The Nabob

THE APPARITION

If you want simple and sincere feeling, if you would see overflowing affection, tenderness, laughter—the laughter born of great happiness which, at a tiny movement of the lips, is brought to the verge of tears—and the beautiful wild joy of youth illumined by bright eyes transparent to the very depths of the souls behind them—all these things you may find this Sunday morning in a house that you know of, a new house, down yonder, right at the end of the old faubourg. The glass door on the ground floor shines more brightly than usual. More gaily than ever dance the letters over the door, and from the open windows comes the sound of glad cries, flowing from a stream of happiness.

“Accepted! it is accepted! Oh, what good luck! Henriette, Elise, do come here! M. Maranne’s play is accepted!”

Andre heard the news yesterday. Cardailhac, the manager of the Nouveautes, sent for him to inform him that his play was to be produced immediately—that it would be put on next month. They passed the evening discussing scenic arrangements and the distribution of parts; and, as it was too late to knock at his neighbour’s door when he got home from the theatre, the happy author waited for the morning in feverish impatience, and then, as soon as he heard people stirring below and the shutters open with a click against the house-front, he made haste to go down to announce the good news to his friends. Just now they are all assembled together, the young ladies in pretty deshabille, their hair hastily twisted up, and M. Joyeuse, whom the announcement had surprised in the midst of shaving, presenting under his embroidered night-cap a strange face divided into two parts, one side shaved, the other not. But Andre Maranne is the most excited, for you know what the acceptance of Revolt means for him; what was agreed between them and Bonne Maman. The poor fellow looks at her as if to find an encouragement in her eyes; and the rather mischievous, kind eyes seem to say, “Make the experiment, in any case. What is the risk?” To give himself courage he looks also at Mlle. Elise, pretty as a flower, with her long eyelashes drooped. At last, making up his mind:

“M. Joyeuse,” said he thickly, “I have a very serious communication to make to you.”

M. Joyeuse expresses astonishment.

“A communication? Ah, mon Dieu, you alarm me!”

And lowering his voice:

“Are the girls in the way?”

“No. Bonne Maman knows what I mean. Mlle. Elise also must have some suspicion of it. It is only the children.”

Mlle. Henriette and her sister are asked to retire, which they immediately do, the one with a dignified and annoyed air, like a true daughter of the Saint-Amands, the other, the young Chinese Yaia, hardly hiding a wild desire to laugh.

Thereupon a great silence; after which, the lover begins his little story.

I quite believe that Mlle. Elise has some suspicion in her mind, for as soon as their young neighbour spoke of a communication, she drew her Ansart et Rendu from her pocket and plunged precipitately into the adventures of somebody surnamed the Hutin, thrilling reading which makes the book tremble in her hands. There is reason for trembling, certainly, before the bewilderment, the indignant stupefaction into which M. Joyeuse receives this request for his daughter’s hand.

“Is it possible? How has it happened? What an extraordinary event! Who could ever have suspected such a thing?”

And suddenly the good old man burst into a great roar of laughter. Well, no, it is not true. He had heard of the affair; knew about it, a long time ago.

Her father knew all about it! Bonne Maman had betrayed them then! And before the reproachful glances cast in her direction, the culprit comes forward smiling:

“Yes, my dears, it is I. The secret was too much for me. I found I could not keep it to myself alone. And then, father is so kind—one cannot hide anything from him.”

As she says this she throws her arms round the little man’s neck; but there is room enough for two, and when Mlle. Elise in her turn takes refuge there, there is still an affectionate, fatherly hand stretched out towards him whom M. Joyeuse considers thenceforward as his son. Silent embraces, long looks meeting each other full of emotion, blessed moments that one would like to hold forever by the fragile tips of their wings. There is chat, and gentle laughter when certain details are recalled. M. Joyeuse tells how the secret was revealed to him in the first instance by tapping spirits, one day when he was alone in Andre’s apartment. “How is business going, M. Maranne?” the spirits had inquired, and he himself had replied in Maranne’s absence: “Fairly well, for the season, Sir Spirit.” The little man repeats, “Fairly well for the season,” in a mischievous way, while Mlle. Elise, quite confused at the thought that it was with her father that she talked that day, disappears under her fair curls.

After the first stress of emotion they talk more seriously. It is certain that Mme. Joyeuse, nee de Saint-Amand, would never have consented to this marriage. Andre Maranne is not rich, still less noble; but the old accountant, luckily, has not the same ideas of grandeur that his wife possessed. They love each other; they are young, healthy, and good-looking—qualities that in themselves constitute fine dowries, without involving any heavy registration fees at the notary’s. The new household will be installed on the floor above. The photography will be continued, unless Revolt should produce enormous receipts. (The Visionary may be trusted to see to that.) In any case, the father will still remain near them; he has a good place at his stockbroker’s office, some expert business in the courts; provided that the little ship continue to sail in deep enough water, all will go well, with the aid of wave, wind, and star.

Only one question preoccupies M. Joyeuse: “Will Andre’s parents consent to this marriage? How will Dr. Jenkins, so rich, so celebrated, take it?”

“Let us not speak of that man,” said Andre, turning pale; “he is a wretch to whom I owe nothing—who is nothing to me.”

He stops, embarrassed by this explosion of anger, which he was unable to restrain and cannot explain, and goes on more gently:

“My mother, who comes to see me sometimes in spite of the prohibition laid upon her, was the first to be told of our plans. She already loves Mlle. Elise as her daughter. You will see, mademoiselle, how good she is, and how beautiful and charming. What a misfortune that she belongs to such a wicked man, who tyrannizes over her, and tortures her even to the point of forbidding her to utter her son’s name.”

Poor Maranne heaves a sign that speaks volumes on the great grief which he hides in the depths of his heart. But what sadness would not have been vanquished in presence of that dear face lighted up with its fair curls and the radiant perspective of the future? These serious questions having been settled, they are able to open the door and recall the two exiles. In order to avoid filling their little heads with thoughts above their age, it has been agreed to say nothing about the prodigious event, to tell them nothing except that they have all to make haste and dress, breakfast still more quickly, so as to be able to spend the afternoon in the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to them, before they go on to Suresnes to have dinner at Kontzen’s: a whole programme of delights in honour of the acceptance of Revolt, and of another piece of good news which they will hear later.

“Ah, really—what is it, then?” ask the two little girls, with an innocent air.

But if you fancy they don’t know what is in the air, if you think that when Mlle. Elise used to give three raps on the ceiling they imagined that it was for information on business, you are more ingenuous even than le pere Joyeuse.

“That’s all right—that’s all right, children; go and dress, in any case.”

Then there begins another refrain:

“What frock must I put on, Bonne Maman—the gray?”

“Bonne Maman, there is a string off my hat.”

“Bonne Maman, my child, have I no more starched cravats left?”

For ten minutes the charming grandmother is besieged with questions and entreaties. Every one needs her help in some way; it is she who had the keys of everything, she who gives out the pretty, white, fine goffered linen, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the dainty things which, taken out from drawers and wardrobes, spread over the bed, fill a house with a bright Sunday gaiety.

The workers, the people with tasks to fulfil, alone know that delight which returns each week consecrated by the customs of a nation. For these prisoners of the week, the almanac with its closed prison-like gratings opens at regular intervals into luminous spaces, with breaths of refreshing air. It is Sunday, the day that seems so long to fashionable folk, to the Parisians of the boulevard whose habits it disturbs, so gloomy to people far from their homes and relatives, that constitutes for a multitude of human beings the only recompense, the one aim of the desperate efforts of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail, nothing makes any difference, nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing behind them the door of the deserted workshop, of the stuffy little lodging. But when the springtime is come, when the May sunshine glitters on it as this morning, and it can deck itself out in gay colours, then indeed Sunday is the holiday of holidays.

If one would know it well, it must be seen especially in the working quarters of the town, in those gloomy streets which it lights up and enlarges by closing the shops, keeping in their sheds the heavy drays and trucks, leaving the space free for wandering bands of children washed and in their Sunday clothes, and for games of battledore and shuttlecock played amid the great circlings of the swallows beneath some porch of old Paris. It must be seen in the densely populated, feverishly toiling suburbs, where, as soon as morning is come, you may feel it hovering, resposeful and sweet, in the silence of the factories, passing with the ringing of church-bells and that sharp whistle of the railways, and filling the horizon, all around the outskirts of the city, with an immense song, as it were, of departure and of deliverance. Then one understands it and loves it.

O Sunday of Paris, Sunday of the toilers and the humble, often have I cursed thee without reason, I have poured whole streams of abusive ink over thy noisy and extravagant joys, over the dust of railway stations filled by thy uproar and the maddening omnibuses that thou takest by assault, over thy tavern songs bawled everywhere from carts adorned with green and pink dresses, on thy barrel-organs grinding out their tunes beneath the balconies of deserted court-yards; but to-day, abjuring my errors, I exalt thee, and I bless thee for all the joy and relief thou givest to courageous and honest labour, for the laughter of the children who greet thee with acclamation, the pride of mothers happy to dress their little ones in their best clothes in thy honour, for the dignity thou dost preserve in the homes of the poorest, the glorious raiment set aside for thee at the bottom of the old shaky chest of drawers; I bless thee especially by reason of all the happiness thou hast brought that morning to the great new house in the old faubourg.

Toilettes having been completed, the dejeuner finished, taken on the thumb, as they say—and you can imagine what quantity these young ladies’ thumbs would carry—they came to put on their hats before the mirror in the drawing-room. Bonne Maman threw around her supervising glance, inserted a pin here, retied a ribbon there, straightened her father’s cravat; but while all this little world was stamping with impatience, beckoned out of doors by the beauty of the day, there came a ring at the bell, echoing through the apartment and disturbing their gay proceedings.

“Suppose we don’t open the door?” propose the children.

And what a relief, with a cry of delight, they see their friend Paul come in!

“Quick! quick! Come and let us tell you the good news.”

He knew well, before any of them, that the play had been accepted. He had had a good deal of trouble to get it read by Cardailhac, who, the moment he saw its “short lines,” as he called verse, wished to send the manuscript to the Levantine and her masseur, as he was wont to do in the case of all beginners in the writing of drama. But Paul was careful not to refer to his own intervention. As for the other event, the one of which nothing was said, on account of the children, he guessed it easily by the trembling greeting of Maranne, whose fair mane was standing straight up over his forehead by reason of the poet’s two hands having been pushed through it so many times, a thing he always did in his moments of joy, by the slightly embarrassed demeanour of Elise, by the triumphant airs of M. Joyeuse, who was standing very erect in his new summer clothes, with all the happiness of his children written on his face.

Bonne Maman alone preserved her usual peaceful air; but one noticed, in the eager alacrity with which she forestalled her sister’s wants, a certain attention still more tender than before, an anxiety to make her look pretty. And it was delicious to watch the girl of twenty as she busied herself about the adornment of others, without envy, without regret, with something of the gentle renunciation of a mother welcoming the young love of her daughter in memory of a happiness gone by. Paul saw this; he was the only one who did see it; but while admiring Aline, he asked himself sadly if in that maternal heart there would ever be place for other affections, for preoccupations outside the tranquil and bright circle wherein Bonne Maman presided so prettily over the evening work.

Love is, as one knows, a poor blind creature, deprived of hearing and speech, and only led by presentiments, divinations, the nervous faculties of a sick man. It is pitiable indeed to see him wandering, feeling his way, constantly making false steps, passing his hands over the supports by which he guides himself with the distrustful awkwardness of the infirm. At the very moment when Paul was doubting Aline’s sensibility, in announcing to his friends that he was about to start on a journey which would occupy several days, perhaps several weeks, did not remark the girl’s sudden paleness, did not hear the distressed cry that escaped her lips:

“You are going away?”

He was going away, going to Tunis, very much troubled at leaving his poor Nabob in the midst of the pack of furious wolves that surrounded him. Mora’s protection, however, gave him some reassurance; and then, the journey in question was absolutely necessary.

“And the Territorial?” asked the old accountant, ever returning to the subject in his mind. “How are things standing there? I see Jansoulet’s name still at the head of the board. You cannot get him out, then, from that Ali-Baba’s cave? Take care—take care!”

“Ah, I know all about that, M. Joyeuse. But, to leave it with honour, money is needed, much money, a fresh sacrifice of two or three millions, and we have not got them. That is exactly the reason why I am going to Tunis to try to wrest from the rapacity of the Bey a slice of that great fortune which he is retaining in his possession so unjustly. At present I have still some chance of succeeding, while later on, perhaps—”

“Go, then, and make haste, my dear lad, and if you return, as I wish you may, with a heavy bag, see that you deal first of all with the Paganetti gang. Remember that one shareholder less patient than the rest has the power to smash the whole thing up, to demand an inquiry; and you know what the inquiry would reveal. Now I come to think of it,” added M. Joyeuse, whose brow had contracted a frown, “I am even surprised that Hemerlingue, in his hatred for you, has not secretly brought up a few shares.”

He was interrupted by the chorus of imprecations which the name of Hemerlingue raised from all the young people, who detested the fat banker for the injury he had done their father, and for the ill-will he bore that good Nabob, who was adored in the house through Paul de Gery.

“Hemerlingue, the heartless monster! Wretch! That wicked man!”

But amid all these exclamations, the Visionary was following up his idea of the fat baron becoming a shareholder in the Territorial for the purpose of dragging his enemy into the courts. And you may imagine the stupefaction of Andre Maranne, a complete stranger to the whole affair, when he saw M. Joyeuse turn to him, and, with face purple and swollen with rage, point his finger at him, with these terrible words:

“The greatest rascal, after all, in this affair, is you, sir!”

“Oh, papa, papa! what are you saying?”

“Eh, what? Ah, forgive me, my dear Andre. I was fancying myself in the examining magistrate’s private room, face to face with that rogue. It is my confounded brain that is always running away with me.”

All broke into uproarious laughter, which escaped into the outer air through the open windows, and went to mingle with the thousand noises of moving vehicles and people in their Sunday clothes going up the Avenue des Ternes. The author of Revolt took advantage of the diversion to ask whether they were not soon going to start. It was late—the good places would be taken in the Bois.

“To the Bois de Boulogne, on Sunday!” exclaimed Paul de Gery.

“Oh, our Bois is not yours,” replied Aline with a smile. “Come with us, and you will see.”

Did it ever happen to you, in the course of a solitary and contemplative walk, to lie down on your face in the undergrowth of a forest, amid that vegetation which springs up, various and manifold, through the fallen autumn leaves, and allow your eyes to wander along the level of the ground before you? Little by little the sense of height is lost, the interwoven branches of the oaks above your head form an inaccessible sky, and you behold a new forest extending beneath the other, opening its deep avenues filled by a green and mysterious light, and formed of tiny shrubs or root fibres taking the appearance of the stems of sugar-canes, of severely graceful palm-trees, of delicate cups containing a drop of water, of many-branched candlesticks bearing little yellow lights which the wind blows on as it passes. And the miraculous thing is, that beneath these light shadows live minute plants and thousand of insects whose existence, observed from so near at hand, is a revelation to you of all the mysteries. An ant, bending like a wood-cutter under his burden, drags after it a splinter of bark bigger than itself; a beetle makes its way along a blade of grass thrown like a bridge from one stem to another; while beneath a lofty bracken standing isolated in the middle of a patch of velvety moss, a little blue or red insect waits, with antennae at attention, for another little insect on its way through some desert path over there to arrive at the trysting-place beneath the giant tree. It is a small forest beneath a great one, too near the soil to be noticed by its big neighbours, too humble, too hidden to be reached by its great orchestra of song and storm.

A similar revelation awaits in the Bois de Boulogne. Behind those sanded drives, watered and clean, whereon files of carriage-wheels moving slowly round the lake trace all day long a worn and mechanical furrow, behind that admirably set scene of trimmed green hedges, of captive water, of flowery rocks, the true Bois, a wild wood with perennial undergrowth, grows and flourishes, forming impenetrable recesses traversed by narrow paths and bubbling springs.

This is the Bois of the children, the Bois of the humble, the little forest beneath the great one. And Paul, who knew only the long avenues of the aristocratic Parisian promenades, the sparkling lake perceived from the depths of a carriage or from the top of a coach in a drive back from Longchamps, was astonished to see the deliciously sheltered nook to which his friends had led him. It was on the banks of a pond lying like a mirror under willow-trees, covered with water-lilies, with here and there large white shimmering spaces where sunbeams fell and lay on the bright surface.

On the sloping bank, sheltered by the boughs of trees where the leaves were already thick, they sat down to listen to the reading of the play, and the pretty, attentive faces, the skirts lying puffed out over the grass, made one think of some Decameron, more innocent and chaste, in a peaceful atmosphere. To complete this pleasant country scene, two windmill-sails seen through an opening in the branches were revolving over in the direction of Suresnes, while of the dazzling and luxurious vision to be met at every cross-roads in the Bois there reached them only a confused and perpetual murmur, which one ended by ceasing to notice. The poet’s voice alone rose in the silence, the verses fell on the air tremblingly, repeated below the breath by other moved lips, and stifled sounds of approbation greeted them, with shudders at the tragic passages. Bonne Maman was even seen to wipe away a big tear. That comes, you see, from having no embroidery in one’s hand!

His first work! That was what the Revolt was for Andre, that first work always too exuberant and ornate, into which the author throws, to begin with, whole arrears of ideas and opinions, pent up like the waters of a river-lock; that first work which is often the richest if not the best of its writer’s productions. As for the fate that awaited it, no one could predict it; and the uncertainty that hovered over the reading of the drama added to its own emotion that of each auditor, the hopes, all arrayed in white, of Mlle. Elise, the fantastic hallucinations of M. Joyeuse, and the more positive desires of Aline as she installed in advance the modest fortune of her sister in the nest of an artist’s household, beaten by the winds but envied by the crowd.

Ah, if one of those idle people, taking a turn for the hundredth time round the lake, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habitual promenade, had come and parted the branches, how surprised he would have been at this picture! But would he ever have suspected how much passion, how many dreams, what poetry and hope there could be contained in that little green corner, hardly larger than the shadow a fern throws on the moss?

“You were right; I did not know the Bois,” said Paul in a low voice to Aline, who was leaning on his arm.

They were following a narrow path overarched by the boughs of trees, and as they talked were moving forward at a quick pace, well in advance of the others. It was not, however, pere Kontzen’s terrace nor his appetizing fried dishes that drew them on. No; the beautiful lines which they had just heard had carried them away, lifting them to great heights, and they had not yet come down to earth again. They walked straight on towards the ever-retreating end of the road, which opened out at its extremity into a luminous glory, a mass of sunbeams, as if all the sunshine of that beautiful day lay waiting for them where it had fallen on the outskirts of the wood. Never had Paul felt so happy. That light arm that lay on his arm, that child’s step by which his own was guided, these alone would have made life sweet and pleasant to him, no less than this walk over the mossy turf of a green path. He would have told the girl so, simply, as he felt it, had he not feared to alarm that confidence which Aline placed in him, no doubt because of the sentiments which she knew he possessed for another woman, and which seemed to hold at a distance from them every thought of love.

Suddenly, right before them, against the bright background, a group of persons riding on horseback came in sight, at first vague and indistinct, then appearing as a man and a woman, handsomely mounted, and entered the mysterious path among the bars of gold, the leafy shadows, the thousand dots of light with which the ground was strewn, and which, displaced by their progress as they cantered along, rose and covered them with flowery patterns from the chests of the horses to the blue veil of the lady rider. They came along slowly, capriciously, and the two young people, who had drawn back into the copse, could see pass close by them, with a clinking of bits proudly shaken and white with foam as though after a furious gallop, two splendid animals carrying a pair of human beings brought very near together by the narrowing of the path; he, supporting with one arm the supple figure moulded in a dark cloth habit; she, with a hand resting on the shoulder of her cavalier and her small head seen in retreating profile beneath the half-dropped tulle of her veil, resting on it tenderly. This embrace, half disturbed by the impatience of the horses, that kiss on which their reins became confused, that passion which stalked in broad day through the Bois with so great a contempt for public opinion, would have been enough to betray the duke and Felicia, if the haughty and charming mein of the lady and the aristocratic ease of her companion, his pallor slightly tinged with colour as the result of his ride and of Jenkins’s miraculous pearls, had not already betrayed them.

It is not an extraordinary thing to meet Mora in the Bois on a Sunday. Like his master, he loved to show himself to the Parisians, to advertise his popularity with all sections of the public; and then the duchess never accompanied him on that day, and he could make a halt quite at his ease in that little villa of Saint-James, known to all Paris, whose red towers, outlined among the trees schoolboys used to point out to each other in whispers. But only a mad woman, a daring affronter of society like this Felicia, could have dreamt of advertising herself like this, with the loss of her reputation forever. A sound of hoofs dying away in the distance, of shrubs brushed in passing; a few plants that had been pressed down and were straightening themselves again; branches pushed out of the way resuming their places—that was all that remained of the apparition.

“You saw?” said Paul; speaking first.

She had seen, and she had understood, notwithstanding the candour of her innocence, for a blush spread over her features, one of those feelings of shame experienced for the faults of those we love.

“Poor Felicia!” she said in a low voice, pitying not only the unhappy woman who had just passed them, but also him whom this defection must have smitten to the very heart. The truth is that Paul de Gery had felt no surprise at this meeting, which justified previous suspicions and the instinctive aversion which he had felt for Felicia at their dinner some days before. But he found it pleasant to be pitied by Aline, to feel the compassion in that voice becoming more tender, in that arm leaning upon his. Like children who pretend to be ill for the sake of the pleasure of being fondled by their mother, he allowed his consoler to strive to appease his grief, speaking to him of his brothers, of the Nabob, and of his forthcoming trip to Tunis—a fine country, they said. “You must write to us often, and long letters about the interesting things on the journey, the place you stay in. For one can see those who are far away better when one imagines the kind of place they are inhabiting.”

So talking, they reached the end of the bowered path terminating in an immense open glade through which there moved the tumult of the Bois, carriages and riders on horseback alternating with each other, and the crowd at that distance seeming to be tramping through a flaky dust which blended it into a single confused herd. Paul slackened his pace, emboldened by this last minute of solitude.

“Do you know what I am thinking of?” he said, taking Aline’s hand. “I am thinking that it would be a pleasure to be unhappy so as to be comforted by you. But however precious your pity may be to me, I cannot allow you to waste your compassion on an imaginary pain. No, my heart is not broken, but more alive, on the contrary, and stronger. And if I were to tell you what miracle it is that has preserved it, what talisman—”

He held out before her eyes a little oval frame in which was set a simple profile, a pencil outline wherein she recognised herself, surprised to see herself so pretty, reflected, as it were, in the magic mirror of Love. Tears came into her eyes without her knowing the reason, an open spring whose stream beat within her chaste breast. He continued:

“This portrait belongs to me. It was drawn for me. And yet, at the moment of starting on this journey I have a scruple. I do not wish to have it except from yourself. Take it, then, and if you find a worthier friend, some one who loves you with a love deeper and more loyal than mine, I am willing that you should give it to him.”

She had regained her composure, and looking de Gery full in the face with a serious tenderness, she said:

“If I listened only to my heart, I should feel no hesitation about my reply: for, if you love me as you say, I am sure that I love you too. But I am not free; I am not alone in the world. Look yonder.”

She pointed to her father and her sisters, who were beckoning to them in the distance and hastening to come up with them.

“Well, and I myself?” answered Paul quickly. “Have I not similar duties, similar responsibilities? We are like two widowed heads of families. Will you not love mine as much as I love yours?”

“True? is it true? You will let me stay with them? I shall be Aline for you, and Bonne Maman for all our children? Oh! then,” exclaimed the dear creature, beaming with joy, “there is my portrait—I give it to you! And all my soul with it, too, and forever.”