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Title: Papa Bouchard
Author: Molly Elliott Seawell
Illustrator: William Glackens
Release Date: April 5, 2023 [eBook #70469]
Language: English
Produced by: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by
University of California libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAPA BOUCHARD ***
PAPA BOUCHARD
By Miss Seawell
THE HOUSE OF EGREMONT. Illustrated by C. M. RELYEA. 12mo. $1.50.
THE HISTORY OF THE LADY BETTY STAIR. Illustrated by THULE DE
THULSTRUP. 12mo. $1.25.
THE SPRIGHTLY ROMANCE OF MARSAC. Illustrated by GUSTAVE VERBEEK.
12mo. $1.25.
TWELVE NAVAL CAPTAINS. Being a record of certain Americans who made
themselves Immortal. With Portraits. 12mo. $1.25.
[Illustration: She had asked him to button her glove.]
PAPA BOUCHARD
BY
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL
Illustrated by
WILLIAM GLACKENS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1901
_Copyright 1901_,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
_Dramatic and all other rights
reserved_
University Press
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
Illustrations
PAGE
_She had asked him to button her glove_ Frontispiece
_It was the bird who made the first dash for liberty_ 5
_Monsieur Bouchard’s back and legs looked about seventy-five_ 7
_With an affectation of ease and debonairness, and told about
the apartment near the Champs Élysées_ 11
_He stood on one leg, and softly whispered, “Houp-là!”_ 20
_Pierre, however, pretty soon solved the situation by putting
his finger to the side of his nose_ 28
“_I like the lively tunes they play at the music halls across
the street_” 30
“_And the girls are permitted to come out in their stage
costumes to have an ice or a glass of wine_” 45
_De Meneval pulled from his pocket a glittering string of
diamonds_ 53
_“Ta, ta!” called out the graceless dog of a captain_ 59
_She looked like one of those brilliant white butterflies
whose lives are spent dancing in the sun_ 62
_“Does Captain de Meneval know of these bills?” he asked
significantly_ 72
_They went out like two sulky and disappointed children_ 91
_Monsieur Bouchard tried to reassure her--her timidity was
constitutional_ 98
_Monsieur Bouchard sank or rather fell into a chair_ 100
_As Léontine and her husband sat opposite each other--each
felt like a criminal_ 111
_Still, they really loved each other, and kissed
affectionately_ 121
_And there on the arbor hung a cage with a parrot in it_ 131
_A flock of girls, each escorted by a young man, generally
an officer_ 133
_Monsieur Bouchard entered with an air of affected jauntiness_ 135
_At that very moment Léontine and de Meneval were watching him_ 138
_Papa Bouchard stuck pretty close to the champagne_ 146
_Madame Vernet had not the slightest objection to be left in
charge of this good-looking young officer_ 158
_He took a seat close to where Madame Vernet was standing_ 163
_The police officers seized him and dragged him out_ 171
“_Go to the devil!_” 179
_All three of them bolted for the exit to the garden_ 185
_Élise had that evening found her opportunity to go round
to the Rue Bassano_ 198
_And drove rapidly home_ 200
_In the middle of the room was spread a table, with
preparation for an elaborate supper_ 203
_To tiptoe and actually chuck old P. M. P. under the chin_ 208
_Léontine would motion as if to chuck him under the chin_ 214
_Dragging in an elderly gentleman by main force and his coat
tails_ 218
_Papa Bouchard, much alarmed, ran from one to the other_ 220
_“O-o-o-oh!” shrieked the three impish girls in chorus,
“what an outrageous proposition!”_ 224
_His ruddy complexion turned a sickly green_ 226
_She sang_ 230
_She even danced_ 231
“_I am your own true, devoted Léontine_” 234
_The door was burst open and in rushed Pierre, pale and
breathless_ 242
_With much discretion, ranged themselves primly on a sofa_ 244
“_Paul, stop those shocking demonstrations_” 246
_She clutched a flower pot and a gold-headed stick_ 247
_Major Fallière ceremoniously offered her his arm_ 251
_Folding his arms and turning up the whites of his eyes_ 255
_Forcing the cage door open with almost human intelligence,
flew out_ 257
“_Free! Free! gay dogs are we!_” 260
Papa Bouchard
Chapter I
ON a certain day in June, 1901, a cataclysm occurred in the quiet
apartment of Mademoiselle Céleste Bouchard, in the Rue Clarisse,
the quietest street in the quietest part of Paris. This cataclysm
consisted of the simultaneous departure, or rather the levanting, of
the entire masculine element in the excellent old lady’s household. And
this masculine element had been so admirably trained! Monsieur Paul
Bouchard, in particular, ten years his sister’s junior, was reckoned a
model man. Mademoiselle could truly say that during Monsieur Bouchard’s
fifty-four years of life he had never, until then, given her a moment’s
anxiety. All the elderly ladies of the Bouchards’ acquaintance pointed
with admiration to Monsieur Paul.
“Look!” they said; “such a good brother! Mademoiselle boasts that
although he is fifty-four years of age he is still as obedient to her
as he was at fifteen. So prosperous and respected as an advocate,
too!” And all these ladies sighed because they had not succeeded in
petticoating a brother or a husband as Mademoiselle Bouchard had
petticoated the prosperous and respected Monsieur Paul Bouchard.
Pierre, the husband of Élise, Mademoiselle Bouchard’s maid for thirty
years, was as well disciplined as his master, for he was Monsieur
Paul’s valet. He had never had a will of his own since the day, thirty
years before, when Élise had sworn before the altar to love, honor and
obey him.
The third masculine creature in the dovecote of the Rue Clarisse was
the parrot, Pierrot. Nobody knew exactly how old Pierrot was, but he
was supposed to have arrived at years of discretion. Mademoiselle had
spent a dozen patient years in curing Pierrot of a propensity to bad
language, and she had taught him a great variety of moral maxims that
made him a model bird, as Monsieur Bouchard was a model man and Pierre
a model servant. It is true that Léontine de Meneval, Monsieur Paul’s
ward, married to a handsome scapegrace captain of artillery, had amused
herself with teaching the bird a number of phrases, such as “Bad boy
Bouchard” and others reflecting on “Papa Bouchard,” as she called him.
And Pierrot had picked up these naughty expressions with astonishing
quickness. But Léontine had always been regarded as incorrigible by
her guardian and his sister, although they really loved her, and since
her marriage she had become gayer, merrier and more irresponsible than
ever. This deterioration both Monsieur and Mademoiselle Bouchard laid
at the door of her husband, Captain de Meneval, with his laughing
eyes and devil-may-care manner; with whom, however, aside from these
characteristics, not the slightest fault could be found. He was
devoted to Léontine, and if the two chose to lead a life as merry and
unreflecting as that of the birds in the shadowy forests, nobody could
stop them. Papa Bouchard--as the artillery captain had the impudence
to call him--did, it is true, keep a tight hand on Léontine’s fortune,
and would allow her only half her income, at which Léontine grumbled
and incited Captain de Meneval to grumble, too. But Papa Bouchard,
having full power as trustee, met their complaints and protests with a
proposition to cut down their allowance to one-fourth of their income,
at which the two young people grew frightened, and desisted.
Now, there dwells in every masculine breast a germ of lawlessness that
no discipline ever invented can wholly kill. Man or parrot, it is the
same. After having been brought up in the way he should go, he longs to
go it. Such was the case with Pierrot, with Pierre and with Monsieur
Bouchard.
[Illustration]
It was the bird that first made a dash for liberty. After ten years of
irreproachable conduct, Pierrot, on that June morning, suddenly jumped
from the balcony, where he had been walking the railing in the most
sedate manner, and scuttled off in the direction of the Alcazar d’Été,
the Ambassadeurs, the Moulin Rouge, and the very gayest quarter of
Paris.
Monsieur Bouchard was sitting on the balcony at the time. He was rather
younger looking, with his clean-shaven face and wiry figure, than most
men of his age, but thanks to Mademoiselle Céleste, he patronized
the same tailors that had made for his father and his grandfather.
Their cut and style indicated that they had been tailors to Cardinal
Richelieu and others of that time, and they dressed Monsieur Bouchard
in coats and trousers and waistcoats of the pliocene age of tailoring.
As for his hats, they might have been dug out of Pompeii, for any
modernity they had, and the result was that Monsieur Bouchard’s back
and legs looked about seventy-five, while his face looked little more
than forty.
Instead of giving the alarm when Pierrot trotted gaily off, Monsieur
Bouchard felt a strange thrill of sympathy with the runaway.
“Poor devil!” thought he. “No doubt he is sick of the Rue
Clarisse--tired of the moral maxims--weary of the whole business.
He isn’t so young as he was, but there’s a good deal of life in him
still”--Pierrot was just scampering around the corner--“and he wants to
see life.”
[Illustration]
“There is a psychologic moment for everything,” so Otto von Bismarck
said. The parrot’s escape made a psychologic moment for Monsieur
Bouchard, and quietly putting on his hat, and telling Mademoiselle
Bouchard that he was going to a meeting of the Society of French
Antiquarians at St. Germains, and afterward for a stroll through the
museum in the town, made straight for a street in the neighborhood of
the Champs Élysées. He remembered seeing in that quarter a handsome
new apartment house lately finished and thoroughly modern. He had
for curiosity’s sake entered it. He had seen furnished apartments so
bright, so light, so cheery, so merry that he longed to establish
himself there. He had gone back once, twice, thrice, each time more
infatuated with the place. To-day he walked in, selected a vacant
apartment, and in ten minutes had taken a lease of it for a year.
And then he had to go back to the Rue Clarisse to tell about it.
Of course, he had not thrown off the yoke of thirty years without
secret alarms, agitations and palpitations. He walked up and down the
Rue Clarisse twice, his heart thumping loudly against his ribs, before
he could screw up resolution to enter. He was nerved, however, by the
recollection of the apartment he had just seen; it had been given up
the day before by a young journalist, named Marsac, who had left
various souvenirs of a very pleasant life there. The street was such a
bustling, noisy street--and the Rue Clarisse was so quiet, so quiet! In
the new street there were two music halls in full view and generally
in full blast, gay restaurants blazing with lights, where all sorts
of delicious, indigestible things to eat were to be had, and such an
atmosphere of jollity and movement! Monsieur Bouchard quivered with
delight like a schoolboy as he thought of it, and so he marched in to
take his life in his hand while breaking the news to his sister Céleste.
Mademoiselle Bouchard, a small, prim, devoted, affectionate, obstinate
creature, was sitting in the drawing-room, bemoaning with Élise the
loss of Pierrot. Élise, a hard-featured, hard-working creature, had
such a profound contempt for the other sex that it was a wonder
she ever brought herself to marry one of them. She was saying to
Mademoiselle Bouchard:
“Depend on it, Mademoiselle, that ungrateful Pierrot will never come
back of his own accord. If he had been a she bird, now--but Pierrot is
like the rest of his sex. It’s in them to run away--and run away they
will.”
“He has had a quiet, peaceful home in the Rue Clarisse for seventeen
years,” wailed poor Mademoiselle Bouchard.
“That’s reason enough for him to run away. What does he care about
a quiet, peaceful home? He wants to be strutting around in some
restaurant, drinking and swearing and turning night into day. They’re
all like that. My Pierre, now, is just as ready to run away as was
Pierrot, but I shall keep an eye on _him_.”
[Illustration: With an affectation of ease and debonairness, and told
about the apartment near the Champs Élysées.]
And then Monsieur Bouchard walked in, with an affectation of case and
debonairness, and told about the apartment near the Champs Élysées,
whereat it seemed to poor Mademoiselle Céleste as if the Louvre had
moved itself over into the Bois de Boulogne and the Seine had
suddenly begun to flow backward. Of course, Monsieur Bouchard had
arranged a plausible tale by which his hegira was to appear the most
natural and laudable thing in the world. Most men are inventive enough
in the matter of personal justification. But it is one thing to make up
and tell a plausible tale, and another to get that tale believed. Élise
openly sniffed at the theory advanced by Monsieur Bouchard that it was
absolutely necessary for him to live nearer the courts. Also, that he
was really inspired by a desire to save Mademoiselle the annoyance of
clients coming and going.
“You remember, my dear Céleste, you complained of Captain de Meneval
the last time he was here. You said he talked and laughed so much, and
chucked Élise under the chin----”
“But that was a trifle; you know there’s no real harm done,” protested
Mademoiselle Bouchard.
“Why? Because I won’t let him,” said Monsieur Bouchard, with the
determined air a man assumes when he wishes to impress a woman with a
great notion of the power he holds over another man. “It is because he
has to deal with _me_--a man born with his shirt on, as the peasants
say. Otherwise, there might be harm done. De Meneval is very saucy.
When I reminded him the other day of the promise I exacted from him
when he married Léontine, that he wouldn’t go into debt, the fellow
grinned and said he was in love with Léontine, and would have promised
to eat his grandmother if I had made that a condition.”
“But in reference to this strange notion of yours about taking an
apartment at your time of life----”
“That’s just it, my dear,” cried Monsieur Bouchard. “I am too old not
to have a separate establishment.”
“Too old!” cried Mademoiselle, who had never ceased to regard the
model Monsieur Bouchard as a wild sprig of flamboyant youth; “you mean
too young!”
Monsieur Bouchard was tickled. What gentleman of fifty-four is not
pleased at the assumption that he is merely a colt, after all?
Mademoiselle Bouchard anxiously scrutinized her brother. There was a
lawless gleam in his eye--an indefinable something that is revealed
when a man has the bit between his teeth and does not mean to let it
go. Mademoiselle, good, innocent soul, was not devoid of sense, and she
saw her only game was to play for time.
“Very well, Paul. If you _will_ desert the Rue Clarisse, I will look
about and get you an apartment near by, and I will let you have
Pierre----”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Monsieur Bouchard, hastily. He had no mind to have
a domestic Vidocq in his new quarters. “I couldn’t think of robbing you
of Pierre. Thirty years you have had him. You could not get on without
him.”
“Yes, I could.”
“I can’t accept the sacrifice.”
“I make it cheerfully for your sake.”
“It would be cruel to Pierre.”
“_He_ will make the sacrifice.”
“That he will,” interrupted Élise, with the freedom of an old servant.
“He will caper at the notion of leaving the Rue Clarisse for some wild,
dissipated place such as Monsieur Paul has selected.”
“Monsieur Paul has not selected a place, Élise,” replied Mademoiselle,
with severity.
“But--but I have, my dear Céleste. It is No. 25 Rue Bassano. I
have taken it for a year. In fact, the van is coming to-day for my
personal belongings. Pierre will see to them. And, my dear, I have a
busy day before me. I am due at the meeting of the Society of French
Antiquarians at St. Germains at one o’clock, and I can barely make the
train. Afterward I shall spend some instructive hours in the museum--I
shall see you to-morrow--” and Monsieur Bouchard literally ran out of
the room.
“There he goes!” apostrophized Élise to Mademoiselle Céleste, who was
almost in tears. “That’s the way Pierrot scampered off, and Pierre
wants only half a wink to run off, too, to the Rue Bassano.”
“Élise,” cried Mademoiselle, “you are most unjust, and your suspicions
of Pierre will be disproved. Ring the bell.”
Pierre appeared.
He was about Monsieur Bouchard’s age, height and size--medium in all
respects--clean shaven, like his master, and wore a cast-off suit
of Monsieur Bouchard’s, as it was the morning and his livery was
religiously saved for the afternoon. He was, in short, a very good
replica of Monsieur Bouchard.
Mademoiselle Bouchard stated the case to him, carefully giving Monsieur
Paul’s bogus reasons.
“The Rue Bassano is a very gay and noisy place, Pierre, as you know,
with a great many theatres and restaurants about, and much passing to
and fro. It will be a change from the Rue Clarisse.”
“Mademoiselle, I know it,” Pierre replied, showing the whites of his
eyes. “I would much rather remain in this decent, quiet street.”
Mademoiselle turned to Élise with an I-told-you-so air, and said, “No
doubt you would, Pierre--a man of your excellent character.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle. The theatres and music halls must be very
objectionable--and the restaurants. I suppose the waiters would laugh
at me when I went to fetch Monsieur’s dinner of boiled mutton and rice.”
“Yes; but if it were your duty to go with Monsieur?”
“Duty, Mademoiselle, has ever been a sacred word with me. Though but a
servant, I have always revered my duty,” replied the virtuous Pierre.
He backed and filled for some time longer, as servants commonly do--and
as some of their masters and mistresses do sometimes--but finally, in
response to Mademoiselle Bouchard’s pleading that he would not desert
Monsieur Bouchard at this critical moment in his career, consented to
brave the dangers of the gay Rue Bassano. But when Mademoiselle hinted
at the horrid possibility that Monsieur Bouchard might be beguiled into
sowing a late crop of wild oats, suddenly a grin flashed for a moment
on Pierre’s stolid countenance--flashed and disappeared so instantly
that Mademoiselle Bouchard was not sure he grinned at all. If he did,
however, it must have been at the notion that the staid, the correct
Monsieur Bouchard could ever sow wild oats. Mademoiselle Céleste
blushed faintly at the thought that she reckoned such a thing possible.
[Illustration]
Pierre then backed out of the door, wiping two imaginary tears from
his eyes. Once outside with the door shut, this miscreant did a very
strange thing. He stood on one leg, whirled around with the greatest
agility for his years, and softly whispered, “Houp-là!”
That very day came the moving. The van arrived, and Monsieur Bouchard’s
books, papers and clothes were put into it by Pierre, who seemed to
be in the deepest dejection. Mademoiselle gave him minute and tearful
directions about Monsieur Paul’s diet, exercise and clothing. He was
to see that Monsieur Paul kept regular hours, and was to report in
the Rue Clarisse the smallest infraction of the rules of living which
might occur in the Rue Bassano; and Pierre promised with a fervor and
glibness that would have excited the suspicions of anyone less kindly
and simple-minded than good old Mademoiselle. He did indeed awaken a
host of doubts in the mind of his faithful Élise, who had not been
married for thirty years without finding out a few things about men.
And when he wept at telling her good-bye for a single day, she told him
not to be shedding any of those crocodile tears around her.
Pierre, mounted on the van that carried away Monsieur Bouchard’s
belongings, drove off, looking as melancholy as he could; but as soon
as he turned the corner he began whistling so merrily that the driver
asked him if his uncle hadn’t died and left him some money.
When the Rue Bassano was reached Pierre jumped down and skipped up
stairs with the agility of twenty instead of fifty. He was as charmed
with Monsieur’s new apartment as Monsieur himself had been. It was
so intensely modern. Light everywhere--all sorts of new-fashioned
conveniences--nothing in the least like the dismal old Rue Clarisse.
And the view from the windows--so very gay! And the noise--so
delicious, so intoxicatingly interesting! The sound of rag time music
came from the two music halls across the way. Pierre, dropping all
pretence of work, was inspired to do the _can-can_, whistling and
singing meanwhile. The open window proved so attractive that Pierre
spent a good part of the time hanging out of it, and only by fits and
starts got Monsieur Bouchard’s belongings in place. And the more he
saw of the place, the more exuberant was his delight with it, and the
more determined he was to stay there. The last tenant--the jolly young
journalist named Marsac--had left, as Monsieur Bouchard had noted, some
souvenirs on the walls in the shape of gaudy posters and brilliant
chromos of ballet girls. These, Pierre might be expected to remove
when he began to hang on the walls the severely classic pictures that
constituted Monsieur Bouchard’s collection of art. But Pierre seemed
to know by clairvoyance Monsieur Bouchard’s latent tastes. He hung
“The Coliseum by Moonlight”--a very fine etching--immediately under
a red-and-gold young lady who was making a quarter past six with her
dainty, uplifted toe. “Socrates and His Pupils” were put where they
could get an admirable view of another red-and-gold young lady who
was making twelve o’clock meridian as nearly as a human being could.
“Kittens at Play”--a great favorite of Mademoiselle’s--was side by
side with a picture of Courier, who won the Grand Prix that year, and
a very noble portrait of President Loubet was placed next a cut of a
celebrated English prize fighter, stripped for the ring. The remainder
of the things were neatly arranged; the _concierge_, who was to supply
Monsieur Bouchard’s meals, was interviewed, and an appetizing dinner
ordered. Then Pierre, taking possession of the evening newspaper and
also of a very comfortable chair by the window, awaited Monsieur
Bouchard’s arrival.
It was a charming evening in the middle of June, and still broad
daylight at seven o’clock. But Pierre, presently lighting a lamp and
drawing the shades, gave the apartment a homelike and inviting aspect.
Just as the clock struck seven Monsieur Bouchard’s step was heard on
the stair. Seven o’clock had been Monsieur Bouchard’s hour of coming
home since he was fifteen years old, and he had never varied from it
three minutes in thirty-seven years. He entered the drawing-room with
a new and jovial air, but when he saw Pierre his countenance turned as
black as a thunder-cloud.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, curtly.
“I came, Monsieur, by Mademoiselle’s orders,” civilly replied Pierre.
“Mademoiselle’s orders” was still a phrase to conjure by with Monsieur
Bouchard. When the yoke of forty years is thrown off there is still a
feeling as if it were bearing on the neck. Monsieur Bouchard threw his
gloves crossly on the table and asked for his dinner.
“It will be here in five minutes, Monsieur,” replied Pierre. “Will not
Monsieur look about the apartment and see if I have arranged things to
suit him? The pictures, for example?”
Monsieur, still sulky, rose, and the first thing his eye fell on was
the prize fighter’s portrait under President Loubet’s.
“This is intolerable!” he said, indignantly. “Why didn’t you take this
prize-fighting daub down?”
“Because,” readily responded Pierre, “the place where it was would be
marked on the wall; and besides, I did not like to take the liberty
without Monsieur’s permission.”
Monsieur Bouchard passed on to the next picture, that of the hero of
the Grand Prix. He liked horses--in pictures, that is--and really found
Courier more to his taste than “Kittens at Play.” His countenance
cleared, and when Pierre gravely directed him to the young lady poised
on one toe and reaching skyward with the other, a faint smile actually
appeared on Monsieur Bouchard’s face. Then, his eye falling on the
other young lady who was trying to make twelve o’clock meridian,
every wrinkle on his forehead smoothed out, his mouth came open like
a rat trap, and he involuntarily assumed an attitude of pleased
contemplation, with his hands under his coat tails.
Suddenly, however, it flashed on him that Mademoiselle Bouchard’s
paid detective, in the person of Pierre, was eyeing him, and with the
quickness of thought Monsieur Bouchard’s appreciative smile gave way to
a portentous frown, and turning to Pierre, he said, sternly:
“Take this thing away! It is reprehensible both in art and morals! I
can’t have it here!”
But, wonder of wonders! there stood Pierre, his mouth wide open in a
silent guffaw, his left eye nearly closed. Was it possible that he was
daring to wink at his master? Pierre, however, pretty soon solved the
situation by putting his finger on the side of his nose--a shocking
familiarity--and saying, roguishly:
[Illustration]
“Ah, sir, I have something to say to you. I was forced, yes, actually
driven, from the decorous quiet of the Rue Clarisse and the company of
Mademoiselle Bouchard and my worthy Élise and the cats, to this gay
locality by my solicitude for Monsieur. That is to say, Mademoiselle
thinks I was. One thing is certain--I was sent here to cake care of
Monsieur. Well, it depends entirely on Monsieur how I take care of him.
Do you understand, sir?”
“N--n--not exactly.” Monsieur Bouchard was a little frightened. Having
Pierre to mount guard over him seemed destructive of the harmless
liberty and mild gaiety he had promised himself in the Rue Bassano.
“Just this, sir. My wife, I have reason to know, expects Monsieur to
watch me and report to her. Mademoiselle expects me to watch Monsieur
and report to _her_. Now, what prevents us from each giving a good
account of the other, and meanwhile doing as we please?”
Monsieur for a moment looked indignant at this impudent proposition,
coming, too, as it did from a servant whom he had known as the pattern
of decorum for thirty years. But only for a moment. Was it strange,
after all, that thirty years of the Rue Clarisse had bred a spirit of
revolt in this hitherto obedient husband and submissive servant?
[Illustration]
Pierre, seeing evidences of yielding on the part of Monsieur, proceeded
to clinch the matter.
“You see, sir, I found out you were looking at this apartment. If I
had told Mademoiselle what I knew about it there’d have been a pretty
kettle of fish. I doubt if Monsieur would have got away from the Rue
Clarisse alive. But I didn’t. I concluded the Rue Bassano was a very
pleasant place to live. I like the lively tunes they play at the
music halls across the street, and that theatre round the corner is
convenient. But I never should have got away if I had showed how much
I wanted to come. When Mademoiselle proposed it to me, I lied like a
trooper. I not only lied, but I cried, at the prospect of leaving the
Rue Clarisse. That settled it. A woman is like a pig. If you want to
drive her to Orleans, you must head her for Strasburg. So here we are,
sir, and if we don’t have a livelier time here than we did in the Rue
Clarisse it will be Monsieur’s fault, not mine.”
Monsieur met this outrageous speech by saying, “You are the most
impudent, scandalous, scheming, hypocritical rascal I ever met----”
Pierre just then heard sounds in the little lobby which he understood.
He ran out and returned with a tray, which he placed on the table,
already laid for one. Then, arranging the dishes with a great
flourish, he invited Monsieur Bouchard to take his place at the table.
Monsieur complied. The first course was oysters--at three francs the
dozen. Then there was turtle soup; devilled lobster, duckling _à la
Bordelaise_--both of which were forbidden in the Rue Clarisse, because
Monsieur Bouchard at the age of seven had been made ill by them--and
a bottle of champagne, a wine that Mademoiselle had always told her
brother was poison to every member of his family.
But Monsieur Bouchard seemed to forget all about this. He ate and drank
these things as if he had forgotten all his painful experiences of
forty-five years before and as if he had been brought up on champagne.
It was rather pleasant--this first quaff of liberty--having what he
liked to eat and drink, and even to wear. He privately determined
before finishing his dinner that he would get a new tailor next day and
have some clothes made in the latest fashion.
“Have you found out the names of any persons in the house?” asked
Monsieur after dinner, lighting a cigar. It was his second; in the Rue
Clarisse he was limited to one.
“No one at all, sir,” replied that double-dyed villain, Pierre. “It
isn’t judicious to know all sorts of people. I intend to forget some I
know.”
Monsieur Bouchard turned in his chair and looked at Pierre; the fellow
really seemed changed into another man from what he had been for thirty
years. But to Monsieur Bouchard the change was not displeasing. He felt
a bond between himself and Pierre, stronger in the last half-hour
than in the thirty years they had been master and man. They exchanged
looks--it might even be said winks--and Monsieur Bouchard poured out
another glass of champagne--his third. And what with the wine and the
dinner, he was in that state of exhilaration which the sense of liberty
newly acquired always brings.
“Monsieur won’t want me any more to-night?” asked Pierre.
“No,” replied Monsieur Bouchard, “but--be sure to be here at--” he
meant to say at ten o’clock that night, but changed his mind and said,
“seven o’clock to-morrow morning.”
“Certainly, sir,” answered Pierre. “I expect to be home and in bed
before three.”
And he said this with such a debonair manner that Monsieur Bouchard was
secretly charmed, and privately determined to acquire something of the
same tone.
Pierre gone, Monsieur Bouchard made himself comfortable in an
easychair and began toying with a fourth cigar. How agreeable were
these modern apartments, after all--everything furnished, every want
anticipated--all a tenant had to do was to walk in and hang up his
hat. Then his thoughts wandered to that very pretty woman who had
travelled in the same train with him that day to St. Germains, and the
day before to Verneuil, whither he had gone to look after some property
of Léontine’s. Madame Vernet was her name--it was on her travelling
bag--and she was a widow--that fact had leaked out ten seconds after
he met her. But she was so very demure, so modest, not to say bashful,
that she seemed more like a nun than a widow. And so timid--everything
frightened her. She trembled when the guard asked her for her ticket,
and clung quite desperately to Monsieur Bouchard’s arm in the station
at Verneuil. She had expected her aunt and uncle to meet her, and when
they were not to be found, blushingly accepted Monsieur Bouchard’s
services in getting a cab. And that day, on stepping into the railway
carriage to go to St. Germains, there was the dear little diffident
thing again. She was charmed to see her friend of the day before, and
explained that she was to spend the day with another uncle and aunt she
had living at St. Germains. Knowing her inability to care for herself
in a crowd, Monsieur Bouchard had meant to put her into a cab, as he
had done the day before. But just as the train stopped he was seized
by a couple of snuffy old antiquarians and hustled off by them before
he could even offer to take charge of the quiet, the retiring, the
clinging and helpless Madame Vernet.
Monsieur Bouchard lay back in his chair recalling her prim but pretty
gray gown, her fleecy veil of gray gauze, that covered but did not
conceal her charming features, and her extremely natty boots. He could
not for the life of him remember whether he had mentioned to her on
their first meeting that he was going to St. Germains next day. While
he was cogitating this point he was rudely disturbed by the opening of
the door, and Captain de Meneval walked in briskly.
Now, this good-looking captain of artillery, who had married Monsieur
Bouchard’s ward, Léontine, was not exactly to Monsieur’s taste. It
is true he had never been able to find out anything to de Meneval’s
discredit--and he had looked pretty closely into the captain’s
affairs at the time of Léontine’s marriage. As for Léontine herself,
she was devoted to her captain and always represented him as being
the kindest as well as the most agreeable of husbands. True, he was
always complaining about the modest income that Papa Bouchard allowed
them, but Léontine herself was ever doing that, and urged de Meneval
on in his complaints. Monsieur Bouchard was a little annoyed at de
Meneval’s entrance, especially as the artillery captain had adopted a
hail-fellow-well-met air, highly objectionable on the part of a man
toward another man who practically holds the purse-strings for number
one.
Therefore, Monsieur Bouchard rather stiffly gave Captain de Meneval
three fingers and offered him a chair.
“Changed your quarters, eh?” said de Meneval, looking about him. “Found
the Rue Clarisse rather slow, and came off here where you can be your
own man, so to speak?”
“I was not actuated by any such motive,” coldly replied Monsieur
Bouchard. “I came here because the rooms I had in the Rue Clarisse were
cramped, and I needed to have more space, as well as to be in a more
convenient quarter of Paris.”
De Meneval’s bright eyes had been travelling round the walls, and
Monsieur Bouchard remembered, with cold chills running up and down his
back, the pictures of his predecessor--that scampish young journalist,
Marsac--so indiscreetly left hanging by Pierre. A shout of laughter
from de Meneval, and a pointing of his stick toward the red-and-gold
young ladies, showed Monsieur Bouchard that his apprehensions were not
unfounded.
“Is that your selection, Papa Bouchard?” cried the reprobate captain.
“Never saw them before--you must have kept them in hiding in the Rue
Clarisse. I’ll tell Léontine,” and the captain laughed loudly.
He had a great haw-haw of a laugh that had always been particularly
annoying to Monsieur Bouchard, and this thing of calling him “Papa”
Bouchard was an unwarrantable liberty. So he replied, freezingly:
“You are altogether mistaken. These extraordinary prints were left
here by my predecessor, a very wild young journalist--I believe most
young journalists are very wild--and they come down to-morrow. It would
seriously disturb me to have those ballet pictures around.”
“Well, now,” said de Meneval, with an unabashed front, “I think you
are too hard on the poor girls. I have known a good many of them in my
life--taken them to little suppers, you know--and generally they’re
very hard-working, decent girls. Some of them have a husband and
children to help to support. Others have dependent parents. They’re
unconventional--very--and like to eat and drink at somebody else’s
expense, but that’s no great harm. Plenty of other people in much
higher walks of life do the same.”
“I don’t care to discuss ballet girls with you, Monsieur de Meneval,”
remarked Monsieur Bouchard, with great dignity.
“But I want to discuss them with _you_,” answered de Meneval, with
what Monsieur Bouchard thought most improper levity and familiarity.
“That’s what I came to you this evening about. That’s why I have been
haunting the Rue Clarisse during the last ten days, trying to see you
alone.”
“Yes. I know that I have been honored with a good many cards of yours.
Also of Léontine’s.”
“Oh, Léontine! You may be sure she does not come on the errand that
brings me. While she feels the narrowness of our income as much as I
do, she manages to live within her allowance, and I don’t believe owes
a franc in the world. But, Papa Bouchard, to come to business----”
De Meneval paused. He had a good deal of courage, but the stony silence
with which his confidences were met would have disconcerted an ogre.
“Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said Monsieur Bouchard, icily.
“I’m going on. You see, it is just this way--that is--” de Meneval
floundered--“as I was going to say--Léontine, you know, is perfect--it
really is touching to see how she bears our enforced but unnecessary
poverty. I wish I could do as well.”
Here de Meneval came to a dead stop, and Monsieur Bouchard, by way of
encouraging him, repeated, in the same tone:
“Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
“But I _can’t_ go on with you fixing that basilisk glare on me,” cried
de Meneval, rising and walking about excitedly. “I believe, if you
say, ‘Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine,’ to me again, I’ll do something
desperate--smash the mirror with my stick, or turn on the fire alarm.
I assure you, Monsieur Bouchard, I am still a respectable member of
society. I don’t beat my wife or cheat at cards, and I have never
committed a felony in my life.”
“Glad to hear it,” was Papa Bouchard’s fatherly reception of this
speech.
De Meneval, after walking once or twice up and down the room,
succeeded in mastering his indignation, and sat quietly down in the
chair he had just vacated, facing Monsieur Bouchard, and then, still
floundering awkwardly, managed to say:
“I--I--am very much in want--I am, at present--in short, I am in the
most unpleasant predicament.” And then he mumbled, “Money.”
“So I knew the moment you entered this room,” was Monsieur Bouchard’s
rejoinder.
“Then, sir,” said de Meneval, recovering his spirits now that the
murder was out, “I wish you had said so in the beginning. It would have
saved me a very bad quarter of an hour.”
“Young man,” severely replied Monsieur Bouchard, “I had not the
slightest wish to save you a bad quarter of an hour.”
“So it seems; but I will tell you just how it stands. You know I am
stationed at Melun----”
“I have known that fact ever since I knew you.”
“Very well, sir. There is a music hall at Melun--the Pigeon House--with
a garden back of it, kept by one Michaux, a rascal, if ever I saw one.
Now, it’s very dull at Melun the evenings I am on duty and can’t get
back to Léontine in Paris, and it’s a small place, and quite naturally,
when one hears the music going at the Pigeon House, and sees the lights
flashing and the people eating and drinking under the trees on the
terrace garden, it’s quite natural, I say, to drop in there for the
evening.”
“Quite natural for you, sir. Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
De Meneval restrained his impulse to brain Monsieur Bouchard, sitting
so sternly and primly before him, and kept on:
[Illustration: And the girls are permitted to come out in their stage
costumes, to have an ice or a glass of wine.]
“Then there is the garden--jolly place, with electric lights--where
you can get a pretty fair meal. It is quite unique--nothing like it
in Paris or anywhere else that I can think of, and I’ve seen a good
many--” here de Meneval hastily checked himself. “It’s quite the thing
to give suppers to the young ladies of the ballet--and some of them
are not so young, either--in the gardens. The proprietor, of course,
encourages it, and the girls are permitted to come out in their stage
costumes to have an ice or a glass of wine. All the fellows in my
regiment do it; it’s considered quite the thing, and their mothers and
sisters come out to the Pigeon House to see them do it. If it wasn’t
for the support given the place by the garrison it would have to close
up, and then Melun would be duller than ever. The Pigeon House is
unconventional, but perfectly respectable.”
“Possibly,” drily replied Monsieur Bouchard, “but not probably.”
“Good heavens, sir! you are mistaken. Léontine has been teasing me for
a month past to take her out there to supper some evening, and I’ve
promised to do so this very next week. Do you think I’d take my wife to
any place that wasn’t respectable?”
De Meneval was getting warm over this, and Monsieur Bouchard was forced
to admit that he supposed the Pigeon House _was_ respectable.
“But that doesn’t prevent these jolly little suppers to the young
ladies of the ballet, and especially those given to them by the
officers. I assure you it is mere harmless eating and drinking. The
poor girls have to work hard, and when they get through of an evening I
dare say very few of them have two francs to buy something to eat. So
a number of us have got into the way of giving these poor souls supper
after the performance. Even Major Fallière goes to these suppers, and
you know his nickname in the regiment.”
“No, I know of him only as a very correct, middle-aged man. I wish you
had the same sort of reputation as Major Fallière.”
“Well, he is called by the juniors old P. M. P.--that is to say, the
Pink of Military Propriety. And Fallière is my chum, and _he_ goes to
these little suppers.”
De Meneval brought this out with an air of triumph, but Monsieur
Bouchard remained coldly unresponsive, and then de Meneval let the cat
out of the bag.
“And I say, Monsieur Bouchard, the proprietor of the Pigeon House
sent me in my account the other day--nineteen hundred francs nineteen
centimes--and I haven’t got the money to pay it.”
De Meneval lay back and waited for the explosion. Monsieur Bouchard
started from his chair, bawling:
“Nineteen hundred francs! And you no doubt expect me to pay it out of
your wife’s income! I wonder what Léontine would say to this!”
“That’s just what I’ve been wondering, too,” replied de Meneval,
somewhat dolefully. “Léontine is the dearest girl in the world, but
she is a woman, after all. I can prove to her that I have never given
a franc’s worth to any other woman, except something to eat and drink,
but all the same I’d just as soon she would think I spent my Melun
evenings sitting in my quarters, with her picture before me and reading
up on ballistics, as an artillery officer should.”
“And would you deliberately impose on her innocence in this respect?”
asked Monsieur Bouchard, indignantly.
“My dear sir,” calmly replied de Meneval, “you have never been married.
If you had, you would not talk about a man’s imposing on his wife’s
innocence. Love is clairvoyant, and most men know what their wives wish
to believe, and gratify them accordingly. It’s a very complex subject,
and needs to be dealt with intelligently.”
“I think our standard of intelligence is not the same,” grimly
responded Monsieur Bouchard. “But when I tell Léontine about this
nineteen hundred francs due at the Pigeon House, I trust she will be
able to deal with you intelligently.”
“I am afraid she will,” replied de Meneval, with some anxiety; “but
after it’s paid I know I can persuade her that it was not the least
actual harm--just a little lark in the way of killing time.”
“And may I ask, since you speak so confidently of its being paid, whom
do you expect to pay it?”
“You, sir, of course,” replied de Meneval, taking a cigar out of
Monsieur Bouchard’s case.
Papa Bouchard jumped as if a hornet had stung him. “I, sir? Since you
have assumed this modest expectation, perhaps you anticipate that I
will pay it out of my private income?”
“Oh, no, I mean out of my wife’s income,” replied de Meneval, puffing
away at his cigar.
“You are too modest, Monsieur le Capitaine. Now let me tell you
this--you misunderstood your customer in bringing this outrageous bill
to me, and it won’t be paid. I have a sincere affection for Léontine,
and I don’t intend to let any captain of artillery in the French army,
husband or no husband, make ducks and drakes of her money.”
Papa Bouchard leaned back, folded his arms and looked the embodiment of
statuesque determination. Captain de Meneval puffed a while longer at
his cigar, and then rose. There was resolution, as if he still held a
trump card to play, written on his countenance.
“Very well, Monsieur Bouchard,” he said, readjusting the blossom in his
buttonhole. “I am sorry you are so unyielding. You didn’t ask me if I
was prepared to offer any security that the loan would be repaid. If
you had I should have given you this.”
De Meneval pulled from his pocket a glittering string of diamonds,
every stone glittering like a star.
[Illustration]
“This is the diamond necklace I gave Léontine on our marriage. Of
course, I could not afford it, but I was in love with her--I’m more
in love with her now--and I gave her what would please her, without
counting the cost.”
Papa Bouchard gasped. “And Léontine--does she know of this?”
De Meneval shook his head. “You see, when I bought this necklace for
forty thousand francs the jeweller showed me at the same time an exact
copy of it in paste--seventy-five francs. He told me when he sold a
necklace like this he usually sold a counterfeit, for emergencies--you
know. I bought the seventy-five franc necklace, too--and I didn’t
mention it to Léontine. I think all the philosophers, beginning with
the Egyptian school of something or other B. C., down through the
Greeks and the Romans to Kant and Schopenhauer, agree that it is not
philosophic for a married man to tell everything to his wife. So I
never told Léontine about this imitation necklace, but kept it for an
emergency, as the jeweller--a married man--advised me. To-night, when
I saw I was in a tight place and had to come to you, I quietly slipped
the paste necklace into the case, which we keep in our strong-box, and
put the real one into my pocket. I came within an ace of being caught
by Léontine, though. The dear girl entered the room a minute afterward
and asked me to get out her diamond necklace--she was going to the
opera with some friends of hers--and off she’s gone, glittering with
paste, and as innocent as a lamb, while here is the real thing.”
Papa Bouchard was staggered for a minute or two. Then he said: “So you
expected me to turn amateur pawnbroker for your benefit?”
“Well,” replied de Meneval, stroking his moustache, “I should not have
put it in that brutally frank fashion myself, but if you don’t care
to act the amateur pawnbroker, I shall be obliged to take it to the
professionals.”
“No, no, no,” cried Papa Bouchard. He really was fond of Léontine,
and didn’t mean to risk her diamonds. Nevertheless, there was a
stand-and-deliver air about the whole transaction which vexed him
inexpressibly. He sat silent for a while and so did de Meneval.
Papa Bouchard, for all that he had been hectored by a woman all his
life, was yet no fool. He saw that de Meneval had him in a trap, and
reasoned out the whole thing inside of two minutes.
“Now, Monsieur le Capitaine,” he said, presently, “I see where we
stand. I will not lend you the money out of Léontine’s income--but
I will lend it to you myself. I shall keep this necklace until the
money is paid. Meanwhile, I shall go out to see this place--the Pigeon
House--and judge for myself all these facts that you allege.”
“Do!” cried the cheerful reprobate, with a grin. “Perhaps you’ll like
it and get into the habit of going there.”
“And perhaps,” replied Papa Bouchard, “I may not like it, and you may
have your income reduced if you persist in going there. And then--when
the whole transaction is concluded and the money repaid, I shall
disclose every particular of it to Léontine.”
“By all means!” De Meneval was actually laughing in Papa Bouchard’s
face. “I’ll deny every word of it, of course, and call for proof. I’ll
tell Léontine you tried to persuade me to go out there with you and I
refused. I’ll say _you_ gave the suppers, and I’ll bring twenty of the
best fellows in the regiment to swear to it--and you’ll see who comes
out ahead in _that_ game.”
Papa Bouchard was so horrified at the cold-blooded villainy of this
that he could hardly speak for a minute. But he refused to take the
threat seriously, and demanding the bill, which de Meneval promptly
produced, said, stiffly:
“You will hear from me in a day or two.”
“And how about the advance?” asked de Meneval, “I should like about a
thousand francs in cash.”
Papa Bouchard put up his eye-glass and surveyed Captain de Meneval all
over, which scrutiny was borne with the greatest coolness by the brazen
captain of artillery.
“You see,” continued de Meneval, “the story is very liable to get into
the newspapers--_extremely_ liable, I may say. It will be something
like this--that Monsieur Bouchard held Captain and Madame de Meneval so
tight that they were compelled to let Monsieur Bouchard have Madame’s
diamond necklace for a small loan--and the newspapers will probably
make it out to be Léontine’s wardrobe and my watch and chain besides.”
De Meneval paused--the fellow knew when to stop. Monsieur Bouchard,
swelling with rage, paused too--and then, taking out his cheque book,
angrily wrote a cheque for a thousand francs, which he handed Captain
de Meneval in exchange for a sheaf of bills produced by the captain.
“Before paying another franc, I shall go out to the Pigeon House and
investigate the whole business,” said Monsieur Bouchard, savagely.
[Illustration]
“Ta, ta!” called out the graceless dog of a captain, picking up his
hat. “Remember, you are on your good behavior. One single indiscretion
at the Pigeon House and I’ll telegraph the whole story to Mademoiselle
Bouchard, and then----”
Papa Bouchard simply sat and swelled the more with rage at the
unabashed front of this captain of artillery--but he was galvanized
into motion by a light tap on the door and a musical voice calling:
“Are you in, Papa Bouchard?”
Although all the fulminations of Monsieur Bouchard had failed to
affect Captain de Meneval, the sound of that voice flurried him
considerably. For it was Léontine’s, and de Meneval had no particular
desire for an interview with her under Papa Bouchard’s basilisk eye. He
turned quite pale, did this robust captain, and muttered:
“I don’t want to be caught here.”
Papa Bouchard smiled in a superior manner--he rather liked the notion
of de Meneval being caught there--and called out to Léontine:
“Come in.”
M. Bouchard’s hat, cape-greatcoat and umbrella lay on a chair where
he had placed them on coming in. Without so much as saying, “By
your leave,” de Meneval slung the greatcoat round him, clapped Papa
Bouchard’s hat on his head, seized the umbrella in such a way as to
hide his face, and with his own hat under his arm opened the door to
the lobby and darted past Léontine, nearly knocking her down.
Léontine, wearing an evening gown, a long and beautiful white mantle,
and a chiffon scarf over her head, entered, somewhat discomposed by her
encounter.
“What a very rude man that was who pushed by me so suddenly!” she said,
advancing. “Some of your tiresome clients, Papa Bouchard, and I order
you not to have that creature here again.” And she ran forward and
kissed Papa Bouchard on his bald head.
Now, it was plain that this pretty Léontine took liberties with her
guardian, godfather and trustee, and also that Papa Bouchard liked
these liberties. It was in vain that he tried to assume a stern air
with Léontine. She pinched his ear when he scolded, drew caricatures
of him when he frowned, and when at last he was forced to smile, as
he always was, perched herself on the arm of his chair and declined
to be evicted. And she was so very pretty! The French have a saying
that the devil himself was handsome when he was young. Léontine de
Meneval had more than the mere beauty of youth, of form, of color. She
was the embodiment of graceful gaiety. She looked like one of those
brilliant white butterflies whose lives are spent dancing in the sun.
The great and glorious dowry of love, of youth, of beauty, of health,
of happiness was hers. Her entering the room was like a breath of
daffodils in spring. She was a most beguiling creature. It was a source
of wonder and congratulation to Papa Bouchard that this charming girl
did not succeed in bamboozling all of her own income out of him and all
of his as well.
[Illustration]
Having kissed him, pinched his ear, and otherwise agreeably maltreated
her trustee, Léontine looked round the new apartment with dancing eyes.
“Well,” she cried, laughing, “I see how it is. You couldn’t stand the
Rue Clarisse another day or hour. Did anybody ever tell you, Papa
Bouchard, that you had a vein of--a vein of--what shall I call it?--a
taste for the wine of life in you?”
“Nobody ever did,” replied Papa Bouchard, trying to be stern.
“Then I tell you so. And look at these pictures--oh, oh!”
Léontine covered her face with her chiffon scarf, to avoid the sight of
the young ladies pointing skyward with their toes.
“And I wonder what Aunt Céleste will say when she sees them,” continued
this impish Léontine.
“She won’t see them. They will be removed to-morrow,” hastily put in
Papa Bouchard.
“You’d better, you dear old thing, if you value your life. I shall have
to tell Victor about this. How he will laugh! I do all I can to make
him laugh and to amuse him when he is with me, for it is _so_ dull for
him when he is obliged to stay at Melun. When his regimental duties are
over he has nothing to do in the evening but to sit in his quarters and
study up ballistics, as he calls it, and look at my picture by way of
refreshment.”
Papa Bouchard sniffed. He commonly sniffed at the mention of Captain de
Meneval’s name.
“But,” continued Léontine, trying to curl Papa Bouchard’s scanty hair,
using her pretty fingers for curling tongs, “he won’t be so lonely now
at Melun, for his old chum, Major Fallière, is stationed there, too,
and he and Victor are like brothers. You know, dear Papa Bouchard, that
you yourself admitted Major Fallière’s friendship to be a letter of
recommendation to any man. He is called the Pink of Military Propriety,
and if Victor led the larky life you so unjustly suspect him of, he
couldn’t be friends with Major Fallière, who is positively straitlaced.”
“I can’t say I ever saw a really straitlaced major,” replied Papa
Bouchard.
“And I have not yet seen this dear old P. M. P. He was in Algiers when
Victor and I were married--and he has been so little in Paris since his
return that he has not yet had a chance to call. But he has sent me
word by Victor that he already loves me, and I hope to see him in a few
days, for Victor has promised to let me come out to Melun and dine at
the Pigeon House.”
“The Pigeon House!”
“Yes. Why not? You’ll be going there yourself, I dare say, now that
you have eloped from Aunt Céleste. Oh, you’ll be a desperate character
in time, I have no doubt. I see it in your eye. Victor and I, though,
shall keep watch on you, if you go too far and too fast!”
This was a nice way for a ward to talk to her trustee--and such a
trustee as Monsieur Bouchard! Therefore Papa Bouchard called up his
most resolute air of disapproval, and said:
“I am afraid the Pigeon House is hardly a proper place for you to go
to, Léontine.”
“If I thought that I should have been out there long ago,” responded
this sprightly imp. “But, unluckily, it’s perfectly proper.”
“I wish,” replied Papa Bouchard, “you could get one single serious idea
into that head of yours.”
“I have a great many serious ideas,” said Léontine, suddenly assuming
an unwonted air of gravity, and leaving her perch on the arm of Papa
Bouchard’s chair for a seat directly facing him. “What would you say
if I told you that I am taking a deep and real interest in practical
sociological questions, such as giving employment to the deserving
workers?”
“I should say you were at least reaching the development I have always
wished for you. But I hope you are confining your experiments to giving
work only. The mere giving of money tends to pauperize. The giving of
work is the intelligent mode of benefiting a man or a woman.”
“That’s it precisely,” cried Léontine, instantly losing her air of
gravity, and jumping up to kiss the bald spot on the top of Papa
Bouchard’s head. Then she resumed her chair and her serious manner
simultaneously. “That’s what I knew you’d say, dear Papa Bouchard. I
had your approval in mind all the time. It came about in this way,”
continued Léontine, solemnly. “There is a very worthy man--a Pole,
Putzki by name--who is one of the best tailors in Paris. I became very
much interested in this man; likewise in his jackets, coats and riding
habits. I have been to his shop several times and talked with him.
The man is an exile from his native country. How sad that is! And he
cannot go back. He is very deserving and has a family to support. He
doesn’t ask for charity, but I gave him----”
“All the money you had,” hastily and angrily interjected Papa Bouchard.
“Not at all,” replied Léontine, with dignity. “I had learned better
than that. I have not given him a franc. But I ordered, out of pure
charity and good will to a fellow creature, five walking gowns, three
jackets, two long coats, a yachting costume and a couple of riding
habits.”
Papa Bouchard’s mouth opened wide, but no sound came forth. Léontine,
taking advantage of his amazed silence, kept on, rapidly:
“Then there is another deserving case--Louise, a milliner and modiste.
She has a husband who squanders her money on his pleasures. If Victor
did that I think it would kill me. Like Putzki she does not ask money,
but work. Out of sympathy for her, I have had her make me four ball
gowns, nine visiting and house costumes, some little négligées and
things, and about eighteen hats. And here are the bills.”
With this Léontine drew out two huge bills and thrust them into Papa
Bouchard’s scowling face. Not only was he annoyed with Léontine for
her extravagance, but he was conscious that she had fooled him. He sat
perfectly still and silent, glaring into Léontine’s serious, pretty
countenance--not so serious, though, but that Papa Bouchard saw the
shadow of a smile on her rose-lipped mouth.
“And you expect to pay those bills out of your allowance, I presume?”
said Papa Bouchard, sarcastically, after a moment.
“You flatter me,” replied Léontine. “I always knew I was a good
financier, but to expect me to pay such bills as these out of my meagre
allowance is to credit me with the financial genius of a Rothschild.”
“Then they will go unpaid!” cried Papa Bouchard, determinedly. This
assault on him, following hard on Captain de Meneval’s, was rather
more than he could stand. Léontine did not know it, but the defeat
Papa Bouchard had just suffered at the hands of that good-looking
scapegrace, her husband, had hardened his heart against her and her
milliner’s and tailor’s bills. However, she was not easily frightened.
She only tapped her little foot, smiled loftily and said:
“But they _must_ be paid!”
Papa Bouchard, who had no more voice than a crow, began to hum a tune
and to turn over the leaves of a scientific journal that lay on the
table before him. A pause followed. Then Léontine said again, very
softly and very determinedly:
“And they _will_ be paid.”
“How, may I ask?” inquired Papa Bouchard, whirling round on her.
Léontine, throwing aside her chiffon scarf, which she had held round
her bare, white neck, showed a string of diamonds, as she thought them
to be--paste, Papa Bouchard knew them to be--and said:
“My wedding gift from Victor. They are worth forty thousand francs. I
can easily raise ten thousand on them.”
Papa Bouchard lay back in his chair, absolutely stunned. So, both of
them were for turning the necklace into cash! And what scandal would
be precipitated if Léontine carried out her intention! The necklace
would be discovered to be paste, and Léontine would naturally be deeply
incensed against her husband; Papa Bouchard was that already, but he
really loved his little Léontine, and the thought of trouble between
her and her husband disturbed him.
“Does Captain de Meneval know of these bills?” he asked, significantly.
Léontine hung her head. “No,” she faltered, “and that is the part
which distresses me. Victor has been so _very_ prudent--has no bills,
poor fellow--he has no amusements away from me--and I--I have been so
selfish--” Léontine’s eyes were bright with tears.
[Illustration]
“Don’t make yourself unhappy about Victor being too prudent. He
need never give you any anxiety on that point,” was Papa Bouchard’s
unfeeling reply.
There was a moment’s silence. Papa Bouchard, who had a shrewd head
for business, was rapidly cogitating the best thing co do under the
circumstances. Léontine, who had no head for business at all, was
wondering how she could keep Victor from noticing the absence of the
necklace. She had just concluded to fall into a state of great weakness
and prostration, thus preventing her from going into society, when she
received something like a galvanic shock, for there, before her eyes,
Papa Bouchard was holding up the exact counterpart of her necklace. The
two necklaces made a blaze of light.
“Where did you get it?” she gasped, pointing to the glittering thing in
Papa Bouchard’s hand.
Now, Papa Bouchard was a clever man, as men are clever, but he was
not so clever as a woman. A brilliant scheme had flashed into his
mind--he would produce the real necklace, tell Léontine it was paste,
and so make sure that she would not take it to the pawnbroker; and he
could manage both de Meneval and Léontine equally well with the paste
necklace. He did not much fancy having the responsibility of so many
diamonds as the real one contained. But he had not foreseen this direct
and embarrassing question of Léontine’s. He looked blank for a moment
or two, and then, having no better answer ready, replied testily:
“I wish you wouldn’t ask such questions, Léontine. Of course I came by
it honestly.”
“Of course--of course,” cried Léontine, jumping up. “Does Aunt Céleste
know of this?”
“N--n--no,” faltered Papa Bouchard. This was another facer for him.
Léontine had not the slightest doubt that Papa Bouchard could give
a perfectly rational and correct account of how he came by the
necklace--it was probably the property of some client--but seeing a
fine chance to hold Papa Bouchard up to obloquy and to lecture him,
she promptly determined to give him the benefit of her pretended
suspicions. She therefore rose with great dignity, gathered her drapery
about her, and looking significantly at Papa Bouchard, said:
“You will pardon me for saying that this has a most singular
appearance, and I shall lose no time in informing Aunt Céleste.”
Papa Bouchard turned pale. Was ever such a diabolical trap laid for an
innocent man? He was not at all sure, if he gave the true account of
how he came by the stones, that Captain de Meneval would not carry out
his threat and deny the whole business. The fellow had actually laughed
while he was making the threat, and seemed to regard it as an excellent
joke to impair the peace and honor of a respectable elderly gentleman.
Papa Bouchard got up, sat down again, and groaned.
“Léontine,” he said, to that professedly indignant young woman, “you
don’t understand.”
“No, I _don’t_ understand,” replied Léontine, with unkind emphasis.
“It was this way--I was out at St. Germains the other day--” Papa
Bouchard was floundering hopelessly, but a bright thought struck
him--“the day of the meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians.
Very interesting time we had--several specimens of the paleozoic age
were found----”
“And this match to my necklace was among them? Fie, Papa Bouchard!”
“Not at all. Will you let me speak? I say I was out at St. Germains for
the meeting of the Society of French Antiquarians. The curator of the
museum is a great friend of mine--he has an old mother--finest old lady
you ever saw--eighty years old, bedridden and stone blind, but as young
as a daisy, full of life and talk--it’s a treat to see her. My friend
wanted a birthday present for her, and I had seen this necklace in a
shop window in the Avenue de l’Opéra--and I proposed to--to--to--” Papa
Bouchard faltered.
“Buy it for an old lady, eighty years old and bedridden? Oh, Papa
Bouchard, try again!”
“Léontine,” said Papa Bouchard, sternly, “I don’t like these flippant
interruptions. I did not say--I never meant to say that I proposed to
buy a diamond necklace for an old lady, bedridden and eighty years of
age. It happened there were spectacles of all kinds made and kept at
the same shop--and I went and got a pair of Scotch pebble glasses, at
fifty francs----”
“But you said she was stone blind?”
“What if I did? I didn’t say I got the glasses for her. But as I see
you won’t let me tell you the story of the necklace, I shall simply
keep it to myself. As a matter of fact, they are not diamonds, they
are paste.”
Léontine, taking the real stones in her hand, examined them carefully.
Then, laying them against the necklace around her own milk-white
throat, she remarked: “I see they are. Paste, pure and simple.”
Papa Bouchard could hardly suppress a smile at this, but he did.
“Very well. They are paste, and they cost seventy-five francs. Now, I
will make you a proposition. I propose that I shall look into these
bills and see what arrangement can be made with Putzki and Louise,
and reach some basis of settlement whereby I may be able, by making
a series of small payments out of your income, to get rid of them.
Meanwhile, I am afraid to trust you with your own necklace--you will
always be trying to raise money on it. So I shall hand you over this
paste one, which no one but a jeweller can tell from the real one.
You will give me the real one--and I will hold it until your bills
are paid. Then I will return it to you. I suppose you don’t wish your
husband to know of this, and I will agree to keep it from him as long
as you keep out of debt. But if you ever transgress in this way again I
shall tell him the whole story.”
Léontine listened to this with the utmost gravity, and then replied:
“You are a very clever man, Papa Bouchard, but you will find your
little Léontine a very clever woman--too clever to put her head in the
noose you have so kindly held open for her. I sha’n’t dream of giving
up my necklace for anything less than a cheque out of my own money for
the payment in full of these bills. I should be willing to take the
paste necklace temporarily until the bills are paid. After you have
returned it to me I sha’n’t be in the least afraid of your telling
Victor, for if you do I shall tell Aunt Céleste all your tales about
the bedridden old lady and the trip to St. Germains and the widow----”
“What widow?” asked Papa Bouchard, forgetful for a moment of the lady
he had met in the railway carriage two days in succession.
“The prim little widow you went to Verneuil with. My maid happened to
be on the same train and saw you helping her out, and heard you say to
her you were going to St. Germains to-day--and by the way, I happen to
know you _did_ go to St. Germains to-day.”
What a story was this to hatch about the most correct old gentleman
in Paris! Papa Bouchard simply glared at Léontine, but that merry
young woman was smiling and dimpling, as if debts and duns and trips
to Verneuil and diamond necklaces were quite the ordinary ingredients
of life. The hen that hatched a cockatrice was no more puzzled and
dismayed than was Papa Bouchard at the vagaries of his ward.
“Well,” cried he, after a pause, determined to put a bold front on the
matter, “what if I did find a lady in the same railway carriage with
me, going to Verneuil? I hadn’t hired the whole train, or even a whole
carriage. And what if she was a widow, and good-looking! And suppose
to-day, in the pursuit of science, I go to St. Germains and quite by
accident I find the same lady in the compartment with me? What does
that mean except a series of accidents?”
“Yes, a series of accidents,” replied Léontine, with an arch glance.
The minx seemed to have no more conscience about teasing poor Papa
Bouchard than had her rattlebrain of a husband. “It is remarkable that
accidents like these always happen in cycles. I should be willing to
wager that a third accident is now brewing, and you will see that prim
little widow again before the week is out. I shouldn’t be surprised if
this change of quarters had something to do with it!”
“Léontine!” said Papa Bouchard, indignantly, but that heedless young
person only laughed and said:
“I’ll tell Victor that. How the dear boy will laugh! The fact is, I
don’t know whether I can let Victor associate with you or not--you
might lead him off into your own primrose path of dalliance with
widows!”
Was ever anything so exasperating! Papa Bouchard ground his teeth--he
had a great mind to throw over the whole business of Léontine’s money
and her affairs, only he knew it would please her too well. His grim
meditations were interrupted by Léontine tapping him on the shoulder
and saying, “Now, will you hand me over the cheque for the whole amount
of those bills--six thousand francs--or must I take this”--touching the
paste necklace round her throat--“to the pawnbroker?”
“You certainly can’t expect me to give you a cheque until I have
looked into these swindling bills,” answered Papa Bouchard.
“I certainly do,” tartly said Léontine, “and you will either hand me
over immediately a cheque for six thousand francs, or I will drive
to Aunt Céleste’s before I go to the opera--and I think you’ll have
an early visit from her in the morning. I shall tell her about this
mysterious necklace, and the pretty widow you have no doubt been
running after for at least six months----”
“I never saw her in my life until yesterday,” cried Monsieur Bouchard.
“So you say. Perhaps you have been pursuing her for a year.”
Monsieur Bouchard tore his hair, but there was no help for him. After
an angry pause, he sat down, wrote out a cheque for six thousand
francs, which he slammed down on the table, and Léontine picked up with
a joyful cry. And then, with a desperate attempt at an authoritative
manner, he said, sternly,
“Pray understand, Léontine, that I reserve the right to tell your
husband all the circumstances of this affair if I choose to. I am not
intimidated by your threat to tell my sister some cock-and-bull story
about _me_.”
Léontine reflected a moment, her pretty head on her hand.
“Do you know, dear Papa Bouchard,” she said, after a while, “that you
and I are engaged in what the Americans call a game of bluff?”
“Don’t know anything about the Americans. Don’t know what bluff is.”
“Oh, yes, you do--you know the thing, although you may not recognize
the name. But you are a good soul, Papa Bouchard, and Victor and I _do_
bother you a good deal; but only say no more of this matter--about
Putzki and Louise--and don’t tell Victor, and I’ll not tell Aunt
Céleste, and everything will come perfectly right.”
As Léontine spoke she unclasped her necklace, kissed it, and with a
gesture of scorn put on the real necklace, saying to herself: “I never
thought I should come to this.”
And then came a loud rat-tat at the door, and in walked Captain de
Meneval again. He carried Monsieur Bouchard’s impedimenta, with which
he had so unceremoniously made off. Both he and Léontine looked
thoroughly disconcerted at meeting each other. De Meneval thought
she had gone away. Léontine blushed guiltily, and had barely enough
presence of mind to cover up the necklace lying on the table with Papa
Bouchard’s scientific journal.
“Ah, good-evening, Papa Bouchard!” cried this arch hypocrite of an
artillery captain, as if he had not seen Monsieur Bouchard half an hour
before. “I came to return your umbrella and coat. Thanks very much for
lending them to me in an emergency. Why, little girl, I thought you
were on your way to the opera?”
“I am just going,” answered Léontine, moving toward the door.
“One moment!” cried Papa Bouchard, waving his arm authoritatively.
These two scapegraces had used him for their own purposes that night,
had made game of him, and had threatened to discover a mare’s nest to
Mademoiselle Bouchard and had got seven thousand francs out of him in
cold cash. Now, however, he would take his revenge. “Wait,” he said to
Léontine, who returned reluctantly to her former place.
Monsieur Bouchard, assuming the attitude and tone with which he
addressed a couple of criminals in the pursuit of his professional
duties, then continued:
“This is a very auspicious opportunity for me to speak to you both,
in each other’s presence, with a view to your mutual reform. Observe
the word; I use it advisedly.” He paused. Léontine trembled with
apprehension, while de Meneval surreptitiously mopped his brow. “You
have both of you been very extravagant--wasteful, I may say. Nothing
that I have yet said has availed to stop the outgo of money far beyond
your reasonable wants--so _I_ think. Now, I have come to the conclusion
that in order for you to economize you must give up your apartment. You
must leave Paris.”
Leave Paris!
De Meneval was not so stunned but that he could get up rather a ghastly
laugh.
“Leave Paris! Ha, ha! That’s little enough to me, Papa Bouchard--Léontine
and ballistics are all I want to make me happy anywhere--but
Léontine--oh, I know she won’t go!”
“Won’t she, eh? Not to an inexpensive little cottage outside of
Paris--within striking distance of Melun, so you may go back and
forth--a _very_ inexpensive cottage?”
“Well, if that’s your game,” cried de Meneval, savagely, “there are
plenty of cottages to be had at Melun. Our veterinarian has just given
up his cottage--three rooms and a dog kennel. That’s cheap enough.
Shall I take it to-morrow for Captain and Madame de Meneval?”
“You are trifling, Monsieur le Capitaine,” coolly answered Papa
Bouchard. “You understand perfectly well what I mean.”
“But, Papa Bouchard,” put in Léontine, faintly, “while _I_ don’t object
to the cottage, it would be cruel to Victor to force him away from
Paris. It is so dull, anyway, at Melun. The only recreation he has is
when he comes to Paris. Poor, poor Victor!”
Léontine was almost weeping--de Meneval was swearing between his teeth.
Papa Bouchard was waving his arm about, serene in the consciousness of
power.
“I do not say you are to leave Paris to-night, or even to-morrow;
perhaps a week--possibly a month--may be given you. But you are both
too fond of gaieties, of clothes, of suppers and other dissipated
things, and there are too many jewellers’ shops in Paris.” This thrust
caused both of the culprits to quake. “So you must go to some retired
place and economize.”
“I see,” replied de Meneval, who was thoroughly exasperated. “Having
yourself practically run away from a quiet and respectable locality to
these gay quarters, with young ladies of the ballet on every hand--”
de Meneval pointed angrily to the red-and-gold young ladies on the
walls--“now you wish to send my poor little wife off to some hole of a
village, where one may exist but not live. I don’t speak of myself--_I_
don’t care. It’s for her.”
“Very well,” answered Papa Bouchard, maliciously. “You may make that
hole of a village a paradise steeped in dreamlike splendor to Léontine
by your devoted and lover-like attentions to her. You can live over
your honeymoon. Won’t you like that, Léontine?”
“Y--yes,” replied Léontine, dolefully.
“Some pretty rural place--all birds and flowers, eh? And a little dog.
Doesn’t the prospect charm you?”
“Yes--only--for Victor----”
“Haven’t you just heard Victor say that all he needs to be perfectly
happy are you and ballistics? So I suppose, Monsieur de Meneval, you
will be revelling in rapture.”
“I suppose so,” replied de Meneval, gloomily. “Come, Léontine, shall I
put you in the carriage? You won’t have many chances of going to the
opera, poor child, after this.”
Léontine rose and said, coldly, “Good-night, Papa Bouchard.” There was
no tweaking of his ear, no patting of his bald head this time. They
went out like two sulky and disappointed children.
[Illustration]
Papa Bouchard remained chuckling to himself. He had those two naughty
young creatures in the hollow of his hand--it would be a good while
before they would dare to be saucy to him--and that little cottage in
the suburbs was a fine idea. Strange it had not occurred to him before.
He seated himself in his easychair and began to review the events of
his first day of liberty. His mind went back to the point where he had
been interrupted by de Meneval’s entrance--the point where the dear
little bashful widow had appeared in his mind’s eye. If he had been
in the Rue Clarisse he would never even have dared to think of Madame
Vernet, for his sister could actually read his thoughts. But here, in
this jolly bachelor place, he could think about widows all he liked.
And shutting his eyes the better to recall that slim, shrinking,
gray-gowned figure, he opened them to see Madame Vernet quietly walking
into the room, without knocking and quite as if she belonged there. She
advanced to the table on one side of the room, laid her lace parasol on
it and proceeded to remove her long gloves, but stopped in the midst
of the process to rearrange a chair and to set straight a picture--one
of Monsieur Bouchard’s.
“This is very comfortable,” she said, musingly, “but I can improve
it--when I am settled here.”
Papa Bouchard listened as if in a dream. He had not progressed so far
as that. And then Madame Vernet turning and seeing him, uttered a
faint shriek, as if she had seen a snake instead of a human being, and
ran--but not toward the door.
“My dear Madame Vernet, pray do not be alarmed. It is only I--Monsieur
Bouchard,” cried Papa Bouchard, striving to reassure her.
“Oh! is it you? Forgive me for being so agitated, but I am _so_ easily
frightened!” panted Madame Vernet. “Men always frighten me--I am the
most timid woman in the world!”
“So I see,” tenderly replied Papa Bouchard. He was standing quite
close to Madame Vernet now, and she had clasped his arm and looked
nervously about her, as if she expected another man to spring out of
the fireplace or down from the ceiling.
“But when I saw it was only you, all my fears vanished,” she continued.
“And will you tell me to what I am indebted for the honor and pleasure
of this visit?”
“A question I was just asking myself. This is my new apartment.”
“I beg pardon,” replied Madame Vernet, “but it is _my_ new apartment. I
only moved into it to-day.”
“And, Madame, I only moved into it to-day.”
“It is number nine, fourth floor.”
“No, Madame, it is number five, third floor.”
“Ah,” cried Madame Vernet. “I see. My apartment is directly over this,
and corresponds with it exactly. I did not go up high enough, and I
am not quite familiar with the surroundings. How absurd!” and she
laughed, showing the prettiest teeth in the world.
“How delightful!” replied Monsieur Bouchard, gallantly.
“And how singular! This is the third time in three days we have met by
accident.”
An uncomfortable recollection of Léontine’s speech about accidents
of this sort occurring in cycles flashed through Monsieur Bouchard’s
brain, but he dismissed the thought with energy. He rather relished
accidents that brought about meetings with a woman as winning, as
charming, as elegant as Madame Vernet; and then there was that
deliciously intoxicating feeling of independence--no need to cut
the interview short, no labored explanation to give Mademoiselle
Céleste. Monsieur Bouchard was his own man now--for the first time, at
fifty-four years of age. So he smiled benevolently, and said:
“I wish I might ask you to sit down, but at least you will grant me
permission to call on you.”
“With pleasure,” replied Madame Vernet. “And since you won’t let me sit
down--which, of course, wouldn’t be proper, and I wouldn’t commit the
smallest impropriety for a million francs--at least let me walk about
and look at your charming furnishings.”
Papa Bouchard made a heartfelt apology for the red-and-gold young
ladies on the walls, who evidently shocked Madame Vernet extremely.
He said he meant to take them down the next day. Madame Vernet
replied with gentle severity that he ought to take them down that
night. However, she went into raptures over “Kittens at Play” and
“Socrates and His Pupils,” which gave Papa Bouchard a high idea of her
intellectuality.
But in the midst of a learned dissertation on “The Coliseum by
Moonlight” Madame Vernet’s eyes fell on the glittering paste necklace,
which Monsieur Bouchard had left lying on the table. She picked it up
gently--she did everything gently--and playfully clasping it round her
neck, cried:
“How charming! I won’t ask you for whom this is intended; for a
sister--a niece, perhaps. Lucky girl!”
“Indeed, it is not intended for anyone,” replied Monsieur Bouchard. “It
is of trifling value--paste, at seventy-five francs to buy, and would
sell for nothing.”
“Nevertheless, it is very pretty,” said Madame Vernet, looking at
herself coquettishly in the mirror. And then, apparently forgetting all
about the necklace, she confided to Monsieur Bouchard that she was so
nervous at living alone--the only thing that reconciled her was that
she had an uncle and an aunt living in the neighborhood who would watch
over her. Monsieur Bouchard tried to reassure her, but Madame Vernet
declined to be reassured. Her timidity was constitutional--she should
never be courageous as other women, and so protesting, she gathered up
her parasol and gloves, and with blushing apologies for her intrusion
and a bashful invitation to Monsieur Bouchard to return her unique
visit, made for the door.
[Illustration]
Monsieur Bouchard was charmed, flattered, tickled and flustered beyond
expression, but he was likewise terrified at the thought that Madame
Vernet had evidently forgotten that she had the necklace clasped round
her throat and was going off with it. Paste though it was, Monsieur
Bouchard had no mind to let it go out of his own hands. He followed her
to the door, saying, “Madame, you have probably forgotten----”
“Oh, no, I haven’t,” smilingly replied Madame Vernet; “I know my own
apartment now--it is number nine.”
“But--but--you have inadvertently--er--a--” Poor Monsieur Bouchard
mopped his forehead in his agony.
“Yes, quite inadvertently entered your apartment. Oh, how alarmed I
was when I first saw you! But you were so kind. Forgive me, and don’t
forget your promise to call. Good-bye.”
And just as Monsieur Bouchard had made up his mind to ask for the
necklace she flitted out of the door.
Monsieur Bouchard sank, or rather fell, into a chair. His head was in
a whirl. He felt as if the events of that day were beginning to be a
little too much for him. Just at that moment Pierre appeared from no
one could exactly say where.
[Illustration]
“Come, now,” said that functionary, in a tone of what Monsieur Bouchard
would have thought brazen familiarity the day before, “I know all
about it, I saw the whole transaction; remember, Monsieur, we are pals
now. She can’t get money on it any more than Madame de Meneval can,
and she’ll be sure to turn up again. Oh, you’ll come out all right,
Monsieur. Cheer up. We’ll live a merry life, and after all, it is
something to be away from that dreary old hole in the Rue Clarisse.
Just listen, if you please.”
Pierre ran to the window, threw it wide open, and the strains of rag
time music from the music halls filled the room.
“Everything goes in rag time at this jolly place,” cried Pierre--and
then that staid, sober and decorous valet of thirty years’ service,
cut the pigeon wing, twirled around on one leg, with the other stuck
stiffly out like a ballet dancer’s, and kissing his hand in the
direction of Madame Vernet’s apartment, cried, “Oh, we’re a gay pair
of boys! We mean to see life! And no peaching on each other!” And with
ineffable impudence, he winked at Monsieur Bouchard.
Chapter II
MONSIEUR BOUCHARD waked next morning with a delicious sense of youth
and irresponsibility. There was no one to demand an account of him for
anything. As for Pierre, Monsieur Bouchard determined to treat his
vagaries in a jocular manner--it was simply the honest fellow’s way of
showing joy at his emancipation. And when Pierre appeared, to shave his
master, both of them wore a cheerful air. It was their 14th of July.
Pierre, at the same time he brought the hot water, brought Monsieur
Bouchard’s letters. What a comfort to read them without having to give
an explanation of every one to Mademoiselle Céleste! Monsieur Bouchard
actually enjoyed receiving his tailor’s bill for the half-year under
those circumstances. As for Pierre, he went about whistling like a
whole flock of blackbirds, and Monsieur Bouchard had not the heart
or the inclination to stop him. The only fly in Monsieur Bouchard’s
ointment was the unpleasant reflection that Madame Vernet still had
the paste necklace, but he felt sure that she had discovered her
inadvertence of the night before, and would return the thing during the
day.
“I suppose,” said Pierre, who seemed to have quite taken the direction
of Monsieur Bouchard’s affairs, “that Monsieur will be looking after
the bills of Captain and Madame de Meneval to-day.”
“I certainly shall,” replied Monsieur Bouchard.
“And, Monsieur, you will find it necessary to go out to the Pigeon
House at Melun to settle up Monsieur le Capitaine’s account without
Madame finding it out?”
“I suppose so,” answered Monsieur Bouchard. “It is a nuisance; I never
was at Melun in my life.”
“But that’s no reason why Monsieur never should go to Melun; and I’ve
been told that the Pigeon House is a very gay place, with excellent
wine. Suppose Monsieur makes an evening of it out there?”
“Pierre,” said Monsieur Bouchard, wheeling around on him, “are you
trying to get me into all sorts of indiscretions in order to report me
to the Rue Clarisse?”
“Lord, no, sir!” replied Pierre, with much readiness. “I am going to
the Moulin Rouge myself to-night, and I’m sure if my wife knew it she
would take not only my hair, but my scalp with it, off my head. The
Moulin Rouge is a harmless enough place, but that’s what’s been the
matter with our bringing up, Monsieur--we weren’t allowed to go to
harmless places even. For my part, I mean to have my fling, even if my
wife _does_ find it out, and disciplines me. But there’s no reason for
either one of us being found out if we’ll only agree to stand by each
other.”
This was very satisfactory; in fact, everything seemed to be coming
Monsieur Bouchard’s way except--the paste necklace. The thought of
that, like the ghost at Lady Macbeth’s tea party, would not down.
Monsieur Bouchard waited and lingered and dallied over his breakfast,
and yet no parcel came from Madame Vernet. He did not care to remain at
home all day waiting for it; no doubt it would come. It occurred to him
that the best plan was to take Pierre completely into his confidence.
It was true the rascal knew something of what had happened the night
before, but Monsieur Bouchard felt it necessary, in Pierre’s new rôle
of trusty henchman and prime minister, to confide all the particulars
to him. However, this must be done in a manner consistent with the
relations of master and man. So, when Pierre was handing him his coat,
hat and gloves, preparatory to going out, Monsieur Bouchard remarked,
quite casually, as if Pierre knew nothing of the happenings of the
night before:
“By the way, I am expecting a little parcel to be sent me by Madame
Vernet, the lady on the next floor, a very pretty little woman--a
widow----”
“Trust Monsieur for finding out all the pretty little widows between
here and the Rue Clarisse,” replied Pierre, with the impudent grin
that had scarce left his face since he established himself in the Rue
Bassano.
Now, this remark was not only grossly familiar but grotesquely untrue,
so Monsieur Bouchard frowned and said, sternly:
“You forget yourself.”
“And all the pretty little widows will have an eye on Monsieur,”
replied this unabashed reprobate of a Pierre.
At this Monsieur Bouchard wished to frown, but could not. Instead, his
mouth came open in a pleased grin.
“Well, well, that may or may not be true. At all events, last night
Madame Vernet, by the merest accident, came into this apartment,
mistaking it for her own.” Monsieur Bouchard paused. It was rather a
difficult story to tell.
“By accident, did you say, Monsieur?”
“Altogether by accident. A paste necklace belonging to Madame de
Meneval was lying on my table, and Madame Vernet inadvertently carried
it off. She will no doubt return it this morning. Take care of it when
it comes.”
“I will, sir, if it comes. But Monsieur will pardon me if I say I
don’t expect it to come--that is, if I know anything about women.”
“But you _don’t_ know anything about women,” curtly replied Monsieur
Bouchard. Pierre was getting quite beside himself.
“True, Monsieur. I have been married thirty years. That is enough to
convince the toughest sceptic who ever lived that he doesn’t know
anything about women. But, all the same, Madame Vernet isn’t going to
send that necklace back.”
Monsieur Bouchard turned pale and took an agitated turn about the room.
“Did Monsieur buy the paste necklace for--for--Mademoiselle Bouchard?”
asked Pierre.
“No, you idiot! Didn’t I tell you it belongs to Madame de
Meneval--no--to Captain de Meneval--oh, the devil!”
Such expletives as this had been strictly forbidden in the Rue
Clarisse, and in spite of his annoyance Monsieur Bouchard felt a sense
of pleasure in being able to call on the devil in a casual and informal
manner.
“I understand, Monsieur,” replied Pierre, with the wink that, like the
grin, appeared to have become constitutional with him since his advent
in the Rue Bassano. “The accidental Madame Vernet appears to have
become accidentally possessed of a paste necklace that is not hers.
Accidents will happen; but one accident that I am sure will not occur
is the return of the necklace.”
“Damnation!” roared Monsieur Bouchard. He felt a delicious relish in
saying this profane word. It was the first time in his life he had ever
used it.
“Very well, Monsieur. Damnation or no damnation, I will keep the
necklace for you--if I get it.”
Monsieur Bouchard dashed down the stairs faster than he had ever done
in his life before. But on reaching the street and adopting a decorous
pace, he thought, “Of course it’s nonsense to suppose that she won’t
return it. The fact is, I have got to discipline that Pierre. He has
altogether forgotten himself, and I shall have to teach him a few
lessons.”
Meanwhile, in the gay little apartment in the Avenue de l’Impératrice,
where the de Meneval _ménage_ was situated, the necklace had become a
haunting ghost as well as in the Rue Bassano.
[Illustration]
As Léontine and her husband sat opposite each other at breakfast in the
pretty little _salle à manger_, each felt like a criminal. It was a
very pretty little _salle à manger_--just the sort of room for a young
couple with a modest income, yet sufficient to live on. But there is
not a young couple in existence who, knowing that their income is cut
exactly in half while the other half is saved up for them, would be
satisfied with their moiety. This, however, was bliss compared to the
prospect of that dreary little cottage in the country to which Papa
Bouchard had condemned them--or rather, to which they had condemned
each other--for each thought secretly that but for those unlucky debts
and the diamond necklace, Papa Bouchard would never have been so hard
on them. The most painful part of it was, however, the necessity of
concealment each felt toward the other. They had, up to this time,
lived their married life with the perfect frankness of two devoted
young persons who love and confide in each other--and this was what it
had come to--bitterly thought de Meneval, who truly loved his pretty
little wife--her diamonds practically put in pawn by him with that
old curmudgeon, who had got thereby just the opportunity he wanted to
exile them from Paris. All these thoughts chased through his mind as he
looked at Léontine with a new and unpleasant conviction that he was a
villain.
Léontine, for her part, felt a horrid heart-sickness when she
remembered the paste necklace quietly reposing in the strong-box in
her dressing-room, while Victor’s wedding gift was in Papa Bouchard’s
strong-box in the Rue Bassano. And that dull little house in the
country! It was she who had brought all this on Victor, and the thought
filled her heart with remorseful tenderness toward her husband. She
addressed him by the fondest names as she poured his coffee for him.
“And you have to go to that tiresome Melun to-day, to be away from me
two whole days?”
“Yes,” replied de Meneval. “How I wish you could go with me! I have
often been sorry I gave up my quarters to accommodate Lefebvre, with
his wife and four children to support on her _dot_ and his captain’s
pay. I didn’t mind living _en garçon_ until I had a wife of my own.”
It was quite true that de Meneval, out of generosity, had given up the
best part of his quarters to his brother officer, and had not the heart
to ask for them again, especially as he was generally supposed to be in
the enjoyment of a large income.
“Don’t say you are sorry, Victor. For my part, charming as it would be
to stay at Melun with you, I am glad you can help the poor Lefebvres.
_We_ know what it is to want money, don’t we?”
“Indeed we do.”
“And our case is the harder that no one will believe we haven’t the use
of our money.”
Léontine, who was delicate-minded, always called her money “our money,”
and de Meneval deeply and affectionately appreciated this.
“And it will be duller than ever at that odious little cottage in the
suburbs of Melun.”
“Oh, yes. Léontine, I am afraid it is I who have brought this on you.”
“No, no, no--it is I, or rather Papa Bouchard’s old-fashioned, stingy
ideas. He has no notion of what a modern way of living costs.”
“But he will find out in the Rue Bassano, if I’m not mistaken,” said de
Meneval, laughing suddenly.
Then there was a long pause, broken by Léontine’s throwing down her
napkin and crying out:
“I have an inspiration! We are so dull and disheartened to-day that
nothing but a supper at the Pigeon House will cheer us up. You will
take me there to-night. Remember, you promised me.”
“Did I?” asked poor de Meneval. He was, in truth, afraid to show his
face at the Pigeon House lest the head waiter should quietly tap him
on the shoulder and ask him to step up to the bureau and pay the whole
of the nineteen hundred francs. And what would become of that story he
had told Léontine about never having set foot in the Pigeon House since
his marriage? Only the week before, there had been a little supper--de
Meneval’s recollection of it was rather cloudy--but he thought he
remembered something about going to sleep on a bench, and waking up and
finding an umbrella in his sword-belt instead of his sword. This scheme
of Léontine’s was most unlucky.
“And I must and will go this very evening!” cried Léontine, jumping up
and running around to her husband’s chair, where she proceeded to perch
herself on the arm. “I know exactly how it can be done. I will take the
eight o’clock train. You will meet me at the station. We will go to the
Pigeon House, where you will secure a table in that charming terrace
garden you have told me so much about. We will have a jolly little
supper--and I’ll pay for the champagne. No--no!” putting her hands over
de Meneval’s mouth. “And it will be such fun to watch the queer people
passing in and out of the music hall!”
“Some of them,” said de Meneval, with the hope of frightening Léontine,
“are very queer indeed.”
“Yes, yes, I know. You have often told me about the singers and dancers
coming out there in their theatre clothes, and that’s just what I want
to see. And as for any impropriety--haven’t I often heard you say
that every one of those hard-working ballet girls is supporting her
bedridden parents, or crippled husband, or something of the sort?”
“I _did_ say that many of them are honest and hard-working.”
“I am sure of it! The mere fact that they work is enough. You know I
have been studying sociology of late, and I know something about the
working people.” Léontine, as she said this, had an uncomfortable
twinge when she remembered Putzki and Louise.
Now, if anything in the world was calculated to make the bright June
morning blacker than it was already to de Meneval, it was this sudden
freak of Léontine’s to go out to the Pigeon House to supper. He
fidgeted in his chair, and hummed and ha’d, but Léontine prattled on,
talking about the amusement she should have.
“And I shall at last meet Major Fallière! I am so anxious to know him,
the dear old thing!”
“Fallière won’t be at Melun to-night. He goes to Châlons on special
duty to-day,” cried de Meneval, seeing a gleam of hope. “Why not wait
until he comes back--some time next week?”
“Oh, it is quite useless waiting for an officer. He may be snatched
up at any time and packed off to the ends of the earth. And go to the
Pigeon House to-night I shall, I will, I must--” she punctuated this
sentence by giving de Meneval three charming kisses--“and if it’s very
improper, so much the better! I shall go to the Rue Clarisse and tell
Aunt Céleste you forced me to go against my will, and so escape a
scolding.”
“That’s all very well,” replied poor de Meneval, “but how will you get
back to-night? I can’t leave--and I don’t know of anyone returning to
Paris.”
“Don’t bother your head about that. You will put me on the train at
Melun--my maid will meet me at the St. Lazare station. What could be
simpler? No, no, no! I shall sup with you to-night at the Pigeon House,
so be sure and meet me at the station at half-past eight o’clock--you
have just time to make your train.” And she flew into his room, brought
out his helmet and sword--for he was in uniform, being ready to report
for duty--and kissing him affectionately, pushed him out of the door.
De Meneval ran down the stairs and, jumping into a cab, drove rapidly
off. He waved his hand to Léontine, watching him from the balcony.
Deceits and concealments were a new burden for Léontine to carry,
and she spent a wretched day. Do what she would, she saw her diamond
necklace at every turn. It haunted her as the dagger haunted the
Scotch lady in the play. Still woebegone, she determined to go to
see Aunt Céleste in the Rue Clarisse. What a dismal old street it
was, anyhow! Dark and dull and utterly without life--no wonder Papa
Bouchard had tired of it and had levanted into a gayer precinct. When
she was ushered into Mademoiselle Bouchard’s dingy little drawing-room
she found that good woman, Aunt Céleste, seated with one eye on her
embroidery and the other on Élise, who was polishing up the already
shining furniture. Aunt Céleste’s usually placid face was troubled,
but it lighted up when she saw Léontine running in. Aunt Céleste
was genuinely fond of the girl, albeit she was in chronic spasms
over Léontine’s modern, and to poor Mademoiselle Céleste’s notion,
outlandish ideas. Still, they really loved each other, and kissed
affectionately.
“Well, Aunt Céleste, how do you stand Papa Bouchard’s absence?” asked
Léontine, jokingly, but not unkindly.
Mademoiselle Bouchard wagged her head disconsolately. “It is not how I
stand it. It is how he, poor, dear boy, stands it. Who will look after
his dinner and see that he has simple and wholesome food? Who will
look to his flannels? Who will see that he lays aside his books at ten
o’clock and goes to bed, as he has always been accustomed?”
[Illustration]
“It seems to me, Aunt Céleste, that as Papa Bouchard is fifty-four
years of age he ought to know something about taking care of himself.”
“But he doesn’t. However, I have given him Pierre. I have the greatest
confidence in Pierre. In thirty years I have never known him to be
guilty of an indiscretion. He was very unwilling to go, poor fellow.
He is truly attached to the quiet and decorum of the Rue Clarisse, and
objected very much to the noise and bustle of the Rue Bassano, with so
many theatres about and people turning night into day. I almost had
to force him to go--but I did it on my poor, dear brother’s account.
Pierre is to come to see me every day to tell me just how the dear boy
has passed his time.”
Léontine sincerely hoped that Pierre would not think it necessary to
mention her visit to Papa Bouchard the night before.
“And I have had another sorrow,” continued poor Mademoiselle Bouchard.
“My parrot--Pierrot--that I have had for seventeen years, and taught so
many moral and useful aphorisms--he, too, has deserted me.”
“All three of them vanished--like this--_pouf!_” Élise put in, with the
freedom of an old servant. “Monsieur Bouchard, that good-for-nothing
husband of mine and Pierrot--and all bent on mischief--that I’ll swear
to!”
Mademoiselle Bouchard proceeded to read Élise a lecture on the duties
of the married state, among the first of which was the obligation of
the wife to believe everything her husband tells her, at which Élise
laughed grimly.
“Mademoiselle is joking, ha, ha!”
Although Mademoiselle Bouchard led so retired a life, she liked well
enough to know what was going on in the outside world, if only to be
shocked at it. So, when Léontine told her about the proposed supper
at the Pigeon House that evening, Mademoiselle Bouchard was duly
horrified, terrified and mortified, but she did not forget to charge
Léontine to come and tell her all the dreadful things she saw at that
unconventional place.
Léontine, after spending the morning in the Rue Clarisse, returned to
her own apartment in the Avenue de l’Impératrice. She was so dispirited
at the contemplation of her own faults and Victor’s supposed Spartan
virtue that she had no heart to take her usual afternoon automobile
excursion in the Bois de Boulogne--the automobile being one of the
few indulgences she had been able to screw out of Papa Bouchard. She
remained at home, therefore, until it was time to take the eight
o’clock train for Melun. Then, taking her maid to the St. Lazare
station, and directing her to be there when the eleven o’clock train
from Melun returned, Léontine stepped into a first-class compartment,
and was soon speeding toward Melun.
She wore a beautiful evening costume concealed by a long silk cloak,
and a charming hat was perched on her dainty head. The thought in her
tender little heart was of the pleasure her society would give her dear
Victor.
But her dear Victor had spent the day in a manner not unlike her own.
He had interviewed the proprietor of the Pigeon House and had paid
half the bill. The transaction had involved the mortifying admission
that before the balance was handed over Monsieur Bouchard would be out
there himself to look into the matter, as if Captain de Meneval were
a naughty schoolboy. The proprietor of the Pigeon House had scoffed
heartlessly at this, and de Meneval had difficulty in keeping from
knocking him down for his impudence. Then--Léontine’s visit! What
impish microbe had lodged in her head, inducing her to come out there?
He knew her to be keen of wit, and it would be difficult to disguise
from her his familiarity with the place. He might, it is true, say
he knew little or nothing about it, but the waiters, especially one
François, who knew his taste in wines and cigars, fish and _entrées_
and _hors d’œuvres_ to a dot, would be sure to betray him. And then,
the diamond necklace lay heavy on his heart and danced up and down
before his eyes, for Victor de Meneval really loved his charming young
wife, and argued to himself that if that stingy old hunks of a Papa
Bouchard had not held him so tight the present predicament would not
have existed.
However, time waits for no man; and when the eight o’clock train from
Paris was due Captain de Meneval was at the little station waiting
for it. And when it rolled in Léontine sprang gracefully out of her
compartment.
As in the morning, each felt remorseful and penitent toward the other
and tried to make up for the wrong that each had secretly done the
other by renewed demonstrations of affection. When de Meneval escorted
his charming wife across the street to the Pigeon House, which was only
a step away, he paid her the prettiest and most lover-like compliments
imaginable. Léontine responded with the sweetest smiles and the
tenderest words; so that by the time they reached the terrace garden
through a covered hedge next the Pigeon House itself, each felt like a
thief and a murderer.
Léontine exclaimed with delight at the beauty of the terrace garden.
It was indeed a pretty and cheerful place. It looked down straight
into a little valley where the river meandered. An iron railing and a
stone coping defined the terrace. Trees and shrubbery, pretty flower
beds and a rustic arbor were lighted by incandescent lamps that gleamed
softly in the purple glow of evening. The windows of the Pigeon House
gave directly on the terrace, and already the glittering lights and
the sounds of the orchestra showed that the performance was beginning.
There were only a few persons scattered about, and the waiters were
collected in groups, whispering, while waiting for customers. One,
however--the identical François, whom de Meneval wished to avoid--ran
forward and showed them a pleasant table. He was in the act of saying,
“What will Monsieur le Capitaine have?” when de Meneval, looking him
straight in the face, though addressing Léontine, said:
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen this place--not since our marriage,
in fact--that I hardly know what it is like.”
“Oho!” thought François, “that is your game, is it? Very well,
Monsieur, I will help you out with it--for a consideration.” Then,
extending his hand for de Meneval’s hat, he gave a slight but
significant twitch of his fingers and palm, to which a ten-franc piece
was the agreeable response. “Since Monsieur is evidently not familiar
with this place,” said the wily François, “perhaps he will allow me to
recommend our white soup, to begin with.”
“Thank you,” replied de Meneval; “and can you also recommend this
turbot on the menu?”
“Yes, Monsieur. If you had ever tasted our turbot you would never look
at turbot outside of the Pigeon House.”
“By the way, what is your name?”
“François, if you please.”
François remembered perfectly, that little supper at the Pigeon House
the week before, when Captain de Meneval had not only forgotten
François’s name but his own as well, and so had several other very
jolly officers. But François, though but a waiter, had the soul of a
gentleman, and was nobly oblivious of ever having set eyes on Captain
de Meneval before.
“Now, Victor,” said Léontine, who had been studying the wine list,
“as I invited myself here to-night, I intend to be part host. I claim
the right of providing the wine and cigars. They shall be of the
best, as the best of husbands deserves.” Then, turning to François,
she said: “Your best Chambertin with the soup, and a bottle of this
1840 Bordeaux, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Also, for Monsieur
le Capitaine some of your Reina Regente cigars.” Léontine returned
to her study of the wine list and de Meneval and François exchanged
sympathetic grins. François vanished after having received a very
expensive order.
Left to themselves, Léontine and Victor began to condole with each
other on the prospect of their rustication.
“It is not for myself I grieve,” declared Léontine, “it is for you,
poor darling.”
“Never mind me,” protested de Meneval. “If only _you_ were not
condemned to that infernal little cottage! Well, we shall have one good
dinner, anyhow, before we begin doing time, as it were.”
[Illustration]
And as they were exchanging their lugubrious confidences, a shriek of
hoarse laughter resounded near them, and there on the arbor hung a cage
with a parrot in it which Léontine immediately recognized as Pierrot.
With gurgles of laughter Léontine told Victor of her visit to the Rue
Clarisse that morning and the flight of Pierrot, along with that of
Papa Bouchard and Pierre.
“And I shall go to-morrow morning and tell Aunt Céleste that I have
seen her dear Pierrot.”
“It will be cruelty to animals to take the poor devil back to the Rue
Clarisse,” replied de Meneval.
François then returned with the soup and fish, both of which were
excellent. De Meneval made a point of calling François “Louis” or
“Adolphe” occasionally, and François never failed to respectfully
correct him.
Meanwhile, sweet sounds of the orchestra and of singing floated out
from the open windows of the Pigeon House. More people strolled on
the terrace, including many officers of the garrison; and when the
intermission came, a flock of girls, each escorted by a young man,
generally an officer, came out, laughing and chattering, and took their
places at the little tables. Some had only a glass of lemonade or wine,
others had time for a pâté or some trifle of the kind. It was very
pretty and picturesque, and Léontine, never having seen anything of the
kind, was delighted.
[Illustration]
De Meneval was in agony lest some of his friends among the ladies
should recognize him, but they, being mostly decent and self-respecting
women, though of a humble class, with true French politeness did not
intrude themselves on his notice in any way. Nor was he anxious to
begin a conversation with any of his brother officers, and carefully
avoided noticing them beyond a bow, although many of them would have
been glad of an introduction to his pretty young wife.
The dinner was outwardly very jolly, but the demon of remorse was at
work within the breasts of both Victor and Léontine. Nevertheless, it
did not affect their appetites, and François found he had a good deal
to do. At last, however, coffee was served, and just as Léontine put
down her cup a scream from the parrot resounded.
“Ah, there you are, Papa Bouchard! Up to mischief, eh, Papa Bouchard!
Bad boy Bouchard!”
Now these were some of the phrases that Léontine herself, during her
sojourn in the Rue Clarisse, had taught the parrot, much to her own
and Papa Bouchard’s amusement. The wicked bird remembered them most
inopportunely, for there was Papa himself strolling into the garden.
[Illustration]
“Good heavens!” cried de Meneval. “We can’t afford to let Papa Bouchard
see us out here. We should be sent into retirement to-morrow morning!”
And obeying a mutual impulse, these two graceless creatures flew round
the corner of the arbor, where they could see without being seen.
Monsieur Bouchard entered with an air of affected jauntiness which went
very well with the extreme youthfulness of his attire. Apparently he
had thrown all his old clothes to the winds, along with his discretion,
when he decamped from the Rue Clarisse. He wore an extremely youthful
suit of light gray, with a flaming necktie, a collar that nearly cut
his ears off, and a watch chain that would have answered either for a
watch or a dog. A huge red rose decorated his lapel, and his scanty
hair, when he removed his hat, showed marks of the curling-iron.
At the first shriek from the parrot Papa Bouchard started
apprehensively. The waiters--a shrewd and vexatious lot, who never
fail to notice all the slips of elderly gentlemen--immediately jumped
to the right conclusion, that the elderly gentleman in youthful
attire was an old acquaintance of the newly acquired parrot. Monsieur
Bouchard felt, rather than saw, a simultaneous snicker go round, and
rightly concluding that the best thing to do was to ignore the wicked
Pierrot, walked away from the arbor, and seating himself at a table
some distance away, pulled out of his pocket the _Journal des Débats_
and read it diligently. The parrot, however, delighted to find an
old acquaintance among so many new faces, continued to call out, at
intervals, various remarks to Papa Bouchard, such as “Does the old lady
know you’re out?” “Oh, you are a gay bird, Papa Bouchard!” and always
winding up, like a Greek chorus, with “Bad boy Bouchard!”
Presently a waiter approached and asked Monsieur Bouchard politely what
he wished to be served with, and before he could ask for his usual
drink, a little sugared water, the diabolical Pierrot screeched out,
“An American cocktail!” which the bird pronounced “cockee-tailee.” Papa
Bouchard scowled. This was very annoying.
“A little sugared water, if you please,” he replied to the waiter, and
the bird, on hearing it, burst into a screech of hoarse laughter.
[Illustration]
Monsieur Bouchard laid down his newspaper and looked about him with
curiosity not unmixed with gratification. Everything seemed extremely
jolly--these places were undoubtedly pleasant, and he was not so much
surprised as he had been at de Meneval’s fondness for it. At that very
moment de Meneval and Léontine were watching him and counting the
chances of slipping out without being caught. But Papa Bouchard, quite
unconscious of this, was becoming more and more interested in what
was going on before him and around him. “At these places, though,”
he was thinking, “one should have a companion--a person of the other
sex--someone to help one enjoy--it’s dreary trying to be happy alone.”
And as if in answer to his thought, he saw, entering the garden in both
haste and embarrassment, the charming Madame Vernet.
Now, a curious thing happened--a psychologic mystery. All day long
Monsieur Bouchard had been haunted and troubled by the thought of
Madame Vernet and the paste necklace. She had not returned it. So
much he knew from his first look at Pierre’s countenance when he had
got home that afternoon. But the minute he saw the lady herself, in
his pleased flutter and twitter of enjoyment, the necklace vanished
from his consciousness; he remembered only that she was pretty, she
was young, she was demure and she was easily alarmed. In fact, Madame
Vernet appeared to be scared half to death at this very instant, and as
soon as she caught sight of Monsieur Bouchard she fled toward him like
a frightened bird.
“Oh, Monsieur Bouchard!” she said, panting and agitated, “how relieved
I am to find you here! I had an appointment to meet my uncle and aunt
here--you remember I told you I had an uncle and aunt living at Melun
whom I often visited--and not seeing them outside I took it for granted
they were inside, and so came in. I felt terribly embarrassed--I am so
diffident, you know--at entering such a place alone, but I expected
every moment to see them, and when I did not I thought I should have
fainted from sheer terror--you can’t imagine what a timid little thing
I am--and then my eyes fell on you, and I said to myself: ‘There is
that dear, good, handsome Monsieur Bouchard--he is the very man to take
care of a poor, terrified woman’--and so I ran to you.” Madame Vernet
dropped on a chair at Monsieur Bouchard’s table.
What man with a soul as big as the head of a pin could refuse succor to
a pretty woman under these circumstances! Not Papa Bouchard.
“My dear Madame Vernet,” he said, “pray compose yourself. I will take
care of you until your uncle and aunt arrive.”
Madame Vernet looked around apprehensively.
“I don’t see my uncle and aunt,” she murmured--which was perfectly
true--“and I am afraid, very much afraid, Monsieur Bouchard, that your
youthful appearance really unfits you for the office of chaperon.”
Oh, how happy was Papa Bouchard at that! With liberty seemed to have
come youth--with youth should come champagne. Papa Bouchard called the
waiter back and changed his order from a glass of sugared water to a
quart of extra dry Veuve Clicquot.
“Now,” said he, playfully taking up Madame Vernet’s fan, “don’t
worry your little head about your uncle and aunt. I’ll be your uncle
and aunt for this evening. I’m sure I have been told by a number of
persons--members of my own family--that the Pigeon House is a perfectly
respectable place. So let us have a pleasant evening here, and I will
take you back to Paris by the eleven o’clock train.”
“Oh, Monsieur Bouchard, there is nothing I should like better, but I am
afraid----”
“Don’t, don’t be afraid. There isn’t the least chance of anyone I know
turning up. I have a young jackanapes of a family connection stationed
here--a young officer--but I think I have pretty effectually shut the
door of the Pigeon House in _his_ face.”
At that very moment this young jackanapes of an officer was watching
and listening to Papa Bouchard with the most entrancing delight. So
was Léontine, who could not refrain from pinching de Meneval in her
ecstasy. The enjoyment of these two young scapegraces was enhanced at
this very moment by the parrot screaming out:
“Oh, naughty old Bouchard! I’ll tell the old lady! Bad boy Bouchard!”
Madame Vernet started and looked inquiringly at the bird. Papa Bouchard
was seriously vexed.
“Pray,” he said, in an annoyed voice, “don’t pay any attention to that
ridiculous bird. I always thought parrots were the incarnation of the
devil. I can’t imagine how the creature found out my name. At all
events,” he added, tenderly, “neither bird nor devil, neither man nor
woman, nor even your aunt and uncle, can spoil the evening for us.”
“I don’t think my aunt and uncle can be coming,” replied Madame Vernet.
And she spoke the truth.
“So much the better,” whispered Papa Bouchard.
The waiter, the same astute François who had waited on de Meneval and
Léontine, now appeared with the champagne. Monsieur Bouchard had not
thought of ordering anything to eat, but when this artful François said
to him, “Did Monsieur ask for a menu card?” Monsieur Bouchard replied,
promptly, “Certainly I did.”
The menu was brought, and Monsieur Bouchard, with his head close to
Madame Vernet’s, studied it attentively. His order as finally made
out would have caused an earthquake in the Rue Clarisse. He ordered
everything that had been strictly forbidden during the last thirty
years. The order bore, too, a really remarkable resemblance to the one
given by the de Menevals, except that those happy-go-lucky young people
had not the money to pay for it, and Monsieur Bouchard had.
Never in all his life had Papa Bouchard enjoyed a supper as much as
that one. He was at perfect liberty to eat and drink all the things
that were certain to make him feel ill the next day, a prerogative
dear to a man’s heart. He had a charming woman opposite him, and a
waiter who fairly overwhelmed him with attentions. Without an order
from Monsieur Bouchard, François produced the wine appropriate to every
course, and instead of being frowned on was rewarded for it. But in
spite of white wines and red wines, Papa Bouchard stuck pretty close
to the champagne, which speedily got into his tongue and his eyes as
well as into his blood. It was the champagne that made him squeeze
Madame Vernet’s hand under the table, wink at François and kiss his
fingers to one of the young ladies of the ballet, who responded by
playfully throwing a bouquet to him which hit him on the nose. In fact,
his enjoyment would have been entirely without alloy but for Pierrot,
who, slyly inspired by the waiters, kept up a running fire of remarks,
always ending in a shrill laugh and a yell of “Bad boy Bouchard!”
[Illustration]
If Pierrot bothered Papa Bouchard slightly, he added immensely to the
suppressed gaiety of the two listeners, de Meneval and Léontine, and
they went off into spasms of silent laughter whenever Pierrot screamed
out any appropriate remark.
Papa Bouchard, however, got a good deal of solid enjoyment out of his
supper in spite of his old friend of the Rue Clarisse, and Pierrot did
not interfere in the least with Madame Vernet’s pleasure.
“The fact is,” said Monsieur Bouchard, confidentially, to Madame
Vernet, after the third glass of champagne, “I wasn’t quite candid
about that devilish bird.” Papa Bouchard used this wicked word with the
greatest relish. “It belonged to my sister--older than I--who brought
me up in the way I should go, and a deuced dull and uncomfortable way
it was! A day or two ago, Pierrot--that’s the parrot’s name--got tired
of the propriety and seclusion of the Rue Clarisse, where we have lived
for thirty years, just as Pierre, my man-servant, did, and I myself.
All at once, without any previous consultation, Pierre, Pierrot and I
levanted, so to speak. Pierrot has evidently got caught--which is more
than I intend to be--but I’m sure he finds the Pigeon House a great
improvement on the Rue Clarisse, and I haven’t the heart to return
him there. You don’t know how pleasant it is to be living in the Rue
Bassano after thirty years in the Rue Clarisse. And to be my own man,
instead of my sister’s--excellent woman she is, excellent, but she
doesn’t understand what a young man of the present day--er--I mean a
man with the feelings of youth, requires to make him happy. So that’s
why I eloped.”
“It’s a great mistake not to give a man his head sometimes,” added
Madame Vernet, with one of her gentle and winning smiles.
“Yes, yes, yes. You know how to manage a man, I see.”
“_I_ manage a man!” cried Madame Vernet. “Pray don’t say that. The idea
of my managing a great, strong man! No, indeed! All I should ask of
a man is that he would manage me--and I’m sure, as yielding as I am,
nothing would be easier.”
At which François, behind Monsieur Bouchard’s chair, doubled up with
laughter, and Léontine had to fan de Meneval, who appeared to be
choking in an agony of enjoyment, while Pierrot varied his performance
by beginning to sing the song from the opera, “Ah, I have sighed to
rest me!”
“Well,” continued Papa Bouchard, whose _bonhomie_ increased with
every sip of champagne, “I suppose I shall have to manage a woman
some day, for, to be very confidential, my dear Madame Vernet, I am
in an excellent position to marry, and after a while I think I shall
not be satisfied with liberty. I shall want power, too--the power of
controlling another destiny, another heart, another will besides my
own; so I shall marry a wife.” Papa Bouchard said this with an air of
the greatest determination, swelling out his waistcoat, and at the same
moment the parrot shrieked out laughing, “Oh, what an old fool!”
“What’s that? What’s that?” cried Monsieur Bouchard, indignantly,
turning to François. He was a little confused by the champagne and
Madame Vernet’s bright eyes.
“If you please, Monsieur, it is that troublesome parrot. I shall tell
the proprietor how very annoying the bird is--he has only just got
it--and I am sure to-morrow morning it will be sent away.”
Monsieur Bouchard had to be satisfied with this. His enjoyment,
however, was now too deep for Pierrot to ruffle except for a moment.
Monsieur Bouchard was living--living cycles of time, and life was
taking on a color, an exuberance, a melody that quite turned his
otherwise excellent head. He was delighted with Madame Vernet’s
exposition of her inability and indisposition to manage a man. “That’s
the sort of wife I’ll have when I marry,” he thought to himself, taking
another shy at the champagne. “None of your managing sort--I’ve been
managed too much already, heaven knows.” And inspired by these pleasing
reflections, he said, tenderly, to Madame Vernet, offering her his arm:
“Come, Madame, let us take a little stroll in search of your uncle
and aunt. Do you see that sweet, retired little alley, all roses and
myrtles and honeysuckles, with a lot of cooing pigeons nestling among
them? Perhaps we may find your uncle and aunt amid the roses. And,
Madame, I may say to you, I don’t want a managing wife, and I don’t
know any man who does. I want a dependent creature--sturdy oak and
clinging vine, you know--I want a clinger. And if she has already tried
her hand on another man, so much the better. I get the benefit of her
experience. The fact is, Madame, I was born to console--I’m a consoler
of the first water. Now, pray take my arm and let us explore the
wilderness of roses and myrtles.”
Madame Vernet hung her head, but Papa Bouchard insisted. When at last
she rose she threw aside the graceful little wrap round her shoulders,
and there, gleaming on her throat, was the paste necklace.
Monsieur Bouchard received a distinct and unpleasant shock as he
recognized the troublesome object, and he was nowise relieved by Madame
Vernet saying, in her softest and most insinuating manner:
“How charming it was of you to give me this lovely ornament!”
Monsieur Bouchard would have dropped Madame Vernet’s arm, but she held
on to him. This was certainly a very disagreeable incident. He had not
given her the necklace--he never dreamed of giving it to her--he had
been very much annoyed at her failure to return it, and----
But what were Monsieur Bouchard’s feelings in comparison with those
of Léontine and de Meneval, both of whom were watching every movement
of Papa Bouchard and Madame Vernet? Their laughing faces changed like
magic. They stood--Léontine and Victor--horror-stricken, and as if
turned to stone, each pale, trembling, and afraid to meet the eye of
the other. But as, after a minute or two of agonized surprise, they
began to recover from the first shock of their discovery, they felt the
necessity of concealing their feelings from each other, and at the
same time not losing sight of the forty thousand franc necklace.
Léontine, womanlike, was the first to rally. She was quite pale--de
Meneval was not sure whether she had recognized the necklace or not,
and he was afraid to ask. Her voice trembled slightly as she said:
“I think I’ll go and speak to Papa Bouchard. It will be such--such fun
to let him know we have been watching him all the time.”
Out of sheer stupidity, and being thoroughly disconcerted, de Meneval
walked along with her toward Monsieur Bouchard and Madame Vernet.
Léontine jumped to the conclusion that he suspected something. So
she stopped short and said, in a voice that she vainly tried to make
laughing and merry:
“Let me have Papa Bouchard to myself--it will be the more amusing if
you appear later on.”
“Certainly,” replied de Meneval, and continued to walk with her toward
Papa Bouchard and Madame Vernet. The fact is, he had not heard a word
of what Léontine was saying. Papa Bouchard was standing in front of
Madame Vernet, and his countenance showed that all was not at ease
within. She had asked him to button her glove, and he could not well
refuse, but the sight of the necklace was rather trying to his nerves.
And in the midst of it appeared the two human beings he least desired
to see on earth--Léontine and de Meneval!
The three stood looking at each other like a trio of criminals. Madame
Vernet, the blushing, the bashful, the diffident, was the only one
of the four who was not cruelly embarrassed. And then, besides the
infernal necklace--for so Papa Bouchard characterized it in his new
vocabulary--the idea of being caught supping with a lady at the Pigeon
House! Suppose those two scamps should fly off to the Rue Clarisse
with the gruesome tale--and he didn’t know exactly how much champagne
he had taken, only his head was buzzing a little--poor, poor Papa
Bouchard! However, it would never do to show the white feather in the
beginning; the champagne had given him some Dutch courage, but it did
not supply him with any judgment, for his first remark was about the
most indiscreet he could have made. Assuming, or trying to assume, his
usual authoritative air, he said to de Meneval:
“Monsieur le Capitaine, I thought there was a distinct understanding
between us that there were to be no more suppers at the Pigeon House.
And bringing your wife to this place----”
“I know of no such understanding, Monsieur Bouchard,” replied de
Meneval, with some spirit. “I deny your right, or that of any other
man, to say where I shall have supper with my wife. If the Pigeon
House is proper enough for you and this lady--” de Meneval indicated
Madame Vernet, who, with her usual bashfulness, had retired a
little--“whom I overheard just now thanking you for the superb necklace
she wears, it is assuredly proper for me and for my wife.”
This was unanswerable logic, and Papa Bouchard was momentarily
staggered by it. De Meneval followed up his advantage by saying,
significantly, “To-morrow morning I shall come to see you, and you will
kindly explain to me some mysteries concerning--” De Meneval stopped
short; he could not speak his mind to Monsieur Bouchard without letting
the terrible and menacing cat out of the bag regarding the necklace.
It was now Léontine’s turn at the poor gentleman.
“Come, Papa Bouchard,” she said, with pallid lips, but affecting to
laugh, “you must not scold Victor for bringing me here. I really
made him do it. But I want to speak to you a moment in that sweet,
sequestered arbor, where you told this lady just now she might find her
uncle and aunt, amid the roses and honeysuckles and the little cooing
pigeons.”
[Illustration]
Monsieur Bouchard would much rather have gone off with a gendarme at
that very moment, but Léontine had him by the arm, and was determinedly
dragging him away. An anxious grin appeared on his countenance as he
turned to Madame Vernet and said:
“One moment, Madame, and I will return.”
“Only a moment, remember,” answered this bashful creature.
Madame Vernet had not the slightest objection to being left in charge
of this good-looking young officer. She cast down her eyes and began
to murmur something about her timidity, when she was brought up all
standing by de Meneval saying:
“Madame, a few moments ago I overheard you thanking Monsieur Bouchard
for that superb necklace you wear.”
Madame Vernet smiled. Superb necklace, indeed! It must be a fine
imitation.
“But,” continued de Meneval, “that necklace belongs to my wife, Madame
de Meneval. I myself selected it, and paid forty thousand francs
for it. Last night I left it in Monsieur Bouchard’s care in the Rue
Bassano. To-night I find you, a woman with whom, I am sure, Monsieur
Bouchard has a very casual acquaintance, wearing my wife’s forty
thousand franc necklace. You will admit that the circumstances justify
me in demanding the necklace.”
“Monsieur,” replied Madame Vernet, “this necklace is paste. It cost
only seventy-five francs. I have Monsieur Bouchard’s word for it.”
“The old sinner! Well, Monsieur Bouchard wasn’t saying his prayers when
he told you that. I tell you the stones are real, and unless you hand
the necklace over to me this instant I shall telephone for a couple
of policemen--there is a police station not two minutes away--and
to-morrow morning you and Monsieur Bouchard can explain the matter in
the police court.”
Now, Madame Vernet was really as brave as a lion. She suspected at once
that she had got hold of something of actual value, and she determined
to hold on to it and get away with it; hence nothing could have been
more pleasing to her at that moment than to have de Meneval out of
the way for a few moments--even to fetch a policeman--so she merely
replied, with calm assurance:
“Do as you like, Monsieur. I never saw you before--I hope I shall never
see you again. My protector is at hand, and when you arrive with your
police officers it is Monsieur Bouchard with whom you will have to
settle.”
De Meneval turned and ran out of the garden toward the police station.
He thought that exposure was coming anyhow, and he had better secure
the stakes in the game. As he rushed out he caromed against a very
well-dressed, portly, clean-shaven elderly gentleman, who was parading
into the garden with a great air of pomposity. In his hand he held
conspicuously a newspaper, on the first page of which was a large
photogravure easily recognizable as himself, and under it, in letters
an inch long, were the words,
DR. DELCASSE
THE MOST CELEBRATED ALIENIST
IN PARIS.
Below this was the cut of a handsome building, and under this was
inscribed, “The Private Sanatorium at Melun of Dr. Delcasse.”
Dr. Delcasse seemed to feel the injury to his dignity very much when de
Meneval jostled by him so unceremoniously, nearly knocking him down.
He stopped, scowled, growled, and then, with a portentous air of being
much displeased, stalked forward, took a seat close to where Madame
Vernet was standing, and began pompously to unfold his newspaper,
always keeping the picture to his audience, so to speak--which audience
consisted solely of Madame Vernet.
[Illustration]
Now, for quickness and boldness of resource Madame Vernet was fully
the equal of de Meneval or any man alive, and the moment she became
convinced of the identity of Dr. Delcasse a plan was formed in her
mind. Everybody knew Dr. Delcasse, and also of the war waged between
him and Dr. Vignaud, another celebrated alienist, which, if carried
to extremes, would have resulted in locking up half the population of
Paris as lunatics either in Dr. Delcasse’s sanatorium at Melun or Dr.
Vignaud’s private hospital in Paris.
Madame Vernet realized, in her brilliant scheme, the value of time.
There was a train leaving for Paris in ten minutes. If she could but
make the first train, getting away before Monsieur Bouchard returned!
She determined to at least try for it. She came near to Dr. Delcasse,
and said, in a silvery voice:
“May I ask if this is not the renowned Dr. Delcasse--the man who has
restored the largest number of persons, cured and sane, to their
families, of any doctor for the insane in the whole world?”
To this insinuating address from a remarkably pretty and attractive
woman Dr. Delcasse, as would any other man, felt a warming of the
heart, and he replied, rising politely:
“You flatter me. I _am_ Dr. Delcasse.”
“Then,” cried Madame Vernet, taking out her handkerchief and preparing
to weep, “you are the man I most desire to meet. Oh, how fortunate
it is for me that you are here! I have a brother with me--a dear,
good young man, but whose mind has been affected ever since a fall he
had from an apricot tree some years ago. For a year I had him at Dr.
Vignaud’s hospital for the insane--rightly named, for I think anyone
who went there would shortly be insane. Dr. Vignaud is a charlatan of
the worst description.” Dr. Delcasse smiled in a superior manner to
hear himself praised and Dr. Vignaud reviled--how delicious! “I am my
poor brother’s guardian,” continued Madame Vernet, producing her card,
inscribed “Madame Vernet, _née_ Brion.” “My brother’s name is Louis
Brion. Ever since he was released from Dr. Vignaud’s asylum he has been
much crazier than when he went in, although Dr. Vignaud declared him
thoroughly cured.”
“Just like Vignaud!” remarked Dr. Delcasse, with that spirit of
fraternity which sometimes distinguishes the medical profession.
“This evening,” continued Madame Vernet, throwing her most pleading
and fascinating look into her eyes, “I brought my poor, dear brother
out to this place to supper, thinking it would divert him. But he has
been quite insane in all his actions, and just now he became violent.
He took it into his head that this necklace I wear--which I may say
to you confidentially is paste--is real, and is worth forty thousand
francs, and that I have stolen it from his wife. The poor boy has no
wife. And while I was trying to soothe him just now he suddenly broke
away, nearly knocking you down as you came in, and declared he was
going after the police to arrest me--_me_, his devoted sister!” Madame
Vernet’s voice became lost in her lace handkerchief.
“I saw an unmistakable gleam of insanity in his eye as he rushed
by me,” said Dr. Delcasse, promptly. “My experience, Madame, has
been vast. I can tell an insane patient at a glance, and I have no
hesitation in saying that the young man gave every indication to a
practiced eye of being, as you say, very much unbalanced. And Vignaud
said he was cured! Ha, ha!”
“But the great thing,” said Madame Vernet, with real and not pretended
anxiety, “is to get him away from here without scandal, and into your
sanatorium, where I wish to place him under your care. How can that be
managed?”
“Nothing easier, Madame,” replied Dr. Delcasse, eager to get hold
of one of Dr. Vignaud’s patients. “I am well known here--indeed,
I am personally acquainted with many of our police officers. When
the young man returns with the officers I shall simply, with your
permission, direct them to convey him to my sanatorium--it is less
than half a mile from here--and I will telephone to my assistant to
have a strait-jacket, a padded cell and a cold douche ready for the
unfortunate young man, and we will take care of him, never fear. When
I release him, depend upon it, he will be actually cured. I am not Dr.
Vignaud, I beg you to believe.”
At this moment de Meneval, with a couple of officers, was entering
the garden. The police station, as he had said, was but two minutes
away. Dr. Delcasse, accompanied by Madame Vernet, coolly advanced, and
recognizing the officers, spoke to them civilly, saying:
“Good-evening, Lestocq; good-evening, Caron.” And then to de Meneval he
said, soothingly: “Good-evening, Monsieur Brion. I am pleased to see
you and your charming sister at Melun, and think you will enjoy your
stay with me.”
De Meneval looked from one to the other in amazement, and opened his
mouth to speak; but before he could get out a word Madame Vernet laid
her hand on his arm and said, in the tone of soothing a raving lunatic:
“Yes, dear Louis, Dr. Delcasse will take the best possible care of you,
and I will come out to see you every week.”
De Meneval found his tongue then.
“To the devil with Dr. Delcasse! I never heard of him before. Police,
arrest this woman. I can prove by my wife and by a gentleman now in
this garden that the diamond necklace this person wears is the property
of my wife.”
“Do nothing of the kind,” interrupted Dr. Delcasse, with quiet
authority. “This young man, Louis Brion, is the brother of this lady,
Madame Vernet. He is demented, and his latest hallucination is that
Madame Vernet has stolen the necklace she wears; that it is worth forty
thousand francs, that she stole it from his wife--and he has no wife.”
“But I tell you,” shouted de Meneval, quite beside himself, “that I
never saw this woman before. She has my wife’s diamond necklace, and I
can prove it. Call Monsieur Bouchard!”
“You see how it is,” coolly remarked Dr. Delcasse to the two police
officers, “the only thing is to get him out of the way as quietly as
possible. I shall take him at once out to my sanatorium, where I
will have a strait-jacket, a padded cell and a cold douche waiting for
him.”
[Illustration: The police officers seized him, and dragged him out,
under Dr. Delcasse’s direction.]
With this the Doctor suddenly whipped out his silk handkerchief, and
with the greatest ingenuity bound it fast round de Meneval’s mouth, so
that he was completely gagged and silenced. The police officers seized
him, and dragged him out, under Dr. Delcasse’s direction. De Meneval
fought like a tiger, but it was one to three. The struggle, though
violent, was noiseless, and before the two or three waiters in the
vicinity realized what was going on everything was over, and Madame
Vernet, picking up her gloves, fan and other belongings, scurried off
another way to make the ten o’clock train.
Meanwhile, the interview between Papa Bouchard and Léontine had been
stormy. Léontine had demanded an explanation, but Papa Bouchard had no
satisfactory one to give. At first he mounted his high horse, declared
Léontine’s suspicions intolerable, and refused to discuss the subject
of the necklace at all. But she was not so easily put off.
“If you refuse me an explanation,” she said at last, “I shall simply
confess all to Victor, and you will have to treat with a man instead of
a woman.”
“Do; confess all to Victor,” replied Papa Bouchard, tartly. “Tell him
that sociological yarn you told me.”
“I’m afraid to,” replied Léontine, so dolefully, that it partially
softened Monsieur Bouchard, who really had a good heart.
“Come, come, now,” he said. “You had better take my word for it when I
tell you that, in spite of appearances, your necklace is safe. I can’t
and won’t tell you the circumstances--you and de Meneval would both
blazon it over Paris, and it would be devilish uncomfortable--” Papa
Bouchard was becoming expert in the use of bad language--“it would be
devilish uncomfortable for me. I can straighten the whole thing out in
a few days, if you will only keep quiet. _Can’t_ you keep quiet?”
By this time they were re-entering the garden.
“I will agree to keep quiet for a week,” said Léontine, firmly. “At the
end of that time, if this unpleasant complication about my necklace is
not cleared up, I have a presentiment that the whole thing will get
into the newspapers. Just fancy the headlines, ‘Mystery of Madame de
Meneval’s Diamond Necklace. Monsieur Paul Bouchard Proved to have Given
it to an Adventuress, With Whom he was Caught at the Pigeon House.’”
Papa Bouchard felt his knees grow a little weak under him, and went and
sat down in the chair he had lately vacated. Léontine followed him and
said dramatically, as if reading the scare head in a great metropolitan
daily.
“‘SUICIDE of Monsieur Paul Bouchard! The late Advocate Discovered in
his Apartment With a Pistol Wound Through his Temple! The Apartment
presents the Appearance of a Shambles! Blood Over Everything!! Walls
and Ceilings Much Bespattered!!!’”
Papa Bouchard, very white around the lips, poured out with an unsteady
hand a glass of champagne, and drank it, the glass clinking against his
teeth.
“Léontine,” he said, after having drained the glass. “You are trying
to frighten me. But you can’t do it. You sha’n’t do it. And I insist
that you shall not be carrying any of your sensational tales to the Rue
Clarisse, alarming my poor sister, and making her life a torment. Do
you hear me?”
“Yes, indeed, I do,” replied Léontine. “And, by the way, where is your
lady friend?”
Monsieur Bouchard looked around for Madame Vernet, and was much
disturbed at not seeing her. In the perplexities and annoyances of
the last half-hour he had made up his mind that it was absolutely
necessary to get that diabolical necklace back, and to work himself out
of the scrape in which he unexpectedly found himself.
He called up François, who reported that Madame Vernet had gone out
in a great hurry. There was a train for Paris just leaving. It struck
him Madame was trying to make that train. Such was precisely Monsieur
Bouchard’s idea. Her departure in this way seriously annoyed and
alarmed him. One thing, however, was clear in his mind--he must get
back to Paris as soon as possible. There was another train in twenty
minutes, and then there would be no more till eleven.
De Meneval’s disappearance was also strange, but just as Léontine
was beginning to feel uncomfortable she saw de Meneval approaching.
Something unusual had evidently happened. He looked angry and excited,
and his usually immaculate dress showed that he had been in a
scrimmage. By his side walked the portly, the imposing Dr. Delcasse.
The Doctor was apologizing to de Meneval with the utmost earnestness.
“My dear sir, I beg you will believe it was a most extraordinary
mistake----”
“_Very_ extraordinary!” replied de Meneval, grinding his teeth with
rage.
“If I had succeeded in getting you into my sanatorium you would have
found every comfort awaiting you.”
“Yes, a strait-jacket, a cold douche, and a padded cell, as you kindly
promised me.”
“May I ask, Monsieur, that you will not spread this unfortunate story
abroad in Paris?”
“I shall have it printed in every newspaper in Paris to-morrow morning,
and I shall myself write to Dr. Vignaud, giving him a detailed account
of the affair.”
“Good heavens!”
“And if insanity ever develops in my family, it is Dr. Vignaud who
shall treat every case--every case, do you hear?”
[Illustration]
“Then, sir,” said Dr. Delcasse, angrily, “all I have to say is that
I am not at all sure my first diagnosis was not correct, and you are
indeed, already crazy--and I have the honor to bid you good-evening.”
“Go to the devil!”
Dr. Delcasse, slapping his hat down angrily on his head, marched
indignantly out, and de Meneval, still furious at the treatment to
which he had been subjected, poured out his injuries:
“And but for having been recognized by some of the waiters as I was
being dragged away I should at this moment be an inmate of a lunatic
asylum, sent there by the wiles of a shameless adventuress, brought to
the Pigeon House by Monsieur Bouchard.” This was de Meneval’s exact
language.
“Take care, sir; take care!” cried Papa Bouchard, in a voice trembling
with wrath. He was not accustomed to being talked to in that manner.
“You may repent of this language. Madame Vernet is a lady of means
and respectability. I did not bring her out here. She came expecting
to find here her uncle and aunt, who live in Melun. I invited her to
sup in a public place, as any gentleman is authorized to do in the
case of a widow old enough to take care of herself--and because your
suspicions were excited by her having on a necklace like that you
bought for your wife, you proceeded to make trouble. Well, it seems she
turned the tables on you very cleverly, and no doubt, being a bashful
little thing, she dreaded the sensation it would make and the notoriety
which might follow, and--and so, naturally, has gone.” Then, turning
to Léontine, Papa Bouchard played his trump card. “Haven’t you your
diamond necklace safe at home, Léontine?”
To which Léontine faltered: “Y--y--yes, Papa Bouchard.”
“Well, then,” cried Papa Bouchard, assuming an air of triumphant virtue
to poor de Meneval, “I hope you see the enormity of your conduct.”
“I can’t say I do,” sullenly replied de Meneval.
“Very well, very well,” continued Papa Bouchard, realizing that he held
all the trumps in the game. “Do you want to go into the whole business
of this necklace? If you do there is no time like the present. Do you,
Léontine, want the matter sifted to the bottom?”
De Meneval remained gloomily silent, while Léontine murmured, “N--no,
Papa Bouchard.”
Papa Bouchard, having thus effectually silenced both of them, felt
master of the situation, but all the same, he was desperately anxious
to reach Paris in advance of the de Menevals, so that he could get on
Madame Vernet’s track before they should. He was pretty sure that she
could not slip away from her apartment without leaving some trace.
There was another train going almost immediately, and there would be no
more till eleven o’clock. It would be exceedingly convenient for him
to get an hour’s start of the de Menevals. So it occurred to him that
if he were to propose a little more champagne Léontine and de Meneval
would never run away and leave it, but _he_ could and would.
“Now,” said he, with an air of benevolence, “everything having been
straightened out about the necklace, suppose we have a bottle of
champagne before returning to Paris. Here, waiter!”
François immediately responded with a bottle of champagne.
De Meneval had never supposed that anything would be too pressing to
drag him away from good champagne, but he inwardly swore, as Léontine
silently fretted, at the delay that might prevent him from making the
next train to Paris. Both of them gulped down the champagne rather
than drank it, while Papa Bouchard, alleging that he had already taken
several glasses, declined any more. Every moment or two he looked at
his watch, and he said to Léontine:
“Will you be going back to Paris to-night, Léontine?”
“Indeed I shall,” eagerly replied Léontine. “I shall go back with you.”
“But I sha’n’t be going back till the midnight train. You see I am
beginning to keep late hours, to make up for lost time, and that will
be too late for you. Why can’t you remain at de Meneval’s quarters?”
“I have an engagement early to-morrow morning,” replied Léontine, who
was determined to get to Paris as quickly as she could and make some
private inquiries on her own account concerning Madame Vernet. The same
intention was fixed in de Meneval’s mind. Therefore he said:
“Never mind, Léontine; I am off duty till twelve o’clock to-morrow, and
I will take you to Paris to-night, if you wish.”
At which Léontine, looking very blank, replied:
“Oh, very well. That will be nice.”
“Now, why are you in such a hurry to get to Paris?” asked Papa
Bouchard. “The next train is always crowded--not a seat to be had in
a first-class compartment for love or money, and it makes a stop of
only two minutes and a half; unless one is already at the station it
is almost impossible to make it, and you see it is now within a few
minutes of the train.”
[Illustration]
While Monsieur Bouchard was speaking he was putting on his gloves
and making for the garden door, and the de Menevals, each carefully
avoiding an appearance of haste, were following him. Everybody had
forgotten that the champagne was not paid for, except François.
“So,” kept on Papa Bouchard, still edging away, “you will go by the
late train; perhaps I’ll wait for it myself.”
At that moment the shriek of the locomotive resounded. Immediately
every pretense of waiting for the other train vanished. All three of
them bolted for the exit to the garden. François rushed after them,
bawling, “Your bill, Monsieur--the champagne--and the tip--” while the
parrot, suddenly wakened from a nap, uttered a screech of demoniac
laughter and began to yell after Papa Bouchard’s rapidly retreating
figure:
“Bad boy Bouchard! bad boy Bouchard!”
Chapter III
ANYONE who saw Monsieur Bouchard a week after his adventures at the
Pigeon House would have said that the excellent man had grown ten years
older in that time. For he had endured more cares, anxieties, worries,
vexations, apprehensions and palpitations in that one week in the Rue
Bassano than in all his thirty years in the Rue Clarisse. Not that
Monsieur Bouchard had the slightest desire to go back to his old life.
Not at all. In the Rue Bassano he at least lived; in the Rue Clarisse
he had merely vegetated.
In the first place, on his arrival at his apartment shortly after
midnight on that fateful evening spent at Melun he had been unable to
find out anything at all about Madame Vernet. The _concierge_ had gone
to bed when he got home, and he dared not disturb the whole house at
that hour. He spent a sleepless night, with Pierre snoring peacefully
in the next room. The fellow had not come home till two o’clock in the
morning. Monsieur Bouchard utilized the watches of the night in making
up a story to tell the _concierge_ to account for the enquiries he
meant to make concerning Madame Vernet. A _concierge_, he well knew,
is the nearest approach to an omniscient being on this planet. It was
comparatively easy to concoct a tale that would go on four legs, in
the expressive phrase of his countrymen. Monsieur Bouchard was vastly
pleased with his own shrewdness when he paused to think of the facility
with which he invented his story. But to get it accepted at its face
value--ah, that was another thing.
At six o’clock in the morning he tiptoed down stairs in his dressing
gown and slippers. The _concierge_, yawning, was just opening the
shutters in her little den.
“Can you tell me, my good woman,” said Monsieur Bouchard, in a manner
calculated to allay any suspicions the _concierge_ might have--if
anything can allay the suspicions of a _concierge_--“whether Madame
Vernet arrived here last night--in fact, if she is in the house at
present? I ask because I promised her aunt and uncle out at Melun last
evening to escort her in, and by some accident we became separated in
the railway station, and I am considering what apology I shall make to
her aunt and uncle--very worthy people at Melun.”
The _concierge_ looked at poor Monsieur Bouchard, not with suspicion,
but with certainty in her eye. The very expression of her face called
him a liar and a villain, as she replied, coolly:
“Madame Vernet _did_ come in last night and left the house at five
o’clock this morning, to visit her aunt and uncle at Châlons.”
By which Monsieur Bouchard, who was no fool, found out three things:
first, that Madame Vernet had been beforehand with the _concierge_;
second, that Madame Vernet did not have an aunt and uncle at Châlons,
although she seemed to have uncles and aunts in every town, village and
hamlet in France; and third, that wherever she might be she certainly
was not at Châlons.
He spent the next three days in vain efforts to find out Madame
Vernet’s whereabouts. The _concierge_ had evidently been thoroughly
bought and coached, and would absolutely tell nothing. Madame Vernet
had taken her apartment by the month, and had paid in advance. The
_concierge_ knew no more. Not even a ten-franc piece could screw any
additional information out of her.
Papa Bouchard began to feel a little frightened. What would happen
if it should come out in the newspapers, as Léontine had threatened?
There were journalists enough in Paris ready to jump at such a story as
Léontine had hinted at. There was that Marsac, and the remarkable tale
he had concocted about a bogus fortune--Papa Bouchard recalled at least
a dozen instances that were frightfully like what he apprehended. When
this thought occurred to him he bit the pillows in his anguish--it was
in the middle of one of his sleepless nights. And what glee would those
laughing devils of newspaper men have out of him! And how should he
ever show his face in the Rue Clarisse? Monsieur Bouchard made up his
mind that if ever the thing got into the newspapers he should emigrate
to Madagascar.
Of course, Pierre knew all about it. Monsieur Bouchard had told him too
much not to tell him more. Pierre was only moderately sympathetic,
which infuriated Monsieur Bouchard.
“At least,” cried the poor gentleman, “those two scamps, Léontine and
de Meneval, are in as much trouble as I am.”
“But they have the necklace,” replied Pierre, “and it seems to me that
Monsieur is in a jolly hole, with his necklaces and his widows, and all
the rest of it.”
Monsieur Bouchard, at this, burst into a string of bad words that were
very reprehensible, but perfectly natural to a man in his imminent
circumstances.
However Pierre might choose to devil his master in private, in public
he was unflinchingly loyal to him. In the first place, Léontine and
de Meneval, each determined to force an explanation from Monsieur
Bouchard, haunted the Rue Bassano, and when they did not come they
wrote. It was easy enough to dispose of the frantic notes and letters,
but when the two came--always separately--and Léontine wept and raved
that she would and must see Papa Bouchard, and de Meneval swore and
stormed to the same effect, Pierre was immovable. Monsieur was one day
at Passy, another he was at Versailles, always on important business,
and Pierre never had the least idea when he would be home. Thus, by
unceasing vigilance and an unabashed front, Pierre managed to stave off
an interview between his master and the de Menevals for the whole of a
critical week.
Mademoiselle Bouchard was easier to manage. Pierre went to the Rue
Clarisse daily, with a very acceptable tale about Monsieur Bouchard
being so busy making the will of a rich old gentleman at Passy that he
had no time for anything else; likewise, that he was finding the noise
and commotion of the Rue Bassano so objectionable that he bitterly
regretted having left the Rue Clarisse. This little romance took
so well that Pierre improved on it by saying that Monsieur Bouchard
was trying to sublet the apartment, so he could return to peace and
quiet in the Rue Clarisse. Mademoiselle Bouchard was touched, charmed,
delighted to hear this.
Not so Élise. She was not of a trusting or confiding nature. When
Pierre turned up, late in the day, yawning, and still only half-awake,
she did not believe in the least his account of being kept awake by
the noises of the carts and carriages in the Rue Bassano. She boldly
taxed him with leading a riotous life, which Pierre strenuously denied,
and going to Mademoiselle Bouchard, actually wept over Élise’s want
of confidence in him after thirty years of married life. Mademoiselle
sharply rebuked Élise, and ordered her henceforth to believe everything
Pierre told her. Élise made no reply to this beyond her usual sniff,
but privately resolved the first day she had time to slip around to
the Rue Bassano and interview the _concierge_. She knew the ways of
_concierges_ as well as the ways of men.
For four days Monsieur Bouchard gave himself, body and bones, to the
business of a private detective in trying to locate Madame Vernet. Vain
effort! He of course expected to have to pay handsomely for the return
of the paste necklace, but he valued his peace of mind more than money,
and was ready enough to come down with some cash provided he could get
hold of the necklace.
On the fifth day he was delighted, but scarcely surprised, to receive
a letter from Madame Vernet saying that, as there seemed to be some
complications concerning the necklace he had so generously and sweetly
given her, and as she was a person of much delicacy of feeling, she was
seriously thinking of returning it. He could address her at the Pigeon
House at Melun.
Monsieur Bouchard replied by writing and flatly offering her five
hundred francs, nearly six times the original value of the necklace.
He himself took his letter out to the Pigeon House, and spent the
entire evening there, on the chance that Madame Vernet might turn up.
She did not, however. Next day he received a letter from her, all
reproaches and hysterics; how could he offer her money!--her, the most
disinterested, the most retiring of her sex! Money was nothing to her,
least of all a trifling sum of five hundred francs. Monsieur Bouchard
promptly replied, increasing his offer to a thousand francs. Another
deeply injured note from Madame Vernet. At last, after five days of
continual negotiation, Monsieur Bouchard haunting the Pigeon House
every evening, terms were arranged--two thousand francs in exchange for
the necklace.
It was infamous, but as Pierre reminded Monsieur Bouchard, one must
always pay for one’s indiscretions. It would seem as if Madame Vernet
had the direct inspiration of Satan himself in dealing with the too
amiable and too susceptible Monsieur Bouchard. Not only had she given
her address all along as the Pigeon House, but she appointed that
abode of gaiety and champagne as the rendezvous where she was to
meet Monsieur Bouchard and hand over the necklace in return for two
thousand francs in notes of the Bank of France--Madame Vernet specified
that there should be no cheque in the affair; she was so diffident;
it always embarrassed her to go to a bank, and notes could be passed
anywhere.
But Monsieur Bouchard was not wholly without discretion. He concluded
he would rather not be seen in the act of handing over the money to
Madame Vernet. Pierre--the foxy Pierre--should give her the money and
should receive the necklace. So, on the evening specified, the two took
the train for Melun, and went rattling out of Paris without dreaming of
what was brewing behind them and likewise stewing ahead of them.
[Illustration]
It was simply this: Élise had that evening found her opportunity to
go around to the Rue Bassano, and in five minutes she had discovered
everything Monsieur Bouchard and Pierre had been doing since they left
the Rue Clarisse. The _concierge_ knew all about the chase after Madame
Vernet, the continual trotting out to Melun--nay, she knew that both
Pierre and his master had an appointment with Madame Vernet at the
Pigeon House that very evening. Élise returned, boiling with rage,
to the Rue Clarisse, and with face and eyes blazing recounted to the
trembling and agitated Mademoiselle Bouchard the horrid story of the
frightful goings on in the Rue Bassano. And she had for audience not
only poor Mademoiselle Bouchard, but Léontine de Meneval, who happened
to be paying her weekly visit to Rue Clarisse. Léontine scarcely
heard Élise’s fierce denunciations of the two reprobates in the Rue
Bassano; all she really took in was the correspondence and the running
to and fro about the necklace. She flew from the apartment, leaving
Mademoiselle Bouchard in a state of collapse on the sofa, while Élise
retailed every circumstance of horror she had found out about the
renegades. Calling the first cab, Léontine drove rapidly home, rushed
to her strong-box, and got the supposed paste necklace out. She had
said to Monsieur Bouchard that anybody could tell at a glance that it
was an imitation, yet it so glowed and sparkled in its white radiance
that for the first time she began to suspect it was real. If so,
it only deepened the mystery, and she felt she must solve it then
and there. Again ordering a cab, she sprang into it and ordered the
cabman to drive her to one of the great jewelry shops in the Avenue de
l’Opéra. On reaching it she ordered the carriage to wait, and going
into the shop, asked to see the proprietor. He advanced, politely, and
Léontine, taking the necklace from about her neck, where she wore it
under her high bodice, said, with such calmness as she could muster:
[Illustration]
“Will you kindly give me some idea of the value of this?”
The jeweller took it up, examined it for a moment, and said:
“About forty thousand francs, I should say, Madame. The stones are
remarkably well matched, better than in many costlier necklaces.”
“Do you mean to say the stones are--are----”
“Well matched, Madame. In fact, some of them came from this
establishment. It was made by M. Leduc, a friend of mine, and I
assisted him.”
“Thank you,” replied Léontine, forcing herself to be calm, reclasping
the necklace round her throat and covering it up. She went out, got
into the cab again, and hesitated before giving her order. She was in
truth quite dazed and mystified. The man had touched his hat three
times, when she said, with an air of quiet determination:
“To the St. Lazare station.”
Yes, she would that very moment go and confess all to Victor. Her
resolution seemed an inspiration. There was some mystery about the
necklace, and it was only fair that Victor should know it. There should
be no more concealments between them. She reached the station just in
time to miss the eight o’clock train. It was still daylight, and she
waited for the next--a very slow one. Half-way to Melun the engine
broke down. It was nearly eleven o’clock before she found herself in
front of the huge old barrack building in which de Meneval had his
quarters.
[Illustration]
The orderly who took the place of _concierge_ at once recognized her
and politely escorted her to Captain de Meneval’s door.
“I do not think Monsieur le Capitaine is in at present,” he said; “but
if Madame will wait, he will no doubt be here shortly.” And he knocked
loudly at the door.
It was opened by a soldier--de Meneval’s servant--whom Léontine had
never seen before. The man’s unfamiliar face, and the unlooked-for
sight that met her eyes as soon as she stepped over the threshold, made
her turn as if to go out. In the middle of the room was spread a table,
with preparations for an elaborate supper; and Léontine’s quick eye
discovered that ladies were expected, for to three huge bouquets were
appended cards with names written on them. “For the Sprightly Aglaia,”
“For Olga, the Queen of the Dance;” “For Louise of the Fairy Foot.”
Léontine, slightly embarrassed, said to the soldier:
“I see I have made a mistake. I am Madame de Meneval, and I supposed
these to be Captain de Meneval’s quarters, but evidently they are not!”
“They are, Madame,” replied the man, very civilly.
“But I say they are _not_!” replied Léontine, somewhat tartly. “Captain
de Meneval _never_ entertains ladies at supper. He leads a most retired
life at Melun, while here are preparations made for a gay party.”
“Pardon, Madame; but Monsieur le Capitaine is giving the party to some
young ladies from the Pigeon House.”
Léontine’s first impulse was to box the soldier’s ears, but in sweeping
another glance round the room she recognized her own picture over the
mantel, together with a battered photograph of de Meneval’s chum,
Major Fallière, and other things to convince her that Captain de
Meneval was really the host of the impending supper party. She retained
self-possession enough to say to the man:
“If you have finished you may go.” And he discreetly vanished.
Léontine, throwing her parasol on the sofa, began to march up and down
the room in wrath and excitement.
“_These_ are his quiet evenings! _He_ doesn’t know anything about the
Pigeon House since he was married! I shouldn’t have minded it if he
had told me all about it, but to pretend to such economies, and at the
same time be secretly indulging in these extravagances--these shameless
orgies--oh, it is too much!”
Léontine had completely forgotten Putzki and Louise and the object of
her sudden descent on her husband. While she was walking up and down,
becoming every moment more angry and wrought up, the door opened, and
in walked Major Fallière. Léontine recognized him at once from his
picture--a soldierly looking man, slightly bald, immaculately well
dressed, and bearing in his air the reason for his sobriquet, the Pink
of Military Propriety. But his eye was not unkind; on the contrary, he
was distinctly in the class of men designated by women as dear old
things; and as such Léontine felt an instant confidence in him.
The correct Major was not so correct, however, that he hesitated to
march up to Léontine, and chucking her playfully under the chin,
remarked:
“The Pigeons are out early to-night. Where are the rest of the Pouters?”
Léontine’s face was a study. A flash of rage from her bright eyes was
succeeded by a look of puzzled helplessness, and then a radiant smile
of delight. This was really too good. He--old P. M. P.--had mistaken
her, Léontine de Meneval, for one of the young ladies from the Pigeon
House! Angry as she was, she could not forbear laughing, and she
replied, with her sauciest air:
“Oh, they’ll be here presently. I came early because I had a
premonition that old P. M. P. would be here early, too. Always on
time--one of the cardinal virtues of a soldier.” And then Satan
tempted her to tiptoe and actually chuck old P. M. P. under the chin!
[Illustration]
The effect frightened her for a moment or two, because Major Fallière,
perfectly astounded and highly offended, drew himself up stiffly
and glared at her like an ogre. But she was so very pretty, her
impertinence was accompanied with such a charming air of simplicity,
that no man not an absolute ogre could withstand it. So, in spite of
himself, old P. M. P.’s backbone relaxed, his eyes softened and he
tugged at his mustache to disguise the smile that _would_ persist in
coming.
Léontine having once admitted Satan into her heart, he speedily took
complete possession of the premises, and the next thing he inspired
her to do was to examine the prim Major carefully from the top of his
thinly thatched head down to the tips of his well-fitting shoes, and
say to him:
“I have often heard of you, and I am so glad to meet you. You know you
are quite a handsome man, Major.”
The Major grinned.
“For your age, that is.”
The Major scowled.
“And I like you well enough to wish to make friends with you. But first
I must tell you my name. It is Satanita.”
“Satanita! Rather suggestive, eh?”
“I should say so. Little Satan; and I match my name.”
“You are the sweetest, most innocent and captivating little devil I
ever saw.”
“Thank you. You should see me dance and hear me sing. The Pouters, as
you call them, are not a patch on me.”
“I can well believe it.”
“I have another name--I am called the Queen of the Harem-Scarem.”
“No doubt you are.”
“Now,” continued Léontine, seating herself with a confidential air
beside Major Fallière, “what do you think of our host, Victor de
Meneval?”
“One of the best fellows in the world.”
“Devoted to his wife, eh?”
“Yes. I have never seen her, but I hear she is a charming creature, and
Victor is truly attached to her.”
“This looks like it, doesn’t it?” cried Léontine, pointing to the
supper table.
“I don’t see that it doesn’t look like it. I happen to know that de
Meneval has had a good deal to trouble him lately. He got some money
from an unexpected source some days ago, and I advised him to give a
little supper--it’s dull out here, you know----”
“_You_ advised him to give a little supper! You--the Pink of Military
Propriety!”
“Yes, why not?”
“And how about his wife?”
“Oh,” replied the Major, with easy confidence, “she would probably make
an awful row if she knew it--but she’ll never know it. De Meneval has
coached me--I know exactly what to tell Léontine when I meet her--it so
happens that I have not met her yet. But I hear she is a charming young
woman.”
“She will be twice as charming to you when she finds that you have been
leading her husband off into giving suppers to--to--little devils like
me for example,” said Léontine, very solemnly.
“Oh, de Meneval and I have mapped out our campaign. We have a large and
trusty assortment of lies, expressly for Léontine’s consumption, and
she will swallow every one of them.”
Now, this was very provoking of the Major, but something in his kind
eyes, his way of standing up for Victor, his candid praise of herself,
gave Léontine a sudden impulse to tell him the whole story of what was
weighing on her and perplexing her and had driven her out to Melun
at that hour of the night. She knew all about him, what a generous,
sympathetic fellow he was, in spite of his primness and propriety--in
short, that he was a dear old thing. So, with eyes flashing with
mischief, and with smiles dimpling her fair face, Léontine said,
demurely:
“I have still another name besides Satanita and Queen of the
Harem-Scarem. Can’t you guess it?”
“No. I am not a clairvoyant.”
“I am--” Léontine rose, with her whole face sparkling with impish
delight--“I am Léontine, Madame de Meneval, wife of your friend, Victor
de Meneval. Yonder is my picture. Here am I.”
Poor P. M. P! He stared at her for a full minute, glared wildly about
him, and then, jumping up, made a dash for the door, from which
Léontine, laughing till the tears ran down her cheeks, dragged him back.
“What are you running away for?” she asked, forcing him to a seat
beside her.
“Because--because--” the Major tore his hair, “oh, de Meneval will
certainly shoot me when he hears that I chucked you under the chin!”
“But he won’t hear it, unless you tell him. And _I_ chucked _you_ under
the chin, remember.”
Major Fallière, burying his head in his hands, groaned aloud, and then
all at once the absurdity of the thing struck him, and he burst into a
howl of laughter.
Léontine joined him. They laughed and laughed, and when they would get
a little quiet Léontine would motion as if to chuck him under the chin
again, and Fallière would go off into renewed spasms.
[Illustration]
Presently, however, Léontine grew grave. The instant success of her
impromptu personation had given her an idea. She wanted revenge--a
sharp revenge--on de Meneval, and she saw a way to get it.
“Listen, and be quiet,” she said to Fallière. “Victor deserves to be
punished. I will tell you why. He has always represented to me that
he led the quietest kind of a life here--nothing but attention to his
military duties, and his evenings spent in the seclusion of his own
room, with nothing but ballistics and my picture for company.”
Fallière could not refrain from a soft whistle.
“And he professed to be so glad that you were ordered to Melun, because
you were so much more sedate than the other officers. He complained
that they spend too much time at the Pigeon House, while he had
entirely given up frequenting that fascinating place.”
Fallière whistled a little louder.
“I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him to take me to supper
there the other night. Now, what do I find? That he has been throwing
sand into my eyes all the time. Look!” Léontine waved her arms
dramatically toward the table. “Oughtn’t he to be punished?”
“Certainly he ought,” replied Fallière, with the ready acquiescence of
a bachelor who thinks that married men should be made to toe the line.
“Very well. You will help me?”
“You may count on me.”
Léontine rose and looked around her. On the sideboard sat a couple of
bottles of mineral water, and on the floor near by a wine cooler full
of bottles of champagne. She cleverly transferred the labels from two
of the champagne bottles to the apollinaris bottles and then put them
in the wine cooler.
“I think I can drink at least a quart of apollinaris,” she said.
“And I’ll see that you get apollinaris every time,” replied that crafty
villain of a Fallière, laughing.
“And I’m Satanita, and I shall act Satanita until I have made Victor
sorry enough he ever played me any tricks.”
“Oh, no, you won’t! At the first sign of distress on his part you will
throw the whole business to the winds, fall on his neck and implore his
forgiveness. I know women well.”
“Of course you do--having never been married. But wait and see if
I don’t give him a bad quarter of an hour. And I reckon on your
assistance.”
“I will stand by you to the last.”
They were interrupted at this point by a great sound of scuffling
outside the door, mingled with shrieks of girlish laughter. The door
flew open, revealing three remarkably pretty girls--Aglaia, Olga and
Louise--dragging in an elderly gentleman by main force and his coat
tails. The elderly gentleman was resisting mildly but with no great
vigor, and it was plain he was not particularly averse to the roguish
company in which he found himself. And the elderly gentleman was--Papa
Bouchard!
[Illustration]
One of these merry imps from the Pigeon House had possessed herself of
his hat, which she had stuck on her curly head; another one had laid
violent hands on his umbrella, while the third and sauciest of the
lot, Aglaia, had robbed him of his spectacles, which she wore on her
tiptilted nose. Papa Bouchard, puffing, protesting, frightened, but
laughing in spite of himself, was saying:
“Young ladies, young ladies, I really cannot remain, as you insist,
to supper. I do not even know the name of the host on this occasion.
I am quite unused to these orgies. I am out here this evening with my
servant merely for the purpose of completing a business transaction.”
A chorus of “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” saluted this speech, and Mademoiselle
Aglaia, Papa Bouchard’s chief tormentor, asked, solemnly:
“Is your business engagement with a lady or a gentleman?”
And when Papa Bouchard, in the innocence of his soul, replied, “It
is with a lady,” each one of the Pouters, as the young ladies of the
Pigeon House were called, pretended to fall over in a dead faint.
Papa Bouchard, much alarmed, ran from one to the other, trying to
revive them; but while he was rubbing the brow and slapping the hands
of each in turn, Louise suddenly came to life, and running and locking
the door, put the key into her pocket, so that Papa Bouchard had no
means of escape except out of the third-story window or up the chimney.
[Illustration]
And at that moment his eye fell on Léontine.
Pity Papa Bouchard! He really had no intention of attending so gay a
party. He had spent the whole evening anxiously watching for Madame
Vernet. She had not arrived, or at least had not seen fit to reveal
herself, and while he was hovering about the entrance to the terrace
garden looking for her, these three merry girls had come along, had
swooped down on him without the least warning, and had carried him off
bodily to de Meneval’s supper. Papa Bouchard had not the slightest idea
of where he was when he was plumped down in Captain de Meneval’s room.
But one look around him--the sight of Léontine--revealed his whole
dreadful predicament to him. It was too much for poor Papa Bouchard!
His persecutors having permitted him to sit on a chair, he endeavored
to recover himself, and fanning with his handkerchief in great
agitation, he debated with himself what to do. Léontine, meanwhile, was
laughing at him without a sign of recognition.
Papa Bouchard, presently finding his voice, said sternly to Léontine:
“May I ask what you are doing here in this company?”
To which Léontine, with pert gaiety, replied:
“And may I ask what _you_ are doing here in this company?”
“I,” said Papa Bouchard, with dignity, “am here by accident, and by the
violence of these young women.”
“Oh, what a fib!” cried Olga. “The old duffer begged us to let him
come. We tried to shake him off, but we couldn’t. Isn’t that so, Aglaia
and Louise?”
And Aglaia and Louise said it was so.
Papa Bouchard, astounded at such duplicity, glared at them, but the
only satisfaction he got was a fillip on the nose from Aglaia and a
remark to the effect that he and the truth didn’t live at the same
address. Papa Bouchard indignantly turned his back on these traducers
and again opened on Léontine.
“I am amazed--amazed at your temerity. What shall I say to Captain de
Meneval when I see him, as I shall to-morrow morning?”
“Anything you like,” was Léontine’s laughing answer.
“Léontine de Meneval,” cried Papa Bouchard, much enraged, “do you know
_me_, your guardian and trustee?”
“No, I don’t,” responded Léontine, nonchalantly. “I never saw you
before.”
At this, shouts of laughter came from the three young ladies, and they
all urged Papa Bouchard to stop his wild career of prevarication and
learn to tell the truth.
Papa Bouchard, quite beside himself, turned to Major Fallière.
“Sir,” he said, solemnly, “you wear the uniform of an officer, and
I presume you are a gentleman. Believe me, this lady--” indicating
Léontine--“is the wife of a brother officer of yours, Captain de
Meneval. The truest kindness you can do him or her is to persuade her
to leave this scene of dissipation and return to Paris with me.”
[Illustration]
“O-o-o-o-h!” shrieked the three impish girls in chorus. “What an
outrageous proposition! And she says she never saw the man before!”
Papa Bouchard, still appealing to Major Fallière, continued, earnestly:
“Perhaps this misguided girl has not told you that she is Madame
Victor de Meneval.”
“She told me,” quietly replied Major Fallière, “that she was simply
Satanita, a singer and dancer.”
Papa Bouchard dropped limply on the sofa and groaned in anguish
of heart. But now was heard a jaunty step on the stair, which all
recognized as de Meneval’s. The mischievous Aglaia ran forward and
unlocked the door, and in stepped de Meneval, smiling and debonair.
Now, this little festivity had been his sole recreation during the ten
miserable days since he had got into the complication of the necklace;
and the supper, which was for only five, was at the suggestion of the
Pink of Military Propriety. So it was without any compunctions that de
Meneval walked into his quarters, expecting to find a small but jolly
party. But he instantly recognized the two uninvited members, and
stopping short on the carpet, his ruddy complexion turned a sickly
green.
[Illustration]
Papa Bouchard felt a sensation of triumph at Captain de Meneval’s
entrance. _He_, at least, would not dare to deride and defy him, as
these wretched young women had done. But before Monsieur Bouchard could
open his mouth, Aglaia burst forth, pointing to the old gentleman:
“Of all the impudent men I ever saw, this one excels! What do you
think? As soon as he found we were coming here to supper, he hung on to
us--declared there was nothing he liked so well as a gay little party,
that he could drink so much champagne he was called the Champagne
Tank--and actually forced himself in here, although we tried to push
him out. Didn’t he, Olga and Louise?”
And Olga and Louise confirmed every word that Aglaia uttered.
Papa Bouchard, thoroughly exasperated, struck an attitude like that
of Socrates in his favorite picture, “Socrates and His Pupils,” and
addressed Captain de Meneval.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” he said, “you of course do not and cannot
believe a word that these young ladies say concerning my presence here
to-night.”
Victor, very much alarmed, and dreading to catch Léontine’s eye, yet
retained enough of his wits to see that he had Papa Bouchard at a
disadvantage, and that the best thing to do was to assume the worst,
and decline to listen to any explanation.
“Monsieur Bouchard,” he said, coldly, “you are asking a little too much
of me when you wish me to believe your testimony against that of three
ladies. I don’t know how you came, but I am very glad to see you now
that you are here, and hope you will remain to supper.”
“But I came on business!” cried poor Papa Bouchard. “I had an
appointment to finish up a transaction with a lady----”
And Aglaia and Louise and Olga again uttered a chorus of shrieks, and
pretended to faint.
But de Meneval had troubles of his own to attend to then. He walked
over to where Léontine sat, and assuming an air of forced jollity, such
as a man puts on when he anticipates a wigging from the wife of his
bosom, said:
“Delighted you happened to arrive, my love--and what do you think of
the Pouters?”
“I think they are very jolly girls,” promptly replied Léontine; “but as
I am another uninvited guest, I thought it best to tell Major Fallière
and the others that I, too, am a singer and dancer--Satanita, I called
myself, on the spur of the moment.”
De Meneval turned from green to blue. “And you did not immediately
inform them that you are my wife?” he hissed, in a savage whisper.
“No,” coolly replied Léontine, “and when Papa Bouchard recognized me, I
declared I had never seen him before. I am little Satanita--good name,
isn’t it?--for this evening.”
De Meneval, enraged and disconcerted beyond words, felt helpless.
Suppose he were to proclaim the truth? Léontine, as if answering the
thought in his mind, whispered, with cruel glee:
“And if you say I am your wife I shall simply deny it. Satanita I am
and Satanita I shall be, and I shall live up to the part--of that you
may be sure.”
[Illustration]
De Meneval was in doubt whether to shoot himself. And then there was a
move toward the table. The girls were dragging Papa Bouchard forward,
who, still very angry, was yet not insensible to their pretty and
mischievous wiles. Léontine, running up to Major Fallière, demanded
that he sit next her at table, while de Meneval found himself sitting
opposite Léontine, and with indescribable feelings saw her drink
champagne, as he supposed, by the tumblerful. Fallière had cleverly got
hold of the two bottles of apollinaris, and filled Léontine’s glass
with the greatest assiduity.
[Illustration]
There was much noise and excitement, and as the supper progressed de
Meneval grew almost frantic over the spectacle his dear little Léontine
was making of herself. For she not only managed to drink innumerable
glasses of apollinaris, but she sang, she even danced. She paraded up
and down the room, singing, in her sweet, saucy voice, verses made up
at the moment.
“Oh, I am the Widow Clicquot, Clicquot,
I live at the Château Margaux, Margaux,
My coachman’s name is Pommery Sec,
My footman is Piper Heidsieck,
Moët-et-Chandon are my span.”
She paused for reflection and added:
“And when Moët and Chandon go lame,
I drive Mumm and Roederer!”
Here her invention gave out, and rubbing the top of de Meneval’s head
with one of the champagne bottles, she added, laughing:
“Houp-là!”
That “Houp-là” almost drove de Meneval to distraction, but a roar of
applause, in which all joined except her husband and Papa Bouchard,
encouraged Léontine to continue. After a few moments’ reflection she
began singing again:
“This is the way in Champagne Land!
Oh, Champagne Land is dear to me,
But Champagne Land is queer to me.
There, lobsters grow on trees,
There is a mine of cheese;
The oysters walk,
The cocktails talk,
And the _pâté de foie gras_ builds his nest
In the hedge where the anchovy paste grows best.”
And she concluded with another “Houp-là!”
At this Papa Bouchard, who had been as much horrified as de Meneval,
leaned over and whispered in agony to him:
“She has certainly lost her mind and appears quite crazy!”
This was too much for poor de Meneval. He had spent an hour of torture
while Léontine, vastly to her own amusement, to Major Fallière’s,
and to that of the Pouters, had exhibited all the saucy graces of a
Satanita, and Queen of the Harem-Scarem, but de Meneval could stand no
more. Therefore, rising from the table, he cried, with tears in his
eyes:
“My friends, I beg of you to leave me. This lady who calls herself
Satanita is my wife. I have never seen her act in this manner before--I
am sure she never so acted before. It is my duty as well as my
privilege to shield her, and I wish to say that if any person, man or
woman, ever mentions what her unfortunate conduct to-night has been,
a life will be forfeited, for I swear to shoot any man who dares to
breathe one word against her, and any woman who does it may reckon on
my vengeance.” And with big tears rolling down his cheeks, he held his
arms out to his wife.
[Illustration]
This was too much for Léontine. Just as Major Fallière had predicted,
at the first sign of repentance on de Meneval’s part she forgot all her
resolutions to punish him, and falling into his arms, she exclaimed, in
her own, natural voice:
“You dear, chivalrous angel, I haven’t touched champagne--it is nothing
but apollinaris water, and I am your own true, devoted Léontine!”
De Meneval was so overcome that he could do nothing but pat her head
and cry:
“Oh, what have you not made me suffer to-night!”
“At least,” replied Léontine, laughing and looking toward Major
Fallière, “you have not spent your usual dull evening at Melun,” and de
Meneval had the grace to blush, while old P. M. P. laughed back at the
roguish Léontine.
Papa Bouchard, too, had suffered agonies at Léontine’s behavior--agonies,
however, which the attentions he experienced at the hands of the young
ladies partly ameliorated, for they had not stopped pinching and
tickling him for a single moment.
“Really,” he said, “I have been very much agitated and distressed--I
never saw such doings in the Rue Clarisse. I was very seriously
concerned at my ward’s behavior--very seriously concerned. But now,”
continued Papa Bouchard, “everything seems to be straightened out
to everybody’s satisfaction, and finding ourselves accidentally
together, why not finish up our evening with a jollity which--er--did
not--er--exist, so far as I am concerned, in the beginning? So I
say--houp-là!”
Alas! at that very moment the door opened softly behind him and in
walked Madame Vernet! She was prettier, more demure and gentle than
ever before. Her black costume, though highly coquettish, had a
nun-like propriety about it. She advanced with downcast eyes, and said,
timidly:
“I knocked and thought I heard someone say, ‘Come in.’ I do not know on
whose hospitality I am trespassing, but I saw Monsieur Bouchard enter
half an hour ago, and as I must see him on a matter of business, I
venture to ask for a word with him here.”
Monsieur Bouchard, at the sight of her, seemed about to collapse. Not
so Captain de Meneval. He rose at and said, with an ironical bow:
“Madame Vernet, you are trespassing on the hospitality of Captain de
Meneval, the gentleman you adopted as a brother about ten days ago
and handed over as a dangerous lunatic to Dr. Delcasse--who had a
strait-jacket, a cold douche and a padded cell ready for him.”
At this Madame Vernet assumed an attitude more shrinking, more timid
than before, and falling on Monsieur Bouchard’s shoulder, cried:
“Dear Paul, protect me from this dreadful person!”
Monsieur Bouchard was not at that moment able to protect anybody. He
looked the picture of abject despair as he clutched the arms of his
chair. He could only say, feebly:
“Go away! go away!”
“Is that the way you speak to your own Adèle!” cried Madame Vernet,
burying her head on Monsieur Bouchard’s reluctant bosom and bursting
into tears. “Oh, what a change within one short week! Last week it was
nothing but ‘Dearest Adèle, when will you name the day?’ And now it is
‘Go away! go away!’” Madame Vernet’s voice was lost in sobs, but she
continued to rub her left ear vigorously into Monsieur Bouchard’s shirt
front.
“It is false!” wailed Monsieur Bouchard, trying to escape from Madame
Vernet’s left ear.
“Do you pretend to deny,” sobbed that timid and trustful creature,
“that only a week ago you gave me this?” She took from her pocket the
paste necklace, and at the sight of it a shock like a galvanic battery
ran down the backbones of de Meneval and Léontine. “And that when I
found it to be paste you offered me two thousand francs, in humble
apology for the attempt to deceive me?”
“It is false!” again cried Monsieur Bouchard, almost weeping.
“And that we were to meet here to-night in order to make exchange? Oh,
dearest Paul, we have had lovers’ quarrels before, but nothing like
this!”
Monsieur Bouchard was too much overcome by Madame Vernet’s affectionate
attentions to do more than groan and try to push her away. But de
Meneval, walking coolly up to her, quietly and very unexpectedly took
the necklace out of her hand, saying:
“This is the property of my wife, and as such I take possession of it,
and call on Monsieur Bouchard to make an explanation.”
At this Madame Vernet uttered a despairing shriek, and throwing both
arms round Monsieur Bouchard’s neck, screamed:
“You must avenge this insult, Paul! And you must at least give me the
two thousand francs!”
But Monsieur Bouchard was so perfectly delighted with the notion that
de Meneval had the necklace and Pierre the two thousand francs, that
his countenance changed as if by magic. He struggled to his feet, and
after vainly to disengage himself from Madame Vernet’s encircling arms,
much to the amusement of the three young ladies and Major Fallière,
cried:
“I am perfectly overjoyed to make an explanation--an explanation that
will cause you, Léontine, and you, de Meneval, to forget all the
unpleasant events of this evening. This necklace is paste--and the
one Léontine has is real. You may remember, de Meneval, you came to
my apartment a week ago last Monday evening, bringing Léontine’s real
diamond necklace with you. You told me that when you bought it for her
you also bought an imitation one for seventy-five francs, which you
kept a secret from her.”
De Meneval, during this speech, had lost his dashing and determined
attitude.
“I believe I did something of the kind,” he said, meekly.
“And that you had, still unknown to Léontine, put the paste one in
place of the real one; and you threatened, if I did not advance
money to pay a large bill you owed at the Pigeon House for things
like this--” Monsieur Bouchard indicated the supper table and the
guests with one wave of his arm--“you would take the necklace to the
pawnbroker.”
De Meneval turned to Léontine, and knowing what was coming, said, with
a sickly smile:
“Dearest, will you forgive me?”
“Indeed I will!” replied Léontine, who knew more of what was coming
than did de Meneval.
[Illustration]
“Scarcely were you gone,” continued Monsieur Bouchard, assuming his
oracular manner, which sat rather awkwardly on him, as Madame Vernet
persisted in nestling on his shoulder, “when in comes Léontine with the
paste necklace, and for the same purpose--money or the pawnbroker.
It at once occurred to me that she could not be trusted with any
necklace on which she thought money could be raised--her debts were to
tailors and dressmakers--so I gave her back her own necklace--she has
it now--and told her it was paste, and she said it looked it. Then,
just as I had got rid of her, in comes _this_ lady--” Papa Bouchard
made a desperate effort to shake off Madame Vernet, but that diffident
person only held on to him the more affectionately--“picked up the
necklace, clasped it round her neck, and walked off with it, and I have
spent the most miserable week of my life trying to get it back. I had
arranged to give her the two thousand francs, which Pierre, my man,
has in his pocket at this moment, when, owing to this lady’s indelicate
persistence in following me here, and in rashly exposing the necklace,
she lost it, and I keep my two thousand francs. If I could find that
rascal Pierre I could prove all I say.”
And as if in answer to his name, the door was burst open, and in rushed
Pierre, pale and breathless.
“Monsieur,” he cried to Papa Bouchard; “all is discovered, and we
are in the greatest danger. My wife Élise found out everything from
the _concierge_ in the Rue Bassano this evening. She went back to
Mademoiselle Bouchard, and, if you please, both of them took the train
for Melun to capture us--and just as I was coming to warn you I ran
into them at the foot of the stairs. They had asked for Captain de
Meneval’s quarters, in order to get him to help them search for us.
They are on the stairs now!”
[Illustration]
Léontine and de Meneval, meaning to let Monsieur Bouchard bear alone
the brunt of Mademoiselle Bouchard’s wrath, immediately scuttled into
seats against the wall, which they occupied with great dignity. Major
Fallière, who had heard of Mademoiselle Bouchard, got as far away from
the girls as he could, and they--Aglaia, Olga and Louise--with much
discretion ranged themselves primly on a sofa at the farthest end of
the room. But this left Papa Bouchard standing in the middle, with
Madame Vernet embracing him tenderly. He, too, would have liked to
flee, but he was literally frozen with terror, and unable to move or
speak. And then the door came open, and in walked, or rather marched,
Mademoiselle Céleste Bouchard and Élise.
Never in all his fifty-four years of life had Monsieur Bouchard
seen his sister in such a state as she was at that moment. Her eyes
sparkled, and her small figure was erect and commanding. Her emotions
had made both her and Élise altogether forget the primness and
propriety of their costumes, for which mistress and maid had been
noted. Mademoiselle Bouchard’s correct, elderly bonnet seemed to have
caught the same infection of demoralization as Monsieur Bouchard,
Pierre and Pierrot, for it sat at a most improper and dissipated angle.
Her mantle was awry, she had on one white glove and one black one,
and a fringe of white petticoat showed the agitation in which she had
dressed.
Élise was in somewhat the same condition, and she clutched a flower pot
and a gold-headed stick which had belonged to Bouchard _père_, under
the impression they were a travelling bag and an umbrella.
[Illustration]
The sight that met their eyes was Monsieur Bouchard apparently
submitting with willingness to Madame Vernet’s endearments, while the
lady herself sobbed out upon his breast:
“Oh, Paul, dearest, protect your own Adèle from that dreadful old
woman!”
Now, this was too much for any woman to stand. Mademoiselle Bouchard,
panting and trembling with wrath and horror, sank into a chair.
“Élise,” she gasped, putting her hand before her eyes, “put up your
umbrella between me and that disgraceful sight. I cannot look upon it.”
[Illustration]
Élise, equally agitated, made futile attempts to convert the stick into
an umbrella, and then cried out:
“Oh, this is only a stick! Perhaps I put the umbrella in the travelling
bag.” But failing to find an umbrella in the flower pot, she collapsed
into a chair next her mistress, crying out: “When you, Mademoiselle,
have finished with Monsieur Bouchard I’ll dispose of Pierre. Oh, the
rascal!”
Pierre, like his master, was dumb before the accuser. Not so Madame
Vernet. She continued to appeal to Monsieur Bouchard:
“Oh, darling Paul, I am _so_ frightened! Why don’t you send her away?”
“But I am not your ‘darling Paul’ and never was!”
Poor Monsieur Bouchard was simply a pitiable sight, and the de
Menevals, the Major and three girls were heartless enough to go into
convulsions of silent mirth at his predicament. They, too, had nothing
to say in Mademoiselle Bouchard’s indignant presence. But that lady was
determined to be answered.
“Paul,” she said, in the tone of an inquisitor, “stop those shocking
demonstrations toward that person and explain your conduct to me.”
“My dear Céleste,” replied Papa Bouchard, in a faint voice and almost
weeping, “if you could induce this lady to stop _her_ demonstrations
I should be the happiest man on earth. And there’s no explanation to
give. I’m the helpless victim of a designing woman.”
At which Madame Vernet screamed and said, trying to kiss him:
“But I will forgive you, my own Paul. I know you don’t mean what you
say.”
And Élise added to Monsieur Bouchard’s anguish, and to Mademoiselle
Bouchard’s horror by crying out, “Mademoiselle, he isn’t trying to get
rid of her. He is tickling her and pinching her--I see him myself!”
Monsieur Bouchard thought he should have died of horror at this awful
and baseless charge.
Apparently Madame Vernet was master of the situation, but Major
Fallière, the cool, the resolute Fallière, came to the rescue. Going up
quietly to Madame Vernet, he deliberately raised her face so he could
look her squarely in the eye.
“Madame Vernet,” he said, “you seem to have lost sight of that little
incident of representing my friend, Captain de Meneval, as your brother
and a dangerous lunatic, and the trick you played on Dr. Delcasse. Now,
I happen to know that Dr. Delcasse is determined to punish you, if he
can find you, and unless you immediately leave these quarters and leave
Melun I shall inform Dr. Delcasse of your whereabouts, and you will
have a visit from the police.”
Madame Vernet, seeing she had met her match, disengaged herself from
Monsieur Bouchard, to that gentleman’s great joy. Assuming an attitude
and air of great innocence, she said:
“I don’t really understand what you mean, or even who you are. But
being naturally a very diffident and retiring person, I cannot stand
the least unfavorable criticism, and I shall certainly leave this
censorious and unsympathetic company.”
Major Fallière ceremoniously offered her his arm, escorted her to the
door, and opened it. Madame Vernet paused on the threshold.
[Illustration]
“I go,” she said, “to seek refuge and protection with my aunt and uncle
in Mézières.”
And the Major shut the door after her.
Mademoiselle Bouchard then rose majestically and advanced to Monsieur
Bouchard.
“And _you_, Paul,” she said, “will seek refuge and protection in the
house of your sister in the Rue Clarisse, where you spent thirty happy
and peaceful years. You will there resume the orderly and quiet life
interrupted by your unfortunate excursion into the Rue Bassano. You
will return to early hours and wholesome meals. You will have boiled
mutton and rice, with a small glass of claret, for your dinner, and
ten o’clock will be your hour for retiring. An occasional visit to a
picture gallery or a museum will supply you with amusements far more
intellectual than the orgies you have been indulging in at the Pigeon
House.”
Monsieur Bouchard, the image of despair, looked round him. Captain de
Meneval and Léontine were in fits of laughter. The three girls, huddled
together on the sofa, were tittering; the grim Major was smiling
broadly. Even a worm will turn, and so did Monsieur Bouchard.
“I am sorry, my dear Céleste,” he said, in a voice he vainly endeavored
to make cool and debonair, “but what you suggest is impossible. I have
taken my apartment for a year. And I find that boiled mutton and rice
for dinner do not suit my constitution. I--I--I--shall remain in the
Rue Bassano.”
A round of applause from Major Fallière, Léontine and Victor, in which
the three young ladies joined, much to Monsieur Bouchard’s annoyance,
greeted this. Nevertheless, it stiffened his backbone.
“Do you mean to say that you do not intend to return to the Rue
Clarisse?” asked Mademoiselle Bouchard, in much agitation.
“Y--yes,” replied Monsieur Bouchard, trying to assume a swashbuckler
air. “You see, I don’t think the air of the Rue Clarisse agrees with
me very well. I often had twinges of rheumatism there. Now, since I
have been in the Rue Bassano, my joints feel about twenty-five years
younger. In fact, I myself feel considerably younger--an increased
vitality, so to speak. I am sorry to disoblige you, my dear Céleste,
but for the sake of my health and other reasons I shall remain in my
present quarters.”
Mademoiselle Bouchard, defeated, was speechless. Not so Élise. Walking
up to Pierre, she seized him and bawled:
“No excuses about your health shall keep _you_ from the Rue Clarisse.
I promise you that you shall have a very different time there from
your life in the Rue Bassano, turning night into day, running out here
to the Pigeon House all the time and making a show and a scandal of
yourself.”
“No, Élise,” firmly replied Pierre, who had much more real courage than
his master, “I promised Mademoiselle Bouchard that I never would desert
Monsieur Bouchard. If he remains in the midst of the dangers of the Rue
Bassano he needs my protecting services more than ever. Although but a
servant, I have a sense of honor. I cannot break my word.”
“Oh, you old hypocrite--” began Élise.
“Hypocrite, you may call me,” answered Pierre, folding his arms and
turning up the whites of his eyes, “but liar and falsifier you cannot.
Mademoiselle--” to Mademoiselle Bouchard--“I shall keep my word to you.
As long as Monsieur Bouchard remains in the Rue Bassano I stay with
him. He shall not face alone the dangers of that gay locale--those
music halls, those theatres, those merry cafés, where all sorts of
delicious, indigestible things are sold. His faithful Pierre shall be
with him.”
[Illustration]
Mademoiselle Bouchard realized she was beaten. So did Élise. They rose
slowly. De Meneval ran into the next room, and bringing out a cage that
held the redoubtable Pierrot, put it into Mademoiselle Bouchard’s hand.
“There, dear Aunt Céleste,” he cried, “is your consoler. I offered to
buy him from the proprietor of the Pigeon House, but the man said he
would give me the bird for nothing--in fact, he would pay to get rid
of him. He was driving the customers of the Pigeon House away by his
language.”
“At least,” said Mademoiselle Bouchard, solemnly, “if men are
renegades, there is something of the same sex that is faithful and
grateful. No doubt this poor bird is happy at escaping from the
dissipated atmosphere of the Pigeon House to the sweet seclusion of the
Rue Clarisse.”
[Illustration]
But, horror of horrors! The instant the wicked Pierrot found himself
going in the direction of the door, on his way to the Rue Clarisse,
he broke out into the most outrageous denunciations of the two ladies.
Shrieks, demoniac laughter, yells, oaths and slang of the worst
description poured from him; he screamed with rage, bit furiously at
both Mademoiselle Bouchard and Élise, and forcing the cage door open,
with almost human intelligence flew out and perched on Monsieur
Bouchard’s shoulder, from which he continued his volley of abuse,
winding up with a shout of:
“Go to the devil, you bowlegged old rapscallions!”
But the two respectable elderly persons so infamously described, were
already fleeing. Of course, no such bird as Pierrot had become could
be tolerated in the Rue Clarisse, and Élise cried, while she and
Mademoiselle Bouchard ran down the stairs:
“The only safe thing to do, Mademoiselle, is to keep everything
masculine out of our apartment. They are all alike--men and
parrots--everything that is masculine is abominable and not to be
trusted. They live to deceive us poor women, and are never so happy
as when they are lying to us. So let them go--Monsieur, Pierre and
Pierrot--the wretches, and trust to retributive justice to overtake
them!”
But neither Monsieur Bouchard nor Pierre seemed to fear the
blindfolded lady with the sword. They were at that moment capering with
glee, and Pierre was shouting:
“I wouldn’t go back to the Rue Clarisse for a million of monkeys!”
And Papa Bouchard was saying:
“I have a confession to make. It is this--that I like a gay life, and
as that worthy fellow says, I would not go back to the Rue Clarisse for
a million of monkeys, and all the money in the Bank of France beside. I
intend to lead a _very_ gay life, hereafter. I am a changed, a reformed
man. Léontine, I shall allow you three-fourths of your income to
spend--and if you get into straits, come to Papa Bouchard and perhaps
I’ll do something handsome. Victor, when next you have a little party
of Pouters on hand, don’t forgot your Papa Bouchard.”
“Indeed I won’t,” cried de Meneval, “and Fallière and I will promise
to get twenty of the best fellows in the regiment and take you on the
biggest lark, bat, jag, and jamboree you ever heard of in all your
life!”
[Illustration]
“Pray don’t forget,” answered Papa Bouchard, while his mouth came open
as if it were on hinges. “Remember--it is to have all the combined
features of a lark, a bat, a jag and a jamboree. And Pierre, my man, we
won’t go back to the Rue Clarisse!”
“No!” shrieked Pierre, capering in an ecstasy of delight, “we won’t go
back to the Rue Clarisse!”
And Pierrot yelled as if inspired, “We won’t go back to the Rue
Clarisse! We’re free! we’re free! Gay dogs are we!”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
In Chapter III, in the paragraph beginning on page 239 that begins
with “But Monsieur Bouchard” there appears to be a missing word
after the word “vainly.” The transcriber believes that the missing
word was “trying,” but research was not able to confirm this.
There are no other contemporaneous editions for comparison.
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