THE ADOPTION.
Madame Desprez, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie,
presented an agreeable type of her sex; exceedingly wholesome to look
upon, a stout _brune_, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark eyes, and
hands that neither art nor nature could improve. She was the sort of
person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud; she might, in
the worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for
a moment, but the next it would be gone. She had much of the placidity
of a contented nun; with little of her piety, however; for Anastasie
was of a very mundane nature, fond of oysters and old wine, and
somewhat bold pleasantries, and devoted to her husband for her own sake
rather than for his. She was imperturbably good-natured, but had no
idea of self-sacrifice. To live in that pleasant old house, with a
green garden behind and bright flowers about the window, to eat and
drink of the best, to gossip with a neighbour for a quarter of an hour,
never to wear stays or a dress except when she went to Fontainebleau
shopping, to be kept in a continual supply of racy novels, and to be
married to Doctor Desprez and have no ground of jealousy, filled the
cup of her nature to the brim. Those who had known the Doctor in
bachelor days, when he had aired quite as many theories, but of a
different order, attributed his present philosophy to the study of
Anastasie. It was her brute enjoyment that he rationalised and perhaps
vainly imitated.
Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a
nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the
Doctor; everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone
gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, their
single servant, had no other business in the world but to scour and
burnish. So Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf,
warmed and cosseted to his heart’s content.
The midday meal was excellent. There was a ripe melon, a fish from the
river in a memorable Bearnaise sauce, a fat fowl in a fricassee, and a
dish of asparagus, followed by some fruit. The Doctor drank half a
bottle _plus_ one glass, the wife half a bottle _minus_ the same
quantity, which was a marital privilege, of an excellent Côte-Rôtie,
seven years old. Then the coffee was brought, and a flask of Chartreuse
for madame, for the Doctor despised and distrusted such decoctions; and
then Aline left the wedded pair to the pleasures of memory and
digestion.
“It is a very fortunate circumstance, my cherished one,” observed the
Doctor—“this coffee is adorable—a very fortunate circumstance upon the
whole—Anastasie, I beseech you, go without that poison for to-day; only
one day, and you will feel the benefit, I pledge my reputation.”
“What is this fortunate circumstance, my friend?” inquired Anastasie,
not heeding his protest, which was of daily recurrence.
“That we have no children, my beautiful,” replied the Doctor. “I think
of it more and more as the years go on, and with more and more
gratitude towards the Power that dispenses such afflictions. Your
health, my darling, my studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies,
how they would all have suffered, how they would all have been
sacrificed! And for what? Children are the last word of human
imperfection. Health flees before their face. They cry, my dear; they
put vexatious questions; they demand to be fed, to be washed, to be
educated, to have their noses blown; and then, when the time comes,
they break our hearts, as I break this piece of sugar. A pair of
professed egoists, like you and me, should avoid offspring, like an
infidelity.”
“Indeed!” said she; and she laughed. “Now, that is like you—to take
credit for the thing you could not help.”
“My dear,” returned the Doctor, solemnly, “we might have adopted.”
“Never!” cried madame. “Never, Doctor, with my consent. If the child
were my own flesh and blood, I would not say no. But to take another
person’s indiscretion on my shoulders, my dear friend, I have too much
sense.”
“Precisely,” replied the Doctor. “We both had. And I am all the better
pleased with our wisdom, because—because—” He looked at her sharply.
“Because what?” she asked, with a faint premonition of danger.
“Because I have found the right person,” said the Doctor firmly, “and
shall adopt him this afternoon.”
Anastasie looked at him out of a mist. “You have lost your reason,” she
said; and there was a clang in her voice that seemed to threaten
trouble.
“Not so, my dear,” he replied; “I retain its complete exercise. To the
proof: instead of attempting to cloak my inconsistency, I have, by way
of preparing you, thrown it into strong relief. You will there, I
think, recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy to call you wife.
The fact is, I have been reckoning all this while without an accident.
I never thought to find a son of my own. Now, last night, I found one.
Do not unnecessarily alarm yourself, my dear; he is not a drop of blood
to me that I know. It is his mind, darling, his mind that calls me
father.”
“His mind!” she repeated with a titter between scorn and hysterics.
“His mind, indeed! Henri, is this an idiotic pleasantry, or are you
mad? His mind! And what of my mind?”
“Truly,” replied the Doctor with a shrug, “you have your finger on the
hitch. He will be strikingly antipathetic to my ever beautiful
Anastasie. She will never understand him; he will never understand her.
You married the animal side of my nature, dear and it is on the
spiritual side that I find my affinity for Jean-Marie. So much so,
that, to be perfectly frank, I stand in some awe of him myself. You
will easily perceive that I am announcing a calamity for you. Do not,”
he broke out in tones of real solicitude—“do not give way to tears
after a meal, Anastasie. You will certainly give yourself a false
digestion.”
Anastasie controlled herself. “You know how willing I am to humour
you,” she said, “in all reasonable matters. But on this point—”
“My dear love,” interrupted the Doctor, eager to prevent a refusal,
“who wished to leave Paris? Who made me give up cards, and the opera,
and the boulevard, and my social relations, and all that was my life
before I knew you? Have I been faithful? Have I been obedient? Have I
not borne my doom with cheerfulness? In all honesty, Anastasie, have I
not a right to a stipulation on my side? I have, and you know it. I
stipulate my son.”
Anastasie was aware of defeat; she struck her colours instantly. “You
will break my heart,” she sighed.
“Not in the least,” said he. “You will feel a trifling inconvenience
for a month, just as I did when I was first brought to this vile
hamlet; then your admirable sense and temper will prevail, and I see
you already as content as ever, and making your husband the happiest of
men.”
“You know I can refuse you nothing,” she said, with a last flicker of
resistance; “nothing that will make you truly happier. But will this?
Are you sure, my husband? Last night, you say, you found him! He may be
the worst of humbugs.”
“I think not,” replied the Doctor. “But do not suppose me so unwary as
to adopt him out of hand. I am, I flatter myself, a finished man of the
world; I have had all possibilities in view; my plan is contrived to
meet them all. I take the lad as stable boy. If he pilfer, if he
grumble, if he desire to change, I shall see I was mistaken; I shall
recognise him for no son of mine, and send him tramping.”
“You will never do so when the time comes,” said his wife; “I know your
good heart.”
She reached out her hand to him, with a sigh; the Doctor smiled as he
took it and carried it to his lips; he had gained his point with
greater ease than he had dared to hope; for perhaps the twentieth time
he had proved the efficacy of his trusty argument, his Excalibur, the
hint of a return to Paris. Six months in the capital, for a man of the
Doctor’s antecedents and relations, implied no less a calamity than
total ruin. Anastasie had saved the remainder of his fortune by keeping
him strictly in the country. The very name of Paris put her in a blue
fear; and she would have allowed her husband to keep a menagerie in the
back garden, let alone adopting a stable-boy, rather than permit the
question of return to be discussed.
About four of the afternoon, the mountebank rendered up his ghost; he
had never been conscious since his seizure. Doctor Desprez was present
at his last passage, and declared the farce over. Then he took
Jean-Marie by the shoulder and led him out into the inn garden where
there was a convenient bench beside the river. Here he sat him down and
made the boy place himself on his left.
“Jean-Marie,” he said very gravely, “this world is exceedingly vast;
and even France, which is only a small corner of it, is a great place
for a little lad like you. Unfortunately it is full of eager,
shouldering people moving on; and there are very few bakers’ shops for
so many eaters. Your master is dead; you are not fit to gain a living
by yourself; you do not wish to steal? No. Your situation then is
undesirable; it is, for the moment, critical. On the other hand, you
behold in me a man not old, though elderly, still enjoying the youth of
the heart and the intelligence; a man of instruction; easily situated
in this world’s affairs; keeping a good table:—a man, neither as friend
nor host, to be despised. I offer you your food and clothes, and to
teach you lessons in the evening, which will be infinitely more to the
purpose for a lad of your stamp than those of all the priests in
Europe. I propose no wages, but if ever you take a thought to leave me,
the door shall be open, and I will give you a hundred francs to start
the world upon. In return, I have an old horse and chaise, which you
would very speedily learn to clean and keep in order. Do not hurry
yourself to answer, and take it or leave it as you judge aright. Only
remember this, that I am no sentimentalist or charitable person, but a
man who lives rigorously to himself; and that if I make the proposal,
it is for my own ends—it is because I perceive clearly an advantage to
myself. And now, reflect.”
“I shall be very glad. I do not see what else I can do. I thank you,
sir, most kindly, and I will try to be useful,” said the boy.
“Thank you,” said the Doctor warmly, rising at the same time and wiping
his brow, for he had suffered agonies while the thing hung in the wind.
A refusal, after the scene at noon, would have placed him in a
ridiculous light before Anastasie. “How hot and heavy is the evening,
to be sure! I have always had a fancy to be a fish in summer,
Jean-Marie, here in the Loing beside Gretz. I should lie under a
water-lily and listen to the bells, which must sound most delicately
down below. That would be a life—do you not think so too?”
“Yes,” said Jean-Marie.
“Thank God you have imagination!” cried the Doctor, embracing the boy
with his usual effusive warmth, though it was a proceeding that seemed
to disconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had been an English
schoolboy of the same age. “And now,” he added, “I will take you to my
wife.”
Madame Desprez sat in the dining-room in a cool wrapper. All the blinds
were down, and the tile floor had been recently sprinkled with water;
her eyes were half shut, but she affected to be reading a novel as the
they entered. Though she was a bustling woman, she enjoyed repose
between whiles and had a remarkable appetite for sleep.
The Doctor went through a solemn form of introduction, adding, for the
benefit of both parties, “You must try to like each other for my sake.”
“He is very pretty,” said Anastasie. “Will you kiss me, my pretty
little fellow?”
The Doctor was furious, and dragged her into the passage. “Are you a
fool, Anastasie?” he said. “What is all this I hear about the tact of
women? Heaven knows, I have not met with it in my experience. You
address my little philosopher as if he were an infant. He must be
spoken to with more respect, I tell you; he must not be kissed and
Georgy-porgy’d like an ordinary child.”
“I only did it to please you, I am sure,” replied Anastasie; “but I
will try to do better.”
The Doctor apologised for his warmth. “But I do wish him,” he
continued, “to feel at home among us. And really your conduct was so
idiotic, my cherished one, and so utterly and distantly out of place,
that a saint might have been pardoned a little vehemence in
disapproval. Do, do try—if it is possible for a woman to understand
young people—but of course it is not, and I waste my breath. Hold your
tongue as much as possible at least, and observe my conduct narrowly;
it will serve you for a model.”
Anastasie did as she was bidden, and considered the Doctor’s behaviour.
She observed that he embraced the boy three times in the course of the
evening, and managed generally to confound and abash the little fellow
out of speech and appetite. But she had the true womanly heroism in
little affairs. Not only did she refrain from the cheap revenge of
exposing the Doctor’s errors to himself, but she did her best to remove
their ill-effect on Jean-Marie. When Desprez went out for his last
breath of air before retiring for the night, she came over to the boy’s
side and took his hand.
“You must not be surprised nor frightened by my husband’s manners,” she
said. “He is the kindest of men, but so clever that he is sometimes
difficult to understand. You will soon grow used to him, and then you
will love him, for that nobody can help. As for me, you may be sure, I
shall try to make you happy, and will not bother you at all. I think we
should be excellent friends, you and I. I am not clever, but I am very
good-natured. Will you give me a kiss?”
He held up his face, and she took him in her arms and then began to
cry. The woman had spoken in complaisance; but she had warmed to her
own words, and tenderness followed. The Doctor, entering, found them
enlaced: he concluded that his wife was in fault; and he was just
beginning, in an awful voice, “Anastasie—,” when she looked up at him,
smiling, with an upraised finger; and he held his peace, wondering,
while she led the boy to his attic.