The Nabob Part 39

"My son, where is my son?"

"Below, madame, in his carriage. It was he who sent me to look for you."

She ran before the attendant, walking quickly, talking aloud, pus.h.i.+ng aside out of her way the little black and bearded men who were gesticulating in the pa.s.sages. After the waiting-hall she crossed a great round antechamber where servants in respectful rows made a living wainscotting to the high, blank wall. From there she could see through the gla.s.s doors, the outside railing, the crowd in waiting, and among the other vehicles, the Nabob's carriage waiting. As she pa.s.sed, the peasant recognised in one of the groups her enormous neighbour of the gallery, with the pale man in spectacles who had attacked her son, who was receiving all sorts of felicitation for his discourse. At the name of Jansoulet, p.r.o.nounced among mocking and satisfied sneers, she stopped.

"At any rate," said a handsome man with a bad feminine face, "he has not proved where our accusations were false."

The old woman, hearing that, wrenched herself through the crowd, and facing Moessard said:

"What he did not say I will. I am his mother, and it is my duty to speak."

She stopped to seize Le Merquier by the sleeve, who was escaping:

"Wicked man, you must listen, first of all. What have you got against my child? Don't you know who he is? Wait a little till I tell you."

And turning to the journalist:

"I had two sons, sir."

Moessard was no longer there. She returned to Le Merquier: "Two sons, sir." Le Merquier had disappeared.

"Oh, listen to me, some one, I beg," said the poor mother, throwing her hands and her voice round her to a.s.semble and retain her hearers; but all fled, melted away, disappeared--deputies, reporters, unknown and mocking faces to whom she wished at any cost to tell her story, careless of the indifference where her sorrows and her joys fell, her pride and maternal tenderness expressed in a tornado of feeling. And while she was thus exciting herself and struggling--distracted, her bonnet awry--at once grotesque and sublime, as are all the children of nature when brought into civilization, taking to witness the honesty of her son and the injustice of men, even the liveried servants, whose disdainful impa.s.sibility was more cruel than all, Jansoulet appeared suddenly beside her.

"Take my arm, mother. You must not stop there."

He said it in a tone so firm and calm that all the laughter ceased, and the old woman, suddenly quieted, sustained by this solid hold, still trembling a little with anger, left the palace between two respectful rows. A dignified and rustic couple, the millions of the son gilding the countrified air of the mother, like the rags of a saint enshrined in a golden _cha.s.se_--they disappeared in the bright sunlight outside, in the splendour of their glittering carriage--a ferocious irony in their deep distress, a striking symbol of the terrible misery of the rich.

They sat well back, for both feared to be seen, and hardly spoke at first. But when the vehicle was well on its way, and he had behind him the sad Calvary where his honour hung gibbeted, Jansoulet, utterly overcome, laid his head on his mother's shoulder, hid it in the old green shawl, and there, with the burning tears flowing, all his great body shaken by sobs, he returned to the cry of his childhood: "Mother."

DRAMAS OF PARIS

Que l'heure est donc breve, Qu'on pa.s.se en aimant!

C'est moins qu'un moment, Un peu plus qu'un reve.

In the semi-obscurity of a great drawing-room filled with flowers, the seats of the furniture covered with holland, the chandeliers draped with muslin, the windows open, and the venetians lowered, Mme. Jenkins is seated at the piano reading the new song of the fas.h.i.+onable musician; some melodic phrases accompanying exquisite verse, a melancholy _Lied_, unequally divided, which seems written for the tender gravities of her voice and the disturbed state of her soul.

Le temps nous enleve Notre enchantement

sighs the poor woman, moved by the sound of her own voice, and while the notes float away in the court-yard of the house, where the fountain falls drop by drop among a bed of rhododendrons, the singer breaks off, her hands holding the chord, her eyes fixed on the music, but her look far away. The doctor is absent. The care of his health and business has exiled him from Paris for some days, and the thoughts of the beautiful Mme. Jenkins have taken that grave turn, as often happens in solitude, that a.n.a.lytical tendency which sometimes makes even momentary separations fatal in the most united households. United they had not been for sometime. They only saw each other at meal-times, before the servants, hardly speaking unless he, the man of unctuous manners, allowed himself to make some disobliging or brutal remark on her son, or on her age, which she began to show, or on some dress which did not become her. Always gentle and serene, she stifled her tears, accepted everything, feigned not to understand; not that she loved him still after so much cruelty and contempt, but it was the story, as their coachman Joe told it, "of an old clinger who was determined to make him marry her." Up to then a terrible obstacle--the life of the legitimate wife--had prolonged a dishonourable situation. Now that the obstacle no longer existed she wished to put an end to the situation, because of Andre, who from one day to another might be forced to despise his mother, because of the world which they had deceived for ten years--a world she never entered but with a beating heart, for fear of the treatment she would receive after a discovery. To her allusions, to her prayers, Jenkins had answered at first by phrases, grand gestures: "Could you distrust me? Is not our engagement sacred?"

He pointed out the difficulty of keeping an act of this importance secret. Then he shut himself up in a malignant silence, full of cold anger and violent determinations. The death of the duke, the fall of an absurd vanity, had struck a final blow at the household; for disaster, which often brings hearts ready to understand one another nearer, finishes and completes disunions. And it was indeed a disaster. The popularity of the Jenkins pearls suddenly stopped, the situation of the foreign doctor and charlatan, ably defined by Bouchereau in the Journal of the Academy, and people of fas.h.i.+on looked at each other in fright, paler from terror than from the a.r.s.enic they had imbibed. Already the Irishman had felt the effect of those counter blasts which make Parisian infatuations so dangerous.

It was for that reason, no doubt, that Jenkins had judged it wise to disappear for some time, leaving madame to continue to frequent the houses still open to them, to gauge and hold public opinion in respect.

It was a hard task for the poor woman, who found everywhere the cool and distant welcome which she had received at the Hemerlingues. But she did not complain; thus earning her marriage, she was putting between them as a last resource the sad tie of pity and common trials. And as she knew that she was welcomed in the world on account of her talent, of the artistic distraction she lent to their private parties, she was always ready to lay on the piano her fan and long gloves, to play some fragment of her vast repertory. She worked constantly, pa.s.sing her afternoons in turning over new music, choosing by preference sad and complicated harmonies, the modern music which no longer contents itself with being an art, but becomes a science, and answers better to our nerves, to our restlessness, than to sentiment.

Daylight flooded the room as a maid brought a card to her mistress; "Heurteux, business agent."

The gentleman was there, he insisted on seeing madame.

"You have told him the doctor is travelling?"

He had been told, but it was to madame he wished to speak.

"To me?"

Disturbed, she examined this rough, crumpled card, this unknown name: "Heurteux." What could it be?

"Well, show him in."

Heurteux, business agent, coming from broad daylight into the semi-obscurity of the room, was blinking with an uncertain air, trying to see. She, on the other hand, saw very distinctly a stiff figure, with iron-gray whiskers and protruding jaw, one of those hangers-on of the law whom one meets round the law courts, born fifty years old, with a bitter mouth, an envious air, and a morocco portfolio under the arm. He sat down on the edge of the chair which she pointed out to him, turned his head to make sure that the servant had gone out, then opened his portfolio methodically to search for a paper. Seeing that he did not speak, she began in a tone of impatience:

"I ought to warn you, sir, that my husband is absent, and that I am not acquainted with his business."

Without any astonishment, his hand in his papers, the man answered: "I know that _M. Jenkins_ is absent, madame"--he emphasized more particularly the two words "M. Jenkins"--"especially as I come on his behalf."

She looked at him frightened. "On his behalf?"

"Alas! yes, madame. The doctor's situation, as you are no doubt aware, is one, for the moment, of very great embarra.s.sment. Unfortunate dealings on the Stock Exchange, the failure of a great financial enterprise in which his money is invested, the _OEuvre de Bethleem_ which weighs heavily on him, all these reverses coming at once have forced him to a grave resolution. He is selling his mansion, his horses, everything that he possesses, and has given me a power of attorney for that purpose."

He had at last found what he was looking for--one of those stamped folded papers, interlined and riddled with references, where the impa.s.sible law makes itself responsible for so many lies. Mme. Jenkins was going to say: "But I was here. I would have carried out all his wishes, all his orders--" when she suddenly understood by the coolness of her visitor, his easy, almost insolent att.i.tude, that she was included in this clearing up, in the getting rid of the costly mansion and useless riches, and that her departure would be the signal for the sale.

She rose suddenly. The man, still seated, went on: "What I have still to say, madame"--oh, she knew it, she could have dictated to him, what he had still to say--"is so painful, so delicate. M. Jenkins is leaving Paris for a long time, and in the fear of exposing you to the hazards and adventures of the new life he is undertaking, of taking you away from a son you cherish, and in whose interest perhaps you had better----"

She heard no more, saw no more, and while he was spinning out his gossamer phrases, given over to despair, she heard the song over and over in her mind, as the last image seen pursues a drowning man:

Le temps nous enleve Notre enchantement.

All at once her pride returned. "Let us put a stop to this, sir. All your turns and phrases are only an additional insult. The fact is that I am driven out--turned into the street like a servant."

"Oh, madame, madame! The situation is cruel enough, don't let us make it worse by hard words. In the evolution of his _modus vivendi_ M. Jenkins has to separate from you, but he does so with the greatest pain to himself; and the proposals which I am charged to make are a proof of his sentiments for you. First, as to furniture and clothes, I am authorized to let you take--"

"That will do," said she. She flew to the bell. "I am going out.

Quick--my hat, my mantle, anything, never mind what. I am in a hurry."

And while they went to fetch her what she wanted she said:

"Everything here belongs to M. Jenkins. Let him dispose of it as he likes. I want nothing from him. Don't insist; it is useless."

The man did not insist. His mission fulfilled, the rest mattered little to him.

Steadily, coldly, she arranged her hat carefully before the gla.s.s, the maid fastening her veil, and arranging on her shoulders the folds of her mantle, then she looked round her and considered for a moment whether she was forgetting anything precious to her. No, nothing--her son's letters were in her pocket, she never allowed them to be away from her.

"Madame does not wish for the carriage?"

"No." And she left the house.