It was an insecure-looking old pile, which might yet have seemed a sort of city in itself; compressed back, as it appeared, and almost held up between others less elevated, though of greater prominence and somewhat more respectable appearance, to the vast height of at least seven storeys: the general outer door stood fixedly open, and the cord which held it so, conducting by staple and pulley along the low entrance-passage, as through the arch of a cellar, turned in on one side to a dark little den, half lighted by a cooking-lamp and partly from a back-yard covered with rank grass and all sorts of rubbish, with an old wooden pump in the midst, to which the passage itself led through. Here an old woman, the portress, sat in a crazy leathern arm-chair that had been gilded once; she was busy trying to boil something by the lamp, and talking in a cross voice to herself, her cat, or some one else not visible to Sir Godfrey; her old features were sour enough, probably from the rheumatism which controlled her motions; but at his appearance and inquiries she became sufficiently alert and communicative, curtseying at every sentence, and trying to nod her head obsequiously, with the utmost eagerness to do anything in the matter of Suzanne Deroux, whom she knew so well, and who was so deserving—who, indeed, was never from home, except to go to mass on saints’ days at Notre Dame. There was the low fawning cunning and curiosity of old age, joined to the practised manner of some quondam servant, in the portress’s desire that he should be saved the flight of stairs, down which, where it wound up from opposite her lodge, came but the dull glimmer of daylight in some high window: her little girl, however, whom she had screamed for over and over again, between fits of coughing and fresh suggestions to the visitor, at last appeared with her pitcher from the pump, to be angrily despatched up-stairs as a guide to Madame Peltier. That was the appellation expected by the daughter and the son-in-law—the portress informed him—for they were proud, and respected their mother to an extreme—though, properly, it seemed Madame had no right to that title, not having been married—and, doubtless, the marriage even of her daughter must at best have been à la Jacques, since nowadays it was so with all workmen—who had nothing, of course, to inherit or to leave. As for this worthy Suzanne, though she seemed to affect to be religious, her frugality, so unavoidable—her simplicity, which was almost hopeless, did not entitle her—nothing but her misfortunes could entitle her—to such respect.
The portress’s little niece had already preceded him to the floor in view, ere Sir Godfrey reached it, almost breathless, counting the storeys. The whole structure, from base to summit, appeared not merely to teem with apartments, but, as it ascended, to rise and open skyward into visible life: one pleasant buzz of French vivacity, indeed, had seemed to circulate above till the girl appeared; and her voice could now be heard in eager dialogue behind an adjoining door with the young woman who a minute before had been speaking over the balusters. He knocked, half open although it stood, and was at once answered by the latter. Suzanne Deroux was the name of her mother, she said—who was within. There was something hard and cold, almost sullen, about the young woman’s face, though it was well-formed: her cheek seemed worn, her eyes dry and lustreless; nor did she make any inviting or inquiring remark, merely making way for and following the stranger as he slowly entered.
It was a bare garret, with the red-tiled floor of such ordinary Parisian abodes, a low yellow-washed ceiling, much narrower than the floor, as on one side the wall slanted with the roof; yet everything was neat, clean, and decently arranged. But the glance took it in at once, without leaving so much as a shadow; neither hearth nor semblance of a closet broke its completeness, to the recess of the upright dormer-window, which seemed a redeeming feature in so bald an apartment, where it rose large and shining out of the slope, beyond the older woman’s seat. That was an arm-chair, indeed, high-backed and easy: her feet were on a patch of carpet; a pot of mignonette was in flower on the window-sill; a small coarsely-coloured print of some portrait was stuck with a pin to the opposite wall of the recess; as if the household bloomed a little only in that direction, toward the sunlight, which came flooding with the air through the wide-open window-place. Seated on the floor, beside a deal box in a corner, under the slant of the wall, was a stout young workman with a boot-last, engaged on the second of an elegant pair of riding-boots; while a half-naked infant had been laid on the floor, among the parings of the vegetables which seemed meant for some afternoon meal—and was taken up by the portress’s little niece, to be hushed and shaken, with an air of matronly attention.
At sight of the English baronet’s conspicuous figure, stooping to enter, and scarce venturing to stand erect within, the bootmaker had looked up with an absolute scowl of astonishment; showing a strongly-marked haggard visage, rendered the more singularly unprepossessing, despite something of the vivid southern tint and classic decisiveness, by a head close-cropped, in all its native soot-blackness, and a chin left roughly tufted below, although the lean tanned cheek had not yet lost altogether its air of youth. Sir Godfrey’s first feeling had been one of pity, mingled with sudden pleasure in the commission he had to perform; their perfect want of manners, their very poverty, the absence of any other apartment to withdraw into, joined to the motionless silence of the elderly woman in her arm-chair, who neither seemed to hear nor see him, all increased it to a kind of embarrassment. In the highest drawing-rooms in Europe, nay, in any peasant’s cottage of his own country, Sir Godfrey would have felt immeasurably more at ease than he then stood, hat in hand, in the attic of these Parisian work-people. He had hardly begun to address the person before him, too, as Madame, ere the child’s fretfulness in the arms of its little nurse became a vociferous squall, to which the elder woman turned her head slowly, with an air of distress, her features working, her body moving and rocking in her chair, as she made a humming, hushing sound to the infant. Its mother snatched it next moment from the girl’s arms, with an angry exclamation. “Why do you remain here under such pretences?” said she, sharply; and the look of early cunning had betrayed itself on the girl’s face by her attempt to seem absorbed in the child, with the hanging of the head that succeeded. “Favour me, little Pochon, by leaving us alone,” continued the young woman, following her as she slunk out: “Widow Pochon is too good, inform her!” And she slammed to the fragile door, then returned near the visitor, with her infant quietly held to the breast: she was not much more than twenty, and had well-shaped features, that, with a happier expression, might have been attractive; but in this slatternly attire and attitude, her careless presence was doubly disagreeable to Sir Godfrey.
He stepped nearer the sitting woman, who, like a recent invalid, seemed still not so much to attend as to be enjoying the open air, the scent from the flower-pot, and the streak of warm sunshine that gleamed on the window-frame and glowed across her clean dress, on the old bright kerchief that was pinned across her breast, and the high white coif of some country fashion which she wore close to her face; yet in her face there was a healthy tint, a little shrivelled, as on a well-kept apple: so that it appeared to be more from ignorance, or the awkwardness of surprise, perhaps as much from his own foreign accent, or some patois to which she might have been accustomed, that, when Sir Godfrey went on distinctly to explain his errand, the woman Deroux looked sometimes vacantly at him, sometimes away out altogether to the open sky, again irresolutely towards her daughter and son-in-law, spreading her hands in the feeble way of still more aged persons, and smoothing her knees with them by turns, more and more restlessly as his voice grew distincter in its emphasis. To the statement of her former patron’s recent death, of the omission or oversight which had interrupted her allowance from him, and of the nature and amount of the present bequest, increased as it would justly be by the addition of some recompense for the intervening years—Suzanne Deroux returned vague murmurs, which might be taken for assent, till her large mild face was at length fixed towards Sir Godfrey’s, with a light of greater comprehension than before in her dim eyes; and he noticed, for the first time, that one side of her cheek and forehead was marked by the white smooth seam of an old scar—how large it was impossible to see, for her cap; but frightful it must have been once—taking, as it did, the eyebrow away, and seeming to have blanched the eye itself, where its shining mark still crept out and curled round, amidst the furrows and wrinkles of otherwise healthy old age. She said something in reply, but confusedly, and with evident agitation, while her shaking face seemed fascinated to his—and with such a mixture of patois, as it seemed, whether of idiom, pronunciation, or language—that Sir Godfrey could merely infer it to denote recollection of his brother, with sorrow for his death, and gratitude at the remembrance he had shown. The young man had at length put by his work, risen up, and approached to listen, as he leant his elbows on the broken deal-table.
“She is weak in mind, the poor woman—my mother,” said the daughter, abruptly, though still engaged in administering nourishment to her infant; “it is useless to transact anything with her, Monsieur.”
“No, it is merely her memory that is bad, Jeannette,” interposed the son-in-law, who seemed scarcely his wife’s age; and there was something deferential in his look towards the elder woman, with a comparative kindliness of tone, as he turned to address herself, putting his hand on her arm-chair and his head near hers, and using the respectful vous—“and she does not hear strangers very well—do you, belle-mère?”
The elder woman smiled faintly in return, her head still slightly trembling, though the familiar voice seemed to call up a degree of intelligence and composure on her face, somewhat like a child’s when it is commended: “no—no—not very well, my son!” she said; then drawing herself up and spreading her gown with her hands, sat full of silent importance.
“She has always been weak in mind,” coldly repeated her daughter, paying no attention to them, “since the accident by which she was so injured. I am acquainted with the circumstances, Monsieur, although at that time but a child, and fortunately not present with my mother in the house where it occurred.”
“You allude to the fire, above nineteen years ago, in the house where the family of her employer, my late brother, had their apartments?” Sir Godfrey asked, turning to her. She made a simple assent. “Then your mother, Suzanne Deroux, was a servant living within the establishment?” he continued.