The Nabob Volume Ii Part 21

At that moment Madame Jenkins, pale and gasping for breath, entered Andre's studio, drawn thither by an instinct stronger than her will, by the feeling that she must embrace her child before she died. And yet, when she opened the door--he had given her a duplicate key--it was a relief to her to see that he had not returned, that her excitement, increased by a long walk, an unusual experience in her luxurious life as a woman of wealth, would have time to subside. No one in the room. But on the table the little note that he always left when he went out, so that his mother, whose visits, because of Jenkins' tyranny, had become more and more infrequent and brief, might know where he was, and either wait for him or join him. Those two had not ceased to love each other dearly, profoundly, despite the cruel circ.u.mstances which compelled them to introduce into their relations as mother and son the precautions, the clandestine mystery of a different kind of love.

"I am at my rehearsal," said the little note to-day, "I shall return about seven."

That attention from her son, whom she had not been to see for three weeks, and who persisted in expecting her none the less, brought to the mother's eyes a flood of tears which blinded her. One would have said that she had entered a new world. It was so light, so peaceful, so high, that little room which caught the last gleam of daylight on its windows, which was all aflame with the last rays of the sun already sinking below the horizon, and which seemed, like all attic rooms, carved out of a piece of sky, with its bare walls, decorated only by a large portrait, her own; nothing but her own portrait smiling in the place of honor and another in a gilt frame on the table. Yes, in very truth, the humble little lodging, which was still so light when all Paris was becoming dark, produced a supernatural impression upon her, despite the poverty of its scanty furniture, scattered through two rooms, its common chintz coverings, and its mantel adorned with two great bunches of hyacinths, the flowers that are drawn through the streets by cartloads in the morning. What a lovely, brave, dignified life she might have led there with her Andre! And in a moment, with the rapidity of a dream, she placed her bed in one corner, her piano in another, saw herself giving lessons, taking charge of the house, to which she brought her share of enthusiasm and courageous cheerfulness. How could she have failed to understand that that should be the duty, the pride of her widowhood?

What blindness, what shameful weakness!

A sad mistake, doubtless, but one for which much extenuation might have been found in her easily influenced, affectionate nature, in the adroitness and knavery of her accomplice, who talked constantly of marriage, concealing from her the fact that he was not free himself, and when at last he was obliged to confess, drawing such a picture of the unrelieved gloom of his life, of his despair, of his love, that the poor creature, already so seriously involved in the eyes of the world, incapable of one of those heroic efforts which place one above false situations, had yielded at last, had accepted that twofold existence, at once so brilliant and so wretched, resting everything upon a lie that had lasted ten years. Ten years of intoxicating triumphs and indescribable anxiety, ten years during which she had never sung without the fear of being betrayed between two measures, during which the slightest remark concerning irregular establishments wounded her like an allusion to her own case, during which the expression of her face had gradually a.s.sumed that air of gentle humility, of a culprit demanding pardon. Then the certainty of being abandoned at some time had ruined even those borrowed joys, had caused her luxurious surroundings to wither and fade; and what agony, what suffering she had silently undergone, what never-ending humiliations, down to the last and most horrible of all!

While she reviews her life thus sorrowfully in the cool evening air and the peaceful calm of the deserted house, ringing laughter, an outburst of joyous youthful spirits ascends from the floor below; and remembering Andre's confidences, his last letter, in which he told her the great news, she tries to distinguish among those unfamiliar, youthful voices that of her daughter elise, her son's fiancee, whom she does not know, whom she will never know. That thought, which completes the voluntary disherison of the mother, adds to the misery of her last moments and fills them with such a flood of remorse and regret that, notwithstanding her determination to be brave, she weeps and weeps.

The night falls gradually. Great streaks of shadow strike the sloping windows, while the sky, immeasurable in its depth, becomes colorless, seems to recede into the darkness. The roofs ma.s.s for the night as soldiers do for an attack. The clocks gravely tell each other the hour, while the swallows circle about in the neighborhood of a hidden nest and the wind makes its usual incursion among the ruins in the old lumber-yard. Tonight it blows with a wailing noise like the sea, with a shudder of fog; it blows from the river as if to remind the wretched woman that that is where she must go. Oh! how she s.h.i.+vers in her lace mantle at the thought! Why did she come here to revive her taste for life, which would be impossible after the confession she would be forced to make? Swift footsteps shake the staircase, the door is thrown open; it is Andre. He is singing, he is happy, and in a great hurry, for he is expected to dine with the Joyeuses. A glimmer of light, quick, so that the lover may beautify himself. But, as he scratches the match, he divines the presence of some one in the studio, a shadow moving among the motionless shadows.

"Who's there?"

Something answers, something like a stifled laugh or a sob. He thinks it is his young neighbors, a scheme of the "children" to amuse themselves.

He draws near. Two hands, two arms seize him, are wound about him.

"It is I."

And in a feverish voice, which talks hurriedly in self-defence, she tells him that she is about to start on a long journey, and that before starting--

"A journey. Where are you going, pray?"

"Oh! I don't know. We are going ever so far away,--to his own country on some business of his."

"What! you won't be here for my play? It's to be given in three days.

And then, right after it, my wedding. Nonsense! he can't prevent your being present at my wedding."

She excuses herself, invents reasons, but her burning hands, which her son holds in his, her unnatural voice, convince Andre that she is not telling the truth. He attempts to light the candles, but she prevents him.

"No, no, we don't need a light. It is better this way. Besides, I have so many preparations still to make; I must go."

They are both standing, ready for the parting; but Andre will not let her go until he has made her confess what the matter is, what tragic anxiety causes the wrinkles on that lovely face, in which the eyes--is it an effect of the twilight?--gleam with fierce brilliancy.

"Nothing--no, nothing, I promise you. Only the thought that I cannot share in your joys, your triumphs. But you know that I love you, you do not doubt your mother, do you? I have never pa.s.sed a day without thinking of you. Do you do as much; keep a place in your heart for me.

And now kiss me, and let me go at once. I have delayed too long."

A moment more and she will not have strength to do what she still has to do. She rushes toward the door.

"I say no, you shall not go. I have a feeling that some extraordinary thing is taking place in your life that you don't wish to tell me. You are in great sorrow, I am sure of it. That man has done some shameful thing to you."

"No, no; let me go, let me go."

But on the contrary, he holds her, holds her fast.

"Come, what is the matter? Tell me, tell me--"

Then, under his breath, in a low, loving voice, like a kiss:

"He has left you, has he not?"

The unhappy creature shudders, struggles.

"Don't ask me any questions. I will not tell you anything. Adieu!"

And he rejoins, straining her to his heart:

"What can you tell me that I do not know already, my poor mother? Didn't you understand why I left his house six months ago?"

"You know?"

"Everything. And this that has happened to you to-day I have long foreseen and hoped for."

"Oh! wretched, wretched woman that I am, why did I come?"

"Because this is your proper place, because you owe me ten years of my mother. You see that I must keep you."

He says this kneeling in front of the couch upon which she has thrown herself in a flood of tears and with the last plaintive outcries of her wounded pride. For a long while she weeps thus, her son at her feet. And lo! the Joyeuses, anxious at Andre's non-appearance, come up in a body in search of him. There is a veritable invasion of innocent faces, waving curls, modest costumes, rippling gayety, and over the whole group s.h.i.+nes the great lamp, the good old lamp with the huge shade, which M.

Joyeuse solemnly holds aloft as high and as straight as he can, in the att.i.tude of a _canephora_. They halt abruptly, dumbfounded, at sight of that pale, sad woman who gazes, deeply moved, at all those smiling, charming creatures, especially at elise, who stands a little behind the others, and whose embarra.s.sment in making that indiscreet visit stamps her as the _fiancee_.

"elise, kiss our mother and thank her. She has come to live with her children."

Behold her entwined in all those caressing arms, pressed to four little womanly hearts which have long lacked a mother's support, behold her made welcome with sweet cordiality in the circle of light cast by the family lamp, broadened a little so that she can find room there, can dry her eyes, obtain warmth and light for her heart at that st.u.r.dy flame which rises without a flicker, even in that little artist's studio under the roof, where the storm howled so fiercely just now, the terrible storm that must be at once forgotten.

The man who is breathing his last yonder, lying in a heap in the b.l.o.o.d.y bath-tub, has never known that sacred flame. Selfish and hard-hearted, he lived to the last for show, puffing out his superficial breastplate with a blast of vanity. And that vanity was the best that there was in him. It was that which kept him on his feet and jaunty and swaggering so long, that which clenched his teeth on the hiccoughs of his death agony.

In the damp garden the fountain drips sadly. The firemen's bugle sounds the curfew. "Just go up to number 7," says the mistress of the establishment, "he's a long while over his bath." The attendant goes up and utters a shriek of horror: "O Madame, he 's dead--but it isn't the same man." They run to the spot, and no one, in truth, can recognize the fine gentleman who entered just now in this lifeless doll, with its head hanging over the side of the bath-tub, the rouge mingling with the blood that moistens it, and every limb relaxed in utter weariness of the part played to the very end, until it killed the actor. Two slashes of the razor across the magnificent, unwrinkled breastplate, and all his fact.i.tious majesty has burst like a bubble, has resolved itself into this nameless horror, this ma.s.s of mud and blood and ghastly, streaked flesh, wherein lies unrecognizable the model of good-breeding, Marquis Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon.

XXIII.

MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--LAST SHEETS.

I here set down, in haste and with an intensely agitated pen, the shocking events of which I have been the plaything for some days past.

This time it is all up with the _Territoriale_ and all my ambitious dreams. Protests, levies, police-raids, all our books in the custody of the examining magistrate, the Governor a fugitive, our director Bois-l'Hery at Mazas, our director Monpavon disappeared. My head is in a whirl with all these disasters. And to think that, if I had followed the warnings of sound common-sense, I should have been tranquilly settled at Montbars six months ago, cultivating my little vineyard, with no other preoccupation than watching the grapes grow round and turn to the color of gold in the pleasant Burgundian suns.h.i.+ne, and picking from the vines, after a shower, the little gray snails that make such an excellent frica.s.see. With the results of my economy I would have built, on the high land at the end of the vineyard, on a spot that I can see at this moment, a stone summer-house like M. Chalmette's, so convenient for an afternoon nap, while the quail are singing all around among the vines.

But no, constantly led astray by treacherous illusions, I longed to make a fortune, to speculate, to try banking operations on a grand scale, to tie my fortune to the chariot of the successful financiers of the day; and now here I am at the most melancholy stage of my history, clerk in a ruined counting-house, intrusted with the duty of answering a horde of creditors, of shareholders drunk with rage, who pour out the vilest insults upon my white hairs and would fain hold me responsible for the Nabob's ruin and the governor's flight. As if I were not as cruelly hit myself, with my four years' back pay which I lose once more, and my seven thousand francs of money advanced, all of which I intrusted to that villain, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio.

But it was written that I should drink the cup of humiliation and mortification to the dregs. Was I not forced to appear before the examining magistrate, I, Pa.s.sajon, formerly apparitor to the Faculty, with my record of thirty years of faithful service and the ribbon of an officer of the Academy! Oh! when I saw myself ascending that stairway at the Palais de Justice, so long and broad, with no rail to cling to, I felt my head going round and my legs giving way under me. That was when I had a chance to reflect, as I pa.s.sed through those halls, black with lawyers and judges, with here and there a high green door, behind which I could hear the impressive sounds of courts in session; and up above, in the corridor where the offices of the examining magistrates are, during the hour that I had to wait on a bench where I had prison vermin crawling up my legs, while I listened to a lot of thieves, pickpockets and girls in Saint-Lazare caps, talking and laughing with Gardes de Paris, and the ringing of the muskets on the floor of the corridors, and the dull rumbling of prison vans. I realized then the danger of _combin.a.z.ioni_, and that it was not always well to laugh at M. Gogo.

One thing comforted me somewhat, however, and that was that, as I had never taken part in the deliberations of the _Territoriale_, I was in no way responsible for its transactions and swindles. But explain this.

When I was in the magistrate's office, facing that man in a velvet cap who stared at me from the other side of the table with his little crooked eyes, I had such a feeling that I was being explored and searched and turned absolutely inside out that, in spite of my innocence, I longed to confess. To confess what? I have no idea. But that is the effect that justice produces. That devil of a man sat for five long minutes staring at me without speaking, turning over a package of papers covered with a coa.r.s.e handwriting that seemed familiar to me, then said to me abruptly, in a tone that was at once cunning and stern:

"Well, Monsieur Pa.s.sajon! How long is it since we played the drayman's trick?"

The memory of a certain little peccadillo, in which I had taken part in days of distress, was so distant that at first I did not understand; but a few words from the magistrate proved to me that he was thoroughly posted as to the history of our bank. That terrible man knew everything, to the most trivial, the most secret details.