“You can’t think what a beast it made me feel,” he said apologetically.
“You are quite free,” said Margot. Her back was turned to him, but Jean heard the little note of pain in her voice.
“But aren’t you glad I’m glad, Margot?” he asked, in a puzzled way.
“Of course I’m glad you’re glad!” cried Margot vehemently. “Good-night!” And she ran quickly past him out of the room. Jean turned to catch her, but he was not quick enough.
He stood staring blankly at the piano. The piano, however, could have told him nothing except that Margot dusted it very unnecessarily every morning directly he went out, and sometimes kissed the keys. And even that, perhaps, it was just as well it should keep to itself.
The celebration fell through entirely; nothing more was said about it, which was strange, considering that both Jean and Margot were glad.
CHAPTER XV
IF Mahomet, on arriving at the foot of the mountain, had met with a frank repulse from the object of his condescension—say, an earthquake or a stream of molten lava—it would have been permissible on the part of the prophet to feel a little hurt. So that Jean may be excused for suffering the same kind of annoyance when the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas shut their doors in his face.
It had been an effort for Jean to go back to them at all, an effort that had at once attacked his independence and his pride, and having made this sacrifice, he was not at all prepared to find that it had been made in vain. His old friends, the fellow clerks, winked sympathetically, and one of them even invited him to return for lunch at noon. Jean refused his offer somewhat magnificently, little dreaming that in a very short time he would look at a proffered meal as one of the more important gifts of Heaven. He turned away from the gloomy portals of his former prison-house and said to himself that he was still free; as indeed he was, quite free, with Paris before him, twenty francs in his pocket, and two extremely good suits of unpaid-for clothes.
The weeks that followed seemed an incredible time to Jean to look back upon—and yet, while they were passing it was every other time that seemed incredible. They began quite easily with that useful lady known in Paris as “ma Tante.” “Ma Tante” willingly accepted Jean’s gold watch and chain, stooped to his tie-pin and few small articles of jewellery, and by and by absorbed, with an increasingly small return, all that he did not wear of his wardrobe. Jean belonged to that class of society which knows what it is to do without some of its wants, but to whom it is wholly inconceivable that it should ever be asked to do without them all.