THE WEDDING-PARTY.
It was a summer morning. The pedler and his comrade were up before
daybreak. One was sweeping and dusting, with as little noise as
possible, careful not to disturb his companion, who was established at
the open window. The sky was the cloudless one of June, pale blue with
a faint tinge of rose still lingering in the east, that could be seen
between the chimneys. In front of Jack was a zinc roof, which, when the
sun was in mid-heaven, became a terrible mirror. At this moment it
reflected faintly the tints of the sky, so that the tall chimneys
looked like the masts of a vessel floating on a glittering sea. Below
was heard the noise from the poultry owned by the various inhabitants
of the Faubourg. Suddenly a cry was heard: “Madame Jacob! Madame
Mathieu! Here is your bread.”
It was four o’clock. The labors of the day had begun. The woman whose
daily business it was to supply that quarter with bread from the
baker’s had begun her rounds. Her basket was filled with loaves of all
sizes, sweet-smelling and warm. She carries them all through the
corridors, placing them at the corners of the various doors; her shrill
voice aroused the sleepers; doors opened and shut; childish voices
uttered cries of joy, and little bare feet pattered to meet the good
woman, and returned hugging a loaf as big as themselves, with that
peculiar gesture that you see in the poor people who come out of the
bake-shops, and which shows the thoughtful observer what that
hard-earned bread signifies to them.
All the world is now astir; windows are thrown open, even those where
the lamps have burned the greater part of the night. At one sits a
sad-faced woman, at a sewing-machine, aided by a little girl, who hands
her the several pieces of her work. At another a young girl, with hair
already neatly braided, is carefully cutting a slice of bread for her
slender breakfast, watching that no crumb shall fall on the floor she
swept at daybreak. Further on is a window shaded by a large red curtain
to keep off the reflection from the zinc roof. All these rooms open on
the other side into a dark and ugly house of enormous size. But the
student heeds nothing but his work. One sound only depresses him at
times, and that is the voice of an old woman, who says every morning,
before the noises of the street have begun, “How happy people ought to
be who can go to the country on a day like this!” To whom does the poor
woman utter these words, day after day? To the whole world, to herself,
or only to the canary, whose cage, covered with fresh leaves, she hangs
on the shutters? Perhaps she is talking to her flowers. Jack never
knew, but he is much of her opinion, and would gladly echo her words;
for his first waking thoughts turn toward a tranquil village street,
toward a little green door, Jack has just reached this point in his
reverie when a rustle of silk is heard, and the handle of his door
rattles.
“Turn to the right,” said Bélisaire, who was making the coffee.
The handle is still aimlessly rattled. Bélisaire, with the coffee-pot
in his hand, impatiently throws it open, and Charlotte rushes in.
Bélisaire, stupefied at this inundation of flounces, feathers, and
laces, bows again and again, while Jack’s mother, who does not
recognize him, excuses herself, and retreats toward the door.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said; “I made a mistake.”
At the sound of her voice Jack rises from his chair in astonishment
“Mother!” he cried.
She ran to him and took refuge in his arms.
“Save me, my child, save me! That man, for whom I have sacrificed
everything,—my life and that of my child,—has beaten me cruelly. This
morning, when he came in after two days’ absence, I ventured to make
some observation; I thought I had a right to speak. He flew into a
frightful passion, and—”
The end of her sentence was lost in a torrent of tears and in
convulsive sobs. Bélisaire had retired at her first words, and
discreetly closed the door after him. Jack looks at his mother, full of
terror and pity. How pale and how changed she is! In the clear light of
the young day the marks of time are clearly visible on her face, and
the gray hairs, that she has not taken the trouble to conceal, shine
like silver on her blue-veined temples. Without any attempt at
controlling her emotion, she speaks without restraint, pouring forth
all her wrongs.
“How I have suffered, Jack! He passes his life now at the cafés and in
dissipation. Did you know that, when he went to Indret with that money,
I was there in the village, and crazy to see you? He reproaches me with
the bread you ate under his roof, and yet—yes, I will tell you what I
never meant you to know—I had ten thousand francs of yours that were
given to me for you exclusively. Well, D’Argenton put them into his
Review; I know that he meant to pay you large interest, but the ten
thousand francs have been swallowed up with all the others, and when I
asked him if he did not intend to account to you for them, do you know
what he did? He drew up a long bill of all that he has paid for you.
Your board at Etiolles, that amounts to fifteen thousand francs. But he
does not ask you to pay the difference; is not that very generous?” and
Charlotte laughed sarcastically. “I tell you I have borne everything,”
she continued,—“the rages he has fallen into on your account, and the
mean way in which he has talked with his friends of the affair at
Indret; as if your innocence had never been fully established!
“And then to leave me in ignorance of his where-abouts, to spend his
time with some countess in the Faubourg St. Germaine,—for those women
are all crazy about him,—and then to receive my reproaches with such
disdain, and finally to strike me! Me, Ida de Barancy! This was too
much. I dressed, and put on my hat, and then I went to him. I said,
‘Look at me, M. d’Argenton; look at me well; it is the last time that
you will see me; I am going to my child.’ And then I came away.”
Jack had listened in silence to these revelations, growing paler and
paler, and so filled with shame for the woman who narrated them that he
could not look at her. When she had finished, he took her hand gently,
and with much sweetness, but also with much solemnity, he said,—
“I thank you for having come to me, dear mother. Only one thing was
lacking to complete my happiness, and that was your presence. Now take
care! I shall never allow you to leave me.”
“Leave you! No, Jack; we will always live together—we two. You know I
told you that the day would come when I should need you. It has come
now.”
Under her son’s caresses she became tranquillized. There came an
occasional sob, like a child who has wept for a long time.
“You see,” she said, “how happy we may be. I owe you much care and
tenderness. I feel now that I can breathe freely. Your room is bare and
small, but it seems to me like Paradise itself.”
This brief summary of the apartment regarded by Bélisaire as so
magnificent, disturbed Jack somewhat as to the future; but he had no
time now for discussions; he had but half an hour before he must leave,
and he must decide at once on something definite. He must consult
Bélisaire, whom he heard patiently pacing the corridor, and who would
have waited until nightfall without once knocking to see if the
interview was over.
“Bélisaire, my mother has come to live with me; how shall we manage?”
Bélisaire started as he thought, “And now the marriage must be
postponed, for Jack will not be one of our little ménage!”
But he concealed his disappointment, and exerted himself to suggest
some plan that would relieve his friend of present embarrassment. It
was decided finally that he should relinquish the room to Jack and his
mother and find for himself a closet to sleep in, depositing his stock
of hats and his furniture with Madame Weber.
Jack presented his friend to Bélisaire, who remembered very well the
fair lady at Aulnettes, and at once placed himself for the day at the
service of Ida de Barancy; for “Charlotte” was no more heard of. A bed
must be purchased, a couple of chairs, and a dressing-bureau. Jack took
from the drawer where he kept his savings three or four gold pieces
which he gave his mother.
“You know,” he said, “that if marketing is disagreeable to you, good
Madame Weber will attend to the dinners.”
“Not at all; Bélisaire will simply tell me where to go. I intend to do
everything for you; you will see the nice little dinner I shall have
ready for you when you come back to-night.”
She had laid aside her shawl, rolled up her sleeves, and was all ready
to begin her work. Jack, delighted to see her so energetic, embraced
her with his whole heart, and left his room in a very joyous frame of
mind. With what courage he toiled all day! The present unfortunate
career and hopeless future of his mother had troubled him for some
time, and marred his joys and his hopes. To what depth of degradation
would D’Argenton compel her to sink! To what end was she destined! Now
all was changed. Ida, tenderly protected by his filial love, would
become worthy of her whom she would some day call “my daughter.”
It seemed to Jack, moreover, that this event in some way diminished the
distance between Cécile and himself, and he smiled to himself as he
thought of it. But after his work, as he drew near his home, he was
seized by a panic. Should he find his mother there? He knew with what
promptitude Ida gave wings to her fancies and caprices, and he feared
lest she had felt the temptation to re-tie the knot so hastily broken.
But on the staircase this dread vanished. Above all the noises of the
house he heard a fresh, clear voice singing like a lark. Jack stood on
the threshold in mute amazement. Thoroughly freshened and cleaned, with
Bélisaire’s goods gone, and with the addition of a pretty bed and
dainty dressing-bureau, the room looked like a different place. There
were flowers on the chimney, and the table was spread with a white
cloth, on which stood a tempting-looking pie and a bottle of wine. Ida,
in an embroidered skirt and loose sack, a little cap mounted on the top
of her puffs, hardly looked like herself.
“Well!” she said, running to meet him; “and what do you think of it!”
“It is altogether charming. And how quick you have been!”
“Yes; Bélisaire helped me, and his nice widow also. I have invited them
to dine with us.”
“But what will you do for dishes?”
“You will see. I have bought a few, and our neighbors on the other side
have lent me some. They are very obliging also.”
Jack, who had never thought these people particularly complaisant,
opened his eyes wide.
“But this is not all. I went to buy this pie at a place where they sell
them fifteen cents less than anywhere else. It was so far, however,
that I had to take a carriage to return.”
This was thoroughly characteristic. A carriage at two francs to save
fifteen cents! She evidently knew where the best things were to be
found.
The bread came from the Vienna bakery, and the coffee and dessert from
the _Palais Royale_. Jack listened with a sinking heart. She saw that
something was wrong.
“Have I spent too much?” she asked.
“No, I think not,—for one occasion,” he answered, with same hesitation.
“But I have not been extravagant. Look here,” she said, and she showed
him a long green book; “in this I mean to keep my accounts. I will show
my entries to you after dinner.”
Bélisaire and Madame Weber with her child now entered the room. It was
truly delicious to see the airs of condescension with which Ida
received them; but her manner was withal so kind that they were soon
entirely at their ease.
Bélisaire was somewhat out of spirits, for he saw that his marriage
must be indefinitely postponed, as he had lost his “comrade.” Ah, one
may well compare the events of this world to the see-saws arranged by
children, which lifts one of the players, while the other at the same
time feels all the hardness of the earth below. Jack mounted toward the
light, while his companion descended toward the implacable reality. To
begin with, the person called Bélisaire—who should in reality have been
named Resignation, Devotion, or Patience—was now obliged to relinquish
his pleasant room and sleep in a closet, the only place on that floor;
not for worlds would he have gone farther from Madame Weber.
Their guests gone, and Jack and his mother alone, she was astonished to
see him bring out a pile of books.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I am going to study.” And he then told her of the double life he led;
of his hopes, and the reward that was held out to him at the end. Until
then he had never confided them to her, fearing that she would inform
D’Argenton, whom he utterly distrusted, and he feared that in some way
his happiness would be compromised. But now that his mother belonged to
him alone, he could speak to her of Cécile and of his supreme joy. Jack
talked with enthusiasm of his love, but soon saw that his mother did
not understand him. She had a certain amount of sentiment, but love had
not the same signification for her that it had for him. She listened to
him with the same interest that she would have felt in the third act at
the _Gymnase_, when the _Ingenue_ in a white dress, with rose-colored
ribbons, listened to the declaration of a lover with frizzed hair. She
was pleased with the spectacle as presented by her son, and said two or
three times, “How nice! how very nice! It makes me think of Paul and
Virginia!”
Fortunately, lovers, when speaking of their passion, listen to the
echoes of their words in their own hearts, and Jack, thus absorbed,
heard none of the commonplace comments of his mother.
Jack had been living a week in this way when, one evening, Bélisaire
came to meet him with a radiant face. “We are to be married at once!
Madame Weber has found a ‘comrade.’”
Jack, who had been the unintentional cause of his friend’s
disappointment, was equally well pleased. This pleasure, however, did
not last; for, on seeing “the comrade,” he received a most unpleasant
impression. The man was tall and powerfully built, but the expression
of his face was far from agreeable.
The great day arrived at last. Among the middle classes, a day is
generally given to the civil marriage, another to the wedding at the
church; but the people to whom time is money cannot afford this. So
they generally take Saturday for the two ceremonies.
Bélisaire’s wedding, therefore, occurred on that day, and was really
one of the most imposing of the many processions they met on their way
to the municipality. Although the white dress of the bride was missing,
Madame Weber, in her quality of widow, wore a dress of brilliant blue
of that bright indigo shade so dear to persons who like solid colors; a
many-hued shawl was carefully folded on her arm, and a superb cap,
ornamented with ribbons and flowers, displayed her beaming peasant
face. She walked by the side of Bélisaire’s father, a little dried-up
old man, with a hooked nose and abrupt movements, and a perpetual cough
that his new daughter-in-law endeavored to soothe by rubbing his back
with considerable violence. These repeated frictions somewhat disturbed
the dignity of the wedding procession.
Bélisaire came next, giving his arm to his sister, whose nose was as
hooked as her father’s. Bélisaire himself looked almost handsome; he
led by one hand Madame Weber’s little child. Then came a crowd of
relatives and friends, and finally Jack, Madame de Barancy being
unwilling to do more than honor the wedding-dinner with her presence.
This repast was to take place at Vincennes.
When the train that brought the party reached the restaurant, the room
engaged by Bélisaire was still occupied. This gave them time to look at
the lake and to amuse themselves with examining the crowd of
merrymakers. They were dancing and singing, playing blind-man’s-buff
and innumerable other games; under the trees a girl was mending the
flounces of a bride’s dress. O, those white dresses! With what joy
those girls let them drag over the lawn, imagining themselves for that
one occasion women of fashion. It is precisely this illusion that the
people seek in their hours of amusement: a pretence of riches, a
momentary semblance of the envied and happy of this earth.
Bélisaire’s party were too hungry to be gay, and they hailed with joy
the announcement that dinner was ready at last. The table was laid in
one of those large rooms whose walls were frescoed in faded colors, and
whose size was apparently increased by innumerable mirrors. At each end
of the table was a huge bouquet of artificial orange blossoms, a
centrepiece of pink and white sugar, and ornaments of the same, which
had officiated at many a wedding-dinner in the previous six months.
They took their seats in solemn silence, though Madame de Barancy had
not yet arrived.
The guests were somewhat intimidated by the black-coated waiters, who
disdainfully looked at these poor people who were dining at a dollar
per head, a sum which each one of the guests thought of with respect,
and envied Belisaire who could afford such an extravagant
entertainment. The waiters were, however, filled with profound
contempt, which they expressed by winks at each other, invisible
however to the guests.
Belisaire had just at his side one of these gentlemen, who filled him
with holy horror; another, opposite behind his wife’s chair, watched
him so disagreeably that the good man scarcely dared lift his eyes from
the _carte_,—on which, among familiar words like ducks, chickens, and
beans, appeared the well-known names of generals, towns, and
battles—Marengo, Richelieu, and so on. Bélisaire, like the others, was
stupefied, the more so when two plates of soup were presented with the
question, “Bisque, or Purée de Crécy?” Or two bottles: “Xeres, or
Pacaset, sir?”
They answered at hazard as one does in some of those society games
where you are requested to select one of two flowers. In fact, the
answer was of little consequence since both plates contained the same
tasteless mixture. There was so much ceremony that the dinner
threatened to be very dull, and interminable as well, from the
indecision of the guests as to the dishes they should accept. It was
Madame Weber’s clear head and decided hand that cut this Gordian knot.
She turned to her child. “Eat everything,” she said, “it costs us
enough.”
These words of wisdom had their effect on the whole assembly, and after
a little the table was gay enough. Suddenly the door was thrown open,
and Ida de Barancy entered, smiling and charming.
“A thousand pardons, my friends, but I had a carriage that crept.”
She wore her most beautiful dress, for she rarely had an opportunity
nowadays of making a toilette, and produced a most extraordinary
effect. The way in which she took her seat by Belisaire, and put her
gloves in a wineglass, the manner in which she signed to one of the
waiters to bring her the carte, overwhelmed the assembly with
admiration. It was delightful to see her order about those imposing
waiters. One of them she had recognized, the one who terrified
Bélisaire so much. “You are here then, now!” she said carelessly; and
shook her bracelets, and kissed her hand to her son, asked for a
footstool, some ice, and eau-de-Seltz, and soon knew the resources of
the establishment.
“But, good heavens, you are not very gay here!” she cried suddenly. She
rose, took her plate in one hand, her glass in the other. “I ask
permission to change places with Madame Bélisaire; I am quite sure that
her husband will not complain.”
This was done with much grace and consideration. The little Weber
uttered a shout of indignation on seeing his mother rise from her
chair, and all this noise and confusion soon changed the previous
stiffness and restraint into laughs and gayety. The waiters went round
and round the table executing marvellous feats, serving twenty persons
from one duck so adroitly carved and served that each one had as much
as he wanted. And the peas fell like hail on the plates; and the
beans—prepared at one end of the table with salt, pepper, and butter;
and such butter!—were mixed by a waiter who smiled maliciously as he
stirred the fell combination.
At last the champagne came. With the exception of Ida, not one person
there knew anything more of this wine than the name; and champagne
signified to them riches, gay dinners, and gorgeous festivals. They
talked about it in a low voice, waited and watched for it. Finally, at
dessert, a waiter appeared with a silver-capped bottle that he
proceeded to open. Ida, who never lost an opportunity of making a
sensation and assuming an attitude, put her pretty hands over her ears,
but the cork came out like any other cork; the waiter, holding the
bottle high, went around the table very quickly. The bottle was
inexhaustible; each person had some froth and a few drops at the bottom
of the glass, which he drank with respect, and even believed that there
was still more in the bottle. It did not matter: the magic of the word
champagne had produced its effect, and there is so much French gayety
in the least particle of its froth that an astonishing animation at
once pervaded the assembly. A dance was proposed; but music costs so
much!
“Ah! if we only had a piano,” said Ida de Barancy, with a sigh, at the
same time moving her fingers on the table as if she knew how to play.
Bélisaire disappeared for a few moments, but soon returned with a
village musician, who was ready to play until morning. Jack and his
mother at first felt out of their element in the noisy romp that
ensued, but Ida finally organized a cotillon, and the rustling of her
silk skirts and the jangling of her bracelets filled the souls of the
younger women with admiration and jealousy. Meanwhile the night wore
on, the little Weber was asleep wrapped in a shawl on a sofa in the
corner. Jack had made many signs to Ida, who pretended not to
understand, carried away as she was by the pleasure and happiness about
her. Jack was like an old father who is anxious to take his daughter
home from a ball.
“It is late,” he said.
“Wait, dear,” was her answer. At length, however, he seized her cloak,
and wrapping it around her, drew her away. There was no train at that
hour, and indeed no omnibus; fortunately a fiacre was passing, which
they hailed. But the newly married pair decided to return on foot
through the Bois de Vincennes. The fresh morning air was delicious
after the heat of the restaurant; the child slept sweetly on
Bélisaire’s shoulder, and did not even awake when he was placed in his
bed. Madame Bélisaire threw aside her wedding-dress, assumed a plainer
one, and at once entered on the duties of the day.