Fancies and Goodnights

IF YOUTH KNEW IF AGE COULD

The first thing one noticed about Henri Maurras was inevitably his gaunt and quixotic Spanish nose, flanked by a pair of enormous eyes, extremely dark and melancholy, but capable of fire. This romantic equipment was unfortunately betrayed by the childish, petulant mouth of a Parisian, and a ridiculous little mustache.

For the rest, he was a mere thread of a young man, a veritable nailparing, and wore a paper-thin grey suit, under which his little buttocks presented all the appearance of a hair-pin. He worked as assistant book-keeper in a big general store in Marseilles, and he desired ardently to be married.

Frequently he would lose count of a column of figures, and turn up his dark eyes, as he visualized the bride of his dreams, youthful, devoted, passionate, deliciously rounded, and yet of immaculate reputation. Our passionate petit bourgeois was especially set upon the immaculate reputation.

His little mustache would twitch as he imagined the promenades they would take on Sundays, envied by all who beheld them. She would hang fondly on his arm, driving all the men to despair; he would wear a smart suit from Marquet's, and carry a fashionable cane.

«Pleasure is all very well,» said he to his fellow clerks, when they proposed some little frolic on pay-day. «But what pleasure can compare to being married? I mean, to a beautiful wife, gay, amiable, sympathetic, and —» His hands sketched certain outlines in the air. «For that,» said he, «one must save. One must wait.»

«Nonsense,» said the others. «Come with us to Madame Garcier's. It may make saving a little harder, but the waiting becomes infinitely more tolerable. After all, a young man is entitled to a little happiness on account.»

«No. No,» said he. «I have certain ideals. You would hardly understand.»

Henri's ideals, as lofty as the bridge of his nose, preserved him from the venal affections so popular among the youth of Marseilles. Yet that phrase, «A little happiness on account,» took fatal root. Under its influence he succumbed to the attractions of a superb malacca cane, displayed in the window of the most expensive shop in all the Rue St. Ferréol. «After all,» said he to himself, «I shall have to buy one sooner or later. Why not now ?»

As soon as he had paid over the money, he was almost ready to kill himself, he was so mortified at his extravagance. Yet he trembled with joy as he twirled his new treasure, leaned upon it, and hung it over his arm. On leaving the shop, he fancied that several well-dressed men eyed it with envious interest. «Wait,» thought he, «till they see me in a suit from Marquet's, and with my lovely wife walking by my side.»

When he got home he put his new acquisition into his wardrobe. It would never do to get it scratched, or even to have the least gloss taken off it, before the day of his nuptials. On that day, everything was to be immaculate; everything must have its gloss absolutely unimpaired.

Nevertheless, every night, before he undressed, he put on his hat again, and took out his cane for a few minutes, holding it this way and that way in front of the mirror. He swung it as gracefully as the narrowness of his bedchamber allowed, and seating himself on the side of his bed, he drew a heart on the carpet.

This cane had a horn ferrule of the highest quality. It was as smooth and round as anything you can possibly imagine, and it was girdled with a slim circlet of gold, for all the world like a wedding ring.

Now that he possessed such a cane as this, Henri could no longer resist casting glances at the girls, although his saving was at far too early a stage to justify such boldness. He was a little bothered by a certain look on the more attractive faces he saw, a look which can only be described as suggesting worldly experience. «Where shall I find a bride,» thought Henri, «as fresh, immaculate, and shining as my new cane?» He did not reflect that this cane had come to him, not leafy from the swamp in which it had grown, but smooth and sophisticated from the hands of the polisher.

However, Henri still hoped, and every evening he rode home on the bus to his dwelling at the far end of the Prado. At this hour, at the beginning of May, the streets of Marseilles are full of a golden light. The new leaves of the innumerable plane trees exude their soft yellow into the radiance of the declining sun.

One evening a girl got on to the bus. Henri looked up; his magnificent nose made a true point, his dark eyes flamed, his little mustache quivered, and his childish mouth pouted as if it had been stung by a bee. She was an Italianate Marseillaise; and as lovely as a black grape; her skin had that sort of bloom upon it. This dusky bloom concentrated into a delicate, adorable down along the line of her upper lip, which was bewitchingly lifted. Her eye was like the eye of a gazelle, her cheek was soft, and her figure was at once young and ample, such as any man must admire, but especially he whose buttocks are as lean as a hair-pin under his skimpy pants.

To crown it all, she was dressed very simply, in one of those nondescript black dresses affected by the well-to-do peasantry, who are so much better off than the little bookkeepers. She wore black cotton gloves. It must have been a careful family, of the proper old-fashioned type, that had brought her up so completely out of the dubious mode. Such old-fashioned people are usually extremely conscientious about the dot. Henri admired, approved, and loved.

«It is true,» he thought, «I have yet to win her affections, gain the approval of her family, and save up a whole mountain of francs. All that is possible, but how am I to make her acquaintance? At any moment she may get off the bus. If I speak to her, she will either answer me, in which case she cannot be as virtuous as she looks, or she will not answer me, and I shall never see her again.» Here Henri experienced one of the greatest dilemmas known to mankind, and one which has been sadly neglected by the philosophers.

Fate, however, was altogether on his side. The bus stopped for a whole minute at a corner where a family of gipsies were giving the traditional exhibition. A goat mounted precariously upon a step-ladder, a mangy bear stood by, shifting his feet in melancholy reminiscence of his training, a nervous monkey presented a miniature tambourine for the sous of the passers-by.

The girl, as simple as a child, was ravished by this familiar spectacle. She pressed her face against the glass, smiled in rapture, and turned a bright gaze on the other passengers, to see if they were enjoying it, too. Henri, leaning over, was emboldened to offer the comments of a man of the world.

«Very amusing, the little monkey,» said he.

«Yes, Monsieur, very amusing.»

«The bear, he is droll.»

«But yes, Monsieur, very droll.»

«The goat, also. For a domestic animal, he is droll, too.»

«Yes, Monsieur, he is truly droll.»

«The gitanos are very picturesque, but they are a bad type.»

At this point the bus jolted on. A brilliant conversation had been interrupted, but acquaintance was established, and in such a simple and innocent fashion that the most fastidious of future husbands could find nothing to object to. Henri ventured to seat himself beside her. The jolting of the bus provided the briefest but most delicious of contacts. A rapport was established; their tongues uttered banalities, but their shoulders were supremely eloquent. «Mademoiselle,» said Henri at last, «dare I hope that you will take a little promenade with me on Sunday.»

«Oh, but I am afraid that would hardly be possible,» replied the young girl, with an adorable appearance of confusion.

Henri urged his plea with all the feeling at his command, and at length his charmer, whose name was Marie, decided that she might overcome the obstacles, which doubtless had their origin in the excessive respectability of her upbringing.

The rendezvous was made. Henri, left alone upon the bus, rode far past his destination, lost in an ecstasy far transcending any description. The excess fare amounted to two francs.

That night he spent a whole hour before his mirror, conducting his cane in the manner in which he hoped to parade it on Sunday. «There is no doubt about it,» said he to himself, «such a cane and such a girl, absolutely demand that new suit from Marquet's. Tomorrow I will pay them a visit.» He drew several hearts, all of them transfixed by arrows, and surrounded by initials. «I will take her to the calanque,» said he to himself, «and there, seated beside her on a rock, I will draw something of this sort on the sand. She will guess what I mean.»

On Sunday everything went as well as any lover could wish. Henri was first at the trysting place, and soon saw her tripping along. This time she was wearing a summer frock and white cotton gloves. She had the happy air of a little girl let out from school. «Her parents must be very severe,» thought Henri. «So much the better. I wonder by what artless excuses she managed to get away.»

Their greeting was all the heart could desire. Every true lover, and some whose aims are less creditable, knows the delicious promise of those first meetings in which both parties act as frankly and simply as children, and take hands even as they make their way to the bus. Days beginning thus should always be spent in the open air, and no place under all the sky is more propitious to them than those deep and cliffy creeks near Marseilles, which are called the calanques. Snow-white rocks descend into water as clear as glass, edged by tiny beaches of sand, perfectly suited for the inscription of hearts and arrows. Little pine trees cover all the slopes, and, when the afternoon sun is hot, there is all the more reason to take advantage of their shade.

Henri and his Marie did this. «Take off your gloves,» said he, «and I will tell your fortune.»

She willingly removed the glove from her right hand, which she extended to him with the utmost grace.

«No,» said he, «I beg you to take off both.»

Marie blushed, and hesitated, and began with tantalizing slowness to draw off the other glove.

«It does not seem to come off very easily,» said Henri.

«You demand too much,» said she. «This is only the first time I have been out with you. I did not think you would ask me to remove my gloves.»

«At last,» thought Henri, «I have found a girl of a simplicity, of a virtue, such as must be absolutely unique in the world of 193—. Marie,» cried he, pressing his lips to her hands, «I adore you with every fibre of my being. I implore you to be mine. I long, I burn, I die for the happiness of being married to you.»

«Oh, no,» said she. «That is impossible.»

«Then you do not love me,» said he. «I have spoken too soon.»

«No,» said she. «Perhaps I do. But how can I answer you? It could not be for a year, perhaps two, possibly even three.»

«What of that?» cried he. «I will wait. In fact, I still have a great deal of money to save.» He told her of the prospects of the furniture business, and of the situation of his old mother, who had been treated abominably by certain relatives.

Marie was less explicit in her description of her background. She said, though, that she was treated very strictly, and could hardly introduce into her home a young man she had met so unconventionally on a bus.

«It is inconvenient,» said Henri, «but it is as it should be. Sooner or later we will manage something. Till then, we are affianced, are we not? We will come here every Sunday.»

«It will be very hard for me to get away,» said she.

«Never mind,» said he. «It will arrange itself. Meanwhile, we are affianced. Therefore I may embrace you.»

An interlude followed in which Henri experienced that happiness which is only revealed to young men of the meagrest proportions in the company of girls as delightfully rounded as Marie. At the close of the day Henri had drawn almost as deeply on his future marriage as he had upon his costume and his cane. «They are right,» thought he, «one is entitled to a little happiness on account.»

He went home the happiest young man in Marseilles, or in all France for that matter, and next day he actually carried his cane to the office with him, for he could not bear to part with it.

That evening, on the bus, he fixed his eyes on the people waiting at every stopping place. He felt that fortune might grant him an unappointed glimpse of his beloved. Sure enough, after a false alarm or two, he caught sight of her shoulder and the line of her neck as she stood in a knot of people two or three hundred yards up the street. He recognized this single curve immediately.

His heart pounded, his hands shook, his cane almost fell from his grasp. The bus came to a stop, and he turned to greet her as she entered. To his horror and dismay, she appeared not to recognize him, and, as he blundered toward her, she gave him a warning frown.

Henri saw that behind her was an old man, a man of nearly eighty, a colossal ruin of a man, with dim and hollow eyes, a straggly white mustache horribly stained, and two or three yellow tusks in a cavernous mouth. He took his seat beside the adorable Marie, and folded his huge and grimy hands, on which the veins stood out like whipcord, over the handle of a cheap and horrible cane, an atrocity, fashioned out of bamboo. He wore the expensive and ugly broadcloth of the well-to-do peasant.

Henri fixed his eyes on the pair. «Possibly he is her father,» thought he.

A lover, however, has an eye which is not easily deceived. Henri knew perfectly well that this old man was not her father. He tried to repress a feeling of acute uneasiness. «He is very old,» thought Henri. «It is more likely he is her grandfather. Possibly she has something to endure from him. He seems to be sitting beside her in a very familiar way. How I wish we could be married at once!»

At this point the conductor approached the old man, and jingled his little ticket machine under his nose. «Demand it of Madame,» said the old man in a low and thunderous rumble.

Henri sat as if struck by lightning. «It is impossible,» said he to himself over and over again. «After all, what is more natural than for a man to speak of his female companion as Madame, whether she is married or not, when he is addressing a waiter, a bus conductor, or someone of that sort? Besides, the old fool dotes; he doesn't know what the hell he is saying. He thinks it's his wife, her grandmother; his mind is in the past.»

As he said this, he saw before his eyes a picture of her left hand, with the white gloves on it, which she had removed so slowly and with so much trouble.

«She is a pure, sincere, serious, straightforward girl,» thought he. «Yes, but that is why she had so much trouble with that glove. An artful girl would have removed her wedding ring before meeting me. So much the more terrible!»

«No, no. I am going mad. He is her grandfather. Possibly her great-grandfather. See how old he is! People should be killed before reaching that age. Look at his mouth, his teeth! If he should be her husband, and fondle her! Nonsense! I am mad. The idea is absurd.»

Nevertheless he lived in torment till the end of the week, when a note reached him saying that Marie could slip out for an hour or two on Sunday. She would be at the same rendezvous at two o'clock.

Nothing could be more simple and reassuring than this note, which breathed innocence and affection. One or two words were artlessly misspelled, which always gives an effect of sincerity. Henri's suspicions departed as suddenly as they had come. «What a brute I was!» he thought, as he hastened to meet her. «I will beg her forgiveness. I will go down on my knees. But no, not in this suit. On the whole, I had better say nothing about it. What sort of a husband will she think I will make if I am already suspicious of a disgusting old man? Ah, here she comes! How lovely she is! How radiant! I certainly deserve to be thrashed with my own cane.»

She came smiling up to him, and put out her hand with the white cotton glove upon it. Henri's eyes fell upon this glove, and his debonair welcome died upon his lips. «Who,»said he hoarsely, «who was that old man who was with you?»

Marie dropped her hand and stared at Henri.

«He is not your father,» said Henri, in a tone of rage and despair.

«No,» said she, obviously terror-stricken.

«He is not your grandfather!» cried Henri. «He is your husband.»

«How did you know?» cried she.

«You have deceived me!» cried Henri. «I thought you pure, true, artless, without fault. I — I — I —— Never mind. Adieu, Madame! Be so good as to look at the newspaper in the morning, and see if any unfortunate has fallen from the ramparts of the Chateau d'If.»

With that he turned on his heel and strode away, in the ominous direction of the port, where the little boats take sightseers out to the Chateau d'If. Marie, with a cry, ran after him, and clasped his arm in both her hands.

«Do nothing rash,» she begged. «Believe me, I adore you.»

«And yet,» said he, «you marry a disgusting old man.»

«But that was before I knew you.»

«So be it, Madame. I wish you every felicity.»

«But, beloved,» said she, «you do me an injustice. He is rich. I was young. My parents urged me. You cannot think I love him.»

«Leave me, prostitute!» cried Henri.

«Ah, you are unkind!» said she. «Why should you be jealous? You are young. You are dressed in the mode, even to your cane. You are handsome. You are my dream. How could you threaten to commit a desperate act? The old man will not live forever. You and I would be rich. We could be happy. Henri, were we not happy last Sunday, out at the calanque? I am just the same.»

«What?» cried Henri. «Do you think I care for his dirty money? Could I be happy with you again, thinking of that old man?»

«Nevertheless,» said she, «it is nearly a million francs.»

«To the devil with it!» said Henri. «Supposing we stayed at the best hotels, travelled, had an apartment in Paris even, how could I enjoy anything, thinking of you and him together?»

«But he is so old,» said she. «He is nearly blind. He can scarcely speak. He is deaf. He has lost the use of all his senses. Yes, Henri, all his senses.»

«What do you mean, all his senses?» said Henri, halting in his stride.

«All his senses,» said she, facing round and nodding gravely at Henri. «All. All. All.»

«He is eighty years of age,» said she. «Who is jealous of a man of eighty? What is there to be jealous of? Nothing. Nothing at all.»

«All the same,» said Henri. «They are sometimes worse than the rest. Yes, a thousand times worse. Leave me. Let me go.»

«He is a log of wood,» said she earnestly. «Henri, is it possible to be jealous of a log of wood? It is not what you would choose, perhaps, or me either, but, after all, it is nothing. The same cannot be said of a million francs.»

Henri demanded ten thousand assurances, and was given them all. The Parisian in him urged a common-sense view of the situation. «After all, we must be broad-minded,» thought he. «Provided, of course, that it is really nothing. Absolutely and certainly nothing!»

«I shall be able to see you every Sunday afternoon,» said Marie. «I have suggested to him that he take a little stroll and a drink at the café between two and six. I made very poor excuses for not accompanying him, but to my surprise he assented eagerly. I expected a lot of trouble.»

«He is jealous, then?» cried Henri. «A log of wood is not jealous.»

«But all the more,» said Marie. «After all, is it so unreasonable, darling?»

«Nevertheless,» said Henri, «I cannot understand why he should be jealous. I am jealous; that is natural. But a log of wood —»

Marie soothed him again with another ten thousand assurances, and when at last he bade her farewell his happiness was completely restored.

Only one fly remained in his ointment. «When I consider,» thought he, «how extremely scrupulous I have been, unlike any other young man in Marseilles, it certainly seems very unfair. I have never spent my money on girls. I have never visited an establishment such as Madame Garcier's. And now I am to marry a girl who — It is true he is eighty. At eighty a man is no better than a log of wood. Nevertheless, it is a difference between us. It will give rise to a thousand bitter reflections when we are married. She is so beautiful. And there is the million francs. What a pity there should be any cause for bitterness! How lovely she looked today! I wish we could have been reconciled under that little pine tree out in the calanque. I should be able to view matters more calmly.»

At this moment a certain idea came into his head. It is impossible to say where it came from. Probably it was from the Parisian in him. «It would certainly balance accounts between us,» said he to himself. «It would go far to prevent bitterness. She would be all the happier for it. After all, it is not my fault we could not go to the calanque.»

Reflecting thus, he bent his steps toward the famous establishment of Madame Garcier, so highly recommended by his fellow clerks. This discreet haven had all the appearance of a private house; the door was answered by a maidservant, who ushered callers into an anteroom.

«Madame will be with you immediately,» said this maidservant to Henri, taking his hat and stick and depositing them in an old-fashioned hall-stand. With that she showed him into the anteroom and departed, leaving the door open behind her.

«This is an excellent idea,» thought Henri. «Now there will be two of us, and I shall be the worse of the two, as a man should be! So I shall not feel bitter. How happy we shall be! And after all, what is a little extravagance, when we are going to inherit a million francs ?»

At that moment he heard footsteps on the stairs, and the voice evidently of the Madame, who was ushering out some favourite patron.

«This has been a delightful surprise,» she was saying. «When I heard of your marriage, I declared we had seen the last of you. Delphine and Fifi were inconsolable.»

«What would you?» came the reply in a thunderous rumble, which caused Henri's hair to stand erect upon his head. «A man must settle down, Madame, especially when he is no longer as young as he was. It is, so to speak, a duty to the Republic. But, Madame, I am, thank God, still in my prime, and, when he is in his prime, a man demands variety. Besides, Madame, the young women in these days —»

Henri nearly fainted. He heard the front door close, and the footsteps of the proprietress approaching the room in which he sat. He felt he must get out at all costs.

«Pardon me, Madame,» he muttered. «I fear I have changed my mind. A sudden indisposition.»

«Just as you please, Monsieur,» said the old trot. «There is no compulsion in this establishment. But if Monsieur would like at least to inspect a young lady — to exchange a few pleasant remarks —»

«No, no, thank you,» said Henri desperately, edging into the hallway. «I must go. Ah, here is my hat. But my cane! Where is my cane?»

He stared, but his cane was gone. In its place the last visitor had left a cheap, nasty, battered old bamboo.