The marriage of Mademoiselle Gimel, and other stories

Front matter

THE LIBRARY

OF

LOS ANGELES

Author's Preface

OF the five stories which compose this collection, the first three have never appeared before. The last two formed, with others, "Donatienne," "Madame Dor," "1'Adjutant," "les Trois Peines d'un Rossignol," a volume published in 1894 under the title of "Humble Amour."

In writing the first version of " Donatienne," that which the Revue des Deux Mondes published June 1, 1894, I felt very clearly that I was composing the beginning of a romance. But none of the imagined developments satisfied me. It was not until several years later, about the summer of 1900, that I found in real life, as always, the de*- nouement of this drama of abandonment. I set myself immediately to work and the story became a romance. The volume of "Humble Amour" was withdrawn from circulation and the copies were destroyed.

That is the strange shipwreck from which I have thought it possible to save two stories which reappear here.

R. B.

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Contents

PAQH

PREFACE v

I. THE CREAMERY OF MADAME MAULEON ... 3

I. The Creamery Of Madame Mauleon

"FOR a fine day, this is a fine day, Mademoiselle Evelyne! It is like your name! What taste you had to choose such a name."

"Tell that to mamma; you will please her."

" I am not acquainted with her, but I shall not miss the opportunity, if Madame Gimel comes to breakfast here. Evelyne! One sees the person at once, fair, fastidious, distinguished, blue eyes, hair enough to stuff a mattress, and fine and of the true Parisian tint precisely, the nut-brown shade of the year "

"Madame Mauleon, I am waiting for the bill. I am in a hurry."

"Yes, yes, I understand, I am too familiar. With you there is no making any mistake. Your eyes speak in spite of you; they draw together, they quiver when you are offended, and they dilate to say thank you "

The tall young girl, standing by the desk, could not keep from laughing.

"It is true," she said, "my companions call me sometimes 'Mademoiselle Folded Eyes'!"

"Oh! what a pretty live doll you are! and prudent, too! Say, Mademoiselle Evelyne, you can spare me two minutes, can't you; I have something— " The mistress of the creamery interrupted herself.

"What are you doing, Louise, place a decanter at No. 4! Monsieur has been waiting for five minutes!"

As she spoke Madame Mauleon bent over to designate the customer at No. 4, and the strapped linen apron, which she wore, parted from her bust and made a pocket. Madame Mauleon loved white. She had white linen sleeves always immaculate, a counter like a professor's desk covered with white porcelain on which, on the left and the right, framing in the mistress and completing the harmony, were piles of plates and bottles of "special cream." On the left also stood Mademoiselle Gimel; her two wrists resting on the counter left both her small gloved hands free, which unconsciously tapped against each other. One could have taken her for a pianist playing an air on an imaginary keyboard; but she was not a musician, simply a typewriter, accustomed to use her fingers, and she was composing this silent phrase:

"You are a gossip, Madame Mauleon! What can you have to say to me? Is it worth while to stay here? "

As she knew, within a few cents, the price of her breakfast, a roll, slice of ham with an egg and a glass of milk, she began spreading the change on the counter.

At this moment a customer came in, whom Madame Mauleon installed with a glance and gave to understand with a nod of the head that he was recognised and was going to be served. She pressed an electric button. Louise, the good-looking little maid, came promptly.

"Wait on No. 1, Louise, and be quick." Mademoiselle Gimel is a very charming person, in fact, and the customer who has just entered, an under-clerk of the mayor's office in the rue d'Anjou, is already quite persuaded of it. He looks at her with interest while unfolding his paper. Mademoiselle Gimel is simply dressed, but with care, like a Parisian as she is. Her sole luxury is a small bunch of violets pinned to her waist, a white waist, which signifies: "It is the month of July." Her black skirt is like that of so many working-girls, who do not like black, but who are resigned to it, because it is a colour "which does not show dirt." Her straw hat is not worth six francs; but the two roses on the crown were chosen with taste and the mousseline beneath, the fluff resting on the hair, was charmingly rumpled. Mademoiselle Gimel is twenty-two years old, and she has been at work for ten at least. Her eyes are circled with shadows. Madame Mauleon may think them blue, but she is mistaken; they are flax-grey, with a little of the hue of the flower, if you like, when they open in the full light. One would say that they were intelligent, for they shine; but a clever psychologist or simply a man of the world, who might talk with Mademoiselle Gimel from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, the Sunday promenade of the stenographer and her mother, would quickly perceive that this pretty girl has less intelligence than decision, that she is proud, that she hides her feelings, and that this little light is the will of a child of Paris, who is not afraid of life, and who looks at it with secret prudence and an amused air. Mademoiselle Gimel is tall and very slender. Her complexion is pale but healthful, her nose slightly turned up and her lips barely pink in repose become smooth and red when she laughs. When she puts her chain of silver-gilt on her neck and goes for her Sunday walk people take her for a fortunate, almost wealthy young woman; the conductor of the omnibus says:

"If you have forgotten your change, Mademoiselle, give your address at the office, that is enough."

She has the discretion of young girls in large cities, which is as real as it is rare, having been shaken and tried. She has a little depth of sadness, like many others, like almost all, but well hidden and well guarded. She has a sensitive nature, forewarned, one who would place her confidence better than her savings, but who has not even been called to make the trial. She is still distrustful with Madame Mauleon herself, she does not make any advances, and that is why she does not seem to attach the least importance to her idle talk. Still, she is no longer as hurried as she appeared to be; she has no embarrassing witness; |the mayor's clerk is nothing to her, and the waitress Louise hears nothing when she walks.

"I was going to say to you," resumed Madame Mauleon, "there are many who would like to resemble you. I have an idea that you will not remain Mademoiselle Evelyne very long."

Mademoiselle Gimel stretched out her two hands like a screen to ward off the offer.

"Let us not trifle, Madame Maule*on! In our trade, we have no time to think of the improbable. Here are the ninety centimes."

"And suppose I should tell you that the lieutenant came back here yesterday?"

"Yesterday?"

"Yesterday, he went out almost at the moment when you came in; he was standing on the sidewalk opposite."

Mademoiselle Gimel looked at the mistress of the creamery; and her lashes drooped, and her eyes became soft as if she were looking at a beautiful star; but it was only a moment of oblivion. She smiled.

"I did not see him," she replied; "it is really a pity."

"He saw you very well. He stood there, outside, opposite the door, as if there had been an accident in the street, all the time I suppose that you were standing still visible above the curtains."

"And then?"

"He went away."

"Well, so much the better! Au revoir, Madame Maul6on."

"Till to-morrow, Mademoiselle Evelyne."

The young girl went out, followed the rue Boissy d'Anglas, on which the creamery was situated, and went up the Boulevard Malesherbes. She walked very slowly. It was ten minutes after one, and, provided that she was at Maclarey's bank by twenty-five minutes past, she would still be five minutes ahead of Mademoiselle Raymonde and of Mademoiselle Marthe, who breakfasted at their home in the Ternes quarter.

The intense heat of the sun softened the asphalt. Joy dwelt in this summer light, made for the growth of life, and it made more rapid and more elastic the gait of the promenaders of every age who were going up or going down the boulevard. Carriages fanned the driveway and sent the white dust up to the third stories. Rising above the noise of horns, sirens, and wheels, the wrangling of two men caused Evelyne to stop. An auto had come near upsetting a cab. The coachman abused the chauffeur; professional rivalry made sharp words. The driver cried: "Beast of an aristocrat! Get out, old caravan! Get out, smoke all the time!"

The chauffeur mocked: "Look at his muddy wheels! To the stable, old man, to the stable!"

The passers-by laughed, grouped themselves around the place where the auto, a wonderful mahogany-coloured machine, finishing its curve with the gliding motion of a ship coming into port, drew up and stopped an inch from the sidewalk. Evelyne had never seen so spacious a coach before! The chauffeur's seat, a coupe and behind the coupe, separated by a glass, a third compartment.

"That is for the companion," explained a workman. Evelyne was in the front row, admiring the interior arrangement, the bevelled glasses, the deep-yellow silk upholstery, the pocket stuffed with maps, the spy-glass lodged in a leather case on the ceiling, and then, on the roof, the trunks and the complete set of tires, stowed away like coils of rope upon a ship's bridge.

"How far that must be able to go!" said she. "One would like to be the companion."

"Well! Mademoiselle, if I were the owner, your place would be in the inside, for sure."

She had spoken aloud then? She turned her head, put on her offended air, her eyebrows drawn together, and saw a young clerk with a fine beard and a shrewd profile, a bookbinder, engraver, decorator, something of a jester in any case, and an artist, standing in the rear, a portfolio under his arm; then, bursting into a laugh:

"Thanks," she said; "I would rather not ride!"

She made her way through the group, which opened before this pretty, smiling girl. She did not appear to notice the slight bow of the fine bearded head and went on her way quickly in the sunlight.

She would have liked to go in the Pare Monceau and make the tour of a grass-plot ; it was her chosen walk; she took out her watch and turned short to the left ; it was impossible to take such a liberty. The management of the bank had sent an urgent piece of work to the typewriter's office. If Evelyne were late, Mademoiselle Raymonde, as an elder clerk, would not fail to remark to Monsieur Maclarey that Mademoiselle Evelyne took most extraordinary liberties, "no doubt because she was pretty." Ah! what unpardonable inequality! Nearly all the difficulties of her position came to Mademoiselle Gimel because of her charming face, and of that something besides, which makes a woman, even one of equal beauty, jealous of another.

While she was walking toward the Maclarey bank, customers filled the creamery: a few workmen— as they could only be served with water, milk, and beer, they were rare at Madame Mauleon's — post-office clerks, a bookkeeper of a wholesale confectionery shop, a young man, either a student or young lawyer, unless he were an underwriter, for he always carried a morocco bag under his arm, which, on entering, he placed on a chair with his gloves and silk hat — eleven customers in all. The small hall was nearly full. There remained but one vacant place. Madame Mauleon, magnificent with satisfaction, brightened up at the clicking of plates, lowering her head and presenting her bands of brown hair to the reflections of the light, her eyes half closed over the easy accounts, or else she held out a saucer, a cup, a plate, reassured with a gesture a hurried customer, or reproved in an undertone Louise, the only waitress. The latter did wonders. She had a way of gliding over the flagstones, sprinkled with sawdust, of pushing open the kitchen door with her foot, coming back with four or five orders, distributing them without ever making a mistake; she had an elastic step, a sure movement, black eyes which saw everything, a quick way of saying: "I know, I will be back in a moment," which would have excited the admiration of a head waiter. You must realise that there were no experts in this hall. No one dreamed of paying the compliments, which she so well deserved, to the little maid. She heard other praises, discreet on account of the presence of Madame Mauleon; she listened to them with indifference, as one who lacks time. She was no fool. When the post-office clerk, having sweetened his coffee, drew from his pocket and arranged in fan shape five lottery tickets for the benefit of the "Scrofulous children of the Seine/' and asked, "Mademoiselle Louise, if you please, choose two tickets for me, so that I will win; the others I give back," she replied:

" Choose for yourself ! "

"No, you have a lucky hand. If I win "

"You will divide?"

"Well, not exactly, but I will give you a kiss."

"Don't trouble! You would get two big prizes at once."

She took away the coffee-pot and every one laughed. Madame Mauleon herself approved, because the jesting had not interfered with the service. The clerk went out, the fan of tickets still open in his fingers. At the same moment, the lieutenant entered. He was in citizen's dress. Without responding to the inclination of

Madame Mauleon's head, without even appearing to notice it, he seated himself before a table upon which the hors-d'oeuvres were served, and began crunching a piece of an artichoke. You saw, under his moustache, his teeth, which were white, pointed, and glistening. You would have said that he was smiling. He ate like all young and ravenous beings, who always have the air of attacking a prey. He was one of those men, numerous in France, whom one can call born soldiers. His brown eyes, under the clearly and strongly framed forehead, beneath the straight, short, abruptly ending eyebrows, seemed void of curiosity. When you caught their gaze you felt that you were in the presence of a disciplined soul, a logical and strong mind, which ideas interested little and never disturbed. A street urchin called after him one day :

"There goes a defender!"

He had guessed rightly; he was a man of humble origin, but he carried in his breast the image of France and the little lamp lighted before it. His features were regular, but rudely moulded; the jaw, for instance, a trifle advancing and square-cut in front, lifted at a right angle near the ear, the bone showing everywhere near the skin. His thin, short moustache, which he tried to twist and curl at the corners of his lips, proclaimed youth and youthful pride. He must have been the son of some subordinate official, or of a retired non-commissioned officer or small landed proprietor, one of those who have learned early in life that they must have a career and live by it, and who at once have chosen the army, knowing that it would leave them poor, but preferring it to all others because it satisfied in them a passion for authority, honour, and action. They bring with them to the regiment the love of order, of minute preparation for the smallest enterprises, of manual tasks, strict economy, and also a facility for fellowship with soldiers, a willingness to do a service, valuable in barrack or camp life. Like the real nobility, though for other reasons, they have been — they are — the strength, the traditional element of command, the normal staff of the army. Often they go through the schools. Often they enlist. They are methodical, serious, and brave. A chief who knows the species, and who does not clash with them, can make heroes of them. They talk little; when they have the leisure, they dream, but sentiment is a subordinate thing.

Louis Morand had not been for very long a customer of Madame Mauleon. She knew but little about him, not to say that she knew nothing. Such a condition of things could not continue: the habits of the mistress would not permit it. When the lieutenant had finished his breakfast, he approached the counter and Madame Mauleon smiled.

"Monsieur le Lieutenant was late to-day, and I imagine he was hungry."

Louis Morand made a slight inclination.

"It belongs to your age," resumed the mistress of the creamery, seeing that she received no other response than the pieces of coin rapidly laid on the counter.

The majority of the customers had left the shop. Madame Mauleon insisted:

"And then, your profession, too. You drill some distance from here, I wager."

"At Bagatelle or at Issy-les-Molineaux," said Monsieur Morand finally.

"As far as that? And ninety in the shade! You have run about! I am not surprised that you have a good appetite."

She was delighted to have obtained a word from the lieutenant. She smiled, she exulted, she wished to detain this uncommunicative customer, and, recalling him with a sweeping wave of the hand, for he had turned to go :

"Well, Monsieur le Lieutenant, I assure you that I have some customers who do not often breathe 'the fresh air' of the country. For instance, the pretty stenographer of Maclarey's bank

He knit his brows and said carelessly, but without seeking to leave the desk:

"I do not know whom you mean."

"Why, yes; the young girl who came in the other day, as you were going out. She breakfasts always before you do; you looked at her, from the sidewalk yonder. A young girl such as one does not often see, I assure you; she is pretty, she is discreet, she is a workwoman."

The lieutenant's lips lengthened a fraction of an inch abruptly and immediately regained the normal line.

"Well, au revoir, Madame Mauleon!"

"Au revoir, Monsieur le Lieutenant. Till another time."

He did not even hear. He gained the door, with a serious air, with his marching step, preoccupied with giving a favourable idea of the French army, of its dignity, of the good use it makes of its time, to the three remaining customers, who were watching the officer go out.

"It did not hinder him," thought Madame Mauleon, "from casting a glance at the table which I pointed out to him, and which is the one where Mademoiselle Evelyne sits. He remembered, then, something. He is a very worthy young man, but cold. My Mauleon would not have gone away so quickly, if one had spoken to him of a young girl. He had the artistic temperament! This one — I do not know "

She weighed these thoughts, her eyes lifted toward the windows, which poured into the creamery the almost dazzling light of the rue Boissy d'Anglas.

It was the hour when Paris trembles less, vibrates less, when its noise diminishes, when, in the four thousand veins which are its streets, the current of life slackens and the fever falls. It was oppressively warm. People passing walked upon the heated asphalt and felt their heels sinking into the sidewalk. Many employees dozed while watching the shop, office, or factory. It was the hour for resuming work in yards and bureaus. There were young heads which, in crossing the threshold, turned for an instant toward the blue line of the sky from which life flowed.

Mademoiselle Gimel entered the room where the three typewriters of the bank worked when the dictation of correspondence or the session of a board of management did not call them into one of the offices. Three tables ranged along the wall near the windows, three chairs, three machines, a box and row of pegs in the rear, furnished the room. Evelyne took off her hat.

"Are you hot, my dear? Has any one followed you?"

The young girl tossed back her hair, and, without replying, seated herself before the second machine.

The same voice continued :

"You know it is not becoming to you! You are as red !"

The occupant of the table nearest the door, Mademoiselle Raymonde, had ceased to write on seeing Evelyne enter, and, leaning back, looked at her with an expression which she thought to make mocking, but which, in spite of her, betrayed her soul full of suffering and revolt. This little woman, nearing forty, all nerves and eyes, felt that she was vanquished, or on the point of being so, and she avenged herself on life by detesting some one. Mademoiselle Raymonde was the oldest stenographer of the firm, something like the chief of stenography. She was vain of this; she could say to Evelyne or to Marthe, her two companions in the office: "I am established, Mesdemoiselles, I am the head here," but she did not know that Monsieur Maclarey cared little for length of service; that what he exacted was swiftness of touch, exactitude, the power of divining, the delicacy of ear for distinguishing words indistinctly uttered or stammered when he dictated, and which all these virtuosi lose gradually; an old cashier, yes, but an old stenographer, no. She felt a grudge against Mademoiselle Marthe and Mademoiselle Evelyne for being young, and against Mademoiselle Evelyne, in addition, for being pretty. She had noticed, from the first day, the preferences of the employees of the bank for this tall clerk who walked like a lady on the carpet of the council room, and who carried her young head proudly.

Mademoiselle Raymonde had that flabby and half-faded look which one remarks so often in women of the world who keep too late hours, hair weary of being blondined and undulated, a complexion that required powder, pale lips and eyelids. But, at this moment, this little iinage of crackled Dresden china, reanimated by anger, was also rejuvenated by it. In spite of the heat, Mademoiselle Raymonde had on her shoulders a boa of silk gauze which was becoming to her; with her exasperated and trembling right hand she was pinching the end of the boa.

"Presently," said she, "when they send to ask for a stenographer for the Board of Oilworks of Mogador, do me the favour not to offer your services. That is my right."

"Why, I do not dispute it!j" Evelyne answered. "I never offer my services. As if the Oilworks of Mogador were so amusing!"

"Enough, we know you!"

Mademoiselle Marthe, very dark, her hair parted in the middle, and whom one might have taken for a student, came into the room to resume her work. As she was very stiff in her movements, her companions had nicknamed her Monolyth.

" Isn't it true, Monolyth, we know this young lady? She has ways of attracting the attention, of gaining the favour of the officials. We know by what means you succeed!"

Evelyne, whom the walk had put in a good humour, shrugged her shoulders.

"Then imitate me!"

Mademoiselle Marthe had a smile of contempt, which drew downward her soft lips and eyelids with their long lashes. The undulation and the crackling noise of the moving sheets of paper was heard, then the dry click of a letter striking the sheet, then ten, then a hundred minute blows, all alike, answering to each other. The three women had begun to typewrite. The door opened. Young Monsieur Amedee, one of the exchange clerks, thrust through the half-opening his square head, which he tried to lengthen by a too thin, pointed beard, and which revealed the whole framework of his jaw and throat.

" Mesdemoiselles, one of you, if you please, for the Board of Oilworks—

"Here, Monsieur, I will go!"

But the young man, as if he had not heard Mademoiselle Raymonde, continued :

"Mademoiselle Evelyne, will you come?"

Evelyne arose. She avoided looking at her companions and carried with her her stenographic book. The little keyboards behind her began to click furiously. Then one of the typewriters stopped and burst into tears.

The afternoon came to an end; the light faded very slowly away; the heat continued stifling. When night had come, the windows, one by one, opened upon that impalpable furnace of dust, which men, animals, machines and vibrations of pavements and of walls send up through the cuts of the streets. Each of the cells, rich or poor, where men live, one above the other, was connected thus, more closely, with this great troubled current of movement and of noise which bathes our houses until the hours of approaching day. Each received, at the same time, a little of the fresh air which fell in waves into the furnace. That did not waken thought, but it took away the terror which the solitude of night has for many; it sufficed to preserve the semi-sleep of dream and repose.

Madame Gimel, who lived on the fourth floor, rue Saint-Honore, not far from the Nouveau Cirque, like everybody else, had opened the window of her room. She was sitting near the balcony; she saw well enough, thanks to gas-jets and reflections from fagades, to run the tucks in a white waist, which she was finishing. She worked until five o'clock in the office of a wholesale house in the vicinity of the bank, and, in the evening, she found time to do some fine lingerie sewing. In the background, in the shadow, some one was silent and was thinking. Madame Gimel, now and then, straightened up; she turned her head, and, although she only saw the outlines of a motionless form reclining in the easy chair, she brightened up. She asked:

"Don't you want to light the lamp?"

"What is the use, Mamma? The twilight rests me so much. I think that it is delicious."

"I don't."

A half moment passed. In the abyss of the street below the huge omnibus of Ternes shrieked out, its four wheels suddenly blocked; wordless oaths, snortings of motor, murmurs of cockneys rose in waves. Then, as if the wave had broken, there was a lull, a dull rumbling, and a little tremor of the earth shaken by the retreat of the heavy masses, which were again set in motion.

" I do not complain — I was thinking of the time when you will be married!"

"I do not look so far as you. Would you be pleased?"

"Not too much so! I have only you, but for all that you are old enough."

"Twenty-two years, yes, past, and what have I besides?"

"Everything: a Parisian's courage, a trade, good looks, white teeth — yes, indeed, whoever wants pearls, a real necklace, two rows, not one false!"

"But, Mamma, it is only the men who do not marry who admire them! What ideas you have this evening, indeed!"

In the depths of the room, Evelyne laughed, and her white teeth threw a little light in the shadow. There were the white margins of an engraving and an ivory statue, a finger high, which shone in the same way. Evelyne, seated in a low chair, had placed on her dress and abandoned to the folds of the stuff her hands, which shone also, very vaguely. She asked, and Madame Gimel guessed that her daughter was no longer laughing:

"Then, your presentiment of marriage is based upon nothing?"

"Upon nothing at all."

"Curious, isn't it? I have one quite similar to offer to you. No reason for it, and my heart not in it. It must be the effect of the heat."

She rose and went to the older woman, who dropped her work and raised her arms. Near the window, without caring about the neighbours, in the twilight which the street sent up, Evelyne kissed Madame Gimel, who kept the fair head near her white head, thinking of all the happiness of the past, as if an event had marked its end; while Evelyne was thinking of all the happiness to come, although she loved no one and nothing was changed in her life. And they did not talk with each other any more when they separated, when Evelyne had seated herself, turning her back to the street, by the side of her mother, and the latter had picked up her needle again, whose little regular clicking was lost, like so many other sounds, in the noise of the city. They were thinking, both of them, about the marriage of Evelyne. And, all vague as it was, this thought divided them already. Madame Gimel was thinking that if Evelyne should marry the shoemaker, Quart-de- Place, or some one else, the intimacy of twenty years would not continue, in spite of the vow that Evelyne, in her moments of expansion, made with so grave, so ardent a voice, with her whole soul in her eyes :

"If he wishes to separate me from you, I refuse him!"

Evelyne, who had less imagination, was simply reviewing in her mind the words of the mistress of the creamery; she did not attach any importance to them; still, she would have liked to know if they would come to anything.

"More astonishing things have happened," she thought. "If I were loved, it seems to me that I would recognise quickly if he only thinks me a pretty woman, or indeed — and I would love him only on this condition — if he has confidence in me, if he understands that I can be a friend, a power, a helpmeet, a true woman, and even a lady, why not?"