passing; a few plants that had been
pressed down and were straightening themselves again; branches pushed
out of the way resuming their places--that was all that remained of the
apparition.
“You saw?” said Paul; speaking first.
She had seen, and she had understood, notwithstanding the candour of her
innocence, for a blush spread over her features, one of those feelings
of shame experienced for the faults of those we love.
“Poor Felicia!” she said in a low voice, pitying not only the unhappy
woman who had just passed them, but also him whom this defection must
have smitten to the very heart. The truth is that Paul de Gery had felt
no surprise at this meeting, which justified previous suspicions and the
instinctive aversion which he had felt for Felicia at their dinner some
days before. But he found it pleasant to be pitied by Aline, to feel the
compassion in that voice becoming more tender, in that arm leaning upon
his. Like children who pretend to be ill for the sake of the pleasure
of being fondled by their mother, he allowed his consoler to strive to
appease his grief, speaking to him of his brothers, of the Nabob, and
of his forthcoming trip to Tunis--a fine country, they said. “You must
write to us often, and long letters about the interesting things on the
journey, the place you stay in. For one can see those who are far away
better when one imagines the kind of place they are inhabiting.”
So talking, they reached the end of the bowered path terminating in an
immense open glade through which there moved the tumult of the Bois,
carriages and riders on horseback alternating with each other, and the
crowd at that distance seeming to be tramping through a flaky dust
which blended it into a single confused herd. Paul slackened his pace,
emboldened by this last minute of solitude.
“Do you know what I am thinking of?” he said, taking Aline’s hand. “I am
thinking that it would be a pleasure to be unhappy so as to be comforted
by you. But however precious your pity may be to me, I cannot allow
you to waste your compassion on an imaginary pain. No, my heart is not
broken, but more alive, on the contrary, and stronger. And if I were to
tell you what miracle it is that has preserved it, what talisman--”
He held out before her eyes a little oval frame in which was set
a simple profile, a pencil outline wherein she recognised herself,
surprised to see herself so pretty, reflected, as it were, in the magic
mirror of Love. Tears came into her eyes without her knowing the reason,
an open spring whose stream beat within her chaste breast. He continued:
“This portrait belongs to me. It was drawn for me. And yet, at the
moment of starting on this journey I have a scruple. I do not wish to
have it except from yourself. Take it, then, and if you find a worthier
friend, some one who loves you with a love deeper and more loyal than
mine, I am willing that you should give it to him.”
She had regained her composure, and looking de Gery full in the face
with a serious tenderness, she said:
“If I listened only to my heart, I should feel no hesitation about my
reply: for, if you love me as you say, I am sure that I love you too.
But I am not free; I am not alone in the world. Look yonder.”
She pointed to her father and her sisters, who were beckoning to them in
the distance and hastening to come up with them.
“Well, and I myself?” answered Paul quickly. “Have I not similar duties,
similar responsibilities? We are like two widowed heads of families.
Will you not love mine as much as I love yours?”
“True? is it true? You will let me stay with them? I shall be Aline for
you, and Bonne Maman for all our children? Oh! then,” exclaimed the dear
creature, beaming with joy, “there is my portrait--I give it to you! And
all my soul with it, too, and forever.”