THE ROMANCE OF MONSIEUR VANDECQUE
An evening or so after the meeting between Laure Vauxcelles and Walter
Clarges at the gambling hell kept by the Demoiselles Montjoie,
Vandecque sat in the saloon of his apartments in the Passage du
Commerce. Very comfortable apartments they were, too, if bizarre
ornaments and rococo furniture, combined with the most gorgeous
colours possible to be obtained, could be considered as providing
comfort. Yet, since it was a period of bizarrerie and whimsical
caprice in furniture, clothing, and life generally (including morals),
it may be that, to most people--certainly to most people with whom the
once broken-down but now successful gambler was permitted to
associate--the rococo nature of his surroundings would not have
appeared particularly out of place. And, undoubtedly, such a warm nest
must have brought comfort to the heart of the man who paid at the
present moment 250f. a week for the right of occupying that nest,
since there had been a time once when he scarce knew how to find one
franc a day whereby to pay in advance for a night's lodgings in a back
alley. Also, he had passed, previously to that period of discomfort, a
portion of his life away from Paris in a condition which the French
termed politely (whenever they mentioned such an unpleasant subject)
"in retreat," and had been subjected to a process that they designated
as "_marqué_," which, in plain English, means that he had been at the
galleys as a slave and had been branded. "For the cause of religion,"
he said, if he ever said anything at all on the subject; "for a
question of theft and larceny with violence" being, however, written
in the factum of the eminent French counsel who appeared against him
before the judges in Paris.
His life had been a romance, he was in the habit of observing in his
moments of ease, which were when the gambling hells were closed during
the day-time, or the stockbrokers' offices in the Rues Quincampoix and
Vivienne during the night-time. And so, indeed, it had been if romance
is constituted and made up of robbery, cheating, chicanery, the
wearing of blazing scarlet coats one month and the standing
bare-backed in prison yards during the next, there to have the
shoulders and loins scourged with a whip previously steeped in brine.
A romance, if drinking flasks of champagne and iced tokay at one
period, and water out of street fountains at another, or riding in
gilt sedan-chairs one week and being flogged along at a cart tail
another, formed one. For all these things had happened to Jean
Vandecque, as well as the galleys in the past, with the carcan, or
collar around his neck, and the possession of the gorgeous apartments
in the Passage du Commerce at the present moment--all these, and many
more.
With also another romance--or the commencement and foundation of one.
That which has now to be told.
Struggling on foot along the great road that leads from the South to
Paris, ten years before this story begins, Jean Vandecque (with the
discharge of a liberated convict from the galley _Le Requin_ huddled
away in the bosom of his filthy shirt) viewed the capital at last--his
face burnt black by the Mediterranean suns under which he had slaved
for five years, and by the hot winds which had swept over his
nakedness during that time. God knows how he would have got so far,
how have traversed those weary miles without falling dead by the
wayside, had it not been for that internal power which he possessed
(in common with the lowest, as well as the highest of beasts) of
finding subsistence somehow; of supporting life. An egg stolen here
and there along the country roads; a fowl seized, throttled, and eaten
raw, if no sticks could be found wherewith to make a fire; a child
robbed of a loaf--and lucky that it was not throttled too; a lonely
grange despoiled; a shopkeeper's till in some hamlet emptied of a few
sous; a woman cajoled out of a drink of common wine; and Paris at
last. Paris, the home of the rich and well-to-do; the refuge of every
knave and sharper who wished to prey upon others. Paris, into which he
limped footsore and weary, and clad in dusty rags; Paris, full of
wealth and full of fools to be exploited.
He found his home, or, at least, he found the home in which his unhappy
wife sheltered; a garret under the roof of a crazy, tumble-down
house behind Notre Dame--found both home and wife after a day's
search and many inquiries made in cellars and reeking courts and
hideous alleys, into which none were allowed to penetrate except those
who bore the brand of vagabond and scoundrel stamped clear and
indelible upon them.
Also, he found something else: A child--a girl eight years
old--playing in a heap of charred faggots in the chimney; a child who
told him that she was hungry, and that there was no food at all in the
place.
"Whose is the brat?" he asked of his wife, knowing very well that, at
least, it was not hers, since it must of a certainty have been born
three years before he went "into retreat" on the Mediterranean.
"Whose? Have you grown so rich that you adopt children now; or is it
paid for, eh?"
"It is paid for," the patient creature said, shuddering at the man's
return, since she had hoped that he had died in the galley and would
never, consequently, wander back to Paris to molest her. "Paid for,
and will be----"
"Badly paid for, at least, since its adoption leads you to no better
circumstances than these in which I find you. Give me some food. I
have eaten nothing for hours."
"Nor I; nor the child there. Not for twenty-four hours. I have not a
sol; nor anything to sell."
The man looked at his wife from under bushy black eyebrows--though
eyebrows not much blacker than his baked face; then he thrust his hand
into his pocket and drew forth five sols and weighed them in his hands
as though they were gold pieces. He had stolen them that morning from
the basket of a blind man sleeping in the sun outside St. Roch, when
no one was looking.
"Go, buy bread," he said. "Get something. I am starving. Go."
"Bread--with these! They will not buy enough for one. And we are so
hungry, she and I. See, the child weeps for hunger. Have you no more?"
"Not a coin. Have you?"
"Alas! God, He knows! Nothing. And we are dying of hunger."
"How is it you are not at work, earning something?"
"They will trust me no more. They fear I shall sell the goods confided
to me. Who entrusts velvets, or silk, or laces to such as I, or lets
such as I enter their shops to work there?"
"What is to be done, then?"
"Die," the woman said. "There is nought else to do."
"Bah! In Paris! Imbecile! In Paris, full of wealth and food! Stay here
till I return."
And he went swiftly out. Some hours later, when the sun had sunk
behind the great roof of the Cathedral, when the children were playing
about beneath the spot where the statues were, and when the pigeons
were seeking their niches, those three were eating a hearty meal, all
seated on the floor, since there was neither chair nor table nor bed
within the room; a meal consisting of a loaf, a piece of bacon, and
some hard-boiled eggs. The woman and the child got but a poor share,
'tis true, their portions being the morsels which Vandecque tossed to
them every now and again; while of a wine bottle, which he constantly
applied to his mouth, they got nothing at all. Yet their hunger was
appeased; they were glad enough to do without drink.
* * * * * *
The passing years brought changes to two of these outcasts, as it did
to the wealthy in Paris. Vandecque's wife had died of the small-pox
twelve months after his return; the adopted child, Vandecque's
_niece_, Mdlle. Vauxcelles, was developing fast into a lovely girl;
while as for Vandecque--well! the gallows bird, the man who had worn
the iron collar round his neck and who bore upon his shoulders the
brand, had disappeared, and in his place had come a grave, sedate
person clad always in sombre clothes, yet a man conspicuous for the
purity of his linen and lace and the neatness of his attire. While,
although he had not as yet attained to the splendour of the Passage du
Commerce, his rooms in the Rue du Paon were comfortable and there was
no lack of either food, or drink, or fuel--the three things that the
outcast who has escaped and triumphed over the miseries and memories
of the past most seeks to make sure of in the future.
He was known also to great and rich personages now, he had patrons
amongst the nobility and was acquainted with the roués who circled
round the Regent. He was prominent, and, as he frequently told
himself, was "respected."
He was a successful man.
How he had become so, however, he did not dilate on--or certainly not
on the earlier of his successes after his reappearance!--even when
making those statements about his romantic life with which he
occasionally favoured his friends. Had he done so, he would not,
perhaps, have shocked very much the ears, or morals, of his listeners,
but he must, at least, have betrayed the names of several eminent
patrons for whom he had done dirty work in a manner which might have
placed his own ears, if not his life, in danger, and would, thereby,
probably have led to his once more traversing the road to Marseilles
or to Cette--which is almost the same thing--to again partake of the
shelter of the galleys.
Yet he would never have found or come into contact with these
illustrious patrons, these men who required secret agents to minister
to their private pleasures, had it not been for a stupendous piece of
good fortune which befell him shortly after his return to Paris from
the Mediterranean. It was, indeed, so strange a piece of good fortune
that it may well be set down here as a striking instance of how the
Devil takes care of his own.
From his late wife he had never been able to obtain any information as
to who "the brat" was whom he had found playing about in the ashes on
the hearth in the garret, when he returned from his period of southern
seclusion; he had not found out even so much as what name she was
supposed to bear, except that of "Laure," which seemed to have been
bestowed on the child by Madame Vandecque on the principle that one
name was as good as another by which to call a child. She had said
herself that she did not know anything further--that, being horribly
poor after Vandecque had departed for the south, she had yielded to
the offer of an abbé--now dead--to adopt the girl, twenty-five
louis-d'ors being paid to her for doing so. That was all, she said,
that she knew. But, she added (with a firmness which considerably
astonished her lord and master) that, especially as she had come to
love the creature which was so dependent on her, she meant to carry
out her contract and to do her best by her. To Vandecque's suspicious
nature--a nature sharpened by countless acts of roguery of all
kinds--this statement presented itself as a lie, and he believed that
either his wife had received a very much larger sum of money in
payment for the child's adoption than she had stated, or that she was
surreptitiously receiving regular sums of money at intervals on its
behalf. Of the two ideas, he inclined more to the latter than the
former, and it was owing to this belief that he did not at once take
steps to disembarrass himself of the burden with which he found
himself saddled, and send the child of at once to the Home of the
Foundlings whence she would eventually have been sold to a beggar for
a few livres and trained to demand alms in the street, as usually
happened to deserted children in the reign of Louis the Great. Later
on he was thankful--he told himself that he was "devoutly
thankful"--that he had never done anything of the sort.
He was one day, about a year after his wife's death, mounting the
ricketty stairs which led to the garret in which he had found the
woman on his return, when, to his astonishment, he saw a Sister of
Charity standing outside the door of his room, looking hesitatingly
about her, and glancing down towards him as he ascended to where she
was. And it was very evident to him that the woman had been knocking
at his door without receiving any answer to her summons. This was a
thing certain to happen in any case, since it was Vandecque's habit on
quitting his shelter during the day-time to send Laure to play with
all the other vagrant children of the alley, and to put the key in his
pocket. At night, the plan was varied somewhat when he went forth, the
girl being sent to her bed and locked into the room for safety.
"Madame desires--?" he said now, as he reached the landing on which
the sister stood, while taking off his frayed hat to her with an
inimitable gesture of politeness which his varied and "romantic"
career had taught him well enough how to assume when necessary.
"Madame desires----"
"To see the woman, Madame Jasmin," the sister answered, her grave
solemn eyes roving over the man's poor clothes as she answered. Or,
perhaps, since his clothes in such a spot as this would scarcely be
out of place, examining his face with curiosity.
"Madame Jasmin!" he repeated to himself, but to himself only--"Madame
Jasmin!" How long it was since he had heard that name! Ages ago, it
seemed; ages. "Madame Jasmin!" The name his wife had borne as a young
widow of twenty, the name she had parted with for ever, on the morning
when she gave herself to him at the altar of St. Vincent de Paul. Yet,
now, of late years, she seemed to have used it again for some reason,
some purpose, and had probably done so during his retreat. Only--what
was that purpose? He must know that.
"Madame Jasmin," he said in a subdued voice--a voice that was meant
to, and perhaps did, express some sorrow for the worn, broken helpmate
and drudge who had gone away and left him, "Madame Jasmin is dead. A
year ago. My poor wife was delicate; our circumstances did not conduce
to----"
"Ah! your wife. You are, then, Monsieur Jasmin? She doubtless,
therefore--you--you understand why I am here? That I have brought what
was promised."
Understanding nothing, utterly astonished, yet with those consoling
words, "I have brought what was promised," sinking deep into his mind,
Vandecque bowed his head acquiescingly.
"I understand," he said. "Understand perfectly. Will not Madame give
herself the trouble to enter my poor abode? We can talk there at our
leisure." And he opened the door and ushered her within.