CHAPTER VII
One sopping noon, as I was leaving the yard below on some rather arbitrary commission of Fifine’s, I met an old gentleman just entering it. I observed him, but superficially; and was going on my way without further notice, when an odd thought flashing into my mind brought me to a standstill. It was only this, that the stranger, seeing me, had come to a quick stop, as if suddenly petrified, and had thereafter fallen, rather than backed, against the wall to allow me passage while he stared at me. Just that; and what then? Why, nothing—nothing but a recollection of the absurd fable which would have charged me with the circumvention of a monster diabolically bent on the destruction of an innocent victim to his suspicion or jealousy. I did not believe that story; I have intimated as much; yet I felt in duty bound to act as if I did. Who, in short, was this old fellow, and what was he doing here?
He was no denizen of the block: I knew my neighbours generally by sight, and he was not one of them. But why not a visitor? Again, why not a spy or an assassin? With a laugh for my own idiotcy, I yet did turn in my tracks and just peep into the yard. He had disappeared. Madame Crussol had him in charge, and she was to be trusted. En avant!
Trying to recall this intruder’s appearance, as I continued my way, I could only gather a general impression of bony insignificance, a little white, a little spoiled, a little pathetic, of a damp crow-like figure squatting under a minute umbrella, of two large eyes, like a fledgling’s, peering from that sheltering covert—not an heroic figure, by any means, nor one to be associated with secret agencies and stabs in the dark. A piano-tuner, probably: there had been something indescribably hopeless in his aspect, as of one who had spent all his ineffective life in desperately screwing-up things to a pitch destined not to last. I had forgotten him by the time I reached the Rue de Seine, for which I was bound.
But, as chance would have it, his exit and my return again synchronised. As I wheeled under the archway, there was he stepping from the vestibule, and putting up his umbrella in the act. It was a feminine umbrella, very small and very leaky, and somehow it seemed forlornly appropriate to the spare little nervous figure it only half sheltered. He stopped, seeing me, before spreading his tattered wings to fly; then snapped up the spring in sudden resolution and came on. An odd thing again; and this time I took determined stock of him as he approached. He did not evade my scrutiny, but on the contrary seemed lost in one of his own. Something impelled me, quite unwarrantably, to stop and address him as he came up.
“We have encountered once before, Monsieur. You were not by any chance seeking me?”
A sad, plaintive, timorous old face; a deprecating smile; a little contracted gesture of apology, of repudiation.
“No, no, Monsieur; no, indeed. I have accomplished my little mission, entirely to my satisfaction—O, yes, certainly so!”
He was gazing into my face, hungrily, but with a sort of propitiation. His feet, in their little worn ladies’ boots, shuffled uneasily on the flags; he was dressed in damaged black broadcloth, the waistcoat cut low over a frayed shirt, whose single stud had been reversed to hide the gaping of the buttonhole; and on his white head was a silk hat, mangy and much dinted, but set at a perceptible angle. His limbs were small, his bones protuberant; and the only points of vital colour about him lay in his vivacious brown eyes and the fresh yellow chrysanthemum bud in his coat-lapel. I apologised for my officiousness, and passed on.
Fifine was sitting in the studio when I entered it. She barely glanced up at me and down again. There was a self-conscious look on her face; a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums, which I had bought her the day before, stood on a table hard by.
“The piano is certainly sadly out of tune,” I said; “or was, when I last tried it.”
I was certain that her lip twitched—the ghost of an understanding smile.
“Try it again,” she answered. “I like to hear you play.”
I sat down, and shaped out a chord or two. “No,” I said, “it is still as impossible as ever; and that is the mystery.”
She did not comment on the mystery of my calling it one; and I asked no question—I was resolute in my philosophy of silence. But here was certainly an unlooked-for development of a situation already sufficiently cryptic. Did she know that I guessed? I think so, or she would not have passed my innuendo unchallenged. But in that case she must have known that I knew how she had betrayed her own retreat. And to whom—an emissary of Marion, of the Marquis himself, perhaps?
Hardly the first, since, if so, there was nothing to prevent her including me in her confidence. If the second, then I was being made catspaw to some mystery to which the other was only a blind. And that I could not believe: there had never been a suggestion of affectation in her part of fugitive, under whatever moral stimulus she had been brought to play it. She might know nothing as to the true cause of her titular father’s implacable malignity towards her—as I asked no questions I was in no position to judge—or she might know everything. That she genuinely hugged her concealment and dreaded discovery was proof sufficient that she could be in no secret collusion with the supposed terrific power which had made that concealment necessary. No, here was some collateral enigma, about which it really did not concern me to bother myself. If my guest chose to entertain, unknown to me, mysterious visitors, who for some reason regarded me curiously in passing, she had calculated, no doubt, the profits and risks of the game. I was playing my own promised part squarely and loyally; she must do as she liked with hers. I took a book, and sat reading in silence.
I thought Fifine glanced at me once or twice, as if in indecision or compunction; but nothing came of it, and presently she said:—
“You have not heard yet from Mademoiselle Herold?”
“My step-sister? No,” I answered, a little surprised, for this was the first time that any direct reference had been made by either of us to the all-important matter.
She gave a little sigh.
“Do you want me to hear?” I said, putting down my book. “Are you so tired of it all—the confinement, the sense of peril, your company?”
“I do not want to be beholden to my company for anything but itself and its interest.”
“Well, you know you are not. You are a locataire—a paying guest.”
“Yes, that is just it,” she said. “But——”
She hesitated, with a flushed cheek: and I understood. She was running short of cash. Could that be the explanation of the strange visitant? But, then, how could she have applied to him without my knowledge? And who was he? A moneylender? One did not adorn moneylender’s buttonholes with chrysanthemum buds. Or perhaps a money-borrower?
That thought was quite suddenly illuminating. I wondered that it had not occurred to me before. The man, possibly, had been appealing to her bounty—and with success. It was a solution; and yet not a solution. There still remained for elucidation the fact of his claim on her, and the means by which he had found access to her presence. However, as he had traced her somehow, and, presumably, to the effect desired, the moral appeared to lie in the direction of some understanding between them, to which the chrysanthemum bud figured, as it were, for the mystic accent. It was a riddle; but I easily gave it up.
“But,” I echoed, “you are wanting fresh supplies—is not that what you mean?”
“Yes, it is,” she answered, shortly and frankly.
“Cousin,” I said as frankly, “I am really grateful to you for your candour. It clears the air. Now let me propose, what has often been in my mind, that we keep a common purse between us.”
“A common purse!” she said, “into which I put nothing, and from which I take everything!”
“Not in the least: you will put in the account I keep against you for your share, and which you will liquidate at your convenience.”
“Convenience is a very doubtful debtor. Are you really satisfied with that?”
“O, yes! Completely.”
“You do not want to get rid of me, now you know the burden you are undertaking?”
“That is nonsense. We have come to be true comrades, I hope. And so let that close the matter.”
She sat looking down, and purposelessly twining her fingers together. Then suddenly she raised her eyelids, and I thought I detected a moisture on them.
“I think,” she said—“you may—that is to say—will you call me Fifine, Cousin?”
Truly there is no help like pecuniary for expanding the human emotions. No wonder that an unscrupulous man with a purse can make his opportunities.
“On condition that you call me Felix,” I said; and so it was decided.
But though the compact as to those credit notes was made, and scrupulously insisted on by Fifine, I could see, to do her justice, that she was never easy under the compromise. Her pride of family, I opined, rebelled against that indebtedness to a stranger. So one day I said to her point-blank: “Tell me the truth: you are unhappy at not hearing from my sister. Would you like me to go and see her, and tell her of your difficulties?”
She stared at me with open eyes, into which a positive terror grew.
“What do you mean?” she said. “No, not for worlds! Do you in the least realise the risk you would be running—for yourself; for us both? Sometimes I think you hardly take what you were told about me seriously. Either that, or you are really bent on shaking me off by whatever desperate means.”
“I told you I was not.”
“You never said so directly.”
“Well, I implied it clearly enough—just as clearly as you imply, perhaps without meaning it, the real reason for your worrying about Marion.”
“What is that?”
“Why, that the receiving this contemptible accommodation from me is wounding to your patrician pride.”
“Do I seem to imply that?” she said, in a low voice of wonder. Her cheek flushed; a shadowy smile twitched her lips. “It is quite to mistake me—— On the contrary——”
“Well, what?” I asked, as she paused abruptly.
“Nothing,” she said; and I thought she looked at me wistfully. After a moment she went on: “And anyhow it would be absurd, because you too belong to the Noblesse, though you do pretend to think nothing of such connexions. You do, do you not?”
“I wouldn’t affirm such a thing,” I answered. “Pride of family is the most excusable of all prides, because it is impersonal—a leaning upon the support of a genealogical tree for one’s identity. To claim recognition solely through the achievements of one’s ancestry is really a very pretty form of modesty, if looked at rightly. Besides, we owe something to those to whom we owe our own distinguished position, do we not? I admire you for doing that credit to your ancient lineage, I can assure you I do; and should think less of you if you were capable of accepting favours easily, like a commoner soul. Really, Cousin Fifine, you know, your rank is a very attractive part of you to me. Didn’t you ever guess it?”
She was looking down again, frowning and knitting her fingers together. She murmured something inaudible—it might have been protest or assent.
“But for that very reason,” I went on, “there should be no foolish embarrassment between us in such a matter. Your suggesting such seems like a reflection on my own inferior standing. If you want me to feel on the same social plane as yourself, you must regard this question of funds as totally immaterial. I should, believe me, if our positions were reversed; and so, I think, would anybody not a tradesman.”
Still she did not answer; but presently, and quite suddenly, she rose, and, going hastily into her bedroom, shut the door between us.
I was surprised—perhaps; or perhaps I was not. Anyhow, let that pass—and some subsequent days, during which nothing more was said on the subject. In the meantime life went on as before, and I, for my part, found it agreeable. We shared our differences impartially, as we did our amenities; and the money question was shelved.
Early in our acquaintanceship Fifine had cleaned the glass of the little picture by Auguste Ronsin that she so much admired. I don’t know why, but it always piqued me to hear her extravagant eulogies of this piece, which was after all nothing so wonderful, though it was out of the common. One day, when she was in her bedroom, I took the thing off the wall and hid it. She was not long in noticing its disappearance.
“Why have you removed it?” she asked me immediately.
“I want you, for a change, to praise something of mine.”
“Well, I do. Your plats are the most perfect things—models of tasteful cookery.”
“Je veux le croire, Mademoiselle. But I refer to the business of the palette, not of the palate. There comes a limit to welcoming praise of other people at one’s own expense.”
“If I praised a picture of yours it would be in spite of my not understanding it; and what value would my praise have then?”
“O, to perdition with this question of understanding! There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
“No, Felix—no, indeed: I want to have my eyes opened, if you will only believe me. Show me your sketches again.”
I was nothing loth; there can be no question of vanity in proselytism; and I got out a portfolio of colour notes made in Provence. As before, Fifine considered them without emotion, while I confined myself to the simple enumeration of their titles. Presently we came to one before which she paused in a stupefaction so desperate that I was tickled for once into a brief exposition:—
“Imagine yourself waking in bed on a brilliant June morning, and facing a window outside which the plumy tops of a row of plane trees trellised the blue. What would be the impression to your eyes, winking and blinking between dreams and reality? That was painted at Orange.”
Fifine looked up quickly.
“Orange!” she said. “That was where I was born.”
I felt a little surprise; but only for a moment. What was against her being born where she liked? And then she went on, with just a little suggestion of flurry: “How much you must have travelled, judging by all the places you have sketched. And I have never travelled at all.”
“Have you not? Save from Orange to Paris, of course. Do you want to?”
“It would be amusing to see my birthplace again.”
“Well, why not? Let us go together.”
She glanced up, with a quick startled look.
“And run straight,” she said, “into the arms of my enemies.”
“If that is your only objection,” I answered, “I don’t think it need prevent you.”
“Ah!” she said. “You do not believe—I know that.”
“Whether or not, my cousin, makes no difference. To slip out cautiously, and leave the impression, if any such exists, that you were still here, would be to my mind an excellent policy. Think of their watching the empty cage while we were ranging the free earth, unsuspected and without fear.”
She was conning me with eyes in which some astonishment was visible.
“Do you really mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“That about our running away and travelling together?”
“I suggested it quizzically; but really on reflection I don’t know why we shouldn’t. From one particular aspect—that of appearances——”
“You needn’t go on,” she said, interrupting me. “It couldn’t be, of course, and, if I appeared to listen, it was only in jest. Besides, I couldn’t afford it.”
I did not answer to that, because I knew what was in her mind. But the idea which had come into my own remained there to germinate. This hole and corner existence was already figuring as irksome in the light of that wider prospect, and the nomadic instinct in me began immediately to stir and stretch its limbs, like an unswaddled infant laid to kick on its nurse’s lap.
“Very well,” I said: “we will drop the subject for the time being. Are these things making my methods and principles any clearer to you?”
She shook her head forlornly.
“I am very sorry,” she said.
“You want your Ronsin back?”
“Or something in its place. I know you can if you will, Felix. It is only perversity that prevents you. Do, to please me, paint something I can understand.”
“But that I cannot? Well, shall I paint you, Fifine?”
“Like these?”
“No, like that?”
“There!” she cried triumphantly, and in a delighted voice—“I knew it was only theory, and not incapacity at all. O, do, do, Felix!”
“I hope you will appreciate it at its full value—the abnegation of all my most cherished principles. But I declared I was no dogmatist, and this shall go to prove it. Only you must not build too much on the result. You know, after all, I have not young Ronsin’s genius.”
“But you have your own,” she said; “and, try as you will, you have not been able to hide it under that flimsy stuff.”
That portrait of the young woman gave me infinite trouble, but I will admit also infinite satisfaction. As I proceeded, I grew positively enthusiastic over it.
“This shall be something of a revelation,” I said—“perhaps even to yourself. I should recommend any artist, wishing to get at the soul of his subject, to live with it on terms of intimacy for some weeks beforehand. You cannot record a face properly on first acquaintance; and, as to hasty transcripts, one might as well pretend to render the depth and mystery of the moon in a blob of white lead.”
Fifine, who was a very good sitter—perhaps because she was of a sleepy indolent disposition—laughed at that.
“Why?” I demanded.
“O!” she said, “what a jelly you are!”
“A jelly, Madam!”
“Yes; just as dancingly elastic; and such a beautiful coherent shape until something at a touch divides you completely against yourself.”
“You amaze me. Then you do not regard me as consistent?”
“Only in not being so.”
“What a very unamiable characteristic.”
“Well, I don’t think so—or I shouldn’t have said it.”
I glanced up at her in surprise; then continued my work in silence.