VII
A quarter of an hour later a footman in a red coat opened the door of a flat on a first floor in the Rue Taitbout in answer to Mme. Mauperin's ring.
"Good-morning, Georges. Is my son in?"
"Yes, madame, monsieur is there."
Mme. Mauperin had smiled on her son's domestic, and as she walked along she smiled on the rooms, on the furniture, and on everything she saw. When she entered the study her son was writing and smoking at the same time.
"Well, I never!" he exclaimed, taking his cigar out of his mouth and leaning his head against the back of his chair for his mother to kiss him. "It's you, is it, mamma?" he went on, continuing to smoke. "You didn't say a word about coming to Paris to-day. What brings you here?"
"Oh, I had some shopping and some visits to pay—you know I am always behind. How comfortable you are here!"
"Ah, yes, to be sure, you hadn't seen my new arrangements."
"Dear me, how well you do arrange everything! There's no one like you, really. It isn't damp here is it, are you quite sure?" and Mme. Mauperin put her hand against the wall. "Tell Georges to air the room always when you are away, won't you?"
"Yes, yes, mother," said Henri in a bored way, as one answers a child.
"Oh, why do you have those? I don't like your having such things." Mme. Mauperin had just caught sight of two swords above the bookcase. "The very sight of them! When one thinks—" and Mme. Mauperin closed her eyes for an instant and sat down. "You don't know how your dreadful bachelor life makes us poor mothers tremble. If you were married, it seems to me that I should not be so worried about you. I do wish you were married, Henri!"
"I do, too, I can assure you."
"Really? Come, now—mothers, you know—well, secrets ought not to be kept from them. I am so afraid, when I look at you, handsome as you are, and so distinguished and clever and fascinating. You are just the sort of man that any one would fall in love with, and I'm so afraid——"
"Of what?"
"Lest you should have some reason for not——"
"For not marrying, you mean, don't you? A chain—is that what you mean?"
Mme. Mauperin nodded and Henri burst out laughing.
"Oh, my dear mamma, if I had one, make your mind easy, it should be a polished one. A man who has any respect for himself would not wear any other."
"Well, then, tell me about Mlle. Herbault. It was your fault that it all came to nothing."
"Mlle. Herbault? The introduction at the Opéra with father? Oh, no, it wasn't that. Yes, yes, I remember, the dinner at Mme. Marquisat's, wasn't it—the last one? That was a trap you laid for me. I must say you are sweetly innocent! I was announced: 'Môssieu Henri Mauperin,' in that grand, important sort of way which being interpreted meant: 'Behold the future husband!' I found all the candles in the drawing-room lighted up. The mistress of the house, whom I had seen just twice in my life, overpowered me with her smiles; her son, whom I did not know at all, shook hands with me. There was a lady with her daughter in the room, they neither of them appeared to see me. My place at dinner was next the young person, of course; a provincial family, their money placed in farms, simple tastes, etc. I discovered all that before the soup was finished. The mother, on the other side of the table, was keeping watch over us; an impossible sort of mother, in such a get-up! I asked the daughter whether she had seen the 'Prophet' at the Opéra. 'Yes, it was superb—and then there was that wonderful effect in the third act. Oh, yes, that effect, that wonderful effect.' She hadn't seen it any more than I had. A fibber to begin with. I entertained myself with keeping her to the subject, and that made her crabby. We went back to the drawing-room and then the hostess began: 'What a pretty dress!' she said to me. 'Did you notice it? Would you believe that Emmeline has had that dress five years. I can remember it. She is so careful—so orderly!' 'All right,' I thought to myself, 'a lot of miserly wretches who mean to take me in.'"
"Do you really think so? And yet, from what we were told about them——"
"A woman who makes her dresses last five years! That speaks for itself, that's quite enough. I can picture the dowry hoarded up in a stocking. The money would be in land at two and a half per cent; repairs, taxes, lawsuits, farmers who don't pay their rent, a father-in-law who makes over to you unsalable property. No, no, I'm not quite young enough. I want to get married, but I mean to marry well. Leave me to manage it, and you'll see. You can make your mind easy; I'm not the sort to be taken in with: 'She has such beautiful hair and she is so devoted to her mother!' You see, mamma, I've thought a great deal about marriage, although you may not imagine I have. The most difficult thing to get in this world, the thing we pay the most dearly for, snatch from each other, fight for, the thing we only obtain by force of genius or by luck, by meanness, privations, by wild efforts, perseverance, resolution, energy, audacity or work, is money—isn't that so? Now money means happiness and the honour of being rich, it means enjoyment, and it brings with it the respect and esteem of the million. Well, I have discovered that there is a way of getting it, straightforwardly and promptly, without any fatigue, without difficulty and without genius, quite simply, naturally, quickly and honourably; and this way is by marriage. Another thing I have discovered is that there is no need to be remarkably handsome nor astonishingly intelligent in order to make a rich marriage; the only thing necessary is to will it, to will it coolly, calmly and with all one's force of will-power, to stake all one's chances on that card; in fact to look upon getting married as one's object in life, one's future career. I see that in playing that game it is no more difficult to make an extraordinary marriage than an ordinary one, to get a dowry of fifty thousand pounds than one of five thousand; it is merely a question of cool-headedness and luck; the stake is the same in both cases. In our times when a good tenor can marry an income of thirty thousand pounds arithmetic becomes a thing of the past. All this is what I have wanted to explain to you, and I am sure you will understand me."
Henri Mauperin took his mother's hand in his as he spoke. She was fairly aghast with surprise, admiration, and a sentiment very near akin to respect.
"Don't you worry yourself," continued her son. "I shall marry well—better even perhaps than you dream of."
As soon as his mother had gone Henri took up his pen and, continuing the article he had commenced for the Revue économique, wrote: "The trajectory of humanity is a spiral and not a circle——"
VIII
Henri Mauperin's age, like that of so many present-day young men, could not be reckoned by the years of his life; he was of the same age as the times in which he lived. The coldness and absence of enthusiasm in the younger generation, that distinguishing mark of the second half of the nineteenth century, had set its seal on him entirely. He looked grave, and one felt that he was icy cold. One recognised in him those elements, so contrary to the French temperament, which constitute in French history sects without ardour and political parties without enthusiasm, such as the Jansenism of former days and the Doctrinarianism of to-day.
Henri Mauperin was a young Doctrinaire. He had belonged to that generation of children whom nothing astonishes and nothing amuses; who go, without the slightest excitement, to see anything to which they are taken and who come back again perfectly unmoved. When quite young he had always been well behaved and thoughtful. At college it had never happened to him in the midst of his lessons to go off in a dream, his face buried in his hands, his elbows on a dictionary and his eyes looking into the future. He had never been assailed by temptations with regard to the unknown and by those first visions of life which at the age of sixteen fill the minds of young men with trouble and delight, shut up as they are between the four walls of a courtyard with grated windows, against which their balls bounce and over and beyond which their thoughts soar. In his class there were two or three boys who were sons of eminent political men and with them he made friends. While studying classics he was thinking of the club he should join later on. On leaving college Henri's conduct was not like that of a young man of twenty. He was considered very steady, and was never seen in places where drinking and gambling went on and where his reputation might have suffered. He was to be met with in staid drawing-rooms, where he was always extremely attentive and polite to ladies who were no longer young. All that would have gone against him elsewhere served him there in good stead. His reserve was considered an attraction, his seriousness was thought fascinating.
There are fashions with regard to what finds favour in men. The reign of Louis Philippe, with its great wealth of scholars, had just accustomed the political and literary circles of Paris to value in a society man that something which recalls the cap and gown, that a professor takes about with him everywhere, even when he has become a minister.
With women of the upper middle class the taste for gay, lively, frivolous qualities of mind had been succeeded by a taste for conversation which savoured of the lecture-room, for science direct from the professor's chair, for a sort of learned amiability. A pedant did not alarm them, even though he might be old; when young he was made much of, and it was rumoured that Henri Mauperin was a great favourite.
He had a practical mind. He set up for being a believer in all that was useful, in mathematical truths, positive religions and the exact sciences. He had a certain compassion for art, and maintained that Boule furniture had never been made as well as at present. Political economy, that science which leads on to all things, had appealed to him when he went out into the world as a vocation and a career, consequently he had decided to be an economist. He had brought to this dry study a narrow-minded intelligence, but he had been patient and persevering, and now, once a fortnight, he published in important reviews a long article well padded with figures which the women skipped and the men said they had read.
By the interest which it takes in the poorer classes, by its care for their welfare and the algebraic account it keeps of all their misery and needs, political economy had, of course, given to Henri Mauperin a colouring of Liberalism. It was not that he belonged to a very decided Opposition: his opinions were merely a little ahead of Government principles, and his convictions induced him to make overtures to whatever was likely to succeed. He limited his war against the powers that were to the shooting of an arrow or to a veiled allusion, the key and meaning of which he would by means of his friends convey to the various salons. As a matter of fact, he was carrying on a flirtation, rather than hostilities, with the Government in power. Drawing-room acquaintances, people whom he met in society, brought him within reach of Government influence and into touch with Government patronage. He would prepare the works and correct the proofs of some high official who was always busy and who had scarcely time to do more than sign his books. He had managed to get on good terms with his Prefect, hoping through him to get into the Council and afterward into the Chamber. He excelled in playing double parts, and was clever at compromises and arrangements which kept him in touch with everything without quarrelling with anybody or anything. Though a liberal and political economist, he had found a way of turning aside the distrust of the Catholics and their enmity against himself and his doctrines. He had won the indulgence and sympathy of some of them, and had managed to make himself agreeable to the clergy and to flatter the church by linking together material progress and spiritual progress, the religion of political economy and that of Catholicism: Quesnay and Saint Augustin, Bastiat and the Gospel, statistics and God. Then besides this programme of his, the alliance of Religion and Political Economy, he had a reserve stock of piety, and he observed most regularly certain religious practices, which won for him the affectionate regard of the Abbé Blampoix and brought him into secret communion with believers and with those who observed their religious duties.
Henri Mauperin had taken his flat in the Rue Taitbout for the purpose of entertaining his friends. These entertainments consisted of solemn parties for young men, where the guests would gather round a table which looked like a desk and talk about Natural Law, Public Charities, Productive Forces, and the Multiplicabilité of the Human Species. Henri tried to turn these reunions into something approaching conferences. He was selecting the men and looking for the elements he would require for the famous salon he hoped to have in Paris as soon as he was married; he lured to his reunions the great authorities and notabilities of economic science, and invited to a sort of honorary presidency members of the Institute, whom he had pursued with his politeness and his newspaper puffs and who, according to his plans, would some day help him to take his seat among them in the moral and political science section.
It was, however, in turning associations to account that Henri had shown his talent and all his skill. He had from the very first clung to that great means of getting on peculiar to ciphers—that means by which a man is no longer one alone, but a unit joined to a number. He had gained a footing for himself in associations of every kind. He had joined the d'Aguesseau Debating Society and had glided in and taken his place among all those young men who were practising speech-making, educating themselves for the platform, doing their apprenticeship as orators and their probation as statesmen for future parliamentary struggles. Clubs, college reunions and banquets of old boys, barriers' lectures, historical and geographical societies, scientific and benevolent societies, he had neglected nothing. Everywhere, in all centres which give to the individual an opportunity of shining and which bring him any profit by the collective influence of a group, he appeared and was here, there and everywhere, making fresh acquaintances, forming new connections, cultivating friendships and interests which might lead him on to something, thus driving in the landmarks of his various ambitions, marching ahead, from the committee of one society to the committee of another society, to an importance, a sort of veiled notoriety and to one of those names which, thanks to political influence, are suddenly brought to the front when the right time comes.
He certainly was well qualified for the part he was playing. Eloquent and active, he could make all the noise and stir which lead a man on to success in this century of ours. He was commonplace with plenty of show about him. In society he rarely recited his own articles, but he usually posed with one hand in his waistcoat, after the fashion of Guizot in Delaroche's portrait.
IX
"Well!" exclaimed Renée, entering the dining-room at eleven o'clock, breathless like a child who had been running, "I thought every one would be down. Where is mamma?"
"Gone to Paris—shopping," answered M. Mauperin.
"Oh!—and where's Denoisel?"
"He's gone to see the man with the sloping ground, who must have kept him to luncheon. We'll begin luncheon."
"Good-morning, papa!" And instead of taking her seat Renée went across to her father and putting her arms round his neck began to kiss him.
"There, there, that's enough—you silly child!" said M. Mauperin, smiling as he endeavoured to free himself.
"Let me kiss you tong-fashion—there—like that," and she pinched his cheeks and kissed him again.
"What a child you are, to be sure."
"Now look at me. I want to see whether you care for me."
And Renée, standing up after kissing him once more, moved back from her father, still holding his head between her hands. They gazed at each other lovingly and earnestly, looking into one another's eyes. The French window was open and the light, the scents and the various noises from the garden penetrated into the room. A beam of sunshine darted on to the table, lighted on the china and made the glass glitter. It was bright, cheerful weather and a faint breeze was stirring; the shadows of the leaves trembled slightly on the floor. A vague sound of wings fluttering in the trees and of birds sporting among the flowers could be heard in the distance.
"Only we two; how nice!" exclaimed Renée, unfolding her serviette. "Oh, the table is too large; I am too far away," and taking her knife and fork she went and sat next her father. "As I have my father all to myself to-day I'm going to enjoy my father," and so saying she drew her chair still nearer to him.
"Ah, you remind me of the time when you always wanted to have your dinner in my pocket. But you were eight years old then."
Renée began to laugh.
"I was scolded yesterday," said M. Mauperin, after a minute's silence, putting his knife and fork down on his plate.
"Oh!" remarked Renée, looking up at the ceiling in an innocent way and then letting her eyes fall on her father with a sly look in them such as one sees in the eyes of a cat. "Really, poor papa! Why were you scolded? What had you done?"
"Yes, I should advise you to ask me that again; you know better than I do myself why I was scolded. What do you mean, you dreadful child?"
"Oh, if you are going to lecture me, papa, I shall get up and—I shall kiss you."
She half rose as she said this, but M. Mauperin interrupted her, endeavouring to speak in a severe tone:
"Sit down again, Renée, please. You must own, my dear child, that yesterday——"
"Oh, papa, are you going to talk to me like this on such a beautiful day?"
"Well, but will you explain?" persisted M. Mauperin, trying to remain dignified in face of the rebellious expression, made up of smiles mingled with defiance, in his daughter's eyes. "It was very evident that you behaved in the way you did purposely."
Renée winked mischievously and nodded her head two or three times affirmatively.
"I want to speak to you seriously, Renée."
"But I am quite serious, I assure you. I have told you that I was like that on purpose."
"And why—will you tell me that?"
"Why? Oh, yes, I'll tell you, but on condition that you won't be too conceited. It was because—because——"
"Because of what?"
"Because I love you much more than that gentleman who was here yesterday—there now—very much more—it's quite true!"
"But, then, we ought not to have allowed him to come if you did not care for this young man. We didn't force you into it. It was you yourself who agreed that he should be invited. On the contrary, your mother and I believed that this match——"
"Excuse me, papa, but if I had refused M. Reverchon at first sight, point-blank, you would have said I was unreasonable, mad, senseless. I fancy I can hear mamma now on the subject. Whereas, as things were, what is there to reproach me with? I saw M. Reverchon once, and I saw him again, I had plenty of time to judge him and I knew that I disliked him. It is very silly, perhaps, but it is nevertheless——"
"But why did you not tell us? We could have found a hundred ways of getting out of it."
"You are very ungrateful, papa. I have saved you all that worry. The young man is drawing out of it himself and it is not your fault at all; I alone am responsible. And this is all the gratitude I get for my self-sacrifice! Another time——"
"Listen to me, my dear. If I speak to you like this it is because it is a question of your marriage. Your marriage—ah, it took me a long time to get reconciled to the idea that—to the idea of being separated from you. Fathers are selfish, you see; they would like it better if you never took to yourself wings. They have the greatest difficulty in making up their minds to it all. They think they cannot be happy without your smiles, and that the house will be very different when your dress is not flitting about. But we have to submit to what must be, and now it seems to me that I shall like my son-in-law. I am getting old, you know, my dear little Renée," and M. Mauperin took his daughter's hands in his. "Your father is sixty-eight, my child, he has only just time enough left to see you settled and happy. Your future, if only you knew it, is my one thought, my one torment. Your mother loves you dearly, too, I know, but your character and hers are different; and then, if anything happened to me. You know we must face things; and at my age. You see the thought of leaving you without a husband—and children—without any love which would make up to you for your old father's when he is no longer with you——"
M. Mauperin could not finish; his daughter had thrown her arms round him, stifling down her sobs, and her tears were flowing freely on his waistcoat.
"Oh, it's dreadful of you, dreadful!" she said in a choking voice. "Why do you talk about it? Never—never!" and with a gesture she waved back the dark shadow called up by her imagination.
M. Mauperin had taken her on his knee. He put his arms round her, kissed her forehead and said, "Don't cry, Renée, don't cry!"
"How dreadful! Never!" she repeated once more, as though she were just rousing herself from some bad dream, and then, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she said to her father: "I must go away and have my cry out," and with that she escaped.
"That Dardouillet is certainly mad," remarked Denoisel, as he entered the room. "Just fancy, I could not possibly get rid of him. Ah, you are alone?"
"Yes, my wife is in Paris, and Renée has just gone upstairs."
"Why, what's the matter, M. Mauperin? You look——"
"Oh, it's nothing—a little scene with Renée that I've just had—about this marriage—this Reverchon. I was silly enough to tell her that I am in a hurry to see my grandchildren, that fathers of my age are not immortal, and thereupon—the child is so sensitive, you know. She is up in her room now, crying. Don't go up; it will take her a little time to recover. I'll go and look after my work people."
Denoisel, left to himself, lighted a cigar, picked up a book and went out to one of the garden seats to read. He had been there about two hours when he saw Renée coming towards him. She had her hat on and her animated face shone with joy and a sort of serene excitement.
"Well, have you been out? Where have you come from?"
"Where have I come from?" repeated Renée, unfastening her hat. "Well, I'll tell you, as you are my friend," and she took her hat off and threw her head back with that pretty gesture women have for shaking their hair into place. "I've come from church, and if you want to know what I've been doing there, why, I've been asking God to let me die before papa. I was in front of a large statue of the Virgin—you are not to laugh—it would make me unhappy if you laughed. Perhaps it was the sun or the effect of gazing at her all the time, I don't know, but it seemed to me all in a minute that she did like this—" and Renée nodded her head. "Anyhow, I am very happy and my knees ache, too, I can tell you; for all the time I was praying I was on my knees, and not on a chair or a cushion either—but on the stone floor. Ah, I prayed in earnest; God can't surely refuse me that!"
X
A few days after this M. and Mme. Mauperin, Henri, Renée, and Denoisel were sitting together after dinner in the little garden which stretched out at the back of the house, between the walls of the refinery and its outbuildings. The largest tree in the garden was a fir, and the rose-trees had been allowed to climb up to its lowest branches, so that its green arms stirred the roses. Under the tree was a swing, and at the back of it a sort of thicket of lilacs and witch-elms; there was a round plot of grass, with a garden bench and a very small pool with a white curbstone round it and a fountain that did not play. The pool was full of aquatic plants and a few black newts were swimming in it.
"You don't intend to have any theatricals, then, Renée?" Henri was saying to his sister. "You've quite given up that idea?"
"Given up—no; but what can I do? It isn't my fault, for I would act anything—I'd stand on my head. But I can't find any one else, so that, unless I give a monologue—Denoisel has refused, and as for you, a sober man like you—well, I suppose it's no use asking."
"I, why, I would act right enough," answered Henri.
"You, Henri?" exclaimed Mme. Mauperin in astonishment.
"And then, too, we are not short of men," continued Renée, "there are always men to act. It's for the women's parts. Ah, that's the difficulty—to find ladies. I don't see who is to act with me."
"Oh," said Henri, "if we look about among all the people we know, I'll wager——"
"Well, let's see: there's M. Durand's daughter. Why, yes—what do you think? M. Durand's daughter? They are at Saint-Denis; that will be convenient for the rehearsals. She's rather a simpleton, but I should think for the rôle of Mme. de Chavigny——"
"Ah," put in Denoisel, "you still want to act 'The Caprice'?"
"Now for a lecture, I suppose? But as I'm going to act with my brother——"
"And the performance will be for the benefit of the poor, I hope?" continued Denoisel.
"Why?"
"It would make the audience more disposed to be charitable."
"We'll see about that, sir, we'll see about it. Well, Emma Durand—will that do? What do you think, mamma?"
"They are not our sort of people, my dear," answered Mme. Mauperin quickly; "they are all very well at a distance, people like that, but every one knows where they sprang from—the Rue St. Honoré. Mme. Durand used to go and receive the ladies at their carriage-door, and M. Durand would slip out at the back and take the servant-men to have a glass at the wine-shop round the corner. That's how the Durands made their fortune."
Although at bottom Mme. Mauperin was an excellent sort of woman she rarely lost an opportunity of depreciating, in this way and with the most superb contempt and disgust, the wealth, birth and position of all the people she knew. It was not out of spite, nor was it for the pleasure of slandering and backbiting, nor yet because she was envious. She would refuse to believe in the respectability and uprightness of people, or even in the wealth they were said to have, simply from a prodigious bourgeois pride, from a conviction that outside her own family there could be no good blood, and no integrity; that, with the exception of her own people, every one was an upstart; that nothing was substantial except what she possessed, and that what she had not was not worth having.
"And to think that my wife has tales like that to tell about all the people we know!" said M. Mauperin.
"Come now, papa—shall we have the pretty little Remoli girl—shall we?"
"Ask your mother. Say on, Mme. Mauperin."
"The Remoli girl? But, my dear, you know—"
"I know nothing."
"Oh! do you mean to say that you don't know her father's history? A poor Italian stucco worker. He came to Paris without a sou and bought a bit of ground with a wretched little house at Montparnasse. I don't know where he got the money from to buy it. Well, this land turned out to be a regular Montfaucon! He sold thirty thousand pounds' worth of his precious stuff—and then he's been mixed up with Stock Exchange affairs. Disgusting!"
"Oh, well," put in Henri, "I fancy you are going out of your way to find folks. Why don't you ask Mlle. Bourjot? They happen to be at Sannois now."
"Mlle. Bourjot?" repeated Mme. Mauperin.
"Noémi?" said Renée quickly, "I should just think I should like to ask her. But this winter I thought her so distant with me. She has something or other—I don't know——"
"She has, or rather she will have, twelve thousand pounds a year," interrupted Denoisel, "and mothers are apt to watch over their daughters when such is the case. They will not allow them to get too intimate with a sister who has a brother. They have made her understand this; that's about the long and short of it."
"Then, too, they are so high and mighty, those folks are; they might have descended from—And yet," continued Mme. Mauperin, breaking off and turning to her son, "they have always been very pleasant with you, Henri, haven't they? Mme. Bourjot is always very nice to you?"
"Yes, and she has complained several times of your not going to her soirées; she says you don't take Renée often enough to see her daughter."
"Really?" exclaimed Renée, very delighted.
"My dear," said Mme. Mauperin, "what do you think of what Henri says—Mlle. Bourjot?"
"What objection do you want me to make?"
"Well, then," said Mme. Mauperin, "Henri's idea shall be carried out. We'll go on Saturday, shall we, my dear? And you'll come with us, Henri?"
A few hours later every one was in bed with the exception of Henri Mauperin. He was walking up and down in his room puffing on a cigar that had gone out, and every now and then he appeared to be smiling at his own thoughts.
XI
Renée often went during the day to paint in a little studio, built out of an old green-house at the bottom of the garden. It was very rustic-looking, half hidden with verdure and walled with ivy, something between an old ruin and a nest.
On a table covered with an Algerian cloth there were, on this particular day in the little studio, a Japanese box with a blue design, a lemon, an old red almanac with the French coat of arms, and two or three other bright-coloured objects grouped together as naturally as possible to make a picture, with the light from the glass roof falling on them. Seated in front of the table, Renée was painting all this with brushes as fine as pins on a canvas which already had something on the under side. The skirt of her white piqué dress hung in ample folds on each side of the stool on which she was seated. She had gathered a white rose as she came through the garden and had fastened it in her loosely arranged hair just above her ear. Her foot, visible below her dress, in a low shoe which showed her white stocking, was resting on the cross-bar of the easel. Denoisel was seated near her, watching her work and making a bad sketch of her profile in an album he had picked up in the studio.
"Oh, you do pose well," he remarked, as he sharpened his pencil again; "I would just as soon try to catch an omnibus as your expression. You never cease. If you always move like that——"
"Ah, now, Denoisel, no nonsense with your portrait. I hope you'll flatter me a little."
"No more than the sun does. I am as conscientious as a photograph."
"Let me look," she said, leaning back towards Denoisel and holding her maulstick and palette out in front of her. "Oh! I am not beautiful. Truly, now," she continued, as she went on with her painting, "am I like that?"
"Something. Come, Renée—honestly now—what do you think you are like yourself—beautiful?"
"No."
"Pretty?"
"No—no——"
"Ah, you took the trouble to think the matter over this time."
"Yes, but I said it twice."
"Good! If you think you are neither beautiful nor pretty, you don't fancy either that you are——"
"Ugly? No, that's quite true. It's very difficult to explain. Sometimes, now, when I look at myself, I think—how am I to explain? Well, I like my looks; it isn't my face, I know, it's just a sort of expression I have at such times, a something that is within me and which I can feel passing over my features. I don't know what it is—happiness, pleasure, a sort of emotion or whatever you like to call it. I get moments like that when it seems to me as though I am taking all my people in finely. All the same, though, I should have liked to be beautiful."
"Really!"
"It must be very pleasant for one's own sake, it seems to me. Now, for instance, I should have liked to be tall, with very black hair. It's stupid to be almost blonde. It's the same with white skin; I should have chosen a skin—well, like Mme. Stavelot, rather orange-coloured. I like that, but it's a matter of taste. And then I should have enjoyed looking in my glass. It's like when I get up in the morning and walk about the carpet with bare feet. I should love to have feet like a statue I once saw—it's just an idea!"
"If that's how you feel you wouldn't care about being beautiful for the sake of other people?"
"Yes and no. Not for every one—only for those I care for. We ought to be ugly for people about whom we are indifferent, for all the people we don't love—don't you think so? They would have just what they deserved then."
Denoisel began sketching again.
"How odd it is, your ideal, to wish to be dark!" he said, after a moment's silence.
"What should you like to be?"
"If I were a woman? I should like to be small and neither very fair nor very dark——"
"Auburn then?"
"And plump—Oh, as plump as a quail."
"Plump? Ah, I can breathe again. Just for a moment I was afraid of a declaration—If the light had not shown up your hair I should have forgotten you were forty."
"Oh, you don't make me out any older than I am, Renée; that is exactly my age. But do you know what yours is for me?"
"No——"
"Twelve—and you will always be that age to me."
"Thanks—I am very glad," said Renée. "If that's it I shall always be able to tell you all the nonsense that comes into my head. Denoisel," she continued, after a short silence, "have you ever been in love?" She had drawn back slightly from her canvas and was looking at it sideways, her head leaning over her shoulder to see the effect of the colour she had just put on.
"Oh, well! that's a good start," answered Denoisel. "What a question!"
"What's the matter with my question? I'm asking you that just as I might ask you anything else. I don't see anything in it. Would there be any harm in asking such a thing in society? Come now, Denoisel! you say I am twelve years old and I agree to be twelve; but I'm twenty all the same. I'm a young person, that's true, but if you imagine that young persons of my age have never read any novels nor sung any love-songs—why, it's all humbug—it's just posing as sweet innocents. After all, just as you like. If you think I am not old enough I'll take back my question. I thought we were to consider ourselves men when we talked about things together."
"Well, since you want to know, yes—I have been in love."
"Ah! And what effect did it have on you—being in love?"
"You have only to read over again the novels you have read, my dear, and you will find the effect described on every page."
"There, now, that's just what puzzles me; all the books one reads are full of love—there's nothing but that! And then in real life one sees nothing of it—at least I don't see anything of it; on the contrary, I see every one doing without it, and quite easily, too. Sometimes I wonder whether it is not just invented for books, whether it is not all imagined by authors—really."
Denoisel laughed at the young girl's words.
"Tell me, Renée," he said, "since we are men for the time being, as you just said and as we talk to each other of what we feel, quite frankly like two old friends, I should like to ask you in my turn whether you have ever—well, not been in love with any one, but whether you have ever cared for any one?"
"No, never," answered Renée, after a moment's reflection, "but then I am not a fair example. I fancy that such things happen to people who have an empty heart, no one to think about; people who are not taken up, absorbed, possessed and, as it were, protected by one of those affections which take hold of you wholly and entirely—the affection one has for one's father, for instance."
Denoisel did not answer.
"You don't believe that that does preserve you?" said Renée. "Well, but I can assure you I have tried in vain to remember. Oh, I'm examining my conscience thoroughly, I promise you. Well, from my very childhood, I cannot remember anything—no, nothing at all. And yet some of my little friends, who were no older than I was, would kiss the inside of the caps of the little boys who used to play with us; and they would collect the peach-stones from the plates the little boys had used and put them into a box and then take the box to bed with them. Yes, I remember all that. Noémi, for instance, Mlle. Bourjot, was very great at all that. But as for me, I simply went on with my games."
"And later on when you were no longer a child?"
"Later on? I have always been a child as regards all that. No, there is nothing at all—I cannot remember a single impression. I mean—well, I'm going to be quite frank with you—I had just a slight, a very slight commencement of what you were talking about—just a sensation of that feeling that I recognised later on in novels—and can you guess for whom?"
"No."
"For you. Oh, it was only for an instant. I soon liked you in quite a different way—and better, too. I respected you and was grateful to you. I liked you for correcting my faults as a spoiled child, for enlarging my mind, for teaching me to appreciate all that is beautiful, elevated and noble; and all, too, in a joking way by making fun of everything that is ugly and worthless and of everything that is dull or mean and cowardly. You taught me how to play ball and how to endure being bored to death with imbeciles. I have to thank you for much of what I think about, for much of what I am and for a little of any good there is in me. I wanted to pay my debt with a true and lasting friendship, and by giving you cordially, as a comrade, some of the affection I have for father."
As Renée said these last words she raised her voice slightly and spoke in a graver tone.
"What in the world is that?" exclaimed M. Mauperin, who had just entered and had caught sight of Denoisel's sketch. "Is that intended for my daughter! Why, it's a frightful libel," and M. Mauperin picked up the album and began to tear the page up.
"Oh, papa!" exclaimed Renée, "and I wanted it—for a keepsake!"
XII
A light carriage, drawn by one horse, was conveying the Mauperin family along the Sannois road. Renée had taken the reins and the whip from her brother, who was seated at her side smoking. Animated by the drive, the air, and the movement, M. Mauperin was joking about the people they met and bowing gaily to any acquaintances they passed. Mme. Mauperin was silent and absorbed. She was buried in herself, thinking out and preparing her amiability for the approaching visit.
"Why, mamma," remarked Renée, "you don't say a word. Are you not well?"
"Oh, yes, very well, quite well," answered Mme. Mauperin; "but the fact is I'm worrying rather about this visit—and if it had not been for Henri—There's something so stiff and cold about Mme. Bourjot—they are all so high and mighty. Oh, it isn't that they impress me at all—their money indeed! I know too well where they had it from. They made their money from some invention they bought from an unfortunate working-man for a mere nothing—a few coppers."
"Come, come, Mme. Mauperin," put in her husband, "they must have bought more than——"
"Well, anyhow, I don't feel at ease with these people."
"You are very foolish to trouble yourself——"
"We can tell them we don't care a hang for their fine airs!" said Mlle. Mauperin, whipping up the horse so that her slang was lost in the sound of the animal's gallop.
There was some reason for Mme. Mauperin's uneasiness. Her feeling of constraint was certainly justified. Everything in the house to which she was going was calculated to intimidate people, to set them down, crush them, penetrate and overwhelm them with a sense of their own inferiority. There was an ostentatious and studied show of money, a clever display of wealth. Opulence aimed at the humiliation of less fortunate beings, by all possible means of intimidation, by outrageous or refined forms of luxury, by the height of the ceilings, by the impertinent airs of the lackeys, by the footman with his silver chain, stationed in the entrance-hall, by the silver plate on which everything was served, by all kinds of princely ways and customs, such as the strict observance of evening dress, even when mother and daughter were dining alone, by an etiquette as rigid as that of a small German court. The master and mistress were in harmony with and maintained the style of their house. The spirit of their home and life was as it were incarnate in them.
The man, with all that he had copied from the English gentry, his manners, his dress, his curled whiskers, his outward distinction; the woman, with her grand manners, her supreme elegance, all the stiffness and formality of the upper middle class, represented admirably the pride of money. Their disdainful politeness, their haughty amiability, seemed to come down to people. There was a kind of insolence which was visible in their tastes even. M. Bourjot had neither any pictures nor any objects of art; his collection was a collection of precious stones, among which he pointed out a ruby worth a thousand pounds, one of the finest in Europe.
People had overlooked all this display of wealth, and the Bourjot's salon was now very much in vogue and conspicuous on account of its pronounced tendencies in favour of the Opposition party. It had become, in fact, one of the three or four important salons of Paris. It had been peopled after two or three winters which Mme. Bourjot had spent in Nice under pretext of benefitting her health. She had converted her house there into a kind of hotel on the road to Italy, open to all who passed by provided they were great, wealthy, celebrated, or that they had a name. At her musical evenings, when Mme. Bourjot gave every one an opportunity for admiring her beautiful voice and her great musical talent, the celebrities of Europe and Parisians of repute met in her drawing-room. Scientists, great philosophers and æsthetes mingled with politicians. The latter were represented by a compact group of Orleanists and a band of Liberals not pledged to any party, in whose ranks Henri Mauperin had figured most assiduously for the past year. A few Legitimists whom the husband brought to his wife's salon were also to be seen, M. Bourjot himself being a Legitimist.
Under the Restoration he had been a Carbonaro. He was the son of a draper, and his birth and name of Bourjot had from his earliest childhood exasperated him against the nobility, grand houses, and the Bourbons. He had been in various conspiracies, and had met with M. Mauperin at Carbonari reunions. He had figured in all the tumults, and had been fond of quoting Berville, Saint-Just, and Dupin the elder. After 1830 he had calmed down and had contented himself with sulking with royalty for having cheated him of his republic. He read the National, pitied the people of all lands, despised the Chambers, railed at M. Guizot, and was eloquent about the Pritchard affair.
The events of 1848 came upon him suddenly, and the landowner then woke up alarmed and rose erect in the person of the Carbonaro of the Restoration, the Liberal of Louis Philippe's reign. The fall in stocks, the unproductiveness of houses, socialism, the proposed taxes, the dangers to which State creditors were exposed, the eventful days of June, and indeed everything which is calculated to strike terror to the heart of a moneyed man during a revolution, disturbed M. Bourjot's equanimity, and at the same time enlightened him. His ideas suddenly underwent a change, and his political conscience veered completely round. He hastened to adopt the doctrines of order, and turned to the Church as he might have done to the police authorities, to the Divine right as the supreme power and a providential security for his bills.
Unfortunately, in M. Bourjot's brusque but sincere conversion, his education, his youth, his past, his whole life rose in revolt. He had returned to the Bourbons, but he had not been able to come back to Jesus Christ, and, old man as he now was, he would make all kinds of slips and give utterance to the attacks and refrains to which he had been accustomed. One felt, the nearer one came to him, that he was still quite a Voltairean on certain points, and Beranger was constantly taking the place of de Maistre with him.
"Give the reins to your brother, Renée," said Mme. Mauperin. "I shouldn't like them to see you driving."
They were in front of a magnificent large gateway, opposite which were two lamps that were always lighted and left burning all night. The carriage turned up a drive, covered with red gravel and planted on each side with huge clumps of rhododendrons, and drew up before a flight of stone steps. Two footmen threw open the glass doors leading into a hall paved with marble and with high windows nearly hidden by the verdure of a wide screen of exotic shrubs.
The Mauperins were then introduced into a drawing-room, the walls of which were covered with crimson silk. A portrait of Mme. Bourjot in evening dress, signed by Ingres, was the only picture in the room. Through the open windows could be seen a pool of water, and near it a stork, the only creature that M. Bourjot would tolerate in his park, and that on account of its heraldic form.
When the Mauperins entered the large drawing-room, Mme. Bourjot, seated by herself on the divan, was listening to her daughter's governess who was reading aloud. M. Bourjot was leaning against the chimney-piece playing with his watch-chain. Mlle. Bourjot, near her governess, was working at some tapestry on a frame.
Mme. Bourjot, with her large, rather hard blue eyes, her arched eye-brows, and the lines of her eye-lids, her haughty and pronounced nose, the supercilious prominence of the lower part of the face, and her imperious grace, reminded one of Georges, when young, in the rôle of Agrippina. Mlle. Bourjot had strongly marked brown eye-brows. Between her long, curly lashes could be seen two blue eyes with an intense, profound, dreamy expression in them. A slight down almost white could be seen when the light was full on her, just above her lip at the two corners. The governess was one of those retiring creatures, one of those elderly women who have been knocked about and worn out in the battle of life, outwardly and inwardly, and who finally have no more effigy left than an old copper coin.
"Why, this is really charming!" said Mme. Bourjot, getting up and advancing as far as a line of the polished floor in the centre of the room. "What kind neighbours—and what a delightful surprise! It seems an age since I had the pleasure of seeing you, dear madame, and if it were not for your son, who is good enough not to forsake us, and who comes to my Monday Evenings, we should not have known what had become of you—of this charming girl—and her mamma——"
As she spoke Mme. Bourjot shook hands with Henri.
"Oh! you are very kind," began Mme. Mauperin, taking a seat at some distance from Mme. Bourjot.
"But please come over here," said Mme. Bourjot, making room at her side.
"We have postponed our visit from day to day," continued Mme. Mauperin, "as we wanted to come together."
"Oh! well, it's very bad of you," continued Mme. Bourjot. "We are not a hundred miles away; and it is cruel to keep these two children apart, when they grew up together. Why, how's this, they haven't kissed each other yet?"
Noémi, who was still standing, presented her cheek coldly to Renée, who kissed her as eagerly, as a child bites into fruit.
"What a long time ago it seems," observed Mme. Bourjot to Mme. Mauperin, as she looked at the two girls, "since we used to take them to the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin to those lectures, that bored us as much as they did the poor children. I can see them now, playing together. Yours was just like quicksilver, a regular little turk, and mine—Oh, they were like night and day! But yours always led mine on. Oh, dear, what a rage they had at one time for charades—do you remember? They used to carry off all the towels in the house to dress up with."
"Oh, yes," exclaimed Renée, laughing and turning to Noémi, "our finest one was when we did Marabout; with Marat in a bath that was too hot, calling out, 'Je bous, je bous!' Do you remember?"
"Yes, indeed," answered Noémi, trying to keep back a smile, "but it was your idea."
"I am so glad, madame, to find you quite inclined beforehand for what I wanted to ask you—for my visit is a selfish one. It was chiefly with the idea of letting our daughters see something of each other that I came. Renée wants to get up a play, and she naturally thought of her old school-friend. If you would allow your daughter to take part in a piece with my daughter—it would be just a little family affair—quite informal."
As Mme. Mauperin made this request, Noémi, who had been talking to Renée and had put her hand in her friend's, drew it away again abruptly.
"Thank you so much for the idea," answered Mme. Bourjot, "thanks, too, to Renée. You could not have asked me anything that would have suited me better and given me so much pleasure. I think it would be very good for Noémi—the poor child is so shy that I am in despair! It would make her talk and come out of herself. For her mind, too, it would be an excellent stimulant——"
"Oh! but, mother, you know very well—why, I've no memory. And then, too—why, the very idea of acting frightens me. Oh, no—I can't act——"
Mme. Bourjot glanced coldly at her daughter.
"But, mother, if I could—No, I should spoil the whole play, I'm sure."
"You will act—I wish you to do so."
Noémi looked down, and Mme. Mauperin, slightly embarrassed and by way of changing the subject, glanced at a Review that was lying open on a work-table at her side.
"Ah!" said Mme. Bourjot, turning to her again, "you've found something you know there—that is your son's last article. And when do you intend having this play?"
"Oh, but I should be so sorry to be the cause—to oblige your daughter——"
"Oh! don't mention it. My daughter is always afraid of undertaking anything."
"Well, but if Noémi really dislikes it," put in M. Bourjot, who had been talking to M. Mauperin and Henri on the other side of the room.
"On the contrary she will be grateful to you," said Mme. Bourjot, addressing Mme. Mauperin without answering M. Bourjot. "We are always obliged to insist on her doing anything for her own enjoyment. Well, when is this play?"
"Renée, when do you think?" asked Mme. Mauperin.
"Why, I should think about—well, we should want a month for the rehearsals, with two a week. We could fix the days and the time that would suit Noémi."
Renée turned towards Noémi, who remained silent.
"Very well, then," said Mme. Bourjot, "let us say Monday and Friday at two o'clock, if that will suit you—shall we?" And turning to the governess she continued: "Mlle. Gogois, you will accompany Noémi. M. Bourjot—you hear—will you give orders for the horses and carriage and the footman to take them to Briche? You can keep Terror for me, and Jean. There, that's all settled. Now, then, you will stay and dine with us, won't you?"
"Oh! we should like to very much; but it is quite impossible. We have some people coming to us to-day," answered Mme. Mauperin.
"Oh, dear, how tiresome of them to come to-day! But I don't think you have seen my husband's new conservatories. I'll make you a bouquet, Renée. We have a flower—there are only two of them anywhere, and the other is at Ferrières—it's a—it's very ugly anyhow—this way."
"Suppose we were to go in here," said M. Bourjot, pointing to the billiard-room, which could be seen through the glass door. "M. Henri, we'll leave you with the ladies. We can smoke here," added M. Bourjot, offering a cabanas to M. Mauperin. "Shall we have cannoning?"
"Yes," replied M. Mauperin.
M. Bourjot closed the pockets of the billiard-table.
"Twenty-four?"
"Yes, twenty-four."
"Have you billiards at home, M. Mauperin?"
"No, I haven't. My son doesn't play."
"Are you looking for the chalk?"
"Thanks. And as my wife doesn't think it a suitable game for girls——"
"It's your turn."
"Oh! I'm quite out of practice—I always was a duffer at it though."
"Well, but you are not giving me the game at all. There, it's all up with my play—I was used to that cue," and M. Bourjot gave vent to his feelings in an oath. "These rascals of workmen—they haven't any conscience at all. There's no getting anything well made in these days. Well, you are scoring: three, I'll mark it. The fact is we are at their service. The other day, now, I wanted some chandeliers put up. Well, would you believe it, M. Mauperin, I couldn't get a man? It was a holiday—I forget what holiday it was—and they would not come—they are the lords of creation, nowadays. Do you imagine that they ever bring us anything of what they shoot or fish? Oh, no, when they get anything dainty they eat it themselves. I know what it is in Paris—four? Oh, come now! Every penny they earn is spent at the wine-shop. On Sundays they spend at least a sovereign. The locksmith here has a Lefaucheux gun and takes out a shooting license. Ah, two for me at last! And the money they ask now for their work! Why, they want four shillings a day for mowing! I have vineyards in Burgundy, and they proposed to see to them for me for three years, and then the third year they would be their own. This is what we are coming to! Luckily for me I'm an old man, so that it won't be in my time; but in a hundred years from now there will be no such thing as being waited on—there'll be no servants. I often say to my wife and daughter: 'You'll see—the day will come when you will have to make your own beds. Five?—six?—- you do know how to play. The Revolution has done for us, you know." And M. Bourjot began to hum: