Madame Branthonne was a gentlewoman, employed in the Bernstein School
of Languages. She was so free-handed with her sous, so generous in
the matter of brioche and chocolate, that Marie thought she must be
comparatively rich. But madame Branthonne was not rich; and when Marie
knew her well it transpired that she remitted every month, out of her
slender salary, for the maintenance of a baby son in Amiens.
"How you must miss him! How old is he?"
"Only eleven weeks. Miss him? Mon Dieu! But I had to leave him, or we
should both have starved; if I had brought him with me, who would have
looked after him all day while I was out? Besides, in this work, there
is no telling how long one may remain in any city--I might be packed
off to some other branch of the concern to-morrow."
"Really?"
"Oh yes; one never knows. Last week one of oar professors was sent at
a day's notice to Russia. What a life! Of course, one need not consent
to go, but it is never prudent to refuse. You used to make me cry in
there for my baby, when you played the piano. The poor little soul is
called 'Paul,' after his father; he is with a person who used to be
my servant; she is married now, and has a little business, a dairy. I
know she is good to him, but imagine how I suffer--in less than a year
I have lost my husband and my child. Alors, vrai! what an egotist I am!
How go your own affairs? Still no luck?"
In the Garden of the Luxembourg on Sundays, the two lonely women
sauntered under the chestnut-trees and talked of their sorrows and
their hopes. The hopes of the widow were centred upon the lotteries _de
Bienfaisance_, which had lured a louis from her time and again. She was
emerging from a period of enforced discretion, and she asked: "What do
you say to our buying a ticket between us?"
The present lottery had neared its end; only one drawing remained, and
the price of tickets was accordingly much reduced. The friends bought
their microscopic chance for five francs each.
The prizes that were dangled varied between a mite and a fortune; and
now, in the murky lamplight of the garret, the pianist saw visions.
Rebuffed, intimidated, she had suddenly a prospect; chimerical as the
prospect was, she might gain the means to buy a hearing for her art!
For the woman seeking recognition, opportunity. For the woman divided
from her child, a home. Every night they spoke of it. Often while the
lamp burnt low, and a horse-bell jangled sadly, they laughed together
in a castle-in-the-air.
But those brats from the _Assistance publique_, who blindly dispensed
destinies at the drawing, dipped their red hands upon the wrong numbers.
"As usual! I am sorry I proposed it to you. It is an imbecility to
waste one's earnings in such a fashion--one might as well toss money in
the Seine. Well, I have had enough! I have finished. I am determined
never to gamble any more," cried madame Branthonne, who had made the
same resolve a dozen times.
Marie said less. But her disappointment was black; it was only now that
she knew how vivid had been her hope. And in the meanwhile her little
hoard had dwindled terribly, and she was seeking other pupils.
"What if you get them--you will be no nearer to renown? In Chauville
you have a living waiting for you--why wear out shoe-leather to find
bread in Paris? Poverty in Paris is no sweeter than poverty elsewhere."
"If I go back to Chauville, it means the end," she answered. "I shall
never have anything to look forward to there--never, to the day of my
death. Year after year I shall sit teaching exercises and little pieces
to schoolgirls who will never play. The girls will escape, and marry,
but _I_ shall sit teaching the same exercises and little pieces to
their children. Here, if I can hold out, if only I can hold out long
enough, I may batter my way up. I want to get on--I've a right to get
on. You don't suppose that no one has ever made a career who couldn't
pay for it?"
"No," sighed her confidante; "I don't suppose it's so bad as that--men
do help one sometimes." But in her heart she felt, "You aren't the kind
of woman that men do things for."
And, to a stranger, even pupils at five francs an hour proved hard to
find. A pianist of talent--and she couldn't earn a living in Paris,
even by elementary lessons. It was one of those cases which the
uninitiated call "improbable," and which are happening all the time.
Yet it fell to madame Branthonne to quit Paris first. When Marie
Lamande could no longer sleep at night, or slept only to see the
desolation of Chauville in her dreams, the teacher of French was
required to go to one of the London branches of the school. It occurred
abruptly; the news and the good-bye were almost simultaneous.
A new proclamation of millions to be won, aggrandised "_par arrêté
ministériel_," was blazoned across the pages of the newspapers; and, on
impulse, the woman who was "determined never to gamble any more" left a
louis with the other, to buy a ticket for her.
"You know you can't spare it," urged Marie. "I wouldn't, if I were you!"
Momentarily the widow hesitated; and then she gave a shrug.
"Oh, of course, I'm an idiot," she exclaimed. "But what else have I got
to hope for? Yes, get it and send it to me!"
Early in the journey she vacillated again. But her instructions were
not revoked, because soon afterwards no more than a third of the train
remained on the rails, and madame Branthonne was among the victims
killed.
Her aghast friend heard of the catastrophe twelve hours later than
multitudes for whom it had no personal interest. Dazed, she wondered
whether the ex-servant in Amiens would see the name of "Branthonne" in
the list of the dead, and what would become of the baby now. She had a
confused notion that she ought to communicate with the woman, but she
was ignorant of the address. She went hysterically to the head office
of the school, where the manager undertook to make inquiries at the
Amiens branch.
When the sickness of horror passed, her thoughts reverted to the ticket
that she had been enjoined to buy; and on the way to fulfil the duty,
it was as if the dead woman, as she had seen her last, with her hat and
coat on, were close to her again. "What name?" inquired the clerk in
the big bank. "Lamande," she answered--and asked herself afterwards if
it would have been more businesslike to say "Branthonne." But it didn't
seem to matter. The point that perplexed her was, in whose charge ought
the ticket to be? It belonged to the baby now, and its possibilities
extended through the year. "Série No. 78, Billet No. 19,333." Ought she
to post it confidingly to the dairy-keeper when she learnt where she
lived?
The question persisted, as she tramped the streets despondently--as
daily she drew nearer to defeat. She had discontinued to hire a piano.
Everywhere she was humbled with the same reply, banished with the same
gestures, maddened by the same callous unconcern. Paris was brutal! She
dropped in her purse the last louis that protracted hope. When this
was gone, there would be left nothing but the price of her journey to
Chauville and despair.
In the first drawing of the lottery, a few days later, the ticket won a
prize of twelve thousand francs.
In a crumpled copy of _Le Petit Journal_, in the crémerie, she read
of the drawing, by chance--not having remembered for what date it was
announced. And she took a copy of the paper home with her--having
forgotten the number of the ticket that she had bought. And when the
revelation came to her, there was, blent with her thanksgiving for the
child's sake, the human, bitter consciousness that, had she rashly
suggested it, half the chance might have been hers. She might have
stood here to-night on the threshold of success. So simple it would
have been! The knowledge was a taunt. She felt that Fate had robbed and
derided her; she felt poor, as she had never felt poor before....
The thought floated across her mind impersonally. It brought no
shock, because it did not present itself as a temptation, even the
faintest; it was just as if she had been recognising what somebody in
a tale might do. Without purpose, without questioning why the thought
fascinated her, she sat seeing how easily she could steal the money.
The ticket was on the table; there was nothing to show that she hadn't
any right to it--she had merely to claim the prize. There would be a
fort-night's delay, at least, before she got it. Well, she could eke
out the sum that was put by for her fare. She imagined her sensations
on the morning that she walked from the bank with notes for twelve
thousand francs in her pocket. If her pocket were picked! Yielding even
more intently to the thought, she perceived that the proper course
would be to open an account before she left.... It wouldn't be twelve
thousand francs--a substantial sum would be deducted for _les droits
des pauvres._ But it would be enough--the price of power! The thought
leapt further. She saw herself, gorgeously gowned, on a platform--heard
the very piece that she was playing, the plaudits that came thundering;
she trembled in the emotion of a visionary fame.
Recalling her, there sounded, in the dark emptiness again, the minor
jangle of a cab-horse bell.
Then she understood. It had been no idle supposition, the thought that
mastered her. "_O divine Vierge Marie_!" she wailed on her knees, and
knew that she wanted to be a thief.
Through the night, through the morrow, through every waking moment,
a voice was saying to her: "You _won't_ be robbing a child; you can
do for it all that She did--every month, just the same thing. Long
before the child is old enough to need so large a sum you will be in a
position to give it to him. What will he have lost? Nothing. You are
terrified by the semblance of a sin; it is not a sin really. Dare it,
dare it, be bold!"
Nothing could quell the voice. It was whispering while she prayed. And
the crashing of orchestras could not drown it, when she fled to music
for relief.
She learnt that the woman in Amiens was called Gaillard, and had a
shop in the rue Puteaux. But now she shrank from writing to her--she
didn't know how she meant to act. Once, in desperation, she did begin a
letter, an avowal of the prize that had been drawn; but she hesitated
again.
There was an evening when, with steps that wavered, like a woman
enfeebled by illness, she packed her things to return to Chauville....
She sat wide-eyed, staring at the trunk.
When she had dragged the things frantically out, she wrote to Amiens,
making herself responsible for the monthly payments. "All that his
mother did _I_ will do!" she wrote, feeling less criminal for the
phrase. And then one morning, tortured, she caught the express to the
town to see that all was well. The place was small and poor; and though
the baby looked well cared for, and the young woman and her husband
seemed kind, the visit was horrible to her. Next day she spent some of
the stolen money on a baby's bonnet and pelisse. And as the quality of
the gift suggested means, she received, before the date for her second
remittance, a scrawl declaring that the cost of provisions had risen
dreadfully, and asking for twenty francs a month more.
"RÉCITAL DONNÉ PAR MADEMOISELLE MARIE LAMANDE." A blue-and-white
poster, with her name staring Paris in the face. The time came when
she saw one on a wall, and stopped, thrilling at it in the rain. A week
afterwards she saw one on a wall again, and passed it with a sigh,
remembering the half-empty salle, and the cheques that she had drawn.
"Patience, mademoiselle, patience. An artist does not arrive in a
day; one must persevere." There were plenty of persons to give her
encouragement now that it might be advantageous to them.
But the expense of her début was a warning, and she proceeded slowly.
Though they made her feel very shy and cowardly, she did not succumb to
the arguments of vehement people who offered "opportunities the most
exceptional" at a big price, and whose attitudes of amazement implied
that she must be brainless to decline. She did not waste money in
bettering her abode. She did not, when she had given a recital again,
continue to imagine that the prize had provided a sum abundant for her
purpose.
The knowledge obsessed her that she owed this money, that one day she
was to repay it. For a year she told herself, "The road is harder than
I thought, but I shall reach the end of it in time!" During the second
year she struggled in a panic, while the money was melting, melting
without result.
To adventure a concert meant such wearisome, such overwhelming
preparation. And within a week it was as if it had never been--she
was again forgotten. But she saw a little chorus-girl, who had done
something more than ordinarily immodest, launch herself into celebrity
in a night.
At last, when she realised that she had wrecked her peace of mind for
nothing, when to cross the bridge was to eye the river longingly, she
knew that she wasn't free to find oblivion like that. Restitution to
the child would be impossible, but it was her destiny to support him.
She wrote to madame Herbelin, in Chauville, appealing for influence
to regain the footing that she had kicked away. Her bent face was wet
and ugly as she detailed the story of her failure; she foresaw the
greetings, tactful, but galling, of acquaintances, the half-veiled
satisfaction of other music-mistresses in the town.
The reply that reached her made it evident that to recover the position
would be a slow process. And her means to wait were limited.
Hitherto the acknowledgments from Amiens had varied but slightly:
"The remittance had come; the baby was well," or "the baby had had
some infantile ailment, and was better." Now, a partially illegible
letter informed her suddenly that the little business was to be given
up. Circumstances compelled the woman to take a situation again, and
she could not keep the orphan in her care. It was explained that
"Mademoiselle should arrange to remove him in a month's time."
Already stricken, she was stupefied by this news. It seemed to her the
last blow that could be dealt. What was to be done? She marvelled that
she had not contemplated the contingency. She had not contemplated
it--at most, she had given it a passing glance. She had questioned,
agonised, whether she could manage to maintain the payments regularly;
she had asked herself what lay before her when the child was older and
his needs increased; she had wondered, conscience-racked, how she was
to bear her life; but for this new responsibility, hurled on her when
she was broken, she had been unprepared.
"Remove him?" To what? She wasn't remaining in Paris; was she blindly
to answer some advertisement before she left and leave a baby behind
her here, helpless in hands that might misuse him? She shuddered. No;
now that he would be at the mercy of a stranger, the place must be near
enough for her to visit it--often and unexpectedly. She must find a
place near Chauville.
But could she do it? However secretly she arranged, wasn't it sure to
be known? What was she to say? It was a misfortune that she had written
to madame Herbelin too fully to be able to assert now that she had
married. What was she to say? And who would credit what she said?
Hourly, the craven in her faltered that there were hundreds of honest
homes in Paris where he would be gently treated, where he would be as
safe as he had been in Amiens. And always her better self cried out:
"But you'd desert him without knowing that the home you had found was
one of them!"
For three weeks she cowered at the crossways. She did not love the
little child that she had wronged, as she bore him back with her to
Chauville. The journey was long, and he clung to her, whimpering, and
she caressed him, white-faced and abject; but there was no love for him
in her heart. The dusk, when they arrived, was welcome. She led him
down the station steps, her head sunk low. In the street he cried to
be carried, and she picked him up--submissive to her burden. She had
had to sacrifice her reputation, or the child--and mademoiselle Lamande
returned to her native town with a baby in her arms.
She had booked to the Gare du Marché, the station in the poorest
quarter. A porter followed, trundling the luggage over the cobbles.
In a narrow bed, under a skylight, the child and anxiety allowed her
little sleep.
Before she could begin her search for work, it was imperative that
she should find someone to shelter him, if only during the day; and
in the morning she questioned a servant who was sweeping the stairs.
The girl looked as if she had been picked from a dust-bin, and clothed
from a rag-bag, but, compared with English girls of her class, she had
brilliant intelligence. She thought it probable that the woman at the
épicerie across the road might be accommodating.
The woman at the épicerie was unable to arrange, but she suggested a
concierge of her acquaintance "là bas." "Là bas" proved to be remote.
Chauville had not changed. As of old, the door of the Église Ste.
Clothilde was lost in its vast frame of funeral black; as of old,
the insistent bell was dinning for the dead. The population was
still concealed, except where a cortege of priests, and acolytes, and
mourners wound their slow way with another coffin to the cemetery,
Chauville's most animated spot.
As a makeshift, the concierge sufficed.
To gain an interview with madame Herbelin strained patience. But after
the applicant had sat for a long while, with her feet on the sawdust
of the salle d'attente, where an officer, and a marquise drooped
resignedly, madame la Directrice told her: "It is a sad pity that you
left the town." Marie could not remember that the busy woman said
anything more valuable.
There was, however, another occasion. This time the lady said:
"Mademoiselle, I knew you when you were a little girl, and I knew your
parents, and I have regretted, more than you may suppose, that it was
not in my power to offer you an appointment at the Lycée, in your
emergency. But I have recently heard something about you that is very
grave--something that I trust is not true."
"Madame," said Marie, trembling, "I can guess what you have heard,
and it is _not_ true. Only this is true--I have placed a child with a
concierge in the rue Lecomte and go to see it there. It is the orphan
of a woman who was my friend in Paris, a widow--we lived together."
Madame Herbelin did not speak.
"Madame Branthonne was killed in a railway accident, going to England,"
Marie went on; "she was a teacher in the Bernstein School. Her baby
had been left in Amiens, with a woman called Gaillard. A few weeks
ago the woman wrote to me that she was going away, and was unable to
keep the child any longer. I couldn't abandon it to the _Assistance
publique_."
"Where is she now, this madame Gaillard?" inquired the Directrice
coldly.
"I do not know," said Marie. And then, recognising the lameness of the
reply, she burst forth into a torrent of details to corroborate the
story.
Her voice, more than the details, carried conviction to the listener.
After a long pause she said:
"Mademoiselle, I believe you have done a generous thing." The thief
winced. "But it was an imprudent thing, a thing that you could not
afford to do. I do not speak of your intention to maintain the
child--may le bon Dieu aid you in the endeavour! But you did wrong to
bring it to Chauville. You should not expose yourself to calumny. I
counsel you most earnestly to place the child somewhere else without
delay."
"Madame, it is my duty to have him under my own eyes," she urged.
"Apart from me, he might be starved, beaten, corrupted--my friend's boy
might be reared as an apache. How could I know? I should risk it all.
It would be inhuman of me."
"I think you over-estimate the dangers," sighed madame Herbelin. "In
fine, if you put the boy away from you, it is possible he may suffer.
But if you keep him near you, it is certain _you_ will suffer. I cannot
say more."
"_I_ must suffer," answered Marie.
A permanent home for him, not far from the rue Lecomte, was found at a
bonneterie, whose humble little window contained Communion caps, and
the announcement "Piqures à la Machine."
To have had him in her lodging would have cost her less. But this child
that dishonoured her must be covert from the jeunes filles that she
hoped would come there; and if she had to give lessons out, she could
not leave him there alone.
She did have to give lessons out. It was a descent for her here to go
to the pupils' houses, but she was compelled to do it. And something
bitterer--she was compelled to accept a lowered fee, and affect to be
unconscious why a reduction was proposed. To obtain the services of a
"belle musicienne" for a trifle, there were a few mothers who engaged
her, and replied to questioning relatives that she was a "slandered
woman." But to her they did not say that she was slandered, and their
hard eyes were an insult.
She gave a lesson twice a week for twenty francs a month now,
mademoiselle Marie Lamande, who had advertised recitals in Paris, and
she went short of food, to meet the charges at the bonneterie. The boy
seemed to be amply nourished, and the remembrance sustained her on the
days when she was dinnerless.
God! for a chance to get away, to be free of this place, where it was
an ordeal to tread the streets. When she could afford to buy a postage
stamp she applied for salaried work in some distant school. Once
it looked as if the child were not to live; and as she sat, obeying
orders, through one endless night, she knew, before she fainted from
exhaustion, that if he died, her own escape from Chauville would be
made by the same road.
But he recovered--thanks partially to her--and her duty still had to be
done.
He recovered, and, as time passed, began to talk like other children
on the doorsteps. She recalled the refinement of his mother, and the
little child in a black blouse, shrilling kitchen French, avenged
himself unknowingly. "As often as we ever meet, when the boy I robbed
is a poor, big, common man," she thought, "every note of his voice will
be a chastisement!"
Before she accomplished her release, she bore in Chauville-le-Vieux a
three-years' martyrdom.
Madame Herbelin had consented to testify to her abilities, and she went
far away, to a school at Ivry-St.-Hilaire. She had pleaded that, in the
letter of recommendation, she might be referred to as "madame" Lamande,
but this entreaty the Directrice would not grant.
"Mademoiselle," she said, "I cannot do it for you; and if you are wise,
there is no need. Remember what I told you when you returned, and be
guided by me this time. Do not repeat there the blunder that you made
here. Leave the child where he is; you have tested the person and you
know she is honest. Occasionally, once a year, you can afford to come
and see him. If you take him with you, you will not gain much by your
removal. Of course, at Ivry-St.-Hilaire your parentage is unknown and
there is nothing to hinder you from inventing a relationship; but it
isn't worth the trouble--believe me, you would be suspected just the
same. Make the most of this opportunity; go unencumbered--do not live
your whole life in shadow for the sake of an ideal."
But her conscience would not allow her to see him only once a year, nor
to leave him to play on the doorstep, and attend the École Communale.
In view of a constant salary, she already foresaw herself alleviating
his plight. She was resigned to live her life in shadow, that she might
yield a little sunshine to him.
So, when she had sacrificed herself again, madame la Directrice
thought: "She is strangely devoted to the child. I wonder if I was
wrong to befriend her--perhaps she is a bad woman, after all!"
She did not venture to take the boy with her, however. She was more
than three months at Ivry before her furtive arrangements for him were
concluded. Then she placed him with priests twenty miles distant from
her, in the Etablissement des Frères Eudoxie at Maison-Verte. Small as
the annual charges were, they were vast in relation to her salary. Till
she succeeded, by slow degrees, in obtaining a few private pupils, her
self-denial was severe.
But the little chap was in better hands now. And the woman had procured
a respite from disdain. A tinge of colour crept back into her cheeks,
and she faced the world less fearfully. By and by, when she could
afford the fare, she went to the institution sometimes, on a Sunday,
and walked with him in the cour, and noted that gradually his speech
improved. As she could afford the fare but seldom, the intervals were
long.
Paul looked forward to her rare visits. Some of the boys had visitors
more frequently than he, pale women who came to walk beside them in
the cour; and the boastful shout of "Ma mère!" was often humiliating
to Paul. He had been taught to call her "mademoiselle," but one
Sunday, the child, in a triumphant cry, found his own name for her:
"_Mademoiselle ma mère est venue!_"
After that, he called her always "Mademoiselle ma mère"; and, divining
something of the little wistful heart, mademoiselle did not reprove him.
At Ivry-St.-Hilaire a thing strange and bewildering happened. For
the first time in her life a man sought her society; for the first
time in her life she was happier for talking to a man. Two moments
were prodigious to her--a moment after she had heard herself laughing
merrily; a moment when she realised why she had just plucked out a grey
hair.
When they were alone together one day the man said to her:
"Now that I have made a practice in the town at last, I am rooted
here--and Ivry isn't amusing. If a woman were to marry me she would
have to live here always. I tell you this because I love you."
It was as if God had wrought another miracle. "I can't understand it,"
she whispered truly.
Then the man laughed and took her in his arms, and it seemed to her
that she had never known what it was to be tired.
When he let her go and she came back to the world, her sin was staring
at her. And now the voice that decoyed her before was clamouring: "If
you degrade yourself in his sight you'll lose him."
Her lover appeared to her no less a hero because, under his imposing
presence, he was a cur, and the thing that she feared would revolt him
was her dishonesty.
Not on that day, nor on the next, but after many resolutions to do
right had melted into terrors, she forced him to listen; and it seemed
to her that she was dying while she spoke.
"I stole," she moaned, her face covered.
"Pauvrette!" he exclaimed tenderly.
When she dared to look, he was smiling. The relief and gratitude in her
soul were so infinite that she wanted to kneel at his feet.
But when she sobbed out the story of her later struggles and told him
how she was devoting her life to the child, his brow grew dark.
"That, of course, would have to be changed," he said.
"Changed?" she stammered.
"Obviously, best beloved. One must consider public opinion. These
journeys to Maison-Verte are mad; they must cease. You have not
been fair to yourself; and now, more than ever, you need to reflect
that----"
"But," she broke in, frightened, "you don't understand. It is
not a mere question of my going to Maison-Verte; he will not be
there always--he will grow up, and his future will be my care. My
responsibility goes on. Oh, I know--you need not tell me--that you have
thoroughly the right to refuse, but--but I have no right to alter.
Since I have seen that I could never hope to give back what I took, I
have seen that he was my charge for life."
"Mon Dieu!" he said, "you exaggerate quixotically. To give back what
you took? Remember what you have already done!"
"Counted in francs," she pleaded, "I have done very little. It has been
difficult to do, that's all."
Presently, when he perceived that, on this one point, the little weak
woman was inflexible, the man made a beautiful speech, declaring that
she was worth more than the opinion of Ivry-St.-Hilaire, and of all
France. He said that nothing mattered to him but their "divine love."
He looked more heroic still, and his eyes were moist with the nobility
of the sentiments that he was delivering.
But as he sat in the principal café of the town by and by, among the
stacks of swords in the corners, and the elite of the military and
civil circles, clearing their throats vociferously on to the floor, he
knew that a few days hence he meant to deliver a second lie about the
"supplications of his family and his duty as a son." Had her debt been
paid, he would have held her absolved from yielding so much as another
thought to the boy, and he could have afforded to pay the debt, but
it did not even enter his mind to commit such a madness. Yet, in his
fashion, he loved her. The "chivalry" of offering marriage to a woman
without a _dot_ had proved it.
It would have been kinder to her not to leave her in a fool's paradise;
she was to suffer more intensely because of that.
"Some of the facts, sufficient to explain the position, I have confided
to my mother," he told her. "She is very old, and the honour of the
family is very dear to her. I entreat you, in her name. The boy shall
remain in this institution, or be placed in some other. They will teach
him a trade. When the time comes for him to earn his living he will be
no worse off than the other _gosses_ there. Be guided by me. I assure
you, you are morbidly sensitive. There is no reason why you should ever
meet him again. My adored one, our happiness is in your hands. Give the
child up!"
"I cannot," she repeated hopelessly.
And then, all of a sudden, the imposing presence vanished and she saw
the puny man--more clearly than he had ever seen himself.
"It begins to be plain why you 'cannot,'" he hissed. "Zut, tell your
yarn about your 'theft' to somebody greener. For _me_ it's too thin!...
But why should we part, ducky? The matter could be arranged."
When he had demonstrated his intelligence in this way, without
advantage, the man went down the garden path, out of her life--and for
an hour she sat sightless, and ageing years. The birds in the garden
were making a cruel noise. She felt that she had grown too old during
the afternoon to bear the shrillness of the birds. When was it that she
had had the arrogance to pull out a grey hair?
* * * * *
Her love-story was over; but the drear routine continued--the thrift,
the drudgery, the clandestine journeys to the boy. If, when she saw him
next, he felt that she was colder to him, she did not mean to be so.
Never had she striven quite so wearily to be tender.
It was insensibly that she ceased to recall him as a burden. Had Time's
touches been more swift she would have marvelled at the mystery of the
thing. But the weight of life was lifted very slowly, and the burden
bid fair to be consoling before she realised that the load was less.
As the months wore by, and term succeeded term, the boy evoked an
interest in the loneliness. Duty no longer took her to him--it was
affection; to amuse him now was not a task--their playtime had
become her single pleasure. From this child, the woman who had had
no childhood, captured gleams of youth--the virgin who was for ever
celibate, caught glimpses of maternity. "In the _vacances_, Paul,
I'll come and stay at Maison-Verte," she used to say, "and we'll have
picnics in the park!" When the _trimestre_ was over and she studied his
report, her smile was proud. Once when she went, he rushed to meet her
with a prize. "Mademoiselle ma mère, look, look!" he halloed. And the
virgin's arms were flung about him and she hugged him like a mother.
As a mother she marked his progress, year by year; as a mother,
mourning his barren prospects and craving to advance them, she beat her
breast that she had made him penniless. It was as a mother that, by
parsimonies, protracted and implacable, she garnered the means at last
to better his condition. By this time her hair was all grey, and the
schoolboy's voice was breaking.
On the day that she was strong enough, she meant to confess to him and
see his love turn to contempt. But the day when she was strong enough
wouldn't come. When he was sixteen she had said: "I shall tell him in a
year from now!" When he was seventeen she had wept: "God couldn't mind
his loving me for a year more!"
"Mademoiselle," he would say--for he was a young man and had dropped
the other name--"I don't know why you have been so good to me." And she
would answer: "Your mother and I were friends, dearest." Only that.
"You work too hard," he would declare, "ever so much too hard; you're
always tired. You know, you weren't ambitious enough--that was your
great mistake. You shouldn't have gone in for teaching; you ought to
have played at concerts--you might have been no end of a swell. Play
something to me now, will you? What used my mother to say about your
playing?"
"She said once that it made her cry for her baby, Paul. What do _you_
think of when I play?"
But he was shy of admitting what he thought of, because he thought of
noble deeds, and his ideal woman, and of the ecstasy it would be to see
his name on the cover of a book--and he was doomed to be a clerk.
Yet when the clerk chafed in his bonds, and the conceit of authorship
was too mighty to be bridled, it was to her that he first revealed a
manuscript. It was she, trembling, who was his first critic. "Your
good women are all perfect," she told him, "and your bad women have
never a good impulse. We aren't like that." But she was never too weary
to talk about the tales; and when they began to wander among august
journals that refused them, she used to pray, before the crucifix in
her bedroom, that the hearts of editors might be moved.
Now she meant to confess to him before he entered on his military
service.
The parting was so bitter that she failed at the last moment. He went
far from her. The years of his service were a much greater hardship
to her than to him. During the first week she stinted her own diet to
send a _bon de poste_ to ameliorate his food; but he wouldn't keep the
money. In the avenues of Ivry, never did she see the pitifully garbed
conscripts being drilled without picturing the conscript who was dear
to her, garbed like that--and closing her eyes with the pain.
And when he was free to return, the meeting was so sweet that she was a
coward once more.
He was a clerk for a long time, but his dissatisfaction would have
been longer still without her. She it was who took to the _Echo
d'Ivry-St.-Hilaire_ the article that paved his way to journalism. There
was a day of sovereignty when he was offered an ill-paid post on that
undistinguished paper. How victoriously he twirled his moustache! How
proudly, through her spectacles, she watched him do it!
Oh, of course he wouldn't be content to stick for ever on the Ivry
_Echo_, not he! He was going to write great novels just the same.
Incipiently the women of his stories lived now, but he was still
very young. She said to him at this stage: "You put your girls in a
drawing-room, but they come from a tavern." And, abashed and wondering,
he saw that poor mademoiselle knew more of girlhood than a literary man
had learnt. He was an artist, or he would not have seen.
Because he was an artist he probed his questions deep. Because she
loved him she did not flinch. To him she voiced truths that she had
shrunk from owning to herself. Thoughts that had frightened her, and
thoughts that she had deemed too sacred to be uttered, she brought
forth for his guidance. Her innocence and her knowledge she yielded to
him, her vanities and her regrets. She bared the holiest secrets of her
sterile life and stripped her soul, that he might make his books of it.
But always there remained the one secret that she could not tell.
After he had begun to get on--when he was a journalist in Paris--she
had a terrible grief. She had travelled to Paris to see him, and he
declined to admit her. He declined to admit her because he knew what
she had come to say, and, under Heaven, there was nothing to him so
precious as an idol that he had made out of a spiritual profile and
some vices. The Ivry editor had told her it was rumoured that the woman
talked of marrying Paul, and mademoiselle had written imploring letters
to him without avail. "He must be the best judge of his own mind," he
had answered, "and of the true nature of the woman he loved."
Then, distraught, she had made the journey, and been turned from the
door with a servant's transparent he. The tumult of the modern traffic
confused her--the failing little figure was jostled by the crowd. She
went, deafened, through remembered gates, to a bench, and sat there,
feeling stunned. The bench was in the Garden of the Luxembourg, where
it seemed to her that in another life she had walked beside his mother.
She had to save him. When her mind cleared, she thought only of that.
Since it was impossible to plead to Paul, she must plead to the woman.
She would find out where she lived; she would say In imagining herself
in the presence of such a woman, she was as timorous as a child. She
would say--what? The wildness of the notion overwhelmed her. Suddenly
she felt that she could say nothing, that she would be tongue-tied, a
sight for ridicule.
But she must save Paul!
She was two days in Paris before she obtained the address; and she was
no less amazing to the wanton than was the wanton to the spinster. From
different worlds they marvelled at each other across a hearthrug. She
said:
"He is not my son, but he is as dear to me as if he were; indeed, the
sons of many women are far less to them, I think, than he to me. I
worked for him when he was a baby. Since he has been a man, he has
meant the only interest in my life; it has been a wretched failure of
a life--the one hope left in it is to see him succeed. Madame, his
career is in your hands. I entreat you to be merciful--I beg it of
you on my knees. I don't pretend to judge your feelings for him, but
if you care for him really and deeply, do what you know is right for
the man you love--make a memory for yourself that you'll be proud of.
You're beautiful now, and young, and you don't take some things very
earnestly, but one day, when you're older and memories are all you've
got, a noble remembrance will be sweet. You'll say to yourself: '_I_
saved a man from ruining his future, _I_ saved a woman from breaking
her heart.'"
After her curiosity in the alien was exhausted, the beauty rang the
bell, and said:
"What kind of a fool are you to have imagined I should give up a man I
liked, because a stranger asked me to? It's about the silliest idea I
ever heard of."
And then she herself did something sillier. She told Paul what had
happened, mimicking the suppliant's sorrow, and jeering at her prayer.
The man read into the scene the pathos that the jeerer missed, and he
saw that the woman he had idealised lacked the grace of pity.
Later, when success came to him, there was no domestic tragedy
darkening the home behind it, and he had owed to mademoiselle a timely
rent in the veil of his illusion.
She was teaching at Ivry still when his success came. For weeks she
had known by his letters, and the papers, that his new book had made
a reputation for him, but one morning she heard that it was "making
him rich." The hard times were over for them both, he wrote. There
was to be no more labour for her, no more loneliness; they were to
live together in a little appartement in Passy. She was to rest, "with
flowers in the window, and her hands in her lap--he was coming to carry
her away."
The letter quivered as she read it, and she put it down, in fright. The
secret that had smouldered while she toiled for him, while she worked
to keep herself, flared menace now that he proposed to keep her. She
dared not accept her comfort of his ignorance. She saw herself as a
cheat who had hidden her sin, a hypocrite who had taken gratitude to
which she had no claim. Now he must be told. The confession that had
terrorised her all her life could be escaped no longer; the day of her
Calvary was here.
At every step in the street she shuddered, though it was not till
evening that he was due. She clasped him, crying with pride and fear,
when he strode in. He rattled gaily of things triumphant, things too
difficult to-day for her to understand. She thanked God that it was
twilight and he couldn't clearly see her face. She crept away from him
and bowed her head. The young man looked forward. The old woman looked
back.
In the twilight her confession came at last--in the twilight, his
reverent knowledge of his boundless debt.
"But I have loved you," she sobbed. "At the beginning you were my
punishment, but then I loved you!"
"You have borne want for me, and contempt. I have taken your youth
from you, and your happiness and your strength." He went to her, and
knelt, and kissed the trembling hands. "How _I_ love _you_," he cried,
"mademoiselle ma mère!"