The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 6

She did not pause to be twice bidden; she was down the stair in an instant. She had never before suspected herself of such activity. The Doctor meanwhile, with the speed of a piece of pantomime business, and undeterred by broken shins, proceeded to rout out Jean-Marie, tore Aline from her virgin slumbers, seized her by the hand, and tumbled downstairs and into the garden, with the girl tumbling behind him, still not half awake.

The fugitives rendezvoused in the arbour by some common instinct. Then came a bull’s-eye flash of struggling moonshine, which disclosed their four figures standing huddled from the wind in a raffle of flying drapery, and not without a considerable need for more. At the humiliating spectacle Anastasie clutched her night-dress desperately about her and burst loudly into tears. The Doctor flew to console her; but she elbowed him away. She suspected everybody of being the general public, and thought the darkness was alive with eyes.

Another gleam and another violent gust arrived together; the house was seen to rock on its foundation, and, just as the light was once more eclipsed, a crash which triumphed over the shouting of the wind announced its fall, and for a moment the whole garden was alive with skipping tiles and brickbats. One such missile grazed the Doctor’s ear; another descended on the bare foot of Aline, who instantly made night hideous with her shrieks.

By this time the hamlet was alarmed, lights flashed from the windows, hails reached the party, and the Doctor answered, nobly contending against Aline and the tempest. But this prospect of help only awakened Anastasie to a more active stage of terror.

“Henri, people will be coming,” she screamed in her husband’s ear.

“I trust so,” he replied.

“They cannot. I would rather die,” she wailed.

“My dear,” said the Doctor reprovingly, “you are excited. I gave you some clothes. What have you done with them?”

“Oh, I don’t know – I must have thrown them away! Where are they?” she sobbed.

Desprez groped about in the darkness. “Admirable!” he remarked; “my grey velveteen trousers! This will exactly meet your necessities.”

“Give them to me!” she cried fiercely; but as soon as she had them in her hands her mood appeared to alter – she stood silent for a moment, and then pressed the garment back upon the Doctor. “Give it to Aline,” she said – “poor girl.”

“Nonsense!” said the Doctor. “Aline does not know what she is about. Aline is beside herself with terror; and, at any rate, she is a peasant. Now, I am really concerned at this exposure for a person of your housekeeping habits; my solicitude and your fantastic modesty both point to the same remedy – the pantaloons.” He held them ready.

“It is impossible. You do not understand,” she said with dignity.

By this time rescue was at hand. It had been found impracticable to enter by the street, for the gate was blocked with masonry, and the nodding ruin still threatened further avalanches. But between the Doctor’s garden and the one on the right hand there was that very picturesque contrivance – a common well; the door on the Desprez side had chanced to be unbolted, and now, through the arched aperture, a man’s bearded face and an arm supporting a lantern were introduced into the world of windy darkness, where Anastasie concealed her woes. The light struck here and there among the tossing apple boughs, it glinted on the grass; but the lantern and the glowing face became the centre of the world. Anastasie crouched back from the intrusion.

“This way!” shouted the man. “Are you all safe?”

Aline, still screaming, ran to the new-comer, and was presently hauled head-foremost through the wall.

“Now, Anastasie, come on; it is your turn,” said the husband.

“I cannot,” she replied.

“Are we all to die of exposure, madame?” thundered Doctor Desprez.

“You can go!” she cried. “Oh, go, go away! I can stay here; I am quite warm.”

The Doctor took her by the shoulders with an oath.

“Stop!” she screamed. “I will put them on.”

She took the detested lendings in her hand once more; but her repulsion was stronger than shame. “Never!” she cried, shuddering, and flung them far away into the night.

Next moment the Doctor had whirled her to the well. The man was there, and the lantern; Anastasie closed her eyes and appeared to herself to be about to die. How she was transported through the arch she knew not; but once on the other side she was received by the neighbour’s wife, and enveloped in a friendly blanket.

Beds were made ready for the two women, clothes of very various sizes for the Doctor and Jean-Marie; and for the remainder of the night, while madame dozed in and out on the borderland of hysterics, her husband sat beside the fire and held forth to the admiring neighbours. He showed them, at length, the causes of the accident; for years, he explained, the fall had been impending; one sign had followed another: the joints had opened, the plaster had cracked, the old walls bowed inward; last, not three weeks ago, the cellar-door had begun to work with difficulty in its grooves. “The cellar!” he said, gravely shaking his head over a glass of mulled wine. “That reminds me of my poor vintages. By a manifest providence the Hermitage was nearly at an end. One bottle – I lose but one bottle of that incomparable wine. It had been set apart against Jean-Marie’s wedding. Well, I must lay down some more; it will be an interest in life. I am, however, a man somewhat advanced in years. My great work is now buried in the fall of my humble roof; it will never be completed – my name will have been writ in water. And yet you find me calm – I would say cheerful. Can your priest do more?”

By the first glimpse of day the party sallied forth from the fireside into the street. The wind had fallen, but still charioted a world of troubled clouds; the air bit like frost; and the party, as they stood about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning, beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to protect the property, and the party adjourned to Tentaillon’s to break their fast at the Doctor’s expense. The bottle circulated somewhat freely; and before they left the table it had begun to snow.

For three days the snow continued to fall, and the ruins, covered with tarpaulin and watched by sentries, were left undisturbed. The Desprez meanwhile had taken up their abode at Tentaillon’s. Madame spent her time in the kitchen, concocting little delicacies, with the admiring aid of Madame Tentaillon, or sitting by the fire in thoughtful abstraction. The fall of the house affected her wonderfully little; that blow had been parried by another; and in her mind she was continually fighting over again the battle of the trousers. Had she done right? Had she done wrong? And now she would applaud her determination; and anon, with a horrid flush of unavailing penitence, she would regret the trousers. No juncture in her life had so much exercised her judgment. In the meantime the Doctor had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two of the summer boarders still lingered behind the rest, prisoners for lack of a remittance; they were both English, but one of them spoke French pretty fluently, and was, besides, a humorous, agile-minded fellow, with whom the Doctor could reason by the hour, secure of comprehension. Many were the glasses they emptied, many the topics they discussed.

“Anastasie,” the Doctor said on the third morning, “take an example from your husband, from Jean-Marie! The excitement has done more for the boy than all my tonics, he takes his turn as sentry with positive gusto. As for me, you behold me. I have made friends with the Egyptians; and my Pharaoh is, I swear it, a most agreeable companion. You alone are hipped. About a house – a few dresses? What are they in comparison to the ‘Pharmacopœia’ – the labour of years lying buried below stones and sticks in this depressing hamlet? The snow falls; I shake it from my cloak! Imitate me. Our income will be impaired, I grant it, since we must rebuild; but moderation, patience, and philosophy will gather about the hearth. In the meanwhile, the Tentaillons are obliging; the table, with your additions, will pass; only the wine is execrable – well, I shall send for some to-day. My Pharaoh will be gratified to drink a decent glass; aha! and I shall see if he possesses that acme of organisation – a palate. If he has a palate, he is perfect.”

“Henri,” she said, shaking her head, “you are a man; you cannot understand my feelings; no woman could shake off the memory of so public a humiliation.”

The Doctor could not restrain a titter. “Pardon me, darling,” he said; “but really, to the philosophical intelligence, the incident appears so small a trifle. You looked extremely well – ”

“Henri!” she cried.

“Well, well, I will say no more,” he replied. “Though, to be sure, if you had consented to indue —À propos,” he broke off, “and my trousers! They are lying in the snow – my favourite trousers!” And he dashed in quest of Jean-Marie.

Two hours afterwards the boy returned to the inn with a spade under one arm and a curious sop of clothing under the other.

The Doctor ruefully took it in his hands. “They have been!” he said. “Their tense is past. Excellent pantaloons, you are no more! Stay, something in the pocket,” and he produced a piece of paper. “A letter! ay, now I mind me; it was received on the morning of the gale, when I was absorbed in delicate investigations. It is still legible. From poor dear Casimir! It is as well,” he chuckled, “that I have educated him to patience. Poor Casimir and his correspondence – his infinitesimal, timorous, idiotic correspondence!”

He had by this time cautiously unfolded the wet letter; but, as he bent himself to decipher the writing, a cloud descended on his brow.

“Bigre!” he cried, with a galvanic start.

And then the letter was whipped into the fire, and the Doctor’s cap was on his head in the turn of a hand.

“Ten minutes! I can catch it, if I run,” he cried. “It is always late. I go to Paris. I shall telegraph.”

“Henri! what is wrong?” cried his wife.

“Ottoman Bonds!” came from the disappearing Doctor; and Anastasie and Jean-Marie were left face to face with the wet trousers. Desprez had gone to Paris, for the second time in seven years; he had gone to Paris with a pair of wooden shoes, a knitted spencer, a black blouse, a country nightcap, and twenty francs in his pocket. The fall of the house was but a secondary marvel; the whole world might have fallen and scarce left his family more petrified.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY

On the morning of the next day, the Doctor, a mere spectre of himself, was brought back in the custody of Casimir. They found Anastasie and the boy sitting together by the fire; and Desprez, who had exchanged his toilette for a ready-made rig-out of poor materials, waved his hand as he entered, and sank speechless on the nearest chair. Madame turned direct to Casimir.

“What is wrong?” she cried.

“Well,” replied Casimir, “what have I told you all along? It has come. It is a clean shave this time; so you may as well bear up and make the best of it. House down, too, eh? Bad luck, upon my soul!”

“Are we – are we – ruined?” she gasped.

The Doctor stretched out his arms to her. “Ruined,” he replied, “you are ruined by your sinister husband.”

Casimir observed the consequent embrace through his eyeglass; then he turned to Jean-Marie. “You hear?” he said. “They are ruined; no more pickings, no more house, no more fat cutlets. It strikes me, my friend, that you had best be packing; the present speculation is about worked out.” And he nodded to him meaningly.

“Never!” cried Desprez, springing up. “Jean-Marie, if you prefer to leave me, now that I am poor, you can go; you shall receive your hundred francs, if so much remains to me. But if you will consent to stay” – the Doctor wept a little – “Casimir offers me a place – as clerk,” he resumed. “The emoluments are slender, but they will be enough for three. It is too much already to have lost my fortune; must I lose my son?”

Jean-Marie sobbed bitterly, but without a word.