Читать книгу All This and Heaven Too - Rachel Field - Страница 6

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Madame Le Maire's establishment, one of a row of dingy houses in the unfashionable quarter of Marais, rue du Harlay, was one not easily defined. Half pension, half school, its narrow high-ceilinged bed-chambers and musty salons had for many years sheltered a procession of students from various shores and other such temporary sojourners to Paris as the extremely elastic proportions of the ménage could accommodate. Madame Le Maire might be said to specialise in female flotsam and jetsam, though she made it a point to be sure of the morals as well as the financial status of her paying guests. Her terms were a week's rent paid in advance and two letters of reference, carefully scanned and verified before the prospective occupant was allowed to take possession. Her reverence for respectability was well known and far outruled the dictates of her heart and sympathies. If tears and entreaties fell upon her gold-ringed ears they left less impression than the drip of rain on the ancient grey slate of her own roof. But Madame Le Maire was not so much hard as inflexible. She did no favours herself and expected none in return. Her guests received care and simple meals so long as they continued to behave themselves and pay the bills she personally made out every Friday evening in her fine hand that suggested the tracings of a mathematically inclined spider.

"I ask nothing else of le bon Dieu and my guests," she frequently explained to all listeners, "than that my account should balance to the last sou and the police never darken my door. So far my efforts have been blessed with success."

Henriette Desportes and Madame Le Maire were well acquainted. Henriette had spent six months in the old house the year she had left the convent to continue her studies in art. Since that time she had returned for brief visits. Only the year before, she had spent a month there while the Hislop family were travelling in Switzerland. Madame Le Maire greeted her upon her arrival in a barouche from the boat train with marked approval, if not with the effusive welcome of Pierre the porter.

"Mademoiselle has returned with the spring," the old fellow told her as he shouldered her possessions and led the way through the familiar entrance. "Day before yesterday I heard a songbird in the Bois, and when I returned from my errand Madame is already preparing the Needle's Eye because Mademoiselle Henriette is arriving to occupy it."

"So it is to be the Needle's Eye again." Henriette smiled at mention of the narrow slit of a room under the roof which she knew so intimately. Because of its size and inconvenience and the four steep flights that must be climbed to it Madame Le Maire seldom managed to keep it permanently filled, but whenever occasion warranted, she pressed it into service.

"Well"—Henriette exchanged a knowing look with Pierre—"I can put up with a closet this time since I shall be leaving again day after to-morrow."

"Mademoiselle is leaving, and just as she has arrived—" Pierre's old tongue clicked in affectionate concern.

"Not Paris, Pierre, only the Needle's Eye. I have come back to stay—at least—"

She broke off at sight of Madame Le Maire's erect and tightly boned form at the head of the stairs. The two women did not embrace. They never had indulged in such unbusinesslike pleasantries. They met, as they had always done, on a plane of mutual respect and shrewd admiration each for the other's abilities. Henriette had always known that the older woman favoured her above the other feminine boarders. She had never exactly said it in so many words, but the girl knew that this keen-eyed, dumpy Parisienne liked her spirit and good taste in dress and manners. Some of the young ladies had grown deplorably careless in such matters. But Madame Le Maire had always let Henriette know that she knew good breeding when she met it.

"We may have our backs to the wall," she might almost have been saying as the two stood looking each other over after the absence of many months, "but we shall always stand straight, you and I. Yes, our spines will not melt at the first signal of storm."

"Well, Mademoiselle Desportes," was what she really said as they met, "you might have done me the honour of giving me more time to prepare for your arrival. Only by the greatest chance and by considerable shifting about could I find a place for you."

"It was good of you, Madame, to overlook the short notice." Henriette was aware of the older woman's self-importance and knew the value of admitting favours and being grateful for them. "The change was very sudden, and I wrote you at once. I hope it is not too inconvenient at this time?"

"No, no," Madame Le Maire was mollified. "I am always glad to oblige if I am able. The only room now vacant is rather small and at the top of the house. You may perhaps remember—"

"I do—very well," Henriette resisted the temptation to smile and call it by name.

Better to accept the poor accommodation without protest. Madame Le Maire's good will was above rubies. She could afford to puff a little and be cramped for two nights for the sake of keeping it. There were precious few places in Paris where a lone woman might find respectable food and shelter within means of a slim pocket-book. Her tact was rewarded by the offer of a glass of wine and a wafer in Madame's own salon. She accepted the invitation and, as her weariness responded to the delicate glow which stole over her at each sip of the canary, she and Madame grew less formal.

"So you have left London behind you, mademoiselle? And are you glad to return to Paris—permanently, it seems, this time?"

"Very glad indeed, Madame; but as to permanence—who can say? I least of all concerned."

"To be sure, nothing is permanent in this world—nothing except dying; and that is certainly more my affair than yours if years mean anything."

"Years should mean very little to one who wears hers so becomingly." Henriette knew Madame's dread of growing old. She had always felt inclined to humour, rather than to laugh at, her attempt to hide the trace of years. The front hair, so darkly luxuriant and curled in contrast to the scanty greying strands at the old woman's neck, the pince-nez that so inadequately did duty for spectacles, the touches of rouge on her faded cushions of cheeks—all these seemed pathetic, but commendable efforts. Madame Le Maire, she thought, was no more brave than the rest when it came to facing what she really feared. This was her way of showing defiance, as Henriette had seen children strut and whistle through the dark stretches of some long corridor leading to bed.

"But"—she returned to her earlier remark after she had taken another sip of wine and felt the pleasant warmth slowly lifting the weariness from her body—"when I said 'permanence' I meant only that one can never count upon certainty in a new position, and this appointment presents certain new problems."

"Nine altogether new problems if what I hear of the Praslin family is correct. It is the household of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin which you wrote you were about to enter, is it not?"

"It is, but all the children will not be under my supervision. The older boys have a tutor and three of the daughters are at a convent. I shall have charge of three girls and the youngest boy only."

"I should call that more than enough. Well, you have good courage and tact. You will need more than your share of that."

Her tone was casual, but opaque dark eyes fixed her visitor with the wise inscrutability of an old parrot. Henriette did not waver under the look.

"I hope I may please my pupils and their parents." She set down her glass, brushed a crumb of wafer from her skirt, and rose. "I shall do my best."

"Naturally." Madame Le Maire made no offer to refill the glasses. "To please is your bread and butter; and if you are clever enough to add a bonbon now and then to sweeten your diet, all the better. But do not acquire the taste for bonbons. A sweet tooth can be dangerous at your age."

"Madame Le Maire, if you mean that I shall grow too fond of luxury—"

"I mean more than that. The household you are entering is certainly luxurious, but it is also—well—let us say difficult. You are young to meet the requirements of such a position, but perhaps you know better than I what is expected of you. A grey head is sometimes placed on green shoulders. But if I may offer one bit of advice—look as much like a governess as possible when you go to your interview to-morrow."

The sharp old eyes took careful survey of the younger woman, lingering significantly over the richness of the shawl, the grey bonnet with cherry ruching and ribbons that brought out the clear colour of the wearer's cheeks and lips, the sheen of loosely curling chestnut hair.

"There are times when it is advisable to hide one's light under a bushel. And now you no doubt wish to refresh yourself after your journey. You will find hot water in your apartment, and we dine as usual at half-past seven."

Henriette began the long climb, half amused, half annoyed by Madame Le Maire's abrupt dismissal. It was not unpleasant to be warned against her youth, which had of late seemed slipping from her, but she would have liked to get to the bottom of those insinuations. Probably the old woman was merely letting her tongue run away with her; still, she had seldom been so talkative. And the airs she gave herself—calling that hole under the roof an apartment! As for "dining at half-past seven"—Henriette knew exactly what the meal would be like, from cabbage soup, whose familiar fragrance followed her up the stairs, to the pyramid of withered tangerines and nuts that would accompany the demitasse.

The Needle's Eye had not changed by one crack less or one piece of furniture more. All was exactly as she remembered. The couch which was converted into a bed only by virtue of necessity and good will on the part of the sleeper, the corner washstand where she had splashed so often with lowered head because the sloping eaves made it impossible to stand otherwise, the row of wooden pegs awaiting their burden of dresses, the shelf which did duty for dressing-table, and the mirror above it, perpetually dimmed so that the reflected face appeared blurred with inexhaustible tears. But beyond the high peaked window all of Paris waited—ancient and ageless in the late March twilight, fair as some hazy though well remembered dream.

Henriette's fingers shook as she unfastened her bonnet strings. Her breath came quickly, as much from emotion as from her hasty climb. She opened the casement and leaned out to the cool air that lifted the hair from her forehead, that seemed almost like a hand laid to her cheek. All about her, other roofs rose, red-tiled or grey, with their smoking chimneys less blackened and less ominous than London chimneypots. Lights were beginning to appear in windows, and an irregular patch of river between buildings shone softly luminous like a bit of polished pewter. The Seine—she felt its presence in the freshened air; in the faint reflection of sky it still held; in the occasional sound of passing boats. Almost she felt that she could distinguish the murmur of its watery flow from that other flow of sound which was the city itself, man-made and more insistent.

"Paris—Paris—Paris," her pulse beat over and over while she leaned there motionless at the casement and twilight dwindled into darkness. It was as if she held the city in her arms and it in turn held her fate hidden—in which corner she could not know.

"Oh, let me be happy here! Let me know that I am alive. Do not let me be old before I have ever been young!"

So, in the dusk of the twenty-ninth day of March in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-one, Henriette Desportes prayed to the city whose streets were to ring to her name six years later. At half-past nine she climbed more stairs—a not too clean or well lighted flight that led to the second floor of an old stone house just off the Boulevard Montmartre. A slatternly woman answered her ring at the porter's bell and grudgingly admitted that Monsieur Félix Desportes was in his apartment. Henriette did not care for the appraising glances of the old creature and explained her presence in crisp accents.

"Please announce me to the Baron Desportes. Tell him that his grand-daughter is here. He is expecting me."

But the woman only grinned and shrugged.

"Grand-daughter or not," she threw over a lifted shoulder as she disappeared into the shadows from which she had come, "it's all the same to me. I ask no questions, and I'm not paid to announce guests. Be sure you shut the door when you leave, mademoiselle—"

"Mademoiselle Desportes," Henriette repeated with annoyance, "and please be so good as to remember it."

But there was no further response and nothing for her to do but climb the stairs alone, picking her way with care in the flickering light from a single gas jet at the landing. She shook her skirts free of dust and paused to steady herself before she knocked. It was not a visit she anticipated with pleasure, but she was determined to carry off her part of it to the best of her abilities. Perhaps this time her only relative might display some sign of affection or interest. The reunion did not, however, begin with promise.

"Oh, so it's you." There was no welcome in the voice or in the face that greeted her. "Well, come in since you're here. I hardly expected you so soon."

"But, Grandfather, I wrote you that I should come at once. You had my letter?"

"Yes, I had it. It's somewhere about." The tall old man in a worn dressing-gown and slippers shuffled back to his chair by the grate fire, waving a long, veined hand towards a heap of newspapers, letters, pens, and sticky glasses that crowded a nearby table to overflowing. "I knew you would turn up whether or no."

Henriette felt a sudden chill at his words. The old resentment of childhood flooded her at his unresponsiveness. It had always been so. Ever since she could remember he had made her spirit shrink inwardly like a leaf the frost can shrivel in a single night. Upon their rare meetings in her youth he had always made it clear that he found her a nuisance. She had been a plain child, but clever and sensitive. She had hoped that her excellence in studies at the convent might please him, might disarm him into a word of praise or pride. But he had never uttered one. Before each visit of her childhood she had gone to him with hope. Always she had come away with baffled discouragement and a vague sense of actual physical repugnance which both shared. She had hoped that perhaps when she grew older it would be different. But now she knew that a barrier of restraint and even of human dislike must always lie between them.

"You have dined?" The question was perfunctory, and though Monsieur Desportes reached for his own glass of brandy he made no offer to pour her a liqueur.

"Yes, at Madame Le Maire's. One of the students escorted me here. He did not wish me to walk so far alone."

"Well, going about alone should be no novelty to you." He eyed her shrewdly from under his bushy, greying brows. "You should be able to conduct yourself without help by this time. You're almost thirty."

Henriette flushed at his look and words. She was not ashamed of her age, but no woman cares to be reminded of it.

"I am only too used to making my way alone," she answered, stretching out her hands to the fire and taking some comfort in their white shapeliness and the flash of a small ring which caught the light. "I only thought you might be relieved to know—But no matter, I am well, and you? I hope your rheumatism has not returned."

The veined hand holding the stem of the brandy glass was not altogether steady, but the denial was instant.

"Rheumatism! I have nothing of the sort. A twinge now and then in the disgraceful damp of this hole they are pleased to let out in the name of comfortable apartments. But when one has come through the campaigns I have and slept with the snows of the Alps and the steppes for pillow, one learns to put up with poor fare and hardships. My health need give you no anxiety. Better keep your concern for yourself, since, if what you wrote is true, you will have need of it."

"Grandfather!" Henriette leaned forward and laid a hand on his sleeve. "I had hoped you might be glad that I was returning to Paris and even a little pleased and proud at the post that has been offered me."

"Proud—pleased," he echoed her words heavily. Her hand might have been a shadow on his arm for all the notice he took of it. "You have the effrontery to ask me to be glad because you have chosen to cast your lot with the house of Choiseul Praslin that I hate."

"But it is one of the greatest families in France."

"They stand for everything that I spent the best years of my life trying to stamp out of France. This white-livered nobility that feeds on the life-blood like some poisonous fungus—that will fasten on us again now that there is no one strong enough to defy them."

Involuntarily his eyes turned to the souvenirs of his fighting days: his sword and the uniform that hung like a grey ghost in a corner, the portrait of Napoleon in full regalia, his framed commission as officer in the Imperial Guard, his cherished decorations for valour in action and the parchment which had conferred upon him the honorary title of Baron in return for loyal service to his country and his Emperor. As he recognised each symbol of the lost cause to which he would always cling, his voice took on pride along with a more intense bitterness as he continued.

"First you must go to England, to the country that humiliated us and betrayed the Emperor into exile and death. But that is not enough. Now you must choose out of all France those who were the first to hurry back to the side of Orléans when the wind veered in that direction."

"Can I help it if the times have changed?" Henriette answered his accusations quietly, but her colour deepened.

"You could help bringing this last insult upon me. Better families than this Praslin tribe have not forgotten past benefits or run so quickly to the side of the King. If the Duc de Praslin has sold his birthright for what favours he can win from this blundering Louis-Philippe let him take what he can get. Let him be made an officer in the royal household. But you need not serve him and his sons and his daughters."

"Grandfather"—Henriette spoke, in the firmly soothing tone she would have used to quiet an over-excited child—"I am not royalist in my sympathies. I should like to see France a Republic, but—"

"A fine way to show it then." He broke in testily.

"The Emperor Napoleon is dead," she went on, "and his son is dead. I honour you for your loyalty to the past, but what would you have me do? The past does not buy one food to eat, or clothes to wear, or a roof over one's head. For nearly ten years I have had to think of such things. I cannot afford the luxury of living in the past."

"So!" The old man drained his glass and reached a shaking hand to refill it. "Throw it in my teeth that I haven't provided you with servants and carriages and half the Rue de la Paix to put on your back! This is the thanks I get for educating you above your station!"

"And just what is my station?" She stiffened in her chair and faced him squarely across the untidy table with its green-shaded oil lamp. "I should very much like to know. It has never been quite clear to me."

"You need not add insolence to your other faults or reproach me because you are poor and single. I suppose you think I should have added a handsome dowry along with this expensive schooling that has only made you more difficult and headstrong?"

"No, Grandfather, I have never reproached you, and I have not come here asking you for money. But it is not strange that I should want to know something of myself now that I am grown."

"If you know enough to keep out of mischief, that is all I ask of you!"

"But I am asking you." His ruthlessness only made her more determined to force an answer to what had troubled her so long. "You have never seen fit to tell me anything of my birth or of my parents. All I know is that I was christened Henriette Desportes and that you are the Baron Desportes."

She was careful not to omit the title he clung to the more tenaciously as it dwindled in prestige.

"I was told at the convent," she went on, "that you were my only living relative; and when the other girls wrote letters to their parents each week I wrote to you with all the affection I had in my heart to give. I was lonely and eager to make you proud of me. Well, I was foolish and sentimental as children will be. I tried so hard, and I hoped—"

"That is neither here nor there, and you are no longer a child." He broke in irritably. "Get to the point, and tell me what you want of me—why you have come here to-night."

"You are still my only relative, Grandfather." She pressed her hands tightly together in her lap. It was hard to go on against the wall of his displeasure, but she had determined to make one final effort to break down his reserve.

"It is not right to go on year after year with such a blank in one's life. If I have anything good in me that was theirs, I should like to know; and if there are faults and weaknesses that have continued in me, it is only fair that I should know these, too, and try to overcome these defects."

"Defects may be overcome without knowing where they were inherited."

"Yes, but it would help me to understand myself. I feel sometimes like those silhouettes artists cut from black paper and paste on a white card just the outlines of a person standing against nothing. Don't let me be like that all my life."

"I do not propose to rake up the past. Your parents are both dead. You know that already."

"Yes, I know." She sighed uneasily and watched him refill his glass for the third time. "I should like to know that something of passion and love went into my making. I have had little enough of them since."

Her voice had grown low as she forced herself to put the last question. But it vibrated with the intensity of her emotion as a single harp-string twangs suddenly in a still room. The old man roused himself. He set down the half-filled glass and leaned towards her. His gaunt, greyish face was only an arm's length from her, and his expression had sharpened into a hard, malignant stare.

"My name is, unfortunately, yours," he told her levelly, "but only so long as you are a credit to it. If you go against my wishes and take this position which you propose to do, you will forfeit the right to it."

"But, Grandfather, that is impossible. I cannot return to England again, where it might be months before I found another opening. I have done nothing to bring disgrace upon us, and if I needed a good name before, I need it doubly now in this family—"

"Do not mention their name to me again," he broke in. "You have your choice. If you persist in taking this place you must not go as Mademoiselle Desportes."

"But they already know that is my name. If I tell the Duc and Duchesse otherwise they will think it most peculiar."

"What they think is no affair of mine. You accepted this post before consulting me, and if you go to them you need not look to me again for anything. You have no relatives living or dead."

"You cannot speak for the dead." Henriette rose and gathered her shawl about her. She looked unusually tall in the dim room, and her face took on a pallor in the green lamplight that gave it the strength and colour of a marble bust. "You can only speak for yourself, and I can only answer for myself. You need never be afraid that I shall come to you again. After to-morrow I shall be at the residence de Praslin in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Number 55, if you should care to know where to find me."

She moved to the door, and though the Baron Félix Desportes followed her with his eyes he did not rise from his chair. He still held the glass and, as she paused on the threshold to the draughty corridor, Henriette saw him lift it towards the pictured features of his Emperor with the faded knot of tricolour dangling from the frame. With rage and pity struggling in her she watched him offering a silent toast.

"Well," she told herself, feeling her way down the dark well of the staircase, "my only bridge is burned behind me. From now on I must build them myself or drown!"