The Nabob Part 15

Four hundred and thirty thousand francs! And that was not the end.

BONNE MAMAN

Paul de Gery went three times a week in the evening to take his lesson in bookkeeping in the Joyeuses' dining-room, not far from that little parlour in which he had seen the family the first day, and while with his eyes fixed on his teacher he was being initiated into all the mysteries of "debtor and creditor," he used to listen, in spite of himself, for the light sounds coming from the industrious group behind the door, with thoughts dwelling regretfully on the vision of all those pretty brows bent in the lamplight. M. Joyeuse never said a word of his daughters; jealous of their charms as a dragon watching over beautiful princesses in a tower, and excited by the fantastic imaginings of his excessive affection for them, he would answer with marked brevity the inquiries of his pupil regarding the health of "the young ladies," so that at last the young man ceased to mention them.

He was surprised, however, at not once seeing that Bonne Maman whose name was constantly recurring in the conversation of M. Joyeuse, entering into the least details of his existence, hovering over the household like the emblem of its perfect ordering and of its peace.

So great a reserve on the part of a venerable lady who must a.s.suredly have pa.s.sed the age at which the interest of young men is to be feared, seemed to him exaggerated. The lessons, however, were good ones, given with great clearness, the teacher having an excellent system of demonstration, and only one fault, that of becoming absorbed in silences, broken by sudden starts and exclamations let off like rockets.

Apart from this, he was the best of masters, intelligent, patient, and conscientious, and Paul learned to know his way through the complex labyrinth of commercial books and resigned himself to ask nothing beyond.

One evening, towards nine o'clock, as the young man had risen to go, M.

Joyeuse asked him if he would do him the honour of taking a cup of tea with his family, a custom dating from the time when Mme. Joyeuse, _nee_ de Saint-Amand, was alive, she having been used to receive her friends on Thursdays. Since her death and the change in the financial position, the friends had become dispersed; but his little weekly function had been kept up.

Paul having accepted, the good old fellow opened the door and called:

"Bonne Maman!"

An alert footstep in the pa.s.sage, and immediately the face of a girl of twenty, in a halo of abundant brown hair, made its appearance.

De Gery, stupefied, looked at M. Joyeuse.

"Bonne Maman?"

"Yes, it is a name that we gave her when she was a little girl. With her frilled cap, her authority as the eldest child, she had a quaint little air. We thought her like her grandmother. The name has clung to her."

From the honest fellow's tone as he spoke thus, one felt that to him this grandparent's t.i.tle applied to such an embodiment of attractive youth seemed the most natural thing in the world. Every one else thought as he did on the point; both her sisters, who had hastened to their father's side, grouping themselves round him somewhat as in the portrait exhibited in the window on the ground floor, and the old servant who placed on the table in the little drawing-room a magnificent tea-service, a relic of the former splendours of the household. Every one called the girl "Bonne Maman" without her ever once having grown tired of it, the influence of that sacred t.i.tle touching the affection of each one with a deference which flattered her and gave to her ideal authority a singular gentleness of protection.

Whether or not it were by reason of this appellation of grandmother which as a child he had learned to reverence, de Gery felt an inexpressible attraction towards this young girl. It was not like the sudden shock which he had received from that other, that emotional agitation in which were mingled the desire to flee, to escape from a possession and the persistent melancholy of the morrow of a festivity, extinguished candles, the lost refrains of songs, perfumes vanished into the night. In the presence of this young girl as she stood superintending the family table, seeing if anything were wanting, enveloping her children, her grandchildren, with the active tenderness of her eyes, there came to him a longing to know her, to be counted among her old friends, to confide to her things which he confessed only to himself; and when she offered him his cup of tea without any of the mincings of society or drawing-room affectations, he would have liked to say with the rest a "Thank you, Bonne Maman," in which he would have put all his heart.

Suddenly, a cheerful knock at the door made everybody start.

"Ah, here comes M. Andre. Elise, a cup quickly. Jaia, the little cakes."

At the same time, Mlle. Henriette, the third of M. Joyeuse's daughters, who had inherited from her mother, _nee_ de Saint-Amand, a certain instinct for society, observing the number of visitors who seemed likely to crowd their rooms that evening, rushed to light the two candles on the piano.

"My fifth act is finished," cried the newcomer as he entered, then he stopped short. "Ah, pardon," and his face a.s.sumed a rather discomfited expression in the presence of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced them to each other: "M. Paul de Gery--M. Andre Maranne," not without a certain solemnity. He remembered the receptions held formerly by his wife, and the vases on the chimneypiece, the two large lamps, the what-not; the easy chairs grouped in a circle had an air of joining in this illusion, and seemed more brilliant by reason of this unaccustomed throng.

"So your play is finished?"

"Finished, M. Joyeuse, and I hope to read it to you one of these evenings."

"Oh, yes, M. Andre. Oh, yes," said all the girls in chorus.

Their neighbour was in the habit of writing for the stage, and no one here doubted of his success. Photography, in any case, promised fewer profits. Clients were very rare, pa.s.sers-by little disposed to business.

To keep his hand in and to save his new apparatus from rusting, M. Andre was accustomed to practise anew on the family of his friends on each succeeding Sunday. They lent themselves to his experiments with unequalled long-suffering; the prosperity of this suburban photographer's business was for them all an affair of _amour propre_, and awakened, even in the girls, that touching confraternity of feeling which draws together the destinies of people as insignificant in importance as sparrows on a roof. Andre Maranne, with the inexhaustible resources of his great brow full of illusion, used to explain without bitterness the indifference of the public. Sometimes the season was unfavourable, or, again, people were complaining of the bad state of business generally, and he would always end with the same consoling reflection, "When _Revolt_ is produced!" That was the t.i.tle of his play.

"It is surprising all the same," said the fourth of M. Joyeuse's daughters, twelve years old, with her hair in a pigtail, "it is surprising that with such a good balcony so little business should result."

"And, if he were established on the Boulevard des Italiens," remarks M.

Joyeuse thoughtfully, and he is launched forth!--riding his chimera till it is brought to the ground suddenly with a gesture and these words uttered sadly: "Closed on account of bankruptcy." In the s.p.a.ce of a moment the terrible visionary has just installed his friend in splendid quarters on the Boulevard, where he gains enormous sums of money, at the same time, however, increasing his expenditure to so disproportionate an extent that a fearful failure in a few months engulfs both photographer and his photography. They laugh heartily when he gives this explanation; but all agree that the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, although less brilliant, is much more to be depended upon than the Boulevard des Italiens. Besides, it happens to be quite near the Bois de Boulogne, and if once the fas.h.i.+onable world got into the way of pa.s.sing through it--That exalted society which was so much sought by her mother, is Mlle. Henriette's fixed idea, and she is astonished that the thought of receiving "le high-life" in his little apartment on the fifth floor makes their neighbour laugh. The other week, however, a carriage with livery had called on him. Only just now, too, he had a very "swell" visit.

"Oh, quite a great lady!" interrupts Bonne Maman. "We were at the window on the lookout for father. We saw her alight from her carriage and look at the show-frame; we made sure that her visit was for you."

"It was for me," said Andre, a little embarra.s.sed.

"For a moment we were afraid that she was going to pa.s.s on like so many others, on account of your five flights of stairs. So all four of us tried to attract her without her knowing it, by the magnetism of our four staring pairs of eyes. We drew her gently by the feathers of her hat and the laces of her cape. 'Come up then, madame, come up,' and finally she entered. There is so much magnetism in eyes that are kindly disposed."

Magnetism she certainly had, the dear creature, not only in her glances, indeterminate of colour, veiled or gay like the sky of her Paris, but in her voice, in the draping of her dress, in everything about her, even to the long curl, falling over the neck erect and delicate as a statue's.

Tea having been served, while the gentlemen finished their cups and talked--old Joyeuse was always very long over everything he did, by reason of his sudden expeditions to the moon--the girls brought out their work, the table became covered with wicker baskets, embroideries, pretty wools that rejuvenated with their bright tints the faded flowers of the old carpet, and the group of the other evening gathered once more within the bright circle defined by the lamp-shade, to the great satisfaction of Paul de Gery. It was the first evening of the kind that he had spent in Paris; it recalled to him others of a like sort very far away, lulled by the same innocent laughter, the peaceful sound produced by scissors as they are put down on the table, by a needle as it pierces through linen, or the rustle of a page turned over, and dear faces, disappeared for ever, gathered also around the family lamp, alas! so abruptly extinguished.

Having been admitted to this charming intimacy, he remained in it, took his lessons in the presence of the girls and was encouraged to chat with them when the good old man closed his big book. Here everything rested him after the whirl of that life into which he was thrown by the luxurious social existence of the Nabob; he come to renew his strength in this atmosphere of honesty, of simplicity, tried, too, to find healing there for the wounds with which a hand more indifferent than cruel stabbed his heart mercilessly.

"Some women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who has hurt me most never either loved or hated me." Paul had met that woman of whom Henri Heine speaks. Felicia was full of welcome and cordiality for him.

There was no one whom she treated with more favour. She used to reserve for him a special smile wherein one felt the kindliness of an artist's eye arrested by and dwelling on a pleasing type, and the satisfaction of a jaded mind amused by anything new, however simple in appearance it may be. She liked that reserve, suggestive in a southerner, the honesty of that judgment, independent of every artistic or social formula and enlivened by a touch of provincial accent. These things were a change for her from the zigzag stroke of the thumb ill.u.s.trating a eulogy with its gesture of the studio, from the compliments of comrades on the way in which she would snub some old fellow, or again from those affected admirations, from the "char-ar-ming, very nice indeed's" with which young men about town, sucking the k.n.o.bs of their canes, were accustomed to regale her. This young man at any rate did not say such things as that to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, on account of his apparent tranquility and the regularity of his profile; and the moment she saw him, however far-off, she would call:

"Ah, here comes Minerva. Hail, beautiful Minerva! Put down your helmet and let us have a chat."

But this familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man that he would make no further advance into that feminine comrades.h.i.+p in which tenderness was wanting, and that he lost each day something of his charm--the charm of the unforeseen--in the eyes of that woman born weary, who seemed to have already lived her life and found in all that she heard or saw the insipidity of a repet.i.tion. Felicia was bored.

Her art alone could distract her, carry her away, transport her into a dazzling fairyland, whence she would fall back worn out, surprised each time by this awakening like a physical fall. She used to draw a comparison between herself and those jelly-fish whose transparent brilliancy, so much alive in the cool movements of the waves, drift to their death on the sh.o.r.e in little gelatinous pools. During those times devoid of inspiration, when the artist's hand was heavy on his instrument, Felicia, deprived of the one moral support of her intellectual being, became unsociable, unapproachable, a tormenting mocker--the revenge taken of human weakness on the tired brains of genius. After having brought tears to the eyes of every one who cared for her, raking up painful recollections or enervating anxieties, she reached the lowest depths of her fatigue, and as there was always some fun in her, even in her _ennui_ in a kind of caged wild-beast's howl, which she called "the cry of the jackal in the desert," and which used to make the good Crenmitz turn pale.

Poor Felicia! That life of hers was indeed a frightful desert when art did not beguile it with its illusions; a desert mournful and flat, where everything was lost, reduced to one level, beneath the same monotonous immensity, the naive love of a child of twenty, a pa.s.sionate duke's caprice, in which all was overwhelmed by an arid sand driven by blasting fates. Paul was conscious of that void, desired to escape it; but something held him back, like a weight which unrolls a chain, and in spite of the calumnies he heard, and notwithstanding the odd whims of the strange creature, he dallied deliciously after her, at the price of bearing away with him from this long lover's contemplation only the despair of a believer reduced to the adoring of images alone.

The refuge lay down there, in that remote quarter of the town where the wind blew so hard, yet without preventing the flame from mounting white and straight--it was the family circle presided over by Bonne Maman. Oh!

she at least was not bored, she never uttered the cry of the "jackal in the desert." Her life was far too full; the father to encourage, to sustain, the children to teach, all the material cares of a home where the mother's hand is wanting, those preoccupations that awake with the dawn and are put to sleep by the evening, unless indeed it bring them back in dream, one of those devotions, tireless but without apparent effort, very pleasant for poor human egotism, because they dispense from all grat.i.tude and hardly make themselves felt, so light is their hand.

She was not the courageous daughter who works to support her parents, gives private lessons from morning to night, forgets in the excitement of a profession all the troubles of the household. No, she had understood her task in a different sense, a sedentary bee restricting her cares to the hive, without once humming out of doors in the open air among the flowers. A thousand functions: tailoress, milliner, mender of clothes, bookkeeper also for M. Joyeuse, who, incapable of all responsibility, left to her the free disposal of their means, to be pianoforte-teacher, governess.

As it happens in families that have been in a good position, Aline, as the eldest daughter, had been educated at one of the best boarding-schools in Paris. Elise had been with her there for two years; but the last two, born too late, and sent to small day-schools in the locality, had all their studies yet to complete, and this was no easy matter, the youngest laughing upon every occasion from sheer good health, warbling like a lark intoxicated with the delight of green corn, and flying away far out of sight of desk and exercises, while Mlle.

Henriette, ever haunted by her ideas of grandeur, her love of luxurious things, took to work hardly less unwillingly. This young person of fifteen, to whom her father had transmitted something of his imaginative faculties, was already arranging her life in advance and declared formally that she should marry one of the n.o.bility, and would never have more than three children: "A boy to inherit the name and two little girls--so as to be able to dress them alike."

"Yes, that's right," Bonne Maman would say, "you shall dress them alike.

In the meantime, let us attend to our participles a little."

But the one who caused the most concern was Elise, with her examination taken thrice without success, always failing in history and preparing herself anew, seized by a deep fear and a mistrust of herself which made her carry about with her everywhere and open every moment that unfortunate history of France, in the omnibus, in the street, even at the luncheon-table; she was already a grown girl and very pretty, and she no longer possessed that little mechanical memory of childhood wherein dates and events lodge themselves for the whole of one's life.

Beset by other preoccupations, the lesson was forgotten in an instant, despite the apparent application of the pupil, with her long lashes fringing her eyes, her curls sweeping over the pages, and her rosy mouth animated by a little quiver of attention, repeating ten times in succession: "Louis, surnamed le Hutin, 1314-1316; Philip V, surnamed the Long, 1316-1322. Ah, Bonne Maman, it's no good; I shall never know them." Whereupon Bonne Maman would come to her a.s.sistance, help her to concentrate her attention, to store up a few of those dates of the Middle Ages, barbarous and sharp as the helmets of the warriors of the period. And in the intervals of these occupations, of this general and constant superintendence, she yet found time to do some pretty needlework, to extract from her work-basket some delicate crochet lace or a piece of tapestry on which she was engaged and to which she clung as closely as the young Elise to her history of France. Even when she talked, her fingers never remained unoccupied for a moment.

"Do you never take any rest?" said de Gery to her, as she counted under her breath the st.i.tches of her tapestry, "three, four, five," to secure the right variation in the shading of the colours.

"But this is a rest from work," she answered. "You men cannot understand how good needlework is for a woman's mind. It gives order to the thoughts, fixes by a st.i.tch the moment that pa.s.ses what would otherwise pa.s.s with it. And how many griefs are calmed, anxieties forgotten, thanks to this wholly physical act of attention, to this repet.i.tion of an even movement, in which one finds--of necessity and very quickly--the equilibrium of one's whole being. It does not hinder me from following the conversation around me, from listening to you still better than I should if I were doing something. Three, four, five."

Oh, yes, she listened. That was apparent in the animation of her face, in the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself as she sat, needle in air, the thread taut over her raised little finger. Then she would quickly resume her work, sometimes after putting in a thoughtful word, which agreed generally with the opinions of friend Paul.

An affinity of nature, responsibilities and duties similar in character, drew these two young people together, interested each of them in the other's occupations. She knew the names of his two brothers Pierre and Louis, his plans for their future when they should have left school.

Pierre wanted to be a sailor. "Oh, no, not a sailor," Bonne Maman would say, "it will be much better for him to come to Paris with you." And when he admitted that he was afraid of Paris for them, she laughed at his fears, called him provincial, full of affection for the city in which she had been born, in which she had grown to chaste young womanhood, and that gave her in return those vivacities, those natural refinements, that jesting good-humour which incline one to believe that Paris, with its rain, its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the veritable fatherland of woman, whose nerves it heals gently and whose qualities of intelligence and patience it develops.

Each day Paul de Gery came to appreciate Mlle. Aline better--he was the only person in the house who so called her--and, strange circ.u.mstance, it was Felicia who completed the cementing of their intimacy. What relations could there exist between the artist's daughter, moving in the highest spheres, and this little middle-cla.s.s girl buried in the depths of a suburb? Relations of childhood and of friends.h.i.+p, common recollections, the great court-yard of the Inst.i.tution Belin, where they had played together for three years. Paris is full of these juxtapositions. A name uttered by chance in the course of a conversation brought out suddenly the bewildered question: