Chapter 15

"Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?" he asked.

"No, monsieur."

"I have just been reckoning"--and his mocking glance, eloquent of his Southern origin, belied his good-humored smile--"I have just been reckoning that I have spent four hundred and thirty thousand francs to obtain that decoration for Jenkins."

Four hundred and thirty thousand francs! And the end was not yet.

IX.

GRANDMAMMA.

Three times a week, in the evening, Paul de Géry appeared to take his lesson in bookkeeping in the Joyeuse dining-room, not far from the small salon where the little family had burst upon him at his first visit; so that, while he was being initiated into all the mysteries of "debit and credit," with his eyes fixed on his white-cravated instructor, he listened in spite of himself to the faint sounds of the toilsome evening on the other side of the door, longing for the vision of all those pretty heads bending over around the lamp. M. Joyeuse never mentioned his daughters. As jealous of their charms as a dragon standing guard over lovely princesses in a tower, aroused to vigilance by the fanciful imaginings of his doting affection, he replied dryly enough to his pupil's questions concerning "the young ladies," so that the young man ceased to mention them to him. He was surprised, however, that he never happened to see this "Grandmamma" whose name recurred constantly in M. Joyeuse's conversation upon every subject, in the most trivial details of his existence, hovering over the house like the symbol of its perfect orderliness and tranquillity.

Such extreme reserve, on the part of a venerable lady, who in all probability had passed the age at which the adventurous spirit of a young man is to be feared, seemed to him exaggerated. But the lessons were very practical, given in very clear language, and the professor had an excellent method of demonstration, marred by a single fault, a habit of relapsing into fits of silence, broken by starts and interjections that went off like bombs. Outside of that he was the best of masters, intelligent, patient and faithful. Paul learned to find his way through the complicated labyrinth of books of account and resigned himself to the necessity of asking nothing further.

One evening, about nine o'clock, as the young man rose to go, M. Joyeuse asked him if he would do him the honor to take a cup of tea _en famille_, a custom of the time of Madame Joyeuse, born Saint-Amand, who used to receive her friends on Thursdays. Since her death, and the change in their financial position, their friends had scattered; but they had retained that little "weekly extra." Paul having accepted, the good man opened the door and called:

"Grandmamma."

A light step in the hall and a face of twenty years, surrounded by a nimbus of abundant, fluffy brown hair, abruptly made its appearance. De Géry looked at M. Joyeuse with an air of stupefaction:

"Grandmamma?"

"Yes, it's a name we gave her when she was a little girl. With her frilled cap, and her authoritative older-sister expression, she had a funny little face, so wise-looking. We thought that she looked like her grandmother. The name has clung to her."

From the worthy man's tone, it was evident that to him it was the most natural thing in the world, that grandmotherly title bestowed upon such attractive youth. Every one in the household thought as he did, and the other Joyeuse girls, who ran to their father and grouped themselves about him somewhat as in the show-case on the ground-floor, and the old servant, who brought and placed upon the table in the salon, whither they had adjourned, a magnificent tea-service, a relic of the former splendor of the establishment, all called the girl "Grandmamma," nor did she once seem to be annoyed by it, for the influence of that blessed name imparted to the affection of them all a touch of deference that flattered her and gave to her imaginary authority a singular attractiveness, as of a protecting hand.

It may have been because of that title, which he had learned to cherish in his infancy, but de Géry found an indescribable fascination in the girl. It did not resemble the sudden blow he had received from another, full in the heart, the perturbation mingled with a longing to fly, to escape an obsession, and the persistent melancholy peculiar to the day after a fête, extinguished candles, refrains that have died away, perfumes vanished in the darkness. No, in the presence of that young girl, as she stood looking over the family table, making sure that nothing was lacking, letting her loving, sparkling eyes rest upon her children, her little children, he was assailed by a temptation to know her, to be to her as an old friend, to confide to her things that he confessed to none but himself; and when she offered him his cup, with no worldly airs, no society affectations, he would have liked to say like the others a "Thanks, Grandmamma," in which he might put his whole heart.

Suddenly a cheery, vigorous knock made everybody jump.

"Ah! there's Monsieur André. Quick, Élise, a cup. Yaia, the little cakes." Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Henriette, the third of the Joyeuse girls,--who had inherited from her mother, born Saint-Amand, a certain worldly side,--in view of the crowded condition of the salons that evening, rushed to light the two candles on the piano.

"My fifth act is done," cried the newcomer, as he entered the room; then he stopped short. "Ah! excuse me," and his face took on a discomfited expression at sight of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced them to each other: "Monsieur Paul de Géry--Monsieur André Maranne,"--not without a certain solemnity of manner. He remembered his wife's receptions long ago; and the vases on the mantel, the two great lamps, the work-table, the armchairs arranged in a circle, seemed to share the illusion, to shine brighter as if rejuvenated by that unusual throng.

"So your play is finished?"

"Finished, Monsieur Joyeuse, and I mean to read it to you one of these days."

"Oh! yes, Monsieur André. Oh! yes," said all the girls in chorus.

Their neighbor wrote for the stage and no one of them entertained a doubt of his success. Photography held out less promise of profit, you know. Customers were very rare, the passers-by disinclined to patronize him. To keep his hand in and get his new apparatus into working order, Monsieur André was taking his friends again every Sunday, the family lending themselves for his experiments with unequalled good-humor, for the prosperity of that inchoate, suburban industry was a matter of pride to them all, arousing, even in the girls, that touching sentiment of fraternity which presses the humblest destinies together as closely as sparrows on the edge of a roof. But André Maranne, with the inexhaustible resources of his high forehead, stored with illusions, explained without bitterness the indifference of the public. Either the weather was unfavorable or else every one complained of the wretched condition of business, and he ended always with the same consoling refrain: "Wait until _Révolte_ has been acted!" _Révolte_ was the title of his play.

"It's a surprising thing," said the fourth of the Joyeuse girls, a child of twelve with her hair in a pigtail, "it's a surprising thing that you do so little business with such a splendid balcony!"

"And then there's a great deal of passing through the quarter," added Élise confidently. Grandmamma smilingly reminded her that there was even more on Boulevard des Italiens.

"Ah! if it were Boulevard des Italiens--" said M. Joyeuse dreamily, and away he went on his chimera, which was suddenly brought to a stand-still by a gesture and these words, uttered in a piteous tone: "closed because of failure." In an instant the terrible _Imaginaire_ had installed his friend in a splendid apartment on the boulevard, where he earned an enormous amount of money, increasing his expenses at the same time so disproportionately, that a loud "_pouf_" swallowed up photographer and photography in a few months. They laughed heartily when he gave that explanation; but they all agreed that Rue Saint-Ferdinand, although less showy, was much more reliable than Boulevard des Italiens. Moreover, it was very near the Bois de Boulogne, and if the fashionable world should once begin to pass that way--That fashionable society which her mother so affected was Mademoiselle Henriette's fixed idea; and she was amazed that the thought of receiving _high-life_ in his little fifth-floor studio, about as large as a diving-bell, should make their neighbor laugh. Why, only a week or two before, a carriage came there with servants in livery. Sometimes, too, he had had a "very swell" visitor.

"Oh! a real great lady," Grandmamma chimed in. "We were at the window waiting for father. We saw her leave the carriage and look at the frame; we thought surely she came to see you."

"She did come to see me," said André, a little embarrassed.

"For a moment we were afraid she would go on as so many others do, on account of your five flights. So we all four did our best to stop her, to magnetize her with our four pairs of wide-open eyes. We pulled her very gently by the feathers in her hat and the lace on her cape. 'Come upstairs, pray, madame, pray come upstairs,' and finally she came. There is so much magnetism in eyes that want a thing very much!"

Surely she had magnetism enough, the dear creature, not only in her eyes, which were of uncertain hue, veiled or laughing like the sky of her Paris, but in her voice, in the folds of her dress, in everything, even to the long curl that shaded her straight, graceful statue-like neck and attracted you by its tapering shaded point, deftly curled over a supple finger.

The tea being duly served, while the gentlemen continued their talking and drinking--Père Joyeuse was always very slow in everything that he did, because of his abrupt excursions into the moon--the girls resumed their work, the table was covered with wicker baskets, embroidery, pretty wools whose brilliant coloring brightened the faded flowers in the old carpet, and the group of the other evening was formed anew in the luminous circle of the lamp shade, to the great satisfaction of Paul de Géry. It was the first evening of that sort he had passed in Paris; it reminded him of other far-away evenings, cradled by the same innocent mirth, the pleasant sound of scissors laid upon the table, of the needle piercing the cotton, or the rustling of the leaves of a book as they are turned, and dear faces, vanished forever, clustered in the same way around the family lamp, alas! so suddenly extinguished.

Once admitted into that charming domestic circle, he was not excluded from it again, but took his lessons among the girls, and made bold to talk with them when the good man closed his ledger. There everything tended to give him grateful repose from the seething life in which the Nabob's luxurious worldliness involved him; he bathed in that atmosphere of honesty and simplicity, and strove to cure there the wounds with which a hand more indifferent than cruel was mercilessly riddling his heart.

* * *

"Women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who did me the most harm never had either love or hate for me." Paul had fallen in, with the woman of whom Heinrich Heine speaks. Felicia was very hospitable and cordial to him. There was no one whom she welcomed more graciously. She reserved for him a special smile, in which there was the pleased expression of an artist's eye resting upon a type which attracts it, and the satisfaction of a _blasé_ mind which is amused by anything new, however simple it may seem to be. She liked that reserve, most alluring in a Southerner, the straightforwardness of that judgment, entirely free from artistic or worldly formulas and enlivened by a touch of local accent. It was a change for her from the zigzag movement of the thumb, drawing flattery in outline with the gestures of a studio fag, from the congratulations of comrades on the way in which she silenced some poor fellow, and from the affected admiration, the "chawming--veay pretty," with which the young dandies honored her as they sucked the handles of their canes. He, at all events, said nothing of that sort to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, because of his apparent tranquillity and the regularity of his profile; and as soon as he appeared, she would say: "Ah! there's Minerva. Hail, lovely Minerva. Take off your helmet and let us have a talk."

But that familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man of the hopelessness of his love. He realized that he could not hope to make any further progress in that feminine good-fellowship in which affection was lacking, and that he should lose something every day of his charm as an unfamiliar type in the eyes of that creature who was born bored, and who seemed to have lived her life already and to find the insipidity of repetition in everything that she heard or saw. Felicia was suffering from ennui. Only her art had the power to divert her, to take her out of herself, to transport her to a fairyland of dazzling beauty from which she returned all bruised and sore, always surprised at the awakening, which resembled a fall. She compared herself to the jelly-fish, whose transparent brilliancy in the coolness and constant movement of the waves, vanishes on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those intervals of idleness, when the absence of thought leaves the hand inert upon the modelling tool, Felicia, deprived of the sole moral nerve of her intellect, became savage, unapproachable, sullen beyond endurance,--the revenge of paltry human qualities upon great tired brains. After she had brought tears to the eyes of all those whom she loved, had striven to evoke painful memories or paralyzing anxieties, and had reached the brutal, murderous climax of her fatigue,--as it was always necessary, where she was concerned, that something ridiculous should be mingled even with the saddest things, she would blow away the remains of her ennui with a cry like that of a dazed wild beast, a sort of yawning roar which she called "the cry of the jackal in the desert," and which would drive the blood from the excellent Crenmitz's cheeks, taking her by surprise in her torpid placidity.

Poor Felicia! Her life was in very truth a ghastly desert when her art did not enliven it with its visions, a dismal, unrelieved desert, where everything was crushed and flattened beneath the same monotonous immensity, the ingenuous love of a boy of twenty and the caprice of an amorous duke, where everything was covered with dry sand blown about by the scorching winds of destiny. Paul was conscious of that void, he tried to escape from it; but something detained him, like a weight which unwinds a chain, and, notwithstanding the evil things he heard, notwithstanding the strange creature's peculiarities, he hovered about her with a delicious sense of enjoyment, under pain of carrying naught away from that long amorous contemplation save the despair of a believer reduced to the adoration of images.

The place of refuge was in yonder out-of-the-way quarter, where the wind blew so hard without preventing the flame from burning white and straight,--it was in the domestic circle presided over by Grandmamma. Oh! she did not suffer from ennui, she never uttered "the cry of the jackal in the desert." Her life was too well filled: the father to comfort and encourage, the children to teach, all the material cares of a household in which the mother was lacking, the engrossing thoughts which wake with the dawn and which the night puts to sleep, unless it renews them in dreams--one of those instances of indefatigable but apparently effortless devotion, very convenient for poor human selfishness, because it dispenses with all gratitude and hardly makes itself felt, its touch is so light. She was not one of the courageous girls who work to support their parents, give lessons from morning to night and forget the annoyances of the household in the excitement of an engrossing occupation. No, she had formed a different conception of her duty, she was a sedentary bee confining her labors to the hive, with no buzzing around outside in the fresh air and among the flowers. A thousand and one functions to perform: tailor, milliner, mender, keeper of accounts as well,--for M. Joyeuse, being incapable of any sort of responsibility, left the disposition of the family funds absolutely in her hands,--teacher and music mistress.

As is often the case in families which were originally in comfortable circumstances, Aline, being the eldest, had been educated in one of the best boarding-schools in Paris, Élise had remained there two years with her; but the two younger ones, having come too late, had been sent to little day-schools in the quarter and had all their studies to complete; and it was no easy matter, for the youngest laughed on every pretext, an exuberant, healthy, youthful laugh, like the warbling of a lark drunken on green wheat, and flew away out of sight of desk and symbols, while Mademoiselle Henriette, always haunted by her ideas of grandeur, her love of "the substantial," was none too eager for study. That young person of fifteen, to whom her father had bequeathed something of his imaginative faculty, was already arranging her life in anticipation, and declared formally that she should marry some one of birth and should never have more than three children: "A boy for the name, and two little girls--so that I can dress them alike."

"Yes, that's right," Grandmamma would say, "you shall dress them alike. Meanwhile, let us see about our participles."

But the most troublesome of all was Élise with her thrice unsuccessful examination in history, always rejected and preparing herself anew, subject to attacks of profound terror and self-distrust which led her to carry that unfortunate handbook of French history with her wherever she went, and to open it at every instant, in the omnibus, in the street, even at the breakfast table; but, being already a young woman and very pretty, she no longer had the mechanical memory of childhood in which dates and events are incrusted forever. Amid her other preoccupations the lesson would fly away in a moment, despite the pupil's apparent application, her long lashes concealing her eyes, her curls sweeping the page, and her rosy mouth twitching slightly at the corners as she repeated again and again: "Louis le Hutin, 1314-1316. Philippe V, le Long, 1316-1322--1322.--Oh! Grandmamma, I am lost. I shall never learn them." Thereupon Grandmamma would take a hand, help her to fix her attention, to store away some of those barbarous dates in the Middle Ages, as sharp-pointed as the helmets of the warriors of those days. And in the intervals of those manifold tasks, of that general and constant superintendence, she found time to make pretty things, to take from her work-basket some piece of knitting or embroidery, which clung to her as steadfastly as young Élise to her history of France. Even when she was talking, her fingers were never unemployed for one moment.

"Do you never rest?" de Géry asked her while she counted in a whisper the stitches of her embroidery, "three, four, five," in order to vary the shades.

"Why, this work is rest," she replied. "You men have no idea how useful needlework is to a woman's mind. It regularizes the thought, fixes with a stitch the passing moment and what it carries with it. And think of the sorrows that are soothed, the anxieties forgotten by the help of this purely physical attention, this constant repetition of the same movement, in which you find--and find very quickly, whether you will or no--that your equilibrium is entirely restored. It does not prevent me from hearing all that is said in my neighborhood, from listening to you even more attentively than I should if I were idle--three, four, five."

Oh! yes, she listened. That was plain from the animation of her face, from the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself up, with her needle in the air and the thread stretched over her raised little finger. Then she would suddenly resume her work, sometimes interjecting a shrewd, thoughtful word, which as a general rule agreed with what friend Paul thought. A similarity in their natures and in their responsibilities and duties brought those two young people together, made them mutually interested each in those things that the other had most at heart. She knew the names of his two brothers, Pierre and Louis, and his plans for their future when they should leave school. Pierre wanted to be a sailor. "Oh! no, not a sailor," said Grandmamma, "it would be much better for him to come to Paris with you." And when he admitted that he was afraid of Paris for them, she laughed at his fears, called him a provincial, for she was full of affection for the city where she was born, where she had grown chastely to womanhood, and which gave her in return the vivacity, the natural refinement, the sprightly good-humor which make one think that Paris, with its rains, its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the true fatherland of woman, whose nerves it spares and whose patient and intelligent qualities it develops.

Each day Paul de Géry appreciated Mademoiselle Aline more thoroughly--he was the only one in the house who called her by that name--and, strangely enough, it was Felicia who finally cemented their intimacy. What connection could there be between that artist's daughter, fairly launched in the most exalted spheres, and that bourgeois maiden lost to sight in the depths of a suburb? Connections of childhood and friendship, common memories, the great courtyard of the Belin establishment, where they had played together for three years. Such meetings are very common in Paris. A name mentioned at random in conversation suddenly calls forth the amazed question:

"What! do you know her?"

"Do I know Felicia? Why we sat at adjoining desks in the first class. We had the same garden. Such a dear, lovely, clever girl!"

And, noticing how pleased he was to listen to her, Aline recalled the days, still so near, which already formed part of the past to her, fascinating and melancholy like all pasts. She was quite alone in life, was little Felicia. On Thursday, when they called out the names in the parlor, there was never any one for her; except now and then an old woman, a nice old woman, if she was a little ridiculous, a former ballet-dancer it was said, whom Felicia called the Fairy. She had pet names like that for everybody of whom she was fond, and she transformed them all in her imagination. They used to see each other during the vacations. Madame Joyeuse, although she refused to send Aline to M. Ruys's studio, invited Felicia for whole days,--very short days, made up of work and music, of joint dreams and unrestrained youthful chatter. "Oh! when she talked to me about her art, with the ardor which she put into everything, how delighted I was to hear her! How many things she enabled me to understand of which I never should have had the slightest idea! Even now, when we go to the Louvre with papa, or to the Exhibition of the first of May, the peculiar emotion that one feels at the sight of a beautiful bit of sculpture or a fine painting, makes me think instantly of Felicia. In my young days she represented art, and it went well with her beauty, her somewhat reckless but so kindly nature, in which I was conscious of something superior to myself, which carried me away to a great height without frightening me. Suddenly we ceased to see each other. I wrote to her--no reply. Then fame came to her, great sorrow and engrossing duties to me. And of all that friendship, and very deep-rooted it must have been, for I cannot speak of it without--three, four, five--nothing is left but old memories to be poked over like dead ashes."