The Kingmakers

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

“I wish you would tell me something about your life,” said Selden.

“You really wish it?”

“I have heard so many things....”

“Ah, well, you shall know the truth. I should like you to know—though there is really not much to tell. My father was a merchant of lace, a traveller, you understand, selling it to the shops in various towns. One of these shops was at Périgueux, and was managed by a young woman with whom my father fell in love. They married and moved to Paris, where they opened a magasin—not to sell to persons, but to other shops—you understand?”

“What we call a wholesaler.”

“Yes. They did very well and the business grew until it occupied the whole first floor of a building on the Rue de Rivoli near the Chatelet. My mother really managed it, but she found time nevertheless to have two children—two girls. My sister resembled her; but I resembled my father, and he was very fond of me. He still travelled from town to town, taking orders for the business; sometimes he would take me with him. He would wash and dress me in the morning, and comb my hair, and in the evening I would sit at the table with all the men, listening to their talk, and understanding more than they imagined. We were very happy together; but he was a strange man, and once he got an idea into his head, it never left him. For example, he had once lost a parcel through the carelessness of a porter at a railway station, and had made a vow that no porter should touch his baggage in future. So at every stop, he would send the porters away with dreadful insults and stagger along the platform with his great cases of lace on his back, and I would follow very much ashamed, for I could see that people were laughing at him. However it made no difference.

“But those good times did not last. My father began to gamble, and the habit grew so strong that in the end my mother could scarcely find the money to meet the bills each month. When he came home, there were scenes, terrible scenes, during which he sometimes threw all the dishes into the street. Then he would promise to reform; but always the habit was too much for him; it was like a disease, getting worse and worse. I do not know what happened at the end—I was only fourteen years old—but one evening I went to his room to call him to dinner. I knocked, but he did not answer. I opened the door and saw him sitting in his chair before his desk. I ran to him and threw my arms around him, and he fell over against me. He was dead. He had shot himself.”

She stopped for a moment, and passed her hand before her eyes.

“That was the end of the business,” she went on. “It was taken away from us to pay the debts—everything was sold. My sister and I were sent to England to a convent school—it was there I got such English as I have—and mother went to work again in a shop. It was very hard for her, but there was nothing else to be done. We were gone three years. When we came back, she had married again, a maître de danse at the Opéra. He was old and very eccentric and all that he wanted of my mother was that she should make a home for him; and she did, a very good one. It was not amusing, but it was better than working in a shop.

“Then came the war, and for a time there was no more dancing, so to amuse himself and keep himself occupied, he gave lessons to me and to my sister. With my sister he soon stopped and sent her to learn to be a typist; but with me he kept on all day, every day, until I dropped with fatigue—not dancing only, but many other things—how to walk, how to talk, how to acknowledge an introduction, how to hold my fork, how to eat from my spoon—he said the French are pigs because they take their soup from the end of the spoon instead of from the side. He was very clever—a little mad, perhaps. But to him I owe everything.