The Aspirations of Jean Servien Part 14

The actress shrugged her shoulders.

"Look here, go away, will you? I have a horrid headache. Go away, Bargemont."

x.x.x

She was Bargemont's mistress! The thought was torture to Jean Servien, the more atrocious from the unexpectedness of the discovery.

He both hated and despised the coa.r.s.e ruffian whose sham good-nature did not impose on him, and whom he knew for a brutal, dull-witted, mean-spirited bully. That pimply face, those goggle eyes, that forehead with the swollen black vein running across it, that heavy hand, that ugly, vulgar soul, could it be---- It sickened him to think of it! And disgust was the thing of all others Servien's delicately balanced nature felt most keenly. His morality was shaky, and he could have found excuse for elegant vices, refined perversions, romantic crimes. But Bargemont and his pot of b.u.t.ter!...

Never to possess the most adorable of women, never to see her more, he was quite willing for the sacrifice still, but to know her in the arms of that coa.r.s.e brute staggered the mind and rendered life impossible.

Absorbed in such thoughts, he found his way back instinctively to his own quarter of the city. Sh.e.l.ls whistled over his head and burst with terrific reports. Flying figures pa.s.sed him, their heads enveloped in handkerchiefs and carrying mattresses on their backs. At the corner of the _Rue de Rennes_ he tripped over a lamp-post lying across the pavement beside a half-demolished wall. In front of his father's shop he saw a huge hole. He went to open the door; a sh.e.l.l had burst it in and he could see the work-bench capsized in a dark corner.

Then he remembered that the Germans were bombarding the left bank, and he felt a sudden impulse to roam the streets under the rain of iron.

A voice hailed him, issuing from underground:

"Is it you, my lad? Come in quick; you've given me a fine fright.

Come down here; we are settled in the cellars."

He followed his father and found beds arranged in the underground chambers, while the main cellar served as kitchen and sitting-room.

The bookbinder had a map, and was pointing out to the _concierge_ and tenants the position of the relieving armies. Aunt Servien sat in a dim corner, her eyes fixed in a dull stare, mumbling bits of biscuit soaked in wine. She had no notion of what was happening, but maintained an att.i.tude of suspicion.

The little a.s.semblage, which had been living this subterranean life since the evening of the day before, asked what news young Servien brought. Then the bookbinder resumed the explanations which as an old soldier and a responsible man he had been asked to give the company.

"The thing to do is," he continued, "to join hands with the Army of the Loire, piercing the circle of iron that shuts us in. Admiral La Ronciere has carried the positions at epinay away beyond Longjumeau----"

Then turning to Jean:

"My lad, just find me Longjumeau on the map; my eyes are not what they were at twenty, and these tallow candles give a very poor light."

At that moment a tremendous explosion shook the solid walls and filled the cellar with dust. The women screamed; the porter went off to make his round of inspection, tapping the walls with his heavy keys; an enormous spider scampered across the vaulted roof.

Then the conversation was resumed as if nothing had happened, and two of the lodgers started a game of cards on an upturned cask.

Jean was dog-tired and fell asleep on the floor--a nightmare sleep.

"Has the little lad come home?" asked Aunt Servien, still sucking at her biscuit.

x.x.xI

Old Servien, in his working jacket, stepped up to the bed; then, creeping away again on tip-toe:

"He is asleep, Monsieur Garneret, he is asleep. The doctor tells us he is saved. He is a very good doctor! _You_ know that yourself, for he is your friend, and it was you brought him here. You have been our saviour, Monsieur Garneret."

And the bookbinder turned his head away to wipe his eyes, walked across to the window, lifted the curtain and looked out into the sunlit street.

"The fine weather will quite set him up again. But we have had six terrible weeks. I never lost heart; it is not in the nature of things that a father should despair of his son's life; still, you know, Monsieur Garneret, he has been very ill.

"The neighbours have been very good to us; but it was a hard job nursing him in this cursed cellar. Just think, Monsieur Garneret, for twenty days we had to keep his head in ice."

"You know that is the treatment for meningitis."

The bookbinder came up confidentially to Garneret. He scratched his ear, rubbed his forehead, stroked his chin in great embarra.s.sment.

"My poor lad," he got started at last, "is in love, pa.s.sionately in love. I have found it out from the things he said when he was delirious. It is not my way to interfere with what does not concern me; but as I see the matter is serious, I am going to ask you, for his own good, to tell me who it is, if you know her."

Garneret shrugged his shoulders:

"An actress! a tragedy actress! pooh!"

The bookbinder pondered a moment; then:

"Look you, Monsieur Garneret, I acted for the best in my poor boy's interest, but I blame myself. I tell myself this, the education I gave him has disqualified him for hard work and practical life....

An actress, you say, a tragedy actress? Tastes of that sort must be acquired in the schools. Those times he was attending his cla.s.ses, I used to get hold of his exercise books after he had gone to bed and read whatever there was in French. It was my way of checking his work; because, ignoramus as he may be, a man can see, with a little common sense, what is done properly and what is scamped. Well, Monsieur Garneret, I was terrified to find in his themes so many high-flown ideas; some of them were very fine, no doubt, and I copied out on a paper those that struck me most. But I used to tell myself: All these grand speeches, all these histories, taken from the books of the ancient Romans, are going to put my lad's head in a fever, and he will never know the truth of things. I was right, my dear Monsieur Garneret; it is school learning, look you, has made him fall in love with a tragedy actress----"

Jean Servien raised himself up in bed.

"Is that you, Garneret? I am very glad to see you."

Then, after listening a moment:

"Why, what is that noise?" he asked.

Garneret told him it was Mont Valerien firing on the fortifications.

The Commune was in full swing.

"Vive la Commune!" cried Jean Servien, and he dropped his head back on the pillow with a smile.

x.x.xII

He was recovered and, with a book in his hand, was talking a quiet walk in the Luxembourg gardens. He had that feeling of harmless selfishness, that self-pity that comes with convalescence.

Of his previous life, all he cared to remember was a charming face bending over him and a voice sweeter than the loveliest music murmuring: "So you love me still?" Oh! never fear, he would not answer now as he did on that dreadful staircase: "I don't love you any longer." No, he would answer with eyes and lips and open arms: "I shall love you always!" Still the odious spectre of his rival would cross his memory at times and cause him agonies.

Suddenly his eyes were caught by an extraordinary sight.

Two yards away from him in the garden, in front of the orange-house, was Monsieur Tudesco, burly and full-blown as usual, but how metamorphosed in costume! He wore a National Guard's tunic, covered with glittering _aiguillettes_; from his red sash peeped the b.u.t.ts of a brace of pistols. On his head was perched a _kepi_ with five gold bands. The central figure of a group of women and children, he was gazing at the heavens with as much tender emotion as his little green eyes were capable of expressing.

His whole person breathed a sense of power and kindly patronage.

His right hand rested at arm's length on a little boy's head, and he was addressing him in a set speech:

"Young citizen, pride of your mother's heart, ornament of the public parks, hope of the Commune, hear the words of the proscribed exile. I say it: Young citizen, the 18th of March is a great day; it witnessed the foundation of the Commune, it rescued you from slavery. Grave on your heart's core that never-to-be-forgotten date. I say it: We have suffered and fought for you. Son of the disinherited and despairing, you shall be a free man!"