Loe raamatut: «The Belovéd Vagabond», lehekülg 6

What I loved most was to make my round among the tables and mingle closely with the worshippers. Of the men, clean and correct in their perfectly fitting flannels, sometimes stern, sometimes mocking, sometimes pettishly cross, I was rather shy; but I was quite at my ease with the women, even with those whose many rings and jewels, violent perfumes and daring effects of dress made me instinctively differentiate from their quieter and less bejewelled sisters. Blanquette laughingly called me a "petit polisson" and said that I made soft eyes at them. Perhaps I did. When one is a hundred and fifty it is hard to realise that one's little scarecrow boy's eyes may have touched the hearts of women. But the appeal of the outstretched tambourine was rarely refused.

"Get out of this," the man would say.

"But no. Remain. Il a l'air si drôle– what is your name?"

"Je m'appelle Asticot, Madame, à votre service."

This always amused the lady. She would search through an invariably empty purse.

"Give him fifty centimes."

And the man would throw a silver piece into the tambourine.

Once I was in luck. The lady found a ten-franc piece in her purse.

"That is all I have."

"I have no change," growled the man.

"If I give you this," said the lady, "what would you do with it?"

"If Madame would tell me where to get it, I would buy a photograph of Madame," said I, with one of Paragot's "inspirations"; for she was very pretty.

"Voilà," she laughed putting the gold into my hand. "Tu me fais la cour, maintenant. Come and see me at the Villa Marcelle and I will give you a photograph gratis."

But Paragot when I repeated the conversation to him called the lady shocking names, and forbade me to go within a mile of the Villa Marcelle. So I did not get the photograph.

The next best thing I loved was to see Blanquette's eyes glitter when I returned to the platform and poured silver and copper into her lap. She uttered strange little exclamations under her breath, and her fingers played caressingly with the coins.

"We gain more here in a day than Père Paragot did in a week. It is wonderful. N'est-ce pas, Maître?" she said one morning.

Paragot tuned his violin and looked down on her.

"Money pleases you, Blanquette?"

"Of course."

She counted the takings sou by sou.

"Yet you did not want to accept your just share."

"What you make me take is not just, Master," she said, simply.

Much as she loved money, her sense of justice rebelled against Paragot's division of the takings – a third for Laripet, a third for Blanquette and a third for himself which he generously shared with me. Père Paragot used to sweep into his pockets every sou and Blanquette had to subsist on whatever he chose to allow for joint expenses. Her new position of independence was a subject for much inward pride, mingled however with a consciousness of her own unworthiness. Monsieur Laripet, yes; she would grant that he was entitled to the same as the Master; but herself – no. Was not the Master the great artist, and she but the clumsy strummer? Was he not also a man, with more requirements than she – tobacco, absinthe, brandy and the like?

"A third is too much," she added.

"If you argue," said he, "I will divide it in halves for Laripet and yourself, and I won't touch a penny."

"That would be idiotic," said Blanquette.

"It would be in keeping with life generally," he answered. "In a comic opera one thing is not more idiotic than another. Yes, Monsieur Laripet, we will give them Funiculi, Funiculà. I once drove in coffin nails to that tune in Verona. Now we will set people eating to it in Aix-les-Bains – we, Monsieur Laripet, you and I, who ought to be the petted minions of great capitals! It is a comic opera."

"One has to get bread or one would starve," said Blanquette pursuing her argument. "And to get bread one must have money. If I had all the money you would not eat bread."

"I should eat brioches," laughed Paragot quoting Marie Antoinette.

"You always laugh at me, Master," said Blanquette wistfully.

Paragot drew his bow across the strings.

"There is nothing in this comical universe I don't laugh at, my little Blanquette," said he. "I am like good old Montaigne – I rather laugh than weep, because to laugh is the more dignified."

Laripet struck a chord on the piano. Paragot joined in and played three bars. Then he stopped short. There was not the vestige of a laugh on his face. It was deadly white, and his eyes were those of a man who sees a ghost.

The four bright happy beings, two ladies and two men who had just entered the garden and at whom his stare was directed, took no notice, but followed a bowing maître d'hôtel to a table that had been reserved for them.

I sprang to the platform, on the edge of which I had been squatting at Blanquette's feet.

"Are you ill, Master?"

He started. "Ill? Of course not. Pardon, Monsieur Laripet. Recommençons."

He plunged into the merry tune and fiddled with all his might, as if nothing had happened. But I saw his nostrils quivering and the sweat running down his face into his beard.

CHAPTER VIII

When Funiculi Funiculà was over he sat on the wooden chair provided for him and wiped his face. His hands shook. He beckoned me to come near.

"Do I look too grotesque a mountebank Tomfool?" he asked in English.

He was wearing the pearl-buttoned velveteen suit whose magnificence he had enhanced by newly purchased steel-buckled shoes and black stockings, and to a less bigoted worshipper than me I suppose he must have looked a mountebank Tomfool; but I only gaped at his question.

"Do I?" he repeated almost fiercely.

"You look beautiful, Master," said I.

He passed his lean fingers wearily over his eyes. "Pardon, my little Asticot. There are things in Heaven and Earth etc. Myriads of Mysteries. As many in the heart of man as in your Wonder Houses yonder. Get me some brandy. Three petits verres poured into a tumbler."

I went off to the restaurant and obtained the drink. When I returned they were playing the mocking chorus that runs through "Orphée aux Enfers."

The number over, Paragot drained the glass at one gulp. The company broke into unusual applause. Some one shouted "Bis!"

"Get me some more," said he. "Do you know why I chose that tune?"

"No, Master."

"Because twenty devils entered into me and played leapfrog over one another."

"I am very fond of that little tune. It is so gay," said Blanquette, as if she were introducing a fresh topic of conversation.

"I detest it," said my master.

The maître d'hôtel came up and asked that the chorus should be played again as an encore. I fetched Paragot's drink and having set it down beside him on the platform, went round with my tambourine. When I reached the table at which the four new comers were seated I found that they spoke English. They were a young man in a straw hat, a young girl, a forbidding looking man of forty with a beaky nose, and the loveliest lady I have ever seen in my life. She had the complexion of a sea-shell. Her eyes were the blue of glaciers, and they shone cold and steadfast; but her lips were kind. Her black hair under the large white tulle hat had the rare bluish tinge, looking as if cigarette smoke had been blown through it. Small and exquisitely made she sat the princess of my boyish dreams.

"I call it a ripping tune," cried the young girl.

"I hate it more than any other tune in the world," said the lovely lady with a shiver.

Her voice was like a peal of bells or running water or whatever silvery sounding things you will.

"It is very absurd to have such prejudices," said the beaky-nosed man of forty. He spoke like a Frenchman, and like a very disagreeable Frenchman. How dared he address my princess in that tone?

I extended my tambourine.

"Qu'est-ce que vous désirez?" asked the straw-hatted young man in an accent as Britannic as the main deck of the Bellerophon.

"Anything that the ladies will kindly give me, Sir," I replied in our native tongue.

"Hullo! English? What are you knocking about France for?"

I glanced at the lovely lady. She was crumbling bread and not taking the least notice of me. I was piqued.

"My Master thinks it the best way to teach me philosophy, Sir," said I politely. If I had not learned much philosophy from him I had at least learned politeness. The lady looked up with a smile. The young girl exclaimed that either my remark or myself – I forget which – was ripping. I paid little heed to her. I have always disregarded the people of one adjective; they seem poverty-stricken to one who has sunned himself in the wealth of Paragot's epithets.

"Your master is the gentleman in the pearl buttons?" enquired the young man.

"Yes, Sir."

"What's his name?"

"Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot, Sir," said I so proudly that the lovely princess laughed.

"I must look at him," she said turning round in her chair.

I too glanced at the familiar group on the platform: Laripet with his back to us, working his arms and shoulders at the piano; Blanquette seated on the other side, thrumming away at the zither on her lap; Narcisse lolling his tongue in that cynical grin of his; and Paragot fiddling in front, like a fiddler possessed, his clear eyes fixed on the lady in a most uncanny stare.

When she turned again, she shivered once more. She did not look up but went on crumbling bread. It shocked me to notice that the pink of her sea-shell face had gone and that her fingers trembled. Then a wild conjecture danced through my brain and I forgot my tambourine.

"You still here?" laughed the young man. "What are you waiting for?"

I started. "I beg your pardon, Sir," said I moving away. He laughed and called me back.

"Here are two francs to buy a philosophy book."

"And here are five sous not to come and worry us again," said the older man in French. While I was wondering why they tolerated such a disagreeable man in the party my beautiful lady's fingers flew to the gilt chain purse by her side. "And here are five francs because you are English!" she exclaimed; and as she held me for a second with her eyes I saw in them infinite depths of sadness and longing.

When I returned to the platform the piece had just been brought to an end. Paragot poured his second brandy down his throat and sat with his head in his hands. I shed, as usual, my takings into Blanquette's lap. On seeing the five-franc piece her eyes equalled it in size.

"Tiens! Cent sous! who gave it you?"

I explained. The most beautiful lady in the world. Paragot raised his head and looked at me haggardly.

"Why did she give you five francs?"

"Because I was English, she said."

"Did she talk to you?"

"Yes, Master, and I have never heard anyone speak so beautifully."

Paragot made no answer, but began to tune his violin.

During the next interval my quartette left the restaurant. I ran to the gate, and bowed as they passed by.

The young fellow gave me a friendly nod, but the lovely lady swept out cold-eyed, looking neither to right nor left. A large two-horsed cab with a gay awning awaited them on the quay. As my lady entered, her skirt uplifted ever so little disclosed the most delicately shaped, tiny foot that has ever been attached to woman, and then I felt sure.

"Those little feet so adored." The haunting phrase leaped to my brain and I stood staring at the departing carriage athrill with excitement.

It was Joanna – lovelier than I had pictured her in my Lotus Club dreams, more gracious than Ingonde or Chlodoswinde or any of the belles dames du temps jadis whose ballade by Maître François Villon my master had but lately made me learn by heart and whose names were so many "sweet symphonies." It was Joanna, "pure and ravishing as an April dawn"; Joanna beloved of Paragot in those elusive days when I could not picture him, before he smashed his furniture with a crusader's mace and started on his wanderings under the guidance of Henri Quatre. It was Joanna whom he had an agonized desire to see in Madrid and whose silvery English voice he had longed to hear. And I, Asticot, had seen her and had heard her silvery voice. Among boys assuredly I was the most blessed.

But Paragot seemed that day of all men the most miserable, and I more dog-like than Narcisse in my sympathy with his moods, almost lifted up my nose and whined for woe. All my thrill died away. I felt guilty, oddly ashamed of myself. I took a pessimistic view of life. What, thought I, are Joannas sent into the world for, save to play havoc with men's happiness? Maître François Villon was quite right. Samson, Sardanapalus, David, Maître François himself, all came to grief over Joannas. "Bien heureux qui rien n'y a." Happy is he who has nothing to do with 'em.

As soon as we were free Paragot left us, and went off by himself; whereupon I, mimetic as an ape, rejected the humble Blanquette's invitation to take a walk with her, and strolled moodily into the town with Narcisse at my heels. A dog fight or two and a Byronic talk with a little towheaded flower-seller who gave me a dusty bunch of cyclamen – as a porte-bonheur she said prettily – whiled away the time until the people began to drift out of the Wonder Houses to dress for dinner. I lingered at the gates, going from one to the other, in the unavowed hope, little idiot that I was, of seeing Joanna. At last, at the main entrance to the Villa des Fleurs I caught sight of Paragot. He had changed from the velveteens into his vagabond clothes, and was evidently on the same errand as myself. I did not venture near, respecting his desire for solitude, but lounged at the corner of the main street and the road leading down to the Villa, playing with Narcisse and longing for something to happen. You see it is not given every day to an impressionable youngster, his brain stuffed with poetry, pictures, and such like delusive visionary things, to tumble head first into the romance of the actual world. For the moment the romance was at a standstill. I longed for a further chapter. It was a pity, I reflected, that we did not live in Merovingian times. Then Paragot and I could have lain in wait with our horses – everyone had horses in knightly days – and when Joanna came near, we should have killed the beaky-nosed man, and Paragot would have swung her on his saddlebow and we should have galloped away to his castle in the next kingdom, where Paragot, and Joanna and I, with Blanquette to be tirewoman to our princess, would have lived happy ever after. What I expected to get for myself, heaven knows: it did not strike me that perennial contemplation of another's bliss might wear out the stoutest altruism.

Then suddenly out of the door of the Villa came two ladies, one of whom I recognised as Joanna and the other as the young girl of the luncheon party. The façade of the villa stretches across the road and is about a hundred yards from the corner. I saw Paragot stand rigid, and make no sign of recognition as she passed him by, with her head up, like a proud queen. I felt an odd pain at my heart. Why was she so cruel? Her eyes were of the blue of glaciers, but all the rest of her face had seemed tender and kind. I was aware, in a general way, that radiantly attired ladies do not shake hands with ragamuffins in public places, but you must please to remember that I no more considered Paragot a ragamuffin than I thought Blanquette the equal of Joanna. Paragot to me was the peer of kings.

I turned away sorrowing and sauntered up the little street that leads to the Etablissement des Bains. I was disappointed in Joanna and did not want to see her again. She should be punished for her cruelty. I sat down on one of the benches on the Place, and looking at the Mairie clock stolidly thought of supper. They made famous onion soup at the little auberge where we lodged, and Paragot, himself a connoisseur, had pronounced their tripes à la mode de Caen superior to anything that Mrs. Housekeeper had executed for the Lotus Club. Besides I was getting hungry. With youth a full heart rarely compensates an empty stomach, and now even my heart was growing empty.

Presently who should emerge into the Place but the two ladies. I sat on my bench and watched them cross. They were evidently going up the hill to one of the hotels behind the Etablissement. In her white dress and white tulle hat coloured by three great roses, with her beautiful hair and sea-shell face and swaying supple figure, she looked the incarnation of all that was worshipful in woman. I could have knelt and prayed to her. Why was she so cruel to my master? I regarded her with mingled reproach and adoration. But the mixed feeling gave place to one of amazement when I saw her separate from her companion, who continued her way up the hill, and strike straight across the Place in my direction.

She was coming to me.

I rose, took off my ragged hat and twirled it in my fingers, which was the way that Paragot had taught me to be polite in France.

"I want to speak to you," she said quickly. "You are the boy with the tambourine, aren't you?"

"Yes, Mademoiselle."

Paragot had threatened to shoot me if I called any young lady "Miss."

"What is the name of the – the gentleman who played the violin?"

"Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot."

"That is not his real name?"

"No, Mademoiselle," said I.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," said I. "This is a new name; he has only had it a week."

"How long have you known him?"

"A long, long time, Mademoiselle. He adopted me when I was quite small."

"You are not very big now," she said with a smile.

"I am nearly sixteen," said I proudly.

To herself she murmured, "I don't think I can be mistaken."

In a different tone she continued, "You spoke some nonsense about his being your master and teaching you philosophy."

"It wasn't nonsense," I replied stoutly. "He teaches me everything. He teaches me history and Shakespeare and François Villon, and painting and Schopenhauer and the tambourine."

Her pretty lips pouted in a little gasp of astonishment as she leaned on her long parasol and looked at me.

"You are the oddest little freak I have come across for a long time."

I smiled happily. She could have called me anything opprobrious in that silvery voice of hers and I should have smiled. Now I come to think of it "smile" is the wrong word. The man smiles, the boy grins. I grinned happily.

"Has your master always played the violin in orchestras like this?"

"Oh, no, Mademoiselle," said I. "Of course not. He only began four days ago."

"What was his employment till then?"

"Why, none," said I.

It seemed absurd for Paragot to have employment like a man behind a shop-counter. I remembered acquaintances of my mother's who were "out of employment" and their unspeakable vileness. Then, echo of Paragot (for what else could I be?), I added: "We just walk about Europe for the sake of my education. My master said I was to learn Life from the Book of the Universe."

The lovely lady sat down.

"I believe you are nothing more nor less than an amazing little parrot. I'm sure you speak exactly like your master."

"Oh, no, Mademoiselle," said I modestly, "I wish I could. There is no one who can talk like him in all the world."

She gave me a long, steady, half-frightened look out of her blue eyes. I know now that I had struck a chord of memory; that I had established beyond question in her mind Paragot's identity with the man who had loved her in days past; that old things sweet and terrifying surged within her heart. Even then, holding their secret, I saw that she had recognised Paragot.

"You must think me a very inquisitive lady," she said, with a forced smile; "but you must forgive me. What you said this morning about your master teaching you philosophy interested me greatly. One thing I should like to know," and she dug at the gravel with the point of her parasol, "and that I hardly like to ask. Is he – are you – very poor?"

"Poor?" It was a totally new idea. "Why, no, Mademoiselle; he has a great bank in London which sends him bank-notes whenever he wants them. I once went with him. He has heaps of money."

The lady rose. "So this going about as a mountebank is only a masquerade," she said, with a touch of scorn.

"He did it to help Blanquette," said I.

"Blanquette?"

"The girl who plays the zither. My master has adopted her too."

"Oh, has he?" said the lady, the blue of her eyes becoming frosty again. I dimly perceived that in mentioning Blanquette I had been indiscreet. In what respect, I know not. I had intended my remark to be a tribute to Paragot's wide-heartedness. She took it as if I had told her of a crime. Women, even the loveliest of dream Joannas, are a mystifying race. "Bien heureux qui rien n'y a."

"Goodbye," she said.

"Goodbye, Mademoiselle."

She must have read mortification in my face, for she turned after a step or two, and said more kindly.

"You're not responsible, anyway." Then she paused, as if hesitating, while I stood hat in hand, as I had done during our conversation.

"I wonder if I can trust you."

She took her purse from the bag hanging at her waist and drew out a gold piece.

"I will give you this if you promise not to tell your Master that you have spoken to me this afternoon."

I shrank back. Remember I had been for three years in the hourly companionship of a man of lofty soul for all his waywardness, and he had modelled me like wax to his liking. The gold piece was tempting. I had never owned a gold piece in my life – and all the frost had melted from Joanna's eyes. But I felt I should be dishonored in taking money.

"I promise without that," I said.

She put the coin back in her purse and held out her delicately gloved hand.

"Promise with this, then," she said.

And then I knew for the first time what an exquisite sensitive thing is a sweet, high-bred lady. Only such a one could have performed that act of grace. She converted me into a besotted little imbecile weltering in bliss. I would have pledged my soul's welfare to execute any phantasmagoric behest she had chosen to ordain.

"I am leaving Aix tomorrow morning – but if you are ever in any trouble – by the way what is your name?"

"Asticot Pradel," said I, reflecting for the first time that though Polydore Pradel had perished and Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot reigned in his stead, my own borrowed or invented name remained unaltered. Augustus Smith lingered in my memory as a vague, mythical creature of no account.

Joanna smiled. "You are a little masquerader too. Well – if you are ever in any trouble, and I can help you – remember the Comtesse de Verneuil, 7 Avenue de Messine, Paris."

This offer of friendship took my breath away. I grinned stupidly at her. I was also puzzled.

"What is the matter?" she laughed.

"The Comtesse de Verneuil? – but you are English," I stammered.

"Yes. But my husband is French. He is the Comte de Verneuil. Remember 7 Avenue de Messine."

She nodded graciously and turned away leaving a stupefied Asticot twirling his hat. Her husband! And I had been calling her Mademoiselle all the time! And I had been weaving fairy tales of our riding off with her to Paragot's castle! She was married. Her husband was the Comte de Verneuil! Worse than that. Her husband was the disagreeable beaky-nosed man who gave me five sous to go away.

A sense of desolation, disaster, disillusionment overwhelmed me. I sat on the bench and burst out crying and Narcisse jumped up and licked my face.