Dreams So Fleeting

by Sylvia Halliday

  Valentin was smiling up at her. “You minx,” he whispered between howls of pain. “You might have warned me. But ’tis a good lazzo. We shall keep it in.” He curled up like a dog, whimpering as she tweaked the false nose of his mask, then crawled away and stood up, his hands clasped in supplication. “Please, madame,” he whined, “will you give me the box?”

  Ninon made a great to-do, pretending indecision, asking the opinion of the audience, scratching her ear and then her rump, before finally handing him the box he wanted. The scene ended to much applause, and they went offstage grinning to each other. The rest of the play went well, particularly the scene in the “kitchen.” Ninon, piling the table with plates and saucepans, heard a noise and went to the window, bending over to peek outside. Valentin, the jealous husband, thinking she was looking for her lover, tiptoed in with a slapstick and delivered a resounding whack to her bottom. She stood up and shrieked at him, calling him all manner of ridiculous names, and proceeded to break the plates over his head while he reeled about the room. They had rehearsed the movements down to the last steps, but the laughter and the approval of the audience had so buoyed Ninon and heightened her senses that she threw herself into the scene, playing with a zest she had not thought possible.

  By the time the stagemen had closed the curtain on the bowing company, the audience was roaring its delight, stamping and whistling and calling for more. Breathless and exhausted, Ninon leaned up against a wing, a hand to her heaving breast, her eyes shining for joy. The voice of the audience had changed. Now it seemed to be chanting her name, over and over again. She looked up. Valentin, mask in hand, was grinning broadly.

  “They call for Madame Guillemot,” he said.

  “What shall I do?” she asked, her eyes wide with fresh panic.

  He laughed. “Do?” He picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips, the first kind gesture he had ever made toward her. “Do? My dear Ninon, you go out and take your bow. You have earned it!”

  The whole company was treated to supper by two vicomtes and a marquis, who could not make enough of the enchanting Madame Guillemot, pouring her wine, offering lavish compliments, making overtures that she chose to ignore. It suddenly seemed a hollow triumph. She found herself thinking of Philippe. If he had seen her tonight, would he have forsworn Henriette to be with her forever? Dear Philippe. In the midst of the merriment she felt alone and lonely.

  She looked at Valentin at the other end of the long supper table and nearly laughed aloud. She could not decide if he was more disgusted with the attentions paid to her or with the clutch of silly women—the vicomtesses and their friends—who giggled and fawned over him. And when the marquise remarked that she had a cast-off gown for Madame Ninon, and several of her husband’s old suits, archly suggesting that Valentin himself could ride out to her château to receive them, Valentin looked as though he would make a scene. What a proud and haughty man, thought Ninon. Repelled by the woman’s attraction to him, insulted by the thought of accepting cast-offs.

  “Monsieur Sanscoeur, alas, is burdened by appointments, Madame la Marquise,” Ninon said smoothly. “Mayhap you will accept Monsieur Chanteclair and myself as unworthy substitutes. Will tomorrow at eleven suit you?”

  The matter was quickly concluded, Chanteclair being of as practical a mind as Ninon, and eager to acquire a new doublet and breeches by whatever means.

  They returned to their inn at ten, to be greeted sourly by Colombe, who had chosen not to sup with the nobility, but had spent the evening eating alone, nursing her jealousy, and washing out her stockings. She straightened up from the washbasin as they came into the room, and dried her hands on her petticoat. “Did the great Madame Guillemot know how to greet her admirers without a book-holder to give her the lines?” she asked sarcastically.

  Valentin’s eyes narrowed. Marching across the room, he grabbed Colombe by the back of the head and pushed her face into the basin of water. She came up gasping and squealing and cursing, pouring forth a stream of oaths that might have shamed a soldier. She paused for breath and wiped her hand across her wet face. Toinette giggled nervously, then was silent.

  In the stillness of the room, Valentin’s voice rasped like a knife. “That was for your performance with the book today! Restrict your petty jealousies to your private life! You may claw Ninon’s eyes out at your leisure, but when we are performing we are a company! Don’t forget that again.”

  “Don’t be an ass, Valentin,” Ninon said mildly, unwilling to make an enemy of Colombe. “I cannot believe that Colombe would have done it deliberately.” She turned to the other woman with a benevolent smile. “If the task of minding the book is too difficult for you, sweet Colombe, be so good as to tell me, that I may not rely on you anymore.”

  “Indeed,” said Chanteclair. “If that’s the best that you can do, Madame Linard, you will be as useless as a painted tree is to a dog!”

  Marc-Antoine began to laugh, seeing the opportunity for a gibe. “But if the dog must piss…”

  “Tais-toi! Hold your tongue, Marc-Antoine!” Ninon said sharply. The joke was going too far, and Colombe had been humiliated enough tonight. And after all, who could blame her, in a way? Her beauty temporarily eclipsed by the bloated body she carried about, her place on the stage supplanted by an upstart. Ninon neither liked her nor would depend on her again, but she could understand the jealousy. “Come,” she said kindly. “You look tired, Colombe. Let me comb your hair for you before you retire.”

  The week in Nevers went well. Colombe, chastened, tended her book diligently. Each afternoon’s performance was well received, and at night the company was treated like visiting royalty, their appearance a welcome interruption in the monotony of provincial life. The cast-offs from the marquise proved a boon—a sumptuous wine-velvet gown for Ninon, a black-velvet suit that fitted Gaston to a hair, and a bottle-green brocade that, with the help of a tailor, did quite nicely for Chanteclair.

  On the last day the house was full, and Joseph, beaming, announced that they had already collected well over three hundred livres. They were doing a tragicomedy this afternoon, one they had done several days before; it had been greeted with such applause that they had not been allowed to leave the stage without promising another presentation of it before they departed Nevers. The men’s faces were painted with white lead, which highlighted their exaggerated facial expressions in the light of the chandelier. Valentin, as the noble hero, endured all manner of catastrophes before winning his true love, and Ninon, magnificent in her new gown, was a fetching heroine. She made such a success of her role that the audience stamped and hooted after her final speech and would not let the play continue until she had recited it once again.

  They celebrated by having a fine supper at a tavern just down the lane from their inn. The food was plentiful, the wine flowed. By midnight they were all a little tipsy and congratulating one another on the financial success of their stay in Nevers. Marc-Antoine announced that he would buy a new hat with a thousand feathers on it, and Toinette fancied herself in diamonds. Colombe rubbed her belly and allowed that she would give every crown she owned to be quit of her burden.

  Ninon was feeling quite giddy, drunk from the wine, and her successes, and an odd contentment that surprised her. “What will you do with your money, Chanteclair?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I have all that I could wish for. I shall save my money and buy a little cottage someday. For a wife. And children.”

  “Too serious. Too serious…” mumbled Gaston, his voice a thick slur.

  Ninon giggled. “I know what Valentin would wish for his money. A world sans women!” The whole company burst into laughter as Valentin drew his brows together and glared at Ninon. “Oh, oh, oh,” she mocked, laughing. “Look how he glowers, the great sour-faced monsieur! Do you never laugh?”

  He poured himself another glass of wine and turned away, ignoring her. “I shall buy the rights to a new play with my share,” he said.

  The wine had made Ninon r
eckless. “Don’t shift the discourse,” she said. “We are talking about why you do not laugh. Do you fear your beautiful face will crack?” She turned to Chanteclair. “Have you noted that, for a man who dislikes women, Val takes great pains to make himself handsome upon the stage? Tell me, Monsieur Heartless, do you hope that women may swoon for you, so that you may feel contempt for them and their weakness?”

  “Damn your viper’s tongue,” Valentin said quietly.

  Gaston drained his cup and poured another. His eyes were beginning to close. “Too serious…too serious…”

  “Yes,” pouted Toinette. “Too serious. I wish ‘Grandmère’ were here.”

  Chanteclair jumped up from his chair and did a handstand on the floor, then a backward flip. When he landed on his feet, the spectacles were on his nose. “Voilà!” His voice became a high soprano. “You need no cheering tonight, my children. I can see that!” He indicated the pitchers of wine, now nearly empty. “Dame Tipple has done my work for me. So, then. I grant you each a question.”

  Joseph stood up from his chair and crossed unsteadily to Chanteclair. “I have a question. Why do you dress like a man, Grandmère?” Gaston snickered drunkenly and nudged Sébastien.

  Chanteclair sighed, a helpless squeak, and smiled demurely. “I am such a charming wench that I would soon find myself…set upon…by great stumbling oafs such as yourself,” here he gave Joseph a shove that tumbled him to the floor, “if I did not disguise myself as a man!”

  “Tell me, Grandmère,” said Colombe, when the laughter had died down, “shall I be delivered of a boy or a girl?”

  “I must ask you a question first, my pretty,” lisped Chanteclair. He swept his arm about the room, indicating the company. “Tell me first who is the father, then I shall answer your question.”

  “Mon Dieu, Colombe,” said Marc-Antoine, as the woman flamed red, “I did not think you could still blush.”

  “I can tell you who is not the father!” she shrilled. “That tapette…and his bedfellow, Valentin!”

  “To my credit, madame,” Marc-Antoine said through his teeth. “To my credit!”

  “Come, come, children! Grandmère will brook no quarrels.”

  “I have a question, Grandmère,” said Ninon. “Why is Valentin afraid to sleep alone?”

  Chanteclair began to chuckle. Valentin threw him a murderous look. “Chanteclair, if you…”

  “Come, Val. ’Tis a funny story.”

  “Nevertheless…”

  “Yes, tell it,” interrupted Sébastien. “I have always wondered myself.”

  “Sweet Jesu,” muttered Valentin, throwing himself back in his chair and gazing up at the ceiling.

  “It was when Ragotin was with the company. You remember, Marc-Antoine. Before Sébastien and Hortense joined us. We had gone to a town, the three of us, Val and Ragotin and I, and stayed the night at an inn. It was very full and we had to share rooms with the other guests. But, as luck would have it, there was a small room with a single cot bed, and, as luck would have it again, Val chose it for himself. The innkeeper’s wife, finding him attractive, had done him little favors throughout the evening: an extra chop, the chair nearest the fire, the finest wine. In spite of this, I rather fancy she was a virtuous woman, though her husband seemed to burn with suspicion and jealousy. Eh bien. It happened that the woman, getting up in the middle of the night, had a need, as the poet Scarron would put it, to go ‘where kings are forced to go themselves in person,’ or so she said afterward. Her husband, awaking and finding her gone, and thinking she had a rendezvous with the handsome actor, tiptoed through the dark corridor to seek her out. Hearing a breathing on the stair, he attacked her in the dark, pulling her by the hair and calling her all manner of foul names at the top of his voice, which, needless to say, brought us all running, candles and weapons in hand. His adversary was not his wife, but the poor old family dog, too sick and weak to cry out when he was attacked. The woman, guessing what had been in her husband’s mind, rapped him sharply on the top of the head and stormed back to her bed, leaving him to apologize to us all for disturbing our rest. And that is why Valentin no longer sleeps alone!”

  Joseph and Sébastien roared with laughter, while Ninon rocked back and forth in her chair, chuckling softly. “Poor Valentin,” she gasped at last. “The fair flower who entices all the honeybees!”

  “Say what you will,” he growled, “but there would have been the devil to pay had the man reached my room, whether his wife was there or no!”

  “Then God bless the dog,” said Ninon, struggling to keep from laughing.

  Colombe smiled, but there was malice in her eyes.

  “A real man would not avoid such a fate. At every inn, at every turn! A real man would not fear a woman’s approach in the night.”

  “Go to the devil. All of you.” Valentin strode to the door and stormed out. They could hear his footsteps crunching loudly on the gravel outside the tavern window as he headed back to the inn.

  “Ah Dieu,” said Ninon, looking to Chanteclair. “It was my doing…I should not have…”

  “I should not have told the story,” he said with a sigh. “We have all drunk too much, I think.”

  “Too…serious…too…” Gaston put his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and fell asleep.

  “Yes. Too serious,” said Ninon. Without another word she rose from her chair and went out into the night. It was only a short walk to the inn. She hurried up the stairs and found Valentin in his chamber, hanging his doublet over the back of a chair. He glared at her angrily.

  “Go back to your cackling friends!”

  “Val, please. I had not meant…We were all a little silly tonight.” She held out her hand, smiling in conciliation. “But it was a funny story. Can you not allow that? Just a little bit?”

  “I saw no humor in it then. I see no humor now.”

  “Oh, you try my patience! You can find nothing to laugh in that? And yet if it were played on a stage you would find it funny.”

  “Would I?” His lip curled in scorn. “Would he find it amusing? Your lover Philippe? All that sneaking about in the dark to find a lover’s bed?”

  Ninon whirled about and made for the door.

  “Ah, ah!” he mocked. “So that’s the way of it! When we speak of things that touch you, you can find naught to say. Mon Dieu! I could write a comedy on that!”

  She swirled back to him, her blue eyes blazing. “And you? You humiliated Hortense with the donkey, and called it a joke. But you see no humor when your own pride is pricked! The great Sanscoeur. And such an overbearing pride it is!”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her up against the wall, pressing against her with his body so that she was immobilized and helpless. “Who are you to preach to me?” he bellowed.

  She caught her breath, suddenly frightened by his strength and power, half-expecting him to beat her or put his hands around her throat. They stood thus for several minutes, locked together in silent rage, black eyes challenging blue ones. And then, incredibly, Ninon felt a hardness against her body, the unmistakable firmness of his member swelling within his breeches, impelled by an emotion that was far from anger. She saw the surprised look in his eyes; then he blushed, a deep red stain that crept up from his collar and swept across his face. She began to laugh. With a growl he pushed her aside and turned away, his shoulders stiff with the effort at self-control.

  She laughed again. “How it must gall you to know that there are some things over which you have no control!”

  “You bitch!” he said, and swung at her, his open palm striking the side of her face with such force that she staggered back and nearly fell to the floor. She panted hard for a moment, then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, seeing the thin line of blood on her knuckles.

  “Were you born with such hatred? Or did someone put it there? Did your mother spurn you in the cradle? Is that what robbed you of your joy? Or did she…”

  “Enough!” he roared. “S
he was the only woman I ever knew who was good and honest! The rest are but lying, betraying whores!”

  The venom in him made her recoil, her hand to her mouth. “How pitiful you are,” she said softly. “Imprisoned within your own black heart.” She went out the door, closing it gently behind her.

  He stared at the paneling for a moment, then covered his eyes with one hand, his face twisted in agony and torment.

  Chapter Six

  In the morning, Valentin behaved as though nothing had happened. He was unpleasant, of course, but no more than usual. Ninon found it difficult to get used to: the way the company quarreled and reconciled so easily. Perhaps because they were actors they magnified even the smallest difficulties, making every dispute a war, every disappointment a tragedy, only to be forgotten in an instant, as though a curtain had dropped; perhaps, since they traveled together, depended on one another, they knew it was vital to keep peace.

  They were able to rent fresh horses at Nevers for the journey to Moulins. Their ox, well fed and rested after a week in a comfortable stable, had to be prodded and pushed into his traces, but at last they set out. They stayed overnight at Dornes, and arrived at Moulins late the following afternoon, finding an ancient theater that would suit them nicely.

  There was to be a marriage between two old and aristocratic families in the district. Moulins was bustling in preparation for the number of visitors who would arrive at the lord’s château, and venture into town if there were attractions enough. Every shopkeeper dusted off his best goods and arrayed them temptingly, and the resident whores cast off their country lovers in anticipation of a noble bedding or two.