The Belovéd Vagabond by William J Locke (lightweight ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Blanquette, and sat with Blanquette over bock or syrup in the gallery, the unwritten etiquette of the place caused us to be undisturbed. Like the rest of the assembly we enjoyed ourselves. Dancing was Blanquette's one supreme accomplishment. Old Père Paragot had taught her to play the zither indifferently well, but he had made her dance divinely: and Blanquette, I may here mention incidentally, had been my instructress in the art. Seeing her thick-set, coarse figure, and holding your arm around her solid waist as you waited for the bar, you would not have dreamed of the fairy lightness it assumed the moment feet moved in time with the music. If life had been a continuous waltz no partner of hers less awkward than a rhinoceros could have avoided falling in love with her. But waltzes ended all too soon and the thistle-down sylph of a woman became my plain homely Blanquette, uninspiring of romance save in the hardware bosom of the quincaillier at the corner of the Rue des Saladiers.

The bal was crowded. Gaunt ill-shaven men, each a parody of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, capered grotesquely with daughters of Rahab in cheap hats and feathers. Shop assistants and neat, bare-headed work-girls, students picturesquely long-haired and floppily trousered and cravated, and poorly clad models, a whole army of nondescripts, heaven knows with what means of livelihood, all dancing, drinking, eating, laughing, jesting, smoking, primitively love-making, moving, shouting, a phantasmagoria of souls making merry beyond the pale of reputable life; such were the frequenters of the Bal Jasmin. Gas flared in two concentric circles of flame around the hall and around the central bandstand. There was no ventilation. The bal sweltered in perspiration. Hollow-voiced abjects hawked penny paper fans between the dances, and the whole room was a-flutter.

Blanquette, who had forgotten tragedy for the time, sat with me at a table by the balustrade and alternately sipped her syrup and water and looked, full of interest, at the scene below, now and then clutching my arm to direct my attention to startling personalities. The light in her eyes and the colour in her coarse cheeks made her almost pretty. You have never seen ugliness in a happy face. And Blanquette was happy.

"Don't you want to go and dance with any other petite femme?" she asked generously. "I will wait for you here."

I declined with equal magnanimity to leave her alone.

"Suppose some rapscallion came up and asked you to dance?"

"I can take care of myself, mon petit Asticot," she laughed, bracing her strong arms. "And suppose I wanted to go off with him? They are amusing sometimes, people like that. There is one. Regarde-moi ce type-là."

The "type" in question was a fox-faced young man, unwashed and collarless, wearing the peaked cap of Paris villainy. He crossed the hall accompanied by two of the brazenest hussies that ever emerged from the shadow of the fortifications. As they passed the sergent de ville they all cocked themselves up with an air of braggadocio.

"He makes me shiver," said I. Blanquette shrugged her shoulders.

"One must have all sorts of people in the world, as there are so many things to make people different. It is only a chance that I have not become like those girls. It's no one's fault."

"'There, but by the grace of God, goes John Bunyan,'" I quoted reflectively. "You are developing philosophy, Blanquette chérie, and your gentle toleration of the infamous does you credit. But only the master would get what wasn't infamous out of them."

The band struck up a waltz. Blanquette drank her syrup quickly and rose.

"Come and dance."

We descended and soon were swept along in the whirl of ragamuffin, ill-conditioned couples dancing every step in the tradition of Paris. Steering was no easy matter. After a while, we were hemmed in near the side of the hall, and were just on the point of emerging from the crush when the sound of a voice brought us to a dead stop which caused us to be knocked about like a pair of footballs.

"My good Monsieur Bubu le Vainqueur, you do me infinite honour, but until I have devoured the proceeds of my last crime I lead a life of elegant leisure."

We escaped from danger and reaching the side stood and looked at each other in stupefaction. Blanquette was the first to see him. She seized my arm and pointed.

"It is he! Sainte Vierge, it is he!"

It was he. He was sitting at a table a few yards off, and his companions were the fox-faced youth and the two girls over whom Blanquette had philosophised. He wore his silk hat. Brandy was in front of him. He seemed to be on familiar terms with his friends. For a long time we watched him, fascinated, not daring to accost him and yet unwilling to edge away out of his sight and make our escape from the ball. I saw that he was incredibly dirty. His beard of some days growth gave him a peculiarly grim appearance. His hat had rolled in the mud and was everything a silk hat ought not to be. His linen was black. Never had the garb of respectability been so battered into the vesture of disrepute.

Suddenly he caught sight of us. He hesitated for a moment; then waved us a bland, unashamed salutation. We went up the nearest steps to the gallery and waited. After a polite leave-taking he bowed to his companions, and reeled towards us. I knew by the familiar gait that he had had many cognacs and absinthes during the day.

But what in the name of sanity was he doing here?

"Mon dieu, mon dieu, qu'est-ce qu'il fait ici?" asked Blanquette.

I shook my head. It was stupefying.

"Eh bien, mes enfants, you have come to amuse yourselves, eh? I too, in the company of my excellent friend Bubu le Vainqueur, whose acquaintance together with that of his fair companions I would not advise you to cultivate."

"But Master," I gasped, "what has happened?"

"I'll veil it, my son," said he, laying his hand on my shoulder, "in the decent obscurity of a learned language, 'Canis reversus ad suum vomitum et sus lota in volutabro luti.'"

"Oh, mon Dieu," sighed Blanquette again, as if it were something too appalling.

"But why, Master?" I entreated.

"Why wallow? Why not? And now, my little Blanquette, we will all go home and you shall make me some good coffee. Or do you want to stay longer and dance with Asticot?"

"Oh, let us go away, Master," said Blanquette, casting a scared glance at Bubu le Vainqueur, who was watching us with an interested air.

"Allons," said Paragot, blandly.

The dance stopped, and the thirsty crowd surged to the gallery. We threaded our way towards the door, and I thought with burning cheeks that the eyes of the whole assembly were turned to my master's mud-caked silk hat. It was a relief to escape from the noise and gas-light of the bal, which had suddenly lost its glamour, into the cool and quiet street. After we had walked a few yards in silence, he hooked his arms in Blanquette's and mine, and broke into a loud laugh.

"But it is astonishing, the age of you children! You might be fifty, each of you, and I your little boy whom you had discovered in an act of naughtiness and were bringing home! Really are you as displeased with me à ce point-là? C'est épatant! But laugh, my little Blanquette, are you not glad to see me?"

"But yes, Master," said Blanquette. "It is like a dream."

"And you, Asticot of my heart?"

"I find it a dream too. I can't understand. When did you leave Melford?"

"About five days ago. I would tell you the day of the week, if I had the habit of exactness."

"And Madame de Verneuil?"

"Is very well, thank you."

After this rebuff I asked no more questions. I remarked that the weather was still cold. Paragot laughed again.

"He has turned into a nice little bourgeois, hasn't he, Blanquette? He knows how to make polite conversation. He is tidy in his habits in the Rue des Saladiers, eh? He does not spit on the floor or spill absinthe over the counterpane. Ah! je suis un vieux salaud, hein? Don't say no. And Narcisse?"

"It is he who will be contented to see you," cried Blanquette. "And so are we all. Ah oui, en effet, je suis contente!" She heaved a great sigh as though she had awakened from the night-mare of seeing herself a dripping corpse in the Morgue. "It is no longer the same thing when you are not in the house. Truly I am happy, Master. You can't understand."

There was a little throb in her voice which Paragot seemed to notice, for as he bent down to her, his grip of my arm relaxed, and, I suppose, his grip of hers tightened.

"It gives you such pleasure that I come back, my little Blanquette?" he said tenderly.

I craned my head forward and saw her raise her faithful eyes to his and smile, as she pronounced her eternal "Oui, Maître."

"It is only Asticot who does not welcome the prodigal father."

I protested. He laughed away my protestations. Then suddenly he stopped and drew a long breath, and gazed at the tall houses whose lines cut the frosty sky into a straight strip.

"Ah! how good it smells. How good it is to be in Paris again!"

The door of a marchand de vin swung open just by our noses to give exit to a reveller, and the hot poisoned air streamed forth.

"And how good it is, the smell of alcohols. I could kiss the honest sot who has just reeled out and is skating across the road. A bas les bourgeois!"

He did not carry out his unpleasing desire, but when we reached the salon in the Rue des Saladiers, and we had lit the lamp, he kissed Blanquette on both cheeks, still crying out how good it was to be back. Narcisse, mad with delight, capered about him and barked his rapture. He did not in the least mind a master lapsed from grace.

Paragot threw himself on a chair, his hat still on his head. Oh, how dirty, dilapidated and unshaven he was! I felt too miserable with apprehension to emulate Narcisse's enthusiasm. It was cold. I opened the door of the stove to let the glowing heat come out into the room. Blanquette went to the kitchen to prepare the coffee.

Suddenly Paragot leaped to his feet, cast his silk hat on the floor and stamped it into a pancake. Then he thrust it into the stove and shut the door.

"Voilà!" he cried.

Before I could interfere he had taken off his frock-coat and holding one skirt in his hands and securing the other with his foot had ripped it from waist to neck. He was going to burn this also, when I stopped him.

"Laisse-moi!" said he impatiently.

"It will make such a horrid smell, Master," said I.

He threw the garment across the room with a laugh.

"It is true." He stretched himself and waved his arms. "Ah, now I am better. Now I am Paragot. Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot, again. Now I am free from the forms and symbols. Yes, my son. That hat has been to me Luke's iron crown. That coat has been the peine forte et dure crushing my infinite soul into my liver." He tore off his black tie and hurled it away from him. "This has been strangling every noble inspiration. I have been swathed in mummy bands of convention. I have been dead. I have come to life. My lungs are full. My soul regains its limitless horizons. My swollen tongue is cool, and nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu, I can talk again!"

He walked up and down the little salon vociferating his freedom, and kicking the remains of the frock-coat before him. With one of his sudden impulses he picked it up and threw it out of a quickly opened window.

"The sight of it offended me," he explained.

"Master," said I, "where