Mother Sainte-Geneviève had the grand manners of an abbess of the old régime. One of her affected elegances was to ignore the fact that Fellaire could ever need money. He was constantly called on to make advances to the Community, to obtain even the smallest of which involved strategy which would have turned an ordinary brain. But what a pleasure it was for him to go to Vespers on Sunday and sit in the gallery of the chapel, which smelt of incense and orris root, and from his place he could see his daughter in the aisle, bending over her prayer-book, seated between the daughter of a councillor of State and the cousin of a Montenegrin prince! After contemplating her pretty hair, and her shoulders, a little thin and pointed in her brown merino bodice, the glasses of his spectacles would grow misty, and he would blow his nose as one does at the theatre after a moving scene. The business of the Community cost him some money, but brought him many useful acquaintances.
“I am becoming the fashion,” he said to himself, and his chest would swell with renewed ampleness beneath his fancy waistcoat, of white piqué, or printed, stamped, or spotted velvet.
As Hélène grew up, she grew beautiful. Her hair which for a long time had been like her mother’s, pale and faded, turned to a magnificent gold. She was gentle, slothful, easily discouraged, given to bursts of affection and sudden emotions. It was with difficulty they could coax her to eat anything in the refectory beyond salad and bread and salt. She had a friend, Cécile, at whose house she spent the half-holidays. This friend, the daughter of a stockbroker, was a little person of sixteen, at once childish, old-fashioned, and coquettish, neither ill-natured nor mischievous, too unimaginative to be vicious, and very rich. She had the mind of a dull woman of thirty, and her companions endowed her with an extraordinary prestige. She had a heavily upholstered bedroom in her father’s house at Passy, and here she and Hélène would pass hours eating bonbons. When the latter left this stuffy nest, something in her soul had withered, the outside world seemed duller, harder, and more repulsive — her spirits flagged. Her day-dream was to have a blue bedroom and to lie on a sofa reading novels all day long. She developed pains in her chest which quite pulled her down. One night there was a wild scare in the convent. At the cry of “Fire! fire!” all the girls jumped out of bed and, rolled in blankets and petticoats, rushed pell-mell down the staircase. The little ones came last, with outstretched arms, shrieking and stumbling in their long night-dresses. It was soon discovered to be merely a false alarm. Mother Sainte-Geneviève scolded the foolish creatures and congratulated Hélène on having had the good sense not to leave her bed. If she had not moved, it was from pure inertia and the species of cowardice with which she faced every incident of life. Things slipped by her, leaving her indifferent to her surroundings; she thought of nothing but dresses, jewels, horses, and boating excursions. She would burst into tears at the mention of her father’s name.
She left the convent knowing how to enter a drawing-room and play a waltz on the piano. She found the paternal house completely refurnished; she was to do the honours of it, and she had her blue bedroom.
Her father treated her with the kindness and liberality of an old lover for a young mistress. He took her to the little theatres, and to supper after the play. He thought this was the right thing to do. It was a cruel awakening for her when she discovered that this good, easy father was not the perfect gentleman she had supposed him to be in the convent parlour. His manners, which were a mixture of those of a quack doctor and a commercial traveller, wounded her terribly. She had learnt good behaviour with the Ladies of Mount Calvary, and knew instinctively what was right and proper.
Her beauty attracted men, but their vivacious admiration only roused her indignation. Not one among them proposed to marry her; they all resembled each other, and were all alike stupid and tiresome. Uneasy, affected, feverish, nail-biting creatures, they one and all seemed possessed with the desire to wear out their boots, their horses, and their lives as quickly as possible. Then came some one who interested her.
A young army surgeon, René Longuemare. He had been sent by his father, a road surveyor in the Ardennes, to consult Fellaire de Sisac on some matter of business; he returned again and again to the house in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs and became a constant visitor there.
Although he was not handsome, being clumsily built, with a high-coloured face, and although his conversation was rough and obscure, Hélène liked to see him, and to hear him talk. He would hold forth on matters of religion and morality in a way which made her hair stand on end, but which amused her, though she but half understood what he said.
“Man is descended from a monkey,” he would say.
When she protested, he would develop his thesis in a way at once bold and comical.
Longuemare introduced some of his friends, and so a circle of young savants was formed in the house of the good Fellaire, who paid not the slightest attention to them.
The surgeon would advance theories like the following: —
“Virtue is a product, the same as phosphorus or vitriol.”
“Heroism and holiness are the results of congestion of the brain.”
“General paralysis is the only thing which makes a great man.”
“The gods are adjectives.”
“Things have always existed and will always exist.”
“How wicked of you!” she would say.
But she took pleasure in listening to the manly young voice. She admired, as a mysterious force, the free and expansive intelligence which, of an evening, between a cup of tea and a glass of kirsch, would fling pell-mell before her the eccentricity, the magnificence, and the horror of Nature, as a barbarian flings his tribute at the feet of a surprised and flattered queen. Meanwhile, from the salon came the murmur of doleful voices talking of unpaid notes of hand, of decisions of the Chamber of Commerce and disputed building accounts.
Then came a shadow, wandering silently among the divers groups — a big, stiff, red-headed shadow, at once grotesque and noble. It was the troubled soul of Mr. Haviland. Hélène never confounded him with the others; she recognised that he possessed a certain nobility and distinction of mind, and she knew that he loved her, although he never spoke to her.
As for Longuemare, he was naïf, in spite of his scientific audacity; he respected her profoundly, and admired her in silence. After having made some great show of brutality, he would talk to her in the most gentle and delicate way. He was always gay in her presence, partly because it was his nature, and partly from strength of will, for he loved her; and rather than tell her so, he would have bitten his tongue through. He had only his pay, while waiting for something better to turn up. He never doubted but that Mademoiselle Fellaire was rich. She used to tease him, and pretend to believe that he was frivolous, and even worse; but she was becoming strongly and profoundly attached to him, until the day when he came to Meudon to bid her a brusque farewell.
CHAPTER III
THE house on the Butte-des-Moulins had fallen; the mask with its one blue and one yellow cheek had crumbled beneath the pickaxe. The little room where the old cashier David Ewart was arrested, to be taken to the revolutionary tribunal and the guillotine, had gone with the rest. For some time clouds of grey dust rose from the ruins and whirled about the neighbouring streets, carrying particles of the old dwelling down the throats of men and horses. Now those who had inhabited it — the dyer and cleaner and the locksmith among others — could not have exactly indicated the spot where it had stood.
The domain of Monsieur Fellaire de Sisac at Meudon had grown considerably larger. The railings which formerly were quite near the house had retreated so as to take in a piece of neighbouring land, on which immediately sprang up a summer-house built like a Gothic château, with towers, battlements, and portcullis in brick. The property was entitled the Villa de Sisac. The plaster was still fresh when one day a placard appeared on the gate, announcing that the house, the chalet, and dependences were to be let or sold immediately.
The seasons succeeded e
ach other, and still the placard swung in the wind. The sun and the rain wrinkled it and turned it yellow.
Then in the autumn days the silence of desolation fell on the hills of Meudon. Then, with heavy tread, musket on shoulder, and leather helmet on head, the German soldiers entered the abandoned chalet and took up their quarters there. They made fires in the furnace with the polished planks of the parquets. The roof was crushed by a shell. The great winter had come. France was invaded — Paris besieged. In this crumbling away of a people, the fortune of Fellaire disappeared for ever.
The cessation of all municipal work after the resignation of the Prefect of the Seine, under the ministry of Chevandier de Valdrôme, had already shaken the office in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs to its foundations. Luck had forsaken Fellaire, and he let himself go with the stream. He gave up dyeing his whiskers, and wore dusty frock-coats and tortoiseshell-mounted spectacles. He would stake in gambling dens the stray louis he still picked up here and there. Now that his daughter no longer kept his house, he received visits from ladies with yellow hair and painted faces, who sang on the stairs. He was seen one day at the Folies-Bergères with a woman on each arm. During the siege of Paris he became serious again, and started an insurance company, “The Phoenix of the National Guard.” But no one paid any attention to it.
Hélène was married. She had been travelling for four years; the easy, careless life suited her. Tall, beautiful, dressed with a severe magnificence, she was much admired in hotels and casinos, where her indifference lent her an aristocratic air. She endeavoured to care for her husband. But though he was the most honourable and upright of men, he was terribly tiresome. He saw, heard, said and accomplished everything with equal gravity. Nothing was great or small in his eyes; everything was worthy of being taken into consideration. He would give his wife diamond ornaments, and then tease her childishly for ten hours about a sum of three francs which she could not account for. He made handsome presents in a narrow way, even his prodigalities wore an avaricious look. He interfered in all the extravagances of his young bride — not to check them, but to register them. He allowed her to spend lavishly, but on condition that she fulfilled every formality. A third of his life was spent in disputing about ha’pennies with hotel waiters. He was obstinately determined not to be robbed of a sou; and would willingly have ruined himself to foil the would-be robber. He calculated everything — distances to within a yard, longitudes and latitudes, heights, the rise and fall of the barometer, the number of degrees marked on the thermometer, the direction of the wind, the position of the clouds. At Naples he surveyed Virgil’s tomb like a land surveyor. He had a mania for neatness, and could not bear to see a newspaper open on a sofa. He exasperated Hélène by picking up and returning to her twenty times a day the book or the embroidery which she had laid down. It made her think regretfully of her father, who would forget that he had put the stumps of his cigars on the damask arm-chairs. But all this was as nothing.
Hélène’s great trouble was being forced to live with a man so absolutely devoid of imagination. The faculty was so foreign to Mr. Haviland that he was incapable of describing a sentiment or giving any interest to a thought. Since their marriage he had never opened his mouth, except to enunciate some direct, precise, and timely fact. No doubt he was very much in love, and very proud of his wife; but his love was like a fine rain: one of those kinds of rain which one neither sees nor hears — unceasing, penetrating, chilling.
Mr. Haviland’s personal attendant was a Frenchman named Groult. He came from Avranches, and had been many years in his service. They had travelled twice round the world together and were inseparable.
Groult was not handsome. He had stiff, flaming-red hair, shifty green eyes, and walked with a limp; but he was of an exemplary cleanliness, and fulfilled his functions with perfect exactitude. He was married; his wife was also in Mr. Haviland’s service. She remained in Paris and looked after the house he had built recently on the Boulevard Latour-Maubourg.
Mr. Haviland was much interested in chemistry, and Groult helped him in the laboratory. He had a mania for drenching himself with medicine daily, and Groult looked after his travelling pharmacy. Besides manipulating drugs with much ability, he was adroit in many ways, and was even a good locksmith when occasion required. His horrible bony hands, with their enormous thumbs, could execute the most delicate tasks; but though endowed with an extraordinary aptitude for mechanical arts, he could never learn to write in the least degree legibly. He had composed an alphabet for himself which he alone could understand, and it was impossible to make out a letter or a figure of his accounts, which he scribbled on scraps of paper. The cooks and housemaids detested him because of his scrawls, his horrible hands, his lameness, the spots the chemicals left on his skin, and the smell of drugs with which he was impregnated; they nicknamed him “Clochon,” and feared him like the devil; they considered him capable of any crime, but could find nothing to reproach him with. Groult was impeccable.
He inspired Hélène with an instinctive repugnance, and at first she tried to have him dismissed, but soon saw that he was indispensable to her husband, and resigned herself to the sight of him limping perpetually between her husband and herself. He did not appear to bear her any malice, and never comported himself towards her otherwise than as a perfect servant.
Madame’s wish to be rid of him had not frightened him very much. He possessed the confidence of his master, who he knew would not separate from him lightly. There was a tie between Haviland and his servant Groult. For twenty years they had been searching together for Samuel Ewart.
Haviland was still a child when he heard for the first time the story of the old cashier David Ewart, and of his death on the scaffold in 1794. The sublime obstinacy of this brave man, quietly awaiting his doom while keeping the books his masters had confided to him, appeared most praiseworthy to the heir of the house of Haviland, whose sense of fitness and tenacity of purpose just fitted him to understand such practical devotion. He showed nothing of what he felt at the moment; but later on, when he had become master of his actions and his fortune, he began to search actively for some living descendant of the old cashier. He learnt that Andrew Ewart, great-grandson of David, was alive and settled as a merchant in Calcutta. Andrew had married an Anglo-Indian, and had gone into partnership with a Brahmin; their business was carried on under the name of Andrew Ewart, Liçaliçali & Company. Haviland, accompanied by Groult, took the steamer to Calcutta, with the intention of finding Andrew and saying to him: “Your great-grandfather died in the service of mine, like a perfect gentleman. Allow me to shake you by the hand. Can I be of use to you in any way?”
When he arrived in Calcutta in 1849, he learnt that the firm of Andrew Ewart, Liçaliçali & Company had been dissolved by the decease of Andrew, who had died of cholera in June 1848, leaving a widow and a four-year-old son named Samuel; but Haviland could find no further trace of them. Mrs. Andrew, having been left unprovided for, had quitted Calcutta with her little child. Having learnt that Liçaliçali had settled in the Isle of Bourbon he went there, and found the Brahmin giving English lessons to the children of the governor of the colony. Liçaliçali told Haviland that Ewart’s widow and son were living with her brother — a Mr. Johnson, a former officer in Her Majesty’s service; beyond this he could hear nothing.
Every week an advertisement appeared in the Times, inviting Samuel Ewart (who at the time of Hélène’s marriage must have been about twenty-seven years old) to present himself, or make known his place of residence to Martin Haviland, Esq., Paris; but Samuel Ewart gave no sign of life.
For twenty-five years Haviland pursued his researches, with no more apparent ardour or fatigue than when he entered on them. It was his task, and he took it up every morning as a carpenter takes up his plane. Groult held the threads of the affair in his hands, and disentangled them skilfully. He was particularly useful when it came to showing the door to some false Samuel Ewart; for many adventurers presented themselves to Haviland, a
s being the son and heir of the late Andrew.
Haviland’s health became very bad in the autumn of the year 1871; he suffered from giddiness and insomnia. One day (it was at the beginning of the winter; they were living at Nice in the Villa des Oliviers) Hélène, who was reading a novel in the drawing-room, gave a cry of horror as her husband came in.
“Your eyes!” she said. “Look at your eyes in the glass!”
Haviland’s blue eyes had turned black. His lips were trembling, and he seemed to be wandering in his mind as he murmured:
“Sam — Sam Ewart; he will come.”
CHAPTER IV
THEY returned to Paris for the rest of the winter. The courtyard of the hotel was full of trunks, cases, and packages; their size and number filled Madame Groult with despair as she moved about among them. She wore a bed-jacket of flowered calico, and her body seemed as limp as the stuff which covered it. Madame Groult, flabby and agitated, resembled a bundle of rags moved by some invisible force.
Her face was perpetually bathed in a sort of steam, and she continually wiped it with her cottony forearm. She arranged the bonnet-boxes according to the directions of the lady’s-maid; but naturally timid, the orders and counter-orders she received only made her lose her head, while the frizzy-haired maid, her cap-strings flung coquettishly back, made eyes at the grooms.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 287