Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John - Страница 33

OLD ACQUAINTANCE

The apartment, on a fifth floor in the huitieme arrondissement, was pervaded by the respectable smell of furniture polish. The Parisian menage of 40,000 francs a year smells either thus, or of a certain perfume, which indicates quite a different way of living.

Monsieur et Madame Dupres, admirably fitted by temperament for the rotund connubialities of a more spicily scented dwelling, nevertheless had dwindled away twenty years of life in the austere aroma of furniture polish. This was because of an intense though unacknowledged jealousy, which had early inclined both parties to the mortification of their own flesh.

Monsieur had been jealous because he had suspected that Madame had not been altogether free from certain regrets when they married. Madame had been jealous rather in the manner of a miser who underpays his servant and therefore suspects his honesty. It is true that on the rare occasions when they visited the cafe, Monsieur would look round for a copy of La Vie Parisienne, and if there was a picture in it that interested him, his eyes would remain riveted on it for five minutes at a stretch.

Hence the unvoluptuous furniture of Parisian puritanism, and hence its weekly anointings with the pungent resins of respectability.

Now, in the bedroom, the smell of medicine was added. Madame Dupres lay dying of a frugal pneumonia. Her husband sat beside the bed, unfolding his handkerchief in hopeful expectation of a tear, and craving damnably for a smoke.

«My dear,» said Madame faintly, «what are you thinking about? I said, 'Get the gloves at Pascal's. There the prices are not beyond all reason.'»

«My dear,» replied her husband, «excuse me. I was thinking of long ago; how we used to go about together, you and I and Robert, in the days before he went to Martinique, before you and I were married. What friends we were! We would have shared our last cigarette.»

«Robert! Robert!» murmured Madame Dupres. «I wish you could be at my funeral.»

At these words a ray of light fell into a long-neglected corner of Monsieur's mind. «Holy saints!» cried he, slapping his knee. «It was Robert, then, all the time?»

Madame Dupres made no reply; only smiled, and expired. Her husband, a little at a loss as to what to do, kissed her lifeless brow once or twice, tried kneeling by the bedside, got up, and brushed his knees. «Twenty years!» he murmured, stealing a glance at the mirror. «Now I must let the doctor know, the notary, the undertaker, Aunt Gabrielle, the cousins, the Blanchards. I must call at the Mairie. I can hardly get a smoke at the Mairie.»

«I could have a puff here, but people coming in would smell it. It would savour of a lack of respect for the dead. Perhaps if I went down to the street door, just for five minutes … After all, what are five minutes, after twenty years?»

So Monsieur Dupres descended to the street door, where he stood on the step, conscious of the soft air of early evening, and inhaling the smoke from his long-awaited cigarette. As he drew in his first puff, a smile of the utmost satisfaction overspread his plump features.

«Ah, my poor Monsieur Dupres!» said the concierge, emerging suddenly from her den. «How goes it with Madame? She suffers?»

Conscious of his cigarette and his smile, Monsieur Dupres felt he could hardly explain that his wife had passed away but a minute before. «Thank you,» said he, «she suffers no longer. She sleeps.»

The concierge expressed optimism. «After all,» she said, «Madame is from Angers. You know the proverb about the women of Angers.»

She prattled on in this vein; Monsieur Dupres paid no attention. «I will go upstairs,» thought he, «and make the sad discovery. Then I can return and confront this old cow with a more appropriate countenance».

«And then, my God! there is the doctor, the notary, the funeral arrangements, aunts, cousins … My cigarette is done already, and I scarcely noticed I was smoking it. In a civilized country a bereaved should be left alone with his regrets.»

The concierge retired, but would undoubtedly soon return to the attack. Monsieur Dupres felt that he could do with another cigarette, but this time a cigarette smoked under better conditions, so that its healing task might be accomplished unhindered. His nervous condition demanded a seat in a modest cafe, a glass of Pernod before him, and all about him the salutary air of cafes, which is infinitely more fragrant than furniture polish.

«A cigarette, a Pernod,» thought Monsieur Dupres, «and then a good meal! A good meal calls for a glass of cognac afterwards; the digestion requires it, the doctors recommend it. And yet — what is one glass of cognac?»

«I will tell you,» said he to a passing dog. «The first glass of cognac is utilitarian merely. It is like a beautiful woman, who has, however, devoted herself entirely to doing good, to nursing, for example. Nothing is more admirable, but one would like to meet her sister. The second glass, on the other hand, is that self-same sister, equally beautiful, and with leisure for a little harmless diversion… . Twenty years!»

Monsieur Dupres went upstairs for his hat.

He decided to go to the Victoire on the Boulevard Montparnasse. It was there they used to celebrate, he and she and Robert, in the old student days, whenever they were in funds. «It will be, in effect, an act of homage,» thought he, «far better than disturbing her rest with doctors and cousins. And the cuisine used to be superb.»

Soon he was comfortably seated at the Victoire, with a monster Pernod before him. Every sip was like a caress, and, like a caress, led to another. Monsieur Dupres ordered a second glass, and permitted himself to glance at the pages of La Vie Parisienne.

«There is no doubt about it,» said he to himself, «life is what you choose to make it.» He looked about him in search of a little raw material. «Those two girls over there,» thought he, «are probably good-natured to a fault. I wonder if they wear little articles like those in this picture.»

His imagination conjured up a scene which he found incredibly diverting. He was compelled to snigger through his nose. He experienced an ardent desire to slap somebody. «What in the world have I been doing,» thought he, «all these twenty years? Nothing!»

He looked up again, with the intention of darting a certain sort of glance at the two young ladies who had appealed to his fancy. He was mortified to see that they were gone.

He looked around the cafe, in the hope that they had only changed their table, and saw, to his overwhelming surprise, sitting only a few feet away from him, with a monster Pernod before her, none other than Madame Dupres herself, apparently in the best of health, and wearing her grey hat.

She was at once aware of his regard, compressed her lips, and stifled a giggle, which exploded like a soda-water within. She then fixed him with an eye as quizzical as a parrot's eye. Monsieur Dupres, taking up his glass, made haste to join his spouse. «My dear,» said he, «I came out to recover my calm.»

Madame made no answer, only downed the second half of her Pernod at a single swig, and, replacing the glass on the table, fixed her eye unwaveringly upon it till her husband signalled the waiter. «Another Pernod,» said he. «In fact, bring two.»

The power of conscience is so great, in a small way, that Monsieur Dupres, on being discovered in the cafe, could not help feeling that his wife knew his most secret intentions, even those concerning the two young ladies. He anticipated a volley of reproaches. You may imagine his relief when he saw that Madame was cocking her eye at him in the most tolerant and understanding fashion over the rim of her glass, the contents of which were drawn up as if by magic into the refined pouting of her lips. «Marie,» said he with a smile, «perhaps we have lived too narrowly, as it were. After all, this is the twentieth century. What a magnificent figure of a woman you really are!»