Short Stories by - (good fiction books to read txt) 📕

(French of Andre Theuriet: Isabel Smithson: For Short Stories.)

“Can you receive Madame Blouet, sir?” asked an attendant, as he opened the door of the deputy governor’s office.

It was a large, severe-looking apartment, with a very high ceiling, two windows draped with green damask curtains, walls and arm-chairs of the same color, and heavy bookcases of mahogany. The highly waxed floor reflected the cold symmetry of the official furniture, and the mirror over the mantel-piece reproduced with exactness a black marble clock, two bronze lamps and a pair of gilt candlesticks.

Hubert Boinville, the deputy governor, was seated, with his back to the fire-place, at a large mahogany desk which was littered over with deeds and various papers. He raised his grave, melancholy face which was framed in a brown beard, tinged with a few gray hairs, and his black eyes, with tired-looking lids, glanced at the card which the solemn usher handed to him.

On this card was written in a trembling hand, Veuve Blouet (widow Blouet), but the name conveyed no information to him and he put it down impatiently.

“It is an old lady, sir,” said the attendant, in explanation, “shall I send her away?”

“No, let her come in,” replied the deputy governor in a tone of resignation.

The usher straightened himself up in his uniform, bowed, and disappeared, returning the next minute to show in the visitor, who stopped on the threshold and dropped an old-fashioned courtesy.

Hubert Boinville half rose from his chair, and with cold politeness signed her to a seat, which she took, after making another courtesy.

She was a little old lady, dressed in shabby mourning. Her black merino gown had a greenish tinge, and was wrinkled and darned; a limp crape veil, which had evidently served through more than one period of mourning, hung down on each side from an old-fashioned bonnet, and beneath a front of false brown hair was a round, wrinkled face with bright little eyes, a small mouth, and no teeth.

“Sir,” she began, in a somewhat breathless voice, “I am the daughter, sister and widow, of men who served their country. I applied some time ago to the Department for help, and I have come to see whether there is any hope.”

The deputy governor listened without moving a muscle of his face. He had heard so many supplications of this kind!

“Have you ever received any assistance!” he asked, coldly. “No, sir,” she replied. “I have managed to get on until now without asking. I have a small pension.”

“Ah!” he interrupted in a dry tone, “in that case I am afraid we can do nothing for you. We have a great many applicants who have no pension to rely upon.”

“Ah, listen, sir!” she cried despairingly, “I have not explained everything. I had three sons and they are all dead. The last one taught mathematics, and one day during the winter, when he was going from the Pantheon to Chaptal College he caught a violent cold which settled on his lungs and carried him off in two weeks. He had supported me and his child by teaching; the expenses of his illness and death used up all our little savings, and I had to raise money on my pension. Now I am alone in the world with my grandchild, and we have nothing. I am eighty-two years old, sir.”

Tears had gathered under her wrinkled eyelids as she spoke, and the deputy governor was listening more attentively than he had done at first. A peculiar singing intonation of the speaker’s voice, and the sound of certain provincial expressions seemed to his ears like once familiar music; the old lady’s way of speaking had for him a flavor of home which produced a most singular sensation in his mind. He rang his bell and sent for Madame Blouet’s “papers,” and when the sedate usher had laid a thin package before him, he examined the yellow pages with evident interest.

“You are from Lorraine, I see, Madame,” he said at last, turning toward her a face less stern, and on which a faint smile was seen, “I suspected it from your accent.”

“Yes, Sir, I am from Argonne,” she answered, “and you recognized my accent! I thought I had long singe lost it—I have been knocking about France like a flying camp.”

The deputy governor looked with increasing compassion at this poor widow whom a harsh wind had torn from her native forest, and cast into Paris like a withered leaf. He felt his official heart growing softer, and smiling again, he said:

“I also am from Argonne. I lived near your village for a long time, at Clermont,” and then he added gaily, “keep up your courage, Madame Blouet, I hope we shall be able to help you. Will you give me your address?”

“Number 12, Rue de la Sante, near the Capuchin convent. Thank you, Sir, for your kindness. I am very glad to have found a fellow countryman,” and after repeated courtesies the widow took her departure.

As soon as she was gone M. Boinville rose, and going to the window stood looking down into the garden with his face against the glass. But he was not looking at the tops of the half leafless chestnut trees; his dreamy gaze wandered far off toward the East, beyond the plains and the chalky hills of Champagne, past a large forest, to a valley where a quiet river flowed between two rows of poplar trees, to a little old town with tile-roofed houses. There his early childhood had been passed, and later, his vacations. His father, who was registrar in the office of the Chief Justice, led a narrow, monotonous life, and he himself was early accustomed to hard work and strict discipline. He had left home when in his twenty-first year and had returned only to attend his father’s funeral. Possessing a superior intellect and an iron will, and being an indefatigable worker he had risen rapidly on the official ladder, and at thirty-eight years of age was made deputy governor. Austere, punctual, reserved, and coldly polite, he arrived at his office every morning at exactly ten o’clock and remained there until six, taking work with him when he went home. Although he was possessed of keen sensibilities, his bearing was so reserved and undemonstrative that he was thought cold and stern; he saw very little of society, his life being devoted to business, and he had never had enough leisure to think of marrying. His heart indeed, had once asserted itself, before he had left home, but as he then had neither position nor fortune, the girl he loved had refused him in order to marry a rich tradesman. This early disappointment had left in Hubert Boinville a feeling of bitterness which even the other successes of his life could not wholly efface, and there was still a tinge of melancholy in his being. The old lady’s voice and accent had recalled the thought of the past, and his quiet was overwhelmed by a flood of recollections. While he stood there motionless, with his forehead pressing against the window-pane, he was stirring, as one would a heap of dead leaves, the long slumbering memories of his youth, and like a sweet delicate perfume, rose the thoughts of by-gone scenes and days.

Suddenly he returned to his chair, drew Madame Blouet’s petition to him, and wrote upon it the words, very deserving case. Then he rang his bell, and sent the document to the clerk in charge of the relief fund.

On the day of the official assent to Madame Blouet’s petition, Mr. Boinville left his office earlier than usual, for the idea had occurred to him, to announce the good news himself to his aged countrywoman.

Three hundred francs. The sum was but a drop in the enormous reservoir of the ministerial fund, but to the poor widow it would be as a beneficent dew!

Although it was December, the weather was mild, so Hubert Boinville walked all the way to the Rue de la Sante, and by the time he reached his destination, that lonely neighborhood was wrapped in gloom. By the light of a gas lamp near the Capuchin convent, he saw “Number 12” over a half-open door in a rough stone wall, and on entering, found himself in a large market garden. He could just distinguish in the darkness, square plots of vegetables, some groups of rose bushes and here and there the silhouettes of fruit trees. At the other end of the garden, two or three dim lights showed the front of a plain, square building, and to this the deputy governor made his way and had the good luck to run against the gardener, who directed him to the widow Blouet’s lodgings upstairs. After twice stumbling on the muddy steps, M. Boinville knocked at a door under which a line of light was to be seen, and great was his surprise when, the door being opened, he saw before him a girl of about twenty years, holding up a lighted lamp and looking at him with astonished eyes. She was dressed in black, and had a fair, fresh face, and the lamp light was shining on her wavy chestnut hair, round dimpled cheeks, smiling mouth, and limpid blue eyes.

“Is this where Madame Blouet lives?” asked M. Boinville after a moment’s hesitation, and the girl replied, “Yes, sir. Be kind enough to walk in. Grandmother, here is a gentleman who wants to see you.”

“I am coming,” cried a thin, piping voice from the next room, and the next minute the old lady came trotting out, with her false front all awry under her black cap, and trying to untie the strings of a blue apron which she wore.

“Holy mother!” she cried in amazement on recognizing the deputy governor, “is it possible, sir? Excuse my appearance, I was not expecting the honor of a visit from you. Claudette, give M. Boinville a chair. This is my grandchild, sir. She is all I have in the world.”

The gentleman seated himself in an antique arm-chair covered with Utrecht velvet, and cast a rapid glance round the room, which evidently served as both parlor and dining-room. It contained very little furniture; a small stove of white delft-ware, next to which stood an old-fashioned oaken clothes-press; a round table covered with oil-cloth and some rush-bottom chairs, while on the wall hung two old colored lithographs. Everything was very neat, and the place had an old-time air of comfort and rusticity. M. Boinville explained the object of his visit in a few words, and the widow exclaimed:

“Oh, thank you, sir! How good you are. It is quite true that pleasant surprises never come singly; my grandchild has passed an examination in telegraphy, and while she is waiting for a position she is doing a little painting for one and another. Only to-day she has been paid for a large order, and so we made up our minds,” said the grandmother, “to celebrate the event by having only old home dishes for dinner. The gardener down stairs gave us a cabbage, some turnips and potatoes to make a potée; we bought a Lorraine sausage, and when you came in I had just made a tôt-fait.”

“Oh, a tôt-fait!” cried Boinville. “That is a sort of cake made of eggs, milk and farina; it is twenty years since I heard its name and more than that since I tasted it.”

His face became strangely animated, and the young girl, who was watching him curiously, saw a look of actual greediness in his brown eyes. While he was lost in a reverie of the tôt-fait, Claudette and her grandmother turned away and began