"Ewans," said Jean, as he pushed a pebble along one of the linesdrawn in charcoal on the stone coping, "Ewans, you must findit tiresome to be a boarder?""Mother cannot have me with her at home," replied the boy.
Servien asked why.
"Oh! Because----" stammered Ewans.
He stared a long time at the white pebble he held in his handready to play, before he added:
"My mother goes travelling.""And your father?""He is in America. I have never seen him. You've lost. Let's beginagain."Servien, who felt interested in Madame Ewans because of the superbboxes of chocolates she used to bring to school for her boy,put another question:
"You love her very much, your mother I mean?""Of course I do!" cried the other, adding presently:
"You must come and see me one day in the holidays at home. You'llfind our house is very pretty, there's sofas and cushions no end.
But you must not put off, for we shall be off to the seasidesoon."At this moment a servant, a tall, thin man, appeared in theplayground and called out something which the shrill cries oftheir companions at play prevented the two seated on the wallfrom hearing. A fat boy, standing by himself with his face tothe wall with the unconcern born of long familiarity with thisform of punishment, clapped his two hands to his mouth trumpetwiseand shrieked:
"Ewans, you're wanted in the parlour."The usher marched up:
"Garneret," he ordered, "you will stand half an hour this eveningat preparation speaking when you were forbidden to. Ewans, goto the parlour."The latter clapped his hands and danced for joy, telling his friend:
"It's my mother! I'll tell her you are coming to our house."Servien reddened with pleasure, and stammered out that he wouldask his father's leave. But Ewans had already scampered acrossthe yard, leaving a dusty furrow behind him.
Leave was readily granted by Monsieur Servien, who was fullypersuaded that all boys admitted to so expensive a school born ofwell-to-do parents, whose society could not but prove advantageousto his son's manners and morals and to his future success inlife.
Such information as Jean could give him about Madame Ewans wasextremely vague, but the bookbinder was well used to contemplatingthe ways of rich folks through a veil of impenetrable mystery.
Aunt Servien indulged in sundry observations on the occasion ofa very general kind touching people who ride in carriages. Thenshe repeated a story about a great lady who, just like MadameEwans, had put her son to boarding-school, and who was mixed upin a case of illicit commissions, in the time of Louis-Philippe.
She added, to clinch the matter, that the cowl does not makethe monk, that she thought herself, for all she did not wearflowers in her hat, a more honest woman than your society ladies,false jades everyone, concluding with her pet proverb: Bettera good name than a gilt girdle!
Jean had never seen a gilt girdle, but he thought in a vague wayhe would very much like to have one.
The holidays came, and one Thursday after breakfast his auntproduced a white waistcoat from the wardrobe, and Jean, dressedin his Sunday best, climbed on an omnibus which took him to theRue de Rivoli. He mounted four flights of a staircase, the carpetand polished brass stair-rods of which filled him with surpriseand admiration.
On reaching the landing, he could hear the tinkling of a piano.
He rang the bell, blushed hotly and was sorry he had rung. Hewould have given worlds to run away. A maid-servant opened thedoor, and behind her stood Edgar Ewans, wearing a brown hollandsuit, in which he looked entirely at his ease.
"Come along," he cried, and dragged him into a drawing-room, intowhich the half-drawn curtains admitted shafts of sunlight thatwere flashed back in countless broken reflections from mirrorsand gilt cornices. A sweet, stimulating perfume hung about theroom, which was crowded with a superabundance of padded chairsand couches and piles of cushions.
In the half-light jean beheld a lady so different from all he hadever set eyes on till that moment that he could form no notion ofwhat she was, no idea of her beauty or her age. Never had he seeneyes that flashed so vividly in a face of such pale fairness, orlips so red, smiling with such an unvarying almost tired-lookingsmile. She was sitting at a piano, idly strumming on the keyswithout playing any definite tune. What drew Jean's eyes aboveall was her hair, arranged in some fashion that struck him witha sense of mystery and beauty.
She looked round, and smoothing the lace of her _peignoir_ withone hand:
"You are Edgar's friend?" she asked, in a cordial tone, thoughher voice struck Jean as harsh in this beautiful room that wasperfumed like a church.
"Yes, Madame.""You like being at school?""Yes, madame.""The masters are not too strict?""No, Madame.""You have no mother?"As she put the question Madame Evans' voice softened.
"No, Madame.""What is your father?""A bookbinder, Madame"--and the bookbinder's son blushed as hegave the answer. At that moment he would gladly have consentednever to see his father more, his father whom he loved, if bythe sacrifice he could have passed for the son of a Captain inthe Navy or a Secretary of Embassy. He suddenly remembered thatone of his fellow-pupils was the son of a celebrated physicianwhose portrait was displayed in the stationers' windows.
If only he had had a father like that to tell Madame Ewans of!
But that was out of the question--and how cruelly unjust it was!
He felt ashamed of himself, as if he had said something shocking.
But his friend's mother seemed quite unaffected by the dreadfulavowal. She was still moving her hands at random up and downthe keyboard. Then presently:
"You must enjoy yourself finely to-day, boys," she cried. "Wewill all go out. Shall I take you to the fair at Saint-Cloud?"Yes, Edgar was all for going, because of the roundabouts.
Madame Ewans rose from the piano, patted her pale flaxen hairin place with a pretty gesture, and gave a sidelong look in themirror as she passed.
"I'm going to dress," she told them; "I shall not be long."While she was dressing, Edgar sat at the piano trying to pickout a tune from an opera bouffe, and Jean, perched uncomfortablyon the edge of his chair, stared about the room at a host ofstrange and sumptuous objects that seemed in some mysteriousway to be part and parcel of their beautiful owner, and affectedhim almost as strangely as she herself had done.
Preceded by a faint waft of scent and a rustle of silk, shereappeared, tying the strings of the hat that made a dainty diademabove her smiling eyes.
Edgar looked at her curiously:
"Why, mother, there's something... I don't know what. . . somethingthat alters you."She glanced in the mirror, examining her hair, which showed paleviolet shadows amid the flaxen plaits.
"Oh! it's nothing," she said; "only I have put some powder inmy hair. Like the Empress," she added, and broke into anothersmile.
As she was drawing on her gloves, a ring was heard, and the maidcame in to tell her mistress that Monsieur Delbèque was waitingto see her.
Madame Ewans pouted and declared she could not receive him, whereuponthe maid spoke a few words in a very peremptory whisper. MadameEwans shrugged her shoulders.
"Stay where you are!" she told the boys, and passed into thedining-room, whence the murmur of two voices could presently beheard.
Jean asked Edgar, under his breath, who the gentleman was.
"Monsieur Delbèque," Edgar informed him. "He keeps horses and acarriage. He deals in pigs. One evening he took us to the theatre,mother and me."Jean was surprised and rather shocked to find Monsieur Delbèquedealt in pigs. But he hid his surprise and asked if he was arelation.
"Oh! no," said Edgar, "he's one of our friends. It's a long time...
at least a year we have known him."Jean, harking back to his first idea, put the question:
"Have you ever seen him selling his pigs?""How stupid you are!" retorted Edgar; "he deals in them wholesale.
Mother says it's a famous trade. He has a cigar-holder with anamber mouthpiece and a woman all naked carved in meerschaum.
Just think, the other day he came and told mother his wife wasmaking him atrocious scenes."Madame Ewans put in her head at the half-open door:
"Come along," she said, and they set out. No sooner were theyin the street than a man, who was smoking, greeted Madame witha friendly wave of his gloved hand. She muttered between herteeth:
"Shall we never be done with them?"The man began in a guttural voice:
"I was just going to your place, my dear, to offer you a box ofTurkish cigarettes. But I see you are taking a boarding-schoolout for a walk--a regular boarding-school, 'pon my word! Youtake pupils, eh? I congratulate you. Make men of 'em, my dear,make men of 'em."Madame Ewans frowned and replied with a curl of the lips:
"I am with my son and one of my son's friends."The gentleman threw a careless look at one of the lads--Jean Servienas it happened.
"Capital, capital!" he exclaimed. "Is that one your son?""Not he, indeed!" she cried hotly.
Jean felt he was looked down upon, and as she laid her hand onher son's shoulder with a proud gesture, he could not help noticinghis schoolfellow's easy air and elegant costume, at the same timecasting a glance of disgust at his own jacket, which had beencut down for him by his aunt out of an overcoat of his father's.
"Shall we be honoured by your presence to-night at the _Bouffes_?"asked the gentleman.
"No!" replied Madame Ewans, and pushed the two children forwardwith the tip of her sunshade.
Stepping out gaily, they soon arrive under the chestnuts of theTuileries, cross the bridge, then down the river-bank, over theshaky gangway, and so on to the steamer pontoon.
Now they are aboard the boat, which exhales a strong, healthysmell of tar under the hot sun. The long grey walls of theembankments slip by, to be succeeded presently by wooded slopes.
Saint-Cloud! The moment the ropes are made fast, Madame Ewanssprings on to the landing-stage and makes straight for the shrillingof the clarinettes and thunder of the big drums, steering herlittle charges through the press with the handle of her sunshade.
Jean was mightily surprised when Madame Ewans made him "try hisluck" in a lottery. He had before now gone with his aunt to sundrysuburban fairs, but she had always dissuaded him so peremptorilyfrom spending anything that he was firmly persuaded revolving-tablesand shooting-galleries were amusements only permitted to a classof people to which he did not belong. Madame Ewans showed thegreatest interest in her son's success, urging him to give thehandle a good vigorous turn.
She was very superstitious about luck, "invoking" the big prizes,clapping her hands in ecstasy whenever Edgar won a halfpennyegg-cup, falling into the depths of despair at every bad shot.
Perhaps she saw an omen in his failure; perhaps she was justblindly eager to have her darling succeed. After he had lost twoor three times, she pulled the boy away and gave the wooden disksuch a violent push round as set its cargo of crockery-ware andglass rattling, and proceeded to play on her own account--once,twice, twenty times, thirty times, with frantic eagerness. Thenfollowed quite a business about exchanging the small prizes forone big one, as is commonly done. Finally, she decided for aset of beer jugs and glasses, half of which she gave to each ofthe two friends to carry.
But this was only a beginning. She halted the children beforeevery stall. She made them play for macaroons at _rouge etnoir_. She had them try their skill at every sort ofshooting-game, with crossbows loaded with little clay pellets,with pistols and carbines, old-fashioned weapons with caps andleaden bullets, at all sorts of distances, and at all kinds oftargets--plaster images, revolving pipes, dolls, balls bobbingup and down on top of a jet of water.
Never in his life had Jean Servien been so busy or done so manydifferent things in so short a space of time.
His eyes dazzled with uncouth shapes and startling colours, histhroat parched with dust, elbowed, crushed, mauled, hustled bythe crowd, he was intoxicated with this debauch of diversions.
He watched Madame Ewans for ever opening her little purse ofRussia leather, and a new power was revealed to him. Nor wasthis all. There was the Dutch top to be set twirling, the woodenhorses of the merry-go-round to be mounted; they had to dashdown the great chute and take a turn in the Venetian gondolas,to be weighed in the machine and touch the arm of the "humantorpedo."But Madame Ewans could not help returning again and again tostand before the booth of a hypnotist from Paris, a clairvoyanteboasting a certificate signed by the Minster of Agriculture andCommerce and by three Doctors of the Faculty. She gazed enviouslyat the servant-girls as they trooped up blushing into the vanmeagrely furnished with a bed and a couple of chairs; but shecould not pluck up courage to follow their example.
She recalled to mind how a hypnotist had once helped a friendof hers to recover some stolen forks and spoons. She had evengone so far as to consult a fortune-teller shortly before Edgar'sbirth, and the cards had foretold a boy.
All three were tired out and overloaded with crockery, glass,reed-pipes, sticks of sugar-candy, cakes of ginger-bread andmacaroons. For all that, they paid a visit to the wax-works,where they saw Monseigneur Sibour's body lying in state at theArchbishop's Palace, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, modelsof people's legs and arms disfigured by various hideous diseases,and a Circassian maiden stepping out of the bath--"the puresttype of female beauty," as a placard duly informed the public.
Madame Ewans examined this last exhibit with a curiosity thatvery soon became critical.
"People may say what they please," she muttered; "if you offeredme the whole world, _I_ wouldn't have such big feet and sucha thick waist. And then, your regular features aren't one bitattractive. Men like a face that says something."When they left the tent, the sun was low and the dust hovered ingolden clouds over the throng of women, working-men, and soldiers.
It was time for dinner; but as they passed the monkey-cage, MadameEwans noticed such a crush of eager spectators squeezing in betweenthe baize curtains on the platform in front that she could notresist the temptation to follow suit. Besides which, she wasdrawn by a motive of curiosity, having been told that monkeyswere not insensible to female charms. But the performance divertedher thoughts in another direction. She saw an unhappy poodle inred breeches shot as a deserter in spite of his honest looks.
Tears rose to her eyes, she was so sensitive, so susceptibleto the glamour of the stage!
"Yes, it's quite true," she sobbed; "yes, poor soldiers havebeen shot before now just for going off without leave to standby their mother's death-bed or for smacking a bullying officer'sface."Some old refrain of Béranger she had heard working folks singin her plebeian childhood rose to her memory and intensifiedher emotion. She told the children the lamentable tale of thecanine deserter's pitiful doom, and made them feel quite sad.
No sooner were they outside the place, however, than an itineranttoy-seller with a paper helmet on his head set them splittingwith laughter.
Dinner must be thought of. She knew of a tavern by the river-sidewhere you could eat a fry of fish in the arbour, and thitherthey betook themselves.
The lady from Paris and the landlady of the inn greeted eachother with a wink of the eye. It was a long time since she hadseen Madame; she had no idea who the two young gentlemen were,but anyway they were dear little angels. Madame Ewans ordered themeal like a connoisseur, with a knowing air and all the properrestaurant tricks of phrase. All three sat silent, agreeablytired and enjoying the sensation, she with her bonnet-stringsflying loose, the boys leaning back against the trellis. Theycould see the river and its grassy banks through an archway ofwild vine. Their thoughts flowed softly on like the current beforetheir eyes, while the dusk and cool of the evening wrapped themin a soft caress. For the first time Jean Servien, as he gazedat Madame Ewans, felt the thrill of a woman's sweet proximity.
Presently, warmed by a trifle of wine and water he had drunk,he became wholly lost in his dreams--visions of all sorts ofelegant, preposterous, chivalrous things. His head was stillfull of these fancies when he was dragged back to the fair-groundby Madame Ewans, who could never have enough of sight-seeingand noise. Illuminated arches spanned at regular intervals thebroad-walk, lined on either side by stalls and trestle-tables,but the lateral avenues gloomed dark and deserted under the tallblack trees. Loving couples paced them slowly, while the musicfrom the shows sounded muffled by the distance. They were stillthere when a band of fifes, trombones, and trumpets struck upclose by, playing a popular polka tune. The very first bar putMadame Ewans on her mettle. She drew Jean to her, settled hishands in hers and lifting him off the ground with a jerk of thehip, began dancing with him. She swung and swayed to the liltof the music; but the boy was awkward and embarrassed, and onlyhindered his partner, dragging back and bumping against her.
She threw him off roughly and impatiently, saying sharply:
"You don't know how to dance, eh? You come here, Edgar."She danced a while with him in the semi-darkness. Then, rosy andsmiling:
"Bravo!" she laughed; "we'll stop now."Servien stood by in gloomy silence, conscious of his owninefficiency. His heart swelled with a sullen anger. He was hurt,and longed for somebody or something to vent his hate upon.
The drive home was a silent one. Jean nearly gave himself crampin his determined efforts not to touch with his own the kneesof Madame Ewans' who dozed on the back seat of the conveyance.
She hardly awoke enough to bid him good-bye when he alightedat his father's door.
As he entered, he was struck for the first time by a smell ofpaste that seemed past bearing. The room where he had slept foryears, happy in himself and loved by others, seemed a wretchedhole. He sat down on his bed and looked round gloomily and moroselyat the holy-water stoup of gilt porcelain, the print commemoratinghis First Communion, the toilet basin on the chest of drawers,and stacked in the corners piles of pasteboard and ornamentalpaper for binding.
Everything about him seemed animated by a hostile, malevolent,unjust spirit. In the next room he could hear his father moving.
He pictured him at his work-bench, with his serge apron, calmand content. What a humiliation! and for the second time in adozen hours he blushed for his parentage.
His slumbers were broken and uneasy; he dreamed he was turning,turning unendingly in complicated figures, and it was impossiblealways to avoid touching Madame Evans' knee, though all the timehe was horribly afraid of doing it. Then there was a great fieldfull of thousands and thousands of marble pigs stuck up on stonepedestals, among which he could see Monsieur Delbèque promenadingslowly up and down.