he had almost lost his individuality; and if the real Pons appeared, as he had done a moment ago, he was immediately repressed.
“But I myself was married with only twenty thousand francs for my portion – ”
“In 1819, cousin. And it was you, a woman with a head on your shoulders, and the royal protection of Louis XVIII.”
“Be still, my child is a perfect angel. She is clever, she has a warm heart, she will have a hundred thousand francs on her wedding day, to say nothing of the most brilliant expectations; and yet she stays on our hands,” and so on and so on. For twenty minutes, Mme. de Marville talked on about herself and her Cecile, pitying herself after the manner of mothers in bondage to marriageable daughters.
Pons had dined at the house every week for twenty years, and Camusot de Marville was the only cousin he had in the world; but he had yet to hear the first word spoken as to his own affairs – nobody cared to know how he lived. Here and elsewhere the poor cousin was a kind of sink down which his relatives poured domestic confidences. His discretion was well known; indeed, was he not bound over to silence when a single imprudent word would have shut the door of ten houses upon him? And he must combine his role of listener with a second part; he must applaud continually, smile on every one, accuse nobody, defend nobody; from his point of view, every one must be in the right. And so, in the house of his kinsman, Pons no longer counted as a man; he was a digestive apparatus.
In the course of a long tirade, Mme. Camusot de Marville avowed with due circumspection that she was prepared to take almost any son-in-law with her eyes shut. She was even disposed to think that at eight-and-forty or so a man with twenty thousand francs a year was a good match.
“Cecile is in her twenty-third year. If it should fall out so unfortunately that she is not married before she is five or six-and-twenty, it will be extremely hard to marry her at all. When a girl reaches that age, people want to know why she has been so long on hand. We are a good deal talked about in our set. We have come to the end of all the ordinary excuses – ‘She is so young. – She is so fond of her father and mother that she doesn’t like to leave them. – She is so happy at home. – She is hard to please, she would like a good name – ’ We are beginning to look silly; I feel that distinctly. And besides, Cecile is tired of waiting, poor child, she suffers – ”
“In what way?” Pons was noodle enough to ask.
“Why, because it is humiliating to her to see all her girl friends married before her,” replied the mother, with a duenna’s air.
“But, cousin, has anything happened since the last time that I had the pleasure of dining here? Why do you think of men of eight-and-forty?” Pons inquired humbly.
“This has happened,” returned the Presidente. “We were to have had an interview with a Court Councillor; his son is thirty years old and very well-to-do, and M. de Marville would have obtained a post in the audit-office for him and paid the money. The young man is a supernumerary there at present. And now they tell us that he has taken it into his head to rush off to Italy in the train of a duchess from the Bal Mabille… It is nothing but a refusal in disguise. The fact is, the young man’s mother is dead; he has an income of thirty thousand francs, and more to come at his father’s death, and they don’t care about the match for him. You have just come in in the middle of all this, dear cousin, so you must excuse our bad temper.”
While Pons was casting about for the complimentary answer which invariably occurred to him too late when he was afraid of his host, Madeleine came in, handed a folded note to the Presidente, and waited for an answer. The note ran as follows:
“DEAR MAMMA, – If we pretend that this note comes to you from papa at the Palais, and that he wants us both to dine with his friend because proposals have been renewed – then the cousin will go, and we can carry out our plan of going to the Popinots.”
“Who brought the master’s note?” the Presidente asked quickly.
“A lad from the Salle du Palais,” the withered waiting woman unblushingly answered, and her mistress knew at once that Madeleine had woven the plot with Cecile, now at the end of her patience.
“Tell him that we will both be there at half-past five.”
Madeleine had no sooner left the room than the Presidente turned to Cousin Pons with that insincere friendliness which is about as grateful to a sensitive soul as a mixture of milk and vinegar to the palate of an epicure.
“Dinner is ordered, dear cousin; you must dine without us; my husband has just sent word from the court that the question of the marriage has been reopened, and we are to dine with the Councillor. We need not stand on ceremony at all. Do just as if you were at home. I have no secrets from you; I am perfectly open with you, as you see. I am sure you would not wish to break off the little darling’s marriage.”
“I, cousin? On the contrary, I should like to find some one for her; but in my circle – ”
“Oh, that is not at all likely,” said the Presidente, cutting him short insolently. “Then you will stay, will you not? Cecile will keep you company while I dress.
“Oh! I can dine somewhere else, cousin.”
Cruelly hurt though he was by her way of casting up his poverty to him, the prospect of being left alone with the servants was even more alarming.
“But why should you? Dinner is ready; you may just as well have it; if you do not, the servants will eat it.”
At that atrocious speech Pons started up as if he had received a shock from a galvanic battery, bowed stiffly to the lady, and went to find his spencer. Now, it so happened that the door of Cecile’s bedroom, beyond the little drawing-room, stood open, and looking into the mirror, he caught sight of the girl shaking with laughter as she gesticulated and made signs to her mother. The old artist understood beyond a doubt that he had been the victim of some cowardly hoax. Pons went slowly down the stairs; he could not keep back the tears. He understood that he had been turned out of the house, but why and wherefore he did not know.
“I am growing too old,” he told himself. “The world has a horror of old age and poverty – two ugly things. After this I will not go anywhere unless I am asked.”
Heroic resolve!
Downstairs the great gate was shut, as it usually is in houses occupied by the proprietor; the kitchen stood exactly opposite the porter’s lodge, and the door was open. Pons was obliged to listen while Madeleine told the servants the whole story amid the laughter of the servants. She had not expected him to leave so soon. The footman loudly applauded a joke at the expense of a visitor who was always coming to the house and never gave you more than three francs at the year’s end.
“Yes,” put in the cook; “but if he cuts up rough and does not come back, there will be three francs the less for some of us on New Year’s day.”
“Eh! How is he to know?” retorted the footman.
“Pooh!” said Madeleine, “a little sooner or a little later – what difference does it make? The people at the other houses where he dines are so tired of him that they are going to turn him out.”
“The gate, if you please!”
Madeleine had scarcely uttered the words when they heard the old musician’s call to the porter. It sounded like a cry of pain. There was a sudden silence in the kitchen.
“He heard!” the footman said.
“Well,
