"Eh! well then, Monsieur Mutuel! What do I know, what can I say? I
assure you that he calls himself Monsieur The Englishman."
"Pardon. But I think it is impossible," said Monsieur Mutuel,--a
spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman in carpet shoes and a cloth
cap with a peaked shade, a loose blue frock-coat reaching to his heels, a
large limp white shirt-frill, and cravat to correspond,--that is to say,
white was the natural colour of his linen on Sundays, but it toned down
with the week.
"It is," repeated Monsieur Mutuel, his amiable old walnut-shell
countenance very walnut-shelly indeed as he smiled and blinked in the
bright morning sunlight,--"it is, my cherished Madame Bouclet, I think,
impossible!"
"Hey!" (with a little vexed cry and a great many tosses of her head.)
"But it is not impossible that you are a Pig!" retorted Madame Bouclet, a
compact little woman of thirty-five or so. "See then,--look there,--read!
'On the second floor Monsieur L'Anglais.' Is it not so?"
"It is so," said Monsieur Mutuel.
"Good. Continue your morning walk. Get out!" Madame Bouclet dismissed
him with a lively snap of her fingers.
The morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the brightest patch that the
sun made in the Grande Place of a dull old fortified French town. The
manner of his morning walk was with his hands crossed behind him; an
umbrella, in figure the express image of himself, always in one hand; a
snuffbox in the other. Thus, with the shuffling gait of the Elephant
(who really does deal with the very worst trousers-maker employed by the
Zoological world, and who appeared to have recommended him to Monsieur
Mutuel), the old gentleman sunned himself daily when sun was to be had--of
course, at the same time sunning a red ribbon at his button-hole; for was
he not an ancient Frenchman?
Being told by one of the angelic sex to continue his morning walk and get
out, Monsieur Mutuel laughed a walnut-shell laugh, pulled off his cap at
arm's length with the hand that contained his snuffbox, kept it off for a
considerable period after he had parted from Madame Bouclet, and
continued his morning walk and got out, like a man of gallantry as he
was.
The documentary evidence to which Madame Bouclet had referred Monsieur
Mutuel was the list of her lodgers, sweetly written forth by her own
Nephew and Bookkeeper, who held the pen of an Angel, and posted up at the
side of her gateway, for the information of the Police: "Au second, M.
L'Anglais, Proprietaire." On the second floor, Mr. The Englishman, man
of property. So it stood; nothing could be plainer.
Madame Bouclet now traced the line with her forefinger, as it were to
confirm and settle herself in her parting snap at Monsieur Mutuel, and so
placing her right hand on her hip with a defiant air, as if nothing
should ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled out into the Place to
glance up at the windows of Mr. The Englishman. That worthy happening to
be looking out of window at the moment, Madame Bouclet gave him a
graceful salutation with her head, looked to the right and looked to the
left to account to him for her being there, considered for a moment, like
one who accounted to herself for somebody she had expected not being
there, and reentered her own gateway. Madame Bouclet let all her house
giving on the Place in furnished flats or floors, and lived up the yard
behind in company with Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at billiards),
an inherited brewing business, several fowls, two carts, a nephew, a
little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine, a counting-house, four horses,
a married sister (with a share in the brewing business), the husband and
two children of the married sister, a parrot, a drum (performed on by the
little boy of the married sister), two billeted soldiers, a quantity of
pigeons, a fife (played by the nephew in a ravishing manner), several
domestics and supernumeraries, a perpetual flavour of coffee and soup, a
terrific range of artificial rocks and wooden precipices at least four
feet high, a small fountain, and half-a-dozen large sunflowers.
Now the Englishman, in taking his Appartement,--or, as one might say on
our side of the Channel, his set of chambers,--had given his name,
correct to the letter, LANGLEY. But as he had a British way of not
opening his mouth very wide on foreign soil, except at meals, the Brewery
had been able to make nothing of it but L'Anglais. So Mr. The Englishman
he had become and he remained.
"Never saw such a people!" muttered Mr. The Englishman, as he now looked
out of window. "Never did, in my life!"
This was true enough, for he had never before been out of his own
country,--a right little island, a tight little island, a bright little
island, a show-fight little island, and full of merit of all sorts; but
not the whole round world.
"These chaps," said Mr. The Englishman to himself, as his eye rolled over
the Place, sprinkled with military here and there, "are no more like
soldiers--" Nothing being sufficiently strong for the end of his
sentence, he left it unended.
This again (from the point of view of his experience) was strictly
correct; for though there was a great agglomeration of soldiers in the
town and neighbouring country, you might have held a grand Review and
Field-day of them every one, and looked in vain among them all for a
soldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a soldier lamed by his ill-
fitting shoes, or a soldier deprived of the use of his limbs by straps
and buttons, or a soldier elaborately forced to be self-helpless in all
the small affairs of life. A swarm of brisk, bright, active, bustling,
handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn cleverly at anything, from
a siege to soup, from great guns to needles and thread, from the
broadsword exercise to slicing an onion, from making war to making
omelets, was all you would have found.
What a swarm! From the Great Place under the eye of Mr. The Englishman,
where a few awkward squads from the last conscription were doing the
goose-step--some members of those squads still as to their bodies, in the
chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only military butterflies as to
their regimentally-clothed legs--from the Great Place, away outside the
fortifications, and away for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers
swarmed. All day long, upon the grass-grown ramparts of the town,
practising soldiers trumpeted and bugled; all day long, down in angles of
dry trenches, practising soldiers drummed and drummed. Every forenoon,
soldiers burst out of the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium-ground
hard by, and flew over the wooden horse, and hung on to flying ropes, and
dangled upside-down between parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden
platforms,--splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At
every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every
sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy dike,
soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall,
guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy
dike, the town was pretty well all soldiers.
What would the sleepy old town have been without the soldiers, seeing
that even with them it had so overslept itself as to have slept its
echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and bolts and chains all
rusty, and its ditches stagnant! From the days when VAUBAN engineered it
to that perplexing extent that to look at it was like being knocked on
the head with it, the stranger becoming stunned and stertorous under the
shock of its incomprehensibility,--from the days when VAUBAN made it the
express incorporation of every substantive and adjective in the art of
military engineering, and not only twisted you into it and twisted you
out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there,
in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way,
wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, pierced
wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifying dive under the
neighbouring country, and came to the surface three or four miles off,
blowing out incomprehensible mounds and batteries among the quiet crops
of chicory and beet-root,--from those days to these the town had been
asleep, and dust and rust and must had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and
Magazines, and grass had grown up in its silent streets.
On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped out of bed. On
market-days, some friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of
the Great Place, and instantly arose the liveliest booths and stalls, and
sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and huckstering
from many hundreds of tongues, and a pleasant, though peculiar, blending
of colours,--white caps, blue blouses, and green vegetables,--and at last
the Knight destined for the adventure seemed to have come in earnest, and
all the Vaubanois sprang up awake. And now, by long, low-lying avenues
of trees, jolting in white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-back, and in
tumbril and wagon, and cart and cabriolet, and afoot with barrow and
burden,--and along the dikes and ditches and canals, in little
peak-prowed country boats,--came peasant-men and women in flocks and
crowds, bringing articles for sale. And here you had boots and shoes,
and sweetmeats and stuffs to wear, and here (in the cool shade of the
Town-hall) you had milk and cream and butter and cheese, and here you had
fruits and onions and carrots, and all things needful for your soup, and
here you had poultry and flowers and protesting pigs, and here new
shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooks for your farming work, and here
huge mounds of bread, and here your unground grain in sacks, and here
your children's dolls, and here the cake-seller, announcing his wares by
beat and roll of drum. And hark! fanfaronade of trumpets, and here into
the Great Place, resplendent in an open carriage, with four gorgeously-
attired servitors up behind, playing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled
"the Daughter of a Physician" in massive golden chains and ear-rings, and
blue-feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by two immense umbrellas
of artificial roses, to dispense (from motives of philanthropy) that
small and pleasant dose which had cured so many thousands! Toothache,
earache, headache, heartache, stomach-ache, debility, nervousness, fits,
fainting, fever, ague, all equally cured by the small and pleasant dose
of the great Physician's great daughter! The process was this,--she, the
Daughter of a Physician, proprietress of the superb equipage you now
admired with its confirmatory blasts of trumpet, drum, and cymbal, told
you so: On the first day after taking the small and pleasant dose, you
would feel no particular influence beyond a most harmonious sensation of
indescribable and irresistible joy; on the second day you would be so
astonishingly better that you would think yourself changed into somebody
else; on the third day you would be entirely free from disorder, whatever
its nature and however long you had had it, and would seek out the
Physician's Daughter to throw yourself at her feet, kiss the hem of her
garment, and buy as many more of the small and pleasant doses as by the
sale of all your few effects you could obtain; but she would be
inaccessible,--gone for herbs to the Pyramids of Egypt,--and you would be
(though cured) reduced to despair! Thus would the Physician's Daughter
drive her trade (and briskly too), and thus would the buying and selling
and mingling of tongues and colours continue, until the changing
sunlight, leaving the Physician's Daughter in the shadow of high roofs,
admonished her to jolt out westward, with a departing effect of gleam and
glitter on the splendid equipage and brazen blast. And now the enchanter
struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place once more, and down
went the booths, the sittings and standings, and vanished the
merchandise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts, and
tumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet, except the slow
scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre horses clearing up the rubbish,
assisted by the sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than on non-market
days. While there was yet an hour or two to wane before the autumn
sunset, the loiterer outside town-gate and drawbridge, and postern and
double-ditch, would see the last white-hooded cart lessening in the
avenue of lengthening shadows of trees, or the last country boat, paddled
by the last market-woman on her way home, showing black upon the
reddening, long, low, narrow dike between him and the mill; and as the
paddle-parted scum and weed closed over the boat's track, he might be
comfortably sure that its sluggish rest would be troubled no more until
next market-day.
As it was not one of the Great Place's days for getting out of bed, when
Mr. The Englishman looked down at the young soldiers practising the goose-
step there, his mind was left at liberty to take a military turn.
"These fellows are billeted everywhere about," said he; "and to see them
lighting the people's fires, boiling the people's pots, minding the
people's babies, rocking the people's cradles, washing the people's
greens, and making themselves generally useful, in every sort of
unmilitary way, is most ridiculous! Never saw such a set of
fellows,--never did in my life!"
All perfectly true again. Was there not Private Valentine in that very
house, acting as sole housemaid, valet, cook, steward, and nurse, in the
family of his captain, Monsieur le Capitaine de la Cour,--cleaning the
floors, making the beds, doing the marketing, dressing the captain,
dressing the dinners, dressing the salads, and dressing the baby, all
with equal readiness? Or, to put him aside, he being in loyal attendance
on his Chief, was there not Private Hyppolite, billeted at the Perfumer's
two hundred yards off, who, when not on duty, volunteered to keep shop
while the fair Perfumeress stepped out to speak to a neighbour or so, and
laughingly sold soap with his war-sword girded on him? Was there not
Emile, billeted at the Clock-maker's, perpetually turning to of an
evening, with his coat off, winding up the stock? Was there not Eugene,
billeted at the Tinman's, cultivating, pipe in mouth, a garden four feet
square, for the Tinman, in the little court, behind the shop, and
extorting the fruits of the earth from the same, on his knees, with the
sweat of his brow? Not to multiply examples, was there not Baptiste,
billeted on the poor Water-carrier, at that very instant sitting on the
pavement in the sunlight, with his martial legs asunder, and one of the
Water-carrier's spare pails between them, which (to the delight and glory
of the heart of the Water-carrier coming across the Place from the
fountain, yoked and burdened) he was painting bright-green outside and
bright-red within? Or, to go no farther than the Barber's at the very
next door, was there not Corporal Theophile--
"No," said Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at the Barber's, "he is not
there at present. There's the child, though."
A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber's shop, looking
across the Place. A mere baby, one might call her, dressed in the close
white linen cap which small French country children wear (like the
children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue, that had no
shape except where it was tied round her little fat throat. So that,
being naturally short and round all over, she looked, behind, as if she
had been cut off at her natural waist, and had had her head neatly fitted
on it.
"There's the child, though."
To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing the eyes, the
eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened. But they seemed to
be looking so intently across the Place, that the Englishman looked in
the same direction.
"O!" said he presently. "I thought as much. The Corporal's there."
The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thought under
the middle size, but very neatly made,--a sunburnt Corporal with a brown
peaked beard,--faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of
instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss or awry about the
Corporal. A lithe and nimble Corporal, quite complete, from the
sparkling dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white
gaiters. The very image and presentment of a Corporal of his country's
army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest
line of his Bloomer trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of his
leg.
Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the Corporal
looked on (but the last-named at his men), until the drill ended a few
minutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried up directly, and
was gone. Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself, "Look here! By
George!" And the Corporal, dancing towards the Barber's with his arms
wide open, caught up the child, held her over his head in a flying
attitude, caught her down again, kissed her, and made off with her into
the Barber's house.
Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with his erring and disobedient
and disowned daughter, and there was a child in that case too. Had not
his daughter been a child, and had she not taken angel-flights above his
head as this child had flown above the Corporal's?
"He's a "--National Participled--"fool!" said the Englishman, and shut
his window.
But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the house of
Mercy, are not so easily closed as windows of glass and wood. They fly
open unexpectedly; they rattle in the night; they must be nailed up. Mr.
The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had not driven the nails quite
home. So he passed but a disturbed evening and a worse night.
By nature a good-tempered man? No; very little gentleness, confounding
the quality with weakness. Fierce and wrathful when crossed? Very, and
stupendously unreasonable. Moody? Exceedingly so. Vindictive? Well;
he had had scowling thoughts that he would formally curse his daughter,
as he had seen it done on the stage. But remembering that the real
Heaven is some paces removed from the mock one in the great chandelier of
the Theatre, he had given that up.
And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated daughter for the rest
of his life. And here he was.
At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Mr. The
Englishman took it extremely ill that Corporal Theophile should be so
devoted to little Bebelle, the child at the Barber's shop. In an unlucky
moment he had chanced to say to himself, "Why, confound the fellow, he is
not her father!" There was a sharp sting in the speech which ran into
him suddenly, and put him in a worse mood. So he had National
Participled the unconscious Corporal with most hearty emphasis, and had
made up his mind to think no more about such a mountebank.
But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to be dismissed. If he had
known the most delicate fibres of the Englishman's mind, instead of
knowing nothing on earth about him, and if he had been the most obstinate
Corporal in the Grand Army of France, instead of being the most obliging,
he could not have planted himself with more determined immovability plump
in the midst of all the Englishman's thoughts. Not only so, but he
seemed to be always in his view. Mr. The Englishman had but to look out
of window, to look upon the Corporal with little Bebelle. He had but to
go for a walk, and there was the Corporal walking with Bebelle. He had
but to come home again, disgusted, and the Corporal and Bebelle were at
home before him. If he looked out at his back windows early in the
morning, the Corporal was in the Barber's back yard, washing and dressing
and brushing Bebelle. If he took refuge at his front windows, the
Corporal brought his breakfast out into the Place, and shared it there
with Bebelle. Always Corporal and always Bebelle. Never Corporal
without Bebelle. Never Bebelle without Corporal.
Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in the French language as
a means of oral communication, though he read it very well. It is with
languages as with people,--when you only know them by sight, you are apt
to mistake them; you must be on speaking terms before you can be said to
have established an acquaintance.
For this reason, Mr. The Englishman had to gird up his loins considerably
before he could bring himself to the point of exchanging ideas with
Madame Bouclet on the subject of this Corporal and this Bebelle. But
Madame Bouclet looking in apologetically one morning to remark, that, O
Heaven! she was in a state of desolation because the lamp-maker had not
sent home that lamp confided to him to repair, but that truly he was a
lamp-maker against whom the whole world shrieked out, Mr. The Englishman
seized the occasion.
"Madame, that baby--"
"Pardon, monsieur. That lamp."
"No, no, that little girl."
"But, pardon!" said Madame Bonclet, angling for a clew, "one cannot light
a little girl, or send her to be repaired?"
"The little girl--at the house of the barber."
"Ah-h-h!" cried Madame Bouclet, suddenly catching the idea with her
delicate little line and rod. "Little Bebelle? Yes, yes, yes! And her
friend the Corporal? Yes, yes, yes, yes! So genteel of him,--is it
not?"
"He is not--?"
"Not at all; not at all! He is not one of her relations. Not at all!"
"Why, then, he--"
"Perfectly!" cried Madame Bouclet, "you are right, monsieur. It is so
genteel of him. The less relation, the more genteel. As you say."
"Is she--?"
"The child of the barber?" Madame Bouclet whisked up her skilful little
line and rod again. "Not at all, not at all! She is the child of--in a
word, of no one."
"The wife of the barber, then--?"
"Indubitably. As you say. The wife of the barber receives a small
stipend to take care of her. So much by the month. Eh, then! It is
without doubt very little, for we are all poor here."
"You are not poor, madame."
"As to my lodgers," replied Madame Bouclet, with a smiling and a gracious
bend of her head, "no. As to all things else, so-so."
"You flatter me, madame."
"Monsieur, it is you who flatter me in living here."
Certain fishy gasps on Mr. The Englishman's part, denoting that he was
about to resume his subject under difficulties, Madame Bouclet observed
him closely, and whisked up her delicate line and rod again with
triumphant success.
"O no, monsieur, certainly not. The wife of the barber is not cruel to
the poor child, but she is careless. Her health is delicate, and she
sits all day, looking out at window. Consequently, when the Corporal
first came, the poor little Bebelle was much neglected."
"It is a curious--" began Mr. The Englishman.
"Name? That Bebelle? Again you are right, monsieur. But it is a
playful name for Gabrielle."
"And so the child is a mere fancy of the Corporal's?" said Mr. The
Englishman, in a gruffly disparaging tone of voice.
"Eh, well!" returned Madame Bouclet, with a pleading shrug: "one must
love something. Human nature is weak."
("Devilish weak," muttered the Englishman, in his own language.)
"And the Corporal," pursued Madame Bouclet, "being billeted at the
barber's,--where he will probably remain a long time, for he is attached
to the General,--and finding the poor unowned child in need of being
loved, and finding himself in need of loving,--why, there you have it
all, you see!"
Mr. The Englishman accepted this interpretation of the matter with an
indifferent grace, and observed to himself, in an injured manner, when he
was again alone: "I shouldn't mind it so much, if these people were not
such a"--National Participled--"sentimental people!"
There was a Cemetery outside the town, and it happened ill for the
reputation of the Vaubanois, in this sentimental connection, that he took
a walk there that same afternoon. To be sure there were some wonderful
things in it (from the Englishman's point of view), and of a certainty in
all Britain you would have found nothing like it. Not to mention the
fanciful flourishes of hearts and crosses in wood and iron, that were
planted all over the place, making it look very like a Firework-ground,
where a most splendid pyrotechnic display might be expected after dark,
there were so many wreaths upon the graves, embroidered, as it might be,
"To my mother," "To my daughter," "To my father," "To my brother," "To my
sister," "To my friend," and those many wreaths were in so many stages of
elaboration and decay, from the wreath of yesterday, all fresh colour and
bright beads, to the wreath of last year, a poor mouldering wisp of
straw! There were so many little gardens and grottos made upon graves,
in so many tastes, with plants and shells and plaster figures and
porcelain pitchers, and so many odds and ends! There were so many
tributes of remembrance hanging up, not to be discriminated by the
closest inspection from little round waiters, whereon were depicted in
glowing lines either a lady or a gentleman with a white
pocket-handkerchief out of all proportion, leaning, in a state of the
most faultless mourning and most profound affliction, on the most
architectural and gorgeous urn! There were so many surviving wives who
had put their names on the tombs of their deceased husbands, with a blank
for the date of their own departure from this weary world; and there were
so many surviving husbands who had rendered the same homage to their
deceased wives; and out of the number there must have been so many who
had long ago married again! In fine, there was so much in the place that
would have seemed more frippery to a stranger, save for the consideration
that the lightest paper flower that lay upon the poorest heap of earth
was never touched by a rude hand, but perished there, a sacred thing!
"Nothing of the solemnity of Death here," Mr. The Englishman had been
going to say, when this last consideration touched him with a mild
appeal, and on the whole he walked out without saying it. "But these
people are," he insisted, by way of compensation, when he was well
outside the gate, "they are so"--Participled--"sentimental!"
His way back lay by the military gymnasium-ground. And there he passed
the Corporal glibly instructing young soldiers how to swing themselves
over rapid and deep watercourses on their way to Glory, by means of a
rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, and flying a hundred
feet or two, as an encouragement to them to begin. And there he also
passed, perched on a crowning eminence (probably the Corporal's careful
hands), the small Bebelle, with her round eyes wide open, surveying the
proceeding like a wondering sort of blue and white bird.
"If that child was to die," this was his reflection as he turned his back
and went his way,--"and it would almost serve the fellow right for making
such a fool of himself,--I suppose we should have him sticking up a
wreath and a waiter in that fantastic burying-ground."
Nevertheless, after another early morning or two of looking out of
window, he strolled down into the Place, when the Corporal and Bebelle
were walking there, and touching his hat to the Corporal (an immense
achievement), wished him Good-day.
"Good-day, monsieur."
"This is a rather pretty child you have here," said Mr. The Englishman,
taking her chin in his hand, and looking down into her astonished blue
eyes.
"Monsieur, she is a very pretty child," returned the Corporal, with a
stress on his polite correction of the phrase.
"And good?" said the Englishman.
"And very good. Poor little thing!"
"Hah!" The Englishman stooped down and patted her cheek, not without
awkwardness, as if he were going too far in his conciliation. "And what
is this medal round your neck, my little one?"
Bebelle having no other reply on her lips than her chubby right fist, the
Corporal offered his services as interpreter.
"Monsieur demands, what is this, Bebelle?"
"It is the Holy Virgin," said Bebelle.
"And who gave it you?" asked the Englishman.
"Theophile."
"And who is Theophile?"
Bebelle broke into a laugh, laughed merrily and heartily, clapped her
chubby hands, and beat her little feet on the stone pavement of the
Place.
"He doesn't know Theophile! Why, he doesn't know any one! He doesn't
know anything!" Then, sensible of a small solecism in her manners,
Bebelle twisted her right hand in a leg of the Corporal's Bloomer
trousers, and, laying her cheek against the place, kissed it.
"Monsieur Theophile, I believe?" said the Englishman to the Corporal.
"It is I, monsieur."
"Permit me." Mr. The Englishman shook him heartily by the hand and
turned away. But he took it mighty ill that old Monsieur Mutuel in his
patch of sunlight, upon whom he came as he turned, should pull off his
cap to him with a look of pleased approval. And he muttered, in his own
tongue, as he returned the salutation, "Well, walnut-shell! And what
business is it of _yours_?"
Mr. The Englishman went on for many weeks passing but disturbed evenings
and worse nights, and constantly experiencing that those aforesaid
windows in the houses of Memory and Mercy rattled after dark, and that he
had very imperfectly nailed them up. Likewise, he went on for many weeks
daily improving the acquaintance of the Corporal and Bebelle. That is to
say, he took Bebelle by the chin, and the Corporal by the hand, and
offered Bebelle sous and the Corporal cigars, and even got the length of
changing pipes with the Corporal and kissing Bebelle. But he did it all
in a shamefaced way, and always took it extremely ill that Monsieur
Mutuel in his patch of sunlight should note what he did. Whenever that
seemed to be the case, he always growled in his own tongue, "There you
are again, walnut-shell! What business is it of yours?"
In a word, it had become the occupation of Mr. The Englishman's life to
look after the Corporal and little Bebelle, and to resent old Monsieur
Mutuel's looking after _him_. An occupation only varied by a fire in the
town one windy night, and much passing of water-buckets from hand to hand
(in which the Englishman rendered good service), and much beating of
drums,--when all of a sudden the Corporal disappeared.
Next, all of a sudden, Bebelle disappeared.
She had been visible a few days later than the Corporal,--sadly
deteriorated as to washing and brushing,--but she had not spoken when
addressed by Mr. The Englishman, and had looked scared and had run away.
And now it would seem that she had run away for good. And there lay the
Great Place under the windows, bare and barren.
In his shamefaced and constrained way, Mr. The Englishman asked no
question of any one, but watched from his front windows and watched from
his back windows, and lingered about the Place, and peeped in at the
Barber's shop, and did all this and much more with a whistling and tune-
humming pretence of not missing anything, until one afternoon when
Monsieur Mutuel's patch of sunlight was in shadow, and when, according to
all rule and precedent, he had no right whatever to bring his red ribbon
out of doors, behold here he was, advancing with his cap already in his
hand twelve paces off!
Mr. The Englishman had got as far into his usual objurgation as, "What bu-
si--" when he checked himself.
"Ah, it is sad, it is sad! Helas, it is unhappy, it is sad!" Thus old
Monsieur Mutuel, shaking his gray head.
"What busin--at least, I would say, what do you mean, Monsieur Mutuel?"
"Our Corporal. Helas, our dear Corporal!"
"What has happened to him?"
"You have not heard?"
"No."
"At the fire. But he was so brave, so ready. Ah, too brave, too ready!"
"May the Devil carry you away!" the Englishman broke in impatiently; "I
beg your pardon,--I mean me,--I am not accustomed to speak French,--go
on, will you?"
"And a falling beam--"
"Good God!" exclaimed the Englishman. "It was a private soldier who was
killed?"
"No. A Corporal, the same Corporal, our dear Corporal. Beloved by all
his comrades. The funeral ceremony was touching,--penetrating. Monsieur
The Englishman, your eyes fill with tears."
"What bu-si--"
"Monsieur The Englishman, I honour those emotions. I salute you with
profound respect. I will not obtrude myself upon your noble heart."
Monsieur Mutuel,--a gentleman in every thread of his cloudy linen, under
whose wrinkled hand every grain in the quarter of an ounce of poor snuff
in his poor little tin box became a gentleman's property,--Monsieur
Mutuel passed on, with his cap in his hand.
"I little thought," said the Englishman, after walking for several
minutes, and more than once blowing his nose, "when I was looking round
that cemetery--I'll go there!"
Straight he went there, and when he came within the gate he paused,
considering whether he should ask at the lodge for some direction to the
grave. But he was less than ever in a mood for asking questions, and he
thought, "I shall see something on it to know it by."
In search of the Corporal's grave he went softly on, up this walk and
down that, peering in, among the crosses and hearts and columns and
obelisks and tombstones, for a recently disturbed spot. It troubled him
now to think how many dead there were in the cemetery,--he had not
thought them a tenth part so numerous before,--and after he had walked
and sought for some time, he said to himself, as he struck down a new
vista of tombs, "I might suppose that every one was dead but I."
Not every one. A live child was lying on the ground asleep. Truly he
had found something on the Corporal's grave to know it by, and the
something was Bebelle.
With such a loving will had the dead soldier's comrades worked at his
resting-place, that it was already a neat garden. On the green turf of
the garden Bebelle lay sleeping, with her cheek touching it. A plain,
unpainted little wooden Cross was planted in the turf, and her short arm
embraced this little Cross, as it had many a time embraced the Corporal's
neck. They had put a tiny flag (the flag of France) at his head, and a
laurel garland.
Mr. The Englishman took off his hat, and stood for a while silent. Then,
covering his head again, he bent down on one knee, and softly roused the
child.
"Bebelle! My little one!"
Opening her eyes, on which the tears were still wet, Bebelle was at first
frightened; but seeing who it was, she suffered him to take her in his
arms, looking steadfastly at him.
"You must not lie here, my little one. You must come with me."
"No, no. I can't leave Theophile. I want the good dear Theophile."
"We will go and seek him, Bebelle. We will go and look for him in
England. We will go and look for him at my daughter's, Bebelle."
"Shall we find him there?"
"We shall find the best part of him there. Come with me, poor forlorn
little one. Heaven is my witness," said the Englishman, in a low voice,
as, before he rose, he touched the turf above the gentle Corporal's
breast, "that I thankfully accept this trust!"
It was a long way for the child to have come unaided. She was soon
asleep again, with her embrace transferred to the Englishman's neck. He
looked at her worn shoes, and her galled feet, and her tired face, and
believed that she had come there every day.
He was leaving the grave with the slumbering Bebelle in his arms, when he
stopped, looked wistfully down at it, and looked wistfully at the other
graves around. "It is the innocent custom of the people," said Mr. The
Englishman, with hesitation. "I think I should like to do it. No one
sees."
Careful not to wake Bebelle as he went, he repaired to the lodge where
such little tokens of remembrance were sold, and bought two wreaths. One,
blue and white and glistening silver, "To my friend;" one of a soberer
red and black and yellow, "To my friend." With these he went back to the
grave, and so down on one knee again. Touching the child's lips with the
brighter wreath, he guided her hand to hang it on the Cross; then hung
his own wreath there. After all, the wreaths were not far out of keeping
with the little garden. To my friend. To my friend.
Mr. The Englishman took it very ill when he looked round a street corner
into the Great Place, carrying Bebelle in his arms, that old Mutuel
should be there airing his red ribbon. He took a world of pains to dodge
the worthy Mutuel, and devoted a surprising amount of time and trouble to
skulking into his own lodging like a man pursued by Justice. Safely
arrived there at last, he made Bebelle's toilet with as accurate a
remembrance as he could bring to bear upon that work of the way in which
he had often seen the poor Corporal make it, and having given her to eat
and drink, laid her down on his own bed. Then he slipped out into the
barber's shop, and after a brief interview with the barber's wife, and a
brief recourse to his purse and card-case, came back again with the whole
of Bebelle's personal property in such a very little bundle that it was
quite lost under his arm.
As it was irreconcilable with his whole course and character that he
should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments or
congratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting his two
portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to
comporting himself in every particular as if he were going to run
away,--except, indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and
prepared a letter to leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum
of money in lieu of notice. A railway train would come through at
midnight, and by that train he would take away Bebelle to look for
Theophile in England and at his forgiven daughter's.
At midnight, on a moonlight night, Mr. The Englishman came creeping forth
like a harmless assassin, with Bebelle on his breast instead of a dagger.
Quiet the Great Place, and quiet the never-stirring streets; closed the
cafes; huddled together motionless their billiard-balls; drowsy the guard
or sentinel on duty here and there; lulled for the time, by sleep, even
the insatiate appetite of the Office of Town-dues.
Mr. The Englishman left the Place behind, and left the streets behind,
and left the civilian-inhabited town behind, and descended down among the
military works of Vauban, hemming all in. As the shadow of the first
heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind, as the shadow
of the second heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind,
as his hollow tramp over the first drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler
sound, as his hollow tramp over the second drawbridge was succeeded by a
gentler sound, as he overcame the stagnant ditches one by one, and passed
out where the flowing waters were and where the moonlight, so the dark
shades and the hollow sounds and the unwholesomely locked currents of his
soul were vanquished and set free. See to it, Vaubans of your own
hearts, who gird them in with triple walls and ditches, and with bolt and
chain and bar and lifted bridge,--raze those fortifications, and lay them
level with the all-absorbing dust, before the night cometh when no hand
can work!
All went prosperously, and he got into an empty carriage in the train,
where he could lay Bebelle on the seat over against him, as on a couch,
and cover her from head to foot with his mantle. He had just drawn
himself up from perfecting this arrangement, and had just leaned back in
his own seat contemplating it with great satisfaction, when he became
aware of a curious appearance at the open carriage window,--a ghostly
little tin box floating up in the moonlight, and hovering there.
He leaned forward, and put out his head. Down among the rails and wheels
and ashes, Monsieur Mutuel, red ribbon and all!
"Excuse me, Monsieur The Englishman," said Monsieur Mutuel, holding up
his box at arm's length, the carriage being so high and he so low; "but I
shall reverence the little box for ever, if your so generous hand will
take a pinch from it at parting."
Mr. The Englishman reached out of the window before complying,
and--without asking the old fellow what business it was of his--shook
hands and said, "Adieu! God bless you!"
"And, Mr. The Englishman, God bless _you_!" cried Madame Bouclet, who was
also there among the rails and wheels and ashes. "And God will bless you
in the happiness of the protected child now with you. And God will bless
you in your own child at home. And God will bless you in your own
remembrances. And this from me!"
He had barely time to catch a bouquet from her hand, when the train was
flying through the night. Round the paper that enfolded it was bravely
written (doubtless by the nephew who held the pen of an Angel), "Homage
to the friend of the friendless."
"Not bad people, Bebelle!" said Mr. The Englishman, softly drawing the
mantle a little from her sleeping face, that he might kiss it, "though
they are so--"
Too "sentimental" himself at the moment to be able to get out that word,
he added nothing but a sob, and travelled for some miles, through the
moonlight, with his hand before his eyes.