MARGOT was extremely unreasonable about her change of masters; she said
she did not like Monsieur Flaubert.
It was true he agreed to teach her for a sum almost nominal. He
professed to take the deepest interest in her voice, and told her, as
Jean had never done, that she sang with the purity of a lark and the
passion of a nightingale. “I do not like him, he chills my spine,” she
asserted to Jean after her first lesson; “and you--you do not like him
either, Jean!”
This was more unreasonable of Margot still, for Jean had never admitted
even to himself that he resented Torialli’s secretary, and he did not
admit it now.
He explained elaborately to Margot his reasons for esteeming Monsieur
Flaubert; they really added up very respectably, from the fact that
he had been with Torialli for ten years to his frank appreciation of
Margot’s golden voice.
“Bah!” exclaimed that young person, “dress an eel in gold and he will,
still squirm! Why does he come into a room rubbing his hands? He has a
bad conscience and he looks like a cat that has stolen the cream. You
say I know nothing against him--everything is against him--I do not
like the way he does his hair!”
Jean shrugged his shoulders; it was no use trying to argue with Margot;
she lived too near the sources of sensation to be easily hoodwinked by
ideas.
Jean would have liked to hoodwink her because it would have given him
company in the process in which he became daily more and more involved
of hoodwinking himself.
At last he had begun his career, but there were moments when he found
himself wondering what his career was. He was everybody’s servant and
nobody’s master. Music seemed to recede further and further into the
distant horizon. For days together all he had of it was the sound of
a distant piano; sometimes he was out all day, delivering notes and
seeing business people for Louis Flaubert, or Madame Torialli would ask
him to organize a little party, a day in the country, or an evening
At Home. These last occupations, however, if they were not music, had
at least about them an indefinable charm. They seemed to make Jean
indifferent to the salary that was never paid, to the extra evening
hours no one seemed to be surprised at his resigning for the general
good of the Toriallis. After all he had, as Louis often pointed out
to him, his great opportunities. He took almost all his meals in the
Boulevard Malesherbes, and he met the best people in Paris. Madame
Torialli treated him as a friend, almost as a son. Signor Torialli
treated him as a fellow musician. Jean often played at the Toriallis’
At Homes; he began to have a vogue in Paris; he was called “that good
little fellow at the Toriallis’”; and people smiled indulgently when
they mentioned him; but whether the indulgence was for Jean or for the
Toriallis never appeared. Romain met him at one of the Toriallis’ At
Homes. His smile seemed to have even more humour in it than usual; he
did not refer to any of his previous ideas for Jean.
“So, my dear boy,” he said, “we meet again. You are _bien installé_
here, I take it. I am so glad you have been wise and given up your
music.”
“But I have not,” Jean cried in amazement. “That is what I am here for!”
“Tut! tut!” said his uncle. “You must be jesting, Jean; every one knows
the good Toriallis have no time for the fine arts; they have only time
for receipts! Share them! Share them, my dear boy! for if you do not
you will very surely be made to pay them! There are only two ways of
getting on in this world--taking and sharing! For my own part I think
sharing is the best, the responsibility is divided, and there is
nothing I trust so greatly as a self-interest which is identical with
our own. Ah, Madame Torialli, I am congratulating my young nephew on
his position with your husband. If I were twenty years younger I should
wish I were in his place.” Madame Torialli smiled very gravely and
gently; her eyes sought Jean’s with an affectionate expression.
“I am wondering what your uncle means,” she said. “And I am afraid that
it is not perhaps quite kind. I am such a simple person.” And then she
looked back at Romain, who chuckled.
“Twenty years ago, Madame,” he said, “I should have been a simple
person, too. We might then have met upon an equality.”
“Jean and I understand each other,” said Madame, softly, preparing to
pass on to her other guests.
“That is doubtless why I congratulate him,” said Romain, drawing aside
to let her pass.
Jean was needed elsewhere; he made no attempt to continue his
conversation with Romain. He did not know why, but it had made him feel
a little uncomfortable.
It was only a small addition to the discomforts his pinched pride gave
him every day. All these little pin-pricks together only amounted to
the pain of a corn in a tight shoe. When the shoe made him most aware
of its presence was in the disagreeable business interviews with the
pupils. From the first Louis had sent him to collect money for the
accounts. Jean copied them daily into the book from Flaubert’s notes;
but the Toriallis’ pupils almost always disputed their accounts, and
Jean’s dislike for these interviews increased daily.
“I can’t think what is the matter with these people,” he said at last
to Louis. “I can understand some of them being mean--but so many of
them are, men and women alike. And they seem so certain that they have
had fewer lessons or shorter hours. I suppose there _can’t_ be any
mistakes in the accounts?”
“How can there be?” said Louis, looking at Jean rather hard. “I put
them all down in a book myself, you know, exactly as they take place.
Paris is full of cheats, and the worst of them are the rich.”
“Yes, but they aren’t all rich,” Jean answered. “Some of them are poor,
and that makes it so much worse.”
“I haven’t the time to explain just now,” said Louis after a pause.
“Be so kind as to write down the appointments for next week; and here,
by the by, is Miss Vanderpool’s account. You may take that to her
to-morrow.”
“Can’t I send it?” Jean asked.
“No! She always likes to argue things out,” said Flaubert. “She thinks
she shows a business instinct. Mind you make her pay.”
“Really, Flaubert, I wish to Heaven you’d do it yourself!” said Jean
impulsively. “The other day I heard you tell one of the pupils that a
mistake in the account was my fault, and you know I never make them out
at all!”
Flaubert put his arm genially on the young man’s shoulder.
“My dear boy,” he said. “I apologize a thousand times. I had to get rid
of him, and to tell the truth I hadn’t time for a fight. Madame had
just sent for me. You came into my head, and I made a scapegoat of you.
I apologize profoundly.”
Jean drew away from the insinuating arm.
“I should be very glad if you would give me your word that it doesn’t
happen again!” he said curtly.
Louis laughed nervously.
“I will give you my word, of course, if you want it, my dear boy,” he
said. “But really, you know, you’ll never learn business at this rate.”
“I’m afraid I must insist,” said Jean.
Flaubert shook his head roguishly. “I give you my word, then,” he said;
“but I don’t know what Madame would say if she heard me; she believes
in a silent partner, does Madame.”
“But Madame has nothing to do with business?” exclaimed Jean.
Flaubert bit his lip, and forced an unnatural laugh.
“No, no!” he said. “Of course not, that is why we must be so careful
of her interests. By the by, if you so much dislike tackling the
great Pauline, you can after all leave her to me. If she does dispute
the account I’ll try to make time for her; she is always disputing
something. No! send it by post; after all that is the best way.”
Jean was immensely relieved. After all Flaubert was very easy to work
with; he was always good-natured, and he never took offence at any of
Jean’s protests. Jean decided that he would try not to protest so much,
and he sent the account to Pauline. It seemed even to him, accustomed
to the enormous expenses of Torialli’s lessons, an immense account.
He congratulated himself on not having to face Pauline with it.
Unfortunately his congratulations came a little too soon. The very next
day Pauline called, not at the hotel of the Toriallis, but at Louis
Flaubert’s house.
She was shown at once into the room where Jean was going through the
morning’s correspondence. He was used by now to the sight of angry
women, but he had never before seen one so fixedly, fiercely angry as
Pauline Vanderpool.
“Where’s your master?” she asked Jean with no formal preface.
“I don’t think I know quite whom you mean, Mademoiselle,” said Jean
very quietly.
“I guess you know well enough, Jean D’Ucelles, and you’ll soon know
some more. I tell you those--Send for that man, Flaubert. No! Don’t
you stir--I’ll not have you two conspiring behind my back. I’ll see
you both together and now. Do you catch on? The daughter of Silas P.
Vanderpool isn’t going to be swindled by a pack of low-bred Parisian
money-grabbers, not by a long way!”
“Mademoiselle, I do not think you will gain anything by being abusive,”
said Jean. “You have very great advantages as a woman. It would perhaps
be better manners as well as better policy on your part not to abuse
them!”
“Why, you puppy!” gasped Pauline. “Do you dare to stand there and try
to teach me manners, when I know you haven’t got a brass cent unless
you have stolen it?”
“Be content, Mademoiselle, for apparently I have not succeeded,” said
Jean grimly. “Ah! Here is Monsieur Flaubert! Have the kindness to make
your complaint to him.”
“Say, do you keep this impertinent young whipper-snapper here to insult
your clients?” hissed Pauline, leaning forward and forcing the words
out between her teeth, her blue eyes hard as steel and her great chin
thrust forward like a rock. “I’ve brought you this bill, Monsieur
Flaubert--this isn’t the first time I’ve suspected some monkey trick in
my account here--but this time I know it! It won’t be of any use your
lying about it. I can prove the mistake and I can prove where it is.
Take this paper I’ve got here, and look through it, and then tell me
you’ve not cheated me, if you dare! I tell you what it is, Monsieur,
I’ll have these two accounts published in the leading journals
throughout your little one-horse village by to-night if you don’t climb
down pretty quick--Toriallis or no Toriallis!”
Jean looked at Flaubert with a sympathetic glance; it was very
disagreeable to have a mad woman to deal with, and he was sorry for
Flaubert. He thought Pauline was mad. To his intense astonishment
he saw that Flaubert was white to the lips and trembling like a
leaf--great beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead, and he
smiled in a sickly way, first at the paper in his shaking hands, and
then at Pauline. He moistened his lips before he spoke, and gave Jean a
quick, furtive look under his eye-lashes.
“I regret infinitely, Mademoiselle,” he said, “that a mistake should
have been made; it is nothing more, I assure you; still it is very
natural that you should be annoyed by it. I have not had my secretary
here very long, and he is not much up to affairs! You know, Ucelles,
you owned to me yourself only this morning that you had a very poor
head for business,” said Flaubert, turning to Jean. He had recovered
himself by now, the colour had come back to his face. He looked in
Jean’s direction, but he did not meet his eyes. “I fear I must ask you,
Mademoiselle, to overlook my secretary’s little mistake and to accept
our most humble apologies. I trust you will let this affair go no
further. I can answer for Monsieur D’Ucelles’ good intentions as I can
for my own, and if it reached the ears of the Toriallis they might be
annoyed.”
“It shall reach them,” said Pauline sharply.
“I meant annoyed with you, Mademoiselle,” interposed Flaubert, whose
confidence was now fully returned. “Signor Torialli is so impetuous,
and your attack on me has not been very temperate. It would be such a
pity to stop your lessons just now, when your voice is profiting so
greatly.”
Pauline paused for a moment. Her lip curved scornfully as she looked at
Jean. He had started forward at the first words of Flaubert’s speech,
stung beyond his own control and ready with a vehement denial. But even
as he did so Flaubert’s words about Madame came back to him; he must do
nothing that might be against her interests, and he was in the presence
of something that he did not understand. He drew back and stood quietly
waiting with his eyes on Pauline.
“As for you, Jean D’Ucelles,” she said, “I guess you’re just about the
poorest-headed, lost lamb of a Weary Willie I ever struck! I don’t see,
Monsieur Flaubert, how you can suppose a man who has never had anything
of his own to look after is likely to make much of a hand looking
after anybody else’s accounts! If he ever turned up our side of the
water they’d send him brick-picking! Now see here! I’ll give you back
this bill this one time; make it out again, and let me advise you to
send it to me correct! You’ve tried to fool me twice, and it hasn’t
paid you any, I guess--but if you try the third time, Louis Flaubert,
I’ll turn you down!”
Pauline swept from the room. Flaubert went to the door with her while
Jean stood quite still, trying to understand what had happened, and
what he must say to Flaubert when he came back. He knew now what all
his little misgivings and discomforts had led to--they had led to this;
and yet he dared not say even to himself what _this_ was. He had one
thing that he could still hold to, and for the sake of holding to that
one thing he must make up his mind quickly to let everything else go.
He was where he was in order to serve Madame Torialli, and if the man
she trusted in was a thief and a liar, the more need she would have
of Jean to stand by her, and watch over her; and to do this he must
overcome his natural instinct, which was to seize Flaubert and kick him
with contumely and finality out of the house.
Louis came back humming a little dance tune, and rubbing his hands
together; he did not appear to see Jean standing in the middle of the
room with sombre eyes. He smiled cheerfully.
“Well, the storm is over, the sun is out again,” he said. “That big
Pauline would make a terrible wife; she should marry a lion-tamer or
an _apâche_; but we have escaped that difficulty, my dear fellow,
and now she is out of the house would you mind making a list of the
appointments you know, and I shall just try over some of these new
accompaniments?”
Flaubert, still without meeting Jean’s eyes, seated himself upon the
piano stool, and trilled out the latest drawing-room inanities of
Parisian music.
Jean hesitated, but in the end said nothing. What can an honest man
say to a liar? Nothing that the liar does not already know, and only
that which must put an end to all connection between them. Still, he
could not breathe in the same room as Flaubert; he took up a list
of appointments and passed into a little ante-room where the most
insignificant of the pupils were accustomed to wait their turn; it was
empty now. The light music followed him with a mocking insistence; it
seemed to Jean to be laughing at his fine principles and triumphantly
flouting his stubborn honour.
“I don’t know anything,” said Jean to himself doggedly. “After all,
what can I do? I don’t know anything!”
The cold, thin music rang its perverse and sickly sentimentality into
his brain. It was like bad wine. Jean pushed away the papers in front
of him and put his head on his hands. When he lifted it again he looked
ten years older. Something had passed away from him never to return.
It was his trust in the integrity of man.