The Old Wives' Tale
Book III
SOPHIA
Chapter VII
SUCCESS
I
Sophia lay awake one night in the room
lately quitted by Carlier. That silent negation of individuality had come and
gone, and left scarcely any record of himself either in his room or in the
memories of those who had surrounded his existence in the house. Sophia had
decided to descend from the sixth floor, partly because the temptation of a
large room, after months in a cubicle, was rather strong; but more because of
late she had been obliged to barricade the door of the cubicle with a chest of
drawers, owing to the propensities of a new tenant of the sixth floor. It was
useless to complain to the concierge; the sole effective argument was the chest
of drawers, and even that was frailer than Sophia could have wished. Hence,
finally, her retreat.
She heard the front-door of the flat open; then it was shut with
nervous violence. The resonance of its closing would have certainly wakened less
accomplished sleepers than M. Niepce and his friend, whose snores continued with
undisturbed regularity. After a pause of shuffling, a match was struck, and feet
crept across the corridor with the most exaggerated precautions against noise.
There followed the unintentional bang of another door. It was decidedly the
entry of a man without the slightest natural aptitude for furtive irruptions.
The clock in M. Niepce's room, which the grocer had persuaded to exact
time-keeping, chimed three with its delicate ting.
For several days past Chirac had been mysteriously engaged very
late at the bureaux of the Debats. No one knew the nature of his employment; he
said nothing, except to inform Sophia that he would continue to come home about
three o'clock until further notice. She had insisted on leaving in his room the
materials and apparatus for a light meal. Naturally he had protested, with the
irrational obstinacy of a physically weak man who sticks to it that he can defy
the laws of nature. But he had protested in vain.
His general conduct since Christmas Day had frightened Sophia, in
spite of her tendency to stifle facile alarms at their birth. He had eaten
scarcely anything at all, and he went about with the face of a man dying of a
broken heart. The change in him was indeed tragic. And instead of improving, he
grew worse. "Have I done this?" Sophia asked herself. "It is impossible that I
should have done this! It is absurd and ridiculous that he should behave so!"
Her thoughts were employed alternately in sympathizing with him and in despising
him, in blaming herself and in blaming him. When they spoke, they spoke
awkwardly, as though one or both of them had committed a shameful crime, which
could not even be mentioned. The atmosphere of the flat was tainted by the
horror. And Sophia could not offer him a bowl of soup without wondering how he
would look at her or avoid looking, and without carefully arranging in advance
her own gestures and speech. Existence was a nightmare of
self-consciousness.
"At last they have unmasked their batteries!" he had exclaimed
with painful gaiety two days after Christmas, when the besiegers had recommenced
their cannonade. He tried to imitate the strange, general joy of the city, which
had been roused from apathy by the recurrence of a familiar noise; but the
effort was a deplorable failure. And Sophia condemned not merely the failure of
Chirac's imitation, but the thing imitated. "Childish!" she thought. Yet,
despise the feebleness of Chirac's behaviour as she might, she was deeply
impressed, genuinely astonished, by the gravity and persistence of the symptoms.
"He must have been getting himself into a state about me for a long time," she
thought. "Surely he could not have gone mad like this all in a day or two! But I
never noticed anything. No; honestly I never noticed anything!" And just as her
behaviour in the restaurant had shaken Chirac's confidence in his knowledge of
the other sex, so now the singular behaviour of Chirac shook hers. She was taken
aback. She was frightened, though she pretended not to be frightened.
She had lived over and over again the scene in the restaurant. She
asked herself over and over again if really she had not beforehand expected him
to make love to her in the restaurant. She could not decide exactly when she had
begun to expect a declaration; but probably a long time before the meal was
finished. She had foreseen it, and might have stopped it. But she had not chosen
to stop it. Curiosity concerning not merely him, but also herself, had tempted
her tacitly to encourage him. She asked herself over and over again why she had
repulsed him. It struck her as curious that she had repulsed him. Was it because
she was a married woman? Was it because she had moral scruples? Was it at bottom
because she did not care for him? Was it because she could not care for anybody?
Was it because his fervid manner of love-making offended her English phlegm? And
did she feel pleased or displeased by his forbearance in not renewing the
assault? She could not answer. She did not know.
But all the time she knew that she wanted love. Only, she
conceived a different kind of love: placid, regular, somewhat stern, somewhat
above the plane of whims, moods, caresses, and all mere fleshly contacts. Not
that she considered that she despised these things (though she did)! What she
wanted was a love that was too proud, too independent, to exhibit frankly either
its joy or its pain. She hated a display of sentiment. And even in the most
intimate abandonments she would have made reserves, and would have expected
reserves, trusting to a lover's powers of divination, and to her own! The
foundation of her character was a haughty moral independence, and this quality
was what she most admired in others.
Chirac's inability to draw from his own pride strength to sustain
himself against the blow of her refusal gradually killed in her the sexual
desire which he had aroused, and which during a few days flickered up under the
stimulus of fancy and of regret. Sophia saw with increasing clearness that her
unreasoning instinct had been right in saying him nay. And when, in spite of
this, regrets still visited her, she would comfort herself in thinking: "I
cannot be bothered with all that sort of thing. It is not worth while. What does
it lead to? Is not life complicated enough without that? No, no! I will stay as
I am. At any rate I know what I am in for, as things are!" And she would reflect
upon her hopeful financial situation, and the approaching prospect of a
constantly sufficient income. And a little thrill of impatience against the
interminable and gigantic foolishness of the siege would take her.
But her self-consciousness in presence of Chirac did not
abate.
As she lay in bed she awaited accustomed sounds which should have
connoted Chirac's definite retirement for the night. Her ear, however, caught no
sound whatever from his room. Then she imagined that there was a smell of
burning in the flat. She sat up, and sniffed anxiously, of a sudden wideawake
and apprehensive. And then she was sure that the smell of burning was not in her
imagination. The bedroom was in perfect darkness. Feverishly she searched with
her right hand for the matches on the night-table, and knocked candlestick and
matches to the floor. She seized her dressing-gown, which was spread over the
bed, and put it on, aiming for the door. Her feet were bare. She discovered the
door. In the passage she could discern nothing at first, and then she made out a
thin line of light, which indicated the bottom of Chirac's door. The smell of
burning was strong and unmistakable. She went towards the faint light, fumbled
for the door-handle with her palm, and opened. It did not occur to her to call
out and ask what was the matter.
The house was not on fire; but it might have been. She had left on
the table at the foot of Chirac's bed a small cooking-lamp, and a saucepan of
bouillon. All that Chirac had to do was to ignite the lamp and put the saucepan
on it. He had ignited the lamp, having previously raised the double wicks, and
had then dropped into the chair by the table just as he was, and sunk forward
and gone to sleep with his head lying sideways on the table. He had not put the
saucepan on the lamp; he had not lowered the wicks, and the flames, capped with
thick black smoke, were waving slowly to and fro within a few inches of his
loose hair. His hat had rolled along the floor; he was wearing his great
overcoat and one woollen glove; the other glove had lodged on his slanting knee.
A candle was also burning.
Sophia hastened forward, as it were surreptitiously, and with a
forward-reaching movement turned down the wicks of the lamp; black specks were
falling on the table; happily the saucepan was covered, or the bouillon would
have been ruined.
Chirac made a heart-rending spectacle, and Sophia was aware of
deep and painful emotion in seeing him thus. He must have been utterly exhausted
and broken by loss of sleep. He was a man incapable of regular hours, incapable
of treating his body with decency. Though going to bed at three o'clock, he had
continued to rise at his usual hour. He looked like one dead; but more sad, more
wistful. Outside in the street a fog reigned, and his thin draggled beard was
jewelled with the moisture of it. His attitude had the unconsidered and violent
prostration of an overspent dog. The beaten animal in him was expressed in every
detail of that posture. It showed even in his white, drawn eyelids, and in the
falling of a finger. All his face was very sad. It appealed for mercy as the
undefended face of sleep always appeals; it was so helpless, so exposed, so
simple. It recalled Sophia to a sense of the inner mysteries of life, reminding
her somehow that humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses. She
did not physically shudder; but her soul shuddered.
She mechanically placed the saucepan on the lamp, and the noise
awakened Chirac. He groaned. At first he did not perceive her. When he saw that
some one was looking down at him, he did not immediately realize who this some
one was. He rubbed his eyes with his fists, exactly like a baby, and sat up, and
the chair cracked.
"What then?" he demanded. "Oh, madame, I ask pardon. What?"
"You have nearly destroyed the house," she said. "I smelt fire,
and I came in. I was just in time. There is no danger now. But please be
careful." She made as if to move towards the door.
"But what did I do?" he asked, his eyelids wavering.
She explained.
He rose from his chair unsteadily. She told him to sit down again,
and he obeyed as though in a dream.
"I can go now," she said.
"Wait one moment," he murmured. "I ask pardon. I should not know
how to thank you. You are truly too good. Will you wait one moment?"
His tone was one of supplication. He gazed at her, a little
dazzled by the light and by her. The lamp and the candle illuminated the lower
part of her face, theatrically, and showed the texture of her blue flannel
peignoir; the pattern of a part of the lace collar was silhouetted in shadow on
her cheek. Her face was flushed, and her hair hung down unconfined. Evidently he
could not recover from his excusable astonishment at the apparition of such a
figure in his room.
"What is it—now?" she said. The faint, quizzical emphasis which
she put on the 'now' indicated the essential of her thought. The sight of him
touched her and filled her with a womanly sympathy. But that sympathy was only
the envelope of her disdain of him. She could not admire weakness. She could but
pity it with a pity in which scorn was mingled. Her instinct was to treat him as
a child. He had failed in human dignity. And it seemed to her as if she had not
previously been quite certain whether she could not love him, but that now she
was quite certain. She was close to him. She saw the wounds of a soul that could
not hide its wounds, and she resented the sight. She was hard. She would not
make allowances. And she revelled in her hardness. Contempt—a good-natured,
kindly, forgiving contempt—that was the kernel of the sympathy which exteriorly
warmed her! Contempt for the lack of self-control which had resulted in this
swift degeneration of a man into a tortured victim! Contempt for the lack of
perspective which magnified a mere mushroom passion till it filled the whole
field of life! Contempt for this feminine slavery to sentiment! She felt that
she might have been able to give herself to Chirac as one gives a toy to an
infant. But of loving him…! No! She was conscious of an immeasurable superiority
to him, for she was conscious of the freedom of a strong mind.
"I wanted to tell you," said he, "I am going away."
"Where?" she asked.
"Out of Paris."
"Out of Paris? How?"
"By balloon! My journal…! It is an affair of great importance. You
understand. I offered myself. What would you?"
"It is dangerous," she observed, waiting to see if he would put on
the silly air of one who does not understand fear.
"Oh!" the poor fellow muttered with a fatuous intonation and
snapping of the fingers. "That is all the same to me. Yes, it is dangerous. Yes,
it is dangerous!" he repeated. "But what would you…? For me…!"
She wished that she had not mentioned danger. It hurt her to watch
him incurring her ironic disdain.
"It will be the night after to-morrow," he said. "In the courtyard
of the Gare du Nord. I want you to come and see me go. I particularly want you
to come and see me go. I have asked Carlier to escort you."
He might have been saying, "I am offering myself to martyrdom, and
you must assist at the spectacle."
She despised him yet more.
"Oh! Be tranquil," he said. "I shall not worry you. Never shall I
speak to you again of my love. I know you. I know it would be useless. But I
hope you will come and wish me bon voyage."
"Of course, if you really wish it," she replied with cheerful
coolness.
He seized her hand and kissed it.
Once it had pleased her when he kissed her hand. But now she did
not like it. It seemed hysterical and foolish to her. She felt her feet to be
stone-cold on the floor.
"I'll leave you now," she said. "Please eat your soup."
She escaped, hoping he would not espy her feet.
II
The courtyard of the Nord Railway Station was lighted by oil-lamps
taken from locomotives; their silvered reflectors threw dazzling rays from all
sides on the under portion of the immense yellow mass of the balloon; the upper
portion was swaying to and fro with gigantic ungainliness in the strong breeze.
It was only a small balloon, as balloons are measured, but it seemed monstrous
as it wavered over the human forms that were agitating themselves beneath it.
The cordage was silhouetted against the yellow taffetas as high up as the widest
diameter of the balloon, but above that all was vague, and even spectators
standing at a distance could not clearly separate the summit of the great sphere
from the darkly moving sky. The car, held by ropes fastened to stakes, rose now
and then a few inches uneasily from the ground. The sombre and severe
architecture of the station-buildings enclosed the balloon on every hand; it had
only one way of escape. Over the roofs of that architecture, which shut out the
sounds of the city, came the irregular booming of the bombardment. Shells were
falling in the southern quarters of Paris, doing perhaps not a great deal of
damage, but still plunging occasionally into the midst of some domestic interior
and making a sad mess of it. The Parisians were convinced that the shells were
aimed maliciously at hospitals and museums; and when a child happened to be
blown to pieces their unspoken comments upon the Prussian savagery were bitter.
Their faces said: "Those barbarians cannot even spare our children!" They amused
themselves by creating a market in shells, paying more for a live shell than a
dead one, and modifying the tariff according to the supply. And as the
cattle-market was empty, and the vegetable-market was empty, and beasts no
longer pastured on the grass of the parks, and the twenty-five million rats of
the metropolis were too numerous to furnish interest to spectators, and the
Bourse was practically deserted, the traffic in shells sustained the starving
mercantile instinct during a very dull period. But the effect on the nerves was
deleterious. The nerves of everybody were like nothing but a raw wound. Violent
anger would spring up magically out of laughter, and blows out of caresses. This
indirect consequence of the bombardment was particularly noticeable in the group
of men under the balloon. Each behaved as if he were controlling his temper in
the most difficult circumstances. Constantly they all gazed upwards into the
sky, though nothing could possibly be distinguished there save the blurred edge
of a flying cloud. But the booming came from that sky; the shells that were
dropping on Montrouge came out of that sky; and the balloon was going up into
it; the balloon was ascending into its mysteries, to brave its dangers, to sweep
over the encircling ring of fire and savages.
Sophia stood apart with Carlier. Carlier had indicated a
particular spot, under the shelter of the colonnade, where he said it was
imperative that they should post themselves. Having guided Sophia to this spot,
and impressed upon her that they were not to move, he seemed to consider that
the activity of his role was finished, and spoke no word. With the very high
silk hat which he always wore, and a thin old-fashioned overcoat whose collar
was turned up, he made a rather grotesque figure. Fortunately the night was not
very cold, or he might have passively frozen to death on the edge of that
feverish group. Sophia soon ignored him. She watched the balloon. An
aristocratic old man leaned against the car, watch in hand; at intervals he
scowled, or stamped his foot. An old sailor, tranquilly smoking a pipe, walked
round and round the balloon, staring at it; once he climbed up into the rigging,
and once he jumped into the car and angrily threw out of it a bag, which some
one had placed in it. But for the most part he was calm. Other persons of
authority hurried about, talking and gesticulating; and a number of workmen
waited idly for orders.
"Where is Chirac?" suddenly cried the old man with the watch.
Several voices deferentially answered, and a man ran away into the
gloom on an errand.
Then Chirac appeared, nervous, self-conscious, restless. He was
enveloped in a fur coat that Sophia had never seen before, and he carried
dangling in his hand a cage containing six pigeons whose whiteness stirred
uneasily within it. The sailor took the cage from him and all the persons of
authority gathered round to inspect the wonderful birds upon which, apparently,
momentous affairs depended. When the group separated, the sailor was to be seen
bending over the edge of the car to deposit the cage safely. He then got into
the car, still smoking his pipe, and perched himself negligently on the
wicker-work. The man with the watch was conversing with Chirac; Chirac nodded
his head frequently in acquiescence, and seemed to be saying all the time: "Yes,
sir! Perfectly sir! I understand, sir! Yes, sir!"
Suddenly Chirac turned to the car and put a question to the
sailor, who shook his head. Whereupon Chirac gave a gesture of submissive
despair to the man with the watch. And in an instant the whole throng was in a
ferment.
"The victuals!" cried the man with the watch. "The victuals, name
of
God! Must one be indeed an idiot to forget the victuals! Name of
God—of
God!"
Sophia smiled at the agitation, and at the inefficient management
which had never thought of food. For it appeared that the food had not merely
been forgotten; it was a question which had not even been considered. She could
not help despising all that crowd of self-important and fussy males to whom the
idea had not occurred that even balloonists must eat. And she wondered whether
everything was done like that. After a delay that seemed very long, the problem
of victuals was solved, chiefly, as far as Sophia could judge, by means of cakes
of chocolate and bottles of wine.
"It is enough! It is enough!" Chirac shouted passionately several
times to a knot of men who began to argue with him.
Then he gazed round furtively, and with an inflation of the chest
and a patting of his fur coat he came directly towards Sophia. Evidently
Sophia's position had been prearranged between him and Carlier. They could
forget food, but they could think of Sophia's position!
All eyes followed him. Those eyes could not, in the gloom,
distinguish Sophia's beauty, but they could see that she was young and slim and
elegant, and of foreign carriage. That was enough. The very air seemed to
vibrate with the intense curiosity of those eyes. And immediately Chirac grew
into the hero of some brilliant and romantic adventure. Immediately he was
envied and admired by every man of authority present. What was she? Who was she?
Was it a serious passion or simply a caprice? Had she flung herself at him? It
was undeniable that lovely creatures did sometimes fling themselves at lucky
mediocrities. Was she a married woman? An artiste? A girl? Such queries thumped
beneath overcoats, while the correctness of a ceremonious demeanour was strictly
observed.
Chirac uncovered, and kissed her hand. The wind disarranged his
hair. She saw that his face was very pale and anxious beneath the swagger of a
sincere desire to be brave.
"Well, it is the moment!" he said.
"Did you all forget the food?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "What will you? One cannot think of
everything."
"I hope you will have a safe voyage," she said.
She had already taken leave of him once, in the house, and heard
all about the balloon and the sailor-aeronaut and the preparations; and now she
had nothing to say, nothing whatever.
He shrugged his shoulders again. "I hope so!" he murmured, but in
a tone to convey that he had no such hope.
"The wind isn't too strong?" she suggested.
He shrugged his shoulders again. "What would you?"
"Is it in the direction you want?"
"Yes, nearly," he admitted unwillingly. Then rousing himself: "Eh,
well, madame. You have been extremely amiable to come. I held to it very
much—that you should come. It is because of you I quit Paris."
She resented the speech by a frown.
"Ah!" he implored in a whisper. "Do not do that. Smile on me.
After all, it is not my fault. Remember that this may be the last time I see
you, the last time I regard your eyes."
She smiled. She was convinced of the genuineness of the emotion
which expressed itself in all this flamboyant behaviour. And she had to make
excuses to herself on behalf of Chirac. She smiled to give him pleasure. The
hard commonsense in her might sneer, but indubitably she was the centre of a
romantic episode. The balloon darkly swinging there! The men waiting! The
secrecy of the mission! And Chirac, bare-headed in the wind that was to whisk
him away, telling her in fatalistic accents that her image had devastated his
life, while envious aspirants watched their colloquy! Yes, it was romantic. And
she was beautiful! Her beauty was an active reality that went about the world
playing tricks in spite of herself. The thoughts that passed through her mind
were the large, splendid thoughts of romance. And it was Chirac who had aroused
them! A real drama existed, then, triumphing over the accidental absurdities and
pettinesses of the situation. Her final words to Chirac were tender and
encouraging.
He hurried back to the balloon, resuming his cap. He was received
with the respect due to one who comes fresh from conquest. He was sacred.
Sophia rejoined Carlier, who had withdrawn, and began to talk to
him with a self-conscious garrulity. She spoke without reason and scarcely
noticed what she was saying. Already Chirac was snatched out of her life, as
other beings, so many of them, had been snatched. She thought of their first
meetings, and of the sympathy which had always united them. He had lost his
simplicity, now, in the self-created crisis of his fate, and had sunk in her
esteem. And she was determined to like him all the more because he had sunk in
her esteem. She wondered whether he really had undertaken this adventure from
sentimental disappointment. She wondered whether, if she had not forgotten to
wind her watch one night, they would still have been living quietly under the
same roof in the Rue Breda.
The sailor climbed definitely into the car; he had covered himself
with a large cloak. Chirac had got one leg over the side of the car, and eight
men were standing by the ropes, when a horse's hoofs clattered through the
guarded entrance to the courtyard, amid an uproar of sudden excitement. The
shiny chest of the horse was flecked with the classic foam.
"A telegram from the Governor of Paris!"
As the orderly, checking his mount, approached the group, even the
old man with the watch raised his hat. The orderly responded, bent down to make
an inquiry, which Chirac answered, and then, with another exchange of salutes,
the official telegram was handed over to Chirac, and the horse backed away from
the crowd. It was quite thrilling. Carlier was thrilled.
"He is never too prompt, the Governor. It is a quality!" said
Carlier, with irony.
Chirac entered the car. And then the old man with the watch drew a
black bag from the shadow behind him and entrusted it to Chirac, who accepted it
with a profound deference and hid it. The sailor began to issue commands. The
men at the ropes were bending down now. Suddenly the balloon rose about a foot
and trembled. The sailor continued to shout. All the persons of authority gazed
motionless at the balloon. The moment of suspense was eternal.
"Let go all!" cried the sailor, standing up, and clinging to the
cordage. Chirac was seated in the car, a mass of dark fur with a small patch of
white in it. The men at the ropes were a knot of struggling confused
figures.
One side of the car tilted up, and the sailor was nearly pitched
out.
Three men at the other side had failed to free the ropes.
"Let go, corpses!" the sailor yelled at them.
The balloon jumped, as if it were drawn by some terrific impulse
from the skies.
"Adieu!" called Chirac, pulling his cap off and waving it.
"Adieu!"
"Bon voyage! Bon voyage!" the little crowd cheered. And then,
"Vive la
France!" Throats tightened, including Sophia's.
But the top of the balloon had leaned over, destroying its
pear-shape, and the whole mass swerved violently towards the wall of the
station, the car swinging under it like a toy, and an anchor under the car.
There was a cry of alarm. Then the great ball leaped again, and swept over the
high glass roof, escaping by inches the spouting. The cheers expired instantly….
The balloon was gone. It was spirited away as if by some furious and mighty
power that had grown impatient in waiting for it. There remained for a few
seconds on the collective retina of the spectators a vision of the inclined car
swinging near the roof like the tail of a kite. And then nothing! Blankness!
Blackness! Already the balloon was lost to sight in the vast stormy ocean of the
night, a plaything of the winds. The spectators became once more aware of the
dull booming of the cannonade. The balloon was already perhaps flying unseen
amid the wrack over those guns.
Sophia involuntarily caught her breath. A chill sense of
loneliness, of purposelessness, numbed her being.
Nobody ever saw Chirac or the old sailor again. The sea must have
swallowed them. Of the sixty-five balloons that left Paris during the siege, two
were not heard of. This was the first of the two. Chirac had, at any rate, not
magnified the peril, though his intention was undoubtedly to magnify it.
III
This was the end of Sophia's romantic adventures in France. Soon
afterwards the Germans entered Paris, by mutual agreement, and made a point of
seeing the Louvre, and departed, amid the silence of a city. For Sophia the
conclusion of the siege meant chiefly that prices went down. Long before
supplies from outside could reach Paris, the shop-windows were suddenly full of
goods which had arrived from the shopkeepers alone knew where. Sophia, with the
stock in her cellar, could have held out for several weeks more, and it annoyed
her that she had not sold more of her good things while good things were worth
gold. The signing of a treaty at Versailles reduced the value of Sophia's two
remaining hams from about five pounds apiece to the usual price of hams.
However, at the end of January she found herself in possession of a capital of
about eight thousand francs, all the furniture of the flat, and a reputation.
She had earned it all. Nothing could destroy the structure of her beauty, but
she looked worn and appreciably older. She wondered often when Chirac would
return. She might have written to Carlier or to the paper; but she did not. It
was Niepce who discovered in a newspaper that Chirac's balloon had miscarried.
At the moment the news did not affect her at all; but after several days she
began to feel her loss in a dull sort of way; and she felt it more and more,
though never acutely. She was perfectly convinced that Chirac could never have
attracted her powerfully. She continued to dream, at rare intervals, of the kind
of passion that would have satisfied her, glowing but banked down like a fire in
some fine chamber of a rich but careful household.
She was speculating upon what her future would be, and whether by
inertia she was doomed to stay for ever in the Rue Breda, when the Commune
caught her. She was more vexed than frightened by the Commune; vexed that a city
so in need of repose and industry should indulge in such antics. For many people
the Commune was a worse experience than the siege; but not for Sophia. She was a
woman and a foreigner. Niepce was infinitely more disturbed than Sophia; he went
in fear of his life. Sophia would go out to market and take her chances. It is
true that during one period the whole population of the house went to live in
the cellars, and orders to the butcher and other tradesmen were given over the
party-wall into the adjoining courtyard, which communicated with an alley. A
strange existence, and possibly perilous! But the women who passed through it
and had also passed through the siege, were not very much intimidated by it,
unless they happened to have husbands or lovers who were active politicians.
Sophia did not cease, during the greater part of the year 1871, to
make a living and to save money. She watched every sou, and she developed a
tendency to demand from her tenants all that they could pay. She excused this to
herself by ostentatiously declaring every detail of her prices in advance. It
came to the same thing in the end, with this advantage, that the bills did not
lead to unpleasantness. Her difficulties commenced when Paris at last definitely
resumed its normal aspect and life, when all the women and children came back to
those city termini which they had left in such huddled, hysterical throngs, when
flats were re-opened that had long been shut, and men who for a whole year had
had the disadvantages and the advantages of being without wife and family,
anchored themselves once more to the hearth. Then it was that Sophia failed to
keep all her rooms let. She could have let them easily and constantly and at
high rents; but not to men without encumbrances. Nearly every day she refused
attractive tenants in pretty hats, or agreeable gentlemen who only wanted a room
on condition that they might offer hospitality to a dashing petticoat. It was
useless to proclaim aloud that her house was 'serious.' The ambition of the
majority of these joyous persons was to live in a 'serious' house, because each
was sure that at bottom he or she was a 'serious' person, and quite different
from the rest of the joyous world. The character of Sophia's flat, instead of
repelling the wrong kind of aspirant, infallibly drew just that kind. Hope was
inextinguishable in these bosoms. They heard that there would be no chance for
them at Sophia's; but they tried nevertheless. And occasionally Sophia would
make a mistake, and grave unpleasantness would occur before the mistake could be
rectified. The fact was that the street was too much for her. Few people would
credit that there was a serious boarding-house in the Rue Breda. The police
themselves would not credit it. And Sophia's beauty was against her. At that
time the Rue Breda was perhaps the most notorious street in the centre of Paris;
at the height of its reputation as a warren of individual improprieties; most
busily creating that prejudice against itself which, over thirty years later,
forced the authorities to change its name in obedience to the wish of its
tradesmen. When Sophia went out at about eleven o'clock in the morning with her
reticule to buy, the street was littered with women who had gone out with
reticules to buy. But whereas Sophia was fully dressed, and wore headgear, the
others were in dressing-gown and slippers, or opera-cloak and slippers, having
slid directly out of unspeakable beds and omitted to brush their hair out of
their puffy eyes. In the little shops of the Rue Breda, the Rue Notre Dame de
Lorette, and the Rue des Martyrs, you were very close indeed to the primitive
instincts of human nature. It was wonderful; it was amusing; it was excitingly
picturesque; and the universality of the manners rendered moral indignation
absurd. But the neighbourhood was certainly not one in which a woman of Sophia's
race, training, and character, could comfortably earn a living, or even exist.
She could not fight against the entire street. She, and not the street, was out
of place and in the wrong. Little wonder that the neighbours lifted their
shoulders when they spoke of her! What beautiful woman but a mad Englishwoman
would have had the idea of establishing herself in the Rue Breda with the
intention of living like a nun and compelling others to do the same?
By dint of continual ingenuity, Sophia contrived to win somewhat
more than her expenses, but she was slowly driven to admit to herself that the
situation could not last.
Then one day she saw in Galignani's Messenger an advertisement of
an English pension for sale in the Rue Lord Byron, in the Champs Elysees
quarter. It belonged to some people named Frensham, and had enjoyed a certain
popularity before the war. The proprietor and his wife, however, had not
sufficiently allowed for the vicissitudes of politics in Paris. Instead of
saving money during their popularity they had put it on the back and on the
fingers of Mrs. Frensham. The siege and the Commune had almost ruined them. With
capital they might have restored themselves to their former pride; but their
capital was exhausted. Sophia answered the advertisement. She impressed the
Frenshams, who were delighted with the prospect of dealing in business with an
honest English face. Like many English people abroad they were most strangely
obsessed by the notion that they had quitted an island of honest men to live
among thieves and robbers. They always implied that dishonesty was unknown in
Britain. They offered, if she would take over the lease, to sell all their
furniture and their renown for ten thousand francs. She declined, the price
seeming absurd to her. When they asked her to name a price, she said that she
preferred not to do so. Upon entreaty, she said four thousand francs. They then
allowed her to see that they considered her to have been quite right in
hesitating to name a price so ridiculous. And their confidence in the honest
English face seemed to have been shocked. Sophia left. When she got back to the
Rue Breda she was relieved that the matter had come to nothing. She did not
precisely foresee what her future was to be, but at any rate she knew she shrank
from the responsibility of the Pension Frensham. The next morning she received a
letter offering to accept six thousand. She wrote and declined. She was
indifferent and she would not budge from four thousand. The Frenshams gave way.
They were pained, but they gave way. The glitter of four thousand francs in
cash, and freedom, was too tempting.
Thus Sophia became the proprietress of the Pension Frensham in the
cold and correct Rue Lord Byron. She made room in it for nearly all her other
furniture, so that instead of being under-furnished, as pensions usually are, it
was over-furnished. She was extremely timid at first, for the rent alone was
four thousand francs a year; and the prices of the quarter were alarmingly
different from those of the Rue Breda. She lost a lot of sleep. For some nights,
after she had been installed in the Rue Lord Byron about a fortnight, she
scarcely slept at all, and she ate no more than she slept. She cut down
expenditure to the very lowest, and frequently walked over to the Rue Breda to
do her marketing. With the aid of a charwoman at six sous an hour she
accomplished everything. And though clients were few, the feat was in the nature
of a miracle; for Sophia had to cook.
The articles which George Augustus Sala wrote under the title
"Paris herself again" ought to have been paid for in gold by the hotel and
pension-keepers of Paris. They awakened English curiosity and the desire to
witness the scene of terrible events. Their effect was immediately noticeable.
In less than a year after her adventurous purchase, Sophia had acquired
confidence, and she was employing two servants, working them very hard at low
wages. She had also acquired the landlady's manner. She was known as Mrs.
Frensham. Across the balconies of two windows the Frenshams had left a gilded
sign, "Pension Frensham," and Sophia had not removed it. She often explained
that her name was not Frensham; but in vain. Every visitor inevitably and
persistently addressed her according to the sign. It was past the general
comprehension that the proprietress of the Pension Frensham might bear another
name than Frensham. But later there came into being a class of persons, habitues
of the Pension Frensham, who knew the real name of the proprietress and were
proud of knowing it, and by this knowledge were distinguished from the herd.
What struck Sophia was the astounding similarity of her guests. They all asked
the same questions, made the same exclamations, went out on the same excursions,
returned with the same judgments, and exhibited the same unimpaired assurance
that foreigners were really very peculiar people. They never seemed to advance
in knowledge. There was a constant stream of explorers from England who had to
be set on their way to the Louvre or the Bon Marche.
Sophia's sole interest was in her profits. The excellence of her
house was firmly established. She kept it up, and she kept the modest prices up.
Often she had to refuse guests. She naturally did so with a certain distant
condescension. Her manner to guests increased in stiff formality; and she was
excessively firm with undesirables. She grew to be seriously convinced that no
pension as good as hers existed in the world, or ever had existed, or ever could
exist. Hers was the acme of niceness and respectability. Her preference for the
respectable rose to a passion. And there were no faults in her establishment.
Even the once despised showy furniture of Madame Foucault had mysteriously
changed into the best conceivable furniture; and its cracks were hallowed.
She never heard a word of Gerald nor of her family. In the
thousands of people who stayed under her perfect roof, not one mentioned Bursley
nor disclosed a knowledge of anybody that Sophia had known. Several men had the
wit to propose marriage to her with more or less skilfulness, but none of them
was skilful enough to perturb her heart. She had forgotten the face of love. She
was a landlady. She was THE landlady: efficient, stylish, diplomatic, and
tremendously experienced. There was no trickery, no baseness of Parisian life
that she was not acquainted with and armed against. She could not be startled
and she could not be swindled.
Years passed, until there was a vista of years behind her.
Sometimes she would think, in an unoccupied moment, "How strange it is that I
should be here, doing what I am doing!" But the regular ordinariness of her
existence would instantly seize her again. At the end of 1878, the Exhibition
Year, her Pension consisted of two floors instead of one, and she had turned the
two hundred pounds stolen from Gerald into over two thousand.