THERE was no meal that Flaubert enjoyed so much as his breakfast.
It seemed to him to be the great opportunity of appearing as a
grand _seigneur_; for, in his opinion, to take your breakfast in a
blue boudoir leading from your bed room, attired in a flowered silk
dressing-gown, sufficiently expressed every claim of ancient blood.
It was here that he received the younger secretary and dictated to him
any part of his correspondence he could induce Jean to accept as the
business of Torialli, and tried to impress that impatient youth with
the belief that the remainder of his letters were the subdued tributes
of every young and beautiful woman in Paris.
To-day Flaubert had reached his second cup of chocolate before Jean’s
knock sounded at the door.
He did not at once notice anything unusual in Jean’s appearance except
that he carried a new and rather formidable walking-stick.
“That memento _d’un Apâche_, my dear fellow, you might have left in
the hall,” Flaubert observed “Think of my china!”
“I will try to bear it in mind,” said Jean briefly.
Flaubert took a mouthful of egg without salt and made a face. There was
something discomposing in the voice of Jean D’Ucelles; it sounded like
that of a man who is standing on the edge of his patience.
“In the first place,” said Jean, approaching the table, “I should be
obliged if you would give me a receipt for this,” and he laid in front
of Monsieur Flaubert Margot’s bill, with the notes for four hundred
francs. “I come on the part of Mademoiselle Selba,” Jean finished in
the same dry manner.
“Business _now_, Jean!” cried Flaubert, playfully lifting a reproving
forefinger. “You know my habits! You don’t want to make a dose of my
morning chocolate. All this affair of the little Selba, see, let us
go into it later! You settle her little bills for her do you, then,
_hein_? Shocking, shocking! And I who thought you so fresh from the
country!”
“I would like the receipt now, Monsieur,” said Jean; his nostrils
twitched, and as he moved nearer Flaubert his hand opened and closed
about the handle of his walking-stick.
Flaubert looked furtively at the bell; it was at some little distance
from the table. He pushed away his unfinished egg and signed the paper.
“Thank you,” said Jean, putting the receipt in his pocket. “And now,
Monsieur Flaubert, it is my regrettable duty to show you why I have not
left my stick in the hall--if you wish to defend yourself I will give
you time to reach the poker--but I am afraid I must stand between you
and the bell. I will do my best to avoid the china.”
Flaubert was not usually a quick man, but he acted with the agility of
a cat at this crisis of his career. He had no intention whatever of
trying to defend himself, but he lost no time in disappearing swiftly
under the table.
There was a crash of china, the cloth was swept on to the floor, the
azure carpet was drenched in broken foods, priceless blue Worcester
lay in fragments, and then Jean kicked the table over and clutched
the flowered dressing-gown. Shriek after shriek rose on the air; the
present of Romain did its work with swiftness and skill; only one of
Flaubert’s vases was broken, and this disaster was simply owing to his
having clung at the wrong moment to one of his companion’s legs.
Suddenly the cries ceased, the _portière_ at the door was thrown aside,
and Gabrielle stood in the room.
Jean flung down his stick and turned to face her. Flaubert cringed,
white and trembling, against the useless shelter of the table. None of
the three spoke for a moment.
Then Madame closed the door behind her and floated forward into the
middle of the room; her eyes wavered and passed over the broken
crockery, they glanced lightly at Louis’ prostrate form, and rested on
the open window and the blue, spring sky.
Something extraordinarily different had come into the atmosphere of
Flaubert’s room; nothing had changed, chocolate still dripped on to the
azure carpet, and yet Jean could have sworn it was all a dream. Nothing
violent had happened, nothing violent could happen in the presence of
Gabrielle Torialli.
She stood there, with the sun on her hair, in a grey Japanese silk
gown; there were faint peach-blossom embroideries here and there, and
the lining looked like a soft pink cloud.
“I came down rather early,” said Madame gently and impersonally.
“Torialli has just received a message from one of the Princes, who
has sprained his ankle and wants to amuse himself with a lesson,
_chez lui_! Torialli would like you to go to him, Louis--you know the
Prince’s ways.”
Self-pity choked Flaubert completely for a moment; then he managed to
gasp out: “How can I? Madame--ask yourself--like this?”
Gabrielle’s grave, child-like eyes rested on him for a moment, and then
returned dreamily to the broken vase.
“Jean,” she said, “do you know, I think I should pick up the table and
these things. Servants are always so in the way. It is a bad example
for them too, to see broken china. As for you, Louis, certainly
you had better not go to Torialli in that dressing-gown; it is an
extraordinarily good one. Your taste in such matters is doubtless
infallible. Still I should recommend you to change it; with that
difference, and a brandy-and-soda to put you in your usual spirits, you
should do very well. Do you know, I think I should go at once, Louis.”
Flaubert groaned, dragged himself up by the table, and with a vicious
look at Jean crept sullenly out of the room.
Gabrielle sank into a low chair by the window; she leaned back
peacefully, her little feet in slippers of peach blossom crossed at her
ankles. She was smoking a very delicately scented cigarette, and she
looked like a child holding out a flower. When Jean turned towards her
she put down her cigarette, her lips began to curve, a little flame of
merriment sprang into her blue, untroubled eyes. She threw back her
head and laughed aloud; the music of her laughter shook Jean’s heart;
it was like the liquid leaping notes of a blackbird in the spring. She
laughed till the tears came into her eyes; then she grew grave again.
“And now, Jean,” she said, “we must have this affair out, you and I.
Alas! alas! why will men think a great big stick an inducement in
getting what they want? Even you, Jean--who are, in so many ways, so
civilized--even you must break a Sèvres vase and upset a table! Why did
you not come to me instead?”
“Madame!” stammered Jean. Gabrielle raised her eyebrows; he had not
called her “Madame” twenty-four hours ago. “I had to do what I have
done, it was an affair of business, a matter that I could not have
troubled you with. It was very base.”
“Ah,” said Gabrielle softly, “my dear Jean, you speak as if I was a
child. I have lived long enough in Paris to have seen ugliness! Shall
I tell you the history of this great affair of yours? Indeed I know
it already. In the first place, it began with that stupid bill of
which you told me, _non_?” Jean nodded. “Yes--and then I told you to
wait,” Gabrielle continued. “I had my reasons for telling you to wait,
Jean. When I say reasons I mean more than reasons--those I would have
told you. I had suspicions! It was foolish of me, I see that now, not
to have confided those also to you. But I shrank from putting the
reputation of an old friend altogether at the mercy of a new one.
Torialli and I are not sudden persons; for five years we have known and
trusted Louis--we have lived next door to him--with a covered passage;
it has been the intimacy of a little household at peace with each
other. And suddenly I had these suspicions! I won’t weary you with when
they began--I am so ignorant of business that I daresay you, or even
a cleverer woman than myself, would have begun to suspect long ago.
Little by little I felt the dissatisfaction of the pupils--and above
all, Jean, I felt--yours--” Madame paused a moment; then she added very
softly: “that meant more to me, perhaps, than any other proof.”
Jean said nothing; he sat at some little distance from Madame, and most
of the time he kept his eyes on the floor; he would have kept them
there all the time if he could.
“_Eh bien!_” said Madame, “I waited until you told me of that
bill--sent to your poor little friend. I knew then it was time to make
sure. Men are human, Jean; it occurred to me that the account was
absurdly large, and I guessed the reason. I guessed,” said Madame,
leaning forward and touching Jean’s arm with her delicate finger-tips,
“I guessed that Flaubert intended to make terms out of his account--she
is very pretty, the poor little Selba! Ah Jean! one does not live as I
live and keep free from these things; the poison of them is in the air!”
Jean started; he had not expected this; with all his heart he wished
that Gabrielle had not guessed the truth.
“And this is why you came here with your big stick, _mon cher_!” she
finished softly. “After all, perhaps you were wisest--I would have
used another method for dismissing our old friend--but then I am older
than you--I have grown tortuous and worldly wise!” Gabrielle paused a
moment; she expected Jean to say that she was not older and that she
had not grown worldly wise; but Jean sat there obstinately, with his
eyes on the broken vase; and said nothing. He was leaving a great deal
for her to do this morning; he had missed several of his cues; still
Gabrielle could do a great deal, and she had never in her life missed a
single cue.
She did not miss one now; she sighed gently, the delicate ghost of a
sigh, then she said: “Jean, _petit_ Jean, since it is all over, since
we can consider Flaubert as already gone, you will stay with us? You
will take his place?”
At last Jean turned his eyes on her, and she saw a most peculiar look
in them; it was the same look she had seen once in the eyes of a dog
which had been run over in the street.
“_Jamais_, Madame,” said Jean in a very low voice, “_jamais_!”
“_Mais pourquoi pas_, Jean?” she murmured; her hands moved towards him.
Jean rose to his feet; he felt dizzy and uncertain of himself; he could
not stay near her any more.
“One moment, Jean,” said Gabrielle quietly, “sit down again.” Jean
obeyed her. “What has happened?” she asked very simply.
Jean bowed his head in his hands; he could not tell her what had
happened--she might make him believe that it had not happened; she was
almost making him believe it now.
“Don’t you think you owe me the truth?” said Gabrielle at last. It
was she who rose now; she stood before him with the dignity of a proud
woman who has not been justly used. She threw back her head and looked
at Jean. “Indeed it seems to me you owe me that,” she said.
Jean got up and came close to her.
“Madame,” he said, “just now you said to me that you wished me to take
Flaubert’s place. What is Flaubert’s place?”
Gabrielle drew back a little; she did not attempt to defend herself, or
to deny anything. She merely met Jean’s eyes.
A long silence fell between them. Jean breathed quickly, he tried not
to throw himself at her feet. It was he who felt ashamed.
Then she said, with all the exquisite proud gentleness of a friend who
has been cruelly wronged. “_Alors, c’est fini_, Jean?”
She stood there still, but it seemed to Jean as if all the light had
gone out of the room. He moved towards the door without answering her;
but as he reached it he turned back and looked at her as if he would
keep her face forever in his eyes.
“_C’est fini_, Madame,” he muttered, but she did not need his words to
see that it was finished.
Gabrielle stood quite still for a moment after he had left her.
“_Pauvre petit_ Jean!” she murmured softly. “He came straight from
Heaven--but alas! men like that are never very practical. They serve
God better than they serve women!”
Then she knocked at the door which led to Flaubert’s bedroom.
“_Bon, mon ami_,” she called, “it is all over, I have dismissed him.
I fancy the sprained ankle of Prince Rudolph has recovered by now. It
will not be necessary for you to go to Torialli--for I have an idea he
is out. There is just half an hour before the pupils come.”
It has been said already that Madame Torialli never wasted her time.