Tales of Two Countries
see his face. At first he let his eyes travel furtively over his old
friend’s figure; then he looked up, and, gazing straight at Charles, he
said, half aloud, “Charlie!”
It was long since Charles had heard that old pet name. He gazed into the
well-known face, and now for the first time saw how it had altered of
late. It seemed to him as though he were reading a tragic story about
himself.
They remained thus for a second or two, and there glided over Alphonse’s
features that expression of imploring helplessness which Charles knew
so well from the old school days, when Alphonse came bounding in at the
last moment and wanted his composition written.
“Have you done with the _Journal Amusant_?” asked Charles, with a thick
utterance.
“Yes; pray take it,” answered Alphonse, hurriedly. He reached him the
paper, and at the same time got hold of Charles’s thumb. He pressed it
and whispered, “Thanks,” then--drained the glass.
Charles went over to the stranger who sat by the door: “Give me the
bill.”
“You don’t need our assistance, then?”
“No, thanks.”
“So much the better,” said the stranger, handing Charles a folded blue
paper. Then he paid for his coffee and went.----Madame Virginie rose
with a little shriek: “Alphonse! Oh, my God! Monsieur Alphonse is ill.”
He slipped off his chair; his shoulders went up and his head fell on one
side. He remained sitting on the floor, with his back against the chair.
There was a movement among those nearest; the doctor sprang over and
knelt beside him. When he looked in Alphonse’s face he started a little.
He took his hand as if to feel his pulse, and at the same time bent down
over the glass which stood on the edge of the table.
With a movement of the arm he gave it a slight push, so that it fell
on the floor and was smashed. Then he laid down the dead man’s hand and
bound a handkerchief round his chin.
Not till then did the others understand what had happened. “Dead? Is he
dead, doctor? Monsieur Alphonse dead?”
“Heart disease,” answered the doctor.
One came running with water, another with vinegar. Amid laughter and
noise, the balls could be heard cannoning on the inner billiard-table.
“Hush!” some one whispered. “Hush!” was repeated; and the silence spread
in wider and wider circles round the corpse, until all was quite still.
“Come and lend a hand,” said the doctor.
The dead man was lifted up; they laid him on a sofa in a corner of the
room, and the nearest gasjets were put out.
Madame Virginie was still standing up; her face was chalk-white, and she
held her little soft hand pressed against her breast. They carried him
right past the buffet. The doctor had seized him under the back, so that
his waistcoat slipped up and a piece of his fine white shirt appeared.
She followed with her eyes the slender, supple limbs she knew so well,
and continued to stare towards the dark corner.
Most of the guests went away in silence. A couple of young men entered
noisily from the street; a waiter ran towards them and said a few words.
They glanced towards the corner, buttoned their coats, and plunged out
again into the fog.
The half-darkened café was soon empty; only some of Alphonse’s nearest
friends stood in a group and whispered. The doctor was talking with the
proprietor, who had now appeared on the scene.
The waiters stole to and fro making great circuits to avoid the dark
corner. One of them knelt and gathered up the fragments of the glass on
a tray. He did his work as quietly as he could; but for all that it made
too much noise.
“Let that alone until by-and-by,” said the host, softly.--Leaning
against the chimney-piece, Charles looked at the dead man. He slowly
tore the folded paper to pieces, while he thought of his friend--
A GOOD CONSCIENCE.
An elegant little carriage, with two sleek and well-fed horses, drew up
at Advocate Abel’s garden gate.
Neither silver nor any other metal was visible in the harness;
everything was a dull black, and all the buckles were leather-covered.
In the lacquering of the carriage there was a trace of dark green; the
cushions were of a subdued dust-color; and only on close inspection
could you perceive that the coverings were of the richest silk. The
coachman looked like an English clergyman, in his close-buttoned black
coat, with a little stand-up collar and stiff white necktie.
Mrs. Warden, who sat alone in the carriage, bent forward and laid her
hand upon the ivory door-handle; then she slowly alighted, drew her long
train after her, and carefully closed the carriage door.
You might have wondered that the coachman did not dismount to help her;
the fat horses certainly did not look as though they would play any
tricks if he dropped the reins.
But when you looked at his immovable countenance and his correct
iron-gray whiskers, you understood at once that this was a man who knew
what he was doing, and never neglected a detail of his duty.
Mrs. Warden passed through the little garden in front of the house, and
entered the garden-room. The door to the adjoining room stood half open,
and there she saw the lady of the house at a large table covered with
rolls of light stuff and scattered numbers of the _Bazar_.
“Ah, you’ve come just at the right moment, my dear Emily!” cried Mrs.
Abel, “I’m quite in despair over my dress-maker--she can’t think of
anything new. And here I’m sitting, ransacking the _Bazar_. Take off
your shawl, dear, and come and help me; it’s a walking-dress.”
“I’m afraid I’m scarcely the person to help you in a matter of dress,”
answered Mrs. Warden.
Good-natured Mrs. Abel stared at her; there was something disquieting in
her tone, and she had a vast respect for her rich friend.
“You remember I told you the other day that Warden had promised
me--that’s to say”--Mrs. Warden corrected herself--“he had asked me to
order a new silk dress--”
“From Madame Labiche--of course!”--interrupted Mrs. Abel. “And I suppose
you’re on your way to her now? Oh, take me with you! It will be such
fun!”
“I am not going to Madame Labiche’s,” answered Mrs. Warden, almost
solemnly.
“Good gracious, why not?” asked her friend, while her good-humored brown
eyes grew spherical with astonishment.
“Well, you must know,” answered Mrs. Warden, “it seems to me we can’t
with a good conscience pay so much money for unnecessary finery, when
we know that on the outskirts of the town--and even at our very
doors--there are hundreds of people living in destitution--literally in
destitution.”
“Yes, but,” objected the advocate’s wife, casting an uneasy glance over
her table, “isn’t that the way of the world? We know that inequality--”
“We ought to be careful not to increase the inequality, but rather to do
what we can to smooth it away,” Mrs. Warden interrupted. And it appeared
to Mrs. Abel that her friend cast a glance of disapprobation over the
table, the stuffs, and the _Bazars_.
“It’s only alpaca,” she interjected, timidly.
“Good heavens, Caroline!” cried Mrs. Warden, “pray don’t think that
I’m reproaching you. These things depend entirely upon one’s
individual point of view--every one must follow the dictates of his own
conscience.”
The conversation continued for some time, and Mrs. Warden related that
it was her intention to drive out to the very lowest of the suburbs, in
order to assure herself, with her own eyes, of the conditions of life
among the poor.
On the previous day she had read the annual report of a private
charitable society of which her husband was a member. She had purposely
refrained from applying to the police or the poor-law authorities for
information. It was the very gist of her design personally to seek
out poverty, to make herself familiar with it, and then to render
assistance.
The ladies parted a little less effusively than usual. They were both in
a serious frame of mind.
Mrs. Abel remained in the garden-room; she felt no inclination to set to
work again at the walking-dress, although the stuff was really pretty.
She heard the muffled sound of the carriage-wheels as they rolled off
over the smooth roadway of the villa quarter.
“What a good heart Emily has,” she sighed.
Nothing could be more remote than envy from the good-natured lady’s
character; and yet--it was with a feeling akin to envy that she now
followed the light carriage with her eyes. But whether it was her
friend’s good heart or her elegant equipage that she envied her it was
not easy to say. She had given the coachman his orders, which he had
received without moving a muscle; and as remonstrance was impossible to
him, he drove deeper and deeper into the queerest streets in the poor
quarter, with a countenance as though he were driving to a Court ball.
At last he received orders to stop, and indeed it was high time. For
the street grew narrower and narrower, and it seemed as though the fat
horses and the elegant carriage must at the very next moment have stuck
fast, like a cork in the neck of a bottle.
The immovable one showed no sign of anxiety, although the situation was
in reality desperate. A humorist, who stuck his head out of a garret
window, went so far as to advise him to slaughter his horses on the
spot, as they could never get out again alive.
Mrs. Warden alighted, and turned into a still narrower street; she
wanted to see poverty at its very worst.
In a door-way stood a half-grown girl. Mrs. Warden asked: “Do very poor
people live in this house?”
The girl laughed and made some answer as she brushed close past her in
the narrow door-way. Mrs. Warden did not understand what she said, but
she had an impression that it was something ugly.
She entered the first room she came to.
It was not a new idea to Mrs. Warden that poor people never keep their
rooms properly ventilated. Nevertheless, she was so overpowered by the
atmosphere she found herself inhaling that she was glad to sink down on
a bench beside the stove.
Mrs. Warden was struck by something in the gesture with which the woman
of the house swept down upon the floor the clothes which were lying on
the bench, and in the smile with which she invited the fine lady to be
seated. She received the impression that the poor woman had seen better
days, although her movements were bouncing rather than refined, and her
smile was far from pleasant.
The long train of Mrs. Warden’s pearl-gray visiting dress spread over
the grimy floor, and as she stooped and drew it to her she could not
help thinking of an expression of Heine’s, “She looked like a bon-bon
which has fallen in the mire.”
The conversation began, and was carried on as such conversations usually
are. If each had kept to her own language and her own line of thought,
neither of these two women would have understood a word that the other
said.
But as the poor always know the rich much better than the rich know the
poor, the latter have at last acquired a peculiar dialect--a particular
tone which experience has taught them to use when they are anxious to
make themselves understood--that is to say, understood in such a way
as to incline the wealthy to beneficence. Nearer to each other they can
never come.
Of this dialect the poor woman was a perfect mistress, and Mrs. Warden
had soon a general idea of her miserable case. She had two children--a
boy of four or five, who was lying on the floor, and a baby at the
breast.
Mrs. Warden gazed at the pallid little creature, and could not believe
that it was thirteen months old. At home in his cradle she herself had
a little colossus of seven months, who was at least half as big again as
this child.
“You must give the baby something strengthening,” she said; and she had
visions of phosphate food and orange jelly.
At the words “something strengthening,” a shaggy head looked up from the