an open portmanteau, into which he was placing hurriedly whatever
caught his eye or took his fancy, from the surrounding tables. His
hand trembled from eagerness, his pale old face was flushed with
excitement and hope. Owen, going straight up to him, put his two hands
on his shoulders, and without uttering a word, gently forced him
backwards into a chair. Then he sat down in front of him, so close
that their knees touched, and fixing his strong eyes on Renouf's
wavering ones, and stroking with his finger-tips the muscles behind
the ears, he threw him immediately into an hypnotic trance.
"You want to stay here, don't you?" said Owen emphatically. "I want to
stay here," repeated the old man through grey lips. His face was
become the colour of ashes, his hands were cold to the sight. "You
want your cousin to go away and not disturb you any more?
Answer--answer me." "I want my cousin to go away," Renouf murmured,
but in his staring, fading eye were traces of the struggle tearing him
within.
Owen pressed down the eyelids, made another pass before the face, and
rose on his long legs with a sardonic grin. Margot, leaning across a
corner of the bed, had watched him with breathless interest.
"I b'lieve you're de Evil One himself," she said admiringly.
Owen pinched her smooth chin between his tobacco-stained thumb and
fingers.
"Pooh! nothing but a trick I learned in Paris," said he; "it's very
convenient to be able to put a person to sleep now and again."
"Could you put any one to sleep?"
"Any one I wanted to."
"Do it to me then," she begged him.
"What use, my girl? Don't you do all I wish without?"
She grimaced, and picked at the bed-quilt laughing, then rose and
stood in front of him, her round red arms clasped behind her head. But
he only glanced at her with professional interest.
"You should get married, my dear, without delay. Pierre would be ready
enough, no doubt?"--"Bah! Pierre or annuder--if I brought a weddin'
portion. You don't tink to provide me wid one, I s'pose?"--"You know
that I can't. But why don't you get it from the Tourtels? You've
earned it before this, I dare swear."
It was now that the housekeeper came up, and took down to Louisa
Poidevin the message given above. But first she was detained by Owen,
to assist him in getting his patient into bed.
The old man woke up during the process, very peevish, very determined
to get to town. "Well, you can't go till to-morrow den," said Mrs.
Tourtel; "your cousin has gone home, an' now you've got to go to
sleep, so be quiet." She dropped all semblance of respect in her
tones. "Come, lie down!" she said sharply, "or I'll send Margot to
tickle your feet." He shivered and whimpered into silence beneath the
clothes.
"Margot tells him 'bout witches, an ogres, an scrapels her fingures
'long de wall, till he tinks dere goin' to fly 'way wid him," she
explained to Owen in an aside. "Oh, I know Margot," he answered
laconically, and thought, "May I never lie helpless within reach of
such fingers as hers."
He took a step and stumbled over a portmanteau lying open at his feet.
"Put your mischievous paws to some use," he told the girl, "and clear
these things away from the floor;" then remembering his rival Le
Lièvre; "if the old fool had really got away to town, it would have
been a nice day's work for us all," he added.
Downstairs he joined the Tourtels in the kitchen, a room situated
behind the living-room on the left, with low green glass windows,
rafters and woodwork smoke-browned with the fires of a dozen
generations. In the wooden racks over by the chimney hung flitches of
home-cured bacon, and the kettle was suspended by three chains over
the centre of the wide hearth, where glowed and crackled an armful of
sticks. So dark was the room, in spite of the daylight outside, that
two candles were set in the centre of the table, enclosing in their
circles of yellow light the pale face and silver hair of the
housekeeper, and Tourtel's rugged head and weather-beaten countenance.
He had glasses ready, and a bottle of the cheap brandy for which the
Island is famous. "You'll take a drop of something, eh, Doctor?" he
said as Owen seated himself on the joncière, a padded settle--green
baize covered, to replace the primitive rushes--fitted on one side of
the hearth. He stretched his long legs into the light, and for a
moment considered moodily the old gaiters and cobbled boots. "You've
seen to the horse?" he asked Tourtel.
"My cert'nly; he's in de stable dis hour back, an' I've given him a
feed. I tought maybe you'd make a night of it?"
"I may as well for all the work I have to do," said Owen with
sourness; "a damned little Island this for doctors. Nothing ever the
matter with anyone except the 'creeps,' and those who have it spend
their last penny in making it worse."
"Dere's as much illness here as anywhere," said Tourtel, defending the
reputation of his native soil, "if once you gets among de right class,
among de people as has de time an' de money to make dereselves ill.
But if you go foolin' roun' wid de paysans, what can you expec'? We
workin' folks can't afford to lay up an' buy ourselves doctors'
stuff."
"And how am I to get among the right class?" retorted Owen, sucking
the ends of his moustache into his mouth and chewing them savagely. "A
more confounded set of stuck-up, beggarly aristocrats I never met than
your people here." His discontented eye rested on Mrs. Tourtel. "That
Mrs. Pedvinn is the wife of Pedvinn the Jurat, I suppose?"--"Yes, de
Pedvinns of Rohais." "Good people," said Owen thoughtfully; "in with
the de Càterelles, and the Dadderney (d'Aldenois) set. Are there
children?"--"Tree."
He took a drink of the spirit and water; his bad temper passed. Margot
came in from upstairs.
"De marster sleeps as dough he'd never wake again," she announced,
flinging herself into the chair nearest Owen.
"It's 'bout time he did," Tourtel growled.
"I should have thought it more to your interest to keep him alive?"
Owen inquired. "A good place, surely?"
"A good place if you like to call it so," the wife answered him; "but
what, if he go to town, as he say to-night? and what, if he send de
notary, to put de scellés here?--den he take up again wid Dr. Lelever,
dat's certain." And Tourtel added in his surly key, "Anyway, I've been
workin' here dese tirty years now, an' dat's 'bout enough."
"In fact, when the orange is sucked, you throw away the peel? But are
you quite sure it is sucked dry?"
"De house an' de lan' go to de Pedvinns, an' all de money die too, for
de little he had left when young John went 'crost de seas, he sunk in
a 'nuity. Dere's nuddin' but de lining, an' plate, an' such like, as
goes to de son."
"And what he finds of that, I expect, will scarcely add to his
impedimenta?" said Owen grinning. He thought, "The old man is well
known in the island, the name of his medical attendant would get
mentioned in the papers at least; just as well Le Lièvre should not
have the advertisement." Besides, there were the Poidevins.
"You might say a good word for me to Mrs. Pedvinn," he said aloud, "I
live nearer to Rohais than Lelever does, and with young children she
might be glad to have some one at hand."
"You may be sure you won't never find me ungrateful, sir," answered
the housekeeper; and Owen, shading his eyes with his hand, sat
pondering over the use of this word "ungrateful," with its faint yet
perceptible emphasis.
Margot, meanwhile, laid the supper; the remains of a rabbit-pie, a big
"pinclos" or spider crab, with thin, red knotted legs, spreading far
over the edges of the dish, the apple-gôche, hot from the oven, cider,
and the now half-empty bottle of brandy. The four sat down and fell
to. Margot was in boisterous spirits; everything she said or did was
meant to attract Owen's attention. Her cheeks flamed with excitement;
she wanted his eyes to be perpetually upon her. But Owen's interest in
her had long ceased. To-night, while eating heartily, he was absorbed
in his ruling passion: to get on in the world, to make money, to be
admitted into Island society. Behind the pallid, impenetrable mask,
which always enraged yet intimidated Margot, he plotted incessantly,
schemed, combined, weighed this and that, studied his prospects from
every point of view.
Supper over, he lighted his meerschaum; Tourtel produced a short clay,
and the bottle was passed between them. The women left them together,
and for ten, twenty minutes, there was complete silence in the room.
Tourtel let his pipe go out, and rapped it down brusquely upon the
table.
"It must come to an end," he said, with suppressed ferocity; "are we
eider to spen' de whole of our lives here, or else be turned off at de
eleventh hour after sufferin' all de heat an' burden of de day? Its
onreasonable. An' dere's de cottage at Cottu standin' empty, an' me
havin' to pay a man to look after de tomato houses, when I could get
fifty per cent. more by lookin' after dem myself.... An' what profit
is such a sickly, shiftless life as dat? My good! dere's not a man,
woman, or chile in de Islan's as will shed a tear when he goes, an'
dere's some, I tells you, as have suffered from his whimsies dese
tirty years, as will rejoice. Why, his wife was dead already when we
come here, an' his on'y son, a dirty, drunken, lazy vaurien too, has
never been near him for fifteen years, nor written neider. Dead most
likely, in foreign parts.... An' what's he want to stay for,
contraryin' an' thwartin' dem as have sweated an' laboured, an' now,
please de good God, wan's to sit 'neath de shadow of dere own fig-tree
for de short time dat remains to dem?... An' what do we get for
stayin'? Forty pound, Island money, between de two of us, an' de
little I makes from de flowers, an' poultry, an' such like. An' what
do we do for it? Bake, an' wash, an' clean, an' cook, an' keep de
garden in order, an' nuss him in all his tantrums.... If we was even
on his testament, I'd say nuddin. But everything goes to Pedvinns, an'
de son John, and de little bit of income dies wid him. I tell you 'tis
'bout time dis came to an end."
Owen recognised that Destiny asked no sin more heinous from him than
silence, perhaps concealment; the chestnuts would reach him without
risk of burning his hand. "It's time," said he, "I thought of going
home. Get your lantern, and I'll help you with the trap. But first,
I'll just run up and have another look at Mr. Rennuf."
For the last time the five personages of this obscure little tragedy
found themselves together in the bedroom, now lighted by a small lamp
which stood on the wash-hand-stand. Owen, who had to stoop to enter
the door, could have touched the low-pitched ceiling with his hand.
The bed, with its slender pillars, supporting a canopy of faded
damask, took up the greater part of the room. There was a fluted
headpiece of the damask, and long curtains of the same material,
looped up, on either side of the pillows. Sunken in these lay the head
of the old man, crowned with a cotton nightcap, the eyes closed, the
skin drawn tight over the skull, the outline of the attenuated form
indistinguishable beneath the clothes. The arms lay outside the
counterpane, straight down on either side; and the mechanical playing
movement of the fingers showed he was not asleep. Margot and Mrs.
Tourtel watched him from the bed's foot. Their gigantic shadows thrown
forward by the lamp, stretched up the opposite wall, and covered half
the ceiling. The old-fashioned mahogany furniture, with its fillets of
paler wood, drawn in ovals, upon the doors of the presses, their
centrepieces of fruit and flowers, shone out here and there with
reflected light; and the looking-glass, swung on corkscrew mahogany
pillars between the damask window curtains, gleamed lake-like amidst
the gloom.
Owen and Tourtel joined the women at the bedfoot; though each was
absorbed entirely in his own egotisms, all were animated by the same
secret desire. Yet, to the feeling heart, there was something
unspeakably pleading in the sight of the old man lying there, in his
helplessness, in the very room, on the very bed, which had seen his
wedding-night fifty years before; where as a much-wished-for and
welcomed infant, he had opened his eyes to the light more than seventy
years since. He had been helpless then as now, but then the child had
been held to loving hearts, loving fingers had tended him, a young and
loving mother lay beside him, the circumference of all his tiny world,
as he was the core and centre of all of hers. And from being that
exquisite, well-beloved little child, he had passed thoughtlessly,
hopefully, despairfully, wearily, through all the stages of life,
until he had come to this--a poor, old, feeble, helpless, worn-out
man, lying there where he had been born, but with all those who had
loved him carried long ago to the grave: with the few who might have
protected him still, his son, his cousin, his old friend Le Lièvre, as
powerless to save him as the silent dead.
Renouf opened his eyes, looked in turn at the four faces before him,
and read as much pity in them as in masks of stone. He turned himself
to the pillow again and to his miserable thoughts.
Owen took out his watch, went round to count the pulse, and in the
hush the tick of the big silver timepiece could be heard.
"There is extreme weakness," came his quiet verdict.
"Sinking?" whispered Tourtel loudly.
"No; care and constant nourishment are all that are required; strong
beef-tea, port wine jelly, cream beaten up with a little brandy at
short intervals, every hour say. And of course no excitement; nothing
to irritate, or alarm him" (Owen's eye met Margot's); "absolute quiet
and rest." He came back to the foot of the bed and spoke in a lower
tone. "It's just one of the usual cases of senile decay," said he,
"which I observe every one comes to here in the Islands (unless he has
previously killed himself by drink), the results of breeding in. But
Mr. Renouf may last months, years longer. In fact, if you follow out
my directions there is every probability that he will."
Tourtel and his wife shifted their gaze from Owen to look into each
other's eyes; Margot's loose mouth lapsed into a smile. Owen felt cold
water running down his back. The atmosphere of the room seemed to
stifle him; reminiscences of his student days crowded on him: the
horror of an unperverted mind, at its first spectacle of cruelty,
again seized hold of him, as though no twelve callous years were
wedged in between. At all costs he must get out into the open air.
He turned to go. Louis Renouf opened his eyes, followed the form
making its way to the door, and understood. "You won't leave me,
doctor? surely you won't leave me?" came the last words of piercing
entreaty.
The man felt his nerve going all to pieces.
"Come, come, my good sir, do you think I am going to stay here all
night?" he answered brutally.... Outside the door, Tourtel touched his
sleeve. "And suppose your directions are not carried out?" said he in
his thick whisper.
Owen gave no spoken answer, but Tourtel was satisfied. "I'll come an'
put the horse in," he said, leading the way through the kitchen to the
stables. Owen drove off with a parting curse and cut with the whip
because the horse slipped upon the stones. A long ray of light from
Tourtel's lantern followed him down the lane. When he turned out on to
the high road to St. Gilles, he reined in a moment, to look back at
Les Calais. This is the one point from which a portion of the house is
visible, and he could see the lighted window of the old man's bedroom
plainly through the trees.
What was happening there? he asked himself; and the Tourtel's cupidity
and callousness, Margot's coarse cruel tricks, rose before him with
appalling distinctness. Yet the price was in his hand, the first step
of the ladder gained; he saw himself to-morrow, perhaps in the
drawing-room of Rohais, paying the necessary visit of intimation and
condolence. He felt he had already won Mrs. Poidevin's favour. Among
women, always poor physiognomists, he knew he passed for a handsome
man; among the Islanders, the assurance of his address would pass for
good breeding; all he had lacked hitherto was the opportunity to
shine. This his acquaintance with Mrs. Poidevin would secure him. And
he had trampled on his conscience so often before, it had now little
elasticity left. Just an extra glass of brandy to-morrow, and to-day
would be as securely laid as those other episodes of his past.
While he watched, some one shifted the lamp ... a woman's shadow was
thrown upon the white blind ... it wavered, grew monstrous, and
spread, until the whole window was shrouded in gloom.... Owen put the
horse into a gallop ... and from up at Les Calais, the long-drawn
melancholy howling of the dog filled with forebodings the silent
night.
The Lamplighter
By A. S. Hartrick
[Illustration: The Lamplighter]
The Composer of "Carmen"
By Charles Willeby
What little has been written about poor Bizet is not the sort to
satisfy. The men who have told of him cannot have written with their
best pen. Even those who, one can see, have started well, albeit
impelled rather than inspired by a profound admiration for the artist
and the man, have fallen all too short of the mark, and ultimately
drifted into the dullest of all dull things--the compilation of mere
dates and doings. I know of no pamphlet devoted to him in this
country. He was much misunderstood in life; he has been, I think, as
much sinned against in death. The symbol of posthumous appreciation
which asserts itself to the visitor to Père Lachaise, is exponential
of compliment only when reckoned by avoirdupois. Neglected in life,
they have in death weighed him down with an edifice that would have
been obnoxious to every instinct in his sprightly soul--a memorial
befitting perhaps to such an one as Johannes Brahms, but repugnant as
a memento of the spirit that created "Carmen." It is an emblem of
French formalism in its most determined aspect. And in truth--as
Sainte-Beuve said of the Abbé Galiani--"they owed to him an
honourable, choice, and purely delicate burial; _urna brevis_, a
little urn which should not be larger than he." The previous
inappreciation of his genius has given place to posthumous laudation,
zealous indeed, but so indiscriminating as to be vulgar. Like many
another man, he had to take "a thrashing from life"; and although he
stood up to it unflinchingly, it was only in his death certificate
that he acquired passport to fame.
Just eighteen years before it was that Bizet had written from Rome:
"We are indeed sad, for there come to us the tidings of the death of
Léon Benouville. Really, one works oneself half crazy to gain this
Prix de Rome; then comes the huge struggle for position; and after
all, perchance to end by dying at thirty-eight! Truly, the picture is
the reverse of encouraging." Here was his own destiny, _nu comme la
main_, save that the fates begrudged him even the thirty-eight years
of his brother artist--called him when he could not but
"contrast
The petty done--the undone vast."
But his early life was not unhappy. He had no pitiful struggle with
poverty in childhood, at all events. Some tell us he was
precocious--terribly so; but I had rather take my cue from his own
words, "Je ne me suis donné qu'à contre-coeur à la musique," than
dwell upon his precocity, real or fictional. It was only hereditarily
consistent that he should have a musical organisation. His father was
a teacher of music, not without repute; his mother was a sister of
François Delsarte, who, although unknown to Grove, has two columns and
more devoted to him by Fetis, by whom he is described as an "artiste
un peu étrange, quoique d'un mérite incontestable, doué de facultés
très diverses et de toutes les qualités nécessaires à l'enseignement."
What there was of music in their son the parents sought to encourage
assiduously, and Bizet himself has shown us in his work, more clearly
than aught else could, that the true dramatic sense was innate in him.
And that he loved his literature too, was well proved by a glance at
the little _appartement_ in the Rue de Douai, which he continued to
occupy until well-nigh the end.
In 1849--he was just over his tenth year--Delsarte took him to
Marmontel of the Conservatoire. "Without being in any sense of the
word a prodigy," says the old pianoforte master, "he played his Mozart
with an unusual amount of taste. From the moment I heard him I
recognised his individuality, and I made it my object to preserve it."
Then Zimmerman, with whom _l'enseignement_ was a disease, heard of him
and sought him for pupil. But Zimmerman seems to have tired of him as
he tired of so many and ended by passing him on to Gounod. From entry
to exit--an interval of eight years--Bizet's academic career was a
series of _premiers et deuxièmes prix_. They were to him but so many
stepping-stones to the coveted Grand Prix de Rome. He longed to secure
this--to fly the crowded town and seek the secluded shelter of the
Villa Medici. And in the end he had his way. In effect, he commenced
to live only after he had taken up his abode on the little Pincian
Hill. Even there life was a trifle close to him, and some time passed
before he really fixed his focus.
In Italy, more than in any other part of the world, the life of the
present rests upon the strata of successive past lives. And although
Bizet was no student, carrying in his knapsack a superfluity of
culture, this place appealed to him from the moment that he came to
it, and the memory of it lingered long in after days.
The villa itself was a revelation to him. The masterpiece of
Renaissance façade over which the artist would seem to have exhausted
a veritable mine of Greek and Roman bas-reliefs; the garden with its
lawns surrounded by hedges breast-high, trimmed to the evenness of a
stone-wall; the green alleys overshadowed by ilex trees; the marble
statues looking forlornly regretful at Time's defacing treatment; the
terrace with its oaks gnarled and twisted with age; the fountains; the
roses; the flower-beds; and in the distance, "over the dumb
Campagna-sea," the hills melting into light under the evening sky--all
these made an _intaglio_ upon him such as was not readily to be
effaced, and which he learned to love. Perhaps because, after all,
Italy is even more the land of beauty than of what is venerable in
art, he did not feel the want of what Mr. Symonds calls the
"mythopoeic sense." It is a land ever young, in spite of age. Its
monuments, assertive as they are, so blend with the landscape, are so
in harmony with the surroundings, that the yawning gulf of years that
would separate us from them is made to vanish, and they come to live
with us.