Leonard Merrick

“ I want to give my child the comforts that other children have. That's my ambition. I have no loftier pose than fatherhood. My prayer is, not applause, and compliments, and notoriety, not the petty pleasure of hearing I have equalled one favourite or eclipsed another; my prayer is—to give things to my child! I want to buy her nourishing food, and a physician's advice, and the education of a gentlewoman. I want the money to send her to the South when it snows, and to the mountains when it's hot. I want to see her laughing in a garden, like the rich men's children in Paris that you spoke of. ”

“ Though not actually more than two or three years older than Blanche, mademoiselle Paumelle was in tone much older. Blanche was an ingenue; Georgette was a woman. Excepting in moments, when she romped like a schoolgirl, all spontaneity and high spirits.
"She is a queer compound, your chum," he remarked when she had been with them for a fortnight. "Alternately thirty, and thirteen!"
"You don't like her, papa?"
"Oh, yes, she is well enough, and not bad-looking. I am relieved she did not turn out to be ugly—that would have depressed me. ”

“ Even more ideality flooded his gaze, and he propped a temple with two fingers. "I am not of your opinion, mon cher," he told Henri profoundly. "I find it admirable."
"The three questions that besiege one, monsieur," burst forth Jacques—and I shuddered—"are, who, biding amid decay, has the imperishable sensibility to tend a pot of pansies? Of what does it speak to her? How comes it that she is there?"
And now it was that the famous man was tempted to a fall. ”

“ Henri had told me to leave it all to him. And not a word have I had from him. Even if I had applied, I should not have got them. What malice! Blanche is broken-hearted. I will never forgive him for her grief. It is not as if I had been seeking a gift at his hands—he could have made money for us without its costing him more than a postage stamp. An opportunity to do such a service for a friend comes to a man once in a lifetime. No; his spite against me for nothing is so intense that deliberately he turns his back on the chance! It is disgusting. ”

“ It was so wonderful, so real! The naturalness of the attitude, the perfection of the toilette—I had never realised that the sculptor's art could do such things; I think I looked for minutes at the slippers. I admired the sleeves, the sweep of the gown, that seemed as if it must be soft to touch; I was amazed by a thousand trifles before my glance lingered on the face. And after my glance lingered on the face I saw nothing else; I could not even move to look at it in profile—it held me fixed."
"It is Beauvais' masterpiece," said Gaby; "they all say it is the finest thing he has done." ”

“ When Floromond beheld her first, she was in a shop window—the most tempting exhibit that a shop window had displayed to him, in all his five-and-twenty years. If he had stayed in the quarter where he belonged, it would not have happened. It was early on a spring morning, and she was posing a hat, for the enticement of ladies who would tread the rue La Fayette later in the day. Floromond, sunning himself like a lord, though he was nothing better than a painter, went on to the Garden of the Tuileries, noting how nicely the birds sang, and thinking foolish thoughts. ”

“ You won't want a wife to write novels—you'll want one to bake the bread and feed the chickens and make herself useful. You'll want the domesticated article—and I'm an artist. I should be an encumbrance, not a wife. Besides, I should hate it all. Oh, I know I'm hurting you, but it's true! I should bore myself to death. To write, I need to live among men and women, to live in London, Paris, among other writers. I want to see pictures, and hear music—real music, not Verdi and that kind of treacle—and be in the movement. ”

“ Floromond and Frisonnette, like foreigners more fashionable, "spent their honeymoon in Paris," for, of course, Frisonnette had to keep on selling Auréole's hats. Home was reached by a narrow staircase, which threatened never to leave off, and after business hours the sweethearts—as ridiculously enchanted with each other as if they had never been married—would exchange confidences and kisses at a little window that was like the upper half of a Punch and Judy show, popped among the chimney-pots of the slanting tiles as an afterthought.
"It is good to have so exalted a position," said Frisonnette ”

“ That Henri is unmanly enough to hate another for his own mistake. Ah, it is too petty and contemptible of him for words!"
"But remember it is not Elise's fault," I begged. I saw that she could endure no more. "Say these things to Henri, both of you, if you must—not to her!"
"Blanche is in no need of your corrections," shouted Jacques hysterically. "Attend to your own affairs. My wife talks to her cousin as she thinks fit. It is always Elise you champion. If you feel so deeply for our enemies, I wonder that you come here." ”

“ His haggard eyes devoured me.
"You have only to make one success. After that, you will be grossly overpaid, like every other star."
"If I could but do it!" he gasped. "If I could only convince a Paris manager that I have it in me! Year after year I've hoped, and tried, and failed to get a hearing. You may judge my desperation by my audacity in stopping you in the streets. What course is open to me—what steps can I take? Even now, when I am pouring out my heart to monsieur Panage himself, how much does it advance me?" ”

“ I ought to return to Paris, it is my duty—I have my wife to consider."
"You were never so well in your life," I remonstrated sharply. "Rubbish! there's no escape now, you've got to see it through. Foretaste the triumph of Omphale and be blithe."
"How much will a triumph be worth to me if I am dead?" he wailed. "Mon Dieu! what an existence, what demoniac desolation! I shudder when I wake in the morning; the thought of the terrible day before me weighs me down. I have scarcely the energy to put on my socks. To wash my neck exhausts me. ”

“ His simplicity in crediting me with the notion of recruiting the Suprême from a travelling theatre tickled me nearly to death.
"A grave drawback, monsieur," he agreed. "But I am not alone—I have a child, and she is too delicate to thrive in a city."
"A good many delicate children have thriven in Paris," I remarked.
"In thriving households, monsieur—in healthy quarters. Paris is dear, and I am poor—my child would be condemned to a slum. I should see her lade away. Better to be a barnstormer all my life than lose my child. She is all I have left to love." ”

“ Monsieur Rouelle detects promise of a great story where I see none. The point is not uninteresting." Whereupon he launched into a description of the street, and did justice to the pansies, though Jacques did not look as if he thought so.
"C'est très bien, ça," said Martime, with weighty nods. "It is very fine, that. Let me tell you that you have there a poem." In no more authoritative a tone could the Academy have spoken.
"Ah!" cried Jacques. "You feel it, monsieur? There, in that vile spot, the fairness and fragrance of those pansies——"
"Not 'fragrance,'" said Henri; "pansies have no smell." ”

“ All my tenderness for her cannot alter that."
"You do not seem to me old," said mademoiselle Paumelle.
"Don't I?" said Vauquelin, regarding her gratefully. "Look how grey my moustache is getting. And yet, do you know, when we're all laughing together I feel as young as ever I was."
"Your manner is young. The face alters ever so long before the manner."
"I am forty-f—er—over forty, and Blanche is twenty-one. What will you? I must get her married soon. It is my paramount desire. I rather fancy that Daudenarde and she may not dislike each other—the gentleman you saw the other evening." ”

“ For each morning she goes with the Misses Findon to gaze upon the study, and each Sunday she goes with them to gaze upon the grave; and on their return, while the Misses Findon sit by the fireplace, speaking at long intervals, in subdued tones, their stepmother stares from the window, knowing that her pretence of mourning a husband she did not love will continue as long as she lives. ”

“ Finot is furious; he has dismissed me; I have no job and no money. I have come back with nothing, my Floromond, but the clothes I stand up in. And—and why do I find you with an empty coal-scuttle?"
"Ma foi!" he stammered, loath to deepen her distress, "as usual, that imbecile of a charbonnier has neglected to fulfil the order."
"He becomes intolerable," she faltered. "Is that why I notice that your tobacco-pouch is empty, too?"
"Oh, as for the tobacco-pouch," said the young man, "in this ferocious weather I have been reluctant to put on my hat."
"It is natural," murmured Frisonnette. ”

“ In the daytime, Frisonnette ate delicate food, and sauntered through stately show-rooms, robed like a queen—and in the evening she turned slowly to her little old frock, and supped on scraps in the garret. And now her laughter sounded seldom there. Gradually the contentment that had found a heaven under the tiles changed to a petulance that found beneath them nothing to commend. Her gaze was sombre, and often she sighed. And the misgiving that Floromond had tried to stifle knocked louder at his heart. ”

“ In the season there, among so many men—mightn't there be two to find Mildred and Amy congenial?
It was she, not they, who pondered so carefully and paid so much for the morning, afternoon, and evening dresses in which they lagged about a fashionable hydro a fortnight later. It was she, not they, who knew a throb of hope when either of them danced twice, monosyllabically, with the same partner, and who welcomed their opportunity to play in an amateur performance, with its attraction of daily rehearsals.
"I don't think we care much for acting," Amy demurred. ”

“ On reflection, I saw that I had not the right to advise Jacques to speculate. What of it?"
"They do not view it as a speculation," I said.
"They! Much they know of business!"
"Did you take shares yourself?" queried Elise.
"The cases are not parallel," he contended, his voice rising excitedly. "Jacques is a poor man; I did not feel justified in letting him risk money."
"Oh, Henri," she wailed, "you know very well that was not the reason. It was not loyal of you; it was very, very wrong. Already it would have been a little fortune for them. No wonder they are aggrieved. ”

“ A man with a round humorous face darted each moment from one melancholy countenance to another, and a passer-by said, loud enough to be overheard: "Look at Jibily, the low comedian—he is crazy to play tragic parts!" Irritating and incessant was the shrill outcry of a female broker, hobbling with a file of maids-of-all-work at her heels. "Fine faces cheap!" clamoured the crone. "Fine faces cheap!"
It became very cold beside the water-mill. As the laggard night wore by, madame de Val Fleury shivered distressfully. ”

“ Because there are no English cooks. I should like frequently to sojourn in the beautiful countryside of England, if it were not so painful to see vegetables growing there. When I looked at those verdant young things, so full of flavour and nutriment, and thought of the fate before them—reflected that they were destined to be drowned in hogsheads of water, and served as an unpalatable pulp, the sight of them used to wring my heart. I overtook Jacques in the Champs Élysées one day, as I was on my way to call on Henri and Elise, and we strolled along together. ”

“ A pauper should never have rich friends."
"Tiens! That is a novel philosophy," said Elise inquiringly.
"It is sound. What do they yield him? At best, an invitation to dinner. Which does not compensate for the despondence he suffers in contrasting their grandeur with his garret. The poor devil of discretion associates with people even worse off than himself—and by comparison feels prosperous."
"You old humbug!" they laughed at me. And addressing Blanche again, Elise Dufour said, "Wait till those dividends come rolling in! He will gnash his teeth more than ever, won't he?" ”

“ I tried to classify the denizens, but well as I know Paris, I was baffled. I had the impression of entering a street of mysteries. It was as if, behind each of those morose, darkling windows, lowering upon me in their hundreds, there lurked gruesome things. Suddenly, on the foul ledge of a ground-floor window, dim with dirt, behind which some nameless stuff was looped, further to hide the secrets of the room, I saw blooming?—a pot of pansies! I cannot tell you how infinitely fresh its fairness looked in these surroundings, how divinely incongruous! ”

“ Supposing—a man is never too old to make a fool of himself, you know—supposing, for the sake of argument, I felt a tenderness, a devotion for a girl scarcely older than Blanche: a devotion which I strove to think platonic, even while I sighed under her window, and which revived in me unsought, the emotions—all the sentiment, the throes, the absurdities—of the youth that had gone from me before I knew how divine it was. ”

“ The day I entreated Elise to marry a boy who had not five hundred francs, I was guilty of a crime. I have never forgotten the confidence she showed in me that day—nor her unwavering belief in me while times were bad. In truth, my wife has but one failing—she admires me to excess. According to her, every word I write, or speak, is inspired. But it is not odious to be worshipped. ”

“ She dreams always of the sylvan vales that she has left, and the lover who is seeking for her. And—it would be very charming—one day the lover passes the window while she waters the pansies."
"Oh, my dear Numa, bosh!" exclaimed Henri genially.
No sooner had he said it than he recognised his error, I am sure. Martime's eyes flashed poniards, and his face turned turnip colour with offence. Perceiving his indignation, Jacques began to stammer hasty insincerities, and Henri also did his utmost to palliate the affront, but I could not persuade myself that their efforts were successful. ”

“ To be in your arms is enough. Life looks to me divine—and if I find anything at all lacking in our heavens it is merely a second cupboard. Now, since you are too heavy for me, you may jump down, and we will reverse the situation."
"I have strange tidings to reveal to you," said Floromond, squeezing the breath out of her—"I adore you, Frisonnette!" ”

“ In the days that followed, when Blanche developed a tendency to sigh plaintively, and turned against chocolates, it grew clear to Georgette that this father must be shown the error of his ways.
"May I say that I hope that conversation with madame Daudenarde contented you?" she ventured.
"Hein?" said Vauquelin, starting.
"That the engagement will soon be announced?"
"Mon Dieu, is it not extraordinary how people seek to rob me of my child?" he moaned.
"Does that mean that nothing is arranged yet?"
"Why not leave well alone? Are we not all comfortable as we are? ”