HORTENSE LE QUESNOY.
Through one of those sudden shiftings of the scenery which are so
frequent in the comedy of Parliamentary government, the meeting of
January 8th, during which it was to be expected that the good luck of
Roumestan would go all to pieces, procured for him on the contrary
a striking success. When he marched up the steps of the platform in
order to answer the cruel sarcasms that Rougeot had been getting off
concerning the management of the opera, the mess that the department of
the fine arts had got into, the emptiness of those reforms which had
been trumpeted abroad by the supporters of the clerical Ministry, Numa
had just learned that his wife had left Paris, having renounced her
lawsuit.
This happy news, which was known to him alone, filled his answer with a
confidence that radiated from his whole being. He took a haughty air,
then a confidential, then a solemn one; he alluded to calumnies which
are whispered in people’s ears and to some scandal that was expected:
“Gentlemen, there will be no scandal!”
The tone with which he said this threw a lively disappointment over
the galleries crammed with all the sensation-loving, pretty women,
mad for strong emotions, who had come there in charming costumes to
see the conqueror devoured. The interpellation by Rougeot was torn to
bits, the South seduced once more the North, Gaul for yet another time
was conquered!--and when Roumestan ran down the steps again, worn out,
perspiring and almost without voice, he had the proud satisfaction
of seeing his party--but a moment ago so cold and even hostile--and
his colleagues in the Cabinet, who had been accusing him of having
compromised them, surround him with acclamations and enthusiastic
flatteries. And in the intoxication of his success the relinquishment
of her vengeance on the part of his wife kept returning to him always
in the light of a supreme salvation.
He felt himself relieved and gay and expansive, so much so that on
returning to the city the thought passed through his mind to run around
to the Rue de Londres. O, of course, entirely as a friend! in order to
reassure that poor little girl who had been as anxious as he over the
results of the interpellation, who bore their common exile with so much
bravery, sending him in her unformed writing, dryed with face-powder,
delightful little letters in which she related her existence day by day
and exhorted him to patience and prudence.
“No, no; do not come here, poor darling--write to me and think of me--I
shall be brave.”
It happened that the Opera was not open that evening, and during the
short passage from the station to the little house in the Rue de
Londres Numa was thinking, while he clutched in his hand that little
key which had been a temptation to him more than once for the last
fortnight:
“How happy she is going to be!”
Having opened the door and shut it noiselessly, he suddenly found
himself in deep obscurity, for the gas had not been lit. This neglect
gave to the little house an appearance of mourning and widowhood which
flattered him. The thick carpet on the stair softening his tread as he
ran up, he reached without being in any way announced the drawing-room
hung with Japanese stuffs of the most deliciously false shades just
suited to the artificial gold in the tresses of the little girl.
“Who is there?” asked a pretty voice but an angry one from the divan.
“It is I, by Jove!--”
He heard a cry and a sudden springing up, and in the uncertain light of
the evening by the white light of her skirts, the little singing girl
stood up straight in the greatest fright, whilst handsome Lappara in a
crushed but motionless position stood there looking hard at the flowers
in the carpet to avoid the eyes of his master. There was no denying the
situation.
“Gutter-snipes!” roared Roumestan hoarsely, seized by one of those
suffocating rages during which the beast growls inside the man with a
desire to tear in pieces and to bite far more than to strike.
Without knowing how it was he found himself outside the house, hurried
away by fear of his own frightful wrath. In that very place and at
that very hour some days before, his wife, just like himself, had
received the blow of treachery, the vulgar and the outrageous wound,
but a far more cruel and utterly unmerited one. But he never thought of
that for a moment, filled as he was with indignation at the personal
injury. No, never had such a villainy been seen beneath the sun! This
Lappara whom he loved like a child! This scoundrel of a girl for whose
sake he had gone the length of compromising his entire political
fortune!
“Gutter-snipes!--gutter-snipes!” he repeated aloud in the empty street
as he hurried through a fine, penetrating rain, which in fact calmed
him far better than the finest logic.
“_Té!_ why, I am all wet--”
He hurried to the cab-stand on the Rue d’Amsterdam, and in the crowd
which collects in that place owing to the constant arrival of trains at
the station he came up against the hard and tightly buttoned uniform of
General the Marquis d’Espaillon.
“Bravo, my dear colleague! I was not in the Chamber; but they tell me
that you charged the enemy like a ---- and routed him, horse and foot.”
As he stood as straight as a lath under his umbrella, the old fellow
had a devilish lively eye and moustaches gallantly twisted to the
correct angle for the evening of a lucky love adventure.
“G-- d-- m-- s--!” he went on, leaning over toward Numa’s ear with
a tone of confidence in gallantry, “you at least can boast of
understanding women, by Jove!”
And as the other looked at him sharply, supposing that he was speaking
sarcastically:
“Why yes, don’t you remember our discussion about love? You were
perfectly right. It is not only the fops and dudes that please the
women--I’ve got one now on the string. Never swallowed a better than
this one--G-- d-- m-- s--, not even when I was twenty-five and had just
left the Academy.”
Roumestan listened to him with his hand on the door of his cab and
thought that he was smiling at the old lovesick fool, but what he
produced was nothing more than a horrible grimace. His theories about
women were just then so extraordinarily upset.--Glory? genius? O, come
now! Those are not the things that make them care for you. He felt
himself outwitted and disgusted, and had a desire to weep and then
a longing to sleep in order not to think any more, especially not
to recall further the frightened laugh of that little rascally girl
standing straight before him with her waist in disorder and all her
neck red and trembling from the interrupted kisses.
But in the agitated course of our life, hours and events link
themselves together and follow each other like waves. In place of the
nice rest which he hoped to obtain on returning home a new blow was
awaiting him at the Ministry, a telegraphic despatch which Méjean had
opened in his absence and now handed him, deeply moved:
Hortense dying. She wishes to see you. Come quickly.
WIDOW PORTAL.
The whole of his frightful egotism broke from him with the dismayed
exclamation:
“Oh, what devoted fidelity am I losing in her!”
Then he thought of his wife who was present at that death-bed and had
allowed Aunt Portal to send the despatch. Her wrath had not yielded and
probably never would give way. Nevertheless, if she had been willing,
how thoroughly would he not have recommenced life at her side, giving
up all his imprudent follies and becoming a straightforward and almost
austere family man! And then, never giving a thought to the harm that
he had done, he reproached Rosalie for her hardness of heart, as if she
were treating him unjustly.
He passed the night correcting the proofs of his speech and
interrupting work every now and then to write bits of letters to that
little scoundrel of an Alice Bachellery, letters either raging or
sarcastic, scolding or abusive. Méjean was also up all night in the
Secretary’s office; overwhelmed with bitter sorrow, he tried to find
forgetfulness in unremitting toil, and Numa, who was pleased with his
company, experienced a veritable pain because he could not pour out to
him in confidence the deception he had met with. But then he would have
been forced to acknowledge that he had gone back to her and stand the
ridicule of the situation.
Nevertheless, he was not able to hold out, and in the morning whilst
his chief of cabinet was accompanying him to the station he committed
to him amongst other orders the charge of giving Lappara his
walking-papers. “O, he is expecting it, you may be sure! I caught him
in the very act of committing the blackest piece of ingratitude.--And
when I think how kind I have been to him, to the point of intending to
make him--” he stopped short; would it be believed that he was on the
point of telling the man in love with Hortense that he had promised the
girl’s hand to another person? Without going further into details, he
declared that he did not wish to find on his return such a wretchedly
immoral person at the Ministry. But on general principles he was
heart-broken at the duplicity of the world--all was ingratitude and
egotism. It was so bad, he would like to toss them into the street, all
his honors and business matters, in order to quit Paris and become the
keeper of a lighthouse on a horrible crag in the midst of the ocean.
“You have slept badly, my dear Master,” said Méjean with his tranquil
air.
“No, no, it is exactly as I tell you--Paris makes me sick at my
stomach....”
Standing on the platform near the cars, he turned about with a gesture
of supreme disgust aimed at that great city into which the provinces
pour all their ambitions and concupiscences, all their boiling and
sordid overflow--and then accuse it of degeneracy and moral taint. He
interrupted his tirade and then, with a bitter laugh, pointing to a
wall:
“How he does dog me everywhere, that fellow over there!”
On a vast gray wall pierced with hideous little windows at the angle of
the Rue de Lyon, there was the picture of a wretched troubadour. Washed
out by all the moisture of the winter and the filth from a barrack of
poor people, the advertisement showed on the second story a frightful
mess of blue, yellow and green through which one could still see the
pretentious and victorious gesture of the tabor-player. In Parisian
advertisements placards succeed each other quickly, one concealing the
other; but when they are of enormous dimensions, some bit or end will
stick out; wherefore it happened that in every corner of Paris during
the last fortnight the Minister had found before his eyes either a
leg or an arm, or a bit of the Provençal cap, or an end of the laced
peasant’s boots of Valmajour. These remnants threatened him even as in
that Provençal legend the victim of a murder with his various limbs
hacked and separated cries out against his murderer from all the
separate bits of his body. But in this case he was there entire, and
the horrible coloring seen through the chill morning air, forced as it
was to receive unflinchingly all kinds of filth before it dropped away
and disappeared under a final rush of wind, represented very well the
destiny of the unfortunate troubadour, driven forever from pillar to
post through the slums of that Paris which he could no longer quit, and
conducting the _farandole_ for a mob recruited from the unclassed and
exiled ones and the fools, those persons thirsting for notoriety whose
end is the hospital, the dissection table and the potter’s field.
Roumestan got into his coach frozen to the very bone by that morning
apparition and by the cold of his sleepless night, shivering at sight
through the car windows of those mournful vistas in the suburbs, those
iron bridges across streets that shone with rain, those tall houses,
barracks of wretchedness whose numberless windows were stuffed with
rags, and then those early morning figures, hollow cheeked, sorrowful
and sordid, those rounded backs and arms clutching breasts in order
to conceal something or warm themselves, those taverns with signs in
endless variety and the thick forest of factory chimneys vomiting
smoke that falls at once to earth. After that came the first gardens
of the outer suburb, black of soil, the coarse mortar in the low farm
buildings, villas closely shuttered in the midst of their little
gardens reduced by the winter to copses as dry as the bare wood of the
kiosks and arbors, and then, farther on, the country roads broken up by
puddles, where one saw files of overflowing tanks--a horizon the color
of rust, and flights of crows over the deserted fields.
He closed his eyes to keep out this sorrowful Northern winter through
which the whistle of the locomotive passed with long wails of distress,
but his own thoughts under his lowered eyelids were in no respect
happier. So near again to that fool of a girl--for the bond that held
him to her still contracted his heart though it had broken!--he
pondered over all the different things he had done for her and what the
support of an operatic star had cost him for the last six months. In
that life of the boards everything is false, but especially success,
which is only worth as much as one buys. The demands of the claque,
cost of tickets at the office, of dinners, receptions, presents to
reporters, publicity in all its varying forms, all these have their
price; then the magnificent bouquets at sight of which the singer
grows red and shows emotion, gathering them up against her arms and
nude neck and the shining satin of her gown; and then the ovations
prepared beforehand for the provincial tour, enthusiastic processions
to the hotel, serenades to the diva’s balcony and all the other things
calculated to dispel the gloomy indifference of the public--ah, all
these must not only be paid for but paid high!
For six months he had gone along with open pocketbook, never begrudging
the triumphs arranged for the little girl. He was present at
negotiations with the chief of the claque and the advertising agents
of the newspapers, as well as the flower-woman whose bouquets the diva
and her mother worked off on him three times without his knowledge
merely by decking them out with fresh ribbons; for these Bordeaux
Jewesses were possessed of a vulgar rapacity and a love of trickery
and expedients which caused them at times to remain at home for entire
days, clad in rags, old jackets over flowing skirts, with their feet
in ancient ball slippers. In fact it was thus that Numa found them
oftenest, passing their time playing cards and reviling each other as
if they were in a van of acrobats at a fair. For a good many months
past they had no longer put on any restraint in his presence. He knew
all the tricks and grimaces of the diva and the coarseness natural to
an affected and unneat woman of the South: also that she was ten years
older than her age on the boards and that in order to fix upon her face
that eternal smile in a Cupid’s bow she went to sleep each night with
her lips pulled up at the corners and streaked with coral lip-paint.
At this point at last he himself fell asleep--but I can assure you that
his mouth was not like a Cupid’s bow; on the contrary his every feature
was haggard from disgust and fatigue, while his entire body was shaken
by the bumps and swayings to and fro and by the shocks of the express
train whirled under full steam over the metals.
“_Valeïnce!--Valeïnce!_”
He opened his eyes like a child called by his mother. The South had
already begun to appear; between the clouds, which the wind was driving
apart, deep blue abysses were dug, and there was the sky! A ray of
sunlight warmed the car window and among the roadside pines one saw the
grayness of a few thin olive-trees. This produced a feeling of rest
throughout the sensitive nature of the Southerner and a complete polar
change of ideas. He was sorry that he had been so harsh to Lappara.
Think of having destroyed the future of that poor boy and plunged a
whole family in grief--and for what? A “_foutaise, allons!_” as Bompard
said. There was only one way of repairing it and correcting its look of
dismissal from the Ministry, and that was the Cross of the Legion of
Honor. And the Minister began to laugh at the idea of Lappara’s name
appearing in the _Officiel_ with this addition, “Exceptional services.”
But after all it was an exceptional service to have delivered his chief
from that degrading connection.
Orange!... Montelimar and its nougat!... Voices were already full of
vibration and words reinforced by lively gestures. Waiters from the
restaurant, paper sellers and station guards rushed upon the train with
their eyes sticking out of their heads. Certainly this was quite a
different people from that which one met thirty leagues farther North,
and the Rhône, the broad Rhône, with its waves like a sea, glistened
under the sunshine that turned to gold the crenelated ramparts of
Avignon, whose bells--which have never stopped ringing since the days
of Rabelais--saluted the big political man of Provence with their
clear-cut chimes. Numa took possession of a seat at the buffet in
front of a little white roll, a pasty and a bottle of the well known
wine from the Nerte that had ripened between the rocks and was capable
of inoculating even a Parisian with the accent of dwellers among the
scrub-oak barrens.
But his natal atmosphere rejoiced his heart the most--when he was
able to leave the main line at Tarascon and take a seat in a coach
on the small patriarchal railway with a single track which pushes its
way into the heart of Provence between the branches of mulberries and
olive-trees, while tufts of wild rose scrape against the side doors.
People were singing in the coaches; at every moment the train stopped
in order to allow a flock of sheep to pass or to pick up a belated
traveller or to ship some parcel which a boy from a _mas_ brought
up at a full run. And then what salutations and nice little bits of
gossip between the train hands and the peasant women in their Arles
head-dresses standing at their doors or washing clothes on the stone
near the well! At the station what cries and hustlings--an entire
village turning out to conduct to the cars some conscript or some girl
who was off to the town for service.
“_Té! vé!_ not good-bye, dear lass, ... but be very good, _au moins!_”
Then they weep and embrace each other without taking any notice of the
hermit in his cowl asking alms as he leans against the station fence
and mumbles his pater-noster; then, enraged at receiving nothing, turns
to go as he throws his sack upon his back.
“Well, there’s another _pater_ gone to pot!”
That phrase catches and is understood, all tears are dried and the
whole company roars with laughter, the begging monk harder than the
rest.
Hidden away in his coach in order to escape ovations, Roumestan
enjoyed immensely all this jollity, pleased with the sight of these
countenances all brown and hooked-nosed and alive with emotion and
sarcasm, these big fellows with their smart air, these _chatos_ as
amber-colored as the long berries of the muscat grape, who as they grow
older will turn into these crones, black and dried by the sun, who seem
to scatter a dust as from the tomb every time they make one of their
habitual gestures. So _zou_ then! and _allons!_ and all the _en avants_
in the world! Here he found once more his own people, his changeable
and nervous Provence, that race of brown crickets always at the door
and always singing!
But he himself was certainly a type of them, already recovered from his
terrible despair of that morning, from his disgust and his love--all
swept away at the first puff of the mistral which was growling in
a lively fashion through the valley of the Rhône. It met the train
midway, retarding its advance and driving everything before it, the
trees bent over in an attitude of flight as well as the far-away
Alpilles, the sun shaken by the sudden eclipses, whilst in the distance
under a rapid gleam of sunshine the town of Aps grouped its monuments
about the ancient tower of the Antonines, just as a herd of cattle
huddles on the wide plain of the Camargue about the oldest bull in
order to break the force of the wind.
So it was that Numa made his entrance into the station to the sound of
that magnificent trumpeting of the mistral.
The family had kept his arrival secret through a feeling of delicacy
like his own, in order to avoid the Orpheons and banners and solemn
deputations. Aunt Portal alone awaited him, majestically installed in
the arm-chair belonging to the keeper of the station, with a warmer
under her feet. As soon as she perceived her nephew the big rosy face
of the stout lady, which had expanded in her reposeful position, took
on a despairing expression and swelled up under the white lace cap, and
stretching out her arms she burst into sobs and lamentations:
“_Aie de nous_, what a misfortune!... Such a pretty little thing,
_péchère!_... and so good!... and so gentle!... you would take your
bread from your mouth for her sake....”
“Great Heavens, is it all over?” thought Roumestan as he reverted
quickly to the real purpose of his journey.
His aunt suddenly interrupted her vociferations and said coldly and in
a hard tone to the servant who had forgotten the foot-warmer:
“Ménicle, the _banquette!_” then she took up again on the pitch of a
frenzy of grief the story of the virtues of Mlle. Le Quesnoy, calling
with loud cries upon heaven and its angels to know why they had not
taken her in place of that child and shaking Numa’s arm with her
explosions of sorrow; for she was leaning on him in order to reach her
old coach at the slow gait of a funeral procession.
The horses advanced slowly under the leafless trees of the Avenue
Berchère in a whirlwind of branches and dry bits of bark which
the mistral was scattering as a poor sort of welcome before the
illustrious traveller. At the end of the road where the porters had
formed the habit of taking the horses out Ménicle was obliged to crack
his whip many times, so surprised at this indifference for the great
man did the horses seem to be. As for Roumestan, he was only thinking
of the horrible news which he had just learned, and holding the two
doll hands of his aunt, who kept constantly drying her eyes, he gently
asked: “When did it happen?”
“What happen?”
“When did she die, the poor little dear?”
Aunt Portal bounced up on her thick cushions:
“Die?--_Bou Diou!_--who ever told you that she was dead?”
Then she added at once with a deep sigh:
“Only, _péchère_, she will not be here for long.”
Ah, no, not for very long, for now she no longer got up, never leaving
the lace-covered pillows, on which from day to day her little thin head
became less and less recognizable, painted as it was on the cheek-bones
with a burning red cosmetic, whilst the eyes and nostrils were
outlined in blue. With her ivory-white hands lying on the linen of the
bed-clothes and a little hand-glass and comb near her to arrange from
time to time her beautiful brown hair, she lay for hours without a word
because of the wretched roughness that had invaded her voice, her look
lost off there on the tips of the trees and in the brilliant sky over
the old garden of the Portal mansion.
That evening her dreamy immobility lasted so long while the flames of
the setting sun reddened all the chamber that her sister grew anxious:
“Are you asleep?”
Hortense shook her head as if she wished to drive something away:
“No, I was not asleep, and yet I was dreaming--I was dreaming that I
am going to die. I was just on the borders of this world and leaning
over into the other. Yes, leaning over enough to fall. I could see you
still and some parts of my room, but all the same I was quite over on
the other side, and what struck me most was the silence of this life
in comparison with the tremendous sound that the dead were making.
A sound of a beehive, of flapping wings and the low rustling of an
ant-heap--the murmur which the sea leaves in the heart of its shells.
It was just as if the realms of death were far more thickly peopled and
encumbered than life. And all this noise was so intense that it seemed
to me my ears heard for the first time and that I had discovered in me
a new sense.”
She talked slowly in her rough and hissing voice. After a silence she
employed whatever there was left in the way of strength in that broken
and wretched instrument:
“O! my head is always on the journey.--First prize for
imagination--Hortense Le Quesnoy of Paris.” A sob was heard which was
drowned in the noise of a shutting door.
“You see,” said Rosalie, “Mamma had to leave the room. You hurt her
feelings so.”
“On purpose--every day a little--so that she shall have less to suffer
at the last,” answered the young girl in a whisper. The mistral was
galloping through the big corridors of the old Provençal mansion,
groaning under the doorways and shaking them with furious blows.
Hortense smiled.
“Do you hear that? O, I love that, it makes me feel as if I were far
away--off in the country. Poor darling,” added she, taking her sister’s
hand and carrying it with a weary gesture as far as her mouth, “what a
mean trick I have played you without intending to--here is your little
one coming who’ll be a Southerner all through my fault--and you will
never forgive me for it, _Franciote!_” Through the clamor of the wind
the whistle of a locomotive reached her and made her shiver.
“Ah, ha, the seven o’clock train!”
Like all sick people and prisoners, she knew what the slightest sounds
about her meant and mingled them with her motionless existence, just
as she did the horizon before her, the grove of pines and the old
weather-beaten Roman tower on the slope. From that moment on she became
anxious and agitated, watching the door at which at last a servant
appeared.
“That’s right,” said Hortense, in a lively way, and smiling at her big
sister: “Just a minute, will you?--I will call you again.”
Rosalie thought it was a visit from the priest bringing his parochial
Latin and his terrifying consolations, so she went down into the
garden, which was a truly Southern enclosure without any flowers, but
with alleys of box sheltered by high cypresses that withstood the wind.
Ever since she had been sick-nurse she had gone thither to get a breath
of air and to conceal her tears and to slacken a little all the nervous
contractions of her sorrow. Oh, how well she understood that speech
made by her mother:
“There is no sorrow which is irreparable but one, and that is the loss
of the person we love.”
Her other sorrow, her happiness as a woman all destroyed, was quite
in the background; she thought of nothing except that horrible and
inevitable thing which was approaching day by day. Was it the evening
hour, that red and deepening sun which left all the garden in shadow
and yet lingered on the panes of the house, or that mournful wind
blowing high up which she could hear without feeling it? At that
moment she felt a melancholy, an anguish which could not be expressed
in words. Hortense! her Hortense! more than a sister for her, almost
a daughter ... she had in Hortense the first happiness of a premature
mother’s love.
Sobs oppressed her, sobs without tears; she would have liked to cry
aloud and call for help, but on whom? The sky, toward which the
despairing raise their eyes, was so high, so far, so cold; it was as if
polished off by the hurricane. Through that sky a flight of migrating
birds was hurrying, but neither their cries nor their wings which made
as much noise as flapping sails could be heard below. How then could a
single voice from earth reach and attain those silent and indifferent
abysses?
Nevertheless she made a trial and with her face turned toward the light
which moved ever upward and was passing from the roof of the old house,
she made her prayer to Him who has thought fit to conceal Himself and
protect Himself from our sorrows and lamentations--Him whom some adore
confidentially with their brows against the earth, but others forlornly
search for with their arms wide apart, while others finally threaten
Him with their fists and revolt against Him, denying Him in order to be
able to forgive His cruelties.
And denial of this sort, blasphemy of this kind--that also is prayer.
She was called to the house and ran in trembling with fear because she
had reached that nervous terror when the slightest noise re-echoes from
the very depth of one’s being. The sick girl drew her near to her bed
with her smile, for she had neither strength nor voice, as if she had
just been talking a long time.
“I have a favor to ask of you, my darling--you know what I mean, that
final favor which people grant to one who is condemned to die--forgive
your husband! He has been very wicked and unworthy of you, but be
indulgent and return to his side. Do this for me, dear sister, and for
our parents, whom your separation grieves to death and who will soon
need greatly that all should close round about them and surround them
with tender care. Numa is so lively, there is no one like him for
putting a little spirit into them.... It is all over, is it not? You
forgive?”
Rosalie answered, “Yes, I give you my promise.”
Of what value was this sacrifice of her pride beside this irreparable
disaster? Standing straight beside the bed she closed her eyes a
moment, keeping back her tears--a hand which trembled rested upon hers.
There he was in front of her, trembling, wretched and overwhelmed by an
effusion of heart which he dared not show.
“Kiss each other,” said Hortense.
Rosalie bent her brow forward and Numa kissed it timidly. “No, no, not
that way--both arms, the way one does when one really loves.”
Numa seized his wife and clasped her with one long sob, whilst the
twilight fell in the great chamber as an act of pity for the girl who
had thrown them one upon the other’s heart.
This was her last manifestation of life. From that moment she remained
absorbed, indifferent and unaware of what passed about her, never
answering those disconsolate appeals of farewell to which there is
no answer, but still keeping upon her young face that expression of
haughty underlying anger which those show who die too early for the
ardor of the life that is in them--those to whom the disillusions of
existence have not had time to speak their last word.