Читать книгу Twelve Tales - Allen Grant - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Zélie was our cook. She came back to us each winter when we returned to the Riviera, and went away again in spring to Aix-les-Bains, where she always made her summer season with a German family. A thorough-going Provençale was Zélie, olive-skinned, black-haired, thick-lipped, pleasant-featured, with flashing dark eyes and a merry mouth, well shaped to make a mock at you. Nobody would have called Zélie exactly pretty: but she was comely and buxom, and good-humoured withal; while, as for pot-au-feu, she had not her equal in the whole Department. She said çoux for choux, and çapeau for chapeau; but her smile was infectious, and her kindness of heart was as undoubted as her omelettes.

One April afternoon, Ruth went out into the kitchen. She didn't often penetrate into such regions at the villa; for Zélie, on that point, was strictly conservative. 'If Madame desires to see me,' she used to say, 'I receive at half-past nine in the morning, when I come home from marketing. At all other hours, I am happy to return Madame's call in the salon.' Zélie was too good a servant to make it worth while for us to risk her displeasure; and the consequence was that Ruth seldom ventured into Zélie's keep except at the hour of her cook's reception.

On this particular day, however, Ruth was surprised to see Zélie seated at the table, stitching away at what appeared to be a bridal garment. Such white muslin and white tulle gave her a turn for a moment. 'Why, Zélie!' she cried, putting one hand to her heart, 'you're not going to be married?' For cooks like Zélie are rare on the Littoral.

'Ma foi! no, Madame,' Zélie answered, laughing. 'I confection a robe for Frasine, who makes her first Communion.'

'Frasine!' Ruth exclaimed. 'And who may Frasine be? Your sister, I suppose, Zélie?'

Zélie smoothed out a flounce with one capable brown hand. 'No, Madame,' she said demurely; 'Frasine is my daughter.'

'Your daughter!' Ruth cried, staring at her. 'But, Zélie, I never even knew you were married!'

Zélie smoothed still more vigorously at the edge of the flounce. 'Mais non, Madame,' she continued, in her most matter-of-fact voice. 'It arrived so, you see. Hector's family were against it, and thus it never happened.'

Ruth gazed at her, much shaken. 'But, Zélie,' she murmured, seizing her hand in dismay, 'do you mean to tell me——?'

Zélie nodded her head sagely. 'Yes, yes, Madame,' she answered. 'These things come so to us other poor people. It is not like that, I know, chez vous. But here in France, let us allow, the law is so difficult.'

'Tell me all about it,' Ruth cried, sinking down on to one of the kitchen chairs, and looking up at her appealingly. 'What age has your daughter?'

'Frasine is twelve years old,' Zélie answered, still going on with her work, 'and a pretty girl, too, though 'tis the word of a mother. You see, Madame, it came about like this. The good Hector was in love with me; but he was in a better position than my parents for his part, for his father was proprietor, while mine was workman. They owned a beautiful property up in our hills near Vence—oh, a beautiful property! They harvested I could not tell you how many hectolitres of olives. Their little blue wine was renowned in the country. Well, Hector loved me, and I loved Hector. Que voulez-vous? We were thrown, in our work, very much together.' She paused, and glanced shyly askance at Ruth with those expressive eyes of hers.

'And he didn't marry you?' Ruth asked, faltering.

'He meant to, Madame: I assure you, he meant to,' Zélie answered hastily. 'He was a kind soul, Hector; he began it all at first for the good motive. But, meanwhile, you understand, in waiting for the priest——' Zélie lifted her flounce close up to her face and stitched away at it nervously.

'And that was all?' Ruth put in, with her scared white face—I could hear and see it all through the door from my study.

'That was all, Madame,' Zélie answered, very low. 'I m'a dit, "Veux-tu?" Je lui ai dit, "Je veux bien." Et tout d'un coup, nous voilà père et mère presque sans le savoir.'

There was a pause for a moment, during which you could hear Zélie's needle go stitch, stitch, stitch, through the stiff starched muslin. Then Ruth spoke again: 'And, after that, he left you?'

Zélie's stoicism began to give way a little. There were tears in her eyes, but still she stitched on, to hide her confusion. 'He never meant any harm, my poor boy!' she answered, bending over. 'He really loved me, and he always hoped, in the end, to marry me. So, when he knew Frasine was beginning to be, he said to me, one fine day, "Zélie, I will go up to Vence, and arrange your affair with my father and the curé." And he went up to Vence, and asked his father's consent to our marriage; for, chez nous, you know, one is not permitted to marry without the consent of one's family. But Hector's father was very angry at the news, and refused his consent, because he was proprietor, and I was but a servant. And about that time it was Hector's year to serve, and they put him into a regiment that was stationed a long way off—oh! a very long way off—quite far from my country, in the direction of Orleans. And without his father's consent, of course, he could never marry me, for that's our law here in France, to us others. So he served his time, and at the end of it all—well, he married another woman, and settled in Paris.'

'He married another woman,' Ruth repeated slowly, 'and left you with Frasine.'

'Parfaitement, Madame,' Zélie answered with a gulp. Then, all at once, her stoicism broke down completely; she laid aside her sewing, and burst into tears with perfect frankness.

Ruth bent over her tenderly and stroked her brown hand. 'Dear Zélie!' she said; 'he treated you cruelly.'

'No, no, Madame!' Zélie answered through her tears, still loyal to her lover. 'You do not understand. He could not help it. He was a brave boy, Hector. He meant to do well, it was all for the good motive; but his family opposed; and with us, when your family oppose, mon Dieu! it is finished. But still, he was good; he did what he could for me. He acknowledged his child, and entered it at the Mairie as his own and mine, which alters, of course, its état civil—Frasine has right, at his death, to a share of his property. My poor, good Hector! it was all he could do for me.'

Ruth burst away at once, and came in to me, crying. This was all so new to her, and we were both of us so genuinely attached to Zélie. 'Oh, Hugh!' she began, 'Zélie's been telling me such a dreadful, dreadful story. Do you know she has——'

'My child,' I said, 'you may save yourself the trouble of repeating it all to me; I've heard through the door every blessed word you two have been saying.'

Ruth stood by my side, all tearful. 'But isn't it sad, Hugh?' she said; 'and she seemed so resigned to it.'

'Very sad, dear,' I answered. 'But, do you know, little Ruthie, I'm afraid such stories are by no means uncommon—abroad, I mean, dear.'

'Hugh,' Ruth cried, seizing my arm, 'we must see this little girl of hers.' She rushed out into the kitchen again. 'Zélie,' she said, 'where is Frasine?'

Zélie had taken up her sewing once more by this time, and answered with a little sob, 'In our mountains, Madame, near Vence; in effect, she lives with my parents.'

'And do you see her often? Ruth asked.

'Once in fifteen days she comes to Mass in the town,' Zélie answered with a sigh; 'and then, when Madame's convenience permits, I usually see her. And when I have made my winter season, I go up for eight days with her, to stop with my people, before I leave for Aix-les-Bains; and when I return again in autumn, before Madame arrives, I have eight days more. Ce sont là mes vacances.'

'And where will she make her first Communion?' Ruth asked.

'Why, naturally, in the town,' Zélie answered, 'with the other young people. The Bishop of Fréjus comes over, from here a fortnight.'

'Bring her down here,' Ruth said in her imperious little way. 'Let her stop with us till the time. Monsieur and I desire to see her.'

So Frasine came down, and very proud indeed Zélie was of her daughter. Barring the irregularity of her first appearance in this wicked world, Zélie had cause to be proud of her. She was tall and well grown and as modest as a rosière. She had dove-like eyes and peach bloom on her cheeks; and when Ruth and Zélie had arranged her, all blushing, in her pretty white dress and her long tulle veil, she looked a perfect model for Jules Breton's young Christians. Zélie kissed her as she stood there with a mother's fervour; and Ruth kissed her, I declare, just as fervently as Zélie. They couldn't have made more fuss about that slip of a girl if Frasine's father had kept his promise and the child had been born in lawful wedlock.

After a day or two Ruth began to talk about something that was troubling her. It was a very serious thing, she said, this first Communion. It was an epoch in a girl's life, a family occasion. Every member of the family ought to be apprised of it beforehand. Hector might be married to another horrid woman in Paris, but, after all, Frasine was his daughter, acknowledged as such in due form at the Mairie. I'm bound to say that, though Ruth is a stickler for the strictest morality on our side of the Channel, she didn't take much account of that woman in Paris. I ventured to suggest that to invite the good Hector to the first Communion might be to endanger the peace of a deserving family. Madame Hector de jure might be unaware of the existence of her predecessor de facto, and might regard little Frasine, as an unauthorised interloper, with no friendly feeling. But Ruth was inexorable. You know her imperious, delicious little way when she once gets a fixed idea into that dear glossy head of hers. She insisted on maintaining the untenable position that a man is somehow really and truly related to his own children, no matter who may be their mother. As an English barrister, I humbly endeavoured to point out to her the fact that recognition of this pernicious principle would involve the downfall of law and order. Still, Ruth was impervious to my sound argument on the subject, and refused to listen to the voice of Blackstone. So the end of it all was that she persuaded Zélie to write to Hector, informing him of this important forthcoming epoch in their daughter's history.

Of course, I had a week of it. To search for Hector in Paris, after nine years' silence, would be to search for a needle in a bottle of hay, as I pointed out at once to those two fatuous women. My own opinion was that Hector was to be found (as we say facetiously) in the twenty-first arrondissement—the point of which is that there are but twenty. But I rushed up to Vence all the same, to prosecute inquiries as to what had become of the former owner of that belle propriété which loomed so large in Zélie's imagination. With infinite difficulty, and after many trials, I had reason to believe, at last, that the nommé Hector Canivet, ancient proprietor, was to be found at a certain number in a certain street in the Montmartre Quartier. Hither, therefore, we despatched our letter of invitation, dexterously concocted in our very best French by Ruth, Zélie, and myself in council assembled. It informed Monsieur Hector Canivet, without note or comment, that Mdlle. Euphrasyne Canivet, now aged twelve years, would make her first Communion in our parish church on Wednesday the 22nd, and that Mdlle. Zélie Duhamel invited his presence on this auspicious occasion. As an English barrister, I insisted upon the point that consideration for the feelings of Madame Canivet in Paris should make us leave it open for M. Hector Canivet to treat Mdlle. Euphrasyne, if he were so minded, as a distant cousin. So much of masculine guile have I still left in me. Ruth was disposed to protest; but Zélie, more French, acquiesced in my view of the case, and over-persuaded her.

Three days later I was sitting in my study, intent on the twenty-fourth chapter of my 'History of the Rise of the Republic of San Marino,' when suddenly the door opened, and Ruth burst in upon me with the most radiant expression of perfect happiness I ever saw even on that dimpled face of hers. She held a letter in her hand, which she thrust forward to me eagerly.

'What's up?' I asked. 'Has that brute of a husband of Amelia's been kind enough to drink himself to death at last?'

'No; read it, read it!' Ruth exclaimed, brimming over. 'Zélie and Frasine are dissolved in tears in the kitchen over the news. I knew I was doing right! I was sure we ought to tell him!'

I took the letter up in a maze. It was involved and long-winded, full of the usual inflated rhetoric of the Provençal peasant. But there was no doubt at all about the human feeling of it. Monsieur Hector Canivet wrote with the profoundest emotion. He had always loved and remembered his dear Zélie. She was still his dream to him. He had married and settled because his parents wished it; but now, his parents were dead, and he had sold his property, and was doing very well at his métier in Paris. The late Madame Canivet—on whose soul might the blessed saints have mercy!—had died two years ago. Ever since that event he had had it in his mind to return to his country, and look up Zélie and his dear daughter; but pride, and uncertainty as to her feelings, had prevented him. It was so long ago, and he knew not her feelings. He took this intimation, however, as a proof that Zélie had not yet entirely forgotten him; and if the devotion of a lifetime, and a comfortable fortune (for a bourgeois) in Paris, would atone to Zélie for his neglect in the past, he proposed not only to be present at Frasine's first Communion, but also to superadd to it another Sacrament of the Church which he was only too conscious should have preceded her baptism. In short, if Zélie was still of the same mind as of old, he desired to return, in order to marry her.

'That's well,' I said. 'He will legitimatise his daughter.'

'You don't mean to say,' Ruth cried, 'he can make it just the same as if he'd married Zélie all right to begin with?'

'Why, certainly!' I answered; 'in France, the law is sometimes quite human.'

Ruth rushed into my arms. And the brave Hector was as good as his word.

But we shall never get another cook like Zélie!