The pretender: A story of the Latin Quarter

One morning I received a cheque for nine hundred dollars from Widgeon & Co.—payment for The Great Quietus, now running serially in the Uplift. Did I wave it in the air? Did I do a war-dance of delight? No. I looked at it with sober sadness. The struggle was over. Henceforward it was the easy money, the work that brought in ten times its meed of reward. Alas! how I was doomed to prosperity! I banked the cheque with a heavy heart.

Always was it thus. I vowed each book would be my last. I would drop out of the best-seller writing game, take to the country and raise calves. Then, sooner or later the desire would come to leap into the lists once more. There was usually a month’s boredom between books, and I would go at it again. “Perhaps,” I would say, “I’ll be able to write a failure this time.”

So, having got The Great Quietus off my hands already, I was having this feeling of energy going to waste. One day then, as I walked along the Avenue de la Grande Armée, I happened to stop in front of an automobile agency. There in the window was displayed the neatest voiturette I had ever seen. It had motor-bicycle wheels, a tiny tonneau for two, an engine strong enough for ordinary touring. It was called the Baby Mignonne, and I fell in love with it on the spot.

As I was admiring the dainty midget two American women stopped in front of the window.

“Isn’t it just the cutest thing?” said one.

“Isn’t it just a perfect darling?” said the other.

Then they passed on, leaving me tingling with pride at their verdict; for on the spur of the moment I had made up my mind that this diminutive runabout should belong to me. Ha! that was it. I was seeking for a new character in which to express my energy. Well, I would become a dashing motorist in a leather cap and goggles, swishing along in my Baby Mignonne. Yet I hesitated a moment.

The price was thirty-eight hundred francs. That would not leave much out of my forty-five. It seemed a little indiscreet in a man who had been fighting the wolf so long to spend the first decent bit of money he made in an automobile; a man who lived in a garret, whose wardrobe was not any too extensive, and whose wife, that very morning, had finished a hat for winter wear with her own hands. Ah! now I came to think of it, she had looked so pale leaning over her cherry ribands. Now I understood my sudden impulse. It was for her I was buying it; so that I might drive her out; so that she might get lots of fresh air; so that the roses might bloom in her cheeks again. With a sense of splendid virtue, I said to the agent: “I’ll take it.”

Then I halted: “But I don’t know how to drive one,” I said prudently. “How do I know I can get a chauffeur’s certificate?”

“Ah,” said the agent, “that was easy. There was a school for chauffeurs next door, where for a hundred francs they qualified you for the licence.”

So I promised the man I would return when I could drive, and made arrangements to begin lessons on the following day.

I returned home full of my new hobby. At all costs I must keep it a secret from her. Her economical soul would rebel at my splendid sacrifice. Then again I wanted the surprise to be a dramatic one. I would tell her one day to meet me at the Place de l’Opera, and as she lingered, patiently waiting for me to come plodding along on “train onze,” up I would dash on my Baby Mignonne. Removing my goggles, I would laugh into her amazed face. Then I would remark in a casual way:

“I thought you might be too tired to walk home, so I brought you round your car. Jump in quickly. We’re blocking up the traffic.”

So clearly did I see the picture that I chuckled over my coffee and Camembert.

“What make you so amuse?” she asked curiously.

“Oh, nothing,” I said hurriedly. “I was just thinking of a little business I have in hand.”

I continued to chuckle throughout the day, and my wife continued to wonder at this change in her husband. (Here let me change for a moment from my view point to hers.) She never pryed into his affairs, but nevertheless she watched him curiously. And day by day his conduct was still more puzzling. Although an inveterate late riser, he sprang from bed at half-past seven and dressed quickly. Then after a hurried breakfast he said: “I’ve got an engagement at nine. Don’t wait for me.” She did not dare ask him where he was going, but she saw an eager glow in his eyes, a gladness as of one hastening to a tryst.

And when he returned how joyous he was! With what a hearty appetite he attacked his lunch! How demonstrative in his affection! (Wives, when husbands grow demonstrative in their affection, begin to get suspicious.)

She marked, too, his unusual preoccupation. He had something on his mind; something he was desperately anxious to keep from her. He seemed afraid to meet her eye. She began to be anxious, even afraid.

Next morning he arose at the same time and went off again on his mysterious business. She fretted: she worried. She knew he was wilful and headstrong; she knew he would always be an enigma to her; she loved him for that very quality of aloofness; yet over all she loved him because of his caprice, because some day she dreaded she might lose him. He had moods she feared, subtle, harsh moods; then again he was helpless and simple as a child.

Yes, she had never been able to fathom his whimsical changes, and he certainly was greatly excited about this affair. It could not be that he was incubating a new novel, for that only made him irritable. Now his eyes expressed a rare pleasure. What, O, what could this secret business be?

(So much for what I imagined to be the “Psychology of Anastasia” at this moment. To return to myself.)

I was certainly getting a great deal of fun out of my lessons. The change from book-making to machinery was a salutary one, and every day saw me more enthusiastic. There in the quiet roads of the Bois-de-Boulogne I practised turning and backing, accompanied by an instructor who controlled an extra set of brakes in case of accident. I was beginning to be very proud of myself as I bowled around the Bois, and was even becoming conceited when one morning my professor said to me:

“To-morrow, Monsieur, you must come in the afternoon instead of the morning. Then we will drive along the Champs Elysées and the boulevards, for it is necessary you have some experience in handling the automobile in the midst of traffic. On the morning after, the Inspector will come to examine you for your certificate.”

I was tremendously excited. Instead of rising early the following day I visibly astonished Anastasia by sleeping till ten o’clock. But after lunch I announced that I was going out and would not be back to supper.

I saw her face fall. Doubtless she thought: “His mysterious business has only been transferred from forenoon to afternoon. I thought this morning when he did not get up it was finished. It seems only the hour is changed. But I will say nothing.”

So she watched me from the window as I went away, and I believe the position must have been getting on my nerves for that afternoon, amid the bewildering traffic of Les Etoiles, I lost my head. Trying to avoid a hand-barrow, I crashed into a cab, and of course the emergency brakes refused to work. Considerable damage was done. There were two policemen taking down names, a huge crowd, much excited gesticulation. In the end I promised to call at the office of the cab proprietor and pay for the damage. Sadly I drove back to the garage. Never, I thought, should I pass my examination on the morrow. But my instructor cheered me up, and I began to look forward to it hopefully.

I arrived home trembling with excitement. I could hardly eat my supper, and rose soon after it was over.

“I’ve got an engagement this evening,” I said nervously; “I may be late; don’t wait up for me.”

I was conscious how furtive and suspicious my manner was. I turned away to avoid her straight, penetrating gaze.

“Won’t you tell me where you are going?” she said quietly.

“Oh, just out on business,” I said irritably. “I have a matter to attend to.”

With this illuminating information I went off. I had the impression that she was restraining herself with a great effort. Well, it was certainly trying.

I paid the proprietors of the cab a cheque for two hundred francs. Then it was necessary to go round and inform the police that everything had been settled. Then it seemed fit to promote a good feeling all round by ordering a bottle of champagne. Then one must drink to my success as a chauffeur in another bottle. When I reached home it was after midnight and I was terribly tired. The excitement of the day had worn me out; and, besides, there was the worry over the examination in the morning. The wine too had made me very drowsy.

Anastasia lay silent on her bed. She did not move as I entered so I supposed she slept. Making as little noise as possible, I undressed. As I blew out the candle my last impression was of the exceeding cosiness of our little room. Particularly I noted our new dressing-table of walnut, the armoire with mirror doors, and the fresh curtains of cream cretonne with a design of roses. “It’s home,” I thought, “and how glad I am to get back to it!” Then I crept between the sheets, and feeling as if I could sleep for ever and ever, I launched into a troubled sea of dreams.

“What’s the matter?”

It seemed as if some one was shaking me furiously. Opening my eyes I saw that it was Anastasia.

“What, is it? Fire? Burglars?” I exclaimed. I had always made up my mind in the case of the latter I would lock the bedroom door and interview them through the keyhole. I am not a coward, but I have a very strongly developed sense of self-preservation.

“No, no; something more serious than that,” she answered in a choking voice.

“What then? Are you sick?”

“Yes, yes, sick of everysing. I waken you up because you talk in your sleep.”

“Do I? Seems to me you needn’t waken me up just for that. What was I saying?”

“Saying? You talk all the time about her.”

“Her? Who?”

“Oh, do not try to deceive me any more. I know all.”

“You know more than I do,” I said, astonished. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, do I not know you have a maîtresse? Do I not know you go to see her every day? Do I not know you are spending all your money with her? For two weeks have I borne it, seeing you go every day to keep your shameful assignations with her. Though it was almost driving me mad I have said no word. Hoping that you would tire of her, that you would come back to me, I have tried to bear it patiently. Oh, I have borne so much! But when it comes to lying by your side, and hearing you cry out and murmur expressions of love for her, I can bear it no longer. Please excuse me for waking you, but you torture me so.”

I stared. This was an Anastasia altogether new to me. Her voice had a strange note of despair. Where had I heard it before? Ah! that night on the Embankment, when she was such a hunted, desperate thing. Never had I heard it since. Yet I knew the primal passion which lies deep in every woman had awakened. I was silent, and no doubt my silence seemed like guilt. But the fact was—her accusation had been launched in tumultuous French, and I was innocently trying to translate it into English.

“What was I saying?” I said at last.

“Oh, you cry all night, ‘Mignonne! Mignonne! Petite Mignonne!’ You say: ‘You are love; you are darleen.’ And sometimes you say: ‘You are cute little sing.’ What is ‘cute little sing’? Somesing very passionnante I know. You have nevaire call me zat. And nevaire since we marry you call me Mignonne.”

Suddenly it all burst upon me, and I laughed. It did not strike me how utterly heartless my laugh must have sounded.

“So that’s it. You’ve found out all about Mignonne?”

“Yes, yes. Who is this petite Mignonne? I kill her. I kill myself. Tell me who she is. I go to her. I beg her not to take you from me. I ’ave you first. You belong to me. No one shall ’ave you but me. Tell me who she is.”

“I cannot tell you,” I said, avoiding her gaze.

“Zen it is true? You have maîtresse? You have deceive me! Oh, what a poor, poor girl I am! Oh, God, help me!”

She was sobbing bitterly. Now, I am so constituted that though I am keenly sensitive to stage sobs and book sobs, domestic sobs only irritate me. Outside I can revel in sentiment, but at home I seem to resent anything that goes beyond the scope of everyday humdrum. I am tear-proof (which is often a mighty good thing for a husband); so my only answer was to pull the blankets over my head, and say in a rough voice:

“For goodness’ sake, shut up and let’s have a little sleep.”

But there was going to be no sleep for me that night, and to have one’s sleep invaded would make a lamb spit in the face of a lion.

“Are you going to see her to-morrow?” she demanded tragically.

“Yes,” I said, with a disgusted groan. Really the whole thing was becoming too ridiculous. All along I had been irritated at her jealousy, the more so as there had been certain grounds for it. It had been the only fault I had found with her, and often I had been stung to the point of protest. Now all my pent-up resentment surged to the surface.

“Oh, please, darleen, excuse me; please say you won’t go. Stay wiz your leetle wife, darleen.”

“I’ve got to go; it’s important.”

“Promise me zen you shall see her for the last time. Promise me you’ll say good-bye.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“You love her?”

“Ye—es. I love her.”

My mind was made up. There is no cure for jealousy like ridicule. It would be a little hard, but I would keep the thing up for another day. I would let matters come to a climax, then I would triumphantly drive round on my little voiturette and say, pointing to the blue and gold name plate:

“There! Allow me to introduce to you ‘Little Mignonne.’”

The whirl of the alarm-clock put an end to my efforts to get some sleep, so up I sprang in by no means the best of tempers. My examination at nine, and I had had a wretched night.

Anastasia got up meekly to prepare the coffee. I ate without saying a word, while she even excelled me in the eloquence of her silence. Never eating a mouthful, she sat there with her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes downcast. She seemed to be restraining herself very hard. The domestic atmosphere was decidedly tense.

At last I rose and put on my coat.

“Then you’re going?” she said, breathing hard.

“Yes, I’m going.”

At that her pent-up passion burst forth. She cried in French:

“If you go to her, if you see that woman again, I never want you to come back. I never want to see you again. You can go forever.”

“You forget,” I said, “this is my house.”

She bowed her head. “Yes, you are right. I am nothing in it but a housekeeper you do not have to give wages to, a convenience for you. But that will be all right; I will go.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Really, you’re too absurd.”

Suddenly she came to me and threw her arms around me, looking frantically into my eyes.

“Tell me, tell me, do you not love me?”

I softly unloosened her grasp. An actress on the stage can do justice to these emotional scenes. In real life, a little woman in a peignoir, with hair dishevelled, only makes a hash of them.

“Really,” I said with some annoyance, “I wish you would cease to play the injured wife. You’re saying the very things I’ve been putting into the mouths of my characters for the last five years. They don’t seem real to me.”

“Tell me. Do you love me?”

“Why verge on the sentimental? Have I ever, since we were married, been guilty of one word of love towards you?”

“You have not.”

“Yet we have been happy—at least I have. Then let us go on like sensible, married people and take things for granted.”

“If you do not love me, why did you marry me?”

“Well, you know very well why. I married you because having saved you from a watery grave, I was to a certain extent responsible for you. It was up to me to do something, and it seemed to be the easiest way out of the difficulty.”

“Was that all?”

“No, perhaps not all. I wanted some one to cook for me. You know how I loathe eating at restaurants.”

“Then you did not learn to care for me afterwards?”

“Why as to that I never stopped to consider. Really it never occurred to me. I was quite happy and contented. And I had my work to think of. You know that takes all emotional expression out of me.”

“And now you love this Mignonne?”

“Hum! Ye—es, I love Petite Mignonne.”

“Oh, I cannot bear it! I have come to love you so much. Try, try, to geeve her up, darleen. It will keel me if you do not.”

Here she sank on her knees, holding on to the skirts of my coat.

“I—It’s too late to give her up now.”

“Then, you’re going?” She still clung to me.

I disengaged myself. “Yes, I’m going.”

She rose to her feet. She was like a little Sarah Bernhardt, all passion, tragic intensity.

“Then go! shameful man. Go to the woman you love. I never want to see you again. But know that you have broken my heart! Know that however happy you may be there is never more happiness for me!”

With these words ringing in my ears I closed the door behind me. Poor little girl! Well, it was tough on her, but she must really learn to curb that emotional temperament. And after all, it was only for a few hours more. I would show her how foolish she had been, and she would forever after be cured of jealousy. With this thought I hurried off to my examination.

I found the Inspector to be a most genial individual who desired nothing more than that I should pass; so, profiting by my mishap of the day previous, I acquitted myself to admiration. Elated with success, I was returning merrily home when suddenly I remembered the domestic cloud of the morning. My conscience pricked me. Perhaps after all I had been a little harsh. Perhaps in the heat of the moment I had said things I did not mean. Well, she had never resented anything of the kind before. By the time I reached home she would have forgotten all about it. I would hear her hurried run to the door to greet me. “Hello! Little Thing,” I would say. And then she would kiss me, just as lovingly as ever. Oh, I was so confident of her desperate affection!

But, as I reached the door, there was an ominous stillness within.

“She is trying to frighten me,” I thought; yet my hand trembled as I put the key in the lock.

“Hello, Little Thing!”

No reply. A silence that somehow sickened me; then a sudden fear. Perhaps I would find her dead, killed by her own hand in a moment of despair. But, as I hurriedly hunted the rooms, the sickening feeling vanished, for nowhere could I find any trace of her. The breakfast things were on the table just as I had left them. Everything was the same ... yet stay! there was a note addressed to me.

Again that deadly sickness. I could scarce tear open the envelope. There was a long letter written in French in an unsteady hand, and blurred with many tears. Here is what I read:

I sat down and tried to collect my thoughts, I turned to the letter and read it again. No; there it was, pitilessly plain. I was paralysed, crushed by an immense self-pity. In fiction I would have made the deserted husband tear his hair, and cry, “Curse her; oh, curse her!” Then tear her picture down from the wall, and fall sobbing over it. If there had been a child to cling to him it would have been all the more effective. But this was reality. I did none of these things, I lit a cigarette.

“Well, if that’s not the limit!” I cried. “Who’d have thought she’d have so much spirit. But she’ll come back. Of course she’ll come back.”

So I sat down to await her homecoming, but oh! the house was very sad and still and lonely! Never before had I realised how much her presence in it had meant to me. I made some tea and ate some bread and butter, and that night I went to bed very early and did not sleep at all. Next morning I made some more tea and ate some more bread and butter, but I did not wash any dishes. I was too sad to do that.

The next day crawled past in the same lugubrious way. I went to the police and reported her disappearance, and they began to search for her. I approached the Morgue to make daily inquiries with fear and trembling. I spent my days in looking for her. Every one sympathised with me, as, wan and woebegone, I wandered round the Quarter. I did not speak of my trouble but the whole world seemed to know, and the general opinion seemed to be that she had gone off with some other man. They hinted at this, and advised me to forget her.

“I can’t forget her,” I cried to myself. “I never dreamed she meant so much to me. Over and over again I live the time we spent together. Looking back now, it seems so happy, the happiest time in my life. And to be separated all through a wretched misunderstanding!”

And every night I would sit all alone in the apartment, brooding miserably, and hoping every moment to hear a knock at the door, and to find that she had come back to me. But as time went on this hope faded. Once, when I saw them fishing a drowned girl out of the Seine, I had a moment of terrible fear. There in the boat it lay, a dripping, carrion thing, and with a thousand others I pressed to peer. With relief, I saw that the cadaver had fair hair.

I began to write again, but the old, gay, whimsical spirit had gone out of me, and in its place was one of bitterness. Yet I was prospering amazingly. Tom, Dick and Harry was selling among the popular books in the American market, and it looked as if the new book was going to be equally successful. Already had I received a royalty cheque for three thousand dollars, and I had spent most of it in hiring private detectives to search for Anastasia. For six months I believed I looked the most wretched man in Paris. You see, I was playing the part of the Deserted Husband as splendidly as I had played all my other parts. Yet never did I fail to minutely analyse and record my feelings, and even in my blackest woe I seemed to find a somewhat Byronic satisfaction. Never did I cease to be the egotistic artist.

But all my searchings were vain. The girl seemed to have disappeared as if the Seine had swallowed her. I was wasting my life in vain regrets, so after six months had gone I put my affairs into the hands of a divorce lawyer, and having fulfilled all the requirements of French law, I sailed for America.