Light. Henri Barbusse
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talk about keeping order, but as soon as it's a question of a-doing of it, they seem like a cold draught."
The good fellow is angry. He raises his great fist and shakes it in space like a medieval mace. Pointing where Brisbille has just plunged floundering into the night, he says, "That's what Socialists are,—the conquering people what can't stand up on their legs! I may be a botcher in life, but I'm for peace and order. Good-night, good-night. Is she well, Aunt Josephine? I'm for tranquillity and liberty and order. That's why I've always kept clear of their crowd. A bit since, I saw her trotting past, as vivacious as a young girl,—but there, I talk and I talk!"
He enters his shop, but turns on his heel and calls me back, with a mysterious sign. "You know they've all arrived up yonder at the castle?" Respect has subdued his voice; a vision is absorbing him of the lords and ladies of the manor, and as he leaves me he bows, instinctively.
His shop is a narrow glass cage, which is added to our house, like a family relation. Within I can just make out the strong, plebeian framework of Crillon himself, upright beside a serrated heap of ruins, over which a candle is enthroned. The light which falls on his accumulated tools and on those hanging from the wall makes a decoration obscurely golden around the picture of this wise man; this soul all innocent of envious demands, turning again to his botching, as his father and grandfather botched.
I have mounted the steps and pushed our door; the gray door, whose only relief is the key. The door goes in grumblingly, and makes way for me into the dark passage, which was formerly paved, though now the traffic of soles has kneaded it with earth, and changed it into a footpath. My forehead strikes the lamp, which is hooked on the wall; it is out, oozing oil, and it stinks. One never sees that lamp, and always bangs it.
And though I had hurried so—I don't know why—to get home, at this moment of arrival I slow down. Every evening I have the same small and dull disillusion.
I go into the room which serves us as kitchen and dining-room, where my aunt is lying. This room is buried in almost complete darkness.
"Good evening, Mame."
A sigh, and then a sob arise from the bed crammed against the pale celestial squares of the window.
Then I remember that there was a scene between my old aunt and me after our early morning coffee. Thus it is two or three times a week. This time it was about a dirty window-pane, and on this particular morning, exasperated by the continuous gush of her reproaches, I flung an offensive word, and banged the door as I went off to work. So Mame has had to weep all the day. She has fostered and ruminated her spleen, and sniffed up her tears, even while busy with household duties. Then, as the day declined, she put out the lamp and went to bed, with the object of sustaining and displaying her chagrin.
When I came in she was in the act of peeling invisible potatoes; there are potatoes scattered over the floor, everywhere. My feet kick them and send them rolling heavily among odds and ends of utensils and a soft deposit of garments that are lying about. As soon as I am there my aunt overflows with noisy tears.
Not daring to speak again, I sit down in my usual corner.
Over the bed I can make out a pointed shape, like a mounted picture, silhouetted against the curtains, which slightly blacken the window. It is as though the quilt were lifted from underneath by a stick, for my Aunt Josephine is leanness itself.
Gradually she raises her voice and begins to lament. "You've no feelings, no—you're heartless,—that dreadful word you said to me,—you said, 'You and your jawing!' Ah! people don't know what I have to put up with—ill-natured—cart-horse!"
In silence I hear the tear-streaming words that fall and founder in the dark room from that obscure blot on the pillow which is her face.
I stand up. I sit down again. I risk saying, "Come now, come; that's all done with."
She cries: "Done with? Ah! it will never be done with!"
With the sheet that night is begriming she muzzles herself, and hides her face. She shakes her head to left and to right, violently, so as to wipe her eyes and signify dissent at the same time.
"Never! A word like that you said to me breaks the heart forever. But I must get up and get you something to eat. You must eat. I brought you up when you were a little one,"—her voice capsizes—"I've given up all for you, and you treat me as if I were an adventuress."
I hear the sound of her skinny feet as she plants them successively on the floor, like two boxes. She is seeking her things, scattered over the bed or slipped to the floor; she is swallowing sobs. Now she is upright, shapeless in the shadow, but from time to time I see her remarkable leanness outlined. She slips on a camisole and a jacket,—a spectral vision of garments which unfold themselves about her handle-like arms, and above the hollow framework of her shoulders.
She talks to herself while she dresses, and gradually all my life-history, all my past comes forth from what the poor woman says,—my only near relative on earth; as it were my mother and my servant.
She strikes a match. The lamp emerges from the dark and zigzags about the room like a portable fairy. My aunt is enclosed in a strong light. Her eyes are level with her face; she has heavy and spongy eyelids and a big mouth which stirs with ruminated sorrow. Fresh tears increase the dimensions of her eyes, make them sparkle and varnish the points of her cheeks. She comes and goes with undiminished spleen. Her wrinkles form heavy moldings on her face, and the skin of chin and neck is so folded that it looks intestinal, while the crude light tinges it all with something like blood.
Now that the lamp is alight some items become visible of the dismal super-chaos in which we are walled up,—the piece of bed-ticking fastened with two nails across the bottom of the window, because of draughts; the marble-topped chest of drawers, with its woolen cover; and the door-lock, stopped with a protruding plug of paper.
The lamp is flaring, and as Mame does not know where to stand it among the litter, she puts it on the floor and crouches to regulate the wick. There rises from the medley of the old lady, vividly variegated with vermilion and night, a jet of black smoke, which returns in parachute form. Mame sighs, but she cannot check her continual talk.
"You, my lad, you who are so genteel when you like, and earn a hundred and eighty francs a month,—you're genteel, but you're short of good manners, it's that chiefly I find fault with you about. So you spat on the window-pane; I'm certain of it. May I drop dead if you didn't. And you're nearly twenty-four! And to revenge yourself because I'd found out that you'd spat on the window, you told me to stop my jawing, for that's what you said to me, after all. Ah, vulgar fellow that you are! The factory gentlemen are too kind to you. Your poor father was their best workman. You are more genteel than your poor father, more English; and you preferred to go into business rather than go on learning Latin, and everybody thought you quite right; but for hard work you're not much good—ah, la, la! Confess that you spat on the window.
"For your poor mother," the ghost of Mame goes on, as she crosses the room with a wooden spoon in her hand, "one must say that she had good taste in dress. That's no harm, no; but certainly they must have the wherewithal. She was always a child. I remember she was twenty-six when they carried her away. Ah, how she loved hats! But she had handsome ways, for all that, when she said, 'Come along with us, Josephine!' So I brought you up, I did, and sacrificed everything…."
Overcome by the mention of the past, Mame's speech and action both cease. She chokes and wags her head and wipes her face with her sleeve.
I risk saying, gently, "Yes, I know it well."
A sigh is my answer. She lights the fire. The coal sends out a cushion of smoke, which expands and rolls up the stove, falls back, and piles its muslin on the floor. Mame manipulates the stove with her feet in the cloudy deposit; and the hazy white hair which escapes from her black cap is also like smoke.
Then she seeks her handkerchief and pats her pockets to get the velvet coal-dust off her fingers. Now, with her back turned, she is moving casseroles about. "Monsieur Crillon's father," she says, "old Dominic, had come from County Cher to settle down here in '66 or '67. He's a sensible man, seeing he's a town councilor. (We must tell him nicely to take his buckets away from our door.) Monsieur Bonéas is very rich, and he speaks so well, in spite of his