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"In that case you will capture him. If you can only get a man
to listen--"
"Not my uncle, Mademoiselle. He will listen, and do you know what his
answer will be?"
"What?"
"This, or something like it: 'My worthy nephew, you have come to tell me
two things, have you not? First, that you are about to marry a
Parisienne; secondly, that you renounce forever the family practice.
You merely confirm and aggravate our difference. You have taken a step
further backward. It was not worth while your coming out of your way to
tell me this, and you may return as soon as you please.'"
"You surprise me. There must be some way of getting at him, if he is
really good-hearted, as you say. If I could see your uncle I should soon
find out a way."
"If you could see him! Yes, that would be the best way of all; it
couldn't help succeeding. He imagines you as a flighty Parisienne; he is
afraid of you; he is more angry with me for loving you than for refusing
to carry on his practice. If he could only see you, he would soon
forgive me."
"You think so?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Do you think that if I were to look him in the face, as I now look at
you, and to say to him: 'Monsieur Mouillard, will you not consent to my
becoming your niece?' do you think that then he would give in?"
"Alas! Mademoiselle, why can not it be tried?"
"It certainly is difficult, but I won't say it can not."
We explained, or rather Jeanne explained, the case to M. Charnot, who is
assuredly her earliest and most complete conquest. At first he cried out
against the idea. He said it was entirely my business, a family matter
in which he had no right to interfere. She insisted. She carried his
scruples by storm. She boldly proposed a trip to Bourges, and a visit to
M. Mouillard. She overflowed with reasons, some of them rather weak, but
all so prettily urged! A trip to Bourges would be delightful--something
so novel and refreshing! Had M. Charnot complained on the previous
evening, or had he not, of having to stop in Paris in the heat of August?
Yes, he had complained, and quite right too, for his colleagues did not
hesitate to leave their work and rush off to the country. Then she cited
examples: one off to the Vosges, another at Arcachon, yet another at
Deauville. And she reminded him, too, that a certain old lady, one of
his old friends of the Faubourg St. Germain, lived only a few miles out
of Bourges, and had invited him to come and see her, she didn't know how
many times, and that he had promised and promised and never kept his
word. Now he could take the opportunity of going on from Bourges to her
chateau. Finally, as M. Charnot continued to urge the singularity of
such behavior, she replied:
"My dear father! not at all; in visiting Monsieur Mouillard you will be
only fulfilling a social duty."
"How so, I should like to know?"
"He paid you a visit, and you will be returning it!"
M. Charnot tossed his head, like a father who, though he may not be
convinced, yet admits that he is beaten.
As for me, Jeanne, I'm beginning to believe in the fairies again.
CHAPTER XVIII
A COOL RECEPTION
August 3d.
I have made another visit to the Rue de l'Universite. They have decided
to make the trip. I leave for Bourges tomorrow, a day in advance of M.
and Mademoiselle Charnot, who will arrive on the following morning.
I am sent on first to fulfil two duties: to engage comfortable rooms at
the hotel--first floor with southern aspect--and then to see my uncle and
prepare him for his visitors.
I am to prepare him without ruffling him. Jeanne has sketched my plan of
campaign. I am to be the most affectionate of nephews, though he show
himself the crustiest of uncles; to prevent him from recurring to the
past, to speak soberly of the present, to confess that Mademoiselle
Charnot is aware of my feelings for her, and shows herself not entirely
insensible to them; but I am to avoid giving details, and must put off a
full explanation until later, when we can study the situation together.
M. Mouillard can not fail to be appeased by such deference, and to
observe a truce while I hint at the possibility of a family council.
Then, if these first advances are well received, I am to tell him that
M. Charnot is actually travelling in the neighborhood, and, without
giving it as certain, I may add that if he stops at Bourges he may like
to return my uncle's visit.
There my role ends. Jeanne and M. Charnot will do the rest. It is with
Jeanne, by the light of her eyes and her smile, that M. Mouillard is "to
study the situation;" he will have to struggle against the redoubtable
arguments of her youth and beauty. Poor man!
Jeanne is full of confidence. Her father, who has learned his lesson
from her, feels sure that my uncle will give in. Even I, who can not
entirely share this optimism, feel that I incline to the side of hope.
When I reached home, the porter handed me two cards from Larive. On the
first I read:
CH. LARIVE,
Managing Clerk.
P. P. C.
The second, on glazed cardboard, announced, likewise in initials, another
piece of news:
CH. LARIVE,
Formerly Managing Clerk.
P. F. P. M.
So the Parisian who swore he could not exist two days in the country is
leaving Paris. That was fated. He is about to be married; I'm sure I
don't object. The only consequence to me is that we never shall meet
again, and I shall not weep over that.
BOURGES, August 4th.
If you have ever been in Bourges, you may have seen the little Rue Sous-
les-Ceps, the Cours du Bat d'Argent and de la Fleur-de-lys, the Rues de
la Merede-Dieu, des Verts-Galants, Mausecret, du Moulin-le-Roi, the Quai
Messire-Jacques, and other streets whose ancient names, preserved by a
praiseworthy sentiment or instinctive conservatism, betoken an ancient
city still inhabited by old-fashioned people, by which I mean people
attached to the soil, strongly marked with the stamp of the provincial in
manners as in language; people who understand all that a name is to a
street--its honor, its spouse if you will, from which it must not be
divorced.
My Uncle Mouillard, most devoted and faithful citizen of Bourges,
naturally lives in one of these old streets, the Rue du Four, within the
shadow of the cathedral, beneath the swing of its chimes.
Within fifteen minutes after my arrival at Bourges I was pulling the
deer's foot which hangs, depilated with long use, beside his door. It
was five o'clock, and I knew for certain that he would not be at home.
When the courts rise, one of the clerks carries back his papers to the
office, while he moves slowly off, his coat-tails flapping in the breeze,
either to visit a few friends and clients, respectable dames who were his
partners in the dance in the year 1840, or more often to take a
"constitutional" along the banks of the Berry Canal, where, in the poplar
shade, files of little gray donkeys are towing string after string of big
barges.
So I was sure not to meet him.
Madeleine opened the door to me, and started as if shot.
"Monsieur Fabien!"
"Myself, Madeleine. My uncle is not at home?"
"No, Monsieur. Do you really mean to come in, Monsieur?"
"Why not?"
"The master's so changed since his visit to Paris, Monsieur Fabien!"
Madeleine stood still, with one hand holding up her apron, the other
hanging, and gazed at me with reproachful anxiety.
"I must come in, Madeleine. I have a secret to tell you."
She made no answer, but turned and walked before me into the house.
It was not thus that I used to be welcomed in days gone by! Then
Madeleine used to meet me at the station. She used to kiss me, and tell
me how well I looked, promising the while a myriad sweet dishes which she
had invented for me. Hardly did I set foot in the hall before my uncle,
who had given up his evening walk for my sake, would run out of his
study, heart and cravat alike out of their usual order at seeing me--
me, a poor, awkward, gaping schoolboy: Today that is ancient history.
To-day I am afraid to meet my uncle, and Madeleine is afraid to let me
in.
She told me not a word of it, but I easily guessed that floods of tears
had streamed from her black eyes down her thin cheeks, now pale as wax.
Her face is quite transparent, and looks as if a tiny lamp were lighting
it from within. There are strong feelings, too, beneath that impassive
mask. Madeleine comes from Bayonne, and has Spanish blood in her.
I have heard that she was lovely as a girl of twenty. With age her
features have grown austere. She looks like a widow who is a widow
indeed, and her heart is that of a grandmother.
She glided before me in her slippers to that realm of peace and silence,
her kitchen. I followed her in. Two things that never found entrance
there are dust and noise. A lonely goldfinch hangs in a wicker cage from
the rafters, and utters from time to time a little shrill call. His note
and the metallic tick-tick of Madeleine's clock alone enliven the silent
flight of time. She sat down in the low chair where she knits after
dinner.
"Madeleine, I am about to be married; did you know it?"
She slowly shook her head.
"Yes, in Paris, Monsieur Fabien; that's what makes the master so
unhappy."
"You will soon see her whom I have chosen, Madeleine."
"I do not think so, Monsieur Fabien."
"Yes, yes, you will; and you will see that it is my uncle who is in the
wrong."
"I have not often known him in the wrong."
"That has nothing to do with it. My marriage is fully decided upon, and
all I want is to get my uncle's consent to it. Do you understand?
I want to make friends with him."
Madeleine shook her head again.
"You won't succeed."
"My dear Madeleine!"
"No, Monsieur Fabien, you won't succeed."
"He must be very much changed, then!"
"So much that you could hardly believe it; so much that I can hardly keep
myself from changing too. He, who had such a good appetite, now has
nothing but fads. It's no good my cooking him dainties, or buying him
early vegetables; he never notices them, but looks out of the window as
I come in at the door with a surprise for him. In the evening he often
forgets to go out in the garden, and sits at table, his elbows on his
rumpled napkin, his head between his hands, and what he thinks of he
keeps to himself. If I try to talk of you--and I have tried, Monsieur
Fabien--he gets up in a rage, and forbids me to open my mouth on the
subject. The house is not cheerful, Monsieur Fabien. Every one notices
how he has changed; Monsieur Lorinet and his lady never enter the doors;
Monsieur Hublette and Monsieur Horlet come and play dummy, looking all
the time as if they had come for a funeral, thinking it will please the
master. Even the clients say that the master treats them like dogs, and
that he ought to sell his practice."
"Then it isn't sold?"
"Not yet, but I think it will be before long."
"Listen to me, Madeleine; you have always been good and devoted to me;
I am sure you still are fond of me; do me one last service. You must
manage to put me up here without my uncle knowing it."
"Without his knowing it, Monsieur Fabien!"
"Yes, say in the library; he never goes in there. From there I can study
him, and watch him, without his seeing me, since he is so irritable and
so easily upset, and as soon as you see an opportunity I shall make use
of it. A sign from you, and down I come."
"Really, Monsieur Fabien--"
"It must be done, Madeleine; I must manage to speak to him before ten
o'clock to-morrow morning, for my bride is coming."
"The Parisienne? She coming here!"
"Yes, with her father, by the train which gets in at six minutes past
nine to-morrow."
"Good God! is it possible?"
"To see you, Madeleine; to see my uncle, to make my peace with him.
Isn't it kind of her?"
"Kind? Monsieur Fabien! I tremble to think of what will happen. All
the same, I shall be glad to have a sight of your young lady, of course."
And so we settled that Madeleine was not to say a word to my uncle about
my being in Bourges, within a few feet of him. If she perceived any
break in the gloom which enveloped M. Mouillard, she was to let me know;
if I were obliged to put off my interview to the morrow, and to pass the
night on the sofa-bed in the library, she was to bring me something to
eat, a rug, and "the pillow you used in your holidays when you were a
boy."
I was installed then in the big library on the first-floor, adjoining the
drawing-room, its other door opening on the passage opposite M.
Mouillard's door, and its two large windows on the garden. What a look
of good antique middle-class comfort there was about it, from the floor
of bees'-waxed oak, with its inequalities of level, to the four bookcases
with glass doors, surmounted by four bronzed busts of Herodotus, Homer,
Socrates, and Marmontel! Nothing had been moved; the books were still in
the places where I had known them for twenty years; Voltaire beside
Rousseau, the Dictionary of Useful Knowledge, and Rollin's Ancient
History, the slim, well bound octavos of the Meditations of St.
Ignatius, side by side with an enormous quarto on veterinary surgery.
The savage arrows, said to be poisoned, which always used to frighten me
so much, were still arranged like a peacock's tail over the mantel-shelf,
each end of which was adorned by the same familiar lumps of white coral.
The musical-box, which I was not allowed to touch till I was eighteen,
still stood in the left-hand corner, and on the writing-table, near the
little blotting-book that held the note-paper, rose, still majestic,
still turning obedient to the touch within its graduated belts, the
terrestrial globe "on which are marked the three voyages of Captain Cook,
both outward and homeward." Ah, captain, how often have we sailed those
voyages together! What grand headway we made as we scoured the tropics
in the heel of the trade-wind, our ship threading archipelagoes whose
virgin forests stared at us in wonder, all their strange flowers opening
toward us, seeking to allure us and put us to sleep with their dangerous
perfumes. But we always guessed the snare, we saw the points of the
assegais gleaming amid the tall grasses; you gave the word in your full,
deep voice, and our way lay infinite before us; we followed it, always on
the track of new lands, new discoveries, until we reached the fatal isle
of Owhyhee, the spot where this terrestrial globe is spotted with a tear
--for I wept over you, my captain, at the age when tears unlock
themselves and flow easily from a heart filled with enchantment!
Seven o'clock sounded from the cathedral; the garden door slammed to;
my uncle was returning.
I saw him coming down the winding path, hat in hand, with bowed head.
He did not stop before his graftings; he passed the clump of petunias
without giving them that all-embracing glance I know so well, the glance
of the rewarded gardener. He gave no word of encouragement to the
Chinese duck which waddled down the path in front of him.
Madeleine was right. The time was not ripe for reconciliation; and more,
it would need a great deal of sun to ripen it. O Jeanne, if only you
were here!
"Any one called while I've been out?"
This, by the way, is the old formula to which my uncle has always been
faithful. I heard Madeleine answer, with a quaver in her voice:
"No, nobody for you, sir."
"Someone for you, then? A lover, perhaps, my faithful Madeleine? The
world is so foolish nowadays that even you might take it into your head
to marry and leave me. Come, serve my dinner quickly, and if the
gentleman with the decoration calls--you know whom I mean?"
"The tall, thin gentleman?"
"Yes. Show him into the drawing-room."
"A gentleman by himself into the drawing-room?
"No, sir, no. The floor was waxed only yesterday, and the furniture's not
yet in order."
"Very well! I'll see him in here."
My uncle went into the dining-room underneath me, and for twenty minutes
I heard nothing more of him, save the ring of his wineglass as he struck
on it to summon Madeleine.
He had hardly finished dinner when there came a ring at the street door.
Some one asked for M. Mouillard, the gentleman with the decoration,
I suppose, for Madeleine showed him in, and I could tell by the noise
of his chair that my uncle had risen to receive his visitor.
They sat down and entered into conversation. An indistinct murmur
reached me through the ceiling. Occasionally a clearer sound struck my
ear, and I thought I knew that high, resonant voice. It was no doubt
delusion, still it beset me there in the silence of the library, haunting
my thoughts as they wandered restlessly in search of occupation. I tried
to recollect all the men with fluty voices that I had ever met in
Bourges: a corn-factor from the Place St. Jean; Rollet, the sacristan; a
fat manufacturer, who used to get my uncle to draw up petitions for him
claiming relief from taxation. I hunted feverishly in my memory as the
light died away from the windows, and the towers of St. Stephen's
gradually lost the glowing aureole conferred on them by the setting sun.
After about an hour the conversation grew heated.
My uncle coughed, the flute became shrill. I caught these fragments of
their dialogue.
"No, Monsieur!"
"Yes, Monsieur!"
"But the law?"
"Is as I tell you."
"But this is tyranny!"
"Then our business is at an end."
Apparently it was not, though; for the conversation gradually sank down
the scale to a monotonous murmur. A second hour passed, and yet a third.
What could this interminable visit portend?
It was near eleven o'clock. A ray from the rising moon shone between the
trees in the garden. A big black cat crept across the lawn, shaking its
wet paws. In the darkness it looked like a tiger. In my mind's eye I
saw Madeleine sitting with her eyes fixed on her dead hearth, telling her
beads, her thoughts running with mine: "It is years since Monsieur
Mouillard was up at such an hour." Still she waited, for never had any
hand but hers shot the bolt of the street door; the house would not be
shut if shut by any other than herself.
At last the dining-room door opened. "Let me show you a light; take care
of the stairs."
Then followed the "Good-nights" of two weary voices, the squeaking of the
big key turning in the lock, a light footstep dying away in the distance,
and my uncle's heavy tread as he went up to his bedroom. The business
was over.
How slowly my uncle went upstairs! The burden of sorrow was no metaphor
in his case. He, who used to be as active as a boy, could now hardly-
support his own weight.
He crossed the landing and went into his room. I thought of following,
him; only a few feet lay between us. No doubt it was late, but his
excited state might have predisposed him in my favor. Suddenly I heard a
sigh--then a sob. He was weeping; I determined to risk all and rush to
his assistance.
But just as I was about to leave the library a skirt rustled against the
wall, though I had heard no sound of footsteps preceding it. At the same
instant a little bit of paper was slipped in under the door--a letter
from the silent Madeleine. I unfolded the paper and saw the following
words written across from one corner to the other, with a contempt for
French spelling, which was thoroughly Spanish:
"Ni allais pat ceux soire."
Very well, Madeleine, since that's your advice, I'll refrain.
I lay down to sleep on the sofa. Yet I was very sorry for the delay.
I hated to let the night go by without being reconciled to the poor old
man, or without having attempted it at least. He was evidently very
wretched to be affected to tears, for I had never known him to weep, even
on occasions when my own tears had flowed freely. Yet I followed my old
and faithful friend's advice, for I knew that she had the peace of the
household as much at heart as I; but I felt that I should seek long and
vainly before I could discover what this latest trouble was, and what
part I had in it.
CHAPTER XIX
JEANNE THE ENCHANTRESS
BOURGES, August 5th.
I woke up at seven; my first thought was for M. Mouillard. Where could
he be? I listened, but could hear no sound. I went to the window; the
office-boy was lying flat on the lawn, feeding the goldfish in the
fountain. This proved beyond a doubt that my uncle was not in.
I went downstairs to the kitchen.
"Well, Madeleine, has he gone out?"
"He went at six o'clock, Monsieur Fabien."
"Why didn't you wake me?"
"How could I guess? Never, never does he go out before breakfast.
I never have seen him like this before, not even when his wife died."
"What can be the matter with him?"
"I think it's the sale of the practice. He said to me last night, at the
fool of the staircase: 'I am a brokenhearted man, Madeleine, a broken-
hearted man. I might have got over it, but that monster of ingratitude,
that cannibal'--saving your presence, Monsieur Fabien--'would not have it
so. If I had him here I don't know what I should do to him.'"
"Didn't he tell you what he would do to the cannibal?"
"No. So I slipped a little note under your door when I went upstairs."
"Yes. I am much obliged to you for it. Is he any calmer this morning?"
"He doesn't look angry any longer, only I noticed that he had been
weeping."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know at all. Besides, you might as well try to catch up with a
deer as with him."
"That's true. I'd better wait for him. When will he be in?"
"Not before ten. I can tell you that it's not once a year that he goes
out like this in the morning."
"But, Madeleine, Jeanne will be here by ten!"
"Oh, is Jeanne her name?"
"Yes. Monsieur Charnot will be here, too. And my uncle, whom I was to
have prepared for their visit, will know nothing about it, nor even that
I slept last night beneath his roof."
"To tell the truth, Monsieur Fabien, I don't think you've managed well.
Still, there is Dame Fortune, who often doesn't put in her word till the
last moment."
"Entreat her for me, Madeleine, my dear."
But Dame Fortune was deaf to prayers. My uncle did not return, and I
could find no fresh expedient. As I made my way, vexed and unhappy, to
the station, I kept asking myself the question that I had been turning
over in vain for the last hour:
"I have said nothing to Monsieur Mouillard. Had I better say anything
now to Monsieur Charnot?"
My fears redoubled when I saw Jeanne and M. Charnot at the windows of the
train, as it swept past me into the station.
A minute later she stepped on to the platform, dressed all in gray, with
roses in her cheeks, and a pair of gull's wings in her hat.
M. Charnot shook me by the hand, thoroughly delighted at having escaped
from the train and being able to shake himself and tread once more the
solid earth. He asked after my uncle, and when I replied that he was in
excellent health, he went to get his luggage.
"Well!" said Jeanne. "Is all arranged?"
"On the contrary, nothing is."
"Have you seen him?"
"Not even that. I have been watching for a favorable opportunity without
finding one. Yesterday evening he was busy with a visitor; this morning
he went out at six. He doesn't even know that I am in Bourges."
"And yet you were in his house?"
"I slept on a sofa in his library."
She gave me a look which was as much as to say, "My poor boy, how very
unpractical you are!"
"Go on doing nothing," she said; "that's the best you can do. If my
father didn't think he was expected he would beat a retreat at once."
At this instant, M. Charnot came back to us, having seen his two trunks
and a hatbox placed on top of the omnibus of the Hotel de France.
"That is where you have found rooms for us?"
"Yes, sir."
"It is now twelve minutes past nine; tell Monsieur Mouillard that we
shall call upon him at ten o'clock precisely."
I went a few steps with them, and saw them into the omnibus, which was
whirled off at a fast trot by its two steeds.
When I had lost them from my sight I cast a look around me, and noticed
three people standing in line beneath the awning, and gazing upon me with
interest. I recognized Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Lorinet. They
were all smiling with the same look of contemptuous mockery. I bowed.
The man alone returned my salute, raising his hat. By some strange freak
of fate, Berthe was again wearing a blue dress.
I went back in the direction of the Rue du Four, happy, though at my
wits' end, forming projects that were mutually destructive; now
expatiating in the seventh heaven, now loading myself with the most
appalling curses. I slipped along the streets, concealed beneath my
umbrella, for the rain was falling; a great storm-cloud had burst over
Bourges, and I blessed the rain which gave me a chance to hide my face.
From the banks of the Voizelle to the old quarter around the cathedral is
a rather long walk. When I turned from the Rue Moyenne, the Boulevard
des Italiens of Bourges, into the Rue du Four, a blazing sun was drying
the rain on the roofs, and the cuckoo clock at M. Festuquet's--a neighbor
of my uncle--was striking the hour of meeting.