The pretender: A story of the Latin Quarter

The time was drawing near when I would become a father. Yet as the hour of my trial approached I realised that I was glad, glad. I hoped it would be a girl; nay, I was sure it would be a girl; a little, dark, old-fashioned girl, whose hand I would hold on my rambles, and whose innocent mind I would watch unfolding like a flower. And I would call her ... yes, I would call her Dorothy.

Dorothy! How sweet the name sounded! But no sweeter than my little daughter—of that I was sure. I could feel her hand, small as a rose leaf, nestling in mine; see her innocent, tarn-brown eyes gazing upward into my face. Then as she ran and eagerly plucked a vagrant blossom I would weave about it some charming legend. I would people the glade with fairies for her, and the rocks with gnomes. In her I would live over again my own wonderful childhood. She, too, would be a dreamer, sharing that wonderful kingdom of mine, understanding me as no other had ever done.

Then when she grew up, what a wonderful woman she would be! How proud she would be of me! How, in old age, when my hair grew white, and my footsteps faltered, she would take my arm, and together we would walk round the old garden in the hush of eventide.

“Wonderful destiny!” I cried, inspired by the sentimental pictures unfolding themselves before me. “I can see myself older yet, an octogenarian. My back is bent, my hair is snowy white, I have a venerable beard, and kindly eyes that shine through gold-rimmed spectacles. A tartan shawl is round my shoulders, and my hands, as they rest on my silver-headed cane, are glazed and crinkly. But, crowning glory! Greater than that array of children of my mind for which men give me honour, are the children of my flesh who play around my knee, my grandchildren. There will be such a merry swarm of them, and in their joyous laughter I will grow young again. Oh, blessed destiny! To be a father is much; but to be a grandfather so infinitely nobler—and less trouble.”

The more I thought over it, the more I became impressed. My imminent paternity became almost an obsession with me. My marriage had surprised me. No time had I to embroider it with the flowers of fancy, but this was different. So engrossed did I become with a sense of my own importance that you would have thought no one had ever become a father before. In my enthusiasm I told Lorrimer of my interesting condition, but the faun-like young man rather damped my ardour.

“Marriage,” he observed, in his usual cynical manner, “is a lottery, in which the prizes are white elephants. But Fatherhood, that’s the sorriest of gambles. True, as you suggest, your daughter may marry the President of the United States, but on the other hand she may turn out to be another Brinvilliers. She may be a Madame de Staël and she may be a Pompadour. Then again, you may have a family of a dozen.”

“But I won’t,” I protested indignantly.

“Well, just suppose. You may have a dozen ordinary respectable tax-payers and one rotter. Don’t you think the black sheep will discount all your successful efforts? Really, old man, you’re taking an awful chance. Then after all it’s an ungrateful business. The girls get married and enter the families of their husbands; the boys either settle far away, or get wives you don’t approve of. Anyway, you lose them. At the worst you beget a criminal, at the best an ingrate. It’s a poor business. However, cheer up, old man: we’ll hope for the best.”

Helstern, on the other hand, took a different view of it. The sculptor was sombrely enthusiastic.

“You must let me do a group of it, Madden. I’ll call it the First-born. I’m sure I could take a gold medal with it.”

He led me to a café and in his tragic tones ordered beer in which we drank to the health of the First-born.

“Just think of it,” he rolled magnificently, his visionary instincts aroused; “just think of that little human soul waiting to be born, and it’s you that give it the chance to enter this world. Oh, happy man! Just think of all the others, the countless hosts of the unborn waiting their turn. Why, it’s an inspiring sight, these wistful legions, countless as the sands of the sea. And it’s for us to welcome them, to be the means of opening the door to as many as possible, to give them beautiful bodies to enter into, and to make the world more pleasant for them to dwell in. Now, there’s a glorious ambition for us all. Let parenthood be the crowning honour of life. Let it be the duty of the race to so improve conditions that there will be the right kind of welcome waiting for them—that they will be fit and worthy in body and soul to live the life that is awaiting them.”

He drank deeply from his big stein, and wiped some foam from his lips.

“Why, it’s more than an ambition: it’s a religion. The Japanese worship the Dead; let us worship the Unborn, the great races who are to come, the people we are going to help to make great. For on us it all depends, on us to-day. Every action of ours is like a pebble thrown in a still sea, the waves of which go rippling down eternity. Yes, let us realise our responsibility to the Unborn, and govern our lives accordingly in grace and goodliness. There! that goes to the very heart of all morality—to live our best, not because we are expecting to be rewarded, but because we are making for generations to come better bodies, better homes, better lives. And they in their turn will realise their duty to the others that are crowding on, and make the world still worthier for their occupation.”

He filled his Turk’s head pipe thoughtfully.

“I want to go further,” he went on, “but the rest is more fanciful. I believe that the armies of the Unborn know that it all depends on us here to-day what kind of deal they are going to get, and in their vast, blind way they are trying to influence us. I like to think that that is the great impulse towards good we all feel, the power that in spite of selfishness, is gradually lifting us onward and upward. It is the multitude to come, trying in their blind, pitiful way to influence us, to make us better. There they wait, the soldiers of the future, ready to take up the great fight, to carry the banner of freedom, happiness, and mutual love to the golden goal of universal brotherhood. Truly I worship the Unborn.”

He lit his pipe solemnly.

“Then, let me congratulate you, Madden. You are a very lucky man.”

Much cheered I thanked him and, absorbed in my dreams of paternity, continued to tramp the streets. All the time I was seeing that slim little girl of mine, with her long dark hair, her hazel eyes, her quaint, old-fashioned ways. And as the day drew near she grew more and more real to me. I could feel her caressing arms around my neck, and her rosebud mouth pressed to mine. Truly she was the most adorable child that ever lived.

One piece of luck we had at this period: The fairy stories were accepted by the Piccadilly Magazine and we got ten pounds for them, thus saving the situation once again.

When the time came that we should obtain a new lodging I had taken a room in the rue D’Assas, but I was immediately sorry, for I discovered that it overlooked the Maternity Hospital Tarnier. The very first morning I saw a young woman coming out with a new baby. She was a mere girl, hatless and all alone, and she cried very bitterly.

Then that night, as I was preparing to ascend the stairs, I heard terrible shrieks coming from the great, gloomy building as if some woman within were being painfully murdered. For a moment I paused, stricken with horror. There was a cab drawn up close by, and the cocher was pacing beside it. He was the typical Parisian cab-driver, corpulent and rubicund, the product of open air, no brain worry, and generous living. He indicated the direction of the appalling cries: “The world’s not coming to an end just yet,” he observed with a great rosy grin.

Nor was the view from our window conducive of more cheerful thoughts. I could look right down into one of the wards, a great, barn-like place, mathematically monotonous, painfully clean. There were the white enamelled beds, each with its face of pain on the pillow, its tumbled bedding, agony-twisted or still in apathy. Then in the night I suddenly started, for once again I heard those awful sounds. They began as long, half-stifled moans ... then screams, each piercing, sharp-edged with agony, holding a strange note of terror ... then shriek upon shriek till the ultimate expression of human agony seemed to be reached ... then sudden silence.

At least twice during the night this would happen, and often in the morning there would be a dismal little funeral cortége standing outside the gates: a man dabbing red eyes with a handkerchief would herd some blubbering children into a carriage, and drive after a hearse in which lay a coffin. It was all very melancholy, and preyed on my spirits. I wondered how people could live here always; but no doubt they got hardened. No doubt this was why we got our room so cheaply.

Then at last the day came when Little Thing held me very tightly, gave me a long, hard kiss and left me, to pass through that portal of pain. Back I went to the room again. How empty it seemed now! I was miserable beyond all words. I had dinner at the Lilas, and for two hours sat moodily brooding over my coffee. What amazed me was that other men could go through this trial time after time and take it with such calmness. The long-haired poets, the garçons with their tight, white aprons—were they fathers too? A girl came and sat by me, a girl with high cheek-bones, snake-like eyes, and a mouth like a red scar. I rose with dignity, sought my room and my bed.

There I fell into a troubled doze in which I dreamed of Dorothy. She had grown up and had made her début as an operatic star with overwhelming success. How proud I was of her! Then suddenly as I gazed, she changed to the young woman of the café, who had looked at me so meaningly. I awoke with a crushing sense of distress.

Hark! Was that a scream? It seemed to cleave my very heart. But then it might be some one else. There was no distinguishing quality in these screams. Trull or princess they were all alike, just plain mothers crying in their agony. No, I could not tell ... but it was too terrible. I dressed hurriedly and went out into the streets.

At three in the morning Paris is a city of weird fascination. It turns to us a new side, sinister, dark, mysterious. Even as the rats gather in its gutters, so do the human rats take possession of its pavements. Every one you meet seems on evil bent, and in the dim half-light you speculate on their pursuits. Here come two sauntering demireps with complexions of vivid certainty; there a rake-hell reels homeward from the night dens of Montmartre; now it is a wretched gatherer of cigarette stubs, peering hawk-eyed as he shambles along; then two dark, sallow youths, with narrow faces, glinting eyes, and unlit cigarettes in their cynical mouths—the sinister Apache.

Coming up the Boul’ Mich’ were a stream of tumbrels from the Halles, and following their trail I came on a scene bewildering in its movement and clamour. The carts that had been arriving since the previous night had gorged the ten pavilions that form the great Paris Market till they overflowed far into the outlying streets. The pavements were blocked with heaps of cabbages and cauliflowers, carrots and turnips, celery and asparagus, while a dozen different kinds of salad gleamed under the arc-lights with a strange unnatural viridity. In other parts of the market crates of chickens and rabbits were being dumped on the pavements; fresh fish from the coast were being unloaded in dripping, salty boxes; and a regiment of butchers in white smocks were staggering under enough sides of beef to feed an army.

What an orgy of colour it was! You might pass from the corals and ivorys of the vegetable market to the fierce crimsons of the meat pavilion; from the silver greys of the section devoted to fish, to the golden yellows of the hall dedicated to butter, and cheese. There were a dozen shades of green alone—from the light, glossy green of the lettuce to the dull green of the cress; a dozen shades of red—from the pale pink of the radish to the dark crimson of the beet.

Through this tumult of confusion I pushed my way. Hurrying porters in red night-caps, with great racks of osier strapped on their backs, rushed to and fro, panting, and dripping with sweat. Strapping red-faced women with the manner of men ordered them about. A self-reliant race, these women of the Halles, accustomed to hold their own in the fierce struggle of competition, to eat and drink enormously, to be exposed to the weather in all seasons. Their voices are raucous, their eyes sharp, their substantial frames swathed in many layers of clothes. Their world is the market; they were born in its atmosphere, they will die with its clamour in their ears.

And from the surrounding slums what a sea of misery seemed to wash up! At this time you may see human flotsam that is elsewhen invisible. In the bustling confusion of the dawn the human rats slink out of their holes to gain a few sous; not much—just four sous for soup and bread, four sous for a corner in the dosshouse, and a few sous for cognac. Here flourish all the métiers of misery. I saw five old women whose combined ages must have made up four hundred years, huddled together for warmth, and all sunk in twitching, shuddering sleep. I saw outcast men with livid faces and rat-chewed beards, whose clothes rotted on their rickety frames. I saw others dazed from a debauch, goggle-eyed, blue-lipped pictures of wretchedness. And the drinking dens in the narrow streets vomited forth more wanton women, and malevolent men, till it seemed to me that never does misery seem so pitiable, never vice so repulsive, as when it swirls round those teeming pavilions at four o’clock of a raw, rainy morning.

Suddenly I stopped to look at a female of unusual height and robust rotundity. A woman merchant of the markets, seemingly of substance no less than of flesh. Her voice was deep and hoarse, her eyes hard and grim, and the firmness of her mouth was accentuated by a deliberate moustache. A masculine woman. A truculent, overbearing woman. A very virago of a woman. Her complexion was of such a hard redness, her Roman nose so belligerent. On her bosom, which outstood like the seat of a fauteuil, reposed a heavy gold chain and locket. On her great, red wrists were bracelets of gold; and on her hands, which looked as if they could deliver a sledge-hammer blow, sparkled many rings. Beside this magnificent termagant her perspiring porters looked pusillanimous. “Here,” thought I, “is the very Queen of the Halles.”

She was enthroned amid a pile of wicker crates containing large grey shells. As I looked closer I saw that the grey shells contained grey snails, and that those on the top of the heap were peering forth and shooting out tentative grey horns. Some of them were even crawling up the basket work. Then as I watched them curiously a label on the crate caught my eye and I read:

Madame Séraphine Guinoval
Marchande d’Escargots
Les Halles, Paris.

“Guinoval,” I thought: “that’s odd. Surely I’ve heard that name before. Why, it’s the maiden name of Anastasia. The name of this enormous woman, then, is Guinoval. Sudden idea! Might it not be that there is some relationship between them?” But the contrast between my slight, shrinking Anastasia with her child-like face and this dragoon of a woman was so great that I dismissed the idea as absurd.

I was very tired when I reached home. I had been afoot four hours, and dropping on my bed I fell asleep. About eleven o’clock I awoke with a vague sense of fear. Something had happened, I felt. Hurrying down, I entered the hospital.

“Yes,” they told me; “my wife had been confined during the night. She was very weak, but doing well.”

“And the child,” I asked, trying to conceal my eagerness. “Was it a boy or a girl?”

“The child, Monsieur, was a girl” (how my heart leapt); “but unfortunately it—had not lived.”

“Dead!” I stammered; then after a stunned moment:

“Can I see her? Can I see my child?”

So they took me to something that lay swathed in linen. I started with a curious emotion of pain. That! so grotesque, so pitiful,—that, the gracious girl who was going to be so much to me, the sweet companion who was going to understand me as no one else could, the precious comfort of my declining years! Oh, the bitter mockery of it!

And so next day, alone in a single cab I took to the cemetery all that was mortal of Dorothy Madden.

END OF BOOK II