A WATERING-PLACE (_continued_).
The morning on which the _Bathers’ Gazette_ announced that his
Excellency, the Minister of Public Instruction, with his secretary
Bompard and staff, had taken quarters in the Alpes Dauphinoises, great
was the demoralization in the surrounding hotels. It just happened
that La Laita had been keeping dark for two days a Catholic bishop
from Geneva in order to produce him at the proper moment, as well as a
Councillor-General from the Department of the Isère, a Lieutenant-Judge
from Tahiti, an architect from Boston--in fact, a whole cargo; La
Chevrette was on the point of receiving also a “Deputy from the Rhône
and family.” But the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Judge and all disappeared,
lost in the illustrious mass of flame, the flame of glory, which
followed Numa Roumestan everywhere!
People talked only of him, occupied themselves about him only.
Any pretext was good enough to introduce oneself into the Alpes
Dauphinoises in order to pass before the little drawing-room on the
ground floor looking into the garden where the Minister took his
meals with his ladies and his secretary; to see him taking a hand in
a game of bowls, dear to Southern Frenchmen, with Father Olivieri
of the Missions, a holy man and terribly hairy, who, along of having
lived among savages, had taken unto himself their manners and customs,
uttering terrible cries when taking aim and brandishing the balls above
his head when letting fly as if they were tomahawks.
The Minister’s handsome features, the oiliness of his manners, won
him all hearts, but more especially his sympathy for the poor. The
day after his arrival the two waiters who served on the first floor
announced at the hotel office that the Minister was going to take them
to Paris for his personal servants. Now, as they were good workmen,
Mme. Laugeron pulled a very wry face, but allowed nothing to be seen by
his Excellency, whose presence was of such great importance and honor
to her hotel. The prefect and the rector made their appearance from
Grenoble in full fig to present their respects to Roumestan. The Abbot
of La Grande Chartreuse--for Roumestan made a pleading on their side
against the Prémontrés and their liqueur--sent him with the greatest
pomp a case of extra-fine chartreuse; and finally the Prefect of
Chambéry came to get his orders for the laying of the corner-stone for
the new college, a good occasion for a manifesto in a speech and for a
revolution in the methods at the universities.
But the Minister asked for a little rest. The labors of the session
had wearied him; he wanted to have a chance to get a breath, to live
quietly in the midst of his family and prepare at leisure this
Chambéry speech, which had such a considerable importance. And the
prefect understood that perfectly well; he only asked to be notified
forty-eight hours before in order that he might give the necessary
brilliancy to the ceremony. The corner-stone had been waiting for
two months and would naturally wait longer for the good-will of the
illustrious orator.
As a matter of fact, what kept Roumestan at Arvillard was neither
the necessity for rest nor the leisure needed by that marvellous
improvisator--upon whom time and reflection had the same effect as
humidity upon phosphorus--but the presence of Alice Bachellery. After
five months of an impassioned flirtation, Numa had got no further
with his little one than he was on the day of their first meeting.
He haunted the house, enjoyed the savory bouillabaisse cooked by
Mme. Bachellery, listened to the songs of the former director of the
Folies Bordelaises, and repaid these slight favors with a flood of
presents, bouquets, Ministerial theatre boxes, tickets to meetings of
the Institute and the Chamber of Deputies, and even with the diploma of
Officer of Academy for the song-writer--all this without getting his
love affair one bit ahead.
Nevertheless, he was not one of those fresh hands who are ready to
go fishing at every hour without having tried the water beforehand
and thoroughly baited it; only he was engaged in an affair with the
cleverest kind of trout, who amused herself with his precautions, now
and then nibbled at the bait and sometimes gave him the impression
that she was caught; but then, all of a sudden, with one of her bounds
she would skip away, leaving him with his mouth dry with longing and
his heart shaken by the motions of her undulating, subtle and tempting
spine.
Nothing was more enervating than this little game. Numa could have
caused it to stop at any minute by giving the little girl what she
demanded, namely, a nomination as prima donna at the opera, a contract
for five years, large extras, allowance for fire, the right to have her
name displayed--all that stipulated on paper bearing the government
stamp, and not merely by a simple clasp of the hand, or by Cadaillac’s
“Here’s my hand on it!” She believed no more in that than she did
in the expressions, “You may depend upon me for it”--“It’s just the
same as if you had it”--phrases with which for the past five months
Roumestan had been trying to dupe her.
Roumestan found himself between two pressing demands. “Yes,” said
Cadaillac, “all right--if you will renew my own lease.” Now Cadaillac
was used up and done with; his presence at the head of the first
musical theatre was a scandal, a blot, a rotten heritage from the
Imperial administration. The press would certainly raise an outcry
against a gambler who had failed three times and was not allowed to
wear his officer’s cross, against a cynical _poseur_ who dissipated the
public money without any shame.
Finally, wearied out with not being able to allow herself to be
captured, Alice broke the fish-line and skipped away, carrying the
fish-hook with her.
One day the Minister arrived at the Bachellery house and found it
empty, except for the father, who, in order to console him, sang his
last popular refrain for his benefit:
“_Donne-moi d’quoi q’t’as, t’auras d’quoi qu’ j’ai._”
(Gimme a bite o’ yourn, my boy, I’ll gi’ you a bite o’ mine.)
He forced himself to be patient for a month, and then went to see the
fertile song-writer again, who was good enough to sing him his new song
beginning--
“_Quand le saucisson va, tout va,_”
(Sausage gone, all is gone,)--
and let him know that the ladies, finding themselves delightfully
situated at the baths, had announced their intention to double the term
of their sojourn.
Then it was that Roumestan remembered that he was expected for the
laying of the corner-stone of the college at Chambéry, a promise he
had made off-hand and which probably would have remained off-hand if
Chambéry had not been in the neighborhood of Arvillard, whither, by
a providential piece of chance, Jarras, the doctor and friend of the
Minister, had just sent Mlle. Le Quesnoy.
Immediately upon his arrival they met each other in the garden of the
hotel. She was tremendously surprised to see him, just as if that very
morning she had not read the pompous announcement of his coming in the
daily gazette, just as if for eight days past, through the thousand
voices of its forests, its fountains, its innumerable echoes, the whole
valley had not been announcing the arrival of his Excellency.
“What! you here?”
Roumestan, with his Ministerial air, imposing and stiff:
“I am here to see my sister-in-law.”
Moreover he was surprised to find that Miss Bachellery was still at
Arvillard; he had thought her gone this long while.
“Well, come now, I have got to take care of myself, haven’t I? since
Cadaillac pretends that my voice is so sick!”
Then she gave him a little Parisian nod with the ends of her eyelashes
and waltzed off, uttering a clear roulade, a delicious undersong like
the note of a blackbird, which one hears long after one loses the bird
from sight.
Only from that day on she changed her manner. It was no longer the
precocious child forever bouncing about the hotel, roqueting Master
Paul, playing with the swing and other innocent games; it was no longer
the girl who was only happy with the children, disarmed the most severe
mammas and most morose ecclesiastics by the ingenuousness of her laugh
and her promptness at the sacred services. In place of that appeared
Alice Bachellery, the diva of the Bouffes, the pretty tomboy, lively
in manners and setting the pace, who surrounded herself with young
whipper-snappers, got up impromptu festivities, picnics and suppers,
whose doubtful reputation her mother, who was always present, only
partly succeeded in making respectable.
Every morning a basket-wagon with a white canopy bordered with fringed
curtains drew up to the front door an hour before these fine ladies
came downstairs in their light-toned gowns. Meanwhile about them
pranced and caracoled a jolly cavalcade consisting of everybody in the
way of a free and unmarried person in the Alpes Dauphinoises and the
neighboring hotels--the Assistant Justice, the American architect and
more especially the young man on springs, whom the young diva seemed
no longer to be driving to despair by her innocent infantilities. The
carriage well-crammed with cloaks against their return, a big basket
of provisions on the box, they swept through the country at a sharp
rate on the road for the Chartreuse of St. Hugon. Three hours were
spent on the mountain along zigzag, precipitous roads on a level with
the black tops of pines that scramble down precipices toward torrents
all white with foam; or else in the direction of Brame-farine, where
one breakfasts on mountain cheese washed down by a little claret
very lively in its nature, which makes the Alps dance before one’s
eyes--Mont Blanc and all that marvellous horizon of glaciers and
blue peaks which one discovers up there, together with little lakes,
fragments shining at the foot of the crags like so many broken pieces
of sky.
Then they came down “_à la ramasse_,” seated upon sledges of branches
without any backs to lean against, which made it necessary to grasp
the branches frantically, launched headlong as they were down the
declivities, steered by a mountaineer who goes straight ahead over
the velvet of the upland pastures and the pebbly bed of dry torrents,
and passing with the same swiftness a section of rock or the big gap
of a river. At last it lands you down below overwhelmed, bruised and
suffocated, your whole body in a quiver and your eyes rolling with the
sensation of having survived a most horrible earthquake.
And the day’s trip was not complete unless the entire cavalcade had
been drenched on the way by one of those mountain storms, bright with
lightning flashes and streaks of hail, which frighten the horses,
make the landscape dramatic and prepare a sensational return. Little
Bachellery would be seated on the box in some man’s overcoat, the
tassel of her cap decorated with a feather of the Pyrennean partridge.
She would hold the reins, whip the horses hard in order to warm herself
and, when once landed from the coach, recount all the dangers of the
excursion with the greatest vivacity, a high sharp voice and brilliant
eyes, showing the lively reaction of her youthful body against the cold
downpour--all with a little shudder of fear.
It would have been well if then at least she had felt the need of a
good sleep, one of those leaden slumbers which trips in the mountains
produce. Not at all; till early morning, in the rooms of these women,
there were goings on without end--laughter, songs, popping bottles,
meals brought up at improper hours, card-tables pushed around for
baccarat--and all this over the head of the Minister, whose room
happened to be just underneath.
Several times he complained of it to Mme. Laugeron, who was very much
torn between her desire to be agreeable to his Excellency and fear
of causing clients with such good paying qualities discontent. And
besides, has any one the right to be very exacting in these hotels at
the baths which are always being turned upside down by departures and
arrivals in the midst of the night, by trunks that are dragged about,
by big boots and iron-bound Alpine sticks of mountain climbers, who
are engaged in making ready for the ascent long before daybreak? And
then, besides, the fits of coughing of the sick people, those horrible,
incessant coughs which seem to tear people in spasms, appearing to
combine the elements of a sob, a death rattle and the crowing of a
husky cock.
These giddy nights, heavy July nights, which Roumestan passed turning
and twisting on his bed, filled with pressing thoughts, while upstairs
sounded clear in the night the laughter of his neighbors, broken by
single notes and snatches of song--these nights he might have employed
writing his speech for Chambéry; but he was too much agitated and too
angry. He had to control himself not to run upstairs to the next floor
and drive off at the tips of his boots the young man on springs, the
American and that shameless Assistant Justice, that dishonor to French
jurisprudence in the colonies, so as to be able to seize that naughty
little scoundrel by the neck, by her turtle-dove’s neck puffed out with
roulades, and at the same time say to her just once for all:
“Isn’t it about time that you ceased making me suffer in this way?”
In order to quiet himself and drive off these dreams and other visions
even more vivid and painful he lit his candle again, called to Bompard,
asleep in the adjoining room--his comrade, his echo, always ready
at command--and then the two would talk about the girl. It was for
that very purpose he had brought him along, having torn him away with
no little trouble from the business of establishing his artificial
hatcher. Bompard consoled himself by talking of his venture to Father
Olivieri, who was thoroughly acquainted with the raising of ostriches,
having lived at Cape Town a long while. The tales told by the priest
interested the imaginative Bompard very much more than Numa’s affair
with little Bachellery--the Father’s voyages, his martyrdom, the
different ways in which the robust body of the man had been tortured
in different countries--that buccaneer’s body burnt and sawed and
stretched on the wheel, a sort of sample card of refinements in human
cruelty--and all that along with the cool fan of silky and tickly
ostrich plumes dreamt of by the promoter. But Bompard was so well
trained to his business of shadow that even at that time of night Numa
found him ready to warm up and be indignant in sympathy with him and
to express, with his magnificent head under the silken ends of a night
scarf, the emotions of anger, irony or sorrow, according as the talk
fell upon the false eyelashes of the artificial little girl, on her
sixteen years, which certainly were equal to twenty-four, or on the
immorality of a mother who could take part in such scandalous orgies.
Finally, when Roumestan, having declaimed and gesticulated well and
laid bare the weakness of his amorous heart, put out his candle, saying
“Let’s try to sleep, come on,” then Bompard would use the advantage of
the darkness to say to him before going to bed:
“Well, in your place, I know well enough what I would do.”
“What?”
“I would renew the contract with Cadaillac.”
“Never!”
And then he would plunge violently under the bed-clothes in order to
protect himself from the rowdy-dow overhead.
One afternoon at the time for music, that hour during life at the baths
which is given over to coquetry and gossip, whilst all the bathers,
crowded in front of the establishment as if on the poop of a ship, came
and went, slowly circled about, or took their seats on the camp-chairs
arranged in three rows, the Minister had darted into an empty alley in
order to avoid Mlle. Bachellery, whom he saw coming clad in a stunning
toilet of blue and red, escorted by her staff. There, all alone, seated
in the corner of a bench and with his pre-occupation strong upon him,
infected by the melancholy of the hour and that distant music, he
was mechanically stirring about with his umbrella the spots of fire
with which the alley was strewn by the setting sun, when a slow shade
passing across his sunlight made him raise his eyes. It was Bouchereau,
the celebrated doctor, very pale and puffy, dragging his feet after
him. They knew each other in the way that all Parisians at a certain
height of society know each other. It chanced that Bouchereau, who
had not been out for several days, felt in a sociable frame of mind;
he took a seat; they fell to talking: “Is it true that you are ill,
Doctor?”
“Very ill,” said the other with his manner of a wild boar, “a
hereditary disease--a hypertrophy of the heart. My mother died of it
and my sisters also. Only, I shall last less long than they, because of
my horrible business; I have about a year to live--or two years at the
most.”
There was nothing except useless phrases with which to answer this
great scientist, this infallible diagnoser who was talking of his death
with such quiet assurance. Roumestan understood it, as in silence he
pondered that there indeed were sorrows a good deal more serious than
his own. Bouchereau went on without looking at him, having that vague
eye and that relentless sequence of ideas which the habit of the
professorial chair and his lectures give to a professor:
“We physicians, you see, are supposed not to feel anything because we
have such an air with us. They think that in the sick person we are
taking care of the sickness only, never the being, the human creature
suffering pain. What an error! I have seen my master Dupuytren, who was
supposed to be a pretty tough chicken, weeping hot tears before a poor
little sufferer from diphtheria who told him very quietly that it was
an awful bore to die ... and then those heart-breaking appeals from
anguished mothers, those passionate hands which clasp your arm: ‘My
child, save my child!’ ... and then the fathers who stiffen themselves
up and say to you in a very masculine voice, but with great big tears
running down their cheeks: ‘You will pull him through, won’t you,
Doctor?’ It is all very well to harden oneself, but such despairs break
your heart, and that is a nice thing, isn’t it, when one’s own heart is
already attacked? Forty years of practice and every day becoming more
nervous and sensitive--it is my patients who have killed me! I am dying
from the sufferings of other people!”
“But I thought you did not accept patients any more, Doctor,” said the
Minister, who was deeply moved.
“Oh, no; never any more, for nobody’s sake! I might see a man fall dead
to the ground there in front of me and I wouldn’t even bend down. You
understand? It is enough to turn one’s blood at last, this sickness of
mine, which I have increased by all the sicknesses of others! Why, I
want to live; there is nothing else but life!”
With all his pallor he excited himself and his nostrils, pinched with a
look of morbidness, drank in the light air filled with lukewarm aromas,
vibrating musical instruments and cries of birds. He continued with a
heart-broken sigh:
“I do not practise any more, but I always remain the doctor. I preserve
that fatal gift of diagnosis, that horrible second sight for the latent
symptom, for suffering which the sufferer hopes to conceal, and which
at a mere glance at the passer-by I perceive in the person who walks
and talks and acts in the full force of his being, showing me the man
about to die to-morrow, the motionless corpse. And all that just as
clearly as I see _it_ advancing towards me, the fit which is going to
do for me, that last fainting-fit from which nothing can ever bring me
back.”
“It is frightful!” murmured Numa, who felt himself turning pale. A
poltroon in the face of sickness and death, like all Provençal people,
those people so crazy to live, he turned his face away from the
redoubtable scientist and did not dare look him in the face for fear
he might read on his own rubicund features the warning signs of his,
Numa’s, approaching end.
“Oh! this terrible skill at diagnosis, which they all envy me, how sad
it makes me, how it ruins the little remnant of life which remains to
me! Why, look here: I know a luckless woman here whose son died of
laryngeal consumption ten or twelve years ago. I had seen him twice and
I alone among all the physicians gave warning of the seriousness of
the malady. Well, to-day I come across that same mother with her young
daughter; and I may say that the presence of those unfortunate ones
destroys the good of my sojourn at the baths and does me more harm than
my treatment will ever do me good. They pursue me, they wish to consult
me, and as for me I absolutely refuse to do it. No good of auscultating
that child in order to read her condemnation! It was enough the other
day to have seen her voracity while seizing a bowl of raspberries, and
during the inhalation to have seen her hand lying on her knees, a thin
hand, the nails of which are puffed up and rise above the fingers as if
they were ready to detach themselves. That girl has the consumption her
brother had; she will die before the year is out. But let other people
tell them that; I have given enough of those dagger-stabs which have
turned again to stab me. I want no more.”
Roumestan had got up, very much frightened.
“Do you know the name of those ladies, Doctor?”
“No; they sent me their card and I would not even see them. I only know
that they are at our hotel.”
And all of a sudden, looking down the alley, he cried:
“By George, there they are!--I am off--”
Away down there at the end of the alley, on the little gravelled circle
whence the band was sending its last note, there was a movement of
umbrellas and light-colored gowns among the foliage, just as the first
strokes of the dinner bells were heard from the hotels. The ladies Le
Quesnoy detached themselves from a group of lively, chatting people,
Hortense tall and slender in the sunlight, in a toilet of muslin and
valenciennes, a hat trimmed with roses and in her hand a bouquet of the
same kind of rose bought in the park.
“With whom were you talking just now, Numa? We thought it was Dr.
Bouchereau.”
There she was before him, dazzling in her youth and so brilliant, on
that happy day, that her mother herself began to lose her fears and
allowed a little of that infectious gayety to be reflected on her
ancient face.
“Yes, it was Bouchereau, who was recounting to me his miseries; he’s
pretty low, poor fellow!”
And Numa, looking at her, reassured himself.
“The man is crazy; it is not possible; it’s his own death he is
dragging about with him and prognosticates everywhere.”
At that moment Bompard appeared, walking very quickly and brandishing a
newspaper.
“What is up?” asked the Minister.
“Great news! The tabor-player has made his début--”
They heard Hortense murmur: “At last!” and Numa was radiant.
“Success, was it not?”
“Do you think so? I have not read the article; but here are three
columns on the front sheet of the _Messenger!_”
“There’s one more whom I discovered!” said the Minister, who had seated
himself again with his thumbs in the armholes of his waist-coat. “Come
on, read it to us.”
Mme. Le Quesnoy having called attention to the fact that the
dinner-bell had sounded, Hortense hastily answered that it was only
the first bell, and, her cheek resting on her hand, she listened in a
pretty attitude of smiling expectancy. Bompard read:
“Is it due to the Minister of the Fine Arts or to the Director of the
Opera that the Parisian public suffered such a grotesque mystification
as that with which it was victimized last night?--”
They all started, with the exception of Bompard, who, under the impetus
of his gait as a fine reader, lulled by the sonorous sound of his own
voice and without taking in what he was reading, looked from one to the
other, surprised at their astonishment.
“Well,” said Numa, “go on, go on!”
“In any case, it is the Honorable Roumestan who must shoulder the
responsibility. He it is who has lugged up from his province this
savage and odd-looking piper, this goat-whistler--”
“Well, there certainly are some people who are very mean,” interrupted
the young girl, who had turned quite pale under her roses. The reader
continued, with eyes staring in horror at the dreadful things he saw
coming:
“--this goat whistler; to him is due that our Academy of Music appeared
for the space of an evening like the return from the fair at Saint
Cloud. In truth it would take a very crack fifer indeed to believe that
Paris--”
The Minister rudely dragged the newspaper from his hand.
“I hope you don’t intend to read us that idiocy to the bitter end, do
you? it is quite enough to have brought it to us at all.”
He ran down the article with his eye, with one of those quick glances
of the public man who is used to reading the invectives of the daily
press. “A provincial Minister--a pretty clog-dancer--Valmajour’s own
Roumestan--hissed the Ministry and smashed his tabor--”
He had enough of it, thrust the virulent paper down into the bottom of
his pocket, then rose, puffing with the rage that swelled his face, and
taking Mme. Le Quesnoy by the arm:
“Come, let’s go to dinner, Mamma--this should teach me not to fret
myself for the sake of a parcel of nobodies.”
All four marched along together, Hortense with her eyes upon the ground
in a state of consternation.
“This is a matter concerning an artist of great talent,” said she,
trying to strengthen her voice, a little veiled in its tone. “One ought
not to hold him responsible for the injustice done him by the public
nor for the irony of the newspapers.”
Roumestan came to a dead stop.
“Talent--talent!--_bé_, yes--I don’t deny that--but much too exotic--”
and, raising his umbrella:
“Let us beware of the South, little sister, let’s beware of the
South--don’t work it too hard--Paris will grow weary.”
And he resumed his walk with measured steps, quiet and cool as if he
were a citizen of Copenhagen. The silence was unbroken save for the
crackling of the gravel under his feet, which in certain circumstances
seems to indicate the crushing or crumbling effect of a fit of rage or
of a dream.
When they reached the front of the hotel, from the ten windows of whose
enormous dining-room there came the noise of hungry spoons clattering
on bottoms of plates, Hortense stopped, and, raising her head:
“So then, this poor boy--you’re going to abandon him?”
“What is to be done?--there is no use fighting against it--since Paris
doesn’t care for him.”
She gave him an indignant glance which was almost one of disdain.
“Oh, it is horrible, what you are saying; well, as for me, I am prouder
than you are; I am true to my enthusiasms!”
She crossed the porch of the hotel with two skips.
“Hortense, the second bell has sounded!”
“Yes, yes, I know--I am coming down.”
She ran up to her room and locked the door in order not to be
interfered with. Opening her desk, one of those natty trifles by the
aid of which a Parisian woman can make personal to herself even the
chamber of an inn, she pulled out one of the photographs of herself
which she had had taken in the head-dress and scarf of an Arles woman,
wrote a line underneath it and affixed her name. Whilst she was
putting on the address the bell in the tower of Arvillard sounded the
hour across the sombre violet that filled the valley, as if to give
solemnity to what she had dared to do.
“Six o’clock.”
From the torrent the mist was rising in wandering and flaky masses of
white. In the amphitheatre of forests and mountains and the silver
plume of the glacier, in the rose-colored evening, she took note of the
smallest details of that silent and reposeful moment, just as on the
calendar one marks some single date among all others; just as in a book
one underscores a passage which has caused one emotion; dreaming aloud
she said:
“It is my life, my entire life I am risking at this moment.”
She took as witness the solemnity of the evening, the majesty of
nature, the tremendous repose of everything about her.
Her entire life that she was engaging? Poor little girl! if she had
only known how little that was!
* * * * *
A few days after this the Le Quesnoy ladies left the hotel, Hortense’s
treatment having ended. Although reassured by the healthy look of
her child and by what the little doctor said concerning the miracle
performed by the nymph of the waters, her mother was only too glad to
have done with that life, which in its smallest details recalled to her
a past martyrdom.
“And how about you, Numa?”
O, as for him, he intended to stay a week or two longer, finish a
bit of medical treatment and take advantage of the quiet which their
departure would afford him in order to write that famous speech. It
would make a tremendous row, the news of which they would get at Paris.
By George! Le Quesnoy would not like it much!
Then all of a sudden, Hortense, though ready to leave, and
notwithstanding she was happy at returning home to see the beloved
absent ones whom distance made even more dear to her--for her
imagination reached even to her heart--Hortense suddenly felt sorrow
at leaving this beautiful country and all the hotel society and her
friends of three weeks, to whom she had no idea she had become so much
attached. Ah, ye loving natures! how you give yourselves out! how
everything grasps you and then what pain ensues when breaking these
invisible yet sensitive threads!
People had been so kind to her, so full of attention; and at the last
hour so many outstretched hands pressed about the carriage, so many
tender expressions! Young girls would kiss her: “We shall have no
more fun without you.” Then they promised to write to each other and
exchanged mementos, sweet-smelling boxes and paper-cutters made of
mother-of-pearl with this inscription in a shimmering blue like the
lakes: “Arvillard, 1876.” And while M. Laugeron slipped a bottle of
superfine Chartreuse into her travelling-sack, she saw, up there behind
the pane of her chamber window, the mountaineer’s wife who had been her
servant dabbing her eyes with an enormous handkerchief of the color of
wine-lees and heard a husky voice murmur in her ear: “Plenty of spring,
my dear young lady, always plenty of spring!” It was her friend the
consumptive, who, having jumped up on the wheel, poured out upon her a
look of good-bye from two haggard and feverish eyes, but eyes sparkling
with energy, will and a bit of emotion besides. O, what kind people!
what kind people!...
Hortense could not speak for fear of crying.
“Good-bye, good-bye, all!”
The Minister accompanied the ladies as far as the distant railway
station and took his seat in front of them. Crack goes the whip, jingle
go the bells! All of a sudden Hortense cries out:
“Oh, my umbrella!” She had had it in her hand not a moment before.
Twenty people rush off to find it: “The umbrella, the umbrella”--not in
the bedroom, not in the drawing-room; doors slam; the hotel is searched
from top to bottom.
“Don’t look for it; I know where it is.”
Always lively, the young girl jumps out of the carriage and runs to the
garden, toward the grove of walnuts, where even that morning she had
been adding several chapters to the romance that was being written in
her crazy little head. There lay the umbrella, thrown across the bench,
a bit of herself left in that favorite spot, something which was very
like her. What delicious hours had been passed in this nook of rich
verdure! what confidences had gone off on the wings of the bees and
butterflies! Without a doubt she would never return thither again. This
thought caused her heart to contract and kept her there. At that moment
she found everything charming, even the long grinding sound of the
swing.
“Get out! you make me weary--”
It was the voice of Mlle. Bachellery who was furious at being left
because of this departure and, believing herself alone with her mother,
was talking to her in her habitual tongue. Hortense thought of the
filial flatteries which had so often jarred upon her nerves and laughed
to herself while returning to the carriage. Then, at the turn of an
alley, she found herself face to face with Bouchereau. She stepped
aside, but he laid hold of her arm.
“So you are going to leave us, my child?”
“Why, yes, sir.”
She hardly knew what to answer, startled by this meeting and surprised
because it was the first time that he had ever spoken to her. Then he
took her two hands in his own and held her that way in front of him,
his arms wide apart, and gazed upon her fixedly from his piercing eyes
under their brushy white brows. Then his lips and hands, his whole
body trembled, while a rush of blood colored deeply his pallid face.
“Well, then, good-bye, happy journey!” And without another word he
drew her to him and pressed her to his breast with the tenderness of a
grandfather and then hastened away with both hands pressed against his
heart, which seemed about to break.