“No, he is not in the room.”
“When he comes in again, send him to me. I want to have a word with him.”
The waiter looked confused, and replied: “I do not think that Jean will return.”
“How long has he been on your staff?”
“Oh! he has not been on our staff for some years.”
“Then why does he come here and ask for payment for coffee and what else one may order?”
“He never takes payment for anything that has been consumed. He takes only the tips.”
“But why do you permit him to do that?”
“We cannot help ourselves.”
“He should not be allowed to enter the café.”
“No one can keep him out.”
“This is surpassing strange. He has no right to the tips. You should communicate with the police.”
The waiter shook his head. “They can do nothing. Jean Bouchon died in 1869.”
“Died in 1869!” I repeated.
“It is so. But he still comes here. He never pesters the old customers, the inhabitants of the town—only visitors, strangers.”
“Tell me all about him.”
“Monsieur must pardon me now. We have many in the place, and I have my duties.”
“In that case I will drop in here tomorrow morning when you are disengaged, and I will ask you to inform me about him. What is your name?”
“At monsieur’s pleasure—Alphonse.”
Next morning, in place of pursuing the traces of the Maid of Orléans, I went to the café to hunt up Jean Bouchon. I found Alphonse with a duster wiping down the tables. I invited him to a table and made him sit down opposite me. I will give his story in substance, only where advisable recording his exact words.
Jean Bouchon had been a waiter at this particular café. Now in some of these establishments the attendants are wont to have a box, into which they drop all the tips that are received; and at the end of the week it is opened, and the sum found in it is divided pro rata among the waiters, the head waiter receiving a larger portion than the others. This is not customary in all such places of refreshment, but it is in some, and it was so in this café. The average is pretty constant, except on special occasions, as when a fête occurs; and the waiters know within a few francs what their perquisites will be.
But in the café where served Jean Bouchon the sum did not reach the weekly total that might have been anticipated; and after this deficit had been noted for a couple of months the waiters were convinced that there was something wrong, somewhere or somehow. Either the common box was tampered with, or one of them did not put in his tips received. A watch was set, and it was discovered that Jean Bouchon was the defaulter. When he had received a gratuity, he went to the box, and pretended to put in the coin, but no sound followed, as would have been the case had one been dropped in.
There ensued, of course, a great commotion among the waiters when this was discovered. Jean Bouchon endeavoured to brave it out, but the patron was appealed to, the case stated, and he was dismissed. As he left by the back entrance, one of the younger garçons put out his leg and tripped Bouchon up, so that he stumbled and fell headlong down the steps with a crash on the stone floor of the passage. He fell with such violence on his forehead that he was taken up insensible. His bones were fractured, there was concussion of the brain, and he died within a few hours without recovering consciousness.
“We were all very sorry and greatly shocked,” said Alphonse; “we did not like the man, he had dealt dishonourably by us, but we wished him no ill, and our resentment was at an end when he was dead. The waiter who had tripped him up was arrested, and was sent to prison for some months, but the accident was due to une mauvaise plaisanterie and no malice was in it, so that the young fellow got off with a light sentence. He afterwards married a widow with a café at Vierzon, and is there, I believe, doing well.
“Jean Bouchon was buried,” continued Alphonse; “and we waiters attended the funeral and held white kerchiefs to our eyes. Our head waiter even put a lemon into his, that by squeezing it he might draw tears from his eyes. We all subscribed for the interment, that it should be dignified—majestic as becomes a waiter.”
“And do you mean to tell me that Jean Bouchon has haunted this café ever since?”
“Ever since 1869,” replied Alphonse.
“And there is no way of getting rid of him?”
“None at all, monsieur. One of the Canons of Bourges came in here one evening. We did suppose that Jean Bouchon would not approach, molest an ecclesiastic, but he did. He took his pourboire and left the rest, just as he treated monsieur. Ah! monsieur! but Jean Bouchon did well in 1870 and 1871 when those pigs of Prussians were here in occupation. The officers came nightly to our café, and Jean Bouchon was greatly on the alert. He must have carried away half of the gratuities they offered. It was a sad loss to us.”
“This is a very extraordinary story,” said I. “But it is true,” replied Alphonse.
Next day I left Orléans. I gave up the notion of writing the life of Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be gleaned on her history—in fact, she had been thrashed out.
Years passed, and I had almost forgotten about Jean Bouchon, when, the other day, I was in Orléans once more, on my way south, and at once the whole story recurred to me.
I went that evening to the same café. It had been smartened up since I was there before. There was more plate glass, more gilding; electric light had been introduced, there were more mirrors, and there were also ornaments that had not been in the café before.
I called for café-cognac and looked at a journal, but turned my eyes on one side occasionally, on the lookout for Jean Bouchon. But he did not put in an appearance. I waited for a quarter of an hour in expectation, but saw no sign of him.
Presently I summoned a waiter, and when he came up I inquired: “But where is Jean Bouchon?”
“Monsieur asks after Jean Bouchon?” The man looked surprised.
“Yes, I have seen him here previously. Where is he at present?”
“Monsieur has seen Jean Bouchon? Monsieur perhaps knew him. He died in 1869.”
“I know that he died in 1869, but I made his acquaintance in 1874. I saw him then thrice, and he accepted some small gratuities of me.”
“Monsieur tipped Jean Bouchon?”
“Yes, and Jean Bouchon accepted my tips.”
“Tiens, and Jean Bouchon died five years before.”
“Yes, and what I want to know is how you have rid yourselves of Jean Bouchon, for that you have cleared the place of him is evident, or he would have been pestering me this evening.”
The man looked disconcerted and irresolute.
“Hold,” said I; “is Alphonse here?”
“No, monsieur, Alphonse has left two or three years ago. And monsieur saw Jean Bouchon in 1874. I was not then here. I have been here only six years.”
“But you can in all probability inform me of the manner of getting quit of Jean.”
“Monsieur! I am very busy this evening, there are so many gentlemen come in.”
“I will give you five francs if you will tell me all—all—succinctly about Jean Bouchon.”
“Will monsieur be so good as to come here tomorrow during the morning? and then I place myself at the disposition of monsieur.”
“I shall be here at eleven o’clock.”
At the appointed time I was at the café. If there is an institution that looks ragged and dejected and dissipated, it is a café in the morning, when the chairs are turned upside-down, the waiters are in aprons and shirt-sleeves, and a smell of stale tobacco lurks about the air, mixed with various other unpleasant odours.
The waiter I had spoken to on the previous evening was looking out for me. I made him seat himself at a table with me. No one else was in the saloon except another garçon, who was dusting with a long feather-brush.
“Monsieur,” began the waiter, “I will tell you the who
le truth. The story is curious, and perhaps everyone would not believe it, but it is well documentée. Jean Bouchon was at one time in service here. We had a box. When I say we, I do not mean myself included, for I was not here at the time.”
“I know about the common box. I know the story down to my visit to Orléans in 1874, when I saw the man.”
“Monsieur has perhaps been informed that he was buried in the cemetery?”
“I do know that, at the cost of his fellow-waiters.”
“Well, monsieur, he was poor, and his fellow-waiters, though well-disposed, were not rich. So he did not have a grave en perpétuité. Accordingly, after many years, when the term of consignment was expired, and it might well be supposed that Jean Bouchon had mouldered away, his grave was cleared out to make room for a fresh occupant. Then a very remarkable discovery was made. It was found that his corroded coffin was crammed— literally stuffed—with five and ten centimes pieces, and with them were also some German coins, no doubt received from those pigs of Prussians during the occupation of Orléans.
“This discovery was much talked about. Our proprietor of the café and the headwaiter went to the mayor and represented to him how matters stood—that all this money had been filched during a series of years since 1869 from the waiters. And our patron represented to him that it should in all propriety and justice be restored to us. The mayor was a man of intelligence and heart, and he quite accepted this view of the matter, and ordered the surrender of the whole coffin-load of coins to us, the waiters of the café.”
“So you divided it amongst you.”
“Pardon, monsieur; we did not. It is true that the money might legitimately be regarded as belonging to us. But then those defrauded, or most of them, had left long ago, and there were among us some who had not been in service in the café more than a year or eighteen months. We could not trace the old waiters. Some were dead, some had married and left this part of the country. We were not a corporation.
“So we held a meeting to discuss what was to be done with the money. We feared, moreover, that unless the spirit of Jean Bouchon were satisfied, he might continue revisiting the café and go on sweeping away the tips. It was of paramount importance to please Jean Bouchon, to lay out the money in such a manner as would commend itself to his feelings. One suggested one thing, one another. One proposed that the sum should be expended on masses for the repose of Jean’s soul. But the head waiter objected to that. He said that he thought he knew the mind of Jean Bouchon, and that this would not commend itself to it. He said, did our headwaiter, that he knew Jean Bouchon from head to heels. And he proposed that all the coins should be melted up, and that out of them should be cast a statue of Jean Bouchon in bronze, to be set up here in the café, as there were not enough coins to make one large enough to be erected in a Place. If monsieur will step with me he will see the statue; it is a superb work of art.”
He led the way, and I followed.
In the midst of the café stood a pedestal, and on this basis a bronze figure about four feet high. It represented a man reeling backward, with a banner in his left hand, and the right raised towards his brow, as though he had been struck there by a bullet. A sabre, apparently fallen from his grasp, lay at his feet. I studied the face, and it most assuredly was utterly unlike Jean Bouchon with his puffy cheeks, mutton-chop whiskers, and broken nose, as I recalled him.
“But,” said I, “the features do not—pardon me—at all resemble those of Jean Bouchon. This might be the young Augustus, or Napoleon I. The profile is quite Greek.”
“It may be so,” replied the waiter. “But we had no photograph to go by. We had to allow the artist to exercise his genius, and, above all, we had to gratify the spirit of Jean Bouchon.”
“I see. But the attitude is inexact. Jean Bouchon fell down the steps headlong, and this represents a man staggering backwards.”
“It would have been inartistic to have shown him precipitated forwards; besides, the spirit of Jean might not have liked it.”
“Quite so. I understand. But the flag?”
“That was an idea of the artist. Jean could not be made holding a coffee-cup. You will see the whole makes a superb subject. Art has its exigencies. Monsieur will see underneath is an inscription on the pedestal.”
I stooped, and with some astonishment read—
JEAN BOUCHON
MORT SUR LE CHAMP DE GLOIRE 1870
DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI.
“Why!” objected I, “he died from falling a cropper in the back passage, not on the field of glory.”
“Monsieur! all Orléans is a field of glory. Under S. Aignan did we not repel Attila and his Huns in 451? Under Jeanne d’Arc did we not repulse the English—monsieur will excuse the allusion—in 1429. Did we not recapture Orléans from the Germans in November, 1870?”
“That is all very true,” I broke in. “But Jean Bouchon neither fought against Attila nor with la Pucelle, nor against the Prussians. Then ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ is rather strong, considering the facts.”
“How? Does not monsieur see that the sentiment is patriotic and magnificent?”
“I admit that, but dispute the application.”
“Then why apply it? The sentiment is all right.”
“But by implication it refers to Jean Bouchon, who died, not for his country, but in a sordid coffee-house brawl. Then, again, the date is wrong. Jean Bouchon died in 1869, not in 1870.”
“That is only out by a year.”
“Yes, but with this mistake of a year, and with the quotation from Horace, and with the attitude given to the figure, anyone would suppose that Jean Bouchon had fallen in the retaking of Orléans from the Prussians.”
“Ah! monsieur, who looks on a monument and expects to find thereon the literal truth relative to the deceased?”
“This is something of a sacrifice to truth,” I demurred.
“Sacrifice is superb!” said the waiter. “There is nothing more noble, more heroic than sacrifice.”
“But not the sacrifice of truth.”
“Sacrifice is always sacrifice.”
“Well,” said I, unwilling further to dispute, “this is certainly a great creation out of nothing.”
“Not out of nothing; out of the coppers that Jean Bouchon had filched from us, and which choked up his coffin.”
“Jean Bouchon has been seen no more?”
“No, monsieur. And yet—yes, once, when the statue was unveiled. Our patron did that. The café was crowded. All our habitués were there. The patron made a magnificent oration; he drew a superb picture of the moral, intellectual, social, and political merits of Jean Bouchon. There was not a dry eye among the audience, and the speaker choked with emotion. Then, as we stood in a ring, not too near, we saw—I was there and I distinctly saw, so did the others—Jean Bouchon standing with his back to us, looking intently at the statue of himself. Monsieur, as he thus stood I could discern his black mutton-chop whiskers projecting upon each side of his head.
“Well, sir, not one word was spoken. A dead silence fell upon all. Our patron ceased to speak, and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. A sort of holy awe possessed us all. Then, after the lapse of some minutes, Jean Bouchon turned himself about, and we all saw his puffy pale cheeks, his thick sensual lips, his broken nose, his little pig’s eyes. He was very unlike his idealised portrait in the statue; but what matters that? It gratified the deceased, and it injured no one. Well, monsieur, Jean Bouchon stood facing us, and he turned his head from one side to another, and gave us all what I may term a greasy smile. Then he lifted up his hands as though invoking a blessing on us all, and vanished. Since then he has not been seen.
Black Ram
(A tale from A Book of Ghosts)
I do not know when I had spent a more pleasant evening, or had enjoyed a dinner more than that at Mr. Weatherwood’s hospitable house. For one thing, the hostess knew how to keep her guests interested and in good-humour. The dinner was all that could be de
sired, and so were the wines. But what conduced above all to my pleasure was that at table I sat by Miss Fulton, a bright, intelligent girl, well read and entertaining. My wife had a cold, and had sent her excuses by me. Miss Fulton and I talked of this, that, and everything. Towards the end of dinner she said: “I shall be obliged to run away so soon as the ladies leave the room to you and your cigarettes and gossip. It is rather mean, but Mrs. Weatherwood has been forewarned, and understands. Tomorrow is our village feast at Marksleigh, and I have a host of things on my hand. I shall have to be up at seven, and I do object to cut a slice off my night’s rest at both ends.”
“Rather an unusual time of the year for a village feast,” said I. “These things are generally got over in the summer.”
“You see, our church is dedicated to St. Mark, and tomorrow is his festival, and it has been observed in one fashion or another in our parish from time immemorial. In your parts have they any notions about St. Mark’s eve?”
“What sort of notions?”
“That if you sit in the church porch from midnight till the clock strikes one, you will see the apparitions pass before you of those destined to die within the year.”
“I fancy our good people see themselves, and nothing but themselves, on every day and hour throughout the twelvemonth.”
“Joking apart, have you any such superstition hanging on in your neighbourhood?”
“Not that I am aware of. That sort of thing belonged to the Golden Age that has passed away. Board schools have reduced us to that of lead.”
“At Marksleigh the villagers believe in it, and recently their faith has received corroboration.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Last year, in a fit of bravado, a young carpenter ventured to sit in the porch at the witching hour, and saw himself enter the church. He came home, looking as blank as a sheet, moped, lost flesh, and died nine months later.”
“Of course he died, if he had made up his mind to do so.”
“Yes—that is explicable. But how do you account for his having seen his double?”
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould Page 20