Haviland’s bank was saved from ruin by the energetic fidelity of this old man, but the house on the Butte-des-Moulins ceased to be one of its branches, and was let for other purposes.
It was very black and dirty when marked for the pickaxe. The windows to the front were surmounted by the Louis XV. shell, and a head wearing a helmet still grimaced heroically above the keystone of the arch of the courtyard door; but it was squeezed between the mural signs of a dyer and cleaner and a locksmith, and was painted blue on one side and yellow on the other. To the right and left of the door, and under the archway, hung little boards displaying the names of copyists and dressmakers. Within, the stone staircase, with its magnificent balluster of wrought iron, was befouled with dust, spittle, and dead salad leaves, and permeated by an acrid alkaline smell. The squalling of children was audible on the landings, and through the half-open doors could be seen women in bedgowns and men in shirt-sleeves, the undress of the worker or the loafer.
Such was the Haviland house in its last days.
Monsieur Fellaire de Sisac, being entrusted with the interests of the owner, visited it. He noted that it possessed thirty yards of frontage, two shops with offices and dependencies, and afforded shelter besides to thirty-two trading enterprises of divers sorts, with their appurtenances, including a female costermonger who kept her barrow in the coach-house, and a sempstress who stitched at a sewing-machine in the garret.
A detailed account of the whole was given in a report destined to impress a due sense of its immense value on the Council of Indemnities, appointed by the city to satisfy expropriated landlords. If, as was not unlikely, the affair should come before a competent tribunal, de Sisac was to arrange with barrister and lawyer.
He invited Haviland to dine with him first in Paris and afterwards at Meudon; for he was hospitable to all his clients, partly from inclination, partly from policy. He could manage men better from behind a decanter, and became most persuasive at dessert. He was convivial, and liked opening bottles.
“This is life,” he would say. In the less prosperous epochs of his existence he treated his customers to roast chestnuts and white wine on the oilcloth covered tables of some small café. This was in the days of consultations with embarrassed shopkeepers. Now he received his clients in his own house, with his own silver and linen marked with his initials.
The last red rays of the setting sun lighted up the dining-room of the chalet where Haviland and de Sisac sat over their coffee, the business man with his pendulous cheeks was watching his guest narrowly.
“Just try this brandy, dear islander,” he said.
The appellation insulaire seemed to him an elegant synonym for Englishman. He would sometimes speak of Albion instead of England, though he admitted that this was a little romantic.
Haviland drank the brandy, asked for a glass of wine, and then said:
“I hope that Mademoiselle Fellaire is not seriously indisposed?”
De Sisac said he hoped so also, and Haviland relapsed into his usual silence.
At last he rose with an English awkwardness accentuated by arthritis, for his knees were crippled with this rheumatic affliction. With his yellow overcoat over his arm, he had already passed through the garden gate, when he spoke again.
“I have the honour,” he said to his host, “to ask you for the hand of your daughter, Mademoiselle Fellaire.”
The little man was probably about to make some adroit but petulant reply, when the Englishman put a paper into his hand.
“You will find there,” he said, “an exact account of my fortune. Let me have your answer by registered letter, please. Do not accompany me any farther. No.”
And he walked off stiffly towards the railway station.
Fellaire though not easily surprised, was startled. He trotted at a sprightly pace twelve times round the fountain before he could recover his composure, the moon shining on his fat inert face gave it the appearance of a mask.
“What?” he said; “this man who is no more to me than the two hundred other strangers I come into contact with in the course of the year; this man who has seen my daughter perhaps half-a-dozen times, and who scarcely opens his mouth, opens it now to make her a proposal of marriage! I wonder if it is Hélène who has arranged this little comedy for two actors so deftly? But no, I’m no fool; I know what is going on in my own house, and I don’t believe the poor child has spoken more than four words to him. I’m afraid she will not receive this proposition as she ought to.”
He stood still, biting his thumb, gazing fixedly ahead like a man measuring some obstacle; then he turned deliberately back to the chalet. He stopped in the dining-room and read the paper Haviland had given him, before going upstairs to his daughter’s room. He put his cigar down on the pink chintz of the mantelpiece, and drew a chair to the bedside. He might have been the family doctor as he asked:
“Well, and how are we now, my pet?”
As she did not answer, he added:
“Mr. Haviland inquired after you this evening in the most affectionate manner.”
Then, after a pause, he went on in the unctuous voice of a man who has dined well.
“What do you think of him?”
No answer came to his question, but by the light of the candle burning on the mantelpiece he could see her eyes were open and staring, her brows contracted with an air of painful reflexion. He judged rightly that she had guessed Haviland’s intentions, and no longer afraid of striking too sudden a blow, said:
“Mr. Haviland has made you an offer of marriage.”
“I don’t want to marry; I am quite happy with you.”
He settled himself more comfortably in the easy-chair, arranged his hands on his knees, drew a whistling breath through his throat, husky with spirits but soothed with sweetmeats, and said in a businesslike tone:
“You don’t ask me what my answer was, little girl?”
“Well, what was it?”
“My child, I said nothing which could in any way bind you. I want to leave you entirely free. I don’t consider that I have a right to impose my will on you. You know well enough I’m no tyrant.”
She sat up, her elbow on the pillow.
“No, you are a dear father, and if I don’t want to be married you won’t force me to be.”
“I tell you again, child,” he said good-naturedly, “you are as free as air, but we can discuss these little matters. I am your father, I love you, and there are lots of things you are old enough now to understand. Come, let’s talk like a pair of friends. We live together, you and I, and we live very comfortably; but we have not got what could be called a settled fortune. I am a self-made man, and success came to me late — too late. Much water will flow under the bridge before I can provide a dowry for you; and between this and then, who knows what may happen? You are twenty-two, and the offer you have had to-day is not to be despised. It is an extraordinary piece of luck, if I may say so. Haviland is not what one would call a young man. You see, my girl, I am quite impartial; but he is a gentleman, a real gentleman. He is very rich.”
With his mouth full, as it were, of this last word, he slapped the pocket in which was the paper the Englishman had given him, and went on, warming to the subject:
“This devil of a Haviland has the command of a magnificent fortune — houses, forests, farms, stocks and shares, everything.”
She shrugged her shoulders with a disgusted look, and he saw he had put things rather too brutally.
“Don’t imagine, child, that I want you to marry for money as they say; no, I love you and I only want you to be happy.”
He really did love his daughter, and paternal affection made his voice tremble.
“God is my witness that I only want your happiness. I know what sentiment is; when I married your mother she hadn’t a penny. To tell you the truth I am really a dreamer, a sentimentalist. I am very romantic at bottom. Do you know what I should have liked better than anything, if circumstances had permitted? — to live in the country an
d write poetry! But there, I was caught, body and soul, by business. Now I am dragged into it up to my neck. Good Lord! life isn’t all rose-coloured, one has to make certain sacrifices. Well, well, my girl, my dream has always been to spare you such sacrifices, to shield you from the troubles and miseries of existence. It is enough that your poor mother should have had to endure them, and die at the task — die at the task! Do you hear me?”
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, much moved by the memory he had conjured up — as a matter of fact, his wife died of consumption at Niort, where her family lived, and where he had sent her to be out of the way; but he was intoxicated and maudlin with his own eloquence. He took his daughter’s face between his hands, covered it with kisses and burst forth again:
“Listen to me, my Lili. I know you, and I know you must have comfort, luxury even. It is my fault. I have been too ambitious. Nothing was too good or too fine for you. I have brought you up as a rich man’s child. You haven’t learnt how to wait on yourself or to keep accounts. If you are not well off you will surely be the most miserable of women, and it will be my fault. What a responsibility for your poor father! I should die of it. But here is Fortune knocking at your door, hey? Little girl, shall we let her in? See now; I love you — I adore you, my darling, but I know what is best for you. Love is never deceived. Let me settle this.”
Hélène asked in a careless tone if Mr. Haviland intended to live in Paris.
“Yes, certainly,” answered de Sisac, though he knew nothing whatever of Haviland’s plans. He added that his future son-in-law had elegant manners, and was still capable of turning the head of many a young woman. As to his feelings, they were most delicate,... it was difficult to imagine any one with such delicate feelings. Finally, as a last resource, he spoke of an hotel, carriages, and jewels.
Hélène was thinking that René Longuemare had gone, far away and for a long time, without a word of love, without a word of regret. If he had only said he would come back, that he would think of her — remember her. But no, he had said nothing. Evidently, then, he did not care for her. He only cared for his books, his phials, his scalpels, and his tweezers. He had liked her because she had been so willing to listen to him, that was all. He had said a thousand silly things to her, as he would to any girl. But supposing he cared for her secretly, as she had often thought? Well, it would be a just revenge for his desertion. What her father said was true; she was made to be rich, she had a vocation for the luxurious life. And how could she resist? She was too tired to struggle; the first assault had overthrown her, and her father would return to the charge.
Hers was one of those souls which accept defeat in advance. Then, too, the love of this foreigner was flattering. She knew from certain indications how true and profound that love was: this man who was verging on the decline of life, who for twenty-five years had travelled all over the world without being able to dissipate his eternal ennui; this man, glacial towards every one else, had caught fire like a young man — he had known her for three months, and his visits to her had been almost silent, yet he offered her his hand and fortune; was he not strange, chivalrous, generous? Would it not be possible to love him! She raised her pretty face, with its undecided expression, towards her father and murmured:
“We will see.”
CHAPTER II
HÉLÈNE FELLAIRE had been brought up, in many respects, as a rich man’s daughter. It is true she could remember periods in her childhood when her stockings were in holes, when her feet were often cold, and the food seemed to consist principally of plates of sausage from the cook-shop, which she particularly detested; when she had to spend long hours waiting in courtyards and doorways while one of the many removals of their household goods was in progress, when in the winter evenings her mother’s face grew downcast.
When she thought of her mother, it was of some one who was always singing or scolding, restlessly active, or completely broken down; some one who was always tormented or tormenting.
One of her recollections was of their travelling together, where to or exactly at what time she could not recall, but it was when she was very young. One night her mother, having put her to bed, turned her face to the wall and sternly told her to go to sleep. Then the poor lady took off her chemise and washed it in the basin. It amused Hélène immensely to see her mother, rolled up in a shawl, busy among the soap-suds. Later on, when she understood that it was because they were too poor to pay a washerwoman, she felt frightened.
She was an affectionate, delicate creature from her infancy. Her heart would melt at the sight of suffering. She gave sweets and doll’s clothes to poor children. She kept a sparrow in a cage and stuffed it with sugar; it was a source of joy and sorrow to her, for one day it perished miserably, crushed to death by a door.
“Praxo raised a tomb to her grasshopper, by whose death she learnt that all things must die.”
Thus the poet of The Anthology makes the Ionian child speak.
The loss of the sparrow filled Hélène with a terror of death which did not leave her for many years.
Her father was a man with a winning tongue. He spent his money lavishly, and stayed out late at night, so that his wife, faded by poverty and ceaselessly shaken by jealousy, could not possess that quiet and peace of mind, that constant, watchful foresight parents need to enable them to direct skilfully and happily the appealing little souls they have brought into the world; so Hélène, hugged or smacked without knowing why, grew dull and stupid, and gave up trying to distinguish between right and wrong.
“This child will be the death of me!” Madame Fellaire would exclaim. “I don’t know what I have done that God should have afflicted me with such a monster.”
Then would follow a storm of vociferations, accompanied by sobs, clenched fists, and banging doors. The poor child used to creep away to bed and cry herself to sleep with a heavy heart. When morning came she would often be awakened by a shower of kisses, gentle words, and pretty little songs; her mother’s mood having been changed and brightened by a few tardy attentions from Monsieur Fellaire.
As for him, to Hélène’s mind he always appeared very handsome, very good, and very grand. His thick whiskers and his white waistcoats were marvels of elegance to her. Monsieur Fellaire was a god in his daughter’s eyes, but after the manner of gods, showed himself rarely. He was away all day, and came home late. Sometimes, when things outside went against him, he would have bursts of domestic assiduity. On such occasions he would take his Lili driving, or to the Zoological Gardens, or to a café, where she drank sugared water and even syrups. She would dip the end of her tongue in her father’s glass and grimace at the bitter taste of the green beverage. Such outings were delicious, but infrequent. The god faded away, leaving his wife more sullen and more irritable than before, and Hélène, sitting by her in her little chair, would dream lovingly of him and recall the dazzling vision of his wonderful white waistcoat; she was lazy, and happiest doing nothing, an occupation in which she succeeded best of all. Madame Fellaire never noticed the long silent reveries of her daughter, but a peal of infantine laughter would make her break out in reproaches.
Hélène was keenly and precociously alive to sensation. She instinctively loved luxury, and did what she could to improve the paternal ordinary. Her liking for the delicacies of the table and the refinements of dress delighted Monsieur Fellaire, who was a connoisseur on both points.
She was seven years old when he put her to school at Auteuil, at the Convent of the Ladies of Mount Calvary. The white dresses and the white faces of the Mothers, the peacefulness of the house and the unfailingly regular life, did her much good.
One day she was told that her mother, who had gone on a journey, would never return again. This “never again” frightened her — she sobbed bitterly. They dressed her in a black pinafore, and let her run loose in the garden. The garden was for her an immense mysterious country, full of living things — an enchanted world, a land of miracles. Her father came to see her there every
week, and brought her cakes; his love and fatherly pride were most admirable.
Tired as he was with uselessly tramping the pavements, with climbing painfully up and down stairs, knocking at doors only to have them shut in his face; of writing his letters on the corner of some dirty café table; of following up chance clients, sometimes even to the suburban balls they frequented, where he would treat them to a bowl of mulled wine; nosing like a hound after pettifogging law disputes, he would appear every Thursday in the parlour of the Ladies of Calvary, brushed up, shining, gloved, freshly shaved, and with immaculate linen. There he showed only as a being happy and at ease. His fat white cheeks were most presentable. Mother Sainte-Geneviève, the superior of the house at Auteuil, showed him much consideration. Two of the elder girls dreamt of him at night.
Hélène admired him immensely.
Truly, Monsieur Fellaire was heroic in his own fashion. One day, when he had not a penny in his pocket, he saw the poems of Alfred de Musset on a friend’s table and promptly borrowed the volume. “I want to re-read it for the hundredth time,” he said, and went off and sold it on the quais, so as to buy the gloves he drew on carelessly next day, under the watchful eyes of the sister doorkeeper.
The cakes he took for Hélène and her friends on his weekly visits came from a celebrated pastrycook’s, and the sweets were in most tasteful boxes full of mottoes and surprises. Mother Sainte-Geneviève, having conceived a great esteem for him, consulted him one day on some litigious matter. He gladly placed his time, his activity, and his knowledge at her disposal. She deigned to accept them. He was radiant with joy and pride. Such was his desire to please, that he tied up his notes and papers with blue ribbon, and managed to treat even legal matters with a degree of unction. When he ran through these documents with the Reverend Mother, he moistened his thumb with the tip of his tongue in a discreet and modest manner. As a matter of fact, each consultation was torture to him, but it was a delicious torture. He would listen for hours together to the explanations of the good lady, who was at once narrow-minded, mistrustful, obstinate, and gentle, and who promptly slipped out of everything with an ease born of long practice. She was a fine fair woman, a little puffy perhaps, and kept her eyes cast down and her hands in her sleeves, and spoke in a low voice. These manners intimidated him. He was more at ease with his usual clients, suburban publicans and manufacturers of patent hygienic belts, who would fling a bundle of judgment orders and summonses down on his roll-top desk, swearing horribly the while.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 286