Ten Tales Part 9

Seven o'clock! Time that they came home, and the shop must be closed against the November wind which is twisting and turning the flames of the gas-jets.

Look at them now: Bayard grown stout, portly, and covered with trinkets, while Leon, who has just entered the first cla.s.s in pharmacy, has actually become a fine-looking young fellow.

"Good-day, Mimi; good-day, Norine! Let us go right in to dinner. I will tell you all the news while we are eating the soup," said the druggist.

They went up to the dining-room, and while Madame Bayard, sitting under a barometer in the shape of a lyre, served the thick soup, Bayard, tucking his napkin in his vest and regarding his wife with a knowing look, said,

"You know it is all right."

"The Forgets agree?"

"Exactly; and Leon will espouse Hortense in six months, and our daughter-in-law will come and live with us. Yes, Norine, you have known nothing about it, because one does not speak of such things before young girls; but for more than a year Leon has been in love with Hortense Forget, and has been teasing us to arrange the marriage--not such a difficult thing after all, since it only required a word. Leon is a good catch. The only difficulty was that we wanted to keep our son with us.

At last it is all arranged, and your foster brother will have the wife he wants. I hope you are pleased."

"Very much pleased," replied Norine.

Oh, deaf and blind! They never heard the voice of Norine when she replied to them--that low, pathetic tone, which is the echo of a broken heart. Nor did they see how pale she became, and that her head, suddenly grown heavy, swayed from side to side as if Norine were about to faint.

They saw nothing, comprehended nothing; and for a long time they had seen and comprehended nothing. Yet they dearly loved this Norine, who was the grace, the charm of the house. They dreamed, these good people, of marrying her one of these days to their head-clerk, a widower of prudent and economical habits, and "all that is necessary to make a woman happy." Leon loved her, too, with all his heart; but as a dear, good sister. Nor did the great spoiled boy suspect that Norine loved him, and suffered from her love--aye, to death itself. No; even that evening, when they had unconsciously inflicted upon her the worst of torture, they never suspected the truth; and they would sleep peacefully, indulging in beautiful dreams of the future, at the very hour when, shut in her chamber--the chamber separated by such a thin part.i.tion from that of her adopted parents--Norine would fall upon her bed, fainting with grief, and bury her head in her pillow to stifle her sobs.

V.

The ball is finished; and in the empty rooms the candles, burned to the very end, have broken some of the sconces and the fragments lie upon the waxed floors.

The Bayards have insisted that the wedding should be celebrated at their house; but by the aid of many flowers (it is midsummer) they have given a holiday appearance to the apartment in the Rue Vieille du Temple where they have triumphantly installed their daughter-in-law.

At last it is finished; the young couple have retired to their nuptial chamber, where Madame Bayard has gone for a moment with them. Coming out she found Norine still in the little salon, helping the servants extinguish the lights. She embraced the young girl tenderly, saying,

"Go to bed, my child. You must be very tired." And she added, with a smile, "Well, it will be your turn before long."

And Norine was at last alone in the room, now so gloomy, and lighted only by her single candle resting on the piano.

Heavens! how heavy was the odor of the flowers, and how her head ached.

Ah, that horrible day! What torment she had endured since the moment when she knelt, impressed into service as a lady's-maid, with pins in her lips, at the feet of her rival Hortense, and arranged her white satin train, to the hour when Leon, holding his wife by the waist, drew her towards her, Norine, and the lips of the young couple met almost upon her very forehead!

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Oh, the odor of the flowers is insupportable, and she is so giddy and faint.

She fell upon a sofa, unnerved by a frightful headache, her head thrown back, clasping her forehead with her two hands, but with open eyes staring always at the door--the door of that chamber which was shut upon the young couple, closed upon the mystery which was breaking her heart.

A sort of delirium overwhelmed her. How the heavy perfume of those flowers overpowered her, and how a thousand memories a.s.sailed her at once. She was a child again in the saloon at Argenteuil, and the kind Parisians came and caressed her. She was embraced by the dear little boy wearing a white plume in his hat. Rapid pictures flashed upon her soul.

The _pension_ of the Rue de l'Homme Arme, and Mademoiselle Merlin, with her knitting-needle stuck in her head-dress, pointed with the end of her stick to the table of weights and measures. The drug-store on Sundays, all dark, the shutters closed, and she playing catch with Leon among the barrels and sacks.

Good G.o.d! was she losing her head? She could not help humming that waltz, during which Leon once held her in his arms. She was stifled. Oh, the flowers! She must go out, or at least open a window. But she could not rise; her strength had deserted her. Could she die thus? Two iron fingers seemed to be pressing her temples. Oh, the roses and the orange-flowers--those orange-flowers above all!

At last she made a great effort. She rose upright and pale--pale as her white robe. But suddenly her strength left her, and falling first upon her knees, and then with her head and shoulders upon the wood floor, poor Norine lay stretched at the threshold of the bridal chamber, killed by disappointed love and by the flowers.

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MY FRIEND MEURTRIER.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MY FRIEND MEURTIER]

I.

I was at one time employed in a government office. Every day from ten o'clock until four I became a voluntary prisoner in a depressing office, adorned with yellow pasteboard boxes, and filled with the musty odor of old papers. There I lunched on Italian cheese and apples which I roasted at the grate. I read the morning papers, even to the advertis.e.m.e.nts; I rhymed verses, and I attended to the affairs of state to the extent of drawing at the end of each month a salary which barely kept me from starving.

I recall to-day one of my companions in captivity at that epoch.

He was called Achille Meurtrier, and certainly his fierce look and tall form seemed to warrant that name. He was a great big fellow, about forty years old, not too much chest or shoulders, but who increased his apparent size by wearing felt hats with wide brims, ample and short coats, large plaid trousers, and neckties of a sanguine red under rolling collars. He wore a full beard, long hair, and was very proud of his hairy hands.

The chief boast of Meurtrier, otherwise the best and most amiable of companions, was to trifle with an athletic const.i.tution, to possess the biceps of a prize-fighter, and, as he said himself, not to know his own strength. He never made a gesture, even in the exercise of his peaceful profession, that did not have for its object to convince the spectators of his prodigious vigor. Did he have to take from its case a half-empty pasteboard box, he advanced towards the shelf with the heavy step of a street porter, grasped the box solidly with a tight hand, and carried it with a stiff arm as far as the next table, with a shrugging of shoulders and frowning of brow worthy of Milo of Crotona. He carried this manner so far that he never used less apparent effort even to lift the lightest objects, and one day when he held in his right hand a basket of old papers I saw him extend his left arm horizontally as if to make a counterpoise to the tremendous weight.

I ought to say that this robust creature inspired me with a profound respect, for I was then, even more than to-day, physically weak and delicate, and in consequence filled with admiration for that energetic physique which I lacked.

The conversations of Meurtrier were not of a nature to diminish the admiration with which he inspired me.

In the summer, above all, on Monday mornings, when we had returned to the office after our Sunday holiday, he had an inexhaustible fund of stories concerning his adventures and feats of strength. After taking off his felt-hat, his coat, and his vest, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt, to indicate his sanguine and ardent temperament, he would thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, and, standing near me in an att.i.tude of perpendicular solidity, begin a monologue something as follows:

"What a Sunday, my boy! Positively no fatigue can lay me up. Think of it: yesterday was the regatta at Joinville-le-Pont; at six o'clock in the morning the rendezvous at Bercy, at The Mariners, for the crew of the _Marsouin_; the sun is up; a gla.s.s of white wine and we jump into our rowing suits, seize an oar and give way--one-two, one-two--as far as Joinville; then overboard for a swim before breakfast--strip to swimming drawers, a jump overboard, and look out for squalls. After my bath I have the appet.i.te of a tiger. Good! I seize the boat by one hand and I call out, 'Charpentier, pa.s.s me a small ham.' Three motions in one time and I have finished it to the bone. 'Charpentier, pa.s.s me the brandy-flask.' Three swallows and it is empty."

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So the description would continue--dazzling, Homeric.

"It is the hour for the regatta--noon--the sun just overhead. The boats draw up in line on the sparkling river, before a tent gaudy with streamers. On the bank the mayor with his staff of office, gendarmes in yellow shoulder-belts, and a swarm of summer dresses, open parasols, and straw hats. Bang! the signal-gun is fired. The _Marsouin_ shoots ahead of all her compet.i.tors and easily gains the prize--and no fatigue! We go around Marne, and, returning, dine at Creteil. How cool the evening in the dusky arbor, where pipes glow through the darkness, and moths singe their wings in the flame of the _omelette au kirsch_. At the end of a dessert, served on decorated plates, we hear from the ball-room the call of the cornet--'Take places for the quadrille!' But already a rival crew, beaten that same morning, has monopolized the prettiest girls. A fight!--teeth broken, eyes blackened, ugly falls, and whacks below the belt; in a word, a poem of physical enthusiasm, of noisy hilarity, of animal spirits, without speaking of the return at midnight, through crowded stations, with girls whom we lift into the cars, friends separated calling from one end of the train to the other, and fellows playing a horn upon the roof."

And the evenings of my astonis.h.i.+ng companion were not less full of adventure than his Sundays. Collar-and-elbow wrestling in a tent, under the red light of torches, between him--simple amateur--and Du Bois, the iron man, in person; rat-chases near the mouths of sewers, with dogs as fierce as tigers; sanguinary encounters at night, in the most dangerous quarters, with ruffians and nose-eaters, were the most insignificant episodes of his nightly career. Nor do I dare relate other adventures of a more intimate character, from which, as the writers of an earlier day would say in n.o.ble style, a pen the least timorous would recoil with horror.

However painful it may be to confess an unworthy sentiment, I am obliged to say that my admiration for Meurtrier was not unmixed with regret and bitterness. Perhaps there was mingled with it something of envy. But the recitation of his most marvellous exploits had never awakened in me the least feeling of incredulity, and Achille Meurtrier easily took his place in my mind among heroes and demiG.o.ds, between Roland and Pirithous.

II.

At this time I was a great wanderer in the suburbs, and I occupied the leisure of my summer evenings by solitary walks in those distant regions, as unknown to the Parisians of the boulevards as the country of the Caribbees, and of whose sombre charm I endeavored later to tell in verse.

One evening in July, hot and dusty, at the hour when the first gas-lights were beginning to twinkle in the misty twilight, I was walking slowly from Vaugirard through one of those long and depressing suburban streets lined on each side by houses of unequal height, whose porters and porteresses, in s.h.i.+rt sleeves and in calico, sat on the steps and imagined that they were taking the fresh air. Hardly any one pa.s.sing in the whole street; perhaps, from end to end, a mason, white with plaster, a sergeant-de-ville, a child carrying home a four-pound loaf larger than himself, or a young girl hurrying on in hat and cloak, with a leather bag on her arm; and every quarter-hour the half-empty omnibus coming back to its place of departure with the heavy trot of its tired horses.

Stumbling now and then on the pavement--for asphalt is an unknown luxury in these places--I went down the street, tasting all the delights of a stroller. Sometimes I stopped before a vacant lot to watch, through the broken boards of the fence, the fading glories of the setting sun and the black silhouettes of the chimneys thrown against a greenish sky.

Sometimes, through an open window on the ground-floor, I caught sight of an interior, picturesque and familiar: here a jolly-looking laundress holding her flat-iron to her cheek; there workmen sitting at tables and smoking in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a cabaret, while an old Bohemian with long gray hair, standing before them, sang something about "Liberty,"

accompanying himself on a guitar about the color of bouillon--the scenes of Chardin and Van Ostade.

Suddenly I stopped.