Part 18

Then, too, what universal and indefatigable supervision! Through the mists of early morning the farm-servants heard her rough and husky voice: “Olivier, Peyrol, Audibert. Come on! It is four o’clock.” Then she would hasten to the immense kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were heating the porridge over the crackling, new-lit fire. They gave her a little dish of red Marseilles-ware full of boiled chestnuts--frugal breakfast of bygone times, which nothing would have induced her to change. At once she was off, hurrying with great strides, her large silver keyring at her belt, whence jingled all her keys, her plate in her hand, balanced by the distaff which she held, in working order, under her arm, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. On the way, a glance at the stables, still dark, where the animals were moving duly, at the stifling pens with their rows of impatient and outstretched muzzles; and the first glimmers of light creeping over the layers of stones that supported the embankment of the park, lit up the figure of the old woman, running in the dew, with the lightness of a girl, despite her seventy years--verifying exactly each morning all the wealth of the domain, anxious to make sure that the night had not taken away the statues and the vases, uprooted the hundred-year-old quincunx, dried up the springs which filtered into their resounding basins. Then the full sunlight of midday, humming and vibrating, showed still, on the sand of an alley, against the white wall of a terrace, the long figure of the old woman, elegant and straight as her spindle, picking up bits of dead wood, breaking off some uneven branch of a shrub, careless of the shock it caused her and the sweat which broke out over her skin. Towards this hour another figure was to be seen in the park also--less active, less noisy, dragging rather than walking, leaning against the walls and railings--a poor round-shouldered being, shaky and stiff, a figure from which life seemed to have gone out, never speaking, when he was tired giving a little plaintive cry towards the servant, who was always near, who helped him to sit down, to crouch upon some step, where he would stay for hours, motionless, mute, his mouth hanging, his eyes blinking, hushed by the strident monotony of the grasshopper’s cry--a blotch of humanity in the splendid horizon.

This, this was the first-born, Bernard’s brother, the darling child of his father and mother, the glorious hope of the nail-maker’s family. Slaves, like so many others in the Midi, to the superstition of the rights of primogeniture, they had made every possible sacrifice to send to Paris their fine, ambitious lad, who set out assured of success, the admiration of all the young women of the town; and Paris, after having for six years, beaten, twisted, and squeezed in its great vat the brilliant southern stripling, after having burnt him with all its vitriol, rolled him in all its mud, finished by sending him back in this state of wreckage, stupefied and paralyzed--killing his father with sorrow, and forcing his mother to sell her all, and live as a sort of char-woman in the better-class houses of her own country-side. Lucky it was that just then, when this broken piece of humanity, discharged from all the hospitals of Paris, was sent back by public charity to Bourg-Saint-Andeol, Bernard--he whom they called Cadet, as in these southern families, half Arab as they are, the eldest always takes the family name, and the last-comer that of Cadet--Bernard was at Tunis making his fortune, and sending home money regularly. But what pain it was for the poor mother to owe everything, even the life, the comfort of the sad invalid, to the robust and courageous boy whom his father and she had loved without any tenderness; who, since he was five years old, they had treated as a “hand,” because he was very strong, woolly-headed, and ugly, and even then knew better than any one in the house how to deal in old nails. Ah! how she longed to have him near her, her Cadet, to make some return to him for all the good he did, to pay at last the debt of love and motherly tenderness that she owed him!

But, you see, these princely fortunes have the burdens, the wearinesses of royal lives. This poor mother, in her dazzling surroundings, was very like a real queen: familiar with long exiles, cruel separations, and the trials which detract from greatness; one of her sons forever stupefied, the other far away, seldom writing, absorbed in his business, saying, “I will come,” and never coming. She had only seen him once in twelve years, and then in the whirl of a visit of the Bey to Saint-Romans--a rush of horses and carriages, of fireworks, and of banquets. He had gone in the suite of his monarch, having scarcely time to say good-bye to his old mother, to whom there remained of this great joy only a few pictures in the illustrated papers, showing Bernard Jansoulet arriving at the castle with Ahmed, and presenting his mother. Is it not thus that kings and queens have their family feelings exploited in the journals? There was also a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the other end of the world, a regular mountain of a tree, whose transport had been as difficult and as costly as that of Cleopatra’s needle, and whose erection as a souvenir of the royal visit by dint of men, money, and teams had shaken the very foundations. But this time, at least, knowing him to be in France for several months--perhaps for good--she hoped to have her Bernard to herself. And now he returned to her, one fine evening, enveloped in the same triumphant glory, in the same official display, surrounded by a crowd of counts, of marquises, of fine gentlemen from Paris, filling, they and their servants, the two large wagonettes she had sent to meet them at the little station of Giffas on the other side of the Rhone.

“Come, give me a kiss, my dear mother. There is nothing to be ashamed of in giving a good hug to the boy you haven’t seen all these years. Besides, all these gentlemen are our friends. This is the Marquis de Monpavon, the Marquis de Bois d’Hery. Ah! the time is past when I brought you to eat vegetable soup with us, little Cabassu and Jean-Batiste Bompain. You know M. de Gery? With my old friend Cardailhac, whom I now present, that makes the first batch. There are others to come. Prepare yourself for a fine upsetting. We entertain the Bey in four days.”

“The Bey again!” said the old woman, astounded. “I thought he was dead.”

Jansoulet and his guests could not help laughing at this comical terror, accentuated by her southern intonation.

“It is another, mamma. There is always a Bey--thank goodness. But don’t be afraid. You won’t have so much bother this time. Our friend Cardailhac has undertaken everything. We are going to have magnificent celebrations. In the meantime, quick--dinner and our rooms. Our Parisians are worn out.”

“Everything is ready, my son,” said the old lady quietly, stiff and straight under her Cambrai cap, the head-dress with its yellowing flaps, which she never left off even for great occasions. Good fortune had not changed her. She was a true peasant of the Rhone valley, independent and proud, without any of the sly humilities of Balzac’s country folk, too artless to be purse-proud. One pride alone she had--that of showing her son with what scrupulous care she had discharged her duties as guardian. Not an atom of dust, not a trace of damp on the walls. All the splendid ground-floor, the reception-rooms with their hangings of iridescent silk new out of the dust sheets, the long summer galleries cool and sonorous, paved with mosaics and furnished with a flowery lightness in the old-fashioned style, with Louis XIV sofas in cane and silk, the immense dining-room decorated with palms and flowers, the billiard-room with its rows of brilliant ivory balls, its crystal chandeliers and its suits of armour--all the length of the castle, through its tall windows, wide open to the stately terrace, lay displayed for the admiration of the visitors. The marvellous beauty of the horizon and the setting sun, its own serene and peaceful richness, were reflected in the panes of glass and in the waxed and polished wood with the same clearness as in the mirror-like ornamental lakes, the pictures of the poplars and the swans. The setting was so lovely, the whole effect so grand, that the clamorous and tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared, even to the most hypercritical eyes.

“There is something to work on,” said Cardailhac, the manager, his glass in his eye, his hat on one side, combining already his stage-effect. And the haughty air of Monpavon, whom the head-dress of the old woman receiving them on the terrace had shocked, gave way to a condescending smile. Here was something to work on, certainly, and, guided by persons of taste, their friend Jansoulet could really give his Moorish Highness an exceedingly suitable reception. All the evening they talked of nothing else. In the sumptuous dining-room, their elbows on the table, full of meat and drink, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, who had great ideas, had already his plan complete.

“First of all, you give me _carte-blanche_, don’t you, Nabob? _Carte-blanche_, old fellow, and make that fat Hemerlingue burst with envy.”

Then the manager explained his scheme. The festivities were to be divided into days, as at Vaux, when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV. One day a play; another day Provencal games, dances, bull-fights, local bands; the third day--And already the manager’s hand sketched programmes, announcements; while Bois l’Hery slept, his hands in his pockets, his chair tilted back, his cigar sunk in the corner of his sneering mouth; and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on his best behaviour, straightened his shirt-front to keep himself awake.

De Gery had left them early. He had sought refuge beside the old mother--who had known him as a boy, him and his brothers--in the humble parlour of the brightly decorated, white-curtained house, where the Nabob’s mother tried to perpetuate her humble past with the help of a few relics saved from its wreck.

Paul chatted quietly with the fine old woman, admiring her severe and regular features, her white hair massed together like the hemp of her distaff, as she sat holding herself straight in her seat--never in her life having leaned back or sat in an arm-chair--a little green shawl folded tightly across her flat breast. He called her Francoise, and she called him M. Paul. They were old friends. And guess what they talked about? Of her grandchildren, of Bernard’s three sons, whom she did not know and so much longed to know.

“Ah, M. Paul, if you knew how I long to see them! I should have been so happy if he had brought them, my three little ones, instead of these fine gentlemen. Think, I have never seen them, only their portraits which are over there. I am a little afraid of their mother, she is quite a great lady, a Miss Afchin. But them, the children, I am sure they are not proud, and they would love their old granny. It would be like having their father a little boy again, and I would give to them what I did not give to him. You see, M. Paul, parents are not always just. They have their favourites. But God is just, he is. The ones that are most petted and spoiled at the expense of the others, you should see what he does to them for you! And the favour of the old often brings misfortune to the young!”

She sighed, looking towards the large recess from behind the curtains of which there came, at intervals, a long sobbing breath like the sleeping wail of a beaten child who has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the staircase, a loud, sweet voice saying, very softly, “It is I; don’t move,” and Jansoulet appeared. He knew his mother’s habits, how her lamp was the last to go out, so when every one in the castle was in bed, he came to see her, to chat with her for a little, to rejoice her heart with an affection he could not show before the others. “Oh, stay, my dear Paul; we don’t mind you,” and once more a child in his mother’s presence, with loving gestures and words that were really touching, the huge man threw himself on the ground at her feet. She was very happy to have him there, so dearly near, but she was just a little shy. She looked upon him as an all-powerful being, extraordinary, raising him, in her simplicity, to the greatness of an Olympian commanding the thunder and lightning. She spoke to him, asking about his friends, his business, but not daring to put the question she had asked de Gery: “Why haven’t my grandchildren come?” But he spoke of them himself. “They are at school, mother. Whenever the holidays begin they shall be sent with Bompain. You remember Jean-Baptiste Bompain? And you shall keep them for two long months. They will come to you and make you tell them stories, and they will go to sleep with their heads on your lap--there, like that.”

And he himself, putting his heavy, woolly head on her knee, remembered the happy evenings of his childhood when he would go to sleep so, if she would let him, and his brother had not taken up all the room. He tasted for the first time since his return to France a few minutes of delicious peace away from his restless and artificial life, as he lay pressed to his old mother’s heart, in the deep silence of night and of the country which one feels hovering over him in limitless space; the only sounds the beating of that old faithful heart and the swing of the pendulum of the ancient clock in the corner. Suddenly came the same long sigh, as of a child fallen asleep sobbing. Jansoulet lifted his head and looked at his mother, and softly asked: “Is it--?” “Yes,” she said, “I make him sleep there. He might need me in the night.”

“I would like to see him, to embrace him.”

“Come, then.” She rose very gravely, took the lamp and went to the alcove, of which she softly drew the large curtain, making a sign to her son to draw near quietly.

He was sleeping. And no doubt something lived in him while he slept that was not there when he waked, for instead of the flaccid immobility in which he was congealed all day, he was now shaken by sudden starts, and on the inexpressive and death-like face there were lines of pain and the contractions of suffering life. Jansoulet, much affected, looked long at those wasted features, faded and sickly, where the beard grew with a surprising vigour. Then he bent down, put his lips to the damp brow, and feeling him move, said very gravely and respectfully, as one speaks to the head of the family, “Good-night, my brother.” Perhaps the captive soul had heard it from the depths of its dark and abject limbo. For the lips moved and a long moan answered him, a far-away wail, a despairing cry, which filled with helpless tears the glance exchanged between Francoise and her son, and tore from them both the same cry in which their sorrow met, “Pecaire,” the local word which expressed all pity and all tenderness.

The next day, from early morning, the commotion began with the arrival of the actors, an avalanche of hats and wigs and big boots, of short skirts and affected cries, of floating veils and fresh make-ups. The women were in a great majority, as Cardailhac thought that for a Bey the play was of little consequence, and that all that was needful was to have catchy tunes in pretty mouths, to show fine arms and shapely legs in the easy costume of light opera. All the well-made celebrities of his theatre were there, Amy Ferat at the head of them, a bold young woman who had already had her teeth in the gold of several crowns. There were two or three well-known men whose pale faces made the same kind of chalky and spectral spots amid the green of the trees as the plaster of the statues. All these people, enlivened by the journey, the surprise of the country, the overflowing hospitality, as well as the hope of making something out of this sojourn of Beys and Nabobs and other gilded fools, wanted only to play, to jest and sing with the vulgar boisterousness of a crew of freshly discharged Seine boatmen. But Cardailhac meant otherwise. No sooner were they unpacked, freshened up, and luncheon over than, quick, the parts, the rehearsals! There was no time to lose. They worked in the small drawing-room next the summer gallery, where the theatre was already being fitted up; and the noise of hammers, the songs from the burlesque, the shrill voices, the conductor’s fiddle, mingled with the loud trumpet-like calls of the peacocks, and rose upon the hot southern wind, which, not recognising it as only the mad rattle of its own grasshoppers, shook it all disdainfully on the trailing tip of its wings.

Seated in the centre of the terrace, as in the stage-box of his theatre, Cardailhac watched the rehearsals, gave orders to a crowd of workmen and gardeners, had trees cut down as spoiling the view, designed the triumphal arches, sent off telegrams, express messengers to mayors, to sub-prefects, to Arles--to arrange for a deputation of girls in national costume; to Barbantane, where the best dancers are; to Faraman, famous for its wild bulls and Camargue horses. And as the name of Jansoulet, joined to that of the Bey of Tunis, flared at the end of all these messages, on all sides they hastened to obey; the telegraph wires were never still, messengers wore out horses on the roads. And this little Sardanapalus of the stage called Cardailhac repeated ever, “There’s something to work on here,” happy to scatter gold at random like handfuls of seed, to have a stage of forty leagues to stir about--the whole of Provence, of which this rabid Parisian was a native and whose picturesque resources he knew to the core.

Dispossessed of her office, the old mother never appeared. She occupied herself with the farm, and her invalid. She was terrified by this crowd of visitors, these insolent servants whom it was difficult to know from the masters, these women with their impudent and elegant airs, these clean-shaven men who looked like bad priests--all these mad-caps who chased each other at night in the corridors with pillows, with wet sponges, with curtain tassels they had torn down, for weapons. Even after dinner she no longer had her son; he was obliged to stay with his guests, whose number grew each day as the _fetes_ approached; not even the resource of talking to M. Paul about her grandchildren was left, for Jansoulet, a little embarrassed by the seriousness of his friend, had sent him to spend a few days with his brothers. And the careful housekeeper, to whom they came every minute asking the keys for linen, for a room, for extra silver, thought of her piles of beautiful dishes, of the sacking of her cupboards and larders, remembered the state in which the old Bey’s visit had left the castle, devastated as by a cyclone, and said in her _patois_ as she feverishly wet the linen on her distaff: “May lightning strike them, this Bey and all the Beys!”

At last the day came, the great day which is still spoken of in all the country-side. Towards three o’clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous luncheon at which the old mother presided, this time in a new cap, over a company composed of Parisian celebrities, prefects, deputies, all in full uniform, mayors with their sashes, priests newshaven, Jansoulet in full dress stepped out on to the terrace surrounded by his guests. He saw before him in that splendid frame of magnificent natural scenery, in the midst of flags and arches and coats of arms, a vast swarm of people, a flare of brilliant costumes in rows on the slopes, at corners of the walks; here, grouped in beds, like flowers on a lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose little dark heads showed delicately from beneath their lace fichus; farther down were the dancers from Barbantane--eight tambourine players in a line, ready to begin, their hands joined, ribbons flying, hats cocked, and the red scarves round their hips; beyond them, on the succeeding terraces were the choral societies in rows, dressed in black with red caps, their standard-bearer in front, grave, important, his teeth clinched, holding high his carved staff; farther down still, on a vast circular space now arranged as an amphitheatre, were the black bulls, and the herdsmen from Camargue seated on their long-haired white horses, their high boots over their knees, at their wrists an uplifted spear; then more flags, helmets, bayonets, and decorations right down to the triumphal arch at the gates; as far as the eye could see, on the other side of the Rhone (across which the two railways had made a pontoon bridge that they might come straight from the station to Saint-Romans), whole villages were assembling from every side, crowding to the Giffas road in a cloud of dust and a confusion of cries, sitting at the hedge-sides, clinging to the elms, squeezed in carts--a living wall for the procession. Above all a great white sun which scintillated in every direction--on the copper of a tambourine, on the point of a trident, on the fringe of a banner; and in the midst the great proud Rhone carrying to the sea the moving picture of this royal feast. Before these marvels, where shone all the gold of his coffers, the Nabob had a sudden feeling of admiration and of pride.

“This is beautiful,” he said, paling; and behind him his mother murmured, “It is too beautiful for man. It is as if God were coming.” She was pale, too, but with an unutterable fear.

The sentiment of the old Catholic peasant was indeed that which was vaguely felt by all those people massed upon the roads as though for the passing of a gigantic Corpus Christi procession, and whom this visit of an Eastern prince to a child of their own country reminded of the legends of the Magi, or the advent of Gaspard the Moor, bringing to the carpenter’s son myrrh and the triple crown.

As Jansoulet was being warmly congratulated by every one, Cardailhac, who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared, triumphant and perspiring. “Didn’t I tell you there was something to work on! Eh? Isn’t it fine? What a scene! I bet our Parisians would pay dear to be at such a first performance as this!” And lowering his voice, on account of the mother who was quite near, “Have you seen our country girls? No? Examine them more closely--the first, the one in front, who is to present the bouquet.”

“Why, it is Amy Ferat!”

“Just so. You see, old fellow, if the Bey should throw his handkerchief amid that group of loveliness there must be some one to pick it up. They wouldn’t understand, these innocents. Oh, I have thought of everything, you will see. Everything is prepared and regulated just as on the stage. Garden side--farm side.”