The Nabob Part 37

Well! grandeur and splendour hardly dazzled this courageous old lady.

She did not go into ecstasies over gilding and petty baubles, and as she walked up the grand staircase behind her trunk, the baskets of flowers on the landings, the lamps held by bronze statues, did not prevent her from noticing that there was an inch of dust on the bal.u.s.trade, and holes in the carpet. She was taken to the rooms on the second floor belonging to the Levantine and her children; and there, in an apartment used as a linen-room, which seemed to be near the school-room (to judge by the murmur of children's voices), she waited alone, her basket on her knees, for the return of her Bernard, perhaps the waking of her daughter-in-law, or the great joy of embracing her grandchildren. What she saw around her gave her an idea of the disorder of this house left to the care of the servants, without the oversight and foreseeing activity of a mistress. The linen was heaped in disorder, piles on piles in great wide-open cupboards, fine linen sheets and table-cloths crumpled up, the locks prevented from shutting by pieces of torn lace, which no one took the trouble to mend. And yet there were many servants about--negresses in yellow Madras muslin, who came to s.n.a.t.c.h here a towel, there a table-cloth, walking among the scattered domestic treasures, dragging with their great flat feet frills of fine lace from a petticoat which some lady's-maid had thrown down--thimble here, scissors there--ready to pick up again in a few minutes.

Jansoulet's mother was doubly wounded. The half-rustic artisan in her was outraged in the tenderness, the respect, the sweet unreasonableness the woman of the provinces feels towards a full linen cupboard--a cupboard filled piece by piece, full of relics of past struggles, whose contents grow finer little by little, the first token of comfort, of wealth, in the house. Besides, she had held the distaff from morning till night, and if the housewife in her was angry, the spinner could have wept at the profanation. At last, unable to contain herself longer, she rose, and actively, her little shawl displaced at each movement, she set herself to pick up, straighten, and carefully fold this magnificent linen, as she used to do in the fields of Saint-Romans, when she gave herself the treat of a grand washing-day, with twenty washerwomen, the clothes-baskets flowing over with floating whiteness, and the sheets flapping in the morning wind on the clothes-lines. She was in the midst of this occupation, forgetting her journey, forgetting Paris, even the place where she was, when a stout, thick-set, bearded man, with varnished boots and a velvet jacket, over the torso of a bull, came into the linen-room.

"What! Caba.s.su!"

"You here, Mme. Francoise! What a surprise!" said the _ma.s.seur_, staring like a bronze figure.

"Yes, my brave Caba.s.su, it is I. I have just arrived; and as you see, I am at work already. It made my heart bleed to see all this muddle."

"You came up for the sitting, then?"

"What sitting?"

"Why, the grand sitting of the legislative body. It's do-day."

"Dear me, no. What has that got to do with me? I should understand nothing at all about it. No, I came because I wanted to know my little Jansoulets, and then, I was beginning to feel uneasy. I have written several times without getting an answer. I was afraid that there was a child sick, that Bernard's business was going wrong--all sorts of ideas.

At last I got seriously worried, and came away at once. They are well here, they tell me."

"Yes, Mme. Francoise. Thank G.o.d, every one is quite well."

"And Bernard. His business--is that going on as he wants it to?"

"Well, you know one has always one's little worries in life--still, I don't think he should complain. But, now I think of it, you must be hungry. I will go and make them bring you something."

He was going to ring, more at home and at ease than the old mother herself. She stopped him.

"No, no, I don't want anything. I have still something left in my basket." And she put two figs and a crust of bread on the edge of the table. Then, while she was eating: "And you, lad, your business? You look very much sprucer than you did the last time you were at Bourg. How smart you are! What do you do in the house?"

"Professor of ma.s.sage," said Aristide gravely.

"Professor--you?" said she with respectful astonishment; but she did not dare ask him what he taught, and Caba.s.su, who felt such questions a little embarra.s.sing, hastened to change the subject.

"Shall I go and find the children? Haven't they told them that their grandmother is here?"

"I didn't want to disturb them at their work. But I believe it must be over now--listen!"

Behind the door they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door opened. The tutor came out first--a priest with a pointed nose and great cheek-bones, whom we have met before at the great _dejeuners_. On bad terms with his bishop, he had left the diocese where he had been engaged, and in the precarious position of an unattached priest--for the clergy have their Bohemians too--he was glad to teach the little Jansoulets, recently turned out of the Bourdaloue College. With his arrogant, solemn air, overweighted with responsibilities, which would have become the prelates charged with the education of the dauphins of France, he preceded three curled and gloved little gentlemen in short jackets, with leather knapsacks, and great red stockings reaching half-way up their little thin legs, in complete suits of cyclist dress, ready to mount.

"My children," said Caba.s.su, "that is Mme. Jansoulet, your grandmother, who has come to Paris expressly to see you."

They stopped in a row, astonished, examining this old wrinkled visage between the folds of her cap, this strange dress of a simplicity unknown to them; and their grandmother's astonishment answered theirs, complicated with a heart-breaking discomfiture and constraint in dealing with these little gentlemen, as stiff and disdainful as any of the n.o.bles or ministers whom her son had brought to Saint-Romans. On the bidding of their tutor "to salute their venerable grandmother," they came in turn to give her one of those little half-hearted shakes of the hand of which they had distributed so many in the garrets they had visited. The fact is that this good woman, with her agricultural appearance and clean but very simple clothes, reminded them of the charity visits of the College Bourdaloue. They felt between them the same unknown quality, the same distance, which no remembrance, no word of their parents had ever helped to bridge. The abbe felt this constraint, and tried to dispel it--speaking with the tone of voice and gestures customary to those who always think they are in the pulpit.

"Well, madame, the day has come, the great day when Jansoulet will confound his enemies--_confundantur hostes mei, quia injuste iniquitatem fecerunt in me_--because they have unjustly persecuted me."

The old lady bent religiously before the Latin of the Church, but her face expressed a vague expression of uneasiness at this idea of enemies and of persecutions.

"These enemies are powerful and numerous, my n.o.ble lady, but let us not be alarmed beyond measure. Let us have confidence in the decrees of Heaven and in the justice of our cause. G.o.d is in the midst of it, it shall not be overthrown--_in medio ejus non commovebitur_."

A gigantic negro, resplendent with gold braid, interrupted him by announcing that the bicycles were ready for the daily lesson on the terrace of the Tuileries. Before setting out, the children again shook solemnly their grandmother's wrinkled and hardened hand. She was watching them go, stupefied and oppressed, when all at once, by an adorable spontaneous movement, the youngest turned back when he had got to the door and, pushing the great negro aside, came to throw himself head foremost, like a little buffalo, into Mme. Jansoulet's skirts, squeezing her to him, while holding out his smooth forehead, covered with brown curls, with the grace of a child offering its kiss like a flower. Perhaps this one, nearer the warmth of the nest, the cradling knees of the nurses with their peasant songs, had felt the maternal influence, of which the Levantine had deprived him, reach his heart.

The old woman trembled all over with the surprise of this instinctive embrace.

"Oh! little one, little one," said she, seizing the little silky, curly head which reminded her so much of another and she kissed it wildly.

Then the child unloosed himself, and ran off without saying anything, his head moist with hot tears.

Left alone with Caba.s.su, the mother, comforted by this embrace, asked some explanation of the priest's words. Had her son many enemies?

"Oh!" said Caba.s.su, "it is not astonishing, in his position."

"But what is this great day--this sitting of which you all speak?"

"Well, then, it is to-day that we shall know whether Bernard will be deputy or no."

"What? He is not one now, then? And I have told them everywhere in the country. I illuminated Saint-Romans a month ago. Then they have made me tell a lie."

The _ma.s.seur_ had a great deal of trouble in explaining to her the parliamentary formalities of the verification of elections. She only listened with one ear, walking up and down the linen-room feverishly.

"That's where my Bernard is now, then?"

"Yes, madame."

"And can women go to the Chamber? Then why is his wife not there? For one does not need telling that it is an important matter for him. On a day like this he needs to feel all those whom he loves at his side. See, my lad, you must take me there, to this sitting. Is it far?"

"No, quite near. Only, it must have begun already. And then," added he, a little disconcerted, "it is the hour when madame wants me."

"Ah! Do you teach her this thing you are professor of? What do you call it?"

"Ma.s.sage. We have learned it from the ancients. Yes, there she is ringing for me, and some one will come to fetch me. Shall I tell her you are here?"

"No, no; I prefer to go there at once."

"But you have no admission ticket."

"Bah! I will tell them I am Jansoulet's mother, come to hear him judged." Poor mother, she spoke truer than she knew.

"Wait, Mme. Francoise. I will give you some one to show you the way, at least."

"Oh, you know, I have never been able to put up with servants. I have a tongue. There are people in the streets. I shall find my way."

He made a last attempt, without letting her see all his thought. "Take care; his enemies are going to speak against him in the Chamber. You will hear things to hurt you."

Oh, the beautiful smile of belief and maternal pride with which she answered: "Don't I know better than them all what my child is worth?

Could anything make me mistaken in him? I should have to be very ungrateful then. Get along with you!"

And shaking her head with its flapping cap wings, she set off fiercely indignant.

With head erect and upright bearing the old woman strode along under the great arcades which they had told her to follow, a little troubled by the incessant noise of the carriages, and by the idleness of this walk, unaccompanied by the faithful distaff which had never quitted her for fifty years. All these ideas of enmities and persecutions, the mysterious words of the priest, the guarded talk of Caba.s.su, frightened and agitated her. She found in them the meaning of the presentiments which had so overpowered her as to s.n.a.t.c.h her from her habits, her duties, the care of the house and of her invalid. Besides, since Fortune had thrown on her and her son this golden mantle with its heavy folds, Mme. Jansoulet had never become accustomed to it, and was always waiting for the sudden disappearance of these splendours. Who knows if the break-up was not going to begin this time? And suddenly, through these sombre thoughts, the remembrance of the scene that had just pa.s.sed, of the little one rubbing himself on her woollen gown, brought on her wrinkled lips a tender smile, and she murmured in her peasant tongue:

"Oh, for the little one, at any rate."