Selected Short Fiction Page 38

  The gentleman came in dark and with his hair cropped what I should consider too close, and he says very polite ‘Madame Lirrwiper!’ I says ‘Yes sir. Take a chair.’ ‘I come,’ says he ‘frrwom the Frrwench Consul’s.’ So I saw at once that it wasn’t the Bank of England. ‘We have rrweceived,’ says the gentleman turning his r’s very curious and skilful, ‘frrwom the Mairrwie at Sens, a communication which I will have the honour to rrwead. Madame Lirrwiper understands Frrwench?’ ‘Oh dear no sir!’ says I. ‘Madame Lirriper don’t understand anything of the sort.’ ‘It matters not,’ says the gentleman, ‘I will trrwanslate.’

  With that my dear the gentleman after reading something about a Department and a Mairie (which Lord forgive me I supposed till the Major came home was Mary, and never was I more puzzled than to think how that young woman came to have so much to do with it) translated a lot with the most obliging pains, and it came to this: - That in the town of Sens in France, an unknown Englishman lay a dying. That he was speechless and without motion. That in his lodging there was a gold watch and a purse containing such and such money and a trunk containing such and such clothes, but no passport and no papers, except that on his table was a pack of cards and that he had written in pencil on the back of the ace of hearts: ‘To the authorities. When I am dead, pray send what is left, as a last Legacy, to Mrs Lirriper Eighty-one Norfolk-street Strand London.’ When the gentleman had explained all this, which seemed to be drawn up much more methodical than I should have given the French credit for, not at that time knowing the nation, he put the document into my hand. And much the wiser I was for that you may be sure, except that it had the look of being made out upon grocery-paper and was stamped all over with eagles.

  ‘Does Madame Lirrwiper’ says the gentleman ‘believe she rrwecognizes her unfortunate compatrrwiot?’

  You may imagine the flurry it put me into my dear to be talked to about my compatriots.

  I says ‘Excuse me. Would you have the kindness sir to make your language as simple as you can?’

  ‘This Englishman unhappy, at the point of death. This compatrrwiot afflicted,’ says the gentleman.

  ‘Thank you sir’ I says ‘I understand you now. No sir I have not the least idea who this can be.’

  ‘Has Madame Lirrwiper no son, no nephew, no godson, no frrwiend, no acquaintance of any kind in Frrwance?’

  ‘To my certain knowledge’ says I ‘no relation or friend, and to the best of my belief no acquaintance.’

  ‘Pardon me. You take Locataires?’ says the gentleman.

  My dear fully believing he was offering me something with his obliging foreign manners- snuff for anything I knew- I gave a little bend of my head and I says if you’ll credit it, ‘No I thank you. I have not contracted the habit.’

  The gentleman looks perplexed and says ‘Lodgers?’

  ‘Oh!’ says I laughing. ‘Bless the man! Why yes to be sure!’

  ‘May it not be a former lodger?’ says the gentleman. ‘Some lodger that you pardoned some rrwent? You have pardoned lodgers some rrwent?’

  ‘Hem! It has happened sir’ says I, ‘but I assure you I can call to mind no gentleman of that description that this is at all likely to be.’

  In short my dear we could make nothing of it, and the gentleman noted down what I said and went away. But he left me the paper of which he had two with him, and when the Major came in I says to the Major as I put it in his hand ‘Major here’s Old Moore’s Almanack with the hieroglyphic complete,9 for your opinion.’

  It took the Major a little longer to read than I should have thought, judging from the copious flow with which he seemed to be gifted when attacking the organ-men, but at last he got through it and stood a gazing at me in amazement.

  ‘Major’ I says ‘you’re paralysed.’

  ‘Madam’ says the Major, ‘Jemmy Jackman is doubled up.’

  Now it did so happen that the Major had been out to get a little information about railroads and steam-boats, as our boy was coming home for his Midsummer holidays next day and we were going to take him somewhere for a treat and a change. So while the Major stood a gazing it came into my head to say to him ‘Major I wish you’d go and look at some of your books and maps, and see whereabouts this same town of Sens is in France.’

  The Major he roused himself and he went into the Parlours and he poked about a little, and he came back to me and he says: ‘Sens my dearest madam is seventy odd miles south of Paris.’

  With what I may truly call a desperate effort ‘Major’ I says ‘we’ll go there with our blessed boy!’

  If ever the Major was beside himself it was at the thoughts of that journey. All day long he was like the wild man of the woods after meeting with an advertisement in the papers telling him something to his advantage, and early next morning hours before Jemmy could possibly come home he was outside in the street ready to call out to him that we was all a going to France. Young Rosy-cheeks you may believe was as wild as the Major, and they did carry on to that degree that I says ‘If you two children ain’t more orderly I’ll pack you both off to bed.’ And then they fell to cleaning up the Major’s telescope to see France with, and went out and bought a leather bag with a snap to hang round Jemmy, and him to carry the money like a little Fortunatus with his purse.10

  If I hadn’t passed my word and raised their hopes, I doubt if I could have gone through with the undertaking but it was too late to go back now. So on the second day after Midsummer Day we went off by the morning mail. And when we came to the sea which I had never seen but once in my life and that when my poor Lirriper was courting me, the freshness of it and the deepness and the airiness and to think that it had been rolling ever since and that it was always a rolling and so few of us minding, made me feel quite serious. But I felt happy too and so did Jemmy and the Major and not much motion on the whole, though me with a swimming in the head and a sinking but able to take notice that the foreign insides appear to be constructed hollower than the English leading to much more tremenjous noises when bad sailors.

  But my dear the blueness and the lightness and the coloured look of everything and the very sentry-boxes striped and the shining rattling drums and the little soldiers with their waists and tidy gaiters, when we got across to the Continent-it made me feel as if I don’t know what — as if the atmosphere had been lifted off me. And as to lunch why bless you if I kept a man-cook and two kitchen-maids I couldn’t get it done for twice the money, and no injured young women a glaring at you and grudging you and acknowledging your patronage by wishing that your food might choke you, but so civil and so hot and attentive and every way comfortable except Jemmy pouring wine down his throat by tumblers-full and me expecting to see him drop under the table.

  And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a real charm. It was often wanted of him, for whenever anybody spoke a syllable to me I says ‘Noncomprenny, you’re very kind but it’s no use-Now Jemmy!’ and then Jemmy he fires away at ‘em lovely, the only thing wanting in Jemmy’s French being as it appeared to me that he hardly ever understood a word of what they said to him which made it scarcely of the use it might have been though in other respects a perfect Native, and regarding the Major’s fluency I should have been of the opinion judging French by English that there might have been a greater choice of words in the language though still I must admit that if I hadn’t known him when he asked a military gentleman in a grey cloak what o’clock it was I should have took him for a Frenchman born.

  Before going on to look after my Legacy we were to make one regular day in Paris, and I leave you to judge my dear what a day that was with Jemmy and the Major and the telescope and me and the prowling young man at the inn door (but very civil too) that went along with us to show the sights. All along the railway to Paris Jemmy and the Major had been frightening me to death by stooping down on the platforms at stations to inspect the engines underneath their mechanical stomachs, and by creeping in and out I don’t know where all, to find improvements for the United G
rand Junction Parlour, but when we got out into the brilliant streets on a bright morning they gave up all their London improvements as a bad job and gave their minds to Paris. Says the prowling young man to me ‘Will I speak Inglis No?’ So I says ‘If you can young man I shall take it as a favour,’ but after half an hour of it when I fully believed the man had gone mad and me too I says’ Be so good as fall back on your French sir,’ knowing that then I shouldn’t have the agonies of trying to understand him which was a happy release. Not that I lost much more than the rest either, for I generally noticed that when he had described something very long indeed and I says to Jemmy ‘What does he say Jemmy?’ Jemmy says looking at him with vengeance in his eye ‘He is so jolly indistinct!’ and that when he had described it longer all over again and I says to Jemmy ‘Well Jemmy what’s it all about?’ Jemmy says ‘He says the building was repaired in seventeen hundred and four, Gran.’

  Wherever that prowling young man formed his prowling habits I cannot be expected to know, but the way in which he went round the corner while we had our breakfasts and was there again when we swallowed the last crumb was most marvellous, and just the same at dinner and at night, prowling equally at the theatre and the inn gateway and the shop-doors when we bought a trifle or two and everywhere else but troubled with a tendency to spit. And of Paris I can tell you no more my dear than that it’s town and country both in one, and carved stone and long streets of high houses and gardens and fountains and statues and trees and gold, and immensely big soldiers and immensely little soldiers and the pleasantest nurses with the whitest caps a playing at skipping-rope with the bunchiest babies in the flattest caps, and clean tablecloths spread everywhere for dinner and people sitting out of doors smoking and sipping all day long and little plays being acted in the open air for little people and every shop a complete and elegant room, and everybody seeming to play at everything in this world. And as to the sparkling lights my dear after dark, glittering high up and low down and on before and on behind and all round, and the crowd of theatres and the crowd of people and the crowd of all sorts, it’s pure enchantment. And pretty well the only thing that grated on me was that whether you pay your fare at the railway or whether you change your money at a money-dealer’s or whether you take your ticket at the theatre, the lady or gentleman is caged up (I suppose by Government) behind the strongest iron bars having more of a Zoological appearance than a free country.

  Well to be sure when I did after all get my precious bones to bed that night, and my Young Rogue came in to kiss me and asks ‘What do you think of this lovely lovely Paris, Gran?’ I says ‘Jemmy I feel as if it was beautiful fireworks being let off in my head.’ And very cool and refreshing the pleasant country was next day when we went on to look after my Legacy, and rested me much and did me a deal of good.

  So at length and at last my dear we come to Sens a pretty little town with a great two-towered cathedral and the rooks flying in and out of the loopholes and another tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming below him if you’ll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting at the inn before dinner which they made signs to me was Jemmy and which really was. I had been a fancying as I sat in the balcony of the hotel that an Angel might light there and call down to the people to be good, but I little thought what Jemmy all unknown to himself was a calling down from that high place to some one in the town.

  The pleasantest-situated inn my dear! Right under the two towers, with their shadows a changing upon it all day like a kind of a sundial, and country people driving in and out of the court-yard in carts and hooded cabriolets and such-like, and a market outside in front of the cathedral, and all so quaint and like a picter. The Major and me agreed that whatever came of my Legacy this was the place to stay in for our holiday, and we also agreed that our dear boy had best not be checked in his joy that night by the sight of the Englishman if he was still alive, but that we would go together and alone. For you are to understand that the Major not feeling himself quite equal in his wind to the heighth to which Jemmy had climbed, had come back to me and left him with the Guide.

  So after dinner when Jemmy had set off to see the river, the Major went down to the Mairie, and presently came back with a military character in a sword and spurs and a cocked-hat and a yellow shoulder-belt and long tags about him that he must have found inconvenient. And the Major says ‘The Englishman still lies in the same state dearest madam. This gentleman will conduct us to his lodging.’ Upon which the military character pulled off his cocked-hat to me, and I took notice that he had shaved his forehead in imitation of Napoleon Bonaparte but not like.

  We went out at the court-yard gate and past the great doors of the cathedral and down a narrow High Street where the people were sitting chatting at their shop-doors and the children were at play. The military character went in front and he stopped at a pork-shop with a little statue of a pig sitting up, in the window, and a private door that a donkey was looking out of.

  When the donkey saw the military character he came slipping out on the pavement to turn round and then clattered along the passage into a back-yard. So the coast being clear, the Major and me were conducted up the common stair and into the front room on the second, a bare room with a red tiled floor and the outside lattice blinds close to darken it. As the military character opened the blinds I saw the tower where I had seen Jemmy, darkening as the sun got low, and I turned to the bed by the wall and saw the Englishman.

  It was some kind of brain fever he had had, and his hair was all gone, and some wetted folded linen lay upon his head. I looked at him very attentive as he lay there all wasted away with his eyes closed, and I says to the Major

  ‘I never saw this face before.’

  The Major looked at him very attentive too, and he says

  ‘I never saw this face before.’

  When the Major explained our words to the military character, that gentleman shrugged his shoulders and showed the Major the card on which it was written about the Legacy for me. It had been written with a weak and trembling hand in bed, and I knew no more of the writing than of the face. Neither did the Major.

  Though lying there alone, the poor creetur was as well taken care of as could be hoped, and would have been quite unconscious of any one’s sitting by him then. I got the Major to say that we were not going away at present and that I would come back tomorrow and watch a bit by the bedside. But I got him to add- and I shook my head hard to make it stronger - We agree that we never saw this face before.’

  Our boy was greatly surprised when we told him sitting out in the balcony in the starlight, and he ran over some of those stories of former Lodgers, of the Major’s putting down, and asked wasn’t it possible that it might be this lodger or that lodger. It was not possible and we went to bed.

  In the morning just at breakfast-time die military character came jingling round, and said that the doctor thought from the signs he saw there might be some rally before the end. So I says to the Major and Jemmy, ‘You two boys go and enjoy yourselves, and I’ll take my Prayer-Book and go sit by the bed.’ So I went, and I sat there some hours, reading a prayer for him poor soul now and then, and it was quite on in the day when he moved his hand.

  He had been so still, that the moment he moved I knew of it, and I pulled off my spectacles and laid down my book and rose and looked at him. From moving one hand he began to move both, and then his action was the action of a person groping in the dark. Long after his eyes had opened, there was a film over them and he still felt for his way out into light. But by slow degrees his sight cleared and his hands stopped. He saw the ceiling, he saw the wall, he saw me. As his sight cleared, mine cleared too, and when at last we looked in one another’s faces, I started back and I cries passionately:

  ‘O you wicked wicked man! Your sin has found you out!’II

  For I knew him, the moment life looked out of his eyes, to be Mr Edson, Jemmy’s father who had so cruelly deserted Jemmy’s
young unmarried mother who had died in my arms, poor tender creetur, and left Jemmy to me.

  ‘You cruel wicked man! You bad black traitor!’

  With the little strength he had, he made an attempt to turn over on his wretched face to hide it. His arm dropped out of the bed and his head with it, and there he lay before me crushed in body and in mind. Surely the miserablest sight under the summer sun!

  ‘Oh blessed Heaven’ I says a crying, ’teach me what to say to this broken mortal! I am a poor sinful creetur, and the Judgment is not mine.’

  As I lifted my eyes up to the clear bright sky, I saw the high tower where Jemmy had stood above the birds, seeing that very window; and the last look of that poor pretty young mother when her soul brightened and got free, seemed to shine down from it.

  ‘O man, man, man!’ I says, and I went on my knees beside the bed; ‘if your heart is rent asunder and you are truly penitent for what you did, Our Saviour will have mercy on you yet!’

  AsIleaned my face against the bed, his feeble hand could just move itself enough to touch me. I hope the touch was penitent. It tried to hold my dress and keep hold, but the fingers were too weak to close.

  I lifted him back upon the pillows, and I says to him:

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  He looked yes.

  ‘Do you know me?’

  He looked yes, even yet more plainly.

  ‘I am not here alone. The Major is with me. You recollect the Major?’

  Yes. That is to say he made out yes, in the same way as before.

  ‘And even the Major and I are not alone. My grandson - his godson - is with us. Do you hear? My grandson.’

  The fingers made another trial to catch at my sleeve, but could only creep near it and fall.