Jolicoeur at any time has been despairing is a matter that has
escaped my notice. As to the mourning that she now wears, it is a
defiance of all propriety. Why, with no more than that of colour in her
frock"--Madame Vic upheld her thumb and finger infinitesimally
separated--"and with a mere pin-point of a flower in her bonnet, she
would be fit for the opera!"
Madame Vic spoke with a caustic bitterness that had its roots. Her own
venture in second marriage had been catastrophic--so catastrophic that
her neglected bakery had gone very much to the bad. Still more closely
to the point, Madame Jolicoeur--incident to finding entomologic
specimens misplaced in her breakfast-rolls--had taken the leading part
in an interchange of incivilities with the bakery's proprietor, and had
withdrawn from it her custom.
"And even were her mournings not a flouting of her short year of
widowhood," continued Madame Vic, with an acrimony that abbreviated the
term of widowhood most unfairly--"the scores of eligible suitors who
openly come streaming to her door, and are welcomed there, are as
trumpets proclaiming her audacious intentions and her indecorous
desires. Even Monsieur Brisson is in that outrageous procession! Is it
not enough that she should entice a repulsively bald-headed notary and
an old rake of a major to make their brazen advances, without suffering
this anatomy of a pharmacien to come treading on their heels?--he with
his hands imbrued in the life-blood of the unhappy old woman whom his
mismade prescription sent in agony to the tomb! Pah! I have no patience
with her! She and her grief and her seclusion and her sympathetic cat,
indeed! It all is a tragedy of indiscretion--that shapes itself as a
revolting farce!"
It will be observed that Madame Vic, in framing her bill of particulars,
practically reduced her alleged scores of Madame Jolicoeur's suitors
to precisely two--since the bad third was handicapped so heavily by that
notorious matter of the mismade prescription as to be a negligible
quantity, quite out of the race. Indeed, it was only the preposterous
temerity of Monsieur Brisson--despairingly clutching at any chance to
retrieve his broken fortunes--that put him in the running at all. With
the others, in such slighting terms referred to by Madame Vic--Monsieur
Peloux, a notary of standing, and the Major Gontard, of the Twenty-ninth
of the Line--the case was different. It had its sides.
"That this worthy lady reasonably may desire again to wed," declared
Monsieur Fromagin, actual proprietor of the Épicerie Russe--an
establishment liberally patronized by Madame Jolicoeur--"is as true as
that when she goes to make her choosings between these estimable
gentlemen she cannot make a choice that is wrong."
Madame Gauthier, a clear-starcher of position, to whom Monsieur Fromagin
thus addressed himself, was less broadly positive. "That is a matter of
opinion," she answered; and added: "To go no further than the very
beginning, Monsieur should perceive that her choice has exactly fifty
chances in the hundred of going wrong: lying, as it does, between a
meagre, sallow-faced creature of a death-white baldness, and a fine big
pattern of a man, strong and ruddy, with a close-clipped but abundant
thatch on his head, and a moustache that admittedly is superb!"
"Ah, there speaks the woman!" said Monsieur Fromagin, with a patronizing
smile distinctly irritating. "Madame will recognize--if she will but
bring herself to look a little beyond the mere outside--that what I have
advanced is not a matter of opinion but of fact. Observe: Here is
Monsieur Peloux--to whose trifling leanness and aristocratic baldness
the thoughtful give no attention--easily a notary in the very first
rank. As we all know, his services are sought in cases of the most
exigent importance--"
"For example," interrupted Madame Gauthier, "the case of the insurance
solicitor, in whose countless defraudings my own brother was a sufferer:
a creature of a vileness, whose deserts were unnumbered ages of
dungeons--and who, thanks to the chicaneries of Monsieur Peloux, at this
moment walks free as air!"
"It is of the professional duty of advocates," replied Monsieur
Fromagin, sententiously, "to defend their clients; on the successful
discharge of that duty--irrespective of minor details--depends their
fame. Madame neglects the fact that Monsieur Peloux, by his masterly
conduct of the case that she specifies, won for himself from his legal
colleagues an immense applause."
"The more shame to his legal colleagues!" commented Madame Gauthier
curtly.
"But leaving that affair quite aside," continued Monsieur Fromagin
airily, but with insistence, "here is this notable advocate who reposes
his important homages at Madame Jolicoeur's feet: he a man of an age
that is suitable, without being excessive; who has in the community an
assured position; whose more than moderate wealth is known. I insist,
therefore, that should she accept his homages she would do well."
"And I insist," declared Madame Gauthier stoutly, "that should she turn
her back upon the Major Gontard she would do most ill!"
"Madame a little disregards my premises," Monsieur Fromagin spoke in a
tone of forbearance, "and therefore a little argues--it is the privilege
of her sex--against the air. Distinctly, I do not exclude from Madame
Jolicoeur's choice that gallant Major: whose rank--now approaching him
to the command of a regiment, and fairly equalling the position at the
bar achieved by Monsieur Peloux--has been won, grade by grade, by deeds
of valour in his African campaignings which have made him conspicuous
even in the army that stands first in such matters of all the armies of
the world. Moreover--although, admittedly, in that way Monsieur Peloux
makes a better showing--he is of an easy affluence. On the Camargue he
has his excellent estate in vines, from which comes a revenue more than
sufficing to satisfy more than modest wants. At Les Martigues he has his
charming coquette villa, smothered in the flowers of his own planting,
to which at present he makes his agreeable escapes from his military
duties; and in which, when his retreat is taken, he will pass softly his
sunset years. With these substantial points in his favour, the standing
of the Major Gontard in this matter practically is of a parity with the
standing of Monsieur Peloux. Equally, both are worthy of Madame
Jolicoeur's consideration: both being able to continue her in the life
of elegant comfort to which she is accustomed; and both being on a
social plane--it is of her level accurately--to which the widow of an
ingénieur des ponts et chaussées neither steps up nor steps down. Having
now made clear, I trust, my reasonings, I repeat the proposition with
which Madame took issue: When Madame Jolicoeur goes to make her
choosings between these estimable gentlemen she cannot make a choice
that is wrong."
"And I repeat, Monsieur," said Madame Gauthier, lifting her basket from
the counter, "that in making her choosings Madame Jolicoeur either
goes to raise herself to the heights of a matured happiness, or to
plunge herself into bald-headed abysses of despair. Yes, Monsieur, that
far apart are her choosings!" And Madame Gauthier added, in communion
with herself as she passed to the street with her basket: "As for me, it
would be that adorable Major by a thousand times!"
* * * * *
As was of reason, since hers was the first place in the matter, Madame
Jolicoeur herself carried on debatings--in the portion of her heart
that had escaped complete devastation--identical in essence with the
debatings of her case which went up and down the Rue Bausset.
Not having become dévote--in the year and more of opportunity open to
her for a turn in that direction--one horn of her original dilemma had
been eliminated, so to say, by atrophy. Being neglected, it had
withered: with the practical result that out of her very indecisions had
come a decisive choice. But to her new dilemma, of which the horns were
the Major and the Notary--in the privacy of her secret thoughts she made
no bones of admitting that this dilemma confronted her--the atrophying
process was not applicable; at least, not until it could be applied with
a sharp finality. Too long dallied with, it very well might lead to the
atrophy of both of them in dudgeon; and thence onward, conceivably, to
her being left to cling only to the Shah de Perse for all the remainder
of her days.
Therefore, to the avoidance of that too radical conclusion, Madame
Jolicoeur engaged in her debatings briskly: offering to herself, in
effect, the balanced arguments advanced by Monsieur Fromagin in favour
equally of Monsieur Peloux and of the Major Gontard; taking as her own,
with moderating exceptions and emendations, the views of Madame Gauthier
as to the meagreness and pallid baldness of the one and the sturdiness
and gallant bearing of the other; considering, from the standpoint of
her own personal knowledge in the premises, the Notary's disposition
toward a secretive reticence that bordered upon severity, in contrast
with the cordially frank and debonair temperament of the Major; and, at
the back of all, keeping well in mind the fundamental truths that
opportunity ever is evanescent and that time ever is on the wing.
As the result of her debatings, and not less as the result of experience
gained in her earlier campaigning, Madame Jolicoeur took up a
strategic position nicely calculated to inflame the desire for, by
assuming the uselessness of, an assault. In set terms, confirming
particularly her earlier and more general avowal, she declared equally
to the Major and to the Notary that absolutely the whole of her
bestowable affection--of the remnant in her withered heart available for
distribution--was bestowed upon the Shah de Perse: and so, with an
alluring nonchalance, left them to draw the logical conclusion that
their strivings to win that desirable quantity were idle--since a
definite disposition of it already had been made.
The reply of the Major Gontard to this declaration was in keeping with
his known amiability, but also was in keeping with his military habit of
command. "Assuredly," he said, "Madame shall continue to bestow, within
reason, her affections upon Monsieur le Shah; and with them that brave
animal--he is a cat of ten thousand--shall have my affections as well.
Already, knowing my feeling for him, we are friends--as Madame shall see
to her own convincing." Addressing himself in tones of kindly persuasion
to the Shah de Perse, he added: "Viens, Monsieur!"--whereupon the Shah
de Perse instantly jumped himself to the Major's knee and broke forth,
in response to a savant rubbing of his soft little jowls, into his
gurgling purr. "Voilà, Madame!" continued the Major. "It is to be
perceived that we have our good understandings, the Shah de Perse and I.
That we all shall live happily together tells itself without words. But
observe"--of a sudden the voice of the Major thrilled with a deep
earnestness, and his style of address changed to a familiarity that only
the intensity of his feeling condoned--"I am resolved that to me, above
all, shall be given thy dear affections. Thou shalt give me the perfect
flower of them--of that fact rest thou assured. In thy heart I am to be
the very first--even as in my heart thou thyself art the very first of
all the world. In Africa I have had my successes in my conquests and
holdings of fortresses. Believe me, I shall have an equal success in
conquering and in holding the sweetest fortress in France!"
Certainly, the Major Gontard had a bold way with him. But that it had
its attractions, not to say its compellings, Madame Jolicoeur could
not honestly deny.
On the part of the Notary--whose disposition, fostered by his
profession, was toward subtlety rather than toward boldness--Madame
Jolicoeur's declaration of cat rights was received with no such
belligerent blare of trumpets and beat of drums. He met it with a light
show of banter--beneath which, to come to the surface later, lay hidden
dark thoughts.
"Madame makes an excellent pleasantry," he said with a smile of the
blandest. "Without doubt, not a very flattering pleasantry--but I know
that her denial of me in favour of her cat is but a jesting at which we
both may laugh. And we may laugh together the better because, in the
roots of her jesting, we have our sympathies. I also have an intensity
of affection for cats"--to be just to Monsieur Peloux, who loathed cats,
it must be said that he gulped as he made this flagrantly untruthful
statement--"and with this admirable cat, so dear to Madame, it goes to
make itself that we speedily become enduring friends."
Curiously enough--a mere coincidence, of course--as the Notary uttered
these words so sharply at points with veracity, in the very moment of
them, the Shah de Perse stiffly retired into his sulkiest corner and
turned what had every appearance of being a scornful back upon the
world.
Judiciously ignoring this inopportunely equivocal incident, Monsieur
Peloux reverted to the matter in chief and concluded his deliverance in
these words: "I well understand, I repeat, that Madame for the moment
makes a comedy of herself and of her cat for my amusing. But I persuade
myself that her droll fancyings will not be lasting, and that she will
be serious with me in the end. Until then--and then most of all--I am at
her feet humbly: an unworthy, but a very earnest, suppliant for her
good-will. Should she have the cruelty to refuse my supplication, it
will remain with me to die in an unmerited despair!"
Certainly, this was an appeal--of a sort. But even without perceiving
the mitigating subtlety of its comminative final clause--so skilfully
worded as to leave Monsieur Peloux free to bring off his threatened
unmeritedly despairing death quite at his own convenience--Madame
Jolicoeur did not find it satisfying. In contrast with the Major
Gontard's ringingly audacious declarations of his habits in dealing with
fortresses, she felt that it lacked force. And, also--this, of course,
was a sheer weakness--she permitted herself to be influenced appreciably
by the indicated preferences of the Shah de Perse: who had jumped to the
knee of the Major with an affectionate alacrity; and who undeniably had
turned on the Notary--either by chance or by intention--a back of scorn.
As the general outcome of these several developments, Madame
Jolicoeur's debatings came to have in them--if I so may state the
trend of her mental activities--fewer bald heads and more moustaches;
and her never severely set purpose to abide in a loneliness relieved
only by the Shah de Perse was abandoned root and branch.
* * * * *
While Madame Jolicoeur continued her debatings--which, in their
modified form, manifestly were approaching her to conclusions--water was
running under bridges elsewhere.
In effect, her hesitancies produced a period of suspense that gave
opportunity for, and by the exasperating delay of it stimulated, the
resolution of the Notary's dark thoughts into darker deeds. With reason,
he did not accept at its face value Madame Jolicoeur's declaration
touching the permanent bestowal of her remnant affections; but he did
believe that there was enough in it to make the Shah de Perse a delaying
obstacle to his own acquisition of them. When obstacles got in this
gentleman's way it was his habit to kick them out of it--a habit that
had not been unduly stunted by half a lifetime of successful practice at
the criminal bar.
Because of his professional relations with them, Monsieur Peloux had an
extensive acquaintance among criminals of varying shades of
intensity--at times, in his dubious doings, they could be useful to
him--hidden away in the shadowy nooks and corners of the city; and he
also had his emissaries through whom they could be reached. All the
conditions thus standing attendant upon his convenience, it was a facile
matter for him to make an appointment with one of these disreputables
at a cabaret of bad record in the Quartier de la Tourette: a
region--bordering upon the north side of the Vieux Port--that is at once
the oldest and the foulest quarter of Marseille.
In going to keep this appointment--as was his habit on such occasions,
in avoidance of possible spying upon his movements--he went deviously:
taking a cab to the Bassin de Carènage, as though some maritime matter
engaged him, and thence making the transit of the Vieux Port in a bateau
mouche. It was while crossing in the ferryboat that a sudden shuddering
beset him: as he perceived with horror--but without repentance--the pit
into which he descended. In his previous, always professional, meetings
with criminals his position had been that of unassailable dominance. In
his pending meeting--since he himself would be not only a criminal but
an inciter to crime--he would be, in the essence of the matter, the
under dog. Beneath his seemly black hat his bald head went whiter than
even its normal deathly whiteness, and perspiration started from its
every pore. Almost with a groan, he removed his hat and dried with his
handkerchief what were in a way his tears of shame.
Over the interview between Monsieur Peloux and his hireling--cheerfully
moistened, on the side of the hireling, with absinthe of a vileness in
keeping with its place of purchase--decency demands the partial drawing
of a veil. In brief, Monsieur Peloux--his guilty eyes averted, the
shame-tears streaming afresh from his bald head--presented his criminal
demand and stated the sum that he would pay for its gratification. This
sum--being in keeping with his own estimate of what it paid for--was so
much in excess of the hireling's views concerning the value of a mere
cat-killing that he fairly jumped at it.
"Be not disturbed, Monsieur!" he replied, with the fervour of one really
grateful, and with the expansive extravagance of a Marseillais keyed up
with exceptionally bad absinthe. "Be not disturbed in the smallest! In
this very coming moment this camel of a cat shall die a thousand deaths;
and in but another moment immeasurable quantities of salt and ashes
shall obliterate his justly despicable grave! To an instant
accomplishment of Monsieur's wishes I pledge whole-heartedly the word of
an honest man."
Actually--barring the number of deaths to be inflicted on the Shah de
Perse, and the needlessly defiling concealment of his burial-place--this
radical treatment of the matter was precisely what Monsieur Peloux
desired; and what, in terms of innuendo and euphuism, he had asked for.
But the brutal frankness of the hireling, and his evident delight in
sinning for good wages, came as an arousing shock to the enfeebled
remnant of the Notary's better nature--with a resulting vacillation of
purpose to which he would have risen superior had he been longer
habituated to the ways of crime.
"No! No!" he said weakly. "I did not mean that--by no means all of that.
At least--that is to say--you will understand me, my good man, that
enough will be done if you remove the cat from Marseille. Yes, that is
what I mean--take it somewhere. Take it to Cassis, to Arles, to
Avignon--where you will--and leave it there. The railway ticket is my
charge--and, also, you have an extra napoléon for your refreshment by
the way. Yes, that suffices. In a bag, you know--and soon!"
Returning across the Vieux Port in the bateau mouche, Monsieur Peloux no
longer shuddered in dread of crime to be committed--his shuddering was
for accomplished crime. On his bald head, unheeded, the gushing tears of
shame accumulated in pools.
* * * * *
When leaves of absence permitted him to make retirements to his coquette
little estate at Les Martigues, the Major Gontard was as another
Cincinnatus: with the minor differences that the lickerish cookings of
the brave Marthe--his old femme de ménage: a veritable protagonist among
cooks, even in Provence--checked him on the side of severe simplicity;
that he would have welcomed with effusion lictors, or others, come to
announce his advance to a regiment; and that he made no use whatever of
a plow.
In the matter of the plow, he had his excuses. His two or three acres of
land lay on a hillside banked in tiny terraces--quite unsuited to the
use of that implement--and the whole of his agricultural energies were
given to the cultivation of flowers. Among his flowers, intelligently
assisted by old Michel, he worked with a zeal bred of his affection for
them; and after his workings, when the cool of evening was come, smoked
his pipe refreshingly while seated on the vine-bowered estrade before
his trim villa on the crest of the slope: the while sniffing with a just
interest at the fumes of old Marthe's cookings, and placidly delighting
in the ever-new beauties of the sunsets above the distant mountains and
their near-by reflected beauties in the waters of the Étang de Berre.
Save in his professional relations with recalcitrant inhabitants of
Northern Africa, he was of a gentle nature, this amiable warrior: ever
kindly, when kindliness was deserved, in all his dealings with mankind.
Equally, his benevolence was extended to the lower orders of
animals--that it was understood, and reciprocated, the willing jumping
of the Shah de Perse to his friendly knee made manifest--and was
exhibited in practical ways. Naturally, he was a liberal contributor to
the funds of the Société protectrice des animaux; and, what was more to
the purpose, it was his well-rooted habit to do such protecting as was
necessary, on his own account, when he chanced upon any suffering
creature in trouble or in pain.
Possessing these commendable characteristics, it follows that the doings
of the Major Gontard in the railway station at Pas de Lanciers--on the
day sequent to the day on which Monsieur Peloux was the promoter of a
criminal conspiracy--could not have been other than they were. Equally
does it follow that his doings produced the doings of the man with the
bag.
Pas de Lanciers is the little station at which one changes trains in
going from Marseille to Les Martigues. Descending from a first-class
carriage, the Major Gontard awaited the Martigues train--his leave was
for two days, and his thoughts were engaged pleasantly with the
breakfast that old Marthe would have ready for him and with plans for
his flowers. From a third-class carriage descended the man with the
bag, who also awaited the Martigues train. Presently--the two happening
to come together in their saunterings up and down the platform--the
Major's interest was aroused by observing that within the bag went on a
persistent wriggling; and his interest was quickened into characteristic
action when he heard from its interior, faintly but quite distinctly, a
very pitiful half-strangled little mew!
"In another moment," said the Major, addressing the man sharply, "that
cat will be suffocated. Open the bag instantly and give it air!"
"Pardon, Monsieur," replied the man, starting guiltily. "This excellent
cat is not suffocating. In the bag it breathes freely with all its
lungs. It is a pet cat, having the habitude to travel in this manner;
and, because it is of a friendly disposition, it is accustomed thus to
make its cheerful little remarks." By way of comment upon this
explanation, there came from the bag another half-strangled mew that was
not at all suggestive of cheerfulness. It was a faint miserable
mew--that told of cat despair!
At that juncture a down train came in on the other side of the platform,
a train on its way to Marseille.
"Thou art a brute!" said the Major, tersely. "I shall not suffer thy
cruelties to continue!" As he spoke, he snatched away the bag from its
uneasy possessor and applied himself to untying its confining cord.
Oppressed by the fear that goes with evil-doing, the man hesitated for a
moment before attempting to retrieve what constructively was his
property.