The holidays were near. An noon of a blazing hot day Jean was
seated in the shade on the dwarf-wall that bounded the school
count towards the headmaster's garden, He was playing languidly
at shovel-board with a schoolfellow, a lad as pretty as a girl
with his curls and his jacket of white duck.
"Ewans," said Jean, as he pushed a pebble along one of the lines
drawn in charcoal on the stone coping, "Ewans, you must find
it tiresome to be a boarder?"
"Mother cannot have me with her at home," replied the boy.
Servien asked why.
"Oh! Because----" stammered Ewans.
He stared a long time at the white pebble he held in his hand
ready to play, before he added:
"My mother goes travelling."
"And your father?"
"He is in America. I have never seen him. You've lost. Let's begin
again."
Servien, who felt interested in Madame Ewans because of the superb
boxes of chocolates she used to bring to school for her boy,
put another question:
"You love her very much, your mother I mean?"
"Of course I do!" cried the other, adding presently:
"You must come and see me one day in the holidays at home. You'll
find our house is very pretty, there's sofas and cushions no end.
But you must not put off, for we shall be off to the seaside
soon."
At this moment a servant, a tall, thin man, appeared in the
playground and called out something which the shrill cries of
their companions at play prevented the two seated on the wall
from hearing. A fat boy, standing by himself with his face to
the wall with the unconcern born of long familiarity with this
form of punishment, clapped his two hands to his mouth trumpetwise
and shrieked:
"Ewans, you're wanted in the parlour."
The usher marched up:
"Garneret," he ordered, "you will stand half an hour this evening
at preparation speaking when you were forbidden to. Ewans, go
to the parlour."
The latter clapped his hands and danced for joy, telling his friend:
"It's my mother! I'll tell her you are coming to our house."
Servien reddened with pleasure, and stammered out that he would
ask his father's leave. But Ewans had already scampered across
the yard, leaving a dusty furrow behind him.
Leave was readily granted by Monsieur Servien, who was fully
persuaded that all boys admitted to so expensive a school born of
well-to-do parents, whose society could not but prove advantageous
to his son's manners and morals and to his future success in
life.
Such information as Jean could give him about Madame Ewans was
extremely vague, but the bookbinder was well used to contemplating
the ways of rich folks through a veil of impenetrable mystery.
Aunt Servien indulged in sundry observations on the occasion of
a very general kind touching people who ride in carriages. Then
she repeated a story about a great lady who, just like Madame
Ewans, had put her son to boarding-school, and who was mixed up
in a case of illicit commissions, in the time of Louis-Philippe.
She added, to clinch the matter, that the cowl does not make
the monk, that she thought herself, for all she did not wear
flowers in her hat, a more honest woman than your society ladies,
false jades everyone, concluding with her pet proverb: Better
a good name than a gilt girdle!
Jean had never seen a gilt girdle, but he thought in a vague way
he would very much like to have one.
The holidays came, and one Thursday after breakfast his aunt
produced a white waistcoat from the wardrobe, and Jean, dressed
in his Sunday best, climbed on an omnibus which took him to the
Rue de Rivoli. He mounted four flights of a staircase, the carpet
and polished brass stair-rods of which filled him with surprise
and admiration.
On reaching the landing, he could hear the tinkling of a piano.
He rang the bell, blushed hotly and was sorry he had rung. He
would have given worlds to run away. A maid-servant opened the
door, and behind her stood Edgar Ewans, wearing a brown holland
suit, in which he looked entirely at his ease.
"Come along," he cried, and dragged him into a drawing-room, into
which the half-drawn curtains admitted shafts of sunlight that
were flashed back in countless broken reflections from mirrors
and gilt cornices. A sweet, stimulating perfume hung about the
room, which was crowded with a superabundance of padded chairs
and couches and piles of cushions.
In the half-light jean beheld a lady so different from all he had
ever set eyes on till that moment that he could form no notion of
what she was, no idea of her beauty or her age. Never had he seen
eyes that flashed so vividly in a face of such pale fairness, or
lips so red, smiling with such an unvarying almost tired-looking
smile. She was sitting at a piano, idly strumming on the keys
without playing any definite tune. What drew Jean's eyes above
all was her hair, arranged in some fashion that struck him with
a sense of mystery and beauty.
She looked round, and smoothing the lace of her _peignoir_ with
one hand:
"You are Edgar's friend?" she asked, in a cordial tone, though
her voice struck Jean as harsh in this beautiful room that was
perfumed like a church.
"Yes, Madame."
"You like being at school?"
"Yes, madame."
"The masters are not too strict?"
"No, Madame."
"You have no mother?"
As she put the question Madame Evans' voice softened.
"No, Madame."
"What is your father?"
"A bookbinder, Madame"--and the bookbinder's son blushed as he
gave the answer. At that moment he would gladly have consented
never to see his father more, his father whom he loved, if by
the sacrifice he could have passed for the son of a Captain in
the Navy or a Secretary of Embassy. He suddenly remembered that
one of his fellow-pupils was the son of a celebrated physician
whose portrait was displayed in the stationers' windows.
If only he had had a father like that to tell Madame Ewans of!
But that was out of the question--and how cruelly unjust it was!
He felt ashamed of himself, as if he had said something shocking.
But his friend's mother seemed quite unaffected by the dreadful
avowal. She was still moving her hands at random up and down
the keyboard. Then presently:
"You must enjoy yourself finely to-day, boys," she cried. "We
will all go out. Shall I take you to the fair at Saint-Cloud?"
Yes, Edgar was all for going, because of the roundabouts.
Madame Ewans rose from the piano, patted her pale flaxen hair
in place with a pretty gesture, and gave a sidelong look in the
mirror as she passed.
"I'm going to dress," she told them; "I shall not be long."
While she was dressing, Edgar sat at the piano trying to pick
out a tune from an opera bouffe, and Jean, perched uncomfortably
on the edge of his chair, stared about the room at a host of
strange and sumptuous objects that seemed in some mysterious
way to be part and parcel of their beautiful owner, and affected
him almost as strangely as she herself had done.
Preceded by a faint waft of scent and a rustle of silk, she
reappeared, tying the strings of the hat that made a dainty diadem
above her smiling eyes.
Edgar looked at her curiously:
"Why, mother, there's something... I don't know what. . . something
that alters you."
She glanced in the mirror, examining her hair, which showed pale
violet shadows amid the flaxen plaits.
"Oh! it's nothing," she said; "only I have put some powder in
my hair. Like the Empress," she added, and broke into another
smile.
As she was drawing on her gloves, a ring was heard, and the maid
came in to tell her mistress that Monsieur Delbèque was waiting
to see her.
Madame Ewans pouted and declared she could not receive him, whereupon
the maid spoke a few words in a very peremptory whisper. Madame
Ewans shrugged her shoulders.
"Stay where you are!" she told the boys, and passed into the
dining-room, whence the murmur of two voices could presently be
heard.
Jean asked Edgar, under his breath, who the gentleman was.
"Monsieur Delbèque," Edgar informed him. "He keeps horses and a
carriage. He deals in pigs. One evening he took us to the theatre,
mother and me."
Jean was surprised and rather shocked to find Monsieur Delbèque
dealt in pigs. But he hid his surprise and asked if he was a
relation.
"Oh! no," said Edgar, "he's one of our friends. It's a long time...
at least a year we have known him."
Jean, harking back to his first idea, put the question:
"Have you ever seen him selling his pigs?"
"How stupid you are!" retorted Edgar; "he deals in them wholesale.
Mother says it's a famous trade. He has a cigar-holder with an
amber mouthpiece and a woman all naked carved in meerschaum.
Just think, the other day he came and told mother his wife was
making him atrocious scenes."
Madame Ewans put in her head at the half-open door:
"Come along," she said, and they set out. No sooner were they
in the street than a man, who was smoking, greeted Madame with
a friendly wave of his gloved hand. She muttered between her
teeth:
"Shall we never be done with them?"
The man began in a guttural voice:
"I was just going to your place, my dear, to offer you a box of
Turkish cigarettes. But I see you are taking a boarding-school
out for a walk--a regular boarding-school, 'pon my word! You
take pupils, eh? I congratulate you. Make men of 'em, my dear,
make men of 'em."
Madame Ewans frowned and replied with a curl of the lips:
"I am with my son and one of my son's friends."
The gentleman threw a careless look at one of the lads--Jean Servien
as it happened.
"Capital, capital!" he exclaimed. "Is that one your son?"
"Not he, indeed!" she cried hotly.
Jean felt he was looked down upon, and as she laid her hand on
her son's shoulder with a proud gesture, he could not help noticing
his schoolfellow's easy air and elegant costume, at the same time
casting a glance of disgust at his own jacket, which had been
cut down for him by his aunt out of an overcoat of his father's.
"Shall we be honoured by your presence to-night at the _Bouffes_?"
asked the gentleman.
"No!" replied Madame Ewans, and pushed the two children forward
with the tip of her sunshade.
Stepping out gaily, they soon arrive under the chestnuts of the
Tuileries, cross the bridge, then down the river-bank, over the
shaky gangway, and so on to the steamer pontoon.
Now they are aboard the boat, which exhales a strong, healthy
smell of tar under the hot sun. The long grey walls of the
embankments slip by, to be succeeded presently by wooded slopes.
Saint-Cloud! The moment the ropes are made fast, Madame Ewans
springs on to the landing-stage and makes straight for the shrilling
of the clarinettes and thunder of the big drums, steering her
little charges through the press with the handle of her sunshade.
Jean was mightily surprised when Madame Ewans made him "try his
luck" in a lottery. He had before now gone with his aunt to sundry
suburban fairs, but she had always dissuaded him so peremptorily
from spending anything that he was firmly persuaded revolving-tables
and shooting-galleries were amusements only permitted to a class
of people to which he did not belong. Madame Ewans showed the
greatest interest in her son's success, urging him to give the
handle a good vigorous turn.
She was very superstitious about luck, "invoking" the big prizes,
clapping her hands in ecstasy whenever Edgar won a halfpenny
egg-cup, falling into the depths of despair at every bad shot.
Perhaps she saw an omen in his failure; perhaps she was just
blindly eager to have her darling succeed. After he had lost two
or three times, she pulled the boy away and gave the wooden disk
such a violent push round as set its cargo of crockery-ware and
glass rattling, and proceeded to play on her own account--once,
twice, twenty times, thirty times, with frantic eagerness. Then
followed quite a business about exchanging the small prizes for
one big one, as is commonly done. Finally, she decided for a
set of beer jugs and glasses, half of which she gave to each of
the two friends to carry.
But this was only a beginning. She halted the children before
every stall. She made them play for macaroons at _rouge et
noir_. She had them try their skill at every sort of
shooting-game, with crossbows loaded with little clay pellets,
with pistols and carbines, old-fashioned weapons with caps and
leaden bullets, at all sorts of distances, and at all kinds of
targets--plaster images, revolving pipes, dolls, balls bobbing
up and down on top of a jet of water.
Never in his life had Jean Servien been so busy or done so many
different things in so short a space of time.
His eyes dazzled with uncouth shapes and startling colours, his
throat parched with dust, elbowed, crushed, mauled, hustled by
the crowd, he was intoxicated with this debauch of diversions.
He watched Madame Ewans for ever opening her little purse of
Russia leather, and a new power was revealed to him. Nor was
this all. There was the Dutch top to be set twirling, the wooden
horses of the merry-go-round to be mounted; they had to dash
down the great chute and take a turn in the Venetian gondolas,
to be weighed in the machine and touch the arm of the "human
torpedo."
But Madame Ewans could not help returning again and again to
stand before the booth of a hypnotist from Paris, a clairvoyante
boasting a certificate signed by the Minster of Agriculture and
Commerce and by three Doctors of the Faculty. She gazed enviously
at the servant-girls as they trooped up blushing into the van
meagrely furnished with a bed and a couple of chairs; but she
could not pluck up courage to follow their example.
She recalled to mind how a hypnotist had once helped a friend
of hers to recover some stolen forks and spoons. She had even
gone so far as to consult a fortune-teller shortly before Edgar's
birth, and the cards had foretold a boy.
All three were tired out and overloaded with crockery, glass,
reed-pipes, sticks of sugar-candy, cakes of ginger-bread and
macaroons. For all that, they paid a visit to the wax-works,
where they saw Monseigneur Sibour's body lying in state at the
Archbishop's Palace, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, models
of people's legs and arms disfigured by various hideous diseases,
and a Circassian maiden stepping out of the bath--"the purest
type of female beauty," as a placard duly informed the public.
Madame Ewans examined this last exhibit with a curiosity that
very soon became critical.
"People may say what they please," she muttered; "if you offered
me the whole world, _I_ wouldn't have such big feet and such
a thick waist. And then, your regular features aren't one bit
attractive. Men like a face that says something."
When they left the tent, the sun was low and the dust hovered in
golden clouds over the throng of women, working-men, and soldiers.
It was time for dinner; but as they passed the monkey-cage, Madame
Ewans noticed such a crush of eager spectators squeezing in between
the baize curtains on the platform in front that she could not
resist the temptation to follow suit. Besides which, she was
drawn by a motive of curiosity, having been told that monkeys
were not insensible to female charms. But the performance diverted
her thoughts in another direction. She saw an unhappy poodle in
red breeches shot as a deserter in spite of his honest looks.
Tears rose to her eyes, she was so sensitive, so susceptible
to the glamour of the stage!
"Yes, it's quite true," she sobbed; "yes, poor soldiers have
been shot before now just for going off without leave to stand
by their mother's death-bed or for smacking a bullying officer's
face."
Some old refrain of Béranger she had heard working folks sing
in her plebeian childhood rose to her memory and intensified
her emotion. She told the children the lamentable tale of the
canine deserter's pitiful doom, and made them feel quite sad.
No sooner were they outside the place, however, than an itinerant
toy-seller with a paper helmet on his head set them splitting
with laughter.
Dinner must be thought of. She knew of a tavern by the river-side
where you could eat a fry of fish in the arbour, and thither
they betook themselves.
The lady from Paris and the landlady of the inn greeted each
other with a wink of the eye. It was a long time since she had
seen Madame; she had no idea who the two young gentlemen were,
but anyway they were dear little angels. Madame Ewans ordered the
meal like a connoisseur, with a knowing air and all the proper
restaurant tricks of phrase. All three sat silent, agreeably
tired and enjoying the sensation, she with her bonnet-strings
flying loose, the boys leaning back against the trellis. They
could see the river and its grassy banks through an archway of
wild vine. Their thoughts flowed softly on like the current before
their eyes, while the dusk and cool of the evening wrapped them
in a soft caress. For the first time Jean Servien, as he gazed
at Madame Ewans, felt the thrill of a woman's sweet proximity.
Presently, warmed by a trifle of wine and water he had drunk,
he became wholly lost in his dreams--visions of all sorts of
elegant, preposterous, chivalrous things. His head was still
full of these fancies when he was dragged back to the fair-ground
by Madame Ewans, who could never have enough of sight-seeing
and noise. Illuminated arches spanned at regular intervals the
broad-walk, lined on either side by stalls and trestle-tables,
but the lateral avenues gloomed dark and deserted under the tall
black trees. Loving couples paced them slowly, while the music
from the shows sounded muffled by the distance. They were still
there when a band of fifes, trombones, and trumpets struck up
close by, playing a popular polka tune. The very first bar put
Madame Ewans on her mettle. She drew Jean to her, settled his
hands in hers and lifting him off the ground with a jerk of the
hip, began dancing with him. She swung and swayed to the lilt
of the music; but the boy was awkward and embarrassed, and only
hindered his partner, dragging back and bumping against her.
She threw him off roughly and impatiently, saying sharply:
"You don't know how to dance, eh? You come here, Edgar."
She danced a while with him in the semi-darkness. Then, rosy and
smiling:
"Bravo!" she laughed; "we'll stop now."
Servien stood by in gloomy silence, conscious of his own
inefficiency. His heart swelled with a sullen anger. He was hurt,
and longed for somebody or something to vent his hate upon.
The drive home was a silent one. Jean nearly gave himself cramp
in his determined efforts not to touch with his own the knees
of Madame Ewans' who dozed on the back seat of the conveyance.
She hardly awoke enough to bid him good-bye when he alighted
at his father's door.
As he entered, he was struck for the first time by a smell of
paste that seemed past bearing. The room where he had slept for
years, happy in himself and loved by others, seemed a wretched
hole. He sat down on his bed and looked round gloomily and morosely
at the holy-water stoup of gilt porcelain, the print commemorating
his First Communion, the toilet basin on the chest of drawers,
and stacked in the corners piles of pasteboard and ornamental
paper for binding.
Everything about him seemed animated by a hostile, malevolent,
unjust spirit. In the next room he could hear his father moving.
He pictured him at his work-bench, with his serge apron, calm
and content. What a humiliation! and for the second time in a
dozen hours he blushed for his parentage.
His slumbers were broken and uneasy; he dreamed he was turning,
turning unendingly in complicated figures, and it was impossible
always to avoid touching Madame Evans' knee, though all the time
he was horribly afraid of doing it. Then there was a great field
full of thousands and thousands of marble pigs stuck up on stone
pedestals, among which he could see Monsieur Delbèque promenading
slowly up and down.