When Madame Querterot left the cool, airy house, which reminded her
so unpleasantly of one which was associated principally in her inmost
consciousness with the sensation of corporal punishment applied in no
niggardly spirit, she turned her steps towards her own home, which was
situated in the remotest part of Pimlico.
By the time she got off her bus and set out on foot into the dreary
labyrinth of dingy streets, in one of which she lived, the shadows were
lengthening fast and the pavement was losing some of the blistering heat
accumulated during the day. Madame Querterot climbed rather wearily the
flight of steps before her door. When she entered the little shop where
Julie sat sewing behind the counter, she passed through it without a
word to her daughter, and going into the tiny room, which served as a
sitting-room, threw herself into the one arm-chair with something like a
groan.
Julie, whose smile of welcome had faded on her lips when she saw the
expression on her mother's face, bent again over her work, and for a
little while all was still in the tiny, two-storied house.
There was not room for many customers in the shop. Julie often wondered
what she would do if more than two came in at the same time, but such an
embarrassing contingency had not so far occurred. Quite half the space
was taken up by the counter, on which stood a tray containing hair-pins
and hair-nets. In one corner a space was curtained off for such clients
as should wish to have their hair dressed or washed. No one had as yet
requested this last service. In the window Madame Querterot displayed a
few superior articles which had survived the wreck of the Bond Street
establishment.
There was a waxen lady, with fair hair wonderfully curled and twisted,
who obscured the light a good deal as she stood with her shoulders
disdainfully turned to the interior of the room and her snow white
nose close against the plate glass, which separated her from the
street. Plainly she felt it a come-down to look out on to this gloomy
Pimlico roadway. Around her were strewn combs and brushes, bottles
of brillantine and china pots containing creams for the complexion,
curls and tails of false hair--in some cases attached to gruesome
scalps of pink wax--and half a dozen elaborately carved tortoise-shell
combs, which the luckless Eugène had invested in in a fit of mistaken
enthusiasm shortly after his arrival in England, but which had never
received so much as a comment or an inquiry as to price from any of
those who had since looked on them.
They had remained, however, a source of pride to Madame Querterot, who
would often remark to Julie what an air they bestowed.
Presently, after a glance at the clock, Julie put down her work and came
to the door between the two rooms.
"You are back, mother," she said, looking at her gravely.
"So it appears," snapped her mother without raising her eyes.
"I am afraid you must be tired," went on Julie calmly. "The day has been
so hot. Will you not take a glass of lemonade before supper?"
"Have you got a lemon?" asked Madame Querterot somewhat less crossly.
"Yes," said Julie.
She opened the cupboard and taking out a lemon, a tumbler, and a lemon
squeezer, went about the business of preparing a cool drink for her
heated parent.
"Has anyone bought anything to-day?" Madame Querterot asked when after a
few minutes the beverage was handed to her. "Put a little more sugar in
the glass."
"A boy came in for a bottle of hair-oil," replied Julie, "and a few
women have bought hair-pins and hair-curlers. It has been a dull day."
"We shall soon be in the street at this rate," said Madame Querterot
despairingly. "One cannot live on a few packets of hair-pins and a
bottle of hair-oil. No. If only we could move to a fashionable locality.
Here no one ever comes and we have but to die of hunger."
"We haven't been here very long. We may do better presently. It is the
customers whom you massage that keep us from starvation." Julie propped
open the door into the shop and taking up her work sat down by the table
in the parlour.
"Bah! Who knows how long they will continue? They have the skin of
crocodiles, all of them. What can I do with it? Nothing. And in time
they will find that out, and I shall be put to the door. What will
happen then? You, I suppose, think you will be safe in your religious
house. And your poor mother, you will be able to mock yourself of her
then, _hein_!"
"Mother, you know I shall not leave you while you want me. I have not
spoken of becoming a nun since father died, have I?"
"Your father!" exclaimed Madame Querterot with emotion. "Your father was
a poltroon. No sooner did I need his assistance than he deserted me!"
"Mother!" cried Julie, and there was that in her tone which made Madame
Querterot's lamentations die away into inaudible mumblings.
The girl did not say any more, but went on quietly with her sewing, till
after a while her mother rose to go upstairs.
At the door she paused.
"Bert is coming to supper," she said over her shoulder. "You have not
forgotten that it is to-night we go with him to the theatre? He will be
here soon, I should think," and she went on up the narrow stairs without
waiting for an answer.
Half an hour later, when they sat down to a cold meal, which Julie had
carefully prepared--for Madame Querterot was particularly fond of eating
and had seen that her daughter early acquired the principles of good
cookery--they had been joined by the guest to whom she had alluded.
This was a young man of anæmic aspect, with fair hair that lay rather
untidily across a high, narrow forehead. His face, which was pale and
thin, was not at first sight particularly prepossessing. The contour
of it was unusually pointed, though the chin receded so much that it
could hardly be said to exhibit a point. The mouth was weak and large
and always half open, so that the teeth, stained brown by the smoking of
continuous cigarettes, were not completely hidden when he talked under
the straggling little moustache, the end of which he had an unpleasant
habit of chewing. The nose was prominent and looked too large for the
rest of his face, the eyes, dark and deep-set, seemed to flash with
unsuspected fires when talk turned on a subject that interested him. It
was they that redeemed the whole man from total insignificance. They
were the eyes of an enthusiast, almost of a fanatic. He did not talk
much, but seemed content to devour the food set before him and to gaze
untiringly at Julie who sat opposite him at the small square table.
Julie was a very good-looking girl in her way, which was not at all
an English way, although the English language came more naturally to
her lips than her mother tongue. To tell the truth, she was not very
proficient in that, her mother and father having both found it easier,
after she began to go to school, to talk to her in broken English.
Indeed, after twenty years or so of residence in London that language
became as natural to them as their own tongue, and Madame Querterot's
French had by now grown quite as anglicised as that of many linguists
in her adopted country. She found, however, that many of her customers
preferred her to talk in broken English; they liked to feel that here
was some one come straight from the gay city to do their pleasure.
Her daughter inherited her mother's oval face and arched eyebrows, but
there the likeness ceased. Julie was tall while Madame Querterot was
short; she was dark, while her mother was fair, and of a fairness that
owed nothing to art. Julie had a straight, short nose and a little
rosebud of a mouth, her skin was dark but glowing with health, and the
brown eyes, set far apart under the low brow, had a wide-open look
of sorrowful surprise as if she found herself in a world that failed
continually to come up to her expectations. Bert, it was plain to see,
found all this very much to his liking, and was so taken up with the
contemplation of it that a great deal of Madame Querterot's conversation
fell unheeded on his ears, and his answers, when he made any, were for
the most part quite irrelevant.
Madame Querterot had by this time completely recovered her good temper,
or at all events displayed the amiability habitual to her in intercourse
with strangers. She prattled away about the weather, the letter she had
that day received from her relations in Paris, asked about Bert's work,
and showed, and possibly felt, great interest in his meagre replies.
Presently she began to talk about the occupation of her own day.
"There is an old lady whom I visit for the massage," she said, "who
would make you laugh to see. She is ugly, she is fat, she has the
complexion of a turkey! Yet there is no one so anxious as she to become
young again. Was she ever beautiful? I do not know; but it is certain
that she will not be so again. Every day I find her with a mirror in her
hand and every day as I leave her she takes it up again to see if there
is any improvement. For all I know she sits like that, gazing at her
unsympathetic reflection till the next day when I come once more."
Madame Querterot paused and took a draught of her lemonade.
"A little more sugar, Julie, my cherished, and it would be better
still," she said. "In this country sugar is less dear and you are
unnecessarily careful of it. If we were in France I would not say so;
there, there are _impôts_. But this, one must admit it, is the cheapest
place one can live in. That is why one finds here so many Jews. Bah! the
Jews! Why does one suffer them? In England as in France one sees nothing
else; but even more in England since l'affaire Dreyfus. There is one
lady to whom I go daily who would gladly live in France, I think, if it
had not become less disagreeable for her race here since that business.
But perhaps it is not only on that account that she stays here, now
that I reflect. She is not one of those who amuse themselves well in a
republic."
"How is that, mother?" asked Julie without much interest, while their
guest, for his part, merely grunted indifferently.
"She is more than a Royalist," said Madame Querterot; "she loves to see
a head which knows how it feels to wear a crown. She goes every day to
watch the Queen drive through the park. Mon Dieu! I think she lives only
for that. To-day a Prince passed below her window, and as chance had it
he looked up at her as he went. She was mad with joy; one would have
said it was the happiest hour of her existence. She said nothing, but
I have my eyes! And it is a woman who has everything to make her enjoy
life. She is not bad-looking, not at all bad-looking; for a Jewess, even
handsome; she is still young, and rich. Oh, but rich!"
Madame Querterot put down her knife and fork and raised both hands in
the air to convey the extent of the wealth enjoyed by the lucky Jewess.
For the first time Bert displayed some interest in the conversation, or
monologue, as one might more properly call it.
"It's disgraceful," he said, "it ought to be put a stop to. These
people! They suck the blood of the poor!"
"The Jews, yes; it is their _métier_," agreed Madame Querterot.
"I don't refer to the Jew especially. What I'm alluding to at the
present moment is all these useless rich folk. The drones of the hive,
as you may say. These bloated capitalists who occupy the land that ought
by rights to jolly well belong to the people. They'd better look out for
themselves, I can tell them. There's a day coming when society won't
stand it any longer. In other words, we're going to drive them out. Tax
them out of their very existence. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
Bert glared triumphantly round as he brought his hand down on the table
with a conclusive emphasis which made the glasses on the table jump
nervously.
"This Mrs. Vanderstein of whom I speak," resumed Madame Querterot
composedly, "has no land so far as I know. She has only a house in
London. But she is rich all the same. One sees it at each step. In the
house, what luxury! Such pictures! such furniture! such flowers! And
automobiles, and boxes at the opera! Such dresses! And above all, such
jewels! Oh, she is very rich, that one."
"It's all the same," declared Bert, "whether she spends her money on
land, or on clothes, or what not. The point I want to impress on you is
that she does spend it, and that while she's living on the fat of the
land the rest of us may starve!"
He helped himself as he spoke to another plateful of _oeufs à la neige_.
Julie watched him, the shadow of a smile playing about her mouth.
"Have you seen this lady's jewels, mother?" she asked. "I adore precious
stones."
"I have seen some of them," said her mother. "To-night her maid brought
to her a necklace and bracelets of diamonds, besides a coiffure and
rings of great beauty, no doubt without price. But she sent them away
again, saying that she would wear others. Those I did not see, but it
is certain that she has many, and all wonderful. Every day she wears
different ones and, constantly, a string of enormous pearls. Without
those last I have never seen her. They are as large as marbles and, to
tell the truth, not much more pretty, for my taste. When I tell you that
she employs a night watchman, whose sole duty is to patrol the house
every night, you will understand that the value of what it contains must
be large."
"That's just what these capitalists do," cried Bert excitedly. "They
lock away thousands of pounds like that when the money ought to be out
in the world paying just and equal wages. I should like to see it made
a criminal offence to wear jewellery."
"But what would happen to the people who make it?" asked Julie. "They
would all lose their means of earning a livelihood, is it not so? What
would the pearl fisher do, or those who dig precious stones out of
the earth? And the polishers and setters? Every industry has a host
depending on it for a demand for its labour."
"There would be less need for labour," said Bert more gently, as was
always the case when he spoke to her, "if the money was taken from the
capitalists and divided among the people."
"Still----" objected Julie again.
Madame Querterot, however, did not propose to listen to an argument on
the benefits to be expected from Socialism; she had frequently heard
all that Bert had to say on the subject, and it had bored her very
considerably. She pushed back her chair and stood up.
"It is half-past seven," she said, "we must put on our hats for the
theatre. It begins at nine, but we shall take twenty minutes getting
there, and I want to have good places. Come and get ready, Julie."