“Come, Madam,” he cried, “you ought to understand that you are tiring this gentleman with your talk. He didn’t come to see you. Leave the room.”
The old lady protested that the armchair she was sitting in was her own and that she was not going to quit it.
“In that case,” went on La Pérouse with a grim chuckle, “we will leave you.” Then, turning to me, he repeated in gentler tones, “come, let us leave her.”
I made a sketchy and embarrassed bow, and followed him into the next room—the same one in which I had paid him my last visit.
“I am glad you heard her,” he said; “that’s what it’s like the whole day long.”
He shut the window.
“There’s such a noise in the street, one can’t hear oneself speak. I spend my time shutting the windows and Madame de La Pérouse spends hers opening them again. She declares she’s stifling. She always exaggerates. She refuses to realize that it’s hotter out of doors than in. And yet I’ve got a little thermometer; but when I show it to her, she says that figures prove nothing. She wants to be right even when she knows she’s wrong. Her main object in life is to annoy me.”
He himself, while he was speaking, seemed to me a little off his balance; he went on with growing excitement:
“Everything she does amiss in life she sets down as a grievance against me. All her judgments are warped. I’ll just explain to you how it is: You know our impressions of outside images come to us reversed and that there’s an apparatus in our brains which sets them right again. Well, Madame de La Pérouse has no such apparatus for setting them right. In her brain they remain upside down. You can see for yourself how painful it is.”
It was certainly a great relief to him to explain himself and I took care not to interrupt him. He went on:
“Madame de La Pérouse has always eaten much too much. Well, now she makes out that it’s I who eat too much. If she sees me presently with a bit of chocolate (it’s my chief nourishment) she’ll be certain to mutter, ‘Munching again! …’ She spies on me. She accuses me of getting up in the night to eat on the sly, because she once surprised me making myself a cup of chocolate in the kitchen. … What am I to do? When I see her opposite me at table, falling ravenously upon her food, as she does, it takes away my appetite entirely. Then she declares I’m pretending to be fastidious just to torment her.”
He paused, and then in a sort of lyrical outburst:
“Her reproaches amaze me! … For instance, when she is suffering from her sciatica, I condole with her. Then she stops me, shrugs her shoulders and says: ‘Don’t pretend you have a heart.’ Everything I do or say is in order to give her pain.”
We had seated ourselves, but all the time he was speaking, he kept getting up and sitting down again, in a state of morbid restlessness.
“Would you believe that in each of these rooms there are some pieces of furniture which belong to her and others to me? You saw her just now with her armchair. She says to the charwoman, when she’s doing the room, ‘No, that’s Monsieur’s chair; don’t touch that.’ And the other day, when by mistake I put a bound music-book on a little table which belongs to her, Madam knocked it on to the ground. Its corners were broken. … Oh, it can’t last much longer. … But, listen. …”
He seized me by the arm, and lowering his voice:
“I have taken steps. She is continually threatening me if I ‘go on!’ to take refuge in a home. I have set aside a certain sum of money which ought to be enough to pay for her at Sainte-Périne’s; I hear it’s an excellent place. The few lessons I still give, bring me in hardly anything. In a little time I shall be at the end of my resources; I should be forced to break into this sum—and I’m determined not to. So I have made a resolution. … It will be in a little over three months. Yes; I have fixed the date. If you only knew what a relief it is to think that every hour it draws nearer.”
He had bent towards me; he bent closer still:
“And I have put aside a Government bond. Oh, it’s not much. But I couldn’t do more. Madame de La Pérouse doesn’t know about it. It’s in my bureau in an envelope directed to you, with the necessary instructions. I know nothing about business, but a solicitor whom I consulted, told me that the interest could be paid directly to my grandson, until he is of age, and that then he would have the security. I thought it wouldn’t be too great a tax on your friendship to ask you to see that this is done. I have so little confidence in solicitors! … And even, if you wished to make me quite easy, you would take charge of the envelope at once. … You will, won’t you? … I’ll go and fetch it.”
He trotted out in his usual fashion and came back with a large envelope in his hand.
“You’ll excuse me for having sealed it; for form’s sake,” said he. “Take it.”
I glanced at it and saw under my name the words “To be opened after my death” written in printed letters.
“Put it in your pocket quick, so that I may know it’s safe. Thank you. … Oh, I was so longing for you to come! …”
I have often
