Chapter VI: Picq Plays the Hero

When he had made his choice of a career, when in spite of remonstrances he had become an actor, his father had felt disgraced. His father was the hatter in the rue de la Paroisse. The shop was not prosperous--in Ville-Nogent people made their hats last a long while--but it was at least a shop, and the old man wished his son to be respectable. This, you see, was France. The little French hatter had not heard that, across the Channel, the scions of noble houses turned actors, and he would not have believed it if he had been told.

Once, the son of a little French tradesman humiliated his father by going on the stage and became the admiration of the world; but this tradesman's son did not distinguish himself like that. Indeed, he did not distinguish himself at all. Many years later the hatter patted the artist's hand, and said feebly: "After I am gone, take a hat, my poor Olivier. Heaven knows thou needest one!" A hat, and his blessing were well-nigh all he had to give by this time.

In his youthful dreams--day-dreams behind the counter--Olivier Picq had seen himself a leading man in Paris, making impassioned love in the limelight to famous actresses. His engagements had proved so different from his dreams that not once had he attained to the hero's part, even in the least significant of provincial holes. No manager could be induced to regard him as a hero. By slow degrees he had ceased to expect it. By still slower degrees he ceased to expect even parts of prominence. He was the fatuous valet, who came on, with the laughing chambermaid, to explain what the characters that mattered had been doing between the acts; he was the gaby that made inane remarks, in order that the low comedian might reply with something funny; he was the moody defaulter that committed suicide early in the piece--and he changed his wig (alas! not his voice) to become the uninteresting figure that broke the tragic tidings to the widow.

"Ah," says the reader, "he wasn't clever. That's why he didn't get on."

Well, it is not pretended that Picq had genius; for such parts as fell to him he had not even marked ability. But the truth is, that in the rôle of romantic hero, which he had not had a chance to play, he would have been good. The laughing chambermaid used to say he would have been splendid. Often they grieved over the bad luck that had attended him, as they reviewed the years of struggle, hand in hand. He had married the chambermaid.

"Oh, I can guess the end of this story already!" says the reader. "He became a leading man in Paris, after all."

So he did, madam. But not quite so felicitously as you may think. Picq, dizzied by the sudden transformation, was promoted to be the hero--a gallant, dashing boy--in a revival on a Paris stage, one winter when he was subject to lumbago, and fifty-eight years old. You see, most of the actors of military age that still lived were either in the line or the hospitals, while many of the popular actresses were nursing. A manager who had the temerity to cast a play now was in no position to be fastidious, and playgoers were indulgent. They accepted the elderly man as the gallant boy. He was applauded. And while he declaimed bombast across the footlights--those turgid love appeals to which he had aspired, behind the counter, forty years ago--it was with a heart torn with anxiety for his own boy, who was in the trenches.

When Jean had slept as a baby, the utility actor and the chambermaid had sat by the cradle and talked in low tones of the fine things he was to do when he grew up. Not on the stage--both had outlived its glamour; he was to be an advocate. "It is so refined, dearest," said the chambermaid. "And there is money in it, my love," agreed the father. And for half a lifetime unflinchingly they had scraped and hoarded, to realise that ambition for him. Their salaries were not vast, and there were numerous vacations in which there was no salary at all; often the sum that they had garnered during one tour would melt before the next; but every hundred francs that they could stick to looked a milestone on the journey. Only one annual extravagance did they allow themselves. On Jean's birthday it was Picq's custom to take home a bottle of cheap champagne. The dinner might be meagre, the vacation might be long, but on Jean's birthday they must be joyous. And in a shabby lodging-house bedroom--a parlour was beyond the means of poor players who pinched to make their son an advocate--the pair would festively clink glasses to his future.

"We have not been unhappy together all these years, Nanette, my little wife, though you did throw yourself away in marrying me, hein?" Picq would say tenderly, embracing her. And Nanette, who still looked almost as young sometimes as she had looked at the wedding breakfast--at any rate, Picq thought so--would answer, with a catch in her voice: "Sweetheart, I have thanked the good God on my knees every night for that 'throwing myself away.'"

"All the same, it is possible that, without me, you would have got on far better--even have made a name."

"Silly! It is more likely _I_ who have held _you_ back; perhaps alone you would have gone to the top. Ah, no, I cannot bear to think it; I cannot bear to think I have been a hindrance to you!"

Then Picq, denying it vigorously, would cry: "But a fig for the stage! Ma foi, have we not each other, and our Jean? It is wealth enough. I tell you he is going to be a famous man one day, our Jean--he has the brow."

By rare good fortune, when he was old enough to have ideas of his own on the subject of a career, Jean had not opposed their plan; he did not, as night easily have been the case, inherit a craving to be the hero. He had long been a student in Paris, and they were playing in a rural district remote from him on the day of the mobilisation. Never while life lasted would they forget that day--that beating on a tocsin, and the glare of a blue sky that turned suddenly black to them; the deathly silence that spread; and then the shrill voice of a child, the first to speak--"_C'est la guerre_!" The shaking of their limbs held the father and mother apart; only their gaze rushed to each other. "Jean!" she had moaned.

And Jean fought for France still, and already it seemed to them that the war was eternal. Twice--on two anniversaries since that terrible Saturday--they had raised trembling glasses to a photograph on the wall and pretended to be gay, and a third anniversary was approaching. "Be confident, be brave," he wrote to them; "we are going to win." But the thoughts that crowded on his little mother, in the dark, after she went to bed kept her awake for hours; and marking the change that the war had wrought in her, Picq's misgivings for his wife were sometimes hardly less acute than his anxieties for his boy. The laughing chambermaid, who had retained girlishness of disposition for two decades after girlhood was past, seemed to him all at once middle-aged. Ever the first formerly to propose trudging a long distance to save a tram fare, she was now fatigued after an hour's stroll. By the time they came to Paris, too, she was subject to spells of some internal trouble, which the doctor had failed to banish permanently. There could be no question of her seeking an engagement.

"It _is_ a shame, when the double salary would have been so nice," she repined, one evening. The trouble had recurred, and a new doctor had been no more definite than his predecessor. "We might have lived on my money, and put the whole of yours aside every week. It _is_ a shame that you should have an invalid for a wife."

"An invalid!" laughed Picq, affecting great amusement. "Now, is not that absurd? To hear you talk, one would imagine it was some terrible malady, instead of a little derangement of the system that will pass and be forgotten. Very likely you will be in a show again before Jean's birthday. And it shall be a good part, also, parbleu! There are not so many stars available to-day that they can afford to put on an artist like you to flick the furniture with a feather-brush. Listen, Nanette, my best beloved, if it were anything serious that you had the matter with you, it would not right itself as it does from time to time--it would be always the same. The fact that you are sometimes as well as ever shows that it is nothing organic. Have not both doctors said so? Did not the other man tell us so again and again?"

She nodded, forcing a smile. Her smile was girlish still, and somehow it looked to him strangely poignant on her altered face. His gaze was blurred, as he muffled himself in his shabby cloak, and set forth through the sleet, to be the dashing hero. A child came towards him, calling papers, and he thought, "If only the news were that Germany sued for peace! That would be the best medicine for her."

And on the morning before the birthday she was _not_ "in a show again;" she was feeling so much worse that she clung to Picq, alarmed. Picq was alarmed, too, though he tried to hide it.

"Look here, I tell you what!" he exclaimed, in the most confident tone that he could summon. "We are going to call in a big man and get you cured without any more delay! That's what we're going to do. This chap is too slow for me. I dare say his medicines might do the trick eventually, but it does not suit me to wait so long. No, it does not suit me. I am not going to see you worried like this while he potters about as if time were no object. We shall call in a big man and put an end to the nuisance at once. I wish to heaven I had done it before. I am going now. I am going to the chap's house to tell him plainly I am not content."

"Mais non, mais non!" demurred Nanette piteously. "It would cost such a lot, chéri--what are you thinking about? I shall get all right without that. You mustn't take any notice of me; I am a coward--I have never been used to feeling ill, you see--but I shall get all right without that."

"I care nothing what it costs. That is my intention," declared Picq. "And it will not cost such a great sum either. Anyhow, whether it is forty francs or five hundred, my mind is made up. I am going to him this moment to tell him I want the highest authority in Paris. Now, be tranquil, mignonne. Try to sleep. We have chosen the shortest course at last--we were bien bêtes not to take it at the start--and in a week at the outside you will be yourself again."

Never in her life had Nanette contemplated spending forty francs all at once on a physician. She knew she would be unable to sleep for the awfulness of such expense. But, if his prescription cured her promptly and she could earn a salary again soon----

"What a weight I have become to thee, my little husband!" she faltered, stroking his hand.

"Hush! Thou _wilt_ sleep while I am away, pauvrette?" asked Picq tenderly.

She closed her eyes, smiling--to lie and grieve over the "weight she had become to him" when he had gone; and Picq went apace to the doctor's.

When the motive for the inopportune call was explained, the doctor evidently resented the suggestion that his own treatment of the patient could be bettered.

"Another opinion, monsieur? Parfaitement--if you desire it." His shrug was eloquent. "But your wife has only to continue with the medicine I have prescribed----"

"She has continued," stammered Picq; "she has continued. There it is--she has continued for a long time. I grow anxious. No doubt it is unreasonable of me, but----" Truth to tell, the veteran of the boards, who faced a crowded auditorium without a tremor, found himself nervous in the room of the dignified practitioner.

"One must not expect miracles. I am not a magician. In such cases----"

"Mais enfin, another opinion would ease my mind. If you would do me the great kindness to indicate a specialist, monsieur--the best? Such a one as you would recommend if it were--I do not know what it _could_ be, I; but such a one as you would recommend if you feared something grave? I should be thankful. I know nothing of these things. If you would be so very kind as to communicate with someone for me----" He with-drew, after five minutes, clumsily, relieved to be able to tell Nanette that, with luck, they might receive a visit from a specialist on the morrow.

"And his charge--how much?" panted Nanette, who feared that such celerity might cost more still.

* * * * *

When the specialist had been, on the morrow--when Picq had closed the street door after him, and stumbled up the stairs, in his hurry to rejoin Nanette, and sat down on the bed, with his cheek resting against hers--they did not speak for some seconds.

"Well, well," he brought forth at last, "after all, it is not so bad, what? It is a shock, of course--I own it is a shock; but really, when one comes to think it over----"

She moaned--a child afraid.

"Don't--_don't_! An operation!"

"Yes, yes, it is a shock; we were hoping for an easy cure. But when all is said, we have learnt there _is_ a cure. If he had told us there was nothing to be done? There _is_ a cure! And you will feel nothing, mignonne--you will feel no pain at all. And afterwards, when you lie there at peace--so comfortable in the knowledge that all the misery is over--I shall come every day and bring you flowers. And every day I shall find you brighter and stronger. Upon my word, I would not mind making a bet that, in looking back at it, you remember it as a happy time."

Big tears were on her frightened face.

"And it is Jean's birthday," she wailed.

"Yes, it is unfortunate. It cannot be helped. Well, we shall have our fête when you come home instead, and--listen, listen! We will drink his health at a restaurant--we will make up for the delay. To the devil with the cost! When you come home cured, we will have a swagger supper out, to celebrate the double event. Nanette--it is useless to expostulate--I register a vow that this time we will squander a couple of louis on a supper on the Boulevard. And you shall put on your pink silk dress!"

"Petit bonhomme, wilt thou do me a favour?" she whimpered.

"Now thou art going to say something foolish."

"No; we will have that supper on the Boulevard. After the awful expense I shall have been, two louis more or less----But let us fête Jean the same as usual to-night. We must. We've never missed doing it once since he was a baby; I couldn't bear to let the day go by without our doing that. Think of the danger he is in. Get champagne as you always do. If it would be bad for me, I won't take any; but get it! My illness mustn't spoil the birthday altogether. Get it, and we'll forget about me for an hour. Chéri, I shall go into the hospital braver in the morning for having had our fête."

"Agreed, agreed," said Picq chokingly. "But it will be a poor treat to me, if I am to drink it alone. I shall ask if you may take a sip."

He rang up the specialist, to inquire, on the way to the theatre in the evening. "It is our boy's birthday, monsieur," he pleaded--"our boy who is in the war. You see, it is his birthday!"

"One glass of champagne? Yes. It will do no harm," said the authoritative voice. "But no excitement, you understand. And no solid food. To-morrow and the next day they will see to her diet--and the day after that, we shall operate."

That word "operate," booming from the receiver, struck horror to Picq afresh. He marvelled that anyone could be capable of uttering it so cheerfully, as he went out into the streets again. A child came towards him, calling papers, and he sighed, "If they but announced that Germany sued for peace! She would not be thinking so much about the operation then."

During the performance, the bottle of paltry wine stood among the articles of make-up on the table of his dressing-room; and in his wait in the last act, he sat staring at it, and thinking of the days when his boy in the 120ième Régiment Territorial had been a tiny child, and the wife who was so ill had been all sunshine and laughter. It had not been withheld from him, on the doorstep, in the morning, that the operation would be a serious one, and he felt sick in contemplating the next three days' suspense. How would Nanette contrive to bear it, he wondered, away from him, among strangers in a hospital? When the fearful moment came for her to be carried from the ward to the operating table! Cold sweat burst out on him. As he sat huddled there, in the garish dressing-room, Picq prayed to Heaven to give her courage. His chin was sunk on his chest; he rocked to and fro.

There was a sudden rap at the door.

"Entrez!" said Picq, and somebody brought him a telegram.

He read: "I have the pain of informing you of the death on the field of honour of your son Jean Picq." It was from the War Office.

"Better hurry up, Picq--you haven't too long!" called a colleague, carelessly, looking in. "Good God!" And he sprang towards him.

Picq staggered, from his colleague's arms, up the crazy staircase to the wings--and straightened his back to be dashing. He entered upon the scene in time. And he delivered his lines, and struck his attitudes, and paused, by force of habit, when a round of applause was due. At the climax of a tirade, when he took a step back and mechanically raised his gaze to the first circle, nobody would have supposed that, with his mind's eye he looked, through the tier of faces, on the mangled body of his son.

The curtain fell again. The play was over, and he tottered back to the room. The bottle of champagne on the dressing-table, among the litter of make-up, was the first thing he noticed. "My wife!" gasped Picq, and broke down. He was shaken by sobs.

Some of the players had followed. Sympathy surrounded him.

"I see her face when I tell her--I see her face! How to keep it from her? To-night she mustn't know--it would kill her; but to keep it from her for weeks till she has recovered--is it possible?"

"Poor chap! Be brave. Time----" They mumbled useless words.

"To have to pretend to her every time I go, for weeks, perhaps months! And then, when she is so happy at being well again, to have to strike her down with the blow! Ah, I know I am not the only father to lose his son--she is not the only mother, but----"

"You don't think it might be best to break it to her now?" someone suggested.

He shook his head impatiently, the throbbing head from which the jeune premier's curls were not removed yet.

"It would be murder. I am warned she is to avoid excitement. And this evening, when she tries to be bright, to go in and say, 'He is killed'! I mustn't tell her till she is well--quite, quite well. I must keep her cheerful; I must be in good spirits, but--I haven't the courage to go home."

It was the truth: he had not the courage to go home.

"She is waiting for me--I must make haste to change," he faltered more than once; but even when he had "changed" at last, his soul cowered before the thought of the ordeal, and he lingered nerveless in the chair.

"She is waiting for me--I must go," he kept repeating while the lights in the theatre went out. "I must go," he said again, and rose. They had called a cab for him, and his legs felt so unreliable that he offered no protest, though a cab seemed a terrible extravagance. Yes, he would take one; it was certain he could not walk fast enough to make up for the delay, and Nanette mustn't be allowed to grow anxious. He lay back in the cab dizzily, a hand round the neck of the bottle on his knees. "In good spirits--in good spirits!" he cautioned himself. "But her instinct is so strong. If she suspects?" On the rattling course, imagination wrung him with the moment of her suspicion--the horror in her dilating eyes, the impuissance of his agony.... "Dead!" He perceived with a shock that he had not understood that Jean was dead--that he still did not understand. "Dead." Jean, who seemed so vividly alive, was only a memory. His eagerness, his laughter, his allusions, all the intimate realities that represented Jean had been blown out. It was inconceivable; his mind would not grasp it. Where, then, did comprehension he, that he was stricken?... The cab startled him by stopping.

As he had said, she was trying to be bright. She had not cast her fears aside, but she meant to hide them. She welcomed him with a smile. "Champagne _and_ a cab? What next?"

"Yes, what do you think of it? I was in a hurry to get back. How has it been with you, chérie--has the evening seemed very long? Well, there is good news--you may have a glass."

"He was sure?"

"He said 'Yes' at once. Oh, I wouldn't have tried to persuade him--that would have been folly. I told him the reason, but I did not try to persuade him."

"How tired you look! How did it go?"

"It was a good audience--what there was of it. Three calls after the third act. What an appetite I've got--and what a thirst! I can't wait to take my boots off. The spread attracts me. What? I declare I see my favourite sausage!"

"I couldn't go out for any flowers this year, and I forgot to remind you," she said. "But you'll find enough to eat."

"And you--what is there for _you_? Let me put the pillow behind you, mignonne. And now to open the bottle! I am not an expert at the game, but--ah! it is coming. Prepare yourself for the bang.... Tiens, it is of a gentle disposition. But no doubt it will taste just as good. Sapristi, how it sparkles!"

He bore a glassful to her side, and their gaze turned together to the likeness on the wall.

"Well, little wife, the usual toast. To our boy, our darling Jean! May God bless him."

"May God bless him," breathed the mother. They looked at the photograph silently for a moment. "I wonder if he is thinking of us?" she murmured. "Perhaps he is fancying us like this?"

"I venture to say so," replied Picq. "He knows we should never forget his birthday; he knows that."

"If--he is alive," she said in a whisper.

"Ah, why should we doubt it?" His arm encouraged her. "How often we have alarmed ourselves! And always he _was_ alive. Take another sip, mignonne. It is a sound wine, hein? I should not be surprised if on the Boulevard they charge fifteen francs for such a wine."

"You must go and sit down now and have your supper."

"Not for a minute or two. The bouquet is so excellent I can't take my nose out of the glass. And I think I am more thirsty than hungry, after all."

"Petit bonhomme, petit bonhomme," she faltered pitifully.

"And why 'petit bonhomme' like that--what are you making so much of me about?"

"Do you think I am blind? Do you suppose you can hide it from me? Your hands tremble and your eyes are red. As soon as you came in I saw. You have been tormenting yourself about the operation all the evening."

"Mais non, mais non! If I worry, it is not about the operation, because it is a simple thing, though it sounds so big to _us_. They tell me it is an everyday affair, like having out a tooth; that was his very expression: 'Monsieur, it is no more dangerous than having out a tooth.' I worry, if I worry at all, in thinking that you are frightened. If I could only make you believe that there is nothing to be frightened of!"

"I know I am a coward. I told you so. It is from _you_ that he gets his courage."

"What an illusion! A fine fire-eater _I_ am! Old stick-in-the-mud!"

"Ah, yes. I'm ashamed. When I think of what he is going through--how splendidly he bears it! And here am I, afraid of everything. He has no heroine for a mother."

"I forbid thee to say it. He knows it is not true."

"He loves me just the same. Don't you, Jean--you don't love your little mother any less?" The photograph hung too high for her. "Take it down," she pleaded. "If I could change places with thee, my son! I would find the courage for that, though I died of terror in the first hour. Ah, my little baby, my little baby! And I was so glad he was a boy!"

"You are not to upset yourself," quavered Picq. "I cannot stand it. Will you be sorry he was a boy when he gets the Croix de Guerre? I make you a bet they give him that at the very least. I see you polishing it all day. Pick up your glass. To tell the truth, I have a strong presentiment, and I am not given to foolish fancies, that he comes home 'Captain.' What triumph for us--hale and hearty and a captain. Imagine it. At his age! Nanette, pick up your glass. We will paint the town red that night, and you will say you were 'always sure of it.' When I chaff you about your tremors you will declare you never had any. Mind you, I am putting it down very low; it is quite on the cards that he becomes 'Colonel.' Nanette, I entreat thee, pick up thy glass! Again a toast. Good luck, my son! We drink to your future. A bumper to our next merry meeting!"

That toast reverberated to Picq when she lay sleeping and Picq was sleepless. But, at any rate, she had no suspicion so far.

She remained without suspicion when he visited her at the hospital, during the following week, but always she remained a prey to fear. Not for herself now--they said the operation had been successful; it was the thought of Jean's peril that haunted her. As she was wakened in the early morning, the burden of dread rolled upon her. Through the long monotonous day her mind was in the blood-soaked line more often than in the ward. They hinted to Picq that her anxiety was detrimental, and he tried to reason with her once; but it seemed to do more harm than good, for she burst out, "If he should be killed!" and wrung her hands on the quilt. "He has everything before him, he's so fond of life. If he should be killed!"

"He will not be killed. Is not my love for him as great as yours? And you see I am confident. I swear to you I am confident! I implore you, don't dwell on these thoughts. Make haste and get well." And again he asked himself, "How am I to break it to her when she _is_ well?"

Then there was a morning when they sent him away for a while, stupefied by the announcement that never would she be well. "The conditions had changed;" he must be "prepared for the worst." She, too, had been prepared, before he was admitted. He had foreseen her speechless with fright; but, strange to say, the "coward" who had been so timorous of an operation, had spoken of her approaching death quite calmly. Her terror for Jean it was, increasingly her terror for Jean, that tortured her last hours. "Petit bonhomme, it is like being on the rack," she had gasped. "If only I were sure he would be spared!"

"God of heaven, it is 'like being on the rack' for her," shuddered Picq, sobbing in the street; "it is for her 'like being on the rack'! And there is nothing I can do."

And a child came towards him, calling papers.

* * * * *

It was with the connivance of the nurses that he brought joy and thanksgiving to her heart during the hours that remained to her. He pretended to her that Germany sued for peace. If he was condemned to affect the tones of hysterical rejoicing, he had no need to counterfeit the tears. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, as he feigned to fight for mastery of a whirlwind of exultance, and panted to her that the war was won.

"I return with good news--the greatest; but I implore thee, keep still--they forbid thee to sit up. Nanette, my loved one, our boy is safe. The danger is all over--he will soon be home. The Boches are beaten. I rush back to tell thee. They cave in. Paris has gone mad. The boulevards are impassable for crowds. I am deaf with the cheers. They cave in! They have been on the verge of it for months. Bluff, it has all been bluff for a long time, and now America has called their hand. They collapse, the Boches. An armistice is arranged. It is certain they restore Alsace-Lorraine. I have cried like a child. Glory to God. France has conquered. Vive la France!"

"Jean safe!" she breathed, smiling.

She seemed to grow younger during the afternoon, before she died.

"And though she knows now it was a he," said Picq, when they had crossed her hands on her breast, "it is no disappointment to her, since she has him with her now."