Читать книгу The Amazing City - John Frederick Macdonald - Страница 8

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A French friend, M. Durand, thus writes to me:

“To-morrow morning at 11.47 my wife, myself, the three children and our deaf old servant Amélie, all leave for Marie-le-Bois; and to-morrow night, whilst you, mon cher ami, are eating the rosbif and drinking the pale ale of la vieille Angleterre, the Durand family will be dining off radishes, sardines, chicken, and cool salad, in the garden of the Villa des Roses.

“I have taken the villa for a month—our holiday. The Duvals and the Duponts occupy villas near by; and we shall play croquet together, and be amiable and happy. I, your stout friend, le gros Durand, will wear white shoes and no waistcoat, and I shall also smoke many pipes and enjoy long siestas under my own tree.” (What an idyllic picture—the large citizen Durand asleep in a vast cane chair, under a tree!)

“But to-day, mon vieux, what anxiety, what chaos, what despair, in our Paris home! We are distracted, we are in peril of losing our reason, so terrible, so sinister is the work of moving to Marie-le-Bois. The packing, the labelling, the ordering of the railway omnibus (it is engaged for ten o’clock precisely, but will it—O harassing question—arrive in time?), the emotion of the children, the ferocity of my wife, the deafness of superannuated Amélie—all these miseries have left me as weak as an old cat. You, who have travelled, will appreciate the agony of the situation. No more can I say, for I hear my wife crying: ‘Hippolyte, Hippolyte, what are you doing? You must be mad to write letters in such a crisis.’

“Adieu, therefore. Here, very cordially, are the two hands of,

“Georges Auguste Hippolyte Durand.”

Excellent, simple M. Durand! From his letter one would suppose that he is about to make the long journey from Paris to the Pyrenees; and that his luggage is proportionately considerable and elaborate. But, as a matter of fact, Marie-le-Bois lies humbly on the outskirts of Paris. A slow train from the St Lazare Station covers the distance in thirty-five minutes. And once arrived there, one clearly perceives, from the top of a small hill, the Sacré Cœur, the dome of the Panthéon, the sightseers (almost their Baedekers) on the Triumphal Arch! Only five and thirty minutes distant from Paris—and yet Madame Durand is “ferocious,” her husband is as “weak as an old cat,” and the omnibus has been ordered one hour and forty-seven minutes in advance, to drive over the mile that separates M. Durand’s dim, musty little flat from the station!

Luggage? As the Villa des Roses is let furnished, only wearing apparel and little particular comforts are required, and so the Durand luggage consists of no more than a shabby large trunk, two dilapidated valises, a bundle, and a collection of sticks, umbrellas, spades for the children and a fishing-rod for their father.

Why spades? There is no sand at Marie-le-Bois. Why that fishing-rod? Not a river floweth within miles and miles of the Villa des Roses. And it must furthermore be revealed that the “wood” of Marie-le-Bois consists in reality of a few acres of shabby bushes, dead grass and gaunt trees; that the villa itself is a hideous, gritty little structure, rendered all the more uninviting by what the estate agent calls an “ornamental” turret, and that never a rose (never even a common sunflower) has bloomed in the scrap of waste ground joyously designated by M. Durand a “garden.”

No matter; M. Durand, a simple, small bourgeois, is happy, his good wife rejoices, the three children run wild in the hot, dusty roads, deaf old Amélie is to be heard singing in a feeble, cracked voice in the kitchen; and the Duvals and the Duponts—also of the small bourgeoisie—are equally happy and merry in the equally hideous and gritty villas named “My Pleasure” and “My Repose.”

Between them they have hired a rough, bumpy field, in which they play croquet for hours at a time—the ladies in cotton wrappers and the gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves. But not enough mallets to go round and constant confusion as to whose turn it is to play.

“It is Durand’s turn,” says Dupont.

“No, it is Madame Durand’s,” states M. Duval.

“No, it is my turn—I haven’t played for twenty minutes,” protests the shrill voice of little Marie Dupont.

“Apparently it is somebody’s turn,” says M. Durand ironically.

And then do the three gentlemen respectively declare that the “situation” is “extraordinary” and “abominable” and—yes, “sinister”; and then, also, do the three wives proclaim their lords “egoists” and—Oh dear me—“imbeciles,” and then (profiting by the dispute) do the many children of the Duponts and the Durands and Duvals kick about the balls, and hop over (or dislodge) the hoops, and (when reprimanded) burst into tears.

“It’s mad,” cries M. Durand.

“Auguste, you disgust me,” says Madame Dupont to her husband.

“Mamma, Henri Durand has pulled my hair,” sobs little Germaine Duval.

At length on goes the game. But ten minutes later the same confusion, the same cries: “It’s my turn,” and “No, it is the turn of Madame Dupont,” and “I’ve only played once in the last hour,” and “The situation is becoming more and more sinister.”

Still, in the scraps of garden of the three villas there is peace. The gentlemen doze a great deal under their respective, their “own” anæmic trees. Flies buzz about them—but, as M. Durand observes, they are “country flies,” and therefore “innocent.” In the late afternoon M. Durand puts on his glasses, opens his Petit Parisien and says: “Let us hear what is happening in Paris.” As a matter of fact, M. Durand can almost hear what is happening in Paris from his chair; but he studies his paper deeply and gives vent to exclamations of “Ah!” and “That dear, extraordinary Paris—always excited, never tranquil!” as though he were an exile in the remotest of foreign lands.

As for M. Dupont, he is of the opinion that although newspapers are out of place in the country, “still a good citizen should keep in touch with affairs.” And says M. Duval: “A Parisian, wherever he be, should never altogether forget that he is a Parisian. Therefore it is his duty—I speak, of course, figuratively—to keep one eye on the capital.” Figuratively, indeed! M. Duval has only to mount upon his chair to behold Paris with both eyes, most clearly, most vividly.

And now night-time, and a lamp burning on a table in the garden of the Villa des Roses, and around the table, covered with coffee cups, the Durands and the Duponts and the Duvals. Happily they lie back in their chairs. Now and again the peevish, spiteful hum of the mosquito. Odd green insects dash themselves against the glass of the lamp.

“The air of the country, there is nothing like it; it is exquisite, sublime,” says M. Durand rapturously. “Breathe it in, my friends, breathe it in, with all your might.”

“Durand is right,” assents M. Dupont. “Let us not speak; let us only breathe.”

“Are we ready?” inquires M. Duval.

And the three M. D.’s and the three Madame D.’s, lying back in their chairs, breathe and breathe.