Lords of the Housetops Part 15

"And even were her mournings not a flouting of her short year of widowhood," continued Madame Vic, with an acrimony that abbreviated the term of widowhood most unfairly--"the scores of eligible suitors who openly come streaming to her door, and are welcomed there, are as trumpets proclaiming her audacious intentions and her indecorous desires. Even Monsieur Brisson is in that outrageous procession! Is it not enough that she should entice a repulsively bald-headed notary and an old rake of a major to make their brazen advances, without suffering this anatomy of a pharmacien to come treading on their heels?--he with his hands imbrued in the life-blood of the unhappy old woman whom his mismade prescription sent in agony to the tomb! Pah! I have no patience with her! She and her grief and her seclusion and her sympathetic cat, indeed! It all is a tragedy of indiscretion--that shapes itself as a revolting farce!"

It will be observed that Madame Vic, in framing her bill of particulars, practically reduced her alleged scores of Madame Jolicoeur's suitors to precisely two--since the bad third was handicapped so heavily by that notorious matter of the mismade prescription as to be a negligible quant.i.ty, quite out of the race. Indeed, it was only the preposterous temerity of Monsieur Brisson--despairingly clutching at any chance to retrieve his broken fortunes--that put him in the running at all. With the others, in such slighting terms referred to by Madame Vic--Monsieur Peloux, a notary of standing, and the Major Gontard, of the Twenty-ninth of the Line--the case was different. It had its sides.

"That this worthy lady reasonably may desire again to wed," declared Monsieur Fromagin, actual proprietor of the epicerie Russe--an establishment liberally patronized by Madame Jolicoeur--"is as true as that when she goes to make her choosings between these estimable gentlemen she cannot make a choice that is wrong."

Madame Gauthier, a clear-starcher of position, to whom Monsieur Fromagin thus addressed himself, was less broadly positive. "That is a matter of opinion," she answered; and added: "To go no further than the very beginning, Monsieur should perceive that her choice has exactly fifty chances in the hundred of going wrong: lying, as it does, between a meagre, sallow-faced creature of a death-white baldness, and a fine big pattern of a man, strong and ruddy, with a close-clipped but abundant thatch on his head, and a moustache that admittedly is superb!"

"Ah, there speaks the woman!" said Monsieur Fromagin, with a patronizing smile distinctly irritating. "Madame will recognize--if she will but bring herself to look a little beyond the mere outside--that what I have advanced is not a matter of opinion but of fact. Observe: Here is Monsieur Peloux--to whose trifling leanness and aristocratic baldness the thoughtful give no attention--easily a notary in the very first rank. As we all know, his services are sought in cases of the most exigent importance--"

"For example," interrupted Madame Gauthier, "the case of the insurance solicitor, in whose countless defraudings my own brother was a sufferer: a creature of a vileness, whose deserts were unnumbered ages of dungeons--and who, thanks to the chicaneries of Monsieur Peloux, at this moment walks free as air!"

"It is of the professional duty of advocates," replied Monsieur Fromagin, sententiously, "to defend their clients; on the successful discharge of that duty--irrespective of minor details--depends their fame. Madame neglects the fact that Monsieur Peloux, by his masterly conduct of the case that she specifies, won for himself from his legal colleagues an immense applause."

"The more shame to his legal colleagues!" commented Madame Gauthier curtly.

"But leaving that affair quite aside," continued Monsieur Fromagin airily, but with insistence, "here is this notable advocate who reposes his important homages at Madame Jolicoeur's feet: he a man of an age that is suitable, without being excessive; who has in the community an a.s.sured position; whose more than moderate wealth is known. I insist, therefore, that should she accept his homages she would do well."

"And I insist," declared Madame Gauthier stoutly, "that should she turn her back upon the Major Gontard she would do most ill!"

"Madame a little disregards my premises," Monsieur Fromagin spoke in a tone of forbearance, "and therefore a little argues--it is the privilege of her s.e.x--against the air. Distinctly, I do not exclude from Madame Jolicoeur's choice that gallant Major: whose rank--now approaching him to the command of a regiment, and fairly equalling the position at the bar achieved by Monsieur Peloux--has been won, grade by grade, by deeds of valour in his African campaignings which have made him conspicuous even in the army that stands first in such matters of all the armies of the world. Moreover--although, admittedly, in that way Monsieur Peloux makes a better showing--he is of an easy affluence. On the Camargue he has his excellent estate in vines, from which comes a revenue more than sufficing to satisfy more than modest wants. At Les Martigues he has his charming coquette villa, smothered in the flowers of his own planting, to which at present he makes his agreeable escapes from his military duties; and in which, when his retreat is taken, he will pa.s.s softly his sunset years. With these substantial points in his favour, the standing of the Major Gontard in this matter practically is of a parity with the standing of Monsieur Peloux. Equally, both are worthy of Madame Jolicoeur's consideration: both being able to continue her in the life of elegant comfort to which she is accustomed; and both being on a social plane--it is of her level accurately--to which the widow of an ingenieur des ponts et chaussees neither steps up nor steps down. Having now made clear, I trust, my reasonings, I repeat the proposition with which Madame took issue: When Madame Jolicoeur goes to make her choosings between these estimable gentlemen she cannot make a choice that is wrong."

"And I repeat, Monsieur," said Madame Gauthier, lifting her basket from the counter, "that in making her choosings Madame Jolicoeur either goes to raise herself to the heights of a matured happiness, or to plunge herself into bald-headed abysses of despair. Yes, Monsieur, that far apart are her choosings!" And Madame Gauthier added, in communion with herself as she pa.s.sed to the street with her basket: "As for me, it would be that adorable Major by a thousand times!"

As was of reason, since hers was the first place in the matter, Madame Jolicoeur herself carried on debatings--in the portion of her heart that had escaped complete devastation--identical in essence with the debatings of her case which went up and down the Rue Bausset.

Not having become devote--in the year and more of opportunity open to her for a turn in that direction--one horn of her original dilemma had been eliminated, so to say, by atrophy. Being neglected, it had withered: with the practical result that out of her very indecisions had come a decisive choice. But to her new dilemma, of which the horns were the Major and the Notary--in the privacy of her secret thoughts she made no bones of admitting that this dilemma confronted her--the atrophying process was not applicable; at least, not until it could be applied with a sharp finality. Too long dallied with, it very well might lead to the atrophy of both of them in dudgeon; and thence onward, conceivably, to her being left to cling only to the Shah de Perse for all the remainder of her days.

Therefore, to the avoidance of that too radical conclusion, Madame Jolicoeur engaged in her debatings briskly: offering to herself, in effect, the balanced arguments advanced by Monsieur Fromagin in favour equally of Monsieur Peloux and of the Major Gontard; taking as her own, with moderating exceptions and emendations, the views of Madame Gauthier as to the meagreness and pallid baldness of the one and the st.u.r.diness and gallant bearing of the other; considering, from the standpoint of her own personal knowledge in the premises, the Notary's disposition toward a secretive reticence that bordered upon severity, in contrast with the cordially frank and debonair temperament of the Major; and, at the back of all, keeping well in mind the fundamental truths that opportunity ever is evanescent and that time ever is on the wing.

As the result of her debatings, and not less as the result of experience gained in her earlier campaigning, Madame Jolicoeur took up a strategic position nicely calculated to inflame the desire for, by a.s.suming the uselessness of, an a.s.sault. In set terms, confirming particularly her earlier and more general avowal, she declared equally to the Major and to the Notary that absolutely the whole of her bestowable affection--of the remnant in her withered heart available for distribution--was bestowed upon the Shah de Perse: and so, with an alluring nonchalance, left them to draw the logical conclusion that their strivings to win that desirable quant.i.ty were idle--since a definite disposition of it already had been made.

The reply of the Major Gontard to this declaration was in keeping with his known amiability, but also was in keeping with his military habit of command. "a.s.suredly," he said, "Madame shall continue to bestow, within reason, her affections upon Monsieur le Shah; and with them that brave animal--he is a cat of ten thousand--shall have my affections as well.

Already, knowing my feeling for him, we are friends--as Madame shall see to her own convincing." Addressing himself in tones of kindly persuasion to the Shah de Perse, he added: "Viens, Monsieur!"--whereupon the Shah de Perse instantly jumped himself to the Major's knee and broke forth, in response to a savant rubbing of his soft little jowls, into his gurgling purr. "Voila, Madame!" continued the Major. "It is to be perceived that we have our good understandings, the Shah de Perse and I.

That we all shall live happily together tells itself without words. But observe"--of a sudden the voice of the Major thrilled with a deep earnestness, and his style of address changed to a familiarity that only the intensity of his feeling condoned--"I am resolved that to me, above all, shall be given thy dear affections. Thou shalt give me the perfect flower of them--of that fact rest thou a.s.sured. In thy heart I am to be the very first--even as in my heart thou thyself art the very first of all the world. In Africa I have had my successes in my conquests and holdings of fortresses. Believe me, I shall have an equal success in conquering and in holding the sweetest fortress in France!"

Certainly, the Major Gontard had a bold way with him. But that it had its attractions, not to say its compellings, Madame Jolicoeur could not honestly deny.

On the part of the Notary--whose disposition, fostered by his profession, was toward subtlety rather than toward boldness--Madame Jolicoeur's declaration of cat rights was received with no such belligerent blare of trumpets and beat of drums. He met it with a light show of banter--beneath which, to come to the surface later, lay hidden dark thoughts.

"Madame makes an excellent pleasantry," he said with a smile of the blandest. "Without doubt, not a very flattering pleasantry--but I know that her denial of me in favour of her cat is but a jesting at which we both may laugh. And we may laugh together the better because, in the roots of her jesting, we have our sympathies. I also have an intensity of affection for cats"--to be just to Monsieur Peloux, who loathed cats, it must be said that he gulped as he made this flagrantly untruthful statement--"and with this admirable cat, so dear to Madame, it goes to make itself that we speedily become enduring friends."

Curiously enough--a mere coincidence, of course--as the Notary uttered these words so sharply at points with veracity, in the very moment of them, the Shah de Perse stiffly retired into his sulkiest corner and turned what had every appearance of being a scornful back upon the world.

Judiciously ignoring this inopportunely equivocal incident, Monsieur Peloux reverted to the matter in chief and concluded his deliverance in these words: "I well understand, I repeat, that Madame for the moment makes a comedy of herself and of her cat for my amusing. But I persuade myself that her droll fancyings will not be lasting, and that she will be serious with me in the end. Until then--and then most of all--I am at her feet humbly: an unworthy, but a very earnest, suppliant for her good-will. Should she have the cruelty to refuse my supplication, it will remain with me to die in an unmerited despair!"

Certainly, this was an appeal--of a sort. But even without perceiving the mitigating subtlety of its comminative final clause--so skilfully worded as to leave Monsieur Peloux free to bring off his threatened unmeritedly despairing death quite at his own convenience--Madame Jolicoeur did not find it satisfying. In contrast with the Major Gontard's ringingly audacious declarations of his habits in dealing with fortresses, she felt that it lacked force. And, also--this, of course, was a sheer weakness--she permitted herself to be influenced appreciably by the indicated preferences of the Shah de Perse: who had jumped to the knee of the Major with an affectionate alacrity; and who undeniably had turned on the Notary--either by chance or by intention--a back of scorn.

As the general outcome of these several developments, Madame Jolicoeur's debatings came to have in them--if I so may state the trend of her mental activities--fewer bald heads and more moustaches; and her never severely set purpose to abide in a loneliness relieved only by the Shah de Perse was abandoned root and branch.

While Madame Jolicoeur continued her debatings--which, in their modified form, manifestly were approaching her to conclusions--water was running under bridges elsewhere.

In effect, her hesitancies produced a period of suspense that gave opportunity for, and by the exasperating delay of it stimulated, the resolution of the Notary's dark thoughts into darker deeds. With reason, he did not accept at its face value Madame Jolicoeur's declaration touching the permanent bestowal of her remnant affections; but he did believe that there was enough in it to make the Shah de Perse a delaying obstacle to his own acquisition of them. When obstacles got in this gentleman's way it was his habit to kick them out of it--a habit that had not been unduly stunted by half a lifetime of successful practice at the criminal bar.

Because of his professional relations with them, Monsieur Peloux had an extensive acquaintance among criminals of varying shades of intensity--at times, in his dubious doings, they could be useful to him--hidden away in the shadowy nooks and corners of the city; and he also had his emissaries through whom they could be reached. All the conditions thus standing attendant upon his convenience, it was a facile matter for him to make an appointment with one of these disreputables at a cabaret of bad record in the Quartier de la Tourette: a region--bordering upon the north side of the Vieux Port--that is at once the oldest and the foulest quarter of Ma.r.s.eille.

In going to keep this appointment--as was his habit on such occasions, in avoidance of possible spying upon his movements--he went deviously: taking a cab to the Ba.s.sin de Carenage, as though some maritime matter engaged him, and thence making the transit of the Vieux Port in a bateau mouche. It was while crossing in the ferryboat that a sudden shuddering beset him: as he perceived with horror--but without repentance--the pit into which he descended. In his previous, always professional, meetings with criminals his position had been that of una.s.sailable dominance. In his pending meeting--since he himself would be not only a criminal but an inciter to crime--he would be, in the essence of the matter, the under dog. Beneath his seemly black hat his bald head went whiter than even its normal deathly whiteness, and perspiration started from its every pore. Almost with a groan, he removed his hat and dried with his handkerchief what were in a way his tears of shame.

Over the interview between Monsieur Peloux and his hireling--cheerfully moistened, on the side of the hireling, with absinthe of a vileness in keeping with its place of purchase--decency demands the partial drawing of a veil. In brief, Monsieur Peloux--his guilty eyes averted, the shame-tears streaming afresh from his bald head--presented his criminal demand and stated the sum that he would pay for its gratification. This sum--being in keeping with his own estimate of what it paid for--was so much in excess of the hireling's views concerning the value of a mere cat-killing that he fairly jumped at it.

"Be not disturbed, Monsieur!" he replied, with the fervour of one really grateful, and with the expansive extravagance of a Ma.r.s.eillais keyed up with exceptionally bad absinthe. "Be not disturbed in the smallest! In this very coming moment this camel of a cat shall die a thousand deaths; and in but another moment immeasurable quant.i.ties of salt and ashes shall obliterate his justly despicable grave! To an instant accomplishment of Monsieur's wishes I pledge whole-heartedly the word of an honest man."

Actually--barring the number of deaths to be inflicted on the Shah de Perse, and the needlessly defiling concealment of his burial-place--this radical treatment of the matter was precisely what Monsieur Peloux desired; and what, in terms of innuendo and euphuism, he had asked for.

But the brutal frankness of the hireling, and his evident delight in sinning for good wages, came as an arousing shock to the enfeebled remnant of the Notary's better nature--with a resulting vacillation of purpose to which he would have risen superior had he been longer habituated to the ways of crime.

"No! No!" he said weakly. "I did not mean that--by no means all of that.

At least--that is to say--you will understand me, my good man, that enough will be done if you remove the cat from Ma.r.s.eille. Yes, that is what I mean--take it somewhere. Take it to Ca.s.sis, to Arles, to Avignon--where you will--and leave it there. The railway ticket is my charge--and, also, you have an extra napoleon for your refreshment by the way. Yes, that suffices. In a bag, you know--and soon!"

Returning across the Vieux Port in the bateau mouche, Monsieur Peloux no longer shuddered in dread of crime to be committed--his shuddering was for accomplished crime. On his bald head, unheeded, the gus.h.i.+ng tears of shame acc.u.mulated in pools.

When leaves of absence permitted him to make retirements to his coquette little estate at Les Martigues, the Major Gontard was as another Cincinnatus: with the minor differences that the lickerish cookings of the brave Marthe--his old femme de menage: a veritable protagonist among cooks, even in Provence--checked him on the side of severe simplicity; that he would have welcomed with effusion lictors, or others, come to announce his advance to a regiment; and that he made no use whatever of a plow.

In the matter of the plow, he had his excuses. His two or three acres of land lay on a hillside banked in tiny terraces--quite unsuited to the use of that implement--and the whole of his agricultural energies were given to the cultivation of flowers. Among his flowers, intelligently a.s.sisted by old Michel, he worked with a zeal bred of his affection for them; and after his workings, when the cool of evening was come, smoked his pipe refres.h.i.+ngly while seated on the vine-bowered estrade before his trim villa on the crest of the slope: the while sniffing with a just interest at the fumes of old Marthe's cookings, and placidly delighting in the ever-new beauties of the sunsets above the distant mountains and their near-by reflected beauties in the waters of the etang de Berre.

Save in his professional relations with recalcitrant inhabitants of Northern Africa, he was of a gentle nature, this amiable warrior: ever kindly, when kindliness was deserved, in all his dealings with mankind.

Equally, his benevolence was extended to the lower orders of animals--that it was understood, and reciprocated, the willing jumping of the Shah de Perse to his friendly knee made manifest--and was exhibited in practical ways. Naturally, he was a liberal contributor to the funds of the Societe protectrice des animaux; and, what was more to the purpose, it was his well-rooted habit to do such protecting as was necessary, on his own account, when he chanced upon any suffering creature in trouble or in pain.

Possessing these commendable characteristics, it follows that the doings of the Major Gontard in the railway station at Pas de Lanciers--on the day sequent to the day on which Monsieur Peloux was the promoter of a criminal conspiracy--could not have been other than they were. Equally does it follow that his doings produced the doings of the man with the bag.

Pas de Lanciers is the little station at which one changes trains in going from Ma.r.s.eille to Les Martigues. Descending from a first-cla.s.s carriage, the Major Gontard awaited the Martigues train--his leave was for two days, and his thoughts were engaged pleasantly with the breakfast that old Marthe would have ready for him and with plans for his flowers. From a third-cla.s.s carriage descended the man with the bag, who also awaited the Martigues train. Presently--the two happening to come together in their saunterings up and down the platform--the Major's interest was aroused by observing that within the bag went on a persistent wriggling; and his interest was quickened into characteristic action when he heard from its interior, faintly but quite distinctly, a very pitiful half-strangled little mew!

"In another moment," said the Major, addressing the man sharply, "that cat will be suffocated. Open the bag instantly and give it air!"

"Pardon, Monsieur," replied the man, starting guiltily. "This excellent cat is not suffocating. In the bag it breathes freely with all its lungs. It is a pet cat, having the habitude to travel in this manner; and, because it is of a friendly disposition, it is accustomed thus to make its cheerful little remarks." By way of comment upon this explanation, there came from the bag another half-strangled mew that was not at all suggestive of cheerfulness. It was a faint miserable mew--that told of cat despair!

At that juncture a down train came in on the other side of the platform, a train on its way to Ma.r.s.eille.

"Thou art a brute!" said the Major, tersely. "I shall not suffer thy cruelties to continue!" As he spoke, he s.n.a.t.c.hed away the bag from its uneasy possessor and applied himself to untying its confining cord.

Oppressed by the fear that goes with evil-doing, the man hesitated for a moment before attempting to retrieve what constructively was his property.

In that fateful moment the bag opened and a woebegone little black cat-head appeared; and then the whole of a delighted little black cat-body emerged--and cuddled with joy-purrs of recognition in its deliverer's arms! Within the sequent instant the recognition was mutual.

"Thunder of guns!" cried the Major. "It is the Shah de Perse!"